Incarnate Destiny Choices

[marcussmythe]

On a tank, your incarnate choices seem pretty straightforward.  DEF or RES out of your Alpha (unless your really happy with those, and then probably Damage).  Hybrid - again, probably Melee (Which flavor depends on build, but Im a fan of the Resistance Focused one - because of large bonuses that dont rely on foes in range) or Assault if you have breathing room to play around with pretending your a really chunky scrapper.

 

But what about Destiny?  Ageless seems to be a super-common choice - 10% recharge is nice.  Whether we want the Recovery, or the Debuff resistance, depends on how much END we need - the raw END refill from Ageless is often enough by itself.  Barrier gets some love - 5% DEF and 5% RES is not to be sneered at - and has a higher 'sale value' than 10% Recharge (though Barrier does not offer the debuff resistance or REC/END Support!)

 

But what about Rebirth?  Assuming one doesnt need the END support, and can live without debuff resistance (Im looking at -you-, SR and its DDR), the 'buy value' of 200% Regen is very, very high indeed - by 'Buy Value' here I mean 'how many uniques/set bonuses/etc do I need to do what this incarnate does?)

 

Has anyone played around with it?  Im considering Rebirth for a 2nd/3rd Incarnate on my Invuln tank - I can 'get happy' with everything else, and I've noticed that when I have melee running, the extra regen is a huge bonus - but Melee Hybrid isnt up all the time, and I can get the 200% Regen out of Rebirth 24/7 - and while Melee IS up, its pushing over 600% Regen - thus starting jokes about 'Regenvuln'.

 

Just curious - I see Ageless everywhere, and Barrier soon after it - but set bonuses and other tools can get us to basically every cap we care about for resist and defense.  What do we think of adding a large healing layer to the survival suite?  I was thinking mostly with no-heal or low-heal sets, obviously - Dark/Rad/Bio/WP would care not for such things, but the SRs and Invulns would seem to get real value.

 

More broadly, has anyone weighed the 'buy value' of various incarnates and powers, in terms of set bonuses?  We often have a choice to do X with a power, and then do Y with set bonuses.. or instead to do X with set bonuses, and Y with a power - and weve all got a certain unconcious feel for what we can get from where and what can be patched with what (For example, the PSI damage hole is made pretty easy to patch up, and various forms of DEF and S/L Resist are common in powers, pool powers, and set bonuses - but Energy Resist is a frustrating thing to try to find in set bonuses, and by endgame, Energy Damage is basically the new Smashing/Lethal, often with a debuff rider...)  

Edited July 22, 2020 by marcussmythe

[Bill Z Bubba]

I used rebirth on my sr/claws tank when I was testing it against the 801.* AE missions. He does also run musculature core, assault core and degen core. Having the heal and extra regen made all the difference in there.

[marcussmythe]

50 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

I used rebirth on my sr/claws tank when I was testing it against the 801.* AE missions. He does also run musculature core, assault core and degen core. Having the heal and extra regen made all the difference in there.

Yeah, thats kinda what I was thinking.  A once every 2 minutes full heal, AND constant HP influx, seems like a good thing.

[Werner]

1 hour ago, marcussmythe said:

Yeah, thats kinda what I was thinking.  A once every 2 minutes full heal, AND constant HP influx, seems like a good thing.

Likewise. That's what I used on an SR/Staff on Beta on 801.1 +4x8 no temps no insps. I leaned on it heavily, and it worked quite well. I think it was the best choice, but I decided not to build that Tanker on live due to low damage output. Rebirth is also what I told a friend to take on his Invuln Tanker. Both builds were already basically immune to defense debuffs. I don't think Rebirth would be my choice on any toon where defense debuffs were going to be an issue. 

[Brutal Justice]

I also decided on rebirth for my rad/ tank.  I went with the +hp branch because my regen was already fairly high.  I also like to be able to top off any blaster/squishy that might take an aoe or stray shot.  Ground zero is slotted for damage but more often than not I hold onto it until somebody takes a little damage to provide a little heal and aoe damage.  

[Shred Monkey]

On my Elect/DB tank I took both ageless for the debuff resists and rebirth.  After some comparison testing against spawns with -defense, I estimate that both kept me alive about the same.   But I like that rebirth also works when the problem isn't -defense... such as against enemies with +tohit or with toxic damage.  Now I just run rebirth 100% of the time.

[Sir Myshkin]

I try everything in my power to develop builds that don't need to fulfill their purpose with a Destiny, and then I get to the point of finally being able to select one and I look at the list and go "... I don't need any of these, so I guess Rebirth it is!" Because it's the only one that ends up having universal value no matter what. There are only a few one-off cases where I know that the Destiny needs to support a certain purpose: Ageless on my Blaster because it vacuums endurance like a Dyson, and Clarion on my Storm for Mez Protection.

 

Personally I feel like we need one more Destiny in there that does a little Acc/Dam/End/Regen blending. Doesn't need to have a huge spike, just something that gives a nice little collective static bonus of +ToHit/+Dam/+Recovery/+Regen alongside Debuff Resistance to each of those categories for two minutes. Just a nice little "top off" power that can more dynamically blend on teams than compared to what we have now: Super Def/Res, Super Heal, Super Mez, Super Weird (what is really the point of Incandescent, come on).

