Alpha slotting analysis for Cold Domination.

So fellow Cold defenders, are you going for Spiritual for more recharge? Faster Heat Loss, Benumb & Sleet is very, very attractive.

Going Nerve for slightly higher def? Better shields, and better def for Arctic Fog, not to mention possibly Maneuvers and if you run stuff like CJ, Hover or Weave. And the +Acc doesn't exactly suck.

W/my own Cold/Dark def, I'll be looking at Ice/Glacial Shield, AF & Maneuvers for Nerve vs. Hasten, Sleet, HL & Benumb as the primary beneficiaries for Spiritual. Making a quich spreadsheet (apologies for the poor formatting):

Nerve gets me

Power	Base	ED cap	Uncommon	Ultra Rare
Ice Shield	15.00%	23.56%	24.56%	25.56%
Glacial     	15.00%	23.56%	24.56%	25.56%
Arctic Fog	5.00%	7.85%	8.19%	8.52%
Maneuvers	3.50%	5.50%	5.73%	5.96%
Total      	23.5%	36.9%	38.5%	40.0%

Power	Base	Rech	Global	ED Cap	Uncommon	Ultra Rare
Hasten	450.00	99.80%	125.00%	138.55	134.01	126.83
Sleet	60.00	95.90%	125.00%	18.70	18.08	17.10
Heat Loss	360.00	97.59%	125.00%	111.60	107.92	102.10
Benumb	120.00	99.08%	125.00%	37.03	35.81	33.89

I was strongly considering Musculature on my Cold/Ice for the damage boost (and later the defdebuffs and endmod enhancing) as I currently use several sets of Entropic Chaos in his blasts. Entropic Chaos barely hit ED effects, a full set being around 85% post ED and about 87% preED. Thinking the boost will up the damage quite a bit and still allow me to put various procs in the 6th slot for a very nice overall boost to his damage output. Likewise I'd get the buff/debuffs out of Infrigidate, Sleet and Heat Loss potentially while freeing up some slots to use elsewhere or differently.

The problem with Muscular is that with a full set, most Range/Melee attacks are already over 100% before ED (Thunder Strike for example pushes your +damage to 143%!) so you only get the "bypass" benefit which isn't much especially if your base damage is low (IE Defender's).

I find Cardiac amazing because most full sets don't even push -endurance higher than 70% so you actually get a lot of -end out of it just with the very first tier. Having higher tier could be overkill for -end but the 20% +range is very good especially if you do Apex TF because you can safely kill pylon with that 20% +range. My Fortunata carries 8 toggles (tough, weave, hover, power tool assault and maneuver!) and without Cardiac, I can't last long without eating blues (I already have Numina and Miracle unique and two accolades).


My Bane will try Nerve for the +defense because he has at least 3 defensive powers.

I usually don't find +recharge that important if I already have sets. I would only go for very high +recharge with a Dominator.

I plan to slot the recharge Alpha boost on my Cold/Sonic Defender. Getting Benumb and Heat Loss perma'd without the recharge Alpha boost seems to be very difficult, if not impossible.

Spiritual gives you 12 seconds downtime between the buffs on Heatloss, Near perma benumb (or less downtime if you miss), and more sweet sweet sleet stacking.

With HL buffs near perma (and it gives you minimally 2.2 end/s without a hit check) Cardio should be the last thing you need.

While 40% positional defense is laudable, is it really necessary at 50? Your already providing 37ish defense before the alpha slot. What happens when you start stacking your /dark secondary with your 120% global recharge? With perma benumb, infrid, stacked sleet, with an occasional heatloss AV's shouldn't be to hard for any group requiring those levels of defense just from you.

Recharge is definitely the best for cold domination because of its powerful, long recharge debuffs.

+Rec is a given for Cold, in my opinion. There are lots of other ATs that can softcap quite well without too much effort, and principally the primary feature of Nerve - accuracy - is not entirely great since your powers should be slotted to a reasonable degree. Higher accuracy will unlikely be as beneficial as the other Alpha Slots.

With the defense, VR Core Boost, 2/3 of 20% is only 13.33..% boost which is not really that great in my opinion.

Spiritual's primary boost of +30%, VR Core Boost 2/3 of 45%, is far more efficient for a cold. As others have said, it brings your attack chain up to speed.

Fury

Yes, rchg is the way to go.

I went Cardiac for the 2nd tier, to buff Resistance. I currently have no Resistance slotted in Fog and minimal resistance slotting in Tough. So I'll get the full 20% buff for those.

It was tough choosing. Basically my thought process went like this:

Musculature - My blasts are already at ED cap. Looking down the tree, Total Radial Revamp is interesting, with Damage, Def Debuff and EndMod being affected, all things a Cold does.

Nerve - Accuracy in and of itself is not all that enticing, especially given global bonuses, Accuracy enhancements from the powers themselves and all the -Def in Cold. Looking ahead, since I'm Cold/Ice and spam my hold, Partial Core Revamp has caught my eye, since it enhances Acc, Def and Hold.

Spiritual - Recharge is always a good thing. Unfortunately nothing down the tree seems to benefit my powers all that much. Also high recharge builds see minimal benefits, as illustrated in the OP.

Cardiac - It's true that HL and Recovery bonuses make endurance quite manageable. However, looking at my build, few powers are within 50% of the ED cap for Endurance Reduction, so I'll get the full benefit. Further, my own playstyle is such that I don't spam HL, rather I use it opportunistically (such as post-nuke) so I do go for stretches without the HL buff. Looking down the road, the buff to Range, Resists and End Redux is tempting.

For now though, I just wanted to fill in the slot and the Resist buff was the difference maker. Right now, my resist numbers are
s/l- 18.9, e - 20, f/c - 25.7, t - 17.5
After slotting Cardiac Radial, the numbers should be
s/l - 21.8, e - 24, f/c - 29.7, t - 17.5

No those aren't dramatic increase but the team buff for e/f/c goes from 20 to 24.

Anyway, it was a tough choice and I may well end going a different direction when the time comes to go into the rare/ultra rares.

For me it's definitely looking like a choice between Musculature and Spiritual.
Nerve and Cardiac are non-starters. Already at 95% chance to hit vs +4's and that's without considering -def powers or his ability to cap his own To Hit at over 200% when he wants. And Cardiac ... Heat Loss nails something every time it's up, about the only thing here would be nasty strong sappers ... but doubtful Cardiac is going to keep my end bar up under those circumstances either that's something Heat Loss handles with its +recovery.

Unfortunately not nearly enough of a math wizard or number cruncher to figure out how much down time is reduced and how much damage is boosted. Recharge wise Benumb looks to be see the most gain as recharge in the power is just tickling ED at around 83% from slotted (2 lvl 50 recharge IO's) while Heat Loss would likely see the least improvement sitting at 96% after ED (111% pre ED). Might even be the real gain here is true perma Hasten rather than a few seconds down time Hasten currently has.

Guessing what I'll actually do is one build with Spiritual and one with Musculature and see how they work out in actual play.

If you take Scorpion Shield, Maneuvers, and CJ, the Nerve Alpha could get you to the S/L softcap.