Sovera

I feel your questions are a bit too generic to be easily addressed. As a rule of thumb every Tanker primary can do a good job at keeping you up, but you need a build. If your tanker is regularly dying it can be placed down at the feet of the build not being complete or just plain not being good. Dying once in a while is fine. It happens. The game tends to cheat a bit to keep things interesting. But simply throwing defense or resistance into your shields is not enough. Sometimes you need to worry about endurance sapping, other times about recharge debuffs stacking up, and you absolutely need to worry about reaching certain number caps in terms of defense and resistance. Now the good news is that there are plenty of builds in these forums that you can try it out. I currently have a little beast of Rad Armor/Martial Arts that took reaching level 43 and do an ITF while still not having slotted my shields to finally die for the first time. Once at 50 and having slotted everything an ITF will hold no particular terrors to it which is how things work. Dying while leveling and underslotted happens, but once at 50 and everything shored and in place you should be fine.

Experimenting is the best thing. It's common to overthink endurance problems for example. We overslot and overcompensate and discover we actually do not have endurance problems. This can be because Ageless is a *very* common Destiny and it's common to be under its effect all the time from someone else in the team who fired it. That means you don't need to take it, that means your endurance is pretty much always solved. This is something you find as you play. Another thing for example is 'CoH is an AoE game' which is a view I espoused as well. But as we play we realize a pack melts from enthusiast AoE and that a strong ST with fluid animations is actually a nice thing to have to take care of the leftovers, not more AoE. Now, regarding Tactics and the use of Gaussian. What you have here is a spreadsheet VS practical use scenario. In spreadsheet terms the Gaussian term will go off X times a minute without intervention from the user making its slotting there palatable. In practical terms the Gaussian going off will be random. It can happen while running to the next spawn, it can be while fighting a minion, it can be when fighting a boss at 10% HP. I feel it better to have the thing when I need it. Even not fully slotted my little tanker manages to kill most, if not all, +2 minions in a spawn by running to it, Focus Chi + Gaussian, Dragon's Tail, Electrifying Fences, Ball Lightning, Dragon's Tail. Or there's something like a Sapper, or a Surgeon, or a Paragon Protector at 30%, and that damage boost ensures they go down presto. Again, as you play you decide your own playstyle, there is not one size-fits-all. I do things how I like, others do as they like, and you can be that third way of doing things and none needs to be accounted as being a wrong way. Respecs recipes are cheap at 1-2 mill so just horse around and play with slottings, do group content and refine things.

It's a 'worryingly' widespread thing because people tend to not budge their difficulty slider. It's super common even at level 40+ to see people running TFs at +0 +1. Get rid of the 5%. If it's a worry for NPCs then let them keep it. If it's a worry for PvP then PvP can keep it. In the 'quite frustrating scenario is lenghty animations that miss, with a special place in hell when the animation SHOWS that it will miss AKA me using something like Flaming Arrow and the character is nose to the target (sometimes a box I need to break), AND THEY DO THE SLOW ANIMATION TO THE SKY BEFORE SHOOTING THE CEILING!

Meltdown is not needed when resists are hardcapped and endurance is positive. Ground Zero is more damage than Ball Lightning (124 damage every 10 seconds VS 430 proc filled every 30). As mentioned I just don't like mini nukes (especially with 3.1 animations) but it's a choice. Probably not, but it only cost one slot and I'm not starved for them. I could switch to Preventive Medecine instead of Panacea and get the absorb proc into the build. That would give me more S/L resist than I need so I could change the slotting in Tough. Overall it is for single target situations that ToE is slotted in though. I'll have to see how well the build handles long stretches of hitting things. In AoE situations my endurance depletes much faster and I need to use Radiation Therapy more often, but AoEs chug endurance and in AoE situations we are surrounded by enemies anyway. The ST attacks are much cheaper. Hmm... Yes, you're right, I should test this.

I go with +3 as well. I'm more and more pretty disgusted with the 5% chance of failure when I see it happen three times in a row so at some point I'm just well #$& it. Aim for +3 or aim for +4 I still get deflects and misses. So wasting stats in more accuracy is just meh.

I tried really hard to like Eagle's Claw. The animation is fun looking and the numbers are good, just as @Sir Myshkinmade a very compelling argument to take it because of the long term endurance costs and the damage buff it provides... but I cannot make myself to like long ass 2.8 animations and it kills my enjoyment to even press the button. So I returned to the good old Crippling Axe Kick. The ST rotation becomes Crippling Axe Kick, Storm Kick, Crane kick, Storm Kick. In a team while under recharge buffs I found myself not needing the second Storm Kick which increases the overall damage. In order to get some slots back I dismantled Gamma Boost and spread the slots around which keeps the hasten still at 130 seconds (one target in range) the same though loses some (hidden) recovery. Radiation Therapy is just that powerful though, and Particle Shielding can be used on CD simply for the recovery aspect so all is well though I have not tried a pylon to see if the endurance bar survives wailing solo on something for 3-5 minutes.

