I'm going to try to be as constructive as I can here. Just for you Steelstar.

[grausherra]

Zehnvhex speaks harshly, but true.

[Tilomere]

So the question then becomes, what is the non-warlocks goal? If they insist on trapping then 12 cleric/6 bard/2 rogue will do just as well.
.

Even if it is equal, it is an alternative build from cleric. Just like sorc is an alternative heroic build from warlock.

[zehnvhex]

Even if it is equal, it is an alternative build from cleric. Just like sorc is an alternative heroic build from warlock.

I'm just going to reiterate my point that even though Eldritch Knight has an enhancement that's really good for tanking and that there are Eldritch Knight dps builds out there that can solo/clear content, doesn't mean that the EK tree is good.

Let's take a look at Radiant Servant. Nearly everything in that tree is desirable/usable with the exception of pacifism. Everything in that tree is geared around making you a better healer and it does it pretty well to the point of being almost overkill.

You look at RM and the only thing that makes you a better healer is +10 to the Max casting level of your admixtures and a second cast of Radiant Forcefield once you hit level 18 (which in your build you wouldn't get). SLA's are nice but when was the last time you had a cleric run out of spell points? 2012?

That's why I'm criticizing the lack of focus in RM. If you want it to be a healing tree, make it a healing tree. There's just stuff sprinkled all over with no real support for it. Also don't call it Renegade Mastermaker because Renegade Mastermakers are not healers. They are battle cyborgs.

[Kza]

Actually, I've seen people playing a pure lightning caster arti. It's disgusting. Lightning-immune mobs are problematic (and weirdly common), but you can always swap to a crossbow even if it's not tricked out with all the bells and whistles. And use your runearm. Plus, if you're epic there's always ruin, greater ruin, and hellball.

But it's a surprisingly effective build.

I plan to invest in mastermaker simply because I wind up healing raids far too often on my arti. I tested it out and the build lets me get a lot out of construct essence while not losing value from my admixture party heals. I like it.

Is it an ultra-strong tree by itself? No, but arti is ALREADY a very strong class. It opens up some options without a lot of power bloat to a class that *really doesn't need it*.

This!

Only thing i would maybe look over is the t5 abilities. I really dont see any taking them. But this is a nice strong second tree for many pure arties. I like :-)
(And both this and druid Changes has some new fun things in them and not just more powwa, Lovely inventions imho from the devs)

[Tilomere]

That's why I'm criticizing the lack of focus in RM. If you want it to be a healing tree, make it a healing tree.

It is a tanky healing tree. You can make it a tankier healing tree by splashing 4 pali for even more tankyness, add in elf for displacement, and you will be the last person standing in the zombie apocalypse. You can make it into a tank with pali + fighter or wiz splash. You can make it into the support build above.

If it had a very specific focus, very few people would find a use for it.

[Hephaestas]

Trying to forget the name of the tree being something different for the most part than what the tree really is.... I like the flavor of the idea of adding that traditional 'beefy' feel to Artificers. That's about where I stand right now with RM.

Zehn has hit the nail on the head for most of the issues this tree suffers.

- No clear vertical incline in the tree (no line of admixtures, positive spell power, pos spell crit, etc)
- The Armor bonuses are a bit half baked. You get some defenses out of it, but don't try to use this as a Tank build, at best you're getting a few more miss chances in lower or outdated content than you used to.
- The Admixtures are really hit or miss (no like, literally) - and the idea that quicken could be added to them possibly, helps with this. Still theyre gonna be finicky and making a healer based off of these will suck at the very least and just be painful completely at worst
- Converter is just.... aggravating. I LOVE the concept and using it; but when you have more than one person, it leaves you sad. If another artificer used theirs on someone already because you didn't know, you'll waste it. And the whole casting a buff on someone before being able to heal them is cumbersome and in the heat of the battle you'll probably try to heal someone and their converter ran out 30 seconds ago [I suppose unless youre watching your converter timer like a hawk]

However, I think I figured out what the tree is good for. It's a support tree to SUPPORT A SUPPORT CLASS. As in, YOURSELF. Dang it why didn't I see it earlier. Don't you see? You're not SUPPOSED to go tier 5 or capstone'd into the tree. That'd just be silly. Oh it makes so much more sense now.

[zehnvhex]

If it had a very specific focus, very few people would find a use for it.

I can't agree with that. I don't think Kensai would be made better if we replaced the +hit/dmg column with a bunch of +spellpower.

Anyways.

I did play around with tank builds today a bit. I tried a variety of builds (pure arti, arti/pal/wiz, arti/pal/ftr, etc...even arti/druid). Here are my notes:

- If you shapeshift into a bear before taking embed component you can get the +20% racial ap from RM and the +25% hp from the new bear form talents. On my (nearly) naked dwarven druid test I had over 1000 hp at 20. You're not supposed to be able to do this but it was fun to check out.

- Also, improved construct essence says you lose the benefits if you shapeshift into a bear. You do not.

- I can't see RM by itself being any good at tanking. You just lose too much. Like almost 60 prr less than paladin/fighter builds. It's bad.

- I played around with RM as a split. The EHP loss from giving up T5 sacred defender didn't sit well with me and then I had to give up wizard as my 3rd split meaning even more AC loss. All in all I ended up with less EHP even though my displayed HP went up.

So basically you can do something like 12 arti/5 paladin/3 fighter and still be a respectable tank, but the 5 paladin/3 fighter is going to be doing the bulk of the work there. You could substitute the arti levels for practically anything else and not miss out on much.

[Tilomere]

Ya I looked it over and like my support build the best. For someone else to play of course. I'll, uh, be the warlock.

[cpw_acc]

So here's my issue with this:

- -snip

.

I'm thinking that your sarcasm detector failed to go off

[Ladislaio]

I also messed around some more with melee/tanking hybrids and I just don't see much potential here. It's one of those things where it's like, "Yeah you can do it....but...this is DDO you can do anything." Not long ago I did a monk/favored soul build based on duel-wielding long swords. I wouldn't exactly declare it the next DDO melee meta.

