[Arsenal slotting ideas?]

Let's start with a brief review of the powers:

• Tranquilizer. Sleep with no miss chance always has fringe applications - think about toggle dropping a Personal Force Field - and this power is somewhat decent as a basic nuke. However, Sleep isn't very good at setting Containment since it drops immediately on damage. Since the Sleep is already far longer than you need it to be, slotting for pure damage via Apocalypse and various procs (depending on secondary, Call of the Sandman might be appropriate) seems the way to go.
• Cryo Freeze Ray. This is one of the weaker Holds available. The supplemental effects aren't really of any use and it has a relatively long activation time. I suspect that most of the time, the best answer will be to slot it as a damage power, potentially with multiple procs including Unbreakable Constraint.
• Sleep Grenade. Static Field is one of the most powerful control effects in the game. This is not Static Field. It has considerably less proc potential and you can't use it as a heal/endurance engine. It doesn't debilitate the spawn so that they can't fight back effectively once you break the Sleep. And, of course, it doesn't self-stack, so you lose most of the virtue of a Sleep field. This is probably the best place to dump Will of the Controller even though putting a damage proc in a Sleep field is dumb - the proc rate is so low that you won't wake up enemies very often and it doesn't matter because you weren't depending on the Sleep field to keep them controlled in the first place.
• Liquid Nitrogen. This checks every 0.2s. There is an 8% chance that it deals a small amount of damage and knockbacks the target, with a 4.5s lockout. Overall, a thoroughly unimpressive power. You can slot this with Ice Mistral's Torment if you need AE defense but don't expect the proc to do anything useful.
• Cloaking Device. LotG mule.
• Smoke Canister. Coerceive Persuasion is the obvious choice here. However, the proc will rarely be useful and the power itself is significantly less potent than click powers like Seeds of Confusion. To compound this, it has a debuff component (making enemies do less damage to one another) and you need to keep attacking them to activate the Confusion.
• Flash Bang. My gut instinct is Cloud Senses here. It's a pretty standard Disorient with uselessly low damage. It can be proc'd out for AE damage, though.
• Tear Gas. As with all the AE Holds, not much use except muling sets.
• Tri-Cannon. I actually like this pet due to its combination of operating at range, taunt and near-invulnerability. It can be proc'd with Perfect Zinger but the fact that it only has a single attack means that doesn't add much damage. You can use the Soulbound Allegiance set but you're probably not building for Psi defense and the pet doesn't do enough damage to justify the proc. So I'd say the standard here would be Expedient Reinforcement. Call to Arms is also a decent option if you need AE defense since the unique is slightly better for a pet that has tons of resist and no defense.

However, it's important to remember that how we slot is dependent on what our secondary set is. For example, I mention building for AE defense. But this isn't a realistic option unless you're playing a set like Traps or Force Field that gives significant defense buffs.

 

 

[Dark Armor Tanker: Torn on a secondary]

Electric Melee has abysmal damage and while Lightning Clap is nice from the standpoint of being a 'tanktroller', the set has very little to recommend it otherwise.

 

Staff has fantastic AE, terrible single target. You can also use Form of the Soul to deal with the endurance problems of Dark Armor. However, without any features like -regen, you'll find fighting AV/GM takes forever. You'll also only be stunning single targets.

 

Radiation Melee is another option, particularly due to the ability to slot Theft of Essence into Radiation Siphon. However, it's again a very low damage set.

 

Stone Melee is probably a stronger option purely from the standpoint of "Tanktroller", but the endurance demands would probably be non-negotiable.

 

You could also consider playing a Stalker or Sentinel instead. Stalkers all do good single target damage and you'll save a bit of endurance since you won't have the damage aura (arguably you could just not take the aura on a Tanker). However, Staff no longer has an endurance management option as a Stalker and Electric loses Lightning Clap. Radiation Melee doesn't lose much of anything you need. Likewise, a Beam/Dark Sentinel will cover all of what you need in an endurance-friendly package. However, neither Stalkers nor Sentinels receive taunt auras.

