Erratic1

I think Ice does things in a weird and more difficult to quantify way than almost all the other sets. It has DEF for sure, and crazy cold resist, but Chilling Embrace (in addition to being a taunt aura and a movement slow) also slaps a 30+% recharge penalty on nearby foes, and that translates into fewer attacks levied, and less damage taken by the Icer. I'm sure there's a way to mathematically quantify that, but I have no idea how. Energy Absorption not only fills up your stamina, it drains the foes, and gives you Defense for every foe hit. Again, that's not something that's going to show up well in a hero planner, but considering how you're right in the middle of everything as a Tank, there's every possibility you're going to be pulling 10 or more % DEF when you fire off EA. If you fire off EA twice in a battle you've AoE drained all the end out of almost everything below an Elite Boss, another difficult thing to figure into a measure of effectiveness. I've pretty much only played Ice, so I'm not in a good place to compare with other sets. I think of Ice as being kind of non-traditional in how it approaches tanking, and wanted to express that. Attacks taking 30% longer to recharge should translate into a 1/1.3=77% rate of damage, or effectively reducing incoming damage by 23.

I have a couple of SD characters (Rad/SD scrapper and Psi/SD brute) and an SM/Bio Scrapper. Here are my thoughts... (1) At level 22 you really have a lot of the meat of the two powersets in Against All Odds and Rending Flurry. If that combination isnt feeling good then moving on now may be a good thing. However you have two significant powers yet to pick up which will change your approach--Savage Leap at 32 and Shield Charge at 35. Being able to Savage Leap in, Shield Charge on top of your targets, finish building Blood Frenzy on knocked down targets, then drop Rending Flurry should be quite effective. (2) Compared to the quick animations and cycling of Savage Melee, Radiation Melee is a slow, ponderous thing, like an elephant is compared to a cheetah. While it makes up for that with hard hits, it will be a significant change in pacing. Rad Shield is endurance intensive. This is not necessarily a problem in groups where someone might be buffing your endurance recovery but solo can be an issue until late game or sufficient IOs are slotted to help out. You will also need to leverage the Contaminated mechanism of Rad Melee to see the real power of Rad/SD, but if you do it is pretty sweet (not Elec/SD insta-gib of minions and lieutenants but things melt quickly and on balance that means more damage bonus from AAO while working on bringing down bosses).

I got hold of a Theft of Essence: Chance for +End last night and did some testing. TLDR: Not as great as I expected but not bad. The proc can go off on multiple targets but it never went off on all of them. I was testing with small groups of three to five yellow and orange cons. I do not think I ever got more than a single proc in a group of three and usually got a double proc in groups of four and five. Radiation Siphon's base cost is 10 endurance, so a proc is self-paying. I have it slotted with a single Endurance Cost Reduction, so get back 2.5 endurance on a single proc. Double procs are where the real gain begins. Once the character's defenses are in better shape I will test larger groups.

Good point.

Brute: "Oh shit, there goes my Fury." Scrapper: "Look at THAT clump of bad guys!" Did a four man Positron 1 TF this past weekend where the group consisted of 1Tanker, 1 Scrapper, and 2Brutes. At some point I realized my brute kept pulling aggro when we were all fighting together. I'd put it down to Against All Odds, but the scrapper was Shield Defense too. I definitely had to be careful in using Psi Blade Sweep.

Running Sonic/Bio and it is a wonderful combination.

Radiation melee is slow, but heavy hitting. It also has a mechanic which spreads damage around from its single-target attacks if you attack the right target. I liked it enough to have two character with it (Rad/Shield Scrapper and Rad/Fire Brute). Radiation Armor is wonderful but I get the impression most people do not realize all the things it brings to the table Solid protections, a heal, great endurance supply (basically you get a second Stamina power), a continuously up absorption shield (if slotted for it), a recharge bonus, and it debuffs enemies defenses. Hmm. . .despite having a DM/Elec Brute that is pretty awesome, I am now thinking about the potential behind a DM/Rad. Edit: Should add, Rad Melee does not bring the variety of tools to the table that Dark Melee does. It does not regain endurance, its life regain attack requires a precondition on top of needing to hit, and it has nothing like Soul Drain.

With Radiation Armor you get great recovery, a heal, recharge bonus (while in the thick of things), an absorption shield, and your enemies are easier to hit. Electrical covers a lot of the same ground.

If TT is only ever going to be on Excelsior then as sad as I will be not to enjoy them, that will have to be the way it is.

Howl's debuff lasts 8s. No, you're not likely in a team going to be doing full blast rotations, but you don't need to. Your purpose on a team is buffing the team's damage by providing damage bonus and debuffing resistance. With the Recharge boost from Siphon Speed you can Howl every 8s to maintain the resistance debuff on everything you hit. And tossing out Howl every 8s isn't exactly demanding.

