OVWyx_EU

The kill time on Hami I thought wasn't to bad to be honest, once we had the Rads in. Once thing I did notice is that a lot of rad defenders who didn't have holds didn't actually come in and use AM until they were asked in to use Lingering Radiation. When the Rad defenders came in to debuff I went from 3-4 lots of AM to 7-8 lots for the remainder of the phase, as did most of the people in my team whose bars I was watching, it would have been helpful to have had that from word go.

Something worth considering next time.

9th was last night - we did it in one evening in the end - I really hadn't realised how short that TF was, don't know where I got the idea it was a long one (think it just feels it with all those council bases ).

However Phil, we are thinking about Moonfire early evening today, if you're really after a TF.

Unfortuantely something has cropped up and it's looking unlikely that I'll be able to make this now. Please feel free to offer my spot to someone else too, as I also wont know until the last minute.

Wyx.

Buffem and Run needs this, the scaredest kinetic defender ever, will be shutting her eyes if there's an AV involved of course. If you have room still pwease mister.

I would strongly recommend you take stamina, you may be able to "get by" without, but you will definitely suffer for not having it. In addition to which there's absolutely no reason not to take it at all. With Siphon Speed stacked up you can cherry pick the best of the attacks and you will never want for an attack chain. You simply don't need as many as you have in that build.

My level 50 currently has Neutrino Bolt, Cosmic Burst, Irradiate, Aim and Atomic Blast (giggle, it's a great nuke) plus Total Focus from the Ancilliary. I also have Hasten, and I am never left waiting for an attack to come up. I find Electron Haze annoying, it does knockback, which is not what you want as a Kinetic, and Neutron Bomb is simply not worth the animation time. Snipes I have always had relatively little time for, again, it's not a ranged combination really.

With Fitness and Transferrance you wont need to slot a single endurance reducer in the entire build, so you can fully optimise the slotting on all other powers. With the exception of immediately after nuking when you do need a CaB, you'll never have any endurance problems at all. I have at various times run either the leaping pool and my epic shield, or as now the leadership pool plus my epic shield, and in order to do that and run the build at full pelt I find stamina a must.

Repel is also not a power I'd take, that's a pretty mele based set, you probably wont get a lot of mileage out of it.

I'll pop along with one 'toon or another, probably the kinetic again. Hopefully my little fingers will have recovered from two hours solid of SBing people by then.

Yup fine, that gives us enough to start it, the more the merrier though, still two more spaces if anyone wants to join.

And yeah, 7:30 pm UK time.

As the title suggests, I will be running the Citadel TF with an SG team in two chunks, starting tonight at 7:30pm and finishing tomorrow evening at the same time.

We currently have three places free. Please shout if interested.

1. Stuffem and Run - Blaster/Flamin' Nora - Controller
2. Shaken Not Stirred - Tank
3. Prawn Cocktail - Peace Bringer
4. Archaic Shadow - Scrapper
5. Divv - Blaster/Howla - Defender
6. Yzothateg - Controller

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Buffem and Run tells me she isn't too bothered about her Accuracy/Damage HO, however I hear there may be a blaster who will take it off her hands shortly.

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*Cough, splutter*
Me for one!

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I'm sorry to dissapoint, but I was thinking a little closer to home.

Points at signature

Well done folks, only major annoyance of the evening was the Kinetic constantly hammering Shiphon Power and Fulcrum Shift. Other than that things went fairly well. Buffem and Run tells me she isn't too bothered about her Accuracy/Damage HO, however I hear there may be a blaster who will take it off her hands shortly.

What character are you looking to do it with?

Edit: Sorry, not looking so likely after all unfortunately.

I would question whether the majority of the people I see "trash talking" in PvP zones could correctly spell sufficient swear words to have anything looking like that with the swear filter on.

I have to say I'm always surprised by attitudes in PvP areas in games like CoH, Eve etc, I suppose less "twitch" based games. These are not my regular "genre" of game, and I expected what I would class as more RP based games to have a higher general standard of behaviour, but in fact I find it significantly lower in a lot of respects.

