Mythbusting - Kin/Sonic and it's corruptor counterparts

[Nemu]

If you scour the forums you will find most posts claiming that Sonic Blast is the most optimal pairing for Kinetics for teams because +dmg and -resist have a lot of synergy. Let's breakdown why some things look good on paper but really isn't that good in practice.

 

1 - Animation times matter. 2+ seconds for Fulcrum Shift and 2+ seconds on most sonic attacks. On high level teams where everyone is throwing judgements you have barely enough time to cast FS before most things (especially your anchor) die anyway. But wait! theory crafters will say that you fire off FS for the first spawn and then open with howl the next. Ok, when's the last time you saw high level teams actually care about teamwork and coordinate? You think those softcapped whatever ATs will wait up for you or the rest of the team before they decide to go solo the next mob while some folks are still trying to clean up the bosses that their judgement didn't kill? At best you play selfish and get that FS for yourself, teammates be damned because they are the ones most likely to screw up your plan by killing your anchors. And if you choose to play solo like that Sonic is horrible because all the attacks are slow and you need to reposition to take advantage of the low damage cones (more on that later). there's no alacrity in your killing speed even with the -res sonic offers.

 

2 - AV/GM force multiplier is a lie. People also say that it's great for AV/hard targets. How many AV/GM fights do you have the benefit of fully saturating the team with FS? I'd rather bring a debuffing set that offers more -res/regen for those targets than boosting on average 20-25% damage to select members of the team depending on how you and teammates position themselves, a little more +dmg if you actually bothered to take siphon power. Kin is still good for those fights because it offers a good bit of sustainability for the team, but it's not that much of a force multiplier without fodder to fuel FS.

 

3 - Range vs melee. This applies to both the kin player and teammates. There will always be people too scared to go into melee who will miss out on all the Kin benefits. On the other hand Kin and Sonic have wildly disparate playstyles. One encourages melee and the other range with all the cones. This ties into the 1st point. Now you have to waste time repositioning to use either your kin powers or your sonic powers, that little bit of time matters.

 

TL;DR Kin/Sonic isn't all that it's cracked up to be.

[Magical]

I think you do a good job of pointing out how kin/sonic is not as straightforward to make work as it seems. However, I think at least some of your points are general issues faced by all defenders, or at least all kinetics. If enough judgments are being tossed around that you cannot even get a good FS off, no buffs or debuffs matter anyway (and to me that says the team's playing on too low a notoriety setting, not aggroing enough enemies or not splitting up when they should). And if people refuse to get kinetics buffs, that's not something that can be fixed by a different blast set.

 

I don't think the melee vs range issue is that bad. The best aoe of /sonic is dreadful wail, so if you ask me, sonic blasters should be dancing in and out of melee anyway. You can wail once every 40s, which is every other spawn. My experience is something like FS, dreadful wail, everything is dead except 2 bosses that are at -40% from the wail + fury proc, mop up with ST. Next spawn, FS, hop to edge of spawn, spam howl and procced out shockwave. Or, if it's a fast team, by the time I get to the next spawn they have reduced it to 2 half dead bosses as well. Then we can all happily proceed to spawn #3 and I dreadful wail again.

 

I wonder if FS is better than it looks on paper against single targets. When I use FS on a single target in melee, I get +75% damage on the combat monitor: +25% in an area around the enemy and +50% on myself. I don't know if the +50% part affects teammates. But FS is easily double stacked. So if both components of the power affect teammates, then a double stacked single-target FS is +150%. That's still not bad considering most AT's only need 200% to 300% more +dmg to cap (e.g. blaster: cap 500% - base 100% - slotting & musculature core 130% = 270% more required). The question is how much this eats into the sonic -res.

 

 

 

 

Edited July 19, 2021 by Magical

[Psylenz0511]

There is a lot of talk in the City of Heroes forums about 2 ranges: melee and ranged. I am confident there are THREE ranges: melee (where you can get punches or PbAoE'd by a spawn, ranged where they have to target you and shoot, blast, ranged damage ability to hit you, and the THIRD range is what I refer to as KINETIC RANGE, where you are not able to be hit by the target's melee or PbAoE attacks but you STILL can benefit from Transfusion (which is a big AoE) siphon power, or Fulcum Shift. I am aware there are some PbAoE that extend farther than others, but by and large, a character can be in kinetic range and not be affected by PbAoE melee attacks.

 

In playing on all defender teams, for example, the Forcefielder, Time, Sonic, Electrical Affinity, et al can hang out behind the kinetic in KINETIC RANGE and all parties are protected by Transfusion, Dispersion bubbles of both varieties, Time Juncture, and Faraday Cage. (Of course every defender that can run leadership should pick up maneuvers and easily hit the defense soft-cap. ) Kinetics are capable of determining the safe range out of  melee but still be in heal range of Transfusion.

 

My point is squishies, blasters, corrupters, defenders, controllers, sentinel's don't have to be 30 feet away from a spawn to be safe outside melee range. Suck it up and hug your kinetic!

[MoonSheep]

i only play two alts since returning in 2019 - a dom and a kin/sonic def, i think this is one of those “XYZ is bad because i don’t get it” posts

 

screech debuffs for around 15 seconds, stack it with shout and you have a nice -40% debuff without too much time, can fire off the nova also for some added debuff, isn’t hard and combos nicely with FS

 

with AVs, use fold space to bring more enemies nearby for a meaty FS, or aggro a few things whilst bouncing towards it.

 

my ITF speedrun whilst on the def is 11.59 - whilst this isn’t the worlds most stellar time it’s not awful either

 

kin/sonic is one of the best defender combos out there

[kelika2]

Are you strait up forgetting about Siphon Power after getting Fulcrum?  With a perma hasten build you can stack siphon 3-4 times on top of FS.

