Super Reflexes/Staff build help

[StoneKarma]

I based this on builds from @Infinitum and others as well as input from some Brute and Scrapper proc monster builds. 

I have a Rad/Rad build from th thread bread below that I'm happy with but needed another Tank for a different server. (Everlasting vs Excelsior if that matters.)

 

I went Super Reflexes because it's different and still among the top primaries . Staff because I like the animations, two cones, one PBAOE and a DEF buff attack all seem to work well together. But, no heal or recovery boosts. In play though, it seem to work well enough as long as I keep a heal inspiration or two around. 

 

Below is the build. I have it built and slotted, and it seems very inconsistent. I'm lvl 50 but haven't unlocked any incarnates yet. I watch my combat numbers and they are all over the place. Any suggestions to make it "Tankier"?

 

I like the way some of the procs fire off but I don't see the Force Feedbacks trigger. 

I don't have Hasten but I haven't really noticed any recharge problems. Per the Proc Monster threads, the total attack chain is about 10 seconds. The attacks work well, I think the challenge is my DEF and DMG RESIST. But numbers-wise, they look fine. But, even with DEF DEBUFF RES hovering around 90-95% things still get through and quickly everything melts. And, with no heal, I'm relying on inspirations to heal. 

 

SO, THE *REAL* QUESTION IS: Can we tweak this SR/Staff Tank to make it as good or better than the RAD/RAD tank? 

 

Tanker (Super Reflexes - Staff Fighting) Skull Crusher.mbd

 

And here is the Rad/Rad Tank thread.

 

Edited July 26, 2023 by StoneKarma

[Unclemarty]

On a quick glance this build looks quite tough already. 

 

Do you want to build with mostly teaming or solo in mind?

What kind of content are you doing that you are noticing its not tanky enough? Are you building this for hard mode content, custom AE content, or just general play?

 

If you give some more context on your build goals it would help us provide specific feedback.

 

One thing about SR is that it has scaling resists that kick in when you're health is below 60%. To take advantage of those resists you don't always need to be at high health, so when you take damage don't immediately eat inspirations to heal it up. You should be able to play comfy at low health, especially if you cycle through your +resistance powers appropriately. 

The only hitpoint that matters is the last one 🙂

 

[StoneKarma]

I ran ITF and TinPex. Ran a Ms Liberty TF and Recluse killed me 3 or 4 times. The 4 AVs before that (BS, GW, Mako and Scirroco) killed me once and almost a second time. 

Almost exclusively running teams, and TFs. I'd like to be able to run Hard Mode content, but not until my incarnates are T4. I would only solo or run AE content for testing or just to kill some time. What I found solo is that without some kind of DMG aura, it kills too slow to be fun. 

 

It was the idea of Scaling Resists that made me go SR in the first place. What I've found is that sometimes it kicks in and the resists are crazy good. But almost just as often, what I'm fighting hits so hard, so fast that I go from 40% or 50% health to zero without the combat tracker even updating. I think in Mids, this build is set for 40% health in the powers that scale. 

 

And heck, if the performance is just that I have been running the trials without my incarnates, I'll just keep chugging along. But, if the RAD/RAD build is better, I'll just roll another tank for Excelsior, as soon as I come up with a good name. 😀

[Uun]

• Slot 6x Gauntleted Fist for the 6% S/L and E/N resistance bonuses, or 3x twice to double up on the E/N bonus.
• The Miracle +recovery and Regenerative Tissue +regen in Spirit Ward won't work unless the power is active, and Spirit Ward needs to be cast on an ally.

 

8 hours ago, StoneKarma said:

Recluse killed me 3 or 4 times

 

One of the towers gives him a massive tohit buff, so he basically ignores your defense. Also, a lot of his attacks do toxic damage.

[ZemX]

15 hours ago, StoneKarma said:

Below is the build. I have it built and slotted, and it seems very inconsistent. I'm lvl 50 but haven't unlocked any incarnates yet. I watch my combat numbers and they are all over the place. Any suggestions to make it "Tankier"?

