Amy_Amp

There is a ton of talk here. There are pure farm builds in there as well as general builds. Look at ones for what you want and get ideas from there.

I guess my question is what is it about a Ice/cold makes you think you will enjoy it more than an Ice/ice blaster that you were "totally disappointed with?" I like both my Ice/ice and Cold/ice about the same and to me they play rather similar.

Very few people write guides these days. Period. The fact that guides have been written for it in the defender and blaster forums makes the need for a corr version all the less likely needed.

The strength of Elec is that it does a number of things. The problem is, it doesn't do any of them well enough to stand out. It's has two ST attacks if you skip the pet, so it's ST damage can be lacking. I didn't find the pet all that useful, FWIW. It has two AoEs, but one generally gets slotted for at least some end mod so you aren't getting two full AoEs out of it as well.

It has controls, but it's biggest selling point is end drain and that it is hit-or-miss at best. SC takes a full 3 seconds to animate. It needs to be applied twice before it actually end drains on an AoE level unless you have a power to combo with it like Power Boost. In other words, by the time end drain takes over, a decent part of the battle has happened. This say nothing of the fact that if there is a controller, or dom on the team they have already AoE mezzed the mob and thus the additional end drain is adding marginal mitigation, or how ever so small of a sliver a mob needs and they will still attack. In short, it's a blast set that was given mitigation tools, but they can't be too good, or they step on the toes of controllers and doms, but the blasts can't be that good either due to the mitigation the set has.

Now, there are times when it does stand out and lord knows I have dropped jaws on my Kin/elec. It's tough to die when stuff can't attack you and suddenly the little defender is the one standing and not the other teammates. When end drain works, it really is effective. On the LGTF, Famine, who I believe is the end draining one, is painfully easy to end drain and that's a huge boon for a team. Some AVs can be end drained. Some, despite my best efforts, simply can not be, or at least at a rate that would make a difference. If their end bar goes down as fast as their health bar, then end drain won't really matter.

If you want a balanced mix of ST and AoE, Kat and Claws work. On my Kat/sr I can pretty much chain Golden Dragonfly, Flashing Steel, and The Lotus Drops, so to me that's pretty respectable AoE.

/fire does more damage. It will be the squishiest of the three. One other knock against it is it will cause the most redraw of the three. The fun factor will be high just because you are going to pump out a ton of damage. I only have a couple /fire brutes that I used to learn about self PLing. One should hit 50 tomorrow and then I'll work on the other that's at 40. Minimal experience outside of farms, so there is little I can add. I am aiming to make an alternate builds so they can be played for general content. From my play experience as a support-o-holic, I wouldn't put too much into forming an opinion of FA until it's got IOs in it. FA on SOs is...lacking in my book.

/elec is more end friendly. My only issue with it is that brutes get Energize at 28 versus where scrappers get it at 20. Elec is working it's way towards my favorite armor set. I do have a level 32 DB/elec and level 31 Spines/elec scrappers to whom I have enjoyed. My Dark/elec brute was actually set up for deletion, but I talked to a SG mate and I was willing to grin and bear it until I got Energize. It looked so good on paper and yet I hated it so much I repeatedly put it on the self. Now, it's becoming one of my favorite builds. I got a Elec/dark Hardcore tank, and I'm rolling a SS/elec brute somewhere. I did say I liked ElA.

/dark is sturdier. It has a bunch of tools that work with teams as well. It is, an end sucking behemoth in the making if you let it be. Outside of getting KB protection, you will want the +end proc in DR asap. Highest DA I have is a level 40 Dark/stone tank and I'm happy as hell to be close to epics and then getting Cardiac once I Incarnate. I basically have a SO type build outside of the +end proc and it's a pre i19 build so I don't have room for Tough/Weave, but I can't imagine running all of those toggles on an SO build. I'm not saying it's a bad set. I just can't imagine rolling one without the intention of IOing it out and getting it Incarnated. Same can be said for FA mind you. I got a Claws/dark brute, but it's around 25 and I haven't really slotted it out yet for some reason. I need to do that and then take it for a spin. I'm just glad Claws is way more end friendly than /stone.

So Posi, how is that Staff melee set coming along?

Depends on how you define "considered fine." To me it's a valid play style outside of PLing newbies which end up generating players with level 50s and still ignorant of the basics. I have just about got a level 50 SS/fire and a near level 50 Claws/fire via self PLing them in the AE and to me it has been an interesting experience and I learned from it. I even learned some aspects of using AE that I didn't know about since I hardly use the AE before. I got all of the AE stuff unlocked so at some point I'll start to poke around and see what I can come up with. Without rolling a ticket generator, that doesn't happen.

10 Astral Merits

Due to the title of the name I'll not link to it. However...

Medieval LARP.
Ryan Kwanten(True Blood)
Steve Zahn
Danny Pudi(Community)
Peter Dinklage

And yes, the trailer looks good. It will be a crime if this doesn't live up to it's potential.

My best build isn't mine. I copied it from one of the best known posters for pulling off stupid amazing things in the game. I might be a math geek, but I'm lazy.

Unless you are going Mu for thematic reasons, I would look into going Mace since Scorpion Shield is a def based toggle and the def will stack with FFG. As fun as MOAR DAMAGE is, soft capping to stuff like S/L is even better.

BS is a solid 4th since it looks thematic and Parry helps /sd with def until you can soft cap. Once the next set of ports hit, Axe and Mace will be worth looking at as well.

EDIT: SS for Scrappers In sort, double stacked Rage + fully saturated AAO = jaw dropping foul mouthed exclamations of glee amounts of damage.