[Is Sonic Resonance Worth Having?]

Sonic Siphon, Sonic Cage, Disruption Field and Clarity can’t slot any enhancement sets. Sonic Barrier, Snoic Haven, and Sonic Dispersion can only slot resist sets (which are relatively limited in value beyond the uniques). Sonic Repulsion can only slot knockback sets (again, limited). Liquefy can slot a huge array of enhancement sets but few of them do any good because it’s a pseudo-pet power so procs work poorly and the few procs that work well (mainly ones that proc on power activation like Force Feedback or Performance Shifter) aren’t amongst that huge array.

 

That makes building for Sonic Resonance extremely challenging since a significant part of the power of any build comes from its enhancement set bonuses.

 

Sonic Resonance also lacks many of the features like endurancement management, self recharge or self-healing (or abilities to achieve these through procs) that permit it to augment a blast/control set usefully.

 

While not a direct comparison, Thermal is going to be generally stronger and more versatile at doing what Sonic tries to do although obviously it involves a very different theme.

[Different Axe builds, but which to choose?]

8 hours ago, JayboH said:

Bio Armor is the outlier as mentioned earlier due to the adaptation option.  (EDIT: it's not an aura.  It's applied with a click via DNA Siphon.)  I didn't say damage auras were taunt auras.  I said the sets that have one don't have damage auras.

DNA Siphon does not taunt (except via Fury/Gauntlet for Brutes/Tankers). Evolving Armor does.

[Different Axe builds, but which to choose?]

26 minutes ago, JayboH said:

Every scrapper set that has a taunt aura has no damage aura.

Cough. Bio Armor. Cough.

 

In any case, damage auras are not natively 'taunt auras' for any AT. The reason Brutes and Tankers get a 'taunt aura' out of abilities like Fiery Aura is that they taunt on all attacks, not because the power itself taunts. If you look at actual taunts like Against All Odds or Beta Decay, you'll notice they explicitly taunt (and then also apply Gauntlet/Fury).

 

The only true outliers are Super Reflexes and Regeneration. Both those sets have an explicit taunt aura for Tankers and/or Brutes but not for Scrappers.

 

[Different Axe builds, but which to choose?]

2 hours ago, JayboH said:

Trying to check.  I think Energy Aura does.  Invulnerability does.  Radiation does.  Shield does.  Willpower does.

 

So 5 out of the 14 sets do, if I am reading it right.

 

EDIT:  odd, DNA siphon in Bio lists taunt in the hover text but I don't really see its taunt stats.

https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=scrapper_defense.bio_organic_armor.adaptation&at=scrapper

[Martial Arts Tanker! Show me the way!]

22 hours ago, BuiltDifferent5 said:

From what I hear, Rad Armor/Martial Arts is something else.

Rad/MA is often consider the premiere farm build because of the Dragon's Tail/Force Feedback interaction. This alone makes it some of the strongest AE in any set. But when you combine it with Ground Zero, it really shines.

 

With that in mind, actual farm builds involve a lot more procs in Dragon's Tail/Ground Zero than are manageable for a general purpose build.

[Least played ATs/powerset combos]

On 3/14/2024 at 12:13 AM, Psiphon said:

I'm not sure how Defenders can out  damage Corruptors, they've got lower base damage, lower damage caps and that's not even taking Scourge into account. 

Could you please explain this or point to the links that do? 

It depends on the primary/secondary combinations. However, two things can happen:

• Defenders don't need to make nearly the investment in meeting defensive goals, so they can afford to more heavily proc their attacks.
• Defenders get better numbers on -resist and +damage which amplifies their damage.

You also have to consider the nature of Scourge. Scourge is relatively useless for (most) ultimates and for picking off individual enemies while moving through a mission. On the other hand, it's almost exactly a +30% upgrade in damage against an AV/GM.

[My search-fu is weak. Guide for Willpower and War Mace?]

I don't have a design for this, but I can walk you through how I'd start thinking about it.

