Rebuilding my Regen Tank

raighn

Ok... So I'm looking to rebuild my Regen Tank from the ground up... Heavily considering redoing her power concept a bit as well... Currently running CON/Ego/Pre, Sentinel/Protector, with TK/TP powers... Her build as is has become an energy nightmare and it's just increadibly frustrating... I'd like to keep her in the TK Melee power build however...

PowerHouse   (Link to this build)

Name: Chrona

Archetype: Freeform

Super Stats:
Level 6: Constitution (Primary)
Level 10: Ego (Secondary)
Level 15: Dexterity (Secondary)

Talents:
Level 1: The Void
Level 6: Survival Training
Level 9: Field Ops Training
Level 12: Sniper Training
Level 15: Ascetic
Level 18: Shooter
Level 21: Acrobat

Powers:
Level 1: Kinetic Darts
Level 1: Ego Weaponry (Rank 2, Siphoning Strikes)
Level 6: Ego Blade Dash (Crippling Challenge)
Level 8: Regeneration (Rank 2, Rank 3)
Level 11: Energy Shield (Laser Knight)
Level 14: Ego Surge (Nimble Mind)
Level 17: Resurgence (Rank 2, Rank 3)
Level 20: Ego Reverberation
Level 23: Mental Discipline (Rank 2, Rank 3)
Level 26:
Level 29:
Level 32:
Level 35:
Level 38:

Travel Powers:
Level 6: Superspeed
Level 35: Teleportation

Specializations:
Constitution: Tough (3/3)
Constitution: Resilient (2/2)
Constitution: Quick Healing (3/3)
Constitution: Adrenaline Rush (2/2)
Sentinel: Eternal Spring (2/2)
Sentinel: Sentinel Aura (3/3)
Sentinel: Moment of Need (3/3)
Sentinel: Genesis (2/2)
Protector: Fortified Gear (3/3)
Protector: Bulwark (2/2)
Protector: Debilitating Challenge (2/2)
Protector: Resolute (3/3)


I intend to maximize her health and self-healing potential while giving her a reliable amount of defense as well. I'm not sure what to take for her AoE Threat (possibly Ego Sprites again, but I'm not really sure about keeping any of her Telepathy powers)

flowcyto

Ego Sprites would be a good for a melee tank for the AoE tagging. EBF would be fine for an AoE if its coverage was better.

If ur having energy issues, one option is switching to FotT for the toggle and gearing more Dex, and/or getting Fuel My Fire. Tough and Quick Healing aren't very good; ya could drop them w/o much impact; prob would get Armored too.

I'd prob get EBA for the spike dmg as well. Other option is Mental Storm w/ CS- its dmg isn't great anymore, but its Ego debuff still is.

chaosdrgnz43

If you're not gonna move around much, you could try using Circle of Arcane Power or (if you have scr/gcr to spare) Neuroelectric Pulse.

Although, it does break theme a bit.

raighn

flowcyto said:

Ego Sprites would be a good for a melee tank for the AoE tagging. EBF would be fine for an AoE if its coverage was better.

If ur having energy issues, one option is switching to FotT for the toggle and gearing more Dex, and/or getting Fuel My Fire. Tough and Quick Healing aren't very good; ya could drop them w/o much impact; prob would get Armored too.

I'd prob get EBA for the spike dmg as well. Other option is Mental Storm w/ CS- its dmg isn't great anymore, but its Ego debuff still is.

Her current build on live uses Compassion as her form... my other TK blade build uses MD and never has energy problems so I figured I'd move her more in that direction, plus with MD boosting her crits she'll get more milage out of Siphoning Strikes and Adrenaline Rush.

Honestly I'd like to add Fuel My Fire to her build, but the spec relies heavily on End to be of much use.

flowcyto

Well, if ya wanna use MDisc, then ur gonna be more reliant on Ego Reverb, so that just means gearing more Ego and possibly picking up more cost discount on gear. Could work, maybe w/ some infrequent end building, and that's fine. If ur using the Tank role here, then energy penalty isn't going to help, but ya just gotta work around that.

aesica

raighn said:

Honestly I'd like to add Fuel My Fire to her build, but the spec relies heavily on End to be of much use.

Coming from someone who's struggled with energy problems in the past, I've found that relying too much on energy-on-hit effects such as fuel my fire will leave you massively energy-starved if you somehow lose aggro and have nothing hitting you. I haven't done much with the powerset you're using, but I assume you're using dex to get crit for ego weaponry's siphoning strikes. Since I assume you'll be stacking mostly con because HP is important for tanks, will your dex give enough of a crit bonus to be useful? (You can still get crit from gear, after all) If not, you may want to sub it out for one of the energy-yielding stats, like recovery or endurance. The telekinesis set gets a lot of crit from other sources.

