Luigrein

The numbers may have been tweaked for the dominator version, but mud pots is also available in stone melee for ATs that get it. I know back on live it was the damage aura for my tank.

I had an ice/DB back on live and quite enjoyed it, but it definitely didn't have too much breathing room for power choices if you want to go into power pools. From a tank standpoint, the sweep and weaken combos can both help you survive while leveling. Obviously at max level and IO/Incarnated out that's not super relevant, but an AoE debuff available fairly early on and an AoE knockdown available later in the build can be nice for the ride there. You can have an attack chain at lv 20 of cycling the empower and weaken combos, although on my DB scrapper I find I need to throw in a quick pause (whatever the CoH equivalent of skipping 1 GCD is) due to the timing of the combo system buffs wearing off which is unfortunate but not a deal breaker. As a tank this may just be a place to throw in a taunt if you are taking it.* This does take roughly half of your power choices, but you can probably rely on those for the a bit while you gather the other parts of your build together. *From what I can tell the issue is caused by the combo system relying on short term buffs that you get for landing the attacks that enable the next part of the combo to give it's buff. The problem being the starting power's buff last for a duration just longer than it takes to pull off the combo. When you hit with Nimble slash, if you still have the buff from your previous use up it doesn't give you a new buff or refresh the old one, and your ability to combo off of it will fade before you can really get any further into the second combo. Normally starting a new combo (or breaking your current one without starting a new one) wipes all the buffs from your old ones, but since nimble slash starts both...issues. Also disclaimer, this observation is NOT based on knowing the code involved, just put together from trying to figure out the behavior using in game feedback.

For a pure healer type playstyle my first thought is mastermind as well. You need 5 powers from your primary set, only 3 of them need slotting. You can devote the rest to your support abilities and power pools. If you are ever stuck soloing you still have a team to support. Time investment in the primary can be as simple as summon and upgrade pets, put them on defensive follow, replace as needed. Rest of your time and energy is on support. I’d recommend a buff focused set to stick with the feel, but literally only healing will probably run in to some issues. I feel like healing+ buffs sticks pretty close to the goal though. Is this going to win awards as best/most effective build? Probably not but it can solo and contribute in teams while fitting the pure healer playstyle decently well.

*gets in rocking chair* Back in my day you tanks had heart attacks from unstoppable every 2 minutes and liked it! I had a 6 slotted absorb pain just for you. Seriously though, yeah the crash ults don’t usually do much for you once IOs hit the field. Add it to the list of things that are decent with no IOs and made redundant with them. The no-crash t9s are generally decent, albeit niche in some cases.

For what it’s worth, I turned my grav/ff/primal on live into a tanktroller with tough/weave and IOs and was quite happy with it. It’s very much a late game build though. Really though, go with what sounds fun to you.

From my experience back on live, (grav/ff for the record) which I know isn’t the same, possible rose colored glasses kicking in and all. I don’t remember ever feeling like I wasn’t brining enough control. I may not have had a dolid tertiary control option, but having one is rarely needed and I could lean on my secondary some if it was. Wormhole was great fun even with aggro on it, I often pulled the next spawn with it, dropping them onto what was left of the current spawn. Also, singularity is best pet, just saying. As a test once I made it solo a toxic tarantula by itself, not even bubbled by me. Singularity won. Toxic tarantula was chosen because of a discussion at the time more than any balance metric admittedly.

I use it on my Kin/EA stalker occasionally to force a buildup recharge but...yeah it mostly sits there unused. My advice would be look at your build and see what you are struggling with having enough of. If the answer is powers skip it. If the answer is slots it makes a decent if niche power that you don’t need to add slots to.

I believe (it’s been a while, I don’t have my mids files from live any more) I frankenslotted so it would be good for both damage and end drain. I’m sure it meant lower values on acc and/or recharge, of which acc at least would be offset by aim/buildup. I don’t remember being disappointed in it’s damage. (The blaster as a whole maybe yes, but not the t9) I’m not trying to say this is optimal, and I rather agree with end drain being an all or nothing secondary effect. It’s barely noticeable if at all until you floor their blue bar and recovery when it suddenly turns really good. Just saying that it’s possible to get some mileage out of it even with just elec blast. Worth the cost is up to you.

Things may have changed, but I remember on live my Elec/Ice blaster put some emdmod on his nuke and it basically let him share his end crash with any surviving enemies. Open with thunderous blast, kill all the minions and maybe lts (don’t remember), then staring contest with the bosses as we all have no blue bar and no recovery.

