OVWyx_EU

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PvP does happen in other parts of Warburg

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I know, it was merely a (light hearted, amazingly, on this forum) observation that certain character types will always gravitate towards the beach and I understand the reasons why.

I tend to do everything I realistically can to move the fight from there where possible. It's pretty nigh on suicide to take a Defender (or even two) in the middle of a reasonable sized beach fight. Aside from the gaggle of Brutes and Stalkers, you can pretty much guarantee that if you get involved in a villain fight some cheeky little scrapper will dive off the boat, bash you round the back of the head, steal your bucket and spade, knock your ice cream in the sand, and be back on the boat again before you or anyone else can do much about it.

I certainly do understand the attraction of it for certain character types though.

(Glad you enjoyed yourself Ravenswing).

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I hear they're being banned in i9. Hopefully this will stop all the cheaters.

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Along with teaming, and other such lame exploits.

Ironically I find the people most likely to [censored] about my break free habbit are normally the first to start popping blues, and hammering that Warburg temporary power to get their toggles back up the minute their endurance is gone.

Cheers, that's much easier.

Pool Powers

Personally I prefer stamina, I always say this whenever someone gets a Kinetic build out, but that's just me.

Stealth I don't think is a good option at all, but if that's for concept you can work round it.

Regarding the other pool powers, if you can run it endurance wise with no Stamina, then the leadership pool is definitely a good buy for assault and tactics, manouvers isn't that great, the defence buff isn't fantastic, and it's just another endurance munching toggle.

Hasten is also useful, Kinetic is all about recharge, so stacking it up is good.

Leaping v Flight

Either works. You need some form of knockback protection, Hover when slotted for speed and stacked up with Siphon Speed is plenty fast enough to fight with. The leaping pool gives you the immobilise protection and the limited hold protection too, it is better in my opinion, but not vital, and if you don't have the power picks you can work round not having it. You'll need to carry break frees regardless of whether you have acro anyway.

Kinetics

Mostly comments just on slotting to be honest.

Two accuracy is sufficient in any one power, you don't need more, you don't want less (I notice Siphon Speed has none, that wont work).

Speed boost I wouldn't put that many slots in. One end mod is fine on most decent builds.

I like the slotting on ID, not many people seem to slot it for resist, but it is worth it in my opinion. Although you can't keep it on a team permanently (you'd do nothing else - the duration is too short) I tend to try and make sure that it's on squishies as much as possible for the status protection, and whoever's taking the alpha strike (3 slotted you boost resistance to smashing and energy by a little under 40% which certain types of scrapper and tanker are quite happy about).

Siphon Power is a good 'un, even when you have Fulcrum shift I still find it useful to stack up as a damage debuff, particularly in AV fights.

Sonic

I've not played this set to high level, so just very general comments. One the whole I'd slot 2 accuracy, 3 damage, then possibly 1 recharge. Same as with the primary, 3 accuracies is just overkill, two is enough.

Aim is worth putting three recharge in.

Epic Pools

Power Mastery is the dogs nads, Power Build Up, Total Focus, Temp Invul are all excellent. Conserve power, again, on a no stamina build is going to be useful for when (and it will) Transferrance misses.

Total Focus is better than Thunder Strike, the stun is excellent. Conserve Power v Power Sink from an endurance recovery point of view doesn't really make a lot of difference. The armours again, each has their advantages.

But, Power Build Up is just fantastic, in addition to boosting your end drain, you get sooo much more besides. The heal will hit for over 800 points at level 50 with it running, it boosts your stuns, your sleep, your damage, your tohit and brings you tea and cookies.

Either could work OK, both complement the build, but yes, Power Mastery probably is better.

If you don't mind a suggestion the shorter export from hero builder is a lot easier to go through and read.

I had some vague recollections of it being quite busy, I haven't seen that many people in a PvP zone since I was last on Victory. I'm not a big FFA fan generally - probably because it tends to be a tad painful for a defender - particularly when too drunk to see what's infront of your nose - but I seem to remember it being some fun.

Sirens had a few people in there earlier in the night as well.

Shame there weren't more villains in RV, I do prefer PvPing at level 50 on a level 50 character, every time I see Total Focus grayed out, it makes me want to cry.

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I don't like dark power animations. So never intented to try it. But as far as i know people keep telling it is a weak ranged set.

