Doomguide2005

Likely. I too tend to play everything as if it's a rabid scrapper including my Earth/Storm(s). But I'd also say I find a lot a ways to divert myself between bursts when solo -> comment or just reading in chat on something, look up something in the wiki, the forums or toggle out to see peek at Mids or just grab/take a drink all of which slow my actual pace down sometimes a lot. With decent end recovery the blue bar bounces back pretty quick.

Computers up and dying on me has been a repeating nemesis for me. Knocked me offline so I missed Sunset and again has me out of game currently as something always seems to come along to swallow up the funds I'd otherwise put aside.

I've personally never found /Storm to have the endurance issues it seems to have a reputation for. Maybe it's my own playstyle with it, don't know. Yes it can use the blue bar but I've never found it problematic to the point of requiring the Alpha Slot to fix any issues I was having and that's doubly true solo where the pacing is far more under my control. And for this especially if I wanted to go for it above +0 there's a lot to love about the pairing even with endurance challenge present. Can you tell it's one of my favorite pairings in general?

What's it say in your Combat Attributes? What level are you? And the foes? Are you just approaching the mobs? And do you mean literally any mobs? Council vs DE vs Malta vs etc..

Agreed Earth/Kinetics should wreck. One soft spot is your Kin wants to be in close and that's where mez protection comes into play. Amplifier, Sorcery pool helps there as well as Rocky's strong taunt.

Earth/Storm would be my choice -defense debuff auto hit patches (QS) Those patches can be used from behind/around cover. Storm has more -def and -resist patches (FR) Auto hitting Tornado Pet I wouldn't care to try it at +4/×8, but thinking +0/×8 would be relatively fast even when compared to an IO'd build (though obviously slower) and the real obstacle to speed would be endurance usage for which there's base empowerment buffs and p2w solutions, Accolades and Day Job buffs for additional support in both Endurance and Recharge. Another solid choice would involve Traps I'm thinking. Illusion/Traps perhaps. Wouldn't set any speed records but Traps can lend itself to be a very patient set up and ambush playstyle.

What 'normal' spawns are we talking about? Details would be helpful to distinguish between bug, unusual circumstance and working as intended.

Great now I'm imagining Daleks in Granite Armor staring down curbs and trying to figure out how to get into City Hall.

Hey don't bring me into this.

Without a doubt, despite numerous alts across 5+ servers on Live and HC my number one "Main of Mains" is 'Greta' aka GRETA-001 my Claws/SR scrapper. An acronym for the mostly in my head backstory behind the character, an involuntarily and genetically engineered soldier. My first character created in CoX in late i3 she was (and is) my personal vanguard character. The first to see a new zone, try new content or changes in the game, solo this, that, and whatever comes her way and through her my way. The first to be heavily IO'd and have a billion inf build, to have a dozen varied builds in Mids and a dozen more on paper long before I knew anything about character builders. I have other favorites, ones who saw and will see again a great deal of post 50 play, got beyond basic generic IOs and SOs but none are her match or ever will be that one special character.

Feel free to swap out the Rectified Reticle +perception in Tactics. I don't know if it does anything worth it in PvP but in PvE Tactics alone is more than sufficient to counter Blind effects from Arachnos and others, see Banes, KoA etc.. I'd drop something in there -> endred, to hit/end or to hit IO more useful. EDIT: Player base perception is 500ft. Smoke from foes like Widows is -90%, Tactics (at 50th) is +86.5%

Does that put the health bar over their heads or place it in your window like a pet or teammate? If I'm not mistaken @Ukaseis talking about the second. A health bar over their heads I can't see if I'm a melee character with foes ahead and the hostage behind me.

Presuming it's an additional option, sounds good to me.

Would also, especially an IO'd and exemplared, pack a hell of a lot of To Hit and damage debuff for the King to deal with. Uptime on Howlings regen debuff would also be greatly improved. Whereas practically speaking TG isn't likely to be used more often even given higher recharge.

Well if you're really liking the build there's always that 2nd (or 3rd) alternate build options as well especially if $$ is not an issue. Mine was a Cold/Ice/Power Defender and probably, along with my Earth/Storm, saw the most play time among my support characters on Pinnacle.

From what I've read/seen and experienced on teams the major issue with going with something like /Energy for using extreme range as defense is the second mission. The cramped twisty caves make using that extra range difficult at best. Outdoor maps (or portions thereof) yes, twisty caves with neg energy and hovering defdebuffs using foes not so much. In general the 2nd mission is problematic for most non-melee types.

