Rad Emission Alternatives

[Grozlam]

Howdy Folks,

 

I've been playing through some TFs, Trials, and just general missions with a few friends fairly casually on a Rad/Beam Defender (Full group makeup is me with one Tanker, one-two Dominators, and a Blaster). Currently up to level 26. I'm enjoying it overall and from some reading understand that Radiation Emission is one of the stronger Defender primaries, though there are a few annoyances I have with it-

 

1. I drop my debuffs on a target I don't think my teammates will focus on; I have misjudged, and one of them punts him off to the moon, debuff falls off the group, and the tank gets shredded.
2. Debuffs are up and working normally, but I get CC'd or End Drained or something and the debuff toggles get turned off and we start getting wrecked.

 

So, while I'm liking the debuffs themselves and, particularly solo, feel like an god when they're all up and running smoothly, what I'm seeing as the central mechanic of Rad debuffs (toggle on a body) is kind of bugging me.

 

Is there another powerset that offers a similar style of debuffs in more of a fire-and-forget style, as in you don't need to worry about an unfortunately timed corpse despawn or accidental mob punting suddenly wiping a make-or-break debuff? Or am I just kind of looking a gift horse in the mouth here, and I should instead just focus on playing around this?

 

I've messed around a little bit with Trick Arrow and read about Traps and Poison, and they all sound interesting, but I don't have any real experience with how they work in groups (particularly small groups). Do you think any of those would scratch a similar itch, or maybe there's some other primary I'm overlooking that'd be a better option for what I'm looking for?

 

TL;DR- Love the power of Rad Emission, don't love the toggle-on-body mechanics of some of the debuffs. Looking for recommendations on a similar debuff primary without that toggle mechanic.

 

Thanks!

[Elia87]

Just a curiosity: is /beam strongher than /son for rad primary?

[Dark Dove]

Poison has fire and forget debuffs and a PBAOE toggle debuff that combined have some similar things going on to Rad.  This is probably the best similar alternative.

 

Trick Arrow has a lot going on now and can do a lot of Rad's tricks pretty well, with lots of debuffing and almost all fire and forget powers.

 

Time has a large PBAOE toggle debuff as well, and some -res -regen fire and forget powers.

 

Rad is still probably the strongest at what it does, but the finicky powers are sometimes maddening and not worth the effort when it's driving you crazy or just not a style of play you can get into.

[Onlyasandwich]

Seconding @Dark Dove here.

 

Trick arrow may be more in line with your expectations, as you don't have to fiddle with double aoe splashing the tiny radius of envenom to maximize output.

 

TA is just super strong now, and is equally great solo as well.  Fire and forget debuffs with quick animations all around, and even a good buff in the emp arrow now.

 

Poison may be easier to wedge in thematically if you don't envision a bow user. I love poison too, but it has more dud powers overall.

 

 

Edited May 11, 2021 by Onlyasandwich

[Grozlam]

Thanks both! Tried out Poison for a little bit and yeah, that tiny AoE radius is rough. Giving TA another shot now, so far so good 👍

[Ankhammon]

Another advantage of TA is that it is front loaded with semi fast recharging powers (fast animations also compared to Rad) so these very nice debuffs can be applied very fast and then you can go about blasting.  

 

And OSA is just too good and will make you very happy. 

[Linea]

Anchor a Boss or higher.  Even if they die, the toggle stays on the corpse usually till the end of the fight.

That won't help with KB happy team-mates.   This is why most of use strongly dislike KB, and instead favor KD or the use of KB-to-KD IOs.

 

Some of the strongest debuffs are Anchors.  You have to compromise something when you pick other versions.

 

Rad and Traps are the classic AV killers.  If you're wanting easy-mode AV kills on TFs, those are the best choices.  

I'm not sure how the TA revamp does vs AVs.  You want perma stackable -500 regen if not -1000 regen to take out the hardest +4 AVs.

 

Time - doesn't have the -regen for AVs, but is a beast otherwise.