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Low damage, yes.
Weak, I would say not.

I'm not a massive fan, for a variety of reasons, they could definitely do with a timer on them for respawn to stop people going afk in the entrance for hours on end and hanging on to them if nothing else, although I do use them - it'd be silly not to really.

My biggest annoyance with them however is being spammed with team invites/tells by other heroes who "lolz need SB for my pet plz". I could think of little less exciting than following someone around, who would doubtless offer no support to my squishy little Defender were she to be attacked, soley for the purpose of speed boosting their pet while they farm prestige and/or experience. It makes her quite cross.

From experience of playing Radiation and Kinetics, I would say that while I prefer my Kinetic overall to just about everything, Rad is better for soloing on a Defender.

Kinetics is great, I absolutely love the set, but I always feel the bigger the team the better the character gets. Dark is great too, but I tend to feel Rad is a better mix with Psionic Blast due to the lack of aim in secondary, and lack of tohit boosting powers in dark primary (you could run tactics, but there's also no endurance recovery/boosting powers).

Bow redraw would irritate the hell out of me mixing one Archery set and one non-archery set.

Rad/Sonic is great. I played with one quite a bit a while back and liked it to team with a lot. I finally made one fairly recently. It's the best soloing Defender I've ever had at low level (although it's also the most offensively built Defender I've had at low level).

Buffem just bribes the villains with cookies to attack Bimble first, errrr, don't check your cookie stocks, they may be a little low.

Re: Getting held in PvP areas. There is just no easy answer to that other than carry a lot of break frees.

I generally play with another Defender (we're both Kinetic). We keep ID on each other probably as much as is realistically possible, which helps a bit with stuns from mele types. It doesn't really protect from controllers though, and it sure as hell doesn't do much against a dominator.

My normal inspiration tray to take to any PvP zone includes twelve break frees. The other 8 vary according to level of zone, the break frees never change. I use them pre-emptively to keep my toggles running when I go into a fight, and I leave the zone and buy more when I get down to a couple. That will generally last me about half an hour to an hour, depending on what's in there, although if I'm going up against multiple dominators that'll do me two fights with them, at best.

Not so much a comment on the two sets, I've played them, but not that enthusiastically, more comments on getting the badges on a Defender.

By far the hardest badges will be the rep badges, which I assume is what you're wanting a semi-PvP build for.

The easiest way to do this on a Defender is in a small (2-3 person) team. As such I'd slot Fortitude and AB with that in mind (make them good, rather than going overboard on recharge). You don't want to split the rep too many ways, and really anything more than three people in a team is overkill in most situations (you want to win, but you don't want to drive your enemies out the zone). If you can find someone else to play with regularly that is ideal, then just zone hop (you get no reputation for killing someone you've killed within the previous 10 minutes so for ease of doing this quickly, rotating between Sirens, Warburg, and RV is a good idea.)

Make sure your build exemps well to 30.

Pool powers:

As an empath, I would take Swift, Hurdle and Stamina, you have little use for Health.

Combat Jumping and Stealth are very low defence buffs, you'd be better off slotting hurdle and Combat Jumpting with 3 Jump Buffs (try this one test if you never have, it's extremely manouverable).

Another alternative if you really do like the fly/SS set up is to just make knockback protection in your SG base (assuming they have the facility to do that) prior to going in to PvP zones - it takes just a bit of salvage and lasts an hour and can't be knocked off. You need to carry break frees by the bucket load with or without Acrobatics, so that can be a good option if you're not planning on doing a lot of arena PvP (which so far as I'm aware gives no badges barring the gladiator ones).

Have fun.

Yes, sorry, perhaps I should have explained that a little better. The point of slotting siphon speed for recharge was to have transferrance available more often.

With hasten and SS slotted with three recharge over continuous fights you can keep two lots of Siphon Speed running easily. When I solo my Kinetic I just don't have downtime, and the build functions better if I go from group to group without pausing. When I'm teaming obviously I accept there will be short pauses between fights, but it's rare once mission has got going that I don't have at least one lot of Siphon Speed running.

Just a couple of thoughts to add which I didn't really think about when looking at this yesterday: I do not rate the stealth pool particularly highly now at all, and especially not on a kinetic.

