Psiphon

Originally Posted by Narkor

Much like the title may suggest, I have a concept/idea for an ice/snow/wind themed character and I am torn between a... vast variety of choices.

Ice tanker is an option, but one that I am somewhat fearful of, mostly because of their damage output. I am not looking for a moving iceberg, but a glacier that smashes/cut things up (What I am implying is that I am kind of biased against tankers when taking damage dealing into consideration -not that I want to exclude tankers from the possible choices).

I have been suggested, and have looked at, multiple choices, such as Ice/Energy tanker, Fire/Willpower scrapper, SS/Fire brute (/Fire not really being my cup of tea, but I suppose I could give it yet another try) and a lot of other combinations within these three AT. I did notice that blasters get a few melee powers, but I've never really thought about making a blaster that relied on them. It just doesn't sound very productive... or playable, for that matter.

Due to the coloring customization available to most of the sets, one could easily color /Fire or another set to look snowy-ish and make it fit with the theme... and that is mostly where my problem start. As I am not the best when it comes down to noticing synergy (or, say, dysfunctions or negative traits -or however you want to call it) between some of the sets, when multiple sets present themselves I am easily at a loss.
So I am looking at all those sets available to the melee ATs and the only ones that I can see not fitting into the concept would be Stone and maybe Elec, although wind-electricity could somehow be linked, it'd be starting quite far from the original concept.

As a final note, combinations that seem more interesting than the others (but really, any suggestion is welcome)
-Fire/Willpower brute or scrapper looks very promising,
-Ice/Energy or Kinetic tanker seemed to fit as well, although once more I stand unknowing in front of, well, a tanker.
-SS/ brute would probably be one of the closest to what I am looking for, but I just can't decide onto which secondary to pair it to. DA looks interesting and... that's pretty much it. While I've read guides on it, I really don't know what to expect from that combination. Fire could work, although I'm not a /Fire fan, so I'm mostly looking elsewhere right now.
-Dual Blades/DA has been one of the sets that I have spend the most time looking at, but, having never even tried DB before, the combo system seems rather overwhelming, considering that taking just two combos will require most powers.

In any case, I'm trying to pair an elemental-ish primary or secondary, that could be colored into something icy or snowy to fit to concept, with just about anything else that wouldn't destroy the theme (I'm looking at you, Granite Armor).

Any thoughts, comments, questions or suggestions? At this point, almost anything would be of help.

Originally Posted by Cheetatron

-If you hit an enemey with no resistance to your damage type with a - res power will it push their res into the negatives and make them take even more damage?

-If your confused and you you team teleport will teleport your team or the enemy?

Originally Posted by Amy_Amp

My guess is if you haven't used ST before and then you do use it, you will see no real need for Intimidate. It's basically perma out of the box. The amount of use Intimidate brings to an Ill is near non-existent and that's not factoring in wasting two powers to get one. This says nothing of how good Intimidate is as a power. It merely fears minions as where ST does Lts. as well.

Originally Posted by Nihilii

Shield - everything, except Grant Cover and One with the Shield. I would personally take everything ; many argue against OwtS. Some argue against GC (but it is often disputed, as GC is essential to having high DDR).

BS - Hack, Headsplitter, Disembowel are must haves. Parry, Slash, Slice, Build up are very nice. Whirling Sword is to taste, and Confront is, well, Confront.

Originally Posted by Local_Man

So far, Electric Control is not all that great to me. It has too many weeknesses. I have an Elec/Rad at 47, and I'm working on an Elec/Earth dom. The big problem is that it is a low damage set so it needs to team to level up at a good rate. However, because it relies heavily on the AoE sleep, Static Field, and many types of teammates have AoE DoT powers that make disrupt the sleep. If there is another controller on the team with an AoE Immob that has -knockback, then Jolting Chain is worthless. The Chaining confuse power takes so long to take effect that teammates often enter combat before it has any significant effect. And the Gremlins are fairly fragile and do a disappointingly low amount of damage.

If you want to try Electric Control, try pairing it with Rad. Choking Cloud and the Rad debuffs add a lot. I'm not sure I would choose to pair it with Cold.

I have an Illusion/Cold at 50. He is wonderful on TFs as the single target debuffs help the team take down AVs embarassingly quickly. I think Illusion/Cold is a great pairing, since Illusion mainly focuses on single target damage so the single target debuffs work well. Cold's debuffs help Phantom Army do more damage. Cold's Snow Storm adds a lot to Illusion's AoE soft controls.

Plant focuses more on AoE control and damage. Certainly Plant/Cold will ge a good character, but I'm not sure that Plant is the best pairing with */Cold.

Mind/Cold should be a good character, as Mind has a lot of AoE control but single target damage. I think that Mind/Cold should be good. Grav/Cold should be good if you can like Gravity Control. (Just got my Grav/Storm up to 50 last week.) Gravity is a unique set that is pretty weak on AoE control but has good single target damage if you have enough patience. I like it better solo than on teams.

Originally Posted by Bill Z Bubba

What are you comparing it to? Claws/spin is almost broken it's so good as an aoe. Throwing in eviscerate and shockwave, spawns should be falling to pieces for you.

Originally Posted by Smersh

If you're trying to do this, you're doing it wrong.

Most of Burn's damage is up front, now. If an enemy is not in the patch when you drop it, they don't take that damage.

