Silas Plays Support And So Can You!

Inspired by Ping’s Weekly Niche, I’ve decided to share some of my finger-quotes expertise for you Championites. So I’ll be writing these guides weekly, and by weekly I mean whenever I can be bothered until I run out of support sets I know stuff about.

So. Why play support? Well, while your scrapper is totally the stabbiest and we’re all super impressed, they’re fairly one-dimensional in what they bring to a team. For future reference, when I say support I’m referring to Corruptors, Controllers and Defenders. Also MMs I guess. But like, they generally only buff their pets. Why yes, Painbringer that Lich. Go team. Super effort. Anyway. If you've only played blasters/scrappers/tankers/other totally boring things support might be something you're interested in trying. Also, Scourge is the awesomeness and women will want to touch you. Most definately. And by most, I mean highly, and by definately, I mean unlikely.

I’m generally writing these from the perspective of a Corruptor/Offender, so if you want a guide on how to be the bestest empath with one attack you may want to look elsewhere. Like a vat of boiling grease. Just stick your head in and take a good look around. I’m sure you’ll find something.

Let’s start with Cold Domination, because it is The Awesome and this is my guide so I do what I want, you’re not the boss of me. I’ll be providing a brief description of the powers and some tips on how to use them, no numbers because I am lazy. Go look in Mids, you bums.

Why Cold Is Awesome And You Want To Be One:
• Huge ST debuffing
• Solid defense buffs
• Lots of –res all up in yo’ bidness
• AoE stealth so you can harass pug ITFs
• Fast animations (a little on the boring side but whatevs)

Powers:

Infrigidate: slow, defense debuff and hefty fire damage debuff.

Slotting Recommendation: An Achilles proc, accuracy and def debuff to taste.

How to Use: Find dude. Throw at dude. ??? Profit. No, seriously. Use this at the start of your attack chain on stuff that isn’t a minion, keep it up on AVs/Heroes. It’ll make the rest of your and everyone else’s stuff hit more reliably and it stacks nicely with your other slows.

Ice Shield: Ally +def (smash/lethal/melee) also some +res to fire/cold I guess
Slotting Recommendation: Defense IOs, as long as you’re getting about 16-17% for Corrs or 22% for Defenders You Are Doing It Right. Good place for LotG 7.5s if you gots the money.

How to Use: Keep up on teammates. Shielding people only takes a few seconds per person and they last 4 minutes. The only excuse for not keeping everyone shielded other than lag/meteor showers is being bad. Or if they gave you sass. Or if there’s like, 3 VEATs so everyone is softcapped anyway. Regardless, keep them on people, that way you get to be the squishiest person on the team and that’s always fun. I bind this and Glacial to two keys next to each other, g and h for me so I can click my way down the team hitting g and h and then everyone’s costumes are ruined. Hooray. I recommend you bind these, unless you like clicking more than Spiderlings. Clicky clicky.

Notes: Unfortunately due to the ice shields having a resist component, they are unaffected by Power Boost unlike the FF shields. Sadface.

Snow Storm: Targeted foe AoE –slow –rech toggle

Slotting Recommendation: Eh, one or two end rdx and some slow. Honestly:

How to Use: Don’t. Maybe grab it when you’re low level and you need something to slow lots of dudes, but that’s generally not necessary. The AoE slow is nice, but Sleet does slow anyway and if you’re doing your job stuff should be dying fast enough that you don’t need a slow activating end hog one trick toggle to keep them in place. If you must get it because you wish to spite me, throw it on the dude most likely to live longest. Bosses, EBs, AVs.

Glacial Shield: Ally +def(ranged, AoE, energy, negative)

Slotting Recommendation: Same as Ice Shield

How to Use: Same as Ice Shield

Frostwork: Ally +hp +res(toxic)

Slotting Recommendation: 2-3 Heals, 2-3 Recharge, if you must.

How to Use: Personally, I don’t. It’s just a +hp, it doesn’t have a heal component and most people can cap their own hp fairly easily making it of limited use. It’s nice if you team with a lot of brutes/scrappers who aren’t WP/Inv or who are and are bad, I suppose.

