Rad armor secondary for dualboxing TFs

[Rastenn]

I want to make a pair of characters to dualbox TFs and the like because reasons. The secondary character will be some flavor of MM with a defense secondary (leaning towards Bots/Time but haven't decided yet). For the primary character that I will focus most of my attention on I'm thinking Radiation Armor Tanker because maxing (nearly) all the resists sounds fun and the MM will handle the lack of def, but I don't know what to pair it with.

 

Something with strong, early AoE seems like the way to go to keep aggro off the MM and pets, but I'm not familiar enough with Tanker secondaries to know which to pick. Rad Melee is an obvious choice, but I just finished with a Rad/Stone Brute and I don't want to repeat myself. What else is there? What would make a good pairing functionally and/or thematically?

[ZemX]

Rad Armor has two large AoEs in Rad Therapy and Ground Zero.  RT is available relatively early and has a large area (though hits just 10 targets).   Still, remember that, for Tankers, every target hit procs an AoE taunt in a 10ft radius around it.  Everyone will get the message.  If you have any trouble at all with escapees, the Taunt power itself is the next best thing for reaching out and grabbing runners at a distance without having to move from the group you already have corralled.  I wouldn't worry overmuch about the secondary.  Pick something thematic.

 

Thematic with a Bots MM?  Probably Elec or Energy Melee.  Both have a decent AoE at level 16.  Elec has more AoE in the end and Energy much stronger Single Target.  Make your Tanker the lead Bot in the MM's army? 🤪

 

Less thematic, but interesting to pair with Rad Armor is Staff.  You can pick something tech-energy looking and add flashy colored power customization.   The interesting things about Staff for Rad Armor are the +def(melee/lethal) Guarded Spin cone attack.  Itself a decently large 135 degree, 9ft long cone on a Tanker.  Available level 4.  Good place for MotT proc and a LotG.  Eye of the Storm is the PBAoE at 16.  15ft radius on a Tanker.  Procs -res when used as a finisher in Form of Body stance.  Has knockdown so also takes FF:Recharge proc. Innocuous Strikes is another cone, same size as Guarded Spin at level 35.  Level 38 gives you Sky Splitter.   This single target slow attack gives you +13% res(all) when used as a finisher.  Nice for shoring up the weaker resistances in your build without devoting too much set bonus effort to them.  Or even for skipping Tough entirely. 

 

TL;DR: Staff is not considered one of the better damage secondaries but on a Tanker it's got large and fast AoEs and some nice side benefits.

[Psyonico]

46 minutes ago, ZemX said:

Still, remember that, for Tankers, every target hit procs an AoE taunt in a 10ft radius around it. 

 

Gauntlet only adds AoE Taunt to single target powers, not AoE powers.

[ZemX]

29 minutes ago, Psyonico said:

Gauntlet only adds AoE Taunt to single target powers, not AoE powers.

 

Thanks for the correction.  It seems to add AoE taunt to the "main target" of a power as long as it has activate period = 0 (any non-toggle attack, in other words).  So that should mean an AoE around the main target of a cone too, though.   Probably not noticeable on a lot of cones but if it taunts in a 10ft radius sphere around the main target, that's bigger than most melee cones.

[Rastenn]

3 hours ago, ZemX said:

Make your Tanker the lead Bot in the MM's army? 🤪

 

I was actually thinking about doing that. It's the first robot she built and the power core's a little wonky, hence the totally-not-deadly radiation emissions. That would definitely make Electric the most thematic choice.

[ZemX]

Rad/Elec is a whole lotta AoE, that's for sure.  With Ground Zero and Lightning Rod you'll eventually have two solid big AoE openers to alternate between.   Not that the bots won't be making a mess of everything in the room already...

[biostem]

On 8/15/2022 at 2:47 AM, Rastenn said:

I will focus most of my attention on I'm thinking Radiation Armor Tanker

Check out savage melee.  One of my favorite melee sets for tankers - the recharge and end discount from blood frenzy stacks are really nice, and you can easily avoid consuming the stacks if you don't want to lose the benefits.  Savage leap is a fairly quick recharging self teleport + AoE that is also nice for maneuverability or to open fights with.

[Rastenn]

3 hours ago, biostem said:

Check out savage melee.  One of my favorite melee sets for tankers - the recharge and end discount from blood frenzy stacks are really nice, and you can easily avoid consuming the stacks if you don't want to lose the benefits.  Savage leap is a fairly quick recharging self teleport + AoE that is also nice for maneuverability or to open fights with.

 

I thought about that, but I really want a proper AOE by 20 at the latest, and Savage only has a cone till 28. I realized that Cold Dom on the MM gives positional defense and cold resist, the two things Rad Armor lacks, but Bots/Cold is all wrong thematically so now the MM is going to be a spooky Necro/Cold ghost. Savage Melee would work great on a zombie Tanker, but Necro pets have poor AOE so that pushed me back to Electric.

 

So now my character is going to be a scientist who set out to create a perfect synthetic body for himself. He succeeded, but was forced to resort to magic to transfer his consciousness into it. Naturally things went horribly wrong, and now he's stuck as a disembodied spirit which can control the dead and is followed around by a semi-sapient, badly damaged robot.

 

Now I have to design costumes. And names, god I hate coming up with names.

[ZemX]

16 hours ago, Rastenn said:

I realized that Cold Dom on the MM gives positional defense and cold resist, the two things Rad Armor lacks

 

While it's true that Cold is Rad's worst resist... it's also not really a big deal.  I wouldn't go as far as to say it "lacks" cold resist.  RadA isn't entirely a resist set so even middling Cold resist coupled with all its other tools is really no issue.  We'll see if I notice it more after the next update where a few enemy groups got their cold damage boosted . But I doubt it.

 

As for defense, outside of hardmode TFs, it's also not a big deal.   RadA doesn't have defense but also doesn't really rely on it either.  It's certainly a nice to have but without Defense Debuff Resistance, it's of questionable worth, in my opinion.  If you can send it up significantly over the soft-cap, sure.  If not... forget about it.  

 

Unless you're just really having fun wrangling that concept, FF would do just as well as Cold dom, I think.