[Crater Kate]

3 hours ago, Sir Myshkin said:

(what is really the point of Incandescent, come on).

making Justin Augustine less like chewing glass and more like... still chewing glass, but a lot faster?

[Parabola]

Ageless radial for the debuff resist is my default choice unless I have a pressing reason to look elsewhere. It gives you things you simply can't build for from set bonuses. The end refill and extra recharge are always welcome too.

[KC4800]

I use Ageless on my Rad/WM and Barrier on my Ice/Stone. 

[marcussmythe]

Ageless Radial was my default choice for the longest time.  Debuffs stink, and an every 2 minute end refill was enough for most of my builds.

 

But over time as I tweak more and get better with my character and the mobs Im fighting, Im finding that my END stays stable, and that debuffs are killing me less and less.  I tried slotting for regen and incarnating for something else - but I find that regen is haaaard to slot bonus for (at least at anything like +200 - you can, but it consumes your build.  Not worth it).  
 

PS - Ive always wished we could get versions of Hybrid that were half value and always on, and versions of Destiny that were set to their mean values (and were toggles)  same average bonuses over time, but less buttons in my ‘chain cooldown timing line’ on my hotbar.  (Ive wished for something similar for a lot of click buffs - give me value equal to their average value over their expected uptime at my level of recharge)

Edited July 23, 2020 by marcussmythe

[Parabola]

47 minutes ago, marcussmythe said:

PS - Ive always wished we could get versions of Hybrid that were half value and always on, and versions of Destiny that were set to their mean values (and were toggles)  same average bonuses over time, but less buttons in my ‘chain cooldown timing line’ on my hotbar.  (Ive wished for something similar for a lot of click buffs - give me value equal to their average value over their expected uptime at my level of recharge)

Apart from anything else the stepping structure of the destiny buffs makes it almost impossible to use them in actual calculations. Well I'm sure someone could calculate (and probably has) for example how close to perma you have to have hasten for ageless to tip it over but it's beyond me!

 

The 'more things to remember to click' aspect doesn't bother me too much. They are at least on reasonably long cooldowns. I've tried a couple of times to make an energy manipulation blaster and the buff cycle in that is crippling. It feels like you're self buffing more than you are attacking.

[Mikewho]

1 hour ago, marcussmythe said:

  
 

PS - Ive always wished we could get versions of Hybrid that were half value and always on, and versions of Destiny that were set to their mean values (and were toggles)  same average bonuses over time, but less buttons in my ‘chain cooldown timing line’ on my hotbar.  (Ive wished for something similar for a lot of click buffs - give me value equal to their average value over their expected uptime at my level of recharge)

I definitely agree with this. I would even be ok with them being slightly lower than average performance if it meant they were always on.

[Sir Myshkin]

On 7/23/2020 at 8:25 AM, parabola said:

Apart from anything else the stepping structure of the destiny buffs makes it almost impossible to use them in actual calculations.

The only one that really has collective value is Ageless, which if you break down the steps and average it out over the course of two minutes you end up with a "long-term" value of 20% Global Recharge for anything that sits within its 2+ minute effect. Anything that cycles within 60/s or less it depends on which side of the tier it falls for that to matter, but often in those cases Ageless is likely less impactful by contrast.

 

Barrier, anyone who uses that for calculations is just seeing it as 5% net since that's the portion and value that exists the longest (at the end). The burst portion of the ability is effective as an anti-debuff, which is essentially the only alternative reason someone may take this power.

 

Clarion is purely either a perma-mez, or a "Power Boost" for Farsight (about the only power that actually matters under its effect).

[Werner]

8 hours ago, Sir Myshkin said:

Barrier, anyone who uses that for calculations is just seeing it as 5% net since that's the portion and value that exists the longest (at the end). The burst portion of the ability is effective as an anti-debuff, which is essentially the only alternative reason someone may take this power.

I use it to counter defense debuffs, or more rarely resistance debuffs. I also use it to plug the energy hole, but that's more relevant to my Brute than my Tanker, who doesn't notice the energy hole nearly so much.

[marcussmythe]

Im still running the Ageless.  Next ‘to do’ is a Barrier and finishing my Rebirth.

 

Broke Vet 100, so filling out Incarnates is slowing down.  But hey; it passes the time!

[Heraclea]

I always prioritize recovery starting at level 7 so I tend not to focus on that on incarnates.  A character that has too bad endurance issues will never get that far. 

 

I go Barrier first and get Barrier Core to t4 to let me go toe to toe with Recluse with minimal support.  I will then use any spare incarnate junk to go Ageless, esp. for a Hami tank. 

[tellania]

anyone have an opinion for a SR/spines tank?   I'm leaning to Rebirth (I have 68% SL resistance), but not sure to go +regen vs +hp route.

[Avilister]

On 7/23/2020 at 3:09 AM, Crater Kate said:

making Justin Augustine less like chewing glass and more like... still chewing glass, but a lot faster?

This is exactly what I used it for last week. We also use it pretty extensively to collect the group in iTrials or to dodge green stuff in KIR. Mostly, it has a use as an ATT with a much shorter cooldown and instant activation.