I can’t really disagree with stone as mentioned above. I think I saw someone say rooted works on a suppression system now instead of a self slow which sounds... terrible but granite is still the highest baseline survivability. You do pay for that in damage and recharge though. For a new idea: Ice tank. I’m pretty sure you can softcap on SOs and its aggro control is phenomenal. Energy absorption can also help shore up your blue bar. Really though, all tanks can get the job done in SOs, the road there may be a little rough but you’ll get there.

From my limited experience and looking over the set a bit: Bio kind of wants you to take everything. I’m sure you could trim a power if you really wanted to (ablative carapace maybe?) but I wouldn’t. Psy doesn’t have any bad powers that I’ve tried yet (haven’t done them all) but I can see concentration (if you’re like me and forget to hit it,) taunt (let gauntlet handle it,) and boggle (CC? No. Damage,) being skipped depending on your playstyle. I don’t think any of those powers are bad, but if they don’t fit how you play then probably skippable. High recharge builds may be able to skip an attack as well but I’m not going to even try mathing that out.

I’m stll levelling mine but a few thoughts so far. A-I know you have energy drain, but put an end reducer in your attacks anyway. When I was relying on the drain for my blue bar I was cutting it close a lot. B-I really like that there is an in set ranged ability. I know it doesn’t mean too much from an optimization standpoint but it’s nice to have, especially when my travel power is superspeed. (Primarily redside...because I hate fun :p) C- between concentrated strike and the stalker ATO set you can get a lot of buildup. It’s rng so it won’t be super consistent, but I think I got 5 buildups in a spawn the other day. Once I’m home from work I’ll try to post my build plan for you as a jumping off point. I don’t pvp and my experience with EM is pretty much just the parts that for ported to blasters so can’t comment much there.

I think it may be for a few reasons taken together rather than any one huge one. In no particular order: 1-graphics, as you said, the ice armor graphics are pretty hit or miss. I think some people may have issues with the melee graphics too but I think it's more an armor (or buff for cold) issue. 2-sound, maybe it's just me, but I find the icy wind sound thing accompanying the ice melee powers on my brute to be irritating after a bit. It's not so bad in combat they just...linger. I think ice armor has an issue with this too but it's been a long time since live when I had an ice tank. (I liked my Ice/DB tank back on live, I've just been trying not to repeat power sets/combos) 3-ice melee makes some fairly significant tradeoffs for extra mitigation (although not as much as it used to) Don't get me wrong, ice patch is about the best mitigation you can find in a melee set, but it takes enough of a damage hit that it's probably not going to be in any farming builds. As an added aside, ice melees slow and hard CC effects have anti-synergy with brutes fury mechanic. And brutes are really popular. 4-ice armor is fairly all in on defense, not quite on SRs level but getting there. This isn't a problem late game (although it does have the less favored typed defenses instead of positional,) but early game the RNG factor to defense can make ice armor feel unreliable on defense. Sure it averages out over time to be equivalent to resist or hybrid sets, but it's got higher highs and, perhaps more memorably, lower lows. 5-finally, related to number 3, it doesn't age terribly well into IOs. Most of the people focusing on builds will be trying to get enough mitigation going that they don't need ice melees non-static mitigation. If they're going to almost always miss anyway do I really need to spend endurance/time on this knockdown patch? And it's a lot harder to make up a damage loss with IOs than it is to shore up your defenses. This is by no means an issue exclusive to ice melee (stone armor says hi!) but it's probably plays a part. On the armor side the set has typed defenses instead of positional, and additionally has resist instead of defense for cold and fire. The cold resist is high enough you probably won't really mind not dodging cold attacks, the fire can be an issue. Plus it has the classic tank set psy hole. Balance wise I think ice melees issues are mostly just the set showing it's age. Ice armor I think is more or less fine, it's probably not AS durable as some of the other set's but it gets the job done and has a few nice tricks up it's sleeves. Phenomenal aggro control is a solid strength, slow immunity is pretty nifty too.

Defender primaries are so varied I’m not sure you can really do a tier list. How good a set is depends on what your team needs. For example: FF is generally considered fairly weak in teams where everyone has already softcapped their defenses. But in basically anything else? It’s great.

Just to weigh in on the stone tank thing: For pure durability stone/ takes the crown. The issue people have with it is that there are significant offensive penalties in getting there, and other sets when IOd out can reach functionally identical levels without the offense penalty. Since stone starts at a higher levrl they can invest more of their IO bonuses into offense but it’s generally easier to shore up your defense than your offense. If you just want to be an unmoving wsll stone/ is your quickest and easiest route there, just be aware that it makes sacrifices to be that. As an aside, stone outside of granite switches to decent durability with no offense penalty and no psy hole (basically granite’s only defensive weak point) Honestly, I think the main issue is that stone is showing it’s age. Back when everyone only had SOs and maybe some HOs it had clear advantages, but IOs let you buy most of those advantages with influence while stone paid for them with offense. And while you can buy some offense with IOs stone/ is starting from an actual penalty instead of a “more would be nice” position that sets getting more defenses start with. Sure I can probably IO away most of granite’s penslties but thats getting me back to a baseline rather than taking me over the top like other sets boosting their sefense get.

