Most useful Defender build for current fast endgame?

[Camel]

This doesn't really answer your question, but it's something I experienced while playing my Kinetics/Sonic Defender. Just yesterday I had joined a speed Khan TF, there was a Dark/Sonic Defender, a Sonic/Sonic Defender, a Fire/Dark Corrupter and myself, the Kinetics/Sonic Defender. When we were fighting Reichsman, we had so much -resistance and +damage going.. .My T1 SHRIEK was hitting for OVER 500 damage. As a Defender, using their T1 blast attack... I was seeing some of the numbers from the Stalker on the team.. He was hitting for 7k damage with his Assassin Strikes. It was NUTTY. Reichsman and the other AVs were all eliminated in 15 seconds, easy. So... Doesn't really answer your question, but /Sonic anything on a Defender is really good on teams. I've heard good things about Beam Rifle as well. 

[Ankhammon]

Is -Def considered needed/wanted these days? in particular I'm thinking about the high numbers that can be generated with Rad Blast as a secondary.

 

 

[Without_Pause]

The benefit of Rad is being able to slot -res procs. 

[Pzn]

1 hour ago, Without_Pause said:

The benefit of Rad is being able to slot -res procs. 

Lots of damage proc options too.  Shield breaker and touch of lady grey procs can go into all the attacks.

[Ankhammon]

In particular though I was asking on the -Def portion. I know the -res procs are tasty (even though they don't stack) but there used to be issues with acc on teams even with IO sets. I was just wondering if that was still a potential issue with things like Cap'n Mako who used to bring trouble due to his high D numbers.

[Doomguide2005]

1 hour ago, Ankhammon said:

In particular though I was asking on the -Def portion. I know the -res procs are tasty (even though they don't stack) but there used to be issues with acc on teams even with IO sets. I was just wondering if that was still a potential issue with things like Cap'n Mako who used to bring trouble due to his high D numbers.

The problem with Mako is 2-fold.  First he's a +4 end game AV ... he resists things like defdebuffs like crazy.  Combine that with his Elude power and you'd need silly high amounts of defdebuff to make hitting him easy.  Easier, especially with a bunch of support ATs, to buff the team's To Hit via things like Tactics, Forge, Fortitude, etc..  He fears it in much the same way an SR user fears to hit buffs but not defdebuffs.

 

Otherwise the actual -def in endgame content is of minimal value where most high end builds are built with enough acc/to hit to reliably hit +4 mobs.  But like many things in end game play the degree of optimization can vary wildly between characters on a team/league so ymmv considerably.

 

Edit:  No idea if it's been done or not but it was a relatively common event on Live to run various end game TFs with all defenders or all support but I don't recall seeing it done on the Incarnate Trials ... has it been done or being done?  The greatest strength of defenders, corruptors, controllers etc. isn't with a particular set really its in their ability to team to stack those buffs and debuffs to the caps and beyond something non support sets can't truly do

Edited June 18, 2020 by Doomguide2005

[Marshal_General]

What do people think if the new electrical affinity set? I am thinking about making a character with it.

[Apparition]

28 minutes ago, Marshal_General said:

What do people think if the new electrical affinity set? I am thinking about making a character with it.

It is good for leveling, not good for endgame.  It doesn’t bring nearly enough offense to be competitive with Cold Domination, Nature, Thermal, Radiation, Dark, nor Sonic.  Plus, two or more Electrical Affinity toons on the same team or league can dramatically plummet FPS.

[Hjarki]

On 6/18/2020 at 3:06 PM, Doomguide2005 said:

Edit:  No idea if it's been done or not but it was a relatively common event on Live to run various end game TFs with all defenders or all support but I don't recall seeing it done on the Incarnate Trials ... has it been done or being done?  The greatest strength of defenders, corruptors, controllers etc. isn't with a particular set really its in their ability to team to stack those buffs and debuffs to the caps and beyond something non support sets can't truly do

This is more of an organizational issue than anything else. You can put together a decent group with all support set AT, but you tend to run into scaling problems because you're dependent on a lot of pet damage.

29 minutes ago, Marshal_General said:

What do people think if the new electrical affinity set? I am thinking about making a character with it.

I think it works well on Masterminds. Indeed, this is generally true of 'healing sets' - they work well for Masterminds and somewhat poorly for other AT because there's no guarantee your buffs/heals will have any meaningful impact on some arbitrary ally. When you bring your own allies, you know precisely how much healing/buffing they'll need and anything you give the rest of your group is simply gravy.

[Doomguide2005]

@Hjarkiscaling problems?  Not following you, and yes pet(s) are clearly important to some support sets, others not so much (Fire/Kin controller vs Cold/Ice defender).  But damage output, pets or not, is not an issue ... capped damage plus severely resistance and regen debuffed targets are highly likely even given an end game AV debuff resistances and the purple patch.  Note that AV resistance to debuffs does not apply vs -resistance if I'm reading wiki correctly.  That is even if the net value of the debuff is tiny now turn it around and apply a leagues worth.  

 

I'm a bit out of the loop as I was just hitting Incarnate levels on my first HC characters when the computer died on me so memories are 8+ yrs old.  But what happens when a leagues worth of Holds start landing on AVs without mez protection.  Triangles I'm quite sure aren't enough for any AVs for whom a discussion involving solo characters stacking mag 50 in holds apply.

[Siderous]

For a defender that keeps up with the fast pace of end game but, is also capable of well rounded play, I'd pick Time/blast set with snipe.

 

Time does everything, my Time fire can solo 4x8s. 

 

Farsight combined with power boost is insane.  Cap'd all defence... And cap'd tohit..  tohit increases snipe damage.  Full proc'd timestop hits like a truck and the debuffs in slowed response and distortion field are good and distortion field does decent in procs too.

