A seasoned Fire / Rad in need of advice

Hello folks, I could use some feedback.

The toon in question is a Fire / Radiation corrupter. It was the second toon I ever made and still consider it my "main" after years of play. But, I've recently found that it isn't my favorite toon anymore. I have several characters that can sit in the center of madness and utterly destroy things...this one cannot. He can't really even solo well...a single gunslinger can rock my world.

When hero ancilary pools became available, I gave him the Power Mastery pool. "Two survivablity power and a way to boost my debuffs! ROCK!". However...the survivabilty didnt seem to do much. I think I actually die MORE often. In my old build, I had mace mastery. I could use the hold on problem targets (like sappers and gunslingers), and the pet offered did keep some aggro off. Force of nature seems bad at doing what I want it to do...be an 'oh ****' power. Usually when I activate it, I'm at ~25% health and theres lots of meanies looking at me angrily. So I hit it...and then die. In that situation, I could pop pills or hit demonic and be fine...but Force of nature doesnt seem to help.

My current build (though I have some random purples thrown in to work my way up to a better one):

http://www.cohplanner.com/mids/downl...0D99FF6A7AFD20

So, I'm wondering...go back to mace? I'm looking at builds and trying to figure this out. If I were to take the fighting pool for survivabilty (most likely losing the powers of fallout, aim, and acrobatics), and switch to mace...that still only gives me 34-36% defense vs S/L/E. My accuracy debuffs should raise that up...but I just don't know...hehe. Fallout and aim are powers I can live without, I just added them when stamina became inherent...though I will miss acrobatics I'm sure. There isnt really much room for more S/L defense that I can see...I could 4 slot boxing for a hair more, but that seems like a bit of a waste, and would lower my recharge by taking slots from other powers.

So here's a proposed build with mace returning:

http://www.cohplanner.com/mids/downl...12E12FAE82E61C

(also a change in this build is switching from combat jumping / SJ to hover fly and adding a damage proc to Radiation infection. This is to exploit a trick where you can trick recluse to run and hide during the statesmen...you drop RI on him and fly away...he tries to follow you but can't reach you, and the damage proc holds his aggro. I'm also not sure how this change will affect my toon...hover takes more END and doesnt have immobilize protection.)

Its a rather large overhall of slots, enhancements, and powers...and not something that I can easily test because theres so many new enhancements needed to make this work.

I can also just quit whining and adjust my playstyle instead. It is true that what a fire/rad is good at is killing things...AoE doom for mobs and debuff hell for AVs...and I should rely on control and taunt classes to keep me alive...but that just doesn't feel as fun to me, and I don't want to give up on this toon!

Or yet another build, incorporating stuff found on the forums:

http://www.cohplanner.com/mids/downl...4EF80B777CECC2

This one loses some fun procs, rain of fire loses recharge, loses global status resist, S/L resist and has slightly weaker holds and damage (only a few % though). BUT gains enough defense for S/L to go to 41.8% and energy to 35% (everything else at like 16).

I guess it all comes down to...how much is it worth it?

My initial thoughts are:

Build One

Fallout is handy but often I can't get venge/fallout/mutation off before someone rez's. I could understand dropping fallout.

I admit that I have dropped aim on my rad/rad; I think it will come down to 'do YOU use it'.

Acrobatics I never take. I feel it's a waste of three powers for what it gives. I always slot KB prot and carry breakfrees. I do have CJ on my D3 and a couple of melee chars but only when I have the room.

If you wanted to keep that ancillary, I'd drop SJ, acro and Force of Nature and pick up SS, boxing and tough.

I think if you wanted to keep this power selection, you're looking at a new build to beef def/res with sets because when I just swapped the powers out, I didn't think it added a whole lot to the build.

Low def/res which means you're going to get hit (toggles get mobs attention) and it's going to hurt. I like to build chars to solo (YMMV) and work on the idea that not every brute/tank will have taunt or be under the aggro cap.


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Build 2

I like your def/res numbers better bu as you've seen on my own rad/rad thread; I wonder if that's enough. It's certainly going to be better than build one.

