Rad/Sonic trio

I and two friends of mine are going to embark on what we suspect will be our most dominant run on CoH. I have been playing pretty much since the beginning, while one of them has been on a year and the other about three months. The characters will be named Hears No Evil, Speaks No Evil and Sees No Evil, will be dressed appropriately and will be Rad/Sonic/Dark defenders. They will be playing together exclusively, always all three, always only them.

As the person responsible for the build, I find myself in a quandry. There are just so many tools in the box, I'm not sure what to take and what to focus on. Things like the big three of RI, EF and LR are no-brainer, and we'll be taking AM at 4th and Hasten at 6th, slotting both for recharge immediately... but then what?

My initial thought is to run three Assaults, three Tactics and three Choking Clouds. Open with RI and there you go - I'm right in thinking that three continuous AM's will suffice without dipping into the Fitness pool, yes? In game-play is that a pracical strategy, or is it better to stay at range? Things like Screech and Siren's Song seem superfulous at first glance, and then the idea of finally getting triple Oppressive Gloom's going in the Epic pool makes me question Choking Cloud early.

Anyway, I'm a touch overwhelmed trying to focus these characters and their build ahead of time, and I'd love some advice from anyone who has played multiple Rad's together before... for the moment, assume only standard SO's or generic IO's. We'll play around with sets once we have a good handle on what direction we're going in.

Thanks in advance.

Triple Choking Clouds could be good, but so could triple OGs. What you might consider doing is grabbing Soul Drain and your nukes. Then take turns hitting Amplify > Soul Drain > Nuke on each spawn. My Rad/Sonic Offender does and it's extremely fun. Three Rad/Sonics doing it should be nuts. I'd also say try to work in Howl for triple cone-debuffing mobs and EM Pulse for taking turns dropping mez nukes. Vengeance + Fallout, especially back with Amplify and Soul Drain, should be silly awesome if any of you manage to die.

Do not pick up Siren's, as that's more of a soloing tool. It does damage, so you can't stack Siren's for sleep. I'd also say skip Shockwave if none of you like/are good with knockback.

Yeah, figured no Shockwave or Siren's. Maybe we'll do Choking Cloud at 18 and then switch to OP when it becomes available and respec.

I guess I'm curous about sample builds, particularly if anyone else had experience with this. We want to move fast so we want to stream line what we're doing - it may be that we don't NEED all the debuffs if it takes longer to set them than to kill or lock-down our foes without them...

I suppose it would be best to show the build as I'm currently looking at it now and see what changes if any you guys might suggest.

Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.707
http://www.cohplanner.com/

Click this DataLink to open the build!

Level 50 Magic Defender
Primary Power Set: Radiation Emission
Secondary Power Set: Sonic Attack
Power Pool: Speed
Power Pool: Leadership
Power Pool: Teleportation
Ancillary Pool: Dark Mastery

