Sovera

Just for the sake of putting my two cents in. The concept Tankers don't need to do damage because their role is to tank is a rather obsolete idea. Even in WoW where healers and tanks are dedicated roles they are expected to do damage. It is, in fact, expected and accounted for that each person will do at least % damage. There are heavy discussions about which tank does most damage since it influences the picks for raids. It's not that different here, and CoH is laughably easy when compared. Both in mechanics and with most people able to dunk IOs into their build to a point they could almost tank instead of the Tanker, unlike WoW where a squishy is squishy and will die to two swats of a white mob in a dungeon and there is nothing that they can do to improve it. Here we face regular mobs, of which the majority are minions, in a game that allows to cheat the system by being a squishy that is also sturdy. The idea the game is so dangerous and complicated that there is no time left to hit things because tanking is a full time job is definitely not mainstream and we've had lively conversations with Diantane about it. With all of this said there game is, as pointed out, easy enough that a character can do what they want. Be it Tanking without doing damage or buffing without doing damage, or playing a Mastermind without pets. It will not ruin the mission. At most just make it slower to finish,

Yeah, that agro-whole-map-into-a-dumpster died very early in the game. Issue 3? Someone correct me. I joined at issue 6 and played up to issue 14 and the plug was pulled at issue... 23 if I recall correctly. So that tactic has been dead for a long time. There is not a lot that you can do other than do damage. If you go hit the new group that was agroed the new ones will focus on you and the previous group will ignore you now. But, realistically, if the whole team was hitting the first group then there is not a lot of it left after the initial volley of AoEs. We're talking 3-4 half health lieutenants and a boss? If the group has a Scrapper or a Brute the agro will shift to them. This is one of the reasons I insist people, Tankers, buffers, etc, all slot their attacks because even a Tanker can jump into a group, use Build-up, use their AoEs, and have a group half dead. The Tanker role is to soak the alpha. But in today's meta almost anyone can do that. A Scrapper, a Brute, even a Blaster (oh, how the times changed). That's the real role of the Tanker. Perfectly holding agro is not strictly needed. But being the person that takes 16 mobs all shooting at once IS needed. Someone has to go in first. Now a Controller can CC and eliminate the need to soak the alpha, an IO-ed up Scrapper or Brute can do it, so it does not need to be a Tanker. Based on our conversation I think you'd like to play a Plant whatever. Controller if you want further buffing the team, Dominator if you want to do damage instead. All because Plant has an absurdly OP power in Seeds of Confusion that can be made to recharge in 15-20 seconds and that basically CCs a whole group. AND it's available at level 8 😛 Making it available every 15-20 seconds is as ridiculous as it sounds since it's up for every group and in a pinch you can use it on a second group if it's agroed before the first has been finished. Lets not forget Plant has more than Seeds of Confusion if the agroing happens to happen before those 15-20 seconds have passed so they can land something else to keep agro down, count the seconds until Seeds is available again, and then re-CC the new group. A Plant/Kinetics would allow you to buff the team to their gills in raw damage, recharge, endurance recovery, and Plants would keep the team extremely safe with the Seeds. It is, in fact, why I don't like playing with Plant characters since there is nothing to fight back against.

Like everyone else has said already. Those two powers are only mules for my endurance recovery so by order of importance Panaceia proc, Performance Shifter proc, Miracle proc, Numina proc. If the build is heavy in endurance then I slot an early endurance mod proc in stamina as well. At level 50 this is boosted to +5. This is the best bang for the buck in terms of endurance recovery. With infinite slots we could slot more things but the return value is low and it becomes muling. I try to make my muling useful and slotting Health/Stamina is not it.

I'm not sure how to parse your question. On one hand you ask which AT is best for tanking but then lead by saying you want to hold agro on more than 17 mobs. Also, 16 mobs being tops has been a thing since the game was live 20 years ago. You can extend this by an extra 5 with Taunt, which, apparently, ignores the limit (so I hear, I never pick it so I can't chime in). Why would you pick a Tanker then? Early feel-like-a-superhero thanks to their emphasis on defense allowing to crank the difficulty while in the teens, or even in the single digits, W I D E AoEs which are very pleasant, Fire Melee (two PbAoEs which is a rarity in CoH). The Stone/Fire Melee in my signature can go to 0x8 by level 13 which is not a common thing to do. Since no AT can hold agro on more than 17 mobs you have nothing, sorry. At best play a Controller/Dominator and for a few seconds you can CC two groups but don't expect it to be perma since hard CCs have big cooldowns. If your worry is how your team crumbles if two groups are agroed then play a buffer that will keep the team safe. I think even a humble Force Field can stack enough defense that even most flimsy ATs can survive surprise agro. Debuffs can be a play but these have cooldowns, activation times, and they rely on the player to juggle things, but passive buffs will simply be on all the time. Realistically most teams don't care about this extra agro you speak of. A chunk of the population has IO-ed builds who can take at least take a modest amount of beating. But, most likely, there is enough damage going around to pulverize any extra agro. Lastly, the penalty for dying is light and it teaches the one who agroed an extra group to be more careful in the future. That's how we all learned.

