Tankers and -ToHit

[Troo]

Stalkers don't get this power so here I am..

 

 

It's a 25' aggro magnet

It neuters incoming damage by 30%

25%+ -ToHit seems glorious.

 

What am I missing? Why isn't this more of a cornerstone? (I'm totally building around this one power currently)

[Spaghetti Betty]

It's a great power. I have a couple of personal arguments against taking it but that by no means should stop anyone else from considering it.

For me, it's a ton of end sacrificed for the benefit. Most of the Tanks I would want DN on simply would not be able to shoulder the added end.

It's an entire Epic pick, so unless I was already dipping into Soul to get Gloom, probably not worth the tradeoff of, say, choosing FA to become immune to -Tohit.

 

These are just my own personal building philosophies coming into play though. It's just part of the give and take nature of building. No one should scoff at such a huge mitigation option especially on an AT designed around safety.

[Mezmera]

It's a very good power to be sure.  If I had 2 powers to spare on an epic pool this would be top two pick.  I don't skip my armors from primaries or pools and like to dabble in some transformative power picks like Unleash Potential for these new 4stars and even skimping on attacks for the very important ones to get I find it hard to have extra powers to play around with.  

 

On my tank I had one power at the end to play with which I usually end up as @Spaghetti Betty pointed out and just go with FA for the large -tohitt resist and the additional accuracy and small tohitt boost.  

 

But yes if I had an extra power pick to choose from it would totally be this uber toggle debuff.  

[Psyonico]

It's really a great power pick, but it is an investment.  It's end heavy, as others have said, and it locks you into soul mastery (don't get me wrong, gloom is awesome).

 

I've taken it on some of my tanks and its a great extra aggro tool, but I can't get it in on all of my builds.

[Spaghetti Betty]

I've been musing a bit on this topic since I posted. I might work Darkest Night in on my SR/DM Tank simply for pulling Requiem and Romulus off the platform in a 4*. Surprisingly enough the Tank was sturdy for the entire run (there were a couple of moments I was the last one standing when it got too hot), but for the life of me I cannot get those 2 to cooperate when pulling, and standing up there and ensuring they follow is a suicide mission. Could be worth looking into.

Edited January 27, 2023 by Spaghetti Betty

[Yomo Kimyata]

This power makes my broadsword/regen brute immortal.  I cannot imagine what it would do for a tank, probably break the matrix.

[Werner]

I took Gloom for DPS on my Shield/MA, so it was easy to also take Darkest Night. I slotted it with only an endurance reducer. I didn't slot for -ToHit because my defense was already over the incarnate soft cap with solid DDR, and I only need additional survivability against tougher enemies who will be debuffed less. Still, the difference can be pretty noticeable when I slap it on. It's not been a game changer for me, but it's been well worth the power pick.

 

Edit: Maybe I should use an Enzyme?

Edited January 27, 2023 by Werner

[StriderIV]

25 minutes ago, Werner said:

I took Gloom for DPS on my Shield/MA, so it was easy to also take Darkest Night. I slotted it with only an endurance reducer. I didn't slot for -ToHit because my defense was already over the incarnate soft cap with solid DDR, and I only need additional survivability against tougher enemies who will be debuffed less. Still, the difference can be pretty noticeable when I slap it on. It's not been a game changer for me, but it's been well worth the power pick.

Slightly off topic, but I remember on live you had a Shield/Fire tanker, correct? Have you tried Fiery Melee at all since the changes Werner?

[ZemX]

22 hours ago, Troo said:

It's a 25' aggro magnet

 

I don't see any exclusion from Gauntlet's radius buff in City of Data's description of this power.  That would mean it should be a 37.5ft radius on a Tanker.

[Troo]

It just seems like this one power could put someone over the top if they are nearing some of the soft caps. Both defensive and resistance.

 

if

-25% ToHit = 12-25% Defense

-30% Damage = 30% Resistance

 

then

-25% ToHit plus 25% Defense could = 90% damage reduction and = ~50% Defense

-30% Damage plus 60% Resistance could = 90% damage reduction and = 90% Resistance

 

This takes a bit of pressure off soft capping and allows focusing elsewhere.

Example 1: A Super Reflexes tanker could just get near the defense softcaps to have the equivalent of softcap, have the equivalent of 30% resistance, and have a bunch of slots to play with.

Example 2: A resistance tanker with a hole could just get near the defense softcaps and fill both the resistance hole and the softcap gap.