 

I'm on my phone and can't put Time Torch's build on right now.  If anyone is interested I'll put up later.

[Marshal_General]

On 6/22/2020 at 8:02 AM, Hjarki said:

I think it works well on Masterminds. Indeed, this is generally true of 'healing sets' - they work well for Masterminds and somewhat poorly for other AT because there's no guarantee your buffs/heals will have any meaningful impact on some arbitrary ally. When you bring your own allies, you know precisely how much healing/buffing they'll need and anything you give the rest of your group is simply gravy.

To me Faraday Cage is worth it for the resist and the ability to tell the mobs "I will see your status effects and raise you a finger. The middle one!"

[Psylenz0511]

On 6/22/2020 at 9:02 AM, Hjarki said:

<snip>

I think it works well on Masterminds. Indeed, this is generally true of 'healing sets' - they work well for Masterminds and somewhat poorly for other AT because there's no guarantee your buffs/heals will have any meaningful impact on some arbitrary ally. When you bring your own allies, you know precisely how much healing/buffing they'll need and anything you give the rest of your group is simply gravy.

Help me out with this observation. I am not following. On my elec aff defender I target the ally with the lowest health bar, or the ally with the  lowest end bar to benefit accordingly. As far as I know, although it is smaller than kinetic or rad emission, energizing circuit boosts recharge and end modestly. Empowering circuit boosts +damage +tohit, and insulating circuit throws on an absorb shield. Unless the team is always at the recharge, damage, absorb caps along with the ever popular Faraday Cage. As good as dark, cold, kinetics and rad are, they don't boast the mezz resistance of electric affinity.

 

Or is it about the fps?

[Hjarki]

On 8/4/2020 at 8:13 PM, Psylenz0511 said:

Help me out with this observation. I am not following. On my elec aff defender I target the ally with the lowest health bar, or the ally with the  lowest end bar to benefit accordingly. As far as I know, although it is smaller than kinetic or rad emission, energizing circuit boosts recharge and end modestly. Empowering circuit boosts +damage +tohit, and insulating circuit throws on an absorb shield. Unless the team is always at the recharge, damage, absorb caps along with the ever popular Faraday Cage. As good as dark, cold, kinetics and rad are, they don't boast the mezz resistance of electric affinity.

As players level up, they increasingly address problems like recharge, healing, defense, etc. As a result, it's fairly common for your buffs to be superfluous when used on high level players. They may not be at some 'cap', but they are effectively at the limits of what they can use.

 

This means that the majority of a Defender's buffs are really just self-buffs - you design your character around them in a way other players cannot.

[Doomguide2005]

Recharge cap is 500%.  Subject to diminishing returns.  But few players are afaik anywhere near the cap even on the vast majority of high end builds

 

Damage cap is AT dependent either 400%, 500% or you're a Brute.  No one does this in a vacuum, a few can do it with enough foes supplied.  

 

I can say with a far degree of certainty these two buffs will definitely benefit the vast majority of high end builds.

[KaizenSoze]

On 6/14/2020 at 6:55 PM, Zeraphia said:

As someone who is actually doing speed running and has actually broken records with their team (not #1, but top 5 times):

 

- Dark Miasma (due to Tar Patch bug), Sonic Resonance, Cold Domination, and Kinetics are the top tiers in that order for supports for speed running.

- Sonic Blast or Fire Blast are the most viable blast sets. Beam Rifle is serviceable, but vastly inferior due to its cast times to use with debuffs/buffs in comparison to Fire Blast that can do everything pretty much at a whim when needed.

 

Most viable combos: Dark/Sonic (I will not recommend you make it, as Tar Patch will get fixed), Sonic/Sonic Defender, Fire/Cold Corruptor, Cold/Sonic Defender, Kin/Sonic Defender (this is the fastest one for regular teams overall *not everyone constantly popping Super Reds the entire TF*), Fire/Kinetics Corruptor.

 

So what about Dark Miasma? Tar Patch bug. -30% unresistable -res, that means you can actually debuff even immunities into nothing with this power, you can effectively nullify LR's immunity due to the Red tower against S/E with this power, you can turn Hero 1's T9 into literally nothing. You magnify damage at an absurd insurmountable rate, and you can abuse this by Tar Patch -> Burnout -> Tar Patch and then still have another Tar Patch to stack before the first two run out... That means you just did -90% unresistable -res... You have effectively NUKED everything's resistance in the game to 0. Expect this to get patched soon. Broken! Combine this with Sonic, and you have created your lovely "Wailing Banshee" of unresistable mayhem!

The fix for the tar patch bug is now on the beta server. The note is at the bottom of the first post.

 

 

[Hew]

Might want to check the not-your-mamas build thread! With a base of +225% damage to ALL of your attacks, insane gobs of recovery, +39% tohit to pretty much everyone, perma overgrowth, perma souldrain, perma hasten, perma wildgrowth, +18% global heal, it is the kind of "heal" build that actually pumps out huge gobs of damage as a primary source of "defense".

 

Look no further than the builds unassisted 1046.1 damage inferno.... or 460.9 damage blaze on a 2.24 second recharge and a _1 second animation_. Instant cast blazing bolt pumps out 727.5 damage, with a recharge of 2.66 seconds.

 

Cursory attack chain of fireball - blaze - bolt dumps ~2233 damage to a single target, and some miscellaneous damage to everything in fireball range in 3 seconds of cast. Rinse and repeat. I dont really know the best rotation for a seamless chain, given the 1 second cast times and near instant recharge. 

 

Rain of fire is, well, I dunno. Inferno is up every 32 seconds. Mix a judgement in with inferno, and you are doing mass damage nonstop. 

 

Something to consider.

 

Edited October 24, 2020 by Hew