Silas

I actually wonder what would happen with Hibernate and the Elude crash, assuming you hit Hibernate before it crashed.

While it gives you massive recovery, Hibernate does have an endurance cost. It might be a bit of a crapshoot whether or not it gets detoggled by the end crash.

Oh, it was no time at all. Don't worry about it.

Scrapperlock is bad.

All Corr TFs are the ****. Once the AV hp reaches 50%, game over.

Do you mean testing just the VS against a Pylon? You wouldn't be able to tell anything, other than that the VS doesn't do enough damage to beat the Pylons regen.

Or do you mean dropping a Pylon (using whatever means) and then doing it with and without the VS, to see what kind of DPS it contributes?

Although I suppose if someone were Elec/Traps they could do nothing but drop PGT to flatline the pylons regen and let VS do all the damage, then you could work out the DPS of VS. They'd have to be very patient though

If you want survivability, going with the Mace pool and getting as much s/l defense as you can is the way to go. Ideally, softcapped. That way you've also got RI on top as a buffer. I suppose the pet would help with spreading out aggro, but I myself am not a fan for a few reasons*. If it fits your playstyle though, go for it.

The thing about the Mace hold (or any of the APP holds) is that they have terrible duration:recharge numbers. As a Fire/Rad, the only other hold you have to pair it with is EMP, which wouldn't be a good idea to bust just to mez one boss >.> My personal preference for dealing with troublesome mobs is to debuff 'em and burn them down as fast as possible. Fire has great ST damage and softcapped s/l means you can ignore most of the damage out there, so you can focus on the things that are really a threat.

Quick note re: the damage proc thing for RI for Lord Recluse. You don't actually need a damage proc in there. As long as RI/EF are the only things on him, he'll be aggroed by the debuff alone and try to get you.

As for losing the status resist IOs, they're really, really bad. Especially in comparison to AM. AM gives you about 173% status resist. Both of the resist IOs together will give you about 30%. The benefit from AM eclipses what the IOs do and given the nature of mez resistance (shortens duration only) getting more doesn't provide more and more benefit. Well, it kinda does but it kinda doesn't. It will continue to lower mez durations, but it'll be fractions of a second so its really, really not worth it. AM is all you need for that.

Acrobatics is a tricky one. When Fitness wasn't inherent, I always skipped it. I could slot KB IOs and the mez protection wasn't a big deal since it would only protect you from 1 hold and all the other stuff would still get you. With Inherent Fitness, I've picked it up on all my Corrs. The extra power slots let me pick it up, the hold protection is just kinda nice to have and it freed up those other slots where I had KB IOs. It's a personal preference thing. Acrobatics isn't good enough for me to unequivocally say its better than KB IOs, but I like it.

Cardiac is the Alpha I'm going with on my Fire/Rad. I don't strictly need it, but it allows me to go full-bore spamming all my AoEs with all my toggles running and not have an issue. The range buff is minor, but also nice for Breath and Blaze.

When I've got more time later I can take an indepth look at each build, but I'd recommend you try one out getting to the softcap. That way you can compare and contrast the different build properly. Don't underestimate the benefit of softcapping

*Long cast time, short duration relative to the stupidly long recharge, costs a huge chunk of endurance, pet only contributes good damage in static fights because its so slow moving and really, Fire brings enough damage of its own.

With Inherent Fitness, take Frost Breath. Added AoE, isn't that bad.

Take Freeze Ray, skip BFR. Its slow, you can just hit whatever with a second Freeze Ray since it recharges so fast and lasts long anyway. BFR is slow, eats more endurance and has twice the recharge.

Frostworks is a good power. Subtle, but very good. Great ally buff. Take it, chuck it on people taking a lot of damage or people with high HP caps like Brutes. Suddenly they're invincible.

Not BMT but don't care:

My personal preference is to just pop greens. Aid Self is nice but eh, requires a fair slot investment to be good and is interruptible.

If you want more survivability I'd go for the softcap.

Never again!

Deus, Good man, Fire/Colds are made of win and awesome. If I didn't love Sleet+Ice Storm+Blizzard so ******* much I'd have rerolled my Cold into Fire/ ages ago.

re: the melee guide (Codename: IWIIRMH*), I actually wrote the meat of it mooooooonths ago, I've just been so busy with work I've not had time to work it over and refine it. I've got holidays for the next 2 weeks though so hopefully I'll be able to finish the damn thing up, heh.

It's more a general melee guide than a specific set, tactics and playstyle kind of thing. I mean, I'll have stuff up for my particular two melee dudes, my SS/Fire Brute and KM/SD Scrapper but its not powerset specific.

Demo, Well, both Cold and Widows/Forts are hella good and also sweet, so I am a supporter of both ideas. Aside from the fact that your Widow is already 33, it might also be a better entry into buffing characters since all your team buffing is done by just being there.

That said, Cold doesn't have that much buffing to do so I wouldn't let that deter you. Kin has to rebuff way more and Therm has Forge/Thaw as well. Toss out shields every 3-4 minutes, spend the rest of the time bringing the pain. I'm sure you'd do great on a Cold

*In Which I Immediately Regret My Hubris

That's what I'd have thought, since I don't have any trouble hitting +4s on my Fort, whose only constant +tohit is Mind Link. Aim is there for when I need it.

Fair enough though if you sorta-PuG a lot, the extra +tohit is really nice for those few situations.

When I was redoing my Forts build for i19 I had 2 power selections at the end and it was tricky to decide what I wanted to pick up. Since I already had all the attacks/core powers I wanted, whatever I took would be a situational kind of thing. I was looking at stuff like Aid Self, Recall Friend, Darkest Night but more on topic, I was also looking at TT:L. More overall team buffing, +tohit is nice for those few situations.

Been playing my Fortunata again recently, verdict: Fortunatas still kick huge amounts of ***. Never actually tried a melee Fort though, have often thought about doing a NW build alt build though. Already got her an expensive Fort build though, could only really justify the time/effort/expense if she was my 'main' or whatever. I don't have a main though, so my Fort is SoL

Ah right. Yeah, Mids is dumb about stealth power defense. My understanding is that it shows you the suppressed number in the Info tab, but the full amount under totals. Which is misleading and kindof backwards, but *shrug*. As you say though, you can change your Mids settings to display the suppressed amount.

That makes sense about FU. I did wonder because the Heca set gives more recharge than a CI set and FU is arguably an attack you want to hit as much as is humanly possible So the proc makes sense there too.

Have you actually checked the numbers for your tohit chance against +4s? While Aim has a longish recharge and FU actually needs to hit, are you sure you need TT:L to cap your hit chance against +4s? It would still of course help a lot against AVs popping Tier9s.

My personal preference is to have the +def and +damage which is always good rather than +tohit which might be superfluous a fair amount of the time, but that's suited to my playstyle. I suppose if you do a lot of soloing (including AVs) then TT:L is more valuable.