DodgerTA's Rad/Rad: A Twink's Guide 3.0 (I7)

Irradiate is a 20' radius. That's pretty big for a PBAoE.

Diggin' the guide. Favoriting!

See, that's another bit of information that I wish I'd known about when I was building my character. a 20' radius is quite big, comparatively (comparing, say, to the radius of the debuff toggles), but the builder only lists it as 10 feet. Had I known that, I'd have probably given Irradiate a much closer look on my build early-on, because it's a lot easier to hit multiple mobs with an area that's four times as large.

My guide has the right numbers, and so does the Prima Guide, mostly... even if the builder doesn't.

Suggestion: adding the level of availablility to the initial list of powers would be quite helpful to those of us not familair with the set.
Otherwise, thank you! Your guide is informative, and quite useful.

The powers are listed in the guide in order from lowest Tier to highest Tier for each powerset. This means that if a powerset is your primary, the powers are available at:
Tier 1: lvl1
Tier 2: lvl1
Tier 3: lvl2
Tier 4: lvl6
Tier 5: lvl8
Tier 6: lvl12
Tier 7: lvl18
Tier 8: lvl26
Tier 9: lvl32.

If it's your secondary, they become available like so:
Tier 1: lvl1
Tier 2: lvl2
Tier 3: lvl4
Tier 4: lvl10
Tier 5: lvl16
Tier 6: lvl20
Tier 7: lvl28
Tier 8: lvl35
Tier 9: lvl38

ok im lvl 41 and at my next respec i'm redoing my powers somewhat. Hanv't figured out the slots completely but here are the powers im getting

All of my primaries execpt fallout. In my secondaries netrino bolt, cosmic bolt, neutronbomb, and irraditate
going to get recall friend, hover, fly, tacticts, manuvers, hurdle, health, stamina and of couse i will get dark consumption. how do you guys think that will work

Tactics is all but useless for a rad/rad. Your defense debuffs are all the help your team will need to hit anything it's reasonable for you to be fighting. Maneuvers isn't worthwhile unless you can provide significant other defense buffs. Your acc debuffs are enough in most cases for your team. Assault is worthwhile, if you want it, but not everybody's cup of tea.

If you're going to go with the Dark APP, you'll want at least three powers. Dark consumption is given. Rad/Rad can never have enough endo. You'll want your armor... it REALLY helps a lot in the 45+ game where you find lots of AVs. And while you're at it, pick up Soul Drain - it does decent damage, and it improves your accuracy and damage for each target hit. Oh, and being a scrapper power, it can occasionally hit for critical damage, too. ;-)

Since you certainly seem to know your stuff, I'll ask how you put up with the slow animations of neutron bomb, and the rabbit like speed of neutrino bolt.

I tried neutron bomb and respecced first chance I got- it was so underwhelming after witnessing cosmic burst for the first time. Similarily, I wish I coud drop neutrino bolt. It keeps me clicking so much I don't have time for much else.

I also love snipe for the first strike and pulling.

Having said this, I find rad/rad anemic compared to by dark/dark. Any words of wisdom why I'm thiking wrong?

vaporub,

First, Neutron bomb and Cosmic Burst do NOT compare. On any level, except that they both do damage. I'll tell you I almost never use Cosmic Burst on minions (unless they're running). Irradiate + Neutron Bomb as an attack cycle, with Cosmic Burst on the Lieutenants to make up the extra damage, kills them all dead, pretty quick. You toss up your fields, hit Aim, then Irradiate, then Neutron Bomb, heal yourself if you need it, fire your Cosmic Burst, and start again with Irradiate.

Neutron Bomb Doesn't do amazing damage, but it DOES do AoE damage, so vs most groups it is much more damage-per-activation efficient than even Cosmic Burst. :-) And the long animation is time for your endo to recover. :-)

Neutrino Bolt, there's no cure. You just have to put up with it. Or just don't use it. I hardly ever do - I usually have Irradiate or Cosmic Burst available, which do more damage just as fast.

And as far as considering the differences between Rad/Rad vs Dark/Dark, it's beyond apples and oranges, it's much like comparing chainsaws to stainless steel mixing bowls. If you want to make a cake, the chainsaws aren't very helpful, but if you want to cut down a tree, well, you get the picture. Vastly different playstyles. It comes down to what you enjoy more than anything else.