 

Are you using Form of Body + Sky Splitter finisher to add 13% res(All) when you need it?  You could mostly ignore this combo until you are missing a chunk of health and then use it as kind of an adder to your scaling resist to make it cap out sooner.  Nice thing about Form of Body is the -res debuff built into the Eye of the Storm finisher.  So you can choose to spend your "perfection" stacks on either defense or offense without switching stances.  Just by picking which finisher to spend on.

[Unclemarty]

Here are some specific suggestions in no particular order:

• regenerative tissue and miracle uniques are best suited for a toggle power or always on power like health. Preventative medicine +absorb is special and weird and will trigger regardless of where it is in your build when you are low health. So it can go into spirit ward instead.
• You're not getting much value from 3 slotting taunt. Recommend 1 slotting it with your choice of range, recharge or end reduction
• 4 slotting shield wall offers a great 4.5% E/N resistance.
• A great way to add damage  on tanks is to fill an attack with procs instead of "traditional" slotting strategies. Long recharge powers will trigger procs more often than short attack powers, so I'd use Mercurial blow as a set mule and load up other attacks with procs instead. I believe you have enough single target powers to have a complete single target attack chain by using procs and avoiding recharge reduction enhancements.
• You could also experiment with adding procs to your aoe powers but you might not have a continuous aoe attack chain if you replace recharge reduction enhancements with procs. You could drop combat jumping for dark obliteration if you wanted another aoe but some people really like the movement that combat jumping offers.

Regarding whether Rad or SR is better it really depends. SR critical weakness is against autohit mechanics and enemies with very high tohit (like recluse with his buff towers). SR shines in debuff heavy content because it has so much defense debuff resistance. Other sets like Rad may face cascading defense failure if unsupported.

Tanker (Super Reflexes - Staff Fighting) Skull Crusher_rev1.mbd

[Hjarki]

Some notes:

• Miracle +recovery only works when you activate the power. So there’s little point in putting it into Spirit Ward (which you’ll rarely, if ever, activate).
• You don’t need all that endurance/health slotting in Health/Stamina. Either you have a party member who can help you out or you simply use Perfection of Soul.
• Your resists seem a bit low. In general, you want 30% - 40% before scaling resists to hard-cap under dire circumstances. For Super Reflexes, the biggest problem is normally E/N. Slotting 4-set Shield Wall in your SR defense toggles can help here. F/C should come almost naturally from purple sets while Toughness should cover S/L.
• Ditch the procs from your attacks. A standard 3.5 ppm proc in 0% internal recharge Mercurial Blow will yield an average of 16.74 damage. A basic +5 Damage IO would yield 23.52 damage. This is generally true for Tankers across their variety of attacks - damage slotting is better than proc slotting and you should generally restrict yourself to ‘opportunistic’ procs where you’ve already got the set bonuses you want. So Hecatomb 5-set plus another proc is good. Frankenslotting and ending up with only 23% damage in a power is not.
• Your ST rotation is sketchy. Mercurial Blow is a terrible attack. A rotation of Precise Strike(x2), Serpent’s Reach, Skysplitter will do more damage. While Gloom is better than Serpent’s Reach, you can’t build in enough recharge to make a rotation with it work and trying to randomly toss it into the rotation doesn’t move the needle enough to bother (especially given the lack of a second high quality ranged set).
• You don’t need Eye of the Storm. Since you have the increased Tanker arc/targets and Staff is a long range set, you can simply Hover above the fray and your high damage Cones work pretty much like normal PBAoE while dealing more damage than Eye of the Storm.

