OK so defense works like this: In DPS gear you get 15% mitigation, regardless of your CR. As long as you're within 30CR of the content, you take the same damage from attacks regardless of your defense. I don't have the formula for how gear defense scales-- it's a geometric progression now -- but in DPS stance mitigation is always the same. When you increase your defense over what DPS gear gives, that's when you take less damage. And the damage decrease scales in a nice, predictable way-- double defense is half the damage in. And blocking is +100% defense. Penryn and I spent hours on the test server in gotham under siege getting zapped by amazons figuring this out. Anyway here's the defense scaling chart I used for this guide. You can ignore the last column above-- that was for a 50K test that I never included. DPS mitigation *may* actually be 20% instead of 15%. Moja was a little cagey about it. But damage in definitely scales as I show above.
Okay I want to battle tank as a rage player. I don’t have a pull move, I’m relying on my powers to taunt. I can do every alert and raid as is. I’ll focus on elite once I get all the pieces of elite gear and more skill points. Before I go any further I just want to say that the tank artifact buff health isn’t worthwhile at least in my view as I have said in another topic. The might artifact needs adjusting as well. The only good artifact is the supercharge one. I currently have 181 skill points and allocated 158 into health. Why? Because the highest mods only give 178 might and the health mod gives 445. The sheer amount of effort and time it takes to create just one mod is tiresome so I figured the more health you have the better. I did mess with switching my skill points into might and my damage did increase somewhat. So far I have two mods created that are 445. Both of which are from my 195 rings. I’m wearing all tank gear and at a cr of 221. My base health is 50977, defense is 26571, dominance is 6147. My might is 14438. As I said I’m able to do all raids and alerts perfectly fine except for elite. My loadout is Outrage-Severe Punishment- Redirected Rage-Berserk-Lacerate-Relentless Anger The thing about rage is you only need Severe Punishment it doesn’t go based on your dominance. The only thing dominance would have an effect on is my rage shield. Relentless Anger is my supercharge generator and my plasma burn pi. I usually start with that power too. Berserk as we all know is the most powerful supercharge in the game. No other rage supercharge is worth using. My question is can I put a dps gear or is it better to have all tank gear? If I can put a dps gear on which one would it be? Back, hands, face, feat, hands etc..
So.. I've been back on Tanking and jumped straight into ZooE yesterday with my Brick-Tank. It was an Desaster lol Just to get it straight. Using full health and then dom is better than full dom and then health (can use 195sp + 116 sp on health/dom currently). As a loadout I run: Double pull brick totem fortify Gemstone Should I replace Epicenter (just love it) with jackhammer? Also a question abou jackhammer - brick. If Brick dies, but I used JH before it died.. will the stoneskin form JH be active automatically or do i need to hit JH again after Brick dies?
Before update 80, you could wear a few pieces of dps gear. Now, I wouldn't. Things hit much harder. I'm not a race tank, so I have no idea how to tell you to spec. My tank is atomic, and he is heavy on might and dom.
I haven't Earth tanked elite yet. Were you solo? As far as I can tell you're specced correctly. I always have jackhammer on my bar when I Earth tank anything in case brick dies-- and yes you have to use it without brick to get stone skin. The good news is jackhammer is also a decent juggle. The bad news is that I'm always tempted to play like a DPS Hopefully some more experienced Earth Tanks will chime in. And yes, I'm aware that the Rage section is out of date. I'll get around to updating it soon
Yes, but only for the 1st boss. We didn't make the 2nd boss because of incoming insults towards me (never tanked zooe, just solohealed it all time) and then i left, because of ppl being stupid (at 2nd boss it wasn' my fault at all lol ). Ok thanks for the spec-info. Mh ok.. so I really have to rebuild my loadout and maybe run more armories.. Ye JH is a nice juggle.. always liked it because of that.. but kinda hate JH because of the revamp.. Playing like a dps shouldn't be a problem for me.. I really hate earth dps with a burning passion. And my pet does enough damage while i'm blocking.
Ok so i wouldnt bother with double pull, i personality dont. As for jackhammer as a backup in case brick dies, when brick does die we get 5 seconds of protection as if he was till up so you have time to summon him so once again i wouldnt bother with jackhammer for the times when he does die. What i use instead is depending on the content hardlight shield or amazon deflection. For certain bosses like the first two in pan i dont even bother running with a pull simply because you dont need one since adds dont spawn so my loadout for those bosses are brick totem fortify Amazon d hardlight gemstone
This is solid advice. When I have tanked Elites, both as Earth or Fire, I’ve looked to drop pull moves where possible in favour of more mitigation powers. Hardlight shield and Amazonian Deflect are definitely worth considering. Also, if you haven’t got all ready, I feel the personal dampening fields are a good addition to your loadout.
