Help me decide solo Corrupter: Ice or Fire/Time?
By
Beauregard,
Posted on: 2012-04-06 14:50 in Corruptors
I have some /time masterminds and time defenders, but not the two combos you show. I do have an Ice/Cold corruptor. There is a TON of mitigation you can get stacking slows and holds. Time stop and freeze ray mean most troublesome foes can be held and killed at your pleasure. Time Juncture, distortion field, time crawl, the ice secondary means so much slow you will notice how much less you get hit.
Also your nuke in ice is targetted AoE. Chain some debuff, ice storm, blizzard from relative ranged safety 
Triumphant Defenders Forever
Psylenz FF/Psi, ArticQuark Storm/Rad, Symon BarSisyphus Bots/psn, Max VanSydow Thugs/Dk, Cyclone Symon Bots/stm, Blue Loki Ice/Cd, Widow 46526
HelinCarnate:OMG it is so terrible. I have the option to take 3 more powers but no additional slots. Boo F'ing hoo.
Thanks for your reply, and you raise an interesting question. If I am mainly solo then defenders get a 30% damage buff. And nowadays Defenders can get Fire. Hmm.
Defender rain is a watered down version, just pointing that out.
I took a quick look at the Defender's forum and wasn't able to find any guides or posts about this. Can you fill in a few more details on how it is watered down?
Fire/Time hands down. Take it slot it love it.
The development team and this community deserved better than this from NC Soft. Best wishes on your search.
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One of the reasons why rain of fire is so nice on a corrupter is because the blaster version was used without the numbers tuned down.|
Originally Posted by JimG
I took a quick look at the Defender's forum and wasn't able to find any guides or posts about this. Can you fill in a few more details on how it is watered down?
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The same is not true of the defender version. A quick look at the damage on mids should show you what I mean.
Ice has better mitigation. Most of your attacks have -rech attached, which stacks with the -rech from time to basically force your enemies to never attack. Fire does absurd damage, and it's AoE's have a ridiculous cap (Fireball hits 16 enemies, Fire Breath hits 10, RoF has no cap to my knowledge). For solo, I'd be tempted to go fire. The damage is just that good. Especially once you get incarnate abilities it's an AoE powerhouse.
Fire/Time hands down. The mitigation in ice works well with time but nothing is better than hitting farsight and a purple running into melee and destroying everything in your path.
I dunno how fire/time is on a ruptor, but I assume it's awesome. My time/fire fender is a god. Incarnate softcap to everything, position and typed. Perma-hasten. Perma-chronoshift. No purple IOs needed! I wade in, and stuff just kinda melts. Fire/time ruptor would be great I'm sure!
I add Soul Drain in there for insult to injury as well. "Oh whut? Sorry did I just kill you all with only RoF and Fireball? TEE HEE!
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Fire/Time Corr is basically the same thing except the corr does more damage and get scourge rain of fire.
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Originally Posted by Emberly
I dunno how fire/time is on a ruptor, but I assume it's awesome. My time/fire fender is a god. Incarnate softcap to everything, position and typed. Perma-hasten. Perma-chronoshift. No purple IOs needed! I wade in, and stuff just kinda melts. Fire/time ruptor would be great I'm sure!
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Pretty easy to get 59% to all on a time ruptor, is it? I'll have to look into that, everyone loves Scourge 
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Oh I didn't read incarnate softcap. 45% softcap is ridiculously easy to get. Additionally, any enemy affected by Time's Juncture will put you at an effective incarnate softcap. Getting to the Incarnate softcap isn't really a big deal because of TJ.|
Originally Posted by Emberly
Pretty easy to get 59% to all on a time ruptor, is it? I'll have to look into that, everyone loves Scourge
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Actually, speaking of the incarnate softcap, it's not really necessary for anything. Incarnate softcap just doesn't make a big difference, and pretty much the only content I do is incarnate content, and none of my toons have incarnate softcap nor do they have survivability issues.
I thought along those lines too, but at 54 doesn't stuff resist the everlovin' out of TJ? Agreed that on anything with Time, 45% is practically child's play to get What a great set.
edit: Regardless of this tiny derail, you should totally go Fire/Time, OP.
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Depends what level you are relative to them. If you are +3 it's not gonna get resisted. If you're +0 it will probably be cut a bit (too lazy to look up by how much), but you won't be +0 for long.|
Originally Posted by Emberly
but at 54 doesn't stuff resist the everlovin' out of TJ?
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| edit: Regardless of this tiny derail, you should totally go Fire/Time, OP. |
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Well hot damn, I did not realize that incarnate shifts were counted when calculating the effects of level difference on debuff. Good to know. I've been running on +4 in DA since I hit 50 and it's been a rocking trip.
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Originally Posted by DreadShinobi
Depends what level you are relative to them. If you are +3 it's not gonna get resisted. If you're +0 it will probably be cut a bit (too lazy to look up by how much), but you won't be +0 for long.
