Silas Plays Support And So Can You!

Introduction

Welcome, dear reader to my support guide. I've been writing guides for all the support sets I play for the Champion forums but figured they could ostensibly be helpful if presented to a wider audience.

To date I have written guides for Cold Domination, Kinetics, Thermal Radiation and Pain Domination. Guides for Radiation Emission, Dark Miasma, Trick Arrow and Sonic Resonance are forthcoming. Watch this space, etc.

So why should you care? Because other than my obvious requirement for Internet Validation, I have been known to occasionally know stuff. And stuff is good to know. But hey, don't trust me, here are what others have to say about my prodigious skills:

"Having teamed with him once, I will make sure that I absolutely will...team with him again"
-Anon

"Silas is easily the most...player I've met"
-Anon

"Could be much improved."
-Anon

See? I am the most player they have ever met! How's that for a glowing recommendation?

Introduction II: The Introducening

Shamelessly ripped from my first post:

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 definitely. And by most, I mean highly, and by definitely, 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.



Updates:

• 14/11/09 Radiation Guide added
• 30/11/09 Dark Miasma Guide added
• 2/01/10 Sonic Resonance Guide added (wow hell of long between updates, whoops.jpg)
• 2/02/10 Trick Arrow Guide added
• 3/04/10 Storm Summoning Guide added and Kin guide updated with new setup
• 17/05/10 Fortunata guide added.
• 18/05/10 Cold guide updated, build chunks added for Cold, Kin and Fort guides. More to come when I can be bothered.
• 11/06/10 Dark and TA build chunks added, Fort setup link fixed (thanks ColdWarRelic!)
• 19/06/10 Traps guide with build chunk added, Thermal build chunk added
• 26/06/10 Cold and Kin guides reformatted to make them less ZOMGWALLOFTEXT-y. Cheers for the help Talen Lee.
• 28/06/10 Pain, Thermal and Rad guides reformatted.
• 1/07/10 Dark, Sonic, TA, Traps and Fortunata guides reformatted. Build chunk added for Sonic.
• 28/04/2011 So actually a whole bunch of my guides were updated for i19 builds and various corrections made but I didn't add it here. So, builds updated for i19: Cold, Thermal, Rad, Kinetics, Fortunata, Dark and Traps
• 9/07/11 Cold, Therm, Kinetics and Sonic guides updated for the buff change. I typed 'no excuse' or some variation thereof a bunch of times. Hooray!
• 3/09/11 Empathy guide posted, ohgodohgodohgod

I: Cold Domination

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:

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Infrigidate: slow, defense debuff and hefty fire damage debuff. Slotting Recommendation: Set mule if anything, really. It's great at lower levels but that's about it. Once you've got Sleet and decent accuracy slotted/set bonus accuracy it's a waste except to debuff fire damage dealing AVs or bosses. How to Use: At lower levels, as your opener to make sure the rest of your stuff hits. It's a decent defense debuff. Defense debuffs aren't really needed once you've got good accuracy slotted and/or set bonuses and the times when you're having trouble hitting, Sleet will do a much better job of debuffing.

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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. Since the change to ally shield buffs, buffing an entire team is now trivially easy. No excuse to not keep everyone shielded. Regardless, keep them on people, that way you get to be the squishiest person on the team and that’s always fun. In order to make the most of the AoE buff, try and target someone in the middle of things to hit with the buffs. That way you should get most people and can just single buff someone if you miss them. Notes: Unfortunately due to the ice shields having a resist component, they are unaffected by Power Boost unlike the FF shields. Sadface.

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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.

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Glacial Shield: Ally +def(ranged, AoE, energy, negative) Slotting Recommendation: Same as Ice Shield How to Use: Same as Ice Shield

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Frostwork: Ally +hp +res(toxic) Slotting Recommendation: It's fine with just the base slot. It's of relatively limited use, but the use it has it serves perfectly well with the base slot. Chuck a heal in it and call it done. How to Use: I didn't have this in my build when I originally wrote this guide. I've since picked it up. As I said above, it's of limited use because the buff simply isn't that overwhelming. It's a good buff to throw on anyone with low hp, but don't bother maintaining it. I use it very rarely, but it is handy sometimes (like the LRSF) where the few extra hundred points of hp can make the difference between someone faceplanting or staying on their feet.

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Arctic Fog: Team PBAoE Stealth, +def(ranged, AoE, melee) +res(fire, cold, energy, slow) Slotting Recommendation: Enhance the defense. While the resistance number is bigger, the defense applies to all types . It'll stack a lot better with the defense from your team as well as whatever defense you get (Scorpion Shield, IO bonuses etc). The resistance is nice but not worth enhancing. 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.

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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 gorramn 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.

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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.

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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:

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How To Not Be Awful: • Keep team shielded. No excuse not to now, really. • Keep big baddies debuffed into the Stone Age. Seriously. Benumb will mess up an AVs day. If there's a buff target and it's not Benumb'd, you're Doing It Wrong. Infrigidate is good to throw on fire damage dealing bosses or AVs but Benumb is the real gem. It does have a lengthy recharge though, so make sure to throw down Sleet first so it hits and to put it on a target worth debuffing. • Blast, curse 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

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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.

My Setup

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(NB: This section is out of date and is included only for completeness sake) 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.

Update the Second:

I've since respecced my Cold. Went for softcapped s/l defense and higher recharge. Now updated for i19.

Here's the data chunk for anyone interested:

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Ways It Could Be Improved: Getting more recharge and defense. It was a tough call but I settled for not being softcapped until Fog gets fixed. It gave me more build flexibility and if I really need the extra defense in the meanwhile I can eat a purple.

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Update: Arctic Fog has been fixed for some time now, so my build is fully softcapped to smashing/lethal. Feels good, man.

Update again: Build has been updated for Inherent Fitness. Hooray.

Update: Section on shields and HTNBA updated for the AoE buff change.

II: Teh Kinning
Almost everyone seems to have a kin, but for such a straightforward set people seem to have a lot of difficulty not being terribad with it.

THEREFORE!

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:

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Disclaimer Thing

Pain is not villain Empathy. Yes, I know the devs said that’s what it’s supposed to be. Tough. It’s not. Unless you think Empathy is about the leet heals and having a rez, in which case Congratulations! You are Doing It Wrong™.

If anything, I think Pain is best described as a lower maintenance Thermal with different buffs (that are either worse or better, depending on team makeup/situation).

What everyone seems to have forgotten with the release of Pain is just how much people shat on Thermal for not being as good as Empathy. Resistance buffs? Har, nowhere near as handy as defense buffs. No Adrenaline Boost? lol. No Regen/Recov Auras? Haha, the devs hate villains. Oh man and the rez KBs enemies, hilarious.

But now people seem to understand Thermal better and judge it on its own merits for what it is, a hybrid support set which sacrifices a lot of the defensive capabilities of Empathy for offensive capabilities. Pain is not villain empathy, its Pain and should be judged according to its own virtues, just like Thermal is.

What Pain Is:

• Not Empathy.

• Seriously.

• Can’t stress this enough.

• An alternative to Thermal in the following ways:

• o Team resistance buffing
• o AoE debuffing
• o Heals/rezzing/keeping people unmezzed

Chances are, dear reader, you may already have a Thermal Radiation Corruptor/Mastermind/Controller, or therm as they are known on tha streetz. But Therming can be hard! You’ve got to keep shields up and heals and debuffs and oh god its overwhelming oh god oh god i can’t breathe help please oh godohgodohgoddddd.

