Sovera

Tried it a couple of times and things were going well, but once the spinning happened it was a no go. Same as with Positron. That one nearly demands something with DDR and a solid slow protection.

The problem with a Scrapper is that Fire Armor doesn't hold the enemies close because it has no agro aura. Consider a Brute for nearly the same damage and enemies not haring off once their HP gets to 30%. Or a Tanker if the thought of Burn at 18 fills you with joy (it does to me 😄 ).

It is. It's more to keep topped off than to actually prevent death. Things like -def on a secondary that can't handle it won't be stopped by Siphon Life.

They can, but it takes hot damage. Surviving an AV isn't hard for most (all?) tanks, but beating it with raw damage requires a bit of optimization. But once optimization comes in most builds can-ish.

A different take. Let Barrier's 5% finish capping S/L defenses/resistances. Sad lil E/N though.

Man, you're complaining over basic stuff. Read my guide if you haven't, and then type /ah between missions to make sure you have a stock of purple inspirations. In the case of the Blaster also of Breakfrees. Or if the Sentinel then purples and reds. Once you get to 32 the Sentinel catches up. A Stalker is not about slow assassin strikes-in-stealth because it's slow. Hit with your strongest attack while in stealth to force it to crit, -then- use AS. Try to copy builds instead of trying to pile something yourself until you are more used to the game and builds.

In that quest for a little bit more damage but still be sturdy I've cooked this. Maybe someone will find use for it. It has all the rad goodies: - 96% protection against slows. - 40% to S/L - 70% to S/L/E/N/Toxic leaving Psi at 30% and Cold at 25% as the holes. - Infinite endurance with Radiation Therapy + Theft of Essence that doubles as a heal. The intention is picking Barrier as a panic button which then hardcaps resistances and softcaps defenses. It also has all the Ice Melee goodies: - Exotic cold damage less resisted than most. - Freezing Touch, Ice Sword, Frost, Ice Sword for ST is not bad at all and will cleave enemies while the boss is being focused. - Ice Patch to either get a breather or wreak malicious havoc on tough enemies. After much consideration I've placed the 50% crit in FT despite this meaning no low level proc and that the 50% will not buff FT itself. This has different reasonings backing this decision: A) Freezing Touch hits pretty hard already. Ice Sword and Frost are the weak links. Buffing the weak links so it feels satisfying to hit those buttons isn't bad. B) In an AoE scenario I'm going to be hitting Frost and Frozen Aura on cooldown. FT as my hardest ST skill will also be usef on CD. This excludes Ice Sword since it will go something like FT (if proc goes off it buffs the next two skills), Frost, Frozen Aura, FT, Frost, gap. I'm not replacing any of these skills for Ice Sword until the gap comes. C) This does not exclude placing the 50% proc in Frost though. Frost is used in both AoE and ST and if it goes off it will nourish FT. Frost is also an AoE so multiple chances for the proc to go off in regular gameplay. My reluctance comes from Bombardment being a dream set with S/L res, a chunky E/N res, accuracy, recharge, plus a bit of range for Frost itself. Seriously, if I could slot this everywhere I would. I'm not sure what is the best answer but the current slotting seems like a good compromise. The powers are in order for optimizing exemplaring but not the slots. There is a free power to take since I saw nothing of interest (to me) to take. If someone needs it I can make a leveling build.

If you're not using -res procs then 4 minutes is my average on a Fire Armor + Claws/MA/Ice. It completely skews things if a set can use both -res since it shaves a full minute off making it seem much better. S'up to you if you feel -res procs are worth using or not though since they don't seem to make a large difference on other stuff than pylons. The Assault question has come often and the general rule of thumb remains +damage for solo since more bang, and double hit for team play in case of Kin with mythical damage capping. On a Tanker and on a pylon I noticed no difference either after multiple tests. I'm willing to bet a dime I wouldn't notice a difference even with a Kin in the party since my experience is poor Kins struggling to reach a group and hit FS before it has been reduced to a red mist.

Reactive doesn't do much either on normal enemies. The DoT is what actually makes the difference, but not a large one. Degenerative 75% chance for DoT closes the gap a bit but still works on AVs/pylons/GMs where Reactive falls flat. It's not a huge difference either way though.

It doesn't. I've done ITFs in full teams since and everything melts the same.

Might still get better results with Degenerative too.

This sums up my point of view. We have too many tales of 'haha, my tank just puled X enemies and laughed'. Well, yes, it's a tank? It is what they do. ITF and romans are nice and good, but lets talk about something a bit more problematic to tank. How about soloing some Shepherds from First Ward? They mulched my Fire Tank by -res (and no resistances resist resistance debuffs helped), -defense, and I think -accuracy but don't quote me. It might have been slows. Regardless between -res AND -def a single +1x8 would kill my tank np. What about Banished Pantheon, but not the watered down version we get from DA since all the incarnate boosts turn them into +1.

Put hover on for the extra bit of defense, then, if you are not and old like SOME people I shall not name, manually approach what you wish to kill.

