Unthing

Ice is a nice primary. It has the advantage of having solid defences as well as having probably the most powers for a tank primary.

Mace is generally considered subpar, mainly because of the power order I think, but there is a nice change coming up soon which makes the power order better. This will make it about the same as Battleaxe at low levels, although at higher levels Mace is better for AoEs and Battleaxe is better for single target.

There is no specify synergy between Ice and Mace. This is the case with most tanker combinations.

My secondary is Trick Arrow.

I have Hasten too.

I was considering and end reducer too, normally I don't slot end reduction until I actually have end problems, I am a bit low on end at the moment though.

I just got Terrify on my Troller. It seems like it is good for a few slots, what is recommended slotting for it?

I'm thinking 1xACC, 3 recharges is probably a given. However I'm not sure about whether I should go for Fear or Damage.

Any ideas?

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Weave is good with Invincibility (assuming enough around you)

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QFT! and in the face of an AV you would have to be one sick tank to try it as more enemies have more chance of hitting you as well as the AV!
If you faced the AV relying on weave and 1 target buffing invincible (tough hide and unyielding cancel out) and you dont have Rel and Ren you should be begging for resistance (all this i say is dependant on tanking style and team support but i will take the resistance thankyou very much as AVs laugh at such poor defence).

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Tough hide provides 2.8 defence over unyielding. I have Combat jumping too. Add on a defence inspiration and I'm good to go. AFAIK AVs don't have to hit buffs, so in I7 they no longer laugh at no defence. My standard tactic in I6 was to take 2 purple pills.

Resist E only reduces incoming damage per second by 14%. Weave reduces it by around 25% against a lone enemy. Ideally you want both, but there is only so much room in a build.

I've found that AVs are rare enough ( max 2 per mission ) that you can just hoard inspirations for them, I consider the fight against standard spawns what you should be primarily planning you build against. The other thing is if you treat the AVs with the caution they deserve you have less chance of being caught out by ones you have no protection against.

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Remember though, that weave is only melee/ranged defence, at least IIRC

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Positionally yes.

It also provides Smash/Lethal/Fire/Cold/Energy and Negative Energy Defence.

These stack with Tough Hide and Invincibility.

So you are protected unless you are fighting Pure Psi or Pure Toxic enemies. Forget about the Melee/Ranged/AoE defence as they will count for almost nothing because of the Unyielding defence debuff.

I've rated Tough and Weave since I6. When I respecced my tanker from my I5 to my I6 build I didn't feel nerfed on defences, because I took Boxing, Tough and Weave instead of Resist Physical Damage, Resist Elements and Resist Energies. As far as attacks go, well that was a different matter.

I've never seen the point of having the extra 10 S/L resist ( RPD ) to hit the resist cap when you have 30% defence ( with 1 enemy in melee range ). The only time I felt I needed it was when trying to fight those DE giant monsters in PI. I know people who disagree with me on this though as you can say it halves incoming damage, but when my strengths are that good, I'd prefer to reinforce my weaknesses ( with Combat Jumping for instance ).

I think Inv tanks benefit the most of the fighting pool. Fire really only gets a good benefit from Tough. Ice only really gets a big benefit from Weave. By the time Stone can get both they are probably close to Granite which is more effective anyway, they benefit from Tough less than Inv or Fire and from Weave less than Ice or ( a surrounded ) Inv.

As for picking Aid Self. From Dr Rocks comparison, Tough + Weave is better than Aid Self + Resist Physical Damage. Both cost 3 power picks.

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However, as MC being a level 32 Power I think on its own it could really need some love. i do not think as a stand alone its on paar with Imps or many others 32 powers. Especially the recharge could be lots better (or even just a bit) without overpowering MC.

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I haven't got it yet on my Mind/TA controller. From the builder it looks like it has twice the duration of the mass holds.

I think the control hierachy is something like
immob<sleep<fear<confuse<disorient< hold as far as the devs are concerned. I personally pretend that Confusion is a hold as it does most of the nice things a hold does without the random spread out of a disorient.

However given that the Plant Dominator set has Seeds of Confusion which is VERY permable I really wonder. I think Mass Confusion should fit into the same niche, a bread and butter confusion power, in the same way as Fearsome Stare is a bread and butter Fear power for Dark Miasma ( I'm not convinced Terrify is useful for that as it has an alpha, I only got it recently though ).

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And one more thing: While everyone points that MC is a power that increases Exp/time, I think those MC-is-all-that-great screamers are little wrong there. Those calcualations are mostly done linear, but however, as the whole mass confused Spawn does not loose Health equaly and you dont beat enemies to exactly 0 Hitpoints this whole calculation is by far too much done in favour of MC.

