Silas SBs and so can you!

So yeah. I was feeling particularly industrious so I decided to put this up now rather than a week or whatever vague timeline I said these would be on. Also if your name is Myrmydon go away this is not for you, take your business elsewhere

I couldn’t decide between Kinetics and Thermal for this guide, as people seemed enthusiastic for both and they’re the other two sets I bring most to SFs. Kinetics got the deciding vote because of sheer volume of people who suck and are bad who play it. People with the playing skill of earwax statues generally aren’t drawn to thermal. This is not thus for kinetics. So, this is for all the terrible kins who will never read this, because I am Sisyphus and terrible support players are my crushing boulder.

Why Kinetics Is Awesome And You Want To Be One:

• Zomghueg damage buffs to cap everyone’s damage like a boss
• Nifty recharge and recovery buff
• Big dang ol’ heal
• Big dang ol’ endurance recovery power
• Hell of recharge for yourself
• AoE jump buff if that is your thing I guess
• Pretty respectable damage debuffs
• Granites will want to be around you, if you like things that are Bad
• A PBAoE KB toggle if you like things that are Bad but are maybe sometimes a little useful
• If you’re really good at it people will make little earwax statues of you and carry a lock of your hair in a locket around their neck so you’re always by them and never far away and build tiny little shrines to you in their rooms (sup Amy)
• Great unsuppressed personal mobility. Except in pvp. Haha, newpvp.
• You will get all the ladies*

*Disclaimer: You will not actually get the ladies
Powers:

Transfusion: foe –regen –end, AoE team heal

Slotting Recommendation: Get as much heal/acc in this as you can. Recharge doesn’t need too much work as it recharges fast as is

How to Use: As well uh, a heal. Except for against AVs/GMs, spam that chit. The –regen comes in handy as well as keeping everyones health bars topped off. The way this works is, you hit a dude and he loses some endurance and gets a –regen debuff, and a pet is summoned at his location which heals everything in its area then dies. Fun Fact: On GMs and other huge things like an Empaths ego, the visual effect of Transfusion is huge, this is misleading as the radius of the heal (20 feet) does not change. You can file this particular fact under More Information Than You Require.

Siphon Power: foe –damage team +damage

Slotting Recommendation: Barely. An accuracy and a recharge, if anything. An accuracy in the default slot is fine.

How to Use: Once you get Fulcrum Shift the damage buff it offers is negligible, but still worth throwing out for the debuff on AVs if you’ve got a spare second or two and nothing else worth throwing out. This is not gonna happen much because Kinetics is busier than DXP AE buildings. Here’s an idea of the stuff you should prioritize over throwing out Siphon Power:

Things You Should Be Throwing Out Before Siphon Power In No Particular Order:

• Transfusion
• Transference
• Fulcrum Shift
• Hard hitting blasty stuff
• Siphon Speed
• Speed Boosts

If all of those thingies are recharging or not needed, go ahead and do the little damage buff/damage debuff fist grab, you stud you.

Repel: PBAoE KB toggle

Slotting Recommendation: Please don’t?

How to Use: Please, please don’t? The KB is radial which is the worst kind of KB, its an end hog, its totally counterproductive to your best team buff but still more useful than a Granite. Oh ho ho. Seriously though, skip this. It is bad and if you take it you should feel bad.

Siphon Speed: Foe –rech –speed self +speed +rech

Slotting Recommendation: 2 acc, 2 rech

How to Use: Delicious. Self 20% recharge buff, stacks with itself. Keep 2-3 of these badboys on you at all times is A Good Thing™ Punctuate your main kineticcy things (Transference/fusion, FS, blasting like a boss) with this. Also set your build to have it quadruple stacked, turn a FFB proc on and brag about your high recharge build on the forums. The speed it gives you is awesome for mobility and zooming in, dropping your payload and zooming out again before anyone notices you were there to begin with. Which is what women want, right?

