Critique my new tank!

[xaix1999]

So...... Just finished one tank and now going to start another!

 

I played live during the glory days of regen being OP and so I still got that nostalgia. With the plan of chasing down the OP regen, I decided to go will a willpower build. This willpower build has had some direction changes and reworks and all those fancy words for trashing everything and starting over. Went with Willpower/Katana to give it an Iron Warrior type of style.

 

This version stuck around with me since standing next to one bad guy I have 91 hp/s. Seemed like an ok start. I also ended up with close'ish defense to the soft cap for most things. I'm hoping the hybrid part of this defensive set is able to have a few layers that can help with it all.

 

2940 HP (without accolades)

746% regen (91 hp/s)

 

Defense

S: 26%

L: 44% (Does divine avalanche give S/L?)

F: 41%

C: 41%

E: 41%

N: 41%

T: 17%

P: 33%

 

M: 41% (so many 41s)

R: 20%

A: 21%.

 

Resists

S: 82%

L: 82%

F: 26%

C: 26%

E: 26%

N: 26%

T: 29%

P: 60%

 

This build is already looking expensive to me and I usually try to stay away from that anyways but I'm shooting for nostalgia so I will get to it eventually. Hopefully it will stay under 200m inf, I can have hopes! Build is included if anyone wants to check it out and/or give me some pointers on anything I might have missed.

BingBongBang - Tanker (Willpower - Katana).mbd

Edited October 24 by xaix1999

[Warshades]

There are quite a few things I would say you could improve with the build. I am by no means an expert on Willpower, my last WP tank was back when CoH was live and I haven't remade one since. Having said that, WP does not have a lot of defense debuff resistance, meaning it will be very vulnerable to cascading defense failure and you should instead focus on getting as much resistance built in to layer with your regen instead of trying to bring your defense up. By cascading defense failure, if you've not encountered the term before, it means that any mobs that have attacks that reduce defense when they hit will eventually plummet your defense to below 0%. The only way to prevent that is with defense debuff resistance (SR tanks get this at 95% and pretty much never have to worry about it). Willpower is on the very low end of 21%, less than tanks like Shield, Invuln, Ice, etc. Basically, any -def power that hits you will still apply 79% of that defense debuff and it won't take a lot of hits to make your defense non existent.

 

While it is a tank that focuses on regen, do not go out of your way to chase regen bonuses. You will get plenty of them from going for resists which will add a lot more meaningful and reliable form of damage mitigation.

 

In terms of slotting that you have; Rise to the Challenge has very low base tohit debuff. There is absolutely no point in wasting slots on the dark watcher set. If you hit effects and hover over the power, you'll see that it has a base of -3.5% to hit debuff. Heightened senses is way over slotted. Again, I would not recommend chasing defense and there is very little point in chasing recharge from red fortune if you're not including hasten in your build. The same applies for the titanium coating in mind over body (which is also taken way late and should be the first power you pick up).

 

For me personally, I don't like using hover and don't make builds revolved around it. I will include how I would slot a WP tank for reference and ideas to build around. If you do go for hover, I would suggest 2 slotting Hypersonic for the resist bonus instead. I also wouldn't recommend going the route of force of will, but that's again up to you if you're doing it for theme purposes. Resurgence is again a power I wouldn't recommend. Reviving after dying doesn't help much when you revive without your toggles on (not to say you can't get them back on if you're with a team and they have aggro, but you're failing your job as a tank if you die in the first place). If you plan on reviving after a fight, an awaken insp will handle that.

