Justaris

Personally I like Soul Mastery because Darkest Night stacks directly with your Defense so if you're building for tankiness that's a bit more on top of it all. Energy Mastery is also a popular choice but really just for Conserve Power, and you don't *need* Conserve Power though of course it helps.

What oldskool said. In my estimation incarnate tanking with little to no support is where DA really shines.

Here's something to get you started that's more of a high-end expensive build. Dark Melee offers some good synergy in terms of endurance management and -Acc to stack with Defense, but doesn't offer any particular extra Defense like some other secondaries. This particular build will get you melee softcap defense with very strong resistances, and will softcap to all positions as well as to S/L/F/C/E/N damage types with the active Support incarnate power. You could alternatively rework this with Kinetic Combats to focus more on typed softcap to allow for more DPS, depending on playstyle. Hero Plan by Mids' Reborn : Hero Designer 2.6.0.7 https://github.com/ImaginaryDevelopment/imaginary-hero-designer Click this DataLink to open the build! Dark: Level 50 Magic Tanker Primary Power Set: Dark Armor Secondary Power Set: Dark Melee Power Pool: Fighting Power Pool: Speed Power Pool: Force of Will Power Pool: Leaping Ancillary Pool: Soul Mastery Hero Profile: Level 1: Dark Embrace -- UnbGrd-ResDam(A), UnbGrd-ResDam/EndRdx(3), UnbGrd-Rchg/ResDam(3), UnbGrd-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(11), UnbGrd-Max HP%(40), UnbGrd-EndRdx/Rchg(43) Level 1: Shadow Punch -- SprGntFis-Acc/Dmg(A), SprGntFis-Dmg/Rchg(13), SprGntFis-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(15), SprGntFis-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(34), SprGntFis-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(43), SprGntFis-Rchg/+Absorb(43) Level 2: Murky Cloud -- UnbGrd-ResDam(A), UnbGrd-ResDam/EndRdx(5), UnbGrd-Rchg/ResDam(5), UnbGrd-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(11), StdPrt-ResDam/Def+(40), StdPrt-ResKB(42) Level 4: Death Shroud -- SprAvl-Acc/Dmg(A), SprAvl-Dmg/EndRdx(15), SprAvl-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(17), SprAvl-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(34), SprAvl-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(45), SprAvl-Rchg/KDProc(46) Level 6: Obsidian Shield -- UnbGrd-ResDam(A), UnbGrd-ResDam/EndRdx(9), UnbGrd-Rchg/ResDam(9), UnbGrd-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(13), GldArm-3defTpProc(42) Level 8: Shadow Maul -- ScrDrv-Acc/Dmg(A), ScrDrv-Dmg/EndRdx(17), ScrDrv-Dmg/Rchg(19), ScrDrv-Acc/Rchg(40), ScrDrv-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(48) Level 10: Taunt -- PrfZng-Taunt/Rchg/Rng(A) Level 12: Dark Regeneration -- ThfofEss-+End%(A), Erd-Acc/Rchg(19), Erd-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(21), Erd-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(21) Level 14: Cloak of Darkness -- ShlWal-Def/EndRdx(A), ShlWal-Def/Rchg(29), ShlWal-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(31), ShlWal-Def(31) Level 16: Siphon Life -- Mk'Bit-Acc/Dmg(A), Mk'Bit-Dmg/EndRdx(23), Mk'Bit-Dmg/Rchg(37), Mk'Bit-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(37), Mk'Bit-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(37), Mk'Bit-Dam%(46) Level 18: Kick -- FrcFdb-Rechg%(A) Level 20: Hasten -- RechRdx-I(A) Level 22: Tough -- UnbGrd-ResDam(A), UnbGrd-ResDam/EndRdx(23), UnbGrd-Rchg/ResDam(25), UnbGrd-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(25) Level 24: Weave -- ShlWal-Def/EndRdx(A), ShlWal-Def/Rchg(27), ShlWal-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(27), ShlWal-Def(29) Level 26: Mighty Leap -- BlsoftheZ-ResKB(A) Level 28: Soul Drain -- ScrDrv-Acc/Dmg(A), ScrDrv-Dmg/EndRdx(31), ScrDrv-Dmg/Rchg(33), ScrDrv-Acc/Rchg(33), ScrDrv-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(46) Level 30: Combat Jumping -- ShlWal-Def/EndRdx(A), ShlWal-Def/Rchg(33), ShlWal-Def(34), ShlWal-ResDam/Re TP(36) Level 32: Oppressive Gloom -- HO:Endo(A) Level 35: Dark Consumption -- FuroftheG-Dam/End/Rech(A), FuroftheG-Acc/End/Rech(36), FuroftheG-Acc/Dmg/End/Rech(36) Level 38: Midnight Grasp -- Mk'Bit-Acc/Dmg(A), Mk'Bit-Dmg/EndRdx(39), Mk'Bit-Dmg/Rchg(39), Mk'Bit-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(39), Mk'Bit-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(45), Mk'Bit-Dam%(48) Level 41: Weaken Resolve -- AnlWkn-Acc/DefDeb(A) Level 44: Gloom -- SprWntBit-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(A), SprWntBit-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(45) Level 47: Darkest Night -- HO:Enzym(A) Level 49: Soul Transfer -- Erd-Acc/Rchg(A), Erd-Dmg/Rchg(50), Erd-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(50) Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A) Level 1: Prestige Power Surge -- Empty(A) Level 1: Prestige Power Dash -- Empty(A) Level 1: Prestige Power Quick -- Empty(A) Level 1: Prestige Power Rush -- Empty(A) Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A) Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A) Level 2: Swift -- Empty(A) Level 2: Hurdle -- Empty(A) Level 2: Health -- Mrc-Rcvry+(A), NmnCnv-Regen/Rcvry+(7), Pnc-Heal/+End(48) Level 2: Stamina -- PrfShf-EndMod(A), PrfShf-EndMod/Rchg(7), PrfShf-EndMod/Acc(42), PrfShf-End%(50) Level 1: Gauntlet Level 1: Prestige Power Slide -- Empty(A) Level 4: Ninja Run Level 0: Freedom Phalanx Reserve Level 0: Task Force Commander Level 0: The Atlas Medallion Level 0: Portal Jockey Level 50: Warworks Core Superior Ally Level 50: Ageless Radial Epiphany Level 50: Void Radial Final Judgement Level 50: Support Core Embodiment Level 50: Paralytic Radial Flawless Interface Level 50: Cardiac Core Paragon ------------