I now almost always turn all chat facilities off when going in to PvP zones.

Controller wont be in level range, so my current plan is to bring my Kinetic, Buffem and Run, to help the PA drop team, unless anyone asks otherwise.

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I was hoping that the speed and evade bonuses would though, not for long, but the few microseconds needed for the badge...

alas however, i got pwned instead of getting a badge

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Warburg mission temp power for 30 seconds of Phase Shift maybe? Should give you long enough to find the spot.

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But I did suspect an Ice/Ice blaster would be bad for end-efficiency pre-SOs

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Bad post SOs too. The only real weakness of the set, but you do have to build to accomodate it unless teaming solidly with someone who's going to boost your recovery.

My level 50 uses quick bursts of Hibernate to manage end recovery, which is quite effective, although I have taken out most end reducers from attacks with that in mind so exemping is a complete git.

I would think of that more as something which is nice to read as the person writing it obviously enjoyed their character, rather than a definative guide.

Some things really stand out.

1. You can solo on higher than heroic quite easily, if you approach the fights from the right point of view. Air superiority, and later Char (or the Electricity Epic hold) can help you to do this, although the character will always function better in a decent team.

2. The "ranking" of the powers in the secondary is interesting reading. A lot of the powers the writer likes are practically useless on a solid build. Blazing Aura, Hotfeet and Combustion all do damage over time on a set that pretty much defines front loaded damage, they're endurance hogs, they pull aggro (although the whole set does so that's not a major issue) and more importantly they force you into mele constantly for something that gives relatively little return, rather than allowing you to go in and out of mele depending on what you're using. Mobile builds work better for teaming with Fire/Fire in my opinion.

4. Hasten is not a must have at all, although it's not necessarily a bad idea either. You get a good selection of AOEs, and because of the way the set works (hang back, let the tanker get aggro or the controller lock them down, unlease a string of AOEs, smile at a pile of corpses) you actually don't need it at all - the main thing it helps for is recharge on single target attacks when soloing, and Aim/Build Up availability.

5. Slotting. The recommended slotting on some of the powers in there wont work overall. Endurance is the main issue. Consume I would recomment slotting 2/2/2 on accuracy, recharge and endurance modification. That will go a large way to reducing the endurance issues the build has overall, putting an endurance reducer in to some of the AOEs instead of two accuracy can also help - you tend to combine AOEs with aim, build up, or both, so accuracy isn't really something that you need to heavily slot them for.

Inferno does not need an accuracy check. Blazing Bolt does not need an accuracy check, they have good accuracy anyway, and you normally only use with aim, build up, or both. Rain of Fire does not need two accuracy enhancements.

6. Bonfire does not mesh at all with an AOE based set, although that is touched on, I wouldn't recommend it, there are other powers from within pools (eg. leaping, medicine etc) that would benefit a fire blaster more than that.

7. Fire Breath is part of the core of the attack chain. It's ranged, it does excellent damage, you just need to learn to position the cone. The easiest way to place cones accurately is to target something near the back of the group, it gives you more control. Ideally to make the most of this power (in fact the whole set) you would have someone rounding the bad guys up, in which case Aim, Build up, Fire Breath, Fire Ball, Fire Sword Circle, and the only thing left standing you either missed, or it's a boss.

Overall Fire/Fire is about deliving the most damage you can, as quickly as possible, and surviving it. The toggles in the secondary do not help with this at all in my experience.

Ahem singing the praises of a set and then advising 6 slotting a self res, is an interesting perspective. I have RoTP on my Fire/Fire, but I'd say the default slot is enough, better to slot other powers that help keep you alive.

Fire Blast Powers are mostly good. The one I don't like is Flares (long animation time which could be spent using something that does more damage). The ones I would consider taking depending on what I'm regularly teaming with are Blazing Bolt (not necessary, although can be handy occasionally - big help when soloing Malta missions) and Rain of Fire (extremely good if you have someone locking the bad guys down, bloody awful if you don't), the rest are all very good.