That being said 2.5 minutes of radiant forcefield on my dwarven artificer tank attempt was kinda hilarious. I did less DPS then an afk cleric but I at least looked cool.

Tanking expert checking in here...

This tree is the BEST tanking tree they currently have, because of how it interacts with other trees.
You don't need to do DPS as a tank, that isn't your job. But if you want to, there are builds that can and would be able to (below is not one of them)

DWARF!!!!! Starting
str 12
dex 8
con 20
int 16
wis 8
cha 12


Level Class Feat Bonus Feat
1 Arti Combat Expertice
2 Wizard Quicken
3 Arti Compeltionist
4 Arti
5 Arti THF
6 Paladin Toughness
7 Paladin
8 Paladin
9 Arti Insightful Reflexes
10 Arti
11 Arti
12 Arti Shield Deflection Construct Essence
13 Arti
14 Arti
15 Arti Construct Exemplar imp construct essence.
16 Arti
17 Paladin
18 Arti Force o Personality
19 Arti
20 Arti
21 Epic Epic Toughness
24 Epic Buwark
26 Epic Intim
27 Epic Epic Reflexes?
28 Epic <Open feat>
29 Epic Diefic Warding
30 Epic Epic DR Scion of Fire


Enhancments Level Ap Important Thingcs
Master Maker 5 37 t5's
Sacred Defender 4 27 movement speed, con, %hp, Armor AC %
Dwarf 4 Max Dex Bonus
Eldritch Knight 4 AC
Harper 3 Int to-hit

The AC that you can hit with this type of build is pretty dang crazy, as is your dodge cap. MRR is pretty dang high, particularly with a mirrorplate shield for places like baba.
I'm not posting the SS because I had forgot to remove some key gear from my TR cache before copying my tank over, but even with the gimp gear I was able to break 300 PRR 140 MRR 19% dodge 340 AC. I had ~4500 hp; These numbers were, again, missing some key gear - most notibly my MRR gear, one of my LGS bits, my insightful / quality PRR gear... With the defences you get out of the RMM tree you can even reasonably do moderate reaper questing as a full tank in a better dps ED such as Divine Crusader or LD.
With enough racial ap's and a lack of feeling commited to being a dwarf, you could easily be even more insanely tanky by using the Aasimar Protector setup.
Int to hit from Harper + Int to damage from the arti spell (or int to hit + con to damage throw your weight around) actually gives you some "dps". Default weapon would likely be the raid maul(yes, I got over 340 AC with a two handed weapon equiped). You have 2 cleaves (although weak ones) and you can, if you want, pick up a third out of KotC.

The build had ~220 hamp (so about 150 effective hamp) and ~161 ramp, and could pack either a double reconstruct or recon SLA + deadly weapons buff.

Being able to be repaired or healed is a major advantage on a tank too - partically in Strahd where strahd will sometimes curse you with a "reduce all positive healing to 0 curse". Yes, you just need to drink a curse pot, but sometimes you don't have time for that or don't notice in time. Aasimar healing hands are INSANE when used on you too.

Going 13 arti - 7 paladin - 1 wizard would make the build even tankier, but I decided that I liked the party utility of being able to pass out deadly more than having totally awesome Unyeilding Soventry. But it was a really difficult decision.

I really wish they would make the constructs useful tho. The repair aura is, um, worth the AP and SP you spend to use it but nothing to write home about... the other ones are basically worthless.

Why not make bolstering construct provide a temp HP aura equal to 2x your con, just like the t4 temp hp from Enlightened Spirit? that would be lovely devs, thank you.

Note on EHP compared to t5 SaD:
Because of thing in the tree and how Construct Exemplar works, you will actually end up with more MRR. The current endgame raids (Baba, Strahd) both primarily damage you with magic damage dots, so the loss of PRR isn't as big of a deal (and prr is easier to get anyway). The thing that wrecks tanks the most in Baba would also be cyclonic blasts, which as they do untyped damage they are not impacted by your PRR or your MRR, so the only effective defense against them is your HP total.
When doing reaper Baba's you are likely to get hit by the %hp debuff. This debuff first applies linearly to your %hp bonuses.... so having more %hp bonuses means you have more hp after getting hit by the debuff. My not-actually-a-tank build of 14 clr(war) - 5 fighter - 1 wizard had over 2k hp when hit by the mound debuff on r1... I'm positive that with two RMM based tanks correctly geared moderate-high reaper baba wouldn't be too much of a problem, just tedious.
The immunity to neg levels is also pretty dang spiffy. Several of the mobs in rloft (divine casters, living fingers of death) will dispel death ward constantly and then spam neg levels at you. Not having to worry about this is a very nice improvement.

[zehnvhex]

I'm thinking that your sarcasm detector failed to go off

Can be hard with Tilo. =p

Anyways.

I tried really hard to find a way I'd go deep into the third tree. I focused mostly on the leveling aspect of builds rather than the cap play potential. I obviously didn't have time to play all these builds for more than a few quests and many of them were more "make the build and thought experiment" it. I've played tons of different builds along my leveling path so I typically know when I need to focus on what based on playstyle.

----

Caster

#1 Pure arti blaster build. I really couldn't find a place to reliably put any points into the tree that it wouldn't delay getting something better elsewhere. Once I finish getting my baseline dps enhancements in place, I figured maybe I could dip 11 points in for the free cure serious. This meant delaying Battle Engineer which mean lower dps, delaying getting better runearm usages, and having a rougher time dealing with lightning immune mobs.

#2 Arti/sorc hybrid. I had even less incentive to go RM on this build. I could at least ~sorta~ justify putting off getting BE stuff in build #1, but the whole point of a pure lightning build is the all in nature of it. If you're not going to all in, why make this build? What little healing I need scrolls/casting admixtures naturally was good enough.

