Super Reflexes for a Tanker, yay or nay?

[JnEricsonx]

Also, War Mace or Axe for the same?

[Haijinx]

Super Reflexes works just fine on a Tanker

 

War Mace > Axe

[ninja surprise]

Super easy to softcap by late 20's and then you're on cruise control into Incarnateland.

[Haijinx]

1 hour ago, ninja surprise said:

Super easy to softcap by late 20's and then you're on cruise control into Incarnateland.

If you get tough in your teens and plug the two +3% def IO uniques you can Softcap by 20. 

 

[Bill Z Bubba]

Big freakin yay for SR on a tank. Even Rom's autohit fluffy becomes laughable. Based on recent build testing, I've also been pondering an SR/Mace tank since my mace/shield brute isn't working out as I'd hoped. Between the ease of softcap, high hit points, built in scaling resists + scaling resist proc + tank AT IO + damres ... it gets damn silly damn fast.

[aethereal]

2 hours ago, Haijinx said:

If you get tough in your teens and plug the two +3% def IO uniques you can Softcap by 20. 

Though I think it's overkill to do so.  My SR tank feels unkillable in the 20s with softcapped melee and like 37% ranged defense, I'm fine with pursuing attack powers/slotting and letting my ranged/aoe softcaps land in the late 20's.

[Sovera]

The only 'downside' is that surviving well is good, but all tanker armors do that already. So we need to look at utility and what else other than surviving a given set brings to the table.

[Slithershot]

Literally the only downside I have found to my Claws/SR tank is pure burst damage at the highest incarnate level, and autohits that hit hard. 

 

If you can survive until your scaling resists -really- kick in around 20-40% health... you're damn near a god. Specially if you take rebirth for the extra regen. 

[Tath99]

Super Reflexes is excellent on a tank.  Just make sure you slot adequately for Endurance to last a fight.

[Haijinx]

11 hours ago, Sovera said:

The only 'downside' is that surviving well is good, but all tanker armors do that already. So we need to look at utility and what else other than surviving a given set brings to the table.

This is a reasonable point

 

What SR provides kind of sums up to

20% recharge boost

More slots than other sets (since SR takes few) 

Probably the best exemplar set

 

It does not have

Any End tools

Any added damage powers or attacks

No special synergy (like the Invul Guasians idea)

 

 

[Bill Z Bubba]

3 hours ago, Haijinx said:

This is a reasonable point

 

What SR provides kind of sums up to

20% recharge boost

More slots than other sets (since SR takes few) 

Probably the best exemplar set

 

It does not have

Any End tools

Any added damage powers or attacks

No special synergy (like the Invul Guasians idea)

 

 

It also allows you to avoid a whole slew of debuffs that have to hit you in the first place. Finding myself constantly slowed, confused and end drained on my non-SR armors has made me appreciate SR even more lately.

[Haijinx]

40 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

It also allows you to avoid a whole slew of debuffs that have to hit you in the first place. Finding myself constantly slowed, confused and end drained on my non-SR armors has made me appreciate SR even more lately.

That particular bit was an "outside of survival" bit.  Basically given that all Armor Primaries on Tankers provide enough protection that with IOs they will be in a fairly good place .. what else have they done for me lately?  I think its a good point since the end goal is total performance.  Fire being able to drop down a Burn patch, or Shield rolling around with a big +Dmg Boost and a in-set Nuke are definitely considerations.  

 

Including survival in the mix, you do have a few advantages over many armors, with a couple of disadvantages 

 

Advantages 

Click Mezz protection that stacks and also works exactly like a Break Free

The massive DDR you mentioned. 

Decent mobility gained due to quickness. 

Ease of reaching Incarnate Softcap.

All of these combine to make you almost immune to Status effects in a practical sense     

 

Disadvantages 

Resistances are lower than basically every other armor set. (Outside of Scaling) 

Lacks a Self Heal. 

Terrorize weakness combined with some of those autohit fear attacks (A lot of sets have this problem, and they are rare). 

Has a mostly useless T9 (A lot of sets have this problem).  

 

Of note is the investment in making SR nigh unkillable is a lot lower than many Armor sets 

Though it never gets as nigh unkillable as say .. a high end Invul 

[Mystic_Cross]

SR is the only tank primary I’m aware of that doesn’t seem to have a taunt aura. Pairs well with secondaries that have lots of AoE but feels like it may have to work harder holding aggro in a group setting. Especially so if you have an ST focused secondary, or one with longer animation times. It’s worth noting that I’ve not played an SR tank in a group, so it’s possible that is not the case.
 

I can see it being one of the more boring primaries for some people, unless you have a more active secondary. Something with fast recharge and short animations like Claws... or one of the “combo” sets like SJ, DB or staff would all likely be favorable to SR.

 

It feels great for soloing too, it’s not high maintenance... like many have said it’s basically cruise control above 20. It doesn’t need a lot of investment to softcap so you can focus on other things like +dam if you wanted. 
 

Most of the above is personal observation from a few days playtesting on a private server, so take with a grain of salt. Others like BillZ that have played SR extensively may have a different opinion, and if so I’d say it’s probably better to listen to them, haha.

[aethereal]

It has a taunt aura.  All tanker armor sets have a taunt aura.  In SR, it's rolled into Evasion.

