Talk to me Goose: Theory crafting Cold/Rad

[SeraphimKensai]

Combining Cold which is arguably one of the best powersets in the game especially considering hard mode content with Radiation Blast seems to be one of the least used combinations out there. I've seen one post about it which was someone sharing a build without any significant discussion from 2019, and the combo was the 148th most popular lvl 50 Defender combo from the last time Cipher released stats in 2020.

 

The combo on paper seems like there's ample synergy leveraging a ton of debuffing -def (enough to cut through vengeance Nemesis and MoG Paragon Protectors), -res (including ample -res proc options), -regen, -recharge, while granting team stealth, and giving ally defense/resistance buffs.

 

So I wonder why we haven't seen more of these. I see plenty of Cold/Fire and Cold/Ice and their corruptor counterparts. Radiation Blast is an energy damage type, which is the third most resisted in the game, but with the debuffing potential I feel this would still do decent damage for a Defender.

 

Given Defender buff values, I'd imagine it's possible to hit MRA positional soft caps of 45% defense reasonably easy. Sure there's no self heal, but with padded defense and decent resistance (artic fog, tough, dark embrace) could make a pretty resilient Defender. Also with all the Defense based powers (Artic Fog, Ice Shield, Glacial Shield) it makes maximizing LoTG 7.5 bonuses fairly easy too.

 

Because of the Defender Buff values, it makes it a reasonable degree easier to proc slot some attacks as well on a Defender so I could see making a couple decent proc bombs as well.

 

What do you all think? Is there something I'm missing here, or have I potentially found my next project toon?

[Uun]

I've got a Cold/Beam defender and it works well in hard mode content. Similar damage type, -def and proc options, but fully ranged. Obviously Rad has more AoE than Beam. I think Cold/Rad should do fine.

[SeraphimKensai]

22 minutes ago, Uun said:

I've got a Cold/Beam defender and it works well in hard mode content. Similar damage type, -def and proc options, but fully ranged. Obviously Rad has more AoE than Beam. I think Cold/Rad should do fine.

Cold/Beam works well, I used to run one on the live servers. The powerset combo screams Mr. Freeze, but mine was a disgruntled ice cream truck driver that studied electrical engineering.

 

I think I might boot up a cold/rad to check it out as I can't really think of a reason why not to roll one. I was just surprised that I haven't seen more discussion about them or any in-game. I already have several characters for hard mode including a fire/cold corruptor, but cold/rad just seems like an interesting project toon.

[Sir Myshkin]

Radiation Blast is a great proc monster blast set which gives it incredible leverage to do more than normal when paired in the right way, but not every set allows it to take advantage of this ability. If you want more total coverage you'll get it better in a few other places to keep Radiation proc'd, but if you're willing to rely on team mates for a larger portion of your support then Mace will at least carry Cold up into the soft cap range.

 

This build has just enough of everything. Avoids Hasten since there's not really a huge need for it, all the key components cycle in the right amount of time, and the global that exists is just enough for X-Ray > Cosmic > Small Gap > Proton Volley that any kind of +Recharge boost from another team member will eradicate.

 

Spoiler

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[Meknomancer]

1 hour ago, Sir Myshkin said:

Radiation Blast is a great proc monster blast set which gives it incredible leverage to do more than normal when paired in the right way, but not every set allows it to take advantage of this ability. If you want more total coverage you'll get it better in a few other places to keep Radiation proc'd, but if you're willing to rely on team mates for a larger portion of your support then Mace will at least carry Cold up into the soft cap range.

 

This build has just enough of everything. Avoids Hasten since there's not really a huge need for it, all the key components cycle in the right amount of time, and the global that exists is just enough for X-Ray > Cosmic > Small Gap > Proton Volley that any kind of +Recharge boost from another team member will eradicate.