Final Thoughts: While leveling it's difficult to find a point and say "This is where I'm going to delay taking dps enhancements and grab some more healing." As a caster healing isn't something I need and if I want to be able to off-heal friends in groups, RM doesn't make you any better at that since you can already scroll heal and cast admixtures without needing to delay getting more dps stuff.

----

Melee

#3 Pure SWF arti melee. A pure Arti melee build is already garbage tier dps and the presence of RM didn't make it much better. Simply put I ran into the same problems I did with caster. There's simply too much better stuff to get and by the time I can afford to put points into RM, I can already do just as well with scroll casting. The cleave attack is a nice cheap grab but pure Arti's aren't exactly rolling in melee power.

#4 SWF Arti/fighter hybrid. Facing the same issue again. Going at all deep into RM requires delaying getting a much better use of enhancements.

#5 Arti/monk/fighter 2hf build. I could ~possibly~ see some value here with a 3 arti splash. Gives you trapping (though skill points are soooper tight), improved scroll casting and another cleave. I felt stretched pretty thin and had to make compromises all over the place. Not sure if the cleave and latent immunity to magic missiles was worth it.

Final Thoughts: It was even harder to justify splashing into RM on melee. The cleave just isn't enough by itself and there's really nothing else in the tree that's attractive. I kept trying to convince myself that 'free' self heals are awesome but early game I simply don't need them, mid-game scrolls outperformed it and late game i have better options.

----

Tank

#6 Pure arti tank. I ruled this one out pretty much immediately. I didn't even bother testing. I think it was something like 40 AC, 60 PRR and 4 or 5 dodge lower than current hybrid builds. I'm sure it ~can~ tank but it'd be in the same capacity that any class can tank.

#7 14 art/3 pal/3 wiz. Not the worst tanking build I've ever tried. The fighter/pal/wiz build is superior though. Higher HP in this build for sure thanks to the racial HP bonus but my EHP was much lower due to a significant PRR loss and less heal amp. Having arcane barrier and radiant forcefield was kinda neat. I didn't test to see if they stacked though. I could see this being a thing though (or some variation of it).

#8 12 art/6 dru/2 ftr. This one was mostly just to toy around with the druid changes as well and to see what I could break. Thanks to a glitch with bear form and embed component I was able to get an absurd amount of HP. If it was allowed to work that way this would be a superior build to #6 but inferior to #7.

#9 12 art/4 ftr/4 pal. Did this mostly just to see if you can triple stack the +50% bonus to armor AC and you can. It wasn't an awful build. #7 I felt was better though. I'm a stupidly huge fan of arcane barrier and try to work it into all my tanking builds. Reinforced Shield works with Kinetic Charge which I felt was kinda neat.

Final Thoughts: I could possibly see Arti being a thing for tanking simply to break up the monotony that is fighter/paladin/wizard, warlock or cleric/x. However, tank builds are kinda uncommon as is and if you're going to go that route, most people try to pick the best one anyways. There's slightly more HP and MRR to be had with Arti as primary so I could see that being a thing on content that promotes it (Baba for example).

----

Ranged

#10 Pure Arti Ranged. Similar to caster/melee there was really no point where I felt that more healing would be superior to getting more damage and by the time I ran out of damage enhancements to get, I could scroll heal.

#11 8 ftr / 6 art / 6 rogue. My variation of the Slarden build since I prefer to get IPS as fast as possible and then later on want sneak damage more than I want evasion. There was absolutely no room for RM in this build.

Final Thoughts: RM is completely useless for ranged builds.

----

Healer

#12 14 cleric/6 artificer. If you're 100% absolutely dead set on playing a healer with zero dps options, then this build might be the build for you. The 14 cleric will provide the reliable burst healing for quests while the 6 arti allows you to near-infinitely spam 5 spell power group healing. Especially going path of healing with all the SLA's and everything. Just endless healing. However, I did so little damage I think mobs actually gained health around me.

#13 Pure artificer. My admixtures healed for a little bit more but the loss of cleric healing would be noticeable in terms of keeping people alive in emergency situations. Converter is kinda pointless in its current state even with pure artificer healing. The drones were all terrible and not worth picking up. It had better offensive capability and some control options than #12 thanks to going down arcano tree but honestly I think I would feel more comfortable going pure arcano and healing with scrolls.

Final Thoughts: There's nothing in RM that makes you a better healer unless you currently have significant spellpoint issues. I'll be honest, I don't group with pure healers that often and the 'I have healing by default' ones never seem to have spellpoint issues currently.

I think this is one of those things where in content where Artificer healing is good enough you don't really need it in the first place and in content where you need significant healing Artificer healing isn't going to be good enough.

--------

Anyways...

So yeah. I'm disappointed because they could do better. They won't of course. What we see now is what we're going to get so I'm really just wasting time I could have spent picking flowers or something. I'm unfortunately passionate about this game and it sucks to see such an awesome PnP class be reduced to this. RM is supposed to be this awesome Steampunk/Magitech/Cyborg thing and instead we're getting...7 healing SLA's and a handful of AC/HP bonuses.

Yay?

[zehnvhex]

Tanking expert checking in here...

Yeah, of the tanking builds I tried I liked Arti/paladin/wiz the most. The biggest issues I had with it were that the obvious workhorse here is the paladin/wizard tree's. I'm not sure how you're gaining MRR with the loss of harbored by the light and I feel that the PRR loss is pretty significant (~40ish?).

It's doable but I don't see it being better than the Seskie build which gets around 400+ PRR, nearly 200 MRR, 400+ AC, 5k hp, etc...

Like you said you were missing some key gear but looking at just the base stats RM offers less PRR, less MRR, ~similar AC, more HP, 2 more dex bonus cap, less HAMP, more RAMP. I'm not seeing how that makes RM superior.

Doable, certainly, but not better. I could be wrong, I'm not a tanking expert. I just play one on TV. ^_^

[Ladislaio]

Yeah, of the tanking builds I tried I liked Arti/paladin/wiz the most. The biggest issues I had with it were that the obvious workhorse here is the paladin/wizard tree's. I'm not sure how you're gaining MRR with the loss of harbored by the light and I feel that the PRR loss is pretty significant (~40ish?).