 

In terms of build goals, I’d recommend going with soft-capped E/N/F/C/P and hard-capped S/L. Toxic can be dealt with primarily via exceptional Regen.

 

So let’s examine our options with War Mace. The powers in War Mace, ranked for single target dpa:

Clobber (106.2)

Jawbreaker (52.3)

Pulverize (50.5)

Shatter (48.0)

Crowd Control (38.1)

Bash (33.4)

Whirling Mace (20.4)

 

Since Clobber is the only one of those powers above 60 dpa, it makes sense to include Gloom in our rotation instead of a melee attack. We have to take either Bash or Pulverize and Bash is terrible, so we’re stuck with Pulverize. Because it’s an 1.207 AF AE that can slot Armageddon, we’ll go a bit further down the list to grab Shatter. So that gives us:

Clobber (16 sec recharge, 1.452 activation)

Shatter (12 sec recharge, 2.508 activation)

Pulverize (8 sec recharge, 1.716 activation)

Gloom (16 sec recharge, 1.32 activation)

 

A standard build runs about 100% external recharge and you can slot about 100% recharge internally, so we need enough activations to fit into about a third of those recharges. None of our powers have a small enough recharge to be used twice in any simple rotation.

 

All of the powers work well within these constraints except Clobber, which would require +257% recharge to fit perfectly. However, we can slot Force Feedback to mostly cover the gaps and then rely on Crowd Control if we don’t get the procs firing.

 

A first pass at how to slot these:

Clobber: Might of the Tanker. The ATOs have great internal recharge and this is the power we want to prioritize.

Gloom: Apocalypse. Since we probably want to soft-cap Psi Defense, the 6-slot makes sense.

Shatter: 5-slot Armageddon + Force Feedback. Hecatomb will fire more often in the longer recharge power.

Pulverize: 5-slot Hecatomb. We have to put it somewhere and there’s no need to split the ATO on a build as far away from E/N hardcap as this will be. The 6th slot can be whatever.

 

For the AE:

Crowd Control: 3-slot Eradication, 2-slot Obliteration, Force Feedback. We want the Force Feedback and we probably need a smidge of E/N defense.

Whirling Mace: Gauntleted Fist. We need to put it somewhere and primary doesn’t have any places for it. In all likelihood, we wouldn’t be taking it in the first place if we had slotting options in primary.

 

Taunt can be slotted with Mocking Beratement. Build Up probably isn’t necessary since we don’t have any long recharge blast powers.

 

For primary:

High Pain Tolerance: As an auto-power, we only need +resist and +health here. We can probably do some sort of frankenslotting like Aegis (proc, resist), Numina’s (proc, heal), Gladiator’s Armor (proc, resist).

Mind Over Body: 3-slot Impervium + Steadfast Protection + Unbreakable Constraint (proc, R or R/E) would be my gut instinct, but balancing out the various defenses may require different slotting.

Fast Healing: 6-slot Preventative Medicine. Despite wasting all that endurance/recharge, it’s a nice set bonus.

Indomitable Will: LotG proc, 3 slot Reactive Defenses seems like a good starting point.

Rise to the Challenge: I'd probably go with Panacea 5-slot here.

Quick Recovery: Power Transfer proc.

Heightened Senses: LotG proc, 3 slot Shield Wall

Resurgence/Strength of Will: Neither of these have any particular need for slotting and they don’t have particularly good options. We’ve already slotted basically all of the endurance/resist procs we need, so we’ll hold off to see what needs to be massaged at the end.

 

For pools:

Fighting: We’ll need LotG in Weave and probably need to boost resist (either through Impervium or Aegis, depending on how our defenses look) in Toughness.

Leadership: LotG in Maneuvers, Gaussian’s 1-slot in Tactics, Endurance in Assault

Leaping and/or Flight: We need a third LotG mule. With such a strong dependence on cones, playing as a flying brick makes a lot of sense for the build. In all likelihood, we’ll take both Combat Jumping and Hover.

