Teeth

I don't like the punches--though I do have one costume that's all secondary animations just because I can--but they are an option. I have a friend who is using the angry redneck punch because he really wanted the attack but can't stand the original.

I do like that one better than Thunder Gut Punch and Eagle's Melodramatic Baseball Pitch, through.

I'm OK with Uppercut, but I really like the original Cobra Strike, so that one loses out for me too.

Yep, Kin and Cold both turned out to be a bit less impressive as Offenders than I had hoped. They're good, no doubt, but in actual practice they're a bit less direct than they look on paper. Rad can have its +Dam +Rech running before a single shot is fired and it takes virtually no time to throw out an EF and starting blasting. (RI adds a bit, but it makes up for it by being very good when you need it.)

You're a Defender, you can take a primary that does this much better than Rad Blast ever will. This is actually one of the reasons I don't like Kin for an Offender build. You, for example, will have enough debuff from Acid Mortar that Rad Blast wouldn't help you. Of course, that only applies to enemies with special defenses--most of the time you'll be hitting even +4's once you're high enough in level to have some sets and some global accuracy.


I have 35 levels of experience with that particular combo, and I'm rather unimpressed. Your logic assumes that you will get nailed the second you start your attack run, which needn't happen; between Poison Trap, Seeker Drones, a Mortar, and FFG, your enemies are both 1) having trouble hitting you and 2) not even attacking you half of the time. (It is amazing to me just how often my FFG took aggro instead of me when I was taking my Traps to 50.) This also assumes no IO bonuses; once you have soft-capped defenses, Dark Blast does hilariously little for you. Finally, you're assuming that it's somehow safe to give your enemies twice as many chances to hit you while you grind them down, which is silly since there's a minimum hit chance. Again, this is from experience.

I agree with you here, but only because Kin is your primary. Rad/Sonic has all the benefits you described for Rad and Dark blasts (except much better) plus a +Dam +Rech buff, all of which make it so powerful that it's better in a fight than a Scrapper at low levels. (It also destroys AV's and GM's.) Dark/Sonic is nearly as good, and Cold/Sonic would actually debuff even better (but be in more danger in the process). Kin has +Dam and +Rech, and only the former is a higher number than what Rad has, and Kin cuts into its attack chain to buff itself, if it even hits!


Truth.


While I don't expect you to play the set again, I would point out the logic for Sonic Blast being rare is absurd. I don't see many D3 Defenders, but that doesn't mean that they aren't game-crushing tankmages. Also, above and beyond the obvious flaw in your argument, the headache-inducing sound effects are typically given as the reason people dislike Sonic.

This is strictly PvE, and FA will never be turned on. I decided that a passive perception bonus would be better than Conserve Power, since I don't expect to have huge endurance problems and Conserve is on too long a recharge cycle to be highly useful anyway; if I'm wrong about the endurance problem thing, I'll take Conserve Power and maybe axe 3% of my defense to pick up Consume.

I'm considering slotting Obliteration instead, to get more damage out of this, and I might put a slot from Hasten in as EndMod so I start fuller if I have Endurance problems, but I'm not planning on leaving this near-empty. You seem to plan on not dying; I prefer to plan on just never being dead. With a self-rez, there's an important distinction there. My Fire Armor build doesn't need to keep me alive, it just needs to keep me from dying more often than my ability to stand back up can easily support.

You seem to fixate on FA, so I'll take this opportunity to repeat that it's not turning on.

It's not a real "cap." It's "diminishing returns." The fourth slot in Hasten takes the recharge down by about six seconds; it doesn't sound like much, but in actual practice those last few seconds are always the most annoying if you're actually waiting for it, and I didn't feel like I had anywhere better to put the slot. That said, it's a "floating slot," it's the first one I would move if I needed to shift slots around.

I'm not a tank. Nobody, including me, cares if I die, especially if there's a 20-second Mag 4 stun that fires every time I do (and I don't stay dead). Also, while you guys guided me to some builds with Tough and Weave that I actually liked, I realized that I want to minimize my toggle use so that I spend less time toggling up after RotP. I'm already a bit piqued at having 4, but I certainly don't see a way to do without both armors, Blazing Aura, and Combat Jumping. (I could use Burn as Immob protection, but that's bad for my slotting, DPA, and global bonuses.) Frankly, I'd sooner take Assault than Tough or Weave, even without the Boxing prerequisite.

I'm on the fence about this too. I love the global bonuses for that set, but it's also one of the most expensive, and the slots could be used to mitigate the loss. It looks cool and it's nice to have a ranged attack better than Revolver at times, but I don't actually see many reasons not to move it to 49 and leave it 2- or 4-slotted (perhaps with Accurate Defense Debuff). I could also take a slot from Hasten and put it in Laser Eyes to let me six-slot Thunderstrike for some ranged defense.

