Hjarki

Yet another build from the vaults. Introduction Fire is one of the more popular control sets, but most of the Fire builds I’ve seen are a bit clunky. They tend to involve a lot of remembering to click this and click that. This is a far more ‘Brute-like’ build than most - in theory, you can just stand there afk and watch things die (although such a strategy is far from optimal). However, unlike conventional farming builds, it doesn’t simply fall apart when tasked to go into general content or up against AV/GM but rather holds its own, providing significant benefits to the group and well as meaningful damage. Defenses I went with positional defenses for the build (albeit not AoE defenses). Because the build runs Venomous Gas at all times, the effective soft-cap for Melee defenses is actually 28% against anything without heavy hit debuff resists. In practice, the sheer amount of -resist debuffing means that the build is effectively soft-capped against everything within the Venomous Gas that can’t resist hit debuffs. For Ranged Defenses, I assumed that enemies would not be within Venomous Gas and just soft-capped it the normal way (note: Mids’ reports double the normal value for stealth powers because half is lost in combat, so it’s merely close to soft-cap rather than at soft-cap). Other than this, the build has a fair amount of control to act as defense - the constant flopping from Bonfire, the Holds from Poison Trap and (to a small extent) the Confusion from World of Confusion. Lastly, status protection is conferred via Indomitable Will. Even without Hasten, the constant +recharge buffs from Bonfire and Cross Punch give you a high likelihood of being able to keep it active as needed. Offense As noted above, the build can very rapidly chew through even +4/x8 crowds with damage auras and other area effect powers. While there is no taunt in the build, mobs tend not to scatter very far given the slow/immobilize/hold/knockdown effects. Note: Pre-Incarnate, the endurance demands of this build can be a bit prohibitive. How It Plays Like a Brute, you simply dive in and burn everything down. You’re not nearly as indestructible, but your debuffing/control is significantly better. However, unlike a Brute or similar builds such as Fire/Kin, you’re not operating at the limit of your capabilities while solo. Popping +damage inspirations or benefitting from other player’s buffs can significantly improve your already exceptional performance in a way it can’t for those sorts of builds. So, again, jump on Beta if you want to test out the build - or your variation of it - and see how potent this particular combo can be.

This is an entirely reasonable design decision. I didn't go that way because I just didn't find Defense to be particularly useful due to the control powers and the fact that Superior Invisibility generally meant that I always initiated fights rather than reacting to them.

Since I have some time on my hands, I thought I'd go over some of the builds in my library and discuss how they work. Introduction I have a love/hate relationship with Illusion Control. On the one hand, it has one of the most unique powers around: Phantom Army. Invulnerable pets who do substantial damage are tremendous. On the other hand, it has almost nothing else. It’s the only Control set that can’t set Containment. It has no AE damage. It’s actual pet (Phantasm) is on the low end of durability and damage. These are some significant holes. However, the demand for recharge to fuel Phantom Army is so extreme that most builds don’t even try to fill them. The top choices for support set are almost strictly aimed at managing to get to perma-PA while having decent defenses. The result are builds that might be decent on a pylon test, but have serious flaws as a general build you’d take into task force. Illusion/Trick Arrow goes the other direction. Instead of approaching the question of Illusion from the standpoint of “how can I pile on all that recharge”, it approaches it from the standpoint of filling the holes - providing AE damage and Containment. Meeting Recharge Demands Phantom Army requires +300% recharge. Approximately 95% of this can come from internal recharge. 70% can come from Hasten (which is automatically perma- at the levels of recharge we need for PA). If we have the powers (we do), 5 purple sets will yield another +50%. I’ve slotted two 4-set +6.25% and one 5-set +5%. 5 LotG will yield +37.5%. Note: This does mean there are a number of powers I take solely for their ability to slot recharge sets but I don't actually plan to use much. Add it all up and we’re still short about 25% recharge. In theory, we could bridge this gap with Spiritual or Agility, but those both hurt the overall damage the build can do (vs. Musculature/Intuition). To bridge this gap, I switch up the single target rotation a bit - I take the somewhat mediocre Project Will over Spectral Wounds. This allows me to slot Force Feedback in a power I’ll be using all the time at a high global recharge with no internal recharge - and close the gap. Meeting Defense Demands This is a bit trickier. Trick Arrow provides no defense/resist at all. While some defense can be inferred from the various debuff powers, this isn’t the same as simply having status protection, soft-capped defenses and hard-capped resists. I’ve already spent an enormous number of slots on recharge above, so I don’t have a whole lot of options here. I simply don’t have the slots to dedicate to boosting defenses to soft-cap much less accomplishing the rest. So instead I rely on two long recharge clicks: Indomitable Will and Unleash Potential. Neither can be made perma-, but they provide me with the option of acceptable defenses when needed. The hope is that the combination of AE Fear, AE Hold, AE Slow/Knockdown, minor AE -hit debuffs and invulnerable tanks will preclude the need for always-on defenses. How It Plays A bit like a Blaster - albeit one with significant control and invulnerable pets. While the damage doesn’t scale up nearly as well as a Blaster, almost any team will find your massive debuffs a boon. Unlike most Illusion builds, you can lock an AV/GM in place with Immobilize and you’ve got some pretty heavy-hitting AE. Note: To ignite the Oil Slick requires a proc in Acid Arrow. This is a near certainty against a large spawn, but has a very low chance of occurring against a single target. For single target offense, you’re primarily relying on PA + Blind/Project Will. Multi-target, you’ve got Oil Slick Arrow followed by Acid Arrow. Overall, the build tends have a ‘flow’ that I like a lot more than conventional approaches. So before you rush off to try a flavor-of-the-month approach like Illusion/Storm or Illusion/Time, I’d suggest you go over to Beta and see what Illusion/Trick Arrow can do for you. While ordinarily a low-ranked set, Trick Arrow’s particulars happen to mesh with Illusion Control unusually well. Note: I've updated my build since the Trick Arrow pass:

