Frosticus

I've done a lot of solo av/gms on my poison/fire defender. It is about as far removed from ill/rad as you can get in terms of play style. A good solo character, but even better in teams.

Additionally, the fallacy that defenders are doing corruptor level damage needs to stop. Yes you can make a solo defender that is right in there with corruptor damage if we ignore scourge. Big deal. Neither AT solos in the same realm as scrappers, brutes, controllers, mms, and more. The second you get on a team the defenders damage drops (vigilance) and the corrs superior ability to respond to buffs takes over. Corrs have higher base damage, a higher cap and scourge. It isn't even close.

Yes, but I don't think they will ever be very effective compared to some of the major ATs. At the end of the day (as a whole) they don't stand up well as content becomes more difficult. Their controls lose effectiveness and their damage is difficult to leverage sometimes. I dont see their control side ever being fixed in any meaningful way, so I'd address their damage. For each rank of enemy it would increase. Minion (current) LT (1.05X) Boss (1.15x) Ev/av ( 1.25x) GM(1.3x) That would be in line with the idea of a dominator. The more you resist their will the more they make you wish you hadn't. As a result, difficult-to-control enemies feel their wrath.

But you could, if you were so inclined, make the exact same statement about the excessive ease of acquiring survivability bonuses. I like procs. I think they add a lot more to build dynamics than the standard +rech and + def approach, but I know it isn't for everyone. I guess for me I'd want any serious reduction in procs to be mirrored in most of the other bonuses that the IO system promotes. I use procs on my scrapper too and it does a LOT more damage than my defender before procs. With procs it is not even a comparison. In fact, one proc in particular eclipses all the additional damage that 15+ damage procs give my defender. I can even forcemultiply better than some defenders thanks to the -res procs. I dont get upset when a defender fires off a proc bomb poison trap. I say "sweet". It isn't vaporizing +4s. I do get frustrated with blasters that require little support nuking spawn after spawn . (Hint 3 dam/rech, 3 procs). I think that has hurt the game maybe more than ios or procs.

I dunno, they just gave energy melee to scrappers. Have you tried it? I have and it makes me confident they aren't worried about ANYONE doing too much damage. I don't think defenders jamming procs into dominate at the cost of set bonuses and any recharge in the power is a problem from a "damage perspective". Damage that can only be improved through debuffs inherently means it isn't going to scale well in teams. Conversely, I don't think a defender deriving a good portion of their damage from procs infringes on blasters in the least. Have you ever seen what happens to blaster damage with team buffs+debuffs? A lot more than what happens to defender damage. The IO system still supports way more increases in survivability than it does in damage output. A blaster that softcaps def is a much bigger deviation from the base AT than a defender that jams in damage procs. I know damage procs upset people, but I can only hope they nerf the -res procs at the same time. Blasters and scrappers putting out more -res than my defender...there's no real justification for that IMO.

As above, give it a whirl. Good opportunity to show off the TA buffs. I'm not sure x/TA (ill/ta would be the best shot) could even get him to the point he'd need to use Dull Pain to show off the -heal debuff. (no insp/temps/lore/amps). 99% of the fun of this encounter was solving for the challenges that he presents. The fight itself is awfully boring, but it only takes 20 min or so to get to him to try out ideas. Edit: I also think dullpain might be unresistable so it might be immune to -heal. But I'm not that familiar with the power.

If you can manage it then that certainly eliminates a big hurdle in the encounter. I have no idea if that is what I did. Earlier when I described the encounter he used DP right as I powered up with assault hybrid and a fresh heatloss. Over those next 2 mins I erased the vast majority of the health he had gained. I was actually taken aback at how fast I chunked him down right after he healed. I was preparing for him to use it again at the end of the fight, but he never did. We can't see their power tray haha so I dunno if it simply hadn't recharged or I was lucky enough to interupt it.