It's doable but I don't see it being better than the Seskie build which gets around 400+ PRR, nearly 200 MRR, 400+ AC, 5k hp, etc...

Like you said you were missing some key gear but looking at just the base stats RM offers less PRR, less MRR, ~similar AC, more HP, 2 more dex bonus cap, less HAMP, more RAMP. I'm not seeing how that makes RM superior.

Doable, certainly, but not better. I could be wrong, I'm not a tanking expert. I just play one on TV. ^_^

Seskie
I am well antiquated with this style of tank. I was the first to post it on the forums. I've tried it with several different races and several different varations on the split, and it is by far the most durable of the options. The way Aasmimar protector stacks with it, and the amazing hands they get, amps the build up further.
The problem is that this build provides nothing EXCEPT being a tank. It has **** for heals, no party buffs, no damage, almost no threat, no extra added utility. His choices in his US tree make this even worse, no rez SLA, no renewal, no light the dark. Makes for some lovely screenshots of your PRR / MRR / HP / AC, but not actually an amazing build.

Tanking is like DC casting - it is a pass/fail type situation. Either you have enough tankyness that you can be healed at a faster rate than you soak up the damage, or you do not. Once you clear particular threshold numbers the particular numbers become less important. This is why you see a lot of cleric tanks - you can hit the numbers quite well on 14 clr / 5 paladin / 1 flavor and still be able provide more party utility.

Ignoring the utility difference (which is huge) here are some comparasons for why I would say the arti split is better:
Tensers - Yes, you can scroll it on the FTR tank, but this is unreliable. Duration is short, the scroll can be interrupted, Arcane spell failure is a thing, in order to use a scroll you have to put down your sent weapon (which will cost you a LOT of durability, usually over 200 hp now) and if you have a DoT on you already good luck getting it to work!. In theory you can have 100% uptime with scrolling it, in practice you don't. Deep arti tank does have 100% tensers uptime.
Mixed Healing Support - The arti tank can be healed and recon'd. While a FTR tank has better hamp(given same gear; Seskie's gear layout actually has worse hamp than my arti test did), the arti tank's flexibility allows for it to more easily fit into a party, and in some cases not have to worry as much about some debuffs (healing curses). Only have one healer? have the DC wizard recon the tank, let the healer heal the party. This also gives thoes poor DC wizards something to do during boss fights.
Displacment - Your displacement clickies last longer on the arti version and you can scroll it without hating your life quite as much. Most things don't have true seeing, you should displace your tank.
Instant Fix - A resto effect you can use while helpless, which can happen more than one would think on reaper when you can take 300 points of cha damage form some mobs. There is also always the possibility of getting hit by no-save CC(otto's) or CC while you have a debuffed save, and another clicky makes this much less threatening. While you may not die durring a short CC, you are also unable to grab trash off of others.
Damage - Because of the easy tensers, because of the easy access to int:damage, arti buffs, and not having to use a shield to get high AC, the arti split (given same gear) is able to do more actual damage, and thus can have more threat. Likely enough extra damage to make up for the loss of the threat from t1 fighter. You can go THF with the new trinket for some impressive stats or SWF with a rune arm for some unexpected amounts of dps. Just because you do this doesn't mean you sacrifice the ability to turtle up with a Mirrorplate shield at times either.
HP % - the Arti tank gets more of its effective HP from hp % improvements. This is important because of how this interacts with the hp % debuff in baba. (My 4.5k hp was with only a 3pc shroud set, Seskie uses a 5pc set for his 5k hp)
Neg level Immunity - Deadward doesn't quite cut it in some raids anymore. Shadowdragon, Mark of Death, and Strahd all have things that will strip your death ward and then neg you.
Dodge Cap / AC - Because you can get a much higher AC while not using a shield, you can also get a much higher dodge cap. Tower shields kill MDB.

... I'll get some SS of the different builds on the same toon and same gear when lammy opens up for the new quests (and hopefully I can re-import my toon with all his tanking gear). I'm thinking that for pure tanking purposes 13 arti / 6 paladin / 1 wizard is going to come out as the best effective HP with the current gear.

[zehnvhex]

I am well antiquated with this style of tank.

Amazing, thanks! I have some counter-questions:

-------

You say tanking is like DC casting. I tanked for ~7 years in WoW and there was never such a thing as enough tanking stats. You always wanted more because then you could swap out healers for DPS on raids and in groups you could pull more stuff.

I do kinda the same thing in DDO. I never really say "Okay enough tanking stats, now to focus on deeps." My 'good enough' threshold is making sure I can maintain threat and after that it's all about inflating numbers so I can pull more stuff to AE down.

I'm assuming your experiences then are different? Can you elaborate?

-------

Given your fondness for heal variety, immunity to certain types of spells and whatnot, why isn't Lich form tank more popular in your opinion? It has pretty much everything you listed with the sole exception of more HP and offers quite a bit in exchange. If you were to do something like 12 PM/6 paladin/2 fighter you'd end up with a little less AC, similar PRR/MRR, death spell immunity, stat damage immunity, great self sustain up through R3 at least, good damage potential, arcane barrier, 15% more incorp, will spell immunity, immunity to heal curses, etc...

-------

Lastly, your post seems to be mostly focused on the tank aspect. As someone who also played a healer for a stupidly long time, mitigation was king. The less I had to heal you, the better. To use a crappy numbers do you assume that they have infinite spellpoints and healing availability?

Granted the differences between builds doesn't seem to be overly dramatic. But as difficulty increases mitigation becomes more important because the more often a healer has to dote on you as the tank, the less they can focus on other people who need healing.

That's why I feel Arti is a bit of a trap. The more HP seems like it's pretty sexy up front, but there's no denying you'll be taking more damage. The other stuff is 'nice' but push comes to shove I want my tank taking the least amount of damage available.

