Thoughts on Bio Armour?

[Ultimo]

So... I've been working on fleshing out my Fantastic Four homage characters, and I'm a little stuck on the Thing.  My original plan was to give him Stone Armour and Stone Melee, but I find I rather dislike the look of Stone Armour.  Sadly, there's no way to completely hide the rock bits on him, so I started considering alternatives.  I could just go with Invulnerability, but I've used that set on LOTS of characters, and wanted to try something new, but still thematic.

 

In the comics, Thing's rocks aren't actually ROCKS.  They're lumps of hardened muscle and tissue.  Indeed, his original look wasn't rocky at all.  This led me to consider Bio Armour, but I know very little about it.  Based on Mids, it looks like a hybrid Resistance/Defense set with a bit of Regeneration thrown in.  My question is, how does it perform?  Is there anything I should know about the set to make it work?

[Erratic1]

Bio is a top tier armor set which some consider on the verge of being overpowered. It typically relies on S/L Resistance and F/C/E/N Defense, though its actual S/L Defense is no slouch, just not enough on its own to rely upon. It has three, "Oh Shit!", click powers which heal, give an ablative barrier, and radically increase regeneration respectively. Add to that it gets three different stances to operate from--Offensive, Efficient, and Defensive which boost damage (toxic damage added to attacks) at the cost of resistance, boost endurance, and boosts Defense and Resistance. Finally, it has a damage aura as icing on the cake.

 

Invulnerability and Stone top it for pure survivability, but Bio is stupidly flexible by comparison.

 

My SS/Bio Brute was built to work primarily in Efficient stance and does not run out of endurance using it. He can swap to the other stances but mostly does not need to.

 

My Bio/DB Tanker is built to operate from Offensive stance. I would not tank hard content in that mode, but regular content and moderate difficulty settings are just fine (on SOs...have not IO'd him out yet).

 

 

Edited September 5 by Erratic1

[Xandyr]

See sig 

[biostem]

3 hours ago, Ultimo said:

the Thing

You could also just go with invulnerability, using any "minimal FX" options that might be available, then let your character's costume reflect any special changes or alterations to their physiology that are providing the protection...

[Maelwys]

10 hours ago, Ultimo said:

In the comics, Thing's rocks aren't actually ROCKS.  They're lumps of hardened muscle and tissue.  Indeed, his original look wasn't rocky at all.  This led me to consider Bio Armour, but I know very little about it.  Based on Mids, it looks like a hybrid Resistance/Defense set with a bit of Regeneration thrown in.  My question is, how does it perform?  Is there anything I should know about the set to make it work?

Bio gets a lot of S/L resistance and a large amount of absorb/regeneration/recovery buffs. It has a decent smattering of defence as well; but it has a hole in Smashing/Lethal defence and no Defence Debuff Resistance, so it's prone to being hit by cascading Defence Failure... however it seldom actually gets overwhelmed in regular content because it has three clicky powers that can grant high Regen/Absorb on demand (and the regeneration scales up with the number of enemies hit by those clicks).

You can overcome its defensive shortcomings via taking certain melee powersets and/or with IO investment.

With sufficient IO investment (it really benefits from Global Recharge Rate buffs to increase uptime on DNA Siphon, Ablative Carapace and Parasitic Aura) Bio can get very good.

The stats display in Mids for Bio toons can get a bit funky due to all the stance mechanics; but here's a quick rough example from my IO'ed-out Rad/Staff Tanker, with no special stance toggles or Guarded Spin activated:



Throw in Parasitic Aura and DNA Siphon and you can get insane levels of Regeneration and Recovery (it's not uncommon for me to see HARDcapped numbers with enough mobs around me on my Bio/Staff in-game; and you can keep that up almost indefinitely with enough global recharge!)




The Stances tweak some of the values slightly... however with a decent build most players will just find themselves running in Offensive mode 24/7.
+ Give up a little less damage resistance in favour of greater damage output and a damage proc (Offensive Stance)
+ Give up a little damage output in favour of a little more MaxHP, Defence/Resistance and a self-healing proc (Defensive Stance)
+ Greater regeneration/recovery and endurance discount (Efficient Stance)

And as mentioned previously, you can obviously plug that Melee Defence hole by taking certain secondaries like Broad Sword, Katana, Titan Weapons, Staff, etc...

In-game... my own Bio/Staff in Offensive Mode with just one foe in range (in this case a Pylon) hits the melee softcap with one copy of Guarded Spin active (stackable to 67.4% with two copies active). Resistancewise they'll be just short of the S/L resistance Hardcap even if they're not activating any powers - and when actually fighting they end up firmly at the S/L Hardcaps, a little shy of the Toxic Hardcap and hovering around 45-55% to F/C/E/N/P (due to Form of the Body Combos and SMoT IO Procs) before any other shenanigans like Barrier or Melee Core Embodiment. And that toon is definitely not built to be the most "survivable" Bio Tanker; merely a well-balanced "all content" one.














 

Edited September 5 by Maelwys

[tidge]

What @Erratic1 wrote. It's a top-tier set that is somewhat "active" and requires paying attention. Smarter slotting choices can alleviate how much attention has to be paid to most content. The lack of Defense Debuff Resistance in Bio Armor is probably the most glaring issue and can be the biggest surprise.

[Thraxen]

Just keep ablative up all the time. Use it before you jump in. Other two probably won’t need most of the time. 

[Ultimo]

Hm.  Well, I don't think I'll be using it.  Got the Adaptation powers, but the effects are these glowing lines and wisps all over the character.  Not at all what I wanted for his look.

 

I could just use Invulnerability, but I already have SO many characters with it.  I mean, it's effective but I was hoping to try something different.

[evetsleep]

9 hours ago, Ultimo said:

Hm.  Well, I don't think I'll be using it.  Got the Adaptation powers, but the effects are these glowing lines and wisps all over the character.  Not at all what I wanted for his look.

 

I could just use Invulnerability, but I already have SO many characters with it.  I mean, it's effective but I was hoping to try something different.

Concept is king 👑.  Bio Armor is awesome, but it doesn't always fit.  More power to you 🙂

[ZemX]

Yeah, it's a shame.  The Minimal FX options needs to get around to some more powers and powersets.  The original devs were really too fond of particle effects and that just doesn't fit a whole lot of comic book genre super powers.  

 

Rad Armor would be a good fit for this character too, but similar problem.  It has flying "ping pong balls" on one of the armor toggles that I suppose are meant to suggest electrons flying around a nucleus but you can only tone them down with certain color customizations.  Can't get rid of them.   Same with the taunt aura.  I get it to where it's just a subtle smoke effect near the floor surrounding the character but you can still see it.

[PyroNugget]

how has no one said SHIELD yet?

 

top tier armor set,no funky auras or graphics and the stone shield can be matched to the skin color of your toon(or since you said the THING from FF4--their is a man hole cover shield)