Cold/Water Defender - newbie help

[Sunbreaux]

Hi folks!

 

I'm a returning player and I'm looking to make a good team friendly character to make some friends and have some fun. I don't expect to solo much at all with this one so if her offensive side is a bit lacking it's ok! I've read and reviewed other Cold/ and /Water builds but I didn't see any with that combination to really work from. Also, as a newbie, I'm broke. So I only slotted the things that seemed very important set wise as a work towards .. Getting there will be all SO > IO until I make some cash.

 

Please critique!

 

@Sunadora - Everlasting

 

 

Defender - Cold.Water - Defender (Cold Domination - Water Blast).mbd

Edited July 1, 2023 by Sunbreaux

[Without_Pause]

Just a quick general observation. Nothing should require 2 End. More so using level 50 IOs as that's near 3 SOs in terms of numbers. A single target attack should be 1 acc, 1 end, 3 damage, and maybe 1 recharge. Multi-target attacks do 2 acc, 1 end, 3 damage. Dehydrate needs acc. Geyser, Whirlpool, and Tidal Forces slotting is all sorts of no. They are attacks. Slot them as such. You don't really want to slot Def Debuff into Stream Spray unless it is a proc. More power to you if you can get to 50 without a travel power, but I can't fathom doing so. You need the Defender IOs to help with Ranged Def as that will be the easiest to cap.

[Wimbochismo]

A quick bit of general advice for a new player making money - it will vary if you decide to take the p2w xp booster. Slot the p2w enhancements for free proc dmg. Do DFB x 4 for the buffs, this will offset sub optimal slotting and set you up till the 20's. You can do the same up into the 30's if you run DIB.

 

Run some TF's, probably starting with Posi. Convert the merits you get into enhancement converter's/booster's. Sell them on the AH and this should net you millions. By around lvl 27-30 you can afford all the lvl 30 IO's like in your build. As you level, shore up weaknesses you find like end issues. You can take performance shifter, panacea etc rather early and they help a ton. They're not too expensive, but if they cost too much, find other enhancements in the set that are cheaper and use those enhancement converters to in-set convert it to what you want. 

 

I've pulled off plenty of builds that only take the 2 ATO sets as purples. If you buy them as oranges they typically run around 8 million, with enhancement catalyst's around a million. That's probably the most expensive set you'll have to buy, if that puts things into perspective. A lot of the yellow/orange sets, especially the cheap ones might only cost around 1 million - 4 million per enhancement. Find the cheap sets in your build and it can be affordable.

 

For the build, it's valuable to have something in place around 30-40 to start shooting for. You look like you already have a good idea of how to make builds and what you want. You're beefing up ranged defense and going after recharge with 5x lotg's etc.

 

You can probably drop Steam Spray and pick up Water Jet to give yourself more single target dps. You already have Water Burst, Whirlpool, Geyser for aoe. I usually 3 slot Touch of Nictus accurate healing set with proc, and add more procs to Dehydrate. This makes it an ok heal and better dps. You may not even need Dark Consumption for end with Heat Loss covering end problems. If you want you can go with a different resist shield epic.

 

I've posted a FF/Water build somewhat recently that you could probably partially port over to this combo with a few changes.

ffwater def.mbd

Edited July 1, 2023 by Wimbochismo

[Sunbreaux]

Thank you so much for the advice! I swapped around the things you suggested and dropped combat jumping for super jump. Tidal Forces is a to hit buff only abilitys o I couldn't do much to change that one but I did drop some slots form it to place into other abilities. Let me know if any of these sets are going to be prohibitively expensive.

 

Thanks again for the feed back!

 

Defender - Cold.Water - Defender (Cold Domination - Water Blast).mbd

[MoonSheep]

i would drop one of assault/manuvers/tactics and pickup veng - always good to have on a defender. you’ll be outputting good def values to the team anyway, but the extra acc can be a lifesaver in some content

[Wimbochismo]

23 hours ago, Sunbreaux said:

Thank you so much for the advice! I swapped around the things you suggested and dropped combat jumping for super jump. Tidal Forces is a to hit buff only abilitys o I couldn't do much to change that one but I did drop some slots form it to place into other abilities. Let me know if any of these sets are going to be prohibitively expensive.

