My wife finally left another World (of Warcraft), help me build her FF/ Ice Defender

[BurnTheWitch]

I think the title pretty much sums up my situation.  My wife has decided that she wants to be a FF / Ice defender.  She is of interested in being a "Sentinel with buffs", (thanks to @MonteCarla for delivering that concept to us).

 

The big asks on her part are.

• Hover and Fly, she really likes those two skills and I'm not going to tell her she's wrong.
• This is going to be a character that spends 80%+ of it's time in a group, act like it.
• Keep the leadership trio unless there are major gains to be made elsewhere.
• An ST rotation that isn't super complicated, i don't think this will be difficult, but I don't know Ice well enough to judge.
• The Epic power pool is still open but I went with Ice for Frozen Armor and Hoarfrost (and look at all that AOE DEF we squeezed out of it).

 

All That being said, I've never built a defender before. I'm not actually good at build as well. What changes would the experts recommend?

 

My concerns in no particular order

• Am sacrificing too much for DEF? RES is pretty low and I'm concerned that when she does get hit, it will gack her in one shot. I might be overly concerned, she's a perfectly competent player who has too much experience in MMOs, she can avoid fire.
• This build won't work well exemplared below 30, so we'll have to use a second build for that, not a big deal.
• Build up and Ice elemental are only there to fill out powers, what else would be useful instead of those, they aren't doing much with that pathetic slotting.
• holy guts the end issues she is going to have, she'll kill me!  That should be first on the list.
• Are the attack powers I've picked the "right" ones.  3 ST and 3 AOE attacks seems sufficient, but I'm far from an expert, more of an aspiring apprentice)

 

Thanks for your time and consideration.

 

Force Blizzard.mbd

[Mini-Mega]

you're build looks solid, but imo you're over slotted for survivability. 

 

ST rotation would just be Bitter Ice Blast - Freeze Ray - Ice blast - repeat.

when its a full mob open with Blizzard - Ice storm (about halfway through blizzard animation) - ST rotation 

 

i got you more DMG, better end management and more rech. 

 

if you get into trouble you still have your heal and PFF. 

Defender (Force Field - Ice Blast).mbd

[SeraphimKensai]

I'll take a look at the builds after work.

 

Force Field wise I personally like all the powers sans Detention Field (unless planning for PvP, in which case this power is great ruining someone's day after they've popped Build-up/aim)and Repulsion Field.

 

For repulsion bolt and force bomb if she's a hovering/flying then being directly above the mobs when able to will push them down on the ground reducing scatter. Same with positioning mobs into a corner of a map.

 

PFF is great while leveling but once you're able to build out and slot IO sets, then it's usefulness drops significantly.

 

Ice blast I like all the powers except frost breath. If you had to cut a second it would be ice bolt.

 

Does it have to be hover/fly or would Mystic Flight work with vfx minimal? Reason I ask is because Rune is really nice to have and enflame is decent enough.

 

As far as APP goes, on a FF toon I typically recommend Energy to get Power Build Up. Maximized for recharge you get decent uptime to be able to significantly boost the strength of your bubbles, also a reason why I strongly recommend Clarion radial for a destiny on a Force Field toon. Having a dedicated bubbler with boosted bubbles is enough to bring an entire team to above the incarnate defensive soft cap allowing an entire team to slot in a way to maximize damage potential.

[UltraAlt]

18 hours ago, BurnTheWitch said:

I think the title pretty much sums up my situation. 

 

It seems to happen quite infrequently.

I think it is important to mention if you are going to be playing the game with the character or just making an end-game/level 50 character.

 

It really makes a big difference on the kind of reply you will get.

I will say this, if you want a damage dealing defender ... go with a corruptor instead.

[JJDrakken]

18 hours ago, BurnTheWitch said:

I think the title pretty much sums up my situation.  My wife has decided that she wants to be a FF / Ice defender.  She is of interested in being a "Sentinel with buffs", (thanks to @MonteCarla for delivering that concept to us).

 

The big asks on her part are.

• Hover and Fly, she really likes those two skills and I'm not going to tell her she's wrong.
• This is going to be a character that spends 80%+ of it's time in a group, act like it.
• Keep the leadership trio unless there are major gains to be made elsewhere.
• An ST rotation that isn't super complicated, i don't think this will be difficult, but I don't know Ice well enough to judge.
• The Epic power pool is still open but I went with Ice for Frozen Armor and Hoarfrost (and look at all that AOE DEF we squeezed out of it).

 

All That being said, I've never built a defender before. I'm not actually good at build as well. What changes would the experts recommend?