Arctic Fog: Team PBAoE Stealth, +def(ranged, AoE, melee) +res(fire, cold, energy, slow)

Slotting Recommendation: The defense is 5% which is appreciable, but you’ll get more bang for your buck boosting the resistance. I would say 1 end rdx, 2 resists. This is also a good place to put Karma/Steadfast –kbs. No, this does not give the –kb to affected teammates. They need to go buy their own damn –kb IOs.

How to Use: Toggle on, do not toggle off unless a hostage/NPC needs shuffling around. Stealth is happy fun times, stacks with travel set stealth IOs/Super speed for full invis. If you are not a hateful misanthrope like me maybe try positioning yourself in the back row of squishies so they get the resistance buff and stealth.

Benumb: Ranged –damage (all)-regen, -end, -special

Slotting Recommendation: 2 acc, 2-3 recharge.

How to Use: Hit big baddies with this after Infrigidate to make them hit like kittens and go down like a catgirl in Pocket D. Recharge is a little on the long side so you want a fair amount of +rech to keep this as close to perma as you can. Single handedly reduce AVs to wussies and /e flex like a ******* boss.

Notes: This works primarily as a reverse Power Boost, but this isn’t too noticeable in PvE for most mobs. This should not discourage you from throwing it at every big bad you see to ruin their day. Which will be very, very brief.

Sleet: Yaaaaaaaaay

Oh.

Uh.

Yeah so it’s a targeted location AoE rain with hell of –def and –res. It also slows and has a chance to KD stuff inside the rain.

Slotting Recommendation: 3 recharge, an Achilles proc or I will shank you, defense debuff to taste. The Achilles proc has a chance to hit every dude in the rain every 10 seconds resulting in a whole bunch of dudes with a whole bunch of shot resistances. You Want This™.

How to Use: Frequently and often and with great regularity. Should be your opening power for most spawns so the lamentations of their women come speedily. It’s easily perma-able and stacks with itself if you can summon another one while the first is doing its thing. This gets very, very nasty. This power is half of the reason you want to build for heavy +rech with a cold. You can also drop it from out of LoS, so that’s nice, if of limited utility.

Heat Loss: Hell yes, babies. Works like Fulcrum Shift, but with +end, +rec for your mans and –res and slow for the enemy guys.

Slotting Recommendation: As much recharge/end mod as you can get, with respect to ED. Condolences to your wife, beeteewee. I went with 6 Efficacy Adaptors.

How to Use: This power can be tricky to understand if you’ve never played with Fulcrum Shift. Basically, a recovery buff radiates from you, as well as a smaller one from every enemy affected. This means if you’re standing right next to a single foe, you’ll get 2 Heatlosses, one from yourself, one from the enemy. This means if you’re right in the middle of a huge spawn you can cap your recovery.

What’s even better is if you hit enough guys you can recover right through your nuke end crash. Your toggles will still drop (usually, unless you get lucky with a P.Shifter proc) but it doesn’t matter as you’re still recovering anywhere from 3-4 end/sec. It’s also a huge resistance debuff, all the more reason to nuke right after using it. I have so much love for Sleet->Heat Loss->Ice Storm->Blizzard. Especially on herded Cimeroran rooftops in the last ITF mission. Mmmmmmmmmm. Ticking -16s. Stuff dies in a hurry. This is the other reason you want hefty +rech on a cold. Delicious.

Notes: Make a macro for this if you feel the need to announce that you are doing your job every few minutes or if there is a kin but they are terribad. Honestly, I don’t think its necessary. Hit it on big spawns and proceed to bring the ruckus, but give the melees a chance to get in for the buff You’ll be staying at range for most of the time, so you running into melee should be enough of a hint that Good Things™ are about to happen. For most people. Who aren’t creti-okay maybe it’s not enough of a clue. Their loss.

Now for the fun part:

How To Not Be Awful:
• Keep team shielded. Yes, it’s a hassle when you just want to pewpewpew since you just dropped Sleet but I find that’s a pretty good time to do it. Drop Sleet on a spawn, spend the next few seconds buffing people while they butcher the dudes you just served them on a platter.

