I20 Incarnate Slots and Defender Primaries Synergy Discussion

Issue 20. With the introduction of four new powers, a lot of Defenders will be making important choices with their hard earned components, threads, and shards. To try and avoid scenarios of wasted resources, this thread will discuss which incarnate powers complement which primaries the most.

Since Empathy is my Forte, I'll start with that and hopefully more will join in.


Interface: Since Empathy's mitigation is so powerful, you might want to go for Reactive so you can contribute more damage. Since Interface depends more on your team's Interface choices and secondary powerset than your primary(at least with Empathy) this isn't really an easy choice.

Judgement: Empathy is a very cast time intensive set and long cast times can hinder those clutch heals, so I would rather take a power that doesn't take a long time to cast or get into range. Pyronic seems to fit the bill here, as it doesn't require any set-up time and has a very short cast time.

Lore: Similar to Interface's considerations, Empathy has very powerful mitigation options and lacks in the damage department, so taking the support pet option isn't something I would advise. As long as you go with the Left side of any tree, that's a good choice(Though WarWorks seem to be more powerful at the moment due to the -Regen).

Destiny: This is the most interesting pick. A lot of Empaths take the Spiritual Alpha(myself included), and Rebirth works really, really well with Spiritual which increases its healing capabilities. However, consider this: Empathy, as a whole, specializes in +Def(Ally only), Status Protection(Ally only), +Regen, +Recovery buffs and powerful direct heals. You already have a lot of great heals, and another one will be more about diminishing returns. How about status protection? Empathy has none for itself, and casting that CM can be oh so tedious. Clarion not only gives you status protection, but the right side of the tree makes your heals and buffs more effective, with the +Special and +Range. You like Power Boost/Power Build Up? You can now have another one.

Interesting idea, I'm not sure how valid it'll be for everyone but I'll give it a go. Here are my recommendations on Traps.

Interface: These all stack with something in Traps so I'd say take the one you feel is most useful to your playing style. The only piece of advice is if you do go Diamagnetic take the core tree rather than radial. Traps already has plenty of -regen. If you solo a lot Reactive is probably the best choice for pretty much any Defender.

Judgement: The only one I don't recommend here is Cryonic. Cones are nice but the long range of Cryonic combined with the close in nature of Traps makes it seem like a poor option. Void should work well enough since you'll be in melee range for PGT anyway. Pyronic and Ion are, of course, good options for any ranged character.

Destiny: Clarion seem like a waste to me since you already have AoE mez protection in FFG. Barrier is ok, but the lingering buff seems a bit weak to me. Ageless and Rebirth both seem like sensible choices for a Trapper. Ageless is pretty obvious, Recharge is like catnip to trappers, you cannot get enough of it and taking Ageless will help you get Traps up more often which is always nice. Rebirth does a good job of making up for one of Trap's weaknesses which is the lack of any panic button power, a strong heal/regen power is a good way to keep your team up until PGT recharges, plus it stacks with Triage Beacon which is nice during long fights.

Lore: I don't think there is sufficient difference between the groups to really matter so it mostly comes down to what you want. The only real thing I'd say is that if you do go for the support option the two trees with Battle Orbs (IDF and Warworks) are probably worse than the other trees since the Battle Orbs mez protection abilities are wasted with the FFG. So for support go either Clockwork (better heal) or Seers (damage/to hit bonus). The damage side matter less although personally I like the extra control from the Seers.

EDIT: Lore update. Based on reports the Warworks boss apparently offers the highest damage. The good news here is that Trappers work relatively well in melee so you should be able to offer at least some support. The bad news is that Traps has limited options for keeping her alive outside of keeping her under the bubble and whatever Destiny Buff you took. Still if you're looking for damage Warworks is probably a solid choice for the agressive Trapper.

Excellent advice Adeon.

Let me try Son & Cold, since those are my 2 Incarnate defenders that I'm running through the two trials atm. Both are similar in that they both shield, though in different ways, and they both debuff.

Interface: More -res is always attractive, as is the proc damage. In fact, I see very few places where Reactive isn't the pick of choice. With Cold, I can see value to Grav's -recharge & speed to stack, but you likely have enough from just your primary. Diamagnetic's -to hit offers nice synergy with your shields, but Cold hardly needs more -regen. I'm still leaning Reactive with both.

