Blue_Yin_EU

I don't think you can say that tankers are "marginalised" now - due to 9 months' altitis I don't have much experience of the 40s yet, but at least in the 20s and 30s, most players I team with vocally appreciate the presence of a good tanker, and when I'm forming teams I look for a tanker first and consider them the "foundation" of a good team (i.e. if the tanker leaves I will definitely look for another, or a PB or WS with tanking ability).

When I play my 21 tanker (inv/ss, all primaries fully slotted, taunt in secondary) I find that with a bit of care (e.g. occasional pulling) the team I'm in can sometimes even make do without a healing defender or controller (i.e. can work quite happily with a defender or controller with bubbles or storms and no major heals).

IOW, despite the changes, aggro management is still hugely important in the game. Things go much quicker and smoother with a good tanker.

Ooops sry my bad - too late to amend unfortunately.

Siphon speed grants nearly as much recharge as hasten and nearly as much endurance recovery as stamina.

The Leadership pool is awesome - Maneuvers/Assault aren't all that (I'd get maneuovers since the extra damage is swamped by your own damage-siphoning abilities), but Tactics 3-slotted is great to enable you (and your team) to punch above your weight. Also, since you don't have a rez, you can get Vengeance, which is a great buff for the team if someone goes down. But I woulnd't dip into the leadership pool until much later - starting in your 20s. You don't really need it till then (when you start going on harder settings against tougher mobs). I'd get another Kin or DB power in there.

Don't know about the medicine pool, but I'd be inclined to say unless you really want to be a more empath-like defender and definitely have the power to do single target heals, it would be better to get more kinetics/DB stuff - the whole set (apart from repel/inertial reduction if you already have a travel power) is very much worth getting if you can squeeze it in.

Dark blast the main thing is to get the 2 cones - TT and NF; line up for TT, step back a bit and fire of NF and you've got some pretty good AoE damage once they're slotted up (contrary to some advice, I'd say you should slot TT for damage to maximise the effect of this AoE chain). I'd get TT much earlier so you can have this good 1-2 punch as soon as you can. These powers cycle quickly too. NF is end heavy tho so stick endred in there.

I agree that unless you're going to make sniping your thing, there's no point in taking Moonbeam.

The nice thing about all-squishy teams (e.g. all blasters/defenders/controllers) is that, all things being equal (i.e. no idiots), because they are all of the same squishy mind-set, they all know how to keep the aggro at a distance. When there are melee people in the mix, especially scrappers, (again all things being equal, i.e. them not being idiots) they think differently and can actually bring aggro upon the squishies sometimes, through no fault of their own (i.e. they may be playing well within their AT).

Which I suppose leads to a possible rule of thumb?: a team can get along fine without any melee players, but if you're going to have a scrapper in the team, then you need more than one, or a tank too.

(I don't mean to be derogatory against scrappers - they are truly awesome, and an all-scrapper team is possibly the fasest mission-finishing combo I've ever been in. It's just a matter of team balance.)

Everyone has said good stuff. Just quickly, off the top of my head: target through the tanks or scrappers where possible, but sometimes they don't change target fast enough, so just be aware of who is aggroing on them and attack them. Definitely let others take the alpha strike!

Don't be afraid to run. Defiance can be great in the right circumstances - it can give you the occasional real superhero rush - but it's nothing to rely on.

OTOH, as a blaster, you'll probably get very rich

If you like a bit of controlling with your blasting, ice/ice is a great combination (if you forego the blapping powers) - you are like a mini-controller with awesome damage.

I'd definitely agree that a kineticist can build up a huge amount of damage compared to other defenders, even solo. To my surprise, at about lvl 38 or so my kin/elec was able to solo invincible fairly easily.

It does take a bit of time building up the necessary "momentum" though - you have to keep the mobs held, at bay, etc., while you build up siphon speeds, thereby stacking a couple of fulcrum shifts and several siphon power, then with a few reds on top you can use your bigger AoE blasting powers to great effect, finishing off with your nuke.