IT IS OKAY. TAKE DEEP BREATHS. I will help you. Unlike your emotionally distant father who would just disdainfully gaze over a corner of his newspaper, slowly shake his head and sigh, Silas is here for you. Unless you read this entire guide, take it all in and then continue to suck and be awful at therming. In which case your father and I will both sigh, then go have a beer, watch the game and talk about how we wished things had turned out differently. SOMETIMES THAT IS JUST HOW IT GOES. Don’t worry though, you have plenty of prospects

That said, your father and I do hope this guide is helpful for you.

AND SO:

Why Thermal Is Awesome And You Want To Be One:

• Setting people on fire without subsequent incarceration.

• That’s definitely a big one.

• Great resist shields.

• No but seriously being in jail is pretty bad you guys

• Awesome ranged AoE –res –def debuff

• Fast cycling anti-mez and tohit/dmg buffs

• ST –regen –recov –dam –end

• Hell of flashy rez which will annoy all melee when used (yaaaaay)

• Heals to keep you and teammates on their feet

• The ability to turn teams from wiping every other spawn into steamrollers

Powers:

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So. Radiation. Did you know that the following is absolutely true?

If someone approaches you and says hey, radiation emission is awesome and you should play one, they are 100% correct!

How wild is that? Truth is stranger than fiction, folks. This is all the information you require. But what if you want more information? What if you want more detail and nuance than will ever be necessary? What if you not only want detail and nuance, you want to delve tirelessly into the deepest trenches of detail and soar through the loftiest clouds of nuance of the set and learn more information than anyone will ever care to know? What if you just don’t have anything to do to distract yourself from the crushing, crushing loneliness and the booze cabinet is empty?

THEN YOU ARE IN THE RIGHT PLACE.

So.

Why Rad is Rad and You want to be Rad too: (okay I swear that is the last time I use rad like that in this guide)

• Great self and team +rec +rech +dam (and +mez resistance if you care) buff

• Two very powerful debuff toggles to make stuff die faster and harder. Uhn tiss uhn tiss.

• Self heal because having to eat green inspirations means there are less inspirations being converted into purples for SHENANIGANS

• Generally a rad (ahaha I lied) strong all-round support set. Good buffs, good debuffs with a nice dash of general team utility.

• Fantastic at facilitating the destruction of AVs and GMs.

• Fairly low maintenance, no targeted ally buffs if you can’t stand that kind of thing BECAUSE YOU’RE A SCRAPPER GO ON GET OUT OF HERE WHO LET YOU IN

• God, those guys. I swear.

• I wrapped some attack chain calculations around a brick and threw it into a river, that should keep them away for a while.

• Radiation gets its core powers very early on so you’re a force to be reckoned with from, you know, early on. Unless you don’t take the toggles until 40+ because well, your mother fed you paint chips or something, god, I don’t know, what am I, psychic?

• (Yes!)

Powers:

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Radiant Aura: PBAoE ally +heal Slotting Recommendation: There are several good options for this depending on how you’re building your character. If you want recharge Doctored Wounds are a good choice, if you want +hp/+regen/+rec Numinas or Miracles are a good choice. If you’re building for ranged defense 6 slots gives a nice bonus but bear in mind unless you’re hitting it once every 2 mins you’re not getting the bonus from the Numina +/+. There are also better places to get +ranged def. So I went with Doctored Wounds. And so should you. Or uh, a few heals and end reducers if you are POOR How to Use: Self heal, mostly. It doesn’t really pack enough oompf for you to be relying on it to keep a team on their feet. Don’t get me wrong, it certainly helps especially if you can top off a few people at once with it, but generally there are more important things you should be doing to keep the team going. Bear in mind the radius is reasonably large so if you want to heal several people at once you can. Some people feel the need to put this on auto. This makes me sad. I do not know why they would think that this is a good thing to do.

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Radiation Infection: Enemy based AoE toggle, foe –def- tohit Slotting Recommendation: Decent endurance reduction, as while this doesn’t guzzle as much as Enervating Field it still uses .52 end/sec base which is tones bozillions. As for whether to enhance the –def or –tohit, I would say its personal preference. At lower levels I would say the –def is more important, as teams don’t have a lot of +tohit or accuracy slotted yet, but at higher levels the –tohit stacks with all the +def most teams have flying around. I went with 4 Dark Watchers because yay +recharge. I would have put in an Achilles proc if I had the slot. How to Use: Find a big nasty dude. Chuck it on the big nasty dude. Rejoice. That’s the basic gist of it, but I’m gonna go into more detail in a separate section for Radiation Infection/Enervating Field.

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Accelerate Metabolism: PBAoE ally +speed, +rech, +recovery, +damage, +res (Sleep, Hold, Disorient, Immobilize, End Drain) Slotting Recommendation: Maximise the recharge. You want 90-99% recharge in this. Beyond that, endurance mod slotting is also worthwhile since at base it gives more recovery than Stamina but recharge is more important if you’re hurting for slots. Best of both worlds is frankenslotting end mod sets. How to Use: Get in the middle of as many people as you can and fire it off. Really, it’s that simple. Please, please don’t make some lame-*** bind or macro that demands the team grind to a halt and gather around you. Especially if you make some joke about hugs or snuggles. **** is tedious. The radius is the same as Radiant Aura so if you want to get a feel for how big it is [Obvious Joke] you can practice with that.

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Enervating Field: Enemy based AoE toggle, -damage, -resistance (all) Slotting Recommendation: 2 endurance reductions. 3 if you can, really. This power eats a ton of endurance and you’ll be running it all the time. You can’t enhance the –damage or –resistance so yeah. How to Use: Similar to Radiation Infection. Find a baddy and throw this on him. Proceed to bring the ruckus until it has been done brought. Much faster animation though, I generally lead with this.

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Mutation: Ally +special (+200% rec, +100% rech, 40% damage buff (to all) +30% tohit) for 90 seconds, +special (-40% damage (all) -30% tohit) for 45 seconds after 90 seconds Slotting Recommendation: A recharge and/or endurance reduction. How to Use: If someone dies, you can rez them with this. IT IS REALLY THAT SIMPLE, DEAR READERS! You might want to pick up Vengeance and Fallout to go with this, so you pee your pants a little with glee every time someone dies.

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Lingering Radiation: Targeted AoE –regen –recharge -speed Slotting Recommendation: 2 accuracy, 2 recharge. Bruv, it is most imperative that this hits and recharges fast, innit. How to Use: I don’t bother unless I’m fighting an AV/GM/whatever that has bunches of regen. This will basically flatline the regen of whatever it hits, which is totally good times for AVs and GMs and other stuff that would otherwise regen thousands of hp a tic. If you’re fighting one of the aforementioned things use this as soon as it recharges. Preface with Aim if you’ve got it, because this missing (especially if you’re the only person with –regen on the team) is >:C Its not really worth it to use on anything weaker than an EB unless you need something to do because you don’t know how to blast or do controllery things because you’re an IDIOT*. *Addendum: Since I've rerolled my Sonic/Rad into a Fire/Rad, I get a lot more use out of LR against normal spawns. The slow component stacks really nicely with RoF to keep stuff melting in there. If you've got powers that cause scatter and/or other slows to stack it with (basically Ice or Fire blast) using it in conjunction with them can be very good.

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Choking Cloud: PBAoE Foe Hold Slotting Recommendation: If you don’t have a bunch of slots for this, don’t even bother picking it up. It’s a great power, but it needs a lot of slots to make the most of it. Running a power that eats as much endurance as this one and having it miss all the time and not hold anything for very long = fail harder, failbot. Get good values for acc/hold/end reduction because this has crappy base accuracy, short duration and eats endurance like whoah. Hold procs are also good times. How to Use: Turn on, be in melee range. More in the How To Not Be Awful Section.