 

For epic:

We already committed to Soul Mastery for Gloom. Depending on available slots, we may want to take Dark Obliteration and/or Summon Widow. The latter can be used for Soulbound Allegiance if we still don’t have enough Psi Defense. The former can slot a variety of options, but we only have 4 10% recharge bonuses, so Ragnarok is an option.

 

For passives:

Stamina: Performance Shifter

Health: Miracle

 

From there, you simply start massaging the numbers to reach build goals.

[Staff Fighting Tanker]

3 hours ago, Onlyasandwich said:

 

All of these primaries are great, and I don't think there's really anything to call out in combination with staff specifically. Some are stronger than others sure, but I say go DA if it is speaking to you! Just know that you'll want to sacrifice a few slots (ideally 3 unless you are going flight pool with Evasive maneuvers) for Knockback protection. If you have evasive and can afford to run it, 1-2 KB protection IOs are fine due to the KB resistance provided.

 

Rad, Bio, and Invuln are probably the best from a min/max "really awesome armor sets" perspective.

 

SR can run really lean on slots, which frees you up to focus more on your attacks. Very simple to build.

 

ELA, WP, and DA are all excellent as well though. 

 

Cardiac Core is indeed a strong choice on DA. It's one of the few armors where I'd pick this over a damage option, as you really benefit from doubling down on resists, and the end redux is a life saver. 

I think Radiation is a particular standout for a few reasons:

• Staff gives a much-needed 'defense toggle' for LotG to a set that otherwise provides none.
• Staff's notoriously poor single target damage is counter-balanced by -regen in primary for fighting AV/GM
• Radiation can nearly can all resists, so being able to push the final mile with Staff's +resist move can make a truly beefy tanker.
• The potentially massive +Melee/Lethal defense bonuses counter-balance the lack of DDR.

With Invulnerability and Super Reflexes, you tend to be forced into using Perfection of Soul to manage endurance. So you fall into a do-you-get-what-you-pay-for? quandary where you have to ask yourself if those sets are so much better than a set like Radiation that they justify such a low damage secondary. I think Super Reflexes is different enough than Radiation that you could potentially make the argument - but you can probably make an argument for other endurance management sets like Savage of Dark that's even better. For Invulnerability, I don't see it.

 

In terms of Bio, it's the "defense version" of Radiation in many ways. However, Bio Tankers are notoriously squishy and I don't think any of the three modes of Staff help this much. Bio doesn't need Soul, Mind is silly almost any time and Body just raises your horrible non-S/L/T resists to slightly less horrible.

 

Electric has a tendency to be simply a worse version of Radiation. Weak Psi/Strong Toxic is a much better combination than the reverse in a resist set.

 

Likewise, it's often tough to justify Willpower when Bio exists. Why play the 'Regeneration set' when the only time your Regeneration actually beats out sets that provide broader benefits is when you're surrounded by a mob of enemies?

 

Dark Armor could benefit, but the Energy hole is painful and you're likely to be stuck with Soul most of the time. With that in mind, Oppressive Gloom does combine well with so much Disorient in secondary.

 

[Archery/?]

If you want to play an 'archer' Blaster, you're normally better off with Tactical Arrow rather than Archery. Archery as a blast set only really has one good spot: Explosive Arrow. 

 

Blazing Arrow is worse than a T2 power like Gloom (which is admittedly a very strong example of a T2 power). Ranged Shot has the longest activation time of any sniper attack (which is shares with several other similar sniper shots). Aimed Shot is a fairly typical T1 power (in the T2 slot) and Snap Shot is terrible. Lastly, Archery lacks a true ultimate.

 

You could pair it with something like /Electricity and build a primarily melee ST attack chain. You could pair it with Martial to get a pseudo-ultimate in secondary. Or you could just pick something like Tactical Arrow and deal with low damage for thematic reasons.

[Staff Fighting Tanker]

3 minutes ago, Sovera said:

We whittle the enemies and despite having a lot of AoE it is all mediocre AoE.

Staff has amazing AE on a Tanker. You can just Hover above the crowd and rotate Guarded Spin/Innocuous Strikes to chew up spawns in short order. Having extended reach Cones on a Tanker with a 10 target cap is fantastic.