Hero Profile:
Level 1: Radiant Aura -- Heal(A), Heal(13), Heal(13)
Level 1: Shriek -- Acc(A), Dmg(3), Dmg(11), Dmg(27), EndRdx(29)
Level 2: Scream -- Acc(A), Dmg(3), Dmg(11), Dmg(27), EndRdx(29)
Level 4: Accelerate Metabolism -- RechRdx(A), RechRdx(5), RechRdx(5), EndMod(15), EndMod(15), EndMod(40)
Level 6: Hasten -- RechRdx(A), RechRdx(7), RechRdx(7)
Level 8: Howl -- Acc(A), Dmg(9), Dmg(9), Dmg(34), Range(34), Range(34)
Level 10: Radiation Infection -- EndRdx(A), ToHitDeb(25), ToHitDeb(25), EndRdx(43), DefDeb(43), DefDeb(43)
Level 12: Lingering Radiation -- Acc(A), RechRdx(37), RechRdx(37)
Level 14: Assault -- EndRdx(A), EndRdx(46)
Level 16: Shout -- Acc(A), Dmg(17), Dmg(17), Dmg(31), EndRdx(31), RechRdx(31)
Level 18: Choking Cloud -- EndRdx(A), EndRdx(19), EndRdx(19), Hold(23), Hold(23), Hold(50)
Level 20: Tactics -- EndRdx(A), ToHit(21), ToHit(21), ToHit(46), EndRdx(46)
Level 22: Enervating Field -- EndRdx(A), EndRdx(40)
Level 24: Recall Friend -- IntRdx(A)
Level 26: Fallout -- Dmg(A), Dmg(36), Dmg(36)
Level 28: Mutation -- EndRdx(A)
Level 30: Amplify -- RechRdx(A), RechRdx(37)
Level 32: EM Pulse -- Acc(A), Hold(33), Hold(33), RechRdx(33)
Level 35: Vengeance -- DefBuff(A), DefBuff(36)
Level 38: Dreadful Wail -- RechRdx(A), Dmg(39), Dmg(39), Dmg(39), RechRdx(40)
Level 41: Oppressive Gloom -- Acc(A), Acc(42), Dsrnt(42), Dsrnt(42), Dsrnt(48)
Level 44: Dark Embrace -- EndRdx(A), ResDam(45), ResDam(45), ResDam(45)
Level 47: Soul Drain -- Acc(A), RechRdx(48), RechRdx(48)
Level 49: Teleport -- Range(A), Range(50), Range(50)
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Vigilance
Level 6: Ninja Run



One of the things I'm trying to decide is if I should do away with Fall-Out, Mutation and Vengeance to add the Fitness pool in. If a team member dies it would be a significant loss considering all of the stacked toggles we'll be running, and Fallout -> Vengeance -> Mutation would seem to mitigate that eventuality pretty potently.

Also, whenever slotting was done, I tried to take into account all of the recharge, accuracy and endurance we would be getting from stacked AM's, Hasten and Tactics. I figured that slotting Shriek, Scream and Shout with endurance reduction would be very effective considering how quickly we'd be cycling through those attacks.

That looks good to me at a glance. I'd just move up Enervating Field to before Lingering Radiation (delaying it if you need), swap Mutation's slot for a recharge redux, and get another recharge redux in Soul Drain and Amplify one way or another... or just use level 50 Recharge IOs.

It would take a better number cruncher than me to figure out if you need stamina or not, but I think you should have 2/3 accelerated metabolisms active at one time. Eventually with IO -recharge I am sure you can get perma-AM for all three. (Base 422 recharge, 120 second duration.)

I would probably keep mutation, but I am not sure how much dying your trio will do with 3 RI's running. I think 3 choking clouds at once would be extremely powerful, but I am not sure you could support that without stamina. It would definitely need heavier end redux slotting than usual. I like the triple leaderships you are taking. What I wondered is if you took triple manuvers for defense on top of all the to-hit debuffing for another layer of security.

Here's an alternative look taking Stamina. Keep in mind that we'll probably be using the 'Ninja Run' power rather than a true 'travel power', augmented by occaisional use of the jump pack, jet pack and anti-grav pack.

I'm keeping Dark Embrace because it is a stepping stone to Soul Drain.

Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.707
http://www.cohplanner.com/

Click this DataLink to open the build!

Level 50 Magic Defender
Primary Power Set: Radiation Emission
Secondary Power Set: Sonic Attack
Power Pool: Speed
Power Pool: Leadership
Power Pool: Teleportation
Power Pool: Fitness
Ancillary Pool: Dark Mastery

