Sovera

I've said from day one that bigger AoE means squat in reality. An 8f PbAoE hits as many as a 15f once mobs are clustered around us. It takes pulling two spawns at once for this to be a thing. So anyone not calling two groups at once would be making no use of the 'increased AoE'. But now we get penalized if we pull two groups, so, shrug.

It's currently at the bottom of the barrel. If you're still enjoying for theme or animations then continue, but if expecting to get better, then, not really. I tried a bit of everything up to quadruple proccing each attack and the only way to squeeze a bit more out of it is by playing as a Stalker so Assassin's Strike alleviates the bad ST damage.

Hyperbole, thy name is Borgold, the third.

At least on Mids I just put three +3 Hamis and have accuracy and near all CCs covered. It's also a nice spot for Avalanche which allowed me to to 95% the -recharge resistance. This is not an option for leveling, of course. For leveling I don't, perhaps, feel that CCing bosses is a pressing matter. Even though they are usually the most dangerous of the bunch there are usually but one per spawn. We usually crumble under the weight of numbers from all minions and lieutenants hitting and debuffing. So neutering those ought to be enough. Which means one accuracy, and then three confuse (to be able to confuse bosses, despite what I said, and see if we squeeze some damage out of them hitting their subordinates), and then two holds (or two disorients, almost same flavor, but disoriented mobs can slowly walk away). In my case since I'm playing with Claws and have the accuracy from Follow-up plus the accuracy from Impose Presence I'll even skip the accuracy and maybe make it three confuse and three hold to reach the boss CCing thresholds that Erratic mathed out. It's probably more important to reach those thresholds than squeezing some IO bonuses which makes me say (without certitudes) that I'd lean on using generic IOs for the raw stats. Depends on the content and the difficulty level.

It's ridiculous how slot starved the build is so though I tried to put the slots at level appropriate places (turn on Slot Levels in Mids) it will depend a lot on what content you are doing. In teams you will have team mates doing a lot of the damage so we can focus on slotting all our defenses instead. Solo we need to arrest the mobs and if we take too long we will be whittled down. So don't necessarily slot according to the build but more of how you're feeling the vibe whether or not you're soloing and not cranking the difficulty too much or pushing the envelope solo, or teaming. The same applies for endurance. Spam Recovery Serums alongside Consume Psyche instead of expecting Consume Psyche to do all the work. Later on we'll ooze endurance but while leveling there are not enough slots to go around. Use SOs until level 22 non exemplared. IOs give a pittance compared to a same level SO and they only catch up at 22 so slotting IOs early is a newb trap (with the exception of things like Panaceia, Reactive Defenses, and Shield Wall). This is roughly how it would look by level 21: Tanker (Psionic Armor - Claws - Early leveling).mbd The empty slots in Spin are for the prestige enhancements from the START vendor. By level 22 it's time to switch to IOs. At this point continue with Prestige Enhancements in Spin up to level 27 and then slot Obliteration in it up to level 50. Just add one slot for accuracy up to 27. If survival feels fine then don't slot Aura of Insanity just yet and keep slotting attacks or slot the uniques in Health and one more slot in Stamina. Tanker (Psionic Armor - Claws - Mid leveling).mbd By level 39 things are pretty much all slotted so it's just a matter of consolidating recovery and regen by throwing the extra slots for it as per the original build (which was slightly changed, download the newest one if you haven't),

At this point in time and after testing the armor for a bit I can say that Aura of Insanity (AoI) elevates Psi Armor to something that can probably solo a lot of very silly stuff. Being able to CC as much as bosses means it can deflect a lot of the problems by simply turning them off. Seeing how enemies tend to flee when confused I've decided it's best to frankenslot AoI and it's probably going to be the framework from here on out. My thoughts on the armor so far: a bit too busy when we start, very slot starved. Psycho Barrier is not enough to counter debuffs. What ever drains endurance recovery will do so anyway, anything that does -recharge will do so anyway. Reaching Yin I poured a lot of slots into everything endurance and was still sucked dry by Super Stunners. I mean, it's annoying, but it's not the end of the world as spamming Recovery Serums was enough to brute force past the -recovery debuffs, and, eventually, we get to 95% -recharge resistance with a single application of Psycho Armor. As mentioned AoI becomes a powerhouse with its many different CC options covering when a faction is resistant to one of them in particular. Except Cimemorians, who will just resist any and all CCs. With the new framework the build reaches 95% without touching the attack powers making it even easier to use any other attack set.