 

My forum export isn't working for some reason, but I'd probably go with something like:

Focused Fighting, Focused Senses, Evasion: 4-set Shield Wall (D, DE, DER, ER or unique)

Agile, Dodge, Lucky, Maneuvers: 2-set Luck of the Gambler (D, proc)

Practiced Brawler: Recharge IO

Quickness: Flight Speed IO

 

Precise Strike: 6-set Hecatomb

Guarded Spin: 5-set Armageddon (all but D), Luck of the Gambler (proc)

Serpent's Reach: 5-set Apocalypse (all but D), Explosive Strike (proc)

Sky Splitter: 6-set Superior Might of the Tanker

Innocuous Strikes: 6-set Superior Gauntleted Fist

 

Hover, Fly, Evasive Maneuvers: 2-set Hypersonic (emphasis on EndRed, the proc goes somewhere)

Tough: 3-set Unbreakable Guard (proc, R, RE), Gladiator's Armor (proc), Steadfast Protection (proc), Impervious Skin (proc)

Weave: 6-set Reactive Defenses

Combat Jumping: 2 set Winter's Gift (proc, Speed/Endurance)

 

Char: 6-set Unbreakable Constraint

Ring of Fire: 6-set Gravitational Anchor

 

Stamina: Performance Shifter (proc), Power Transfer (proc)

Health: Panacea (proc), Numina's Convalescence (proc), Miracle (proc), Regenerative Tissue (proc), Preventative Medicine (proc)

Swift: Flight Speed IO

 

This would give you incarnate level defenses against everything without using Guarded Spin. It would give you ~45% S/L/FC, 35% E/N and 30% T/P resists before scaling and the ATO proc.

[Uun]

13 hours ago, Hjarki said:

Sky Splitter: 6-set Superior Might of the Tanker

This is a terrible idea. Sky Splitter does 30% more damage if you use it with 3 levels of Perfection. It's best to make it the 4th attack in your chain so that you're always using it with 3 levels of perfection (Mids doesn't show the level 3 bonus damage). The SMoT proc provides 6.7% resistance for 10 seconds and can stack 3x. You want to slot it in a power you're using at least every 5 seconds if you want to maintain 2 stacks.

[Hjarki]

11 minutes ago, Uun said:

This is a terrible idea. Sky Splitter does 30% more damage if you use it with 3 levels of Perfection. It's best to make it the 4th attack in your chain so that you're always using it with 3 levels of perfection (Mids doesn't show the level 3 bonus damage). The SMoT proc provides 6.7% resistance for 10 seconds and can stack 3x. You want to slot it in a power you're using at least every 5 seconds if you want to maintain 2 stacks.

There are only three places to put the ATO for single target tanking: Precise Strike, Serpent's Reach and Skysplitter.

 

Serpent's Reach has both the worst performance for the ATO and the Apocalypse proc (which you have no other place to slot). So it's clearly not in the cards.

 

Precise Strike has a 32.2% chance to proc Hecatomb twice in 7.658s, for an average of 9.00 dps. Skysplitter has an 80.5% chance to proc once in 7.658s, for an average of 11.26 dps. Note that this 2 dps difference is un-enhanceable so it's just.. 2 dps. In theory, you could slot either of these attacks with a conventional 3.5 ppm proc instead of taking 6% Toxic/Psi and you'd get a bigger dps boost. But it is, after all, a Tanker. So I thought more Toxic/Psi resist would be worthwhile.

 

Precise Strike has a 41.3% chance to proc the ATO twice in 7.658s, for an average of 1.08 stacks over time. Skysplitter has a 90% chance to proc the ATO (capped) once in 7.658s, for an average of 1.18 stacks over time.

 

So it's really a question of whether you want more average stacks of the ATO or 2 more dps - presuming you can otherwise compensate for the -10% recharge Hecatomb has compared to the ATO set in Skysplitter.

 

In terms of "4th attack", I would have thought that was implied by the rotation I listed.

 

Also, you may be overestimating the importance of the ATO proc. If you're a Radiation Tanker, that ATO proc can potentially halve your incoming damage. But for Super Reflexes, all it's doing is slightly nudging the equilibrium point where your total effective health starts to rise due to the scaling resists. So you don't need to have it up with the first attack you throw. Indeed, with any Staff build, you'll be missing a large chunk of resists since you won't have the Perfection of Body bonus until after you've run a complete rotation.

[Uun]

29 minutes ago, Hjarki said:

There are only three places to put the ATO for single target tanking: Precise Strike, Serpent's Reach and Skysplitter.