Judgment: Really, no reason to go other than Pyro or Ion right now. Ion's -end/-recovery goes well with Cold's debuffs as well. Am thinking Pyro for Son and Ion for Cold atm.

Destiny: Ah, well, here's the really tricky pick for defenders. Do we fill our holes, or strengthen what we're already good at? Barrier might seem a bit excessive, esp for Cold shielders, but maybe not for Incarnate content w/their higher to hits? Sonic shields always seemed a bit weak compared to FF & Cold, so maybe Barrier ftw after all? The ally rez gives both shielders a missing component to their arsenal as well.

Ageless seems half wasted for Cold. HL is a far better recovery tool than Ageless. The +rech is very nice, of course for Cold--faster HL, Benumb, Sleet, etc. Son can use a +end/recovery tool too, but the +rech is largely wasted (faster Liquefy is nice tho).

Clarion fills a nice hole for Cold shields, but it's only useful to fill the Sleep gap for Sonic's bubble. Since you can Clarity your teammates, Clarion is the least useful for a Son defender, IMO.

Rebirth is the Destiny pick of choice for melee toons w/their high HP counts. Plus neither Cold nor Son have heals. If you're looking to benefit your team the most, and not just looking at Destiny as a self buff, Rebirth Radial Epiphany gives your teammates huge layered mitigation with regen, your own shields and their HPs, which if they're melee toons, should already be pretty hefty. Oh and a massive heal too. I'm heavily leaning this way for both my shield toons.

Lore: I'm looking for damage support for soloing mostly here. I'm reading that the Warwork Vikies are where it's at. Properly shielded, they should be wrecking machines.

For Radiation and Dark Miasma:

Destiny - IMO for most Defenders with these sets, Clarion probably makes the most sense. It provides mezz protection to keep toggles running that is otherwise denied to the Defender AT via inherents or APPs (unlike Controllers or Dominators). None of the choices are terrible however.

Interface - Anything works, but IMO every character who wants to solo should pick up a few levels of Reactive. The player can choose to swap into something different for teams and task forces if lots of other people have the same proc.

Lore - Pick whatever you want.

Judgment - Again, anything works. I actually think all 4 powers are pretty decent. Cryonic has 120 foot range and hits up to 32 targets, with one version having a 25% chance for a 10 second Mag 4 hold, for example.

Alpha - It depends, but generally I lean toward Cardiac for these sets. Spiritual isn't a bad choice either, depending on your overall choices. But the extra Resistance in Spiritual plus Tough plus a Resistance armor (all of which have superior base values on a Defender compared to other squishies) boosted by Cardiac is really attractive to me, to say nothing of extending the range of cone powers in several blast sets.

I'll take a stab at Trick Arrow

Interface : I'm torn between Gravitic and Paralytic. Both cover areas of Debuff that TA misses or compliment what it already does. Personally I went Gravitic just to be able to debuff the whole spectrum. I agree about keeping a level or 3 of Reactive in stock for when you solo.

Judgment : The only one I CAN'T recommend is Void. TAs should NEVER be in melee range

Destiny :This one is simple- either Clarion or Rebirth. Ageless doesn't help TA as much as other sets since it's soo END-light. Rebirth will give you a heal that can keep you alive, but I prefer Clarion- it keeps you fighting longer where as Rebirth is more a "oh ****" power.

Lore : Honestly, all of them work, I'm leaning toward Seers for the buffing OR Clockwork for more AoE damage.

My Sonic/Sonic is one of my main two Incarnate charactes, so I'll throw in my $.02.

Judgment: Mostly a matter of personal taste, but I went with Ion because it fit slightly better with the char. concept than hurling fireballs / ice cones, and so I didn't have to worry about lining up the right central target for max. coverage while laying into an AV with my debuffs. Only one I'd avoid is Void.

