Build Advice

[hobopete]

I have only 1 real toon.   The Spectacular Septic Tank.   She's a bit off meta, I am aware.   Looking for advice on how to improve.   Posted build is Septic as she sits now.   She does fairly well,  hold aggro well, pulls well is fairly tanky

 

Tankyness as I conceptualize it on Septic is about a few layers of defense: 

 

1) Pretty close to maxed out resists with a marked Psi hole.   Psi hole has burned me a couple of times on maps with Death Widows.

2) Some sort of combination of defenses and - to hit powers (darkness/beta decay) 

3) Elements of soft control (I like my knockdowns and hold from dominate) 

4) Pumping of the damage shield with the entomb and SGF procs (unhappy that current SGF proc seems to rarely fire) 

 

Any/all advice is welcome. I have enough resources to fund most reasonable rebuild advice.   Sort of like that Septic is a bit unique and I'm more looking on advice on how to make her better rather than advice on how to remake her to the meta.   Thanks.

Septic Tank - Queen of the Porcelain Throne - Tanker (Radiation Armor - Dark Melee).mbd

[Warshades]

If you want SGF to fire more often, you really need to avoid slotting recharge into the power, which doesn't work out well if you put the whole set piece in it. What you could do is split the set into 2 sets of 3 pieces each if you want to plug the negative resistance a bit more (not really worth it imo) or just slot the 1 SGF proc and avoid and recharge boosting enhancements in the other 5 slots in SL. I can take a closer look at the build after work today and see if I can offer any adjustments to make it more tanky.

[Carnifax]

It's tricky because the way I solved the Psi hole on my Rad/Martial was by not spending slots on Epic attacks. All I took was Focused Accuracy for the -ToHit resistance. The slots went on 6 slotting Armour toggles. One more Unbreakable Guard in Proton, Fallout, Alpha for ~11.5% extra psi resists. Then add in Impervium Armour unique into Alpha, Proton, Fallout, Tough & Meltdown for an extra 30% psi. 

 

Couple of stacks of Superior Might of the Tanker and I've capped Psi resists. 

 

You're way more offensive, which is totally fine, but it costs slots. My goal was always "Tough as nails, few holes, someone else is in charge of damage". I'll add my build to show you what I mean. But hard to switch from one to the other without losing your uniqueness (ditto with the 3 power choices for Fold Space but Fold Space is so much fun I can understand why). 

 

You didn't specify your Destiny choice, I'd go Ageless Radial. The debuff resistance can be a life saver, if you find your Defenses floored it's a great "reset button". 

 

 

Tanker - Radiation Armor - MA_hybrid.mbd

[tidge]

This is one of the reasons I generally eschew Epic/Patron attacks:

 

1 minute ago, Carnifax said:

It's tricky because the way I solved the Psi hole on my Rad/Martial was by not spending slots on Epic attacks.

 

Whenever I see the potential to add Epic/Patrons, my mind immediately goes to:

• OOH... chance to proc with %Damage!, and/or
• OOOH... chance to add a 5-piece purple set!

Which is usually making me think of how to come up with anywhere between 3 and 4 extra slots for those powers... and for Tankers specifically, there are a LOT of pretty good options for Quality-of-Life options by sprinkling whatever extra slots among other powers, such as:

• more than one Power Transfer %Heal
• Resistance and/or Defense Globals (LotG, Impervium, etc.)
• KB protection (for Tanks that need it), also Slow resistance
• +MaxHP, positional defenses, etc. from set bonuses

Often those pieces/sets fit nicely into Tanker primary powers.

[hakurr]

overall PSI is really not all that common over all the enemies you could be fighting but this is how i would solve it.

