Bot/Cold or Bot/Electric

[Gavotte]

I'm trying to choose which would be more effective, especially in groups, with bot.  I know the cold defense/resist shields and -recharge debuffs are amazing. I'm leaning heavily towards this, but /cold is a bit boring to play (but my bots/cold isn't even 30 yet, maybe it gets better?). Electric seems more fun to play but I'm not sure how helpful the sapping debuffs are.  

 

Ideas? Thanks ahead of time!

[Kommon]

/Cold is definitely a late bloomer, and so is Bots, but it really starts to pick up after you get the last upgrade and sleep at 32 and 35.  I haven't played /EA yet, but I have seen it in action and know how the powers functions.  Being a buff-heavy powerset, /EA shines when facing very tough situations, however, those are few and far between.  Teams of eight people that know what they are doing will basically will trivialize all content they run into regardless of team makeup.  If you expect to play on teams most of the time, I'd say stick with /Cold.  The shields and debuffs will add a significant force multiplier to the steamroller and help the team mow things down that much faster while also avoiding a ton of damage.

[Coyote]

/EA is a lot more fun. It's very active, and the Robots attacks are pretty poor so having an active secondary is good. It's a strong defensive set for both soloing and teaming, and you can switch from a mixed "buff/heal and occasional attacks" to "max healing/absorb spam" when a fight gets tough. The fact that it can choose how much to leverage the defensive powers to, in effect, swap from offensive to defensive stances is both interesting and unique. The problem is that in order to have an "offensive" stance at all, you need good attacks... and that means you have to go with power pools for attacks. At least the Willpower pool is decent and fits reasonably well.

 

On teams, well, you can't get enough offensive ability from pool powers to matter much, so you won't be doing much on offense... and on defense you'll be great early on when teams will welcome +ToHit/+Damage and +Recharge/+End spamming, in addition to the heals. But at higher levels, the +Damage isn't that much, and most everyone will have their Endurance and Accuracy managed, so... a bit of +Damage and +Recharge is all you'll bring. It's a great teaming set at low-mid levels, not so much at high levels.

 

Cold isn't as strong defensively, but does stack nicely with Robots defenses. It adds a lot more to offense, especially on teams and against AVs. On teams you'll have a lot more time to attack so be sure to invest in some good pool or epic attacks in order to use your time productively, especially since you won't have Endurance issues late. For soloing, it will do better against AVs but defending the Robots without a heal or much resistance backup for occasional hits will be difficult... on teams it will do very well at all levels.

 

Overall Cold is generally a stronger set, largely because it's easier to shore up defensive deficiencies with sets. There isn't much to use to add to offense other than Weaken Resolve. So EA lacks offense and there isn't much you can do about it, while Cold lacks personal defense and you can build a high-defense character through sets.

[shrikefire]

I can't speak to electric but I made a bots cold as my new main when I came back to this game because my original character was a mercs ff. I loved masterminds but I wanted a character that could handle anything solo. Bots cold does not disappoint, ever. I was soloing some AVs in the late 30s (once I got heat loss basically) with cheap and generic IOs. Every now and again something unexpected messes me up but for the most part I feel like I can beat anything in the game. GMs, AVs, +4/x8, the ITF, etc.

[War_L0ck]

I have been checking these forums, and I don't see a lot of /Cold builds on here (at least under MM). Does anyone have good one (for Thugs, Necro, or Beast)? I think @Coyoteis right in that you'd want some active pool abilities (maybe Wall of Force)--and you'd want some medicine in there probably, also.