Fitness-less Defenders?

What, if any, defender combos would you consider running Fitness-less?

Some time back I made a Cold/Dark defender. I figured that between Defenders' inherent Vigilance, Heat-loss at l32, and maybe Conserve Power with APPs, I'd be pretty well set to live a Fitness-less life if I stayed mainly in groups.

However, at 27, I'm beginning to wonder if it's worth the agony. I'm slotted heavily for end reduction with at least 1 on all my Cold Domination powers. (3 on Arctic Fog) I've been concentrating on AoE control effects from the Dark sel, and have slotted them for end reduction as well. However, I frequently never get to use them because I seem to go through my endurance using only my Cold Domination powers pretty darn skippy.

My survivability is also laughable. My AOE debuffs like Sleet and Snow Storm seem capable of peeling agro off of even the best tanks. If I'm close enough to keep the melee in my arctic fog radius, I usually have to live on greens and purples to deal single target damage.

If I were to stick it out another six levels until 32 and then slot Heat-loss for recharge, I could get it down to recharging in the neighborhood of 3 minutes. Being that I can exhaust a full bar of endurance on one group, without getting all the way through an attack chain, It doesn't seem like that will be adequate.

Either I'm doing something terribly wrong (other than assuming I can try to play a defender without Fitness) or the set is close to unplayable without Fitness.

It leaves me wondering what other people are doing with their defender builds. I've played a Sonic/Sonic to 50 without fitness, even soloing quite a bit, and it wasn't nearly so frustrating. Is Cold/Dark doable without fitness. Are any other defender combos doable without fitness?

I've never tried Cold without fitness, so I can't really comment, though I imagine the shields wouldn't help...

However, Kinetics is probably the standard "skip fitness" set. Transference at 26 means pretty much infinite endurance.

I skipped Fitness entirely on my Empathy Defender and I Hover constantly and run Leadership toggles. A combination of Vigilance being a global endurance reduction, slotting heals liberally with End Redux, and popping Recovery Aura when it comes up (which is pretty quick with Hasten and 3-recharge) keeps me pretty secure in the Endurance department. And my character is by no means a heal bot, I am attacking when I am not needed to actively heal people and I still do fine. It gets a little harder when there are other Defenders that do a better job keeping the team from taking damage, because Vigilance is less useful. But that's not really a problem because I'm not stretched as thin between healing and attacking.

That's kind of sad really. I've always thought that Defenders didn't really need fitness, but I think I got that impression from my Empathy defenders.

Just this last week I made a sonic/sonic defender, PL'd up to level 22, picked out my powers, avoided fitness... then I did my level 20 costume mission, and it was immediately clear to me that I'd made a big mistake. Granted, I hadn't really IO'd out the character yet, but endurance was going to be an issue regardless of how much reduction I slotted.

Ah well. Now I know. ^_^

I have two defenders that don't run Fitness, one is a Kin and the other is TA/Pointy sticks. With the Kin i did have it but specced it out around lvl 30 I think, once I had transference well slotted. With the TA I never bothered. She's a Hoverer but doesn't run leadership. Only time i do have any bother is after EMP Arrow but I also have Conserve power from the Ancillary which i pop at the same time as I EMP.

My 99% All Support Bubbler runs without Fitness. With only one attack, the first tier, and the rest all FF, Medicine, Teleportation, and Flight powers, there was no room, or point to it.

My emp is staminaless, and is my only defender at say 30 or higher without it.

I dont feel the necessity to grab it at 20, but usually pick it up between 20 and 30.

I skipped fitness on Doctor Love, one of my earliest characters, an emp/elec with a heavy emphasis on emp (chose elec for thematic reasons, hated it, didn't want to re-roll).

I haven't played him much/at all since the days when you could perma RA so I'm not sure how feasible it would be now, but I bet the invention system would be a big help there.

Hmm, maybe time to finally get him to 50 and do a respec...

I don't think any of my defenders have fitness except for my Sonics and FFs because of the big bubbles + leadership. (Every one of my defenders - and most of my controllers - have all three leadership toggles. They're pretty pricey, but manageable if you've got in-set endurance assistance, like AM/RA/Trans.)

I don't have a TA/ defender, but I'd imagine she'd be able to go staminaless since the TA stuff is pretty cheap and no heal means utilizing vigilance quite a lot.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dispari I don't know why Dink thinks she's not as sexy as Jay was. In 5 posts she's already upstaged his entire career.

Well, since I have Stamina on approximately 8 characters out of the 100+ I have, I can safely answer the question...

So far none of my defenders have fitness, and i attack a lot. so that is a emp/elec/elec level 50, a rad/rad at level 41, and i have 2 coming up, a dark/dark and cold/sonic, but they a e only at early 20s so i cant speak on that, the dark might not make it, toggles tend to make me more likely to take fitness. oddly i find controllers a to harder to go stamina-less, my ice/storm demanded fitness.

Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.

Technically you can run almost any AT without fitness. When I used to play EQ, my shaman had to sit for multiple minutes at a time to regenerate all of her mana -- so that's a viable way to play. I just don't consider it fun. I want my characters to be able to go non-stop, so I build nearly all of them with fitness. ^_^

Some of my scrappers have stamina + inherent recovery power (regen or willpower) + physical perfection. My MA/WP scrappers all have that, and need it.

I'm not a big fan of playing Defenders honestly, but the three I've played up 'til decent levels went along just fine without it.

Dark/Electric made it to 34 or so before I decided she'd work better conceptually as a Dark/Rad, who's back to level 24. Neither has nor really needs Stamina. I attack a lot with both. Don't get me wrong, the blue bar stays less than half full most of a mission on a team, but as long as I have SOME end it doesn't matter.

Also had a TA/A who made it to 23 before I frankly got bored with the concept and lost interest in the character. She was rarely ever even close to being out of end, unless something majorly hoggy in TA came later I had no plans to dip into Fitness. I have no idea what I'd drop to get it either.

Hmm, just realized that Swift is part of Fitness, isn't it? Okay, the Dark/Rad has Swift, just isn't bothering with anything else.

My emp never had fitness stuff until IOs hit. His are slotted for sets.

Kin/Elec defender, especially taking Elec Mastery and Power Sink.

No need for Fitness at all then theoretically but how much it would bring to the playability of the toon I don't know

"You got to dig it to dig it, you dig?"
Thelonious Monk

My Rad/Ice went without for a while, my Bubbler could probably do without as well.

My TA/Archery Defender is one of the few characters where I not only skipped Stamina, but didn't really feel any need to compensate for it with another source of recovery/endredux.

On the other end of the spectrum, my Rad/Rad burns through endurance like she's getting xp for killing it.