The changes to S/L were not global. Only SOME of the attacks in SOME of the factions had the S/L component removed to be pure energy/etc in order not to be deflected by S/L defense. They devs wanted to lower the worth of raising S/L but not make it obsolete in one fell swoop. Regarding the original question it depends. S/L defense is just a layer of mitigation. By itself it won't save you, but, in combination with the other layers it will help. It's true that some factions will do defense debuffs and cut through defenses that have no DDR, but there are also a LOT of factions who do S/L and do no defense debuff. As a rule and if possible try to raise all defenses equally instead of just one but if resist based and having only one defense you can pick then S/L is usually a good pick. With caveats. Bio, for example, has strong S/L resistances but no E/N resistances. It lives and dies by its E/N defenses and since it has no defense debuff resistance those defenses melt like butter. In that case it is smarter to ignore S/L defenses and instead lean on S/L resistances and then pour more into E/N defenses so it will take a few hits of E/N defense debuffing.

I solo a lot, so the damage aspect is important and MA's mediocre AoE was a bummer.

No Fire Armor *cry* Fire/MA is one of my best builds. it's the Turtle in my signature boasting of 45% to melee/ranged/AoE and also 90% to most things. The thing with MA is that we almost are bound to build off Storm Kicks' 10% defense. But Tankers already get good numbers so reaching (at least) 45% is not a big ordeal. In this all the defense oriented builds don't really need Storm Kick except to reach incarnate levels but that's a small amount of the content and the one where buffers will be commonly found. Still worth to build for if wanting to be self-sufficient I guess. I would suggest looking at Bio who has problems due to the lack of DDR and will appreciated a 10% buffer while also mitigating the slotting needed if wishing to raise S/L defenses. One thing to consider is that the AoE of MA is pretty mediocre. On the other hand the AoE of MA DOES allow to slot a FF proc which speeds everything up. So I circle back to Fire Armor. 45% defense to all with creative use of IOs and Barrier, 90% resists, and 'lo, Burn to help the mediocre AoE and Dragon Tail to speed up Burn.

Best I had it was with a 4 second downtime. But since it's Souldrain it only makes sense to use it on a full group. Soul Drain is actually one of the reasons I end up not liking Dark Melee. The recharge is slightly too high making it available once every two groups which is not ideal. Unless we want to use on an half dead group and then 'waste' half its potential. And don't get me started on it being barely useful on a single target BUT the ever present chance of it simply missing. Ugh.

I read you, Snarky. I was checking this thread and seeing you have to excuse yourself because you take it and I don't think it's needed. We just want you informed and then you do what you wish with the info. It's not like the build, or the game, will crumble because you take that one extra power. Derailing a bit. I confess I'm not the best at thematics since as a roleplayer it was faster and easier to come up with a reason why something happened than contort myself into odd shapes to fit a theme. One of my first RP min maxed builds was in the original Neverwinter Nights where my cleric was a follower of X deity (don't ask me to remember because it's been literally decades) who was a monk, and I had all my RP about being ascetic, researched the god's lore so I could spout it, would engage in monk training, etc. But in practice all I wanted was the monk's extra attacks per turn combined with the cleric spells that gave ANOTHER attack per turn while also fixing the accuracy penalty from the extra attacks from the monk. And that's pretty much how I roll. Then there was someone complaining at the time how they were ineffective in combat but then talking about their RP build and how they were half yuan ti (half snake person, don't ask me how that works) and even had taken the feats to have +2 to poison rolls. And I was... my brother in christ, that's useless, no wonder you feel weak if the rest of the build is like that. The mobs don't care about your feat choices, the players can't even see your feat choices. CoH is not that different to me. One of my first characters was a Rad/Ninja Sentinel and my friend made fun of me for being a ninja with radioactive blasts. But I just coloured everything bright white and said 'it's magic, not radiation'. I don't much care about the labels on a can. Later on one of my iterations of the Fire/Martial Arts Tanker was a phoenix straight out of a cultivation manwha to explain the fire and the martial arts.

As someone who solos Yin's TF and has no other option than to eat the Super Stunner's ressurection they are a good study on a character's ability to survive such constant -recovery spam. Many Recovery Serums have been spammed in that TF...

You shouldn't be thinking of activations per minute but activations-when-needed. You need it when you need it, not when you're running to a mob, or finishing a minion. It's run in, BU, Gaussian, drop all AoEs and all that burst does a tremendous amount of damage which indirectly helps defense since the most defeated things in the initial seconds the less are left to hit back.