Increase Density: Ally +res (Smashing/Energy) Stun/Immob/Hold Protection and Resistance, KB protection plus it slows them but hardly

Slotting Recommendation: I keep mine unslotted for her pleasure. A single res IO is fine, although it’s a decent spot for a Steadfast –KB IO

How to Use: It’s not a priority, but do pick it up if you can. While the duration is hilariously short, so much so that you’d be nuts to try to keep it up on a team, let alone a few people. Hit people with it if they call out a mez by saying “zzz” or something. Bear in mind it won’t break sleeps, but those generally break pretty easily by themselves in teams with AoEs flying around. Also if someone rezzes with an Awaken it’s nice to hit them with this and SB so they can get back to the fight quickly.

Speed Boost: Ally +speed +recharge +recovery +res (Slow) +dependency on caster –cave navigation

Slotting Recommendation: Uh, just like, an end mod. Put a few in there if you really want to, but its really fine with the base slot. It’s base recovery value for Corruptors and Controllers is more than 3 slotted Stamina so….yeah. If someone has this on them and Stamina and is still running low (without being sapped) they have serious build issues.

How to Use: Keep up on team mates. Yes, something you have to regularly buff team mates with. Yes, I know you have all those other shiny kineticcy buttons. Yes, I know it can be hassle when you want to zoom zoom pew pew but this keeps everyone else zoom zooming and pew pewing. Like with the cold shields I run down the team list and hit everyone with it every few spawns, depending on team speed. Which, if you keep this up should be fairly nippy. I’ve got it bound to a key for convenience.

Ways In Which You Can Do It Wrong:

• Hitting people with it at the beginning of a mission and then never again
• Not having SB to begin with because you fail at basic and fundamental things
• Playing heroside where people apparently are playing on abacuses so they don’t want the speed buff because it crashes them and ugh beads go just everywhere. I’ve never encountered this villside, so…yeah.
• Only hitting the brute/tank/whatever who is gallantly leading the charge. SB is not Adrenaline Boost or Painbringer. You can afford to keep it on everyone. Yes, really. No, I know. No, trust me on this. I have tested it extensively and found the recharge on SB to be much shorter than AB or PB.
• Being so slow at hitting everyone with it that you fail at the other simple kineticcy things for minutes at a time. Yes, this actually happened. I was on a team where whenever someone asked for sb since the guy was about as good at keeping it up as a easily bored octogenarian he would slowly…..and….ponderously….work his way down the team boosting everyone. So for a good 4-5 minutes there was no Transfusion, no Transference, no Fulcrum Shift and no smiling children’s faces. Won’t you please think of the children?

Inertial Reduction: PBAoE team +jump +wheeeeeeeeeeee

Slotting Recommendation: Eh, a single jump IO.

How to Use: Whenever you need vertical clearance? I took this on my kin because I didn’t want to take cj/sj and super jumpyness that only needs a single powerslot is a pretty good deal imo. If you have a powerslot and lack vertical movement, grab this. Other than that its skippable.

Transference: Foe –end team +end

Slotting Recommendation: I went with 6 efficacy adaptors. I think. Okay, I am reasonably certain I did. Anyway, you want to max out the acc/rech/end mod on this.

How to Use: Same as Transfusion basically, except its +end instead of a heal. Use it whenever you’re running low, kaboom instant full blue bar happy times. The recharge is longer (30s versus 8s) than Transfusion, but you should have decent recharge from Siphon Speed and IOs if you’re not a failbot, designed to succeed only at failing. And besides, if a full endurance bar every 20ish seconds isn’t enough you’ve got bigger issues. In AV fights you don’t need to spam this like Transfusion because it doesn’t have any kind of debuff and people proooobably won’t need their end bars topped off because of Speed Boost. Which you’re keeping on them. Right? Right. So Transference is more for you since you’ll be the only poor sumbitch on the team without SB(probably). My condolences.

