Amberyl

My new guide to kinetics team play (as opposed to kinetics builds): Guide to Playing Kinetics on Large Teams

It'd be handy to have a useful in-game mail system. That would allow you to mail items and Inf to your other characters, as well as other people.

With the giant surge in the popularity of kinetics, I've written two new guides:

What to Do if You've Got Kinetics on Your Team - a guide for those teaming with kinetics

Playing Kinetics on Large Teams - a guide for new kins playing the powerset on large teams

Summary

Almost all of the kinetics powers bolster teammates who are either near the kin, or near the targeted enemy. However, most kins won't chase you around the battlefield. Thus, if you need something from them, stick close to them.

If you're having trouble finding where the kin is in the fight, click on their name on your team window, and hit "f" to follow them. You'll automatically move towards them, although you should still pay attention to where you're going since you don't want to accidentally aggro anything in your path.

There may be times when you do not want to stand in melee range, which is where many kins are likely to be. For instance, if aggro is poorly controlled, or there's a lot of AoE attacks targeting the tank, standing close can be deadly. You'll have to make a judgement call as to whether closer, within the range of kin buffs and heals, or farther, outside of the zone of death, is safer. Just remember that if you do get hit hard in melee range, zipping out of melee may be the worst thing you can do, especially if it brings you outside the radius of available healing.

Transfusion and Transference

Transfusion is a heal; Transference refills your blue bar of endurance. Transfusion is available to all kins at level 1. Transference is available to defenders at 26, and to controllers and corruptors at level 35.

Both powers are PBAoE around a mob, and require a hit check. You can tell the radius of the effect by the big green swirling circle (Transfusion) or big blue swirling circle (Transference) that surrounds the mob that's affected by it. If you're not within that radius of effect, you're out of luck. You can increase your chances of being close enough for the effect by sticking close to the kinetics player, who is probably going to be standing in melee range, likely near the tank. If you see group heals going off, from whatever the source, you know that the the green effect you see is the place you want to be if you need a health bar refill. (Come I16 and powerset color customization, this may be more difficult to see, though, since people might change the colors from the default green and blue.)

A good general rule of thumb is, "If something is attacking you, run towards the tank, where it will hopefully be drawn in by the tank." This is especially true when you've got a kin on your team, because the heal has to be centered on a mob, and chances are that the kin is going to target something near him and/or near the tank (or lead brute, redside). If you run away from the enemy, the kin cannot heal you. Remember this. Run towards the kin if you are hurt. If you're not near an enemy, they can't heal you, and if they're spending time finding you in the fight and trying to find an enemy to target that's near you, those are seconds ticking by where you're not getting healed.

Similar rules apply for an emptying endurance bar. If you've just nuked, used a wakie, or otherwise mostly or totally emptied out your blue bar, run to the kin. Do not run away from the group to recuperate. Assuming the kin is high enough level to have the power, he can readily refill your endurance completely.

Of course, the powers do require a hit check. Even though most kins stack up tons of accuracy, City of Heroes caps the hit chance at 95%, and also uses a "streakbreaker" that forces a miss after a certain number of hits in a row. That means that these powers will sometimes miss, even with a really tricked-out kins. And kins who don't have lots of accuracy will have problems landing these powers on anything with lots of defense, to-hit debuffing, or that's significantly higher level than them. (Keep that in mind when fighting +4 bosses!) Moreover, even if the power hits, if the enemy dies as the power is going off, there's no effect. You'll still see the big swirly green or blue circle, but there will be no effect. On a miss or a waste like this, the kin has to wait for a recharge; the heal has a base 8-second recharge and the end-refill a base 30-second recharge, so it could be a while before there's another attempt.

Transfusion also applies a significant regeneration debuff to the enemy it's used on. For that reason, you'll sometimes see kins healing frequently in AV fights, even if everyone is healthy, in order to debuff the AV's regen.

Siphon Power and Fulcrum Shift

Siphon Power is available at level 1 to defenders, and level 2 to controllers and corruptors. It is targeted at an enemy and requires a hit check; if it hits, it debuffs the enemy's damage, and it buffs the damage of the kin and his allies in the immediate vicinity.

Fulcrum Shift ("FS") is available at level 32 to defenders, and level 38 to controllers and corruptors. It's sort of like an AoE version of Siphon Power. It is an AoE targeted at an enemy; for each enemy it hits, it debuffs that enemy's damage, and buffs the damage of characters who are near that enemy. It also buffs the damage of the kin and his nearby allies. Thus, the more tightly clustered the mob group, and the more of them there are, the more targets FS is likely to hit, and thus the greater the total damage bonus is likely to be. FS can often take characters all the way to their archetype's damage cap.