It only works for Sentinels. I've made a bug report in Mid's Discord so now we wait. But if you want to have a somewhat idea just load a Sentinel with Stone Armor and toggle it on and off to get an approximate idea. It apparently boils to around 20 DPS and is based on the animation time of a power, according to Bopper.

Offensive takes all resistances down in 7%. S/L are the easiest to get up thanks to Tough. This is a Fire/Bio with 40% to S/L/E/N and 85% to S/L with Offensive on for Barrier to finish capping. Change Musculature to Resilient and a couple of slots from the prestige dashes can be saved to try to change the slotting from GFS to incorporate the purple proc. I put too much emphasis on building S/L defenses which could have changed the slotting into other directions. Brute (Fire Bio).mbd But on the topic of this conversation I would go for Stone. To me it has beat both Fire Armor and Bio with all the bells and whistles even if it doesn't reach the dummy thiccness on Brutes as it does on Tankers (50% defenses, 76% resistances down the board, 81% with Barrier).

I'm not sure what you mean by 'a team', but to clarify further the debuff is something the mob applies to itself and it does not stack whether you have it in two attacks or you and someone else has it. Once the mob has the debuff (Gladiator, Achilles, etc) it will not stack on itself. But multiple sources of the proc (more attacks with it or other people in the team having it slotted as well) can help with the uptime.

Copy them, make a new post since you do keep them updated, ask for it to be pinned?

Zect said it. In the end neither is terribly important. There are not a lot of psi enemies and 12% resistance against psi will do nothing against the others. On the other hand 50% regen is nothing as well.

You keep mentioning purples but purples have no bearing on toughness. All they do is add some recharge and accuracy, and a good damage proc. Barrier is an incarnate, yes. If you're level 50 you should be looking for incarnates. Tier three from any Alpha will increase survival and damage by a measurable chunk by making all enemies -1 as long as you're 45+ in level. Barrier is just a panic button giving a truck load of defenses and resists for 2 minutes, but with the caveat they decay over time. They are at their strongest for the first 10 seconds and then slowly dwindle until the bare minimum is 5% to both. But since it lasts 2 minutes and recharges in 2 minutes it can be considered a permanent 5% for level 45+ content. If you haven't picked an Alpha and taken it to T3 it might be why you've slotted a Kismet, but against +3 you have enough accuracy to reach the cap even without it, and since we don't fight +4 enemies under level 45 we consider +3 as the effective level. That said you DO have a purple set in Death Shroud 😄 Not the best place for it btw, it should be in in Dragon's Tail since the damage proc is wasted in an aura (they only check for damage procs every 10 seconds and the AoE math's give it a low chance, in this case 39%) . You can swap Gauntled Fist from Cobra Strike into Death Shroud. Dragon's Tail is not the best place for Might of the Tanker since you want the ATO proc even during ST situations, which is a moment where we will not be using Dragon's Tail. Since Storm Kick should be your filler power (you should be doing Eagle's Claw, Storm Kick, Cobra Strike, Storm Kick, repeat) but your recharge is pretty low and there's a gap even with Hasten and more so when it is down. Eagle's Claw... Hmm, well, if you like it, but the slow animation even with the damage bonus it has, plus the recharge, etc... You could be better off with just Crane Kick (another FF proc source) or Crippling Axe Kick, and then have Storm Kick, Cobra Strike, Storm Kick, Crane Kick. Repeat. I would say you don't need Gloom (it's been nerfed a bit recently and you should have a gapless ST rotation from MA alone but the low recharge in the build I think it does become necessary to reach a gapless ST rotation) and Darkest Night (we might disagree in this and it's a valid approach). You could take Dark Obliteration and help your AoE which is just Dragon Tail and an aura. As usual my advice on the CC auras is to pick one and accept they are neither very good nor very useful since they only work on minions and minions are the first to die. Keep Oppressive Gloom since A) it costs no endurance and B) it stacks with Cobra Strike (it has a 75% chance to stun at least lieutenants, so it and Oppressive Gloom can stun bosses). You can choose NOT to worry about toxic damage much. There are not many enemies that do toxic damage and to hit you they will first need to get past your defenses. It's just that you've dedicated a lot of slots for what is a niche enemy. But, again, it's a valid approach. A theft of Essence is always a good thing to have in Dark Regeneration to help recoup the massive endurance cost of the power. It makes a large enough difference in groups though less so against one or two enemies. The build is very nicely done btw, everything is in place. Not much wiggle room but that's expected when pushing defenses in a resistance build. I have a Fire Armor/MA I've dubbed the Turtle that's in my signature. We did about the same in terms of builds but I eased up on the slotting to only reach 40% defenses and 77% resistances so that a second ATO proc and Barrier would push both defenses to 45% and resistances to 90%. This allowed me to slot damage procs, up slow resistances, etc, and, of course, being Fire Armor it was a nice ball of death and mayhem (for a Tanker anyway). Fire Armor is weak to Psi but I tested fighting psi enemies and even solo +3 psi AVs and it was cake between the defenses making them miss and the heal. Since I didn't want to mess with the build too much and start removing Gloom or lowering defenses and resistances to account for Barrier and etc I didn't end up tweaking it much. If nothing else you can slip the damage/recharge from Gauntled Fist and use that proc anywhere else as it leaves your resistances at 85-86%. The next stack of Might of the Tanker will give 6.7% so you will be overcapped again anyway. I put that slot and Kismet's in more endurance recovery but two LotGs could be the play as well. Tanker (Dark Armor - Martial Arts) L50.mbd

