Hjarki

I think Radiation is a particular standout for a few reasons: Staff gives a much-needed 'defense toggle' for LotG to a set that otherwise provides none. Staff's notoriously poor single target damage is counter-balanced by -regen in primary for fighting AV/GM Radiation can nearly can all resists, so being able to push the final mile with Staff's +resist move can make a truly beefy tanker. The potentially massive +Melee/Lethal defense bonuses counter-balance the lack of DDR. With Invulnerability and Super Reflexes, you tend to be forced into using Perfection of Soul to manage endurance. So you fall into a do-you-get-what-you-pay-for? quandary where you have to ask yourself if those sets are so much better than a set like Radiation that they justify such a low damage secondary. I think Super Reflexes is different enough than Radiation that you could potentially make the argument - but you can probably make an argument for other endurance management sets like Savage of Dark that's even better. For Invulnerability, I don't see it. In terms of Bio, it's the "defense version" of Radiation in many ways. However, Bio Tankers are notoriously squishy and I don't think any of the three modes of Staff help this much. Bio doesn't need Soul, Mind is silly almost any time and Body just raises your horrible non-S/L/T resists to slightly less horrible. Electric has a tendency to be simply a worse version of Radiation. Weak Psi/Strong Toxic is a much better combination than the reverse in a resist set. Likewise, it's often tough to justify Willpower when Bio exists. Why play the 'Regeneration set' when the only time your Regeneration actually beats out sets that provide broader benefits is when you're surrounded by a mob of enemies? Dark Armor could benefit, but the Energy hole is painful and you're likely to be stuck with Soul most of the time. With that in mind, Oppressive Gloom does combine well with so much Disorient in secondary.

If you want to play an 'archer' Blaster, you're normally better off with Tactical Arrow rather than Archery. Archery as a blast set only really has one good spot: Explosive Arrow. Blazing Arrow is worse than a T2 power like Gloom (which is admittedly a very strong example of a T2 power). Ranged Shot has the longest activation time of any sniper attack (which is shares with several other similar sniper shots). Aimed Shot is a fairly typical T1 power (in the T2 slot) and Snap Shot is terrible. Lastly, Archery lacks a true ultimate. You could pair it with something like /Electricity and build a primarily melee ST attack chain. You could pair it with Martial to get a pseudo-ultimate in secondary. Or you could just pick something like Tactical Arrow and deal with low damage for thematic reasons.

Staff has amazing AE on a Tanker. You can just Hover above the crowd and rotate Guarded Spin/Innocuous Strikes to chew up spawns in short order. Having extended reach Cones on a Tanker with a 10 target cap is fantastic. Where Staff stumbles is single target.

I was going through City of Data quickly to do all the proc calculations and just glanced at the knockback to recognize it needed to be suppressed - didn't notice that it was lethal rounds only.

In general, if you can skip a lot of a Tanker's primary powers it probably means that set isn't very good. However, the real issue in terms of pool powers is how many +Defense you need to slot LotG. Almost all builds want at least 5 powers that can be slotted for +defense because spending a single slot to get +7.5% is so incredible. So if you're a Radiation Tanker, you won't be taking the Teleport pool because all four of your pools will already be spoken for with Defense toggles. On the other hand, a Super Reflexes Tanker tends to grab Fighting pool and wonder what else they might need.

There are very few powers in the game where slotting more than 4 procs makes sense. Consider Jab. It deals 35.9242 damage (on a Tanker). 53% (+5 Damage IO) of this would be about 19 damage. Jab with no internal recharge has a 12.29% chance to fire a 3.5 ppm proc for 71.75 damage or an average of 8.82 damage. As a result, you should never slot conventional procs into Jab until you're in ED territory on +damage. Another example would be Knockout Blow. This immediately twigs your proc radar because it can slot Unbreakable Constraint. However, even at +100% internal recharge, you still have well over the 90% maximum for proc chance so you're losing a meaningful part of the value of that proc. The same problem affects the new recharge levels on epic/patron pool Holds - they're simply too slow to make maximum use of Unbreakable Constraint. You also have to consider the powers within the context of your rotation (for single target powers). That Jab performance I discussed above? That's if your only offensive power is Jab and you're firing it the moment it comes off recharge. If you put Jab in an actual rotation, the value of those procs collapses. In general, when you're proc'ing a single target rotation, you want the procs in that relatively long recharge power that just barely comes off recharge when its spot in the rotation comes up. Whether you can proc a power is only half the equation. You also have to do the math to determine whether you should.