I've had extensive experience with kinetics/elec and dark/dark.

In terms of making the team think you are doing something, Speed Boost from the kinetics set is very "obvious", as is the row of icons from Fulcrum Shift. Transfusion is also an enormous AoE heal, possibly the biggest in the game, but people don't really notice that as much, it just gives you personal satisfaction to lay down a constant healing blanket (which you can do with kinetics pretty well).

Fearsome Stare from the Dark Miasma Primary and Tenebrous Tentacles from the Dark Blast secondary are both also very "obvious" powers. Unfortunately, the most awesome debuff in the DM set, Darkest Night, is not so "obvious".

Alternatively, you might think about rolling an Ice/Ice blaster - very controllery. If you dug into the Medicine Pool you could roll yourself a Blastrollerfender (lol). Then you'd feel pretty mighty (the Ice blast, Bitter Ice Blast, is a truly awesome single target attack), Ice Patch and Ice Storm being very "obvious" controllery powers, and just having the ability to heal others and rez might fulfil your defendery hankerings enough to be getting on with.

Another thing you might consider is that it's maybe some combination of the sound effects and the graphics that don't feel "oomphy" enough to you somehow - might be worth considering trying some other powersets from that angle.

Yeah I agree, Short Circuit, by feel, ought to be much more than it is, but still a fair bit short of the effect of Transference per mob. It really is just pretty weedy atm, and I would respec, but I'm happy to wait for just now, and play other chars. (The upside of being an altoholic :-)

I have to say this change has really upset me. My lvl 41 kin/elec was built with sapping in mind. The other day I logged on with her after a break since before this change, and it really seems like sapping is a waste of time now. Transference hardly makes a dent. For example, I used to be able to drain purple PPs (after they'd used a bit of end), to stop them using MoG. Now I can only get them down to half - so Transference is now nothing more than a top-up for my and my teammates end. As for Short Circuit - pffft. My only hope is that the combination of Short Circuit and Power Sink might work as a proper sapping combo (with Transference on top for lts and bosses).

Another possibility (actually probably necessary in addition to the above): has anybody tried to stick an end drain in all blasts - if so, is there any noticeable effect?

Any other ideas on how the kin/elec model can adapt to these changes?

As others have said, SB (3 slotted for endurance recovery) adds a recharge rate component and an endurance recovery component.

A top tip I found somewhere on these boards - I'd skip inertial reduction and go for the Super Leaping line to get acrobatics (avoids knockback and the majority of annoying holds), getting a handy smidge of defence and immobilization protection on the way (from Combat Jumping), as well as a top travel power. Unless you are going to take the Hovering way, as a kineticist you are going to be in the thick of it a fair bit, so prone to holds and knockback - acrobatics pretty much gives you blissful release from having to worry too much about those.

Repel is a great fun power, and I think with 3 endred (and Stamina) it could work as something you could leave on all the time in melee (it looks fantastic too), but unless you want this for concept (as I had with one Kinetics char I tried) then if you have a secondary you want to use a lot of powers of, this is a power from Kinetics that's skippable.

All the other powers in Kinetics are must-haves IMHO - it's a fantastic toolkit to keep the ball rolling in teams, and gives enough of a damage buff to put your (teamed or solo) damage output up more respectably with that of Blasters.

As a Kineticist, if you build your own teams you will find yourself looking for Tankers and Scrappers as the foundation of your team, for they benefit most easily from the types of healing and endurance transference powers you have. When you team with blasters or other defenders, switch more to blasting mode and don't worry about healing until mobs stray into the group enough for you to be able to fire off a heal.

I have Transference 1 acc, 3 enddrain, 2 recharge. I find with hasten and a couple of siphon speeds up in battle, I can be firing Transference off enough to keep myself and everybody else topped up. Instead of an extra acc I run 3 slotted Tactics, which ensures Transference hardly ever misses.