*polishes the last Rad Armor/MA build* When I made the original linked in that post I thought I had made something incredible but received only polite interest and a flood of well meant persons doing their own spin upon it. To this day I don't have a particular clue about the servers having been flooded by copies of that build but from the lukewarm reception in the forums I doubt it. Unrelated, what amuses me most about this threads is the sudden arrival of a random saying how we have a problem, we don't know we have a problem, but they will enlighten us, and teach us the way to be without this problem that we did not knew we had but that they came to inform of us of. No travel powers until 14 and being sent to cavalcade across the areas having to dodge purple mobs using only Sprint was a problem. Fitting three powers (two of which semi useless) to have Stamina so that we were allowed to play the game was a problem. Taking one power if we want to or not (unlike Stamina) at whatever level we want to for a 40% recharge benefit is not a problem.

You get good Contaminated out of Irradiated Ground, Devastating, and Fusion. Siphon is so good you might not ever feel a need for Radiation therapy/Shielding. But you're correct that Rad Armor supplies your needs in terms of defense. While Rad/Rad may be more thematic some mix and matching might have worked better with a secondary that could have used the extra Siphon heals (elec armor for example), or a primary without them (Shield for example). I've personally been on a Rad Armor binge and found I never take Meltdown but that's a personal thing since I dislike mini nukes (and nukes) due to their CD. I've also stopped playing Rad Melee since I loathe slow animation. As for a substitute... well.. Maybe Air Superiority from Fly, and I hear good things of Cross Punch.

Good damage and a fat heal? Yeah, sorta. More importantly what would you replace it with? Devastating, Smash, Siphon, Smash is a good rotation.

Not sure it this is the right thread for that. The thing is Burn. It's not the heal or the midling resistances or the lack of any debuff resistances. Burn is why Fire Armor is taken, and Burn makes the enemies flee, which means only an AT with an agro aura manages to leverage burn... which means Brute or Tanker. And this is why you don't see many (or any) Fire Armor builds for Stalker/Scrappers.

The difference is not as large now, and once we enter the 50s range, everyone slotted, incarnated, even in solo mode a Tanker can quickly kill half a spawn and it is not the 3-4 remaining lieuts and a single boss that will be a problem (this applies to Brutes as well). Where the survivability comes in is versus tricky enemies. Bio armor VS ITF will eat a Brute alive trying to solo a spawn where a Tanker will handle it. As you mention there are subtleties. A team helps, a team that helps killing faster helps even more. If we are down to 2-3 enemies after the initial AoE volley what is there to fear? If we are solo even at +4x8 we decimate all the minions be it Brute or Tanker. What sort or enemies? Council are complete pushovers and have become CoH's XP fodder, but no one dares to do that with Carnies or Devouring Earth. The factions 'no one dares to' is where the extra survival would make a difference. While leveling is where we notice the defense differences more. Once at 50, everyone with a nuke, everyone with a party wide Destiny, everyone IOed to the gills, what is there really to fear?

You guys have a lot more patience than I do. I'm currently leveling a Rad/MA Tanker, and yes, it's not fully slotted and I'm fighting +2 and +3, but, ugh, so slow. Hitting for 150-200 with my high attacks is like watching paint dry. I've soloed Synapse as a I leveled (just +0x1) but even then, sloooow. It got better when I lightbulbed into pulling the whole floor and AoEing it down instead of fighting a spawn at a time. I can't imagine the dullness of trying to soloing a +3 or +4 AV. This is a bit like the whole Brute VS Scrapper argument and me who got into the habit of throwing my new alts into the AE and have my alternate account do a couple maps which puts them at 23, allowing met to slot everything before starting with Posi and move on up. I started doing it with my Fire Armor/Psi Tanker because I can do attack chains that are only AoEs (Mass Levitate, Electric Fences, Ball Lightning, Burn, Psi Sweep. repeat). But on a whim I decided to try my Claws/Bio Scrapper and despite not being completely Incarnated (just T4 Musculature) and having to use my heals once in a while (40% defense since I did not get Barrier yet) I found it kills as fast, or faster. When I do Follow-Up, and get the Scrapper ATO crit, and do Shockwave and Spin and both fit in the ATO's proc the crits, omfg, it tears through the spawns. To me soloing stuff ends not being about surviving, but managing to keep my interest as I whittle through enemies.

