Cold defender vs. Radiation Emission defender

This is was touched on in another thread discussing buffs and debuffs. My personal opinion is that they are equally powerful yet very different power sets. I have a level 50 radiation emission defender and will someday soon despite altitis have a Cold defender at level 50. I do have an Ice/Cold corruptor but that's barking up a horse of a different color.

buffs are naturally better than debuffs on three counts; they are active prior to any attacks, they are active even through mez, and they aren't effected by the purple patch.

although when debuffs are active both sets are equal in most situations. As the enemy con goes higher though debuffs start to slack some compare to buffs in strength, but not by a lot.

You are, of course, aware that your statement there was not a categorical truth, correct? There are debuffs that have some of those same advantages. [Surveilance], for instance doesn't alert mobs, so is similar to applying a buff to a teammate. Also, what does mez have to do with it? There are many debuffs that are on click powers, and so won't be "turned off" by the player being mezzed.

Fallout. If you have someone willing to be Fallout bait, nothing a Defender can do will kill as fast as Radiation Emission. Aim + Soul Drain/Power Build Up + Vengeance (if you have it) + Fallout = one-shotted mob. Dedicated Fallout bait is rather hard to find, but it's awesome when someone volunteers. And strangely, both times I did it, they said they had more fun being blown up repeatedly than by actually playing.

Fallout beside, I've played lots of Rad, but little Cold, so I'm not going to comment much of Cold's strengths and weaknesses.

Rad is very strong solo and in teams. It plays pretty much the same in both situations (ignoring heavy-support based builds) except solo the rez and nuke are worthless. With some good anchor and mob management, you can keep the whole mob debuffed into mush. I haven't looked at my Defender's real numbers since I resubbed, so I don't remember my precise debuff values, but I do recall my Radiation Infection lowers To-Hit by about 50%. 45% drops them to the to-hit floor of 5%, so that's a little wiggle room to make up for any mob resists, higher cons, and AVs. Not a ton, mind you, but it helps. And I'm pretty sure I'm not at the ED cap for it either, though I'm really close if I'm not. And regardless, Rad's debuffs help immensely, so long as you're not going for +4s. And if you are, then you might as well ditch both the Rad and the Cold for an Emp and FF if you're that worried about debuff resistance.

Rad also can heal, something Cold needs to go into the medicine pool for. Stopping lots of damage is fine, but some will get through. And when it does, Rad just pops Radiant Aura on occasion to patch it up. Cold can't without Aid Self. Rad also boosts endurance recovery, damage, recharge, mez resistance, and more through Accelerate Metabolism from as early as level 2. Cold is much more buffy, with resistance, defense, stealth, +MaxHP, and more, including Heat Loss which pretty much lets you pretend your endurance bar doesn't exist. Rad also has a rez, for those moments when someone screws up (and someone will), and also EM Pulse, which is probably the best hold power in the game. Yeah, sure, it has that recovery crash, but its more accurate than a Controller's mass hold, does substantial sapping, and drops some pretty hefty debuffs. Between LR and EM Pulse (and careful end management), Rad can floor the regeneration of pretty much anything. Cold has -regen too, but I don't know how strong it is.

In PvP, if you're interested in that, Rad wins hands down. Buffs get DRed into crud under the current ruleset, so Cold's buffs suffer. And if you're solo PvP, which most is and most are built for (from my experience), those buffs are useless. Going by that, Cold has six usable PvP powers, four of which are actually feasible to use. If the enemy has any kind of mez, Snowstorm is useless because, without any substantial defense buffs or to-hit debuffs, it'll get shut off straight away (though if they don't have any, it's quite nice). Sleet is useless because aiming a locational AoE against super speed/super jump opponents on the constant move is near impossible and, once you miss, they have a very obvious spot to avoid. And all serious melee PvPers will have at least one ranged attack to use if you drop it at your feet (not to mention Taunt/Confront to keep you from shooting back). Infrigidate, Benumb, and Heat Loss are probably quite effective, but I don't know the recharge times. If they're long recharges, then that's not going to be so hot.