[Nemu]

I mentioned higher +dmg with Siphon Power. The reality is that a lot of builds skip it. There is the theoretical, and then there is reality and that's the crux of my post.

 

I see this combo touted as the best pairing but it's always in the context of the best case scenario. I'm not arguing that. The reality is in today's meta on teams that best case scenario is not often achievable. You can drag some mobs to an AV for a one time FS but your teammates are going to blow those up and then what? keep leaving the fight to drag mobs over to keep FS up? While I applaud the dedication I don't think it's practical. What if you run out of fodder in the vicinity or there is none to begin with, then what? The merits of screech and shout still carry the same weight when paired with a agile debuff set like poison which doesn't require the level of setup that kin does. I also mention the notion of stacking aoe -res debuff + massive +dmg in a single encounter which is extremely impractical due to 1 - animation time and 2 - playstyle range differences.

 

I've played my rad/kin corruptor, my fire/kin troller and my beast/kin mm quite a bit and this is my observation on high level teams. The feel bad moments are very real. Like I said, you have to play very selfishly to get the most out of kin but then what's the point in teaming?

 

Keep in mind the context of my discussion is the combo as it relates to teams, as noted in my opening statement.

[Erratic1]

8 minutes ago, Nemu said:

I mentioned higher +dmg with Siphon Power. The reality is that a lot of builds skip it. There is the theoretical, and then there is reality and that's the crux of my post.

 

A lot of people do a lot of questionable things. That does not mean the powerset combo is bad, that means it is often played poorly.

 

Siphon Power is bread and butter for any of my Kinetics characters.  And while I do have a Kin/Sonic Defender, I think I prefer my Water/Kinetics Corruptor.

[DreadShinobi]

6 hours ago, kelika2 said:

Are you strait up forgetting about Siphon Power after getting Fulcrum?  With a perma hasten build you can stack siphon 3-4 times on top of FS.

4 Siphon Powers = 8 seconds of zero actual dps output.

 

If you don't have enough mob saturation to cap with Fulcrum Shift, just pop red insps.

[Psylenz0511]

10 hours ago, DreadShinobi said:

4 Siphon Powers = 8 seconds of zero actual dps output.

 

If you don't have enough mob saturation to cap with Fulcrum Shift, just pop red insps.

Zero actual dps output ... for the solo kinetic. Meanwhile the blaster, scrapper, and brute, etc, benefit from each +dmg from siphon power and -dmg on the target of the siphon. Red inspirations have no effect on teammates. Red inspirations do not debuff damage potential of the siphon target.

[kelika2]

15 hours ago, DreadShinobi said:

4 Siphon Powers = 8 seconds of zero actual dps output.

 

If you don't have enough mob saturation to cap with Fulcrum Shift, just pop red insps.

oh if we are talking about solo damage then yeah, go brute/blaster/scrapper

[Nemu]

I'm talking about teaming.

 

On that topic of providing universal benefit to the team. I also pointed out there are (far too many) melee averse players, and where you and your teammates position themselves also affect the efficacy/availability of Kinetic buffs. Fast debuff sets like poison or even patch debuffs like tar patch/sleet/ etc ensure that teammates get the full benefit of the debuff on enemies.

 

Let's not pretend that every member of the team benefit equally from kin buffs. I have never seen that happen and if it does happen on very specialized and coordinated teams it's far from the norm.

 

Again this all goes back to best case scenario theory-crafting vs application in reality. 

 

If mobs had infinite HP and your anchors don't die and your teammates are always with you and you had time to go through your sequence of Fulcrum, siphon power and all the sonic animations then yeah, sure Kin/Sonic is great, tops even. But that doesn't happen in real game play.

[Without_Pause]

21 hours ago, Nemu said:

I mentioned higher +dmg with Siphon Power. The reality is that a lot of builds skip it. There is the theoretical, and then there is reality and that's the crux of my post.

 

I see this combo touted as the best pairing but it's always in the context of the best case scenario. I'm not arguing that. The reality is in today's meta on teams that best case scenario is not often achievable. You can drag some mobs to an AV for a one time FS but your teammates are going to blow those up and then what? keep leaving the fight to drag mobs over to keep FS up? While I applaud the dedication I don't think it's practical. What if you run out of fodder in the vicinity or there is none to begin with, then what? The merits of screech and shout still carry the same weight when paired with a agile debuff set like poison which doesn't require the level of setup that kin does. I also mention the notion of stacking aoe -res debuff + massive +dmg in a single encounter which is extremely impractical due to 1 - animation time and 2 - playstyle range differences.

 

I've played my rad/kin corruptor, my fire/kin troller and my beast/kin mm quite a bit and this is my observation on high level teams. The feel bad moments are very real. Like I said, you have to play very selfishly to get the most out of kin but then what's the point in teaming?

 

Keep in mind the context of my discussion is the combo as it relates to teams, as noted in my opening statement.

I played so many Kins back in the day I got sick of them. I never skipped SP or got rid of it via a respec. A Kin leaving battle? WTF? SP has range on it. You can pull just fine standing where you are at. The only time my Kins left battle was to move onto the next mob. In terms of moving around, that's what Siphon Speed is for. Hell, I move around on my melee characters as much if not more depending on the situation. 

 

And yes, a Kin/sonic was one of the few Kins I got to 50 and played afterwards. I'm not here to claim it is the best combo. From a defender standpoint, I would argue Kin/rad takes that, but it is quite good and one of the few Kin builds I rerolled coming back. I didn't keep it, but that's more with me being done with Kin versus it being subpar.