Why did you put endoexp in chokin cloud? It doesn't take an accuracy enhancement and is a wasted HO. I put one in Cosmic Burst.

A nice guide, but you are using the wrong terminology for hold magnitude. The #s you are using are the resistance levels of minions, lts, and bosses (1, 2, and 3). Hold powers must exceed those values to work. Therefore, a standard single target hold is actually mag 3, and will affect a lt (3>2) in one application. Ergo, Choking Cloud actually has a chance of a mag 2 or a mag 3 hold - if both happen to hit it adds to mag 5. Mag 4 or higher holds a boss. Likewise, EMP would thus be usually Mag 3 with a chance of Mag 4.

It's probably not a big deal to defenders unless they're desperately trying to stack those two powers, but any controller with radiation secondary who reads this guide is going to think these powers are weaker than they really are. The mag ratings continue up to really big numbers (off the top of my head I want to say holding an AV takes a 24 magnitude) so knowing the true power of each hold is pretty important.

Here, this might help: The guide to understanding magnitude

[ QUOTE ]
Why did you put endoexp in chokin cloud? It doesn't take an accuracy enhancement and is a wasted HO. I put one in Cosmic Burst.

[/ QUOTE ]

I PM'd Castle about this, and here's what he said:

[ QUOTE ]
Yes, you can increase the accuracy that way. There is still a hard 50% chance value AFTER the to hit check, though

[/ QUOTE ]

So if I'm reading this right, 3 Endoplasms (Hold/Acc HO's) would actually help this power out quite a bit.

So, if I'm reading this correctly the numbers would work kinda like this (using easy numbers to figure it out).

Out of 100 minions at equal level:
Unslotted as is, you will hit 75 of them which will MAYBE hold them.
out of the 75 you will hold about 37 of them on the first tick of the power.

Slotted with 3 Endoplasms, you will hit all of them (Well, 95%) and MAYBE hold them
You will then hold about 50 that first tick.

So this is an even better tactic when fighting above your level, or things like Paragon Protectors, PvP toons, AV's (those that can be held), EB's and whatnot. Each tick has a 50% chance of holding a mob if it hits in the first place. Since we can't normally increase that to hit check, this is a GREAT workaround for getting more holds out of CC.

I'm off to respec into this and check it out for myself.

If I'm missinterpreting what Castle is saying here, lemme know.

I put 2 in my CC and let me tell you right here and now, it works.

There's a DEFINATE difference. After about 15 seconds, all the mobs are held in any spawn I jump into, including the bosses.

SO, it's definately something to consider.

I just wanted to post a "big thank you" to you for this guide!

It was very instrumental in helping me decide to go with a rad/rad defender for my latest toon (instead of a blaster).

I had the good luck to team for several hours yesterday, taking my toon from level 10 to level 14, and I must say: I had a blast !!

Of course, being on some well-balanced teams has helped, but I thought it was fantastic that I could be of help to the team in just about any situation. Whether it was buffing with AM, rezzing a fallen comrade with Mutation, debuffing a crowd, or just sitting back and blasting-away, I felt like I was the Swiss-Army-Knife of the team! (Which is exactly what I wanted for a toon that is a robot!)

So, thank you again for posting this guide!

-= Dave =-

I too would like to thank you for this guide. My rad/rad is currently 48 and hopefully will hit the big 5-0 this weekend. It will be my first 50 and your guide had a lot of great advice which helped me get there.

Thanks!

RAD FTW

NUCLE0N - 48 rad/rad def - INFINITY

I'm pretty new to CoH, and my first Defender is this Rad/Rad build. I have a question on AM. A buddy of mine who's been playing a few weeks longer (and LOTS more hours, the lazy slacker!) said to slot Rechg/Rechg/Rechg/Dur/Dur/Dur instead of Rechg/Rechg/Rechg/EndMod/EndMod/EndMod. Can someone explain how to evaluate the two approaches, and why EndMod is better than Dur for this power?

Oh, wait a sec, just tried it in Mid's - apparently not a power that can have a Dur enhancement - nevermind! LOL

Cheers!

Radical Libre - 2 Rad/Rad def

To TxCelt: Where are dur enhancements sold? I want them!

Secondly, to all: I have updated my guide for I10 and incorporated many of the fixes located in this thread as well as given some thought to IO slotting. The new guide is linked in my Sig.