Hero Profile:
Level 1: Radiant Aura -- Heal(A), Heal(13), Heal(13), EndRdx(48), EndRdx(50)
Level 1: Shriek -- Acc(A), Dmg(3), Dmg(11), Dmg(27), EndRdx(29)
Level 2: Scream -- Acc(A), Dmg(3), Dmg(11), Dmg(27), EndRdx(29)
Level 4: Accelerate Metabolism -- RechRdx(A), RechRdx(5), RechRdx(5), EndMod(15), EndMod(15), EndMod(40)
Level 6: Hasten -- RechRdx(A), RechRdx(7), RechRdx(7)
Level 8: Howl -- Acc(A), Dmg(9), Dmg(9), Dmg(34), Range(34), Range(34)
Level 10: Radiation Infection -- EndRdx(A), ToHitDeb(25), ToHitDeb(25), EndRdx(46), DefDeb(46), DefDeb(46)
Level 12: Enervating Field -- EndRdx(A), EndRdx(36)
Level 14: Assault -- EndRdx(A), EndRdx(37)
Level 16: Shout -- Acc(A), Dmg(17), Dmg(17), Dmg(31), EndRdx(31), RechRdx(31)
Level 18: Choking Cloud -- EndRdx(A), EndRdx(19), Hold(19), Hold(23), Hold(23)
Level 20: Tactics -- EndRdx(A), ToHit(21), ToHit(21), ToHit(37), EndRdx(37)
Level 22: Recall Friend -- IntRdx(A)
Level 24: Swift -- Run(A)
Level 26: Hurdle -- Jump(A)
Level 28: Stamina -- EndMod(A), EndMod(43), EndMod(43), Empty(43)
Level 30: Amplify -- RechRdx(A), RechRdx(40)
Level 32: EM Pulse -- Acc(A), Hold(33), Hold(33), RechRdx(33)
Level 35: Lingering Radiation -- Acc(A), RechRdx(36), RechRdx(36)
Level 38: Dreadful Wail -- RechRdx(A), Dmg(39), Dmg(39), Dmg(39), RechRdx(40)
Level 41: Oppressive Gloom -- Acc(A), Dsrnt(42), Dsrnt(42), Dsrnt(42)
Level 44: Dark Embrace -- EndRdx(A), ResDam(45), ResDam(45), ResDam(45)
Level 47: Soul Drain -- Acc(A), RechRdx(48), RechRdx(48)
Level 49: Teleport -- Range(A), Range(50), Range(50)
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Vigilance
Level 6: Ninja Run



As always - thoughts?

I ran a Fire/Rad duo without Stamina,. relying on double AMs (and a few set bonuses) to keep me in Endurance.

It worked really well most of the time. There were points in my cycle where Hasten and Am had run out and I'd start to run dry from the longer AM-free periods.

So with three of you, you should be more than fine without Stamina. You'll have more Recharge due to the thrid AM, hence more uptime, and more recovery bonus when you do.

I'd be running Choking Cloud and Hot Feet. No leadership toggles, and generally running EF during fights.
Since I'd open every group with Flashfire, I didn't bother much with Radiation Infection.

If you do run into End isues, you could probably drop Tactics, or even take it in turns one at a time. Triple RI is going to make it pretty easy enough to hit things.

Are you planning to use three different anchors for RI?

No worries.

Your single target approach is interesting, and not something I've seen on superteam discussions - they usually focus on AopE carnage.

I've always felt Sonic Blast's AoE capabilities get a bit underrated (it has Howl, Shockwave and Siren's Song all doing over 0.6 scalar damage and rechargiung very fast) but I can see how it could really mess with your Radiation anchors to use Shockwave. I can't help but wonder if focussing on a Boss and mixing Howl into your attack chain would work better - would minions gets killed by the splash damage.

Then again, Howl doesn't mix well with Choking Cloud I guess. Yeah, what you're doing makes perfect sense.

Well, keep in mind that we'll eventually be dealing damage to foes of significantly higher level than us eventually, so its not as if they would go down with one shot from a defender. Using the same stretegy with a bunch of blasters probably wouldn't be as effective, but with every attack stackiong -Res, it makes sense to just burn through them one at a time.

What I like about that tact is it lets one guy focus on targeting, while the other two pay more attention to heals, positioning, etc. activities that don't require a target, or debuffs that do but don't matter which (i.e. LR). If I'm doing the targeting, I worry about threat priotrity and anchors while my two compatriots keep an eye on heals, drop their LR's, make sure AM is up and CC is properly positioned to catch the most foes. I've found it to be a very effecient manner of attack.

Again, on some super teams of blasters or scrappers, I'd probably reccomend a different strategy.

