schrodingercat

I have one of those (completely awesome and fun combo, maybe will try it as a corrupter?) and I also have a storm/cold blaster, Bad Meteorologist. I felt like cold didn't add as much to storm as i would have liked. I expected synergy but it didn't feel like it was anything special. I did get more mileage from storm from a storm/TA blaster using glue arrow to keep them in my category 5, but overall, it doesn't feel like it has the oomph as a set as I want it to have. I use it as soft control on my defender more than doing actual damage with it, though I get by and can hold my own in fights. It just takes so long for Cat 5 to do its thing and for the storm cell to get to me that in most content these powers and mechanics still just dont get applied as much as I would like. Cat 5, sleet, and snow storm is very funny though.

this is all 100% correct. I am extremely supporty when I support, but the support all primarily helps me. I also see "keeping x person on their feet" as a way to boost my personal damage, because I can keep killing without worrying about mobs attacking me.

Cold domination is great for boosting damage potential because it contains sleet, which has -def and -res. It also has heat loss, which boosts your recovery for every target you hit with it, centered in a radius around the target. As an extra goodie, heat loss provides a significant -res debuff. Cold gets a -def debuff in their first power, as well. Your team will hit harder and live longer thanks to your ice shields, which provide 24-25% positional defense and type defense + resistance to cold and fire, as well as arctic fog which is a defense/resist toggle. Trick Arrow is also a fantastic debuffing set and I've run both up to 50 now, with a TA/sonic and a cold/storm. I also tried cold/sonic, but i picked up storm when the new set came out and making things blast in the air from lightning strikes is worth the amusement to not have the sonic debuffs to me. Force field is one I built entirely around debuffing, by putting -res procs in the aoe -res attack and taking rad as a secondary. I give things -100% defense and -60% res while giving my team huge armor buffs. i still make people sad by not giving them other buffs because people are obnoxious, so i don't play it as much, even though i really love the character. Other sets with significant -resistance are poison, rad, traps, time, thermal, storm, force field, and dark. done in order of recharge/reusability ease: Rad has a -res toggle and a -def toggle sonic has a -res toggle, a single target -res attack, and a -def patch poison has a quick recasting -res/-def aoe trick arrow has a quick recasting -res aoe, -def aoe, and another combined aoe debuff Force field has an aoe -res attack and a single target -res attack and a quick recasting debuff that debuffs everything while buffing your teams resistance to debuffs storm has freezing rain, an aoe -res/-def patch Traps has acid mortar, which spews out -res/-def attacks Dark has a -res patch time has an aoe -res/-def debuff thermal has an aoe -res/-def debuff For sets that provide active damage to the team, kin, rad, time, pain, empathy, electric, nature, and thermal all have powers that directly boost the damage of their team. And remember, every defender can give their whole team 18.75% more damage by taking assault, or taking sonic attack as a secondary. I probably missed one!

I recommend slotting Energy Manipulator: Chance to stun and Triumphant Insult: chance to disorient both in power sink. The recharge time almost guarantees they proc on each target you hit, and this will stun 10 minions/lieutenants on 40 second cooldown with no accuracy check required.

Oh I agree there always needs to be some sort of healing, even if its just my cold domination defender frantically spamming my power with the defender heal proc slotted in it (I did this for posi 2, everyone else was happy but i grew several white hairs) lol

That's fine, honestly. If all of my other powers are cheap to run and cast, I can keep up with an appropriately timed power sink.

if you click powers->combat attributes-> expand the top most selection, you'll notice that each person in your group debuffs your damage. If you solo, your damage will be on par with corrupters, including scourge. Your trick is you do more buffs and debuffs than any other class in the game, which makes your team kill things quickly, safely, and most importantly, while you get experience. Rad is a weaker damage set on all AT's, defender included. It shines at making things with very high defense easier to hit. Irradiate, snipe, cosmic burst, and your final attack are likely all you will really need, but pew-pewing with your tiny first or second attack will make the things you attack easier to hit for your entire team (and you). I use the weak rad initial blasts to soften the defense on a target and follow it up with a bigger, heavier hitting attack.

this explains why i was having so much trouble soloing all of the sudden!!!! It was the last power I took and I couldn't figure out why one minute I am rocking along and the next I am eating floor sandwiches

How could a power that is a toggle and always on be redundant with a power that has a 71 second cooldown assuming I get multiple FF procs in the cooldown period? That doesn't even make sense. If you'll read why I use sonic repulsion, the knockdown aura is a damage preventative that also procs force feedback. The anchor target has 55% more resist to everything but psi AND now everything in melee is flopping around, with no aggro transferred to anyone but me if they are not a tank. Whoever goes into melee first gets it. Sometimes the tank navel gazes and a scrapper dives in first. Last night I ran my toggles on an elec/elec defender, which let her "tank" and stay in melee safely to leverage sapping. Also, I'm glad that you like the sorcery pool, but I don't have problems with my team being squishy, so I don't need it. I wasn't really asking for critiques of my play style. I was asking about how to meet specific goals in my build: endurance management and survivability.