Ooh, good idea. I'm not going to do exactly that (see the RotP comments above), but you've given me a couple of ideas for shifting things around. I like that Adjusted Targeting gives both Damage and Recharge. I'll post a sample build when I've considered this.

It's very nice in the proper situations. I have quite a bit of experience with it as well, and I think it will be good to have here. I am considering a generic 50 Rech for Energy Torrent, but note that Dragon's Tail is already at the ED "cap" for recharge. I don't plan to change the slotting for Dragon's Tail, regardless of anything else that happens in the build.

First, I don't think there's any good reason to use 6 Doctored Wounds. 5 works great for Reconstruction and Healing Aura--better, in fact, than 6 Numina's--and I expect the same to be true for Healing Flames. Naturally, freeing the slot up is a point in favor of DW, but the Regen and Defense is drawing me toward Numina's.

Secondly, the cost analysis would be more valid if I didn't keep getting them as random drops at my level of preference. (This statement also applies to the following: LotG+R, Run/Jump +Stealth, Kinetic Combat, Steadfast Protection, Positron's Blast.) I could sell them when I get them as drops, of course, but in general I don't make builds with the assumption that price is no concern.

This build would look quite a bit different if I assumed I had billions of inf to work with. I would actually sacrifice some survivability to slot totally for global recharge and damage. As it is, the kind of recharge I want is only available with a lot of purples, since Hasten is invalidated by all the dying, and this character has no access to Sleep and Confuse sets. Darkness Mastery would allow me to use Stun, Immob, and Hold, but those are still expensive and I would still need two of the billion-inf-each Damage sets. A sample "absurd cost" build would be something like this: Click this DataLink to open the build!

It's not just a "signature Corruptor inherent." It's an actual power that Corruptors get. It makes no more sense to talk about Defenders getting Scourge than it does to complain (in a serious fashion) that your Tank is not building his Domination bar fast enough or that your Katana/Regen Scrapper is having trouble summoning his Fire Imps.

You could always change it out for the "crippling angry redneck punch."

Thanks. Just checking.

I'm somewhat prejudiced against Purples as well. I really like that they make Exemplaring easier, but I'd rather have three mid-priced characters than take the time and effort to Purple-out one expensive build. It seems like more of a *****-size thing than a game enjoyment issue, to me. I don't play my 50's much, so why spend 1 Billion per set on sets that can only be slotted past level 50? My Controller has been steamrolling +0x8 since level 46, why spend hours upon hours shopping and crafting and farming to raise that to +2x8?

That said, while I do not know the OP's motivation for "Purple Prejudice," I would sooner buy all six recipes of the purple Confuse set than a single Numina unique (which runs about the same price as the full crafted set). The Recovery, Damage, Recharge, and (5%!) Defense are all nice, as is Contagious Confusion. (Conceptually, it's also amusing to see Seeds of Confusion somehow becoming even more awesome.)

I disdain the use of purples, but I also don't think of the Confuse and Sleep sets as "real" purples, due primarily to their prices. I spent more inf on costume changes for my Scrapper than I did on the Confuse set for my Controller.

That's when big orange numbers make things fall down and stop hitting me. Killing things before they kill you is a selling point for Fire Armor.

And I want a Fencing melee set. Let's not hold our breaths.

This is a tad squishy, in my opinion. Survival is important in doing damage; the less time you spend thinking about yourself, the more time you spend wrecking things.

From personal experience, Rad/Sonic is a very impressive Defender; it does incredible things for teams and it will seriously pump out damage, even solo. Dark/Ice (also from experience) is a slotting nightmare on par with a Kheldian forms build, and besides that is weaker for soloing; it helps a team steamroll more, but it's less capable at taking down AV's and GM's than Rad/Sonic, for indeed this is a *huge* selling point of Rad/Sonic (it's one of the best things you can have for GM's).

Fine by me. I'm one of those people that loves the ice sets but hates tanks. I want Ice Scrappers!!

As for Psy Corrupters: I don't really PvP, and it's a bad set for PvE regardless of which version we get, so meh.

As for FF Corrupters: While Cold does steal a bit of FF's thunder, Cold really doesn't cut it when you want some of what FF offers. I've played both. Cold's freaking hardcore debuffs really do leave FF out in the cold mechanically (*rimshot*), but I still sometimes miss the things my bubbler had. Besides the nice things like better Defense, Repulsion Bomb(!) and status protection (!!), there is the more general factor that FF has always been highly conducive to blasting (in contrast to Cold, which expects you to spend a lot of time bubbling and debuffing). It would be nice to see it backing up an AT that has blasting as its primary!