First Attempt at a tanker build.....

[Jokerace]

After playing brute's mainly and going by other people's builds.. I decided I wanted to make a "true" tanker and came up with this build.

 

I would appreciate any feed back in ways you think I could make it better or went wrong in my thinking when building it.

 

Thank you in advance,

 

Jokerace

My Tanker (Bio Armor - Dark Melee).mbd

[Erratic1]

---

I would change the slotting on Touch of Fear from Scirocco's Dervish to Erradiction for more E/N defense. I would probably look into splitting Superior Avalanche 3/3 between two powers for the extra Fire/Cold resist and doing the same with Gauntleted Fist for the Energy/Negative resist. I would suggest full slotting Environmental Modification with a Defense set and move the Shield Wall IO to Weave.

 

But running late for a long day of work, so no real chance to build something right now.

[Jokerace]

Thank you for your input. I made the changes you spoke about (shown below), however it seems like with some of the  changes I actually lose some s/l, & c/f, Def, and a bit of e/n & F/c resistance. Maybe I did not put the changes in the right slots?

 

Also I was unable to place Gaussian's Synchronized Fire Resistance: Chance for build-up when I did the changes. Is that not needed or am I missing something?

 

Thanks again for the advice you have already given, If there is anything else you can think of, or anything I missed on the changes please let me know.

 

Jokerace

My Tanker (Bio Armor - Dark Melee) 2.mbd

[Meknomancer]

17 hours ago, Jokerace said:

After playing brute's mainly and going by other people's builds.. I decided I wanted to make a "true" tanker and came up with this build.

 

I would appreciate any feed back in ways you think I could make it better or went wrong in my thinking when building it.

 

Thank you in advance,

 

Jokerace

My Tanker (Bio Armor - Dark Melee).mbd 43.03 kB · 7 downloads

 

 

Smite/Touch of fear/Midnight grasp just have random enhances and tossed in cross punch for shadow maul (cos i prefer it, i like a power with a force feedback in to get soul drain up more often) Its just a randomly thrown together build to show how you'd get 45% e/ne/f/c def and 90% s/l res and slow res close to 100%. Definitely can be improved on recharge wise and numbers wise and not a build to be played:

 

Spoiler

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[Xandyr]

@zect is apparently the best builder in all the land. 

[Erratic1]

On 3/7/2024 at 8:36 PM, Jokerace said:

I would appreciate any feed back in ways you think I could make it better or went wrong in my thinking when building it.

 

I try not to change other people's power choices too far from what they have selected because they presumably know what powers they want, but in this case I did do a bit of alteration. I also moved away from my earlier path of looking towards buffing your resistances...in fact, went completely opposite by designing a build meant to run in Offensive stance:

 

Spoiler

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A couple of things:

• There is a base 2.2 end/s gap between endurance expenditure and generation. I do not believe Mid's takes into account Performance Shifter procs, so in reality it build is a bit better off. On top of that you have DNA Siphon and Genetic Contamination. Dark Consumption's only purpose would be as a slow recharging AoE, so I dumped it. 
• Melee Defense is 42.6%. At various points it pushed to 45%+ and E/N/F/C were over 50% but then I got distracted by the bright shiny of...
• I chose the Darkness Mastery Epic pool for you because Tar Patch was just too good not to get--22.5% resistance debuff...while you are in Offensive stance...with the potential of having used Soul Drain!!! Given the Ablative Shield and ability to pump regen (and recovery) and Siphon Life all on top of Dark Melee's power debuffing To-Hit, I figured not completely topping off S/L Resistance (you do have scaling resistance) and Melee defense was livable.
• At one point Soul Drain was sitting at 40s recharge instead of the 47s or so it is at now. If it is critical for it to be perma-available you can probably dance things around to get there.

 

Edit: Most people look at Bio and think they should be dancing between stances. I'm lazy and approach Bio from the perspective of mostly staying in one stance and departing from it only as absolutely necessary. All of this to say, you can toggle to Efficient or Defensive stance if needed but the goal is not to do so.

Edited March 9 by Erratic1

[Duckbutler]

39 minutes ago, Erratic1 said:

Edit: Most people look at Bio and think they should be dancing between stances. I'm lazy and approach Bio from the perspective of mostly staying in one stance and departing from it only as absolutely necessary. All of this to say, you can toggle to Efficient or Defensive stance if needed but the goal is not to do so.

