Onlyasandwich

@BurtHuttis correct. Tactics allows gaussian to tick for every entity affected by it, even pets. On a team, it has huge uptime for the proc, all without having to waste animation time. On my mastermind, I have roughly 40 percent uptime on the proc with just my pets alone affected by tactics.

It's better on some ATs than others. Defenders and controllers have especially good modifiers for it. On any AT, it's pretty strong if everyone is taking it for full team stacks. Taken on its own, it's not so hot. It can be an okay one slot wonder if your other choices require more investment, but typically tactics is a better pick. Maybe you'd choose both if you have many free picks.

It will not.

Hemo is unfortunately still poo poo.

Thank you for the detailed reply, @oldskool! I'll probably run the build with blinding powder first then, and perhaps Respec to rune if I don't find it fitting my playstyle. Indeed, that is what I thought on resists. I was hoping there might be some obvious optimization that ran by me.

Thank youThank you for the thorough rundown, @Oldschool

I think you may be looking at Electric Melee.

I'll just pretend the chain was never added in that case. 😃

Hello there Sentinel land! I've never made one of these before, and after researching builds thrown out over the ages, have put together something that fits a concept I have. I would love your wisdom, and to hear what sort of opportunities I may have missed in selection/slotting from your perspective. Update: Added an alternate build with Rune. Squeezed further resists out of primary build. Found the recharge slot for Charge Up. A few of my priorities: Polish off my positional softcaps without overinvesting in too much pad. Juicy procs wherever possible. Recharge where I can grab the low-hanging fruit. Slow resist! The 80 I have here should do the trick. Very underrated stat. I do like my builds to exemplar decently well. I'm not purely optimized for this, but bear it in mind when boosting and placing IOs. Things I would like to have, but don't see a good way to without sacrificing the above: Better resists. I think I achieved okay resists given the tools available, but they are definitely mediocre. An extra slot to drop a recharge IO in Charge Up would be nice. Not sure where I might steal it though. Done! Squeezed it in. Am I missing anything regarding the opportunity mechanic by skipping my T2 blast? Most of the builds I see skip it for Elec - I'm guessing it's just not worth paying much attention to. A few broad questions about power usage in these sets as well: Blinding Powder looks pretty neat, especially with the purple proc! Reviews seem pretty mixed - what are your thoughts? I like it thematically, and it makes a good mule at least, though honestly I'm a bit overcapped on ranged def. Optimized this out. : ) I've really gone lean on end support. My hope is that the end clicky and refund mechanic on elec/ will be enough to get along. Is this a recipe for spending too much animation time clicking Seishinteki Kyoyo all the time? I am comfortable managing a bouncing blue bar on other builds, and don't mind running close to the edge here for the sake of optimization elsewhere. Obviously Tesla Cage is way better on sents and worth taking. Just a point of curiosity - how useful do you find the chain mechanic? Is it worth paying attention to, or do you just let it happen when it pops up? The Build: I have also been playing with the idea of dropping blinding powder and teleport pool in favor of working Rune of Protection into the build. On-demand res bump on a reasonable cooldown might be just what /Nin needs to bridge those battles where DDR and resists just aren't holding up. For those with Nin experience - have you tried Rune, and do you find it worth the sacrifice? This build still keeps the softcaps, and gains some extra utility slotting (more recharge in charge up, 95% slow resist now). Spirit Ward is mostly a mule, but is actually a decent enough power if you have the extra end to run it. Global recharge takes a small hit from the loss of a purple set. Rune Build:

