Kin/X Defender Builds?

[standard.deviant]

I'm looking at rolling a Defender with Kinetics primary. Based on concept Beam Rifle or Radiation secondary makes sense. What does a 2023 build look like for those? I'm newly returned so I'm on a bit of a budget--please don't bling things out too far.

[SeraphimKensai]

I'd suggest downloading mids and trying to make a build to meet your goals and budget yourself first. After that you could post it here and we could look over it to see any reasonable tweaks that might get you more mileage out of it.

 

Also I recommend defining your budget as 500 mil or so might not be that much to some players, but to others it's quite a bit.

[Uun]

Between the two, I would go with Radiation. Beam is more of a ranged set and Kinetics works best in melee range.

[standard.deviant]

3 hours ago, SeraphimKensai said:

Also I recommend defining your budget as 500 mil or so might not be that much to some players, but to others it's quite a bit.

I will be playing mainly TFs on the character and trying to pay for the build as I level. On my main (currently 46) I think this shook out to about 100m so far, or maybe slightly more. I think I’ll end up at about 150m at 50, so that’s probably a reasonable target for this character as well.

 

As far as Mids goes, I don’t even know which secondary powerset makes the most sense, let alone which skills are good or what sets to try to slot in. I stopped playing when Live closed and came back last week—think of this as baby’s first alt. 

[SeraphimKensai]

13 minutes ago, standard.deviant said:

I don’t even know which secondary powerset makes the most sense, let alone which skills are good or what sets to try to slot in. I stopped playing when Live closed and came back last week—think of this as baby’s first alt. 

I'd recommend playing both on the test server. You can level up for free and get free IOs to slot your character and test how it performs. That way when you go to build it on the production servers you understand how the powers work and which ones you want.

 

That said I still suggest using mids to plan out your character. At the end of the day just downloading someone else's build is ultimately playing a clone of their character. I'm of the mind set that it's much more valuable to teach people how to fish than give them a fish.

 

That said if you throw something together that you want to try, and have tested the powers somewhat on test, I'm more than willing to give you slotting and theory crafting advice.

 

Also since your freshly returned, there's a number of influence making guides on the forums, I'd suggest working on growing some wealth so you aren't necessarily limited due to cash flow.

 

Personally if limited to a kin/rad or kin/beam, if look more at the rad because you have access to irradiate, and an atomic blast which work extremely well in melee which is how kinetics is designed to work. Beam I like pairing on a blaster with energy manipulation for boost range and playing like a sniper. But that's just me.

Edited May 15, 2023 by SeraphimKensai

[standard.deviant]

How do I play on test? I don’t see that setting on the Homecoming server selection screen. 
 

edit: I’m not necessarily limited to those two, but I’m making a character themed on the 80’s era US Strategic Defense Initiative so those seem to be the most relevant. The program had both missile-based and nuclear-driven laser systems, so I was thinking of those power sets as being most thematically similar.

Edited May 15, 2023 by standard.deviant

[Uun]

 

[standard.deviant]

Thanks!

[MoonSheep]

i’ve played my kin/sonic defender a crazy amount as it’s one of my 3 alts i play on HC since 2019 - it does speedruns (9min ITF), hard mode Aeon TFs etc.. it has a build of mostly SOs and a few cheap IO sets 🤷‍♂️

 

kin is such a forgiving set to play as your primary is 90% of your contribution. my advice as someone who plays a kin defender *a lot* is to genuinely not worry and just get on with it

 

radiation would be an AMAZING secondary for kin. the huge amount of -defence irradiate gives will support your team so much at the lower levels, combined with speed boost

 

hope you enjoy it, definitely don’t overthink it!

[Voltak]

On 5/15/2023 at 9:00 AM, standard.deviant said:

I'm looking at rolling a Defender with Kinetics primary. Based on concept Beam Rifle or Radiation secondary makes sense. What does a 2023 build look like for those? I'm newly returned so I'm on a bit of a budget--please don't bling things out too far.

I think I posted my Kinetics/Sonic defender build in this thread. 

That is powerful stuff. 

Kinetics dmg buff + more resistance debuffs for more dmg buffs

The new sonic blast has more dmg and greater DPA.