Why focus on ST tanking? It's more efficient to use the cones if you've got multiple foes in range. I put the SMoT set in Innocuous Strikes and the SGF proc in Guarded Spin. I can chain the 2 cones indefinitely and work in the ST attacks as needed (or when I hit level 3). Unless you're tanking Recluse in MLTF with the towers up, you really don't need the extra resistance against single foes. It's needed against larger numbers of foes with tohit buffs (Rularuu, Nemesis, DE, etc.).

[Hjarki]

1 hour ago, Uun said:

Why focus on ST tanking? It's more efficient to use the cones if you've got multiple foes in range. I put the SMoT set in Innocuous Strikes and the SGF proc in Guarded Spin. I can chain the 2 cones indefinitely and work in the ST attacks as needed (or when I hit level 3). Unless you're tanking Recluse in MLTF with the towers up, you really don't need the extra resistance against single foes. It's needed against larger numbers of foes with tohit buffs (Rularuu, Nemesis, DE, etc.).

Because single target tanking is when you'd need the ATO proc. Against large crowds, each individual hit is relatively small so your health slowly diminishes to the point where your resists are capped.

 

In terms of using it in AE, I suppose you can simply swap the two ATO sets if it's really that big a concern (especially given that Skysplitter comes with a resist buff of its own that's generally better than the ATO). However, putting both ATOs into AE attacks means two things:

• You're skipping Armageddon, one of the best sets in the game, as well as the ability to buff the defense of Guarded Spin.
• You need to come up with another melee set when you've already used the only good one for a positional defense-based character.

 

To Hit buffs are normally not much of an issue since you're so far over soft-cap and can push Melee Defense to obscene levels.

Edited July 31, 2023 by Hjarki

[Uun]

2 hours ago, Hjarki said:

However, putting both ATOs into AE attacks means two things:

• You're skipping Armageddon, one of the best sets in the game, as well as the ability to buff the defense of Guarded Spin.
• You need to come up with another melee set when you've already used the only good one for a positional defense-based character.

I've got Armageddon and SGF split 3x each between Guarded Spin and Eye of the Storm. That allows me to double up on both the 6% E/N resist and 6% F/C resist. There's no reason to buff the defense of Guarded Spin if your primary is SR. I've got Sky Splitter slotted with Hecatomb, which has stats identical to Armageddon, and Precise Strike slotted with Mako's Bite (Hecatomb's recharge is wasted there). 

 

2 hours ago, Hjarki said:

To Hit buffs are normally not much of an issue since you're so far over soft-cap and can push Melee Defense to obscene levels.

Have you ever played SR? Rularuu eyeballs have a 100% tohit buff. Nemesis Vengeance provides a 30% tohit buff for each lieutenant defeated and stacks (unlike the player version). DE Quartz provide a 100% tohit buff in a 50 foot radius AOE. Any of these are capable of completely negating your defense. 

[Sanguinesun]

On 7/27/2023 at 7:06 AM, StoneKarma said:

 

 

SO, THE *REAL* QUESTION IS: Can we tweak this SR/Staff Tank to make it as good or better than the RAD/RAD tank? 

 

 

 

On 7/27/2023 at 1:33 PM, StoneKarma said:

  I'd like to be able to run Hard Mode content, but not until my incarnates are T4. 

 

 

Given your wishes are for goals with hard mode content considerations, unless you have a very specialized team that has the capability(onus) to mitigate your build/choices' weaknesses, Im going to put forth the possibility that the wants may not match up here.

[StoneKarma]

On 8/1/2023 at 1:22 PM, Sanguinesun said:

 

 

 

 

Given your wishes are for goals with hard mode content considerations, unless you have a very specialized team that has the capability(onus) to mitigate your build/choices' weaknesses, Im going to put forth the possibility that the wants may not match up here.

Can you be more specific here please? Are you saying that SR just isn't able to do that kind of content because of all the auto-hits in the top tier content? I noticed that sometimes I couldn't tank Lord Recluse on Ms Liberty Strike Force this week. And Ghost Widow or Mako were able to hold me more than once. Is +RES really the only way to go? 