I'll say it again, Fire armor/Ice melee. By level 20 you're melting whole groups and it does not need a ton of IOs to be safe because you get Ice Patch. Once you get Burn you'll be addicted. Check my signature for builds.

You need to click the lil buttons so that they are green. All da little buttons, unless you don't want them, for example Build-up so it does not skew your accuracy maths. I'd still suggest just copying a build instead of making one. If you're super new it's best to use a build. For example, if you take Weave you don't need to do that particular slotting for Contaminated Strike and Radiation Siphon. I did some tweaking. Doesn't mean it's better, it's just different. Resistances don't need to be at 90% because the Tanker proc in Radioactive Smash will put the resistances to 89% with a second stack (and the Scaling Resists unique in Battle Agility gives +1% resistances when at 90% or lower HP).

In teams you're not going to notice Bio's squish.

Werner sings the praises of Shield for damage but the buffing aura is something I didn't notice at all. Shield Charge at least is a semi demi mini nuke. I should have paid more attention to the damage buff when plunging into the middle of a group, but just hitting things with and without it didn't seem to have much of an impact in killing speed.

You got 5k slots. DO IT ALL!

I knows, I've done all of those when soloing the ITF twice. Once normal and once with all the modifiers. But doing the ambush on purpose is the point. Can we really call it the ITF and soloing it without that ocean of seafood at the top?

I can try running it and see what time I get. Definitely will need either some tweaks or my Lore to distract the ambush since I tried to solo the ITF on normal mode and almost could do it but in the end I got slowed to a crawl and not even Barrier and Ice Patch was enough. I have another build with 65% -recharge though. That ambush atop the hill is just too much with 20+ bosses who all do -recharge and -defense.

I got bored with it. It's going to work but Ripper's slowness was sapping my will to live since I kept comparing it with Frost who did the same but with more range. Once we remove Spine Burst and Impale is it really a Spines build though? 😄 Both are bad enough I'd still not include them though, at least for my own consumption, but the build works being dragged forward by Fire Armor. Check the first post for my top picks in Fire Armor, but plenty works like Fire/Katana if you want to go angelic fiery sword.

Right. Everyone suggesting their favorites so guess which one I'm going to suggest?? Fire Armor! Surpriseeeee! No seriously, if a fire armor can solo the ITF on +4x8 with enemies buffed then then it's fine as 'tough enough'. Go Fire Armor/Ice Melee and you're good to tank the whole while feeling good about your damage.

You're gaining close to 20% resistances from the ATO which is pretty brutal since it goes across the board. Minor nitpick because I agree with everything else. My one play with a Widow crashed at my first Hami when the same blasts that my Tanker shrugs off nearly one shot her. A bit like Shield where I start pondering combos and then see I end up shoehorning myself into DM to get health/endurance.

I'm just going to snip the rest because it's much shorter than what you've said. What would happen? Nothing. Nothing would happen. How did people farm before the AE? They picked a mission and would run it over and over. The infamous Dreck comes to mind. Nowadays there are no hoops to be jumped. The first mission of the Market Crash 100% looks like a regular farm mission from the AE but at 100% the XP. It may not be as OPTIMAL as patrolling mobs who come to meet at the center but it's a gazillion Freaks to be reaped, The only way to calm down the anti farming crowd (incidentally I haven't received an answer about how inflation did not balloon prices, and neither about how it takes casual play two weeks TOPS to buy all the purples and winters, and half that if a bit more aggressive about playing which seems about right if actively playing a character we are enjoying) would be to instate a GW2 diminishing returns. And it's universally loathed in GW2. GW2 is a game with a lot of grind and hours killing things, so it's HILARIOUS to find the drops slowing and eventually stopping if having farmed a map for more than an hour. The game about grind with an anti-grind mechanic is stupid as can be. Before anyone sneers I don't farm. I've long since stated this. I don't farm, I don't even bother playing the market other than crafting the recipes I happen to find for a % more profit than if I sold the recipe. I just play the game, do TFs, do a daily Tinpex/Hami (have actually not done this in a long while other than Tinpex for my most recent character I am incarnating). What I do and some don't is clean an alt I stop playing to gear another alt. Even so I have something like a billion, 4-5 characters fully IOed to the gills with all the expensive stuff, plus a dozen packed enhancement tables. So I have no sides that I am picking. BUT! It annoys me to see all this sneering going on. PROOF, FFS! PRODUCE IT! 'OMG FARMING IS KILLING THE ECONOMY!!!' 'No it's not, things were more expensive before. They are -less- expensive now.' 'IT IS!!!!' '...do you have proof of this?' 'NO, BUT IT IS!' GTFO.

If the doom saying was as real as being reported in this thread the amounts of inf created out of thin air would have balooned the price of things for purples to be 50 mill because, so much inf around, demand, big bids being made to ensure farmers got their goods. Empirical means say this is otherwise. So now we need more of a proof that the small segment of the population that farm requires pitchforks and torches.