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I played and enjoyed a Kin/Elec Defender to 50.
Aoart from power order, I cant think of anything that would really suffer from doing the same as a Corrupter. You can still practically refill your health or end tank if you hit, you still get a boatload of +Damage from Fulcrum Shift.
End Drain values are the same for a Defender or Corrupter.
For a Defender, both survival tools (Tesla Cage and Transference) came together at 26 and 28, with a Corrupter they come at 18 and 35, which means you have an easier time earlier on.
The higher base damage and scourge is the best bit though.
One of the nice combinations of the two powersets I found was that Electrical Blast has no cones. Kinetics demands quite a bit of positioning at time, mostly in melee range, so having a PBAoE and a Ranged Sphere AoE worked really well.
I'd guess that an Elec/Kin is better all round than their Defender counterpart. -
Did this twice last night on my Stalker with Grant Invis and a teammate on my second account.
Run 5 missions quickly, take the sixth. Log out and go to the gym. Come back and do it again.
Thanks for the tip, Cat.
I got a strange little thumbsup from the universe the second time - I applies the Tarot Card buff to myselves and both characters got The Fool, allowing me to race through the missions even quicker! -
I definitely think you're on to something, Raithnor.
I've played a FF Defender who was softcapped to Ranged/AoE and Psi and at about 38% vs Melee, and I've got to say I loved the combination of medium-low damage and medium-high defence.
It wasnt overpowered or underpowered, it's a very common concept for superheroes, and it was fun to play. Unfortunately, I had to get to the mid 40s and spend millions to realise it.
I wouldn't take away PFF as it stands - its a pretty unique game mechanic that forces you to make decisions. I'd maybe add some more personal protection into some of the other FF powers, eg +Melee Def in Repulsion Field and +Ranged/AoE into Force Bubble. -
I really like the idea of turning PFF into a major damage debuff instead of only Affecting Self. With a few qualifiers.
It would also have to neutralise Knockback though, Force Bolting with PFF up seems too good.
I'm not too sure about mezzes either, should they get reduced duration through the PFF?
Having a FF/Rad/Dark being able to stun a boss and his minions with Oppressive Gloom and Cosmic Burst with their PFF up all the time is too much.
It would have to apply its debuff to Sands of Mu vet power. Using this during the Rage crash isnt a killer, but using it with +67% Defence is out of balance.
It would have to neutralise Dispersion Bubble. The team oriented FF-er shouldnt be able to run around with their PFF up without impunity.
Come to think of it, I'm not really sure what you should allow through. Just debuffs maybe? Even that could be overpowered. The more I think about the details, the less I like this idea. -
Lets see....
Do you need those two 5-piece Positron's Blast sets? There isn't really a whole heap crying out for every last drop of recharge in your build beyond Power Build Up. And that will just drop the recharge from 2 minutes to 1 min 52 or something along those lines.
Your accuracy needs are pretty well catered for in the Thunderstrikes and slotted Tactics.
So if you Frankenslot these two powers instead with 2 x Dam/Rech and 2 x Acc/Dam you've freed up 2 slots, the question is what to do with them? You can still make two of these Positron's to get the Recovery bonus.
I take it Ranged Def is capped already, and thats why you arent bothering to six slot Red Fortune?
(16% (Disp.) +3% (StdFast) +3% (Hover) +11.25% (3*TStrike) +6.25 (2* BoTZ) +5.5% (Manouvers) +2.5% Gaussian = 47.5%. OK, you are. Fair enough.)
If you want to lose 2.5% Ranged def, which you can afford to do, take out the Dam/Rech from Power Bolt and add another Explosive Blast damage proc in.
I normally wouldn't throw an extra slot at PFF, but youre going for +Regen, fair enough.
Force Bolt's got a base acc of 1.4, which ups to 1.6 with your set bonuses. So I reckon you can live without the Acc in there and just keep the damage proc.
So, three potential slots...
You could put the Performance Shifter Chance for end proc in Stamina. I even six slotted Stamina at level 50 on my FF/Sonic to get the rather nice set bonuses for that set.
Having the extra End frfom the proc also means you could swap out Impervious Armour (presumable going for the +End and Rec) with Aegis for more AoE def. Do these two and add in another BoTZ into Hover and youve got over +10% AoE Def, which is nice.
