Onlyasandwich

I love poison, and I think /rad is a pretty decent combo with it. My first impressions here: Electron haze is super awkward and slow, and does not work well with Venomous Gas. I would drop it. Paralytic poison is a pretty strong pickup here in its place. It's not actually an amazing hold, but giving it an acc and filling the rest with procs makes it very strong ST damage. The experienced marksman set is not needed. This is a set that is only perhaps marginally useful in pvp. Sting of the manticore is a stronger snipe set. To expound upon this, fast snipes happen automatically when you are in combat. You don't need the IO for it. You don't need extra tohit to make this happen like before, though additional tohit improves your fast snipe damage even further. Poison Trap is only sort of useful all by itself. It really shines as a proc bomb power, as it takes so many different procs. It can be a nice quick-cast mini nuke. The winter set in atomic blast isn't really doing anything for you here. Your defense focus is on S/L and ranged. The big melee bump and bit of aoe def aren't very helpful. Consider consolidating slotting on this power a bit and putting a couple extra in to weaken's cloud senses to achieve closer to ranged softcap. The same applies to your winter set in Neutron bomb, and even cosmic burst. I think you are being too broad in your pursuit of different types of defense. You could probably achieve ranged softcap if you focused on it more, and be stronger for it. This would take further digging into the build and a big rehaul to do, but I would focus more on the procability of rad powers. The biggest benefit of rad blast is its ability to fit many extra damage procs and achilles as well. Here is my poison/dual pistols build for comparison. It is not 1:1, but many of the blasts would translate to similar slotting opportunities. - Note that my build focuses on "just enough" S/L defense, with Venomous Gas making up the difference. With this focus, I can have much stronger resists.

I've fiddled with the build a bit, and optimized some of the slotting. Pretty happy with the state of it thus far! My only complaint in playing it is using entangling aura while still getting value out of frost breath requires some quick bopping around in combat, but that's fine. Everything else works pbaoe, and Nature seems to want to position on the frontlines anyhow. Juggling the cone in (or heal when necessary) keeps combat interesting. I had forgotten how excellent entangling aura/choking cloud is once slotted! I grabbed choking cloud late game on my rad, so didn't have to rely on it as much. Even in my 20's with only a few slots, entangling aura is actually very reliable and fast to stack when you have the lockdown proc in it. I'm excited to get my ST chain fully IO'd out once I get higher. It looks like it will be very satisfyingly punchy! Posting the newest version here for the benefit of anyone who may want to see:

I've been wanting to find a good excuse to play /AR - maybe I'll try your unicorn challenge as well! First impressions: Not quite sure what you are doing with your winter set slotting in M30 and buckshot. I would prefer to drop procs in here instead. It looks like Beanbag is mostly a mule here. I would rather see a tactics or assault pickup, and maybe drop those slots into Burst for a different purple mule. You could leave the achilles here for the sixth slot and have a usable achilles proc in your single target chain. Burst as currently slotted is not worth using just for the proc. Dark mastery is awesome, and you can make it work, but AR is super cone heavy, and the Dark stuff wants you in melee. This is likely to be rather clunky in practice. You have chased a lot of recharge in this build. I'm not sure that you gain much from this focus. Sonic as a primary doesn't really care, other than shaving a little off liquefy, which is a sort of weird but okay power to begin with. You have enough aoes on a short enough cooldown that you don't need high recharge to cycle them well. I like what you've achieved with resists - nothing wasted on overcapping, even with dispersion, tough, and epic! For examplar purposes, you probably want barrier as a low level pick. Lower levels are when you will actually want to use it. It might be worth considering a ranged focus for your defense instead of melee here. You're going to have to keep hopping back to range to use your cones. You don't really have a great way to avoid melee solo, but ranged is going to be shooting at you all day anyhow! Also, you'll find it easier to reach softcap, especially looking at artillery in your aoes. I hope this is helpful!

Thank you for sharing! I appreciate the perspective, Psylenz. It looks like slotting it with heals may be the way to go, as endurance isn't much trouble with this sort of build. Perhaps my mind will change as I invest further.