[ZemX]

Remember that the only enemies you're concerned with in the first place as a Tanker are the same ones that will be resisting about half your debuffs to begin with.  So yeah, that's more like 12% -toHit debuff (and then only if you bothered to enhance the debuff).   There's some nuance to -dmg as well.  It's not exactly equivalent to +res but I can't find that explanation at the moment.  One obvious way it's not the same is in providing resistance to resistance debuffing.  60% res means 40% of res debuffs get through.  That doesn't affect your -dmg debuff in DN, but it cuts down your own base resistance. 

 

Not saying it isn't good.  Fair question though if it's good enough to deserve enhancing, though.  At 0.65 end/sec, it really does need some end reduction.  Also takes some time to toss out there in a fight.  And it's a toggle so you need to shut it off when the fight is done usually.  Late in your build, it might be just a sometimes thing rather than an every fight thing.

[Major_Decoy]

Honestly, I think it's the set-up. 90% of tanker powers are just fire and forget. If it were a self-anchored toggle, I think it'd be much more common in tank builds. It'd be less useful, but it'd be less of a thing you have to think about. And using Dark Watcher's set for 5% recharge at four slots is pretty nice.

[twozerofoxtrot]

On 1/27/2023 at 6:20 AM, Troo said:

What am I missing? Why isn't this more of a cornerstone?

 

Tankers are unkillable agro magnets by default so the only thing it's good for is HM content or individual challenges.

 

That 2.37 seconds could be spent on popping an exp piñata. 

 

Sorry to be the raincloud. But noone answered the question in the OP.

[nihilii]

^ For me, this is it.

 

Darkest Night on a Tanker is absolutely bonkers. But Tankers are so brokenly good to start with, it's superfluous.

 

I'm guilty of skipping it as well.

[MoonSheep]

i have a D3 tank on test that i sometimes hop around with, darkest night makes things really fun, especially

combined with other -acc powers

 

it is of course less effective when enemies are much higher level than you, however i’m a big fan of buffs/debuffs as they benefit the whole team and make a character have a lot more ‘depth’ so it gets a thumbs up from me

[SaintD]

Ice has -15% damage in it's aura. You could stack it with this. Pretty tasty.

[Werner]

On 1/27/2023 at 10:08 AM, StriderIV said:

Slightly off topic, but I remember on live you had a Shield/Fire tanker, correct? Have you tried Fiery Melee at all since the changes Werner?

Fire/Shield Scrapper. Concept character using a fire sword attack chain. Not great at anything, but sufficiently survivable with good sustained AoE. Used him for mostly casual farming and fun. I haven't tried the new Fiery Melee.

[Werner]

When I'm fighting level 54 enemies, they are usually +3 to me, so if I understand correctly, there is a 0.65 modifier to my debuff strength. So a 30% damage debuff ends up as a 19.5% damage debuff, and a 15% ToHit debuff ends up as a 9.75% ToHit debuff. Against level 54 archvillains, it appears that the damage debuff isn't resisted (? untested by me), so remains 19.5%, which is great, but the ToHit debuff slams into an 87% debuff resistance for about 1.3% ToHit debuff. Still something, just not much of something.

 

I don't think the damage debuff behaves much like resistance. Here's how I think it works (please let me know if I'm wrong). Let's say I have 70.5% damage resistance, and stack on the 19.5% damage debuff against level 54s. I'm not now at 70.5% + 19.5% = 90% damage resistance. A 100 point punch would first be reduced to 80.5 points by the debuff, which hits my 70.5% damage resistance, allowing 80.5 * (100% - 70.5%) = 23.7 points to get through. Now I get hit by a 30% damage resistance debuff. Resistance resists resistable resistance debuffs, so I think my resistance is now 70.5% - (30% * (100% - 70.5%)) = 61.7%. I get hit by another 100 point punch, reduced to 80.5 points by my debuff, then to 30.8 points of damage that gets through. That compares very poorly to a true 90% damage resistance. Against the first 100 point punch, we take 10 points instead of 23.7 points. The 30% resistance debuff is 90% resisted, so is a 3% resistance debuff, taking our resistance to 87%. The second 100 point punch does 13 points instead of 30.8 points. 90% resistance is much more effective than 70.5% resistance plus a 19.5% damage debuff. For us personally, anyway. The damage debuff helps reduce the damage taken by the team. To an extent that's the Tanker's role, even if debuffs aren't the usual way we accomplish it.

