Frosticus

I mean you are because you are acting like this 20yr old non-competitive pve game is an e-sports event. The number of players that care about your specific style of play are less than have replied in this thread. That doesn't make it invalid, it just makes it extremely niche. My high end teaming days are on hold with a newborn, but I have to ask. Why is your ultra honed 4* ITF team not running /cold corruptors rather than cold defenders? If the answer is, you are - then why are you deliberately misleading the OP into thinking a cold defender is ideal for the best of the best speed running 4* ITF team? Like he could just show up with his cold defender and join as a walk-on by broadcasting in zone or something? If the answer is you aren't running /cold corrs then ask the person that is in charge of your strategy why not? your lore choices show you are seeking additional damage, /cold corrs give up a very small amount of team mitigation in favor of a huge damage bump. Which is what years of previous high end teams have already figured out. I have 50's of ill/cold, fire/cold corr, and cold/fire def. I'd never join challenging content with them unless there was other support to keep me alive. Huge hybrid forcemultiplier, but alone just joining random TF's they pull aggro and die. Even my poison defender has more personal mitigation and will do better in an unorganized, poorly supported TF. Without knowing the OP's specifics your advice ranges from terrible to good and back to terrible again - because you actually meant /cold corruptor. Finally, based on our recent discussion about TA there is no chance you are your group's leader, so also ask them if they are already seeing the next "meta" forming. This content is going to get chewed up just like every "difficult" thing in the past if the player base deems it worth their time.

ya single target confuse that causes aggro doesn't make a whole ton of sense to me. If it got out super fast (like seeds animation) I could see using it midfight a lot more. That said, it is free damage if I was already going to confuse an enemy during the fight anyway. I'm sure it has uses, proly just requires a different approach than i'm used to.

Search up @Bopper, he put a proc guide (among many other useful echanics guides). Whether the proc(s) is useful depends on the math, your expectations, and what you are giving up in exchange. I have builds that just proc out a few main attacks - like a sentinel nuke 3-dam/rech, 3 procs cause I always use it with aim. Or dominator call Hawk- a hard hitting single target attack with near perfect proc probability that can take 4 damage procs. I have builds like my plant/poison that put procs in pretty much every possible spot as an experiment that turned out super fun. The 5-6 pcs bonuses are where lots of people get their defenses. It can be difficult to give that up.

PA If musculature core then I use the following slotting: 4 piece Expedient Reinforcement (don't use resist proc, or acc/dam) all +5 2 piece Soulbound - proc and +5 acc/rech =95"% acc, 125% dam, 59% end, 99% rech They provide good damage and can "control" a boss well enough (which I don't need on a dom, but oh well). They don't hold a candle to the troller version though. As an aside if mobs are fleeing you then you might have to forgo casting spec terror. Things that brush off the fear are still affected by the afraid (run) part of it. So AV's can get pretty squirrely.

My sav/shield/soul could skip hide with minimal downside. I open with savage leap. Only used slow AS a couple times in earlier levels. I actually wonder if placate would suit that build more as it is rare to "need " help at the start of the fight. Sav/shield/mu spec of the same character would miss it though as I opened with ball lightning > leap

It gets worse! When phantasm summons the decoy the dam thing does the knockback cone too!

ya clockworks would do it too. I guess there is a chance if all PA attacks hit close enough together it could knockback a normal target too.

Are you fighting enemies below your level? PA shouldn't be knocking enemies back, just down. Phantasm on the other hand....welcome to knockback city. PA definitely benefits from the BU proc in soulbound. It makes a significant difference.

