Cybercel

As others have said, the main reason is just that it's quite low damage. A lot of people want to solo quickly, act as a team damage dealer, or be able to actually hurt people in PvP, and there are better sets for those things.

Where the set can shine, however, is on a more support-based character. The obviously synergy is with Dark Miasma, because you can stack a lot of tohit debuffs between the two sets. Aside from the debuffing, it also has some control elements.

So I wouldn't say there's anything wrong with the set, it's just that it does something different from the more popular sets. On the hero side, Dark Blast is actually quite popular amongst Defenders, probably because of its support characteristics, and the fact that Defenders get better debuffs from it, and won't be doing fantastic damage regardless.

I have to agree with those saying you have to expect to be attacked in a PvP zone, and even asking people not to attack is a bad idea. You get a lot of people who demand not to be attacked in the PvP zones, which is a bit unreasonable, and as a result, I think a lot of PvPers are annoyed by it happening repeatedly... so then you go in and make what you think to be a fairly calm and reasonable request not to be attacked, and people get really irritated, because it happens so much. You might have only asked once, but it happens a lot more frequntly than that, and everyone's already sick of it.

Mind you, I'm in no way condoning people being abusive over broadcast, because there's no need for it, and it does make the zones less pleasant... but I think everything would be a lot simpler if people would read the PvP zone warnings and take them to heart. You can and will be attacked, and the odds will very often not be fair. If you really can't deal with that, don't go into them for any reason. If you don't like it but want to go in anyway, then stay quiet when you die - you'll only make things worse by complaining.

In the cases of entirely unprovoked attacks over broadcast - and they certainly do happen - those people have no excuse. There are many times I've killed someone and had a stream of abuse thrown at me, or been killed, not said anything, and then subsequently harrassed over broadcast, and there's just no excuse for that sort of thing.

I have a Mind/Ice around level 26, it's fantastic. The end problems actually aren't as bad as I thought they'd be (and I say this despite not having any end reducers slotted in my attacks), and with Domination building as quickly as it does now, you're getting regular bars of end back from firing it off. Still, Scirocco would be a good choice of patron, as Power Boosted Power Sink is very nice - I know a /Ice Dom in my SG uses it. I've yet to see how my endurance handles the two larger attacks, too.

The sets can be good in both PvE and PvP, although I think you'd need to make some build changes. I currently have a PvE build on mine, which I might well keep until I hit level 50 - I've not taken Aid Self, which would be the major change. I also have Mass Hypnosis, which I would drop in a PvP build - I've found it to be very useful AoE control, especially with Domination and/or Power Boost. It works for me because I mainly duo with another Mind/Ice, though, so there aren't AoEs waking everything up.

Generally, I love it. The XP penalty is small, and it speeds you up. The people who complain about it tend to be the people who haven't thought about it enough to realise that because they're getting through missions more quickly, they're getting better XP over time, which is really what matters, not how much you get in a mission.

I find it especially good for confusing one or two particular mobs in a fight that you know will give you or the team trouble. Sappers, some Circle mages, Avalanche Shamans, Tsoo Sorcerors... they're all good targets. If you have time before the team heads in, you might well be able to confuse one before they get a shot off, and then you can always confuse another during the fight.

You do get the odd situation, though, where someone insists on using it before fights and slowing down the entire team. Everyone's ready, you're all standing by the mob and about to go in, and they decide they want to confuse half the mob one by one, while you all stand there waiting. I've only seen it happen at quite low levels, thankfully. Now, I know there are times when rushing in is death early on, and it can be wise to take the time to soften the enemies up if you're having trouble, but if a team is already getting through a mission just fine, there's no need for it. And if someone is both causing an XP penalty and slowing down the team, then they probably are making XP worse.

Yeah, the hold could work for that. Once you have Fluffy, his immob might help, too. And /Dark certainly will be safer solo - as I said just matters what your priorities are.

Personally, making a /Dark, I wouldn't go with AR because I don't really see a huge synergy there (although obviously, to some extent, that's opinion) - if I want AoEs/cones over Tar Patch, I'd think Fire/Dark, really. But if your main choice is that you want to play AR, and then you want a secondary that will help you solo that AR, then /Dark makes a lot of sense. Especially if you already have an AR/Kin - might as well try something new, right?

I'd think Kin has better synergy with AR, being able to fire off FSed Full Autos.