Although you'd need to add a sixth slot for Temp Inv to 5 slot Aegis and have the Steadfast unique in there. Maybe lose one of the slots from Force Bubble? 2 level 50 IOs is around 84% end redux, thats good enough.
I'd actually say Hover appears to be underslotted for flight speed. Put the anti-KB IO iN Flight, and the speed/end one in Hover even if you dont do anything else.
Cool build. Nice to see you go for a Defence based build without having to take the Fighting pool. -
You can shut off the Ninja Run animation?
How do you do that? -
Quote:Yeah, totally.Level 17 to 21 is kinda brutal all the way around Dr.Mike, my newb FF/Nrg is 26 now,
and took PFF at 22, Aid Other/Aid Self at 24/26, and with all level 25 Generic IOs I can do +1/x2 with relative ease, assuming I dont get cascade defense failures and mezz at the same time, I just PFF+Aid Self, 3-slotted Stamina and Health puts me back in action quite quickly. Defense is Dispersion+Hover (approx 18% iirc)
Bottom Line FF/Nrg has been tons easier than Emp/Elec, who had to wait till 28th to start feeling able to bump difficulty up a notch.
That was a very rough mission during a rough period of my career.
Even though CoT demons are vulnerbale to energy, they also self heal, debuff accuracy and hit very hard.
I'm at 22 now, and pretty sure I could handle Invincible radio missions with Stamina and 25% Defence now. (Dispersion, Manouvres, Hover + Blessing of the Zephyr ) -
I'd also love to be able to choose an alternative to the beachball throw animation for Neutron Bomb and Repulsion Bomb in Force Fields.
Its one of those animations that works for some characters but not for others. -
Yeah, I've seen them go for some crazy prices recently.
Could be someone with two accounts messing around even, corner the market, sell a few to yourself for a million and then see if anyone buys the next one for half a mill in a hurry?
Whatever the cause, if you're a billionaire and dont want to wait five minutes, good luck to you. I've paid some atrociously high prices for the odd piece of salavge here and there just so I can get back to playing - its not like theres much else to spend the influence on beyond having whatever enhancements you want. -
I used to run my FF/Sonic and Kin/Elec Defenders on Invincible, or +2/x1 as we now call it.
I tried running my new-ish level 17 FF/Energy Defender through the "Rescue Lady Grey" mission in the Midnight arc at +1/x1 and found that way too brutal. -
I would definitely go for this.
I've made a few builds where I've run into a choice between three powers I dont really want, and end up effectively wasting a power pick due to ordering.
Example: My current FF/NRG Defender I planned to build first for personal survival, team survival and single target damage.
That ruled out PFF (I'd soft cap later), Force Bolt (partially redundant with Energy Blast secondary) and Energy Torrent (avoiding AoE until later) once I'd got Deflection Shield, Power Bolt and Power Blast. -
Quote:You said it yourself, Bioispark.Hello Dr.Mike,
Since I know you have some in-depth experience on Sonic versus Forcefields, maybe you have some insight into a small disparity between the two sets.
Dispersion Bubble grants 10% Defense to all, which taken purely by itself represents a 20% survival increase on even con minions.
Sonic Dispersion grants 15% resist, which represents only 15% in the same scenario.
Granted they scale differently and Sonic powers can grant increased DPS which has a survival implication. But why would they not make Sonic dispersion 20% to be in-line with FF's bubble. After all 15% resist is the same amount tough grants to a Defender, seemingly out of line with the whole Primary > Secondary > Pool
This always bothered me when I played a sonic.
Sonic is designed as a hybrid defence/offence set, whereas Force Fields is almost entirely defensive. Hence the sum mitigation from Sonic is noticeably smaller, for both you and your team. Sonic gives the team 58% mitigation with a Psi hole, FF gives 80% with a partial Psi hole, or 90% with Manouvers.
Fulmens - knock it off. Please don't bite people's heads off for discussing Defender powers in a forum designed to do so. -
On a set-by-set or even power-by-power basis, yes, definitely.
Force Fields +Def powers and Sonic Resonance +Res powers, for example, benefit significantly from being 33% stronger on a Defender, because of the nature of +Def and +res, the more you have the better it becomes.