 

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I do love looking over your builds but i totally disagree here with skipping hasten, you'll have end issues without perma heat loss, especially procced out like that. Without perma benumb av/gm's will take twice as long. And i like my sleet up every 15 seconds for stacking. I rarely come across a mob that lasts 27 seconds in a team they often don't last 8 seconds. Electron haze is a terrible power but if you skip hasten and take it you can at least use an ff+rech in it which may help.

 

Level 53 d-sync provocations in benumb will knock a massive amount of time off its recharge. If your really short on slots toss a couple in heatloss.

Edited March 20, 2023 by Meknomancer
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[SeraphimKensai]

3 minutes ago, Meknomancer said:

I do love looking over your builds but i totally disagree here with skipping hasten, you'll have end issues without perma heat loss, especially procced out like that. Without perma benumb av/gm's will take twice as long. And i like my sleet up every 15 seconds for stacking. I rarely come across a mob that lasts 27 seconds in a team they often don't last 8 seconds. 

Although I do love a good proc bomb on cold I like hasten and recharge as well for stacking sleet and keeping Benumb perma. Hell you could do burnout in the build and potentially have 15 seconds of 3x Sleet which just sounds unfair to whoever is getting shit on with that.

[Zect]

Rad is not bad in hardmodes, especially since hardmode AV's are one of those targets where all of rad's -def is not overkill. I would not read too much into what combos you see; concept is king for most players (and that's perfectly fine) which is why fire/ice blast are common.

 

45% tri-vector def on a fender is pretty easy to get at the cost of serious procbombing. That's fairly okay on rad, since rad is only a middle of the road procbombing set (+2 procs per power over standard) albeit with the ability to fit 2x -res procs. Furthermore, as a cold, you are the most vulnerable one on the team because you cannot shield nor heal yourself, and inevitably, some people slack on refreshing their barriers or other buffs. So in the specific case of cold in hardmodes, it is usually worth building more defensively; but for babymode content, you can trade out the defense for other things.

 

Note: when building for hardmode, def is less about strictly softcapping (you won't softcap with set bonuses alone), and more about providing a hefty layer of base defense that other people's buffs can stack on top of, so that you are constantly at 100%+ to all even during the tail end of the team's barrier destinies. Don't sweat it if you're a hair away from 45%; it's more important to have a relatively even defense spread without expending unreasonable amounts of slot-efficiency.

 

12 hours ago, Sir Myshkin said:

This build has just enough of everything. Avoids Hasten since there's not really a huge need for it, all the key components cycle in the right amount of time, and the global that exists is just enough for X-Ray > Cosmic > Small Gap > Proton Volley that any kind of +Recharge boost from another team member will eradicate.

 

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The poorly-designed build above is a great example of how not to make a cold:

• Low SL resists
• heatloss over 43s from permanent (67.6% uptime - significantly less -res output and less +endurance)
• benumb over 24s from permanent (55.0% uptime - atrocious anti-AV debuffing output)
• pitiful 27.6s rech on sleet

Critical design errors are the lack of hasten for double-stacked sleet and perma-heatloss/benumb, and eschewing a resist toggle only to spend tons of slots on minuscule resist bonuses - paying pounds to pinch pennies. Procbombing is great as a build strategy, but not when it comes at the cost of core competencies in your powerset. A 4* AV will easily regen more damage in those 24s your benumb is down than half your procs can do.

 

Here's an example of how to design a cold with superior supportive and defensive capacity without sacrificing offensive output:

 

 

Assigning the remaining 12 slots is left as an exercise for the reader; I do not provide complete builds on principle. Notice that despite all the silly little res bonuses the build upthread wastes dozens of slots chasing, my build still has superior resistances due to a focus on areas where assigned slots will make the most impact: taking a resist toggle and slotting the resist powers well, while using superior slot-efficiency to win back defense bonuses and twice the global rech. Note: if you want a different epic, you can put the oblits in irradiate instead of soul drain.

 

By the way, you might want to compare the damage done by some of this build's attacks with those of the build upthread (turn off the decimation proc first). See how much dps the procs are gaining, then consider that my build outputs almost twice the -res.

