Super Reflexes Worries

[Cidri]

I jut ran Market Crash on my Super Reflexes/Staff tank. I was lvl 42, sidekicked to 49, and we ran with +1 level notoriety so we were fighting lvl 51 and 52 mobs.. I had no real effort at all until the end fight - I did have to mind the Super Stunners, but some other tanks have that issue too. In that fight, I died 4 times, while no-one else died in the entire run. We had a kinetic doing a reasonable amount of healing at random times.  It is interesting to note that the times I was away, no-one else took severe damage.

 

Statistically, a SR tanker will be hit now and then, and once in a blue moon hit by a series of big attacks that can take them down. But the Crimson Prototype's attacks did so regularly. Anything that auto-hits is naturally the bane of Super-Reflexes, I don't know if the Crimson Prototype does that, but the extremely large doses of damage it does (about half my health) only requires it to be lucky twice in a row.

 

I was tracking my damage resistance, to see if the resistance bonus from the SR passives kicked in. I normally have 34% s/l. I think I saw it go up to 50 one time, but not more than that. Again, when damage comes in very large packages, the resistance from the passives don't seem to have time to kick in. (I am aware that the monitoring doesn't always work.)

 

I've suspected for a long time that SR would not cut it in the end game. It has solely defense and defense debuff resistance to survive on. No hit point bonus and no resistance. This is the first time I actually felt this was an issue. It would be interesting to see the results of datamining on how Super Reflexes on tanks is doing at different levels. My suspicion is that they don't really work after level 40 and barely at all in incarnate play.

 

If I am right, what can be done? If tanker SR is to be boosted, I think its the passives that should get love. Increasing the amount of resistance they give, and have them give it earlier (at lower levels of damage), possibly starting at a moderate resistance even at 0% damage. I could also see them give a buff to maximum hit points - almost ever tank primary has that.

 

 

[Caulderone]

Would you mind sharing your build?

 

I don't know enough about the Market Crash final fight to comment on it.  I'm going to go hunt info now just so I have a clue.

 

edit:  Ah, found a couple things.  That AV is SR bane.  22.5% minimum chance to hit and -MaxHP debuffs.

 

 

Edited December 9, 2019 by Caulderone

[Sir Myshkin]

3 hours ago, Cidri said:

I've suspected for a long time that SR would not cut it in the end game. It has solely defense and defense debuff resistance to survive on.

There are a handful of unique cases where SR, because of being a one-trick-pony, isn't necessarily best suited, but don't discount your abilities across the board. I played a KM/SR Scrapper pretty heavily pre-sunset alongside a Night Widow that I swapped between. I built my defense up to 61% to each positional and I did just fine in Incarnate content. I packed Rebirth Radial as a support heal that'd give me that Regen boost as follow-up and it more than covered me for most scenarios I experienced. There will be an occasional "oops, dead" in there, but it really wasn't that often. Carry a pack of T3 Oranges to super-boost your Resistances in the off situations where your defense is a wet paper bag to an enemy and you'll be fine.

 

Since you're a Tanker it'll be easy to get to 60% Positional, and leave you with room to dig up some S/L Resistance bonuses. Run those with Tough and you should be able to get 40-50% there (at least). The Tanker +Res proc in an attack... the PvP +5%...

 

Also, the scaling resist IO double-dips for you in combination with your natural scaling in SR. Not necessarily something to full rely on, but you get more mileage out of them together, compared to not.

 

The Crimson Prototype is strangely an AV with an attack concept that specifically neuters Defense and Regen focused characters pretty hardcore.

[nihilii]

7 hours ago, Sir Myshkin said:

The Crimson Prototype is strangely an AV with an attack concept that specifically neuters Defense and Regen focused characters pretty hardcore.

Also resistance. It has a high damage PBAOE that ignores resistance every ~40 seconds or so.

Absorb is the only unscathed mechanic. There's no absorb only character, but a well-built character with strong absorb (rad, bio, SR sentinel) can take on the Crimson Prototype with some jousting.