Some thoughts. Solo or teamed? While solo defenses are far more important but I still want solid recharge. Pacing when solo is dependent on the player which means you can if needed slow down or wait a few seconds for powers or end recovery but not getting creamed when taking the alpha is obviously of importantance. Teamed I want recharge, lots of recharge then what defense I can get without significant loss of cool downs on important powers. While this should be fairly obvious those overall goals need to be kept in mind while putting together a build. Too often in the past I see first time or inexperienced builders lose track of their overall goals. Of course being unable to use Mids makes it much harder currently for me to see the effects of various choices. Recharge is very important for Benumb, Heat Loss and Sleet, Ice Storm and Blizzard, especially Benumb and Heat Loss. Ideally Benumb and the +recovery portion of Heat Loss are no more than a few seconds off perma on a team focused build and HL is even more important in a proc build as both global accuracy and +recovery/+end are more important in proc builds. I'd want both Kismet and Tactics in the build. I'd want Kismet early while leveling or for exemplar work. Kismet only functions if the power it is in is active (and 120 sec after the power becomes inactive). Generating To Hit buffs will help greatly with how much global accuracy is needed to make proc loaded attacks hit reliably particularly vs +4 and up targets. Keep in mind those defense debuffs are less effective vs +4 foes (Purple Patch) and waaaay less effective vs +4 AVs, GMs etc., but it's also another reason for recharge => to be able to use Sleet on every mob. Ideally I'd want to max the damage aspect prior to procs but especially on the early blasts 6 procs if they reliably trigger yield more damage. Find the happy spot (and yes that probably involves a Kinetics teammate 😜). I like LotG and Adjusted Targeting sets as they give me two things I need in a build, especially a proc-centric build namely Accuracy and Recharge. Ditto for most Purple sets. Ice Shield and Glacial Shield -- keep in mind they also accept Resist Damage sets. So a LotG def/+rchg is just the tip if the iceberg of special IOs that could be placed here freeing up slots elsewhere to solidly enhance aspects of those other powers. Mids is a great place to experiment moving stuff around. Edit: just be mindful of how the specials work in clicks, take it to the test server if needed (which momentarily slipped my mind, oops)

Fair enough. I guess all things considered I don't necessarily have an issue with some sort of limited bypass of the clamp or a higher such clamp (i.e.99% or such) under thing like aim and bu.

Looks at Time Lord *boggles* Yes that looks sweet indeed.

Unfortunately my internet is limited to this phone. No ability to look at the build as posted.

@Nemu Brawl with 5 piece Blistering Cold? Am I missing something by not being able to open Mids? @SeraphimKensai How do you like to slot Tough? I believe my Claws/SR went 2 Steadfast (resist/end, resist/3%) and 3 Glad Armor (resist, resist/end, 3%) => 4% recovery, 3 pts kb prot, which is probably what I'd do here if I stayed at 5 slots. But it is consistent with their build goals. Not sure of the math for 4% recovery vs 2.5% end discount Definitely a lot of mules for the S/L defense. I've seen the build in action (YouTube) it definitely performs assuming the above build is essentially the same one.

So let's say they did remove the chance to miss. How would you expect that to change the purple patch? How about damage and damage resistance? Would missing still be a foe thing? What sort of changes to the numerous powers in the game would you expect? Seems to me that nevermind whether you're in favor of it or not the amount of changes necessary to the power sets alone makes the idea a non starter unless the plan is to lobby for CoX 2.0 several years down the road.

Been a while since I could use Mids (2+ yrs 😳) but as I recall it was possible to search its data base for various set bonuses to see which sets had which bonuses.

<-- also not a PvP player beyond some extremely casual SG stuff and zone encounters in Bloody Bay and RV on my main owing to collecting Shivans regularly and well I barely recall what I was doing in RV other than it was probably PvE related badging or collecting for a Heavy etc.. And a few times I did to help an SG mate test some aspect of their PvP build, get a badge (yes I'll go die a bunch for you) or just helping someone with theorycrafting a PvP build (SR characters in particular) outside of actual engagement. Mostly it'll be very fast, highly mobile encounters especially in zone. Standing relatively still slugging it out is only happening by the agreement of all parties involved. Stealth and Perception is far more important than in PvE encounters. Softcap/I-cap, lololol, but still important as a starting point -> what's your defense after you factor in, potentially, Aim+BU+/Gaussian's+1or more yellow etc.. against a couple energy melee heavy hitters. Does the target manage to hit Elude or other t9 before the second blow. God help the squishy who isn't packing an Amp with mez protection and carrying breakfrees. Not sure offhand how it works these days but Fold Space/Cmbt TP onto a minefield with a prepped foe waiting (with the above set up) was fun on Live as I recall at one point. The return of Ice/Nrg with procs and other IO toys. And so on.

Don't know why I didn't ask earlier but did your @LynxNordique Dark/Cold have or use Frostwork at all? Again don't know if at the recharge available on an SO build (primarily) whether it would be enough to help keep Umbral Beast going or not but it's the closest thing to a heal a Cold has.