A Psi/Ice variant. Pretty much the same regen at 147 HPS instead of 149. I was mostly looking at Ice Patch to prevent mobs from running when confused which has turned Psi Armor into a downer for me as instead of the expected behavior of mobs fighting each other (they still do, a bit) they tend to run away instead (??). If wishing for more healing but that won't be reflected in the tooltip then remove a couple of Luck of the Gambler to put a Power Transfer in Physical Perfection and in Stamina. Also, removing the Eradication proc from Frozen Aura and slotting a Call of the Sandman proc can give upwards of 200 HP per use on a full group. Tanker (Psionic Armor - Ice Melee).mbd

On the Tanker character creator if we hover over Dark Melee it makes reference to Scrapper Crits:

Dummy thick armor. Without any mobs in range of Energy Drain it has softcapped defenses. With two stacks of the ATO and Barrier's 5% it has capped resistances (which is more than Stone Armor). It also has 64% DDR (more than Stone Armor) and a large-ish buffer from ED (0.8% per mob) which I didn't slot for but with minimal changes would be 1% per mobs. So jumping headfirst into a group and used ED could grant roughly 10%. Because of the contortion to bring Negative defenses up this means S/L defenses have 47% and Energy defenses have 58%. So, jumping into a spawn and hitting ten mobs ends with 55% and 66% and good luck ablating all of that down. Not even mentioning Barrier's 5% so 60% and 71%. Does Negative even have -def components? I'm leaning on no but I haven't looked into it. But with Barrier's 5% and 8% from ED a fight can start with 58% to Negative too. Then it has a heal clickie on top of an endurance clickie Hasten is at 129 but actually more though not shown becauseo Entropic Aura not working on Mids (same as the defense from ED), recharge debuff resistance is at an okay 75%. Downsides: struggling to reach some goals lowers damage. Lack of a damage armor to dump Gauntled Fist and trying to maximize -recharge resistance led to Combustion being down to a miserable 171 damage instead of 321 (not accounting for Brimstone since Mids doesn't seem to handle Brimstone very well, otherwise 421 if we want to believe Mids). Also needs every trick to get Negative up, including Weave and Combat Jumping and Hover so Negative will not be capped until max level and all in place (unlike Stone Armor where we can be softcapped by the 30s). Though, to note,by relying on Energy Drain and hitting a full pack of mobs even Negative defense is softcapped before having Weave since hitting 10 enemies will give 8% and that defense lasts 45 seconds, so all the time in the world to finish with a group before jumping on the next. It is only in the case of fighting a single tough enemy for a long time (soloing an AV) that ED will not cover Negative until Weave. T/P remains a bit of a hole at only 62% (69% (nice) with a second ATO proc and 74% with Barrier's 5%) resistances with some damage sacrificed in the form of a second damage proc in Greater Fire Sword and Fire Sword Circle. These can be taken back I guess, depends on if soloing or teaming. If teaming a second damage proc wouldn't be noticed as Tanker damage is anemic., if soloing I guess it depends on the enemies and some inspirations might be enough. Tanker (Energy Aura - Fiery Melee).mbd

I went for confuse to help with mobs hitting each other. Downside is that confused mobs run away which is a (n unwelcome) novelty when playing a Tanker. Because of this I don't want to accentuate the other CCs to stop them from hitting each other.

