RAD/SS or RAD/EM

[Owenknowone]

Looking for experienced feedback on these powerset combos.  I have a tanker with each.  The Rad/SS is 50 and the Rad/EM is 25.  I would like to focus on one moving forward.  What help can the community offer on these pairings?

[Anthraxus]

I'll give you a theoretical perspective; I have a RAD/Axe tanker and an Dark/EM tanker, and I've considered putting them together myself.

 

The big gimmick with Dark Armor/EM (my EM combo) is the stuns that stack with Oppressive Gloom in the DA set; it works pretty well, but I find that OG can whittle down the hit points over time, somewhat equaling the damage saved from having minions staggering around instead of shooting/hitting me. Also, chasing wandering minions can get a little annoying, especially with a mainly single target melee set.

 

The other nice thing that comes with the Dark/x pairing is of course...DARK REGEN, one of the best/most powerful heals in the game; this helps to offset the constant self-damage your tank inflicts from using Energy Transfer.

 

RAD/x, while not providing the same compounding stun effect, also has a darn good heal; more importantly though, RAD comes with Particle Shielding, a multi-trick power that provides a HUGE, fast-recharging absorb shield and awesome +recovery; combine those with the potential proc-bomb of Ground Zero, and you've got a super-tough, super-recharge, super-single target tanker with a 30-target aoe (that also heals teammates!).

 

Hard to go wrong, imho...just watch out for those cold-based villains!

[Owenknowone]

Thank you for the feedback.  Anything can work together.  My thinking is more damage will be produced Rad/SS versus Rad/EM.  

[mcdoogss]

SS is a good, but unbalanced melee set.  Rad armor has a couple of procbomb powers that help SS by supplementing the AOE.  Same can be said of EM, but I think Rage tilts the board in the SS direction.  
 

Another hilarious rad combo is rad/fire.  FSC -> combustion -> ground zero -> rad therapy -> combustion -> FSC is joyous aoe rotation

[Mini-Mega]

Tanker (Radiation Armor - Fiery Melee)NEW.mbd

 

rad/fire is really fun if you havent thought of that. 

 

this quickly turned into my main tank.

[Warshades]

This is my rad/ss tank build and is my main and one of my favorite tanks to play. I went with cross punch as an additional cone attack that I could slot force feedback proc into, but you're welcome to replace it with taunt if you like and distribute the slots as you want. A single SMoT proc will cap all resists except neg/cold. 2 stacks will cap negative as well.

Tanker (Radiation Armor - Super Strength) 2.mbd

[Story Archer]

On 5/31/2024 at 1:56 PM, Owenknowone said:

Looking for experienced feedback on these powerset combos.  I have a tanker with each.  The Rad/SS is 50 and the Rad/EM is 25.  I would like to focus on one moving forward.  What help can the community offer on these pairings?

 

My RAD/SS is by far the most fun character I have, and that's out of dozens and dozens. The trick is to go extremely heavy into damage procs and lean into the +Res/+Absorb/+Regen aspects of your defenses and simply expect to play with your Defense floored. The only SS powers I actually take are Punch, KO Blow, Rage and Foot Stomp.

 

The two mini-nukes from Rad combined with Foot Stomp makes you a bit of a burst AoE king. I also use Darkest Night and Meltdown when going up against particularly hard foes, but I almost never need them. The character plays more like a Scrapper who can take an Alpha pretty easily than a traditional Tanker - a lot of times all I need to do is drop FS -> Rad Therapy -> Ground Zero -> FS and then its off to the next mob while the rest of the group cleans up. Seriously, I can't recommend it highly enough.