Cold/Psi

Was thinking about running this build when I'm able to play again and have been dabbling with it on Mids. When I originally rolled it up awhile back, I thought stacking -recharge maybe a viable tactic but I don't think I have seen anyone discuss it. Anyone have insight on this combination? Thanks in advance.

There's two major flaws with recharge debuffing as a viable tactic.

First: It has a minimum of -75% recharge debuff. That's fairly easy to hit with either Cold Domination (Snow Storm/Sleet/etc.) or Psychic Blast (Psionic Tornado/Psychic Scream/etc.), which means the synergy of those stacked recharge debuffs comes in handly in really only two ways, maintaining the -75% recharge debuff and the purple patch. This slows your enemies (at cap) to a quarter of recharge (if you maintain the 75%), but they can still recharge. Also, on most teaming you'll find your mob dead way before they get a 2nd attack, though that's part of the draw of recharge debuffing.

Second: They still get their first attack with any already charged power. So that means all the enemies will be able to use their ranged attack right as you confront them. After that, it goes down to how many different powers the enemy has. If they have 4 different attack powers, they can use those four on you before having to even worry about their recharge debuff you just tossed on them. This is *the* major flaw of recharge debuffing as a feasible tactic. The enemy starts off with all their powers fully recharged and ready to go, so you have to survive their onslaught before your debuffing takes effect.

So between the numbers of attacks and the enemy having to go through all of them in order to be fully debuffed by your recharge debuffs and the fact that on teams, most mobs typically don't last too long after they get their powers recharged, I find the value of recharge debuffing lessened. Still helpful? Why sure! It's a debuff, but when you have only a couple of powers that can stack on normal mobs before they get capped (Sleet or Psionic Tornado + Snow Storm or Psychic Scream = capped), you might find yourself hitting the cap often. Just as a forewarning before you think Sleet + Psi Tornado + Snow Storm + Psychic Scream = they never recharge, ever.

Oedipus_Tex wrote a decent post about -recharge here. Of course with this combo, sustainability is not an issue on normal mobs.

With just Cold you can pretty much put everything at the recharge cap (that's 4 times as long for powers to recharge) as long as it's not more than +3 to you or an AV.

So more recharge is great against AVs? Well.....not really. AVs have 85% resistance to -recharge which means that if you want to get them at the -recharge cam you need 500% recharge....and you're not going to reach that. Against an AV trying to reach the 75% cap:
Sleet: 6%
Snow Storm: 9.4%
Mental Blast: 5.6%
Psionic Lance: 2.8%
Psychic Scream: 9.4%
Psionic Tornado: 5.6%

Thus you see the problem. That said, I love playing Storm/Psi which I would imagine has a similar synergy. The knockup from Psionic Tornado makes it an excellent opening move in combination with Freezing Rain. And since on teams I usually don't bother with Snow Storm since it's not worth the time to use when anchors are killed so quickly, Freezing Rain + Psychic Scream or Psionic Tornado puts mobs at the recharge cap so that I don't need to worry about Snow Storm.

Other Powers:

Mental Blast: meh

Subdue, again only a chance to immobilize but can be useful for keeping a mob in Sleet or away from you if spammed (although there is always a chance the immob won't go off)

Psionic Lance: If you like snipes I believe this is the longest Snipe in the game, and quite nice.

Psychic Scream: Also one of the largest cones available to defenders.

TK Blast: can be useful for knocking mobs into Sleet (or out with the current bug).

Will Domination: only has a chance to sleep, and will be mostly just be used as a heavy single target hitter since Sleet will break sleep.

Psionic Tornado: already discussed I love the chance to Knock Up.

Scramble Thoughts: nicer on a stormie since you have other stun powers to stack it with, but it at least lets you take out a pesky Lt. before the fight, and as long as it stuns the opponent, doesn't aggro the rest of the group (One of the advantages of having insane range on all of your attacks).

Psychic Wail: I'm not a nuke person.

As I mentioned briefly, having a very long range on all of your powers can also be advantageous when used in conjunction with Cold's slowing powers as you can get a long ways away and then fire at enemies as they try to run towards you, and can be it's own form of damage mitigation. Will Cold/Psi have crazy synergy....no. Will it be a lot of fun to play, yes.

Stormy and Dragg...I really appreciate the great #s and insight into the build. Best replies I think I've received for PvE content ever. Be good.

That's what us Defender forumites do.

Either we'll give you great insight or we'll ridicule you and you'll never get an answer.

I have had some luck with this tactic on bosses on the whole -recharge thing but keep in mind critters are programed to flee if they have no usuable powers at their disposal. So this opens up a new problem, them running away. As if we dont have enough of that going on already. What I suggest is doing cold/ice or doing */cold with a controller set that has an immobilize, this keeps that running issue to a minimum or non-existent. This strategy works wonders on bosses for low damage ATs since they will be at the recharge cap well before you get them half way dead.

Good deal and thanks everyone. There is enough ridicule action swirling around the PvP forums, so it's good when you can just read solid information without everyone being snarky to each other.