I'm sure it will be a great character to play! General notes on the latest iteration: I'm still not clear on your IO slotting focus for defense - you are stacking full winter sets and end up with a weird set of softcap defenses. AoE and F/C are more marginal than say melee, ranged, or S/L/E. Splitting the Vigilant assault set in 2 is quite powerful! What you have here certainly won't perform poorly, but this is a fun optimization for any defender build, as you get two 10% recharge bonuses for little investment, and can flesh out the other three slots with procs or other good sets as you like. Voltaic Sentinel is a pretty good power now. It is basically what /Electric gets instead of a real heavy hitter single target blast, and adds up to a ton of damage over time, especially in single target scenarios. I would definitely find a way to use it, or at least try it for a while and see how you like it. Also consider that Kin is super busy - VS is essentially free damage that requires no animation time. You are overinvested in defense slotting for combat jumping, which provides little return on the bonuses. If you are going for the 4 slot lotg, drop it in weave instead. Just a small optimization - move the unique +res IOs to combat jumping, as they aren't part of a used set, and you'll have access to them earlier. This will be possible if you yank the aforementioned extra lotgs from combat jumping. Superspeed doesn't really need speed/end enhancement. Just drop the KB prot travel IO in there so you can yank the karma from combat jumping and keep it at 8 pts. Winter slow resist is also a worthy option, as you are only at 45% here even with your winter sets. Assault is super redundant when you have fulcrum shift. I would heavily advise tactics instead.

A quick addendum here - Electric Fences is indeed awesome! Unfortunately, the Defender pool is only giving you the single target version.

So I promised I would put together a build. Honestly, Kin/ is a bit of a hard set to focus for a good build! Since there isn't really much solid mitigation built into your primary, and primary powers themselves often don't even take sets, you really have to carefully consider where you focus your bonuses. This build comes out with a few highlights: S/L resist capped. Softcap ranged defense. Procs procs procs - damage squeezed in all over. Solid slow resist at 80%. This is especially important in kin, which lives on its clickies. Underrated debuff resistance in many situations. Lots of built-in Knockback protection (15 pts). You won't be thrown around! Weird stuff about it: I went Nerve core for the Alpha, allowing for more flexibility in acc slotting. I tried to shore this up as much as possible for exemping, but the Alpha should kick in when it counts. This give a little edge in defense as well, though that is not the primary purpose. You make up the damage with Fulcrum either way. Tesla Cage. I haven't had a chance to play with it since the change. It seems to be a bit less proc-worthy than most holds, though still decent when jam packed. I really don't know how worthwhile the aoe chain mechanic is. It might be a fair trade to either drop this for lightning bolt, or maybe even the epic electric hold, which procs super well. Does damage enhancement even apply to the chains? Who knows? I have no extra end support slotted at all. Between the infinite fountain of Transference and the built-in refund mechanic on electric blast, it's worth saving the slots. Don't cross your eyes at the Kick and Speed boost slotting - ranged defense mules! Areas that could be better: S/L defense might be a better goal than ranged, though it's hard to say. Short Circuit does require melee range, but even in melee, ranged defense is very important. On a team this won't matter so much, and solo your sapping can actually do something worthwhile and neuter the melee with careful application. Unfortunately, slotting for S/L defense from the ground up requires heavier set investment, and leaves little room for the procs I want. Exotic resists. I mean - it's not a tanker. You have resists outside of S/L/E, but they're not very strong. Fulcrum does help, and you have heals. There isn't really a completely smooth single target attack chain of optimal powers. However, Charged bolts recharges quickly enough to keep it moving between the big punchers, and realistically Kin/ is a super busy set who will be bouncing plenty of other powers in there, even when piling on an AV.

Apologies for my lack of clarity! When I said add procs I mean damage procs. The other little mez, slow, heal, etc procs are pretty weak and not a great use of a slot. The ato procs are still quite powerful of course. I'll pull this up and provide further feedback when not on mobile. One thing I do see right off hand is that you have no acc in transference or transfusion. They really want solid acc slotting, as they are your lifeline and battery respectively, and life will be hard against higher mobs if they miss Correction, pulling it up in mids, I do see acc in transference. The PM set is really nice - you might be good enough with the strong global acc you have here. It does make the build less exemp-friendly. Overall solid! I see that most of your proc additions are damage, and well placed. The hold proc might have marginal use given that you have a hold to stack with, but still a bit suboptimal. Power transfer heal proc isn't actually bad, but not really necessary in kin. Overall a much cleaner build! I think you'll have success with it. I'll put together a vision of how I would approach the same combo later on as well.