FUH FUH FUH FUUUUUUUUUULCRUM SHIIIIIIIIFT: Foe –damage ally +damage

Slotting Recommendation: Max out accuracy and recharge.

How to Use: This power can be tricky to understand if you’ve never played with Heat Loss(heehee). Basically, you target a dude and hit it. The guy you hit and every guy in an area around him gets a damage debuff. As well as this, a damage buff radiates out from every target hit as well as from you.

The damage buff from you is greater than the one from the targets (40% vs 20%, iirc) This means you yourself will always get a minimum of one damage buff, the one radiating out from you. This also means the best way to cap your own damage as well as that of your team is to be right in the middle of the spawn, where everyone else can get in to get all the enemy radiating buffs as well as yours.
So. Run in, hit this. Go nuts. This has a fastish recharge and stacks easily. Assuming reasonable spawn to spawn speed, you should be able to keep most people at the damage cap as long as they’re in range.

Notes: The AoE on this is huge. Really, really huge. So you’ll want someone else to have pissed off the dudes before you run in with this, or eat purples, or softcap s/l defense, or melee, or hit Transfusion, or whatever. Just be aware you may catch other spawns with the edge of FS if you target a guy to the side of a given spawn. Oh, also use this a lot in AV fights, even if there are no random lil dudes to fuel it. It’s still a 60% damage buff that stacks with itself and Siphon Power and –damage is always nice on AVs who can hit cheatyface hard sometimes (sup States)

Now for the fun part:

How To Not Be Awful:

• Prioritize. Kinetics is very fast (assuming you’re doing it right) and you’ll always have a lot to do. People will expect you to keep SB on them as well as keep their damage buffed to all hell. So sometimes you have a bunch of buttons to press and expectations and oh god its so difficult why am I playing a kin oh god. And then you break down and cry. DO NOT DO THIS. It is important that you not cry because the tears of your sorrow will blur your vision.
For your convenience, I have edited a flowchart for you.

Gaze Upon Its Majesty:



How To Not Be Awful Continued:

• As the chart so clearly indicates, keep people SBed. I said it a bunch in the stuff for the power itself so if it hasn’t sunk in by now you are probably a lost cause. I am sorry.

• While ID can break stuns, immobilizations and holds, it will not break sleeps. While as I mentioned this isn’t a big deal as not much uses sleeps and it will usually get broken by damage anyway, if someone is slept and there’s an enemy dude right next to them, hit Transfusion off the dude. Why yes, heals do break sleeps. Isn’t that fun? This is by no means a priority, but y’know, Nice To Know.

• Try and not get held/stunned/*****’d yourself. Siphon Speed gives you mobility, I recommend putting a stealth proc in your travel power of choice as well as investing in +hp or defense from IOs. You can break other people free from mezzes but not yourself so try to keep yourself out of trouble. This is not to say hang back, because that would make you a total wuss. You don’t want to be a wuss, do you? So just, exercise an iota of discretion. While for average PvE you can go ahead and rush headfirst into spawns with an insp or two and an epic shield, a spawn full of Chief Mentalists and Soldiers miiiight warrant that you wait for someone a mite stompier to get in there first. Dead kins are not helpful kins.

• You’re not a healbot. While Transfusion is a pretty burly heal, its nature of radiating from an enemy can make it fiddly to heal random blasters trying to not become vengbait. Target through whoever is getting whomped, hit Transfusion and hope they had their aggressor targeted and close by. In my opinion, there’s not much more you can reasonably do to help them beyond killing whatever it was harassing them. If you want to babysit and chase down dying people play a therm/emp/pain, not a kin. As far as I’m concerned, if someone is getting Rick James’d they can either eat insp, rely on the therm/pain/emp or stand right next to something and hope you’re not awful at kinning.