Both powers have similar visual FX; those affected are briefly marked by a swirly-glowing red-orange effect. Because both powers require a hit check, kins who don't have sufficient accuracy to hit higher-level foes will use these powers less effectively when in missions that are sufficiently high to them that they're having trouble hitting things.

A kin of sufficiently high level will often open a fight with FS, as soon as the tank (or lead brute) has grabbed aggro. (FS counts as an attack, and thus generates aggro; kins that aren't built to take alpha strikes can easily faceplant if they open with FS before someone sturdier has grabbed aggro.) If you want to reap the benefit of FS, it behooves you to be within reasonable range of the kin, and in melee range with the densest portion of the enemy group, when FS goes off. If you're lagging behind the rest of the team, you'll miss the FS effect, and thus the huge buff to damage that it usually offers.

Speed Boost

Speed Boost ("SB") is available at level 12 to defenders, and level 20 to controllers and corruptors. It's a buff that lasts for two minutes; the sound effect sounds a bit like a whip-crack, and the buff icon is a less-than sign on a light-blue background. The buff stacks if you receive it from different kins, but if the same kin re-applies it, it simply refreshes the buff.

People love this power for two reasons -- it gives you a 50% boost to your recharge, and it significantly increases your endurance recovery. It also greatly increases your speed, though, and some people dislike it for that reason, because they find it difficult to move accurately when speed-boosted.

If you don't want speed boost used on you, you should make that known immediately, and your teammates will usually respect the request, but recognize that you are gimping your effectiveness by turning down the buff.

Kinetics players vary in how conscientious they are about keeping speed boost on the whole team, the degree to which they only buff during downtime between fights, and their level of annoyance at being told "sb plz". Don't beg for speed boost, but if you see it in the powers list of the kin on your team, and he's never using it, it's not offensive to ask if you could please have speed boost, especially right before a fight. In the middle of a fight, the buff might very well drop, and the kin may be too busy dealing with other things to re-buff the whole team immediately. Note that some kins hate speed-boosting other people, since the buff has such a short duration, and may grumble about not wanting to be a buff-bot; indeed, some kins will avoid taking the power in order to avoid the requests.

Increase Density

Increase Density ("ID") is available at level 8 to defenders, and level 16 to controllers and corruptors. However, many players don't take it until later in their build. It's a buff that protects the recipient from mez effects, and will break a current mez. It also provides resistance to smashing and energy damage. The mez protection stacks (although usually one application) is sufficient; the resistance does not.

Because ID has a very short duration, most kins don't buff it proactively. If you get mezzed, say "zzz" and someone may throw a mez breaker at you; on a team with a kin, that might be ID.

ID slows your movement. For people who have problems controlling their character when under the effect of Speed Boost, ID may help.

If you're someone that the kin might normally expect to have mez and knockback protection -- a tank, scrapper, or brute, especially at level 20+ (either normally, via sidekick, or AE auto-sidekick) -- but for whatever reason you don't have it, make sure that the kin knows this. They might try to keep ID on you, especially if you're tanking.

What to Do if You've Got Kinetics on Your Team

Kinetics is a primary powerset for defenders, and a secondary powerset for controllers and corruptors. It has experienced a significant rise in popularity as a result of its perceived usefulness for large-team missions, particularly AE missions.

This purpose of this guide is to explain to new players what kinetics does, and what you can do to make sure that you get maximum benefit and survivability from having a kinetics toon on your team.

If you play a kinetics yourself, check out my "Guide to Playing Kinetics on Large Teams". That guide is for you; the guide you're reading right now is for your teammates.

This guide is structured by the powers most commonly taken by Kinetics players ("kins"), in the order that they're most likely to be relevant to you. It is not a comprehensive guide to Kinetics, just the things that non-Kinetics players are likely to care about. All numbers in this guide are defender values; in many cases, controller and corruptor numbers are slightly less.

The TL;DR Version

The summary for the really, really impatient: You will usually need to stand close to the kin if you consistently want the buffs, heals, and endurance that the kin provides. Can't find them? Target them in your team window and hit "f" to follow, which will automatically move you towards them.

The summary for the merely moderately impatient:

Transfusion and Transference are a heal and endurance-bar refiller, respectively. They have a decent-sized radius, visible as a swirly green or blue circle when the power goes off, that is PBAoE around an enemy. Most kins target an enemy that's near them. If you need healing or an end refill, stand near the kin. These powers have a minimum of a 5% chance to miss, have no effect if they go off on an enemy as it dies, and have relatively long recharges, so in a real emergency, pop an inspiration, don't wait and hope.

Siphon Power and Fulcrum Shift debuff enemy damage, and increase the damage of teammates who are in the area of effect. Stay near the kin to make sure that you get the buff effect, which you can see as a red-orange whirly visual FX on the affected. To get the best benefit from Fulcrum Shift, you'll also want to be near the enemies that are hit by it.