Pretty much agree with what oldskool said. I have several DA tankers and they're all powerhouses, but you do need to take care with the build as it's easy to have endurance problems if you have poor slotting choices and/or power selection. I will say that the endurance issues are a bit overstated - you don't need to take Conserve Power and Cardiac alpha and Ageless just to manage the endurance if you've built carefully. I usually go with either Cardiac or Reslient for an alpha. If you use Performance Shift, Panacea, Numina and Miracle procs in combination with good Stamina slotting and the Theft of Essence proc in Dark Regeneration that covers a lot of the issues with Dark Armor's endurance use. I do typically go Ageless for destiny as the Ageless Radial tree is the only way to build Defense Debuff Resistance into the build, but I will usually craft multiple Destinies for different iTrial needs and I do just fine fighting with a different Destiny if necessary. It's a top tier tanker and a blast to play, if a bit rougher in the early game. Enjoy!

Interesting idea.

While I don't recommend going 'pure' support on any character in this game, I much prefer Controllers who do this to Defenders. Defenders will have higher base values on their heals, but if they totally ignore their secondary powerset then the overall benefit to the team is substantially below that provided by a Controller who can also offer pets (in most cases) and CC. Even worse, some 'healer' builds will also ignore or undervalue their buffs in favor of only doing heals, which results in an even weaker character. Almost any build of Defender is better than a 'pure healer'.

Actually, Blue buffs his ToHit. A good thing to remember when trying to tank him on a Defense-based set, although in my experience this is not well-known and some teams will not listen as a result.