• Keep big baddies debuffed into the Stone Age. Seriously. Infrigidate+Benumb will mess up an AVs day. Hit these whenever they’re up on buff targets. Infrigidate you can throw around relatively willy-nilly as it recharges hella fast, Benumb you have to be a little more particular.

• Blast, ******* you, blast. If people are shielded and Sleet has been laid down, the AV is sloooowly trying to run away throw ice/radiation/fire/bullets(lol)/whatever at all the guys who will now die like stuff that dies fast. Uh, shaken babies? I don’t know.

• While you can be in melee if you want (hooray Fulcrum Shift) most of your powers are ranged so you don’t need to be. If you feel your team will otherwise eat paint and die feel free to try to attempt to herd them inside your Fog. Molestations may occur. These things happen. It’s a risk you take when you want fire/cold resistance, what can I say.

• Build for +recharge with IOs if you can. I would say aim for about 60-70%, but I’m a huge recharge junkie soooooo you could probably get away with less. You just want Heat Loss, Sleet and Benumb to be up when you need them. Which can be pretty often, depending on how not-awful your team is.

• +Ranged defense is also a good idea, which is pretty easy to softcap. (sup, Thunderstrike)

• If you’ve got it, Aim can be good to hit before Infrigidate to ensure it hits.

• Prioritize. You’re not gonna be as busy as a kin, but you’ve still got a lot of buttons and they are all super snazzy. I generally lay down my debuffs first, just Sleet and/or Heat Loss if there’s nothing particularly ugly that would warrant Infrigidate+Benumb, buff the team if they need it and then starting killing face.

• Speaking of buffing the team…I don’t wait until the shields are flashing to refresh them. I’ll refresh them every few spawns, depending on team speed. I find the team buff monitor thingie distracting so I don’t bother, it’s also a hassle to look along an omfghueg line of buffs to see if they do or do not have your shiny ice shields. If someone whines because their shields drop for a bit, apply boot directly to face. If their build is bad enough they have to have the shields up at all times to survive they’ve got worse problems than you being lax with your buffing. That said, do try to keep the shields up because they are super good and also nice.

• Fire Heat Loss off on the nastiest dude in a spawn or the guy most in the center, depending on the situation. If its an AV spawn, hit the AV as his dudes will fairly quickly anyway. If it’s a somewhat spread out spawn and you target some Immunes Surgeon way off the hell to the side so the debuff radiates just about nowhere you deserve facepunchings. Pow pow.

Update

What Goes Well With Cold

There are several powersets that complement Cold well. I personally went with Ice Blast because it fit thematically, the slows stack and Blizzard is the shizzle. It's a good option because the two-three storms absolutely shred whatever is in their area and you can drop them and go about your other business. Like killing people. The ST hold is also handy for normal PvE play.

Fire Blast is a good option for all the reasons its normally a good option, that is to say FIRE BURN DIE DIE DIE. Again, the Rain goes nicely with Sleet and if you really need me to say more to convince you that Fire is worthwhile perhaps you should have an early night with a bleach nightcap.

Dark Blast is another option for more dots more dots okay stop dots. The self heal is nice and its ranged nature works well with cold. The downside imo is a lack of Aim and I prefer a targeted AoE to a narrow as hell cone.

There aren’t really any sets that work too much –against- Cold, it’s just a question of what you find to be most synergistic and what you like most. For the most part, Cold handles itself admirably so it’s up to you to decide how you want to kill the mans you just debuffed into the Stone Age. Except maybe like, Energy Blast. Because it is generally poop and KBs dudes out of your sleet which is no fun. Although the Sleet debuff is sticky so they’ll still have it on them. But whatever.

Okay, how about this. You want a blast set that has decent synergy with Cold (like Ice or Fire) and has AoEs to make use of the mahoosive –res debuffs you’ll be laying down.

How Silas Be Doin’ It

Here’s a screenshot of how I have my UI set up for my cold.