Kinetics in an 8 person team is an extremely busy set, unless you've actually played it a lot you just don't realise how time consuming keeping a team buffed is, in addition to using all your other powers (which obviously you want to do - despite how a lot of your team mates will view it Kinetics is a lot more than just a buff bot). I would not want to add Grant Invis to that - just wouldn't have time. Phase shift is useful so rarely, you might as well just do the patrol in Warburg to get the temporary power and save yourself some power picks.

I have never rated Voltaic Sentinal that highly. Just not that impressive damage wise, although he looks quite cute. He's also not buffable by fulcrum shift at all, and the damage of everything else is.

I'd still lean towards the leadership pool above anything.

I also noticed when looking at the build again that you don't have any knockback protection at all! That will really really annoy you a lot, again, kinetics is a set that puts you in mele, so does Elec, you probably need to look at rejigging your travel power selections, there's a thread discussing that here which you might find useful.

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Thinking of coming to the next raid, how long do they take nowadays as only ever done the very 1st successful EU one

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45 mins to an hour to get started, about an hour to actually do.

Just a few thoughts in no particular order.

If you want to try and run a none-stamina build you would want to change the slotting in Siphon Speed and Transferrance to make it available more often. I'd recommend 2 accurancy and 3 recharge in Siphon Speed, and 2 accuracy, 3 end mod, 1 recharge in Transferrance, in addition to 3 slotted Hasten which you already have.

For drain, the Power Epic gives you more than Power Sink. You can boost the drain on both Transferrance and Short Circuit, and it does much more too. (Not to mention the fact that Total Focus knocks the socks of Thunder Strike).

Snipes don't need accuracy. No attacks needs more than two accuracy for PvE, Short Circuit is fine without accuracy, or with only one, you definitely want some recharge in there on a drain based build (either 1 acc, 2 recharge, 3 end mod, or 3 recharge, 3 end mod).

I'm wondering why you put repel in that build? You need to be in mele for loads of the stuff in it, that just isn't going to work, and running repel on a no-stamina build will utterly cripple you for endurance.

Personally I'd take stamina. I'd probably drop the snipe (not that much use on a build that's very geared towards mele, your other attacks will pull better, as a Defender you wont one hit kill anything much anyway) and take Ball Lightning instead, another AOE would just mesh with the build better. Alternatively I may look at the leadership pool.

You need to slot more recharge. The whole thing with kinetics is speed. It's fast, which is most of the fun about the set.

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I think I've even teamed with you before on my controller and had no complaints

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I don't comment on anyone's build ingame unless invited to do so.

This is not the build which I use on my Kinetic. My build has a few concessions towards the fact that I PvP with my Defender, not to mention more than a couple of HOs, but it's a workable build that could be used on a Kinetic, and geared towards larger teams. It's fairly similar to the build I played with for quite a long time. I built to be able to either play offensively or defensively depending on the the type and size of team I'm playing in.

You could look at getting rid of the leadership pool and IR/Hover in favour of the Leaping pool, you definitely want some sort of knockback protection on a Kinetic because you do spend a lot of time in Mele.

My primary choices are self explanatory. Some people slot SB for recovery, I do not, I expect at higher level that most decent players will make a passing nod at sorting their own endurance issues out, one slot is more than sufficient unless teaming with particularly badly built characters. I slot ID for resistance, yes, worth it if you can spare the slots in my opinion.

The attack choices are less self explanatory. Whenever I talk to someone about Radiation Blast a number cruncher always pops up and says "Neutrino Bolt does better DoT than X-Ray Beam". It does, but find me a situation on a Kinetic where you're repeatedly spamming your weakest attack and I'll be surprised. I prefer to slot X-Ray Beam first because it's higher damage for a one off attack (although the animation is longer).

Irradiate is great, pulls loads of aggro though, but very much worth it. The Defence Debuff on it is around 37% - nice for a set which requires your primary to hit to do anything.

Aim is self explanatory again.

Cosmic Burst is the dogs nads, Stun and good -Defence, all round lovely attack, very long animation, but worth it.

Atomic Blast is also fantastic, Kinetics can nuke easily and recover as long as you've a single Catch a Breath, it has a very good hold as a secondary of it, so even if you don't quite kill everything (you often wont kill luitenants if they're higher level) you do stop it from flattening you afterwards.