Edited March 21, 2023 by Zect

[Sir Myshkin]

12 hours ago, Meknomancer said:

disagree here with skipping hasten, you'll have end issues without perma heat loss

12 hours ago, SeraphimKensai said:

Although I do love a good proc bomb on cold I like hasten and recharge as well for stacking sleet and keeping Benumb perma.

 

I'd say you're both still stuck in the mindset "Me" and not "Team" when thinking about this. I posted a build that didn't even have Incarnates placed. No the build will not have endurance issues with Heat Loss on a 40/s timer, and Mid's also doesn't account for the recovery bonus when the power is flagged on. This is still thinking inside the box though. What's the Destiny? What's your team mate's Destiny? What're you running? Someone is bound to have at least one activation of Ageless in there, it could be you, why not? Even if I did stick Hasten in there, it still won't be perma, and it'll be strictly focused on trying to shave second off of three powers: Sleet, Benumb, and Heat Loss. Even if I flip the proc in Sleet to a Dam/Rech and +5 the set to get 81% Recharge in Sleet, adding Hasten still only gets it to 18/s downtime (as the build stands). To do both, and get each of those powers Perma, I would have to take Ageless and Hasten. Oh, and Heat Loss has just enough recharge to loop itself, just barely. And Benumb will drop for about a second and some change.

 

So now you're the Ageless team member because your build got selfish, but you won't ever run out of endurance, I'll tell you what! 😉

 

How anyone approaches a build is entirely up to them. I can tell you I don't personally particularly like Focused Accuracy for its cost, but it would have its usefulness in Hard Mode, I'd rather swap for Tactics in most other cases for being cheaper and team-wide. There is a small discrepancy in existence that Nerve fixes from an Incarnate stand point and lets FA be turned off for most situations, and allows Benumb to get double-rech slotted without moving anything around. Sadly adding Hasten only shrinks another 8/s off Benumb, Heat Loss is still 16/s over, and Sleet is still 18/s if someone were to add it at that point. Again, that's a personal call really, I'd probably skip it personally knowing I'm likely to be running on a team using Ageless in one or two capacities. 🤷‍♂️

 

2 hours ago, Zect said:

The poorly-designed build

 

Did you know when someone does this in the pool nowadays a iridescent blue chemical reaction occurs warning others of the offender?

 

Yeah, time for you to hop on out of the pool for a while until you can play nice with the other kids again.

[nihilii]

re: why not more cold/rad out there.

 

I think part of the reason people keep away from /rad is an extremely... strong... SFX on the snipe. It's a like it or hate it thing.

Add to that the competition. /fire is more or less a plain better version of /rad without the opinionated SFX. /sonic was always great and got buffed further. /dark has a better secondary effect and stacks healing on top.

With Cold specifically, lacking any form of healing, you benefit greatly from the ATO procs. A set well-suited to procs might get comparatively less mileage out of it than with other primaries.

Tohit is rarely ever an issue, so -def isn't all that hot as a secondary effect.

That's my take on the popularity of that particular combo, anyway.

[SeraphimKensai]

3 hours ago, nihilii said:

re: why not more cold/rad out there.

 

I think part of the reason people keep away from /rad is an extremely... strong... SFX on the snipe. It's a like it or hate it thing....

I can see that. I personally don't mind the snipe as it reminds me of an old 1970's cartoon ray gun as far as the blobs of energy and sound fx.

 

The one animation in Rad Blast that I've always felt like it would take forever was Neutron Bomb but the root time and arcanatime aren't bad. It's the almost extra second of animation before the power takes effect on the target that seems slow to me. But since it doesn't root you that whole time, I've become accustomed to it. I typically have a lot of mobility in how I play especially on "Squishies" as a holdover from being a PvP for so many years during the game's original run.

 

I rolled one up last night and gonna give it the old college try.