A few more things:

1) If you have room, consider adding nailed to the ground to ego blade dash. Really useful for knocking down the occasional flying enemy that would otherwise be hovering out of reach. It's rare you'll need it, but it's really useful when you do.

2) You have sentinel, so consider picking up a stun (ideally short cd aoe) and go with sentinel mastery for even more self-healing. You'll have to experiment with which ones work though, because some (such as ego storm + adv, which would be perfect) won't trigger sentinel mastery. Maybe it counts as something other than a stun? Maybe mental storm or telekinetic maelstrom? Either way, if ego sprite damage is capable of triggering the healing effect stuns provide via sentinel mastery, then you'll have some pretty amazing self healing vs large packs.

3) Will ego sprites alone be enough to provide meaningful aoe threat? Waaay back when I started this game, I used it and there was some annoying-as-hell bug where blocking right after using it would cause it to not be applied to enemies. Hopefully that doesn't still exist.

4) Rank 2 in ego surge will buy you 3 extra seconds of uptime with the power and more damage overall. That's a lot more healing per use with siphoning strikes.

5) You shouldn't need R3 in resurgence unless the bonus it gives to regeneration is enough to warrant it. Unless you're using it at extremely low hp levels (like 5%) you'll just be overhealing.

chaosdrgnz43 said:

If you're not gonna move around much, you could try using Circle of Arcane Power or (if you have scr/gcr to spare) Neuroelectric Pulse.

Although, it does break theme a bit.

For awhile, I wanted to use the laser sword powerset, but since it lacks any kind of real energy unlock (that I'm aware of) CoAP was what I used. It was great when I could stand in it, but overall, I found it to be really frustrating to use on a melee character. Especially vs anything that moves around and/or knocks.

Edit:

Oh, a few more things:

1) Eternal Spring is weird and doesn't always seem to work with everything. Make sure it works with your healing powers of choice before you commit to it.

2) "Quick healing" in the con tree is crap from what I remember. (pretty much all of the regen-based specializations are) I'd suggest trade it in for armored and unyielding.

maatmons

I'm by no means an expert, but I have been experimenting with a similar build, so I'll post some thoughts.

Regeneration gives you passive healing, but Ego Reverberation would nearly double the healing you receive from Siphoning Strikes, because of the increase in damage. You'd need to run in Hybrid role, but you could get Bulwark from the Protector tree. The threat multiplier isn't as big as you'd get from Tank role, but you'd be multiplying a much larger base amount of threat due to all the extra damage your offensive passive would be giving you. You'd also get a little DR, which is always nice.

I considered using Constitution as my primary super stat too. The thing is though, going with Strength or Ego instead would give you a big boost to defense. Dividing the damage you receive is basically the same as multiplying how much you heal, right? With as high as your healing can get from Siphoning Strikes, I just don't think the extra healing from Adrenaline Rush can compete with an increase in the worth of the healing you're already getting. Strength and Constitution both also have specializations to improve your critical severity, further improving your Siphoning Strikes.

Laser Knight interacts strangely with Siphoning Strikes. It decreases damage you take, which makes all healing you receive count for more, but it decreases your damage, which decreases the healing you receive from Siphoning Strikes. I'm not sure if the net effect is an increase or decrease in survivability.

raighn

aesica said:

Coming from someone who's struggled with energy problems in the past, I've found that relying too much on energy-on-hit effects such as fuel my fire will leave you massively energy-starved if you somehow lose aggro and have nothing hitting you. I haven't done much with the powerset you're using, but I assume you're using dex to get crit for ego weaponry's siphoning strikes. Since I assume you'll be stacking mostly con because HP is important for tanks, will your dex give enough of a crit bonus to be useful? (You can still get crit from gear, after all) If not, you may want to sub it out for one of the energy-yielding stats, like recovery or endurance. The telekinesis set gets a lot of crit from other sources.

I'll take that into consideration and see where my crit is with the new stat setup... it may very well be possible that I could drop Dex for End with no problems... I know I won't have as much Crit% from gear as most builds though... I'm probably going to gear her with Healing Offense gear w/Crit Cores... to make her Sentinel Aura & Self-heals stronger. Her current build on Live uses Pre & Compassion for this effect and she's got a great amount of healing, but her build is just so awkward to play and has major energy problems (largely due in part to her being a giant passive aggro magnet so allies rarely ever take damage to fuel Compassion and her Regen and Siphoning Strikes tick off before Sentinel Aura all the time)...

aesica said:

1) If you have room, consider adding nailed to the ground to ego blade dash. Really useful for knocking down the occasional flying enemy that would otherwise be hovering out of reach. It's rare you'll need it, but it's really useful when you do.