What I love most about the potential of these guys is the different options available. Eventually Oppressive Gloom will offer a second PB AoE mez if holds are for some reason ineffective. Entire groups can be chain nuked after applying several Howls. Single Targets like GM's or AV's can be debuffed into oblivion. Lot of tools there even without using things like Screech, Siren's or Shockwave.

One thing I was considering though, was having two of us get Screech and one of us get Shockwave, so that we can mez Bosses or pesky foes like Tsoo Sorcerers or Sky Engineers from a distance if we need to, or position spread-out foes into a corner before moving in on them... do you think that would be necessary/useful?

I'd definitely invest in Screech. Ranged Mez is always good, especially when you can stack it.
I'd even take it over Shout. Scream and Shriek have the same activation and damage as Shout, and can be an attack chain all by themselves.

As for Shockwave, hmm, maybe. Personal preference. You could always corner pull with Rad Infection to bunch enemies up if you don't mind doing that.

Rad/sonic trio.. nice.

I´m currently trippleboxing (one is running in a passive window, so only 2 are fully active synchronized, 1 is set on autofire) 2 rad/sonics and 1 FF/sonic. At 22 I wasn´t even looking to put down RI since I was on the softcap for defense with the bubbler and 1 additional maneuver running.

The problem I see when combining Sonic and Chocking cloud (just to make it clear: I LOVE CC....on other combinations) is the absolut loss of AOE. It can be very frustrating in the end to pew pew every mob down. Yes you would get enough survivability from this, but for me, the cost would be to high. If I would go for a pbaoe centric approach I would take Ice blast.

My approach with my team is: gather mobs with double EF on boss at softcap, throw in a heal if needed, then LR and howl howl howl howl. = funny With the amount of mitigation and damagemultipliers you get with 3 rad/sonics, the enemies would melt down very fast anyhow. After getting the Dark epic, I would just run in, Stun everything, Soul drain, LR to keep them together get at distance and howl howl howl
With my setup I managed to kill Babbage with level 22 (the whole TF was a joke with that setup). Endurance was no issue (factoring in that AM was not fully slotted for End, but had stamina: 3 AMs are better than 2 AMs and stamina).

If I were you, I would run 2 rad/sonics and 1 cold/ice (defense for the first 2 for alphas, much + recharge from the first two, AOE from ICE and the debuffs are godly combined) ... but that is my opinion

You should definitely drop amplify. With all the damage buffs you have being thrown around, amplify won't be helping much, if at all.

Whatever we do, it's going to be a little bit of this and a little bit of that.

Early playing - we get together on Monday nights - has indicated that with just Howl (recharging about every 3-4 seconds with triple AM and Hasten) we're getting all of the AoE we need. Between three Asaults and the AM's boosting damage and Howl's debuffing damage resistance, we're tearing through minions pretty quickly on our own. Figure open with RI and sit back, letting them come to us while we Howl through them. Anyone who gets close gets caught in the triple CC's and we start onesing the Bosses and then the lt's.

It really is a full tool box. Early on we can't keep anchors alive long enough to waste time with the debuffs, but we're running into some problems absorbing alphas. Tonight we dinged 12 and now everyone has RI, so we're going to see if all three of us raising it at once helps with that.

I asked the question before but didn't see a response - how does the Achilles Heel proc work with RI?

If I were going to drop one of the three of Shriek, Scream and Shout with the understanding that when coupled with Howl I only need two of them to give Me a solid attack chain, which should it be and why?

Achilles' Heel will have a chance to proc on cast and every 10 seconds thereafter on everyone within RI. It will not stack from the same caster.

Drop Shout. I like Shout, but you'd be fine with Shriek and Scream and have a better attack chain than Shriek + Shout or Scream + Shout. Plus, you can't drop Shriek, it's your auto-selected Tier 1.

With a trio like that, you won't (shouldn't) be dying at all, so powers like Mutation, Fallout and Vengeance are out of the picture.

You'll usually get more mileage out of running Assault/Maneuvers than Tactics. As for Choking Cloud, it's not a very good power by itself, but stacked x3 can be very good.

