Earth / Cold Mids build, looking for suggestions

I went for broke in putting together an Earth / Cold / Stone build, ignoring the budget and aiming for good recharge and good defense totals. I'd be happy to receive feedback about probable influence / merit costs and about overall effectiveness for PvE team and solo play, mostly for TFs and cooperative missions.

Here's the data chunk that can be copied into Mids, for review ...

| Copy & Paste this data into Mids' Hero Designer to view the build |
|-------------------------------------------------------------------|
|MxDz;1419;708;1416;HEX;|
|78DAA593C76E13511486EFB8C4718B4B7A71E234ECC4C4C4A2C3028914888883455|
|0568035C4936484993133130904825096ACA8ABD096F00010780D9A8047A0C38695|
|39E53A89C49291FD7F778EFF7BCEF12DF9F3E32121560E08253A56566DBB38661A8|
|E6596CB9AE5CDAB8BFA7CC38C69394B9A6524C7AD65BDE4134224373C357B764205|
|57EDAD6793E1E0F2C24276CC2C978AE3E659DD501DDD3462530664D40C275B1B840|
|A262499D41D43B3ED00BDCC5634AD14A1E1B4A69634CB5ED22B41F695F5C525273E|
|51D1E7B3B38E6968C5BC6A3B9A75A10DBA1B82EF2545C8A7EA11132E2172C235C93|
|844F01C664C11CE8437D95D6E211222E0263479095D1E461DE12264E70255AFB22A|
|3043FD03C64342FC11A1E531E309A10C45DC3CCBE56E5630541725B435112E837AD|
|9A0789FB1E1290356DD4715ABC297A66C7D10F27348F167281460AC403428BB0B5E|
|A1F9A115C65542C335C67542F406C107F9C2B244788E4206341C910D47B8E12877D|
|ACF7D63BA181BDCB1355AC9F87342F74BC2F00B423DE46E94BD3626A9C92646054A|
|34F32FEE662ED1CDB947B8D248AB822B1E830CADEC73B5A22FC58B9612035102FEA|
|576B983EDAF5D38A7E30DE32DA1F71DE33DE11CD4ED64BBE8E465F34389842C91F8|
|C4FFE22361E0030197AB47AE6BCF370A257F30BE337E127A7F13FA7F112CA8D4271|
|BEBE333D5CF8769808F564A210CF3D1B2C13E4887ABEA1DBC4B19B6DC61DC66DC22|
|A4EE33EE113EC3DCB42C92DE4EA1A11D8C9D8C5DBC1FBB097FE0C667A43D93A2D0D|
|634639891218C0C11BE42F6ACB46767685BB6E51947180542EE28E10BD847E5428E|
|F22EE6786B73BCB55D9EF5DB061F78C4F43F918267FD8A098522890DCF7F3D6BA15|
|A1EFFB100E8719402883287A3132827F1F5148E541C9D4699C7D7EAABF5D9913DD8|
|D05E947D28FB516EA2C987B72F88124209A334A04450A2288D282D281D28AB28D5B|
|FDF0403B7|
|-------------------------------------------------------------------|

Your build looks pretty good, if expensive. You put a lot of effort into getting your defenses up, but you don't cap anything. Still, I'm sure that with all your other controls, that would really take the edge off and let you be more aggressive. The main issue with your build might be endurance. Your endurance reduction is kinda low in your toggles. Still, 24% isn't much worse than running generics with a single SO. But then again you didn't 3-slot stamina. It could be an issue, but considering your goals, I don't see anywhere to save slots without impacting your other goals.

That Stalagmites slotting always makes me nervous. I mean, I see that you wanted the blend of recharge and defense, and with the defenses you've got, losing 3 seconds of stun time isn't terrible. Still that kind of thing irks me. But, I know its livable. My Fire/Kin lives with a 5-slotted stupefy (and a recharge in the 6th). Just typing as I think. Its fine really.

Your Benumb is unslotted. i find that irritating. Still, if you really acquire that much global accuracy (74%) and that much global recharge (97.5%) then I can see how that would be adequate. It might suck until you really achieve those numbers.

I don't like the fact that Stone Cages is missing from your build. You miss out on regular containment damage potential. You might consider replacing Stone Prison with Stone cages once you hit level 50. A full Trap of the Hunter set gives you 3.13 ranged defense, so you'd only lose 0.62% ranged defense. You'd also drop 2.19% energy/negative defense, but still, you'd have 18%. I think it would be worth considering, just to be able to get more frequent area containment. Maybe. It is something to think about.

I can see skipping Frostwork. I have it on my Fire/Cold, and its kinda "meh." I'm sure some people love getting extra hit points, but its pretty unsatisfying for me. Snow Storm is nice for the -recharge and the -slow, but you already have a lot of control, and you have -slow in Quicksand. Therefore, I can totally understand skipping these.