I liked them too, but they were a great enough challenge that I'd credit them as a primary reason behind backlash against Kheldians which still persists in some parts of the community. There are many reasons why some players harbor negative opinions about Khelds - some due to unrealistic expecations, some due to disregard for lore-based options, some that don't care for a complex generalist as a playstyle. The special spawns, especially the cysts, seems to have caused some in the community to fear failing missions / TFs due to those spawns. I imagine most people don't know that the cysts don't spawn anymore and while personally I'm saddened by that it's likely a good change so we hopefully don't see Khelds being rejected for content based on fears of these kinds of spawns.

All of the challenges need to be done on arcs, not badge missions. They're not broken, but the system is hardly intuitive in terms of which arcs you count and which do not. There are guides in this forum to help you on that, I'll come back and link to the relevant guide in a bit. Here it is:

I can confirm this, Trusting and Arriviste are now separately earnable badges.

Just wanted to confirm that there's no new badge in Dr. Kane's House of Horrors. IIRC, this secret boss is more of an Easter Egg than anything else, but I wasn't 100% sure if he had a badge tied to him now.

Here's a few of my Warshade, Iscariot. The primary costume is a tri-color scheme that I think works pretty well. I also have a darker netherworld-themed costume that I sometimes use which relies on powers to maintain the effect so it's mainly for show, but it's fun. This one's the aforementioned netherworld concept, using Shadowy Presence. Just a close-up of the first one.

This isn't bad for an SO build, though Dark Armor moreso than almost any other primary benefits from good use of Sets. Simple things to start would be to add the Theft of Essence proc to Dark Regeneration and to add in the Panacea proc to Health or to Physical Perfection. Knockback protection is also critical and you'll want a few Steadfast Protection, Karma or Blessing of the Zephyr IOs to cover that hole in your status protection. I recommend 12 points (3 IOs), though some people roll with only two. The Energy Mastery epic pool certainly can help with endurance, especially if you don't quite have your IO build together, but it's far from necessary especially once you've got incarnate powers worked into your build. I tend to favor Soul Mastery for the Darkest Night toggle, but that's really only giving you very strong synergy once you have your Defense improved to softcap with IOs. For an SO build, Energy Mastery is a solid choice. In terms of synergy, both Stone Fist and Fault are sources of stuns, which combo well with Oppressive Gloom. Cloak of Fear provides to-hit debuff, which as with Darkest Night is good to stack on top of softcap Defense, but isn't doing you a lot of good in an SO build (and it's one of your most endurance-hungry toggles)

I play my Rad/Rad defender mostly in melee as well, since the -Defense in the Rad Blast powers help to boost the utility of Choking Cloud. Irradiate is a very good defense debuff and is PbAOE, and you can add on the single target blasts and Neutron Bomb to do a lot of AOE damage from melee and hold nearly everything around you. It makes for a fun playstyle, stacked with the debuffs from the two anchored debuff powers which you'll typically land on the tougher targets like bosses.

The problem with running Spiritual is that your endurance curve in this particular build relies to a great degree on the endurance discounts given by Cardiac. Switching away from Cardiac changes the endurance curve to 3.88 recovery/s vs 3.68/s usage, a margin of only 0.2. That combined with the extra recharge from Spiritual will mean you'll easily exhaust your endurance with even moderate amounts of Rad Melee power usage. This isn't to say that you can't make a build that uses Control Radial and Spiritual Radial, but it isn't this build. You'd have to do a total redesign with more endurance management baked into the build itself to make a variant like that work. The Clarion destiny also has a boosting effect that can work well in that context. Bottom line is that you'd likely have to trade some survivability to obtain that control. Control can be a great means of managing aggro and I think for the majority of content a variant like that could work well, but may struggle against AVs where the dreaded triangles give very high mags of protection when active.

Fair enough. I'm in either way.