You have a LOT of recharge on this build (AM and Hasten are over perma; AM by quite a way) and perhaps you could drop some of that to push towards 40% or more? Although I'd be tempted to 5 slot Efficacy and take the dam buff.

My instinct is Thunderstrike for the ranged def but you're built more to S/L/E.

The big question is do you really want to chuck Apoc/Rag into that build? If you have them on hand, I can understand it but my natural cheapskate looks for alternatives. LotG Rech

A friend ran some numbers through and decided that Perf Shift Chance +End isn't too different to a Stamina Mod. I haven't ran numbers myself but based on what he said, I tried it and I've got a few chars either just slotted with Numy Regen/Recovery and Perf Shift Chance +End and I haven't really noticed it as being a problem. Obviously 2 Nummys is nice for the Regen bonus.

I'm not sure about the pet. I had an Adept on my fire/kin corr and respec'd out of it. It was handy when I was playing on the Cim wall but bang-for-buck wasn't quite there for me.

In my own thread you mentioned endurance of toggles. I would say that it's absolutely possible to steal some of the end redx (for example in Ennervating Field). That third IO doesn't make that much difference.


Build 3

A brief look at what you just posted and I like the numbers. But again, WAY over on recharge. I'd lose some of that because (for me) once AM is perma, why bother? *hides*


Conclusion

I'm pretty much undecided as you are! I'm doing the rad/rad corr and also working on a fire/dark corr build. I just checked my fire/kin and she only has 44% S/L Res nothing else yet she feels more solid than my rad.

What (if any) Alpha are you using? Cardic solves your end redx issues (although I admit my rad rad is using Spiritual and not having end issues), Spiritual means you could drop some of the purples and pick up def.

Not sure how valuable the above is but .. just a thought. Best of luck.

If you want survivability, going with the Mace pool and getting as much s/l defense as you can is the way to go. Ideally, softcapped. That way you've also got RI on top as a buffer. I suppose the pet would help with spreading out aggro, but I myself am not a fan for a few reasons*. If it fits your playstyle though, go for it.

The thing about the Mace hold (or any of the APP holds) is that they have terrible duration:recharge numbers. As a Fire/Rad, the only other hold you have to pair it with is EMP, which wouldn't be a good idea to bust just to mez one boss >.> My personal preference for dealing with troublesome mobs is to debuff 'em and burn them down as fast as possible. Fire has great ST damage and softcapped s/l means you can ignore most of the damage out there, so you can focus on the things that are really a threat.

Quick note re: the damage proc thing for RI for Lord Recluse. You don't actually need a damage proc in there. As long as RI/EF are the only things on him, he'll be aggroed by the debuff alone and try to get you.

As for losing the status resist IOs, they're really, really bad. Especially in comparison to AM. AM gives you about 173% status resist. Both of the resist IOs together will give you about 30%. The benefit from AM eclipses what the IOs do and given the nature of mez resistance (shortens duration only) getting more doesn't provide more and more benefit. Well, it kinda does but it kinda doesn't. It will continue to lower mez durations, but it'll be fractions of a second so its really, really not worth it. AM is all you need for that.

Acrobatics is a tricky one. When Fitness wasn't inherent, I always skipped it. I could slot KB IOs and the mez protection wasn't a big deal since it would only protect you from 1 hold and all the other stuff would still get you. With Inherent Fitness, I've picked it up on all my Corrs. The extra power slots let me pick it up, the hold protection is just kinda nice to have and it freed up those other slots where I had KB IOs. It's a personal preference thing. Acrobatics isn't good enough for me to unequivocally say its better than KB IOs, but I like it.

Cardiac is the Alpha I'm going with on my Fire/Rad. I don't strictly need it, but it allows me to go full-bore spamming all my AoEs with all my toggles running and not have an issue. The range buff is minor, but also nice for Breath and Blaze.

When I've got more time later I can take an indepth look at each build, but I'd recommend you try one out getting to the softcap. That way you can compare and contrast the different build properly. Don't underestimate the benefit of softcapping

*Long cast time, short duration relative to the stupidly long recharge, costs a huge chunk of endurance, pet only contributes good damage in static fights because its so slow moving and really, Fire brings enough damage of its own.