My first impressions on the finished Psi Armor: I was in a ironman mood so started with a SO only run and equipping what I earned. Right at the start Consume Psyche felt immensely OP but this fell off *really* quickly and I was gasping for blue air most of my time. The honeymoon with the ironman fell off quickly as it is quite unfun and slow and I wanted to try Psi Armor and see where it led me so I deleted the character and started over with Psi/Fire Melee on a twinked character. Soloing Posi 1 at 0x6 the first impressions were/are not great. Too much clicking to keep stacks up, too many slots having to be invested in the armor rather than the attacks, and every debuff under the sun crumpled the armor like it was made out of cheap plastic. -def? Dead. -recharge? Dead. Resistance armors continue being second tier compared to master race defense armors. Stone Armor would mostly cruise through since most of those debuffing attacks would simply miss, but, resistance armors have to eat them, and are not even given the tools to deal with them. Psycho Armor stacking is fine and dandy but and in the low levels (and under -recharge, the very thing it is meant to protect) it's difficult to impossible to keep the stacks up. The six shadow bosses at the end creamed me even guzzling resistance insps and sitting at 90% because... Fire Sword debuffs defense. Yeah, as usual resistance armors get shafted about defense debuffs despite having no tools against it, unlike defense armors who get defense debuff resistance. Returning I guzzled defense inspirations instead and they lasted long enough to get a few of the bosses which was enough to tip the balance once they ran out. After many many deaths I eventually crawled to the end of Posi having taken 1h20m rather than the usual 50-55. I decided not to take it against Psi Armor since I had been aching for Hasten (stacks constantly falling off) and didn't have it for the duration since I started Posi 1 at level 10 and took Hasten at 18. Today I went for Posi 2 trying to keep a positive attitude. Had Hasten, it was slotted, IOs had been sprinkled. Noticed Mids' numbers are slightly off and psi resistance is actually higher as I was capping it just via ATO stacks and amplifier. I'll have to see if the slotting needs changing. Just like in Posi 1 a twinked character had nearly no endurance problems despite fighting Clockwork and only had to use one Recovery Serum for both TFs (unlike Stone Armor who would be spamming them). My blue bar wasn't keeping up with Hasten speeding my attacks so I had to place two end mod slots in Consume Psyche to counter it. Posi 2 was... not fun. Again. It took 1h21m where it is usually done in 55-1h. Since I was constantly on the verge of dying I was pouring slots into the armor rather than the attacks and it was slooooow going whittling enemies down. With Stone Armor I'd dedicate four slots and not look back to it until mid thirties. I decided to STILL not take it against the armor though. Early levels slot starvation aren't strictly the armor's fault and an early slump isn't reason to dump on an armor set, and it also didntt have Aura of Insanity which I'm starting to feel it won't live to the hype I'm building for it in my head (as few things could). I'll try Yin tomorrow and see how it behaves and then yes I'll probably give my judgement since there ought to be enough slots for most things by then. But right now I need to slot my attacks, slot my resistance, slot my regen, slot my endurance, slot my 'heal'. Honestly? Not very fun so far.

Only that it's not reflected in the tooltip and I don't want to math out the results.

As one of the five persons in the game who uses Monstrous Legs I appreciate the extra customization The Blacklight extrs look pretty cool though they don't mix very well because of the metal texture that doesn't allow to make the colors blend with other materials. Plus the glow ought to have been separate from the other colors. But, nitpicks, I'll take it and be thankful. P.S. if shameless groveling is accepted I'd love to have Retro Sci3 added to Monstrous legs so my trousers can finally match the jacket.

A slightly weaker version of the Psi/Claws only managing a top end of 143 HPS compared to the 162 HPS. A second ATO stack and Barrier's 5% to reach the caps. Tanker (Psionic Armor - Fire Melee - Nonmax).mbd

I just built an EA/Fire for a friend. It's not Rad melee but the slotting shouldn't be too hard to migrate. I was a bit surprised at the contortions I had to go through to cap negative defense. It's not quite what I would have used for myself (he wanted more S/L hence the, for me, superfluous Blistering Cold slotting) but he has his likes so I just tweaked the numbers. It will rely on a second ATO stack and Barrier's 5% to finish capping S/L/N but T/P will always lag behind as they are meant to be the armor's hole and, as mentioned, a surprising amount of contortionism was needed to get the rest of the numbers up so T/P doesn't get enough focus. Tanker (Energy Aura - Fiery Melee).mbd The current Mids doesn't take into account the defense from Energy Absorption nor the recharge from Entropic Aura.