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Fallout: Target dead ally, boom. Stuff dies. But it’s also a very respectable debuff, to the order of 30% -dam -30% tohit, -30% defense and -50% res. Yes, those numbers are correct. Unless City of Data and Mids are wrong >.> Slotting Recommendation: The numbers are pretty good, so if you really wanted to slot it out I’d go 5 posi blasts and an Achilles Heel –res proc. You’ll get nice values for the damage aspect of the power and the proc will ensure that 20% of the mobs hit by it will have their resistances dropped by 70%. Boosh. That said, it’s a –highly- situational power. I would say if you’ve got the slots for it go nuts, but it’s a very low priority and if you’re only gonna have 1-2 slots in it you might as well not bother. How to Use:Well, target a dead ally, hit this and like, kaboom, dude. While looking at the numbers it looks like a fantastic power, the reality is that unless you’re porting a corpse round, you’re not gonna get much use out of it. If you do decide you want to make the most of it, (which is fairly understandable), I would say go whole hog with it. Pick up recall friend and Vengeance. Make everyone squee with delight whenever that one blaster dies. Maybe the emp/therm/pain on the team gets a little careless. Accidents happen, right?

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EE EMM PEEEE: PBAoE HUUUUGE radius foe hold, -end, -regen, damage vs bots, self -recovery Slotting Recommendation: Get good values for hold and accuracy, max the recharge. How to Use: As both a panic button as well as a general hold. Unless you’ve got Conserve Power or a bunch of blue insp just use it as a panic button. The AoE is stupid ******* huge so while it is PBAoE you don’t need to worry too much about being right in the middle of the spawn. The special damage vs robots is nice, but nothing to write home about. Stick to how you’re doing at school, momma ain’t care about damaging robots, especially since the damage is fairly small (about the same as most blast tier 2s). Unless you slot it for damage, in which case there will be consequences.

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How To Not Be Awful: • Get comfortable with the range on AM. While the team shouldn’t grind to a halt for you to use it, consistently hitting only 2-3 people with it is fail. Unless the team is really all over the place you should be able to consistently get 4-6 people with it. The only time where I’d make sure to hit the whole team would be on a really low level team where people don’t have Stamina and stuff yet, so the +rec comes in very handy. • Learn who to use Radiation Infection and Enervating Field on. While you want them to be on something tough enough to warrant the debuffs, on a team with several stalkers or scrappers a lieut might live longer. On fast moving/high level teams don’t bother with Radiation Infection unless it’s a boss or EB. Depending on the situation I’ll often also will throw the toggles on different mobs (unless its an AV fight ofc) so that 1: the debuffs are spread around and 2: they won’t both get shut down if the target dies. • Toggle pulling. Get good at it. What I mean by this is throwing either of the toggles (RI preferably) on a spawn to pull them. You can do this to bring a spawn to where the team is currently killing, to make better use of whatever AoE debuffs have been dropped. If you block Line of Sight you can also herd the enemies into nice little bundles to be AoEd. Radiation Infection is a better choice for this because the -tohit will make them miss you more so you don’t get splattered trying this. • Bear in mind that Radiant Aura is not a huge heal, so if you wait until you’re at half health and dropping it might not be enough to keep you on your feet. I generally start using it at 70%-80% because then you’ll only need to use it once or twice to top yourself off. • You must never forget this. • Fallout for Fun and Profit: Radiation is in a great position to take advantage of team mates who die a bunch because you can make them go kablooie and then get them back up on their feet. Vengeance + Fallout + Mutation = everyone on the team is happy when someone dies. Fallout is great to clear out the spawn hovering over someone to ensure they don’t get cut right the **** back down when you Mutation them. This is good. However, if there’s only one or two mobs around I wouldn’t bother with Fallout, The animation is long enough to warrant discretion in its use. Unless you like seeing your team mates explode then crumple to the floor again. Which, of course, is pretty awesome. Especially if you then don’t rez them. Serves you right for dying, chump. Take that to the bank and smoke it, buddy. Wait, what? • lern2manage the EMP crash. It’s not as severe as the damage nukes or a godmode crash, but can be nasty if you don’t have a way to mitigate it. No recovery sucks when you’re burning 1end/sec running your toggles. Keep a supply of blues on hand if you don’t have something like Converve Power. If you don’t have stuff to make the crash manageable its not –too- bad to be very reserved with your EMP use. It is a great power, but not so great that you’ll suck for not using it. Not using EMP all the time because of endurance = okay, not using fireball all the time because of endurance = scorned by colleagues, unloved by women, frowned on by YHWH.

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What Goes Well With Radiation: Radiation lends itself well to either a ST or AoE focus. I personally went with sonic for hella –res spammings because I wanted to solo big cranky stuff. The –res stacks nicely with the rad debuffs as well as being very endurance efficient which is great because rad can be very end hungry. For general play, I’d recommend something like fire blast. Great ST damage and AoEs, Lingering Rad to keep them in range of Enervating Field and Rain of Fire. Mmm, delicious. Unless you’re a defender so you can’t have fire blast, haha, sucks to be you. Make a corruptor. Amy.

How Silas Be Doin’ It

Observe:

My Setup

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Notes • 65% recharge is enough to have Hasten/AM just about perma. About a second downtime, pretty good times though. • With decent recharge Shout actually causes a loss in DPS, so I only use that when its guaranteed to Scourge. My usual attack chain is Screech, Scream and the stun to stack the –res. • No Fallout or Choking Cloud. Both of these are very situational at best and I wanted a softcap range build so I didn’t have room for either of these. I decided of the three (mutation, fallout and choking) Mutation would be the most useful. • In the absence of any shields to speak of, I’ve got AM bound to G and Radiant Aura bound to Q. • I monitor endurance consumption because Enervating Field and Radiation Infection (as well as travel power/patron shield) can put a big dent in your endurance. This number doesn’t factor in your end/sec use from attacks, but I find it pretty handy to monitor for Conserve Power use. • Enervating Field and Radiation Infection placement. You want these close enough at hand so that you can hit them easily, but not so close that you’ll hit them by accident detoggling them. If you want to bind them, that works too.

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Update: I rerolled my Sonic/Rad into a Fire/Rad a few weeks back and am enjoying him a lot more. While Sonic is a stupidly good blast set, I just find spamming Shriek/Scream and having no AoE boring. Plus zomggggggggggggg RoF makes me a special kind of happy Build has more recharge than the last one and more defense too. Went for s/l instead of ranged. Build is basically better in every way I care about. feels good, man Here's the new Fire/Rad character, Castle Bravo. Tadaaa Here's the chunk: Code: | Copy & Paste this data into Mids' Hero Designer to view the build | |-------------------------------------------------------------------| |MxDz;1421;679;1358;HEX;| |78DA6593DB6E12511486F730209643293D414B4B055A5BA01DC0566F4D5A8BA2A03| |D246ABC219332A5935420034DF4CE17D00B35D6E343784AAB773E84C7A48FE0E10D| |70CDFA770B0913E05BFBDF6BEDFDEF35ECD2BD4B3E211E5C144A6065576F36CB2B7| |5CBDA6BB4EA96ABA457CD2DE11642444EC4F2865EAB1A152D6F5A4679990A5AB1CE| |DCF2DEF6B6B6A1574CBD65D66BE5D5BB66B34941B050DB312CA3D6D28E03CF5ABDB| |EAB6D360CA3E2E7306F56775A66ADEAE351D1D01B34081C0F2A86D5DC311B91D586| |B9A575B62BE95B06FD345B86753F4C2E93F49D7508F9B49DE2A52D08C70BE039C3B| |90FBC627C55BAD26FD020274E15816B8CD325E03A638E564745DBA59C77D8926709| |5864F8CE011718FD3161E33B95A85CD656D5873C33FA88117EC2883E65C4A9D52EE| |4395C692E1D0646816F34E9966EDD875C33F0893178007C660C7F210C891F94DE87| |74A50F56A4A324CD7BE539BC1F598A7E609C39040E80F78C18AA12B4B71FFE84BF4| |D8F48D13A01ACE308BCE5A40154CEBF03282128370AE6D8DC7496717601D0800C63| |161BFD526CFB38E7D0382C48A0110940A62BE46B04E9EAC83A212E121B8CE94D608| |DA1525E48F62314A23D264538CC70D2CC184EE61A1BE1573DDE0F78181301C0CB88| |FA19A3541591FD88A02AE4B6978334C92D0A93322593A6E037EDB0DDC047FC35BFA| |AC41BC61125CEC883CF14D0922B8CD42A633E0F5C66345421E6A4ED391848C27612| |B693F09B82FB146C07C9515AFECDD276D5ACC839013763901234695983E59F34CCC| |A7365214D384FAE8E2AD0F50CBA9E41BB73687EB193471FBB256BCE935B2414560A| |9D9CF6BAC7EE0BE25B5DF1EDAEF84E57DC3740B74BD6FE265D51BA57FED3A3FCED2| |88A72933B92B9CAE7FED79951957DEEF0C263E01980EB9AED3951AA47C9F5284B3D| |CA628FF21F218CF036| |-------------------------------------------------------------------| Updated build for i19. Ended up going with the Cardiac alpha so I can spam my AoEs with wild abandon. Hooray!

