+DMG vs -RES (Cold vs. Kin) questions

I am looking to roll either a Fire/Kin or Fire/Cold Corruptor and I'm looking for damage/team utility. I am wondering how the +DMG from Fulcrum Shift (and Siphon Power) compares to the -RES that Cold can stack (Sleet, Heat Loss, and any Achilles' Heel procs). Are +DMG and -RES in fact direct opposites? I started doing a simple analysis in excel but I figured I would ask here if someone could point me to a page on the boards which has some numbers already. Or if they know the answer, obviously. The question is simple, which set will help teams (and me) kill stuff faster? "Steamroll" if you will. I never solo, if that matters to know.

Of course /Kin and /Cold vary dramatically on secondary effects (full health/end vs DEF/RES team protection), but I'm more curious about the damage potential.

I also have a 50 Fire/Kin controller and I know from experience that /Kin is powerhouse for sure, just wondering how /Cold compares.

Best,
-MT

I have a fire kin corr, and cold corr (not fire primary though). I find both to be great team improving toons. Not too sure of how the dam/res question actually functions, that is..if +30 damage = -30% res. However..I do find the kin more fun to play. That may be due to having fire blast..but I find the kin seems to make teams steamroller more.

If anything, that could be because FS has a much faster rech than sleet..and you can stack it very easily. Of course, on the flip side, if you run in to use FS and the target dies..as well as the problem of actually BEING in melee. Cold is much easier to stay back and blast with and the -res will hit the whole mob, instead of most of the FS only buffing people in melee (not the team mates at the back).

Maybe someone who understands the numbers better can give you a better answer..but in short, both builds are gonna be fun and kick *** for teaming.

Cold is probably one of the best support secondaries, if not the best.

However, which would be better for a team all depends what the current team already has. Colds will stack better regardless of what's on the team, but if the team already has some debuffers, the kin will be more useful. More than one kin on a team isn't that useful since you can keep everyone damage capped with one.

Kin definitely add more offensive ability to a team, but it doesn't protect the team too much. Cold is more well-rounded. But a kin keeping a whole team speed boosted and at the damage cap for an entire mission is a big deal. For steamrolling in cases where extra protection isn't needed (like 99% of trials), nothing beats kin.

I would vote Kin for reasons of multiple spawns. Cold's debuffs affect the hit targets and so the debuff dies with the target. Kin's buffs affect the team and last after the 1st group of enemies are charred stains on the ground. And then into the next spawns.

The way I remember it was -res gave you the bigger benefit, but Kin offers so much +dmg that it outweighs the smaller -res number. Add in Kin's ability to boost recharge and Kin wins for going from point A to point B the fastest. Not the safest, but the fastest.

The OP is focusing on the +dmg of kinetics, but siphon power and fulcrum shift are great damage DEBUFFS on the targets.

A point of -res is generally worth more than a point of +dam, because +dam works off the base unenhanced damage of your powers, while -res works off the final enhanced + buffed damage of your powers. So generally that point of -res will boost your final damage by more than the point of +dmg.

However, Kin usually pumps out a *lot* more +dmg than just about any set does -res, so will usually boost overall offense by more (esp. since it can also buff recharge to get bigger attacks up more often).

Edit: also worth noting that once at the +dmg cap more +dmg obviously does nothing, while -res will continue to boost the damage (I think there's a -res cap, but it's a lot harder to reach).

Basically (and simplistically) representing final damage you've got

Base * Min( AT Cap, (1 + Σ (Damage Enhancements subject to ED) + Σ Damage Buffs)) * (1 + min( -3, Σ Resist Debuffs))

A majority of ATs have a damage cap of 400%, so let's look at that.

Assume damage is slotted to ed cap, giving us (1 + .95 + .2 * KinSiphons), I won't get into the 2 types of kin buffs and just leave it at this player is damage capped (especially considering other +dmg buffs, ie Assault or AM). So that's 400% damage. This may not be true for ATs with higher caps.

Let's look at 2 scenarios for Cold : 1) a worst case of one Sleet debuff 2) a best case of two Sleet debuffs + Heat Loss

1) (1 + .95) * (1 + .3) = 2.535
2) (1 + .95) * (1 + .9) = 3.7

So, Kin definitely provides more damage and that's no surprise, even for the best case for Cold.

I would like to submit two more scenarios: 1) A Kin is already on the team 2) A Cold is already on the team.

