Tanker Primary "Tough Test"

[Galaxy Brain]

13 hours ago, Pizzamurai said:

No, I understand that. I do. I just don't think it's something that can be measured on a spreadsheet, or by times. Tanking is a lot more complicated and nuanced than damage in general. You can't time it. You can't really put numbers on it. Tanking is... you either survive, or you don't. To not give a tank all the tools they need to survive is to do a set a disservice when you're trying to attain a baseline. You can't really test a good bit of tanker sets without a secondary because some of them really do require something from their secondary to survive... and sometimes survive even better than your basics like Invuln or granite. It's not really a baseline if you're not testing a realistic scenario. 

Thanks for the feedback Pizzamurai! Yes, this test does slice out a lot of stuff but it is designed to in order to isolate the armor itself as much as possible to try and eyeball which primary offers what level of "base" protections. Including other factors like secondary combos, particular pool or epic powers, and so on would multiply the time it takes to go through everything by a huge factor, and thats just too much for one guy lol.

 

What stands out to me though through this is that a number of armor sets appear to be rather self sufficient vs "basic" content. Even cranking it up to x4/x8 on just SO's and standing there a few were able to achieve immortality! A few performed admirably compared to that, and a few didn't really stand up vs the incoming damage. What could be learned from this is exactly what you said though where different aspects of tanking patch holes in certain sets. However, from what I can see here when factoring in secondaries: how much would it *relatively* matter?

 

Take Invuln vs Fiery Aura. Invulnerability proved it could stand there at max difficulty with basic slotting + some common pool powers and be immortal. Fiery Aura far from that with a low survival average without use of other tools. If both sets have access to the same tools to supplement them, outside of an all-psy map, Invuln would still be wayyyyyy tougher by a similar magnitude, no?

 

[Tsuko]

1 hour ago, Galaxy Brain said:

Take Invuln vs Fiery Aura. Invulnerability proved it could stand there at max difficulty with basic slotting + some common pool powers and be immortal. Fiery Aura far from that with a low survival average without use of other tools. If both sets have access to the same tools to supplement them, outside of an all-psy map, Invuln would still be wayyyyyy tougher by a similar magnitude, no?

I always apreciate your kindness and patience and dedication to your testings🙂

 

But you know what i think of "SO" content.

 

Now, could you explain me the différence of result between your test and mine about Shield Tanker ?

 

 

vs

 

 

[Marshal_General]

The problem is that some sets like fire are not designed to just stand there. Fire would need its heal to go off regularly. Dark would need its -acc debuff to go off regularly and so on.

[Galaxy Brain]

4 hours ago, Tsuko said:

 

Now, could you explain me the différence of result between your test and mine about Shield Tanker ?

Well, the test had incarnates, full use of energy melee and I would assume pool powers/epics and set bonuses?

 

This test, and others, are meant to show sort of the skeleton to work with I suppose. Shield is very similar to Invuln but you trade some defense for offense. If you patch up the defenses to match then you're gonna have a great time.

 

39 minutes ago, Marshal_General said:

The problem is that some sets like fire are not designed to just stand there. Fire would need its heal to go off regularly. Dark would need its -acc debuff to go off regularly and so on.

I used clicks as much as possible with setsbthat had them. Certain ones (dull pains, big heals) i waited until below 50% or more, but with Elec and Fire i tried to shoot off their heals as soon as I lost 30%ish. It's just that unfortunately by itself it wasn't enough. 

[Tsuko]

2 hours ago, Galaxy Brain said:

Well, the test had incarnates, full use of energy melee and I would assume pool powers/epics and set bonuses?

that was a only AT power run 🙂

[Galaxy Brain]

33 minutes ago, Tsuko said:

that was a only AT power run 🙂

Thats what I get for reading when I first wake up lol. I just saw the list of incarnates at the start! 

[Gobbledigook]

When you start adding more +recharge some sets become a lot more durable also. +recharge won't do much for Shield but will do a lot for RadA etc. So maybe Hasten should be considered also.

[Saikochoro]

12 hours ago, Galaxy Brain said:

Thanks for the feedback Pizzamurai! Yes, this test does slice out a lot of stuff but it is designed to in order to isolate the armor itself as much as possible to try and eyeball which primary offers what level of "base" protections. Including other factors like secondary combos, particular pool or epic powers, and so on would multiply the time it takes to go through everything by a huge factor, and thats just too much for one guy lol.