Happy holidays! I have played every type of Defender out there to 50 and back save for Nature and Electric at this point. I found a fun concept for a Nature/Ice, and put together a rough draft build. As I've never played nature before (only level 15 on this guy right now), I'd love the input/advice of nature affinity veterans. Goals I've shot for here: - Softcap Ranged defense. - I let entangling deal with melee along with my stacking hold. I found success with this using choking cloud/dominate on my rad/sonic. - Heavy recharge - 81.25 before hasten here. - Build upon Nature's strong resists where possible. Where I'm not quite happy: - My S/L resist is super way overcapped. Tough is somewhat redundant, but is on the way to weave. - It would be nice to come out to a similar build but have strong S/L defense as well, while retaining my resists. Unfortunately that would probably require scorp shield. I prefer an epic resist shield on a set that has tohit debuffing. Other than that, I'm very happy with the power selection, and everything is nicely enhanced and procced out. Note that Mass hypnosis and World of confusion are just set mules. I may actually use MH solo I guess! It's fun to have. General power usage questions: - Do you ever really use Regrowth? It seems fine, but it looks like the set, when mature, wouldn't need it much. - How effective is lifegiving spores? It seems pretty nifty and looks cool, but I don't really understand the numbers on this power. So far I enjoy using it but don't have perspective on its true impact. Here's the build:

That's actually pretty interesting! With my frequency of use on the characters that use it, it may be a solid contender for the gaussian proc, especially for a set without buildup.

I might amend one further weakness of my build - it's sort of expensive. To really round out the incarnate softcap totals, almost everything defense related is plussed out with boosters. Two purple sets, both ATO sets, and one winter set aren't the worst bank breakers, but it is definitely not a bargain build. That said, influence buys you out of some compromises shield may have to make without!

I think other powers are a priority. Grant cover is primary there for more ddr, a lotg mule slot, and some slow resist. You will protect your team best by being a good tank. Any buffs you provide them via auras are somewhat incidental. 15 ft radius is good for an attack. It is pretty much beans for an aura. Leadership powers are 60 ft for comparison. It helps add a little layer for melee blasters who stand near you, but it's nothing to build around

Certainly! What this build focuses on: - Chasing high base S/L resist. At 83 without an ATO proc. Capped with one ATO proc. - Incarnate softcap to all positions - +recharge and procs where I can find space - Recharge is pretty strong at 67.5 before Hasten. Where it may lack compared to others you see out there: - Mostly a few extra procs in some key damage powers. Savage Leap, Shred, and Rending Fury especially are often juiced with more procs. - You could definitely drop my smash/lethal resist mission entirely and just accept whatever naturally occurs in your build, focusing instead on maximum proc damage. Easy Flex slots: - The extra slot in active defense. I like it for double stacking the DDR value. - Could probably pull numina proc and be fine. - If you don't care about Kismet +acc, you could condense some slotting in Deflection. I find it makes a big difference on builds without tactics. I've toyed with the idea of dropping shred for maiming slash. This would improve ST damage a little, but at the cost of a relatively seamless aoe attack chain. One of the true joys of this build is its ability to just chain shred, rending flurry, and savage leap all day with the occasional shield charge nuke. Note that this is a build for someone who likes flying melee. I find hover combat ideal for positioning on a tank, and it makes lining up cones a dream (just hover over the spawn and sploot). The triple muling of flight pool powers here means if you switched travel pools you'd have to fiddle around a bit to get back to ranged and aoe softcap. - Another neat hover trick - hover straight up and savage leap down for max distance/damage/blood frenzy. Also feels cool - murder diving! This is the perfect combo if you want to make some sort of rabid aerial dolphin. - If you've never tried Afterburner, bind it to an easy key and give it a shot! It makes flight feel so much better for travel, and could even be a decent poor man's intangible if you ever need to reset a pile of debuffs. Incarnates: Musculature radial for sure. I'd recommend Rebirth Core for your Destiny. There is some argument for Ageless radial to totally cap your DDR and allow more spammability when needed.

I've seen others mention this. I wouldn't say it's a huge end hog. You do have one extra toggle you want to run (grant cover), but otherwise it matches up fairly evenly on end consumption to other armors. It just doesn't have a proactive tool to help end management. I don't have any crazy slotting and have no issues. Modest endredux in my powers, one extra slot in stamina, health uniques are present. I feel no need to grab ageless for end. I can spam all I want most of the time, though may have to look a little at my blue bar if I'm on an incarnate team that requires me to leave weave and maneuvers on for softcap. No need for these in non incarnate content.