I'm only going to account for 1 Sleet here. If you bring a Kin to a team with a Kin, I'm not even going to go through the motions of showing there is no incremental damage buff gain. Capped is capped. When you bring a Cold to a team with a Kin, then magic happens... 4 * (1 + .3) = 5.2

If you bring a Cold to a team with a Cold, then you get (1 + .95) * (1 + 2 * .3) = 3.12

Moral of the story... a Kin is, as expected, the undisputed king of damage buffing. A second kin.... not so much. Please note I'm not saying 2 kins invalidate each other, just that the incremental gain of a 2nd kin isn't that great. There's always room for another Cold though. And another, and another and another...

Let me acknowledge I did not account for purple patch or enemy resistances which would be favorable to Kinetics.

For the record, 2 of my 10 favorite characters are a fire/kin corr and a fire/cold corr. I have no bias of one over the other, I rate them both as 10 stars out of 10 for fun and team utility. I solo better on the /Cold, but I rarely solo either. They're on different servers so I don't have to choose between them, but if I did I'd probably start off with the fire/kin and if another kin joined the team, i'd switch to the Cold.

They both pull more than their weight in "steamrolling" through mobs. Kin does it faster (usually) and cold does is more reliably (by keeping the team safe and being better against singular hard targets).

I think that's as succinctly as I can put it.

Which of these you want depends on how you want to play.

I love Kinetics. I have a Kin/Dark Defender, along with Rad/Kin, Fire/Kin, and Ice/Kin Corruptors, all of which I enjoyed enough to get to level 50 - although the Rad/Kin is the one I played the most after 50. I like playing them, and they're incredible for a team.

But Kinetics is a very busy set to play, so don't go into it thinking you'll throw out a buff or two and then spend the rest of the time blasting with huge damage numbers. Making Speed Boost into an AoE significantly cut down on the time you're going to spend in animations, and it's a lot less like trying to play whack-a-mole with expiring buffs now. But you'll still want double-stacked Fulcrum Shift to keep the damage cap since when you're at the damage cap targets disappear during its animation a lot - reducing the buff per cast on it - and to keep up with all of those people you Speed Boosted you need to keep Siphon Speed going as well. Plus you get people who expect to be healed every now and then, which means finding a target near them that, until i21, isn't going to die in the animation time for Transfusion.

In comparison, Cold is far more laid back - the shields last for 4 mins instead of Speed Boost's 2, Sleet is generally all you need per spawn before you start blasting, and you don't have to pay attention to other people's hit points or what they're standing near since you don't have a heal at all, let alone one that requires a live enemy near them.

Both are great for teams. But they play very differently - so do like I did and make both, then pick the one whose playstyle you want that day.

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I keep seeing a common theme pop up in regard to multiple Kins on a team; that damage cap is damage cap, so there's a huge drop in marginal returns. Which would be true, if +Dam was Kin's only trick. It's sort of analagous to the "Emps only heal" line of thought. Multiple Kins mean: extra healing; extra -regen; extra -Dam; extra EndRec and Recharge (o hai, rolling crashless Nukes!); and extra Mez protection (teehee Ghost Widow, stop, that tickles).

It probably doesn't mean extra mags of Repel.

How extensively are you planning to IO this character out? If not much, Kinetics would be my preferred option. Most of the stuff in Kinetics is tameable with SOs, not so much Cold Domination. Heat Loss has a 360 second recharge on -Resist that lasts only 30 seconds, and Benumb has only about 50% uptime. Outside of AV fights Cold on SOs mainly just provides shields and casts Sleet a lot. Sleet is good and all, but also available to Dominators as an APP power at the same level (as of issue 21). Almost all of Cold's reputation, IMO, rests on what it does to AVs, and even then mainly only after extensive slotting.

Anyway, in a situation with 2 Kinetics characters, often the optimal solution is to split up and mop up different sides of the map even faster.

Pretty much that. Although you can manage Damage Cap with a single Kin Defender, the other ATs would benefit from two.

Kin is also one of the few sets that does not /drastically/ improve with IOs, although it still does. Cold is one of the few sets that gets /stupid/ with heavy +Recharge IOing.

If you're looking to invest, go for Cold. If not, go for Kin.

For a deeper analysis, Cold offers more overall utility and possibly the superior kit. The +DMG from Fulcrum Shift, saturated, is worth more than Sleet's -RES, but only saturated. Too lazy to do the breaking point math for you Zzz.

That said, Kin is /probably/ better on AV's purely because +DMG can't be "Resisted", where -RES is. Again, saturated Fulcrum Shift only.