 

When I was playing my Invuln/Staff tanker, there was a similar tradeoff with staff mastery. At first I was switching between the endurance and the resistance stances. Eventually endurance problems worked themselves out and now I sit in the resistance stance all the time. If I start getting endurance drained and running into problems I'll switch it back. I think that's just how stance mechanics tend to play out in reality rather than the stance dancing people imagine when they see the mechanic.

[Jokerace]

Thank you everyone for your input and ideas, Some great information given here.

From all the responses I think I have a gameplan now of the way I want the tank build to go. 🙂

 

 

btw @Xandyr -- who is @zect, or was that an inside joke that I did not get?

 

Anyways thanks again for the help all. 🙂

[Xandyr]

On 3/11/2024 at 10:04 AM, Jokerace said:

 

 

 

btw @Xandyr -- who is @zect, or was that an inside joke that I did not get?

 

 

Zect is on the forums. I'll just say that he believes there's only one way to build a tank, and it's his way. 

[Hjarki]

I think it helps to start with determining what your goals are.

 

Bio on a Tanker will never be a 'true' Tanker in the sense of being able to withstand any enemy. The resists are simply too low and the lack of DDR means that the defenses will fail under certain circumstances. It's more of a 'Scranker' set where your goal is less to be impervious to all harm than be impervious *enough* that you can deal with 99% of content.

 

As such, I tend to build Bio as an either-or affair. For any given damage type, I either have hard-capped or nearly so resists (S/L/T) or I have soft-capped defenses (E/N/F/C/P). This doesn't meaningfully change my ability to survive but it makes the build significantly easier since I'm no longer wasting slots on sets like Kinetic Combat.

 

It also means I have a real option for my resist toggles: Impervium Armor. Unlike my other options, it gives me a meaningful set bonus while also improving my powers. So I'd set up a power like Hardened Carapace with 3-set Impervium and then 2 set Gladiator's Armor (unique + Resist). Evolving Armor might be 3-set Impervium with Steadfast Protection unique. And so forth.

 

For the rest of the powers:

• Inexhaustible. This doesn't need any slotting most of the time, but it's a decent place to plant Healing/Endurance uniques.
• Environmental Modification. At least one slot needs to go to LotG global recharge. Other than that, our defense powers need to find a place for Reactive Defenses and Shield Wall, both of which have better set bonuses that LotG for most purposes.
• Ablative Carapace. 6-slot Preventative Medicine is the obvious choice here.
• DNA Siphon. The best way to think of this power is purely as a -regen tool. So if you can get something out of slotting full sets, go ahead. But otherwise it really just needs recharge/accuracy (and it may not even need accuracy depending on your build).
• Genetic Contamination. 6-slot Might of the Tanker is the obvious choice here. It has set bonuses you want and having the proc just operate passively saves a lot of hassle.
• Parasitic Aura. I don't find this power useful either from the standpoint of the power itself or the slotting opportunities, so I generally don't take it.

For Dark Melee, I don't much like the pairing. Dark gives up damage in exchange for Siphon Life. This trade-off can be critically important with primaries that don't have health/endurance management. With Bio? It's almost pure downside.

 

But with that in mind, our single target rotation will be Smite/Siphon Life/Smite/Midnight Grasp. We either need excessive recharge or another power to close the gasp due to Midnight Grasp's long recharge, so we'll pick up Gloom from epic pools.

 

Since Bio doesn't have a good reason to split Gauntleted Fist, we can just use 6-slot Gauntleted Fist for Smite/Midnight Grasp and 5-6 slot Hecatomb for the other (depending on how much you care about capping Toxic resist - the 6th slot could also be any of a number of procs).

 

Touch of Fear is our primary AE, so that's a good place for Armageddon. If it's 5-slot, then the unusually low radius makes Fury of the Gladiator proc a solid choice.

 

We'll need a touch more E/N/F/C defense, so doing a 3/3 Eradication/Avalanche split for Shadow Maul and DNA Siphon seems a solid choice.  6-slot Mocking Beratement in Taunt gives us fantastic set bonuses as well.

 

I'd probably use Siphon Life as a proc attack - just enough damage (and no recharge) to get near ED caps with some variety of available procs filling out the rest. With accuracy bonuses from sets and potentially Tactics/Kismet, we probably don't need to invest in accuracy at all.

 

Shadow Punch and Dark Consumption don't have any purpose for the build, so skip them.