Feedback/adoration/scorn welcome.

VI: Dark Miasma

Yes yes I know it’s Magic Missile, god, shutupshutupshutup. Yes so okay. It’s interesting that I’m doing this guide so late, as I’ve been playing Dark Miasma for basically forever.

How long? Long enough that daddy doesn’t want to talk about what it was like back then, don’t drive daddy back to the liquor, stop asking questions baby please. FORTUNATELY, somewhere along the line I discovered corruptors (I am the Columbus of Archetypes, you see) and I realised just how much more awesome Dark Miasma really could be. Protip: SO AWESOME.

See, here’s the thing. My raving, frothing-at-the-mouth distaste for Defenders aside, this set really does shine on Corruptors because they have the offense to take advantage of all the defence that DM brings. But if you –really- want to play it on a Defender that is okay. I guess. Maybe. But don’t expect me to like it.

Without further ado:

Why Dark Miasma Rocks The ******* House:

• Massive –tohit debuffs

• Lots of control through fear, stun and hold

• Delicious –slow –res AoE patch

• A pet which does bunches of stuff for you so you can slack and no one will notice

• Brings a lot of support to a team by just doing your thing, no clicky clicky buffs to maintain on the team

• Defensive powerhouse, allowing you to focus on blastyness

• Represents the eternal darkness of your tortured soul because you received insufficient quantities of Hug as a child.

• Maybe you were an ugly baby? I don’t know.

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Twilight Grasp: foe -dmg (all) -tohit -regen PBAoE ally heal Slotting Recommendation: You want good healing and accuracy values for this. This is because it has to hit when you need it to and the animation is slow enough that you want it to count when it goes off. Touch of the Nictus is a great set for this because you can frankenslot it with other heal sets and get great values. How To Use: Offensively: While it is primarily a heal, the debuff is great. Spamming it on an AV will debuff their regen a little but its more about the -damage. It’s also worthwhile to chuck on a rampant boss to debuff their damage and tohit. If the boss already has Darkest Night on them, hitting them with TG is just cruel. And by cruel, I mean hell of awesome and also great. But still a little cruel. Just because no one needs healing doesn’t mean you should neglect TG. Defensively: To keep yourself and your team mates alive. TG does have a tohit check -and- the animation is kindof slow, but the upside of this is that it heals like uh, a..heal…train? I don’t know, whatever. At 50 it will heal for about as much as Cauterize but in AoE. Delightful. Hitting a boss once or twice with this, especially if they’re already under DN means you can bust out the RDLV Seizure right in front of their faces and there is nothing they can do about it. That’ll learn ‘em.

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Tar Patch: targeted AoE –speed -fly -res (all) Slotting Recommendation: Max out the recharge. If you want to enhance the slow you only need 1 or 2 enhancies to do so, so that’s nice. I personally didn’t bother because stuff dies fast enough that things skedaddling off the patch like they’re Benny Hill isn’t much of an issue. Unless they’re War Wolves. In which case there is nothing you can do but sigh and reach for your Petrifying Gaze button. Mmmmmmrooooooownnnn. Scary. How to Use: Offensively: Drop under a spawn so they melt faster. And my, how they will melt. A spawn with Tar Patch under it will burn at all ends, they will not last the night; but ah, my foes, and oh, my friends--It gives a HELLISH LIGHT Muahahahhaha! Wait, where was I? Oh, yes. :3 *ahem* Defensively: Dropping it under a spawn not only means they go tubby-bye-byes in a hurry but also that anything trying to get into melee to smash face will do so at a glacial pace so you may dismantle them at your leisure. That’s leh-sure, by the way, not lee-sure. Thank you please come again. (That is not what she said)

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Darkest Night: foe based toggle, AoE -tohit -damage (all) Slotting Recommendation: Get good values for -tohit debuff and endurance reduction. While DN doesn’t eat as much endurance as say, the Radiation toggles, it does add up. I went with a set of Dark Watcher’s Despair because it gives good values and bonuses for few slots. Das pas waarde voor je geld, man. How to Use: Offensively: Ev ev ev every day I’m DN-pullin’, every day I’m DN-pullin’. Chuck it on a dude, back off and warm up your larynx for the maniacal cackling as they all run towards you where they will bunch up to be annihilated. Yaaaaay. The (sadly unenhanceable) damage debuff is also sizeable, so if I’m not using this to pull pretties into my web of destruction I’ll probably chuck it on a boss to make them hit less hard and often. Defensively: To make a spawn hit like kittens and make them go down like… wait, what, no. Okay, let’s start again. If slotted DN is on a spawn, their hit rate will go down the toilet and whatever hits do get through won’t hit hard at all. The biggest baddie in a given spawn is generally the best choice to put DN on because a) they probably hit the hardest so yay damage debuff and 2: they’re likely to live longest so the debuff gets the most use.

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Howling Twilight: targeted AoE foe stun, slow, –rech, minor damage (negative) -regen, ally rez Slotting Recommendation: While the stun duration (relative to the recharge of the power) is nothing to write home about, this power is a great set mule with the added bonus of being deserving of the enhancing it gets from the sets. I went with Absolute Amazements in mine because it makes the stun last MUCH longer, gives great recharge values and the -tohit proc is actually not garbage in Howling Twilight! INCREDIBLE! How to Use: Offensively: To stun a spawn. Unlike most rezzes which are only useful when, y’know, someone needs rezzing, Howling Twilight is almost always awesome. The stun will instantly neutralize a spawn for more than enough time to burn them down. It also has a sizeable -regen debuff attached, same amount as Benumb, Lingering Radiation and Heat Exhaustion. The downside is it has a longer recharge than those powers, but still be sure to use it against AVs for the debuff. Twilight Grasp also has -regen but 1/10 of the strength of HT. Defensively: As a stun. Har. Okay, okay, maybe a little as a rez sometimes I guess. Seriously about the stun though, if another spawn is aggroed Howling is a great panic button to deal with it. Neuter the first spawn with Fearsome Stare, emasculate the second with Howling Twilight. Feels good, man. Well, not for them. But they’re AI so who cares what they think. At least, until the Robot Revolt turns violent, but we’ve got some time before then.

