Morganite

Incidentally, if you want to see exactly how much defense the protector bot shields are giving you, you can find that information in your detailed numbers window. (Also, if it's like the shield from the Ember Demon, your bots probably get more defense from it than you do.)

-Morgan.

I think I'll be happier with a pet that doesn't take up that much space.

-Morgan.

I've been assuming that accuracy and damage enhancements improve the little hellfire things that get spawned.

Whether it's *worth* improving them, I don't know. Not to that level yet.

-Morgan.

I read somewhere that the aura is 40'. Still pretty good, as long as you stay close to your pets. (Which you'll probably want to be doing *anyway*...)

Though on the original question, I'd also wonder "Why put them all into this power, and leave almost no room to enhance it's own function?"

-Morgan.

Well, that was kind of my point. Anything hit by it is going to get knocked back, so the knockdown seems like it'd be redundant.

Though if it does do something additional, it could be interesting. But having it in another AoE power would probably be more useful, especially since it doesn't look like you actually plan to use Gale that much.

-Morgan.

What's the point of the Ragnarok proc in Gale? It already does knockback.

-Morgan.

Maneuvers could be a decent idea for a /Storm MM, since stacked with the +def from Steamy Mist, -ToHit from Hurricane, and places for both defense aura procs, it should be able to keep a useful number of attacks off your pets. Of course, the endurance cost to run all those plus Snow Storm, Assault, and Tactics is going to be pretty massive. Staminaless would definitely not be an option, and even then running it all at once would leave you unable to do much else. Still, they're probably all worthwhile in at least some situations.

-Morgan.

I can't comment on the overall worth of the SA set, but unless you're really hot on the psi defense bonus, you could do something like replace the Damage/Recharge with a Damage/EndRed from another set. That gives a pretty noticeable improvement on the endurance consumption, and hopefully the Prince doesn't die enough that a 12 second longer recharge time will be a problem anyway.

-Morgan.

Well, no one can fault him for inconsistency of purpose.

For MMs it's actually a bit of a wash for me. I don't want the tier 1 or 2 attacks, and I do want both Gale and O2 Boost. Whichever's not at L1 will get taken at L2. But if I couldn't get one of them until, say, level 10, I'd rather have Gale first. Keeping the enemies flying through the air where they can't attack my bots > a heal that isn't that impressive out of the box.

-Morgan.

I don't claim to be a master build maker, which is why I asked. Lots of times people go for different things in their builds than I do.

I have a Bots/Storm, and it's still pretty low level, but I've played it enough to have some ideas on the /Storm part.

At low levels, Gale is a pretty nice mitigation power. Anything you knock down isn't attacking you or your pets. O2 Boost is a bit weak out of the box, so preventing attacks is a lot better. At higher levels, a knockback cone can still be a nice tool if things are getting too heavy, as long as you're careful about where you knock the mobs off to.

Snow Storm is also helpful at keeping the mobs doing anything but attacking you, but it's expensive. It's also noticeably below the slow movement cap, so enhancing slow will help. I kind of like a little recharge in toggle debuffs, so I can get them back up faster if my anchor dies/I get mezzed, but YMMV. (As well as how much global recharge you shell out for.)

Beyond that, I can't claim much direct experience. But based on the powers, I think /Storm would work better as a 'Controllermind' approach. Debuff and otherwise mess with the mobs, but try to let your pets take the hits, because they're a lot easier to heal. With a knockback cone, a knockdown patch, def buffs for your pets, and tohit debuffs for anything that gets too close, you've got a lot of tools to help keep those hits to a minimum.

Of course, I might be a bit biased. I'm enjoying knocking things down again and again so much that I intend to build around doing it as much as possible.

-Morgan.

Slotting damage in gale, let alone a purple set, doesn't make much sense. It's base damage is way too low. Unless you're just using it as a set mule?

I don't know why you've got EndMods from random sets in Stamina, and Snow Storm doesn't need accuracy at all.

-Morgan.

Mids actually shows Stamina's base as exactly twice that of PP. If you're saying that's wrong... you'd better come out and say it.

A third L50 endmod IO doesn't provide much anyway, thanks to ED. The first two both add around 0.17 EPS. A third only gives a paltry 0.06.

So, the proc is way better than a third endmod in stamina. Numerically it's better than the first or the second ones too. But it's not amazingly better.

-Morgan.

That's not quite right.

That post is talking about Physical Perfection, a power with a much lower base than Stamina. Mids shows the difference between one level 50 EndMod IO and two as being ~0.17 EPS. So at ~0.2 EPS, the proc has a bit of an advantage, but not too exciting a one. It certainly doesn't provide more than both slots in Stamina.

-Morgan.

I have no experience with higher level mind or cold, but there was one thing that leapt out at me.

It sounds like you use Confuse often in situations where you need it to be aggro-free. I've read that when the Contagious Confusion proc fires, it will get you aggro. So, that could be a bad idea for you. You'll probably want to get verification on that (and I'd be interested to know as well), but if that's true, you'll probably want to avoid that one.