As for Sonic powers, Shriek, Scream, Amplify, Howl (and maybe Screech) is all you'd need . I'd stay away from the Nuke (very counterproductive as a rad) and Shout (loooong animation, impractical for stacking -res, does low DPA)

Here's a new look at the updated build for the three, taking into consideration some of the advice this board has offered. Its still using standard SO's or the equivalent of level 22 IO's... with a few procs tossed in for spice.

Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.707
http://www.cohplanner.com/

Click this DataLink to open the build!

Level 50 Magic Defender
Primary Power Set: Radiation Emission
Secondary Power Set: Sonic Attack
Power Pool: Speed
Power Pool: Leadership
Power Pool: Fitness
Power Pool: Teleportation
Ancillary Pool: Dark Mastery

Hero Profile:
Level 1: Radiant Aura -- Heal(A), Heal(13), Heal(13), EndRdx(40)
Level 1: Shriek -- Acc(A), Dmg(3), Dmg(11), EndRdx(25), Dmg(29), Decim-Build%(48)
Level 2: Scream -- Acc(A), Dmg(3), Dmg(11), EndRdx(25), Dmg(29), Apoc-Dam%(48)
Level 4: Accelerate Metabolism -- RechRdx(A), RechRdx(5), RechRdx(5), EndMod(17), EndMod(17), EndMod(34)
Level 6: Hasten -- RechRdx(A), RechRdx(7), RechRdx(7)
Level 8: Howl -- Acc(A), Dmg(9), Dmg(9), Range(27), Posi-Dmg/Rng(27), Posi-Dam%(48)
Level 10: Radiation Infection -- EndRdx(A), ToHitDeb(15), ToHitDeb(15), DarkWD-Slow%(46), Achilles-ResDeb%(46)
Level 12: Assault -- EndRdx(A), EndRdx(37)
Level 14: Swift -- Run(A)
Level 16: Hurdle -- Jump(A)
Level 18: Choking Cloud -- EndRdx(A), EndRdx(19), EndRdx(19), Hold(21), Hold(21), Hold(43)
Level 20: Stamina -- EndMod(A), EndMod(34), EndMod(34)
Level 22: Lingering Radiation -- Acc(A), RechRdx(23), RechRdx(23)
Level 24: Enervating Field -- EndRdx(A), EndRdx(37)
Level 26: Recall Friend -- IntRdx(A)
Level 28: Teleport -- Range(A), Range(43), Range(43)
Level 30: Maneuvers -- EndRdx(A), DefBuff(31), DefBuff(31), DefBuff(31), EndRdx(37)
Level 32: EM Pulse -- Acc(A), Acc(33), Hold(33), Hold(33)
Level 35: Screech -- Acc(A), Acc(36), Dsrnt(36), Dsrnt(36)
Level 38: Dreadful Wail -- Acc(A), Dmg(39), Dmg(39), Dmg(39), RechRdx(40), RechRdx(40)
Level 41: Oppressive Gloom -- Acc(A), Acc(42), Dsrnt(42), Dsrnt(42)
Level 44: Dark Embrace -- EndRdx(A), ResDam(45), ResDam(45), ResDam(45), S'fstPrt-ResDam/Def+(46)
Level 47: Mutation -- RechRdx(A)
Level 49: Fallout -- RechRdx(A), Dmg(50), Dmg(50), Dmg(50)
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Vigilance
Level 6: Ninja Run

Is it reasonable to assume, if our first act against every mob is throwing up three RI's, that a single accuracy without running tactics will be enough, even against high-level mobs? The thought process right now is to run Assault x3 and CC x3, eventually adding Maneuvers x3, coupled with Hasten and AM x3 pretty much perma... opening every group with RI x3 and then one LR (we'll take turns)... then proceeding to howl, scream and shriek our way through the baddies with one leader doing the targeting, letting CC's lock down anyone who moves into melee range.

Sound good?

We'll probably save EF and the nukes for special situations, and eventually sub out OG for CC when the time is right. I like having that screech handy to stack if need be.

Enervating Field actually casts fairly quickly and reduces the incoming damage early in the fight. Another good place to sprinkle damage procs is in choking cloud. Three players running three damage procs in three choking clouds may be very formidable.