Speed Boost (SB) is a buff that significantly increases your recharge rate and endurance recovery. It also increases your speed.

Increase Density (ID) is a buff that prevents and breaks mezzes. It also provides significant resistance against Smashing and Energy damage. Also, it reduces your speed, so if you've got trouble controlling your movement after a Speed Boost, an ID might help you.

Concluding Words

Kinetics is an excellent powerset which has great utility of teams of all sizes. However, its target-centric nature means that it is more difficult to use optimally on larger teams. In particular, kinetics is often best played at melee range, and if a team is split between melee and ranged toons, ranged toons can receive lesser benefits unless the kinetics player is particularly careful about positioning, or the ranged toons are willing to fight at closer range.

Kinetics benefits strongly from not being the sole type of support (in terms of defender primary, controller or corruptor secondary) on a team. However, since effects from multiple kinetics toons stack, it's not a waste to have more than one kin on a team. Conversely, don't buy into the myth that kinetics is necessary for anything.

The information in this guide is a set of generalizations that are broadly applicable to all kins, but your specific build, team make-up and dynamics, and playstyle may lead you towards making different play decisions. There are many guides that cover building and playing kins, specific to particular archetypes and powerset combos. You're strongly encouraged to read the guides that are specific to your choices.

The Combat Attributes Window

If you click the Powers menu, you'll see that it has a sub-menu, Combat Attributes. You can expand the sections shown when you view your combat attributes, to get a detailed quantitative view of your powers. You can right-click something to begin monitoring it. All the attributes you're monitoring show up in a little window that you can drag someplace convenient.

For kinetics, it's particularly useful to monitor two things: your Last Hit Chance, and your Damage Bonus.

Last Hit Chance tells you what your percentage chance to hit was on the last thing you tried to use a power on. It's never any higher than 95% -- you always have at least a 5% chance to miss, no matter what. If you're keeping the same target, this is hugely useful to see whether you're likely to hit it the next time. If you've got to hit -- for instance, you've got a critical Transfusion or Transference attempt -- you can look at that number and decide whether you're going to shift targets to something that's easier to hit (for instance, something that doesn't have lots of defense), or if you'll need to pop a yellow inspiration or fire off a power like Aim beforehand.

Damage Bonus tells you how much of a damage bonus you have, based on any IO set bonuses, buffs from teammates, and the buffs from Siphon Power and Fulcrum Shift. This is a sideways way of knowing how effective Fulcrum Shift was (the higher the number, the more targets you hit with it), and of knowing whether stacking another will be useful. Note that your damage cap -- represented by the bonus number being colored blue -- may be lower than the damage cap of other archetypes on the team, so even if you don't benefit from another boost, the rest of your teammates might.

Binds

You may find it useful to make a macro or bind indicating that someone has gone out of range. It's useful for everything -- people out of buff range, people who aren't within the radius of Transfusion or Transference, people too far away to benefit from Fulcrum Shift, etc.

"/macro Rng tell $target, You're out of range. Come to me!" will create a macro that you can put on your power tray; when you use it, you will send a tell to the targeted player.

"/bind F12 tell $target, You're out of range. Come to me!" will bind the F12 key, so that when you press F12, you will send a tell to the targeted player. You can substitute any other unused key for F12.

Siphon Power and Fulcrum Shift

Siphon Power is a single-target attack that does no damage, but debuffs an enemy's damage, and buffs your damage as well as the damage of teammates who are near you when the power goes off.

Fulcrum Shift ("FS") has similar, but more complex, mechanics. First, FS buffs your damage as well as the damage of teammates who are near you when the power goes off. Second, FS is an AoE centered on the enemy target, and requires a hit check for every enemy within the radius of the AoE. Every enemy that it hits has its damage debuffed, and each of your teammates that is near that enemy has a buff applied to their damage. Thus, for maximum damage bonus, your teammates should be both close to you, and as close to as many enemies in the FS radius as possible. Similarly, you should also be close to your FS target to reap the maximum benefit, and of course, your FS target should be central and in the densest portion of the enemy group.

If you're on a large team, and you properly time Fulcrum Shift to go off on as many targets as possible, you will usually hit the damage cap. This means that once you get Fulcrum Shift, you'll probably find Siphon Power to be less useful, but it can be handy against particularly tough opponents like AVs, for boosting damage for teammates who weren't within range of Fulcrum Shift's buff, and for further damage buffing in instances where the mobs were scattered and you didn't get a maxed-out FS. Multiple Fulcrum Shifts and Siphon Powers do stack with one another. If you're a defender or controller, your damage cap is only 400% (a max of a 300% damage bonus); other archetypes have higher caps, so even if you're personally capped from the first FS, the rest of your teammates may benefit from additional damage buffs.