So they're good as they are. Ditto for most -Res powers.
Recovery Aura is the opposite - +200% Recovery (same for Defs and Con's oddly enough) is functionally the same as +150% or +250% - you have endurance coming out of your ears either way. People usually slot this for Recharge, because thats what counts, so this power should recharge faster for Defenders.
Basically, just applying scalars to the buffs doesnt work in making Controller secondaries less effective than Defender primaries, because the powersets are so different. I agree that things like recharge need to be taken into account.
And I'm with Biospark too - End costs should be dropped for Defender's (and Tanks) attacks a bit. Maybe not by enough to match the DPE of Blasters and Scrappers, but somewhere inbetween. -
Which pools prevent mez? I can think of:
Acrobatics has a Mag 2(?) hold protection, ie one hold and its overcome. Also prevents KB, but that doesnt drop toggles anyway.
Combat Jumping provides decent immobilise protection, once again not a toggle-dropper.
Health reduces the duration of Sleep, but doesnt stop them.
Aid Self reduces the duration of Stuns, but doesnt stop them.
But nothing can stop a single stun or sleep or two holds from dropping your toggles.
The problem with this for a Rad is that even break frees dont help unless you use them pre-emptively. On a Blaster, say, its Ok to pop a break free once you are mezzed and carry on business as usual, on a Rad its pop a break free and hope you survive before Rad Infection comes back up. -
Sonic Blast/Rad Emission Corrupter is a very powerful combo, Neon, and unlike Kinetics, its powerful right from the get go.
Radiation Infection is your main defence due to the massive -To Hit it imparts on the target and surrounding enemies.
Your main frustration coming from Scrapperville will be getting mezzed - when you do so your enemy targetted toggles like Radiation Infection drop, and take a good few seconds to recharge, during which time you can feel pretty vulnerable. Your best defence is preemptively mezzing the mezzers - Screech at 26 and Sirens Song at 18 are your tools here.
This combo also works really well on a Defender, by the way. The base damage is lower and there's no Scourge, but the -Res from all the Sonic attacks and Enervating Field are greater, so that closes the damage gap considerably. The mez attacks are further away though, but the -To hit from Radiation Infection is better.
BTW, if you're talking about Sonic Resonance/Radiation Blast, thats a much weaker combo. -
Come to think of it, the worse times I've had on my Kinetics Defender was against Earth Thorn Casters, because they can keep you at range using Quicksand and running off.
The defence debuff isn't great, but its the inability to get close and Transfuse that really hurts.
Speed Boost provides run speed debuff resistance, but Siphon Speed doesn't - I learned the hard way watching my teammates skim effortlessly over the quicksands. -
Fulcrum Shifting from a distance will still draw aggro. If you do that, you're not only the target but you're out of range of your own enemy-centred heals.
So the two safe options are:
1) Stay back and Fulcrum once the tank's gone in and grabbed aggro.
2) Follow the tank in and Fulcrum once the tank's grabbed aggro.
I usually went for option 2, because the spike damage is low in this situation (you're taking small AoE hits rather than big melee hits) and easily overcome by Transfusion.
There were some situations where I found I'd go for option 1. Nemesis springs to mind, they seem to put out a lot more AoE damage than most groups. That's when I'd switch to option 1.
This is from experience of playing a Kin/Elec Defender and Earth/Kin to 50.
I'd say more Kinetics deaths occur from failed Transfusions (either you miss or the target dies) than from just being in melee range. -
Thats pretty good for a "disastrous" build
A few minor points...
[Edit] Get Howl! Its 20% -Res to a group, ie 20% more damage after your damage bonuses from Fulcrum are factored in. Im not sure what to drop specifically. Maybe drop Shout? Shout has a long animation, so you can often get by on just Shriek and Scream for ST damage. [end edit]
I'd drop the end redux enhancements in Fulcrum and Siphon Power straight away. Transfusion fills your bar up to full each time it hits, which is at base once every 30 seconds. Maybe turnt hem both into Recharges in Fulcrum Shift - 1 Acc 3 Rech is pretty good basic slotting for that, considering you have a bit of an Acccuracy bonus from sets as well.