The issue is that neither Electric Blast nor Electric Affinity is particularly good at draining endurance/recovery. Electric Blast's single target end drain is mediocre. It's AE end drain is better, but still involves recharges too long to lockdown a spawn indefinitely. Moreover, if you are going this route, Sentinels have a significantly better version of the set (for end drain purposes). Electric Affinity is better at end drain, but it's still nothing special. It's certainly not a set I'd choose for a 'sapping' build, despite the name and initial appearance of the set. If you want to use end drain as a core concept, I'd recommend Electric/Poison, Electric/Storm or Electric/Thermal Controller. They're all noticeably better at end drain. Remember end drain is an all-or-nothing strategy. If you're not emptying an end bar and keeping it floored rapidly, you might as well not even bother. If your entire strategy is predicated on "I hope I'm grouped with someone who can actually make my build useful", then your strategy is flawed. Note: I originally wrote Electric/Pain. I meant Electric/Poison (corrected above).

In my experiments, I found that there were builds that only needed a short time (5 - 6 second time frame) to completely shut down essentially any large spawn (targets with no meaningful resistance to what you're doing) and keep them floored indefinitely. As I noted above, the best way to accomplish this wasn't Electric Affinity (which only has the long recharge Defibrillate), but Electric Control. Once floored, the minions/lt/bosses I tested on simply stopped attacking - it was effectively a disorient you could maintain forever (and since a key component of this strategy was an AE Immobilize power, it might as well be a Hold). This was particularly effective in conjunction with Power Boost, since you can easily drop its recharge into once-per-battle territory and it boosted both the speed at which you could zero a spawn and your defenses while engaging the spawn. Against AV/GM, it's a different story. There, it's more about -resist debuffing. The obvious tactic of going Elec/Elec and stacking end drain on top of end drain is actually far less effective than taking the best end drain you can find and pairing it with the best -resist you can find. It's more valuable to multiply a very good end drain power by a very good -resist power than it is to add a very good end drain power to a mediocre end drain power. However, the problem Electric Affinity has is that the best -resist you can find are all in (other) support sets while Shock isn't actually much better than other options for 'best end drain'. One of the consequences of this is that neither Electric Affinity nor Electric Blast tend to be particularly good at end drain. It's also worth mentioning that AV/GM seem to have zero end 'brawl' attacks that never get shut off and some of them have environmental effects which are independent of their endurance bar. So while you can potentially reduce their damage output, your ability to do so is going to be dependent on the specific AV/GM.