Interface: I was really, really tempted by the damage proc in Reactive. I am in love with my Apocalypse proc in Shriek, because it lets a tier 1 defender blast hit for over 200 damage, and more damage procs would make a big difference on a sonic/sonic. However, I went with the -damage proc from Paralytic for now; unless I'm deeply mistaken, -resistance can amplify the effects of -damage, since the two stats are so closely linked. As a sonic/sonic, Paralytic -damage could take out a significant bit of a nasty boss/AV's threat level. I'll likely get the Reactive DoT as well, once I get my other powers up a bit more.

Lore: Like with Interface, MOAR DAMAEG seemed fun, but the differences between the groups appear mostly thematic. My main split was between Seers and Warworks; I use the Psi epic pool, and even more psionic damage can only help vs. enemies like Marauder, but a harder hitting melee combatant like Victoria would be more useful against more targets (and could carry my disruption aura if there isn't a suitable meleer on the team. I haven't unlocked it yet, so I still have some more time to be indecisive.

Destiny: Don't QUITE have it unlocked yet, but I already have my rare radial Rebirth crafted and waiting to go, and will upgrade it to V-rare as soon as I get a few more threads for the last 4 common components. Layering lots of +res (already covered) with lots of +regen/heals is one of the easiest and strongest sources of protection a character can access. Plus, Barrier (and maneuvers, and IO defense buffs, and ...) seems very common already, so diversity is more helpful than more redundancy.

I'm torn between Void for my dark/dark/soul defender or Pyronic.

One, void is PBAoE, but since dark miasma's heal is based on people around you, that should work to your advantage, but on the other hand: You're a defender. By the time you get in melee range most things have probably already been killed, but you don't want to rush into melee first because then you die.

Pyronic solves the PBAoE problem, but now you're more tempted to stay at range, whereas the melees will most likely need the healing more.

Even though I got void first, I'm kinda leaning towards switching to Pyronic. What do you guys think?

I agree on the damage debuff, stacking it can go to a maximum of 10% damage, which Void and DN can almost cap it on most anything that can't resist -dmg. That's a viable option, I must say.

I've been mostly focusing on my Storm/Dark Defender. After doing some research, I feel a bit better about my choices of things.

Judgement: I went with Void with the bonus damage. I'm mainly focused on two points to use it. First, Freezing Rain on a mob, fly in and blast the bejesus out of normal spawns which gets them a significant way down on health, especially on non-54 enemies. Second, when I had Blackstar and was solo, I hurricane pulled mobs, lay freezing rain down, and use blackstar to kill most everyone. However, I respeced out of it, so now I can use the same tactic, not have the endurance drop for them to easily kill me for those I miss, plus I'll be able to blast whoever remains.

Interface: I was initially thinking -resistance, like most were. However, when I heard the rumor that it's only a 2.5% or so resistance debuff, I figured that the 100% to-hit debuff, stacking with my damage focused tentacles and nightfall would be a much better choice. One use of each, it drops their to-hit down to -28%. I already got over 20% defense, so to generic mobs, I'll be softcapped to them, assuming equal level. When I get the -regen, that's one of the few things that Storm is outright missing debuff wise, so I can be even safer with a good debuff for harder targets.

Lore: This is another that a bit of studying did me a great favor. I was looking at the buff pets, because that's somehow what I really was looking at. My mindset was "Damage is nice, but damage is damage. Buffs do a lot of different things." So I did my homework, and noticed that the battle orb actually gives out mez protection to (what seemed like) everything. It may not be perfect per se, but for soloing it's exactly what I need and I didn't want to spend my Destiny spot for it. With that, I quickly came down to decide on Warworks, mostly because of what I've heard and seen of the Vicks. Status protection and a great melee pet for me, great!

Destiny: The major reason I didn't want to use this slot for my anti-mez was because I still have endurance issues. As to how, I dunno. I did take FoN and have Gaes to help some, but the drawback of both makes me itch. I don't want to loose defense or have a crash. As a result, I decided to go Ageless, which no only completely solves my endurance issues, but it helps me lay down my FR and LS faster. Then I can follow it up with more cones of -14% to-hit debuff a pop on each enemy I hit without having it slotted for to-hit debuff. It also gets my self heal faster. So, overall I see it as a great win for me.