Transference and Stamina look a bit overslotted? If youre going for +Recovery and +Damage set bonuses dont bother, you'll be overshadowing any piddly little +3%'s with your powers! I doubt you even need to 3 slot Stamina (Transference is that good at returning end), and Transference should get Acc, Recharg and End Mod.
Siphon Speed and Inertial reduction are both good to have. Siphon Speed ups your recharge and gives you unsupressed combat superspeed, so its great to have in missions. IR is your standard travel power-free travel power for crossing zones, because you don't need to draw aggro to use it. If you're say level 10 and arrive at the top end of Steel Canyon, it can be tricky finding a NPC to siphon speed from to get back down to the south end.
The Luck of the Gambler +Rech seems a bit of a waste maybe. You'll be pulling in recharge with Siphon Speed, whether you'll notice the extra 7.5% is debatable. Up to you - if you can afford it go for it.
Regarding playing in melee - I found on a team you're often best off going in at the tank's heels. They draw aggro, keeping the big spike damage off you. You'll take some splash damage, but you've got a massive heal in Transfusion. I'd be doing my best to draw aggro using Fulcrum Shift, Short Circuit and Ball Lightning but if I had a tanker on the team I rarely faceplanted.
Having another Defender on the team was nice, especially a Force Fielder (Kin and FF mutaully beneift each other a lot) but a good Tanker or even an aggressive scrapper was enough to take the heat off me.
You'd have to have a pretty poor team to warrant standing at the back at any time. -
Hi there, and welcome.
Kin/Rad and Kin/Sonic both work well. A lot of Kinetics powers need to hit, so the -Def from Rad is nice, and Rad plays well close up with Irradiate and Cosmic Burst both being short range.
Kin/Sonic is the ultimate damage booster, and has a couple of good mezzes in the set. Siren's Song mass sleep is the perfect setup for a good safe Fulcrum Shift.
In general, Sonic Blast goes best with anything, because the -Res stacking is that good. Just attacking can give you a 60% Res debuff on any enemy. -Def from Rad is nice at lower levels, but can be compensated for with reasonable slotting. Thunderstrike (mentioned below) gives +58% accuracy to the power its in, plus a global 7% bonus per set, so your ST blasts are at +80% accuracy already if you slot three of these sets. (And I almost always say you should).
With Kinetics you can skip travel powers (rely on Inertial Reduction and Siphon Speed) and Stamina (rely on Transference) in order to make use of other pool powers.
You aksed about Defence. Kinetics wont contribute directly - you pretty much rely on the powerful heal (Transfusion) to stay alive. However, any Defender can build up a meaningful level of defence from polls because they get good Defence Bonuses.
Fighting Pool lets you put the Steadfast Unique IO in Tough. This and fuilly slotted Weave is 11% Defence to all.
Combat Jumping (or Hover) is 2.5% unslotted
Manouvres from leadership is 5.6% slotted.
So for those three pools you can start off with 19% Defence to everything.
Add in a few set bonuses and you're dodging half the incoming attacks that would otherwise hit.
Ranged Defence is probably most important because mezzes can be deadly - you're relyiong on a click heal power to stay upright. Fortunately, the Thunderstrike set is available and cheap - 3.75% ranged defence per full set, or 11.25% for three sets in your single target blasts. Add in Red Fortune in Manouvres and Weave at 2.5% each, and you can have 32.75% Ranged Defence - now 2 out of 3 attacks are bouncing off.
Blessing of the Zephyr in Hover/CJ is also recommended, both for anti-KB and set bonuses, but this is pricey.
So, you can build for Defence on a Kineticist. It wont come together till the late 20s/early 30s, and you may have to skip Stamina or a travel power to do so, both of which are quite viable. You'll never be Scrapper tough, and life will always be a little bit edgy, but its a fun set for sure. -
There's one office map that causes this every time - the elevator lobby leads into a square room with two little alcoves North and East if you're coming in from South, and an upper mezzanine floor.
The henchmen bolt straight North every time, often through a wall I think? -
My favourite new archetype idea was the Movement Master written up by Rachelthulu back on the old forums (and seemingly now lost in time, at least to my search skills).
In brief, its a Movement-Defence/Melee archetype for those characters whose primary power is movement eg Flash, Nightcrawler, Cannonball, Angel and Toad to name but a few.