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Fire/Time does about 10% more single target damage than Ice/Time.
Ice/Time is more survivable, has more devastating AE damage, is easier to slot effectively and requires fewer powers to make it function effectively.
/Time Takes care of the survival Part and /Fire is king. Plus you can spam Blaze, RoF and Fireball to take a mob. With Ice you're focusing more on ST attacks and Ice Storm. It all depends on the person but Fire/ deals more damage and Time can keep you alive.
Ice is amazing paired with Ageless and Burnout though but Fire still wins out I think.
I have an Ice/Dark that I love but I wished that I made an Ice/Cold instead...but Dark is awesome in it's own way.
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Mezzes and rchg debuffs are largely superfluous when you're softcapped to everything.|
Originally Posted by Beauregard
Ice/Time is more survivable,
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| has more devastating AE damage, |
A Time Manip really shouldn't be nuking unless you we're running an extremely specific build with ageless, but even if you were blizzard and inferno are even enough.
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| is easier to slot effectively and requires fewer powers to make it function effectively. |
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I bolded the part from Bizarro City of Heroes. I'd love to hear some details explaining how Ice has better AoE than Fire.|
Originally Posted by Beauregard
Ice/Time is more survivable, has more devastating AE damage, is easier to slot effectively and requires fewer powers to make it function effectively.
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edit:
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Originally Posted by DreadShinobi
Mezzes and rchg debuffs are largely superfluous when you're softcapped to everything.
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I'm not sure where you get the idea that eeking your way to 45 S/L confers some sort of invulnerability. It doesn't. There are spawns that 50+3 Tankers leap into and have to stay on their toes to survive. Virtually every high level spawn can rip through merely soft-capped defense like it isn't even there due to accuracy buffs coupled with defense debuffs.|
Originally Posted by DreadShinobi
Mezzes and rchg debuffs are largely superfluous when you're softcapped to everything.
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In any case, Ice/Time can hold AVs - hardly 'superfluous'. And it debuffs hit.
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Explain to me how Frost Breath and Ice Storm are more "devastating" than Fireball, Firebreath, and Rain of Fire. A Time Manip really shouldn't be nuking unless you we're running an extremely specific build with ageless, but even if you were blizzard and inferno are even enough. |
Especially as Time. You have zero toggles from main sets (that you'd bother taking) and ~20% defense before you add in the primary -hit debuffs. Once you've dropped Blizzard, you've essentially paralyzed/killed the entire spawn so you don't really need to do much but watch.
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| This honestly makes no sense. Both powersets need their lvl 1 power, t3 blast, aim, rain power, and then optionally take breath/nuke powers. All of those powers are more or less going to be slotted the same way. Fire then has fireball and Ice has Freeze Ray, Fireball being non-optional and Freeze Ray being optional. Are you really saying /having/ to take fireball is a disadvantage? And if you're rolling Ice Blast and not taking Freeze Ray, why did you roll Ice blast in the begining? The statement just doesn't make sense. |
The power you save is the fairly weak Time's Juncture that Fire needs for survivability but Ice does not.
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I never said anything about being invulvernable. I said that rchg debuffs and ST mezzes aren't going to magically survive a situation when you're defense fails. Although with that said Time has fabulous effective def debuff protection thanks to Time's Juncture.|
Originally Posted by Beauregard
I'm not sure where you get the idea that eeking your way to 45 S/L confers some sort of invulnerability. It doesn't. There are spawns that 50+3 Tankers leap into and have to stay on their toes to survive. Virtually every high level spawn can rip through merely soft-capped defense like it isn't even there due to accuracy buffs coupled with defense debuffs.
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| In any case, Ice/Time can hold AVs - hardly 'superfluous'. And it debuffs hit. |
Then ask yourself a second question: Is that hold actually helping me survive that AV? If you're able to survive the AV when their PToD is up why wouldn't you be able to survive the AV when their PToD is up?
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Blizzard does over twice the damage that Inferno does, it does it from range, it knocks down and hit debuffs everyone in the radius. So while I can understand not using Inferno, it makes almost no sense not to use Blizzard. Especially as Time. You have zero toggles from main sets (that you'd bother taking) and ~20% defense before you add in the primary -hit debuffs. Once you've dropped Blizzard, you've essentially paralyzed/killed the entire spawn so you don't really need to do much but watch. |
Time's Juncture, Maneuvers, Tough/Weave, Combat Jumping, Super Speed, Patron Shield will all drop when you nuke. But more importantly time is a very end heavy set and does not have a way to get on it's feet after nuking. Time is really just not a good set to be nuking on.