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Shadowfall: PBAoE +def (all) +res (energy, negative energy, psy) +stealth Slotting Recommendation: Enhance for defense and end rdx first and foremost. The defense applies to all types and will stack with whatever other defense is floating around for you and/or your team. The Psy resist shouldn't be ignored though, since only a few armour sets provide psy res and there are some fights (Psionic CWK) where it's very useful. How to Use: Offensively: Not really. Defensively: Run in conjunction with another stealth for full invis so you can get the drop on spawns as well as positioning yourself well for your cones/AoEs. I generally run this all the time even if not fighting heavy psy/neg/nrg damage dealing enemies just because stealth is really handy. If you are fighting primarily psy/negative dealing enemies whatever lolmelee is attempting to take point will probably appreciate the added resistances. Especially against something like Numina/Sister Psyche/the Clockwork King. Oh, also make sure to run it when freeing Sister Solaris. Don’t turn it off, ESPECIALLY when she is freed. Trust me, people will love you for it*

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Fearsome Stare: Cone fear -tohit Slotting Recommendation: The fear duration/recharge/tohit debuff on this are already pretty decent at base, so imo it comes down to set bonuses. I went with 4 Cloud Senses with the proc for the recharge bonus and a tohit/end/rech from Siphon Insight. Why go with tohit debuff sets rather than say, Glimpse of the Abyss? Because while Fear is yummy, the base duration on FS is fine, fear gets broken fast and the –tohit on Fearsome Stare is huge. 15% huge (which, dear reader, is the same as Darkest Night and 3x as much as Twilight Grasp). Enhancing the –tohit will do much more for your survivability than the fear. How to use: The way Fearsome Stare works there’s a lot of overlap when using it offensively vs defensively so I’m not gonna break it down. Hit a spawn with it when you’re jumping in to minimize any alpha-strike sass when you unload Fireball/Rain of Fire. Which you have, because you’re fire/dm, right? Yeah, that’s right. I thought so. Using Fearsome Stare proactively like this will drastically lower the incoming damage and is less fiddly than Darkest Night if you’re on a fast moving team. Since it recharges faster and has a large AoE than Howling Twilight, this should be your first panic button. If a second spawn is aggroed, FS, bam, threat neutralised. Unless someone goes and attacks them. Which should totally be you, fyi. Get stuck in with your AoEs. Rawr. Even if there is so much damage flying around the fear will never stick for more than a second or two, still throw this out for the tohit debuff. One important thing to note is that the cone is rather large. And when I say rather large, I mean absolutely hufuckingmongous. Even moreso if you’ve got it enhanced for range from set IOs. This means if you’re too close to the spawn you’re using it on, you may catch one or two dudes from the next spawn over. Not a big deal as whatever it tags will be feared and debuffed, but worth being mindful of.

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Petrifying Gaze: foe hold Slotting Recommendation: The hold/rech values on this are pretty poopy at base so if you plan on making any serious use of it be sure to enhance them well (as well as Accuracy). I went with a set of Unbreakable Constraints mostly for the set bonuses but justified by the fact that when I do use PG, I want it to be good. How to use: Similar deal as FS, not breaking this one down. If this bothers you feel free to copy and paste this segment into a Word document, arbitrarily divide it and then continue to read. The animation on this is not glacial, but its slow enough that I rarely use it, especially given the huge amount of mitigation in the rest of DM. I mostly use it to hold a troublesome mob like a lt, sapper or wolf that insists on zooming around like a turbocharged Audi r32. If a mob is dangerous enough that you don’t want to just debuff its tohit and take your chances, use PG: It can also come in handy to make your DN anchor sit still.

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Black Hole: AoE foe intangible Slotting Recommendation: Don’t. If you don’t take this, you can’t slot it and then everyone wins. How to use: Don’t. See above. Enemy phases are of limited utility to begin with, but this one being AoE makes it much more so plus a bunch. Unlike a Sonic or FFer, you can’t just phase one troublesome target without phasing all his buddies too. Any time you would need Black Hole, Fearsome Stare or Howling Twilight would be better and still let you kill the enemies. Please, don’t take Black Hole.

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Dark Servant: summon Dark Servant pet Unlike say, a Fire Imp, the Dark Servant has a bunch of powers that do a bunch of things so I’ll list them below. Quote: • Tenebrous Tentacles: Cone immobilize -tohit minor negative DoT • Chill of the Night: PBAoE -tohit minor negative damage • Twilight Grasp: Same as yours. • Darkest Night: Same as yours, funnily enough. • Petrifying Gaze: OH MY GOD WHAT IS GOING ON HERE** Slotting Recommendation: The Dark Servant can take a whole slew of sets, I went with Dark Watcher’s Despair because it affects all of his powers and the bonuses are nice. If you’ve got a spare slot, the Clouded Senses proc can be quite nice, but bear in mind it will only check on the Servant’s -tohit powers that have an accuracy check (TT, TG, CotN) In addition you want high accuracy in the pet, because DM has no -def and there’s no point having a pet who can do a bunch of stuff if it misses everything all the time. Unless you like to watch hopeless, pointless struggles. In which case go read a thread about building a tanker for damage. Ho ho ho. How to Use: Offensively: Given that the Servant has no melee or PBAoE powers except for its toggle, as you’re running around it will always be at range. Despite this, you can still use it offensively by summoning it into the middle of spawns. Its damage aura will debuff them, damage them and it will take the aggro for you so you can go nuts. Don’t worry about it dying, the Servant is surprisingly resilient with its -tohit coupled with your own. Defensively: Just summon it and go about your business. It’ll spam its powers leaving you more time to blast away. Its Twilight Grasp spam can keep you topped off if you stand next to it, but don’t rely on it to heal you when you need it. The Servant is about as intelligent as a Scrapper, with the upside of at least having powers that help the team. Oh man, I’ve been dogging on the melees hard recently. Good times.

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How to Not Be Awful: • DN pulls DN pulls DN pulls. Dark Miasma profits so, so much from good pulls with Darkest Night. The hefty tohit debuff means a lot of the fire that will come your way will miss, and the damage debuff means whatever does get through won’t hit too hard. Unless you use it to pull like, a spawn full of 54 Praefectus. In which case, you have balls. I like your balls. Pull stuff to a corner with DN, lay down Tar Patch, hit them with Fearsome to ensure minimal sass then proceed to show them what time it is. (Hint: IT IS THE INFAMOUS GO TIME) • Twilight Grasp used to have a suuuuuper slow animation, but it’s still on the slow side. If you wait until you’re at really low health to hit it you’re probably still gonna get smooshed. I generally hit it when I’m at 1/2-3/4 health to stay topped off. Same for healing team mates with it. • Speaking of Twilight Grasp, I sometimes use it even if I don’t need the heal, because of its tohit/damage debuff. Very nice on bosses. Spam on AVs for the -regen. Rejoice in a power that does all kinds of stuff and does it well. Laugh at powers that do only one thing and do it badly. Haha, Repel. • If you only ever use Howling Twilight as a rez you’re wasting it 90% of the time. Even if it is super ******* epic when you rez like 3 or more people at once. (So epic). It’s great big honking stun. So unless people are dying left and right and you’re likely to need it as a rez, use it as an AoE stun. Use it as a panic button when another spawn is aggroed. It will instantly take a whole bunch of dudes for its duration, which is pretty respectable if slotted for stun (good set mule to put Stupefys or Absolute Amazements) giving you more than enough time to take them apart. • When things are getting nasty, stand by the Servant. Its power spam (especially Twilight Grasp) makes it very resilient and you standing by it means you can heal it too. As long as it has enough accuracy to hit reliably the two of you will be very hard to take out. Conversely, if you’re always standing outside of its range you’ll be much squishier. • Against AVs your –tohit will be scaled down to near-uselessness, but the –damage components in Twilight Grasp and Darkest Night will not. Keeping DN up and spamming TG (which you should be doing anyway for the –regen) will make the do defender level damage. Haha. • While I mentioned it in the power, it bears repeating. The range on Fearsome Stare is huge. 70” huge, aka 10” less than a standard blast. If its within attacking range, its within Fearsome Stare range. If you’re right next to a spawn you might want to back up before hitting Fearsome to make sure you 1: tag the whole spawn 2: avoid tagging the spawn behind them. • Tar Patch is fairly easy to perma but still has a longer recharge than Sleet/Freezing Rain so exercise judgement in throwing it down. If a spawn lasts long enough for it to recharge while you’re still fighting, if there’s only a few dudes left its probably best to hold off on it so you can drop it under the next spawn. • Petrifying Gaze use. Yes, not a phenomenal hold, but still worth having. 2 hold and 2 rech IOs will be enough for you to keep a particularly nasty boss held. Or instantly taking a troublesome mob out of the fight.