Also, Dark doesn't have -def. Tar Patch is -res, maybe that's what you were thinking about? The fear won't work well with Ignite, because mobs get a chance to move or otherwise react to you in some way once they're hit. It's still a great power, and I love the set overall, I just don't know that I'm seeing the synergy. Full Auto over Tar Patch could be kinda nice, but it's not going to be FS + Full Auto, and I've heard Buckshot is pretty weak.

It's true enough that a /Dark will be more soloable than a /Kin, though. You certainly get more to stop incoming damage. If you really can't choose between them based on how much you think you'd enjoy them, then it probably comes down to whether better synergy between sets, or the ability to solo safely, is more important to you. /Kin certainly can solo, anyway, it just tends to be a little more hectic and filled with more debt.

Yeah, it's generally the stuns that get me killed, and not the damage, in the zones. When you compare it to the secondary effects of the other Blaster and Tanker secondary effects, it's decidedly imbalanced.

In the arena, I'd guess the higher damage of both /Energy and /Elec is the more important thing? I'm a little torn on whether anything really needs to be done, on that front. Perhaps to /Ice. /Fire makes such a lovely PvE AoE build, though - it's just good at something else, as far as I can see, and it already had some of its damage boosted in a recent patch.

Yeah, we will probably be making use of storing on characters, but I'd much rather see things change, or at least hear why they won't be changing, so I know the SG will need to resort to other measures.

As I said, I'd happily see more storage items allowed only on larger plots, or perhaps more expensive storage items (or maybe ones you have to make with other salvage) that store more, and that kind of thing. I don't mind having to work for something, I just dislike finding I can't get anywhere no matter what I do.

My preference would just be going for the normal servers, rather than complicating things any further.

One thing people might want to keep in mind - if our intention is to increase overall PvP activity in RV, then trying to keep sides relatively balanced would be helpful, at least at first. So if one side has a huge advantage, switch sides, if you can, or maybe ask some friends to come in if you're on the losing side. I will happily do this. Otherwise, you risk just chasing people out of the zone, especially the casual players that the hope is to attract - it's no fun getting ganked over and over again, and people will just give up and leave.

Obviously, it's not always going to be balanced... I'd even go so far as to say that most of the time, the zones have a big leaning in one direction or the other. But as long as it switches back and forth and everyone gets a chance to actually PvP, and not just get ganked repeatedly for an entire night, then it's fun, and people will hopefully start showing up more.

Also, something else I forgot to point out...

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Also where an individual can only carry a max of 20 per salvage item, amount of components carried are not restricted.

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Doesn't this sort of destroy the point of having base storage in the first place? It's nice to be able to go into the base, and in one place, see exactly how much we have, and not to go jumping around from alt to alt to get it, or find out how much we have total. The whole idea is to consolidate things.

It also doesn't help with the more rare salvage that is mainly used for making high-level weapons and so on, as there is a limit to how much of that you can store on a character. We're not using the stuff right now, but the SG has already grown unexpectedly once, and we'd hate to chuck it all only to find we really need it later on.

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I want more base storage. We're max'd out right now and there's still stuff to store.

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Yeah, I've no idea what we're going to do when we get back to seriously running the RSF. Good to know we're not the only ones running into this problem, though... I suspect there's more chance of things getting changed that way.


As far as all of the above suggestions, we already only store top-tier insps, and the only enhancements we store are 51+ or SHOEs. All of our salvage has been converted into components, but this is less of a worry for now, since I found comfirmation on the US boards of what the actual limit is - we've dropped back down to three salvage racks. It's slow and boring needing to convert everything all the time, though.

As far as the idea that insps and enhancements are for personal use... not really. Maybe not all SGs are like this, but we really tend to all drop off a lot of these things. In some cases, it's to store them for personal use later on (we're a small SG, so there are no real theft issues for us), and in many cases just to share with others who might get use out of them. And in the case of SHOEs, you really want somewhere safe to store them. It doesn't help that we're pretty much all altoholics, so there's a very good chance that any 51+ enhancement we get, or any SHOE we get, we're going to want to keep, either for our own alts, or someone else in the SG. With only 10 enhancement spots on toons, you can't keep a lot stored, especially if you tend to actively play a lot of your toons. And there's also the worry of accidentally selling or deleting things if they're left in a toon's enhancement tray.