 

The ToHit debuff is more comparable to defense, though still not quite the same, of course, and mostly ineffective against AVs. On my Shield/MA, I do like how it stacks in a rough sense with Grant Cover to boost the defense of the rest of the team on the rare occasions that I team. With only a default slot in Grant Cover and Darkest Night, I'm typically providing 13.1% defense and 9.8% ToHit debuff, so in a rough sense, about 23% defense to any team members standing near me. Not bad. If I switch to a +2 Enzyme, that'd go up to 25% for only an extra 0.02 endurance per second. I can afford that.

Edited January 28, 2023 by Werner

[Yomo Kimyata]

33 minutes ago, Werner said:

The damage debuff helps reduce the damage taken by the entire team.

 

This is the thing that I think damage reduction is supposed to be most useful for.  Everyone slags on Kinetic Melee (well, I can't blame them for the look and feel), but they are safer than, say, energy melee since they are taking less damage.  And their team is also taking less damage.  But people don't care (and rightfully so) because survival is much easier to achieve and much harder to assign value towards than, say, damage inflicted.  I don't think people are posting Trapdoor times if they are defeated, for example.  It's survivor bias!  And I highly doubt anyone is saying, "thank goodness we have a kin melee on the team, we are all going to be taking 5-10% less damage!".

[StriderIV]

1 hour ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

 

This is the thing that I think damage reduction is supposed to be most useful for.  Everyone slags on Kinetic Melee (well, I can't blame them for the look and feel), but they are safer than, say, energy melee since they are taking less damage.  And their team is also taking less damage.  But people don't care (and rightfully so) because survival is much easier to achieve and much harder to assign value towards than, say, damage inflicted.  I don't think people are posting Trapdoor times if they are defeated, for example.  It's survivor bias!  And I highly doubt anyone is saying, "thank goodness we have a kin melee on the team, we are all going to be taking 5-10% less damage!".

Hey, as a Kin Melee lover, I appreciate this 😂 my Kin/Ice Stalker is one of my faves. Might have to role a Kinetic Melee Tanker sometime that is a PURE team Tanker. In some HM content, I’m sure that 5-10% less damage is highly valued.

Edited January 28, 2023 by StriderIV

[Troo]

good stuff @Werner

 

 

The two 53 and one 50 Marginalization D-Syncs get the end reasonable and the ToHit to a nice spot. (no one is gonna spend 3 slots here but I'm building around this one power)

 

..an interesting thing I notice when looking at PvP stats (I do a lot of PvE in PVP zones, for fun)

 

Pairing a -40% Dam debuff with 75% Resist does get to the 90% damage reduction. (sans any modifiers or effects) So there is significant overlap required.

100 * (1-.4) = 40

40 * (1-.75) = 10

 

With the -30% Dam debuff it appear takes over 85% Resist

100 * (1-.3) = 70

70 * (1-.85) = 10.5 (that's not quite the resist number I'm looking for)

 

Fear not, my battle ship is yet to be sunk. The plan is to blend the -Dam, -ToHit with above average Resistance and Defense. Where 32-35ish Def and 65-70Ish Resist can be equivalent to softcap def or resist alone. This would fit great on a Bane, alas their Darkest Night numbers are not as compelling.

Edited January 29, 2023 by Troo

[aethereal]

In my mind the advantage of -damage is not that it adds up with resistance to reach the normal damage mitigation cap of resistance, it's that it can take you overcap.  Get 90% resistance and 30% -damage and enjoy 93% mitigation.

[Troo]

@aethereal thats a good way to look at it for general purposes

[Nyghtmaire]

Another advantage to DN is for pulling a second group, especially around environmental obstacles, into the kill (err…. Arrest) zone. That radius is HUGE, a decent trade-off (cast time for example) compared to taunt. 

[Troo]

17 hours ago, Troo said:

With the -30% Dam debuff it appear takes over 85% Resist

100 * (1-.3) = 70

70 * (1-.85) = 10.5 (that's not quite the resist number I'm looking for)

 

So combined with decent def and resists I'm hoping to avoid needing to chase more defense.

 

Running Darkest Night over the top of something like the example damage focused build below. (It's a little skinny on end so may need to continue tweaking)

   

 

A simple 100 incoming damage

• needs to get past the -23 ToHit, then the ~35% Def. (getting hit even 25% of the time is better than 95%, but for DDR)
• then the -Dam, and finally the resistance.

Edited January 29, 2023 by Troo