I say give it a whirl. Khans regen is far from the biggest hurdle to overcome in the fight though. His fist of the heavens is a high mag stun that he spams the hell out of. I'm pretty sure it stuns me through rune of protection. Probably stun a build with no -special for about 15 seconds at least. When he has crashless unstoppable up he is essentially immune to all damage (except psi). My purple proc shows 1.18 damage and that is with about 100% -res on him. You also have to outpace his dullpain cycle. I think that was about an 80k heal + hp/regen increase. All while chewing through 225k hp (base hp)

I think there might be some confusion or misunderstanding as not everyone is talking about the same thing. I think many characters in the game could solo MoKhan. That's because MO doesn't block inspirations, or lore pets. Some temp powers also aren't counted against MO. The only reason the MoKhan I did with ill/cold is noteworthy is because it was specifically without inspirations, lore, amps or any temps. Lots of builds can make headway until he starts cycling unstoppable and dull pain. You can see in the screens I attached what his unstoppable does to damage output (it might be 99% resistance?) The list of builds that can succeed under those conditions is very short. I don't have thermal on that list myself, but that isn't to say it can't be done.

I think sleet is underrated as a mitigative tool because it is such a powerful offensive tool. i don't personally think either set is terrific if your goal is to solo, not compared to sets like dark or traps. Cold has little to help recover from hits and therm has little to slow them down. Both can be made fantastic with the right pairing and IO's though. Cold has a much higher ceiling than therm in terms of what it can accomplish before employing assistance aids like insp/temps. I can't forsee many things that either set couldn't accomplish with temps/insp in play though.

I think everyone will have a different answer for this. I know how I define it and did as such in the OP - no insp/temps/lore/amps. If I was going to employ any of those I would change the build accordingly, maybe drastically. I dont personally see any difference between a scrapper using envenom daggers and a defender using temp pets. Similarly, once I use insp I don't see anything holding back the flow of super insp and/or emailing them. But that is specific to me and this particular character. Others have different parameters and that is fine. I know there are people that have solo'd khan in like 15 mins with temps and insp, so there is a pretty big grey area of what "solo" means and subsequently what "levels of soloability" could be interpreted as.

The cool down on the hide proc is annoying to say the least. The fact that it is undocumented and most don't know about it doesn't help. I spent a long time frustrated on my sav stalker and ultimately became fatigued trying to optimize a chain that maximized blood stacks, assassins focus, proc probability AND the hide timer. For a long time I was unaware of the timer and was using a ~7 sec chain. All I knew is I wasn't getting near the amount of 'hidden" procs as I should have been. Unbeknownst to me, I was actually inducing a nearly 14 sec timer between hide procs. The build up refresh proc is great and this is a first world problem, but the cast time does eat in to some of your damage so it isn't as amazing as it appears in some situations. I love it for aoe trash clearing though. Other than that, if a target will stand and fight you the crit proc for scrappers can be ludicrous with seemingly endless streams of crits.

To answer your question: it depends But bio does more than boost your damage, it also buffs your tohit, lowers enemy resistance and adds a small toxic proc to most damaging powers.

Indeed. I went mu on my sav/shield for even more aoe + snipe. I'd probably go soul on /dark tho. Shadowmeld is hard to pass up. You definitely want a snipe though since hemo was overnerfed. Chance for build up goes anywhere. It is passive. Just make sure you use said power at least once when you log in (maybe per map?) or it seems to fail to trigger. Chance for hide should go in AS so you can follow up with snipe crit for bosses. Or rending flurry crit for groups. It is pretty effective. Although one could see some value from putting it on savage leap too. But I feel other procs are better there.

Put avalanche knockdown into your burn on a scrapper. You should be able to kill off most things before they get up to flee. Sometimes hilarity will ensure and the proc will stack rapidly and launch an enemy or two across the way.

Hilariously on my EM/FA scrap the 0 cost of ET allowed me to get out of a sapper situation that I wasn't paying attention to.

Haunts are very different than PA. Their description/power listing is a bit misleading which might lead to expectations not being met. That said, dark/cold should have no issues bringing down lots of tough targets and is a very good controller.

Traps, Rad, Cold, Thermal, Dark, Poison, TA, Storm They can all do it with varying degrees of ease. Add lore/temps and the options expand considerably. All the primaries are viable (though mind would be a challenge), with illusion having the strongest suite of tools available for it. There were fire/rads taking down AVs back before IOs so it can certainly do it.

