incarnate selection vs set bonuses

[PhillyPhil26]

Hey guys, so maybe i'm overthinking incarnates with my builds.

Or maybe i'm not will see what you think.

So i've yet to do the incarnate content but i've heard for defense softcap on incarnate its 59%.

I have a DM/SR scrapper that with set bonuses alone i got him to

58% range,

54% Melee,

and then like 45% AoE 😞 #fail lol

I'm thinking of redoing his build again (because i'm never fully 100% happy. Always feel i can do better by re-working my build but still avoiding the really expensive sets) and had a question.
Don't know if this will make sense but i heard theres an incarnate that will raise you defense by like 3-5% i believe?

Is there a preference like "build your defense using set bonuses, and then use incarnates for other things?"

or vice versa "take the 3% incarnate and mix a few of your defense sets to maybe buff you in another way?

Right now my incarnates with him are 

Alpha  - Spiritual total core revamp for perma soul drain or Resilient Boost to increase damage resistance by 20%

 

Interface - Reactive core interface - For damage resistance debuff proc 50% chance to my attacks

 

Werner your familiar with this toon on the forums  you've provided me help many times lol i'm just never fully satisfied lol.

Even at 54% melee i'm still strugglng on AV's too. 
But that's for my DM/SR post to discuss hehe.

 

Any advice for this question or in relation to SR scrappers and incarnates is welcome 🙂

 

[Werner]

For the Alpha, I took Agility on my DM/SR Brute, giving me +4.3% positional defense. Well, it will when I hit tier 4. But on a Scrapper, I'd probably take Musculature. I'm not sure, though. Don't bother with Resilient - if I plug in Resilient Core in Mids, I get 2.6% smashing/lethal resistance. It's enhancing your damage resistance powers, which is why it's so anemic on Super Reflexes.

 

I'm not sure which interface would be best. I have Degenerative Radial on my Brute, but Brutes are not Scrappers. You may be on target with Reactive Core, but I don't know. I'm sure someone does.

[Bill Z Bubba]

I'm pretty much stuck in a rut these days with incarnate abilities on all 4 of my claws/sr users. Musculature Core Alpha. Degen Core Interface. Barrier Core Destiny. Assault Core Hybrid. AVs aren't generally a problem with this setup. Barrier Core at T4 is perma and will get you that bit of extra defense to cruise at the incarnate cap on melee even as it drops to the lowest buff level right before you recycle it. Going off memory it's 5% at the lowest level.

Edited May 25, 2020 by Bill Z Bubba

[Werner]

I went with Rebirth Radial, but I probably should have done some quick math to see if that or the extra mitigation from Barrier Core would have been better. Rebirth has treated me well the few times I needed it. But I’m at 59% plus, and currently picking up the Blessing of Tieleku or whatever her name is for some additional defense to better handle defense debuffs. I think the worst I’ve seen was 2%, so that should do nicely. But if I were at 54%, I’d go with Barrier. Well, that’s not true, I’d get myself to 59% without Barrier. I might still get Barrier, but I’d want to hold it in reserve for emergencies. Yes, the final minute of Barrier is 5%. 10 seconds of I forget because it’s insanely high, 20 seconds of 32.5%, 30 seconds of 7.5%, 60 seconds of 5%, both defense and resistance. Going by memory too, but I built around and live and die by Barrier on my Katana/Dark, so I hope my memory is right. 🙂

[JJDrakken]

You are fine for your defenses.  45% is soft cap, doesn't matter if it's 45 or 700% defense,  Soft cap is 45. Set number for mobs is 50, minus 45 is 5% chance for them to hit base. With no additional buffs/internal buffs for them.

 

Barrier offers you Res though, but SR also has a increased Res buff as you get lower HP, add in that recipe set that does same...  Barrier is more team friendly for your squishier folks.

 

Scrapper - Dark Melee - Super Reflexes.mxd

Edited May 25, 2020 by JJDrakken

[Bill Z Bubba]

1 hour ago, JJDrakken said:

Soft cap is 45.

 

Only in regular content. Incarnate content gets a 13% tohit buff (as per power analyzer on DA baddies) so incarnate content softcap becomes 58%.

[Shred Monkey]

1 hour ago, Werner said:

I went with Rebirth Radial, but I probably should have done some quick math to see if that or the extra mitigation from Barrier Core would have been better. Rebirth has treated me well the few times I needed it. But I’m at 59% plus, and currently picking up the Blessing of Tieleku or whatever her name is for some additional defense to better handle defense debuffs. I think the worst I’ve seen was 2%, so that should do nicely. But if I were at 54%, I’d go with Barrier. Well, that’s not true, I’d get myself to 59% without Barrier. I might still get Barrier, but I’d want to hold it in reserve for emergencies. Yes, the final minute of Barrier is 5%. 10 seconds of I forget because it’s insanely high, 20 seconds of 32.5%, 30 seconds of 7.5%, 60 seconds of 5%, both defense and resistance. Going by memory too, but I built around and live and die by Barrier on my Katana/Dark, so I hope my memory is right. 🙂

I go with Rebirth as well for /SR.  For /Dark, how can you resist using Ageless?  It's got debuff resists, endurance reduction, and added recharge.  It's like it was special made for /dark.