 

What stands out to me though through this is that a number of armor sets appear to be rather self sufficient vs "basic" content. Even cranking it up to x4/x8 on just SO's and standing there a few were able to achieve immortality! A few performed admirably compared to that, and a few didn't really stand up vs the incoming damage. What could be learned from this is exactly what you said though where different aspects of tanking patch holes in certain sets. However, from what I can see here when factoring in secondaries: how much would it *relatively* matter?

 

Take Invuln vs Fiery Aura. Invulnerability proved it could stand there at max difficulty with basic slotting + some common pool powers and be immortal. Fiery Aura far from that with a low survival average without use of other tools. If both sets have access to the same tools to supplement them, outside of an all-psy map, Invuln would still be wayyyyyy tougher by a similar magnitude, no?

 

I always appreciate your tests and the work you do to put out great information. And even though I have some concerns about people trying to draw conclusions from this test that don’t really take the parameters into account, I still think this test provides great information. 
 

That said, I do think patching holes could result in a lot of differences. Getting SR defenses maxed out and some baseline resists make it immortal in my experience. Shield defense can get softcapped defenses on top of close to or capped resistance to a lot of types with set bonuses and some additional pool powers. It is one of the best tanker primaries because it is so darned tough on top of having great offense when built out.

 

I think you’re right in saying that invulnerability will always be tougher than fiery aura. But, I don’t think invulnerability will ever approach fiery aura’s offensive potential. Fiery aura can get to a point with sets and pool powers that it is tough enough and then it’s offensive power starts to truly shine.  I’m not saying it’s better than invulnerability just a different focus is all.

So, it just comes back to people using your test as I’m sure you intended. To get a good idea for baseline toughness of sets. But not to draw universal conclusions, such as stone is overpowered and shield is underpowered. Which you did call out, but there have still been a few claims posted in this thread (not sure if all of them were jokes or not). 

Edited December 10, 2020 by Saikochoro

[tellania]

Saw this post late, but wanted to add some minor feedback to galaxy brain:

1.  Excellent job of stating the testing conditions.   Even if some disagree, the setup is a good base.

2.  Thank you for the SO only, and SO + pool power survival values.

 

Ignore those who say 'you need not stand ther, but do x,y,z' or ' IO bonus'.   Your conditions is a great baseline.

 

BUT ...   I have 2 suggestions to HELP YOU OUT!

1.   How was this actually setup?   Did you create a custom AE mission to create a testing method?   I didn't see anything specific how the test is actually conducted.

2.  Some people have great suggestion to test against various enemy groups (e..g Rikti) .   While I agree 100% with your initial values, it would also be valuable feedback to see how radiation vs stone (non granite) vs invul against certain missions (such as psi clockwork, or mixed like carnies).   In short, this is too much work for you, so if you do #1, allow others to have a comparable setup and test against mission specific mobs.    Let some of us, help you, in a baseline versus specific enemy mobs.

 

overall, great job!

[Galaxy Brain]

Thanks Tellania!

 

On 12/11/2020 at 11:26 PM, tellania said:

BUT ...   I have 2 suggestions to HELP YOU OUT!

1.   How was this actually setup?   Did you create a custom AE mission to create a testing method?   I didn't see anything specific how the test is actually conducted.

I created a custom AE mission with a boss spawn right at the front that I waltz into. The spawn at x8 size covers attacks with the damage type spread I had mentioned in the OP and has a variety of slow and fast attacks coming in all at once to test the tanker's mettle.

 

Quote

2.  Some people have great suggestion to test against various enemy groups (e..g Rikti) .   While I agree 100% with your initial values, it would also be valuable feedback to see how radiation vs stone (non granite) vs invul against certain missions (such as psi clockwork, or mixed like carnies).   In short, this is too much work for you, so if you do #1, allow others to have a comparable setup and test against mission specific mobs.    Let some of us, help you, in a baseline versus specific enemy mobs.

I think that'd be great! Only thing is picking out the mobs in a way that'd be a bit more controlled / easy to repeat.