Fire Manipulation powers I've found worth while are pretty much the same. Fire Sword, Fire Sword Circle (much improved since they changed the rooting at the end, I never used to use that), Build Up, and Consume. That's all I ever use (other than Ring of Fire on AVs occasionally and you get no choice about that one anyway), I've tried all the others extensively in the past, and find either they're just plain rubbish (Burn, Blazing Aura etc) or like Combustion I just don't need the extra damage over time, and I prefer to go for front loaded powers rather than damage over time. In general, most of the secondary is not great.

Soloing before getting an Epic hold is tricky, playing in teams with substandard aggro management (which is the majority of pick up teams in my experience, I very very seldom meet a combination of a good tanker/controller and a team that will let him do his job in a pick up team) is not a lot of fun. You can learn how not to die in teams like that, but it cuts back your damage output a lot.

Having said all that, I played my Fire/Fire blaster from 1-50 with the same Tanker (Stone) and a Kinetic Defender, plus as assortment of scrappers, and she was a hell of a lot of fun. Since hitting 50 I've played her in a much wider variety of teams, but in a regular team debt was never an issue, and she didn't get the third debt badge until well after hitting 50.

I am absolutely confident I've never had that character outdamaged in a team, but I also feel that I can easily get by without the AOE damage from the secondary (ie, not FSC) and finish up with some good solid single target hitters in the secondary, which is why I'd rather have Energy Manipulation. It would only slightly lessen the team damage output, and give me something that's a lot more soloable and less dependant on good team mates.

Regarding lack of damage mitigation on Fire/Fire prior to the epcis. Air Superiority is a really nice power to help with that. Using that (slotted 2 acc/1-2 recharge, not worth slotting for damage on a blaster in my opinion) and a few lucks you can solo higher level bosses relatively easily, although it'll always be a little risky. Medicine is also a good pick on Fire/Fire, Aid Self six slotted (including two interrupt reductions) makes soloing a lot easier. On the subject of "protection" to stun, Aid Self offers a Resistance, which just means that you get stunned for less time, not that you avoid it at all. Against something like Malta this simply isn't enough and I'd generally find myself using a break free anyway, because the duration of the stun is still too long to be confident of surviving while it wears off. I generally carried 8-12 break frees when soloing my Fire/Fire Blaster at higher level. Malta it would always be 12.

Any Defender Nuke when combined with Fulcrum shift will be good, you have transferrance to put your endurance straight back up afterwards, you're not running an abundance of toggles to worry about them going down for a second, if any Defender Primary works with a nuke, Kinetics does. As long as you have one CaB you can put yourself straight on Endurance and carry right on with Defendering. In addition to which, the nuke does endurance drain (I don't have exact numbers on the Defender version, but enough to be worth mentioning, I'm sure someone will have the exact figures), so if you have bosses in the group (which will definitely survive the nuke), you could top up the drain afterwards with Transferrance/Short Circuit.

I personally have never rated Sparky, there's two schools of thought on that one, but given the abundance of powers that mesh better with your primary, I would probably skip it.

If I made Wyx now, I'd make her Fire/Energy (I love Fire/Ice as well, but if I wanted a pure damage character, which was definitely what she is, Fire/Energy would be my choice).

Fire manipulation is not a great set, the improvements on damage wont help with the weaknesses of the set at all - it's a tweaked tanker set that just does not translate well to a squishy character.

Fire Blast, on the other hand, is an excellent set, and gives you as much AOE capability as you need, for raw damage in teams you're unrivalled by anything else. Energy Manipulation gives some great single target attacks to balance that out, the stun element (of the attacks, not the power itself) helps with soloing and any incidental aggro you may pull in a mission, conserve power helps with, well, conserving power, and it is an endurance heavy combination. You have AOEs for openers, and excellent single target damage for what's left.

Power Boost would help with something like an Epic level hold, and also, most definitely, combined with the stun in Total Focus, even if it doesn't help your damage output from the primary.