Fulcrum Shift, with three recharge slots, will recharge sufficiently quickly that you will usually have it available at the beginning of each fight. If your team does not kill extremely quickly, it may recharge while you're still in the middle of a fight. Don't feel obliged to save FS for just situations where you can hit the maximum targets. It recharges fast enough that you can use it mid-fight on a couple of targets without "wasting" it.

Don't Neglect Your Other Powerset

If you're a defender, your secondary blast set shouldn't be neglected. Defender blasts generally have a useful secondary effect; even if you're going for a "pure support" concept and have some kind of philosophical objection to doing damage, you should be blasting in order to help your team via secondary effects. (Sonic attacks debuff enemy resistance and thus makes your team do more damage even if they're at the damage cap; Radiation attacks debuff enemy defense and thus makes your team hit more often; Dark attacks cause enemies to miss more often; and so forth.) Although kinetics is very "clicky", and you may be kept very busy just with that, you should at least find the time to fire off your AoE attacks, contributing some damage and the benefits of the side-effects.

If you're a controller or corruptor, kinetics is your secondary and should be treated as such. Controlling or blasting, respectively, is your primary role and should generally get priority. This is likely to most frequently manifest in deciding the degree to which you'll rebuff mid-fight or spend time trying to heal up people who are in trouble but not in the range of a heal targeted off your current enemy target. Controllers with pets also need to keep mob scatter in mind; maximizing the benefits of the initial Fulcrum Shift often depends on ensuring that the enemy group is initially clustered as tightly as possible.

Fight Positioning

Ideally for you, a fight should begin with someone sturdy, likely a tank or a brute, grabbing aggro, and, to the extent reasonably possible, trying to cluster the mobs a little bit. If team is pulling rather than someone charging in, wait for the mobs to run up and cluster. Once the toon in the tanking role grabs aggro, you can open with Fulcrum Shift. It is important to wait until aggro is grabbed, because otherwise, everything hit with Fulcrum Shift will aggro on you, and you may die. Alternatively, if you have an AoE control or immobilize power, you can consider opening with that before you Fulcrum Shift; this may also be useful for ensuring that any laggards on your team get a chance to catch up and be within range of the buff when it goes off.

The best place to stand for the fight opening is as close to as many of your teammates as possible, but also reasonably close to the enemy group. The Fulcrum Shift basic buff effect range is a PBAoE centered on you; additional stacking FS buffs are PBAoEs centered on each enemy that's hit. You'll need to experiment a bit to get the sense of how close your teammates need to be to get the effect, and thus where you should stand if your teammates have split into a melee contingent and a ranged contingent.

Once the fight is underway, you'll have to decide where you want to stand. This is probably a function of what your other powerset is. If you've got a blast set (defender or corruptor), you are likely to be moving around, so you can position your AoE and cone attacks optimally. If you're a fire/kin controller, and you're running Hot Feet, you're likely to be standing in melee, near the tank. If you're some other type of controller, you might hang back farther, with the other ranged archetypes. If you're the sole source of heals on the team, you're probably going to need to position yourself near the people getting hurt the most. Broadly, staying near whoever is in the main tank role is useful for helping to ensure that your powers don't draw unnecessary aggro, particularly since anything that chases you is likely to get drawn off towards the tank.

You may find it useful to zoom out the camera during fights. That will give you a better idea of where your teammates and enemies are, and therefore where you can best position yourself and your targeted-PBAoE powers for best effect. If you just stick with a fairly close-up view of your own character, or you play in first-person view, rather than a more zoomed-out third-person view, you'll miss some of the broader context of the fight.

Transfusion and Transference

Transfusion is a superb heal, especially when slotted out, and Transference is a fantastic endurance restoration that's capable of fully refilling your team's blue bars when it's slotted out.

For better or for worse, however, both powers are PBAoE on a mob, and require a hit check. It may feel like Murphy's Law demands that the time when you most need a critical heal or end refill is the time that it will miss, no matter how much accuracy and to-hit you stack on your character. Realistically, though, you're always capped at a 95% chance to hit, and also subject to the streakbreaker. So, inevitably, sometimes you'll miss. All you can do is to try and make sure that your hit chance is always that 95% or more, through some combination of slotting for accuracy, getting a to-hit buff from a toggle like Tactics, increasing your hit chances via IO set bonuses, popping yellow inspirations, and using powers like Aim before trying to land something critical. Also, you should try to minimize emergencies where you have to land that power, by ensuring you have enough recharge, and by healing and restoring endurance before the situation turns into an emergency. (It also helps if your teammates pop inspirations when needed.)

You should be keeping an eye on your team's green and blue bars, and healing and end-refilling as necessary. Keep a particularly close eye out for endurance crashes following a nuke, and for people self-resurrecting; both of these usually require immediate endurance refills, particularly since a nuke usually prevents natural endurance recovery for a brief period of time.