I don't know what to tell you. Thanks to test server I already know some of the combos in this very thread are going to see 600-700 dps (without -res procs, phantasm, or hybrid). I'm not sure how much damage you think PA contributes? *(its about ~130 dps on an ill/x/ice). x = not sonic assault

It works really well. The boost to recharge is awesome while leveling. Your final build may or may not need to +rech from blood stacks, but the end discount applies to all powers which can be really nice as you are unlikely to have much end reduction in PA. Sav is also extremely endurance friendly even without blood given the dpa of its attacks. Rivaling even fiery. It is almost scary how fast a combo like ill/energy (which is awesome btw) can tank their blue bar. looking at their best melee*+best ranged of the top 3 damage sets: * a disservice to fire, but apples to apples Blaze+incinerate produces 244-303.4 (dot chance)(w/ avg 275 base damage) or 11.1-13.8 (avg 12.5) damage/end* *fiery can improve this efficiency with long lasting fiery embrace (30 sec of +85% fire damage) TF+powerburst (w/energy focus) produces 462 base damage or 13.7 damage/end Viscous + Hawk produces 331-453 (dot chance & full blood) (w/ avg 387 damage) or 15.2 to 20.6 (avg 17.6) damage/end* *didn't include any blood discount to endurance

Have you seen a team fail a DFB? Cold dom is one of the worst defenders for that. I'll delete my 4 cold doms now Check and mate 👍

Unless OP pops in and said they were actually seeking meta 4* speed run build I'll take them at their word that they were seeking a build that would play well across all TF's. Some people find they enjoy the lower level TF's like posi or even katie. Some people find joy in normal TF's like market crash and just run it with a few friends. Some people want to dabble in soloing TF's. And yes some people enjoy 4* speed runs, but not everyone enjoys watching lore pets play the game, or rushing everything at breakneck speed. I think you are stuck in the mindset that your way is the best and only way to play. It is not.

4 star meta speed ITF = all TFs? Ok Cold is awesome, trust I have a bit of experience playing the set. It has always been "meta" for high level teams. Did OP specify meta speed 4 star lvl 50+ TFs? Or all? Maybe I misread.

I keep seeing this repeated. Dark assault is a good set, but it is square in the middle of assault sets for single target damage under most scenarios (high rech and/or procs). Doms generally aren't much in the aoe department, but it is middle of the pack there too. It does offer great utility, has a desirable damage type and gives a fairly usable spot for the +dam proc for those lacking a more suitable place for it. It is somewhere between 4th and 9th out of the 12 sets.

Rad/sonic Teamed or solo it just enables everyone to do things easy to hard. For low level content that occasionally gets turned up too high making people whiff - rad infection is a godsend For higher content - EF, AM and sonic blasts keep the team running quickly Lingering rad is still one of the best powers in the game - good range, big aoe, high values, can be stacked a bit solo - arguably the best -regen power Goldilocks combo for almost any team.

Not sure when it happened, but fairly recently spectral terror started accepting accurate tohitdebuff sets. So whatever build you settle on consider cloud senses for that power. ~21% aoe tohit debuff (10 targets) is comparable to an enhanced Fearsome stare (~18%) from Dark control (16 targets though). Spec Terror debuffs for ~35 seconds vs 20seconds. *of note the single target attack/debuff of spectral terror is not an enhanceable tohit debuff (15%)

Same boat. But debating whether I want to finish my elec/bio (sitting at 38) or drop it in favour of elec/stone. I've played a lot of bio across the AT's, but have never put time into stone armor. Seismic blast is a neat set once you figure out how to chain in boosted stalagmites consistently. But all my sentinels have been hover blasters, so playing on the ground would be a large divergence for the AT.

Unfortunately spec Wounds didn't make the trip over. Dom PA is pretty heavily nerfed compared to troller version, they dont tank, but still a good supplemental damage power. Still a great set though and spec terror at lvl 6 is making early game play a breeze on my ill/sav

You were on a controller right? If so, perfect. Otherwise this isn't making sense. A defender should have boosted the -rech to 2.66%

You can do it any way you prefer. I'm just telling you how the game does it. Only one way matters. You can test this in about 5 mins on testserver if you don't have a TA already. At this point I think you need to do this yourself as you are adamant about maintaining your stance despite the mechanics being explained and Doomrider giving you in-game results vs a +3AV Take care

One more example that should clarify the issue: If an even con AV has 85% smash/lethal resistance and you a apply disruption arrow (40% -res) how much damage does it take from a 100 damage attack? a/ It will be 15 * 1.4 = 21 damage If disruption arrow was unresistable (ie additive flat reduction) b/It would be (85%-40%)*100 = 65 damage Acid arrow is simply a non traditional -resistance debuff. It works the same as disruption arrow mechanically and is resistable (ie multiplicative).