 

Thanks again for the feed back!

 

Defender - Cold.Water - Defender (Cold Domination - Water Blast).mbd 43.19 kB · 1 download

 

This is looking better.

 

Don't forget to slot the Steadfast Protection res/def in Mind Over Body. Also slot Gladiator's Armor def all in Tough. This nets you an easy 6% def to all. They're also worth slotting while leveling for easy defense if you need it.

 

For Arctic Fog, you'll probably get good mileage frankenslotting 2 partial Def and Resist sets. Maybe 3 Luck's, the Kismet, and 2 Reactive Armor res/end for the small s/l res bonus.

 

Reduce slotting in Tidal Force's, at most it needs 2 slots. The Gaussian's build up proc and a rech. Can also reduce slots in Sleet by 1 or 2.

 

Move the Miracle +rec out of Dehydrate and into Health. It works best in a toggle/always on power.

 

The Annihilation set in Water Burst can be switched out for either a ranged def set or a recharge set. 

 

2 slotting Blessing of the Zephyr in your travel power will give you 1.25 ranged def. One of the enhancements also gives knockback protection.

 

If you want to, you can break the Vigilant Assault set into 2, slotting 3 of the enhancement's into two different attacks. This gives you the sets recharge bonus twice. Then you could 3 slot Thunderstrike for more ranged def.

 

Altogether, none of these sets is super expensive. In general, the Defense and Resist sets tend to be the most expensive. PvP sets are very expensive. Everything else is do-able. The rest you can just kind of fill in as you level. Once you hit 50 the cash just flows in.

[Sunbreaux]

Holy cow my defense skyrocketed with those changes if Vengeance is up lol - Not sure if I changed water burst quite the way you suggested.

 

 

Without Vengeance:

 

Defender - Cold.Water - Defender (Cold Domination - Water Blast).mbd

Edited July 3, 2023 by Sunbreaux

[Wimbochismo]

9 hours ago, Sunbreaux said:

Holy cow my defense skyrocketed with those changes if Vengeance is up lol - Not sure if I changed water burst quite the way you suggested.

 

 

Without Vengeance:

 

Defender - Cold.Water - Defender (Cold Domination - Water Blast).mbd 43.39 kB · 0 downloads

 

Nice! Good job. This looks very solid. Almost the full 45 ranged def. Any team member running Maneuver's will softcap your ranged def. Resist's are good. Accuracy against +4 mobs is 100%.

 

The end reduction in the team shields is probably unneeded. You should be able to hit the group with it, walking between mob spawns. They last 4 minutes so it shouldn't be a big end drain, although it might be worth it at lower levels.

 

Put your 5th LotG +rech in Vengeance. 

 

General advice - if you have endurance issues, make sure you're turning off Sprint and Super Jump etc in combat. You can probably de-toggle Tough as well with no big losses.

 

Ideally you want Heat Loss to be perma, or for the duration of the buff to equal its cooldown. You would need more global recharge to get there. But that's more for endgame final build tuning when you're more comfortable feeling out what other changes you can make. It's not terrible if it isn't perma, though. Running something like Incarnate Alpha - Agility Core Paragon will bump up your defense to softcap and bump up recharge. Then Heat Loss is like 10 secs off perma.

 

Last tip for once you hit 50. You can use Enhancement Booster's to +5 your Invention IO's. Do this in mids by pressing the + key on your numpad when hovering over and selecting the enhancement. This will let you squeeze a bit more juice out of enhancements in powers. You can do the same to the sets that have set bonuses (not totally recommended) , but you would have to buy the non-attuned version. It just means the set won't scale up and down as well when exemplaring to lower levels.

Edited July 3, 2023 by Wimbochismo

[Without_Pause]

You also might want to simply look at slotting Dehydrate more as an attack versus healing. You may want to sub in one of the end mod sets which offers ticks of HP depending on how you feel about end usage. The point is, if you are staying at range with that much def, heals might not be so required. You'll have to play around with it because even with that much def, you don't really have any DDR so that def can go bye bye in a hurry.