Which Kin?

Yes I did. No where in the OP did he say he wasn't willing to try Fire/Kin again nor did he have anything negative to say about it other than he deleted at level 20. Since this was his final comment....

I gave him my thoughts.

Have you played a Fire/Kin? You can't give up at level 20 you don't even have SOs yet, of course it's going to suck if you don't build and play to the strengths that the combination has at that level.

I'll be willing to bet that it was pre-inherent fitness too. Another early level negative issue about that combo gone.

Of course I thought that was pretty obvious to everyone... apparently not.

I'd still recommend that he give it another go and stick with it till he has fulcrum shift 4 slotted at level 39.

It will, assuming the Haunts and Umbral are nice and close to gain from it. Doggie has a habit of standing back for a few seconds to do his howl.

Another option is an Elec/Kin controller, Gremlins like to be in melee and Transference gels with your -End aura as a sapping tool. However your damage output will probably be less than Dark and certainly less than Fire and Plant. APPs will help with that but you'll still linger behind them.

Yes I have one in the 40s. You also weren't clear at all, stating it like it was an idea for a toon, seemingly disregarding that he has already done this and hated it enough to delete it.

Against large spawns, you don't need all that much time. Against single targets, Kinetics takes up an enormous amount of time. As for other power sets, the only power sets that are remotely comparable to the time investment for Kinetics are the healing sets - and that's only if people are taking damage. Most of the other sets throw a debuff or two at the beginning of a fight and then do nothing but nuke.

Against a large spawn, a single Kinetics easily caps damage. Against a single target, a dedicated Kinetics Defender will also cap damage. Adding another Kinetics doesn't help.

Fire Imps at cap will generate ~180 dps. Against a single target, there's nothing a Fire Controller can do that will come close to matching that performance.

The Corruptor needs to spend more time since their buffs are at 80% power.

On a single target, a Corruptor will generally only be able to muster around +280% (5 Siphon Power, 3 Fulcrum Shift). The Kinetics Defender would generate +350%.

Solo, this becomes particularly noticeable since Siphon Power will constitute a dps loss. As a result, while a Defender easily caps their damage and still has plenty of time to nuke, the Corruptor can either cap damage or nuke - but can't do both very effectively.

Kinetics is one of the best debuffing sets. It can debuff damage, end, slow and recharge better than any other set in the game.

And I don't know anyone with any sense that would ever take a Cold Dom over a Kinetics unless they already had a Kinetics on the team. People can fix their own defense problems pretty easily. It's incredible hard to cap their +damage and effective self-healing is rare outside of a small number of buff/debuff sets.

Kinetics already provides significant mitigation (as I noted above).

In terms of Dark, the reason it doesn't synergize particularly well with Kinetics is that you can simply wipe out most of the spawn before it gets a chance to do serious damage - if you take a power set that has significant AE damage (ie: not Dark). Couple this with the lack of a heavy attack in Dark to exploit the limited time frames you're using, and Dark isn't a particularly good match.

I'm not really sure how much better I can explain, but I'll try.

Defenders do bloom earlier than Corruptors, yes. That only matters until 38, however. The difference is also diminished when considering Support sets that buff damage, because of the Corruptor's higher base damage, damage cap, and Scourge.

Also an important thing to consider, my characters, at least, tend to see a lot more playtime from 38-50 and post-50 than they do getting to 38, but YMMV. Performance also tends to matter less the lower level you are, as lower level content is less demanding.

Assuming you take Maneuvers, Weave, and Combat Jumping, and slot all 3 of them for 55% Defense Enhancement (read: ED soft cap), a Corruptor gets 13.9655% Def(All), and a Defender gets 17.05% Def(All). That's a difference of 3.085% Defense, and that's as big of a difference as you could realistically make with a good build (as I'd assume you're not going to skip Hasten from your 4th power pool if you're concerned enough about the numbers to even be considering the difference in Defense). Less of those powers and/or less enhancement will mean a smaller difference, and even if you have all 3 slotted fully, 3% Def is not very difficult to come up with in Invention bonuses.