I hope you have great fun with your shiny new Defender! A few broad observations: Transfusion is one of the best heals in the game, and worthy of slotting. Give it some love, and don't forget to mix in some accuracy. I don't really know what you're going for with your set bonuses - they are all over the place. You have random defense bonuses all around, but only hit softcap on Fire/Cold, which is the least useful. Choose a vector to focus on like S/L and/or Ranged, or possibly Melee and stick to it. You don't even have to softcap, but focus your bonuses in a more useful direction. Power sink has no use here. It's a bad sapping tool because it's on too long of a cooldown with a long cast time, and you already have infinite endurance from Transference. I would drop this for Voltaic Sentinel, or maybe even a procced out Tesla Cage. Given the lack of need for power sink, just go with Mu mastery instead and grab charged armor there - no need to waste a prereq on electric fence. I guess if you really want electric fence, go for it, but not amazing utility. As @RandomAccess mentioned, splitting the Vigilant Assault set in 2 is great for doubling up on the 3 piece recharge bonus. The Bastion ATO set is either a 5 or 6 slot somewhere (depending on if you pursue ranged def), or else just extract the proc and ignore the other pieces. Consider adding procs to several key attacks - at least Zapp, possibly even one or two in your nuke. If you pick up Tesla Cage, proc it out fully. Procs are already proportionally more powerful for defenders, but since you can cap damage with fulcrum, they're even better for Kinetics, as they allow you to reach beyond the damage cap. If you need to steal slots, consider dropping numina unique or potentially even Miracle. Some kins like to lean less on transference, which is fine, but it does allow you to drop a lot of end support if the benefit is right. Consider the gaussian proc in Charge Up. Though you will have fulcrum, the extra on-demand non-conditional damage can be quite useful, and more to-hit is even better when you are debuffed/hitting high. Transference could use some slotting love as well. Even if you're not dropping a whole set in it, I would find a way to put a bit more acc in there. Both Siphon Speed and Fulcrum could benefit from some extra acc slotting, though it's not awful as is. I prefer to slot a 1 or 2 recharge in Fulcrum as well for better uptime. The preventative medicine proc is quite powerful. I would find a way to drop it somewhere. Doesn't matter where. I'm not sure how committed you are to an electric themed epic pool. If you aren't concerned about this from a thematic perspective, Psy epic is worth considering for solo work (mass hypnosis for setup, good types for armor, superior hold for proc damage), and Dark Mastery provides some useful melee control in oppressive gloom alongside a useful armor.

It's pretty strong, but skippable on builds that have sufficient aoe in their primary. Great way to supplement sets like DM, Electric, and stone melee that can otherwise lag behind in this area. Ultimately, not a reason to pick /Rad all by itself, but a fun tool that is relevant for some builds, though not all. Even in a strong aoe primary, still worth a pick-up if you can fit it in with procs, especially if you have high global recharge in the first place.

I had the opportunity to pull up the latest build in Mids, and wanted to provide some more concrete feedback! On a general note, I wouldn't worry too much about making sure everything is up to incarnate softcaps here. You can definitely reach them pretty easily on SR/, but I would just build as you see fit and let defense settle wherever it is going to be. You're going to have strong defenses if you have paid minimal attention to slotting your primary, and scaling resist along with the ATO proc will give you a lot of leeway on resistances as well. Stacking Weave will give you decent pad and most of the way to incarnate softcap all by itself if you want. I actually don't hate the fact that you have both shadow punch and smite. Smite is a far superior attack, and your slotting for it is totally fine. If you're just using Shadow punch as a mule, I would prefer to see a winter mule for slow resist. If you're actually using it in your attack chain, I'd love to see some procs. You aren't using the Hecatomb proc anywhere - sub it in on either Smite, Midnight grasp, or siphon life. 4 slot kinetic combat is a waste on Siphon Life. Very paltry melee defense return for slotting, and not a really necessary bonus to begin with. If you are quite concerned about beefing defense, you may be better served by finding something to drop for weave. I would recommend dropping evasive for weave, as it would maintain the lotg slot. What I said earlier regarding Siphon slotting still stands. The baseline healing that you will receive by incorporating this into your attack chain is plenty. No real need to enhance it. Make it the best attack possible so you want to use it all the time! I see where you're coming from with Dark Oblit versus Touch of Fear, but I would honestly just grab ToF instead. Procced out it actually does more damage, and on a much lower recharge. This also means less reliance on recharge for chaining aoes! Actually having an early usable aoe is also great. Dark consumption doesn't really benefit much from the extra damage proc. You're only getting it off once in a blue moon. I would pull that slot elsewhere. Your Midnight Grasp slotting is sort of weird. The Touch of Death 3 piece bonus is not so great. I would consider either going full Gauntlet here, or maybe 5 Hecatomb+ToD proc. You could then drop Oblits from consumption and maul and be even on recharge, freeing you up to split Gauntlet into two sets of threes in these attacks. This would allow you to double up on the hefty E/N resist bonus and max end. There are of course many ways you could go with this, and I think the core of what you have is pretty solid for sure. I hope these points are helpful!