When your team stays tightly clustered, you can fire off Transfusion and Transference and easily hit your whole team with the effects. When your team scatters, even a little, some people will inevitably be out of range. Even having your ranged teammates hang back a bit can put them outside the radius of the effects centered on the main melee brawl, and vice versa.

So, how do you deal with your HP and endurance support roles, when you're not sure where someone is in a chaotic and sprawling fight?

The first tactic you can try is to fire off Transfusion as a warning shot of sorts. You may get lucky and simply catch your hapless victim within the radius, which you'll be able to see because their health bar will go up. (Alternatively, they weren't in the radius but popped a green inspiration or got healed by someone else, in which case you no longer have a problem, so c'est la via.) If your victim is not in the radius and still needs healing, hopefully the presence of the big green whirlpool circle of healing will inspire him to run towards it. If you're feeling hopeful in this way, you can simply fire off Transfusion again when it recharges, and pray that your victim has had the presence of mind to come into the circle. This tactic works less well with Transference, due to the longer recharge; a lot of positioning can change between attempts. For this, you can hope that smart players will respond to seeing a Transfusion go off by running towards it, thus ending up within range of a follow-up Transference.

The second tactic you can try is to click on your teammate in your Team window (or otherwise target him). That will set him as your target -- and automatically set an assist target, which means that you are also targeting whatever he's targeting, which is presumably whatever enemy he's fighting. That means that if you then fire Transfusion or Transference, it will go off on whatever enemy he's targeting. If your teammate is a melee toon, you can be almost certain that whatever he's fighting is next to him, and therefore that he'll be within the effect radius of your power. However, if your teammate is a ranged toon, that's not necessarily the case. Fortunately, the assist target shows up as a fainter rectangular target box around that target, which lets you see where that enemy is in the fight and visually verify whether or not your teammate is probably close enough to be in the effect radius.

The third tactic is trying to run over to your teammate and target a mob that's now by you. Select your teammate's name in the Team window, which will cause the bright target box to surround him. Move to him, or just hit "f" to follow him, which will bring you automatically towards where he is. Target the nearest enemy and use your power.

The fourth tactic is to try to manually target a mob by your teammate. Select your teammate's name in the Team window and look for the bright target box to find where he is in the fight. Click on an enemy close to him and fire off your power.

The fifth tactic is the simplest: If your teammate isn't near anything targetable, or the only close enemy looks like it's in imminent danger of death (i.e., it is likely to die before you can fire off the power), or you are too tied up where you're already standing to deal with anything more, yell for your teammate to come to you.

Sometimes, you will have to make a decision about who (likely) lives or dies, because you simply can't keep everyone in within the radius of swirly happiness. Broadly, priority order should probably go to whoever is in the main tank role, the owners of toggles that are likely keeping the team alive (Radiation Infection, Dispersion Bubble, and so on), whoever has an available rez (as long as they stay alive, they can resurrect others), whoever has the control powers that are keeping the mobs helpless, and others whose deaths might lead to a wipe.

Don't feel obliged to follow reckless teammates into death. For instance, If a scrapper decides to go solo the next spawn, gets in over his head, and seems likely to die, you may want to simply let him die, particularly if the group he's fighting hasn't aggro'd to anyone else on the team. You can safely land Speed Boost or Increase Density on him without drawing aggro yourself, but Transfusion and Transference both draw aggro, which can be a problem if the rest of your team is still working on the current spawn group, or you're not personally equipped to survive a retaliation strike from the enemy that's now noticed you.

Transfusion and Transference also have some useful side effects. While Transference does some endurance drain to the enemy that it hits, this usually isn't significant enough to really impact the fight. Transfusion, on the other hand, significantly reduces the regeneration rate of the enemy it hits. Thus, it's a very handy tool against Arch-Villains and Heroes. Hit them with it periodically, even if no one needs healing, to keep debuffing their regeneration; it will help your team kill them faster.

Speed Boost

The curse of kinetics is short-duration buffs. Many kins find it frustrating and annoying to "buff bot". However, the two-minute duration Speed Boost ("SB") is one of the primary reasons that people want a kin on their team. The sad truth is that you can be an awesome kin player in all other regards, but if you fail to keep up SB on your team for a reasonable percentage of the time, you will probably not be properly appreciated by your teammates. While you can choose to play without SB, or choose not to regularly buff SB, expect that many players will judge you on this.

Speed Boost's buff icon shows up as a less-than sign on a blue background. You can see what statuses your teammates have, by clicking the arrow on the right side of the team window, which expands it to show running toggles, buffs and debuffs, and inspirations used. Right-clicking on the buff icons will give you an option to hide auto-powers, thus hugely shortening the icon rows to just the useful information. It's also useful to choose numeric icon stacking. You can also choose whether or not to have a buff icon blink shortly before it wears off. By default, this is on; if you're the sole kin on the team, when the icons start blinking, it's time to rebuff if you can spare the attention.