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What Goes Well With Dark Miasma Well uh, not to be belabourin’ the point but I’m o’ the opinion that Fire Blast is the best for blastin’ with Dark Miasma. This is because o’ the large amount o’ defense that Dark is bringin’ to the table so all the offense that fire is workin’ in goes great. With Dark you’ll generally be wantin’ a blast set that brings a lot of firepower to the table. Ice is also worth considerin’ because *GASP* oh god I can’t do it anymore Phew. Intense. Okay, so where was I? Right, Ice. Less AoE damage than Fire, but brings good control with it. I personally don’t think you really need the extra control given how Dark is, but PG and Freeze Ray is not a bad combo. The Ice Storm slow would also stack with Tar Patch for maek happy fun shredded enemies tiem. The other blast set I’d recommend is Radiation. This is for several reasons. First of all, the –def goes great with Dark as Dark doesn’t have any and it’ll help your and the Servant’s stuff to hit. Also respectable AoE damage and Cosmic Burst will stack with Howling Twilight to stun a boss. While it fits thematically I would not recommend Dark Blast. The damage is butts and it brings utility you don't need because basically everything it can do Dark Miasma does better. I've also gotta give a nod to Sonic here, not because of any particular synergy with Dark Miasma, but just because its all-round very solid blast set. Very cheap on endurance, fast cast times on the Tier 1 and 2 blasts and the -res will stack with Tar Patch. I would however note that if you really want to make the most of Dark, pair it with a set that has boss AoE. So uh, Fire, Rad and uh, AR (I guess >.>)

How Silas Be Doin’ It

Observe:

My Setup

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Notes • Recharge. More recharge = more Tar Patch, more Fearsome Stare, more Howling Twilight. You want a lot of recharge. Not striiiiclty as much as I have since I wanted tonnes bozillions, I would say aim for 50% or so for a noticeable difference. • Accolades. More hp/end means you’ve got more breathing room for Twilight Grasp and increases your endurance recovery. Both great for dark, especially with an end heavy primary like Fire. • Since I use Howling Twilight as much more than a rez (and you should too, dood) I didn’t put it way off to the side. Keep it visible, use it often. So p. much do the opposite of what you do with your junk. • Power binds. Since Dark doesn’t have any shields, all I’ve got bound is Twilight Grasp bound to Q so its easy to hit.

My Build:

This is my current, i19 updated build.

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Went for recharge, recovery and as much hp as I could get. Dark Mastery is beyond awesome for Fire/Darks, especially with high recharge. Soul Drain is pretty much perma and should I die, bam, Soul Transfer and I'm back in the fight.

Disclaimers :

* : Incorrect.

** : Dude I do not even know hold me I’m scared

VII: Sonic Resonance

Okay so you guys know how FF is hugely effective but also super boring and lame? Yeah, totally. Okay so Sonic is like FF, except with resistance instead of defense and awesome instead of lame. Why yes, that is the raddest thing. That’s very astute of you, I’m impressed.

But Silas, I hear you cry, you are a guy who is known for saying all kinds of stuff all kinds of times, how do we know this is a time when you’re not saying stuff that is totally wrong?

WELL I NEVER. I speak 100% truth, all the time, every time. To suggest otherwise is as offensive as well, most of the other stuff I say. But I will indulge you, dear reader. Behold!

Why Sonic Resonance is Awesome and Anyone Who Says Otherwise Is A Butt:

• That’s right, a butt. I don’t take any guff from these swine, man.

• Defense buffs are ridiculously easy to come by but resistance ones are not, this makes sonic especially valuable because…

• Sonic buffs resistance bunches. Assuming you don’t fail at shielding (a ...generous assumption but let us continue for the sake of argument) you can be giving the melee (gross!) types about 23% resistance and the squishies 40%. This is hella good and also sweet.

• As well as buffing team resistance a bunch, you also debuff the enemies resistances a bunch.

• Mez protection and resistance for you and your closest friends. Awwwww :3

• Powerful large AoE debuff/control power. More on this later. (oooh, suspense!)

• A single target (therefore not terrible by default!) enemy phase power for instantly nullifying large threats. Also harassing blasters in RV.

• Low maintenance team resistance buffing set

AND SO:

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Sonic Siphon: foe -res (all) Slotting Recommendation: 2 accuracy, 2 recharges. You want this to hit and you want it to recharge fast. An end rdx if you want. How to Use: To debuff resistance, dood. Use at the start of your attack chain, spam on tough targets. Bear in mind that while the duration is much longer than the recharge it does not self-stack, so once you’ve already hit one target with it hit another when it recharges. Don’t only use it once a fight on your target then go about your business. The more you spread this around the more stuff dies and lo did the people rejoice. There’s generally a lot of AoE -res flying around on teams, and some even from you as a sonic, but single target -res debuffs are relatively rare. The short recharge gives you a versatility that isn’t present with the AoE -res debuffs.

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Sonic Barrier: ally +res(smashing, lethal, toxic) Slotting Recommendation: Max out the resistance values and get a reasonable amount of endurance reduction. You want the shields to mitigate as much damage as they can, but buffing an entire team every 3-4 minutes can put a real hurting on your blue bar so getting good end rdx values are a must. In terms of sets Titanium Coatings and Impervium Armours are good because both +hp and +recovery are very handy for a sonic. How to Use: Target ally, buff ally, everyone around ally gets buffed too, go about your business. This and Haven mitigate a lot of damage so keep them up. They animate fast and recharge faster so there’s no excuse. NO EXCUSE

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Sonic Haven: ally +res(fire, cold, energy, negative energy) Slotting Recommendation: Same as Barrier. You can’t really skimp on the resistance values of either of these because Barrier protects against one of the most common damage types (smashing) and Haven protects against the other (energy). Plus Haven has all the exotic damage types. Invulns will love you. How to Use: Same as Barrier. Man, this kind of thing makes my job so easy. Not needing to think++