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| The Hold allows an extra purple and/or Basilisk's - not a small consideration in a build that requires massive amounts of recharge. You can slot additional proc options into the various Ice attacks as well. |
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| The power you save is the fairly weak Time's Juncture that Fire needs for survivability but Ice does not. |
Time's Juncture:
Keeps enemies in your rains
Protects you from defense debuffs. (in normal content, this means you're effectly immune to nearly all defense debuffs unless the enemy can stack another defense debuff in there before the first one wears off. Getting hit twice within 10 seconds (the standard duration for most def debuffs) is extraordinarily rare. Further between the time that you actually have 2 defense debuffs on you it is even rarer that your defense will actually cascade before 1 of them wears off. This effective defense debuff protection is one of the biggest reasons Time is as survivable as it is. Without that tohit debuff the set would merely be easier to softcap than other sets rather than actually being sturdier.
Let's you hit an effective incarnate softcap for trials and DA.
Allows for highly efficient herding. Due to the fast tick rate and large radius of Times Juncture it is quite easy to quickly herd up multiple groups of enemies.
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If anything, Mid's overstates Inferno and understates Blizzard.|
Originally Posted by DreadShinobi
Both Blizzard and Inferno will wipe a spawn, the end result is the same. Just because Blizzard shows more damage in mids doesn't mean it's better than inferno at wiping a spawn.
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Inferno does an average of 316 damage. It has almost no chance to Scourge - and even if it did, Scourge adds only trivial amounts of damage (since the only part of Inferno that can Scourge is the guaranteed 42 upfront damage that you're applying to a previously unengaged spawn). Throwing an Inferno will leave most of the lieutenants and all of the bosses still standing.
Blizzard does an average of 508 damage. It is almost guaranteed to Scourge since the damage occurs over time. It carries with it a -hit debuff significantly better than your beloved Time's Juncture. It also keeps anything without knockback resistance flopping around. Even without any significant boosts beyond just slotting it for damage, it will wipe out all of the minions and lieutenants - while crippling the boss's ability to act.
If you actually boost both attacks up to the point where Inferno has a decent chance to wipe out all the lieutenants, Blizzard reaches the point where it will annihilate all of the bosses as well (something that Inferno won't do even at the damage cap).
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| Time's Juncture is one of the best powers in Time Manip and the mere fact that you're dismissing it is terrible. |
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| Protects you from defense debuffs. |
There are reasons to go into melee. But your only reason to enter melee is so you can debuff them to the point where you can potentially survive at the range at a much lower rate than if you had simply not gone into melee in the first place. You aren't any more effective because you foolishly decided to step into melee range.
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| Allows for highly efficient herding. Due to the fast tick rate and large radius of Times Juncture it is quite easy to quickly herd up multiple groups of enemies. |
The only reason to 'herd' is when you've got ranged-only enemies and a convenient wall. But actually running around the room? Why would you waste the time (and put yourself at great risk)? Even Tankers have ranged AE these days. Just blast them with a ranged AE or two and take two steps behind your wall. If you've got a Rain, you don't even need to step out from behind the wall.
The ranged-only enemies will run to the corner you're ducking behind - and smack into your Distortion Field, which condenses them as tightly as you need.
Sometimes I forget to read enough of the subforums to find the humor only beau can deliver.
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Your number, 60%, is wrong. This isn't an opinion, it's a fact. I'll let you do the homework but I'll help you this much, these are the only other powers that debuff -tohit and -dmg:| No, it's an awful power. It does perhaps 60% of the -hit/-damage debuffing that any other set (which can debuff those factors) does. The -speed debuff is almost trivially small in a set which already gets the far better Distortion Field for that purpose. And it delivers its minor benefits via an end-heavy PBAoE toggle. |
Dark Miasma.Darkest Night
Poison.Weaken
Traps.Seeker Drones
That's it. You can count Rad which takes 2 powers to debuff those two attributes.
With Darkest Night takes over 3 seconds to activate. Weaken has a to-hit check and a tiny radius. Seekers are somewhat erratic and on a fairly large recharge timer. The 2 Rad toggles will take over 4 and a half seconds to activate. With TJ, you merely need to stand near the foes.
The -speed is certainly not wasted because DF itself is not enough to cap debuff speed. I suppose you could slot slows in it but then that's a spot that could have gone to a proc.
That Beau thinks it's "an awful power" doesn't faze me, that's just Beau being Beau. I simply don't want people unfamiliar with Time to make the mistake of missing out on a great debuff.
Global = Hedgefund (or some derivation thereof)
I am tired of melee toons and want to run a corrupter again.
A few years ago I had a Fire/Traps corrupter that I really liked, especially since /traps has mezz-protection.
Nowadays I solo most of the timefamily commitments mean I cant log in very often or for long. I plan to run actual content rather than just sit in the MA, and eventually I would like a powerful hero that can handle +1-ish/X8.
I am attracted to either Ice/Time or Fire/Time and cant decide. I like the synergy of Ice/Time, plus I have already done Fire. But the extra damage in Fire is just so yummy I am not sure I can give it up. But since I am solo and dont have mezz protection the soft controls of Ice are tempting.
What do people think? I would consider a different secondary than /Time, but Im drawn to the new shiny powerset.