I don't take Electron Haze because of the knockback, Neutron Bomb because of the horrendous animation time, and because it's just not as good as Irradiate (nowhere near as much -def) and I don't take the snipe because I find no situation where I would want to use it. You don't need that many attacks so I picked the ones that best suit my playstyle, I very rarely use Neutrino Bolt, possibly those slots would be better put in another power.

The choice of Epic was essentially for Total Focus (I wanted more stuns to combine with the one I had already - that set up can stack up and stun an EB for a large part of a fight) and Power Build Up. Transfusion with Power Build Up will heal for over 800 hitpoints, Total Focus will stun a boss for bloody ages with PBU, Transferrance will drain a goodly amount of endurance too, although that's more useful in PvP for me if I'm honest.

Some people play without stamina, you could try it, but personally I found that it just doesn't cut it for the speed I like to play at.

The run speeds in swift should be flight speeds, but my hero planner version must be old, because it doesn't want to let me put them in there.

---------------------------------------------
Exported from Ver: 1.7.6.0 of the CoH_CoV Character Builder - (http://sherksilver.coldfront.net/index.php)
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Name: Kin/Rad Build
Level: 50
Archetype: Defender
Primary: Kinetics
Secondary: Radiation Blast
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01) --> Transfusion==> Acc(1) Acc(3) Heal(3) Heal(5) Heal(9) Rechg(25)
01) --> Neutrino Bolt==> Acc(1) Acc(46) Dmg(46) Dmg(50)
02) --> Siphon Power==> Acc(2) Acc(7) Rechg(13) Rechg(15) Rechg(46)
04) --> Irradiate==> Acc(4) Acc(5) Dmg(11) Dmg(11) DefDeBuf(13) Rechg(25)
06) --> Siphon Speed==> Acc(6) Acc(7) Rechg(9) Rechg(15) Rechg(37)
08) --> Increase Density==> DmgRes(8) DmgRes(43) DmgRes(43)
10) --> Swift==> Run(10) Run(37) Run(43)
12) --> Speed Boost==> EndMod(12)
14) --> Health==>
16) --> X-Ray Beam==> Acc(16) Acc(17) Dmg(17) Dmg(19) Dmg(19) Rechg(37)
18) --> Inertial Reduction==> Jump(18)
20) --> Stamina==> EndMod(20) EndMod(21) EndMod(21)
22) --> Aim==> Rechg(22) Rechg(23) Rechg(23)
24) --> Assault==> EndRdx(24)
26) --> Transference==> Acc(26) Acc(27) EndMod(27) EndMod(29) EndMod(29) Rechg(31)
28) --> Cosmic Burst==> Acc(28) Acc(31) Dmg(34) Dmg(36) Dmg(36) Rechg(36)
30) --> Hasten==> Rechg(30) Rechg(31) Rechg(34)
32) --> Fulcrum Shift==> Acc(32) Acc(33) Rechg(33) Rechg(33) Rechg(34)
35) --> Hover==> Fly(35) Fly(40) Fly(42)
38) --> Atomic Blast==> Dmg(38) Dmg(39) Dmg(39) Rechg(39) Rechg(40) Rechg(40)
41) --> Power Build Up==> Rechg(41) Rechg(42) Rechg(42)
44) --> Temp Invulnerability==> EndRdx(44) DmgRes(45) DmgRes(45) DmgRes(45)
47) --> Total Focus==> Rechg(47) Rechg(48) Dmg(48) Dmg(48) Dmg(50) Rechg(50)
49) --> Tactics==> EndRdx(49)
---------------------------------------------
01) --> Sprint==> Empty(1)
01) --> Brawl==> Empty(1)
01) --> Vigilance==> Empty(1)
02) --> Rest==> Empty(2)
---------------------------------------------

Fun set, my Kinetic Buffem and Run is definitely my favourite character.

Running both isn't really viable when AM isn't up, even when it is if you're using any other toggles and attacking, it's still a struggle. I opted for just Arctic Air in the end on mine, it's a great power, although the aggro radius on it is huge.

Re: "highly effective team lock down"

It is extremely good, the slows are very useful, but a large part of your aggro management can and will be totally screwed up by just one Kheldian (or to a lesser degree Energy Blaster) getting in the middle of your Ice Slick. Earh/Rad would be much more effective in my opinion.

I really don't understand what part of the red text saying "This is a PvP zone, do not go in here unless you are willing to be attacked by other players" people find hard to understand.