I do on my fire but for earth and rage i didnt see it as being necessary. I manged to tank pane on my earth char at 216, earth and rage are overpowered
Pardon my ignorance but do you receive Earthen Bond from Brick while blocking? I noticed based on the tool tips on a lot of powers that most of the mechanics seem to be no longer friendly to Turtle Tanking anymore.
Thank you for the clarification LT! Well alright then, I've been feeling a tad squishy but I just thought I was doing something wrong. I read the tool-tip on Brick and how it stated you receive Earthen Bond "while not blocking" and just went with it. I also noticed that when Brick is active and I block I lose the shield symbolizing Earthen Bond. So is Earthen Bond active as long a syou have the first shield icon on your status bar or as long as you have the aura that Brick gives you? I will swap out Fortified Assault for Fortified Block first thing tonight and give blocking a try. Hopefully blocking will mitigate the squishy feeling a bit lol Sorry to be a pest but what would an optimal general use loadout be? I've mostly been using: Fortify Golem - Soothing Sands - Gemstone Shield - Summon Brick Golem - Epicenter - Earthen Grip - I sometimes swap in HL shield but it seems to break very quickly when doing anything substancial. I've toyed with the idea of a single pull and running 3 shields (Gemstone, HL, and AD) but I am not sure the best route. Thanks again for your assistance, it is much appreciated.
That's close to what I run with. You probably don't need both pulls. If you don't need the extra shield, Totem will keep your golem alive a bit longer, and give you some CC. For easy content, you can add in Jackhammer for crowd control and extra damage. Don't use it for serious content though.
I run Pull - Hl shield - Gemstone Shield - Fortify Golem - Totem - Brick I can replace HL shield with Soothing, Epicenter or Jackhammer. I prefer HL shield as an emergency one
Awesome thanks much folks for your help! It is greatly appreciated! Once again pardon my ignorance on the matter as I've been away over a year, but are the tool tips wrong? It states that Earthen Bond will not be applied while blocking, and if you block with Brick summoned the first shield symbol signifying the Earthen Bond buff disappears. Earth tanking has always felt relitively squishy compared to the other powers IMHO (and I played the first 3 years as a Fire tank lol) and it still does compared to my Rage, Atomic, and Ice tanks. I'm just wondering if I'm doing something immensely wrong, or if that is just how it is atm? I will definitely try the suggested loadout ammendments though! Thanks much
Actually haven't read the tool tips. So I can't help you there. But has nothing to do with ignorance. You're just asking, so go ahead The earthern bond is visualized as that ugly "aura" I think. So if it's sill there while blocking, you might have the bond? But hey, i'm not sure. L T might know that for sure, but I can have look at it this evening (morning here). I feel that earth tanking with pet is really really strong (and that's what L T is saying in that comparison). It helps alot to use totem and heal the pet. Also a healer with good ally-heals does make your life easier. For example do I use Galvanize instead of Recover, when i'm running with an earth tank on my healer. For SP I go like 10p for the damge crits each. Just to get my way through it. Then I go full health and Dom after. I works pretty well for me. I don't have mods currently, because collecting gear and it's just my 2nd char. As for playing, I like to get some adds and block. Totem does a nice juggle to them. Also I try to stunn adds with my weapon, but whenever you get like 8 adds around you, I feel more safe with blocking. In those cases Jackhammer "can" help to juggle them. I mainly use HL shield when the pet goes down. It's for emergency most of the time. Like a panic button. As a pull I mainly use Earthern Grip (damn I miss epicenter and double pull ). The good thing with EG is that you can stun adds pretty well. In PanoE the security mechs can wipe entire groups. Having them in EG all time does the job and they're doing nothing! I try to keep Fortify on cooldown. In most bossfights I'm doing fine, without the need of 100% focus. Brick is a bit of an easy mode imo. On many adds I tend to be a bit squishy though. But maybe that's just me
Some posts before those I also asked for earth tanking help and some ppl helped me there. With like similar questions to get the earth tanking going Sadly pure aftershock tanking isn't good anymore
I'll re-test, but I think the tool tip is incorrect. If you want to try Earth Aftershocks tanking, you need to load up on Movement/Iconic abilities. Something like: Pull - Breakout - Jackhammer - Gemstone - HL Shield - Amazon Deflect/ Movement Shield Supercharge Pull can be Grip, Epicenter, or movement pull Breakout can be soothing or movement breakout. I messed around with it and it works reasonably well. Way less forgiving than Brick though.