Notes:

• Accolades. Nice to have for +hp which is always nice for support characters as well as Demonic coming in handy for bumrushing AVs. Soooo…I would recommend you get them if you’re gonna be serious about the character, but I’ve only got them on my Cold. Handy to have, but you won’t suck without them.
• Recharge. I’ve got 78% which I’ve found to be plenty for teams, soloing and SFs. I’ve got a good ST attack chain and reasonable uptime on Benumb/Heat Loss as well as stacking Sleets. What the observant may notice is that I do not have Hasten on my bar. The psychic will notice that I do not have Hasten, full stop. While Hasten is awesome and I’d recommend it for almost any support build, especially one with long recharge Awesome Buttons like Cold, for aestheticcy reasons I’m not taking it on my cold till I can recolour it. If you don’t care about that kind of thing though, I would recommend you pick it up.
• Aid Self. This is another more personal choice, I just wanted the self heal for soloing. It comes in handy occasionally on teams but you’d be fine with greens.
• Some stuff about stats I chose to monitor and why:
-Recharge Bonus: this is because of how important recharge is to a cold, so I like to see where I’m sitting on this one.

-ToHit Bonus: Another Nice To Know kind of deal, I’d like to be aware of when my tohit is shot to sh*t before I waste Benumb.

-Damage Bonus/Recovery: Because when both of these babies go blue you can bet your *** I’m dropping Blizzard like a BOSS.

-Smashing defense: it was this or lethal, really. Same difference. I monitor this so I know when I’m softcapped to s/l because of eating purples/VEATs/another cold who doesn’t suck/whatever so I can trow ice with abandon.

So there’s that. I hope some of this was at least vaguely helpful. Tune in at some indeterminate point in the future for more rambling advice and abuse. I’ll be covering Thermal, Pain Dom, Kinetics, and Radiation. Not in that order though. Probably. If I do it will be by some cosmic coincidence. I will not be covering Empathy because its Pain but with better buffs also Empathy is hells of boring. I won’t be covering FF because it’s boring too. I’ll probably be covering TA, but not until after I’ve had time to mess with it after i16 hits.
Comments/feedback/flowers optional but encouraged.

Fantastic guide. I mean it. I've avoided playing support toons for the entire time I've been subscribed, but you just might convince me to roll one.

Doooo eeeeeet

Cold Dom ftw

But this:

I hereby give you permission to unleash your ruckus by PM :3

Fabulous post Silas.

I know you'll never forgive me completely for being a Defender addict and not a Corruptor fiend, but I definitely share your passion for the support sets in the sense that they add a lot of dimension to a team.

Cold is indeed a great set with tons of variety in terms of what you're capable of. I look forward to your review of the other sets, in particular, Kinetics. I might have one of those lying around.

In short, rock on.

My kinetics guide will consist entirely of two words.

sb plz

Very nice guide, Silas.

However, bubbles ftw!

Nice Guide, Silas. Cold Domination is the only Ice set that I haven't tried yet, so I'll think I'll give it a whirl.

Teach me the ways of the kin...cuz I'm awfulbadneedurexperteec

Seriously though, delivered with humor, you are tehrockipations!

Nice guide sir Silas!

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~ The Earthguard ~

Silas, any plans to cover Storm Summoning?

Nice guide Luke, Cold is by far my favorite buff/debuff set. Any idea what you're gonna do next?

Myr: doooooo eeeet

Demobot: Yes actually, but probably not until waaay down the line. Also going to do Dark Miasma.

Obi: I'm not sure, but probably thermal or kinetics since those with cold make up my top 3 things to bring on TFs for Happy Fun Support Time.

I've got a Dark/Elec Defender that I haven't played in awhile but plan to get back into at some point. Would love to see what tips you have for Dark Miasma.

Numero Uno: Reroll as a corr.

I kind of want to level a /cold corr now, but at the same time not. You get points for the guide though.

Kinetics next, plz. With all of these new AE kinnies running around they'll need a few tips. But thermal's good too.

Alright it seems next time I'm feeling spry I'll be flipping a coin for thermal/kin. I might even do these in this next week if I have the time/care.

Also why are all these people who already kin well want me to write guides for it >.> feels like a trap...