The Astro-Harness is a piece of Legendary (5-Star) Gear, evolved from the Epic (4-Star) gear, Astro Force. The unevolved version can be obtained by ranking in the top 5% of certain Online Battle seasons, or as a possible reward in the Worst Heroes Ever Bundle, The Dawn of Justice Triple Pack, Nth Metal Pro Packs, or Nth Metal Ultimate Packs.
The ultimate tanking gear, the Astro-Harness can negate astonishing amounts of damage with good timing without having to rely on luck, but has weak offense and lacks persistent effects after its many shields are exhausted.
Effects
- On any Special Attack applies ELECTRIC DOT dealing 5% - 10% of SP damage for 5 seconds.
- On lethal hit 50% - 75% chance to trigger Power Shield that will absorb damage up to 20% - 40% of Max Health.
- [EVOLVED] Invulnerability for 3 - 5 seconds at Health thresholds: 100%, 50% and 10%.
Mechanics
Power Shield
Power Shield on Ares
The "Power Shield" works like a secondary health bar (very similar to Armor) that overlays the main health bar and will activate upon a hit that would have knocked out the user. If both Power Shield and Resurrect are available, the Power Shield is triggered first, and Resurrection will only activate once the Power Shield is depleted. Health will not be affected until the shield is used up while healing restores health but not the shield. Batgirl/Arkham Knight's rescue will trigger at the same time as Power Shield if available. Raven/Prime's health swap and Batman/Blackest Night's damage boost will ignore power shield. Effects that deal % current health damage (e.g. Batgirl/Cassandra Cain's passive) will not count Power Shield in calculations; if the user has exactly 1 health left, no damage will be dealt.
Unlike Resurrect, overkill damage will carry over from the normal health bar to Power Shield. A single large hit can instantly deplete the power shield and its animation will not be displayed despite having been triggered. However, hits within special attacks that cannot KO will not trigger Power Shield, and simply do no damage until a hit that can KO is landed, at which point Power Shield may be triggered.
Damage over time or reflect damage from specials can trigger and deplete the Power Shield, despite that they normally cannot deal a lethal hit. If the Astro-Harness user is tagged out when Power Shield is triggered, the Power Shield bar would be incorrectly displayed on the active fighter, despite it is actually still on the Astro-Harness user.
Area Effect damage also seems to trigger the effect.
Tagging out will not remove the power shield.
Tag-in stuns (e.g. Cloak of Destiny) and Green Lantern/Jessica Cruz Rebirth's stasis passive will ignore the Power Shield and deal damage to health directly (the 1 or 2 damage dealt by the stun, not any follow-up attacks). If the target already had 1 health left, the stun can immediately knock them out even if they have active Power Shield.
Invulnerability
(See also: Invulnerability)
Invulnerability on Ares
The core strength of Astro Harness. The invulnerability is activated at three health thresholds (similar to Green Lantern/John Stewart's Passive) and if active, can be used to completely ignore all damage, including Super Moves, for 3-5 seconds.
It can also stack with Green Lantern/John Stewart or teammates paired with him to give one of them four layers of invulnerability, but it is a waste as just one of them is enough. Its invulnerability takes priority over passives like Superman/Injustice 2 or Black Adam/Regime, and theirs won't trigger while under invulnerability.
If a single hit goes through two thresholds (e.g. if the hit brings you from 60% health to 5% health), invulnerability will only trigger once, wasting one of activations.
It is possible to trigger Power Shield at the same time as the second or third phases of invulnerability, if overkill damage is dealt.
Invulnerability can protect user from most status effects such as Power Drain or Damage-Over-Time. However, it cannot protect user from snare effect of Hawkgirl/Prime, Jessica Cruz/Rebirth, and Disable Special effect of Hawkgirl/Regime. The disable gear effects of Claw of Horus, Solomon Grundy/Earth 2 and Catwoman/Batman Ninja can be applied even if the target is protected by Invulnerability, although they won't disable Astro Harness' invulnerability if already triggered. The Flash/Earth 2's tag-in stun and slow on SP can also bypass invulnerability.