For those who are doing incarnate trials on Stormies, I'd suggest giving another look at Gale as a general tip. It won't help against War Walkers, however, it does great against every other enemy of the IDF when you're trying to get those weapon catches or containment things killed. Freezing Rain will help with your accuracy on Gale, if you don't have it just slotted with a 50 generic Accuracy IO.

If i ever get around to it heres what i was going for on my Cold/Psi

Destiny - Not sure about this one either clarion for the mez protection or rebirth for the self heal.

Interface - I was going for the one with travel debuff but seeing how much reactive dot stack up i would go for that.

Lore - The seers have no aoes but i found them far easier to micromanage of the stuff i have tried.

Judgment - Cryonic for the beefy travel debuff. And while the cone is far more narrow than i would like in pve it looks cool.

Alpha - Spiritual Radial T4. Basically part of a project i ahvent reall started that could potentially slow down people in pvp. The recharge helps since my pve build is really cheap.

Emp/Psi here with no Acrobatics. First time visit to the thread, and an interesting similarity to the OP

Interface: Went reactive for more damage as per OP. Psi secondary has nothing to help with killing things quicker, so Reactive all the way.

Judgement: Started out with Void, but switched to Ion for the special effect alone.

Lore: I'm going Seer (currently T2) and it's pretty terrible for +Damage. Reserving judgement until I get the T4

Destiny: Clarion all the way. I get so fed up of being mezzed, and when I'm mezzed, I'm no use. I can do Carnie missions now!!

-H

Well, Auroxis knows what I play. But for those who don't...

My main is Emp/Dark/Power. I do carry good old Power Buildup to take advantage of opportunities to drop PBU + Venge/Fort/Heal/Etc. I enjoy the /Dark portion because it does do a satisfactory amount of damage (for my tastes) and Tenebrous Tentacles/Night Fall provide some nice -tohit debuff.

As far as my opinion on the i20 stuff...

Judgement - I am currently running with Ion. I figure I want a power that will occasionally do some significant damage and clear out trash mobs. So far, it seems to help get rid of a bunch of mobs and "lighten" the load on my team as far as incoming damage. Tho, I haven't really decided on which Judgement I will really stick with, Ion does seem to be a good choice so far.

Lore - I actually chose to take the seers and go the route that has the pet which gives out Fortitude. Thought it would be nice to have something that will buff my damage when I want to do damage. Trouble with me is I tend to team a lot on my Empath and I take the attitude that my teammates are my "pets". So, my need for buffs on myself are few. I may end up looking into pets that do more damage on their own on those occasions when I need a couple extra meat shields.

Interface - Haven't really done much with this yet. But, I am debating the choices between Diagmatric (sp?) and Reactive. Debuffing Tohit even more seems hot. Debuffing regen also seems good. Though, debuffing resistance is also a good way to go.

Destiny - Clarion was the easy choice for me. I have the T4 2-minute version. When I saw that I could have perma CM + ID on myself (and those around me), I immediately knew what to pick. Though, since any character with Empathy tends to be the "center" of the team (so you can make best use of RAs and Healing Aura), I would think all of the destiny powers would be a great choice. The path in Barrier that offers rez x2 even seems good in that it would give an Empath additional rezzing ability that they lack, which could be useful in large-scale events where having multiple dead bodies is more likely.

Personally, I think that i20 brought to my defender the ability to expand on his overall theme.

You can GET Incanate powers on Traps defenders?

I had to pay for mine practially.

I will make a plug for each of my favorites so far

Interface: Reactive Set: My eventual target is the 75% Fire DoT and 25% -Res, as my main stay name here suggests my main is an Emp/Sonic. My only real short falling is Damage and Mez protection. This helps to boost my overall damage and when I see HP falling short I have learned to switch targets knowing that the DoT will potentially KO the target. when the -res fires its nice but hardly noticeable (not compared to the -60% res from my secondary anyhow)

Judgement: Pyronic Set: Again, going with the theme of moar damage I went with Pyronic. The added fire DoT is so nice even with it having a total target of 24ish. I almost went with Ion but in the end Ion does more overall targets if it can hit more where as pyronic does the most per target.