[Cidri]

I could share my build, but since I have yet to fully respec into that build, it wouldn't show so much. The team had LOTS of defense buffs, and all my defenses (melee, ranged, area) were at 100 or more. I can show my current slotting.

[Cidri]

8 hours ago, Sir Myshkin said:

There are a handful of unique cases where SR, because of being a one-trick-pony, isn't necessarily best suited [...]

 

The Crimson Prototype is strangely an AV with an attack concept that specifically neuters Defense and Regen focused characters pretty hardcore.

My best toon ever is a Claws/SR scrapper, and she's great in incarnate content, so I completely agree SR can be good. But the demands on scrappers and tankers is different. I will keep playing my SR tank and may post more on my experiences. I do hope that you're right.

 

About the Crimson Prototype, a friend on a Willpower tank had similar (if less serious) issues, and is now doing very well in incarnate content. The Crimson Prototype may indeed just be an oddity in this.

[Cidri]

1 hour ago, nihilii said:

[...]  well-built character with strong absorb (rad, bio, SR sentinel) can take on the Crimson Prototype with some jousting.

This is what I did towards the end of the fight. Rather than taunting the CP conctantly, I tanked the adds and only taunted the CP when another teammate's hits went down. This worked very well.

[Cidri]

Finally, thx for the constructive replies!

[Sir Myshkin]

5 hours ago, Cidri said:

But the demands on scrappers and tankers is different.

Only when you throw Taunt into the mix, and if it were reduced to a 1 v 1 comparison against any given target and just look at SR's performance (ie Crimson Prototype), the two are going to come out equivalent. I had been so confidant in my KM/SR Scrapper that I intentionally took Confront to pull one-off targets attention and to force-taunt on AV's when a Tank wasn't present on a team. I was also typically the first person to taunt AV's on iTrials like the BAF. Defense, unlike Resistances, don't have any special target values for individual AT's, so everyone plays at the same table.

[Troo]

To quote one of the current devs: " Defense was designed as a gamble/luck mechanic. Sometimes, you will lose that bet, and very quickly fall if defense is the only thing keeping you alive. "

 

So you aren't imagining it @Cidri.

Sprinkle in non-positional attacks and Super Reflexes can be madding. It is awesome until it isn't.

 

I'm taking note of your 'Rather than taunting' Crimson Prototype comment. -thx

 

Edited December 9, 2019 by Troo
misspelled op's name

[Sovera]

On 12/9/2019 at 1:47 AM, Cidri said:

I jut ran Market Crash on my Super Reflexes/Staff tank. I was lvl 42, sidekicked to 49, and we ran with +1 level notoriety so we were fighting lvl 51 and 52 mobs.. I had no real effort at all until the end fight - I did have to mind the Super Stunners, but some other tanks have that issue too. In that fight, I died 4 times, while no-one else died in the entire run. We had a kinetic doing a reasonable amount of healing at random times.  It is interesting to note that the times I was away, no-one else took severe damage.

SR and tank is not a happy marriage IMO. Those 5% chances pile up very fast and as a tank you're going to be an agro magnet unlike a scrapper who will have a lot less attention on them.

 

Market Crash is one of the few TFs where we can get to agro cap pretty easily because of huge spawns very close together (it's almost designed as a farm map tbh). Which then need to be healed, but SR has no heal. I posted a SR tank build somewhere and mentioned how when I threw it into a farm map to stress test it I was using Aid-Self as part of my rotation, and often times eagerly waiting for it to recharge.

 

Aid-Self had a six seconds CD.

 

 

The only two strengths of SR is being softcapped super early (I believe by level 24 on a tank) and its immunity to defense debuffs. I don't find either good enough to warrant playing one.

