Kinetic / Sonic Defender - An Unusual Thought?

[Bon_of_a_Sitch]

Hello everyone, 

I have been playing around with my Kinetics / Sonic Defender and would like to know if the thoughts I'm having are completely off base or am I "on to something"

 

The intent of the post and questions is to provide a forum for discussion of them.  I am not specifically asking for a build, but if you have you'd like to share I will gladly take a look as the AT and powers are new to me.  As such I don't currently have a full build or enhancement set up in mind for the same reasons. 

While I like the -res the sonic pool provides, I am mainly interested in only using powers that provide some kind of buff to my team, aid me in providing said buffs (like Siphon Speed or Stealth / Invis for me), or provide crowd control with an absolutely minimal amount of damage.

 

The same applies to power pools 

 

Is that a workable concept?  Should I just go with the bog standard kin/son builds?

 

I look forward to any and all insights I can glean here.  

 

[Doomguide2005]

Well in a sense your Sonic blasts are team oriented powers.  All that -resistance applies to any attacks hitting the target while the debuff is present including all your teammates attacks.  Second once your Kin buffs folks to the damage cap that -resistance will further boost your/their damage.  It's pretty much the only way to do even more damage to the target once the damage cap is reached.

[Carnifax]

As Doom say. But with regards to Sonic if you want to be more team support orientated make sure you take the single target stun.

 

It is quicker animating than some of the blasts. The -res also lasts 12 rather than 6 seconds (most other sonic attacks are 6 second). Useful on av fights.

 

Howl is useful as a cone aoe -resist. Nuke is also good for that as a pbaoe (lasts 20 seconds) and stuns things. Kind of a natural follow up to a good Fulc.

 

Finally on some teams you might get away with Sirens to sleep them all, then Fulc. Fulc won't wake things up. I'd consider this more useful solo or on small teams. 

Edited February 10, 2021 by Carnifax

[Erratic1]

While I enjoy using Repel to go Bowling for Nazis when things are getting out of hand, it is rare that scattering a group is of benefit to a team. But Knockback->Knockdown is something you can add to your knockback powers and then foes simply get knocked down in place. While I have not used KB->KD on Shockwave on my Kin/Sonic I do have a Kinetic Melee/Bio Armor scrapper who has used it in Shockwave's cousin Repulsing Torrent and it works wonderfully. 

 

Its not something which makes a spawn just simply die and its utility to a team is not necessarily obvious but things on their butt are not making attacks.

[Psylenz0511]

On 2/10/2021 at 8:51 AM, Erratic1 said:

QFT

 

Its not something which makes a spawn just simply die and its utility to a team is not necessarily obvious but things on their butt are not making attacks.

 

[Nemu]

Try a controller if you don't want to do damage. Ice/Kin or earth/kin if you are set on /kin

 

Ice/Poison for the ultimate passive playing experience.

[micros]

I've been playing with this alot recently as i'm new back to the game (played a ton years ago).  I absolutely love Kin there is something about the fulcrum shift that speaks to my soul. I really like the idea of damage cap with fc and then -res howl to bring it up to full mayhem. 

couple of questions

full damage cap + -res = more damage right?

 

Does anyone like experimentation pool?  I'm eyeing corrosive vial but no one seems to use in builds does it suck?

 

for that reason i don't really like taking fighting pool for the tough and weave as I want to be a team def no solo.  anyone have other recommendations?

[Doomguide2005]

To the first question yes if you want to really crank the damage up you want to both hit the damage cap and floor the targets resistance.  Damage cap varies by AT while resistance debuff caps out at -300%.  A Kin/Sonic can cap the teams damage and readily manage 80% resistance debuff on a single target (such as an AV, GM or EB) prior to any resistance to the debuff being applied.

 

No personal experience with the Experimentation pool but at least on a Kin/Sonic defender in the end game it seems not terribly useful. Level 50 characters are generally built by then to hit things reliably making the defense debuff unnecessary.  Slotting procs for damage might be a consideration solo but on a team oriented build your number one consideration after damage capping everyone should be on a steady output of your blasts to maintain as high a level of resistance debuff as possible.  Procs will up your damage, that resistance debuff will up everyones damage.

 

The argument for chasing defense is fairly straightforward ... dead or mezzed defenders don't buff/debuff or damage anything.  That said on teams, especially large teams it's doable if you avoid being the first into the scrum and let others get aggro first.  That of course makes it harder to get good saturation of your Fulcrum Shift.  It takes practice, inspires and cooperative  patient teammates and it is possible to build defense without the Fighting pool and can be very helpful to get enough stealth to be unseen prior to attacking.

[Hjarki]

Kinetics/Sonic is one of those 'obvious' pairings I don't think works all that well.