Their discord has the Homecoming database. They are working at integrating it and hammer out some bugs, but we can download the database and merge it manually.

Reserved

Edit: the god devs over Mids are fixing small bugs and tweaking the actual numbers manually which means the early 164 HPS numbers were inflated. Also, Memento Mori does not give +HP while used without foes in range so toggled that off. Lets quickly debunk the bombastic clickbait: max Consume Psyche (happens near instantly in x8 content but will take close to 40 seconds starting from scratch against a single enemy), Psycho Barrier up (recharges in 18 seconds and lasts 45 seconds so isn't a problem), Memento Mori used prior to combat (with no enemies in range it recharges in 10 seconds and lasts for 30 seconds so good for a small extra boost with zero downsides, and if push comes to shove it can be used again while in combat), Vigor Radial as Alpha. Without faffing with Memento Mori or taking Vigor Radial it is a less bombastic 126 HPs. Which is still amazing on top of resistances. 126 HPs -> With Memento Mori: 133 HPs -> With Vigor Radial: 149 HPs. 126 HPs -> Not bothering to use Memento Mori and simply relying on Vigor Radial: 141 HPs. Yes, I skipped Shockwave, I can't be arsed to bounce around trying to align a cone then jump back in to hit my PbAoE. I picked Claws to have a single strong AoE allowing me to sprinkle the slots I would otherwise use on a second AoE. If wishing to take Shockwave strip the slots dedicated to regen. Yes, there are is a free power, but there was nothing else that interested me. Pick whatever, be it Taunt or Assault (or Shockwave). Assault kinda sucks. That said we ooze endurance (5.6 EPs and that doesn't take in account the Panaceia and both Perfect Shifter procs) and should be able to afford it. Build has capped S/L/E/N/P with two ATO stacks and Barrier's 5%. F/C lags behind at 72% with two stacks and Barrier while Toxic is near non existent at about 26% with two stacks and Barrier. I tried amping defense but there was no real point as I ended with around 33% to melee and 25% to ranged and AoE with no DDR to back it up. So I just took all those slots out and went full bore on regen reaching a majestic 1259% regeneration. (As others pointed out in the thread slotting Power Transfer will give more heal-per-second than slotting pure regen, but this will not be reflected in the tooltip. Follow their advice and remove two Luck of the Gambler Def/End and place Power Transfer in Stamina and Psychical Perfection). Memento Mori has a ten second cooldown if not used with enemies in range and since it gives +HP then using it prior to combat will add another 163 HP which in turn boosts regeneration to 133 HPs. This last bit will only work for the initial 30 seconds of combat. Using it in combat (or in range of enemies) will make the recharge go up to 300 seconds. Granted that depending on the number of enemies this can elevate regeneration to even higher levels but Mids currently does not account for each enemy hit (fairly sure this means the numbers will be off again once fixed). That said it has no downsides to its use unlike nearly all T9 panic buttons and the ten seconds recharge means we can have our cake and eat it too by using prior to combat and if things go sour then using it again during combat (or, y'know, kite the enemies until out of range and then use it again, but uff, that's so try-harding). It's one of the few builds where I will take the T9. (Edit: kinda, I guess? It a ressurect and a panic button, but not both since if used and then dying then it is on CD and can't be used to ressurect unless we sit for whatever number of minutes it has left to recharge. I'm not as invested in it now especially since a Tanker does not plan for their death). I decided to 'cheese' Mids by having max stacks of Consume Psyche since, unlike other stacking powers, we can have 10 stacks all the time even against a single enemy thanks to the way the dynamic recharge works. Mids in its current state is not taking in account the dynamic recharge (but seriously humongous kudos to the devs of Mids to put out the changes the same day the page releases! Gods amongst men they are) so shows 17 seconds per application but against a single enemy that ought to be closer to 4-5 