[Meknomancer]

8 hours ago, Sir Myshkin said:

 

I'd say you're both still stuck in the mindset "Me" and not "Team" when thinking about this. I posted a build that didn't even have Incarnates placed. No the build will not have endurance issues with Heat Loss on a 40/s timer, and Mid's also doesn't account for the recovery bonus when the power is flagged on. This is still thinking inside the box though. What's the Destiny? What's your team mate's Destiny? What're you running? Someone is bound to have at least one activation of Ageless in there, it could be you, why not? Even if I did stick Hasten in there, it still won't be perma, and it'll be strictly focused on trying to shave second off of three powers: Sleet, Benumb, and Heat Loss. Even if I flip the proc in Sleet to a Dam/Rech and +5 the set to get 81% Recharge in Sleet, adding Hasten still only gets it to 18/s downtime (as the build stands). To do both, and get each of those powers Perma, I would have to take Ageless and Hasten. Oh, and Heat Loss has just enough recharge to loop itself, just barely. And Benumb will drop for about a second and some change.

 

So now you're the Ageless team member because your build got selfish, but you won't ever run out of endurance, I'll tell you what! 😉

 

How anyone approaches a build is entirely up to them. I can tell you I don't personally particularly like Focused Accuracy for its cost, but it would have its usefulness in Hard Mode, I'd rather swap for Tactics in most other cases for being cheaper and team-wide. There is a small discrepancy in existence that Nerve fixes from an Incarnate stand point and lets FA be turned off for most situations, and allows Benumb to get double-rech slotted without moving anything around. Sadly adding Hasten only shrinks another 8/s off Benumb, Heat Loss is still 16/s over, and Sleet is still 18/s if someone were to add it at that point. Again, that's a personal call really, I'd probably skip it personally knowing I'm likely to be running on a team using Ageless in one or two capacities. 🤷‍♂️

 

 

Did you know when someone does this in the pool nowadays a iridescent blue chemical reaction occurs warning others of the offender?

 

Yeah, time for you to hop on out of the pool for a while until you can play nice with the other kids again.

 

 

I run a lot of low level team content even after 50, so i don't build purely for incarnate level teams+tf's which is why i'd consider hasten essential, And i find more and more there are teams wanting hardmode builds requiring barrier/rebirth with nobody on the team running ageless and the /cold is expected to keep everyones blue bar full with a perma heat loss. Hasten works from both the low level content to anything in between and up to hardmode. I understand players wanting hastenless builds usually for theme and they do work, but as you say its for teaming and other players expect that heatloss on all the time, and the buffs, and that you will be running a useful destiny-ageless on a cold isnt really useful. 

 

But as i said earlier i do love looking at the builds you post, they always offer a completely different approach as to how the game can be played and it fascinates me the way so many different players come up with so many different builds for their own playstyle. I hope you keep posting them and don't take anything posted negatively.

Edited March 21, 2023 by Meknomancer
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[SeraphimKensai]

Little weekend update...

So I built the cold/rad, and have it dark for an ancillary power set for Oppressive Gloom, Dark Embrace, and Soul Drain. It's sitting at vet lvl 5 or 6 currently, and I through together a build for it where I got it working how I envisioned.

 

It turned out to be pretty resilient, I have 45.18% to melee, 45.8% to ranged and AoE, and also the inclusion of Oppressive Gloom helps stun the trash as I lay down the debuffs.

 

Ageless radial for DDR and to keep Benumb/drain soul perma with sleet double stacked. The amount of defense debuffs is essentially keeping mobs defense floored which makes it easy for myself and any teammates. Additionally the -res from double stacked sleets and my -res procs helps make the attacks punch through not just for me but also the team.

 

I kept ice shield and glacial one slot mules for LoTGs as that suits my playstyle.

 

Overall so far it's turned into a pretty fun defender, and I'm working on incarnates and accolades. I also want to give it a test whirl for some doubles PvP or maybe small teams as well.