Sovera

First post has math, but tbh for the rest of us we just look at the times so we know a 1:30 build is better than a 3 minute build.

A mere two years later 😄

Quick and dirty test against a pylon. No procs involved to not muddy waters. Frost 154 GiS 184 That's exactly 30 more points damage which is nothing to sneeze at. According to Mids I should be doing 187 with Frost, but since the pylon has 20% resists to all the difference maths out to 17% which seems good enough. So back to Mids once Frost has two damage procs it goes to 239 where GiS with two damage procs goes to 304. The damage difference is now 65 points. According to Mids with my slotting Frost has 33% chance for a proc to go off while GiS has 53% which favors GiS and why the gap increased with procs involved. So in a world with infinite slots and powers I'd take GiS for those pure ST moments. But for regular gameplay where we are surrounded by mobs using Frost instead of GiS is a no brainer. A person with a regular Ice Melee build (AKA not someone weird who does not like Frozen Aura for whatever reason >_> >_>) will be doing FT, Frost, Frozen Aura, FT, Frost, gap (Burn if using Fire Armor). Start over. Personally, because I play with Fire Armor and have Burn, and because I know bosses last the longest, I found focusing on the boss (Ice Sword and Freezing Touch instead of Frozen Aura) works best for me. But more AoE killing minions and lieutenants is not a bad thing to have when they keep on pumping out debuffs. So again in a world of infinite slots and powers I'd take GiS for the pure ST moments and also Frozen Aura for the pure AoE moments. Frost and GiS both have (nearly) the same recharge and same animation time so FT, Ice Sword, GiS, Ice Sword works just as well. Now it's up to the individual to decide about the cost of a power and six slots for 65 extra damage.

For a T8 it's just weak. With two damage procs it does 304 with a 2.5 animation. Crippling Axe kick, for example, also a T8, does 342 but animates in 1.9. Or take Devastating Blow at 2.9 but who does 576. Soaring Dragon for 1.6 who does 388. And this is with Mids. There might be under the hood mechanics but if you go to the character creator and check the average damage of Frost and GiS the first does 124 and the second 103. The one thing it does better than Frost is that a ST power has better proc chances (53% in the example above) than Frost (33%). So according to Mids it will do about 70 damage more than Frost at 233 which is not as much of a 'tiny fraction' I was talking above. Though I'm not sure how it relates to the character creator showing different numbers. It probably asks for some empirical testing in game, but it's too late to start that now. I'll do it tomorrow.

Fire Armor. Not kidding. If someone asked for the toughest set I'd answer something else, but best powerset for a new tanker? Fire Armor. Fast recharging heal, endurance clicky, early Burn to kill things dead before they hurt back. Couple it with Ice Melee and you can start a fight with Ice Patch and kill things as they flop. With two Build-up mechanics + damage aura + Burn it's all the tankiness of a Tanker with nearly the damage of a Scrapper.

Imagine 2021 and not having Focused Accuracy. I kid, I kid. But it's the reason why I don't leave home without it 😜

Ice Sword, Frost, Ice Patch. Frozen Aura, Build-up. Swap your Greater Ice Sword for Frost and suffer a tiny fraction of damage less and in exchange you're hitting in AoE. Focus the boss and the spawn dies while you're doing your ST rotation of Freezing Touch, Ice Sword, Frost, Ice Sword.

It's my favorite Fire Armor combo. I have a build in my signature. And Ice does well, just need to get away from the Frozen Fists/Greater Ice Sword trap.

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.