The lack of PRR doesn't seem like it'll matter much for Baba of course, but will it remain that way? Why should we say "Oh, 45~50 less PRR is okay because PRR isn't really all that great in the current cap raids" when that could change in a few weeks?

Tanking is one of those things where you really, -really- don't want niche builds. Ask WoW and how well that whole "Deathknights are pretty much immune to magic damage but get trucked by everything else" thing went.

If physical mitigation suddenly became super important would still stand by "Arti is best tank" or would you fall back to fighter based tank builds?

-------

Thanks again for taking the time to discuss with me! Tanking is exceptionally uncommon in DDO and I still don't feel like it fits the mythos of Renegade Mastermaker. But if it at least has some use, I'll ignore how blatantly useless most of the stuff in the tree is. It's not like other enhancement trees aren't full of useless bloat (I'm looking at you -prr/mrr on mobs enhancements in warlock tree)

[Tilomere]

Ask WoW and how well that whole "Deathknights are pretty much immune to magic damage but get trucked by everything else" thing went.

My 69 pvp DK twink had a KDA of 14:1. That is to say, it went quite well.

Those were some fun times in WSG.

[Ladislaio]

Amazing, thanks! I have some counter-questions:

-------

You say tanking is like DC casting. I tanked for ~7 years in WoW and there was never such a thing as enough tanking stats. You always wanted more because then you could swap out healers for DPS on raids and in groups you could pull more stuff.

I do kinda the same thing in DDO. I never really say "Okay enough tanking stats, now to focus on deeps." My 'good enough' threshold is making sure I can maintain threat and after that it's all about inflating numbers so I can pull more stuff to AE down.

I'm assuming your experiences then are different? Can you elaborate?

A good tank build isn't going to do much deeps in ddo, but you *do* have to do enough damage to generate threat. While this isn't too important right now with how key bosses are all able to be intim'd (and more intim = more threat, don't stop just at the no-fail numbers for your intim check or you'll loose aggro when running with good DPS parties), a tank that cannot get / hold aggro is a massive determent to the party that is belongs to.
As such it isn't "okay, enough tanking stats, now focus on deeps" but "Okay, enough tanking stats, now focus on utility".
The tank builds that I have run on soda have always been able to handle a full cluster of mobs. Trying to gather the next cluster or two usually goes poorly, not so much for Sodapoppy but for the party members who do silly things like dps mobs which you just intimed but are not close enough to intim again because you are grabbing a different group. These builds have also been self-sufficent up to ~r4 since reaper came out, although efficiency of self heals isn't so great there.

-------

Given your fondness for heal variety, immunity to certain types of spells and whatnot, why isn't Lich form tank more popular in your opinion? It has pretty much everything you listed with the sole exception of more HP and offers quite a bit in exchange. If you were to do something like 12 PM/6 paladin/2 fighter you'd end up with a little less AC, similar PRR/MRR, death spell immunity, stat damage immunity, great self sustain up through R3 at least, good damage potential, arcane barrier, 15% more incorp, will spell immunity, immunity to heal curses, etc...

Litch form requires 18 wizard. I think you meant wraith form. Assuming that...
The difference in HP is pretty massive - RMM gives 85 flat HP, 2 more hp per level of arti, and 6 additional con even without the 20% hp t5.
The vulnerablity to light damage is kinda high risk on a tank, esp since light bearers are a thing and a partially nasty thing at that.
You also actually loose on healing flexibility - you either can only be healed by positive energy(and recon if you are a robot) or can only be healed by negative energy. If you are in wraith form, which is the only way to get the incorp / self heals / stat damage immunity, you have to be getting heals from negative energy. This means that there is no ED ability to heal you, druids cannot heal you, artificers cannot heal you, warlocks cannot heal you (EA lock mass cure mod + light damage blast do a lot of healing for a decent tank). Cleric/FvS inflect spells have a MUCH shorter range than their cure counterparts, inflict and harm require you to be facing the target even when healing (making it much harder to do the heals). The state of Negative Amp gear is even worse than the state of Repair Amp, so you end up taking less from the heals you do get than you would from recons. If you choose to drop form to get normal heals this removes most of the benefits of 21 spent AP, and if you want to regain that benefit you have to drop a huge chunk of SP to re-up the form.
To get viable amounts of AC you would have to use a shield and in doing such you would exclude your ability to make use of the Bloodrage Chrism, costing you 10 PRR / 30 MRR that you cannot get anywhere else(Net -20 PRR / + 15 MRR compared to going full shield mastery line + tower shield, also assumes you go for a full 5pc Adherent of the Mists set). Kinetic Charge w/ 12 arti is +20 AC; Base AC on the endagme buckler and light shields is 20, large shields is 23, tower shields is 27. Adding Aboria(2), Enchant Weapons(if you can find it, 1), and fighter StD t3 (not available on this build, 3), you could reasonibly have a with +33 AC bonus before modifiers. Testing on lammy land show that +% shield ac enhancements improve the AC grated by Kinetic Charge, so a Dwarf with the max +% shield AC (50+50+15+15+15=145) would get about 81 AC from a fully tripped out Mirrorplate Tower Shield, while they would get about 49 AC from an un-enhanced buckler or 12 arti kinetic charge, and a 15 arti gets about 61 AC from Kinetic charge.

15% incorp and super easy displacment, tensers is something I have found pretty tempting tho. But the HP just doesn't swing in favor of going that deep wizard, and having to be healed by negitive energy makes your tank even more nitch than a tank already is. Damage avoidance is great but you have to be able to take the hits when they *do* land and then have to be able to be healed up before the next hit lands.

-------

Lastly, your post seems to be mostly focused on the tank aspect. As someone who also played a healer for a stupidly long time, mitigation was king. The less I had to heal you, the better. To use a crappy numbers do you assume that they have infinite spellpoints and healing availability?

