Please critique my experiment

[Lusiphur Malache]

I was watching a streamer who was playing a stone/electric tank.  I couldn't see his entire enhancement page, but I seen enough to make me wonder if they knew how to build a character.  Fueled by whiskey and not enough sleep, this is what I cooked up on Mids.  Is this functional or did I make critical mistakes?  I've only made and played a few tankers and that was as a 0 range blaster for the most part.

 

No Moss - Tanker (Stone Armor - Electrical Melee).mbd

[Sovera]

On 4/21/2024 at 4:50 PM, Lusiphur Malache said:

I was watching a streamer who was playing a stone/electric tank.  I couldn't see his entire enhancement page, but I seen enough to make me wonder if they knew how to build a character.  Fueled by whiskey and not enough sleep, this is what I cooked up on Mids.  Is this functional or did I make critical mistakes?  I've only made and played a few tankers and that was as a 0 range blaster for the most part.

 

No Moss - Tanker (Stone Armor - Electrical Melee).mbd 42.5 kB · 3 downloads

 

 

Friends don't let friends build while drunk 😄 

 

There are a few mistakes like Lightning Rod, Chain Induction, and Jacob's Ladder being attacks and not slotted for damage. C'mon man, you're a Tanker but you still need to defeat mobs by hitting them 😛 You also forgot Rock Shield Armor.

 

It depends if you want to be permanently in Granite form or not. Nowadays there is almost no need to and we give up a lot to even be in Granite. More than just the penalties listed in the Granite tooltip since Granite also turns off the recharge AND the psi defense from Minerals, the damage proc from Brimstone, and the recovery from Crystal Armor. Which also means there is almost no point in slotting these powers as they are only mules.

 

If you did NOT intend to be in Granite form all the time then Rock Shield Armor is your source of S/L defense.

 

 

I have a Stone/Elec in the Stone Armor thread in my signature that has 45% defense to all (50% with Weave turned on, 55% with Barrier's 5%) and 70% to all resists except psi (but it has defense to psi), 76% with a second ATO stack, 81% with Barrier's 5%. Granite is not even taken but can replace Weave since Weave is basically a LotG mule and buffer in case of meeting defense debuffers.

Edited April 24 by Sovera

[Lusiphur Malache]

11 hours ago, Sovera said:

There are a few mistakes like Lightning Rod, Chain Induction, and Jacob's Ladder being attacks and not slotted for damage. C'mon man, you're a Tanker but you still need to defeat mobs by hitting them 😛 You also forgot Rock Shield.

I recently made a discovery with a scrapper. That did slot for damage, but not as much as I'm used to, it still packed a wallop. I think I took that idea to an extreme here and was leaving damage to teammates. I don't even recall seeing Rock Shield, probably due to whiskey.

 

11 hours ago, Sovera said:

Granite is not even taken but can

I thought it was heretical to not take granite.

[Sovera]

4 minutes ago, Lusiphur Malache said:

I recently made a discovery with a scrapper. That did slot for damage, but not as much as I'm used to, it still packed a wallop. I think I took that idea to an extreme here and was leaving damage to teammates. I don't even recall seeing Rock Shield, probably due to whiskey.

 

I thought it was heretical to not take granite.

 

You can still take it, and the penalties were even alleviated in the last Stone Armor rework. There is just not much of a point nowadays as the rework made the other armors pick up the slack that Granite was carrying by itself.

[PLVRIZR]

13 hours ago, Lusiphur Malache said:

I don't even recall seeing Rock Shield, probably due to whiskey.

 

I thought it was heretical to not take granite.

The T1 armor is actually named "Rock Armor"...and no, don't ever skip it 😁.

 

Not anymore.  I take it as more of a mule (for the Unbreakable Guard +7.5% hit points) and the ability to take that form, for thematic purposes.  Back on Live, it was a must.  With the QoL changes to Stone, it's really superfluous, now.  As Sovera mentioned, there are outstanding benefits/bonuses from the other armors, that you immediately lose when you activate Granite.  I run PLVRIZR 99.9% outside of Granite, and breeze through +4/8 content, even exemplared down from 50+3.

[Zect]

I’m on mobile, so I can’t look at the build currently. However, the best way to look at granite is to see it as way of trading off defenses for dps. You can get the majority of your mits from granite, then that frees up the rest of your builds to be devoted to damage (procbombing). If you aren’t doing something like this you’re likely better off with a non-granite build.

[DarkRevelation]

On 4/23/2024 at 7:15 PM, Lusiphur Malache said:

I recently made a discovery with a scrapper. That did slot for damage, but not as much as I'm used to, it still packed a wallop. I think I took that idea to an extreme here and was leaving damage to teammates. I don't even recall seeing Rock Shield, probably due to whiskey.

 

I thought it was heretical to not take granite.