For Suppressive Fire, a 3.5 ppm proc is better than a pure damage IO. For Executioner's Shot, they're essentially the same. For Pistols and Bullet Rain, a pure damage IO is about 15% better than a 3.5 ppm proc. Force Feedback in Hail of Bullets is... meh. The long recharge compared to the duration of Force Feedback means it only adds a negligible amount of total recharge to the build. Force Feedback in Bullet Rain is a strong choice, though. Force Feedback in Executioner's Shot would average out to approximately 32% recharge over time. Not relevant for closing your single target rotation but potentially very relevant for long recharge powers like Chrono Shift or Hail of Bullets. In general, your AE powers should prioritize damage/recharge over procs - you'll get a lot more damage that way. Unsuppressed knockback in Bullet Rain makes my eyes twitch. Minor knockback in a single target power is no big deal. Knockback on an AE? You'll blow nicely clumped spawns apart and make everyone chase them down with single target attacks (including yourself). At perma-Hasten, Annihilation in Piercing Rounds will average -12.22% resist on a single target. For comparison, Achilles' Heel in Pistols will average -5.29% resist on a single target (presuming you're running your full rotation). While this isn't a direct comparison because you wouldn't ordinarily use Piercing Rounds as part of your rotation, it does bear on what happens when you're trying to purely debuff. I'm not sure why you took Distortion Field instead of Time Stop. The latter is a far more useful power and can slot the same set. You might consider running this as a Corruptor rather than a Defender. You'll get an additional purple proc and very little in Time really demands Defender numbers - most of the buffs/debuffs tend to fall into one of three categories: more than enough, don't care and unchanged.

The issue isn't whether or not groups can benefit from a 'healer'. The issue is that Empathy isn't very good in this role compared to 'healer' sets like Electrical, Thermal, Pain and Nature.

Shield's Grant Cover

For Super Reflexes, I find that following that the following approach is almost always good way to start: In the toggles, put 4-slot Shield Wall (one will have the unique; the others will have E/R) In the passives, put 2-slot LotG (+recharge and D) In Elude, put 6-slot Reactive Defenses In Practiced Brawler, put a single recharge or endurance IO (depending on overall recharge/build goals) In Quickness, put run speed IO (or fly speed for flying characters) One of the hardest things to do with SR is get enough E/N resist (thus the 4-slot Shield Walls) Broad Sword is a bit of an odd pairing. Not only will you struggle with endurance but Ninja Blade is almost strictly superior. Neither set is particularly good on a Stalker since the heavy-hitting attack (Head Splitter) suffers an AE penalty on critical and the key AE of the set (Whirling Sword) is missing. The general pattern for Stalker rotations is Light Attack - Heavy Attack - Light Attack - Assassinate - Really Heavy Attack, with Assassinate slotted with Stalker's Guile and Assassin's Mark in an attack that needs a lot of recharge and doesn't benefit much from Hecatomb.

For sets without DDR or with insufficient DDR, the best solution is normally to grab a primary that either buffs defense (Broadword, Katana, Staff) or incapacitates melee opponents (abilities like Thunderclap or Fault). In the first case, you can delay defense collapse by having a much higher Melee/Lethal defense than you need. In the second case, you can prevent it by reducing the frequency of incoming attacks.

Because almost no build has enough AE to create a 'rotation', recharge normally isn't relevant for AE powers. Indeed, proc'd out Irradiate would do a lot more damage if it had a 10s or 8s recharge. The proc chance on any individual attack would be lower, but you'd have more attacks over time. Where recharge can matter on an AE attack is when the AF is so low it's used as a single target attack (which is not the case with Irradiate). PBAoE powers also have 3 damage procs, a purple proc and a -res proc, so it really doesn't matter all that much what procs their secondary effects grant.

You might consider Ice/Ninja Blaster. You've got Armageddon, Hecatomb, Unbreakable Constraint, Apocalypse and Superior Blaster's Wrath all in your single target rotation.