For high difficulty content I do assume infinite spell points, but not healing availability. SP pots are a thing, and they are a thing that should be used if you want to do high reaper with a non-optimized party; donating SP pots to those that need them is also a thing that should be done. Likewise lost souls are a thing.
My main toon is a 12 FvS / 6 monk / 2 fighter CC / spot heals / dps / fun thing. I have a decent perspective on what it is like to be healing people in the current game.
Of course you need to have people that can take a hit in order for them to BE healed in the current game... lots of DPS / caster builds seem to not be able to do that r7+, which is something I may have got ribbed about a bit when I first rolled my main into the above build and listed "Able to spot heal a tank" as one of the build objectives. At the time I was the only person who was actively running a tanky tank tank in reaper content on our server

Granted the differences between builds doesn't seem to be overly dramatic. But as difficulty increases mitigation becomes more important because the more often a healer has to dote on you as the tank, the less they can focus on other people who need healing.

Yes, this is true. Hence the nice thing of being able to let a DC caster or an Arti cover the tank in a raid... but again, once you push the difficulty high enough that 400+ PRR starts to be really necessary unless you get constant heals, most of the DPS people cannot take a hit anyway so... This is also why hamp is so vital (and I don't like seeing tank builds that don't bother to slot at least a basic healing amp item).
More often with a good party on high reaper I find I just grab the mobs, gather them up, then they get held and insta'd. They don't have much chance to take swings at me, and after they are dead healing my tank up isn't time critical. During a boss fight heal priority *should* be on the tank, as on any difficulty where I cannot self heal the boss is likely to one shot someone who isn't the tank.

That's why I feel Arti is a bit of a trap. The more HP seems like it's pretty sexy up front, but there's no denying you'll be taking more damage. The other stuff is 'nice' but push comes to shove I want my tank taking the least amount of damage available.

A large amount of damage can be avoided by careful play. High reaper? don't face tank, tumble around dance around the mobs to avoid getting hit. Effective HP that determines how much damage you can take before being a soul stone is more important than value per point HP. I'm very confident with the current gear landscape I can get more Effective HP out of t5 RMM than t5 SaD.
On that note, t5 Enlightened Spirit is a trap if you want to make a serious tank. Say no to paper tanks people!

The lack of PRR doesn't seem like it'll matter much for Baba of course, but will it remain that way? Why should we say "Oh, 45~50 less PRR is okay because PRR isn't really all that great in the current cap raids" when that could change in a few weeks?

Tanking is one of those things where you really, -really- don't want niche builds. Ask WoW and how well that whole "Deathknights are pretty much immune to magic damage but get trucked by everything else" thing went.

If say they re-releated Tempest Spine and physical mitigation suddenly became super important would still stand by "Arti is best tank" or would you fall back to fighter based tank builds?

I adjust my tank builds to fit the landscape. If, for some reason, evasion became super important soda would adjust his build to be able to support that (currently a lg or tower shield + good mr + absorbs >>> evasion on a tank).
Tempest Spine LE was a joke for a real tank build when it came out. R5ish after reaper came out wasn't too bad, but you needed an on-the-ball healer to tank Sojeck. I'm not sure if it is possible to make a tank that can soak up an r7-8+ Sojeck hit without making a whole ton of LGS RFF / Dark Discorp clickies. Maybe a funky high diplo helf thing. The trash leading to the endfight, even the Inevitable, is not too bad for a solid tank with ok heals on r10. HOWEVER that raid is more about knowing your perch points and other sneaky things and using the environment than about smashing through it with a hammer.

Tank bulids are also very very very dependent on what the gearing is. Prior to rloft, I would argue that having 6 warlock for the aura tick was vital to being a top tier reaper tank. This was because the aura could proc LGS, such as a Leg AFF weapon in your main hand; at the 4s tick this kept the +1k hp up quite often. Now that you don't want to be holding a LGS hamp stick, the aura becomes less useful/important. I was in 10 fighter / 5 paladin / 5 wizard before reaper, 8 lock / 6 fighter / 6 paladin until the Cleric domain pass, then was 8 lock / 7 FvS / 5 Paladin (needed the lock past life) after that. Soda's been doing a few TR's while waiting on the RMM tree to come out and for people on my server to get more interest in doing Baba/strahd above r1.
Currently Druid / Robot tanks are not in favor because they are unable to make use of the very strong rloft tank set; as gear changes this may change, and so may it change as what they give us to tank changes.
Do remember that DDO's tr mechanic allows for a nich build to be re-speced when you need to for benefit to the character.
If you want a more stable tank build that would not require reworking as the options change, I *strongly* recommend going with a 14 cleric (animal) / 5 paladin / 1 flavor (lock, arti, monk, wiz, sorc in that order). This build looks like it will do just fine on LE / r1 for quite some time, and even if it suddenly doesn't it will still be a very durable raid healer (if a bit light on SP).
The builds I do for soda are also chosen after considering the past lives and reaper AP's he has.

-------

Thanks again for taking the time to discuss with me! Tanking is exceptionally uncommon in DDO and I still don't feel like it fits the mythos of Renegade Mastermaker. But if it at least has some use, I'll ignore how blatantly useless most of the stuff in the tree is. It's not like other enhancement trees aren't full of useless bloat (I'm looking at you -prr/mrr on mobs enhancements in warlock tree)

It IS painful that they have some really awful things in the tree. I also don't think "Best-in-slot for current tanking, maybe somewhat useful for other builds" is what the tree should deliver. But it is very nice for tank builds in its current form.
I really enjoy talking builds, particularly tank builds, and you have shown constructive thought with the tree in your feedback (even if it seems a bit high on salt). This back and forth has been most fun for me so far

You also got me to start thinking about War(Blade)forged tank builds which have 4 arti just for the Con / MRR / HP(not the t5 hp%). Something like 10 ftr / 6 paladin / 4 arti Con Tank or 10 fvs / 6 ftr / 4 arti Cha tanky dps(TWF warhammers maybe???). Gear isn't in a really good spot for them right now tho, so we'll have to see. (oooo, bard/ftr/arti setup might be fun too)


Side notes:
Construct Exemplar + 3/3 Embed Component (RMM t4) is worth 25 MRR, the same as harbored by light, and only 5 less than all the heavy armor feats on 14 fighter

12 arti / 5 paladin / 3 flavor with t5 36ap SaD and ~25 ap in RMM would likely be all-around stronger than most current tank splits, and is something to consider. I think RMM makes a better backup tree than StD, although missing the 30 PRR / 5 MRR from the Heavy Armor feats kinda hurts a bit. I think a remix of build # 7 into 12 arti / 5 paladin / 3 wizard, t5 SaD t4 RMM t3 EK actually has a LOT of potential as a long-term focused tank build. Having your PRR / MRR past lives makes the loss of these from loosing fighter hurt a bit less.