I've thought about how mind control needs to be more of a puppet master/telekinesis type power set. One way to make this happen would be for your final power to clone any boss or lower tier npc and make it your pet. It would make mind controllers versatile beyond measure. If that isn't an option, an area effect gravity well type power, like what singularity does, but without the repel, would be nice.

So I leveled this character to 50 determined to make what feels like an underperforming support set good. It is good IF it has other support with it. Sometimes, when doing PUG task forces, I will get stuck with an all blaster team, which does not feel good. A few notes: Liquefy is fun and good, but still needs a shorter cooldown. I frequently sit at 200% recharge and can't use it every spawn, which is silly. I would trade out the random hold chance that never seems to go off with a shorter cooldown because it is 1. pretty and 2. funny with repulsion going off. Mobs start breakdancing until they are arrested. Sonic Repulsion DOES work as an aoe knockdown field when converted with sudden acceleration and DOES proc force feedback: chance for recharge frequently. In exchange, you get a power that drains 0.51 end/sec AND 1 endurance per mob it hits AND has a hit check that you can't enhance. So for the cost of insane endurance thirst, you get a fun and cool power, when you have high accuracy & to-hit. This build is the aggro magnetiest build I have ever run, but can manage it if you are able to fire off howl/shockwave/siren song and chew inspires quick enough. If mobs are breakdancing, sleeping, or disoriented, they are partying too hard to hurt you very much. So now that you know some details, here is how play generally goes: keep people shielded, and when able, amplify, liquify, wail. The standard fallback when waiting for the show to start is the standard howl/shockwave/sirensong (or in a team with no aggro control, shockwave/howl/sirensong) and do shriek/screech/shockwave on bosses that will live long enough after you sonic siphon (usually not very long if you have any dps on the team). Endurance management consists of victory rush/power sink/energize. Here is what I need help with. I need survivability and endurance management. I use recovery serums and recovery buffs from base stations but I still hurt for endurance. I have no real way to get my defense up to anything reasonable, either. So could someone look over the build I've made and help me perfect Drop the Beat? Note that mu powers are standing in for power sink/energize since mids doesnt have them in there yet. Even with the fancy IO's ive slotted in here past the uniques I currently have, it still looks like a stinker of a build. I am not sure if the cost to make this would result in a character that can do what I want it to do: liquefy more, breakdance more. If this powers weren't so pretty, I would probably play something else. I hope they do further refinement of sonic to bring it more into line with the effectiveness of the other power sets. Defender (Sonic Resonance - Sonic Attack).mbd

Sonic Repulsion drains my endurance both on successful hit and takes a huge amount of endurance to run yet will not accept accuracy enhancements. Sonic would be great fun AND useful if this toggle actually worked instead of meh set that needs ultra perfection slotting and gameplay to perform half as well as other primaries. Note that the misses are directly affected by my accuracy. Eating yellows makes the power more accurate, using tactics makes the power more accurate, etc. Global accuracy through IO slotting will fix it - but no power set should require IO bonuses to function.

from what I understand, very few powers in storm are proc-worthy, so slotting them normally is your best bet.

Hey! thank you for this. Perhaps it would be helpful if I had a targeting circle or something that turned red when I was too far. I don't know how far that is in game intuitively. I still have to inch forward to get in sniper range 🙂 Also we need to group again, I had fun grouping with you!

The combat log has nothing listed when this happens. Successful pulls do show hit/miss checks.

I have noticed Fold Space sometimes pulls everything, and sometimes pulls 1 or 0 mobs out of the pack I have targeted. I am testing this behavior as a level 39 on level 22 mobs in talos. I have fold space slotted 2 Level 30 accuracy IOs + 2 Level 30 recharge reduction IOs. It shows the power as having an accuracy of 1.70. I have no outside buffs or debuffs, and I am not running tactics. I have Kismet +6% accuracy slotted. The game shows my current to-hit bonus as 81.7% and accuracy is 1.00. I have attempted to use fold space on the same 10 Talos Warriors (level 22) 5 times. Out of those 5 times, the first time pulled one minion. times 2, 3, 4 pulled zero minions. The 5th time pulled all the minions. I am standing right next to them with no obstructions, and I haven't moved from the initial testing spot. I flew around for a bit and tested it on level 15-25 mobs with no issues in Boomtown. Then I went to Terra volta, worked fine on some 23 sky raiders. Finally, I tested it on level 27 Lost. This time, after it failed, I made sure to try a different target each time to see if that mattered. I was the same distance as I am from before, but with no little wall between me and the Lost. I tried to use Fold Space on them 7 times without succeeding on any try to get any mobs. When it fails, there is no MISS over the npcs to indicate i failed a hit check, and there is no aggro generated. There is no text in the log about hit checks on npcs when this happens. I relogged to a different character, and logged back. Now I get combat log messages and the power works as expected. Switched maps, it went right back to the old behavior!