 

 

Edit:

 

1. Arachnos: lots of exotic types in there! Good source of Toxic, Psy, Energy damage along with S/L of course
2. New Banished Pantheon: cold, negative, psy, energy, and fierce debuffs
3. Endgame CoT: lots of fire damage, some cold, some Negative
4. Endgame Dev Earth: includes the Infested troopers which yield a lot of damage types and debuffs
5. Vanguard Sword: Much spoopier SL with some nasty debuffs, as well as en / cold / fire / neg attacks
6. Council / 5th Column: standard mob 1
7. Carnies: standard exotic mob 1

 

Could do these guys?

Edited December 21, 2020 by Galaxy Brain

[Erratic1]

On 11/22/2020 at 2:58 PM, Galaxy Brain said:

Super Reflexes:

Jumping down nearly a whole minute's worth of time we have Super Reflexes. Not much to say here as this is about as straight-forward a set as you can ask for with RNGesus taking the wheel, one thing I did notice is that the scaling resists only kicked in at 50% hp. If it still scaled to the max (55%ish total) at 1 pixel of HP, but started at 99% HP I feel the set would be much smoother.[/quote]

 

I know this was stated a month ago, but I have just come back to the game, happened to be reading the thread, and this caught my eye and reminded me of a test I had performed on the matter:

 

 

Found a building, leapt off it, checked the resistance I had once I hit. 

 

465.2 / 1372.5 = 0.33894 or 33.894%

33.894 + 26 = 59.894 ~ 60%

 

Did something change or is the gain non-linear?

 

Original thread: Bring the mocking and derision: I made a SR/TW Tanker - Tanker - Homecoming (homecomingservers.com)

[StriderIV]

Necroing this thread because I found the whole thing fascinating.

 

Some questions on this tough test:

 

1. Do you feel this testing order would be the same (at least for the available powersets) if you applied it to Scrappers? How would their lower resist cap impact the results?

 

2. Out of all these sets, which ones do you feel benefit the MOST from late game, fully IO’s builds? From what I read, it seems Rad and Dark would make substantial jumps.

[Saikochoro]

13 hours ago, StriderIV said:

Necroing this thread because I found the whole thing fascinating.

 

Some questions on this tough test:

 

1. Do you feel this testing order would be the same (at least for the available powersets) if you applied it to Scrappers? How would their lower resist cap impact the results?

 

2. Out of all these sets, which ones do you feel benefit the MOST from late game, fully IO’s builds? From what I read, it seems Rad and Dark would make substantial jumps.

1. In my experience, I think some of the general ratings would stand, such as invulnerability being tougher than fiery aura.  My gut feeling would be that defense oriented secondaries or layered secondaries with a defense focus would be comparably better on scrappers than tankers due to have lower resist caps and HP.  Though I’m not sure how true that would be without IOs pushing them to the softcap. 
 

2.  Out of all the sets I think shield defense probably jumps the most with a proper set IO build. I think this is true for both tankers and scrappers. When fully built out shield defense is just absolutely insane. It blows a lot of the other sets out of the water when you combine both its sheer toughness and bonuses to offense. You can softcap, have great resist, and great boosts to offense all in one. It’s one weakness of no inherent healing is easily overcome by some primaries or with IO slotting. 
 

That said, with how low dark armor is in this test, I imagine that would also make quite the leap. 

[StriderIV]

1 hour ago, Saikochoro said:

1. In my experience, I think some of the general ratings would stand, such as invulnerability being tougher than fiery aura.  My gut feeling would be that defense oriented secondaries or layered secondaries with a defense focus would be comparably better on scrappers than tankers due to have lower resist caps and HP.  Though I’m not sure how true that would be without IOs pushing them to the softcap. 
 

2.  Out of all the sets I think shield defense probably jumps the most with a proper set IO build. I think this is true for both tankers and scrappers. When fully built out shield defense is just absolutely insane. It blows a lot of the other sets out of the water when you combine both its sheer toughness and bonuses to offense. You can softcap, have great resist, and great boosts to offense all in one. It’s one weakness of no inherent healing is easily overcome by some primaries or with IO slotting. 
 

That said, with how low dark armor is in this test, I imagine that would also make quite the leap. 

Great points man. I do have a shield Tanker, and I definitely noticed a huge difference once I had him properly slotted. I’ll do the same with that DM/Shield Scrapper 😉

 

Good to know about Dark Armor. I’m theorycrafting a Dark Armor/Staff Fighting Tanker, and I think that will be a cool combo.