Everything is definitely looking nice and neat. We follow different paths but that's fine too. I still feel a Tanker's damage is still a bit too anemic and thus would never pass on slotting Musculature and damage procs. At most the 33% version so it buffs endurance a bit more. In the same vein I would not pass on my Build-Up power. Taking Ageless would fix any endurance woes you'd have and allow you to drop out of Conserve Power and Physical Perfection and instead pick extra AoE (which may or may not be useful) or Barrier for another 5% defense and 5% resistance (further allowing moving around the slotting). I would personally not worry about DDR. Your defense is a secondary layer and you are primarily a resist based character with a potent heal. If you haven't you could take a look at the Rad Armor/MA build I posted somewhere below these forums. The only thing I did not pick compared to yours is Tactics which is of dubious use at 50. I had to twist a bit more to reach 45% defense since I did not have Cloak of Darkness to help things, but managed to squeeze in a damage proc for most attacks, picked Musculature, traded Tactics for Focus Chi, picked two extra AoEs and still got my 45% and 90% goals (except psi and cold). We don't *need* to follow the trope of Tankers being sturdy low damage dealers. That said these are personal opinions. Your build as is will eat all content, kudos 👍

Remember to pick the unofficial update to HD over the Tools section of the forum as it fixes the +resistances from the alpha.

You have everything in place though you could probably refine the slotting a bit more to save some slots here and there. Dark Regen is so powerful it is almost not mandatory to search for capped resists, but, things you can try to consider in the further refining of the build: - Remember than you can boost IOs (right click as if to choose a new OP, then press + five times). Hasten went from 143 seconds to 138. Same applies to the end mod in Stamina, Conserve Power, Assault, etc. - Dragon Tail can be taken at level 20. Don't level to 35 without it <_< It is also a *marvelous* place to stick a Force Feedback (much like Crane Kick) proc since hasten at 138 seconds is a bit slow. The Gladiator -res can go into Death Shroud and Crippling Axe Kick can take the Achilles -res (despite HD not allowing to slot it). - The Theft Essence proc pretty much negates Dark Regen's endurance which is the real big hog of the build. It almost turns Dark Regen into an endurance recovery tool which is nutty, but try it. - If you manage to, er, manage, your endurance you can move away from Ageless. I bring this up because having another build wide 5% resistance to all changes slotting a lot which brings me to my next point... - ...which is you have too much in the way of resistances. You're 15% overcapped in S/L with just one stack of the Tanker's Might proc. It stacks twice more for another near 15%, so you might be overcapped as much as 30%. Putting the proc in a toggle is not the best choice due to procs-per-minute. It will go a lot better in a single target attack you are bound to spam. My own choice where to put it is Storm kick since we will be spamming it for the +defense. This is part of the build refining I mentioned. If you trim all you can to absorb the slots giving you excess resistances (for example Tough can do with just its single native slot, and the Reactive Defenses in Weave giving 1.5% S/L) you can spread them over your other powers. This also applies to Fire/Cold (but not much to be done there) but not to Energy/Negative and Toxic/Psi. The reason it does not matter for those is that they are tied together and one is severely buffed by Dark Armor but not the other which forces severe overcapping in one so the other can be capped. This is normal and nothing to be done about, and Energy being very prevalent in end-game I'd say to keep on pushing even at the cost of Negative being crazy overcapped. Same reasoning with Psi/Toxic. To be perfectly honest Dark Regen is so powerful you can skip the previous advice. If you do intend to follow it consider that activating any power where you put Tanker's Might will give the build near 7% resistances to all. The safe thing is to consider that two stacks are easy to maintain. That means activating the power it is in (in this case Death Shroud) and aiming to have 83% resistances instead of 90% will have the second stack push the resistances to 90% by itself.

Yes, I've seen this advice so many times and I don't understand it. Perhaps under level 20 I'd use something that has no slots but even then.

Irradiated Ground wants to be 6 slotted with damage procs and the two different -resistance procs. Ignore acc, damage and etc. I can't answer your question without seeing your slotting. Can you screenshot Particle Shielding?

Maybe, but I don't think so. Siphon Life does not do leech, it heals for a fixed amount each time so damage boosts should not have interfered with the heal values of Siphon Life, but tbh i have no clue, for all I know perhaps it did.

A Rad Armor version of this build. It is in all ways a superior version: - Two heals instead of one with Radiation Therapy super fast recharge doubling as an endurance clicky. - Particle Shielding doubling as an absorption shield. - Passive recovery with Gamma Boost to not be gasping for Power Sink to finish recharging. - Much improved recharge with Beta Decay that further adds -5% ToHit. Still keeps: - 45% to Melee/Ranged/AoE (with Barrier's 5%). - 90% to all (with Barrier's 5% and two stacks of the Tanker's ATO) with the exception of Psi that sits at around ish 64% and Cold at 69% once having Barrier's 5% and three stacks of the Tanker ATO that HD is not showing. - Electrifying Fences and Ball Lightning for PvE. - Two Force Feedback procs to further accelerate the build. - 105% recharge/slow debuff resistance. Current numbers with one stack of the ATO.