seconds. It would still take around 40 seconds to stack it 10 times against a single enemy so it is definitely cheesing it for big clickbait numbers, but in regular play so much as fighting against two enemies would lower that to 20 seconds, and of course a single application on a group will fill it up in one go. As we can refresh the stacks even with a single enemy, stacks that last 45 seconds, we can take a page from our Brute brethren and try to not linger between spawns and the 10 stacks will always be up. My initial playing with the build had me going in, hit my AoE, mobs wake up, start running to me, I used Consume Psyche and pretty much capped my stacks. In the meanwhile I would take a bit of damage and would use Psycho Barrier which would heal me and add more regen to the mix while refreshing the buff stacks it brings. Speaking of buff stacks Psycho Barrier brings a buff that stacks up to 3 times VS endurance drain, recovery debuffing, regeneration debuffing, and, more to the point, recharge debuffing. Since -recharge is pretty dangerous for a resistance build that relies on its cooldowns to survive I don't rely on stacking the -recharge and prefer starting straight off at 95% at the first use of Psycho Barrier, ergo the slots in Boxing and Brawl. The build only has one AoE so it's not min-maxed for massive clears, but Spin is good, and though my playing I saw that even bosses for confused. This means by dint of leaning hard on the Confuse angle we have a pseudo damage aura. And I'm not talking of the piddly DoT the aura itself does but rather the enemies hitting each other as we wait for Spin to recharge. Confused enemies hitting each other does diminish the XP but I can't say that this bothers me if it makes the clearing faster. I haven't leveled the character yet to see if this is so, just as I don't know if the Cupid proc would actually add anything to it. After playing with the armor I decided not to lean on confuse in particular and ignore the rest so that it would not stop mobs from hitting each other because, for some spaghetti code reason, confused mobs will high tail it. As such my dream of being a mobile Seeds of Confusion dispenser have been toned down and I decided to frankenslot Aura of Insanity. Downside: no mobs hitting each other (as much) due to being constantly stunned, disoriented, slept, or held. Upside: the armor becomes even more of a dumptruck with groups locked down due to the sheer awe of our existence, allowing them to be slowly and gently whittled down by our anemic Tanker damage. The recharge started good at 124 but the more I spread the build thin the worse it got and by now Hasten (the benchmark) is at 131 seconds. It's not super bad though if we consider the FF procs from Focus will help it. As for Incarnates pick what seems interesting. I'm thinking of going for Vigor Radial since as mentioned it will further boost the regeneration and slightly boost Aura of Insanity some more. This will do zilch for single-target damage which is where Tankers are ailing, but Musculature 45% only gives around 15% damage, and since I usually picked the 33% version it was actually less than a 15% boost. Might be worth it, will have to see. There might be a temptation to take Rebirth Radial for more regen but I consider my Destiny incarnates as panic buttons which is something Barrier excels at (it's not just the resistance, which we are nearly capped anyway, but the burst of defense to prevent taking more damage if we are severely debuffed). But yes, I could make an even MORE bombastic title with Rebirth. I hope someone appreciates my restraint. This can serve as a framework for other secondaries than Claws, though then the fluff slots to amp regen will have to be salvaged. Otherwise the resistances are pretty much baked into the build so the choice of the secondary will not affect them. The ST rotation is still Follow-up, Focus, Slash. Strike is just a mule for Gauntled Fist. Tanker (Psionic Armor - Claws).mbd I can cook a leveling build if someone needs it. Leveling build here.

I'm not sure what is happening, but I regularly have more than 10 stacks of Consume Psyche. Usually it stabilizes at 11, but I've had as much as 18 stacks. These are not a tooltip error since my monitored regeneration and recovery reacted accordingly.