ooh yeah i did that one as an elec/shield stalker. I was really glad that my clone didn't have access to IOs!

i made one last night before I saw this and discovered it was impossible to kill as a positron 1 clone. It took 4 tries just to kill my single character because no one could see. Whoops, sorry team! So if anyone thinks to make one, ask for their character to be killed first (preferably blinded before hand) or you are going to be in for a really bad time.

If I cast Rejuvenating circuit on my zombies, the power will chain to the nearest target per number of available bounces that I have. The first couple bounces always receive a bigger benefit: bigger heal, bigger absorb, more endurance, etc. Unfortunately, non buffable/healable targets like specters and Illusion decoys are considered bounce targets and eat the buff too. Sometimes this can be a difference of hundreds of points of absorb in a crowded team. Can the non-healable/buffable pets be excluded from chain logic for Electrical Affinity? Other weird things happen too, like if I cast Amp Up on an illusion controller/dominator, they will proc Discharge on ME (red text, endurance drained) even though I am friendly, not PVPing, and on their team.

if it helps, you can mod the sounds of your beasts using the COH Mod installer. For instance, demon summoning plays a few bars from the opera Carmina Burana for me, and the demons themselves sound like cats.

counterpoint: Go granite-less stone and build for regen and heal procs. Your layered defenses and resists will protect you, and when stuff does get through, your max HP and high regen will fix the booboos quickly enough.

you should be able to get earth's embrace perma with 3 recharges. I have the full set that procs that absorb power for the recharge bonus, and it puts me at the HP cap all by itself. I don't use hasten, either! I may have a couple of luck of the gamblers, but I'm definitely not a high recharge character. That being said, one of my few weaknesses is being slowed, so I very much recommend using at a minimum the slow resistance in the winter event travel power. I believe its pretty cheap in the auction house. If I was going to work on juice squeezing this character, I would chase recharge and more regen (can never have enough regen!)

ah, yeah it is! But I didn't want people avoiding a thing because they feel they HAVE to get all the juice. Juice squeezing is an optional minigame once you've settled on a character you like, really!

I should have clarified that I don't use granite except as a mule. I primarily rely on layered defenses with an emphasis on regen. I am at 400-500% regen currently. I also use vigor incarnate and have power transfer: chance to heal proc slotted in stamina, the armor that gives recovery, and the APP energy physical perfection power. So, every minute, i proc heal for 90 hp three times, which is a pretty big chunk of self healing. I also have the radiation heal proc attack in my chain because the final single target radiation power has an incredibly slow, dumb animation and i could hit two times with other attacks in the time it takes to animate. I get axe doesnt have that, but you should get a ton of mitigation from keeping stuff on their butts! I can't look at my build in game, but iirc I have 60-70% resist to E/NE and capped resist to S/L/F/C. Psi is at 60% resist? I have defenses at 50+ to everything but F/C. I know granite has uber resists to everything but I havent encountered an extreme E/NE damage scenario such that it can seriously damage me before my regen at HP cap makes it better in short order.

I run a Stone/rad tank (before rad was the farmer's choice!) and I clear 2/8 without having to use inspirations or pay attention at 50 thanks to Ageless's extra boost to DDR. Nothing hurts me much, from Av's with weird tricks to exotic damage typed mobs. I cruise through everything making clouds of fluffy mass death and havent really had too much trouble killing stuff, except AV's which take a while. I have done all the normal and incarnate content at 4/8 in groups without deaths, but I haven't tried any of the new, homecoming/player made content specifically designed to test tank durability. I don't feel like i've had to sacrifice much to get damage, in fact, I build specifically for defense and the damage just happened, possibly thanks to brimstone and increased target caps. I do use the fighting pool shields and tanker ATO procs. I would offer a build, but I don't have any sets or anything in mine, just level 40+ plain IO's with some procs, so it's nothing fancy. TLDR; tanks are all very tanky with minimal effort. People act like you have to squeeze all the juice out of everything to get to god-tier immortality but for 99% of content just absolute lazy slotting and power picks will be fine, as it was made for pre-IO tanks. Damage is fine with increased target caps, too. Add procs!