 

Soul Drain is a debate. We can't make it perma and it has a significant activation time - an activation time where our damage isn't very good. Against a single target, we'll lose about 6% of our damage to get a buff of about 12% of our damage (with +100% or so global recharge and the rotation outlined above). That's not very impressive so I'd skip it unless there's a good slotting opportunity.

 

In terms of pools, we need four defense powers ideally:

• Fighting (whatever/Tough/Weave). Environmental Modification, Weave and Maneuvers are better than other defense toggles so when we're grabbing set bonuses (and thus over-slotting +defense), those should be where we concentrate.
• Leadership (Maneuvers/Assault and maybe Tactics)
• Leaping (Combat Jumping)

For the fourth, I think Hover is the best option. It gives you additional always-on defense and doesn't carry the threat penalties of Concealment. It's also not a pure mule like Vengeance. Hover is also useful on a Tanker, especially one with Cones, because it allows you to compress the spawn more than standing on the ground would.

 

We already committed to Gloom, so that means Soul Mastery. Gloom itself can be 6-slotted with Apocalypse to give us recharge, a proc and Psi Defense. The rest of Soul Mastery isn't all that impressive, but Obliteration can be nice since we can slot it with Ragnarok and the proc is nearly auto-fire.

[Zect]

On 3/8/2024 at 10:36 AM, Jokerace said:

After playing brute's mainly and going by other people's builds.. I decided I wanted to make a "true" tanker and came up with this build.

 

I would appreciate any feed back in ways you think I could make it better or went wrong in my thinking when building it.

 

Thank you in advance,

 

Jokerace

My Tanker (Bio Armor - Dark Melee).mbd 43.03 kB · 20 downloads

 

Bio on a tanker doesn't need def/res (beyond the uniques, incidental bonuses, and the lowest-hanging fruit), and it definitely doesn't need SL def. These are the stats of a bio armor tanker with just the uniques, fighting, CJ, and 1 stack of ATIO +res proc:

 

 

So with no set bonuses, no incarnates, and no nothing, you're 11% away from the SL res hardcap and 4.2% def away from the FCEN def softcap. (And just to drive home how much mit it has out of the box, the above stats are with the malus from offensive adaptation turned on.) The set is designed to mitigate SL damage with res and FCEN with def. Let it do its job. Cap your SL res, take maneuvers or something for FCEN def and call it a day.

 

Bio has no native -def resist, and can't get enough from ageless radial to matter. The set is designed to absorb damage with colossal amounts of sustain, and kill enemies with offensive buffs of +dmg +tohit and offensive debuffs of -res -regen. Let it do its job. Build for rech and slow resist, and fill everything you can with damage procs. Rech not only increases DPS, but boosts the throughput of your sustain (heal/regen/absorb) clickies, effective against all damtypes and against autohit and irresistible damage. How much rech depends on your 2ndary and build resources, but permahasten is a good place to start.

 

Parasitic aura does not need acc. It has 1.5x base acc and you have the tohit bonus from offensive adaptation. You can safely slot 5x panacea or doctored wounds. Boost the panaceas, because PVPIO's don't lose enhancement value when exemplared.

 

DNA siphon is underslotted. Many builds slot 6 damage procs, or 5 damage procs + touch of essence +end proc. When you need to tank something really tough, you can unslot the procs and slot 5x panacea (you can carry IO's in your enhancement tray and do this even in the middle of combat) which makes it effective even when tanking a single tough foe. By replacing IO's on the fly and turning on defensive adaptation, you retain the option to turtle up at a moment's notice even on an offensively-oriented build.

 

Bio has a huge amount of end output. Therefore, you should not pursue minuscule end/recovery bonuses like that from your 2x mocking beratement because you typically have end to spare and should invest in other areas (dps). You also do not need dark consumption. Trade Bio's excellent endurance economy for dps by underslotting stamina and passing on recovery uniques, and slotting more damage procs.

 

If you play on teams a lot I recommend taking tactics and putting the gaussian's proc there. Toggles only check for procs once per 10s, but the proc rolls once for every entity buffed by tactics, including each of your teammates and pets. On a big team, it fires very often. Enjoy it before it gets fixed.

 

The way you slot shadow maul somehow misses the best parts of both sets. Dodging good set bonuses seems to be a perennial skill of forum builders. Why are you chasing the 3% damage bonus from obliteration? Just put an armageddon proc in there or something. And turn on offensive adaptation.

 

Slotting 2 different sets in the same power like this loses you set bonuses. You added 5 slots, but only gained 4 set bonuses. There are use cases for it, but don't carelessly do this everywhere.