Been Gone a LONG time, so lots of little questions and stuff

Probably no one around here remembers me, because I mostly lurked, though I did try to contribute to things every once in a while. Basically, I used to PVP casually pre I-13 (left at I13), and am trying to ease my way back into it now. I have followed most of the mechanical changes, and had some help from a couple people hanging out at the terminals yesterday (as well as RV which I was surprised to see so busy), but I still had a few mechanical questions. I also put a brief list of builds I am looking at together (based on my preferred play style, used to do defs/controllers/blasters/MMs), so I was wondering if I could list the builds I am looking at/related mechanical questions and get some input.

Blasters:
Of course I am looking at a psy/em. I still have my old Fire/EM blaster, though she has slowly become more geared for PvE (though I can easily adjust her using one of her alt builds). Is it worth rolling a psy/em or should i just set up a second build on my fire/em?. Leveling really isn't much of an issue (have my brothers old account, now Premium, so PLing my self is easy), so I am guessing the psy/em would be worth making over the fire/em?

Corrs/Def:
Looking at a couple here, before the I left I was looking into Elec/Thermal, but I heard those were dead now a days (I guess because of ageless?), but the one I ran into in RV sure had no problem messing me up. This might have been because I was on my newish cold/dark def, and just didn't have the damage to kill him before heat exhaustion got me though, and not because it was super effective... Also wondering if (Psy/fire)/Therm or therm/sonic def might be better because elec doesn't seem to do a whole lot of draining? Or is tesla cage's -recov still necessary for this build to function at all?

Also looking a little into psy/poison, cause I know poison is great (used to dabble in MMs), but not sure this would be worth rolling over the psy/em. Damage might not be that much worse after the -res is applied, and scourge and weaken are fun, but I do love boost range.

I also have an old Rad/Psy fender, but with the way toggles work now I wasn't sure if I would be very happy with the results on that build if I did respec it (still has fitness and such lol).

Doms/trollers:
I happen to have an old Earth/Fire dom sitting around from an old theme supergroup circa I12 I could respec. I understand its considered a great combo due to the extended duration on stalagmites, but this is where I have a mechanics question. Looking at City of Data, the domination based un-resistible portion of the stun doesn't have the extra duration (its still 4 sec), and I know that all hold protection is now resistance. I don't really have a good feeling for how much resistance things have now, so I am curious if the extra 2 sec (4 sec slotted) on the resistible portion really makes that big a difference, especially on a 90 second base recharge. I am mostly just wondering if the extra duration is really worth it, or if i should remake this as a mind/fire?

Are there any controllers worth looking into now other than ill/emp? I still have an old Fire/Rad I used to love (I enjoyed the system where I had to war of attrition their BFs but once they were down it was over), and I leveled a new Fire/Cold since coming back, but with the way the new system works I just don't have a good feel for if they are any good anymore.

MMs:
I used to enjoy MMs, but i was only really getting into PVP MMs when I left. Are they even worth considering now, or does judgment just make them as much of a joke as i am guessing it does?

In general I am pretty open to trying everything (other than melee, though maybe I could trow sharks) and I wouldn't mind trying my hand at support (though I acknowledge that is even harder so probably not a good place to start), so if anyone has a build they would recommend starting on for someone getting back into the swing of things I am open to suggestions. Only other real constraint is that while I can afford to purple stuff out, I prefer builds I can feel out without purples, just because i am not SUPER rich, and extracting all the purples from a failed build is a pain. I prefer builds I can figure out how they function and if I like them before a huge investment (anything below purple is fine, no problem with LotGs or anything)

Also, I just want to clarify, I am not begging for exact builds, just power set combos. I like to research and design the finer points of a build myself before asking for pointers. Only real slotting based things I could use some advice on is maybe a general guideline of when DR destroys recharge set bonuses, or if there are any other special case procs to keep in mind (like placate in willdom, or 41ish KB prot)

I know that ended up being a longer post then I wanted it to be, so thanks in advance to anyone that helps out

Psy is the go-to damage type for any spike team. The delayed damage is pretty OP. Fire is great for small teams or damage spam in zone. Therm on a defender is sick, but not the end all be all. Poison on corruptors is very strong, on controllers even stronger. Again, psy is the damage type for large spike teams for the delayed damage, but not so great for small teams or 1v1s. dark blast blasters are quite strong, but they dont quite measure up for the 1v1 prowess of debuffing sets. There are generally three kinds of viable melee: stalkers who can AS (or do a 3+ shark spike...), KM scrappers (since Concentrated strike does almost as much as AS), or a big fat taunt bot tanker who never dies. Oh.. and stalagmites is definitely broken... that stun lasts long enough for the dom to kill you solo. Note that stalagmites is not even the best part of earth/fire... its just a great toon all around. Rad defenders are still very useful.