As it stands, I think we're going to have to look at limiting the amount of any one kind of top-tier insp we keep at any one time. The whole thing is just irritating, though - there's very little incentive to keep working on prestige and so on if buying larger plots and expanding your base doesn't actually give you any benefits. I have no problem with there being limits, as long as those limits can be changed, expanded on, through the efforts of the SG members. If there's a technical issue, it'd at least be nice to hear an explanation of that from someone in the know, and whether it's something that's ever likely to be worked around or not.

Uh, I did say I was talking about in the zones, and that arena would be a different matter. ("Tar Patch is quite nice in PvP on the occassions you go get someone stuck in it - I've found it pretty nice against Tanks who think they're okay standing their group. Being in the arena, rather than a zone, could change matters, although as with many sets and builds, it depends on the map.") Mind you, my Ice/Dark hasn't been awful in arena, either (did decently well in the Squished tourny that was held a while back, teamed with a /Dark MM, including making a team run out of BFs which is apparently impossible), but she's definitely more of a zonal PvP toon. In arena, as I said, map matters. So does who you're fighting - like any set, Dark is going to be better against some things than others. I think you're underestimating the debuffs anyway, because I've seen a /Dark MM, with weaker debuffs than a Controller, beat a Regen with FA and Tactics running one on one in a cage match.

Also, please stop putting words in my mouth - I never said Dark was better than Rad in PvP. In fact, I said it was a senseless argument and one I wouldn't get into. I just think it's a shame people write the set off immediately when it is actually quite good, especially if you're looking for a toon for both PvE and PvP, as the original poster was.

EDIT: Also, just thought I'd better point out, so no one thinks Dark is as poor as you're trying to make out for some reason... it doesn't have a simple disorient, it has an auto-hit AoE disorient with a big -regen attacked to it. It knocks Blasters sitting in PFF out instantly, and is quite nice against Regens.

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I suppose there's meant to be some weird sort of balance, but the second two weakest, Power Blast and Ice Blast, have somewhat higher endurance cost, with Power Blast having longer activation times (though not as long as Mental Blast or Hurl Boulder).

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It could be that the balance is more meant to be by comparing one entire set to another, not just one blast to another. Conserve Power and Power Boost are both very good powers. The intention may have been to perhaps allow people to choose whether they wanted to specialise more in damage, or in self-buffs, etc. Plenty of people have brought up the issue of imbalance between the various hero ancillaries, though, and especially when comparing them to the villain ones.

And just to let you know, the huge activation time on Mental Blast was changed, assuming the fix affected all versions of the power. I have it on a Defender and a Dominator, and it's actually quite usable now.

That's pretty much how I feel. I do actually have three Rads, but I don't find any of them as fun to play as my Ice/Dark. Dark Miasma is a very active set, there's a lot of control, and I really enjoy the feeling of having multiple ways to deal with things. Rad tends to get a little samey for me after a while, and I get bored.

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Fighting higher then +3 doesn't happen that often if you're not PL'ing.

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This is exactly why I brought up that it matters what level you tend to fight. That might be true for you, but some people end up doing big teams on the highest difficulty a lot, and it's pretty common to end up with people SKed up or who are a level or two down. I know on my SG teams we quite often end up with some members fighting +4s and even +5s. Without a second acc, they're just painful, especially when you hit high def mobs, or AVs.

I've found it to be one of those things that I just can't go back from since I first started slotting two acc. The difference is too noticeable for me, and now I'm used to hitting this much, one acc just feels really weak. I tend to six-slot attacks regardless, though, so it hardly uses up slots for me - I'd just rather have the extra acc than a recharge or end cost.

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(seriously though its nice to see pvp villains showing up)

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I came, I Thermed, I used my Patron Pool.

I honestly enjoy villains more for PvP, although that Thaw animation and rooting nearly let you catch me a number of times. As I said at the time, think I'll be back now I have the Therm at 50, and with an arena build next time. Coming along tonight helped me see what I need to change.

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for PvP, rad probarbly does better because the acc debuff is much stronger and end is easier to manage.

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If the numbers in the builder I have are anywhere near correct, which I know is entirely iffy (as are most numbers you see floating around, far as I can tell ), Dark can stack up more tohit debuffs than Rad can. Drop the toggle on, fire off Fearsome Stare, and you have more tohit debuff, a damage debuff, and a terrify on the person. Then the heal does a small debuff, too.

