Unthing

Basically DDDs are the best to hit debuffers in the game.
This is mine ( level 19 at the moment )

01) --> Tar Patch==> Rechg(1) Rechg(3) Rechg(3)
01) --> Dark Blast==> Acc(1) Dmg(5) Dmg(27)
02) --> Darkest Night==> TH_DeBuf(2) TH_DeBuf(9) TH_DeBuf(9)
04) --> Gloom==> Acc(4) Dmg(5) Dmg(29)
06) --> Twilight Grasp==> Acc(6) Heal(7) Heal(7)
08) --> Hasten==> Rechg(8) Rechg(11) Rechg(11)
10) --> Swift==> Run(10)
12) --> Fearsome Stare==> Acc(12) Rechg(13) Rechg(13) Rechg(15) TH_DeBuf(15)
14) --> Super Speed==> Run(14)
16) --> Tenebrous Tentacles==> Acc(16) Dmg(17) Dmg(17) Dmg(19) Rechg(19) Rechg(25)
18) --> Health==> Heal(18)
20) --> Stamina==> EndMod(20) EndMod(21) EndMod(21)
22) --> Night Fall==> Acc(22) Dmg(23) Dmg(23)

Key powers are the debuffs ( Tar Patch, Darkest Night, Fearsome Stare ) and the AoE attacks ( TT and Nightfall ). Twilight Grasp is icing on the cake.

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Shockwave is a useless power ( knockback )

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Wash your mouth out sir! It's a small cone based force bolt with ridiculously short recharge timer. It's wonderful for putting things back in debuff patches when they break free, or keeping cornered mobs on their backside.

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I'm not convinced that a toggle debuff defender should waste a power on something that can wreck his or her debuffs when there is something better to pick.
Maybe it is situational rather than useless.

For a FF, Sonic or Stormie I see the purpose of it.

Tough really doesn't add that much. Weave is the reason to go for the fighting pool and tbh 3 powers is an expensive way to get 7.8% defence.

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In fire/dark, the same combo is available, plus the fireball and the cone flame attack... A lot of AoE powers for attacks, and a bit less of control (IMO)

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Why not the cone, Frost Breath, for Ice? Frost Breath is exactly the same power as Fire Breath, except it does about 25% less damage but slows them down too.

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Psychic Blast:
Good: Apart from the first blast the single target attack chain is very quick and damaging. 2 AoEs, one is a cone.
Bad: There are a couple of knockback powers, including the 2nd AoE.

[/ QUOTE ]AFAIK, the only knockback is TK blast, and the 2nd AoE is knockup.

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Cheers for clarifying.

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Radiation Blast:
Good: 3 AoEs, 1 is PbAoE, 1 is a cone. The secondary effect is not great most of the time, but irradiate has a massive defence debuff which works well with Choking Cloud from your primary.
Bad: Early single target attacks are a bit lacklustre, they have short animation trimes though.


[/ QUOTE ]There is NOTHING lacklustre about cosmic burst.

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There is NOTHING early about Cosmic Burst either. It's a tier 7 power.

A fire Blaster who doesn't use Rain of Fire in teams ( except on immobbed mobs ) and waits for the aggro to consolidate before using AoEs is a tankers best friend.

Rain of Fire is a power to use when soloing.

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Yup, the one-two of Ripper at 26 and Invincibility at 28 really make a huge difference to the way Spines/Inv plays

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A bit of a slotting nightmare though.

Ripper : 26, 27, 27, 29, 31, 31
Invincibility : 28, 29, 31

Okay maybe not that bad.

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ok atm i have bin playing a rad/rad def but i know i am not ment to do alot of dmg but would energy blast be abit more dmging then radiation blast just so i can hold my own more and heal at the same time

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First thing, as a rad defender you are a rubbish healer. The heal is just for icing. The real power of a rad is to stop incoming damage by debuffing and increase team damage by buffing and debuffing.

Generally I wouldn't pick Energy blast to be damaging. The main advantage of Energy Blast is that it has knockback, so that can be used as a form of defensive. However if you are Rad this completely ruins your debuffery. So I would not advise picking energy with rad.

For a debuffing build like rad, you should probably pick a set that work well for AoEs and doesn't interfere with your primary.