Note that even if you're not the only kin on the team, you'll still be expected to Speed Boost (and other kins will certainly appreciate getting the buff themselves). Speed Boosts from multiple kins will stack, so if you're all diligent about your buffing, your team can charge around like crazed, angry weasels on crack. It can be somewhat difficult to keep track of when you need to refresh buffs in this situation, since you're not the sole owner of the buff icon; in this case, it's useful to run some form of two-minute timer, or to simply get into the habit of re-buffing between fights regardless of the time lapsed.

So, how do you buff without either going postal, or forcing the team to slow down while waiting for buffs?

First, buff between fights. Unless the team is really steamrollering, you can simply rebuff as you're running to the next fight. If someone is out-of-range as you go down the team list, simply move on, and get them when you've all arrived at your next fight. You don't need to stand still to buff; if you're running to the next fight, you can click on a player's name in your team list, then queue the power, so it will fire off as soon as you're close enough to them.

Second, buff in the clean-up phase at the end of the fight. This is useful if the next mob group is immediately nearby. When the team is just beating down on the last straggler or two, you have the leisure to re-buff everyone. Again, if someone is out-of-range, simply move on and get them later.

In a long fight, or if you simply haven't been diligent about re-buffing when it's convenient, you may find that your team needs a re-buff. In this case, you'll have to make some decisions: don't rebuff, rebuff selectively, or rebuff everyone? If you're rebuffing everyone, go down the team list sequentially, or in priority order?

If you're rebuffing selectively, or rebuffing in priority order, you should probably begin with the teammates that are having trouble managing their endurance. While you may have Transference and thus be able to do a mass-refill, characters may be able to burn through their blue bar faster than Transference can recharge. Next, rebuff anyone who could benefit from faster recharge. Depending on how the fight is going, you may prioritize whether you want more offense or defense, and whether your goal is to help those with very long-recharging powers (Empathy regen and recovery auras, Invulnerability's Unstoppable, Tier 9 powers like nukes, etc.), or to prioritize short-term recharge needs. Short-term recharge is usually most important if your team is in so much trouble that you need to immediately bolster the recharge rate of heals and damage-mitigation powers (like AoE control abilities, including soft control like Super Strength's Footstomp that does PBAoE knockdown).

When rebuffing mid-fight, don't lose awareness of what's going on around you. You don't need to go into "buff-bot mode", where you're just methodically re-buffing; you can just toss out the next buff when you get a chance, between applying your other powers. If needed or useful, blast, control, etc. between each buff. You need to decide whether the most useful thing you can do at that particular moment in the fight is to throw a rebuff on someone, or do something else; it's just like making a decision about any other power use.

If you encounter players who object to having Speed Boost, remind them that it provides a big boost to recharge rate and endurance recovery. New players who don't know the powerset may think it just makes them run faster. You may want to consider offering to put Increase Density on those who refuse to take the buff because they find it impossible to control their character under the effect of Speed Boost; Increase Density slows their speed, partially counteracting the run speed increase from Speed Boost.

Increase Density

Increase Density ("ID") has a very short duration (one minute, half of Speed Boost's duration), and a longer animation time and recharge time than Speed Boost. It's your primary means of breaking and preventing mez (holds, sleeps, stuns, etc.) and knockback.

You should use ID on a character who you've noticed is mezzed, or who says "zzz", which is the usual shorthand chat indicator for status effects, and an implicit plea for a mez-breaker. Also, when someone uses a wakie to self-rez, they're usually stunned for a few seconds. Immediately ID them to break the stun (and to help them survive any incoming smashing and energy damage, if relevant). Remind them to run into range if need be, hit a quick Transference to bring them back to full endurance, and hit Transfusion to heal them up. Don't forget to Speed Boost them again, too.

Many kins don't routinely buff ID proactively. If you are buffing proactively, it's more efficient to buff both SB and ID on a character at the same time, rather than buffing everyone with SB and then buffing ID; if you buff them both at the same time, ID will recharge by the time you get to buffing the next character.

If you're fighting a lot of enemies that mez, you may want to proactively apply and maintain ID on characters who have no mez protections. Controllers, defenders, corruptors, and dominators are likely your priority targets for these; beyond no new powers being fired off, mez can drop critical toggle powers (such as Radiation Infection) that are keeping the team safe. Melee characters usually have their own protection, and mez on the other archetypes tends not to have deadly effects on the team.

Beware melee characters who haven't taken their mez protection / knockback protection. (In Fiery Aura, this is split; the set has no knockback protection, so toons of this type often take Acrobatics or slot -KB IOs.) New players who have power-leveled often build very badly, which means that even if their tank, scrapper, or brute defense set offers protection, they haven't taken it, even at high level. If you're not reading people's power choices, the first visual indicator of this is usually seeing a melee toon getting tossed in a knockback. If this is your team's lead tank or brute, you'll have to decide whether you want to keep ID on them constantly, suffer with the danger, or find a better team.

