Doomguide2005

The above is exactly why I started my first post with something along the lines of 'the actual answer is far more complex ... ' and then changed it to the text above (and why @Hedgefund I suspect just uses attuned and calls it a day.) And that's with just single aspect IOs, etc., etc..

Empowerment buff station tier 2 or 3 --> recovery serum should mostly end any endurance woes since you're allowing sg buff stations. The the issue is getting the salvage to drop instead of endmod recipes or IOs.

I believe Solvera is both correct and wrong. You can boost it and it will exemp like normal. The exemplar effect is based on the natural level of the IO. Procs and global's aren't effected by boosts. So if you boost a lvl 50 def/increased global rech the def portion will scale like normal (BUT, and this is where the above answer is essentially correct) the global rech portion will stop functioning below level 47 as that's when set bonuses would shut off. Keeping it attuned means the global recharge will function down to lvl 22. The question then is would boosting a lvl 25 LotG to +5 yield better defense value while retaining the global recharge than a lvl 50 def/increased global rech that's attuned. I think the attuned is barely larger but I'm not sure to be honest and can't look at Mids or in game to tell.

I think it might be more specifically at -3 and less, maybe (just thinking): White con (even level) +0 Blue con at -1 Green con at -2 and those are minions. At -2 an underling will con gray ... maybe

Hah! I'll see your Speed Boost and raise you a Regeneration Aura. And these last few silly posts shows the more serious differences between the sets. Empathy is primarily about mitigation and recovery (of both health and endurance). The defensive side of the equation with a bit of offensive buffs to damage and recharge added in. Kinetics is more about the offensive side of the battle boosting damage and recharge with a side of damage and regeneration debuffs. And this plays into the current meta of MOAR damage as us Incarnates have a really good handle, typically, on much of what Empathy provides. Meanwhile Kins are essentially playing right into the whole MOAR damage meta of the endgame. What I find ironic is Kins provide pretty much none of what makes so many other defender sets desired in endgame. No resistance debuffs and minimal (comparatively) regeneration debuff, yet still very desired because, you know, MOAR damage 😁.

A last thought Rad Blast is great as a "proc monster" type build and doubly so on a Kin. Procs bypass the damage cap. Kins should spend a lot of time at the cap without necessarily needing to slot for damage in the power itself as those damage enhancements count towards the cap (of 400%).

One of the big issues a sapper build faces is the size of the foes endurance pools. That's why it so often seems why the baddies get to attack with basically no end cost. Everyone, players and mobs alike, gain a percentage of the end back with each tic of recovery. Player has 100 end. Bosses iirc get 200 end and a late game AV has 800. Powers themselves pretty much have the same end cost. Your Smite and Nosferatu's Smite both cost the same in endurance. But if as a player you gain 5 end the AV gets 40. Then answer how many of your powers can you use with 5 end? And how many can Nosferatu use with 40 end. And that's why it seems AVs can attack with pretty much anything even after fully drained. They get one tic of recovery and have enough end for pretty much everything. That's why it's so important to also hit them with lots of -recovery and not just -endurance. Recovery determines how often those tics occur. So first you need to remove all their endurance then second shut off their recovery. And ideally you need to do both very rapidly to make it worthwhile as a form of mitigation. Otherwise the Fire/Fire blaster mitigates them by turning them into ash faster than you drain them. And Electric/Cold sounds potent in terms of sapping to mitigate and solo big stuff. Has the sapping side covered than adds lots of -recharge/slows with Cold along with all of Cold's potent debuffs like Benumb

This (the part I bolded) plays a much greater role than I think is often acknowledged. There isn't much new to surprise you when you've done it a dozen times or more. Take 8 builds give them to 8 players who've never run an ITF or a Tinpex before but are familiar with the builds and have them give it a go. Take 8 vets with those same builds who have run an ITF a dozen times and watch the difference in times, deaths etc..

@StrikerFoxYes Power Boost will work to buff up both the defense and to hit of Fortitude for the full duration of Fortitude. That To Hit buff it provides is another good reason to lay it on the pets as it will greatly help them hit mobs when you're fighting +4's.

Adrenaline Boost! 😜

In a lot of ways this is "Hello Apples meet Oranges" which on many levels is what makes Defenders such an interesting AT for me. The AT is an utterly wonderful fruit basket more so than most other ATs. An Empath and a Kin do their thing very differently but both do support very well. And if you want to see an Empath go 😳 watch a Kin hit a bunch of teammates in a rough melee fight with a Power Boosted Transfusion. Yeah the Empath does healing in general far better but ... weeeee!