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They don't go down linearly with MC, but neither do spawns without MC in most teams, they drop one by one.

I prefer to think of Confusion as a safety power, like a hold.

So Stone/Fire because of the lack of knockback.

Hmmm, seems like /fire is one of the best secondaries for synergy.

I like my Primary and Secondary to have good synergy from a power/game mechanics point of view. I was looking for a good one for Stone primary and nothing seems to stand out. In fact I can't really see any obvious ones for Inv either, my original reason for Golden Golem probably isn't that much of a synergy as it once was given the changes in the Inv set.

For example:

Ice/Fire has probably the best aggro grabbing primary and secondary mix.
Ice/SS has a mix of Rage + the best powers for mitigating it's downtime ( hibernate and Defence debuff resistance ).
Ice/Ice has -recharge.
Fire/Ice has Burn + Ice Patch.
Fire/Fire has the Fiery Embrace Damage Bonus

Can anyone think of others?

Dark Miasma fear powers debuff accuracy. Dark Melee fear powers debuff accuracy. IIRC Mind Control Fear powers debuff accuracy. Presence pool ones do not.

From Issue 2 release notes.
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Removed Accuracy Debuff Enhancements from Pool/Presence/Intimidate and Invoke Panic; and Force Field/Force Bubble. These powers do not debuff the targets Accuracy, and thus, does not need ACC Debuff Enhancements.

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It doesn't debuff accuracy.

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total action time = time for attack chain = 17.3 seconds

total endurance cost for attack chain = 83.82

83.82endurance / 41.5seconds = 4.78 endurance per second


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I think you made a typo here. Shouldn't it be 17.3 seconds not 41.5.


That seems like more detail than I would go into, mainly because there are few toons I have who have a fixed attack chain.

You use 6 attacks. All slotted for 1 end red, using my rough approximation I get 6/1.33 = 4.58 end per second. About the same value.

Either way we probably both agree that attacks use more endurance than toggles.

I think there is a Hitpoint cap.

Brutes must have a higher hitpoint cap than others.

Unenhanced it boosts by 333 hitpoints, probably a percentage of your hitpoints.

Enhanced it boosts by 626 hitpoints, about what you would expect from 3 heal enhances.

If you duo with a brute most of the time, enhance it! If you never team with them don't bother.

2.6 seems far too high.

A character with 3 slotted stamina recovers about 2.5 ish.

Previous versions of Hero Builder put it at about the same as the damage auras. These are now about 0.5.

The tick rate for Cloak of Fear is 5s seconds, so the actual end cost is more likely to be 2.6 / 5 = 0.512.

The people who have recently been redoing endurance costs seem to have missed the tick rate information.

It is an expensive toggle, especially on top of the others, but I find that it is worth it.

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What the Highest Single Target damage Blaster out there?

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I'd say Ice or possibly Sonic for the primary. Elec or Energy for the secondary.
Sonic is a possible because of the -res.

/Energy has less damage than /Elec but gets Build Up earlier.

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What the Highest AOE damage Blaster out there?

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Fire/ and Elec/ both have 2 good AoEs.
Fire/ has a cone and a ball.
Elec/ has a ball and a pbAoE. Fire's do more damage though.

/Fire has 2 PbAoEs and 2 damage Auras.
/Devices has Trip Mine and Time Bomb. See other posts.

I would say either Elec/Fire or Fire/Fire with Fire/Fire just winning.

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Whats the most Survivable Power Set Combos?

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Possibly Ice/Ice? Or Sonic/Ice? Or something Dev. Other than damage, Control is the best way for a blaster to be survivable.
Ice/ has 2 single target holds and a rain power, although the second hold is not that good.
Sonic/ has a single target stun and a cone sleep as well as a cone knockback.
Elec/ has 1 single target hold, also Short Circuit can be used to drain endurance.

/Ice has a hold, a small AoE knockdown patch, a toggle self debuff and a cone debuff.
/Devices has 2 stealth powers ( Smoke Grenade and Cloaking Device ), Caltrops which messes up enemy AI and a single target stun.

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However a single unenhanced attack when used constantly uses an average of just under 1 endurance per second as they have a end cost and recharge of about the same value.

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That sounds to me like the endurance per second of an auto'd attack.

Each attack has an endurance cost and immediately after one attack you use another and then another meanwhile the first attack has recharged.

For me the EPS of the attack chain matters most and thats total action time of attack chain/total endurance cost of all attacks used.

By the end of the attack chain you could be only waiting for one attack to be recharged and have a full endurance bar whilst it is recharging. So i dont include recharge. My ability to last in a long fight duration and fighting comes from the overall endurance per second cost of the attack chain plus toggles compared to end recovery per second from full endurance.

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We've had this conversation before.