Anyway, not to get into an "X is better than Y!" discussion because it's a bit pointless, and not really quantifiable in this case - the main point is they're both fantastic sets, and you can't really go wrong either way. I'd just go for the one I find more enjoyable to play in that kind of decision, as they're both good in PvP and PvE

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IMO Ice/Rad only does better at PvP cuz the two main debuffs are toggles while Tar Patch is a click zone debuffer (however I do love this power and it is one of my fav in the whole game). Again, my vote goes for Ice/Dark.

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In the zones, I tend to find people get away from toggles too easily, or drag them into groups of mobs, getting you a ton of aggro. I certainly make heavy use of Darkest Night anyway, but I don't find toggles to be enough on their own. The extra control offered by Dark makes it really quite good in large areas - I'd rather have Fearsome Stare when I'm doing zonal PvP than just about anything in Rad. Having two quick-firing holds lets you stack over people with Acrobatics (sure, there's Bitter Freeze Ray and Patron holds, but the former takes too long to fire off, and the latter has a long recharge, and comes very late on). And while it can be more difficult to get someone in Tar Patch than Enervating Field, again, at least they can't just fly away until the toggle drops. Tar Patch is quite nice in PvP on the occassions you go get someone stuck in it - I've found it pretty nice against Tanks who think they're okay standing their group. Being in the arena, rather than a zone, could change matters, although as with many sets and builds, it depends on the map.

I just hate to see people write off Dark in favour of Rad immediately when it comes to PvP, as both sets have a lot to offer, just in different ways.

If there's a technical limitation that's keeping the total number of storage items to 18, then why limit Enhancement and Inspiration storage items to 100 pieces each? Salvage storage items are listed as holding 999, but actually hold much more (I've read either 1500 or 2500 on the US forums), so that's certainly technically possible. You could have 18 of those, right now.

It just strikes me as a needless limit that's not adding anything to the game if it really is the case, and isn't a bug or anything. It's certainly displaying that way when I go to edit the plot.

I was just told today that you can only have 18 storage items in any base, regardless of plot size. First, I want to check that's true... second, if it is true, I'd love to know why.

I'm in a small SG, we don't have many actual members, and an awful lot of alts. We're on the 8x12 plot now, and we already have 18 storage items. We were intending to upgrade, assuming that surely, large plots would allow more. If an SG our size is already having storage problems, it must be awful for larger SGs!

Frankly, I can't even see the sense in the larger plot sizes now, or what we're earning Prestige for. We already have TPers to every CoV zone, we have all the storage we could use, and we're not intending to do raids. The one thing we heavily use the base for is storage (and hopping between zones, but as I said... we have all the TPers). So what do we do now?

Also, with Inventions coming, I'd sort of assumed salvage and enhancement storage would be becoming even more important. We're already full... what will we do then? And all in all, where's the harm in letting people store lots? Some of us are just natural packrats.

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No need for 2 accu in your attacks. 1 is enough for pve normally. Especially since your rad/ attacks all have secondary -def and even some bypassing of defense. Not to mention the excellent def debuff from RI.

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It depends on what sort of level you tend to fight, but I have to disagree here. If you fight mostly on the lowest difficulty, sure, one acc is fine, but if you're going to be fighting +3s or more, I always find that one just doesn't cut it. Even on my Rad Blast or Rad Emission toons - you get to get some first hits for that -def to kick in, and you won't always have Rad Infection running on every mob you try to attack. I find this is especially important in CoV, where you end up fighting a lot of high-def mobs like Night Widows, etc. Obviously, if you find you're really not annoyed by only one acc, go for it... but it drives me up the wall missing that much, especially in important powers like Lingering Rad.

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-cj swap def buf for end redux. the base def is so low the enhance does almost nothing.

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The end cost is also so low as to be almost meaningless. I usually go with a jump enhancement, but it doesn't matter much whatever you put in it.



Other than that, looking at the original build...

I wouldn't bother slotting Health. It's not great on low-HP characters, and you have a self-heal anyway. You could even take the slots and put them straight into the heal instead - it'll be more useful to you and any teams you're on. Two more recharges or a recharge and end reduction would help it.

Cosmic Burst is an awesome attack, and you might want to find a slot to put a recharge in it.

Lingering Rad could certainly do with recharges - you might not use it a lot in normal missions, but against AVs/Heroes (and there are a lot in CoV), it's one of your best tools.