Ice/Ice is one of the lowest risk blaster sets, lots of control, and good single target damage, you can build them well for AOE damage as well at higher level (requires a lot of slots, as you need to be slotting for slows as well as damage in some powers, so doesn't work as well at lower level). There's a lot of different options really - my Ice/Ice blaster was always the most versatile of the set, not to mention the only one that could have, and did quite freqently, team with 6 scrappers and not soak up debt like a sponge.

Avoiding debt in teams is largely about knowing when to fire and when not to. In larger teams there are few situations where a blaster should be firing first - although having someone who can pick apart larger spawns well can be useful at times, that's a bit of an acquired nack - giving whoever is managing the aggro time to do it will cut down on most of the debt that you would other wise pick up.

Playing with Defiance is a sure fire recipe for early debt badges, once you get past level 15-20 or so, it's just too risky. In addition to which, once you get SOs in, with well slotted attacks and aim and build up, it's simply not needed for a good damage output.

Wyxie chuckles.

I like it, I suspect I could find a Blaster that could be persuaded to dress up in red.

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There is only one attack which does knockback (Power Push), the rest of the secondary attacks have varying chances to stun.

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Power push is energy primary attack, you mean power thrust. (I admit the power X attacks sound similar)

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I do. I tend to mix the names of those two powers up. Have the same problem with Lightning Bolt and Charged Bolts (I think my mind things the "Bolts" attack should be the one that's the two handed attack with two bolts, but it isn't) which led to an unfortunate screw up on a level 50 respec one time.

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igured i'll try ice/nrg, not the most damaging set but the slows and knockbacks should be good.

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Ice/Energy is the highest single target damage combination you can come up with. A total of six good single target attacks (three ranged, three mele) mostly quick firing.

There is only one attack which does knockback (Power Push), the rest of the secondary attacks have varying chances to stun.

Ice/Energy is the best on paper, although I find against certain specific builds, other blasters may fair better.

Primaries

Fire is an AOE based primary, Flares is not a good attack (long animation) which really messes up a single target attack chain, no holds, no other nifty effects at all. In other words, not the best.

Ice has good single target damage, a good quick firing hold, and some slowing capabilities.

Elec has weaker single target damage, a pet which some people find handy in PvP, a single hold, but with a longer animation than the best of the two ice holds. It's OK, but Ice is better in my opinion.

Energy also has pretty reasonable single target damage, but you wont find many people without knockback protection in a PvP zone, let alone the arena.

Secondaries

Of the secondaries, Energy has a lot of very useful tools, Power Boost and Conserve Power being the two most noticable ones. You also have stuns in your mele attacks rather than holds, and they're in your attacks, which is very useful.

Elec is also quite good, does good damage, has a decent quick firing mele hold, but doesn't have all the other nifty tools.

Ice secondary is generally not liked for PvP, I find for team PvP my Ice/Ice/Cold is actually very good, slows are not often resisted, so in a zone I get quite a lot of mileage out of her. I'd need to change epic to make her affective in the arena though.

Devices is pretty reasonable for zone PvP.Telemining (ie teleport the bad guys on to mines and caltrops) can be very effective, I'm not a big fan of the set other than that though.

If you're looking to solo PvP at all then Force Mastery and the Medicine Pool (aid self, 6 slotted, 2 interrupt durations in there) are an extremely big advantage, regardless of the rest of the set.

To a degree they're what you make of them though.

Edited: To remove a comic typo which really changed the meaning of the thing.

I've taken Sands of Mu on both my Level 38 Ice/Rad and my Level 14 Fire/Kin.

Very impressed. Especially on the Ice/Rad who I have a very low damage output set up on - the biggest attacks she has at the moment, apart from when I can entice Jack in to mele with the offer of Mint Feasts, are the croatoa temp powers which I've still got a fair bit of time left on too - and with Rad secondary accuracy is not really an issue on them.

From my "testing" (OK, bashing stuff) last night, I would agree that Containment does not work on them.