What kind of toon you play is really up to your preferences. If you want to fit right in with 8v8s like kickballs or joining the supplementary draft for the ongoing league, psy/em is typically what teams will expect you to have. If you want to zone, anything works really. fire/em in particular is very strong, especially if you have your incarnates. With blaster builds, you dont need recharge.. just get HP can and some Acc bonuses, but an expensive build adds extra fluff onto that. If you want to build up that dom, I would say you want the build to be pretty expensive because the build goals are more demanding. 41 KB protection is the minimum, 48 is ideal. You want to use the kismet +tohit proc if possible. You want to have as much stealth as possible. You want as much perception as possible. I would recommend having speed/leaping/leadership pools on every pvp toon (maybe other than emp or pain since you dont need perception to target your team.. duh) the other 2 pools are either fighting or concealment depending on if you have hiber in your epic or a resist toggle.

Arcanaville's DR calculator

With DR, you really need to over-slot your travel powers if you want to get near the travel cap (for SS especially). About recharge bonus: with DR, after about 200% bonus recharge (this includes the bonus from the diminished effect of enhancements), you are only getting less than 1/2 the amount of recharge you think you're getting.

Thanks for the fast info, had alot of what I was looking for, especially the DR calc and recharge information. I am deff going to spend some time goofing around in zones and random 1v1s, maybe some kickball, before I try to get into the leagues or "serious" kickball. I think even at my pre I13 prime I was low/average kickballer at best, so I deff need to get my legs going again before anything to serious. Power pool advice pretty much confirmed what I already suspected

Couple of follow up questions:
For the earth dom, I know to max it out and hit all the HP/rech/KB goals will be expensive, but I think I can spare enough to get something decent enough to feel it out in a zone and make sure it is right for me. One thing I wanted to ask was why it seems every Earth/Fire I see seems to have leviathan mastery over Ice mastery? Both have hibernate, and I would think with the stun on stalagmites they should be able to land sleet pretty well. Im guessing its because hoarfrost is largely wasted due to set bonuses (since you need to build high HP anyway since with DR hoarfrost wont be close to perma) and res passive>def shield?

And if the broken stalagmites isn't the best part of earth control what is? The -def seems nice, but squishies have such terrible def caps with DR that it won't be great for those fights, and doesn't dominate ignore positional def (or did they fix that)?

For thermal, why did you recommend it on defs over corrs? From real numbers the -recov of HE looks to be the same on corr and def (-200%), and with DR it doesnt look like the shields will help much (I popped powersurge on my blaster yesterday and had to double check to see if the numbers even changed at all lol), so just the slightly higher heal?

I will prob start by getting a Psy/EM because I do enjoy blasters, and like you said, its probably the easiest thing to slide into a group effort, while respecing my Earth/Fire dom and working a thermal or poison on the side (or knowing me, ill probably just end up leveling both and see which one i forget about lol).

Anyway, once again, thanks for all the quick advice

[edit] Also, quick double check, is the reason you mentioned poison on trollers specifically because of the hold length (which will be fixed in i21.5), or do the slightly higher envenom/weaken numbers make a big difference (are they higher, they dont seem to be up on redtomax, so i cant check them atm)?

You get a resist toggle with Leviathan, which means you don't need fighting pool. You also get a pet which is great for the Soulbound +HP bonus and it messes with people's ability to lock in 8v8s. Sleet is not useful at all in 8v8s, but great in zone. Hoarfrost is great just to have a heal, but one should be able to rely on their emps and insp tray for the duration of a 10 minute 8v8 match. You don't need stalagmites by -any- mean for earth/fire to be an effective spike team composition. I saw it with Conquistadorks in the CAPE league and now WARE has it down pat in the current Freedom league. Blaze > Fossilize from a team of 5 Earth/Fire doms will just kill a target outright unless they were already playing evasively. It is a spike that can totally catch you by surprise and it is also very fast paced. Call a target, blaze, fossilize, if they arent dead, someone is probably finishing them or they are being healed. Next target. There is a span of possibly less than 5 seconds. Playing against WARE, when they do this properly, They kill the first target, kill the emp's AP, then kill a second target before the respawn timer even cycles. With a psy/em team the cycle of spiking targets is definitely slower, as there is more time spent in animation and waiting for recharge of one's attack chain. tl;dr Earth/fire is a sick toon for a spike team. Spikes do/should not take as long as even a standard mez, let along stalagmites.

The defender HE is actually much better... if Mid's is reporting 200%, it is wrong. Check the number in game. Defenders also do significantly better damage due to the new(er) version of vigilance.