Honestly I've never found NttG to be valuable at all in PvE... and I don't ever build for PvP, it's just not my thing... With the exception of Viper PA & Viper Aerial Aces, there really aren't any flying enemies that like to linger out of melee range, and even those 2 generally don't. Plus I'd actually find it more valuable to work in a Knock-to instead... but we'll see if I have the spare advantage points.

aesica said:

2) You have sentinel, so consider picking up a stun (ideally short cd aoe) and go with sentinel mastery for even more self-healing. You'll have to experiment with which ones work though, because some (such as ego storm + adv, which would be perfect) won't trigger sentinel mastery. Maybe it counts as something other than a stun? Maybe mental storm or telekinetic maelstrom? Either way, if ego sprite damage is capable of triggering the healing effect stuns provide via sentinel mastery, then you'll have some pretty amazing self healing vs large packs.

I've actually be thinking about doing exactly this... just not quite sure what stun would best fit her build & theme just yet... I'll probably move a couple spec points in Sentinel around a bit as well for the bonus hold duration... I don't think I'm really getting anything out of Genesis anyway...

aesica said:

3) Will ego sprites alone be enough to provide meaningful aoe threat? Waaay back when I started this game, I used it and there was some annoying-as-hell bug where blocking right after using it would cause it to not be applied to enemies. Hopefully that doesn't still exist.

That issue still exists... but it's a non-issue for me... I actually kinda know what's going on with it too... if you block to quickly after activating any power it will actually cancel the power activation, the problem with Ego Sprites however is that it applies the DoT prior to this canceled activation and when the power gets canceled the system wipes the DoT as if it were never applied, but this also has the unintended effect of wiping the entire stack instead of just the most recent application. If you block to quickly after using Absorb Heat you'll notice that the HoT from it will end immediately, with fully charged Pyres the fire patch won't place and damage won't even be dealt (but energy will be consumed). There are a number of powers that have this sort of annoyance when blocking immediately after using them. It appears to be by design, though a little glitch in application, due to some unintended interactions (energy consumption, loss of pre-existing DoTs/debuffs, etc...)

Thinking about it, she might not even really need an AoE threat power due to her passive threat from Sentinel Aura's healing. But it's still a good idea to make sure she can tag enemies in AoE with more threat to insure they stay on her.

aesica said:

4) Rank 2 in ego surge will buy you 3 extra seconds of uptime with the power and more damage overall. That's a lot more healing per use with siphoning strikes.

I'll take that into consideration

aesica said:

1) Eternal Spring is weird and doesn't always seem to work with everything. Make sure it works with your healing powers of choice before you commit to it.

I'm aware, I'm probably taking Conviction as her self-heal...

aesica said:

2) "Quick healing" in the con tree is crap from what I remember. (pretty much all of the regen-based specializations are) I'd suggest trade it in for armored and unyielding.

I get a pretty substantial amount from it currently... with crap gear too... but you might be right, Armored might be more valuable... unyielding doesn't provide nearly enough knock resist to make a noticeable difference in my experience, but I'd say that's more a fault with how knock resist works than the spec itself.

flowcyto

I'd be careful dropping Dex, as lower crit mean less healing procs from Siphoning as well. I assume ur stat focus now is gonna be Con and Ego mostly? Maybe first try stuff out in the PH w/ the high crit and Ego setup and see if energy is better. Since ur not SS'ing Int or getting Physical Peak, then cost discount rating is going to have considerably more impact.

Sentinel Mastery can work fine. If ur in melee already then I'd prob take TClap w/ CS for that. TK Maelstorm and Mental Storm are also good, but do have longer cds so ya won't have as good uptime w/ them.

There's a nice selection of potentially good masteries for ya here- Protector, Con, Sentinel, Warden.. I wouldn't say any of them is a bad choice for a melee tank, but it will come down to ur playstyle and priorities.

maatmons said:

Regeneration gives you passive healing, but Ego Reverberation would nearly double the healing you receive from Siphoning Strikes, because of the increase in damage. You'd need to run in Hybrid role, but you could get Bulwark from the Protector tree. The threat multiplier isn't as big as you'd get from Tank role, but you'd be multiplying a much larger base amount of threat due to all the extra damage your offensive passive would be giving you. You'd also get a little DR, which is always nice.