Archery:
Good: Best tier 9 power, it is isn't a Nuke but you can use it every fight and it almost does as much damage. Reasonable single damage chain, Accurate so with your defence debuffs you can skip slotting accuracy.
Bad: The 2nd AoE does knockback on half the people. So it works badly with your debuffs. Attacks are Lethal so they are commonly resisted. Animation times are fairly long. Has a bow redraw everytime you use the rad heal ( and a few other powers ).

Dark Blast:
Good: Great Secondary effect, -ACC, with make you and team safer. Tenebrous Tentacles is an AoE immob, which is good for keeping enemies in the debuff zone. Has 2 decent damaging AoEs and one knockback one, although they are cones.
Bad: No Aim. AoEs are quite late ( level 16 and 20 ).

Elec Blast:
Good: 2 early AoEs, both are usable in point blank range. The secondary is end drain which can be good as you can drain enemies to nothing in 2-3 AoE hits. Good nuke as it is ranged. Also has a hold. Pure energy damage.
Bad: Animation times are fairly slow. Damage is not great.

Energy Blast:
Good: With rad nothing really. It is an average set.
Bad: Knockback, Knockback and Knockback.

Psychic Blast:
Good: Apart from the first blast the single target attack chain is very quick and damaging. 2 AoEs, one is a cone.
Bad: There are a couple of knockback powers, including the 2nd AoE.

Radiation Blast:
Good: 3 AoEs, 1 is PbAoE, 1 is a cone. The secondary effect is not great most of the time, but irradiate has a massive defence debuff which works well with Choking Cloud from your primary.
Bad: Early single target attacks are a bit lacklustre, they have short animation trimes though.

Sonic Attack:
Good: Great secondary effect -20% res is wonderful for increasing your damage and the damage of your team. Awesome against AVs. The only decent damage AoE is the cone Howl, which you can use as a -res debuff. Note that -res stacks with Enervating Field to reduce resistance and the damage of enemies.
Bad: Longish animation times. Shockwave is a useless power ( knockback ). No Snipe, but I never rate snipes anyway.


So overall I would say not Energy. The best are probably Rad, Dark and Sonic.

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also is atomic blast better then nova or the other way round?

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Apart from Archery, the only differences between the nukes is the secondary effect. Most of these mean that while you are out of action, the enemies are too. The worst is probably Energy as it flings enemies everywhere, which is fine if they die, but means that the rest of the team takes longer clearing up. However there is very little in it and unless you go for archery I would not consider it when choosing.

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Why is everyone saying that tough needs 3 slots for endurance reduction? It's not that costly to run, especially for a tanker who isn't chaining large attacks the whole time.

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Tough and Weave are about 0.30 endurance per second each, the same as Temp Invulnerability and Unyielding. Most other tanker toggles are 0.20 endurance per second .

I don't know why people think there are worth 3 slotting for end reduction. Surely more endurance reductions in attacks is more practical, as attacks if used as much as possible, cost about 0.8-1.0 endurance per second each.

As for the original poster... Hasten is well worth it for an Ice Tank as it increases the recharge of EA, Hoarfrost and Hibernate. Increasing the recharge of EA is both an increase in survivability and an increase in end recovery.

You are close to capping your defence with the powers you suggest ( 39% without EA ) so I think Aid Self is probably overkill. It will make you tougher than Hasten though. Although I believe it costs quite a bit of end to run. So it comes down to a more offensive build with Hasten or a more defensive with Aid Self.

For the record I've found that Ice tanks are pretty tough without the fighting pool. I have Hasten and Combat Jumping in addition to all but Permafrost from the set.

Did you know that Tough Hide and Weave have the same defence bonus? Surely you should pick Tough Hide before Weave as it costs no endurance. Also Tough Hide is more effective than Resist Energies and Resist Elements put together providing you have invinicbilty active and 1 person is in melee. This is assuming you don't have Combat Jumping which just makes it even more effective.

So if I was to change the power order around I would get Tough at 24, Tough Hide at 26, Weave at 28 and then the passives at 41,44 and 47. However I don't know what level you are now so I may be advising you after you have picked them.

Slotting Heals in Dull Pain is not just to increase your HP. Before the heal did that in early I6 it was still sensible to 3 slot do it as Dull Pain is actually your only self-heal power. Given that your build looks very defensive I would 6 slot Dull Pain by level 18.

Surely Confuse should be 6 slotted for PvP.

The Fear of Terrify + Confuse should be enough to pin someone and take them out of the fight or at least force a break free.