I just built and hit 50 on my shield savage and am loving it. Check out the savage alpha slot thread below for mine and a few other builds. This combo has amazing aoe and unmatched mobility with its two teleport attacks. Savage leap is good both aoe and st as well. It lacks a little in st damage, as you only have one higher tier heavy hitter in vicious slash. Hemorrhage just isn't very good. Shield helps make up some of this with the damage buff aura.

This is an outstanding suggestion!

I would still love to have a more intermediate recharge single target attack to put Might in. Hemorrhage would be perfect in terms of recharge/base damage if it didn't kinda stink. The aoe nature of Shred makes it tougher to proc when you don't have a crowd. What do you think Hemorrhage needs to work? Shortened DoT, faster animation? It's sad, because I like the unique approach of a heavy DoT. It just doesn't fit in with modern CoH gameplay. I wouldn't want to rely on melee core for my resistances - partially because it's only up half the time, and also because all of the other facets (mez protection and defense) are wasted. Not taking Assault Hybrid is a much larger opportunity cost in my book. I did use some of your slotting advice and maxed out avalanche in order to give savage leap room for the fury -res proc. Strict damage numbers go down a modest amount on leap, but I think both my ST and AoE damage will benefit overall.

For what it's worth, I've been playing with shred and will be keeping it for sure. It is a nice little cone! I don't think it is the absolute optimal st option, but will help me clear spawns faster overall, and give me some actual aoe when exemping.

That's great! I am happy to be wrong if this is the case. I wonder if this holds true for every psuedopet aoe.

It affects any aoes. I believe it is an actual buff,so won't affect psuedopet powers like shield charge.

Very good point on the shield charge dam proc - that isn't doing a whole lot given how often its used. If I keep it closer to my current build that could give me a few extra slots to play around with, shunting one for another aoe mule in a travel power, and sucking all but a couple ribos from tough. Thank you for the build! Your slotting here will inform some further iteration. Overall, it is a significant sacrifice to S/L resist though ( going from 83 to 65 with no ATO procs - I do like giving the ATO proc room to provide benefit, but want to be close to 90 with only 1 proc for S/L. Other resistances I'm okay playing catchup by stacking). The pursuit of strong S/L resist is what guided a lot of my choices in this first build. If I'm actually using maiming slash, it will easily double or triple stack the ato proc. If maiming slash is trash, that is obviously not the best way to achieve stacking. I really like the idea of switching the fury proc into SL, as it will generally be the first attack in, and finding a better home for the purple damage proc in Rending Flurry. How much does blood frenzy end up buffing Shred? I don't see this info in mids to compare. As it is, Maiming Slash has literally twice the DPA if I'm looking only at ST utility. I know Shred is a solid cone of course - do you find yourself relying on it to clear crowds, or do SL and RF pull most of the weight? I like to focus on optimizing my ST chain on Tankers, as my strongest aoes will tend to knock down the trash pretty quickly as I throw them in while focusing down harder targets.

Thank you for the perspective! I'll definitely pick up shred as I'm levelling to get a feel for it and potentially modify to switch it in. Do you pay much attention to when and with what you cash out your blood, or do you just go for the attacks as you like? Is shred a part of your ideal st chain when focused on a hard target? The tough slotting is for the set bonuses, most importantly the aoe defense. In previous iterations I had leaner slotting there and used ribos, but this ended up being more efficient given my goals. All of my defensive values are fully enhanced on powers, every unique I want is in the build, and every attack is fully slotted, so there aren't a lot of interesting targets if I siphon slots. The full ato sets are strong in pursuit of sl resist. Usually I do cut them up for the procs as you suggest, but shield has a little more room to reach resist cap than some other primaries.

I built for ranged defense on my rad/sonic, though I do have healthy melee. I have choking cloud fully slotted with the lockdown set. The proc goes off quite often, and it doesn't take long for lts and bosses to be held. Even without stacking, it is valuable for me to instantly be able to neutralize minions in melee without them running about. Ranged softcap handles the rest I also have a procced out hold to instantly guarantee an important boss is held while I burn him down. It helps that holds have some really awesome set bonuses!