Poison troller have better debuff numbers in general, as I recall. I think the -special is notable much stronger on controllers. Also, I think that poison is a better disruption set than a set for a member of the offense. As such, controller primaries are much better at disruption than corruptor primaries. See: Illusion, Grav.

Once again thanks for all the advice/help.

I double checked in Mids, and it looks like it says Both Corr and Def HE do -200% recovery, but if you switch to PVP mode it says Corrs do -276 and defs do -346 (or something like that). I will double check in game, and had deff forget to click pvp mode the first time I checked.

If I do get around to rolling a Thermal Def, is elec blast still necessary for the extra drain and -recov of tesla cage, or should i go with sonic or something more damaging?

Sonic or fire blast, IMO. I have heard good things about a therm/son combined with buffed lore pets. By good I mean that I heard it was near impossible to beat.

Therm fenders are legit, I'm sort of surprised more people haven't made them yet. They easily drain through most recovery buffs where Corr HE wouldn't normally, and they do more damage. Also, on the subject of corrs/fenders, nowadays fenders are generally better than corrs. Better debuffs, better damage, better buffs, better heals, etc. Corrs have scourge but the 30% damage debuff for fenders 1v1 ends up being more important, and the better debuffs are more important for team PvP.

Only reason to roll corrs anymore is for poison for the most part.

I think most common fenders you will find are Rads. There's not really any other fender set that is as common as that, because Rads are still good if played well and are still pretty important in a lot of team settings.

Once again, thanks for the advice. I understand why Defs have an edge over Corrs now that I know HE's -recov is diff in PvP mode (like i said, i forgot to click that the first time I was comparing them). Im glad to hear Elec blast isnt as required as it used to be, because I do like some of the other sets more.

I still have a rad/psy and a rad/sonic I rolled from before I left, so at some point I will probably respec those as well (atleast one of them still has fitness pool ).

I think I have enough to get me started here, as I have a stable of 4 or so build I want to try out (2 of which I need to level still), though once i have them mostly set up and test them out for a bit I mihgt have some more questions .

I really hate the rap the rest of the community gives the everyone here, you guys have always been very helpful whenever I have had questions, but so many people think they will just get blown off if they ask.

Ok, so I prioritized the Psy/em blaster and the Therm/son def, because unlike the Earth/fire dom and the Rad/(psy or sonic), I actually had to level those two so I figured I wanted them done before the ambush XP nerf went live. I have them mostly leveled (should finish one tonight and the other tomorrow), and I have "cheap" builds planned out for them (basically no pvp IOs and no purples other than procs) since I cant afford to purple/pvp io out 4 chars and want to be able to get a feeling for them to decide who im going to splurge on. Long story short I have a couple of questions for these two builds.


Blaster:
Fairly confident the two builds I am trying to decide between will just come down to preference. Both have 42+ KB res, both hit HP cap (ok, one is only at 1604 or something), both have about 20% dam bonuses (not counting assault) , both have 200% acc. Basically I am trying to decide between Concealment+Force mastery or Fighting+Ice mastery. I was originally leaning towards Ice, but a couple posts I came across were pushing for force. I used the SS you linked above to check PFF, and it looks like even slotted that would only bring my def up to 25ish%, so I figure thats not the reason. Is it just because when you phase you are mobile vs Hibernoob where people can camp your body waiting, or am I missing something else?

My other question for the blaster was on which Alpha/Destiny to take. Originally I was leaning Cardiac/Rebirth, but my end consumption seemed pretty high. I dont have the numbers in front of me, but I think the net gain was only like 1.5 or 1.75 with everything running (sprint/SS/SJ/man/tactic/assault/acro, maybe something else i am forgetting), though my attacks with cardiac are pretty well reduced, so I wasn't sure if I should run ageless over rebirth? Also, I dont have beta installed ATM, so I havent been able to check, but i think one of the new alphas can get dam and range? that one worth looking into?

Defender:
I ended up with 3 builds for this char, mostly because I have no idea which APP/PPP to take. All 3 builds have 200% acc, 42+ KB, 1400ish HP (Is this good for a def? way harder to cap than blaster lol), and enough recharge to keep HE up alot. I havent checked the PVP zone numbers yet, but without spiritual HE recharges in 37 sec, and I think it is 32 with spiritual, so should be decent even after DR I think. Planned on going Spiritual/Ageless on this just to try and keep HE and MA up as much as possible and boost my heals. Should have more than enough rech to string scream+shriek together without to big a gap.