The great thing about Transference is that it has a strong controlling aspect, so it does double duty very nicely - in effect you are using it strategically anyway a lot as a control power, and usually at times when you are close enough to get the benefit (I'm usually draining the boss, and since I'm often Fulcrum-Shifting up close with the Tanker and Scrapper, they and I get regular top-ups of end).

I can't deny though, that if there were 3 extra powers, the Fitness pool would be next on the list - having Transference as the main endurance recovery power is somewhat less safe than having it AND Stamina would be

Done this afternoon in 2 1/2 hours, in fine style. Team comprised: 3 tanks (stone, fire, invul), 2 defenders (me kin/elec, the other dark/dark), a blaster (elec) and a scrapper (DM). Thanks to all who participated!

It's funny, Blue Yin (MA/SR) was my first char, and I played her into the early 30s continuously. Until I'd played a couple of other ATs to the 20s, I had no idea what all the fuss was about this "mezzing" thing, or how annoying some of the mobs can be for it :-) PB is that good - I'd only put Elude above it in the SR set for sheer specialness.

Looking good so far - there's also a couple of people I spoke to in-game who are interested. Anybody else?

My lvl 37 kin/elec defender, Speed Shock, desperately wants a respec to get rid of a couple of now-useless powers. She's thinking of doing it this weekend at 14:00 on Saturday 4th Feb 2006. If anybody's interested please let me know here and/or tell Speed Shock in-game on Union anytime from 13:00 till 14:00.

The time isn't set in stone and can be shifted earlier or later.

Before I6 my MA/SR scrapper had the Fighting pool, with Weave taking the place of the SR passives, and Boxing as a very good, very regular "filler" to supplement my MA chain. Now I have the SR passives instead, and make do without Boxing.

There's a post on the US boards recently about this, where Arcanaville (someone who's very good on the numbers for SR) says that the passives are a much better bet than Weave for SR these days.

I've seen a few people say they fire of Short Circuit then Ball Lightning. I tend to do it the other way round because I can fire off Ball Lightning from a distance, and for a few seconds the mobs are "disoriented" (jerking around from the "shocking" effect) after Ball Lightning, making it easy to zip in and fire off Short Circuit (have to be quick of course, as SC has an irritatingly long activation time).

Whereas if I try to zip in first and fire off Short Circuit, I sometimes get hit hard as soon as I get into aggro radius.

So I think BL-SC is just a bit safer.

What do my esteeemed fellow Kinetice/Electric Defenders think?

I've gotten Speed Shock to nearly 31 so far without the Fitness Pool. All powers are slotted with 1 endred. (Incidentally, even with Tactics I like to have 1 acc in powers, especially "critical" powers like Transfusion and Transference.) It was a bit of a struggle until Transference, I just had to be careful and time my big endurance-draining hits for the right moments (i.e. not when I only had a small bit of blue left :-) Transference makes everything hunky dory - again, having Tactics and 1 acc, it rarely misses.

I've got more or less the same powers as you except in place of the Fitness line I've got the Super Leaping line, and I have to say Acrobatics is absolutely golden against knockback.

Just in general praise of the powerset, I've found Kin/Elec to be a brilliant combination. I now consider SS to be my main - it's insanely busy, there's always something to do, and now as I'm starting to slot damage SOs in my attacks, I'm even beginning to be able to output some respectable damage by spamming Siphon Powers. I can even solo fairly well on Rugged!

Btw I have a question: I took tp friend to speed up early missions and am looking to respec into either Hover or Stealth - which do my learned fellow kin/elec defenders think I should take?

I've seen it explained conceptually as "rolling with the blows" - i.e. if you can't quite evade a strike, at least you can roll with it so it does you less damage. That concept works very well for melee (and smashing/lethal damage types), but I find it hard to see how it could work with, say, energy or fire.