Disruption arrow doesn't self stack, that was changed with the recent TA overhaul. I mean for a split second it will I guess. A TA troller can reliably put out 45% -res to a single target. Acid can take 2 -res procs, but it is far from reliable and not a great damage power so I'd be surprised if someone spammed it given the duration of the debuffs that it packs vs the animation time and low damage. There is no theory about self stacking sleet. You don't need immobs or taunts to keep things in a sleet patch for long enough to do its magic. It is up to a 45 second -res debuff. triple stacked is more common than not when fighting anything with staying power. I reliably triple stack it on my cold/fire defender too. Infrig rolls achilies at 90% proc rate, while also taking 3 damage procs. So not only does it replicate what you are getting from entangling arrow, it also hits pretty hard in the process. HL is a buff first and foremost. But it is pretty nice to help spike up -res at the start of the fight before multi sleet kicks in. The 50% unresistable debuffs of TA (-dam is probably what you are comparing to with benumb) is both a positive and a negative. It is a positive if your target has appreciable damage resistance because it will still lower their damage output without being resisted. It is a negative because it means that -res doesn't amplify it as much. Cpt Powerhouse did that specifically to avoid some of the insane -damage debuffing potential seen in poison, cold and dark when they amplify it with their -res (especially stacking -res). It lowers the ceiling, but raises the floor for TA. Against most targets /cold will floor their damage output quite rapidly. Unresistable or resistable, both cold and TA are still impacted by the purple patch, so 54's reduce the effectiveness of everything by ~35%

I'd definitely recommend one build for solo and one for teaming for any character that someone spends considerable time playing. If you enjoy low level content I'd even do a third build focused on exemplaring down. Ease of access to IOs, acquiring multiple t3 level incarnates and being able to switch builds away from a trainer make that a fairly easy recommendation. I'm not sure I'd recommend two dedicated solo builds like I have going unless you are specifically challenging some limitation of the game. For instance, nearly any situation that I flip to my "survival build" could have been covered by just using some inspirations and doing it much faster with my "damage build".

Shields are just for lotg or when I team. I don't spend time tending to phantasm. I'm nearly done an ill/cold guide, just digging in to the nitty gritty aspects of some key mechanics to help others understand why this combo sings so well. I hope to have it up over the weekend. That will have all the builds that I use and several interesting options to consider. I'll also talk about some other cool illusion pairings for those that are adverse to cold temperatures 🙂. I want to keep this thread mostly just to the things I knock off (or others if they want to post). PM me if you want me to have a gander at your build in the mean time.

@DocMidknight I was in the same boat. I kept stalling out on the way to 50 in favour of other characters even though ill/cold was able to solo missions set with AV's from back in the mid 30's, well before I had a high recharge build in place. I think the issue (for me) is that illusion is so strong vs a few enemies, but pretty anemic against large spawns. An illusion build geared toward range and survival makes the game pretty boring either through ease (few enemies), or inefficient arresting (large spawns). What revitalized the build for me was to go all in on offense. The output that this combo is capable of is astounding. In addition to that I basically asked myself what this combo can do as a standalone? no aids such as temps/insp/lore/amplifiers because it has so many tools at its disposal. All of which are quite sharp! Some builds respond exceptionally well to inspirations and such, but I don't feel illusion/cold does because so much of the damage comes from summons and procs. So now I'm in there like a dirty shirt side by side with my PA (and phantasm cause he loves melee too!). Rolling up and stomping down an AV in under a minute feels great. Scrolling back through the combat log and seeing seismic smash producing ~1500 damage is pretty satisfying.

Something most people don't look deeply in to is the t9's. Probably because most are skippable. But you can set up some stalkers to be incredibly survivable on the sets with soft crash t9's. I recently did a respec on my sav/shield (cause hemo nerf took the wind out of my sails for single target damage) that cycles: rune, one w/ shield, rune, melee hybrid - repeat. Minimal slotting investment needed on rune/owts. No downtime, always running very good resistance on top of softcapped def and capped ddr (ageless radial plus 2x active defense). ice, rad, willpower can all do similar setups that let you comfortably run just about all content confidently.

Kronos Class Titan (GM) This GM has a surprising amount of offense. It is much less hardy that the Council Goliath Warwalker though and went down in less than half the time.

Fire/rad is a good choice too. I think rad functions best at range. Like someone mentioned earlier you don't even need the last 3 powers in rad. Ice is all ranged too. Rad gives you some +rech which means you can more easily sneak some procs into your attacks (ie 4-5 procs in freezeray, 3-4 in BIB) without as much worry about set bonuses. It's a good pairing with a lot of utility.