 

Where Staff stumbles is single target.

[Time/DP Build]

5 hours ago, Mayven said:

Don't need to worry about Unsuppressed knockback in Bullet Rain if you never use standard rounds.

I was going through City of Data quickly to do all the proc calculations and just glanced at the knockback to recognize it needed to be suppressed - didn't notice that it was lethal rounds only.

[Tanker Armor with room for pool powers?]

In general, if you can skip a lot of a Tanker's primary powers it probably means that set isn't very good.

 

However, the real issue in terms of pool powers is how many +Defense you need to slot LotG. Almost all builds want at least 5 powers that can be slotted for +defense because spending a single slot to get +7.5% is so incredible.

 

So if you're a Radiation Tanker, you won't be taking the Teleport pool because all four of your pools will already be spoken for with Defense toggles. On the other hand, a Super Reflexes Tanker tends to grab Fighting pool and wonder what else they might need.

[The ProcBomber]

43 minutes ago, nihilii said:

Super Strength is an excellent proc bomber if you want a melee option. All attacks take 5 to 6 procs, and permaRage means you don't need to hunt for accuracy set bonuses like you would in most other proc builds.

There are very few powers in the game where slotting more than 4 procs makes sense.

 

Consider Jab. It deals 35.9242 damage (on a Tanker). 53% (+5 Damage IO) of this would be about 19 damage. Jab with no internal recharge has a 12.29% chance to fire a 3.5 ppm proc for 71.75 damage or an average of 8.82 damage. As a result, you should never slot conventional procs into Jab until you're in ED territory on +damage.

 

Another example would be Knockout Blow. This immediately twigs your proc radar because it can slot Unbreakable Constraint. However, even at +100% internal recharge, you still have well over the 90% maximum for proc chance so you're losing a meaningful part of the value of that proc. The same problem affects the new recharge levels on epic/patron pool Holds - they're simply too slow to make maximum use of Unbreakable Constraint.

 

You also have to consider the powers within the context of your rotation (for single target powers). That Jab performance I discussed above? That's if your only offensive power is Jab and you're firing it the moment it comes off recharge. If you put Jab in an actual rotation, the value of those procs collapses. In general, when you're proc'ing a single target rotation, you want the procs in that relatively long recharge power that just barely comes off recharge when its spot in the rotation comes up.

 

Whether you can proc a power is only half the equation. You also have to do the math to determine whether you should.

[Time/DP Build]

For Suppressive Fire, a 3.5 ppm proc is better than a pure damage IO.

 

For Executioner's Shot, they're essentially the same.

 

For Pistols and Bullet Rain, a pure damage IO is about 15% better than a 3.5 ppm proc.

 

Force Feedback in Hail of Bullets is... meh. The long recharge compared to the duration of Force Feedback means it only adds a negligible amount of total recharge to the build.

 

Force Feedback in Bullet Rain is a strong choice, though. Force Feedback in Executioner's Shot would average out to approximately 32% recharge over time. Not relevant for closing your single target rotation but potentially very relevant for long recharge powers like Chrono Shift or Hail of Bullets.

 

In general, your AE powers should prioritize damage/recharge over procs - you'll get a lot more damage that way.

 

Unsuppressed knockback in Bullet Rain makes my eyes twitch. Minor knockback in a single target power is no big deal. Knockback on an AE? You'll blow nicely clumped spawns apart and make everyone chase them down with single target attacks (including yourself).

 

At perma-Hasten, Annihilation in Piercing Rounds will average -12.22% resist on a single target. For comparison, Achilles' Heel in Pistols will average -5.29% resist on a single target (presuming you're running your full rotation). While this isn't a direct comparison because you wouldn't ordinarily use Piercing Rounds as part of your rotation, it does bear on what happens when you're trying to purely debuff.

 

I'm not sure why you took Distortion Field instead of Time Stop. The latter is a far more useful power and can slot the same set.