Important Note You seem to know this from what you were saying about more mitigation, but it is a myth that the usefulness of PRR/MRR drops off past a particular point. You always want to be stacking more when you can if the build allows it - in terms of effective hp each point of PRR is of equal value. It is true that once you clear particular values getting more appears to be less useful, but that has to do with the damage values that you are getting hit for not the actual value of the PRR.... hmm, what I'm trying to say here doesn't seem too clear. Oh well, tired of typing for the moment lol

[zehnvhex]

(even if it seems a bit high on salt)

Easily my favorite mineral.

Important Note

You seem to know this from what you were saying about more mitigation, but it is a myth that the usefulness of PRR/MRR drops off past a particular point.

Yeah. It's one of those tricky math word problems. Each point of PRR in terms of how many hits you can take is equally valuable. It's mostly because people don't understand percentages when it comes to tanking values and you'll often see people state that AC over 200 is pointless. It's only a few percentage points afterall!

A good way to trip people up is to ask, which is the bigger change, going from 50%->80% avoidance or 95->99%.

Anyways...

That was quite the information dump. I'm glad I stand corrected on the potential value of RenMas in terms of tanking. At the same time I'm sad that that's about it and let's be honest. I wanted a super awesome steampunk cyborg and all I got was 20% hp. At least I know it'll have a use, albeit an extremely niche one. But in a game of dozens/hundreds of niche builds...

[cpw_acc]

This tree does seem quite useful for a build I made once before for a single-weapon feat focused fighter/artificer. He was actually quite effective due to the high attack speed and ability to cast combat buffs combined with fighter action boosts.

On the other hand, I play for fun (fun for me thinking up interesting characters) rather than trying to outdo every other player in some kind of imaginary dps/kill count competition.

Plus the main reason I wanted to create a fighter/artificer was so I could call him a "F*rtificer"!

[Ladislaio]

Read over RMM in 3.5.
It seems like there is defiantly a tanky theme with the prestige class, but I see where besides that it doesn't feel quite how you would like.

I think they should add a t4 enhancement that

1) lets you be centered with a rune arm and 2) lets you use a rune arm with handwraps.
- OR - (preferred)
When fighting with a (melee) weapon and a Rune Arm, you gain a % chance equal to 10 + arti level * 2 to bash with your rune arm. This uses your main hand to-hit and does bludgeoning damage equal to the damage die of your main hand weapon, but does not proc magic effects on the weapon(eg if you have a morninglord's bastard sword with deadly and improved power attack it does 6.5[1d10+2]+(half damage stat)+(damage bonuses like deadly) damage, but doesn't proc Holy or augments. It *would* proc Scion of <whatever>, sneak attack, your rune arm imbue, etc; Crit profile would be the same as your main hand weapon). Coding and animation would be snagged from shield bashing; would not work with vangaurd tree enhancements. Perhaps even make it exclusive of the second core of the vangaurd tree.
Construct Exemplar would grant an additional 10% chance to proc this ability if you have it.

... and then we would have battlefists


I imagine it would be be really hard to balance fairly tho. But it would be quite a bit of fun!


Side note on DPS on a tank: Having some type of DPS option, particallry one that is easy to access by just swapping some gear, twists, and ED choice, allows for a tank to be less niche than they would be otherwise. I would still not recommend doing dps beyond enough to maintian good threat to be a build goal for a tank tho, you are better off stacking some toughness feats

HEY STEEL: What about replacing one or both of the t1 SLA's with an arti version of Feign Health? Anytime you buff someone they get 33/50/100% of your int(or con XD) score as temp hp.
Perhaps buff Bolstering Construct to also passively grant +5 stacking MRR / PRR / AC to any friendly that you heal with repair magic? Kinda like Sacred Touch from Warrior Priest?
Maybe also make the t5 aura a multi-selector, and you can choose instead of getting the aura perhaps Deadly Weapons as a SLA and all of your weapon buffs grant +5 melee, ranged, and universal spell power to targets for the duration of the buff?

[zehnvhex]

So here is what I would propose. It removes a lot of the bloat, adds some more versatility/uniqueness, keeps the focus on tanking/healing -but- makes it more along the lines of the 'Renegade Mastermaker' and less 'Here's 9 healing SLA's'. Feels more cyborgy to me and allows for it to be a melee augment tree as well to make melee artificers possibly more of a thing.

Numbers obviously can be tweaked so ignore them mostly in favor of what the abilities offer.

SLA modify T5	Melee Passive	Embed Comp 5	Construct 4	Mastermaker
Reconstitute SLA	Melee Activated	Embed Comp 4	Construct 3	Stat
SLA modify 2	Melee Activated	Embed Comp 3	Construct 2	Stat
SLA modify 1	Melee Activated	Embed Comp 2	Construct 1	Action Boost
Cure/Repair SLA	Melee Passive	Embed Comp 1	Skills	Toughness

Core 1

Core 2

Core 3

Core 4

Core 5

Cap

Cores

Core 1 - (Renegade Defender) While in med/heavy/adamintine every core grants 10 hp, 7 repair amp, 1 max dex bonus and 10 repair spellpower

Core 2 - (Alchemical Shield) +4 alc AC bonus, immunity to magic missiles

Core 3 - (Flesh integration) +15 heal amp, +5 mrr, +5 prr, +15 positive spell power

Core 4 - (Reactive Conduit) Every time you are attacked (hit, dodge, miss, etc...) applies a stacking buff. +1% attack speed, +1 AC, +1 PRR. Max 10 stacks, lose 1 stack every 15 seconds.

