_Eve__NA

Cuppa,

I appreciate your response. In case you're not already aware, here are some related facts that you might want to relay to the developement team:

- The only resistance debuff that's been weakened is Enervating Field, not Tar Patch or Freezing Rain.

- The Freezing Rain debuff for defenders is still weaker than its controller counterpart, as it has been, apparently for a long time (the same is true for Snow Storm).

Also, I think many forum readers will find the explanation you gave ironic, considering that Sonic/* and */Sonic Defenders saw an unprecedented Increase in resistance debuff capability at the same time the Global Defense Decrease was implemented.

There has also been speculation that EF was decreased in order to balance a Rad/Sonic Defender's single target debuff capability. However, this analysis doesn't really hold up to scrutiny either, considering that a Sonic/Sonic can stack resistance debuffs on a single target to the order of 200%.

I still have a hard seeing what the goal is here. The only explanation that makes sense to me would be an attempt at evening the playing field by setting all AoE defender debuffs at 30%.

States,

This last set of numbers is contradictory with the first set of numbers you posted (i.e. Wet Ice of .5% base is not equal to 3% six slotted, and the same for Energy Absorption per mob). Could you clarify which set of numbers is correct? Or maybe one of the "numbers guys" could clear this up.

Hey Max (Tesla here),

PBU boosts base defense by 100%, for all active toggles and also click powers activated while it's up.

Lets say you had maneuvers and stealth 5-slotted, plus hasten, for

7.8 + 7.8 + 7.5 + 7.5 + 5 = 35.6% defense.

Hitting PBU would give you an extra 7.8 + 7.5 = 15.3% defense, or 20.3 if you hit it just before hasten cycled, for a total of 55.9% defense.

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My main attacks are Electron Haze and Neutron Bomb, with CB+NB for bosses.

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(In total shock, but with tongue firmly in cheek)

But...but...but... I remember the very first discussion we ever had -- and it was about how under-rated Irradiate was (at the time, anyway). And now you've switched over to the Neutron Bomb camp?

I'm just teasing, of course, Eve.

Seriously, though, it's not in any attack chain of yours? Just curious as to why.

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I don't think there are any bad powers in the rad blast set. The black sheep used to be irradiate, and I used to hear people say that EH wasn't worth the endurance. The latest black sheep is XB, and I'm thinking of making a thread about how exaggerated the power of NB is, and how XB is really just as good or better in some situations. But I probably won't actually put XB in my build either Just not enough room for it.

I think the AoEs in Rad are especially well-balanced. For reasons that you stated about economy in build, I only wanted two AoE attacks, so I just picked those EH and Bomb. They work well together -- same recharge time, and with one cone range in EH i can cast them both from range for a pretty big effect.

I might switch around my AoEs again if I do another respec (leadership -> concealment). With Tactics gone, I'd want to make sure I was maxing out the duration of my defense debuffs. I may visit some lumi's soon and do some tests for that, but I wouldn't be surprised if I ended up getting Irradiate again some time.

Great post R'ae.

I like Rad/Rad for a lot of the same reasons. At level 40, I went a slightly different route with my build, going leadership for my accuracy, and putting all tohit debuffs in RI. My main attacks are Electron Haze and Neutron Bomb, with CB+NB for bosses. I'm might eventually respeccing to concealment for added utility, since I'll doing some more trials in the 40s. So I might look a little bit more like you soon!

WRT the discussion here, I have to point out something about Neutrino Bolt. I've seen a lot of calcs for this power based on the assumption that it starts recharging when the activation starts, which is not true. Go and look--especially felicity; I see you posting about NB quite a bit; you should really go and check this out.

NB works the same way as all the other powers in this game: It activates, a little swirly thing goes around the icon, and then when the power is done, the icon shrinks, and begins recharging. You won't notice this if you leave NB on auto, but if you keep tapping NB over and over, you'll see it activate, and then queue for activation while its recharging. Granted, the recharge time is shorter with Hasten + AM, but it still starts recharging -after- the activation is done. Please, go and try this out. If you still don't believe me, try six-slotting NB with recharge and see how many more you can get off in a minute. I think you'll find that with more and more recharge, you get diminishing returns towards the number many people accept as given.

Io, and any Rads interested:

I made some mistakes with my calculations last night, thinking that my SOs were giving me 20% instead of 33% enhancement. Since I had so many powers running with those measurements and could have made a bunch more mistakes, I decided to run it again, but this time I just copied to test, respec'd with no stamina, and ran the endurance drain with no reductions.

This time I got:
- EF running alone: gain 11 end over 1 minute, 22 over 2 min, 32 over 3 min
- EF with RI: lose 62 end over 3 minutes
- CC running alone: gain 55 end over 2 minutes

This gives:
EF = -1.48 EPS
RI = -.58 EPS
CC = -1.21 EPS

Considering how much simpler my setup was this time, I think this should be more accurate.

I ran a test similar to Vennom's just now for Radiation Infection and Enervating Field. Running 5-slotted Stamina, Manuevers, Tactics, Super Jump and Enervating Field (with 3 endurance reduction), I timed 305 seconds from empty to full. Then I switched on RI, and timed 215 seconds back to zero. I did this a few times and feel pretty comfortable with these numbers +/- five seconds.

By my calculation, this gives EF = -1.63 EPS, and RI = -0.68 EPS.