I assume ya mean ID Mastery here? Its an interesting take (I have a TK blader that runs CoS in Tank Role, and its pretty funny for casual tanking or off-tanking), but I'm not sure I'd go this route for high-end stuff, as it may tie you a bit too heavily into more rng-based health recovery. Ya kinda have to choose one method or the other at some point, and I'd prob take Regen's higher consistency in a pinch.

Also, Con PSS doesn't have a severity bonus (I guess ya meant Ego PSS). And Adren Rush can actually be pretty nice, but I find its better w/ high crit builds using maintains more than anything else.

raighn

maatmons said:

I'm by no means an expert, but I have been experimenting with a similar build, so I'll post some thoughts.

Regeneration gives you passive healing, but Ego Reverberation would nearly double the healing you receive from Siphoning Strikes, because of the increase in damage. You'd need to run in Hybrid role, but you could get Bulwark from the Protector tree. The threat multiplier isn't as big as you'd get from Tank role, but you'd be multiplying a much larger base amount of threat due to all the extra damage your offensive passive would be giving you. You'd also get a little DR, which is always nice.

I considered using Constitution as my primary super stat too. The thing is though, going with Strength or Ego instead would give you a big boost to defense. Dividing the damage you receive is basically the same as multiplying how much you heal, right? With as high as your healing can get from Siphoning Strikes, I just don't think the extra healing from Adrenaline Rush can compete with an increase in the worth of the healing you're already getting. Strength and Constitution both also have specializations to improve your critical severity, further improving your Siphoning Strikes.

Laser Knight interacts strangely with Siphoning Strikes. It decreases damage you take, which makes all healing you receive count for more, but it decreases your damage, which decreases the healing you receive from Siphoning Strikes. I'm not sure if the net effect is an increase or decrease in survivability.

I have zero interest in changing her passive... besides if I were to change her to an offensive passive it would be either Shadowform or Seraphim due to the healing effects they provide on top of their hefty Paranormal Damage buff (which Ego falls under)... but then I'd more-or-less be repeating my build for Myriad... No, Chrona will remain with Regen as her passive.

While yes, STR or EGO PSS would provide more defense, my intent with this build is to make a tank who's primary source of survival is self healing. Due to the fact that her resistance will inevitably be on the low end for a tank I'm pushing her HP to the extreme end of the spectrum making it highly unlikely that she will be 1-shot.

Against most trash mobs Regen, Sentinel Aura, and Adrenaline rush will keep my health topped up continually, Siphoning Strikes is primarily for pushing my self-healing up to the point where most bosses will have trouble reducing my health. The combined effect of all my healing sources should in theory provide enough continual healing to make her build work out in current end-game content. And if she still needs a healer for tanking things like Teleios or Cosmics, then that's ok. Odds are I'd end up running her as an Off-tank in TA anyways since I get the distinct feeling that all the adds are just going to make a beeline to her anyways...

I actually use Laser Knight on my build for Myriad who uses Siphoning Strikes & Shadowform, I actually don't think Laser Knight impacts the healing component of Siphoning Strikes to be honest. I've been seeing heals from Siphoning Strikes on Myriad that were higher than the damage she dealt, by a significant margin...

aesica

raighn said:

Honestly I've never found NttG to be valuable at all in PvE... and I don't ever build for PvP, it's just not my thing... With the exception of Viper PA & Viper Aerial Aces, there really aren't any flying enemies that like to linger out of melee range, and even those 2 generally don't. Plus I'd actually find it more valuable to work in a Knock-to instead... but we'll see if I have the spare advantage points.

Yeah it's just an afterthought in case you have spares, but with how your current usage looks so far, you might not. Another enemy that flies and can be annoying are Cybermind's probes. But yeah, it's very situational and I only got it for my tank's gap closer because I had a few to spare.

On the subject of gap closers, I'm not sure if this will violate your theme, but void shift is really good compared to ego blade dash--stun > root. The stun may even proc sentinel mastery--I don't actually know because I always follow up with thunderclap, which definitely does. One of its advantages lets you aoe-apply fear to everything nearby. Super handy and it's a very stylish power. Also, because the current dev team has some obsession with furries, pounce from the dogman powerset is arguably one of the best gap closers right now. I believe it's one of the least expensive energywise in the game and also, one of its advantages will give you even more self healing when hit (which is pretty much always as a tank) and stacks 1% crit (up to 5% maximum) each time you use it.

raighn said:

I've actually be thinking about doing exactly this... just not quite sure what stun would best fit her build & theme just yet... I'll probably move a couple spec points in Sentinel around a bit as well for the bonus hold duration... I don't think I'm really getting anything out of Genesis anyway...