While Radiation Blast might seem like a 'proc friendly' set, it actually isn't. You don't just need the right debuff category for proc availability. You need fast-activating, long recharge powers that can be assembled into an attack chain with minimal internal recharge slotting. You also need enough powers in primary/secondary to build for the recharge, accuracy and endurance management you aren't putting in your attack powers. Radiation's T1 attack has far too low of a recharge to be effective with procs. Its T2 attack has too long of an activation time for its recharge. They're pretty much the worst T1/T2 powers in any blast set. Irradiate is actually a better 'single target' attack than either based solely on dpa - but this doesn't help with procs (where Irradiate's horrible AF cripples procs used on a single target). Radiation Sniper attack is par for the course. However, you normally don't need any sort of special debuff category for sniper attacks because they can slot 3 procs out-of-the-gate (Sting of the Manticore, Apocalypse, Gladiator's Javelin) and it's fairly common to just 5-slot Sting of the Manticore anyway. Cosmic Burst is another horrible-for-procs power due to its activation time. And that's it for Radiation Blast's single target. You've got two truly awful powers, one merely mediocre one and one no-better-than-anyone-else power. Note: You don't really need any sort of special debuff power for AE attacks since they can slot Positron's, Bombardment and Javelin Volley. What you really want from an AE power is a trivial amount of knockback so you can slot Force Feedback. Too much knockback, you lose a slot to Overwhelming Force. No knockback at all, you're losing about 25% of your potential dps due to worse cyclic rate. In terms of Electric Blast, the Shocked condition is a bit of a trap. It's about 16% more damage on your attacks. For Blaster, this is pretty meaningful. If a Blaster fires off Charged Bolts with 225% enhanced damage, Shocked is an additional 28.2 damage while a 3.5 ppm proc would only be 20.9 damage. On a Defender under the same conditions, Shocked is worth 16.3 more damage while that 3.5 ppm proc is still worth 20.9 more damage. Moreover, 'proc builds' are going to slot up 4 of those procs while the only proc Electrical can slot universally is Gladiator's Javelin. So Electric Blast tends to be worthwhile (on Defender) in one of two situations: You expect to be running at/near the damage cap. Our fully Fulcrum Shift'd Kineticist will raise Shocked to 28.9 damage per activation on a Defender - a bit better than a free proc. Note that the Corruptor version will add 41.7 damage (due to higher cap and higher base damage) - and that damage will increase to 54.2 if we account for the average performance of Scourge. You're mainly concerned about the endurance cost. Charged Bolts with 30% endurance reduction and Dark Blast with 30% endurance reduction both cost 4 endurance. Charged Bolts with Shocked effectively costs 0.75 endurance under the same conditions. This makes Electrical a strong choice for a set like Storm Summoning where you want your blast set to contribute some damage at minimal cost while your support set does the heavy lifting. If you're not meeting either of those conditions, you're probably doing a lot less damage than a proc-heavy set would.

I think the general rule people are looking for is that if you care about the damage, it doesn't Containment/Scourge. If you don't care about the damage, it does.

Most of the game is played in "Scrapper lock" mode. You're rushing from spawn to spawn and only really stop when you encounter an enemy with massive health (an AV/GM). This makes playing pet-based builds - including pseudo-pet builds like Traps - annoying at times. By the time you set up the perfect battlefield, the fight is already over. Even against AV/GM, Traps can be problematic because everything is breakable. While this is fine for Trip Mine - it's supposed to break - it's less fine for your debuff/buff pseudo-pets that you'd really rather didn't die. I think there's a place for something like an Arsenal/Traps Controller who plays their own game at their own pace. But I think you'll find such a build frustrating if you join a random task force.