Pretty much zero once you get to 26 and obtain Power sink.

Siphon Life from the Tankers is showing wrong numbers. I did not test the Scrapper or Stalker versions. In game at level 50 on a clean build an unenhanced Siphon Life heals for 187 HP or 10% HP. HD shows Siphon Life healing for 377, or 17%, with a clean build. In game with three generic heal IOs Siphon Life heals for 373 HP. HD shows Siphon Life with three generic level 50 heals as healing for 652HP, or 34%.

Probably because you're not at max level? Let me go check. Edit: I went to take a look and you're right. At level 50 on a clean build an unenhanced Siphon Life heals for 187 HP or 10% HP. HD shows Siphon Life healing for 377, or 17%, with a clean build. With three generic heal IOs it heals for 20% on the basic level 50 HP of 1877. With a full build and accolades the HP goes to 2662 which makes the static HP value of Siphon Life go down to a 14% heal. Even though the numbers are no longer as impressive (in particular since I had 76% heal stats instead of 99%, which makes the heal 328HP, or 12% of 2662HP) I still advocate frankenslotting from the basic 7% heal SL has (once all IOed and accoladed out). Thanks for the heads-up, Seig, and I'll go make a note over HD's thread.

I'll be honest that if I am on a Scrapper and leveling I don't need a tank to baby sit me. I'll gladly take one, but I don't need it. But I'm all meta-ed out leveling with ATOs and throwing set IOs in as soon as they become available, nearly every melee attack will have a Kinetic Melee set, and of course the two +3% unique IOS will be slotted, and then to top it I abuse the base macro and replenish my inspirations between missions. So of *course* I don't particularly *need* a tank when I'll just eat one insp and run into a group with my agro aura nabbing enemies for the team's comfort. But this is not the common experience for the average player and 90% of the time we gleefuly accept a tank that will bundle up the enemies and stop them from go wandering off across the map to return later and shoot us on the back. You describe why I am not personally interested in Brutes. When people sing the praises of Brutes for being 'nearly as resilient as a Tanker' they forget to add the little asterisk and footnote 'If they have support'. IF they have support, sure. Someone throwing shields on them, yeah. But if there isn't support then Brutes are slightly less damaging Scrappers with the same defense. Take the exact same slotting of a Scrapper and put it on a Brute and both will have the exact same numbers. Take the same slotting from a Brute and place it on a Tanker and the Tanker gets substantial defense and resistances increases (and lets not even go into the ATOs that buff damage on Scrappers and give 20%-ish more resistances to Tankers while they get... 10% regen and endurance discount? Fury bonus? k.). That means a properly build Tanker will always be ready to go even if there is no thermal/sonic/ice shields on them while a Brute will go at it with their Scrapper defenses. Where Brutes shine is for niche content such as farming. Then they can devote their build to reaching 90% to fire resist and softcap fire defense. But a tanker can even reach 45% to melee/ranged/AoE on top of 90% resists, on top of nearly as much damage. Not as good, sure, but they are there to actually tanking and take hits (though never should a Tanker go in a and brag how they don't care about damage and their role is just to tank for the team. They can do both, and they should do both).

Yes. It goes from healing 328 HP to 577 HP. That means it goes 14.7% to 21.8% (I forgot to add accolades). AKA one Life Siphon nearly heals for 1/4th of my green bar every 5 seconds (3 seconds recharge + 2 seconds animation time). Wrong, read the post below. 17%, not 5%. Unlike Redlynne I prefer to frankenslot for damage. I lose the set bonuses, but get and that's with one damage proc in the power. I'd like to lower the recharge further and do Siphon Life, Smite, Shadow Punch instead of Siphon Life, Shadow Punch, Smite, Shadow Punch, but even with SL at 95% recharge I'd still get around a 0.5 gap, which is fine, I guess, once someone in the party throws Speed Boost, or the new mini SB in Elec Affinity, or AM, or whatever. It's difficult to fit everything AND a damage proc with just six slots though, so I prefer throwing an extra Shadow Punch since DM's fun for me is being a punchy puncher buzzsaw. In fact, with the Rad Armor primary being so good for survival it would be very satisfying to throw out Siphon Life and just go ham on Gloom, Shadow Punch, Smite, Shadow Punch, all fast like 1.3, 1.0, 1.2, 1.0. For exemping purposes Siphon life would need to be kept, I guess.

Rolled a winning combo that pulverizes in solo mode and is fawned and fed peeled grapes by teams if joining one?