There's a discussion on one approach here: I'll make some general points. First, KB on single target attacks is not a big deal. Normally you're either fighting AV/GM-type targets (who shrug off the knockback) or you're fighting minions/lieutenants/bosses that you're killing by yourself (and you don't care about KB because you're at range). KB on AE attacks is a big deal, so you want to reduce it to knockdown - otherwise you're going to be scattering spawns all over the place, making life difficult for everyone. Second, Force Feedback is an enormous advantage of knockback, giving you a massive amount of 'free' recharge if you know how to slot it effectively. Likewise, you can get an additional Explosive Strike proc to ramp up damage. This allows some more creative slotting, which can yield more powerful heroes/villains despite using a technically 'inferior' Blast set.

Making Shock worthwhile generally requires a fair bit of -resist. However, if you've got the -resist to back it up, you can do some impressive things.

I have a hard time recommending anything other than Bio/TW. First of all, Titan Weapons is an incredibly powerful set in its own right. Second of all, Bio's defense hole is S/L. Titan Weapons has Defensive Sweep, a stackable/enhanceable buff to Smashing/Melee Defense. This single power can soft-cap your Smashing/Melee Defense from zero. Admittedly, there's still a hole there - but it's awfully tiny (Ranged or AoE Lethal-only attacks).

Fire has one of the slowest sniper attacks, so the average DPS of its attacks suffers.

It's mostly a matter of not caring about the attack too much - it's a 'filler' that you're only really using when nothing else is available.

I mocked up a quick build: 'Decent AE' isn't really in the cards because Psi only has the single AE. Probably the best you can do is grab an AE from epic pools. In terms of soft-capped defenses, that's relatively difficult without serious compromises on a resist-based armor set. I approached it from having situationally capped defenses via Unleash Potential, but obviously always-on soft-capped S/L isn't out of the cards if you focus on it - you'll generally need to slot a lot of Kinetic Combat. I think the major elements to pay attention to when doing your own build: Stalker's Guide Chance to Hide. You almost always want to put this in your Assassinate because you don't want it to proc when your Assassinate is up. Assassin's Mark Chance for Build-Up. You generally want this to proc as much as possible, which means putting it in one of your slow primary attacks. Force Feedback Chance for Recharge. You normally want to slot this into any power with knockback to provide a recharge boost. Fast Snipe. Virtually all of the best Stalker attack chains include either Moonbeam or Zapp from epic pools. You can either pile on enough +hit to make them quick (difficult) or you can simply slot Experienced Marksman. I went the latter route. You might also consider doing Psi/Energy rather than Psi/Electric. They're very similar, but it's trivial to soft-cap defenses on Psi/Energy while also getting great resists compared to soft-capping defenses on Psi/Electric.

Fire is definitely one of the top contenders. However, since the Snipe changes, the value of sets has re-shuffled a bit and I don't know anyone who has done a comprehensive review for Blasters. My suspicion is that sets like Dark and Psi are serious contenders (at least for single target damage). For multi-target damage, it's mainly how hard you make the bodies bounce with your ultimates.

Yes, you can stack them. But you've only got so much activation time - and you need to use some of that activation time to actually deal damage or your debuffing is pointless. So once you've stacked on the high value -resist debuffs, you're left with Sonic attacks that are both low value debuffing and low value damage. You're better off just using high value debuffs and then using the remaining activation time for high value damage. A few things have changed since the heyday of Fire. First, the proc changes have made Fireball not a viable part of a single target rotation. While Fireball can slot quite a few procs, they have a very low proc chance (for a single target attack). Second, the sniper changes have completed up-ended the various sets by giving a number of sets fairly fast massive damage attacks. As it turns out, Blazing Bolt is amongst the worst (slowest) of the sniper attacks - it's barely more effective than Blaze. Third, any Defender can take Dominate/Char - attacks that, when slotted, perform about the same as Blaze. Fourth, we're not really modeling 'rotations' for Defenders since they're not reflective of how most Defenders work. On a Blaster, you can reasonably assume that you'll spend essentially all of your time Blasting. On a Defender, significant chunks of time are spent 'Defending'. This means that the low value parts of the rotation - such as the tier one blasts - are simply omitted and it's all about the high value parts of the rotation. So if we're comparing Fire to Radiation, what we've got: Radiation: Massive Attack (Proton Volley), Strong Attack (Dominate/Char) Fire: Strong Attack (Blazing Bolt), Strong Attack (Blaze), Strong Attack (Dominate/Char) Depending on how 'busy' your secondary is, if you push the balance of your attacks towards Proton Volley, you'll out-damage Fire. If you don't have much else to do besides blast, you'll push it towards the Fire 'rotation'. It's also worth mentioning that Weaken Resolve can almost entirely replace your low value first/second tier attacks due to the conjunction of its proc opportunities and -resist. Now, I'd argue that Fire is a reasonable choice for Radiation since it isn't a very busy set. Going with Fire also allows you to gain more set bonuses than the multi-proc slotting method, so it can be easier to build and have some flexibility elsewhere. Fire also looks better on Corruptors and especially Blasters since they have a higher base damage but get the same value from procs. However, the ability to slot near-constant Achilles Heel can't be overlooked either - and probably puts Radiation Blast out in front for Defenders. Also, if you're deciding on Fire Blast, you need to seriously consider playing the Corruptor version of your build - Fire gets stronger the better your base damage is. In terms of the duration of the -res on Sonic, it does matter a great deal because it's the determining factor on how much you can stack. Also, if you're just fighting relatively weak targets, Sonic is awful because it has weak upfront damage and any -resist beyond the life of the target is wasted.