What about slotting 2xACC in entangling arrow too. You need a way to keep people stationary so they are in your debuffs.

This is all guesswork though. I'm not a PvPer.

From having a Spines/Regen I would imagine that it is probably the best plan. To take advantage of the big AoE damage having recharges is quite a help. Also each of the Spines attacks gives a decent recharge penalty to those it hits. All are about 10% except for Throw Spines ( 20% ) and Quills ( 6% ).

Spines is quite end heavy if you use the AoEs lots, although the single target chain is relatively cheap.

I would go Spines/Inv as a secondary option probably as it is the one that scales with large numbers of enemies best.

Invincibility + Spine Burst + Quills should be a good combo.

Dark sounds like an endurance nightmare waiting to happen, which means you won't be able to take full advantage of either of the sets. Also Dark's lack of knockback protection is a bit of a pain as it means you need to take acrobatics. If endurance was no problem I would go Dark.

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The -recharge in spines is alittle over the top imo.

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Spines seems to be a little over the top for secondary effects generally.

After all Fire Blast has DoT only. Ice has -speed and -recharge. All the spines attacks have both.

The 3 best attacks also have extra secondary effects.
Impale is ranged, but also has -fly, possibly -jump and immob.
Ripper has knockdown, a very small cone and extra DoT.
Throw Spines has a wide ranged cone and extra -recharge.

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AoE is king in PvE, so Spines/(Regen/DA) are by far the best choices.

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I found Spines a bit of late bloomer. In the 40s I was an Unstoppable death machine. If I hadn't messed up my build I would have been almost as good in the early 30s, but at the low levels you only really have 3 good attacks, Lunge, Impale and Spine Burst. Barb Swipe is so meh it pretty much isn't worth it. The single targets attacks were very endurance friendly, I vaguely remember not getting or needing Quick Recovery until I hit level 12 or so. Spines revels in large spawn sizes, so if you can find a good tank to team with you are laughing.

The only other sets I've played are Claws ( to mid teens ) and Dark Melee ( to 39 ). Claws seems quick and endurance light, however it's main uniqueness seems to be in Follow Up, a kind of weird build up attack.

Dark Melee is completely strange, it is mainly single target and the first 3 attacks are the bread and butter of the set. However it has the best Build Up power and a endurance recovery power ( although IMO the recharge in it is too long ). It also has a self heal and a very effective single target fear attack. Unfortunately the tier 9 is completely uninspiring and the only AoEs it has are not really about damage.

As for secondaries, the ones I've played the most, Regen and Dark Armour are pretty click happy.

For Regen it is the case of managing your 3 different flavours of self heal ( Reconstruction is bread and Butter heal, Dull Pain for big heal + hit point boost, Instant Healing for the God Mode regen for 90 seconds ). Using these at the right time is the difference between regen being very hard to kill and pretty squishy. Regen also has Quick Recovery which is a better version of stamina. This means that endurance management is not a problem until high levels.

Dark Armour has the best self heal in any of the defensive sets. Unfortunately it costs lots of endurance. It also has 2 control powers which do Fear and Disorient to foes respectively. This makes it pretty fun. It is a complete endurance hog. There are lots of toggles in the set, which makes it a pain early on. It has a damage aura too.

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I didnt think of howl cos i was talking about damage mitigation powers, -res is damage mitigation in terms of fight duration to me though.

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But res debuffs improve damage debuffs.

A 0.2 res debuff turns a 0.3 damage debuff into a 0.3*1.2 = 0.36 damage debuff.

So -res is damage mitigation if you have a -damage power.

I thought you were talking about TA/Sonic Blast rather than TA/Archery.

Why are we talking about defenders in the Controller forum?

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on a controller i doubt i could spare the slots for flash arrows tohit debuffs but like you i have a defender and not many better damage mitigation powers to slot until epics (you can get a sleep, a disorient and a knockback with sonic blast)

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You missed out Howl.. The only -res Cone in the Sonic blast set. If you get that perma ( 2 recharge ) you get another 0.2 resistance debuff which improves the damage debuff effect of Poison Arrow. It stacks with Disruption arrow and Acid Arrow too.
Against evens it is probably the difference between a 0.33 resistance debuff over time ( not slotted for recharge but including disruption arrow) and a 0.4 resistance debuff. This makes it about a 4% difference in damage debuff which is about the same as Flash Arrow. However it also does damage and increases everyone else's damage too.