SR is quite capable of being endurance efficient. I currently run FF, FS and Evasion plus Tough, Weave, CJ full time and often add on Tactics and/or Maneuvers to the mix on my Claws/SR. It isn't until I add the last two that I even pay much attention to my end bar and consider whether to use Conserve Power or simply slow up a bit. If not running them I won't run out of end no matter how relentlessly I'm attacking. My Alpha is Musculature for the damage but it does add to my recovery as well. I haven't run Elude since pre-Invention issues except on second or third builds 'experimentally'. It is entirely optional. Back later, must sleep.

No it's a branch of the tunnel network which vidiot maps calls the Arachnos Dig Site on its map of Faultline. Fairly open 'secret' these days with player creations and access to sources like Vidiot Maps.

You don't have to go thru the dam in Faultline to get to the other side. There's a tunnel in the RWZ, short it leads down to what looks like the entrance to a Council base but doesn't go beyond (as I recall, been a while since I went in there. Disappointed there was no badge down there.). And I never found a door on the underside of any of the Storm Palace asteroids despite hovering all the way to the Palace avoiding the aggro of the mobs above on my scrapper many years ago.

This made me grin. 😁 I worked for many years and started drinking Caffeine-free Diet Mountain Dew for a while until I got my ... habit ... under control. I worked in the Veterinary Emergency field ... Have you ever tried to insert a 25g IV catheter in a kitten weighing less than a couple pounds after having drunk multiple cans of caffeinated Dew? Hint: Vibrating hands not good.

Probably a ymmv thing. The chance is a 5% to do a mag 8.3 kb. It's just going to be quite noticeable when it happens with that sort of mag and it will generate a lot of chances if you're engaging a lot of foes. But individually the chance on a given foe is not great so it would seem to come down to how you use Hurricane and against how many.

Pain has two things going for it vs Empathy. First is Anguishing Cry a PBAoE debuff. In particular its resistance debuff, endgame favors debuffs especially resistance and regeneration debuffs. Empathy is 100% buffs, arguably the strongest but generally those buffs are redundant with what IO builds self provide i.e. defense, recharge and freedom from endurance woes. Second is many of those buffs for Empathy are single target while Pain's are AoE --> Fortitude vs World of Pain. Again you can argue Fortitude is the stronger buff per target but you can hit the whole team with one click with World of Pain whereas the Empath has to both build for the very high recharge needed to cast it 7 times and then take the time to actually do it (which in turn is time not spent with other buffs or blasting). The extra oomph of Fortitude is simply not worth this exchange 99% of the time. But this is why as team size shrinks Empaths close and even surpass this 'gap'. Support says go Defender, the buff and debuff values are stronger. In many ways the most skippable are Share Pain and Conduit of Pain. Both however, have more potential use then their near clones in Empathy because they self buff the caster when used. Share Pain is Absorb Pain with some nice self buffs for using. If I took the power I'd use it after Panbringer was active to offset the self debuffs. Conduit of Pain has a couple issues. First it's a rez, someone has to die first. And like RadEm's Fallout ideally to really leverage the buffs they have to die before the mob is engaged and do so every time it's ready to cast. At least where they die isn't vitally important. As for slotting I'm looking for pretty much the same thing as on my high end Empaths, recharge then more recharge. Mitigation is from, in no particular order, teammates, inspires, epic shields (if any) and keeping Painbringer up (and to a lesser degree Soothing Aura). I've not run Beam Rifle but from what I've seen it should do well.

Except for one thing ... purple patch. Your confuse duration before enhancement is under 3 sec vs a +7. Good luck on even a well enhanced character spamming Confuse that fast that often for quite a few levels after 6th. Now vs +6 that duration is about doubled but still once you're down to the last boss you've got to defeat them with no help while continuing to spam Confuse which in turn is going to cut into your dps something fierce. And your dps on a lowbie controller when its 15% or so of normal then cut further while spamming Confuse. Doable perhaps but easy not so sure considering one slip and what's your defense again at low levels while not exemped and trying to muster the recharge etc to spam Confuse. Then again tedious vs not easy is another question.

All the above is absolutely true. But keep in mind a few things. DA is defense only to melee and lethal. Exemplar It takes defense IOs. That does not mean not to slot for damage but, options are good. Incarnate cap to melee/lethal is one DA away from the soft cap. A few non-incarnate foes have enough to hit buffs to make things messy. Vanguard Sorcerer's I'm looking at you. It is optional. So ultimately it comes down to what works for you.

My computer died so I can't open Mids but I don't know of any changes that would seriously and negatively impact the builds above.