 

Again, this is just a base idea on how to slot and get more resistance. There may be more optimal power picks at various levels and better pieces of IO sets to use that I didn't explore to deeply. To highlight:

 

Resists (does not include SMoT proc which can easily be stacked 2 times, add 13.4% to all resists if counting):

s/l: 85.9

e/n: 57.1

f/c: 44.3

psi: 54.7

toxic: 23.3

 

Defense:

l/e/n/f/c: 40% (this includes divine avalanche)

melee: 37%

psi: 35%

smash: 26%

tox/range/aoe: 19%

 

Regen

786% with 1 foe in range, 98.9hp/sec (before accolades)

3018 max hp before accolades

Tanker (Willpower - Katana).mbd

 

Edit: forgot the include the blessing of zephyr kb proc in super speed. Also worth noting that this build is most definitely over the 200 mil inf that you're trying to keep under, but the most expensive parts are the Hecatomb (which you could substitute with touch of death) and tanker ATOs (not recommended to substitute as they add a good bit of e/n resist and you'll at minimum want the SMoT proc slotted).

Edited October 24 by Warshades

[xaix1999]

Thanks for the build, ideas, suggestions and reminders! The build is outside of my budget and I kinda knew that was going to be the major limiting factor anyways. The hasten and the recharge proc (which only gain 0.3 - 0.5 seconds on the attacks) is outside of my play-style. The animation time vs recharge time for those attacks is also outside my play-style, as in the powers will be recharged and waiting while I'm still in another step in my attack chain, that looks like loss of attack use. Most of the DPS is based on proc damage, which is also outside of my play-style since we are talking about powers and attack chains that are 3.5 ppm and/or 4.5 ppm which doesn't meet my play-style as the recharge and animation time for a power could be 6 attacks per minute at the slowest and so I wont count on damage that might not be there, looks like the damage went down vs my build. There is also the absorb proc which in my experience testing and using it, just isn't there in any noticeable amount. It's a very expensive and fancy combination of good stuff, but like I mentioned, it's outside my budget and doesn't meet a bunch of my play-style requirements.

[xaix1999]

Given the available feedback and the limitations I have placed on myself, I have made some improvements.

Some slotting suggestions have been made/changed, thanks @Warshades. Damage is close to unchanged.

Recharge has been improved. Resists have improved. Removed Force of Will for Concealment (maybe more ninja?).

 

Regen - 742% (90 hp/s)

HP - 2933 (without accolades)

 

Resists

S/L - 88%

F/C - 32%

E/N - 32%

T - 32%

P - 63%

 

Defense

S - 26%

L - 44% (with divine avalanche)
F/C - 41%
E/N - 40%
T - 17%

P - 33%
 

M - 41% (with divine avalanche)

R - 17%

A - 21%

BingBongBang v2 - Tanker (Willpower - Katana).mbd

Edited October 25 by xaix1999

[xaix1999]

Slight improvement for a much higher cost build. Not entirely sure this is a better/effective IO set layout.

BingBongBang v3 - Tanker (Willpower - Katana).mbd

[Sovera]

- The Gaussian proc should be in Build-up, which you did not take.  Do take it as it as it is a nice boost at the start of the fight and when you can lay down a couple AoEs while under its influence to quickly put down the mass of minions that would debuff and/or hurt you. In Build-up the Gaussian is near assured to go off where in Focused Accuracy it will when it decides it will. By both having BU and the Gaussian you will start the fight with a 160% damage boost for the first 5 seconds, and 80% for the following 5 seconds.

 

As the weakness of Willpower are debuffs it is good to think about bursting down enemies quickly.

 

- Mids is currently not accounting for the +resistance proc from Might of the Tanker. Each stack gives 6.7% and two stacks are easy to keep up so in my opinion you should check your numbers and try to aim for roughly 13%. That means about 77% instead of 90% as you have right now.

 

- Soaring Dragon and Golden Dragonfly are your big hitters. You should really not try to play without them. That would be like playing Energy Melee but not using Energy Transfer and Total Focus. It does create a problem for leveling/exemplaring as you are forced to take the weaker powers to level, but once having access to those two you should respec and take them. Exemplaring will remain a problem though you are forced to take either Sting of the Wast or Gambler's Cut since the game forces you to, and then you can pair it with Flashing Steel and Divine Avalanche as a means to get across the leveling/exemplaring.

 

- Your single-target rotation should be Divine Avalanche, Soaring Dragon, Golden Dragonfly, repeat. DA is less damage than Gambler's Cut but as Willpower you want that defense.