Unless you actually calculate your attack chain in great detail the rough eps of your attack chain is around 1xnumber of attacks, modified by slotting of recharges and end reducers.

However I don't really want to repeat the conversation as the only point is that attacks cost more than toggles, so an end red in an attack is more effective than in a toggle.

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Thinking about it, I am fairly sure it has hit more than 5. I have to do some testing. Somewhere safe like Perez Park would probably be best.

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But be aware of it that the Repel and the Hold may have different number caps. So while 10 Mobs might hover away only 5 might be held.

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I tested it. It seems to be 5 for both.

Thinking about it, I am fairly sure it has hit more than 5. I have to do some testing. Somewhere safe like Perez Park would probably be best.

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hmm, don't even remember now....pretty sure it's 5

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Oh, didn't realise that. I thought people escaped it because they left the radius. I'll have to test it next time I play. nofuture.org.uk says it affects 5 too.

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Almost everything in the set debuffs res, including the cone sleep and the disorient. Only shriek has a very short duration debuff, the AoEs res debuffs last long enough for you to get several attack on afterwards. You can siren's song, screech, scream, shriek and then hit something with a shout that does 300 damage in your mid 30s. That's just obscene damage for a non snipe. Hell that's more obscene than my storm/elecs snipe on something with freezing rain on it! I don't even have debuffs in my FF/sonic primary but I know that people attacking the target I'm cycling blasts on are hitting something with 20-80% resist debuffs on it, just from my secondary. Crazy.

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The sleep doesn't do -res neither does the knockback cone. Hero Builder says they do but the power descriptions don't, I tested the sleep myself. The single target attacks are just short of self stacking unenhanced, with the exception of the first one which just self stacks. The cone is about 8 seconds of debuff. The disorient is about 10 seconds.

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So Invincibilty works just like chilling embrace in the Rage crash.


[/ QUOTE ]I find that very odd....That would mean that the 'Not Affecting Self' part of rage crash was coded differently from other not affecting self powers, since they don't allow any effects to other entities.

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I think you misread me. Or I'm misreading you.

Invincibilty doesn't taunt during the crash ( don't know whether the buffs still work though ).
Chilling Embrace definitely doesn't taunt during the crash.

The Rage crash works exactly the same as Hibernate as far as taunting effect is concerned ( which is one reason why I often Hibernate in the Rage crash to top off my health ).

So Invincibilty works just like chilling embrace in the Rage crash.

Which I why I always try and Foot Stomp, taunt and KO blow if possible just before the Rage crash to cause maximum annoyance. Then you get a period of chaos but 10 seconds isn't that long and usually they are still attacking me until the last few seconds.

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Most armours are in fact 0.13 except dark's which are 0.104 for some reason. Thats according to the free prima download.

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If I remember correctly the Prima guide doesn't give units.

It says it costs 0.13 end. How often? I think it is for a half second tick rate, which would be 0.26 end per second.

However a single unenhanced attack when used constantly uses an average of just under 1 endurance per second as they have a end cost and recharge of about the same value.

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As for the recharge, nobody actualy knows the exact % debuff, though i wonder what the actualy formula is for having a -recharge (time x 1 / (1+buffs/debuff?) = 4 x 1 / 0,3 makes 13,3 seconds). Or would it be a (time x 1+debuffs? = 1 x 1.7 = 6,8 seconds). I rather keep the guideline, recharge penalty = 2 recharge SO's.

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Recharge is quite easy to test but very tedious.

I think the formula is

Time = Base / ( 1+buffs-debuffs)


To test the whole formula you need to do the following.

Get a long recharge power ( Earth's Embrace is a possibility with 360 seconds, but I think a 60 seconds power would be easier ).

Don't run Hasten.
Remove all recharge enhancements in long power.
Time how long before it comes back with and without granite.

Add recharge enhancements and run the test again, wit and without granite.

It it also possible to look at the combat log files, if these are timestamped.

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doesn't that give u more defense then an ice tanker :S. Granite needs a nerf.

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Unslotted:-
20% def base for granite.

17( FA or GA ) + 1 ( wet Ice ) + 2.5 ( Energy absorption with 1 enemy ) = 20.5% defence for Ice.

Enhanced:-
31.2% for granite

26.5 ( FA or GA ) + 1 ( WI ) + 3.9 ( EA for 1 enemy ) = 31.4% for Ice

So no, granite has less defence than Ice. This does not include the double stacking of EA or it's increase in power with multiple opponents.

End reducers in armours generally only make a little bit of difference. Most tanker armours are about 0.2 end per second. Inv ones are more expensive and the damage auras are more expensive too.

So I would say unless you have already six slotted your attacks, slotting armours is less effective. A slot in an attack will generally make more difference to your endurance than slotting an armour.