Poison - has horrible radius, I don't recall how it stacks on on -regen either, you'd have to look it up.

Traps - doesn't work well in fast moving teams.  One of my personal favorites, just the same.

TA - the new TA is nice, but doesn't have the -to-hit magnitude of Time, Dark, Rad, Nature

 

For that playstyle, that's probably the choices.

[Oysterhead]

Cold could be an option too? Though it has no -ToHit either (it does have the shields though which work out only slight less in value but more consistent)

 

Its more late blooming, Benumb, Sleet and Heat Loss are its final three powers that do a lot of the heavy lifting and overlap with what rad could do.

 

Benumb is single target -500% regen, so your AV hitter. Sleet is a big target AOE, -30% resists and -22.5% def, and can be made permanent / up every pack, heat loss is another target AOE, and as a debuff is up less often but does -30% resists. Single target Infrigidate is another -30% defense. You'll also max out -recharge without even trying, its on esssentially everything cold does.

 

Against a single AV it'll be close to Rad, but no -1000% regen from EM Pulse. It also won't have -regen for multiple stacked AVs like Rad can do. Also getting Benumb perma takes a lot of recharge, so if fights last longer than 30 seconds there could be a period where the -regen is off.

Rad is tough to beat from a numbers perspective, the others trade off for easier use.

[Bopper]

I also came here to suggest Trick Arrow. It is nice because it has long duration debuffs on a short cooldown, so if you are in a team that steamroller you can still get most of your debuffs up on each mob and if you are in a long fight you don't have to feel like you're needing to reapply the debuffs too often.

 

1 hour ago, Linea said:

TA - the new TA is nice, but doesn't have the -to-hit magnitude of Time, Dark, Rad, Nature

There is truth to this in a sense. On typical mobs you will not have impressive ToHit debuff AoEs in comparison to sets like Dark (the king of -ToHit), Storm, or Rad. But in an AV fight your ToHit debuffs will be on par with Dark (slightly better than Dark, technically, but difference is negligible) thanks to half of Flash Arrow's debuff being unresistible and thanks to Acid Arrow applying a ToHit resistance debuff (makes the resistible portion of flash Arrow and all other tohit debuffs effectively stronger). So in short, most content the ToHit debuff is meh but in AV fights it is remarkably strong.

[Psyonico]

15 minutes ago, Bopper said:

thanks to half of Flash Arrow's debuff being unresistible and thanks to Acid Arrow applying a ToHit resistance debuff (makes the resistible portion of flash Arrow and all other tohit debuffs effectively stronger

 

I've wondered about Acid Arrow... do you need to fire it before Flash Arrow for the -res to take effect, or if you go Flash->Acid will the debuff still be stronger?

[StriderIV]

3 hours ago, Linea said:

Anchor a Boss or higher.  Even if they die, the toggle stays on the corpse usually till the end of the fight.

That won't help with KB happy team-mates.   This is why most of use strongly dislike KB, and instead favor KD or the use of KB-to-KD IOs.

 

Some of the strongest debuffs are Anchors.  You have to compromise something when you pick other versions.

 

Rad and Traps are the classic AV killers.  If you're wanting easy-mode AV kills on TFs, those are the best choices.  

I'm not sure how the TA revamp does vs AVs.  You want perma stackable -500 regen if not -1000 regen to take out the hardest +4 AVs.

 

Time - doesn't have the -regen for AVs, but is a beast otherwise.

Poison - has horrible radius, I don't recall how it stacks on on -regen either, you'd have to look it up.

Traps - doesn't work well in fast moving teams.  One of my personal favorites, just the same.

TA - the new TA is nice, but doesn't have the -to-hit magnitude of Time, Dark, Rad, Nature

 

For that playstyle, that's probably the choices.

Any particular secondaries you would look to pair with Rad? I was looking at either Water, Rad or Dark Blast.

