Ugh, I should have scrolled up Genghes, took your thread out of context. Got kinda irked since I've been working my monk through ToV lately and have been following this thread closely. Thought you were derailing it, which you were NOT.
Actually got a dev response here https://forums.station.sony.com/eq2...er-tank-armor-in-tov-dev-input-please.546414/ But not what I wanted!
Cheeseman- Thanks for taking the time to offer this advice. I know my DPS and MA were painfully low as I was trying everything I could to increase the survivability of this guy. I am going to try your suggestions and see how it goes. Thanks.
Ok- tried the new stuff and just think that the final Dominion fight just ain't gonna happen. Do very well at just about everything else but that strikethrough is a killer.
I tank Dom on occasion, when i get out and run Heroics here and there. I tank it fine, as long as it's not a gorup of Dom Virgins. =) I have decent gear, mostly Mit, a few Block pieces. I stand at 13k Mit solo. But to me there's two things that make Dom doable or not.. It took me a while to get it down, but a good blocker/temp rotation is the key... that along with Mountain Stance (not sure if bruisers get this). My standard blocker rotation: Tsunami, Bob and Weave, Tag Team. Ill supplement that rotation with Outer Calm, Superior Guard and Brawlers Tenacity as needed I can run blockers/temps for about 50s to damn near a minute. After those are burnt I pop Mountain Stance (which bumps my Mit to 17k while im solo, so usually more grouped) and ill watch my health. If I am not spiking that hard, ill ride it out and pop Draconic Shout, and Mend if needs be. If i don't feel comfortable riding it out, ill pop Brawlers Tenacity (3 anti-deaths for one minute). If i can survive without brawlers tenacity for about 25 seconds while my temps are cycling great. If i used Tenacity, I will wait for Tenacity Timer to expire, or have only one AD charge left, then i cycle my temp blockers again, giving me another 50s or so. Pretty much with that rotation, USING tenacity i can get a good 3-3.5 minutes of no worry brawling in. After that, its coordinating (usually with voicechat) with your healer(s) that your blockers are down, and they should use there's to cover while you wait for your third round of temp blockers (you should have already told your healers your rotation and to hold their blockers until you call for them). Between Tsunami, Bob and Weave, Tag Team, Draconic Shout, Mend, Outer Calm (i think), Superior Guard, and Brawlers Tenacity you get quite a duration of temps that benefit you alot.... at least as a monk. Top that off while blockers are down with Mountain Stance for a GREAT mit buff, i don't tend to have TOO much trouble in Dom.. again, unless its a group of Virgins. =) Im sure brawlers get some comparable blockers as well, its just going to be finding the right rotation for your class.
Bruisers don't get as much. Our mythical effect is great, but only lasts 10s out of every 90 (maybe longer, this is off memory). Other than that, we have inner focus from Shadows Tree (I believe monks get this too), that's just two hits, and impenetrable will on LS prestige (10 or 15s I think). Oh and Tag Team which is both brawlers for 8s immunity. So total we have about 30s every 90s or so of complete damage prevention if we spec correctly. Of course we can cycle in Brawlers Tenacity (death save) and Bruising Spirit (mit buff) with stone cold as a second heroic endline in that "unprotected" time, but my god it's a lot more work than a plate tank! We're certainly not as well off as a monk.
Myth temp is a 3min reuse with capped reuse speed I usually do tag team -> impenetrable -> inner focus -> unyielding -> brawler's tenacity + rock skin (stone cold when rock skin starts to wear off) -> tag team -> impenetrable -> inner focus -> stone cold (if using ignore pain gives me a rock skin reset I'll throw it on along with stone cold). After that I'm depending on other things: god spells, fiery dragon essence, healer temps etc until something pops again. Its good to find what abilities others can use to supplement yours. My usual group runs an inq and a mystic, so I find rock skin + DG can usually keep me alive, or rock skin + spirit tap. It'd be nice if SOE would boost(fix) priest death prevents. In most cases you'll die again as soon as they trigger, since they only restore a tiny amount of hp. Also, tribunal deity is great for Ahrmatal. Take Scales of Justice for a sweet reactive heal the whole fight.
I find templar to be a key class for Dominion, with all their damage reduction temps. asked the guildi temp who is usually in my grp to make macros for all his temps, so he'd send me a tell whenever using one, and to tell me duration and Damage reduction value. Also, macro your own temps to either send a message to group, or tells to your healers. Alternatively voice chat might work, but personally i never use voice chat. Guess i'm oldschool. Even managed a run where we only had templar healing, all other successful runs was templar + pretty much any other healer. Malleria wrote down some nice roation tips, so i won't do the same again; but some points maybe to consider: It's vital for Ahrmetal encounter that you and your healers dont overlap temps, because that will most likely lead to a scenario where at some point neither of you have a save left. So communication is the key, be it by tells or voice. Stone cold is a very fast re use grp wide DR ( dmg reduction) and good to use together with physical and magic stoneskin while impenetrable/tag team/myth are down. it should prevent oneshots, altho ahrmetal has a thing for chaining several hard hitting attacks in a row ( as in...within 2 seconds) Ideally, the healers can keep you steady at all times, leaving you to keep your temps available for those knock ups. That's when healers can't cast for some seconds, and your temps can save you. Good luck on further attempts, i know how frustrating it is as Bruiser in there, often leaving you completely puzzled as to how you're suppsoed to survive. But it does depend very heavily on group set up, gear quality and competence of the individual players. Oh and as long as you aren't overgearing the zone and still spiking very hard, a dirge will definately help out on the survival with their stoneskin proc ( which templars have as well). Inquisitor isn't a very good healer to pair with a Bruiser. I would say templar & warden, or templar & mystic give you the highest odds of surviving, altho wards are as weak as never before in EQ2. EDIT: i use stonecold over tag team because 8 sec is too short duration for my taste, and stonecold has a very good duration and excellent re use time. Plus it's grp wide DR which comes in handy for many raid fights. I suppose i could unlock both abilities, but last time i redid my AA's, i couldn't manage to unlock both and keep all the other AA choices i want.