[Werner]

1 hour ago, Shred Monkey said:

For /Dark, how can you resist using Ageless?  It's got debuff resists, endurance reduction, and added recharge.  It's like it was special made for /dark.

I can't say that you're wrong. I have Cardiac Core, Barrier Core, and Assault Core on my Katana/Dark Brute right now. I think the most competitive alternate combination for how I play would be Musculature Core, Ageless Radial, and Melee Core, and I've not done a Mids build centered on those incarnates, which I could then run on beta for in-game comparison in addition to looking at the final numbers.

 

I can at least talk about what my choices do for me, though, in the build as a whole. It's not about any one incarnate power. So let's actually start with the Alpha. On Scrapper you go Musculature because it's a big damage boost. On a Brute, it's not nearly so big a damage boost. And on a Brute, my resistance caps are 90% instead of 75%, so my resistance benefits significantly from Cardiac Core. Cardiac Core also comes with a 45% endurance reduction enhancement, which looks like it ends up being slightly better than what Ageless Radial offers, at least on my current build. Ageless Core would blow it away, but we need Radial on /Dark. Setting Barrier's defense aside for the moment, let's look at its resistance. We can even just look at the 5% second minute. Ignoring my Energy and Toxic holes, my worst resistance is 81% to Negative. 5% tail end of Barrier is 86%. Then at 60% health, 4% more from Reactive Defenses caps me. That's huge. Combined with the defense, it basically turns off their damage for 10 seconds. That means I can use it very reactively, in only the direst of circumstances, as I plunge into the red - which admittedly happens a lot with defense debuffers. Damage stops, Dark Regeneration resets my HP to max, and I'm back at it. Ignoring resistance, Ageless is the surely the better answer for defense debuffs. And it's nice to resist other debuffs as well. (Edit: Ageless doesn't resist resistance debuffs, though, while Barrier does. Resistance debuffs seem a lot more rare than defense debuffs, but they're out there.) But I suspect that for my character at least, with resistance a significant factor, Barrier is better in practice most of the time. As for the recharge, it would help some, yes. My current build has about 30 seconds downtime on Hasten, and I've tuned my recharge times around Hasten up for maximum proc chances, which means I'm throwing in an extra attack when Hasten is down, lowering my DPS 20% of the time. I tested using a couple Force Feedbacks to get me to almost perma Hasten, but it was significantly better for DPS to just take the recharge hit and use other procs. Having Dark Regeneration up more often is also good. But so is needing Dark Regeneration less. Combining Ageless with Melee Core might be even better than Barrier most of the time. But it takes longer to click 2 powers than 1, and Melee Core lasts 2 minutes, then is down for 2 minutes. If I'm playing cautiously against +4x8, and since my AoE is poor with Katana, I'm not waiting very long between spawns for Barrier to recharge. I'd be waiting over two minutes for Melee, which I wouldn't do, so half the time I just wouldn't have it available. Anyway, that was my thinking in choosing Barrier over Ageless.

 

On a /Dark Scrapper, the first combination I'd look closely at would be Musculature Core, Ageless Radial, and Assault... Radial? Aim for resists in the 70% to 75% range without incarnates so that Reactive Defenses caps your resistance before you're down to 50% hit points. Ageless is then your best answer for defense debuffs, with some other significant benefits, and we take Assault for more damage.

 

And something something DM/SR something back on topic something. 😉

Edited May 25, 2020 by Werner

[Werner]

3 hours ago, JJDrakken said:

You are fine for your defenses.  45% is soft cap, doesn't matter if it's 45 or 700% defense,  Soft cap is 45. Set number for mobs is 50, minus 45 is 5% chance for them to hit base. With no additional buffs/internal buffs for them.

Except in incarnate content as Bill Z said. To me, one of the main advantages of SR is the ease with which it can reach the incarnate soft cap. OK, maybe "ease" isn't the right word, but easier than most sets. The other main advantage is little fear of defense debuffs.

 

3 hours ago, JJDrakken said:

Barrier offers you Res though, but SR also has a increased Res buff as you get lower HP, add in that recipe set that does same...  Barrier is more team friendly for your squishier folks.