Meanwhile, if you'll refer back to my previous post for the math, a Corruptor at the damage cap has an effective damage scale of 3.75, and a Defender has an effective damage scale of 2.6. What that means to you is that a Corruptor will be doing (3.75 - 2.6) / 3.75 = 30.67% more damage than the Defender... without considering Scourge, which is a huge advantage in and of itself.

You will *definitely* be stronger as a Corruptor solo or teamed past 38, and the difference won't be very big before then, because the damage buffs the Corruptor is generating from Siphon Power increase their damage by a larger absolute value than the Defender.

To provide another example assuming Beauregard's numbers are correct above for a Kin against a single target (+260% Damage from the Corruptor, +350% Damage from the Defender), the Defender is far and away above their cap, so they're at +300%. The Corruptor has 260% + an assumed 95% from Damage Enhancements (again, ED soft cap) in their attack powers for a total of +355% Damage.

That puts the Defender's effective damage scale at 2.6, as previously explained, and the Corruptor's at 4.55 * 0.75 = 3.4125, again, not considering Scourge. That means the Corruptor is doing 23.8% more total damage before Scourge. This also assumes the Corruptor has no other Damage buffs at all (such as Inventions, Assault, red inspirations, et cetera), which the Defender couldn't benefit from. If that doesn't qualify as "vastly superior" I'm not sure what does.

I24 Proc Chance = (Enhanced Recharge + Activation Time) * (Current PPM * 1.25) / 60*(1 + .75*(.15*Radius - 0.011*Radius*(360-Arc)/30))
Single Target Radius = 0. AoE Non-Cone Arc = 360.

Time says hi (at least with regards to Slow and Recharge). Trick Arrow does more -Slow in a huge area as well, and adds in some -damage and -resist.

End debuffage isn't all that impressive, and Kins isn't that great as it's single target. In fact that's Kins biggest problem, a lot of its debuffs (other than Fulcrum Shift) are single target.

Kinetics is one of the best buffing sets but with regards to total debuffage it's behind quite a few sets.

Maybe saying the same thing twice helps!

I appreciate the 35+ game takes a lot longer to get through than the earlier levels and that is obviously worth consideration.

Thanks for taking the time to spell it out

-H

I hope it helps. I've made a few edits to try to make it clearer-er since the initial post, which may matter depending on when you started reading :P

Edit:

Found the guide that attempts to quantify the value of Scourge. The long and short of it is:
If you're interested in reading the details, the name in the quote should link correctly to the guide it's from.

Note that means that against the hardest targets, a Damage-capped Corruptor will have an effective damage scale of about 3.75 * 1.2 = 4.5, or, in other words, do about 42.2% more total damage than an equivalent Defender counterpart over the course of the fight.

I24 Proc Chance = (Enhanced Recharge + Activation Time) * (Current PPM * 1.25) / 60*(1 + .75*(.15*Radius - 0.011*Radius*(360-Arc)/30))
Single Target Radius = 0. AoE Non-Cone Arc = 360.

And you believe this proves that controllers do most of their damage through pets? I stand by my post above.

Yes - and Sonic is the best at -resist, followed by Trick Arrow actually. Traps is a jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none (EDIT oops, master of -regen probably.)

I forgot to ask - what was the nerfs?

In practice, Cold Domination trumps TA in -res, and for non-defenders, Cold Domination trumps sonic resonance as well.

Most versions of the Rain of Fire power summon the same pseudopet as the Blaster version (such as the Dominator Fire Mastery version), or, one with the same damage values as the Blaster version plus special archetype mechanics (such as the Corruptor Fire Blast version, which does full Blaster base damage plus double-Scourge).

The Defender version of Rain of Fire, however, got its very own copy of the pseudopet made for it, with it's base damage reduced by about 33%.

I24 Proc Chance = (Enhanced Recharge + Activation Time) * (Current PPM * 1.25) / 60*(1 + .75*(.15*Radius - 0.011*Radius*(360-Arc)/30))
Single Target Radius = 0. AoE Non-Cone Arc = 360.

You must be talking only when Heat Loss is actually up.