As for Hover, it would irritate me greatly to only have 68% fly speed in Hover. Why not switch this with Super Speed? Your universal set bonuses would still work in Super Speed. You've got Hasten already, and it'd give you a real (actually fast) travel power. You could buy a raptor pack for vertical travel, and in missions, you will be staying on the ground anyway, since Stalagmites and Fissure require that you be ground-bound.

I'm not sure if I overlooked anything, but these are my feeble thoughts. Maybe they will help, maybe not. You may have already discarded these ideas as uninteresting.

Lewis

Thank you for your feedback. Based on your observations about Stalagmites and Fissure, I changed Hover to Super Speed. Also, full invisibility can be quite helpful, which was another reason to swap. I also took your advice about Stone Prison, swapping it out for Stone Cages (and putting a full set of Trap of the Hunter into Stone Cages). Your points about the lost time in using Stalagmites are valid and relevant, but I like the added defense enough to tolerate the lost few seconds. I also swapped in another slow/range into quicksand, giving up a small recovery bonus to improve its casting range further.

I'm unconcerned about endurance. The buffs from Heat Loss are less than 15 seconds away from perma (at least in theory) when Hasten is active; also, Hasten is less than 10 seconds from being perma and I'll probably just put Hasten on auto-fire.

For added durability, Earthquake adds 14.5% "to hit" debuff to the mix, which even after "purple patch" reductions will nicely complement the defense totals that have been put together. Also, Earth's Embrace can be effectively perma with Hasten on auto-fire, and it should help to take the edge off burst damage that finds its way through. With full invisibility, I can go to the other side of spawns and have them engage Stony first, preserving my controller's green bar. Finally, status resistance is only 12.5%+, but that is still helpful. Overall, my sense is that this would be a reasonably durable build.

The new data chunk, after these changes ...

| Copy & Paste this data into Mids' Hero Designer to view the build |
|-------------------------------------------------------------------|
|MxDz;1419;709;1418;HEX;|
|78DAA593594F135114C7EF74A1D085B6D0B22FA52D52A8AD34EEFA60221425526CC|
|4F0A492B11DE8C43A5367864413175C1E7D720197F8057CF24DD1AFE116F523B8EB|
|8B4FF52C5320F1D149FBFFDD39F3BFE79CB9F74EE1E2A45F889543420A4D5465D35|
|C98D035CBD0AB55C57017E425B5D43AAB1B564531B4D8A4B1AC963D4288D8A6A761|
|CFE6657035EE06B7180E2F2F2E6627F46A7961523FAF6AB2A5EA5A785A838C8A666|
|51B037F51872453AAA529A6E9A59BB99AA29483349C51E4B2629815B5E6635F555D|
|AA586DF99A5ACACE59BAA62C1464D3528C4B5DD0DD28FC2F4BC2BEEA2E917708911|
|38E29C61182EB28639A702EB0C5EE700AD12FBC4E42C44DE873319A0857203B17A8|
|BBA555093334AF311E10DA1E113A1E331E12AA50C4C9B31CCE28859A4284AE08E12|
|AA89B0D92FB191B9E3260D53D54B12E3C2981A138845A3824B5A429E465AC40D467|
|77E7BB46F3FD2B8CEB84D61B8C9B84D02D8207F205EC1281790A69D070D06E38C80|
|D87B8D304F78DE9C26C7086D76925DB9E13065E12C65E109A2177BBDD6B7B8C9A8C|
|306A5022CA4F9C512E31C0B9335C29D329E18A87214327FB1C9DD1AD8B96643BBE5|
|2B7BD83DDAF1D38A7E70DE32D61E81DE33DE102D4ED65BBE8E5654B78F00197E8FF|
|C46FF19190FC40C0E51AB4D775F01B85623F18DF193F0943BF09895F04032AC5EDC|
|6E27CA6127C98927CB44624C2181F2D13ECC374B8EAEEE1FB9461DB3DC65DC61DC2|
|C81A6395F019E6A6EC22A99D141ADDC5D8CDD8C3FBB197F007BEF8B46D4F8F50687|
|B8A31C6481332A384AF903D6BDBB3B3B4DC3B0A8C638C2221779CF005ECE3F65E8D|
|F326E578CB72BC577DAE8DAF0D7E7089997F2245D7C62726248AF46F7AFEEB5AF73|
|7F2B49CF0829E44298248F3383A85721A6FCFE048C6D1599412DED65F6DCC0EEEC3|
|86F6A31C403988721B4D1EFCFA7C287E94004A2B4A102584D28ED281D283F204A5F|
|E17F64B03D1|
|-------------------------------------------------------------------|

It looks good. I would never be able to afford it.

Lewis