You could probably tweak the build slightly to have less S/L (notice how you're past 90% and this is with just one stack of the ATO) and could use that to bump your Energy resistances. If wanting to minx it could be built for 40% defenses and then Barrier finishes bumping it to 45%, but building straight to 45% is valid too. I don't feel it is important to go past 45% (so 45% and then Barrier pushing to 50%) because defenses on a resist build are just another layer of mitigation. Anything that debuffs defenses will melt them. But for everything ELSE that does not then blessed relief from the myriad of debuffs in the game! If you'd drop the build I could take a look.

SR has heaps of defense so I might lean on resistances to multiply the effect of the scaling resists. The amount of defense depends on the content you wish to run.

The newbie guide in my signature has some tips if you're not aware of selling merits. It includes the link to the essential Mids, which is the program we use to make builds. Once you have Mids you can import the builds posted in these forums because otherwise they are just a bunch of gibberish.

Dark Armor has Dark Regen that steals HP from mobs and Bio Armor does the same with DNA Siphon (and Radiation Therapy). Of the two I'd say stick to Bio Armor for ease of use as Bio is much easier to use, though it is an offense oriented set which leaves holes in the defense. For attack there is Rad Melee and Dark Melee. Dark Melee is literally life drain where Rad Melee we're draining the radiation that we inject in the enemy. Ignoring the wording of the power we still are draining HP from attacking enemies so it has the spirit of the life drain even if the game mechanics are not the same. If you go Dark Melee then it will solve 90% of Dark Armor's problems which shifts my advice above and leaves it neutral between both picks, but if you pick Rad Melee then my advice shifts further into Bio Armor as Rad Melee is endurance heavy, as is Dark Armor, and having both together will be a small nightmare to keep the blue bar afloat. Rad Melee has, IMO, better AoE with a second damage aura and is easier to use, but the REAL AoE comes at level 30 which is still a long way to cruise with the AoE being solely two damage auras. It needs to proc radiation in order to heal from it so it's unreliabe in a pinch between chances to miss and chances to proc the contaminated mechanic, even though it evens out in the duration of a minute. It is known for its slow animations. Dark Melee has an annoying Build-up mechanic in Soul Drain, 'worse' AoE (relies on a cone and an extremely weak TAoE) but that comes much earlier, a life drain, an endurance drain. It pays for all that utility by not being great damage, It has otherwise faster animations. Both can be coloured at the tailor to fit themes.

Rad/SS is not played for the sturdiness. It's played for the proc bombing of Radiation Therapy and Ground Zero. Elec has nothing of the sort.

Axe demands four powers to have a gapless attack chain. Or skip Cleave which immediately eases up on the recharge demands. But Cleave hits very hard despite the slow animation so it is a hard sell. That said you don't need ALL powers from Axe. T1 and T2 ? One of the two can go. Taunt is niche and good for niche content. If you're doing niche content then take it. If you're just leveling, be it solo or otherwise, or doing regular level 50 content then it's skippable and no one will notice not having it. Lets be honest that most things die in 5 seconds flat in a team and what's left can and will be punchvoked. Anything that can punchvoke back is sturdy enough to take the hits. Certain powers from Bio can be pushed back like Inexhaustible that can be taken in the 30s if not more as DNA Siphon does the heavy lifting (slot a Theft of Essence proc in it).

I see a lot of advice in this thread, good advice at that (fighting while using Hover being top most IMO), but a failure of mentioning the number one way of how Blasters survive: Aim (with a Gaussian proc) + Build-up + last power in your primary. If everything is dead nothing is left alive to hurt you. At +0x4 in particular nothing should be close to hurting you after that combo. For this you do want good recharge and preferably a ranged nuke but if using a PbAoE nuke then slot in a stealth IO so mobs don't notice you until you're on top of them. The nuke + AoE is usually so powerful that everything is dead without the need for Aim + Build-up so you can try saving them for the next group when your nuke is still recharging and then just Aim + BU + regular AoEs. Post your build so we can have a look at and point out improvements. Just having Weave and Tough and Manuvers won't help much without further shoring from IOs.

Multiple sources of *different* -res procs will stack. Can't cheat with five Achilles.