 

get rid of taunt as a tank every power you have that hits a target will taunt them and radiation / dark melee has allot of AOE powers that will cause taunt

replace it with Meltdown you can pretty much slot it with anything and the crash is very manageable 

you resists are pretty good i would take  resilient core as my alpha and melee core as my hybrid i know this lowers your def but most the time you wont need it 

and when you have issues with Psi activate meltdown this will bring your Psi resist up to 88%

and take Ageless Radial for 2 reasons one the debuff resistance and also so when your meltdown drops you can use it to help with the endurance

and last if in a tight spot you can activate eye of magus  and layer with defense when absolutely needed

 

 

Septic Tank - Queen of the Porcelain Throne - Tanker (Radiation Armor - Dark Melee).mbd

[hobopete]

Thanks for the responses.   I appreciate the advice very much.   Will get ageless radial epiphany when I get on again.

 

Related to some of the comments without trying to be defensive.   The psi hole only kinda sorta bugs me.   The widows weee just the first mob where I got hit really fast since I did an over leveled mission and ran into sappers for the first time.

 

I like psi epic a bunch because the powers from dark are very “flat” as I think of them, no knockback (for FF procs), no holds (for entomb proc).   The procs on dominate, particularly the entomb fire like crazy.   I get 400 hp from the entomb proc and feel like it makes Septic a good deal tankier.  I could cut that power down a bit, but I like having 100% slow resistance 

 

Thanks for all the advice.   Septic has been me learning by experimenting and I appreciate the advice of folks with more tanking experience

[Warshades]

Here is a slight adjustment to your build. Personally, I would not skip Gamma Boost, it offers a lot of recovery debuff resist and is worth it for that alone. Otherwise you'll find yourself quickly out of endurance tanking someone like LR in MLTF and as you mentioned, encountering sappers like from Malta. CJ was replaced for it as it offers minimal defense and acts mostly as a LotG mule.

 

I also would personally take melee radial embodiment for the hybrid. While it's true that radiation armor has no defense debuff resist, you also aren't always fighting against enemies with defense debuffs. More importantly, once you close the psi hole a bit more, the only thing you really need to boost your resist against is cold and imo you don't get much value out of additional +res when everything else is taken care of by 1-2 SMoT procs. The slotting I have in SL should get the SGF proc to fire off a lot more since the only recharge boosting enhancement in it is in the +absorb proc itself. Personally, I rarely find myself using SL unless I actually need to (I'll usually pair dark melee with defensive sets like SR or Shield). If you find yourself in a similar situation, you can swap the slotting of MG and SL.

 

As @tidge mentioned, the power transfer %heal would boost survival more and you can put them in Harmonic, Stamina, and Gamma Boost.

 

14 hours ago, Carnifax said:

It's tricky because the way I solved the Psi hole on my Rad/Martial was by not spending slots on Epic attacks. All I took was Focused Accuracy for the -ToHit resistance. The slots went on 6 slotting Armour toggles. One more Unbreakable Guard in Proton, Fallout, Alpha for ~11.5% extra psi resists. Then add in Impervium Armour unique into Alpha, Proton, Fallout, Tough & Meltdown for an extra 30% psi. 

 

While this is a way to boost psi resist, I personally do not find it worth it in this case. Radiation armor very easily caps out your toxic resist. Rather than going for a 5th unbreakable in the armor toggles (3.75% to psi and toxic, but toxic is useless in this case), an impervium psi resist unique (which you can slot up to 5 of) boosts your psi resist by 6%. This is much better value for trying to close the psi hole.

 

13 hours ago, hobopete said:

Thanks for the responses.   I appreciate the advice very much.   Will get ageless radial epiphany when I get on again.

 

On this I would disagree a bit. I think there is definite good usage out of ageless radial for armor sets like Stone, Invulnerability, and Shield who reach around 50% defense debuff resist. Even at the minimum effects of ageless radial past 60 seconds, those armor sets are hitting mid 70's on the defense debuff resist with ageless radial. This isn't the case for Radiation which starts at 0% defense debuff resist and would be sitting at the low 20's after 60 seconds.. Gamma Boost will take care of recovery/endurance debuff resist, you've got near soft cap melee defense, and then if the defense is debuffed, you still have your abosrb shields, resists, and heal procs/siphon to fall back on. Barrier Core would actually work as a better alternative to Meltdown (which only boosts resists anyway) as an emergency panic button to get you to very high defenses for the first 30 seconds. Judgement is another place to get some good survival tools. Vorpal radial provides a high defense boost for 10 seconds. Void radial can debuff enemies damage. Alternatively you could go for something that inflicts a mez. If you feel 61% psi resist isn't enough, you can consider finding a spare slot somewhere and putting in aegis +psi resist in Fallout Shelter.