Area Effect does not trigger the Invulnerability. It can bring a tagged-out Astro-Harness to 1 health, who would then only get 1 Invulnerability period when they tag in and none after.
Additionally, invulnerability resets after each match in Survivor Mode and Breakthrough (where health levels carry over) even after losing some health provided you don't fall below the next threshold (e.g. you can start a match with 80% health, and the 100% health invulnerability would be active). If you start a match between 10% and 50% health, you get invulnerability at match start, then when falling below 10%. If you start a match below 10% health, you only get 1 period of invulnerability when you first tag in and none afterwards. If you boost health before a match, your boosted health level is used in determining this. If you start with low health, healing the character during the match will also work to regain the Invulnerability periods, as long as the healing occurs before the Astro-Harness user's first tag in. For example, if you start below 50% health, as long as the user is healed above 50% before they tag in, they will have access to all 3 Invulnerability periods.
Electric DOT
Deals 1%-2% of the special's damage dealt per second (not counting Area Effect damage), for 5%-10% total over 5 seconds. Applied after the special, so knocking out an opponent with a special will apply it on the next opponent. With augment or other universal crit chance, this DOT can crit as other DOTs, deals increased damage. Its damage is usually negligible, but may be devastating sometimes if the special is a powerful (crit) nuke, and especially when this DOT also crits with augmented crit damage or Batman/Flashpoint's passive.
If equipped on Harley Quinn, she can apply it on her SP2 regardless of the choices she picked, but for her, the damage dealt by the DOT is only 2% (of what the bomb would have dealt) total max instead of the 10% normal. If she uses a non-damaging option again before the DOT runs out, the total DOT dealt during the special will be used to calculate a 10% further DOT, further greatly diminishing its damage until it reaches 1, then it goes back to normal. Aquaman/Prime's special 2 does not cause any special hit, and does not apply this Electric DOT.
Strategy
Astro Harness, usually regarded as the ultimate defensive gear, is a huge asset to any team and can be life-saver in many situations. Since the invulnerability can be triggered at full health which is at the start of the match, it can be used against characters with starting bars of power and even 3 full bars such as Green Lantern/Red Lantern Hal Jordan and Batman/Arkham Knight (when equipped with Tantu Totem or paired up with Batgirl/Prime) as both can use a super move at the start of the match. If a hit of a multi-hit special trigger the invulnerability, the remaining hits of that special will be negated as long as the invulnerability hasn't expired, wasting the enemy's power. It is recommended to not put Astro-Harness on your first character to avoid wasting it if there is no immediate threat at the beginning of the match, and instead tag in your Astro-Harness character when the threat arises. However, if equipped on your starter, it is uniquely useful as an invulnerability tool in Survivor mode, completely countering powerful characters such as Batman/Arkham Origins, Batman/Arkham Knight, Batgirl/Prime, and Green Lantern/Red Lantern Hal Jordan no matter which round you are on as the invulnerability will trigger at start at the match even if the users' heath don't reach 100%, and you will lose the 100% heath threshold invulnerability if the users aren't in the first slot.
When invulnerability is on, Hal Jordan/Red Lantern can use his special attacks for FREE, allowing him to usually fire off 3 free super moves per match. Equip it on fragile characters, especially glass cannon such as Ares/Prime and The Joker/Arkham Origins, can help them survive long enough to dish out huge amount of damage. The Invulnerability can also protect you from status effects, and you can then tag-out safely without being damaged by Catwoman/Arkham Knight's unrinsable DOT. When enemy attacks you with their basic attacks while you are protected by invulnerability, you can immediately counter them with your special attacks, which can't be blocked, dealing high damage to the enemy.
The power shield, though isn't guaranteed, can be a life-saver sometimes, especially against powerful one-hit special which can bypass the health threshold needed to trigger invulnerability, such as Ares/Prime's SP2. It isn't counted as healing or resurrection, and therefore, unaffected by Batman/Flashpoint and Killer Frost/Regime, making this gear a great defensive tool against these characters. It can also bypass Raven's dangerous health swaps and can be used to fuel Red Lantern's specials. This effect can help Raven/Prime trigger her health swap after a powerful attack bypassed the health threshold and probably bypassed her passive and knocked her out if the power shield doesn't trigger.