Core 5 - (Auto Repair Systems) When you would take fatal damage you are instead instantly healed to full and rendered helpless for 4 seconds. This effect cannot occur more than once every 3 minutes. In addition, you now gain the die hard feat and your unconscious range is extended by 50.

Core 6 - (Unbreakable Forcefield) Activate to reduce damage taken by 95% (except force/untyped) for 6 seconds. 3 minute cooldown. Can be used while helpless.

Passive: grants +2 int, 2 con, 10 prr, 10 mrr, +2 dodge, +2 dodge cap, +2 max dex bonus

Column 1 (Healer column)

T1 - Grants Cure Wounds Admixture (2d6+2 plus 1 per CL, no CL limit) and repair wounds (repair 2d6+1 plus 1 per CL, no CL limit) SLA's. 12/10/8 second cooldown, 15/10/5 sp cost.

T2 - Admixture now has 'quickened' animation and travel speed increased by 20%. Repair wounds now also scales at +2 per CL.

T3 - Admixture now casts cure curse/disease/poison when it hits. Repair wounds also grants 10% elemental absorb for 20 seconds.

T4 - Reconstitute SLA. Heals target for 15xCL (max 150) regardless of type (negative, positive, repair). 15/13/10 second cooldown, 25/20/15 sp cost. Only quicken meta.

T5 - Admixture now heals for 4d6+8 plus 1 per CL and casts restoration when it hits. Repair wounds has a small chance to restore 1d8+1 spell points on target. Reconstitute applies a buff on the target that grants +20 hamp/ramp/namp for 1 minute.

Column 2 (Combat column)

T1 - (Combat Upgrade) - You are able to upgrade your combat arm with your knowledge of arcane crafting. +3 Melee Power per rank of Artificer Craft Mastery.

T2 - (Kinetic Discharge) - Cleave attack, deals +3[W] and 1d6 force damage per rank of Artificer Craft Mastery. Scales with 200% melee power.

T3 - (Potential Charge) - Attacks grant +1 per 3 arti levels to shield bonus (max 5 stacks). Lose 1 stack per 15 seconds. Equipping a ranged weapon clears stacks.

Can be activated to stun all targets for 1 second per stack. 20 second cooldown. Save is (insert standard stun DC saves).

T4 - (Slam) - Upgrade your left arm to be able to deliver a quick, powerful blow. Deals 1d6 bludgeon per rank of Artificer Craft Mastery + greater of str or int bonus. Scales with melee power. Knocks target down on failed reflex save for 4 seconds. Targets immune to this effect (Bosses) instead deal 10% less damage for duration. 10 second cooldown.

T5 - (Combat Optics) - Replace one of your eyes with enhanced waforged components. Grants True Sight, Ghost Touch, 20% fort bypass and your attacks no longer miss on a 1.

Column 3 (Embed Column)

T1 - (Cyber Agility) - Replace part of your leg with enhanced warforged components. Grants +10 jump, +10 jump cap, 2% run speed per rank of Artificer Crafting Mastery, +5 balance and +2 max dex bonus.

T2 - (Reinforce Structure) - While in heavy/medium/admantine, grants +6 PRR and +15% shield AC. Auto-grants construct essence feat. If you have/take construct essence feat at level up or are warforged, gain +20 repair amp and +5 AC.

T3 - (Magitech Armor) - Infuse your armor with magical components and integrate it with your construct frame. Gain 50% AC from armor and +6 MRR.

T4 - (Embed Components) - Fully integrate your warforged components. Auto-grants Improved Construct Essence. You can no longer use druid forms, tree form or evasion. +1 prr, +1 mrr per rank of Artificer Craft Mastery. If you are warforged or take improved construct feat, gain an additional +6 con.

T5 - (Paragon Body) - Grants 20% racial HP bonus and +4 fort saves. No longer suffer ASF. Can be activated to clear crowd control effects and cast grater restoration on self. 1 minute cooldown. While on cooldown, do not benefit from 20% HP bonus.

Column 4 (Construct Column)

T1 - Grants 1/2/3 Heal, Repair and Intimidate

T2 - Select One of the following:

Warding Construct - Grants you and your allies +7 alchemical bonus to PRR/MRR, +3 alchemical bonus to saves and +4 alchemical bonus to elemental absorb. 10 second cooldown. Only one drone can be active at a time. 20sp cast cost.

Support Construct - Grants you and your allies 1xArtificer level DR/- and 10 hamp/ramp/namp. 10 second cooldown. Only one drone can be active at a time. 20sp cast cost.

Offensive Construct - Grants you and your allies 10% fort bypass, +5 hit, +2 dmg. Also every 30 seconds it will attempt to cast a web trap, launch a lightning grenade or drop an acid mine. DC/damage based on Artificer disable device level. 10 second cooldown. Only one drone can be active at a time. 20sp cast cost.

T3 - Pick another

T4 - Pick another

T5 - Regeneration Construct - Active drone will now also repair nearby targets for 1 hp per 4 artificer levels.

Column 5 (Mastermaker)

T1 - Toughness. +5/10/15 HP.

T2 - Action Boost - Pick from Defense (+5/10/15 AC and PRR) or Saves (+2/4/6 to saves, don't fail on a 1)

T3 - Stat, Con or Int

T4 - Stat, Con or INt

T5 - (Mastermaker) - Pick one of 3

Aggression Matrix - Infuses your combat abilities to their maximum potential. Your attacks have a chance to apply vulnerability

Reaction Coil - Upgrades your defensive abilities to their maximum potential. If an attack would do more than 10% of your health in damage, reduce its damage to 10% of your health. This effect has a 40 second cooldown.

Alteration Engine - Augments your support abilities to their maximum potential. Your heals also grant 10% of their value in temp hp. Lasts 6 seconds.