First build I am looking at is goes concealment (just stealth lotg +rech mule) + Sharkskin + Hibernoob. This build manages to have room for screech (5 slotted for set bonuses), though I wasn't sure how useful this will be. I know stun is useful since there acro won't reduce it, but I mostly wanted for the longer -res? This set also takes full leadership pool.

Second build goes concealment (thru phase shift) + dark embrace + power boost. To fit in the two extra concealment powers I dropped vengeance and screech, and used the freed up slots from screech to get a few more LotG set bonuses by pushing up stealth and invis slotting. Idea here was that phase+PBd heals might be better than hiber? Plus I can PB amplify+MA to make sure HE hits (not that that should be an issue). Wasn't sure if maybe I should give up assault instead of screech? Felt weird to go soul mastery without getting soul storm, but its damage is so slow, and I figure if i need a slow animating attack to hit like a truck I got shout. Of course I could also drop shout entirely for something else...

Third build is like second build, but instead of Dark Embrace+Power boost, I went Dominate + Mind over Body. I 5 slotted dominate with decimation, wanted a 6th slot for a Dam/Mez Hami, but couldn;t figure out where to steal the slot from yet. Dom looks like it hits pretty hard in PVP, animates fast, and only has a base 16 sec recharge, so i figured it might make a good regular 3rd attack for my chain? Kinda disappointed the mez didnt get buffed up much. I have enough outside recharge sources, I could probably franken slot it with Peros/Endos/thunderstrike triples/Lockdown IOs to get something decent. Exact slotting for dom isnt a huge issue for this build, since it would prob be something totally diff in the "expensive version" and im sure i can get it serviceable for a cheap version


Anyway, thanks again for helping and putting up with my long winded ramblings.

Those are all legitimate options. With the defender, you do need more HP than that. You will only ever use ageless against a sapper. As far as what you want to do with the therm, it is a beast for 1v1s, but you would have to get feedback from someone who 1v1s for more info one what is *best*. One thing I can tell you about Dominate, is the damage procs for holds are just as good as the ranged attack procs, but a lot cheaper. With the psy/em, a Cold mastery build will make you more sustainable in zone, but a PFF/phase build will make you more survivable in 8v8 arena *if* you use PFF properly. The reason Cold mastery is a good pick (in arena) is it eases the load on your inspiration tray and it makes the emp's job easier. PFF, when used preemptively, can mitigate a large portion of an incoming spike. You will want t4 Musculature for Alpha and Rebirth for Destiny on the blaster.

Sounds good.

For the Blaster
I will have to run my numbers with the end mod boost from musculature, might be enough to make it sustainable, especially if i am just winging it in random zone stuff for now, cause no one fight should last too long. I was under the impression that the range from cardiac was generally considered worth while though? Might be able to get the best of both worlds with the new one that has damage and range (though its secondary damage so it might only be 33%... really gotta dig up the numbers on that, not even sure any of its options do range and damage together or if they are exclusive).

For the defender:
Yeah, i was afraid that was too low on the hp, but between the lower starting HP making it have a longer way to go, and decreasing the amount I get form any % boost it is tough. I have a couple of places where I have a Lotg+rech but didnt slot have enough slots to push towards +hp bonus. This might just be one of the sacrifices I have to make for a cheap starter build though.
Right now I think Im kinda leaning towards psy, but i think thats mostly just because having 3 fast attacks feels natural... and im lazy and rolled her hero side for whatever reason lol. I am guessing the leviathan option is probably best since I feel like I should leverage screech's 12 sec debuff, but I just never liked hibernate. I always felt like all it did was restart the fight while giving your opponent control of positioning, but I never really did much with teams in the old days. Part of me is wondering if I really should drop shout just to free up the slots, but it is giving me nice bonuses atm, and once they are debuffed it can make a nice finisher.

Pretty sure I am just at the point where I need to stop playing theory and get my feet on the ground now. Hopefully I will have plenty of time this weekend, but might have to wait for next week.

I think whatever conclusions I come to on this defender should likely transition well enough to my rad/psy and rad/sonic that I shouldnt really have any major questions on those. Ill try get my Earth/fire build thrown together this weekend to see if I have any questions on that, but I have a feeling it will be pretty straight forward... though I will prob hit the same HP wall I did on the defender just due to budget... would be nice to hit 1500 though

Once again, thanks for all the help.

There are a lot of things you can get away with in this game since a true competitive scene simply does not exist. Hibernate may be an example of this. This is also a very unbalanced game in general, so that factors in to which build direction you take as well (meaning if you don't pick what's OP and someone else does, they may/will win just because they are playing to the imbalance).

Earth/fire can be a tough build to perfect. There are a lot of important build goals (acc, dam, recharge, range, HP), and depending on the order you rank their importance, it can make a huge difference in your build.