 

You might consider running this as a Corruptor rather than a Defender. You'll get an additional purple proc and very little in Time really demands Defender numbers - most of the buffs/debuffs tend to fall into one of three categories: more than enough, don't care and unchanged.

 

[Is Empathy Dead?]

18 minutes ago, Shadow Metal said:

I can't imagine the number of people on this page that were about to go down that got caught by a thrown heal that kept them on their feet, so that they didn't need to turn all their toggles back on, and gave credit to an inspiration they clicked too late.

The issue isn't whether or not groups can benefit from a 'healer'. The issue is that Empathy isn't very good in this role compared to 'healer' sets like Electrical, Thermal, Pain and Nature.

[DDR available in any Pool/Epic?]

32 minutes ago, Uun said:

There are very powers outside of the defense sets that provide DDR. Other than Ageless/Radial, the only ones I'm aware of are Dark Affinity/Fade and Force Field/Damping Bubble.

Shield's Grant Cover

[Can someone help me with this build?]

For Super Reflexes, I find that following that the following approach is almost always good way to start:

• In the toggles, put 4-slot Shield Wall (one will have the unique; the others will have E/R)
• In the passives, put 2-slot LotG (+recharge and D)
• In Elude, put 6-slot Reactive Defenses
• In Practiced Brawler, put a single recharge or endurance IO (depending on overall recharge/build goals)
• In Quickness, put run speed IO (or fly speed for flying characters)

One of the hardest things to do with SR is get enough E/N resist (thus the 4-slot Shield Walls)

 

Broad Sword is a bit of an odd pairing. Not only will you struggle with endurance but Ninja Blade is almost strictly superior. Neither set is particularly good on a Stalker since the heavy-hitting attack (Head Splitter) suffers an AE penalty on critical and the key AE of the set (Whirling Sword) is missing. The general pattern for Stalker rotations is Light Attack - Heavy Attack - Light Attack - Assassinate - Really Heavy Attack, with Assassinate slotted with Stalker's Guile and Assassin's Mark in an attack that needs a lot of recharge and doesn't benefit much from Hecatomb.

 

 

[DDR available in any Pool/Epic?]

For sets without DDR or with insufficient DDR, the best solution is normally to grab a primary that either buffs defense (Broadword, Katana, Staff) or incapacitates melee opponents (abilities like Thunderclap or Fault). In the first case, you can delay defense collapse by having a much higher Melee/Lethal defense than you need. In the second case, you can prevent it by reducing the frequency of incoming attacks.

[Blasts are too weak]

7 hours ago, MoonSheep said:

irradiate has a long base recharge time (20s) making it a prime candidate for proc, can put two -res procs in it and then others as required

Because almost no build has enough AE to create a 'rotation', recharge normally isn't relevant for AE powers. Indeed, proc'd out Irradiate would do a lot more damage if it had a 10s or 8s recharge. The proc chance on any individual attack would be lower, but you'd have more attacks over time.

 

Where recharge can matter on an AE attack is when the AF is so low it's used as a single target attack (which is not the case with Irradiate). PBAoE powers also have 3 damage procs, a purple proc and a -res proc, so it really doesn't matter all that much what procs their secondary effects grant.

[The ProcBomber]

You might consider Ice/Ninja Blaster. You've got Armageddon, Hecatomb, Unbreakable Constraint, Apocalypse and Superior Blaster's Wrath all in your single target rotation.

[Blasts are too weak]

1 hour ago, Doomguide2005 said:

I haven't really delved into procs (as in proc centered builds) much but Rad blast is certainly well set for it and keep telling myself I need to explore it with 1 of 3 builds.

 

On my Emp/Elec while I'm slotting for damage first I'm usually also pushing the -endmod and -recovery particularly with the AoEs after all the faster the shocked condition comes up the better.  Easier these days with the newer endmod sets.  But I'm also paying even more attention to the -recovery than the -endmod.  The drain seems to occur but keeping them flatlined is really where I'm looking to be.

