Elaith

Just had a random thought (and I may not be the first person to think it but I don't remember seeing it before, although I HAVE been gone from the boards for a while.)

What if assassin strike landed enemies hit with a debuff that made your other attacks hit harder. Lets just say for the sake of making up a random (and probably badly balanced number) your attacks against ASd targets had an "autocrit" for an extra 50% damage in addition to your normal crit chance. This boosts their ST damage against things like EB/AV enemies while it doesn't do much to lower ranked enemies (where they generally dont need help.)

So made up attack thats hitting for 200 and normal crits while the AV is debuffed may look something like this

Hit AV for 200
Hit AV for 100 autocrit bonus
Hit AV for 200 crit damage

Insert standard I am not a programmer disclaimer here.

It is unfortunately b, I had the set on my grav/ff for a bit and replaced the proc pretty fast (althouth stupefy is still a solid set without it.) It's not actually about the radius, its that anything in the middle of bing KBd is immune to being ported. Theoretically its possible with any KB/TP combo (and I think I've seen it happen on occasion to rikti using their own teleports) but the timing is tricky and the stupefy proc does it reliably.

On the plus side while it will somewhat split the spawn, the stun does still land on the things stupefy procs on.

I don't have a DP in game (Although I've been thinking about rolling one) so I can't poke around there to see if I can find it, but here is what Mids says. (Using dual wield, I believe they all debuff by the same amount with the exception of pistols)

Chem rounds: -12.5% damage
Cryo rounds: -18.75% recharge, -18.75% run speed

Just as an addition to that slow resist thing, energy absorption ALSO gives you slow resist, I believe per person hit although I may be wrong. I know my ice tank with permafrost becomes slow immune at one person hit by EA without any slow resist from IOs.

[edit] Just checked CoD and it looks like EA gives a nonstacking 20% slow resist, so it doesn't matter how many people you hit its always 20%. Still, thats enough to cap your slow res if you already have permafrost.

Negative Energy also does well as a damage type with few things in game resisting it. The catch, most enemies that resist it (mostly forms of undead) do so heavily.

Recluse is rough on EVERYONE while all the towers are up, double damage and a high hit chance mean hes going to hurt no matter what. The fact that the red tower is also boosting his resists also means you can't really debuff his damage any (damage resist resists damage debuff) which is why devoting an empath to support the tank is popular. Chew enough purples (or get buffed enough) to take you to what would normally be the soft cap, then eat another big purple is the best I can suggest

[edit] this is what I get from posting at work where I have to get up frequently in the middle of typing, there were no replies when I started this :P

Just to add a little food for thought, from experience with my Ice/DB/Ice.

DB can provide some pretty decent additional mitigation via knockdown, plus theres the slows, damage debuffs, and sapping that all boost mitigation without being directly defense based. Without any special effort towards my psy defense, my ice/DB has succesfully tanked/fought psychic clockwork (memorably, as my settings were cranked up to x8 and I had only 1 teammate who then ate a few too many AoEs) and carnies/arachnos (in a more standard setting) succesfully. While you will be eating a lot of mind bullets, ice armor can be completely slow immune, so you don't have to worry about them slowing down your hoarfrost/hibernate recovery buttons like most tanks with psy holes do. The fire hole I don't find to be a huge problem because, as mentioned, fire attacks usually come paired with a damage type you CAN defend against, and while they aren't exactly great there are non-negligable amounts of fire resist within the set. KoA and their caltrops annoy me more then CoT and their firebreathing demons.

Just to offer a different view here:

Yes it is annoying when a pet dies, however when they go for the unmezzed mob they are quite possibly pulling aggro off of me, and I'd rather the enemies be shooting at my pet then me. Also, (while this one doesnt apply to the imps) the pets that have controls gravitating towards unmezzed target is a nice way to help spread the lockdown.

Indeed, you did not need to be /rad or /kin. I recall my grav/ff fielding 3 singularities. That said, as fun as three control tank pets may have been, I am glad for the change overall. Playing a melee character while teamed with a fire/kin (or worse, multiples) was an excercise in frustration. "Oh look, I have 20 things getting in the way of me getting in to melee, and I can't push them around."

I'm going to preface this with: It's been a while since I saw this, it may have been fixed since.

Yes, the KB proc is horrible in wormhole, not because knockback is inherently bad, but because mobs in the middle of being knocked around would NOT get teleported by the wormhole.

Oh and in other fun gravity facts, singularity used to have a power to phase shift enemies (and it may still take intangibility enhancements as a relic of that.)