 

Sonic Blast is by far the weakest of the Blast sets. It makes up for this with -resist debuffs. But for those -resist debuffs to bridge the gap between Sonic and other Blast sets, you need to be almost constantly blasting. Kinetics is an incredibly busy set that consumes large chunks of your activation time, so you can't realistically maintain the rotation for maximum -resist debuffing. So while an unencumbered Sonic Blast Defender might muster -100% resist on a single target, you're probably only going to get half of that with Kinetics.

 

The 'busy-ness' of Kinetics also strongly favors sets that pack a lot of impact into their high damage powers since the low damage powers will be mostly replaced by various Kinetics powers in the rotation. A pairing like Kinetics/Dual Pistols or Kinetics/Beam Rifle will generate almost as much -resist as Kinetics/Sonic once you take into account the time spent on Kinetics, but they'll also have powers that can better benefit from the buffs/debuffs.

 

In terms of defense, the notion of teaming you have tends to fade very quickly as you level up. A Kinetics Defender who can't survive is one who is of little use to anyone because even the best Tankers will have trouble ensuring that every mob is focused on them. About the only characters I've seen who can legitimately justify not taking the Fighting pool would be Invulnerability Tankers (who easily cap S/L Resist without Toughness) - but even they're very tempted to throw away two powers to grab Weave.

 

You also need both resist and defense toggles to slot uniques. While Kinetics can slot both +defense uniques in Increase Density, normally want you 5 defense powers for Luck of the Gambler. Mustering those 5 defense powers with the Fighting pool is hard enough. Doing it without the Fighting pool normally means just grabbing powers like Vengeance solely for their ability to hold LotG.

 

In terms of Experimentation, Corrosive Vial is a 8 yard radius that deals a total of 50.6058 damage over 14 sec to up to 5 targets. This isn't bad, but it's not game-changing either. The fact that you need to take two powers that are probably of no use is a strong argument against it. 

[micros]

9 hours ago, Doomguide2005 said:

To the first question yes if you want to really crank the damage up you want to both hit the damage cap and floor the targets resistance.  Damage cap varies by AT while resistance debuff caps out at -300%.  A Kin/Sonic can cap the teams damage and readily manage 80% resistance debuff on a single target (such as an AV, GM or EB) prior to any resistance to the debuff being applied.

 

No personal experience with the Experimentation pool but at least on a Kin/Sonic defender in the end game it seems not terribly useful. Level 50 characters are generally built by then to hit things reliably making the defense debuff unnecessary.  Slotting procs for damage might be a consideration solo but on a team oriented build your number one consideration after damage capping everyone should be on a steady output of your blasts to maintain as high a level of resistance debuff as possible.  Procs will up your damage, that resistance debuff will up everyones damage.

 

The argument for chasing defense is fairly straightforward ... dead or mezzed defenders don't buff/debuff or damage anything.  That said on teams, especially large teams it's doable if you avoid being the first into the scrum and let others get aggro first.  That of course makes it harder to get good saturation of your Fulcrum Shift.  It takes practice, inspires and cooperative  patient teammates and it is possible to build defense without the Fighting pool and can be very helpful to get enough stealth to be unseen prior to attacking.

 

 

This makes a ton of sense.  Ok so fighting pool it is, leadership with maneuvers and tactics, super speed (hasten only) and then perhaps stealth?  I like the idea of repel being knockdown instead of knockback which would like soft control... thanks for the feedback I'll work on a build to post later.

[Darkir]

 

[MoonSheep]

i’m late to the party, though my secondary main is a kin/sonic defender

 

i really enjoy playing it, the combination of massive +damage for the team and -res on enemies is really fun. fantastic for AVs, GMs etc

 

i play my defender purely as a buffing character, i haven’t slotted the sonic attacks for damage, i just use them for the -res component

 

playing low level content, e.g posi TFs is just as fun as high end TFs, there’s always useful buffing/debuffing powers on hand to use

Edited March 20, 2021 by MoonSheep

[00Troy00]

On 3/20/2021 at 12:56 PM, MoonSheep said:

i’m late to the party, though my secondary main is a kin/sonic defender

 

i really enjoy playing it, the combination of massive +damage for the team and -res on enemies is really fun. fantastic for AVs, GMs etc

 

i play my defender purely as a buffing character, i haven’t slotted the sonic attacks for damage, i just use them for the -res component

 

playing low level content, e.g posi TFs is just as fun as high end TFs, there’s always useful buffing/debuffing powers on hand to use

Would you be so kind as to share your build?

 

[MoonSheep]

9 hours ago, 00Troy00 said:

Would you be so kind as to share your build?

 

 

The word 'build' implies i put some sort of planning into my slotting or power choices 😁

 

For team play, if a kin def has SB and fulcrum shift it's good enough for most things in my opinion. Take the powers you find fun and go wild with sets which you enjoy - too much min/maxing can wipe out the fun factor

 

It's done an 11.29 ITF, 12.59 LRSF, master of various TFs etc, teamwork makes the dreamwork