Edited May 12, 2021 by StriderIV

[StriderIV]

1 hour ago, Bopper said:

I also came here to suggest Trick Arrow. It is nice because it has long duration debuffs on a short cooldown, so if you are in a team that steamroller you can still get most of your debuffs up on each mob and if you are in a long fight you don't have to feel like you're needing to reapply the debuffs too often.

 

There is truth to this in a sense. On typical mobs you will not have impressive ToHit debuff AoEs in comparison to sets like Dark (the king of -ToHit), Storm, or Rad. But in an AV fight your ToHit debuffs will be on par with Dark (slightly better than Dark, technically, but difference is negligible) thanks to half of Flash Arrow's debuff being unresistible and thanks to Acid Arrow applying a ToHit resistance debuff (makes the resistible portion of flash Arrow and all other tohit debuffs effectively stronger). So in short, most content the ToHit debuff is meh but in AV fights it is remarkably strong.

This is great info Bopper! I might be missing it, but does Trick Arrow have -regen in it's kit?

[Bopper]

1 hour ago, Psyonico said:

 

I've wondered about Acid Arrow... do you need to fire it before Flash Arrow for the -res to take effect, or if you go Flash->Acid will the debuff still be stronger?

Order does not matter. As soon as both are active on the target, you get the stronger effect.

 

Full disclosure though, only Minions and AVs will get affected by the tohit resistance debuff. This is because LTs are set up with a minimum tohit resistance of 10% and Boss/EBs/Snipers are set up with a 20% tohit resistance. Since they're already set to their minimum, you can't make it go any lower.

 

Edit: I should add though, although LTs and Bosses can't have their tohit resistance lowered, flash arrow's unresistible portion of tohit debuff bypasses their 10-20% resistance, so that's nice.

Edited May 12, 2021 by Bopper

[Bopper]

2 minutes ago, StriderIV said:

This is great info Bopper! I might be missing it, but does Trick Arrow have -regen in it's kit?

It has EMP Arrow which does 1000% for the first 15s, then 500% for the next 30s, so 45s debuff duration on a 300s base cooldown.

 

Also, Acid Arrow will debuff the target's resistance to regen debuffs by 30%, so you effectively buff your EMP Arrow's regen debuff by 30% (and everyone else's regen debuff powers)

[StriderIV]

2 minutes ago, Bopper said:

It has EMP Arrow which does 1000% for the first 15s, then 500% for the next 30s, so 45s debuff duration on a 300s base cooldown.

 

Also, Acid Arrow will debuff the target's resistance to regen debuffs by 30%, so you effectively buff your EMP Arrow's regen debuff by 30% (and everyone else's regen debuff powers)

HOLY. That is a huge oversight by me haha. I mean that would go a LONG way in making a hero an AV/GM killer. Obviously it's a long cooldown, but that is pretty nice when you can still stack Acid Arrow pretty consistently.

[Linea]

The new EMP Arrow is a beast of it's own kind.   ...  I noticed it when I added it to some new 801 Mobs 😜

TA after the revamp is really well worth second look if you haven't already.

 

As for blast sets, I tend to recommend Fire, Ice, Water.   Water being my overall favorite after Dual Pistols (I love DP but tend to not recommend it.  DP is below average without a proc build, and proc builds are complicated).

[StriderIV]

5 hours ago, Linea said:

The new EMP Arrow is a beast of it's own kind.   ...  I noticed it when I added it to some new 801 Mobs 😜

TA after the revamp is really well worth second look if you haven't already.

 

As for blast sets, I tend to recommend Fire, Ice, Water.   Water being my overall favorite after Dual Pistols (I love DP but tend to not recommend it.  DP is below average without a proc build, and proc builds are complicated).

Thanks Linea! Rad/Water seems like it’d be a pretty solid and safe combo to me for most content.

 

Definitely going to have to run a TA/Archer Def at some point though =P

 

RANDOM hijack as well: I think you also run a Dark/Savage Dominator. How do you compare that to say a TA or Rad Defender?