Be aware that ID offers more than just mez and KB protection. It also offers a significant buff to resistance against smashing and energy damage. Any standard mob with "Slugger" or "Slammer" in their name does smashing damage. (Blood Brother Slugger, Scrounger Slugger, Outcast Initiate Slammer, Freak Slammer, Maniac Slammer, etc.). Hammers and maces all do smashing. Energy damage normally goes with some form of electricity FX. If you're fighting mobs of this type, you can buff up those who seem to be taking a lot of damage with ID.

For instance, if you're in a fight with enemies that do smashing and/or energy, and a squishy teammate draws a bunch of aggro and their health is dropping quickly, hitting them with a fast ID can help them survive until they can get a heal or pop an inspiration. (This is extra-useful if you're the sole source of heals on a team, and you've got a teammate likes to fight from range, too far away to be in range of an immediate heal.) This can also help you deal with an overly squishy tank or brute, and it can really help people to survive health crashes, such as the severe drop in health when Invulnerability's Unstoppable wears off.

Guide to Playing Kinetics on Large Teams

Kinetics has become a very popular powerset, and the surge of players leveling up kinetics defenders, controllers and corruptors has resulted in many new kinetics players. These players often find themselves on large teams. Unfortunately, large teams tend to present the greatest challenge to kinetics players, especially if those teams are chaotic; the PBAoE-centric nature of kinetics is best suited to melee range and tight clustering of both teammates and the enemy. Moreover, kinetics tend to find themselves invited to situations that promote very fast leveling, leading to high-level kins who haven't necessarily spent a lot of time with the powerset.

This guide is intended to teach new kinetics players ("kins") some useful tactics for handling PvE team play, especially large-team play. (If you're a non-kinetics player looking to understand how to best team with a kin, you should read my guide "What to Do if You've Got Kinetics on Your Team" instead.)

This guide assumes that you want to pay attention to the support components of kinetics, to the best advantage of your team. It's possible that you might have no interest in doing this; some kins don't like to buff, feel that other people are responsible for taking care of their own health and endurance, are particularly oriented towards the non-kinetics portion of their powerset choices, or prefer a "play as if solo, even while teamed" style. If this is the case for you, you probably aren't interested in the guidance presented here, and that's fine.

Manic Slammers have some Resistance as part of their powerset. I don't know what that resist is against, though.

Without the LotG +rech's, Bert's build isn't that expensive, I think. At least not with patient bidding.

Oh, Delta! That triggered a memory, and I just realized from BertTwo's sig that he's Delta Thermal.

I've recently seen him solo an 8-man all-boss AE, and can vouch that he does it very quickly, very safely, and at what's apparently a very good reward ratio. (BertTwo: I was the kin/sonic defender who joined you for a mission a couple of days ago. You remarked that the duo was actually helpful...) I was sufficiently impressed that I'd considered asking about his specific build. Yeah, it wasn't 54s, but who cares as long as the reward-to-time ratio is good? (And if you feel the need to be farming, you are probably short of Influence and are trying to start with a build that isn't grotesquely expensive.)

BertTwo, what's the AE powerset combo that this is designed to be best against?

I was kind to a mid-20s scrapper the other day who was deep into proclaiming I AM SO AWESOME, LOOK AT HOW MUCH DAMAGE I AM DOING. Someone on the team was like, "yeah, you're dual blades, it's like that".

Since I had been spending a good chunk of my time on that mission explaining to the rest of the team how not to die a lot, I decided not to top it off by explaining that he was doing a ton of damage because he was damage-capped from receiving stacked Fulcrum Shifts plus the benefit of the -res of my sonic attacks.

But they all appreciated the heals!

Yes, I definitely agree. (I normally six-slot Char, and to someone not leveling in AE, I'd recommend slotting it up early on to get to the all-important "reliably lock down a boss" point.)

[ QUOTE ]
This is excellent. I've been hoping someone would do this for weeks.

If you haven't done so, I feel it should also be in the Wiki. I'd rather send a newbie there than here.

[/ QUOTE ]

Thanks.

I'm planning on putting it on the wiki, although I'm also pondering doing so with an expansion to a full guide for new players in general, sort of "the manual that should have come with the game", with the AE-recovery stuff as a sideline and appendix.

I'd actually recommend an even more frugal approach for the really cash-poor.

Don't slot TOs at all. Save your Influence. The 10%-ish boost just isn't worth the cash.

If you play primarily teamed or are leveling quickly, slot DOs only in your critical powers. Keep saving cash.