To put this in perspective, Blasters have a 1.125 scale while Defenders have a 0.65 scale. So even before we get into the details of Blasters having a second offensive set and Defiance, Defenders are dealing a bit over half the damage of Blasters with the same attacks. This creates a situation where Defenders really need to be built different than other AT to deal remotely decent damage. For example, I'm currently leveling an X/Assault Rifle Defender. This is how my slotting will look at 50: Slug: Apocalypse D, D/E, proc; Force Feedback proc; Explosive Strike proc; Gladiator's Javelin proc M30 Grenade: Superior Vigilant Assault 3-piece; Overwhelming Force unique, Force Feedback proc, Positron's Blast proc Beanbag: Superior Defender's Bastion 6-piece Sniper Rifle: Sting of the Manticore 5-piece including proc; Force Feedback proc Ignite: Superior Vigilant Assault 3-piece; Positron's Blast proc, Bombardment proc, Annihilation proc Full Auto: Artillery 6-piece Let's consider that first attack (Slug). It normally deals 59.2804 damage in 1.584 sec. With an 8 sec recharge, it has 15.667% * X chance to proc effects. Force Feedback is a 2 PPM proc, Explosive Strike and Gladiator's Javelin 3.5 PPM procs and Apocalypse is a 4.5. So when I fire the attack, I have 31.3% chance to gain +100% recharge for 5 sec. I deal 59.2804 * Damage modifier + 71.75 * 54.83% * 2 + 107.1 * 70.5%. If my total damage modifier for attacks is +125% (including internal damage enhancement), this would yield 287.57 damage or 181.55 dpa. A Blaster who just dumped +damage IOs into the attack would deal 230.85 damage or 145.74 dpa with the same assumptions. In practice, most non-support AT use procs opportunistically. A Blaster is almost certainly going to have the Apocalypse proc somewhere, but it will be part of a 5-set bonus rather than being stranded mostly on its own for pure damage purposes. There are ways around a Defender's overall weak damage, but they are considerably more involved than for other AT.

I think it helps to start with determining what your goals are. Bio on a Tanker will never be a 'true' Tanker in the sense of being able to withstand any enemy. The resists are simply too low and the lack of DDR means that the defenses will fail under certain circumstances. It's more of a 'Scranker' set where your goal is less to be impervious to all harm than be impervious *enough* that you can deal with 99% of content. As such, I tend to build Bio as an either-or affair. For any given damage type, I either have hard-capped or nearly so resists (S/L/T) or I have soft-capped defenses (E/N/F/C/P). This doesn't meaningfully change my ability to survive but it makes the build significantly easier since I'm no longer wasting slots on sets like Kinetic Combat. It also means I have a real option for my resist toggles: Impervium Armor. Unlike my other options, it gives me a meaningful set bonus while also improving my powers. So I'd set up a power like Hardened Carapace with 3-set Impervium and then 2 set Gladiator's Armor (unique + Resist). Evolving Armor might be 3-set Impervium with Steadfast Protection unique. And so forth. For the rest of the powers: Inexhaustible. This doesn't need any slotting most of the time, but it's a decent place to plant Healing/Endurance uniques. Environmental Modification. At least one slot needs to go to LotG global recharge. Other than that, our defense powers need to find a place for Reactive Defenses and Shield Wall, both of which have better set bonuses that LotG for most purposes. Ablative Carapace. 6-slot Preventative Medicine is the obvious choice here. DNA Siphon. The best way to think of this power is purely as a -regen tool. So if you can get something out of slotting full sets, go ahead. But otherwise it really just needs recharge/accuracy (and it may not even need accuracy depending on your build). Genetic Contamination. 6-slot Might of the Tanker is the obvious choice here. It has set bonuses you want and having the proc just operate passively saves a lot of hassle. Parasitic Aura. I don't find this power useful either from the standpoint of the power itself or the slotting opportunities, so I generally don't take it. For Dark Melee, I don't much like the pairing. Dark gives up damage in exchange for Siphon Life. This trade-off can be critically important with primaries that don't have health/endurance management. With Bio? It's almost pure downside. But with that in mind, our single target rotation will be Smite/Siphon Life/Smite/Midnight Grasp. We either need excessive recharge or another power to close the gasp due to Midnight Grasp's long recharge, so we'll pick up Gloom from epic pools. Since Bio doesn't have a good reason to split Gauntleted Fist, we can just use 6-slot Gauntleted Fist for Smite/Midnight Grasp and 5-6 slot Hecatomb for the other (depending on how much you care about capping Toxic resist - the 6th slot could also be any of a number of procs). Touch of Fear is our primary AE, so that's a good place for Armageddon. If it's 5-slot, then the unusually low radius makes Fury of the Gladiator proc a solid choice. We'll need a touch more E/N/F/C defense, so doing a 3/3 Eradication/Avalanche split for Shadow Maul and DNA Siphon seems a solid choice. 6-slot Mocking Beratement in Taunt gives us fantastic set bonuses as well. I'd probably use Siphon Life as a proc attack - just enough damage (and no recharge) to get near ED caps with some variety of available procs filling out the rest. With accuracy bonuses from sets and potentially Tactics/Kismet, we probably don't need to invest in accuracy at all. Shadow Punch and Dark Consumption don't have any purpose for the build, so skip them. Soul Drain is a debate. We can't make it perma and it has a significant activation time - an activation time where our damage isn't very good. Against a single target, we'll lose about 6% of our damage to get a buff of about 12% of our damage (with +100% or so global recharge and the rotation outlined above). That's not very impressive so I'd skip it unless there's a good slotting opportunity. In terms of pools, we need four defense powers ideally: Fighting (whatever/Tough/Weave). Environmental Modification, Weave and Maneuvers are better than other defense toggles so when we're grabbing set bonuses (and thus over-slotting +defense), those should be where we concentrate. Leadership (Maneuvers/Assault and maybe Tactics) Leaping (Combat Jumping) For the fourth, I think Hover is the best option. It gives you additional always-on defense and doesn't carry the threat penalties of Concealment. It's also not a pure mule like Vengeance. Hover is also useful on a Tanker, especially one with Cones, because it allows you to compress the spawn more than standing on the ground would. We already committed to Gloom, so that means Soul Mastery. Gloom itself can be 6-slotted with Apocalypse to give us recharge, a proc and Psi Defense. The rest of Soul Mastery isn't all that impressive, but Obliteration can be nice since we can slot it with Ragnarok and the proc is nearly auto-fire.