Looking good! Your endurance tweaks are much improved now - they'll be even better with the passive Accolades in play. There's not much here that I think needs further revision. You've got softcap Defense for S/L/F/C/E/N plus Melee, which is superb, and your Resistances are hard-capped to everything but Energy and Toxic. (and those numbers aren't bad, at 77% and 69% respectively. You also have a really solid endurance curve now, with 3.88/s recovery to 2.75/s usage. I like to have somewhere between 0.75 to 1.0 differential there to account for frequent use of attacks and you have that and then some. Add in the passive regeneration bonuses from the Melee hybrid and you've got powerful mitigation with the strongest heal in the game to recover if anything gets a lucky strike. I'd consider using Ageless Radial Epiphany for its Defense Debuff Resistance - you don't really need the extra recovery from the Core line with everything else you're running (especially the Cardiac alpha) and the DDR can be really important at times. Other than that, the only other change I'd make is to use Boosters on all your generic IOs to +5, as well as any Set you don't intend to Attune.

So this is for Friday, October 4th? Any chance we could attempt a Master run of Baracuda? I'd be bringing my Rad/Rad Defender, Tetujin (@Justaris)

So when is the next run?

It's a mission set you can do in Flashback.

It also bears mentioning explicitly that damage is an integral part of how threat calculations work in CoH, so even if one were building 'only' for tanking, damage would still be an important consideration for any Tanker who wants to hold aggro.

This is a much, much stronger build for use in general content. You have capped resistances to all but two damage types (Energy and Toxic) and even for those you have 61% and 51% Resistance respectively, combined with extremely good Defense numbers - softcap to Smashing, Lethal, Fire, Cold, Energy, NegEnergy and also to Melee. You're going to do very, very well tanking with this build. You should have no trouble tanking in pretty much every scenario. For the Miss Liberty (formerly Statesman) Task Force in which you fight Lord Recluse, keep in mind that the blue buff tower gives a ToHit bonus of 30% to Lord Recluse so unless you have a dedicated support helping you tank for that particular fight you may want your team to prioritize the blue tower right after the red (+damage/+resistance buff) as otherwise he'll pierce your defense fairly easily. This is not the usual order, however, so some teams may not listen. That's just one fight with one AV across the entire game though. In terms in incarnate choices, you'll want to stick with Agility alpha since it's part of what's giving you the softcaps. For content under level 47 when alpha doesn't apply you won't be quite at S/L/E/N softcap, but you'll be close enough that purple inspirations will get you the rest of the way easily. Consider going Ageless radial for at least one of your destiny choices since this will provide you Defense Debuff Resistance, very important in some content to keep certain enemy groups like Knives of Artemis from stripping down your defenses with their debuffs (plus the Ageless will help with endurance). I'd go either Melee or Support for hybrid, probably Melee Core which will get you to 80% Energy Resistance and 70% Toxic Resistance with just three enemies around you. That's not all the time since that's from the active part of the hybrid which is only up for a short while, but the passive regeneration boost will stack nicely with your Defense and Resistance to make you even tougher. I also strongly recommend the Geas of the Kind Ones / Invader accolade, which provides a massive boost to endurance recovery and recharge. You won't need it often, but getting that massive recharge when you need it so you can keep using Dark Regeneration can make the difference between holding together through a tough battle and faceplanting. There's probably a bit more fine-tuning you can do endurance-wise here as I still think your endurance use vs recovery curve doesn't have as much margin as I usually like. Liberal use of boosters helps some, especially for those powers where you won't really want to attune anyway such as the PerfShifter:EndMod IO in Stamina or the generic Endurance Reduction in Darkest Night. With a tier 4 Agility alpha, with all four passive Accolades and with boosters I can get your endurance recovery / use to 3.88/s vs 3.19/s. I usually aim for at least a 0.75 to 1.0 differential there, but that's not terrible and if you end up running Ageless it'll help a great deal.