This seems worth expanding on. I believe that SR has 60% scaling resists (20% per auto power) that kick in at 60% of max HP. I believe the Reactive Defenses unique has 3% resistance + 10% scaling resists that kick in at 100% of max HP. Confirmed on a Brute as best I could in beta from in-game combat attribute monitoring of % max HP vs. those two sources of resistance. But I could still be wrong because the monitor doesn't seem to be updating the two numbers in sync, with some delay between one and the other, and because it's possible that Scrappers get a different value, though I don't believe so. Maybe someone knows better.

 

It was actually a little shocking, even after all these years, to really watch the scaling resists in action. I turned off all of my toggles standing in front of a Pylon for this testing. It was trivial for the Pylon to hurt me bad. But it was very hard for the Pylon to kill me. With only Tough on, it looked like it could never kill me. Freaky.

 

Anyway, resistance is similar to defense - the more you have already, the more each additional % helps, until you hit the cap. So let's say your resistance starts at 30%. With 70% scaling resists on top of that, you resists should hard cap before you die, whether on a Brute or a Scrapper. But if a hit takes you from 40% to dead, they won't get to that level. So let's say you're at 40%. Your scaling resistance is 20% from SR and 6% from Reactive, so 54% total. 46% of damage gets through. Hit Barrier and you cap your resistance. 25% of damage gets through on a Scrapper, only 10% on a Brute. It's very significant, at least to big hits like AVs and GMs. A million smaller hits and Barrier won't provide as much benefit over your scaling resists as they smoothly scale up to the cap.

 

And yes, your team will appreciate you using Barrier, and also using Rebirth. At least if you have any experience defending squishies. I don't, so on my DM/SR I keep hitting Rebirth about 1 second after a teammate died. It turns out they don't appreciate you as much then!

Edited May 25, 2020 by Werner

[Shred Monkey]

3 hours ago, Werner said:

stuff about ageless

I still think you should try it.  Defense debuffs are really your only danger... ageless covers that.

[Werner]

28 minutes ago, Shred Monkey said:

I still think you should try it.  Defense debuffs are really your only danger... ageless covers that.

Well, it’s fairly easy for me to try it with my current build on beta without wasting any empyrean merits. I need to remember that even if it’s not as good, building around it might still result in a better overall package. But if it’s better despite me being built around Barrier, the answer is obvious. Take on some +4x8 Cimerorans and Banished Pantheon. It’ll give me a good starting point for understanding how it behaves.

 

Apologies again for the threadjack.

[nihilii]

For my own Dark Armor characters, Ageless debuff res never seemed to work as nice as it ought to on paper.

 

This might be a failure of my own builds; because I aim (at best) for just the softcap, even 85% DDR won't stop defense debuffs entirely. DA can take a lot of punishment on its own, so in situations where I want the DDR, I'm facing some serious amount of debuffs. One hit gets through, 45% becomes 43%, then another hit 2 or 3 seconds later, then it's sort of a slow cascading defense failure. Generally standing upright for the first 30 seconds of Ageless; after which the debuff resistance goes from 85% to 42.5%, and all hell breaks loose.

 

In comparison, Barrier gives you so much defense overkill nothing gets through. What defense debuffs were previously there will be gone by the time the 30 seconds "high buff" duration is over, and no further debuffs will be there.

Of course, it's fair to say Ageless shouldn't be as strong as Barrier, as it isn't purely defensive. You get a full endurance bar and some recharge to boot. But I find that dual aspect tricky in itself. If you plan your build around the provided recharge and endurance, then you won't have Ageless saved up for maximum debuff resistance at critical times. And if you do save Ageless, then you're letting endurance and recharge sit unused.

It seems easier to go all the way in one direction or another... Ageless +recovery which lets you forgo almost all endurance slotting and frees up slots, or Barrier for a really tanky character.

YMMV. I could see situations where you have a build where the recharge and full bar of endurance is all that you need, without further +recovery. So in that case you might treat the +debuff as a hefty side bonus even if its strength fluctuates.

[Werner]

4 hours ago, Werner said:

Well, it’s fairly easy for me to try [Ageless Radial] with my current build on beta without wasting any empyrean merits.

<Alexei charges into +4x8 incarnate Banished Pantheon, and dies 15 seconds later screaming, "My eyes! The goggles do nothing!">

 

Oh that's right - Barrier Core caps my energy resistance and incarnate soft caps my ranged/AoE/energy defense for 30 seconds.

 

Though I do think I'll pick up Ageless Radial for situational use, like vs. Carnies, Neuron, or Black Swan. And I could still poke at a build with Musculature Core, Ageless Radial, and Melee Core to address resistance.

 

Well! I just learned something! Cardiac Core buffs the resistance of Barrier Core from 90% -> 32.5% -> 7.5% -> 5% to 108% -> 39% -> 9% -> 6%. Agility Core does the same for defense. Good to know! That means my Toxic resistance will hard cap at 40% hit points for 30 seconds. Nice. It's less of a hole than I thought.

Edited May 26, 2020 by Werner