Lore: Seer: I went with them mostly for the buff and for character. I love being able to have a version of Fort casted on me and I know when its on +ToHit, +Dmg, +Def. I almost never see that lazy bum cast a heal on me though XD I almost went War Works for the Victoria but these ladies just felt more like my character.

Destiny: Clarion: I can not praise this power enough. I have even taken my hasten off auto to leave this on. To have a perma Mag 6 mez protection is sooooooo freaking epic in my mind. I love this so much. I was tempted to go with the +special side but I wanted to be honest with my self, if I am taking fire for more than 30 seconds without moving or doing something to stave off the incoming damage then I am S.O.L..

So, thats what I picked for my main defender. I am still in debate for my Kin/Sonic tankfender

Here are my thoughts, and what I did with my kin/rad. Note that all these have already been crafted, but only the judgement is slotted because the other slots haven't been unlocked. So I can't give feedback yet.

Interface: Went with paralytic and the 75% chance damage debuff. I figure it will stack well with FS and siphon power. It's also the only one of the debuffs that fully affects AV's, since -damage is unresistable from what I understand. Of course reactive is always an option for more damage.

Judgement: Went with Ion, just for the flavor of it. I've tried pyronic on a couple other toons, and overall, I definitely like pyronic better. Ion has the same problem that the rest of kin has....if the target dies while you're casting a power, you get no effect. So while it's a negative, a kin is the one set that should be well prepared for that "problem".

Lore: Going with the warworks ACU+vicky. With speed boost and FS, I figure their damage will be totally insane. Plus I will be able to heal them to keep them alive.

Destiny: This was between barrier and clarion, but I went with barrier. The clarion would be pretty much just for me, since I already have a status res power for others. But I figured I can just keep carrying BF's, like I have been doing for 7 years. Not a big deal. Ageless is completely useless, since I can get to crazy recharge levels with siphon speed, and I can buff others with SB. And rebirth is nice, but I already have a big AoE heal. So I went with barrier, giving me something I had none of before, significant levels of both res and def.

Here's what I'm thinking about FF:

In general, there's a lot of flexibility, and most of these choices are going to depend a lot on your other powersets and your playstyle. Personally, I build for damage and run around like a tankmage. Partly this is because I'm /Dark, which gives me zero tricks, and partly it's because FF's trick is kb, and kb only ever makes me feel like I'm slowing the group down (we're talking incarnate slots, so I just mean endgame content here, of course). This means that I'll probably just grab a reactive interface, a warworks lore, and I really have no clue about the judgment yet: maybe void for flavor, maybe ion for the bigger number of targets, maybe pyronic because I'm tired of long activation times, I dunno. I'll be sticking to the left sides of these three trees, except maybe for reactive.

I think there's a little more to say about destiny, although I don't find any of them very inspiring. Clarion's mez protection is all but useless with dispersion bubble, but the +special would let you come close to softcapping with just the shields and maneuvers. (But it doesn't let you actually softcap without dispersion bubble, like power boost and power build up do.) I don't feel like I have a lot of trouble keeping people under dispersion bubble, though. Barrier is pretty obviously not super attractive--you should be softcapping everyone already, including yourself, and your res can be pretty good, too. I never find myself wishing I had a team heal, and I carry greens, so Rebirth is out. Process of elimination gives me Ageless, and hey, the debuff res on the right side of the tree partially fills a hole in FF anyway, so that's something. And more recharge means more damage, which is also good.

Rebirth or Ageless would both work well for a Forcefielder; the Rebirth just makes it THAT MUCH MORE impossible for anyone to actually die in your presence, although it is pretty heavy overkill normally. Rebirth = more endurance and recharge and debuff protection, which is also quite handy; you can help prevent cascading defense failure for you and your teammates, more rech = more dmg, and I don't know if you have any endurance issues but it doesn't exactly hurt to add even more recovery.

Barrier is obviously redundant, and Clarion is fairly silly with Dispersion already there. That said, my Blaster recently found out just how amusing it can be to pop DOUBLE Power Boost right before hitting Vengeance; /EM has the normal power, and Clarion Radial packs both Boost Range and Power Boost. Together, stupid-awesome stuff happens.