 

Everything Sovera and PLVRIZR told you is accurate. You don't have to take granite. I have one Stone/Rad that I use two builds on; one has granite and one doesn't. The non-granite build does fine, plays faster and does get the benefit from using Minerals, Crystal Armor and Brimstone Armor. I can all but AFK that build in most situations. It is very solid and fun to play. It needs some work, but that is on me and my build, not Stone Armor without granite. 

 

The granite build though blows it away IMO for durability, especially in extreme situations. You hear/read people saying 'well this build is almost unkillable' and for the most part they are right from what I have seen, albeit somewhat limited in my semi-recent return. If you REALLY want to be unkillable without the tricks that these other builds use, look at granite. When I say tricks I mean 'well if I use this power on cool-down and this click is ready and I have 10 mobs around me and my incarnate is up and I rotate these things and  ..... etc.'. Let me show you a build I did and you make your own judgement. It is not a cheap build. It will cost you, but it is effective. 

 

I utilized what Zect said here:

On 4/24/2024 at 10:03 PM, Zect said:

I’m on mobile, so I can’t look at the build currently. However, the best way to look at granite is to see it as way of trading off defenses for dps. You can get the majority of your mits from granite, then that frees up the rest of your builds to be devoted to damage (procbombing). If you aren’t doing something like this you’re likely better off with a non-granite build.

 

110% agree with him. This is a proc build for one reason only; procs do not get punished by granite's damage penalty. It is similar to when you have Super Strength and your damage drops during the rage dump penalty, you use a proc'ed power and it hits for proc damage and it isn't mitigated/punished, hitting for the 'correct' amount. Similar is using 'Sands of Mu' (don't laugh, I do it sometimes on my Invuln/SS tank during the drop) because it isn't penalized/mitigated either. 

 

Before I jump into it, I used Rad Melee and I don't know how RM will translate to Electrical. The lack of a second damage aura is tough to overcome I believe, simply for the procs. You may be able to make up for it with using proc'ed out Lightning Rod and Lightning Clap (which will be more difficult to get multiple damage procs in, but should be able to get at least two in there, plus FF) and using Force Feedback for recharge reduction. 

 

Here it is:

 

 

That is a straight up, plain, out of the box, stock base build, with a lot of very expensive enhancements to be fair. No clicks required, no incarnates running, no waiting on a cooldown, no mob count necessary, and no powers rotating. What you see there is what you get. Period.  It doesn't have to worry about getting the recharge zapped with 95% Recharge Debuff resistance, so Earth's Embrace is perma'ed with or without Hasten. The build can get very close to perma-hasten, if not obtain it, depending on the number of mobs that Energy Torrent hits. I don't have that checked in the build so there is no false sense of recharge time. To speed things up Energy Torrent procs the Force Feedback. A lot of damage is from the dual damage auras proc'ing. Atom Smasher procs as well. Use Energy Torrent on cooldown and aim for the highest amount of mobs available. You want ET to proc FF, and use Atom Smasher on cooldown as well. The more mobs you hit, the more proc chances you have. It you have one mob or no mobs Hasten is around/under one minute down, which isn't bad for where you start with Granite. 

 

Everything is here, including the MIDS file.

 

I drone on and on about the build, address the psi hole, as well as a lot more. Spaghetti Betty also drops a build there, and if you haven't seen their stuff you most definitely should look. They are an incredible builder, and have some awesome ideas IMO.  If nothing else hopefully you find something interesting in one of the two builds and can utilize it in the future.

 

Granite isn't for everyone, and totally has issues, i.e. you will learn the granite hop if you use it, as well as teleport, but it can be incredible. Groups in most content currently blow things away so fast that it doesn't really shine until things get hard, like really hard. You will be a teleporting fool on easy stuff. You will TP into a group and they are all down before you get your 2nd Atom Smasher off. It isn't worth it to use on a lot of content because realistically it just isn't difficult enough and the mobs melt so fast. This is the main reason to NOT use Granite IMO, and what the others were telling you as well. I started off with 'Everything Sovera and PLVRIZR told you is accurate.' and they are right. Well built Granite is awesome, but probably too awesome for most content. I am hopeful for a day in the future when some insane extreme content comes out that squashes most tanks, because I am waiting on that day. This build will be ready.

 

Well built Granite is what other builds use tricks to try to get to.  I can't match that granite build for durability on any other armors set I use. It doesn't mean the other armors aren't good enough or can't do a great/incredible job. My first love is Invuln/Fire tanks and I have multiples of them right now. If you asked me to grab one tank and one tank only to go do some content, I am grabbing my Rad/Fire tank because it is awesome to play. It just means that granite is still impressive after all of these years, old armor or not, and especially in extreme circumstances. Unfortunately those are few and very far between right now. 

 

Good luck to you.