 

- I'd slot three Eradication in Lotus Drop and Flashing steel to finish placing your Energy/Negative defenses to 45%.

 

- I am not sure if you are sold on Grant Invisibility and Infiltration (if you are then carry on) but Combat Jumping is a 'free' 2-3% more defense and can replace Grant Invisibility as a LotG slot while also giving more mobility while in combat.

 

- If you do take Build-up you'll want Hasten to help it, which means choosing whether to keep the Concealment pool or taking Hasten. You can mimic Infiltration with a stealth IO in Sprint and then using one of the START movement runs, be it Athletic Run (normal running animation) or Ninja run (acrobatic Naruto somersaulting run). With both Sprint and one of those runs you get a pretty decent movement speed to reach your next mission so it's something to consider. Do keep Infiltration if it's something you like though.

 

- The IOs themselves are just a quibble but the build as it is will do its job, though if you are slotting purples I don't know why you wouldn't slot the Tanker's ATOs as well instead of just the procs. The cost shouldn't be something to deter you as money can be accrued without too much difficult. Then, if you decide to play a different Tanker, you can just transfer all those IOs to the new character, or, if you decided you hated Tankers and don't want to play one again, you can sell the IOs back to the auction house.

 

 

Check the guide in my signature about how to store IOs for alts or making money.

[xaix1999]

Thanks for the suggestions! I'm mostly using this build more general game-play and I'm not looking forward to min/maxing and playing someone else's play-style.

I've looked over the list here and checking the DPS of single attacks, soaring dragon and golden dragonfly don't have any more DPS with my current recharge of 47%.

The DPS I can see ranges from 35 - 38 (for DA -> SD -> GD) and 35, 50, 38 (for DA -> GC -> SotW).

I also tried to shuffle attacks around and I would lose my AOE and have only single target damage to meet the power choices you suggested, I need AOE.

Build up and procs and hasten are likely not going to be used, I usually forget that they are even there and so sit un-activated. The procs I usually assume that they don't exist as the amount of attacks that I will be doing, the procs will usually under-perform since I will be attacking once per 1.5 - 2 seconds with animations and all that.
That's 30ish actions per minute and procs are around 3.5 per minute to 4.5 per minute. The -res debuffs should act like build ups, the tanker procs will add res and absorb.
I'm just not counting on them being there all the time and so lowering my S/L seems like a detriment that would be more hindering than helpful.

 

The suggestion about taking another form of travel/movement would not be helpful as I'm using Flight for IO set resistance 3.75% F/C bonus. I'm also quite fond of Flight and use it in all of my toons.

 

Thanks for all the suggestions, I was hoping for ideas that work with my build rather than huge swinging changes.
If I wanted to min/max and play another person's play-style, I probably wouldn't be playing Willpower since everyone is so butt hurt about the defense debuff resistance.

Edited November 4 by xaix1999
auto-correct fun!

[Sovera]

I'm a big fan of Fly and have zero builds without it so I read you. The infiltration/GI suggestion swap for Combat Jumping remains (I use CJ just for the 2-3% and the LotG slot). I was offering alternatives for Infiltration since it's a travel power that does stealth and I thought this angle played into your character's theme.

 

There is no reason not to to use Build-up though. You see a pack of enemies and prepare to dive in? Click on it. Hasten you control + left click and it sets that on auto to never be thought about again until the heat death of the universe.

 

Regardless it's your build so surely do as you will. I had not seen in the first post you didn't want changes made to the build but I do have some experience with the game and can say you should at least try the swap to Hasten and Soaring Dragon + Golden Dragonfly. You CAN do the whole game on a T1 and a T2 and I have done such builds, but only when the higher tier skills were crap (looking atcha, Kinetic Melee and Savage Melee). But in Katana's case you got two good, strong skills at your disposal.

 

Simply looking at the numbers DA (95 damage with 1.6 animation), SD (265 damage with 1.6 animation), and GD (329 damage with 2 second animation will do 689 in 5.2 seconds.