I am not even gonna pretend on my AA Setup for VD. This is the ' ONLY ' zone that I run it in. I dont even use it in Temple raid . I run with a solo healer in there 90% of the time. Templar / Defiler / Mystic or Warden so far. I specc for Eagle Shriek and Eagles Patience on Brawler Tree. I go for Tag Team and Stone Cold on Heroic Tree. I go down the second line in Dragon Tree for the heal as well. I go for the extra stone skin on Inner Focus the DR from Unrivaled Focus and the Extra Tenacity trigger. So, thats 2 heals / 3 100% Avoidance Buffs / Group DR Buff / 4 Stone Skins / 3 Death Prevents / a **** ton of Mitigation and DR when I drop below 50% / Increased HP / a boatload of Mitigation from Temp Buffs and such. My DPS is pretty craptastic in this setup but I live lol. Also for weaker healers on Armahtal, Scales of Justice diety buff is a HUGE Assist for healers.
Heh, my VD spec also runs both Tag Team and Stone Cold. Group just has to put up with not getting CM. I haven't quite reached the point of going down the int line. Eagle's Patience is underwhelming for taking so many points to get. 1 stoneskin trigger under those circumstances just isn't enough. Against a mob like Ahrmatal the stoneskin reaction probably provides more protection than the stoneskin itself. It really ought to be a substantial defensive buff if they want to keep the health threshold req.
@ Malleria Oh I completely agree with you on the INT line completely sucking.. but .. I do what I can to survive lol. Oh, and its 2 stoneskins ultimately but I end up chaining it with Inner Focus because Armahtal hits like 6 - 8 times on his freak out Melee hits lol. I really would wish they would add something a little special to that line beacuse it would possible give us a little diversity on what we spec.
So.. my new VD Group setup will always have a Templar Healing.. I have never been that stable in VD untill I ran with a templar. I have ran it solo now with a Defiler / Mystic / Inquis / Warden / Templar and well, I have to say Templar is so much easier. Oh, I would also like to add that Martial Retaliation is still broken.
The enhancement portion that increases the Mitigation provided by 100% and Riposte by 60%. The Riposte amount is correctly increasing but the Mitigation Value is not. I dont have my math details with me right now but the 100% Increase to the Mitigation value doesnt properly apply in hard numbers. It may be possible that there is some underlying factors at play that I cannot see but in terms of just taking the displayed values and putting them in a formula, it doesnt work right.
Ok, scratch this post. I went and redone my math and well, it is working correctly but to get the correct number, you have to strip down to absolutely nothing. I unassigned ALL of my AA and character traits. I took off my Food/Drink. I took off my Elixir. I dropped every piece of armor / jewelry and started with a piece of armor with zero stats and minimal mitigation to test. Doing that, it worked out to the correct numbers. The first time I did the tests, I took off all my gear and even unassigned all my AA but .. I didnt cancell food/drink or character traits. The little increases to mit in those areas were throwing off my numbers quite a bit.
Well I gave in finally and betrayed my bruiser to a monk. Have to say, wow, what a difference. Mythical buff gives 20% mit and 50 strikethrough and some more block as the main parts, which is massive in this xpac, and then I have 2 standard 100% dodge temps to counter loosing the bruiser myth one. And there's several damage reduction temps that bruisers don't have. Quite simply, monks are on another level compared to bruisers.
In my haste I wrongly said monks get two dodge temps to the bruisers one. In fact we both get two, one from prestige LHS and while the monks other one (Tsunami) is a L55 spell, the bruiser one is the mythical buff/ability. Tsunami has a base 3 min reuse so I assume can get to 90 secs with capped reuse speed? It's also 5s longer than bruiser myth. Not sure without being ingame on the duration and reuse of Bob & Weave vs Impenetrable Will. (Prestige temp). I'll assume they're the same for now. I've not played around very long with my new monk yet but it's the myth buff that really helps with stats. I think giving bruisers a new buff with, for example, 40 strikethrough, 20% mit 10 block, or adding it to a current buff, would go a long way to making the 2 brawlers a bit more equal. Doing that would still give monks slightly superior stats and longer temp avoidance with quicker recasts, offset against a superior ability of the bruiser myth as it heals also
The bruiser mythical has a 10% physical damage reduction on it which some say is = to or > than the monk mitigation increase. The prestige avoidances are indeed both the same but the other monk temps are longer duration (Which get buffed further with new dragon AAs vs Bruisers) and shorter recast. The problem also is that I find the monk pull has -some- uses while the bruiser leap which both replaced the 2nd avoidance temp is completely worthless in every way. Giving up the dragonfire buff is also a lot easier than giving up vicious combination in my opinion because rock skin is still just -ok- and Vicious Combination is really fun to use and build up. I also haven't really raided or played much but I know going reckless in a group now and probably a raid is just frustration to the limit on a bruiser because if one add that spawns decides to swing at you, You are next to useless for 30 seconds. I'd rather just see a 5-10% potency drop per time you are swung at rather than cancelling the buff outright and making all my moves that acquire threat/hate do so.
