User:Stephen Michael/Trinity – Demi”God” Mode



There are claims stating that Trinity is the best tank in the game due to her invulnerability but the truth of the matter is, she turns the entire team into deities. The objective is to keep blessing up and to stay alive between casts.

 A brief description to those who aren’t familiar with Trinity;

           Blessing completely heals and restores shields to the entire team no matter how far away they are. At the same time, the team becomes immune to ALL damage for the duration. You will want to equip the Aura Helmet, Constitution, Continuity, and Narrow Minded to maximize power duration (+182% duration but -66% power range) and Fleeting Expertise (rank 4) and Streamline for power efficiency (+70% efficiency but -40% duration).  Note:  75% is the power efficiency cap so adding another rank to Fleeting Expertise only gives you an extra 5% efficiency gain with a 10% duration loss which isn’t worth it in my opinion. Combining these mods will boost the duration to 24.2 seconds, and cost 30 energy. Since the build is dependent on Blessing staying up continuously you will want to equip the Energy Siphon aura for when the enemies’ levels reach the 100+ mark and energy orbs aren’t as plentiful.

The main issue with Blessing is that it has a 1.2 second casting time during which you can be killed. However, your team still becomes invincible (you do as well after you are revived) as soon as you push the button so another member can safely revive you afterwards. For this reason you should equip Natural Talent which decreases the casting time by 50% (patched from 100%). The other issue is that while you take no damage, you are not immune to knockdown. While they are optional, I highly recommend using Sure Footed which increases knockdown resistance by 60% and Fortitude which increases knockdown resistance by 20% and also adds 80% shield recharge. They will help with the annoyance of being knocked down while Blessing is active but absolutely save you in-between casting when it isn’t active. What separates Trinity players is their ability to work around knockdown and to avoid damage in-between casts. A fatal flaw that most Trinity players have is that they do not equip any defensive mods, relying solely on attempting to avoid damage by hiding during casting. This isn’t always easily done during missions such as Survival or while being swarmed by a brood of Infested. I personally recommend Redirection which increases your shields by 440%. Using Redirection is more beneficial than Vitality since shields regenerate and once per thirty seconds, your sentinel can recharge them (explained later). There is however a couple other methods that you can utilize other than using the build explained above…

One way is to ensure you are playing with a teammate that has some form of crowd control or shielding power such as Frost’s Snow Globe. I would shy away from this method though since it’s less reliable. Unless you are playing with people that you know, are using mics for quick communication, and have established strategies for such.

Another way is to drop Fortitude and Sure Footed to equip Link and Overextended/Stretch so that you can stager Blessing and Link a few seconds apart ensuring that Link is still active while you are casting Blessing. The defense aspects of Link are that it protects you from 75% of damage received and that it reflects knockdown (although Link does not protect you from knockdown 100% of the time as Wiki says). As a bonus Link also reflects 100% of all damage received (even if you are under the effects of Blessing) to the three closest enemies. One issue with Link is that with the mods used within this build, your power range is drastically reduced. You can counter the range reduction with Overextended or Stretch. My advice would be to use an Overextended in lieu of Stretch since Stretch only extends range by 45% while Overextended extends range by 90% but decreases power strength by 60%. Neither Blessing nor Link is affected by power mods so it doesn’t hurt the build. The number of enemies and the damage reflected cannot be enhanced by mods so those aren’t necessary. The other issue with Link is that while it’s extremely useful at lower level, its viability lessens as the mob’s levels rise (100+). Even with all four players using Energy Siphon you will not gain enough energy to sustain both powers indefinitely so will you run into trouble without a steady flow of energy orbs.

== Recommendations ==

I recommend using the Shade sentinel and equipping it with Guardian. As soon as you stop firing and start casting Blessing, there is a good chance that Shade will proc Ghost making you invisible and un-targetable (although you are still susceptible to AOE) which will give you some breathing room to cast. Ghost has a cool down of five seconds and lasts until you fire your weapon, use most abilities, are out of line of sight, or once the Shade runs out of energy. Guardian is a sentinel mod that replenishes your shields by 100% (at maxed rank) when your shields completely deplete. Guardian essentially doubles your shields when proced but has a thirty second cool down which means it will only proc every other casting of Blessing. With a maxed Redirection you are looking at shields of 1320 that enemies will need to go through twice in .6 seconds if using Natural Talent.

In my opinion… Well of Life is obsolete since this is a Perma-Blessing build. Energy Vampire helps the group but hurts you by taking up a much needed mod slot. Doubly after all of the duration bonuses, Energy Vampire will last 12.1 seconds at rank 1 and 21.78 seconds at maxed rank which feels like a life time if you are running a lower level Defense or Exterminate mission. There is however a combo utilizing the two powers to do massive damage to bosses or to heavy mobs. There are in depth guides regarding such elsewhere but the combo isn’t part of my build so there’s no point in explaining or number crunching here.

In closing, the weapons that you use are completely optional. Most players that use Trinity with Blessing/Link builds (including myself) use the Penta, Ogris, Stug, etc since the self inflicted damage is instead reflected to the Linked enemies or otherwise just negated in the case of not slotting Link. That or they use shot guns or similar close range/high damage weapons since there is less need to maintain distance.