-Morgan.

Well, I'm no expert (just opinionated), but you're probably better off making the changes you feel help, then posting a revised version of the build for comments. Even for something with as much of a "flavor of the month" past as fire/kin, there's so many possible combinations of build goals, playstyle, available inf/resources, and what you think is worth the effort that just copying from an existing build isn't likely to give you something that makes you happy.

(You're doing much better in this process than I, too... I posted my build a while back, and no one responded at all. ;.; )

-Morgan.

I thought you were agreeing with me? I think one is enough too. Still, I've heard there's a few things that can still knock you down with one, so some people like having two. Whatever it is doesn't seem to show up very often though...

Accuracy, I forgot about that. I've personally got Transfusion slotted about like that + 1 common Accuracy IO. And Tactics. Without Tactics, you might want more. I've also got an accuracy in Siphon Speed, since it's really a pain when that misses.

-Morgan.

I was a bit bewildered at your recovery rate until I realized you had the click accolades turned on. Probably not a good idea, with them being so rarely available.

Anyway, after turning that off, you've still got a lot of recovery bonuses. Not a bad thing, especially since a lot of them are coming from purple sets with their highly desirable recharge bonus. Still, Transference lets you get away with a lot less, so I'd suggest switching out of a couple of them. Like slotting more resist in Fire Shield. Fire Imps can get enhancement values about the same as what you've got with 4 Expedient Reinforcement, saving you a slot while keeping the same recharge bonus.

If you want defense, you might want to find a Steadfast Protection Res/Def. It gives a lot of benefit for one slot.

And speaking of Steadfast Protection, there really isn't much that'll get through only one of the Knockback Protection IOs, so it may not be worth it.

I'm not sure it's worth using Performance Shifter in Stamina over generic IOs. I find Siphon Speed let's me get around missions plenty fast enough. (Enough to make every other character I play feel slow, anyway.) But you may feel otherwise.

Otherwise, it looks like a very nice build. Also incredibly expensive, but you probably already know that...

-Morgan.

Overall, I'm with ketch - you seem to be sacrificing way too much on the basics to get set bonuses.

I'm kind of uncertain what you actually want to do with this build. You've got the heavy focus on protection vs. smashing/lethal, which is typical of farming builds. But you have no damage enhancement in your big AoE damage click, which is pretty surprising in general. But it doesn't really look like it's designed to control for a team either.

I don't get slotting Flashfire for damage and Fire Cages for immobilize. Usually it's more like the other way around - Stun duration for Flashfire, since it's your most available stop-things-from-attacking AoE, and it's good to have it last as long as possible. (Maybe less important with CC, but something to keep the enemy in disarray until it kicks in still seems useful.) Meanwhile, Fire Cages already has incredibly long duration compared to it's recharge, but it's not a bad power to slot up for damage or procs.

On Ring of Fire - it's something I've been wondering in general, but how often do people actually use this at higher levels? I dropped it early on my Fire/ controller, and have never really wished I had a single target immobilize.

Even with heavy endred slotting, I'm betting it's almost never a good idea to run all those toggles at once. But just your affects-self-only toggles consume almost as much end as my entire build. Of course, that's only including toggles that have no endred. But then there's Hot Feet and Choking Cloud, which *also* consume almost as much end as my entire build. If you can break loose an enhancement slot somewhere, you can almost completely replace Acrobatics with a Steadfast Protection or Karma knockback protection IO. (Lose the hold protection, but I have my doubts on how useful that is.) Still, you could really use some endred.

-Morgan.

How about "No slows in Hot Feet until you've got end and damage"? I'm quite pleased with 5 Tempered Readiness + 1 common damage IO. Still impressive damage, plus a useful bit of soft control for the occasional resists-pretty-much-everything enemy.

A couple questions for the OP:

-Why the endred in Super Jump? It's not really the sort of power that needs it, and the set bonus just doesn't seem worth it.
-Is there some source of particular PvP IO recipes that I don't know about? Because most of the ones I've looked at don't even have market histories, they're so rare. (Otherwise, I'd love to get a Gladiator's Armor +3% Def...)
-... Recharge in Maneuvers? Why?

-Morgan.

There's a number of things I can say to that, but I think maybe it's all going to boil down to "So?"

Plant unquestionably has more low level AoE controls than... anything that I know of, really. I know from experience the power of Mind's low level ST chain, though I never had a character concept I liked enough to get one to double digits. Illusion and Grav's capabilities at those levels are pretty obvious. (I'm in fact becoming very tempted to reroll my Rad/Rad defender as an Ill/Rad...)

But the AoE damage isn't really there. Spamming Roots isn't going to be any more viable than spamming Fire Cages. An AoE confusion... well, that's going to be pretty awesome actually. Still, it's a totally different dynamic.

In any case, I still felt pretty powerful as a low level Fire/Kin. I had to do things totally differently than anything else I've levelled, but when I got the strategy down it was both fun and fast, and it's stayed that way all the way up to 42. So I get kind of tired of seeing people say it can't be those things until the 30s.

-Morgan.