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Sonic Cage: awww man what I have to explain a bunch of stuff for this one, my past extravances have caught up with me at last :C Okay, okay. Fine. Its an enemy phase. You know how Hibernate and Phase Shift make it so the bad men can’t touch you any more? It does that to a single enemy. But Silas, what the hell I mean really what that is terrible why would I want to do that when with an enemy it is ME who is the bad man. Well, I say, shut your face and keep reading. Slotting Recommendation: This only takes acc/end/rech/range and of those only accuracy is really important. This is because at base the duration matches the recharge so once you’ve got global recharge and/or Hasten in the picture its not an issue because you’re not generally going to want to have more than 1 thing Caged to begin with. What is interesting to note is that acc/mez HOs will enhance the mag of the phase. I’m not sure what Mag you need to phase a +3 or +4 AV, I was able to do it with 2 lvl 50 HOs so about mag 8/9. I’ve since upgraded them because well why not and more accuracy is good times. That said… How to Use: Sonic Cage is a tricky one. While hitting something with it does instantly take it out commission for 30 seconds which can be a lifesaver, you also can’t affect the target in any way. So unless you don’t need to smash the target for at least 30 seconds, don’t Cage it. Though something being Caged when you want to kick it in the head is a minor inconvenience at most, its fairly irritating. That in conjunction with Cage only really being useful in a few fringe cases means if you’re not sure, don’t use it. Quote: Caging Stuff For Fun and Profit: The fringe cases. The RSF (maybe STF too?) and ITF. Both have AV-level baddies that are worth taking out of the fight for 30 seconds without hampering the progress of the team. Caging Romulus’ Nicti on an ITF can be very useful. Here’s a diagram to show which fluffy bundle of love does what. Teams with a fair amount of buffing/debuffing or not a lot of damage, I cage the Healing Nictus so Romulus dies faster. On teams without a lot of buffing/debuffing where people are taking a lot of damage, I cage the Mire Nictus. I never bother with the Summoning Nictus because it’s not a big threat and more targets = bigger Heat Losses, Fulcrum Shifts, Soul Drains and other delicious things. On RSFs, it can come in handy because there are several times when you’re fighting a bunch of Heroes at once and being able to take one out of the equation is great. Cage whoever is a)not the current target and not going to be the next target and b)would otherwise be a threat. As in, caging Manticore is generally a waste of time. If you’re doing a speed run, (especially with nukes/shivans), keeping Valkyrie caged to ensure she dies last can be very helpful. In the final fight, Statesman. He hits ludicrously hard and usually can’t be taken out until Unstoppable drops. Bam, Cage, no more States smashing people to bits. BaBs and Citadel are also good targets to Cage because they hit pretty hard too. Most importantly, make sure whoever you’re Caging isn’t going to be the target for the next 30 seconds.

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Disruption Field: ally PBAoE –res Slotting Recommendation: 2-3 end redux. This thing eats a tonne of endurance. How to Use: chuck on an ally. Everything around them gets resistance debuffed. What’s rad is that aggroed by this gets cranky at whoever the toggle is on, not you. What’s not rad is that this is an offensive toggle and so gets turned off if you go out of range (about 100yds). So due to the way maps in this game are built, every time you or the ally go into an elevator Disruption shuts off. It can be pretty irritating on maps with a lot of elevators but it is worth it.

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Sonic Dispersion: PBAoE +res(all) +protection (hold, immobilise, stun) Slotting Recommendation: Similar to Haven and Barrier, but more important to get good endurance reduction since you'll be running this all the time. Make sure the resistance is maxed out because this in conjunction with whatever APP/PPP shield you get can give you pretty respectable resistances. How to Use: Turn on, profit. Pretty straight-forward. Everything around you gets resistances and mez protection. This is great because you can hang back in the backlines and make the squishies tougher and mez-protected. Which is awesome. Don't worry too much about keeping all the squishies in its range because of Clarity, just try to position yourself sorta-centrally to the team.

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Sonic Repulsion: ally PBAoE foe KB Slotting Recommendation: man do not even How to Use: Don’t. It’s a turd. It uses a lot of endurance to do a thing no one wants done. Its totally counterproductive to Disruption Field. Skip it, don’t look back.

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Clarity: ally +resistance (hold, sleep, stun, immobilise, fear, confuse) +perception Slotting Recommendation: Just an endurance reduction, really. It’s fine with a single slot. How to Use: Since Sonic Dispersion already provides protection against holds/stuns/immobs the usefulness of Clarity is diminished. However, if the team is running around a lot so they’re not going to be in range, Clarity is worth throwing out. While Fear and Confuse are fairly rare Clarity does come in handy for those times.

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Liquefy: location AoE -tohit, -defense, foe hold, minor DoT, knockdown Slotting Recommendation: This is a tricky one. Liquefy does a bunch of cool stuff which you want to enhance, but it also takes like 20 years to recharge so you want to max that out too. The hold and damage components are really pretty negligible so you can ignore them, it’s the -tohit and -def debuffs that are secksi. Personally I think it comes down to personal preference/build which you choose to go for. I went with Dark Watchers and an Achilles -res proc. Hami-Os are also a good option for this power, uhhhh, Lysosomes I think. Gotta emphasize maxing out the recharge again though, this badboy takes an eternity to recharge because of retarded power balance formulas, yay. How to Use: Throw it under nasty stuff. It’ll mitigate a fair amount of damage as well as making the stuff hit by it die faster (especially if you’ve got the Achilles proc in there, which you should do. Don’t make me come over there.) The recharge is long enough that you don’t want to throw it out on stuff that’s about to die because it’ll be a waste, but it’s an all-round handy enough power that you want to throw it out as much as you can. Search your soul and find the middle ground between these two paths. Godspeed, man.

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How to Not Be Awful: • Keep shields up. Not hard, make team strong like mountain. Silas not want hear excuses. I’ve got them bound to G and H which is clearly the absolute best thing to do, because I did it that way. • If you’re fighting stuff like Rikti (mainly just Rikti, tee bee aych) that has Sleeps aplenty, throw out Clarity on the squishies in your buffing cycle because Dispersion doesn’t protect against it. If you get slept well then haha sucks to be you. Or hit a break free. Equally viable tactics. • Sonic is all about resistance, either buffing or debuffing. You want to be on the ball about both. As such, don’t neglect throwing out Siphon because you’re chasing teammates all over the map to shield them, just throw out the shields on people as you have time. What I usually do is buff between spawns, while my AoEs/Liquefy/Siphon are recharging. • Do something about endurance consumption. Sonic sucky sucky your endurance long time. Especially if you pair it with an endurance intensive primary (like most controller primaries or Fire Blast). Options: Conserve Power, Power Sink, +recovery bonuses (about 20+% should do the trick along with decent end reduction), latching onto a kin and nevernevernever letting go, there are a lot of things you can do. Just, you know, do something otherwise it’ll be agony. I personally got CP and +recovery bonuses (in addition to accolades to boost endurance so the recovery bonuses work off a higher base) • Funhouse by Pink is a godawful song and if you like it I hate you so, so much. Especially if you like it enough to buy it therefore making radio people think it’s a great song to play and goddddd this is the 3rd time it is playing today make it stoppppp ; _ ; • Okay so I know sonic is all about resistance but I’ve gotta stress that you also do your fair share of stuff-deadening. Not much point throwing out a tonne of -res if you never take advantage of it yourself too. Especially since you can (and should) take it upon yourself to Siphon big nasties and kill them. Pchew pchew. • Practice situational awareness for Siphon. While it recharges fast so throwing it on the wrong dude is not a big deal, it is worth prioritizing what needs to go splat first. • Protip: if you take Sonic Cage at 41 or below, hilarity ensues if you go into Warburg with a friend, drop team, Cage them and run away giggling. :3 • Live on time, emit no evil. Well, okay, maybe a little evil is okay.

How Silas Be Doing It:

Behold!

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Notes • Accolades. Awesome in general but especially so on squishies and especially especially on sonic because the increased end helps with the end costs and the hp layers well on top of the resistance you get from Dispersion/APP/PPP shields to make you less likely to get splattered. • I do have Power Sink and Conserve Power, but tbh if I ever think of something I want instead of PS I’m dropping it. I never use it, my recovery and CP are more than enough to keep me going.