 

You current build does Sting of the Wasp (125 damage in 1.32), Gambler's Cut (91 damage in 1 second) and Divine Avalanche (91 damage in 1.6) for 307 damage in 3.9 seconds.

 

The rotation with SD and GD will do approximately 3975 damage over 30 seconds.

Your rotation would do approximately 2361.6 damage over 30 seconds.

 

Of course I'm assuming you're not using Flashing Steel since you have a full rotation without it but it could probably replace one of the weaker skills like Gambler's Cut albeit for minimal gains.

 

At minimal the damage will be much higher, but it is also very aesthetically pleasing since the combo is one of the best looking ones COH has. Soaring Dragon tosses a mob in the air with a knock-up and Golden Dragonfly is us doing a little jump and swinging down doing a knock-down which sells the image of slamming the opponent to the ground. Just, please, do not trust the DPA of Mids, I can assure you the damage will skyrocket compared to what you have become used to even if it demands switching some slotting around.

 

Respecs are cheap so if it's not to your tastes then respec back. There's also the public test server if you wish to try it without burning your free respecs or spending 2 million on a respec recipe.

 

 

But this changes nothing that if you're enjoying the spec as it is and you're not dying then why change? Carry on, it's a game, we literally play these to have fun and if you're having fun isn't the goal achieved?

 

Do try to squeeze in those three Eradications into Sweep and Lotus to finish softcapping your E/N. It will still melt under praetorian robots but better to start softcapped than 5-6% under.

 

 

This is what I'd use in the end-game after amassing money: BingBongBang v3 - Tanker (Willpower - Katana).mbd

 

At least it'll give some more slotting ideas and maybe you'll find something useful to adopt. Most of it can be adapted to be cheaper.

[xaix1999]

https://ibb.co/61gmNZZ

This link is where I'm getting my number and this is also from Mids. The damage increase doesn't look as dramatic as you are suggesting, probably all proc damage that you are talking about. When I look at these DPS numbers there is recharge of the power accounted for and the animation time of the attack, I think you might be missing some information in your calculations. Gambler's Cut is a higher DPS attack than others because the animation time is shorter, if you ctrl+left click and let it run you will get those numbers. I had to look up those numbers from City of Data in order for it to make sense.

I have also stated that proc damage isn't the be all and end all as it's very easy to attack 10 times per minute and the 3.5-4.5 ppm won't be able to keep up with consistent attacks. Looks good on paper as an architect but the practical as an engineer doesn't show as much promise.

The damage increase is purely from recharge increase, which I have said I'm not meta building this toon. The reason my asking for suggestions is to see if I'm missing something obvious, I get that everyone wants to perma-hasten 100% all the time, I am not like everyone. This is comparable to the absorb proc you have slotted in Rise to the Challenge, 600 absorb sounds great, though in my experience this never proc's while I'm at 95%-100% hp, which I will be at most of the time.

I already have a WP/Kat toon able to do +3/8 S/L farms as a bench test for the viability of my v2 build. Four of my 6 incarnates are tier 4 and the last two are tier 3. Willpower is very much a binary type of tanking build, you are either at 100% HP or zero very shortly after you move from being 100%. I am not cycling any of my incarnates to support the base tank of the build, they are mostly there for enemy groups such as the malta which will nuke your end.

 

I do like the high amount of defense that this build has but the over all build is very franken slotted. The drastic change in defense is welcomed but the HP regen has been reduced, the HP regen is very much the main mitigation of WP. The 40ish % I had previously was intended to be good enough before my team refreshes their buffs. Your build is very much more of a solo build which I'm inclined to say that I won't be farming in AE or pocket d that much.

Thank you for the suggestions, I'm looking into the added defense you have slotted, which is about 11% to 12%.