While Radiation Blast might seem like a 'proc friendly' set, it actually isn't. You don't just need the right debuff category for proc availability. You need fast-activating, long recharge powers that can be assembled into an attack chain with minimal internal recharge slotting. You also need enough powers in primary/secondary to build for the recharge, accuracy and endurance management you aren't putting in your attack powers.

 

Radiation's T1 attack has far too low of a recharge to be effective with procs. Its T2 attack has too long of an activation time for its recharge. They're pretty much the worst T1/T2 powers in any blast set. Irradiate is actually a better 'single target' attack than either based solely on dpa - but this doesn't help with procs (where Irradiate's horrible AF cripples procs used on a single target).

 

Radiation Sniper attack is par for the course. However, you normally don't need any sort of special debuff category for sniper attacks because they can slot 3 procs out-of-the-gate (Sting of the Manticore, Apocalypse, Gladiator's Javelin) and it's fairly common to just 5-slot Sting of the Manticore anyway.

 

Cosmic Burst is another horrible-for-procs power due to its activation time.

 

And that's it for Radiation Blast's single target. You've got two truly awful powers, one merely mediocre one and one no-better-than-anyone-else power.

 

Note: You don't really need any sort of special debuff power for AE attacks since they can slot Positron's, Bombardment and Javelin Volley. What you really want from an AE power is a trivial amount of knockback so you can slot Force Feedback. Too much knockback, you lose a slot to Overwhelming Force. No knockback at all, you're losing about 25% of your potential dps due to worse cyclic rate.

 

In terms of Electric Blast, the Shocked condition is a bit of a trap. It's about 16% more damage on your attacks. For Blaster, this is pretty meaningful. If a Blaster fires off Charged Bolts with 225% enhanced damage, Shocked is an additional 28.2 damage while a 3.5 ppm proc would only be 20.9 damage.

 

On a Defender under the same conditions, Shocked is worth 16.3 more damage while that 3.5 ppm proc is still worth 20.9 more damage. Moreover, 'proc builds' are going to slot up 4 of those procs while the only proc Electrical can slot universally is Gladiator's Javelin.

 

So Electric Blast tends to be worthwhile (on Defender) in one of two situations:

• You expect to be running at/near the damage cap. Our fully Fulcrum Shift'd Kineticist will raise Shocked to 28.9 damage per activation on a Defender - a bit better than a free proc. Note that the Corruptor version will add 41.7 damage (due to higher cap and higher base damage) - and that damage will increase to 54.2 if we account for the average performance of Scourge.
• You're mainly concerned about the endurance cost. Charged Bolts with 30% endurance reduction and Dark Blast with 30% endurance reduction both cost 4 endurance. Charged Bolts with Shocked effectively costs 0.75 endurance under the same conditions. This makes Electrical a strong choice for a set like Storm Summoning where you want your blast set to contribute some damage at minimal cost while your support set does the heavy lifting.

If you're not meeting either of those conditions, you're probably doing a lot less damage than a proc-heavy set would.

[Sleet]

6 hours ago, Carnifax said:

Why do you want Sleet to Scourge? The damage is crap anyway (I've just checked Freezing Rain in an old combat log I had on my Plant/Storm by parsing it and it's 1/5th of the damage of Tornado and unlike Tornado that'll be spread across a lot of enemies). 

I think the general rule people are looking for is that if you care about the damage, it doesn't Containment/Scourge. If you don't care about the damage, it does.

[Is a Traps defender boring to play?]

Most of the game is played in "Scrapper lock" mode. You're rushing from spawn to spawn and only really stop when you encounter an enemy with massive health (an AV/GM).

 

This makes playing pet-based builds - including pseudo-pet builds like Traps - annoying at times. By the time you set up the perfect battlefield, the fight is already over. Even against AV/GM, Traps can be problematic because everything is breakable. While this is fine for Trip Mine - it's supposed to break - it's less fine for your debuff/buff pseudo-pets that you'd really rather didn't die.

 

I think there's a place for something like an Arsenal/Traps Controller who plays their own game at their own pace. But I think you'll find such a build frustrating if you join a random task force.