Earlier, I was trying to find something more appropriate for my celestial-ish ranged support character, so I tried out the two I mentioned in hopes of getting her away from thunderclap. Both will proc sentinel mastery even if you just tap them. Unfortunately, thunderclap is king in terms of cooldowns so if you do want sentinel mastery, thunderclap is pretty much a go-to.

One other random thought: I know bountiful chi resurgence has the annoying drawback of 10% reduced damage (a stupid penalty) but as one of the few HoTs in the game, it should synergize with sentinel's rejuvenated, giving you a constant stream of both health and energy regeneration. I'm unsure if rejuvenated scales with anything though. Still, it might be worth checking out if you still find yourself having energy problems.

raighn

aesica said:

One other random thought: I know bountiful chi resurgence has the annoying drawback of 10% reduced damage (a stupid penalty) but as one of the few HoTs in the game, it should synergize with sentinel's rejuvenated, giving you a constant stream of both health and energy regeneration. I'm unsure if rejuvenated scales with anything though. Still, it might be worth checking out if you still find yourself having energy problems.

From what I recall, the only HoTs that actually proc Rejuvinated are Vala's Light - Light Everlasting and Eternal Spring on other players...

flowcyto

raighn said:

aesica said:

One other random thought: I know bountiful chi resurgence has the annoying drawback of 10% reduced damage (a stupid penalty) but as one of the few HoTs in the game, it should synergize with sentinel's rejuvenated, giving you a constant stream of both health and energy regeneration. I'm unsure if rejuvenated scales with anything though. Still, it might be worth checking out if you still find yourself having energy problems.

From what I recall, the only HoTs that actually proc Rejuvinated are Vala's Light - Light Everlasting and Eternal Spring on other players...

Yea. At least when I tested it, if ur not getting Vala's Light w/ adv, then you'll need to crit heal other allies w/ Eternal Spring speced to proc Rejuv. I haven't found any other ways to get Rejuv to work, unless they've patched something recently (doubtful).

aesica

raighn said:

From what I recall, the only HoTs that actually proc Rejuvinated are Vala's Light - Light Everlasting and Eternal Spring on other players...

Ugh, I should be surprised, but I'm really not. BCR ticking every 2 seconds and rejuvenated only working once every 2 seconds was just too good to be true.

I guess this should probably count as a bug, right along with how not every maintain power works with overdrive, not every healing crit works with eternal spring, etc. Oh well, seemed like a good idea at the time.

pantagruel01

raighn said:

Odds are I'd end up running her as an Off-tank in TA anyways since I get the distinct feeling that all the adds are just going to make a beeline to her anyways...

While the theory of a tank with sentinel aura pulling aggro sounds appealing, in practice it doesn't seem to actually work, I still need other threat.

breadandcircuses

raighn said:

From what I recall, the only HoTs that actually proc Rejuvinated are Vala's Light - Light Everlasting and Eternal Spring on other players...

Holy Water is described in-game as an AoE DoT/HoT; it seems a bit too recent to find the info anywhere else, but does that new Power trigger Rejuvinated and is it capable of crits?

raighn

breadandcircuses said:

raighn said:

From what I recall, the only HoTs that actually proc Rejuvinated are Vala's Light - Light Everlasting and Eternal Spring on other players...

Holy Water is described in-game as an AoE DoT/HoT; it seems a bit too recent to find the info anywhere else, but does that new Power trigger Rejuvinated and is it capable of crits?

Not sure, same goes for Absorb Heat, the last time Rejuvinated was tested these two poweres didn't exist yet

flowcyto

raighn said:

breadandcircuses said:

raighn said:

From what I recall, the only HoTs that actually proc Rejuvinated are Vala's Light - Light Everlasting and Eternal Spring on other players...

Holy Water is described in-game as an AoE DoT/HoT; it seems a bit too recent to find the info anywhere else, but does that new Power trigger Rejuvinated and is it capable of crits?

Not sure, same goes for Absorb Heat, the last time Rejuvinated was tested these two poweres didn't exist yet

Just tested them, and I am getting Rejuv procs when using these powers (for Holy Water, the heal version only) w/ pets out on the PTS, but not w/o pets (ie. w/o allies being affected).

So yeah, we can add those two to the short list.