• Fulcrum Shift should almost always be your opening power. Especially if people already have a FS on them once they move onto the next spawn. You want them to get the biggest buff possible before the mobs are wiped off the face of the planet in two shots because everyone is rocking along at the damage cap. Work on your timing so you can zoom into a spawn right behind the brute/tank/scrapper so you see the mobs turn around and fire off their alpha volley. You should already be in the spawn once they’re attacking the brutankpper with their melee. Ideally, you’re far enough behind that very few (if any) of the spawn chooses to shoot their guns/lazers/fireballs/what have you but you’re close enough to be mid spawn for the FS before they all die. Keeping a few Siphon Speeds on you for mobility helps this.

• Being a kin, you don’t have any hard mezzes as such, but you do have pretty reasonable end drain. On small teams it can be worth hitting the bosses with Transference even if everyone is full on blue just to bring the incoming damage down a bit.

• Nuking. You can self-cap your damage and recover your endurance bar entirely with two clicks. There is no reason you should not be nuking a lot. Carry a lot of small blues to eat right after you nuke so you can hit Transference and be right back in the action. Use your discretion, obviously, if stuff is already dying in the first few seconds because you’ve got ballsy fire blasters who have caught onto this FS business and are blowing stuff up in two hits it’s probably not worth it as you won’t have anything alive to ‘ference off of.

• Blastblastblastblast. You’re gonna have buffed recharge and damage. Use it. I like to punctuate my kinning with blowing dudes heads off with Cosmic Burst. Use your AoEs. Just, you know, kill stuff. With FS you’ll even have decent damage as a Defender. Yes, really! So blast.

• Copy paste aaaaand: Fire Heat Lo-wait no Fulcrum Shift 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.

What Goes Well With Kinetics:

Generally, stuff that can put out a lot of AoE damage. Fire and Radiation are good for this, although Radiations TAoE is slooooooow.
I went with Radiation for the second AoE and aesthetics. Cosmic Burst is also a fantastic power, if less damaging than say Blaze. Irradiate also works pretty nicely right after a Fulcrum Shift, especially if you’ve got an Achilles Proc in it for more damage multiplying goodness.
It seems a little wasteful to go with a set that lacks in significant AoE, but I’ve seen Ice/Kins do good things so they can work too.

How Silas Be Doin’ It

Observe:


Notes
• Only 40ish% rech? Gasp! But friends, bear in mind the 20% from Siphon Speed. I can generally get 2-3 of these stacked, bringing me to 80-100% not counting Hasten. I find this is more than enough.
• I’ve circled Cosmic Burst, Siphon Speed and my 2 AoEs as my attack chainy things. This is true, except for Neutron Bomb. I only get to use that on slow teams. But when I’m not doing main kinetics stuff, it’s those three that I’ll be throwing out.
• I monitor damage bonus because despite not strictly being a main damage dealer, monitoring my own gives me a rough idea of whether or not other people will be capped. Also makes me want to nuke >.>
• I don’t monitor any kind of defense/res numbers because if I want to be durable I’ll eat a few purples. If I had gone the IO melee or s/l softcap route I would be monitoring that.

So there’s that. I hope this has been of some use.

*approves*

But it took you FOREVER to post this.

/agreed with the stealth proc. Almost a necessity if you like to speed run TFs/etc. Although, when all else fails, breakfrees are a kin's best friend.

/agreed on taking inertial reduction over combat jumping and super jump. I loves my IR.

Siphon power is extremely useful when the kin HAS to stay at range with other squishies, for whatever reason. I pump it out constantly (well, if it takes a while for Statesman to die) in fear of his silly attacks.

Overall, you get points for the guide.

After Fulcrum Shift, Spihon Power can top off brute's tremendous damage cap, since Fulcrum isn't going to cap them, plus, hey it's there.


And if you really want to get frisky, pop a end reduc or two in transfusion, sure transference is there for a reason, but it's not always there.

If you don't have enough recharge to get a second FS to cap a brutes damage, you are Doing It Wrong. Also I am pretty sure I've never hit FS and thought, damn, if only I had 20% more damage to cap them off.