[Galaxy Brain]

15 hours ago, StriderIV said:

Necroing this thread because I found the whole thing fascinating.

 

Some questions on this tough test:

 

1. Do you feel this testing order would be the same (at least for the available powersets) if you applied it to Scrappers? How would their lower resist cap impact the results?

 

2. Out of all these sets, which ones do you feel benefit the MOST from late game, fully IO’s builds? From what I read, it seems Rad and Dark would make substantial jumps.

I didn't realize how long it has been that I let this thread slumber! I've actually been working on practical tests with a number of real enemy groups, but it's been slow going with RL in the way.

 

1) I feel like it would be very similar overall, just with different numbers due to the Scrapper being comparatively squishier. The defense sets would do relatively better as well due to the way defense works vs the smaller base Res and HP values.

 

2) Any of the sets with good resistances will get much much better as you add in +Def, and often +Rech in the mix as they often come with key click powers. Dark in particular as you manage end better + dont need to spam DR as much (also the +End proc in there) as well as Shield like you guys mentioned since it has amazing base mitigation that can be layered + synergies where it's lack of sustain can be patched up.

 

[StriderIV]

37 minutes ago, Galaxy Brain said:

I didn't realize how long it has been that I let this thread slumber! I've actually been working on practical tests with a number of real enemy groups, but it's been slow going with RL in the way.

 

1) I feel like it would be very similar overall, just with different numbers due to the Scrapper being comparatively squishier. The defense sets would do relatively better as well due to the way defense works vs the smaller base Res and HP values.

 

2) Any of the sets with good resistances will get much much better as you add in +Def, and often +Rech in the mix as they often come with key click powers. Dark in particular as you manage end better + dont need to spam DR as much (also the +End proc in there) as well as Shield like you guys mentioned since it has amazing base mitigation that can be layered + synergies where it's lack of sustain can be patched up.

 

That makes complete sense to me! Hopefully I can get a Dark Armor fully IO'd out and give it a good showing 😄 I feel staff, with it's end reduction stance and +Def, could be a good pairing for it!

[Bill Z Bubba]

On 12/21/2020 at 2:51 PM, Erratic1 said:

Found a building, leapt off it, checked the resistance I had once I hit. 

 

465.2 / 1372.5 = 0.33894 or 33.894%

33.894 + 26 = 59.894 ~ 60%

 

Did something change or is the gain non-linear?

Each passive grants 0 to 20% DR for a total of 60 DR if you have all 3 and a ms from death.

If scaling resists kicks in at 60% health and you were at 33.894% health, you then should be getting 26.106 total DR which is awfully close to your 8.67*3 = 26 shown in your screenshot.

 

Or am I missing something?

 

Edit: Or are we both agreeing that it actually does kick in at 60% health and not 50%.

Edited February 22, 2021 by Bill Z Bubba

[Galaxy Brain]

47 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

Each passive grants 0 to 20% DR for a total of 60 DR if you have all 3 and a ms from death.

If scaling resists kicks in at 60% health and you were at 33.894% health, you then should be getting 26.106 total DR which is awfully close to your 8.67*3 = 26 shown in your screenshot.

 

Or am I missing something?

 

Edit: Or are we both agreeing that it actually does kick in at 60% health and not 50%.

I still think it should start scaling at 100% with the same cap, would be nice lol.

[Erratic1]

1 hour ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

Each passive grants 0 to 20% DR for a total of 60 DR if you have all 3 and a ms from death.

If scaling resists kicks in at 60% health and you were at 33.894% health, you then should be getting 26.106 total DR which is awfully close to your 8.67*3 = 26 shown in your screenshot.

 

Or am I missing something?

 

Edit: Or are we both agreeing that it actually does kick in at 60% health and not 50%.

Agreeing.

[Bill Z Bubba]

1 hour ago, Galaxy Brain said:

I still think it should start scaling at 100% with the same cap, would be nice lol.

And give all SR the Master Brawler treatment.

[Galaxy Brain]

Real World Test 1: Council

 

 

Same conditions as the prior test, all SO's with added CJ / Tough / Weave / Manuevers, + -KB IO's on Dark and Fire (because lets be real here... 😛), wade into a group of +4/x8 enemies and see how long I can take it.