Rad has seven powers it can actually use in PvP, even on teams. Of those, five are feasible. EM Pulse's crash is too much of a liability, as is its recharge, and Choking Cloud ticks too slowly and just hogs endurance. Rad is able to safely employ its debuffs since Rad Infection provides -to hit, which makes landing mezzes to shut it off much more difficult. AM provides endurance and, most importantly, recharge and damage boosts. Radiant Aura can be used to self-heal, which is very important in a PvP scenario. Rad has more endurance issues in PvP since it needs to maintain two toggle debuffs, but those two debuffs are dang effective at protecting the Defender and making the opponent easier to kill.

Couldn't a PVPer just speed run/jump out of the range of the Rad toggles and run right back at you? Their range is really not that big (70ft). No out-ranging Infrigidate/Benumb/Heat Loss though.

On the topic of DR, I'm 90% sure that further buffs over the DR soft cap will act as a buffer against debuffs. I'm not positive though. It depends on if the math goes:
Buff - debuff = total(DR-ed)
or if it's:
Buff(DR-ed) - debuff(DR-ed) = total

Quote:

Originally Posted by Oedipus_Tex Couldn't a PVPer just speed run/jump out of the range of the Rad toggles and run right back at you? Their range is really not that big (70ft). No out-ranging Infrigidate/Benumb/Heat Loss though.

The range in order to cast the debuff is different from how far away you have to be to detoggle it. I THINK the range needed to turn a toggle off is 200 feet, but I'm not sure.

Quote:

Originally Posted by TwilightPhoenix Ok, long recharges on those two, which from what I've heard are super awesomesauce skills. Yeah, being hit by all three would probably suck if you don't have some built-in recharge debuff resistance, but the fact they aren't up often makes them a little un-ideal. As for landing Sleet and etc, you two must be a heck of a lot better than the people I've seen using locational AoEs. I don't know how many Shield Charges, Lightning Rods, Fire Storms, Sleets, and so forth I've seen miss by huge margins against a mobile target.

You've got the right idea on cold's debuffs. A person hit by all of them is pretty much screwed. Slows aren't as great as they used to be because slows don't reduce the maximum speed of the target, but I'm told cold domination is still rather viable.

As for sleet/freezing rain, I'm not going to act like I can hit every time with it (heck, the last arena match I was in I missed more often than I hit) but with some strategy it's possible to do it with reasonable reliability. It's especially easy in any sort of fight with more than two people as it's not hard to catch people who are focusing on someone else.

I've got 3 Colds and several Rads I don't play so much anymore. Both are great sets but in thier own ways. While both debuff and buff, they do so in different ways making them rather hard to compare. Bottom line for me, the only thing Rad does that Cold cannot is heal, lower To-Hit and +rech. The first, I could care less about. The second is replaced by shields and the third...well you got me there.

I play Cold because it's a diverse and very potent powerset when played in the right hands.
Theres always something to do and it does it well. I can say no evil about Rad but honestly, if you fail playing a Rad, theres more at question than which powerset has bigger nuts.

I have a 50 Ill/Rad Troller and a 40 Cold/Sonic Fender and outta the 2, I think I'd prefer Cold Dom, the Resistance Debuffs alone win the argument, for me.
On my Troller, the maximum -Res I can attain is -44.5%, -22.5% without the Achiles Heel Proc.
On the Cold I'll be throwin' down -80% with the -Res Proc, -60% without and all these numbers are AoEs, chuck in Sonic Attacks' debuffs and I can get that to (from memory) -160% ST -Res, but thats off topic.
This is with IOs, of course.


The -Regen numbers are the same between the sets but Cold's is a little harder to make Perma, has a recharge time of 120 compared to Rad's nice 90 seconds.

Heat Loss is pure, pure win, also. I can run into a mob, hit Heat Loss and Nuke without my toggles droppin' (most of the time )



I think that if you're goin' to make a Rad ora Cold toon the question you have to ask yourself is "How much do I like buffin' peoples?" I thats the decidin' factor for some people. A cold that doesn't buff is a FailCold.

Member of the Stoned Templars

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

Sadly, sleet is bugged in the same way that freezing rain is so that it only lasts 15seconds if the target doesn't flee from the area.

No idea why as it should last 30 seconds from the time of the last tic which afaik is how it works if they flee from the area it was dropped, but if they stay in one spot the debuffs expire after 15 seconds.

Whether this bug will ever be fixed? who knows, but it is crappy cause most things can't get out from under it so it usually only lasts 15 seconds. Not that them getting away is any more ideal to make the debuff actually work in the manner it is supposed to.

Fallout comes into play a lot more on PuG teams rather than established teams.