Big things I'm noticing: 1. You're reaching Resistance caps for Smashing, Lethal, Fire, Cold and Psi but with a fairly significant hole for Energy damage at 41.8%. You're also not at positional softcap or typed Energy softcap, so your Defense isn't fully covering this hole in your Resistances. 2. Endurance is an issue. You don't have much endurance reduction slotting in your toggles (almost none in Death Shroud) and the Panacea, Miracle and Numina unique IOs alone aren't going to overcome this. You don't have any incarnate powers selected in this build. As built here, you're almost requiring a Cardiac core tree alpha to help manage this. You'll also want all four of the passive badge Accolades (two of which - Atlas Medallion and Portal Jockey - also help with endurance). In terms of incarnate selections, you may also want Ageless destiny and/or Support hybrid to further help with endurance management. Alternatively / in addition, trying to fit a bit more endurance reduction into your most costly powers (Death Shroud and Cloak of Fear) is a good idea too. As I see it you could fine-tune this in one of three ways. First option - keep the build more or less as-is, as a tanker build with a bit more DPS than most. If you're planning on doing mostly or entirely AE fire farms, then you should be fine as the energy hole will never be an issue in that context. If you choose this option, I'd just look at moving a few slots around for a better overall endurance curve. You're over softcap for Fire/Cold so you can afford to lose a slot or two off of Tough and Dark Embrace to shore up Stamina and Cloak of Fear. Using a Cardiac alpha you'll still have capped Smashing/Lethal/Fire/Cold/Psi resists with only four slots in Dark Embrace and three in Tough. However, if you're wanting to be a top-tier main tank in content outside of fire farms, you'll probably want to go for optimizing either your Defense or your Resistance. Doing either one is probably going to come at the cost of lowering your DPS. If you lean into Resistance, you can start with the Tanker ATO sets - split into two different powers, Gauntletet Fist alone can give you 12% more Energy / Negative Energy Resistance. Alternatively, you can put your focus on Defense and aim for 45% in all three positions or in the six major types - Smashing, Lethal, Fire, Cold, Energy and Negative Energy. You will want either strong Energy Resistances or capped Energy Defense (or positional defense, which does the same job) if you're going to be a strong main tank outside of farms, as it's an extremely common damage type. Going with either of the latter options will mean a major rework of the build, discarding almost everything that doesn't further the new goal and then adding back on whatever you have leftover space for once it's achieved. If you have enough influence, one option would be to keep the build you've posted here as a farm build with the tweaks I've discussed above and make an entirely separate build in one of your alternate build slots for use in non-farm content. This would mean buying everything over again and would be significantly more expensive than reworking your current build, but it's an option if money's no object.

Specifically the power Divine Avalanche, which you'll want to use a truly ridiculous amount of the time.

Summer Blockbuster is an seasonal event currently going on which is queued using the LFG tool (similar to Death from Below), and gives special IOs from the Overwhelming Force set which are not available any other way. If the event is turned off, they will only be available from other players on the Auction House and may become more expensive due to scarcity. This particular set is popular because it contains an IO that converts Knockback to Knockdown, although that can also be achieved using the Sudden Acceleration set which is less difficult to get. Inv/Katana should work just fine, just make sure to use Divine Avalanche liberally as soon as you get it to boost your Defense. You should do fine on SOs and you can gradually transition to generic IOs for minimal cost as you level up into the 30s or so. Dull Pain is pretty strong and between the Resistances in the toggles generally, the Defense from Invincibility and Dull Pain it's unlikely that Medicine will be necessary. If you don't feel tough enough you'd probably get more mileage from Tough & Weave in the Fighting pool, and just carry extra green inspirations. Hasten is useful for most builds and getting perma is more a matter of stacking Recharge bonuses than a factor of any particular powerset. So yes, certainly possible. Inventions, which is a more complex topic in an of itself, is mainly about stacking similar small bonuses to get a large net effect. Broadly speaking, it's common to build for recharge reduction (leading to perma of click powers such as Hasten) or to build for Defense. Depending on what values you're starting from in your particular powersets, there's usually some opportunity cost in pursuing one goal over another. For instance, you might build for perma-Hasten by stacking many Set Bonuses giving recharge reduction, but then not have enough slots left over to meaningfully bolster Defense in the same build. There are other goals you can stack for as well, of course, those are just two of the most common.