Instead of having to mule useless 5-slot powers and take a mediocre Alpha to reach perma-Hasten, you could simply use two IOs in powers that easily accommodate them. The reason people put Force Feedback into Tornado/Lightning Storm is that it's by far the most efficient way to gain large amounts of global recharge - and that efficiency translates into flexibility elsewhere in the build.

Well, it does allow you to slot more procs. With Fire Blast, you get two procs in the Sniper Blast, one proc in the other single target and then one purple proc to put where you please. This is fine if you're playing a Blaster. For a Defender, it means losing a lot of potential damage.

They're both a bit problematic. Sonic was popular on Live, but isn't nearly as effective on Homecoming. The problem is that while Sonic's powers do debuff -resist, most of them don't do so very effectively. The metric I like to use for a rough comparison is (amount debuffed) * (duration debuffed) / (activation time). By this metric: Envenom = 37.5 * 30 / 1.584 = 710 Corrosive Enzymes = 25 * 30 / 1.188 = 631 Weaken Resolve w/Achilles Heel = (17.3 * 15) + (20 * .9 * 10) / 2.244 = 340 Screech = 20 * 174 / 1.716 = 174 Infrigidate w/Achilles Heel = 20 * .9 * 10 / 1.188 = 152 Piercing Beam w/Annihilation = (20 + 20 * .32) * 10 / 2.508 = 105 Shriek = 20 * 5 / 1.188 = 84 Scream = 20 * 7 / 1.848 = 76 Shout = 20 * 10 / 2.904 = 69 Howl = 20 * 8 / 2.508 = 64 This isn't a comprehensive list, but it should showcase how weak most Sonic attacks are at debuffing -resist compared to the alternatives. One of those - Weaken Resolve - is available to any build and will by itself debuff about half of the entire Sonic rotation. Unlike the Sonic rotation, using Weaken Resolve still leaves you plenty of opportunities to do other things - such as those high value debuffs from support sets. Moreover, when you debuff -resist it's important to have something to take advantage of that -resist debuffing. Which Sonic doesn't provide. Not only aren't there many slotting opportunities for procs in Sonic, but the base damage of those powers is lower than other sets. Radiation is a more viable set. It has the best PBAoE non-ultimate, an acceptable (if second class) target AoE and a PBAoE ultimate roughly equivalent to most such powers. For single target, it has a mid-speed Sniper attack that can be heavily proc-slotted. However, the -defense component of Radiation is essentially worthless (beyond slotting opportunities) because even basic IO builds cap hit chance with trivial ease. I'd consider Radiation one of the stronger sets for AE - as long as you're willing to mix it up in melee range. However, Radiation isn't one of the stronger single target sets.

To be fair, it was buried in the middle of an unrelated topic. It's certainly a build worth mocking up on Beta just to see how quickly you can shred an end bar. However, it's probably more sensible to re-jigger it to place less emphasis on end drain and more emphasis on just killing things.