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What Goes Well With Sonic: I personally went with fire because fwoomf stuff dies awesome. The high ST and AoE damage works well with your -res, so you bring a lot of offence and defence to a team. Buuuut very end heavy. Sonic Blast is a good option, since its very light on endurance and all the -res stacks. Your res debuffs from Siphon/your blasts will also help out with keeping the team from getting mauled if there is someone with damage debuffs on the team because of how -dam and -res work. Damage debuffs are more effective if a target has its resistances debuffed. Another good option would be rad, since you can put Achilles procs in the AoEs so you’re bringing a lot of -res and -def to the team. Its also fairly light on endurance. Endurance consumption is something to bear in mind when picking a primary because of how end-heavy Sonic is (even moreso if you can’t/won’t get your grubby mitts on a Numina +/+ or a Miracle +rec)

My Build:

Here's my current i19 updated build. Went for more recharge and softcapped smashing/lethal defenses.

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Quote:

Ways It Could Be Improved: Endurance use, mainly. You can burn through your blue pretty fast running Disruption Field and spamming your AoEs. I've solved this with the Cardiac Alpha, but its something to bear in mind.

So there it is. Sonic stuff.
Go forth and shout at dudes

Trick Arrows, dood. Another one of those hardcore offensive debuffy sets where you keep the team from getting smooshed by debuffing and blowing the would-be smoosher to bits. Awesome as hell.

Fair warning though, TA is very nuanced and tricky (hardeeharhar) and generally people won’t be super aware of what you’re doing so if you love feeling sorry for yourself and making passive aggressive comments in team chat then AWESOME! You won’t find much praise for your efforts running a Trick Arrows, but you’re not doing this for praise, are you? You should be doing this because Trick Arrows rocks the goddamned house and destroys stuff real good. If you want praise for your efforts, go moderate an in-game channel.

…
Bwahahaha. Oh man, awesome.

Seriously though. Without further ado:

Why Trick Arrows is Great and You Want to Sleep With One:

• Um okay dude first of all I do not know what your deal is but I wouldn’t recommend you do that, these things explode and stuff. Unwise.

• If you just want to play a Trick Arrows, then I can help you. Check this out, my droogs:

o Awesome AoE debuffs to neuter spawns and make them real tender for the killings

o High AoE damage and debuff power which is totally awesome, even if it doesn’t work 100% of the time. It still works almost always you guys, discouraged is not a thing you should be.

o Fast recharging AoE -res and -def debuffs

o Lots of control (most notably in the form of a HUGE AoE hold and -regen)

o Great thematic pairing with Archery (which happens to rock butts)

o The sticks are so pointy.

o Unlike Dark or Rad where stuff isn’t debuffed as soon as they run out of the DN/RI/EF radius, almost all of the TA debuffs are persistent due to their click nature. Hit something with a TA debuff, bam, its debuffed for the duration. End of story. This provides an immense amount of versatility.

o Lots of delicious proc oppertunities.

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So hurry up and post a new one for Humor Judgment.

VERY Glad you posted this in guides section so more than just Champion can learn how to play support toons

One thing, the "Flow Chart of Greatness" in the kin section is actually a pic to the setup of your pain corr

t Ecnat, Yeah, great, thanks.

t SonicBang, Ah, so it is. Whoops. Thanks for pointing that out. Probably happened when I was copy-pasting the links over and over to get the code standardized but forgot to change the actual link :P

Great guides! +Rep for you!



Havin seen what cold domination can do to romans ive always wanted to make one but ive never gotten around to it, thx for the push. He will be shown much love and purples. (is also a +rech junkie )


Also, how much ranged defense do you think would suffice?
I kno soft capping would be stupid so im inclined to think 25% will do.

Member of the Stoned Templars

{|-|} Easy Kills {|-|} A&TC {|-|}

Kahlans cold is (as he says) softcapped and its an absolute beast. I wouldn't say building for softcap defense is stupid, just not strictly necessary.

That said, building for defense on squishies is always a pretty viable option, especially if you die a lot. I generally don't, so I didn't bother and just went full-throttle recharge

Edit: Bud, I know you're mostly a brute/scrapper player, so building for high/softcap def as well as recharge might help you feel not quite so squishy.

I honestly thought that it would gimp my +rech too much and that i would have to take some wierd powers to do so but i guess i dont really need 100%+ and hasten.

Thx Kahlan, for making me feel the fool, yet again!

Member of the Stoned Templars

{|-|} Easy Kills {|-|} A&TC {|-|}

Radiation Guide added, Dark Guide to come this week.

no love for traps

Ehhhhh not really, no :s

I used to have a fire/traps corr when PGT was hilariously broken but its since been deleted. I've been thinking about rolling up a Storm and/or another traps (Storm being more likely of the two) I just don't really like traps that much.

Its great at what it does, I just find for me what it does is very awkward on most teams and not worth the time. I'll poke around in Mids and see if anything inspires me

Just thought I'd pop in and say how I'm loving these guides. Each one makes me wanna make a new alt, I'm laughing all the way through them, and I keep checking back to see if any more have been posted. Ve'y nice work, squire!

Very entertaining guides, with useful information.

I'll offer my thoughts on a few of the powers, particularly with reference heroside where some teams don't have such great damage output;

Ice
Snow Storm - I found this somewhat more useful then Silas did, both for spawn pulling (as he mentions for the Rad toggles) and to keep critters corralled in Sleet longer if the team isn't super fast taking them down.

Kin
Increase Density - This power actually has pretty decent resist values, higher then scrapper armors, at least for Smash/Energy which are fairly common. If, and only if, you have slots to spare consider slotting it up for that time when you need to let a blaster tank, say.

Siphon Power - Once fulcrum shift replaces it against spawns, this gets most of its use against AVs. After stacking them, it reduces their damage output substantially, which can be handy for lightweight tanks. Plus with only one target to work with, its pretty efficient damage stacking for your damage dealers.

Rad
Rad Infection - I definitely suggest tohit debuff slotting priority over defdebuff, if well used its like granting SR level defenses to the whole team. Not as good against AVs any more, since they resist debuffs so strongly, but much much safer for doing spawn debuff pulls then Enervating Field, both because they'll do less damage to you and because they'll miss on more mezzes against you. Although its slow to animate, the timing works out well if you have a good rythem with the tank and start it as they start running in.

Lingering Radiation - Handy to keep in reserve if another spawn aggros, since often your toggle debuffs are tied up on the main threat. That lets you reduce their threat substantially, though note they'll still get a ranged alpha off on you.

t Scientist,

Yeah, Snow Storm does have its uses. I tried the toggle pulling thing with it and while it does work, if its slotted for slow it'll make doing so a hassle and potentially very messy. If you frequently are on slow-moving teams and you want the power for concept/sets/whatever then its definitely not a bad pick, it just wasn't for me.

The smashing/energy resistances on ID are pretty sizeable and those are 2 of the most common damage types encountered. That said, I had other things which needed slots more. If you have a slot or two floating around that you don't have somewhere more urgent to put them, ID can make good use of them. I just find the way I use it the default slot was more than enough.

You're totally right about Siphon Power, the damage debuff is quite nice against AVs. Depending on team composition however, I might skimp on its use because there are more important things I need to be spamming like attacks/transference/fusion/SBs/FS. On a team that doesn't have a dark or a cold or a rad debuffing damage I generally do try to work it into my chain for AVs.

Your point about using LR as a backup button to reduce threat is a good one, it does come in handy used like that.

Thanks for the input

Loved the guides, one of the more entertaining reads I've done. Great work, looking forward to the other ones.

Dark Miasma guide added. Let me know what you guys think