I use PvP zones to PvP, I use them to badge hunt, sometimes I just use them to potter, but regardless of what I'm doing in there I always expect to get attacked. When I'm playing my Defender I always expect to be the first target of anyone with half a brain, and I cater for it as far as I can. It's a PvP zone, of course if I make myself an easy target I'm going to pay for it.

Everyone in PvP zones thinks everyone else should cater for their playstyle. Don't interfere with duels, don't interfere with experience farming, don't interfere with prestige farming, don't use teamwork, the other side is too stupid to do that. Why? The zones have their own rules, griefing is really near to impossible, and if you're losing, try making a team and getting on with it if you want to PvP, or leaving the zone if you don't, instead of whinging. Why not for once adapt based on what the other side is doing, and enjoy the zones for what they could be.

This post was brought to you on the back of some serious disgust at the CoH community as shown in RV and Warburg today. I like to say I have seldom seen attitues worthy of such contempt, but it wouldn't be true, I see it virtually every time I go in a PvP zone. I am less chilled than this morning.

Broadcast is generally full of idiots, but then that is hardly restricted to PvP zones.

I personally have no issues ignoring it, I have no understanding of people who feel they need to respond just because someone threw some badly spelled childish abuse at them. In fact if someone wants to pause to type in a PvP zone, they're more than welcome to as far as I'm concerned.

There's just no point slotting more than three of a single type of enhancement in any power at all. You get a very minimal return on it, and there are other useful enhancements that holds can take.

I also see no point in specifically slotting powers for a raid. With the amount of controllers at these now, as long as the majority are slotting fairly sensibly on holds (2/2/2 or 2/3/1 which most probably do anyway, if not effectively better due to having HOs) there is very minimal chance he's going to get unheld. If he does it'll be due in all likelihood either to lag so severe people can't target him even through a Singularity, or because there is no Singularity to target through, or because numbers drop off seriously.

The only real issue last week with the holding phase was the sudden shortage of Grav Controllers. If that one lone Singularity owner had disconnected, we'd have been in some trouble there.

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damn snow!

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I know the feeling.

Luckily, I had a half day today, if I hadn't, I wouldn't have made it back from Nottingham this evening I'm sure. Left work at 3, got home, having walked the last 2 1/2 miles through one of Birmingham's "choicer" areas, at about 7:40. Not a happy bunny, drenched, cold, and some little [censored] decided it'd be really funny to shove me over in the snow so the walk was decidedly unpleasant in soaking trousers.

Did make it in time for the end of the raid though for my HOs.

*snuggles up in computer chair*

Despite the pretty long animation, Cosmic Burst is bloody excellent now they've buffed the range on it actually, although admittedly I do have one or two HOs in it on my Kin/Rad.

Good damage, defence debuff, stun, reasonable range, and it looks great too.

While Irradiate is also brilliant for Defence Debuff (and I do love it on my Kinetic, and slot it for Defence Debuff) it can pull a lot of aggro, sometimes needs careful use in teams that maybe don't have aggro locked down that solidly.

Having said that, while I love Radiation Blast for Kinetics, it really meshes excellently with the primary, I'm not 100% convinced it works as well with Empathy.

Snowstorm is excellent, absolutely excellent. Minus fly and a slow, combined with Shiver you can bring everything and anything to a crawl, helps you with using Ice Storm regularly without annoying the team, which ups your AOE damage potential lots, overall very nice. It eats endurance though, and definitely needs slotting for it. Be prepared to carry blues for AV fights if you're not having your endurance boosted.

Hibernate is useful for panic button and/or a quick end recovery burst (no slotting needed, the end and health recovery are very nice, if you really have slots free it could take a recharge or two).

The armour is not awesome, not enough defence to really get excited about, on a PvE build on my Ice/Ice I actually specced the armour out simply because with the level of control available in the build, I didn't need it. I also didn't feel it was good enough to warrant the endurance cost.

Flash Freeze is excellent for safe soloing on a good single target set. If you want to and have the slots free you can pretty close to chain sleep stuff with it, or just slot it lightly and use it as a panic button/opener. However, it is relatively little use in teams except as an occasional panic button if a second group is aggroed (and get ready to deal with the full aggro of the group when they wake up).

Overall, Ice/Ice/Cold is generally quite nice for a controllery build on a blaster.

Should be there again in one form or another.