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but mine has 3 tohit debuffs in it because when it stacks with someones defence it has to help them a lot more in terms of survivability. Way i see it is if its worth slotting 3 defence slots in powers like tough hide its worth slotting 3 tohit debuffs on flash arrow.

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Tough Hide will always stack with Invincibility for the tank in question. It is not reduced in effectness by fighting higher level enemies like a to hit debuff is.

Flash Arrow will only really be effective when stacked with defence sets. But it is a debuff and so will be reduced by enemy level. Flash Arrow is more situational than slotting Tough Hide. If you were comparing it to slotting Maneuvers or Shadow Fall for defence then I would agree with you. It is about on that level of magnitude of protection.

I think even for a defender that 2 extra slots in Ice Arrow may well be more effective from a dmaage mitigation point of view than 2 Flash Arrow slots.

I'd say no. 5% is less than 10% less damage taken for the team. So the difference between 1 slotting ( 6% to hit debuff ) and 3 slotting ( 7.8% to hit debuff ) Flash Arrow is only 1.8 to hit debuff, probably about 2-4% less damage for the team.

Being able to sustain a hold on one extra person will make at least 5% difference. Without knowing your build it is hard to say, but an extra slot in a single target hold ( Block of Ice or Ice Arrow ) would probably make more difference than slotting Flash Arrow.

Note that I had a tank to soak the aggro almost all of the time. It is a pretty much up close power.

I like it. Basically it is a 0 range fireball. It uses the same animation as the tanker power, which is the same as Short Circuit for the Elec blaster primary. This is about 2-3 seconds.

FSC does more damage but as I got Combustion on my Fire Blaster at level 4 I didn't see the point of another PbAoE. Life was pretty busy doing the Fire Blaster Hokey Kokey with Fireball, Fire Breath and Combustion. Combustion has a bigger area than FSC though. I figured that was more useful.

Unstoppable is the nearest thing to end drain resistance. It gives you +recovery and is undroppable as it is a clickie.

I may well join, I haven't decided.

One point of note. When we were doing the 'private' raid I was taunt team leader and Hami tank. We had 1 tank ( me ) , 4 empaths and a kin in charge of Hami aggro control for most of the raid. The taunt team officially had 3 tanks but only the main one was needed for Hami except when I died early on in the Mito phase. The other tanks were useful in the Mito clearing phase as aggro grabbers.
2-3 speed boosted empaths is enough to deal with Hami's attacks with Heal Other alone, however the chances are you will get some Mito aggro too, so having a spare empath or 2 is good.

I am absolutely certain though that the easiest way to get the taunt team into position is by inserting them with the Mito clearing turtle and then peeling them off when Hami is in range. Good communication ( teamspeak ideally ) is required between the hami aggro team and the PA droppers. This is how we sucessfully managed to do the last 2 raids.

The raid before we had more PAs and the AI for them was nicer so we didn't have as much Mito aggro. As a result we were able to do a suicide drop directly onto Hami and were kept alive by Transfusions from kins.

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Conserve power is a wonderful thing for an Elec/ 1v1 PvP build. It means you can nuke without having all of your end drained.

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I thought Nukes drained about 60-70 endurance per target hit. So for 1 on 1 PvP you will still be able to use attacks post nuke whether you have conserve power or not. Power Sink could achieve the same purpose, to allow you to carry on fighting.

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Weave personally the def boost is so little the power slot could be used to a much better advantage although tough would be put to good use for the extra res.

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IMO this is very bad advice.

Weave is very good for Ice and Inv tanks. Any defence to get you closer to the cap is very effective. Weave, at 5% base, is a pretty good amount of defence, the same as Tough Hide which IMO is one of the must haves in the Inv set. Despite what people still seem to think, Invulnerability is mainly a defence set. The resistance you get is pretty much only S/L.

Combat Jumping does stack with Ice armours. The thing you read is out of date.

nofuture.org.uk gives activation times of 1, 1.1, 1.67 and 2 for Dark Blast, Gloom , TT and Nightfall respectively. IIRC the debuff durations for Corruptors from the Prima guide are 8-10s for these same powers

This is about 6 seconds worth of animation every 8-10 seconds.

Fearsome stare and Twilight Grasp have durations of about 20 seconds, they have activation times of 2 and 2.6 seconds. So fitting these in may mean that you miss out on one of the other powers for some of the time.

I haven't got TT or Nightfall yet though.