The primary combines a level 1 travel power with defensive powers, many of which would require movement to work. eg short range teleport with no immobilise at the end that adds +Def to all positions per click.
Keep moving and you can stay one step ahead, stand still and you're a sitting duck.
You could add in other self buffs, such as a +damage Momentum sprint for speedsters.
The secondaries would be pretty much the usual scrapper sets, with slightly lower damage and no criticals.
I think this kind of character would add a whole new dynamic element to combat in CoH. -
Sonic is a very solid team support set, but probably the worse buff/debuff set to solo, even worse than Empathy in my opinion.
It's also something of an end hog, compared to post-35 Kinetics when you have all the end you can eat.
On the other hand, its very little fuss to maintain. Toggle on Sonic Dispersion, put Disruption Field on the melee-er of your choice and bubble everyone every four minutes. If you enjoy blasting on teams, Sonic's wonderful because it allows you to do just that, whereas Kinetics keeps you busy using click powers to heal, buff and debuff. -
I've played Traps/AR and Traps/Sonic on the dark side, ie Corrupters.
The answer, as always, is that Sonic Blast will be the most effective due to all that stacked -Res. Siren's Song is pretty good solo, although Acid Mortar is a great little sleep-breaker. There's enough jaw costume pieces to make it look like some kind of tech weapon, and you can recolour the blasts these dats, which may help.
Energy Blast is not great since it knocks enemies out of your traps range, or maybe into them if you're good enough. It does look good with big gloves as a tech power.
Rad Blast would be ok, the secondary effect is already covered by Acid Mortar. And if you really need all those stacked Def debuffs, then remember they all have To Hit rolls to land. Once again though, it works as a techie power with goggles and gloves.
Dark Blast would be pretty good due to the immobilise in Tentacles, but that power in particular is hard to marry with a gadgeteer concept.
Ice Blast would also be nice due to slows keeping everyone in the Acid Mortar/Ice Storm area. Frost Breath and Ice Storm aren't very gadgetty to watch, although Im sure you could explain both away if pushed.
Assault Rifle worked pretty well for me (as a Corrupter) - Web Grenade and Ignite are nice together. Acid Mortar is good for clumping up enemies and then wasting them with multiple AoEs once they're debuffed. You can Buckshot enemies back into Acid Mortar range, or onto a Poison Gas Trap. But you've done your dash with it, and Ignite's gotten weaker since I played.
I'd go Sonic Blast.
It looks fine on my future Victorian steampunk gadgeteer Traps/Sonic Corruptor. Oddly enough, black coloured blasts look quite radiowave weapon/Tesla Death Ray. And its a very powerful solo-er. -
Good on you for trying something different again, Biospark.
I tried something similar on my Fire/FF controller - the idea beiung I could bubble up PFF and regenerate rather quickly if needs be.
The results weren't great, and it did occur to me that Aid Other and Aid Self would be far more useful coupled with PFF.
However, I didn't get all the set bonuses I wanted at the time and kind of gave up before really giving that idea a fair shake. I was set on not having a tricorder to heal, you may be too, and if so, good luck to you. I guess for proper field testing you could seek out a giver of +Regen to see how it would feel, maybe get someone to drop an unslotted Triage Beacon for you?
Oh wait, youve got it at 35. Maybe you'll find once you get Aid Self all that hard won +Regen amounts to nought.
I'd personally swap Deflection Shield and Detention Field around. One bubble can provide a team heaps of mitigation, thats everything excepot exotic ranged attacks covered by Defelection since it covers both S/L and all melee. But what happens between levels 8 and 22 is a tiny bit of your career, so big deal really.
No Energy Torrent? Thats a fast animating fast recharging AoE with a good chance of KB. I'd maybe swap that for Force Bolt in that it can kind of stand in if something gets too close, but also beefs up your AoE damage, which is gfood for soloing. Force Bolt is the "oh yes you are going to get knocked down" power, but Energy Torrent followed by your ST chain is a pretty good chance of neutralising that threat that gets too close.
One last point - have you looked at Explosive Strike Damage procs? You could try one in Power Blast and see if it works for you instead of the Psi defence bonus from 6 Dev's. Ive been kitting my new FF/Energy Defender out with them and quite like them. They're not game changing, but add a little bit more punch.