[RobotLove]

16 minutes ago, Mystic_Cross said:

SR is the only tank primary I’m aware of that doesn’t seem to have a taunt aura.

It's on Evasion (AoE toggle). Its main issue is it's only 'taunt' with no other effects like damage or debuffs. That's why you need to be more active with your secondary to hold aggro than other sets do.

Edited September 1, 2020 by RobotLove

[Haijinx]

1 minute ago, RobotLove said:

It's on Evasion (AoE toggle). It's main issue is it's only 'taunt' with no other effects like damage or debuffs. That's why you need to be more active with your secondary to hold aggro than other sets do.

It used to be a lower mag.

 

This was changed with the tank buff.

 

Its now the same as the others.

 

Invincibility has no debuff either and its long been considered the gold standard. 

[Haijinx]

Even with the old numbers Evasion worked okay if you were the only one with a taunt aura in the mix. 

 

Scrappers and brutes and some squishier tankers though could strip aggro off you. 

 

There was this Stone armor tanker that must have died 10 times on a Synapse TF I ran with Sovera on my SR Tanker Starmist.  Nobody else was dying.  Stone is crap at low levels IME. 

 

 

[Mystic_Cross]

23 minutes ago, aethereal said:

It has a taunt aura.  All tanker armor sets have a taunt aura.  In SR, it's rolled into Evasion.

Well then it makes a lot more sense that nobody else said that now, lol. I guess coffee doesn’t make up for sleep where reading comprehension is concerned!

 

thanks for the correction.

[Haijinx]

3 minutes ago, Mystic_Cross said:

Well then it makes a lot more sense that nobody else said that now, lol. I guess coffee doesn’t make up for sleep where reading comprehension is concerned!

 

thanks for the correction.

It does not have one in the scrapper version.

 

And SR has no AOE debuff or anything else ... 

 

So for scrappers your point does apply.

[aethereal]

So I'm being lazy about trying this out, but I kinda want to see a SR/whatever tanker that utilizes the fact that SR requires so little investment in order to make sort of a tank-brute build.  Like, don't try to make something with top-end tank durability, aim for like 50% or so to all three positionals, tough, the usual durability-related procs and globals, the accolades, and whatever random resist bonuses you get from slotting, plus your scaling resists and tanker hit points, and I think you can get durability equal to high-end scrapper or brute builds without really trying.  You have obvious spots for all 5 LotG globals plus you get 20% recharge for free, so getting to perma-hasten shouldn't be hard, and get assault and tactics to shore up a really all-in proccing of your attacks.

 

And just see like if you can make a better version of a SR brute?  Like, can you get your damage output up to brute standards (I assume scrap/stalk standards are out of reach) with proccing, plus slightly better durability plus bigger AoEs?  I don't know if this would actually pan out, but it seems interesting.

[drbuzzard]

One nice thing I didn't see mentioned is that tanker SR is very cheap. If you're new to the game and don't have piles of influence sitting around, tanker SR will softcap you just fine on SOs (or common IOs), and you can play a tough enough tanker without spending much at all.

[Bill Z Bubba]

22 hours ago, aethereal said:

And just see like if you can make a better version of a SR brute?  Like, can you get your damage output up to brute standards (I assume scrap/stalk standards are out of reach) with proccing, plus slightly better durability plus bigger AoEs?  I don't know if this would actually pan out, but it seems interesting.

Based on what I did with my sr/claws tank and claws/sr brute, brutes will always win on ST damage. Tanks now pull ahead on AoE... while being vastly tougher. No, brutes are not midway between scrappers and tanks. They should be. They are not.

[aethereal]

2 hours ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

Based on what I did with my sr/claws tank and claws/sr brute, brutes will always win on ST damage. Tanks now pull ahead on AoE... while being vastly tougher. No, brutes are not midway between scrappers and tanks. They should be. They are not.

I guess I was wondering what happens if you sacrifice the "vastly" tougher part.  Like, what kind of def/res numbers were you posting for your tanker?

 

I was thinking a really minimal investment in SR, the 8 powers of course, but probably with the toggles four-slotted or even three-slotted and the passives one or two-slotted.  At most one power pool defense power.

[Andreah]

I had a SR/SJ Tanker back on live up to low incarnate, and I remember it being reasonably fun. I didn't feel unkillable though, nor really able as a main tank in high end content, such as incarnate raids. I may not have built it as well as I could have though.

[Bill Z Bubba]

26 minutes ago, aethereal said:

I guess I was wondering what happens if you sacrifice the "vastly" tougher part.  Like, what kind of def/res numbers were you posting for your tanker?

 

I was thinking a really minimal investment in SR, the 8 powers of course, but probably with the toggles four-slotted or even three-slotted and the passives one or two-slotted.  At most one power pool defense power.

Unfortunately, not as much as you'd think. Using SR's powers as recharge mules still had me at 57/55/55 for MRA defense but it let me add Elec Fences and Ball lightning, which, hilariously actually slowed me down in mission clearing rather than sticking with followup, focus, spin, shockwave, repeat as my aoe chain.

 

Yea, you could skimp down even harder, but when your 5 primary attacks are already 6 slotted with purps, ATs and other procs and you've already added assault into the mix... what else are you gonna do?