Don't forget you can always use celerity in Sprint + Superspeed for full effective invis against most mobs. This keeps the speed pool open for a hasten pickup. Fliers are definitely annoying! Although it can be a chaotic power at times, I still find caltrops to be one of the most powerful mitigation tools available to Traps. It's not something to be used at all times, but start tossing those suckers around and everything is running away slowly while taking proc shots to the bow. Honestly the procs are a bit of a gimmick in it, but having trops do okay damage is amusing to me. If someone is locking down the mob, the damage is actually really reliable and strong. I would also hesitate to put the Bastion ATO proc in anything but an often-used blast power. This proc is super strong, especially on sets like Traps that lack a heal. Put it in pretty much any blast and you're getting surprisingly strong heals just by attacking. Other priorities are more subjective of course! I do like that you were able to shore up slow resists in your build, though it does come at the cost of significant proc damage potential as you note.

This isn't so much a build as it is a broad suggestion. What goals do you have in mind? Damage at all costs, immortality, somewhere between? There will always be a tradeoff between recharge for ideal rotations, stacking defense, rounding out exotic resists, and maximizing damage. This is the sort of build I might see from someone who is used to SOs only. Do you have an inf budget in mind?

This is exactly what I do with SL. Its true damage potential comes from procs, and you'll get plenty of heal over time just by having it in your attack chain. In fact, you'll have a reason to use it more often. I am on mobile so can't pull up the full build, but agree with what others have said here broadly regarding attack choices and recharge. Don't worry about chasing perma hasten and every drop of recharge. It's okay if hasten has a gap. All you need is a good rotation with quality attacks. Hasten is still a valuable tool of course to keep the rotation tight, and leverage aoes.

I think it became a less interesting power to optimize for, but more useful in a variety of builds. I definitely get how crappy it feels if there isn't anything to close the gap in a build that previously leveraged it to great success.

This definitely seems like the best path overall. I went through as phase of trying to hit incarnate softcap on many characters, but it just isn't worth it on a squishy who has to completely mortgage any hope of decent resists to do so. Layered defenses are much better. On defenders at least, S/L resist cap is pretty easy with epic shield+tough, given the very high base values. That being said, I noticed I am a fool and missed the most obvious thing ever - my previously posted builds don't have the +res IOs! Yikes. The original is pretty old, so I'll just blame it on past me. : ) Here is a further iteration, which also drops the epic pet. Traps/ actually isn't a bad pairing with epic pets, as you stand a chance of keeping them alive. Dropping it allowed me to max out S/L and pump up recharge respectably again though - I think it's likely a worthy trade, and one less clicky to worry about on the battlefield. The real thing the current version lacks that I like to incorporate these days is slow resist. I'll keep playing with it. Edit: I went ahead and respecced into this. Had forgotten what fun this guy is! The new build just sits there unharmed on a 4/8 S/L farm until the FFG dies. Even then, it's not a quick drop, and you can bring the gen back quick enough. Far tougher than the old scorpion shield build I had which could easily crumble to overaggro if not really on top of trap placement or caught off cooldown. Super proccy Caltrops is hilarious, if not entirely as powerful as one might hope. End is a bit of an issue. My build only addresses that with conserve power part time, or ageless when 50+. Not ideal, but I'm happy enough with the trade-off. I'm fairly comfortable having to balance blue usage at lower levels - makes the game a bit more interactive. : ) Build:

