Ater Custos hits 46

Yup. With the extra team runs and such this past week, Ater Custos hit Security Level 46 the other night. The end is in sight now, and power selections are locked down. His build now is as highly optimized as I can make it without dumping obscene amounts of influence into the build.

Three 4-slotted sets of Impervium Armor for +6.75% max endurance. With the Atlas Medallion accolade, his Max Endurance is 111.75%. His AoE attacks are a mix of Cleaving Blow, Tempered Readiness, MultiStrikes, and Scirocco's Dervish. All are at ED cap for damage, have in excess of +80% accuracy, and around an 80% endurance reduction with some -Recharge thrown in. Throw Spines also has +40% slow enhanced on it, since it produces the biggest slow effect when it hits. Tough is slotted with 3 Titanium coatings for the +Max Health and also a Steadfast Resistance/Defense for the +3% global defense boost. Weave is 3-slotted with two Gift of the Ancients for the +2% Recovery with an extra L45 Defense IO to hit the ED cap for the power. Lunge is 6-slotted with Touch of Death for the +2.5% global damage boost and the +3.13% Melee defense. Impale is 4-slotted with Thunderstrikes for the + 2% Recovery and +7% global accuracy boost. I respec'd out of Acrobatics and slotted a Karma: Knockback protection into Combat Jumping. It's not quite as good, but I plan on picking up a Steadfast: Knockback protection IO at Level 48. That should give Mag 8 protection, which will cover everything except some AVs and the Ritki Pylons in the war zone.

Overall, I have carefully tweaked the build and set bonuses to add +Max Endurance and +Recovery to offset the extremely high endurance load from the Spines/Dark Armor combination. Additional +Regen was added to the build to help with reducing reliance on Dark Regeneration, and Tough and Weave from the fighting pool have rounded out the Smashing/Lethal resistance and overall defense of the build. Solid defense values (not great, but they are the first layer of damage mitigation), good resistances from my toggles, a great healing power coupled with +Regen, and improved health (through set bonuses and accolades) all add up to a layered threat mitigation strategy that I swear by. It's proving to be damn effective, as I teamed with a random PuG last night on a Banished Pantheon map, and the mobs were all +3 to me but I could solo spawns sized for an 8-man team solo. The masks and shamans were the only real threats, and Ater has very high defense and resistance to Psi damage, which is what they were throwing out. Taking out the shamans with AoE and single target attacks came first, and then pounding on the masks while the husks staggered around me being shredded by my damage toggles. It was fun, to say the least.

Soloing in the Shadow Shard to fund purchases worked well. The spawns of CoT there are ideal for me to shred, as they are not resistant to Lethal or Negative Energy damage and vulnerable to stuns from Oppressive Gloom. Death Mages are still tough customers, but they go down quickly under a focused attack chain.

With Oppressive Gloom running, the only real threats soloing are Brutes, since the Watchers (eyeballs) have debuff ranged effects and the Brutes hit like a freight train. They are immune to the Stun effect from OG, so there's no damage mitigation there, it just comes down to Ater's slows, movement to keep them off balance, and AoEs to shred them down to size. Harder for Ater than for Flambeau, as Flam just pulls them in and hammers them. Ater needs some footwork to keep him in the green. Not hard, but a more active fight than others... Probably why I like them, as they are more of a challenge. : )

Anyway, Ater's teamed up to defeat about half the Praetorian AVs in the Portal missions. Let's see... Siege, Battle Maiden, Black Swan, Shadowhunter, Dominatrix, and Chimera. I'm working through my Portal contact missions to get to the remainder. Fighting AVs is tough. Dominatrix was an unbelivable bitch to fight. She's a grav controller and all the damage our team was throwing was nerfed like crazy. Like single digit crazy. It's like my spines were made of rubber or something. One of our team logged their /Rad Controller and managed to debuff her enough to slowly finish her off. Even then it was a 15 minute long marathon battle to put her out of commission. Ugh.

Anyway, see you guys whenever. It's holiday time and Rob's out of Tight Night until next year. Have fun and enjoy the Figgy Pudding. : )