Kin goes a long way to speeding a team's killing prowess than Cold does, but Cold helps more with survivability. Substantially, really.

If you manage to get extreme levels of +Recharge for a Cold and can get that elusive Perma-Heat Loss, then it becomes SUBSTANTIALLY stronger in offering damage to the team, along with Cold's +DEF/+RES.

Ultimately? Play what you want to play. If you want to save a buck on IOs, Kin is cheap and deadly still. If you want an investment that'll always pay off, do Cold (and if you're going to invest the level of Purples needed to get Perma-Benumb/Heat Loss, do an Illu/Cold Controller and solo everything in the game.)

Thanks for all the great answers guys. The answers are pretty much what I expected in terms of the +DMG and -RES. The cap is the cap, but it is not impossible to get there, and on a good (fast) team is relatively easy to maintain.

Yes, I IO every toon I have. I personally only play toons that I see great potential in and that I plan to incarnate fully. Not to purple IOs really, but perhaps a set or two in key powers (e.g. my Perma PA Ill/Rad has a few sets of purples), but I am definitely willing to set IO it otherwise.

I'm thinking /Cold simply because I have a Fire/Kin controller already. Yes, it is not the same as a Fire/Kin Corr, but I think the Fire/Kin controller is much more similar (obviously) to Fire/Kin Corr in this situation than to Fire/Cold. The more I think about it, if someone goes "hey we need a Kin" I can already fill that gap. To me, having two toons that kind of do the same thing (on my account, since I can't play them simultaneously; not on a team since obviously two Kins or two Colds is good), is kind of silly. I think I would like to have the option of filling the "hey we could use a Cold" too.

Best,
-MT

Offensively, I would say Kinetic with the right use of FS is a bit more potent.

However, /Cold brings almost everything but healing. With ice shields on, your team can safely blast without worrying about taking too much damage.

I also think Kinetic works better with more melee on the team than more squishies because a lot of squishy don't like to get that close and they may not benefit the full potential from FS.

The usefulness of kinetics or cold will change depending on team. If there already is a kinetics user, another will not add as much, because a single kin can keep a team near the damage cap (excepting perhaps Brutes). A cold, however, will give roughly the same amount of help no matter what the team is composed off (it is much rarer to hit the -res cap than the +dam cap). Also, +dam is deceptive. When you are level one, with no enhancements or buffs, a 10% +dam increase equals 10% more damage. But when you are a level 50 Brute with double stacked rage and high fury, that same +10% will be more like a 1-2% increase. If you have 300% damage increase including enhancements, moving to 400% isn't a 100% increase in the damage dealt. Instead, it would be a 25% increase.

In contrast, -res of 10% would be a 10% increase at level, level 50, and even super duper level 50 IOed to the gills with T4 incarnates. And if I'm correct, it works that way even if the target has resistance buffs against. This isn't necessarily a plus, because it means that an AV with 90% resistance won't be debuffed to 80% with a 10% buff, but to 89%. Why? Because it would be 10% more damage (versus it and you'll see that the target would go from 10% damage taken to 11% damage taken). This may also work with targets that are already debuffed, but I haven't tested it. If so, that same -res debuff would debuff a target with -100% resistance by 20% instead of 10%. The point is that -res is more potent than +dam given the same quantities. A good rule of thumb is that 1 point of -res is worth at least 2 points of +dam, and that ratio increases as the damage cap is approached. For a final bonus, -res bonuses also increase the effectiveness of -dam (which can easily half the damage of any unresisting enemy by up 50% with certain powersets, and that stacks with defense and resistance).

So, for all around effectiveness, go cold. Your resistance debuffing powers will work no matter the team composition and will complement any +dam buffing (and -dam debuffing) on the team. But, if you wanted to just give a big extra punch to most teams, roll a kin. The kin also would have the advantage of giving a +recharge increase.

If you are looking for damage support Kin will do lot more in MOST teams. The only situation where cold may be more indirect damage is if there is another Kin (and you will still be usefull on AVs).
In addition to damage buffs, Kin gives also recharge and endo boost, which may contribute to more damage output.


Now cold isnt a bad set at all. Its strengh relies less on pure damage boost than Kinetics.

(as for res debuff Traps may have better score than cold in addition to some direct damage)

Something I don't think anyone's mentioned yet... make a kin/sonic defender or sonic/kin corruptor and have both on the one character. I know that's not what was asked but it's a thought.