I used to poopoo on choking cloud as well, but the last rad/sonic thread with beradical got me to really try it. If you give it slotting love, it's pretty wonderful. Takes no animation time, so quick contribution in fast teams. Handles all those minions in melee automatically, and stacks to hold a lot of lts and bosses too. Just show up to do all of your other rad stuff and it keeps on chugging.

You're welcome! It got me interested in making a Shield tanker. While I do love WM, I've played it a lot - I put together a fun Shield/Savage Melee that is looking pretty good. I hope you have a great time with the sets!

I was inspired by the build I put together in the Shield/War Mace thread. I wanted to play it, but have played a lot of War Mace and wanted to try something new. Savage melee seemed like a fun fit. My build has a little less recharge than OP, but is incarnate softcapped to all positional defense, and has a modest improvement in S/L resist as well. I prefer ATO sets to go in attacks I will use where the procs actually matter. Large crowds tend to melt quickly, so I find them much more effective in attacks that live in my ST chain, as hard single targets are where they will really matter. You have to work with the sets available for the attacks you have, though! Sometimes you can't balance everything perfectly. I based my build on the shield/WM I put together, but am still inexperienced with Savage Melee. I understand Hemorrhage is not very good on tanks, and I've seen plenty of mixed opinions on Shred. Maiming slash serves my slotting priorities better anyhow. I don't really have a feel for how the flow of blood frenzy will affect my attack chain yet. Note that this is not a very good build for someone who doesn't have flying as a part of their concept! Edit: Switched the slotting of savage leap and shield charge to better take advantage of SL's procability. Second Edit: Managed to remove the kick muling and put those slots elsewhere while still retaining incarnate softcap. I'd love to understand more about in-combat effectiveness or any tips and tricks regarding Savage Melee. It's disappointing to see how sad Hemorrhage makes people - I'd love to have a third chunky ST attack. Savage Leap looks like it will more than make up for it in fun and damage though!

Here we go! Fully enhanced and ready to go. Only sacrificed ~5 global recharge, a little F/C resist, and the fury proc in whirling mace. As a trade-off, whirling actually does a little more damage now. I think it's pretty fair. Now we're up to 81.57 S/L resist with only 1 ATO proc, and still at softcap incarnate for all positions. OoTS is still there to smooth over any predictable alphas while you build up more ATO procs. You could always pull the 7.5 hp IO from tough and drop the fury proc back in, but it's nice to have the extra HP. Edit: Egg on my face! Incarnate softcap is obviously 59, not 56. I don't know how I got this flipped in my head. It may be worth going barrier on this build to bridge the gap. Alternatively, you could just count on some number of teammates having minor defensive buffs when running this kind of content. Honestly you'll probably end up at like 80 on most teams at this level. Agility Alpha would get you there, but I don't think it's worth it to lose the damage. You'll be fine! Futher Edit!: I messed around some more, and brought S/L resist up past 80 without an ATO proc! ATO procs will cap you super easily. I also worked in Kismet, which will be super handy against +4's or incarnate shifted enemies. This is reflected in the S/L focused build below. Note that I did sacrifice Numina unique and 7.5 unbreakable unique. Looking at end consumption it should still be fine, and I think it's a fair trade to get stronger base S/L for consistency. Also adding a new build below this that is a little more gung-ho about S/L resist. S/L focused build:

I looked at the totals in mids, and the ~6% gain in S/L is not a bad trade for missing incarnate cap a little on ranged. Sort of a coin flip in my book. I prefer a clean softcapped baseline. I would probably pull the endmod slot from stamina instead, possibly along with the numina unique to drop a Ribosome or two into deflection. This would depend on your feel for the end consumption of the build once you roll with it for a while. You could definitely chase more sl resist than I have here, but you'll end up with a lot of redundant melee defense and noticably less damage. Even without the ato proc rolling, you'd be hard pressed to find a situation that stresses your protection outside of maybe tanking lord recluse. For recluse, I'd just pop a few inspirations until the ato has stacked. That said, maybe there are some minor offensive compromises that could net us another 6 to 10 sl resist. This might be worth it.

This set is needed for incarnate softcap on ranged defense. I wouldn't recommend sacrificing that for a little sl. Ato procs will bring you to or close enough to 90, although there may be some slot jiggering I could do to find a free one or two to drop some resist into deflection.