 

Hope this helps out. I've not tested this first so definitely consider using test server to see how it performs first, but this is probably how I would do a more survival focused rad/dark/psi pairing.

 

Tanker (Radiation Armor - Dark Melee)2.mbd

[tidge]

A quick comment on the build above: IIRC the set bonuses from 2xShield Wall and 2xLotG are the same, the Shield Wall piece(s) can be boosted to 50+5 and that set bonus will scale down because Shield Wall is a PVP set.

 

I have Radiation Therapy slotted a little differently: It has the Gauntleted Fist Recharge/%absorb ATO and 2x Touch of the Nictus (%damage and Heal/Recharge) and the %damage. I wanted the recharge time improved on it.

 

For Beta Decay I opted for a single HO: Enzyme (Endurance Reduction/Debuff) instead of the rando %proc.

 

I took Gamma Boost early, I have 2x Power Transfer and 2x Numina in it... I like 2xNumina on Tankers.

 

If I can, I'll post a snapshot of my Rad/Dark build.

 

 

 

[tidge]

Here is my "play with friends, still leveling" Rad/Dark Tanker (plan, it is currently in the 30s)

 

 

It's a little thin on early level attacks for my taste, but Radiation is a "take every power" armor set for me.

 

I usually don't take the Fighting Pool on Tankers (any more) unless I feel like I REALLY need Weave. This is one of my few Tankers that doesn't have Wall of Force on it, I love that power for a low-level AoE on Tankers.

 

I did put Hasten in the build, which is a little unusual for me... but my Tankers with "survival click powers" tend to be the characters that I want to have Hasten.

 

As previously noted, I try to get the attacks lined up before the Epic/Patron pools are available, so I tend to go light with slot uses and end-build.

[Warshades]

2 hours ago, tidge said:

I took Gamma Boost early

 

Fully support taking this earlier. When I was rebuilding the combo I ended up replacing CJ late so it ended up being picked late in the build.

 

2 hours ago, tidge said:

I have Radiation Therapy slotted a little differently: It has the Gauntleted Fist Recharge/%absorb ATO

 

This is actually a really good spot for it as well since the power is up relatively often and the long base recharge will help make sure the proc fires off often.

 

2 hours ago, tidge said:

IIRC the set bonuses from 2xShield Wall and 2xLotG are the same, the Shield Wall piece(s) can be boosted to 50+5 and that set bonus will scale down because Shield Wall is a PVP set.

 

Also a great point and worth doing to get every tiny bit of enhancement value possible. I think my reasoning was that LotG would be a bit cheaper to slot in.

 

23 hours ago, tidge said:

Whenever I see the potential to add Epic/Patrons, my mind immediately goes to:

• OOH... chance to proc with %Damage!, and/or
• OOOH... chance to add a 5-piece purple set!

Which is usually making me think of how to come up with anywhere between 3 and 4 extra slots for those powers... and for Tankers specifically, there are a LOT of pretty good options for Quality-of-Life options by sprinkling whatever extra slots among other powers, such as:

 

This might be more of personal preference and how much someone expects out of the epic/patron pools for tanks. I personally think that they do have a good use. If nothing else, psionic tornado does do KD which is additional mitigation. Also doesn't hurt that it's a target AoE and can help with grabbing aggro of a mob (particularly for dark melee which is a bit lacking on good AoE options). Dominate is actually a great ST damage power when fully proc'd out, but can also be used to slot the absorb unique as OP has done. Harmonic in particular is nice for endurance heavy combinations. Personally, I think they add their own quality of life options to a build, but they may not meet everyone's expectations for them.

 

Not that tanks need any more help, but a revamp of their epic/patron powers wouldn't hurt as I will admittedly say that I use very few of the options (the most used being psi, soul, and the occasional energy mastery in that order).