City of Data claims it is a 74 degree cone, but I could never tell it hit anything. I dumped it.

Thank you for testing it. Guess I will have to shell out for the IO now.

Unsure what you're talking about here, wanna provide more info? Every foe you repel drains some of your endurance. Endurance is not a worry for Kinetics due to Transference. It should however be noted that trying to get close enough to a target to gain endurance from using Transference while running Repel is like chasing after a $100 bill suspended from a string attached to a stick holding it just out of reach which is attached to a hat you are wearing. You'll never get it.

Even Repel has its uses.

I may never understand the disdain so many have for Repel. Apparently nobody can think of anything it can be used for than wrecking the ability to apply area damage to groups of enemies. Position yourself between the melees and the ranged characters of your group. If any ranged groupware draws aggro the angry foes cant get past (or to) you. If your party bites off more than it can handle and there are no characters with controls, knocking down everything you see by charging to enemies provides control (because enemies on their butts aren't attacking). It's a situational power, sure. It is not however a waste.

But Regen/Recovery specifically is a 2m effect and it not stacking makes sense (though extending its duration would make sense). Chance for +Endurance is an immediate payoff. But do you only get it for the thing you target or for everything you make a Hit check against?

According to City of Data it's a 30% reduction. You could offset that with the right primary, but you would still be behind where you otherwise would have been with another secondary set.

Does anyone know if Radiation Siphon slotted with Theft of Essence: Chance for +Endurance procs off every enemy hit when attacking a Contaminated target? The combat log shows a Hit check is performed against multiple targets. If you can get Endurance off each hit enemy this would be a fantastic plus for Radiation Melee.

Radiation Melee attacks are slow animating but hard hitting. What it brings to the table is rebuffing enemy defense and the Contaminated mechanic whereby making a single-target attack on a Contaminated target causes an attack on all nearby targets for roughly 30% of the damage of the original hit. If you see Contaminated appear over an enemy's head it is worth it to immediately change targets to attack that enemy. This makes getting the best use of Radiation Melee a bit of a game of Whack-a-mole. Two must take powers in Radiation Melee are Fusion and Irradiated Ground. Fusion is the set's Build Up equivalent, but it also guarantees applying Contaminated to what you hit for 10s. Irradiated Ground both debuffs nearby enemy's defense, making it more likely you will hit (which you want with slow attacks) but also can apply Contaminated. It also deals minor damage.

It is easy enough to test the impact of +Damage on DoTs by using the different stances In Bio Armor. Having a Savage/Bio Scrapper I did so. The headachy part was finding repeated instance of opponents of the same type and level to test on. Long and short, the different stances, which apply no damage bonus (Efficient), apply a damage bonus (Offensive), and apply a negative bonus (Defensive) changed the value of the DoTs I saw just now in testing. Moreover, popping a Focused Rage also changed the value of the DoT. The DoT in question was the one applied by Rending Flurry as used at five stacks of Blood Frenzy, noted as "Rending Flurry Large" in the combat log. I will also note that if you monitor your Damage Bonus you will see that as you build stacks of Blood Frenzy there is no change in the value of the Damage Bonus. The description at Paragonwiki and in Pine that, "Each stack of this buff grants a small damage buff and endurance cost discount," does not seem to hold true. Instead you get benefit on your spenders and only if you use them when at max stacks (the difference between "Rending Flurry Normal" and "Rending Flurry Large" in the log). Another option for testing the impact of +Damge would be to use a Savage/Shield build making use of Against All Odds, which would have the benefit that the +Damage would fluctuate according to how many opponents you had standing at any given time. Over the course one would expect the value to decline with the damage bonus as opponents are defeated. I am not particularly inclined to start another character for such purposes, but a few DFBs and DiBs should get someone to the point of having Against All Odds by which to do some testing.

I have a 36 Rad/Fire Brute. He drinks endurance like nobody's business.

Radiation Melee attacks are slow, ponderous things. Accordingly they hit for more damage than attacks from sets with faster delivery. The heal is as reliable as you manage to contaminate things--something Irradiated Ground should be helping you with.

Pre-shutdown I started levelling an Ice/EM Tanker...that is what prompted me to make my far more successful and enjoyable Ice/Stone Tanker.

Having played a DM/Elec Brute who was stunningly survivable pre-shutdown (and am in the process of remaking), I can assure you an Elec/DM tank will not disappoint. You quite literally cannot run out of endurance so long as three foes are about and having both an quickly recycling healing attack as well as a backup heal that does not have to hit is a major plus.

I have a level 35 Grav/Energy Dominator. :D