Total Focus has twice the recharge of Energy Transfer. Since the slow version of Energy Transfer is still the highest dpa attack in the chain, you should be casting two ET per TF. This also means your primary concern isn't the recharge of Total Focus but the recharge of Energy Transfer - you need to pack in 3 - 4 seconds of something between your fast and slow Energy Transfers.

If he insists on Sonic, it would probably be easier to just skip all the AE in Sonic except for the ultimate. It's not like they're particularly good AE even without the issue of the Poison T9 and Poison has a quasi-AE in the trap anyway. Indeed, I'd argue that one of the strongest Poison pairings is actually Dark despite it's similar emphasis on Cones. With the latest patch, you can run Poison/Dark/Dark. You've got the ultimate/trap for AE, Life Drain to cover health/endurance management and you can even double stack Disorient fields with Dark Pit and Oppressive Gloom - and you get the Aim/Build Up that Dark is missing for the ultimate. Dark is also nice as a Defender because it gets two of its three single target attacks within the first few levels and the rotation is almost entirely medium recharge, proccable powers. Seismic is really a purely ranged set and it's major virtue is the self-recharge on the powers that gives it probably the best ultimate in the game. While I suppose you could run in while the meteor is falling to the ground, it's a lot easier to just use something like Sleet/Freezing Rain while the animation is ongoing. Storm is likewise a set that gains no real benefit from being up close. It's also a "screw it... I'll just play Traps" set due to having to wait for Storm Cell to slowly drift to where you need it to be.

Shield has no endurance management. Neither do Fire Melee or Martial Arts. So you'll be gasping for end with those combos. If you're planning to do Shield, I highly recommend a secondary like Savage, Energy or Dark that mitigates your endurance issues. Radiation is probably the most generally powerful armor set available to Tankers. Rad/MA is arguably the best farming build at the moment and it's a strong build for general play. I don't like Fire nearly as much - while it eventually does pretty well, it's a painfully long slog until you get all the key powers at the end of the set.

Once you brush off all the dust, they still work for us just like they did for our ancestors.

No, but it's fairly easy to build. Seismic's recharge reduction on all powers coupled with Time's ability to cap defenses trivially means you don't need any particularly difficult build constraints.

It really depends on what you mean by 'solo'. Most of the game is simply grinding xp/inf. While no Corruptor is particularly good at this (compared to melee AT or even Blasters), there are certainly builds that are better than others. Techniques like */Time + Soul Drain or */Kinetics would tend to fall into this category. The other part of the game is what might be termed 'achievement' - you're trying to beat difficult enemies, normally AV/GM. Here, the debuff-centric sets tend to be the best for the simple reason that they're better at keeping you alive and can leverage the power of abilities like -regen.

Dark has a decent diversity of abilities. However, the main reasons I don't like the set much: Lack of any truly top notch abilities. There are certain abilities like Fulcrum Shift or Tornado that can carry an entire power set. Dark really doesn't have anything like that. Dark is painfully slow. You'd be forgiving if you check your watch waiting for the abilities to animate. Almost everything Dark does takes a lot longer than comparable abilities in other sets.