Its electric DOT damage is negligible and therefore, shouldn't be taken into account in your gear setups. The Flash/Blackest Night and his Blackest Night teammates can gain power from DOT, so be cautious when you battle them.
Fuse
| Level | Credits | 
|
|
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
| +1 | 1,000 | 4 | 4 | 4 |
| +2 | 2,000 | 6 | 6 | 6 |
| +3 | 3,000 | 8 | 8 | 8 |
| +4 | 4,000 | 10 | 10 | 10 |
| +5 | 5,000 | 12 | 12 | 12 |
| +6 | 6,000 | 14 | 14 | 14 |
| +7 | 7,000 | 16 | 16 | 16 |
| +8 | 8,000 | 18 | 18 | 18 |
| +9 | 9,000 | 20 | 20 | 20 |
| +10 | 10,000 | 24 | 24 | 24 |
| Credits |
|
|
|
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 60,000 | 15 | 15 | 15 | 5 |
| 115,000 | 147 | 147 | 147 | 5 |
| Level | Credits |
|
|
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
| +1 | 5,000 | 4 | 4 | 4 |
| +2 | 10,000 | 6 | 6 | 6 |
| +3 | 15,000 | 8 | 8 | 8 |
| +4 | 20,000 | 12 | 12 | 12 |
| +5 | 25,000 | 20 | 20 | 20 |
| +6 | 30,000 | 28 | 28 | 28 |
| +7 | 35,000 | 36 | 36 | 36 |
| +8 | 40,000 | 48 | 48 | 48 |
| +9 | 45,000 | 60 | 60 | 60 |
| +10 | 50,000 | 72 | 72 | 72 |
| Credits |
|
|
|
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 390,000 | 441 | 441 | 441 | 5 |
Shattering
| Evolution |
|
|
|
|
Bonus
Shards |
|
|
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unevolved | 20 | 20 | 20 | 1 | --> | ? | ? | ? |
| Evolved | 24 | 24 | 24 | 1 | --> | ? | ? | ? |
| Maxed | 24 | 24 | 24 | 1 | --> | 36-71 | 36-70 | 36-70 |
Ignoring the power credit cost and assuming minimum output (24 red, 24 blue, 24 green), evolving it breaks even after 7 gear pieces shattered.
Ignoring the power credit cost and assuming minimum output (60 red, 60 blue, 60 green), maxing it breaks even after 5 gear pieces shattered (over the base evolved form).
Trivia
- There was a visual glitch in which a hit that triggers invulnerability would be displayed once per second while it is active, despite that no further damage is actually taken.
- Before 3.1, the Power Shield can be removed by tagging out and is unaffected by reflect damage.
- Previously, the Power Shield is unaffected by life drain.
- Previously, Aquaman/Prime's Atlantean Hero applied the Electric DOT when one of Aquaman's teammates tag in (regardless of when and whether the hero was knocked out), dealing 2% of Aquaman's damage over 5 seconds. But if the hero attacked the opponent, the damage is scaled to the damage dealt, around 0.65% of the damage dealt.
| Gear (evolved) |
|---|
| 4→5 star 5-U-93-R Pill (Overpowered 5-U-93-R) • Alien Artifact (Mother Box) • Ancient Katana (Soultaker Sword) • Astro Force (Astro-Harness) • Black Diamond (Heart of Darkness) • Black Power Battery (Nekron's Scythe) • Cloak (Cloak of Destiny) • Gingo Fruit (Gingold Soda) • Gloves of Azrael (Gauntlets of Azrael) • Mysterious Artifact (The Ibistick) • Nightwing's Ninjato (Brandished Ninjato) • Ra's Al Ghul's Dagger (Ra's Al Ghul's Scimitar) • Riddler's Cane (Riddler's Staff) • Scarecrow's Mask (Scarecrow's Ventilator Mask) • Sengoku Helmet (Batman Ninja Helmet) • The Batmobile (Militarized Batmobile) • The Master's Arms (The Master's Death Cart) • Time Capsule (Quake Engine) • Totem (Tantu Totem) • War Gauntlet (Claw of Horus)
|