 

What is happening is some things damage me slowly enough that SR's  Scaling Resist kick in, but other things just blow through everything and kill me too fast for the +RES to make much difference. 

 

I've been playing build @Unclemarty posted above and it is *much* improved. I got my Incarnate powers to Tier 3. It works much better than what I had. 

Edited August 7, 2023 by StoneKarma

[Sanguinesun]

Hardmode content (ITF/Aeon) that are starred difficulties(1-4 difficulty ranges designed above that of the normal versions of them.)  Have the mobs have increased difficulties and ignore more debuffs etc.    Level 4, on  a team not well prepared and with good team synergies can die on trash in seconds.  Lots of discussions on what all that entails.

 

Many of those afore mentioned teams favor resistance capped or close to it for their tanks and additionally having some amount of defense to boot.   Defense buffs by a team for team mates is much much easier to build on tope of a solid resists.  Team mate options that boost resistances are much less to be had and thus why the composition of your team(ie the AT's power sets they uses, and tons more) really define the capabilities of those teams.  Then you factor player skill and strats those teams employ specific to their group dynamics and that's their ability to succeed.

 

You're basically not building a toon for that and yes thats in part due to arguably the choice of SR..... UNLESS you've a crack team that builds their team's choices around yours.  

 

SR like any defense set, can eventually succumb to defense debuffs(even with resistance to defense debuffs... especially in hardmode or other difficult mobs).   

 

So what Im saying is its not impossible for you to do, but Im saying because you seemingly prefer to be working in random team dynamics situations, you're more beholden to the roll of the dice in terms of support/complement/supplement to your short comings.  This then reflects the experiences you were having in non hardmode content as well that you outlined above and probably should be a good indicator then of the difficulty jump that you'd experience were you to participate on those starred hardmode content runs....

 

 

Edited August 7, 2023 by Sanguinesun

[StoneKarma]

@Sanguinesun Ok, that all makes sense. So, the better approach for the hard mode stuff sounds like a RESIST set?

 

And heck, I already have this back-door fun tank for all the other stuff. 

 

What about Hami? What does it take to Tank it?

[Uun]

6 hours ago, Sanguinesun said:

SR like any defense set, can eventually succumb to defense debuffs(even with resistance to defense debuffs... especially in hardmode or other difficult mobs).   

Unlikely. My SR tank has 122% DDR (capped at 95%). In my experience the issue is tohit buffs that exceed your defense and damage/debuffs that are autohit or unresistable.

 

I'm not disagreeing with your overall position. On those occasions I've tanked HM content, I've done it on my DA tank. 

[Doomguide2005]

On 8/7/2023 at 7:07 AM, Uun said:

Unlikely. My SR tank has 122% DDR (capped at 95%). In my experience the issue is tohit buffs that exceed your defense and damage/debuffs that are autohit or unresistable.

 

I'm not disagreeing with your overall position. On those occasions I've tanked HM content, I've done it on my DA tank. 

This^

By the time you've gotten enough defdebuff stacked to even remotely initiate something resembling defense failure much less cascade failure you are probably already a greasy spot on the floor.

[Zect]

On 8/7/2023 at 12:25 PM, StoneKarma said:

@Sanguinesun Ok, that all makes sense. So, the better approach for the hard mode stuff sounds like a RESIST set?

 

Given the current meta of barrier stacking, all tanker primaries incl SR are resistance hardcapped or very nearly so regardless of team comp in +4 "hard" mode (quotation marks since it's not hard at all, just gear gated). This is doubly so given you have access to +res from your 2ndary.

 

What differentiates tanks in HM is their offensive power, debuff resistances, access to sustain, and other defensive powers such as absorb and +maxhp that effectively buy more time to respond to damage spikes.

 

As someone who is very involved in build optimization, I need to emphasize that hard mode is really not about uber builds. It's about teamwork, including the ability to take orders, and situational awareness. Any tanker primary can successfully tank hardmode.