Unclemarty

To replace gloom for single target filler attack with good dpa I think some people are still taking cross punch. If you take both boxing and kick I think it’s still pretty good. You’re likely going to want to dip into fighting pool for weave anyway. mezmerize was discussed here as an alternative to gloom too: Regardless, Rad/SS has some amazing synergies with proc builds. My approach would be to build a very aggressive tank with this combo and fill it with procs.

The best proc builds will compensate for what you are giving up by slotting procs. Basically when you slot a power with 4+ damage procs instead of a “traditional” slotting method you are getting more damage out of the power, yet giving up these things: - set bonuses - endurance reduction - accuracy - recharge (minor issue) The set bonus vs procs discussion is a lot so I’ll just focus on the endurance, accuracy, and recharge considerations. —-endurance—- If you spam attacks at full endurance cost you’re generally gonna have a bad time if you don’t have some other way of getting endurance. slotting stamina can only do so much. Some non-attack sets will have ways of getting endurance or sometimes significantly reducing endurance cost for a little bit. Conversely, endurance hungry sets don’t play nice with proc builds because you will just run out of endurance faster. —-accuracy and to hit—- when you slot procs in your attacks you generally don’t hit ED cap for accuracy. This can be troublesome especially if you are facing +4 level enemies you may whiff a lot. Luckily Tohit is more important than accuracy and there are plenty of ways to get to hit though powers. Tactics is one easy way. Look for sets with powers that give some long lasting +to hit bonus to support your procced out attacks (build up dosent last long enough imo). Rage was mentioned in this thread as a good example power that allows you to almost completely ignore accuracy slotting. —recharge— this one may or may not be a concern depending on your attack set. If you aren’t slotting recharge in your powers you may find yourself with odd gaps in your attack rotation or be forced to take a bad/low dpa power to get a complete attack rotation. Again, depends on the set and what you are trying to do. Global recharge will help with this, but wait when slotting procs you may not be getting recharge from set bonuses. Look for powers that will give you global recharge bonuses. Also slot luck of the gambler +recharge in your defense powers. FWIW I generally proc bomb powers with 4 damage procs, 1 damage enhancement and 1 acc/damage. I don’t bother with anything that isn’t a damage proc for an attack power TLDR It’s hard to evaluate proc effectiveness in a power in a vacuum. when evaluating a proc build it’s important to pay attention to what’s going on in your non-attack set. See if it is giving you endurance and accuracy and maybe recharge

Is there some sort of AE mission that can replace trapdoor as a benchmark?

When evaluating whether to load up a power with procs or not its also important to keep in mind what's going on with your non-attack set too. Generally, when slotting procs, you're giving up accuracy, recharge, or endurance reduction. So a non-attack set that brings those things back into your build is going to support your procced out power better.

Mostly interested in the 25 - 35 level range

Many people have been using the trapdoor mission to test clear speed, however It seems like this mission is only available for max level characters. Is there a good way to test clear speed on a lower level character? Similar to trapdoor, ideally a mission for clear speed testing would have: consistent size and placement of spawns variety of enemy damage types straightforward map geometry (please no caves 😱) Anyone know of a mission like this that would fit the bill? Maybe some sort of custom AE mission?

Great ideas! I probably should have specified that I'm looking at the late 20's - early 30's levels. I'm interested in experimenting with IO builds and I believe this is around the level range where IOs become more effective than SO. If possible, I'm looking for sets that can offer good mitigation and attacks by taking only a few powers. This way I don't have to spread slots out to so many powers. So i'm looking for: Sets with a complete attack chain in a few powers are a plus Attacks that offer some sort of damage mitigation are a plus sets that offer some sort of endurance management are a plus Thanks!

I'm trying to come up with builds that do well on harder difficulty content at low levels. Primaries and secondary power sets are not all equal. Some get important powers early and some get them later. For example, super strength gets two key powers, rage and foot stomp, quite late. What are some "early blooming" sets that get most of their important powers early, or even have skippable powers later on?

If you're interested in knockdown instead of knockback this thread has some good ideas: I eventually settled on a fire/storm controller for this idea. The idea is that once bonfire, tornado, and lightning storm are set up they can knockdown while you're casting other powers. knockdown while you knockdown! Bonfire is particularly strong because it has such a fast recharge you can have multiple up per spawn.

This build will do well in pretty much any normal content. However, if you wanted to improve your survivability and damage a bit here are some suggestions in no particular order. I'd slot radiation siphon for damage. You could do some sort of damage/heal hybrid slotting but just slotting it for heals is a waste of an attack imo. 6 slot devastating blow. 5 slotted as is, its not capped for acc/end/rech since you are already 5 slotting fusion, try 6 slot fusion with Gaussians instead. The 6th set bonus provides a nice blanket of overall defense. since you are already 5 slotting hoarfrost, try 6 slotting it with preventative medicine instead. Preventative medicine provides better set bonuses than doctored wounds, and the 6 slot bonus is nice recharge. For tough and permafrost, I'd either 4 slot these with unbreakable guard or 3 slot with aegis if you want more fire defense. Right now, they are not fully enhanced. Of course include the gladiator armor and steadfast protection uniques somewhere. speaking of uniques, you are missing a few. At minimum, I'd aim to include Kismet, Shield wall, and Numinia's Convalescence somewhere. these are popular because you get a lot of value out of a single enhancement. I'd drop physical perfection. you likely are not going to be having endurance issues and unenhanced its not providing much value. You could choose a utility power instead or simply take stealth to slot one more Luck of the Gambler global recharge. If you do happen to have endurance issues for whatever reason, try slotting stamina with perf. shifter +end and slot radiation siphon with theft of essence + end. You could also slap the miracle unique in health. To adopt the suggestions above, id recommend stripping slots from boxing first, then chilling embrace and taunt.