Couple preliminary notes: I will second grab chilling embrace, it's very good. Also dual blades really wants you to have all your powers for combos. Without power slice and blinding feint you lose access to your sweep (AoE knockdown) and empower (+tohit+damage) combo finishers. Deciding to forgo access to a finisher is certainly something you can do if you want more power choices elsewhere, just wasn't sure how aware of it you were. As a general rule for slotting, with SOs I would recommend 3 slots towards whatever you want heavily enhanced (ex: defense) 2 lv 50 generic IOs are almost as good but depending on how important the power strength is to your build it might be worth fitting in a third slot. IO sets change...everything so I'm going to stick with SO/generic IO slotting advice. Just going down the list as I see things: Nimble slash-Especially after getting chilling embrace, I would scrap the taunt for something else (an end redux following your other attack slotting.) Hover: Very minor defense boost, I would probably slot an end reducer or fly speed in the base slot and call it a day. Ablating strike: With 2 acc in all your attacks you probably don't need the defense debuff, I'd swap it for an end redux to match your other slotting. Wet Ice: End cost in the base slot and this ones good to go. It already charges very fast if you lose the toggle. Taunt: Honestly you can get away with just an accuracy in the base slot here, on any tanker really but especially on an ice tank. Permafrost: If you aren't using permafrost to hold resist set IOs I'd leave it at the base slot. You'll cap your cold resist even without slotting anything for resist and I'm not sure 2 slots for 7% extra fire resist is worth the opportunity cost. Glacial Armor: I'd probably move the second end redux elsewhere Energy absorption: I would try to max the recharge and defense boost on this one. If you're in a big pack you won't really need the extra endurance per hit. Provoke: You've already got taunt and if you grab chilling embrace, the best taunt aura around, this is overkill. I'd swap this for chilling embrace and move the slots elsewhere. Tough: I'd probably move the second end redux slot elsewhere. Weave: same as tough Hibernate: Hibernate is a panic button that ideally you won't need often. Additionally once you start hibernate you can stay in it until you finish healing and even base strength will let you fully recover. I'd probably leave this at the base slot and stick a recharge boost in it. [edit] missed glacial armor initially

Ice melee makes some sacrifices to gain some solid CC options (I have a lv 30 Ice/Shield brute and I think ice patch may be better mitigation than my toggles at the moment) which doesn’t fit the brute aesthetic. It may have been pulled from brutes when frozen aura still did no damage as well, don’t quite remember the timing on that. That’s not to say it’s a bad set, but rather I believe the thought may have been that it wasn’t very brutey. I’ve had no real issues with my ice/sd so far but cab’t speak specifically to the ice/ice combo.