Another voice to the "whoever is getting beat up the most." That said, when starting with a team I don't know I'll buff those that I think are going to be our heavy AoE hitters (favoring blasters) to start off with until I get a feel for who needs the defenses most. If we seem to be doing just fine with me hitting them, I'll keep giving it to those people so they can benefit from the +tohit and +dam to boost their damage.

One other thing to consdier, slotting will typically dilute the effects of vigilance. Damage buffs don't multiply off eachother (to multiply damage buffs you need resistance debuffs) and that 30% boost from vigilance is going to apply to base damage. By time an attack is slotted with SOs you have (rounding to a nice round number) about 100% in damage buff from your enhancements to that attack. Assuming this boost you have:

Defenders: 65*2.3 (1.0 base + 1.0 SOs + .3 vigilance) = 149.5
Corruptors: 75*2 = 150

Or, almost exactly the same base solo damage. At this point it pretty much becomes a race between the defender's higher buff/debuff numbers and the corruptor's scourge to see who takes the top damage spot. While it is, to the best of my knowledge, flat out impossible for a solo character to -res cap an enemy this is probably the best way for defenders to pull ahead of corruptor damage. Damage buffs favor the defender too but there is a significant "risk" in the damage race that a kineticist (the only set with appreciable self +dam) defender will hit their damage cap (with SOs and Vigilance covering 130% it's not too hard to FS your way there) at which point they stop gaining from damage buffs while a corruptor still has another 100% to go. Like was mentioned earlier, a corruptor at their damage cap wins, period. At damage cap the def deals 325 damage while the corruptor deals 450. At that point even if they have sonic blast as a secondary to try and make up the difference they would have to put out about a -130% debuff to overcome the corruptors damage (assuming the corruptor is also using the same debuff chain) and quite frankly I doubt thats possible for a solo defender.

Honestly, I quite like the set. Sure, it has it's holes, mostly psychic, but also non-damage debuffs which tend to only have position tags (I'm looking at you web grenade.) I know there is technically a toxic hole too but the game doesn't throw many pure toxic attacks at you. In tradeoff for that you get basically unlimited endurance (and really? I would LOVE it if they gave conserve power the energize treatment.) Fully slotted up energy drian is 50 endurance per nearby enemy every 30 seconds. Also known as "Refill your end bar every 30 seconds except maybe if you're soloing." Ditched stamina once I got energy drian slotted up and never looked back, although I did eventually dip back into the fitness pool for swift so I would stop running slower then my teamates :P

My DM/EA stalker was my first villain to 50 and is still my favorite villain (not that I have THAT many.) I remember being fairly pleased with it's capabilities on SOs but it's definately gotten better after IOs. And, while there has been some defense added, I have NOT gone for a softcapped build and am still quite pleased with my durability. The only specific defense boost I added was a steadfast IO, all the other defense boosts were incidental while chasing what I was after (+dam.) Yes I know, DM is part of what makes him durable, but quite honestly I don't find I need to spam siphon life to keep myself at full. I mean, I do anyway cause it hits like a truck, but I don't HAVE to :P

What do you want the build to do? As a general rule I'd say take (and slot well) the granted shields and dispersion bubble from force field and the immobilizes, holds, pet, and wormhole from gravity. PB is gold from the ancillary. From there, it really depends on what you want from the build.

I am a fan of hamis in fortitude. 3 slots maxes out all the relevant attributes, and a fourth slot can take a LotG +rech. Of course, if you don't already have them, the def/tohit/rech hamis are pretty stupid expensive (are any of the other hamis even in demand?)

But yes, other then that, chase those recharge bonuses.

PS: I think that 5 doctored wounds + an end mod is for adrenaline boost not absorb pain.

Note: The following is to the best of my understanding, people more in the know should feel free to swoop in and correct me if I'm wrong :P

Some commentary as the player of a lv 50 Ice/DB

The build is very tight, admittedly I took things a bit to the extreme. My tanker has all the primary/secondary secondary powers and until epic levels only had a travel power from pools, even after epic levels that didnt' really change, just added hurdle to the mix.

re: the combos. I will agree that when they tend to surround you the cones lose some power, although they can still make good openers. However, the end of the sweep combo is also a PBAoE knockdown and can help with mitigation. DB can chain a lot of knockdown on single targets actually. Though nothing will ever beat ice patch on the knockdown defense front.

If you do what I did, I highly reccomend having 2 seperate attack chains. For AoE I tend to cycle attack vitals and sweep, against single foes I stick to the single target attacks (usually trying to use empower) because, as said, while energy absorption will keep you going against groups it loses some of it's shine against single targets. And all those AoEs aren't cheap.

Watch you end bar! I'm guilty of occasionally getting lost in the attack-attack-attack mentality and forgetting to watch my end bar to know when I need to click EA, it's never pretty.