 

For example. I level plenty of /Bio because I find it super survival and also offense oriented. I am no where near the defense softcap while leveling but I eat one or two purples on tough fights (in TFs) and I'm fine. I replenish my purple stock after a mission (easy enough with a base macro if we use it when a mission is over instead of clicking on exit, loading screen, then base macro, loading screen). And while my /Bios are eaten alive if I jump into the middle of an ITF roman pack thanks to the defense debuffs it works fine if I don't jump into the *middle* of the pack and instead approach them from the side and start unleashing AoEs to kill off all the minions. With those dead my absorb shield takes care of the rest.

 

 

But lets say you like your SR shield and are happy with it or don't want to level a new character? Well, that's fine. Just carry oranges with you. When you see things are going badly (or you know you're approaching an ambush, or you see a second spawn that was agroed) just pop a couple.

 

It is an unpopular opinion but I would work Aid-Self into the build to not rely on greens. Greens run out and then what?

Edited December 10, 2019 by Sovera

[Cidri]

My first SR tank was /Dark, which has a self-heal. But I found I did not like the animations on Dark Melee. It might be a more viable build because of the points you bring up, Sovera.

[Uun]

My SR tank is only lvl 36 so haven't run MC with him yet, but I think every type of armor has its kryptonite. I was running rad armor and learned the hard way that the animated swords in the Apex TF do unresistible damage.

[Redlynne]

10 hours ago, Uun said:

I think every type of armor has its kryptonite.

This is TRUE ... but the problem is that for some protection schemes there's not only more kryptonite but that kryptonite is actually more "common" than it really ought to be, all things considered.

[Troo]

The game is pretty easy at this point. I vote more kryptonite!!

[Uun]

So I ran Market Crash yesterday with my SR/Staff tank (lvl 46 running at 49). I had no problem until the Crimson Prototype. My build has 55-60% defense to all positions (plus 15% melee/lethal from Guarded Spin) and about 50% S/L resistance. With buffs I was running above 90% defense. Nothing touched me through the entire TF except for getting detoggled once by a Super Stunner. I was going toe to toe with Crimson for quite a while, and while I occasionally took some damage, I stayed above 80% in the green. Then BLAM! - one shot by Energy Transfer. I didn't get a good look at the combat log, but it hit for 1,000-1,500 hp, possibly more (I wasn't monitoring my hit points, so not sure how much they had been debuffed). 

 

FWIW, I ran Sutter the day before and had no issues, even against the War Works and IDF (where the Stone tank went down to psi damage). 

[Sovera]

56 minutes ago, Uun said:

So I ran Market Crash yesterday with my SR/Staff tank (lvl 46 running at 49). I had no problem until the Crimson Prototype. My build has 55-60% defense to all positions (plus 15% melee/lethal from Guarded Spin) and about 50% S/L resistance. With buffs I was running above 90% defense. Nothing touched me through the entire TF except for getting detoggled once by a Super Stunner. I was going toe to toe with Crimson for quite a while, and while I occasionally took some damage, I stayed above 80% in the green. Then BLAM! - one shot by Energy Transfer. I didn't get a good look at the combat log, but it hit for 1,000-1,500 hp, possibly more (I wasn't monitoring my hit points, so not sure how much they had been debuffed). 

 

FWIW, I ran Sutter the day before and had no issues, even against the War Works and IDF (where the Stone tank went down to psi damage). 

That's a common theme with Market Crash. The hits from the Crimson Prototype debuff HP. They don't really hit all that hard, but after a while we are down to 500 HP and then we get one shot. Time to run around waiting for the debuff to pass.

[Zylli]

27 minutes ago, Sovera said:

The hits from the Crimson Prototype debuff HP.

Tanking with 1HP on a Rad Armor tanker is fun.  Absorb powers got implemented late in the game, but don't have a counter mobs can do against it.

[Cidri]

The trick against the Crimson Prototype is to NOT tank 100%. Its more useful to tank all the adds. Only when an ally starts to seriously loose HP do you taunt the Crimson Prototype itself.

 

I have had other tanks after my SR tank run get squashed by the Crimson Prototype , it is not a SR-specific issue.