 

The results are relatively the same as the "balanced" damage spread, though for my sanity I shaved off a minute on the "immortal line" to 4 minutes as I'll be testing these through multiple enemy groups, and I also shaved the number of runs down to 5 each for much the same reason. 

 

What is surprising to me is that Invulnerability actually died once. It makes a bit more sense when we take a look at the damage spread of Council:

 

 

On average, the x8 spawn had this spread of damage (S/L are lumped together as all armor sets defend equally against them), with the Vampires and Galaxies being able to do enough chip damage, and on one occasion slow me down *just* enough to steal a kill at the 3:42 mark before Dull Pain could be used! The large negative energy damage could also be said to be how Dark Armor managed to sneak in an immortal run. Bio Eff. was omitted this time in the interest of time, and honestly you can guess it will be between Def and Off.

 

Speaking of, a new stat is the "Immortal Bias". Pretty much the opposite of the safety measure in my other threads, this time I give the times a bonus based on the % of runs hit the immortal line and the above chart is sorted as such. Bio Def (and obviously Granite lol) was the only set to consistently hit that line 5/5 times due to it having much better sustain than Invuln which proved it could be chipped to death if unlucky. Shield and Stone did better comparatively as well which is interesting, but everyone else is relatively the same.

 

I'll be able to add more groups as time goes on, but my list so far:

 

Carnies

Malta

Arachnos

Longbow

Cimerorans

PDF (non Devouring Earth)

CoT
Banished Pantheon (Incarnate)
Arachnoids (need that Toxic X-Factor)

 

Edited February 23, 2021 by Galaxy Brain

[StriderIV]

5 minutes ago, Galaxy Brain said:

Real World Test 1: Council

 

 

Same conditions as the prior test, all SO's with added CJ / Tough / Weave / Manuevers, + -KB IO's on Dark and Fire (because lets be real here... 😛), wade into a group of +4/x8 enemies and see how long I can take it.

 

The results are relatively the same as the "balanced" damage spread, though for my sanity I shaved off a minute on the "immortal line" to 4 minutes as I'll be testing these through multiple enemy groups, and I also shaved the number of runs down to 5 each for much the same reason. 

 

What is surprising to me is that Invulnerability actually died once. It makes a bit more sense when we take a look at the damage spread of Council:

 

 

On average, the x8 spawn had this spread of damage (S/L are lumped together as all armor sets defend equally against them), with the Vampires and Galaxies being able to do enough chip damage, and on one occasion slow me down *just* enough to steal a kill at the 3:42 mark before Dull Pain could be used! The large negative energy damage could also be said to be how Dark Armor managed to sneak in an immortal run. 

 

Speaking of, a new stat is the "Immortal Bias". Pretty much the opposite of the safety measure in my other threads, this time I give the times a bonus based on the % of runs hit the immortal line and the above chart is sorted as such. Bio Def (and obviously Granite lol) was the only set to consistently hit that line 5/5 times due to it having much better sustain than Invuln which proved it could be chipped to death if unlucky. Shield and Stone did better comparatively as well which is interesting, but everyone else is relatively the same.

 

I'll be able to add more groups as time goes on, but my list so far:

 

Carnies

Malta

Arachnos

Longbow

Cimerorans

PDF (non Devouring Earth)

CoT
Banished Pantheon (Incarnate)
Arachnoids (need that Toxic X-Factor)

 

This is AWESOME work Galaxy, thank you! Extremely cool testing. Data is fun.

[Max Firepower]

Curious how this would play out in the 801 series in AE.  The Crucible of tough tests.

[Galaxy Brain]

Real World Test 2: Carnies

 

 

Stone Armor was a suprise! Well, if you think about it it's ability to defend against Psychic Damage specifically was a huge boon on top of it's other defenses that gave it the best average, though all the Defense sets did better on average here. However, Carnies at +4 really just tore everyone a new one with their stacked debuffs out the wazoo. In particular, sets that relied on hitting an enemy for something really fell short with even dark armor hitting a rough spot with their harsh Mask debuffs.

Edited February 24, 2021 by Galaxy Brain

[Hyperstrike]

Well Stone DOES come with Minerals.  Base 25% Psi Def.  Enhanced with Alpha, 42%.
And that's BEFORE any set buffs or the Resist uniques for +3% Defense!