Atomic Blast shouldn't need accuracies. Level 32 Corruptor and Blaster powers inherently have very high accuracy, and you can always fire off Aim before it, if you have it. Go for 3 dam, and as many recharges as you want or can afford.

I think Blue Note already noted Radiation Infection should be three tohit debuffs - that's really the vital part. I usually then go for an end reduction, and a def debuff or two if I can find the slots, which generally isn't easy on a Rad.

Irradiate is an awesome AoE attack with a big def debuff. Think about switching something for it, at least to try it - it's the attack I use most on my Rad/Thermal. At lower levels, I found it pulled in too much aggro, but at higher levels, it's great. I ended up dropping the snipe entirely to make space in my build for other powers, because I found it just wasn't that useful - most CoV teams seem to be centered around charging straight in, which suits me, and it's not great to use mid-combat. I think it'd be more useful solo, mind you, so it depends what you're planning on doing. Rads are great in teams, though.

Keep in mind that your Patron pet is not going to be up very often without recharges.

One place you could maybe find some slots for some of these suggestions is Super Jump. It's a matter of personal preference, but I never bother slotting it past the one that comes with it. It's already quick (especially with Hurdle, which you have), and there are places those slots could be that would help you in combat. The tohit buff in Soul Drain is probably expendable, too, if it needs to be somewhere more important.

I realise this is actually an old post anyway, but just to back up what Irradiator is saying... Ice/Dark is very nice in PvP, and I really wouldn't say that Ice/Rad is the clear choice, on that front.

I keep meaning to write an Ice/Dark guide at some point, seeing as I've probably played it more than any other combination, by this point. It's a really fun and powerful build, and has a lot to offer solo, in teams, and in PvE or PvP. If you play anything like me, though, it is 41 levels of pain as you run out of endurance over and over, until you get Power Sink from Scirocco, and maybe some SHOEs to help the lack of slots problem.

For PvP, I think SJ/Acro is still a must. In PvE though, I'm finding that since all the Domination changes, I'm not so bothered. Some Doms, especially in teams, spend more time in Domination than out of it - my Grav/Ice is just waiting for the Domination button to recharge so she can fire it off, in teams of three. With a /Kin around it's even better. In that sort of case, is Acro really worth it, when Domination gives better knockback and mez resist?

In the end, it just comes down to how much you're irritated by knockback and the odd hold, and perhaps also whether you're having endurance problems with running the toggle. I know some people who can't stand ever being knocked back, whereas I'm finding myself leaving Acro off on my Grav/Ice, and have respecced my Plant/Psi into Fly, as it fits her concept better. Of course, if you like Super Jump anyway, Acro's only one extra power choice, and it's pretty good value for that. Just remember to turn it off while Domination's up if you don't want it using your end.

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Or you could put all three on a rotation so for example week 1 test server will be on monday night, defiant will be on tuesday night and union will have theirs on wendsday night and then the following week it would be test tuesday, defiant wendsday and union thursday.

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The problem with that is that it gets confusing. People won't remember what day it's supposed to be on. Sure, you can keep announcing it to people, but it's going to stick in people's minds a lot less than knowing that people are likely to be in RV every week on Saturday (just as an example).

I realise that means some people who can never sign on on a particular day miss out, but as far as the live servers go, if the intention is to do this to help up the overall PvP population of RV, then even people who can't come on the exact time or day should see the benefits, as people start to spend more time there.

Also, I forgot to mention before, I won't bother showing up on test. Again, if you want to generally increase the zone's population, an isolated weekly event on test probably won't help much, and it's a lot harder for people to give a shout to others to show up there at short notice, when not everyone has it installed. The live servers are probably more likely to pull in casual players. Obviously, if people want a test event just to play against some people from the other server, go for it, but I think it'd be a shame to make that the main one.

As for the initial idea... I think setting a weekly day and rough time could be good on both servers - people who want to do some PvP are more likely to show up if they think other PvPers are likely to be around, and perhaps things will grow from there if people find they actually enjoy the zone and start spending more time in it. And just having a day and time decided on takes little organisation, so no one really needs to head it up - anyone who's interested in furthering the cause could obviously give a shout over their SG channel or appropriate global channels, though.

Would it be better to have the same time and day for both servers though, to make it memorable... or would it be better to have two different days, so that people who have 40+ toons on both can participate in both? I'd happily show up on both servers, although I'd probably spend more time on Union if they're at the same time, as I have more high-level toons there.