[Maelwys]

1 hour ago, xaix1999 said:

https://ibb.co/61gmNZZ

This link is where I'm getting my number and this is also from Mids. The damage increase doesn't look as dramatic as you are suggesting, probably all proc damage that you are talking about. When I look at these DPS numbers there is recharge of the power accounted for and the animation time of the attack, I think you might be missing some information in your calculations. Gambler's Cut is a higher DPS attack than others because the animation time is shorter, if you ctrl+left click and let it run you will get those numbers. I had to look up those numbers from City of Data in order for it to make sense.

I have also stated that proc damage isn't the be all and end all as it's very easy to attack 10 times per minute and the 3.5-4.5 ppm won't be able to keep up with consistent attacks. Looks good on paper as an architect but the practical as an engineer doesn't show as much promise.

 

That still looks like a Mids graph. That said, Damage per Activation in Mids should be fairly accurate as long as you're using the Arcanatime of the power rather than it's raw animation time (there's a tickbox on the options screen for it). For full stats you'll need to check each power's City of Data entry.

 

Best case Single Target damage for Katana is typically a combination of Gambler's Cut, Soaring Dragon and Golden Dragonfly. A Tanker could probably sit with DA/GC>SD>DA/GC>GD pretty comfortably, swapping DA and GC around depending on the current level of damage mitigation required (although that will require a fair bit of global recharge to achieve... so substituting SoTW for GC or using multiple filler attacks is an option)

Sting of the Wasp is a filler attack. Flashing Steel and Lotus Drops plus Golden Dragonfly (Gauntlet will make it much easier to catch multiple foes within GD's narrow arc on a Tanker) are your AOEs and so in actual gameplay will feature quite a bit. Divine Avalanche is there purely to buff your Defense and can be substituted for one of the other attacks if you need it.

 

You seem to have the wrong notion about Procs chances. The listed approximate "procs per minute" figure is only accurate in auto/toggle powers. Clicky attacks use a formula which means their ACTUAL activation chance rises drastically as the power's recharge time and animation time increases. It is not uncommon to see a capped 90% activation rate for damage procs in Single Target attacks like Golden Dragonfly; and so people tend to load these up with procs whilst using Global Recharge Reduction (from Hasten or Set Bonuses) to get a workable attack chain.

AoE powers work similarly but the formula also takes into account their radius and arc (the base values before Tanker Gauntlet). Since a larger part of Tanker performance comes via their buffed AOEs, I'd very much recommend sticking at least 2-3 damage procs into The Lotus Drops (best case I'd tend to aim for 2x Acc/Dam HOs, 3x Damage Procs and a Fury of the Gladiator -res Proc) to drastically increase the average damage it does on each swing.

[Sovera]

4 hours ago, xaix1999 said:

https://ibb.co/61gmNZZ

This link is where I'm getting my number and this is also from Mids. The damage increase doesn't look as dramatic as you are suggesting, probably all proc damage that you are talking about. When I look at these DPS numbers there is recharge of the power accounted for and the animation time of the attack, I think you might be missing some information in your calculations. Gambler's Cut is a higher DPS attack than others because the animation time is shorter, if you ctrl+left click and let it run you will get those numbers. I had to look up those numbers from City of Data in order for it to make sense.

I have also stated that proc damage isn't the be all and end all as it's very easy to attack 10 times per minute and the 3.5-4.5 ppm won't be able to keep up with consistent attacks. Looks good on paper as an architect but the practical as an engineer doesn't show as much promise.

The damage increase is purely from recharge increase, which I have said I'm not meta building this toon. The reason my asking for suggestions is to see if I'm missing something obvious, I get that everyone wants to perma-hasten 100% all the time, I am not like everyone. This is comparable to the absorb proc you have slotted in Rise to the Challenge, 600 absorb sounds great, though in my experience this never proc's while I'm at 95%-100% hp, which I will be at most of the time.

I already have a WP/Kat toon able to do +3/8 S/L farms as a bench test for the viability of my v2 build. Four of my 6 incarnates are tier 4 and the last two are tier 3. Willpower is very much a binary type of tanking build, you are either at 100% HP or zero very shortly after you move from being 100%. I am not cycling any of my incarnates to support the base tank of the build, they are mostly there for enemy groups such as the malta which will nuke your end.