Buy level 25 IOs when you hit level 22, and keep them until you're flush with cash. Don't replace them with 35s; at typical prices, you won't be saving anything over buying SOs unless you keep the 25s throughout most of your career.

The best thing you can do, though, is to play the market. Run a couple of AE missions (just normal ones, you don't have to go on farms) and you'll get enough tickets to go buy some salvage. Sell the salvage on the market and you should have plenty of influence. 540 tickets will get you something that will sell in the 700k to 1 million range.

[ QUOTE ]
Can I team with you? I need to see the magnitude of suckage that would require a build like this to keep a team alive. I bet it would be funny to watch.

[/ QUOTE ]

Any team that sucks that much, he's better off going Dark, slotting Howling Twilight for recharge, and grabbing Vengeance, also slotted for recharge.

New with the last patch: Missions with destructibles have had those objects reset to empty, invalidating the arc.

Adding to the frustration: Trying to fix and republish these on a Mac results in the arc not publishing (and thus not being fixable), AND a mapserver error, dumping you to the login screen.

[ QUOTE ]
This is sadly wrong. Since AE...yes, char isnt needed as much since EVERYONE in the mob is of the same class.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, I figured this guy was going to do nothing but big uniform spawn AE missions that he's going to AoE down into oblivion.

If you plan to only farm and never do regular content, then you don't need to slot Char. But if you are ever going to run regular missions, I'd highly recommend slotting it up. You want to be able to hold things, and Char is the way you'll do it. It needs enough recharge to be stacked quickly.

Even with the +33% global accuracy, you may find yourself to be a sad panda with no Accuracy in Transfusion. I'd recommend an Accurate Healing set; Touch of the Nictus is good.

I am frankly not convinced that a fire/kin needs a Miracle +Recovery, because you should have Transference up every time you need some endurance. Save yourself some money.

I'd recommend a 5-set of Positron's, at least, over the TotH/Positron combo you have now. 9% more accuracy, and 6.25% more global recharge.

You are better off 6-slotting something into Hot Feet rather than breaking up the set. I'd suggest Obliteration, which has lots of goodies -- damage buff, accuracy, recharge, and melee and smash/lethal defense.

You might as well give Hasten another slot. You can pull a slot out of Super Speed for it. You don't really need the endurance reduction.

I'd suggest Reactive Armor over Impervium in Tough. The melee defense is more useful. (Same thing is true in Fire Shield.)

I'd suggest finishing out Basilisk's Gaze in Cinders. The extra accuracy in that power doesn't help you that much, and the chance to slow down enemy recharge means they attack you less, which is equivalent to more survivability.

The extra slots in Speed Boost are a waste.

Fulcrum Shift should be slotted 2 accuracy, 3 recharge. You want it up as often as possible.

Is there a reason you don't want more Ragnaroks? You're missing out on an extra 10% recharge. Alternatively, you could put some extra recharges into it instead, since more Fireballs are good.

I think you really want Siphon Speed earlier in your build, and you want it slotted up with at least three recharges, allowing you to keep it stacked.

Swift is essentially waste with Super Speed.

I'd actually recommend Combat Jumping / Super Jump / Acrobatics, instead of Hasten / Super Speed. That allows you to take Swift rather than Hurdle earlier on, and not take Hurdle at all. It'd give you a bit of extra defense and solid KB protection.

People who don't do a ton of damage, like pre-pet controllers, and defenders with very team-oriented primaries, will almost always be looking for teams. You don't need a balanced team to go through content, and a bunch of support-oriented toons can buff each other into nigh invincibility, assuming that they actually took some form of reasonable attack.

I know, KNOW, that accepting random invites to PUGs on my kinetics defender is asking for pain. I KNOW that I will be horrified by the way people play, especially all of the newly-high-level mito-powered noobs. And yet I join these teams, and attempt to keep them alive, because there is a strange, masochistic desire to see exactly what I can do with my toon in terms of keeping a team alive while blasting the heck out of things.

I think this is sort of like the defender equivalent of the Scrapper Challenge: given an 8-person team built entirely of the clueless and badly built, how long does it take you to get through a 54 Maniac boss farm, and how many people die during the run?

Bonus points for no use of inspirations, tanks/scrappers/brutes without mez protection and/or smash/lethal protection, controllers without their set-defining control power, and MAN builds on your team...

What's the ultimate Defender Challenge?

This is going to be highly useful for everything. It'll help those looking for new challenges, it will eliminate the need to pad (and thus also all the broadcasts for pads), and it will mean that nobody who can solo a map is likely to invite people to fill unless they're doing it for friends and SG mates.

I am curious whether the large-team bonus will apply to up-shifted missions of this type, or if some other reward will be given, or if the convenience of large spawns will be considered sufficient reward. I hope it's the last, as there should still be good incentives to actually team, and I do think large spawns will be their own reward.