I posted a build a few days ago: Now, this probably isn't exactly what you're looking for. The build above is optimized for sapping (end drain) - and it's very, very good at it. It's also a bit difficult to play without incarnates due to end issues (but this is common for Storm Summoning builds). However, you can probably adapt a lot of the build approaches. Storm Summoning tends to be based around exploiting Force Feedback in Tornado/Lightning Storm, while Electric Control uses Jolting Chain packed with damage procs. You can mock up the entire build on Beta and see how it works for you - the sapping aspect is actually useful on large spawns but not all that great against AV/GM.

I played around with end drain extensively on test. Against large spawns, you can completely neutralize them with the right powers. That being said, the 'right power' is Chain Fences from Electric Control since it's both a decent end drain power and one of the best -recovery powers in the game. It'll take you a few seconds to shut down your enemies but once they're shut down, they're shut down. They just sit there, patiently waiting to be killed. Against AV/GM, it's a different story. While you can shred through their end bar rapidly (again, with the right powers), you need significant amounts of -recovery to keep them floored. Unfortunately, AV/GM appear to have basic attacks that cost no endurance so you can't completely shut them down. The amount of effort keeping them at the -recovery floor also tends to preclude doing substantial damage., In terms of Water, I don't see it as a particularly good combo due to the amount of activity in Electric Affinity interfering with the overall mechanics of the set. I think you're better off with sets like Fire and Psionic that have fast-activating big single target attacks.

Fulcrum Shift requires you be close to a large number of enemies if you want to receive that kind of +damage buffing. However, Kinetics doesn't provide any meaningful defenses the user. As a result, attaching it to a purely ranged set (which also doesn't provide much in the way of meaningful defense) often doesn't work out well. You end up with a glass cannon build that absolutely needs a Brute/Tanker to hold aggro for you so you can operate.

The above post contains a sample Archery/Cold build that should demonstrate where you're likely to be headed at 50. The primary attacks from Archery would be Ranged Shot, Explosive Arrow and Rain of Arrows, with Aimed Shot being the better of the two basic attacks. However, you won't have enough recharge to create a tight single target rotation until high levels. In that particular build, Cold Domination initial power is also re-purposed into an attack power - which requires a number of IO procs. Archery is primarily ranged with an incomplete attack cycle. This means you want to pair it with sets that can operate at range and have useful abilities to mix into the attack chain. Cold (as above) is decent for this due to re-purposing Infrigidate as an attack. Nature would also (somewhat) fit this description, but it can be tricky to manage due to the extraordinary recharge requires of Overgrowth. Time and Storm are generally strong sets that can work well with a variety of Blast sets. In terms of leveling, support archetypes are amongst the hardest to level since so many of their key abilities come very late and require significant support from IO sets. You'll probably want to team up as much as possible and you'll need to take more attacks in the early levels than you'll be using at high levels. If you're just interested in Archery as a concept, you might also want to explore a */Tactical Arrow Blaster. While they don't have support sets and managing their defenses can be tricky, they'll tend to have stronger damage output and be easier to level.

That's interesting. It definitely does not proc on the Beta server. It will proc from Distortion Field, though.

I went on the Beta server, rolled up a Gravity Controller, slotted Dimension Shift with Energy Font and repeatedly activated Dimension Shift. Over 10 - 15 trials, I had zero procs of Energy Font.

I wasn't able to get Energy Font to proc from Dimension Shift at all. Standard procs in Dimension Shift do work, but they appear to only work on the initial casting (they do not appear to proc at 10 second intervals also).

The set itself has almost no useful proc opportunities. While new End Mod IO sets have been added, none of them have particularly good partial set abilities (all the good abilities are at the 5- and 6- slot level and they're not all that great) nor are the procs all that useful. Other than End Mod, it's got two heals so you've got some decent (but not exceptional) set bonuses and the bubble (which can store the standard resist set uniques). It can't slot any damage procs, Force Feedback or -resist procs - the really important ones. In terms of how it pairs with other sets, it does provide the key element: recharge. However, it provides it in a dysfunctional manner, requiring you spend a lot of time boosting your recharge and requiring a nearby ally/pet to do so. This makes it less effective for reducing the recharge of your single target rotation and more of a method for reducing the cooldown of long recharge powers. It also provides +hit to allow slotting a lot of procs in Blast set, but it does so in the same sort of dysfunctional manner. Overall, I think Electric Affinity is a solid support-centric set - but it really doesn't serve as a particularly good set for offensively focused builds. As far as I can tell, Entomb can't proc in Distortion Field (although the proc chance may just be very low).