Not quite. The purple patch affects it, but @Voltak is treating it as a flat debuff rather than multiplicative as it actually is. For simplicity you can just use the purple patch numbers. It doesn't matter where you put it in your calculation, but I throw it on the end, just like I would a damage resistance debuff. Vs -1 = 40%x1.11 = 44.4% 0 = 40% +1 = 40%*0.9 = 36% +2= 40%*0.8 = 32% +3 = 40%*0.65 = 26% +4 = 40%*0.48 = 19.2% So vs an even con it always makes a tohit debuff 40% stronger, but it does so after resistances are factored in. In the case of an AV they have resisted the tohit debuff so low that improving it by 40% is still a very low number (as seen with the hurricane examples).

I think I see your main error. You are treating acid arrow like it a flat debuff (additive), but it is multiplicative. You can see this very easily with a power analyzer on a pylon. Use flash arrow and then Acid arrow. @Doomridergave numbers above from in game demonstrating it. For regen vs a +4 (lvl 54AV) your power is first affected by the purple patch which you didn't account for. 500*0.48 = 240% - regen then it has to go through its resistance of 87% = 240*(1-.87) = 31.2% -regen It's also important to look at how much regen actually matters to an AV encounter. They only regen like 100hp/sec. Regen debuffs were way more important back when a top tier scrapper was doing like 150dps. Now that defenders are north of 400dps it is a lot less prominent in overall outcomes. Though they are still very welcome when AV's have a lot of damage resistance that drastically cuts dps.

Thank you for turning off your capslock. It enables a much more pleasant exchange. One where I don't need be curt in response. It will be to your benefit to fire up a power analyzer and test out some of these things because your numbers are really far off. For clarity: A lvl 50 AV has 85% resistance to debuffs not 60% Acid arrow is fully resistible, it is not one of TA's unresistible powers and it is fully affected by the purple patch. For the most part few enemies have specific resistance to any of the unique aspects of the debuff, but there are some. Again, we rarely face +4's in late game from a mechanics standpoint, which is quite important for debuffers as the purple patch hammers them hard. But if you did face a lvl 54 AV at +4 it would look like this: Regen (ie benumb) If a regen debuffer were facing a +4 AV then it would be (500%*0.48)*(100-87%)= 31.2% regen debuff add an acid arrow (facing +4) would increase it to (40%*0.48)*31.2% = 37.19% regen debuff ToHit Debuff Hurricane vs +4 AV would be (59%*0.48)*(13%) = 3.68% tohit debuff add an acid arrow (facing +4) (40%*0.48)*3.68% = 4.39% tohit debuff In a completely non-condescending way I'd suggest you have a look at my poison guide. The section that breaks down Weaken goes in to great detail of how debuffs function and interact with each other, how enemy resistances impact them and what the purple patch does to debuffers. In conclusion, TA is great. Acid arrow is a unique debuff that makes other debuffers (and the user) a little bit better in hard content. It is not a silver bullet.

Sigh. Hurricane is a 59% tohit debuff. (65.5% vs a -1 con) Vs a lvl 50 AV (which is -1 for most of us) it will debuff their tohit by 9.8% If a TA uses acid arrow it now becomes (again -1) 15.2% Storm needs no help vs regular enemies so the acid arrow is redundant. It provides paltry assistance to the stormy vs an AV even at -1. No one is saying TA isn't "the king debuffer" at least not me. Try to keep focused.