I have a Traps/Beam/Scorp myself, and quite enjoy it! I do need to revisit and reoptimize it some time. I like the bones of your build, but a few things stand out: Lancer shot is really strong - it's a real shame not to take it. The listed damage is deceptive, as it gets a damage bonus from disintegrate. I would drop Burnout for it, and reconsider your slotting for Scorp shield and FFG to scrounge slots. Burnout is a neat gimmick, and this build does have a few nice things to do with it, but it's on a super long cooldown, and you aren't doing anything amazing like double Gang War. I would swap Trip mine for Cutting Beam. This is one is more subjective - perhaps you really enjoy the Trip mine playstyle. Traps trip mine never got the in-combat buffs Blaster /Devices did though, so it's not such a hot power. Cutting Beam may not be super top tier, but it requires no setup, and takes a few procs to round out damage. It also benefits from disintegrate, getting extra damage. Poison Trap is auto-hit - it doesn't even natively accept accuracy. The extra UC triple and recharge are pretty marginal return, and the slots are better served elsewhere. I tried the KD proc in Caltrops. It is very uninspiring. Recommend damage procs instead. I agree with all the points Nemu put out there as well. Below is the old build I've been running. This build focuses on proccy damage where possible, and hitting incarnate defense softcaps for S/L/E (as @Nemustates, FFG isn't showing in mids). Ranged def is at regular softcap. I pick up recharge where I can as well, but not sacrificing these other factors. Traps/ doesn't need crazy recharge. You just need your good traps to be up every battle, which they will be. Juicing it a bit will let you stack mortars, which is nice. Honestly, I want to rework it to drop Scorpion shield. Both my build and yours would really benefit from stronger baseline resists. If I rebuild, I'd de-prioritize my incarnate defense chase, and go with an epic resist instead. As @nihonseanmentioned, the defense it is a bit overkill in most cases. You will likely find better survivability shoring up resists, even in incarnate content, where you will likely have some defense buffs floating around anyhow. Note that I did a weird thing and dropped gaussian proc in tactics, ignoring aim entirely. It works out okay when I have all my pets out, as each one helps proc gaussian's. However, easy enough to drop this for Aim. Another neat thing to do here is drop the decimation build-up proc in Seekers. It procs pretty much every time you drop seekers, turning Seekers itself into basically another damage buff power! It works better than you might think. : ) EDIT: I did a quick work-up of what I might do if I followed the priorities above to rework this build. With FFG up, I have regular softcap for S/L/E/N and Ranged defense, and much stronger resists. Could probably dig in further to cap out S/L resist, but it's close. There is some low-hanging fruit to buff S/L further, but I'd have to sacrifice procs, and don't really want to. Conserve power could be swapped for Power Sink if that's your style. Power Sink is more of a total end solution, but CP is easier to manage. Honestly this build doesn't dip much on blue, despite the relatively weak recovery. I did lose a tiny bit of recharge this way with how I have seekers slotted now, and the loss of a lotg mule. However, now Seekers is an even better self-buff, with the tohit proc in Siphon insight in addition to build-up proc from Decimation. Purely incidental, but neat. : ) Definitely more could be done here, but it's a good foundation for further iteration.

Easy or not, gotta GET DEM NUMBERS UP.

Has mids fixed +HP issues? It was grossly overstating HP bonuses from some sources in a recent build. If you are indeed at this cap passively, I would consider majorly reworking the build to allow DP to pick up the slack, as it is a ton of wasted potential. Edit - I think the mids issue was just with Earth's embrace. Other sources of plus HP are probably normal, but it's worth checking. I'm on mobile right now so can't give proper feedback otherwise.

Update: Decided to just go with teleport! Very in theme, nice to have a travel power, and the slow res never hurts. Nice for playing catch up with teammates in mission as well. Pop through walls with powexeclocation Target! End management is actually pretty okay, Even full bore. It's pretty swingy though. I can get caught in a spot when hasten drops, but a blue or serum keeps me going in a pinch. Sometimes it's nice to have something meaningful to actually gain from all those teammates with end buff powers out there. Falling back on heal spam actually nets me positive end with the theft proc too! I had forgotten how fun and powerful this guy is! Tentacles and whips all over, high damage attacks, wading through crowds with demons rampaging. Nothing quite like it. It can go to "hell" pretty quickly if I don't keep a tight leash on pet placement though, and /dark demands proactive debuffing. Definitely a build for when you want to be very engaged.