No well played character is a circus dumpster on a team. Period. Full stop. Further I and many other players will take a friendly cooperative personality over a dictatorial play my way only arsed expert any day of the week. I'd rather 'fail' some piece of content rather than be ranted at in chat over some aspect of my build or action that wasn't 'perfect' in their eyes. That content will be there tomorrow. None of this game is so important to ruin a teams fun over by being a douche to your teammates. Empathy is plenty viable. It's also a pure buffing set. Both Thermal and Pain are often mentioned as more desirable mostly because they include some debuffs including highly desired resistance debuffs and several of their powers are usable on themselves. Thermal also provides resistance Shields. While players can reach the defense softcap from a base of zero, resistance is much harder to come by and you pretty much won't cap it without outside assistance unless you start with significant amounts in your set(s). That said debuffs are effected by the purple patch, buffs are not. And Empathy's buffs are second to none, in particular Fortitude, Regeneration Aura, and Adrenaline Boost.

I'll second what @Tantricsecretshas said overall with some of my own thoughts. I've no practical experience with procs as they currently function. My computer died just as I started to really learn and read up on them in their current ppm mechanics. I've no idea, for example, if you need accuracy/to hit or global accuracy/to hit in an auto-hitting power to make them function properly. I know that on Live they functioned just fine in AM but then I often ran Tactics and had global accuracy as a matter of course. Yes both Poison Gas and Caltrops are autohit powers. AM is not. In most cases (I can't currently think of an exception) the easiest way to tell is if the power will accept SO or generic IO accuracy enhancements. If it does not take accuracy it is auto hit power, and conversely if it takes them it is not autohit. *wonders how long it'll take for someone to mention an exception* I do like to add range enhancement to my Caltrops. Throwing them further than just beyond my toes is purely my own personal preference though (slotting Slow/Range). It does make it easier to remain undercover, limiting exposure while still allowing me to place them effectively more readily. Speaking of range I'll note the range on Acid Mortar is 100ft. That's how far it can attack and debuff foes after placement, not the distance from you when placed. I'm not sure but suspect it has a 45ft perception and how running Tactics would effect this (it's been too long since I ran my Trappers since it was on Live.). Wouldn't be surprised if Tactics buffed that perception. Triage Beacon - is problematic. Much like Traps overall it can be hard to employ effectively on a fast moving team. I'd go a step further than Tantricsecrets and say either skip it entirely or not. My self I usually take it 5 or 6 slot looking for recharge. I'll point out it does stack with itself and double stacking for significant duration isn't difficult if you're building for recharge overall. Well enhanced, 2 of them will equal or exceed Empathy's base effect with Regeneration Aura which is not insignificant. The radius is equal to Tactics so also not insignificant in area (40ft vs RAs 25ft radius). So while it is very difficult to employ in teams that are moving quickly, if they slow or stop for a group of EBs or an AV, for instance, it can literally keep a team standing and/or greatly lessen the need for direct healing, green inspires and the like in this situation. 3. I believe as long as the 'pet' power doesn't say otherwise and they aren't a pseudopet the IOs should buff your FFG and other 'pets'. That said I'm not 100% sure. You can, I believe, see your pets combat attributes and therefore see what's buffing their stats. And you might also see something in the pet combat logs. Just not sure which logs if any it would show up on however and lack of computer and getting in game prevents me from poking around to see. I like to be fully stealthed so I'll run Super Speed full time and use a stealth IO typically.

If this potential temp power ever pulled aggro off a Tanker or Brute I'd be amazed. That's not to say giving it a downside is necessarily a bad idea.

To be clear I'm not particularly against it, if another temp power is added so be it. I just think it's going to be hard to walk the line between useless and still less potent than the presence pool and more effective than slapping the target with say Cosmic Burst or a fast snipe etc.. And forced to take is not the same as 'access to', though I will admit I didn't run through all the ATs to double check but yes for Defenders, Corruptors, Masterminds ... and I stopped checking at that point. But if this is important to the player well most (if not all) ATs it seems do have access when desired for stopping AVs and others from running all over the place.

True, but "taunt" is merely one part of the equation for generating threat though granted a strong one. And most non-melee sets for which this temp power is aimed at have at least access to an Immobilize and would be well advised to have taken it for just this reason. And if you're using it to pull a threat off a teammate in trouble ... well the AV, EB, boss, etc., taking off over the treeline might be welcome if not ideal. And if about someone tanking for a team lacking a 'tank' then you really need to aggro the whole spawn. A single target Affront or Challenge isn't really the ticket you want to punch. But then in my experience teams of 8 support/non-melee rarely need to classically tank the spawn. In about i12 or so I was working on a second build for one of my Empaths a build intended to take on a 3 boss level 54 RWZ spawn of Rikti (solo). Joined a team and forgot to swap out of the alt build. And as it happened the team didn't really seem to have anyone who wanted to engage the spawns. My Empath proceeded to initiate the attacks taking the alpha and in general aggro'd the spawns getting most of the attention. A single target taunt power would have been fairly useless in keeping things focused my way. It was tricky enough as Sonic Attack, her secondary, isn't really known for AoE capability.