Well, aside from not taking Repel and Inertial Reduction at all, looks like I've been doing it right.
For those coming from Empathy Builds, use the same keybinds for Heal Other (You DO have Teammate keybinds for heals riiiiight?) for Speed Boost, and your friends will thank you.
I've found this useful, having 4 keybinds that say:
Team: Fulcrum Shift in 3
Team: Fulcrum Shift in 2
Team: Fulcrum Shift in 1
Team: FULCRUM SHIFT! (activates power)
Mostly you'll only need to use this on teams that aren't familiar with your play style (read: PuGs) and unless you are playing with complete dullards who can't learn, you should only have to use the countdown on the first handful of mobs. They'll pick up on how you roll after that. And once they know that, the countdown becomes annoying. So, yeah, it's a limited use bind, but it helps educate people on how to play with a good Kin, and that's good for a million reasons!

Not to step on any toes but I think there was something important missed, or hell atleast its important to me. :-)

SB means blasters nukes come up a lot. Fulcrum means the mobs they nuke will die quickly. A blaster standing around with an empty end bar could really use some transferance. In LES our golden rule is the kin will target through the blaster to give them some endurance. I have noticed most blasters do not know/think to do that so I will assume maybe its just an LES thing. However as a kin try to do SOMETHING to get those blasters back to blasting, even if it means finding a target near them when you can.

Nothing is more irritating than to see a blaster standing right next to the boss that didn't die in the nuke and the kin doesn't get a light going off in their head that they could help that blaster out a weee bit.

If I'm on a PUG team and I notice someone's used a nuke, they have a nice habit of jumping out of said group and hanging back to recover some of their endurance, usually nowhere near something I could target. >> It'd be nice if blasters would stick around a little longer, it'd make kinning easier in that regard. :P

Although sometimes, Transference isn't always up because I just used a nuke, or someone else did, etc etc. >>

As for Ice Blast with kinning, I'd recommend it. Granted, it isn't lolaoedamage, but it's a nice addition to the -speed from siphon speed and for mitigation. The two holds can be very, very handy too. And we all know how awesome Blizzard is.

Agreed that some blasters get out of dodge, and that sometimes its not up etc. However when mob after mob after mob a kin is not doing their job...ugh.

Kat: Yup thats a good point and something I forgot to add to the tips bit, thanks for the heads up. While as Naloc says it can be fiddly to do as Blasters often get skittish, when it works its pretty nice.

Another great guide. Also, your avatar, I approve. I lent that game to my brother and never got it back.

Gattaca: that's what I meant. Hit FS on spawn one, stuff dies and I do other stuff, move on to spawn two, hit FS and so on. Means I'm generally able to keep one and a half spawns worth of FS up.

Edit:
Demo: yessss TWEWY is such good times

Good to see you doing something with yourself. Good show!

Nope, nothin' better than hitting something to get mroe dmg and lower their's.

Chrome my love! I miss you *sob* come back to me!

Kees me, you fool.

Very nice work there Sir Silas, I thoroughly enjoyed the flow chart and support your cause to make less sucktastic kinners on Champion!!

Anyone who cannot understand or do all/any part of what you are explaining should be done...is...well...just not cut out for being kintastic

I look forward to more flowcharts, guides with humor and general goodness from you woooooo! Bring on the thermal guide...I am sure that I will get some schooling on that one...

Kat, totally hear you on the endurance for the blastie dude/dudette but damned if they ever stick the hell around as someone else mentioned...I guess I really just need to stop all the PuG'ng I seem to do!!! That is, however, seriously worth putting out there for those that just don't think about such things

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~ The Earthguard ~

You didn't disappoint, Luke. Atleast Kins can help boost a Tanks mediocre damage.

About SP, on team it's pretty much useless since you have FS and everybody will mostly be damage capped. On the other hand, if you're soloing it's not bad to have since you won't have the big spawns of a team for FS.