idbeholdME: I built so tanky in The Surge 2 that I could pretty much brute force the last few bosses while ignoring their mechanics if I wanted to, because I could out-heal/out-sustain their damage due to my very high health, damage reduction and healing sources.
Starkrun: Can you share a few items/sets you used? id love to make a brute tank in TS2 <3
IIRC, I did not use any full set. I just mix and matched the pieces which offered the best protection/stamina for blocking. So:
Weapon - I really liked the one I got pretty early on - Helix of the Delver V2.0. Went with it through the entire game due to great balance of Impact, Attack Speed, Energy Gain, Stamina Consumption and damage.
Head Armor - Helmets I probably switched the most out of all gear but ultimately I went with the A.I.D. Ronin Head Gear towards the end of the game when it dropped. It has extremely good damage bonuses and good resistances on top of that.
Chest Armor - this one is from the DLC from one of the skeletons. CORSAIR Body Gear. Before that, I used JCPD Team Z0la Body Gear. While slightly worse defence-wise, I ultimately went with the corsair, because it had an insane stamina consumption reduction.
Arms - MG Cerberus Arm Gear. The best I found. Great Impact bonus, even slightly increases attack speed and is a heavy armor piece with very solid defenses. With the weapon I went, I was able to chain stagger most enemies too because I went pretty ham on impact in general.
Legs - IRONMAUS Leg Gear. Good but not best defenses, but has absolutely insane Stamina Cost reductions for running and evading while being a heavy armor piece. This made me able to pretty much perma-run without it consuming stamina. And the more stamina you have for blocks, the better.
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With levelling, I did a pretty defensive build. Ended the first playthrough at core power 104 with 94 upgrade points in health (959 total HP), 44 in stamina (250 in total, diminishing returns kick in pretty quick here so any additional points are mostly wasted) and 50 battery efficiency for the breakpoint (one pip retains a charge indefinitely).
For implants, I focused mostly on massive bonuses with successful directional blocks, energy gain&retention. So:
Standard heal (Medi-Voltaic Injection)
Heal over time (Cellular Regenerator)
Showing HP and stabiliy bars of enemies (Omni-Health Observer)
Retain 2 battery charges. Combined with 50 points in battery efficiency, this results in 3 bars of energy never decaying.
Directional Block Analyzer
Gain health and defences on block (Deflection Auto-Defender)
For damage in my case (Entropic Dissolver)
Gain energy and damage on block (Deflection Supercharger)
Gain energy on block (Deflection Energy Converter)
Gain defenses on block (Deflection hardener)
Reduce stamina cost of evasive moves (Leg Pneumatics Adapter)
Gain more energy from attacks (Energy Dynamo).
As healing is bound to energy in this game, a lot of my implants focus on that. As long as you are able to at least occasionally get a successful directional block, your energy will keep up and you will have insane defenses for a while after blocking, negating even the largest hits signficiantly and allowing you to unload on the boss with just M1 spam as long as the buffs last. I literally gained like 2 energy pips on every successful directional block which combined with the very decent energy gain from my weapon of choice allows me to heal pretty much infinitely. If you manage to keep refreshing the buffs before they drop off, the game becomes easy mode. But it does have the requirement of being able to directionally block of course.