I don’t have a build for this exact combo but I’d recommend searching the tanker forms here for Dark/x builds and x/spines builds. Then try some experimentation yourself by smashing those two builds together. You could even search the scrapper and brute forms for this combo too. once you have a build drafted the community here could probably provide more specific feedback if you come back and link your draft build.

This build will do well in pretty much any normal content. If you really wanted to push the boundaries on survivability here are some suggestions; Slot luck of the gambler +recharge in all your defense powers that can take it. It's very powerful because the bonus on that one enhancement is equivalent to some 5-6 slot set bonuses. Like all bonuses, it can stack up to 5 times, so if you have 5 defense powers you can slot it 5 times across all the powers. This is part of the reason why so many people run maneuvers. I like to slot defense powers with at least 1 LOTG and 4 Shield wall because the set bonuses on shield wall are better than LOTG imo. Fold space - I'd throw 2 recharge IOs in this power too I'd recommend changing all your 4 slots of gladiator armor to 4 slot unbreakable guard. You can get closer to the 45% softcap for melee defense with 4 slot unbreakable guard. Of course keep the gladiator armor unique slotted somewhere. Energy armor generally already has a lot of endurance management tools, so you're likely not getting much value from running physical perfection and conserve power. You could take another epic pool for more attacks or you could grab more pool powers instead. If you do want to slot more attacks, I'd remove slots from kick and power sink. You have good slow resist already but you can easily cap it by 2 or 3 slotting some of the winter attack IOs. For example, consider 2 slotting avalanche into lightning field. I'd recommend 3 slotting energize with 1 preventative medicine unique and 2 recharge IOs. The preventative medicine proc is special and different because it will proc regardless of where it is in your build, so it dosen't need to be in an "always on" power. Hope this helps!

The game is definitely not balanced around IOs but I don't think that's a bad thing. I'm sure there are large swaths of the playerbase that do not engage with the IO system at all. They either slot what drops from mobs or maybe go on a shopping spree and buy some SO from a vendor. And that's fine. The IO system is very convoluted so it makes sense why someone who plays casually would not want to engage with it. But, as many others have pointed out, now we have a situation where characters who are well built with IOs can stomp through 4x8 content no problem solo. This isn't necessarily a problem either, but it creates a dynamic of "speedy" gameplay that makes teamwork less important. On your tricked out IO character when was the last time you had to pull enemies a few at a time instead of just jumping in and blowing things up? I don't think reducing the availability of IOs is the answer though. It would just widen the gap between players that have billions of inf and players that are just starting out and learning the IO system. People want to play with their fancy builds but they want a challenge. I think the best solution is to continue developing and proliferating additional challenging content to meet the power of IO builds. Hard mode ITF and Aeon are a step in the right direction. I'd love to see similar hard mode settings proliferated to other TF too. But more importantly I think making a reward structure for challenging content at lower levels is important too. We know players can easily solo 4x8 at level 50, but can they do the same at 40, 30, or even 20? What if there was a special challenge flashback that granted special rewards for completing hard content at lower levels? For example a lvl 50 team could flashback and do a lvl 30 mission series with 1* hard mode rules applied (or maybe some other challenge setting). The rewards for completing this could be additional merits, incarnate salvage, chance for rare recipe, badges, etc...

This is a great writeup and consideration about mezzes. Ideally, I'd like to avoid leaning on clarion to give myself flexible options for the destiny slot when I hit 50. I'm probably going to take rune of protection but will need some additional mez coverage somewhere. Speaking of sorcery, is arcane bolt worth taking and slottting on a blaster, even if I only activate it when its ready to cirt? Thanks for this advice on DP and MC. I'm debating between fire and DP for primaries. It seems like fire would do more damage but DP has more utility with cc? Also comparing the T9 powers.. would hail of bullets or inferno be up every spawn? For Martial combat, does burst of speed work like spring attack from the leaping pool? Also does reaction time need enemies around for the absorb to trigger? Trying to figure out the differences between martial and ninja. Seems like blaster has a lot more to consider when developing a build compared to other AT..

This is a pretty good build but I'm curious why are you taking energy mastery for physical perfection and focused accuracy? IMO the tohit protection from focused accuracy is more suited for resist based builds that are actually taking hits. For SR you are avoiding hits altogether so those debuffs are less likely to land and thus focused accuracy seems unnecessary. You could probably use your epic pool to take more attacks instead. For example, you could grab ball lightning or dark obliteration if you want another aoe. If you wanted to slot more attacks this way I'd remove slots from stamina and blood thirst. the Gaussian build up proc is probably also better in blood thirst rather than a toggle power.