 

I do like the high amount of defense that this build has but the over all build is very franken slotted. The drastic change in defense is welcomed but the HP regen has been reduced, the HP regen is very much the main mitigation of WP. The 40ish % I had previously was intended to be good enough before my team refreshes their buffs. Your build is very much more of a solo build which I'm inclined to say that I won't be farming in AE or pocket d that much.

Thank you for the suggestions, I'm looking into the added defense you have slotted, which is about 11% to 12%.

 

I could mimic your current build and throw it against a pylon and then do the same with the Soaring Dragon/Golden Dragonfly variant but I'm coming to terms that you would disregard the results under some reason or another. Damage is damage, whether it comes from procs or from anything else. If you want to see the proc chance of things just hover over the damage and the proc chance will be shown.

 

I'm not quite sure why you're explaining to me, of all people, how you think that procs work or why they are 'bad', but to add the 'shield proc' is mostly useless and it is there to reap the fat 6% resistances to E/N. Both S/L and E/N are the major forms of damage in this game and what is usually built for. Fire and Cold, Toxic and Psi, are rarer and usually come in small doses where we can quickly defeat the mob that is doing it. I sacrificed another 3% E/N in Focused Accuracy to finish pushing S/L a little bit higher but mirroring Build-up's slotting would have pushed E/N resistances to 50%, which in turn having the about-ish 18% from two stacks of the ATO and Barrier would have pushed to 68%.

 

Getting better defenses/resistances beats the loss of the 6 HPS of regen, IMO. Just ask any Regeneration player how well things work in being a bag of HP and regen when damage comes in hot.

 

 

In closing I'm not sure why you'd be farming in AE or farming roleplayers in Pocket D or why asking for a critique and then explain why your choices are better when critiqued, but it's best to build for the times when there are no buffers in a team or buffers of the wrong sort. As you've noticed in a team it doesn't matter while doing normal content. A single person can already solo that normal content so when there are 8 present it's simply overkill and everything melts in five or six seconds and there is no need to overthink it.

 

Your build WILL do all content just fine in a team and even in solo, so under that prism there is no need to change a single bit of even the first one.

 

Carry on having fun, that's all we can ask for.

[Maelwys]

3 hours ago, Sovera said:

Getting better defenses/resistances beats the loss of the 6 HPS of regen, IMO. Just ask any Regeneration player how well things work in being a bag of HP and regen when damage comes in hot.

This. 

Aim for >45% Defense to all types (because you'll be up against Defense Debuffs and your Resistance to those is pretty poor without Ageless running. So fighting stuff like Cimerorans will suck) and >83% Resistance to the important ones (as the Superior Might of Tanker proc will be adding 6.7% per stack; and typically sits at 2x-3x stacks. Being able to hit 100% resistance is valuable because it completely negates resistance debuffs, despite the hardcap being 90%)

To give you an idea of what an average endgame WP will look like when it actually makes use of the procs and globals; open the below in Mids then add anything between 13.4% -> 30.1% resistance to everything (2x SMoT procs -> 3x SMoT Procs plus the Reactive Defenses Global)

zTanker - WP_SS IOed (CrossPunch).mbd

[Nemu]

Have you considered synergy instead of nerdy math with numbers? Knockdown is pretty good mitigation and the last two big hitters as well as energy torrent all do that. It can buy you time, reduce incoming spikes of damage and allow your regen to work. Pair that up with strength of will and/or rune of protection and you can create pockets of HP buffers for fights and let inspirations cover the downtime.

[Maelwys]

Obligatory XKCD:

[xaix1999]

On 11/5/2024 at 12:36 PM, Maelwys said:

Obligatory XKCD:

 

BingBongBang v4 - Tanker (Willpower - Katana).mbd

Edited November 6 by xaix1999
nice person showed me a slight improvement and so i'm updating via their request