Given the lack of damage I'm assuming you never plan on soloing, it will be slow and painful if you do. Personally I prefer slotting the blasts as damage powers and just letting the attached debuffs be there, I think your primary provides enough support that you don't need to lean so hard on your secondary for it as well. That being said, you do you :) It's not that I don't think the slotting can make a mitigation difference, I just didn't personally like the opportunity cost to my damage to maximize it. More generally, I think the main set bonus you are going to want to shoot for is probably recharge, the later half of the set are your moneymaker powers and you want them up as often as possible. I'm going to go ahead and post roughly what I was using back on live below as a point of reference. I say roughly because, well, it's been a while and I don't have the build saved so going on memory. Please don't take it as a "you should build this way" some of the powers are for concept and I never went all out on spending the money for a "perfect" build, if such a thing even exists. I'm merely posting it as another jumping off point for ideas. Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.962 http://www.cohplanner.com/ Click this DataLink to open the build! oldemp: Level 50 Mutation Defender Primary Power Set: Empathy Secondary Power Set: Dark Blast Power Pool: Flight Power Pool: Teleportation Power Pool: Speed Ancillary Pool: Power Mastery Hero Profile: Level 1: Healing Aura -- DctWnd-Heal/EndRdx(A), DctWnd-EndRdx/Rchg(3), DctWnd-Heal/Rchg(3), DctWnd-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(5), DctWnd-Heal(5), DctWnd-Rchg(7) Level 1: Dark Blast -- EntChs-Acc/Dmg(A), EntChs-Dmg/EndRdx(7), EntChs-Dmg/Rchg(9), EntChs-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(9), EntChs-Heal%(11), Thn-Acc/Dmg(11) Level 2: Heal Other -- DctWnd-Heal/EndRdx(A), DctWnd-EndRdx/Rchg(15), DctWnd-Heal/Rchg(15), DctWnd-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(17), DctWnd-Heal(17), DctWnd-Rchg(19) Level 4: Fly -- Srn-EndRdx/Fly(A) Level 6: Resurrect -- RechRdx-I(A) Level 8: Clear Mind -- EndRdx-I(A) Level 10: Gloom -- EntChs-Acc/Dmg(A), EntChs-Dmg/EndRdx(42), EntChs-Dmg/Rchg(43), EntChs-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(43), EntChs-Heal%(43), Thn-Acc/Dmg(45) Level 12: Fortitude -- HO:Cyto(A), HO:Cyto(13), HO:Cyto(13) Level 14: Hover -- Srn-EndRdx/Fly(A) Level 16: Tenebrous Tentacles -- PstBls-Acc/Dmg(A), PstBls-Dmg/EndRdx(21), PstBls-Dmg/Rchg(23), PstBls-Dmg/Rng(23), PstBls-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(25), PstBls-Dam%(25) Level 18: Recovery Aura -- EffAdp-EndMod(A), EffAdp-EndMod/Rchg(19), EffAdp-EndMod/Acc/Rchg(21), EffAdp-Acc/Rchg(46), EffAdp-EndMod/Acc(46), EffAdp-EndMod/EndRdx(48) Level 20: Night Fall -- PstBls-Acc/Dmg(A), PstBls-Dmg/EndRdx(33), PstBls-Dmg/Rchg(34), PstBls-Dmg/Rng(34), PstBls-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(34), PstBls-Dam%(36) Level 22: Recall Friend -- Jnt-Rng(A) Level 24: Absorb Pain -- Heal-I(A), Heal-I(40), Heal-I(46) Level 26: Regeneration Aura -- DctWnd-Heal/EndRdx(A), DctWnd-EndRdx/Rchg(27), DctWnd-Heal/Rchg(27), DctWnd-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(29), DctWnd-Heal(29), DctWnd-Rchg(31) Level 28: Teleport -- Jnt-EndRdx/Rng(A) Level 30: Hasten -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(31), RechRdx-I(31) Level 32: Adrenalin Boost -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(33), RechRdx-I(33) Level 35: Dark Pit -- Stp-Acc/Rchg(A), Stp-EndRdx/Stun(36), Stp-Acc/EndRdx(36), Stp-Stun/Rng(37), Stp-Acc/Stun/Rchg(37), Stp-KB%(37) Level 38: Blackstar -- Obl-Dmg(A), Obl-Acc/Rchg(39), Obl-Dmg/Rchg(39), Obl-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(39), Obl-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(40), Obl-%Dam(40) Level 41: Power Build Up -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(42), RechRdx-I(42) Level 44: Temp Invulnerability -- ImpArm-ResDam(A), ImpArm-ResDam/EndRdx(45), ResDam-I(45) Level 47: Force of Nature -- ImpArm-ResDam(A), ImpArm-ResDam/EndRdx(48), ResDam-I(48) Level 49: Conserve Power -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(50), RechRdx-I(50) Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A) Level 1: Prestige Power Dash -- Empty(A) Level 1: Prestige Power Slide -- Empty(A) Level 1: Prestige Power Quick -- Empty(A) Level 1: Prestige Power Rush -- Empty(A) Level 1: Prestige Power Surge -- Empty(A) Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A) Level 1: Vigilance Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A) Level 4: Ninja Run Level 2: Swift -- Empty(A) Level 2: Health -- Empty(A) Level 2: Hurdle -- Empty(A) Level 2: Stamina -- EndMod-I(A), EndMod-I(50) ------------ Random notes: Absorb pain is rarely used, but I wanted it to hit hard when the situation arose, so I slotted it for heal and nothing else. Waaaaaay back before ED I had that puppy 6 slotted to deal with all the heart attack tankers. But it was always for pure healing, it's not a power you want to be hitting often. Fortitude: Before getting hamis I would 6 slot fortitude for 3 recharge 3 defense (or a set that gives similar results) I'd probably pull the slots off conserve power and the last slot off dark pit (the proc) for this. Tenebrous Tentacles: The immobilize is ridiculously perma out of the box, you don't need to enhance the lockdown. Nightfall: So, the nightfall cone is a little narrower and longer than the tentacle cone, just to make things interesting. Dark pit: As stuns go it's not a great one, but what do you expect in a blast secondary (for a blast set crowd control it's pretty solid actually.) That being said, taking all the minions out of a fight (or stacking with a controllers stun to hit the bosses too) is a decent chunk of mitigation. Power build up: simply amazing in combination with fortitude. The combo is a 38% defense buff on the target, when the softcap is 45% they don't need much personal defense to get there at that point.