Originally Posted by MachineSlave

So im making another alt, and i have no clue which i would like to pair up with Ele Scrapper. I love Fire Aura for tanks, so wanted to give it a shot as a Scrapper, but with Ele, i know between Eles AOEs and such, that Burn would be good together, but then /shield, has Shield Charge. So what im wondering is which secondary would be better for tearing up ****?

Originally Posted by Black_Assassin

Hi guys, was just soloing to 50 today and got annoyed at burn making mobs run away :@

I thought they changed it so burn didn't have the fear factor attached any more?

Or is it because I don't have a taunt aura, I'm not sure :S

Anyone know the answer?

Originally Posted by Local_Man

I was on my Grav/Storm last night on a very good team . . . and my contributions were somewhat limited. I used Wormhole a few times only because I had it and not because it served any useful function. 3 tanks on the team, and the best contribution I could make was dumping Freezing Rain constantly. I would throw up Lightning Storm and and then pick some foe outside of the group to attack with my single-target chain of GD-Crush-Propel.

Originally Posted by Deus_Otiosus

I agree with this.






While true, in this combo particularly, Shield Charge is still not the workhorse damage dealer of the build - Footstomp is.

Footstomp will do more damage over time for either AT, and is not constrained by a pseudo-pet damage cap.

On a high end build, Footstomp will be up every 5.5-6s. And Shield Charge will be around 25s (if you can somehow manage to get softcapped and 170% global recharge and take Spiritual Core, you can get it as low as 22.7s).

And even with Rage+AAO for the Tanker, the Brute still comes out ahead with Footstomp (as it should be, since the Tanker is considerably tougher).
SC is great, for a lot of reasons. But it is not the sole determining factor when choosing either Tanker or Brute IMO.



Addressing no one in particular:

If anyone has a high end SD/SS Tanker build with 150%+ Recharge can you please post what your typical damage is for Shield Charge? (I'm asking because I don't know, I only have the Brute version)

If you want to test, something like Council is pretty good.

Also, please include if you are T3 Alpha Slotted.


Against even level council (51 vs 51) my brute's SC hits for 284 damage at the epicenter with +400% damage bonus (Which means the SC pseudo-pet is damage capped).

Originally Posted by GI Justice

You said not to take One With the Shield and Grant Cover; without those, you are basically hampering the fullest potential of his build. With Grant Cover, he gains valuable defense debuff resistance, which will help when he/she eventually runs task forces, and will help monumentally on some farming missions, especially if he/she decides to crank the difficulty up.

You have to be aware of the fact that Shield Defense isin't going to have much resistance against anything--and when that random number generator decides to fail you, you're going to need some sort of cover. Typically, that cover would be, making spawns die before you die, but Electric Melee, while having a lot of AoE potential, still doesn't do the most damage. Without a very high resistance to defense debuff, cascade failure is undoubtedly possible; and with low resistance, you can faceplant, fairly easily. Consider taking both One With the Shield and Grant Cover.

One With the Shield can get you to 90% resistance to Smashing and Lethal, as well as fairly decent resistance to the other forms, with the exception of Psionic. The only real downside to One With the Shield is the -50 endurance at the end of its duration; and that is really, no sweat. If you have room, take One With the Shield and Grant Cover, and consider speccing into the Medicine pool for Aid Self.(You'll need a prerequsite power)

Originally Posted by Mr_Kingkillaha

How much -ToHit does it take to get the same survivability as soft capping defense? I see the advantage of def being that you dont have to actually hit the enemy first, and tohit being beneficial for the rest of the team. Specifically Im deciding between bubbles or dark. Dark looks like more fun so Ill probably use that, but Im curious how they compare.

Originally Posted by Local_Man

I grabbed "Local Man" on three of the four EU servers, but somebody is pretending to be me on Union.

Originally Posted by Mr_Kingkillaha

This.
I casually took a villain from 1-16 in about an hour last night.

Originally Posted by Obitus

I'm kind of on the fence about this, for what it's worth. On the one hand, the devs seem to have done a good job of getting the above-quoted result, and I like the goal of "[reducing] (but not [eliminating]) the differences between classes" through Incarnate content.

On the other hand, and just from a thematic/conceptual standpoint, I'm not sure I like that so much of the extra power available comes from a pet. Scratch that; I know I don't like it. As someone else said earlier in the thread, I didn't submit my superhero registration to watch someone else do the work. I'm also not entirely sure that the Lore pets are balanced properly among themselves, but that's a separate issue and a different thread.

None of the above is to take anything away from the OP. Lore is a legitimate power as the game is presently constituted, and soloing a GM is a pretty crazy accomplishment for a Tanker under any circumstances.

Originally Posted by Nalrok_AthZim

EM is a pig these days. It's purely ST (disregard Whirling Hands. Seriously) and it's absurdly slow.

Originally Posted by DoctorWhat

Another pro to consider for DA/DM, though, is the fact DM's attack inflict To Hit Debuffs. Stacked with To Hit Debuffs from DA you, effectively, increase your defense against attacks.

Originally Posted by Roderick

Since a scrapper's base damage is on a 1.125 modifier, and a brute is on a 0.85, the scrapper gets more bonus damage than the brute. The same is true of Build Up, by the way.

Originally Posted by Amir

I have a few suggestions:

/DM compliments DA in soo many ways. I cannot think of a con with it.

Originally Posted by obscureent

I really don't know. I gather that Willpower/ is great if slotted correctly, but never hear much about /Ice on a tank, which tells me its a bit unloved. Thoughts?

Thanks