Things 'work' fine in clickies, but will only activate when the clicky is activated. Placed in passives like Health they are on all the time. I haven't looked yet at building something with Psi Armor but it looks sturdy and the Confuse aura will act as a pseudo damage aura (on top of being an actual damage aura). Makes me interested to log in and play with it once it's released.

I had a whole post but deleted it because it was not constructive. I already made my points a few pages back and though the squeaky wheel gets the oil I'm not going to play the game of being loud and obnoxious. I'll resume my post: 1- In my experience my Tankers and Brutes had the same TF times. This was run in multiple characters over the years and those who remember my posts I had/have a thing about writting down what I find. I'm not talking of missions, but TFs. The Tanker can have the extra sturdiness and the bigger AoEs but the Brutes had better ST (my Brutes invariably break a pylon a minute faster than my Tankers). 2 - My builds may be shit by min max standards (6 damage procs) but I'd like to think they reflect a 'normal' slotting where we go up to 5 slots, one proc included, then add a second proc in the last slot. Because of this my times were, well, standard Tanker when doing Trapdoor averaging six minutes. Nerfing the 'average' player achieves what exactly? 3 - Six proc builds brought this on (reminds me of WoW devs nerfing certain powers because they did too much damage, it turns out to be a bug, they fix the bug, but then don't un-nerf the power). Fix the proc stacking with whatever mechanics (100% chance for one proc to go off, 75% for a second to go off back to back. 50% for a third. Adjust numbers) before adjusting the AT because AFTER having FINALLY addressed the proc stacking then ANOTHER pass tuning the ATs will be required. This smells a lot like bringing back City of Brutes which was how the game ran for 95% of its life once Brutes got introduced. Only diehard Tankers played the AT if they came from other MMOs and gravitated to the role of a tank, and even them would move on to Brutes.

I mean, in a sense. 0% defense (our natural state) actually means we have a 50% not to be hit. We are just so used to that 50% status that we don't actually notice it. When we are in the negatives and mobs hit every single time we notice it pretty fast. That's why we push to 45% to have 95% not to be hit. 50% base plus the 45% = 95%.

To be honest I never noticed the slows or -recharge doing anything. But though I don't play Ice Armor it has its strong points. While I'm a big proponent of Stone Armor it is rough on the endurance. I'm leveling one intermittently with zero inf or IO transfers and even with one endurance reduction in each attach and all endurance uniques on Health, and two Per Shifters + end mod in Crystal Armor and Stamina my endurance simply evaporates. It's not something as noticeable when playing with twinked gear and having a stack of Recovery Serums, but when every million is precious I haven't bought Recovery Serums and it shows.

It takes an average of 7 minutes for one of my Tankers to deal with a +1 AV. At max level with all (passive) incarnates it's an average of 5 minutes. For Pylons the average time is 4 minutes, 3 minutes if cheating with double -res procs (I say cheating because the -res procs do not work nearly as well in the real world but, again, if looking solely at a pylon test, then whoa). In the meanwhile Scrappers average a minute to a minute and a half on a pylon and the poor Brutes average two minutes to two minutes and a half. So, yeah, I'm happy the devs did not touch the ST damage much, and yes, mea culpa for being a dumdum and not six proccing my attacks as seems to be the expectation for all Tankers. Same with the Trapdoor test where a not-built-for-Trapdoor build averages 6 minutes where the six-proc players will flaunt their 4 minutes and a half. Dumdum is a me. As long as the overcap changes don't make whittling one spawn slower and only activate if daring to pull two then that's fine, for me, since that's what I do anyway, just one group at a time before moving on. What I'd like to do is a thought exercise: if there were no six proccing attacks and Tankers averaged 6 minutes on a Trapdoor and four minutes on a pylon would they still 'need' to be nerfed?

Your vote is good here. And for me none. Everything should have a bracket. Low level thugs should not be a threat in the higher levels simply because we evolved past them. What was a danger for a lowbie untrained hero is nothing after they get trained by the Avengers.