Did a little digging and it looks like if you go in to the fighting pool and grab weave (and honestly grabbing tough isn't a bad idea on an ice tank, layering defense and resist is always good) you can softcap your S/L/E/N defense with a full EA cast and no IO set bonuses. Now, obviously you won't always get 10 enemies in an EA but it illustrates the point fairly nicely that ice can soft cap with minimal help. Even with only 1 enemy tagged by EA this puts you 7.5% defense short of the softcap before figuring in any outside buffs or IOs. You can knock 3% off with the defense boost unique IO in a resist power (which it looks like there are 2 of now?) which will admittedly be pricy but it lowers the cost of the rest of your build significantly. I'm pretty sure that's what I did back on live, I don't recall the specifics of how I built my Ice/DB that well but I do remember her being dirt cheap to IO to the soft cap. As far as aggro management goes, tanks are pretty solid overall but I do think ice had a bit of an edge. I don't have numerical info to back this up, but I do remember one of my blaster friends saying my ice tank was the only thing he'd seen reliably keep aggro off him, and I don't remember ever really having to work for aggro on her. All that being said, as has been mentioned if the team is going to be buffing your defense a lot you may want to try a resistance or hybrid mitigation tank instead of doubling down on defense. Without knowing the support sets the controllers are flinging around can't say for sure. If the empath is going to make sure you always have fortitude on you it's going to be defense overkill, but empathy as a set has to play favorites, you can't fort everyone (If I recall correctly my empath tried to keep 3 people with fort, one lucky soul getting the power boosted one.) If you can softcap your own defense it potentially frees up fortitude to be used to either shore up someone else's defense or as a damage boost.

That's...actually not an entirely straightforward answer. The armors + combat jumping/hover get you to a solid 30% defense to Smashing, Lethal, Energy, and Negative with just SOs. You'll never have good fire and cold defense from just ice armor but you will have low fire resist and capped cold resist. From there however, things get a little bit sticky with energy absorption. A fully stacked energy absorption cast can add about 10% to your defenses, getting you within 5% of that soft cap. Additionally, with enough recharge, I believe you can overlap a fresh cast over the end of a previous cast, you can probably get enough recharge boosts from IOs to always double stack it but I haven't done the research on it and it would definitely need lots of set bonuses. It's probably easier/cheaper to chase defense set bonuses and ensure you hit soft cap with even a mediochre energy absorption cast up.

Honestly I’d pick up most everything while levelling to try out. An SO build is very different than an IO build and unless you have someone bankrolling your build you’ll be using the SO build for a while first. Get a feel for what powers younlike and what you don’t before respeccing in to a final build. General tips from my stone/stone/energy memories: -teleport is the only travel power you can use while keeping rooted and/or granite armor toggled on. So if you want mez protection no combat jumping/hover -Don’t neglect your other armor toggles once you get granite armor. Granite armor is great but when it’s extreme defense isn’t needed you’ll get stuff done faster outside of it. Also when up against psychic damage you’ll want them. -fault(I think thats the name? The ground stomp that stuns) is amazing mitigation from your secondary.

Made one this morning that I'll get around to playing at some point, Kin/EA. I had a Dark/EA on live way back that I loved, been rerolling my old characters but with different powersets that still fit in their concept. The stalker is actually tied for closest to original set with my blaster, both same secondary with a new primary. Most of them aren't even the same AT. As far as teaming...we're basically specialized scrappers? There's not much we offer a team besides damage, but I know once I had the full build going my stalker could drop a boss in seconds so there's that I guess. Don't get too hung up on hiding, open with assassin strike and use placate for whatever hits hardest after that, but otherwise just scrap it out on one guy at a time. If your sets have good utility by all means use it, but you mostly pick a target, kill, go to next.

If there's an enhancement set bonus you are chasing yes that can be a good reason to add extra slots.

So I’m a little rusty, take this with a grain of salt. Most willpowe abilities only really do 1 thing at a time, so I would reccomend not going over three slots in them, maybe a fourth for cost reduction on the toggles. Rise to the Challenge and Strngth of Will ate probably the only 2 I would 6 slot. Maybe also high pain tolerance, not sure how big the HP buff is. Rule of thumb (assuming SOs) Only up 3 slots per any 1 attribute you are boosting. Diminishing returns kicks in hard after that.