 

My concerns in no particular order

• Am sacrificing too much for DEF? RES is pretty low and I'm concerned that when she does get hit, it will gack her in one shot. I might be overly concerned, she's a perfectly competent player who has too much experience in MMOs, she can avoid fire.
• This build won't work well exemplared below 30, so we'll have to use a second build for that, not a big deal.
• Build up and Ice elemental are only there to fill out powers, what else would be useful instead of those, they aren't doing much with that pathetic slotting.
• holy guts the end issues she is going to have, she'll kill me!  That should be first on the list.
• Are the attack powers I've picked the "right" ones.  3 ST and 3 AOE attacks seems sufficient, but I'm far from an expert, more of an aspiring apprentice)

 

Thanks for your time and consideration.

 

Force Blizzard.mbd 40.67 kB · 5 downloads

 

Defender (Force Field - Ice Blast).mbd

 

Try this out

 

 

[BurnTheWitch]

25 minutes ago, UltraAlt said:

 

It seems to happen quite infrequently.

I think it is important to mention if you are going to be playing the game with the character or just making an end-game/level 50 character.

 

It really makes a big difference on the kind of reply you will get.

I will say this, if you want a damage dealing defender ... go with a corruptor instead.

 

I told her to go corruptor, but it's her toon and she has decided it will be a defender (I'm certain she'll play a corruptor at some point, not like there is a real toon limit). She's currently just picking powers that look interesting and goofing off as she shoots things in Task Forces, but I suspect she will be level 50 reasonably quickly, she is level 19 as of this morning and made the character 2 days ago.  Whatever we build here will most certainly be her second spec and used for high level content exclusively, mostly level 50 but maybe a Manticore Taskforce or the like, If she exemplars down, there will be a different spec for that as those have a different set of demands.

 

1 hour ago, SeraphimKensai said:

Does it have to be hover/fly or would Mystic Flight work with vfx minimal? Reason I ask is because Rune is really nice to have and enflame is decent enough.

 

That's an interesting thought,  I've never actually tried to run about long term with mystic flight but no hover.  Does this work for you as I would think movement would be. . spongy?  Is that the word? I'd be keen to have her try it, guess we're doing a test tonight and see if she likes it.  Thanks for the Idea!

[MonteCarla]

Aww, this makes me happy! 🙂

A Sentinel-that-Buffs!

 

I agree with some of JJ Draken's changes.

I reckon if you go Fighting for Tough and Weave for early invulnerability then Scorpion Shield is probably overkill on Defence and can be swapped out for a Resist shield in another epic.
It's pretty easy with Tough and say Electric Armor to hit 75% S/L resistances as well as capped defences.  That makes a big difference to a lot of the heavy hits in the game, like Freakshow Tanks. I'd also tend not to turn on Tough until I got my epic shield to save on endurance. Till then its just a passive +6% defence with the two IOs. 
 

I also tend to split Vigilant Assault between two powers to get the Recharge bonus twice.

 

And I try to fit Force Bomb in early like you did originally - its your AoE -Res power.

 

Mystic Flight is a cool idea. That also gives you the ability to teleport to a teammate in another room who may need your protection.

e.g. bind Q "powexeclocation target Translocation"

 

It will feel spongy flying without hover - maybe take Hover as well instead of the Stealth pool?

 

[Carnifax]

Freeze Ray > Bitter Freeze Ray. That's an easy swap. The reason is the animation time. FRs Damage per second is nearly twice that of BFRs. Bitter FR is sloooow and you'll end up corpse blasting a lot. Freeze Ray is quick and snappy. You can dump a Freeze Ray + Bitter Cold Blast onto someone and Bitter Freeze Ray is still animating (2.07 for the 2 compared to 2.5 seconds for BFR). 

 

I've messed around with your build and come up with this variant. A lot of your set bonuses were small enough (1.5% smashing resist isn't work 2 slots IMO). 

1. BFR -> FR I've discussed. Essentially you get a decent and very quick blast. Corpse Blasting begone. With the PBAoE heal ATO it becomes "Spam and hopefully green numbers will show"
2. Force Bomb has crap damage, so turn it into Proc Bomb instead. Forced Feedback procs give jolts of recharge, good for self-recharge (since we're going the proc route), Elemental, Hasten and your nuke. It's 0.67 knockback so didn't bother with a KB2KD IO. 
3. Switched Replusion Field (which is annoying on Teams) for Flash Freeze for giggles. Solo / in a duo it can be a useful panic button. It'll do a little bit of a heal now. Also since it does damage you can get away with proccing it (the sleep comes after damage + damage procs so it's not self-breaking). 
   You could go for Repulsion Bolt as a "Get out of my face" with another Forced Feedback instead if you like (and / or a KB2KD to turn it into "Fall at my feet")
4. Hoarfrost is a Heal + MaxHP. So slot it for that. Going Numina's gives you max HP from it, Ranged Def which is good for getting over the magic 45% and +Regen and +Recovery for 120 seconds after triggering.
5. Frozen Armour was underslotted for Def. It's going to give you the main chunk of S/L defence so might as well max it. Good spot with the uniques in here, no need for Fighting. 
6. Ice Elemental is now useful for you (and gives some Ranged Def and Recharge as good Set bonuses). 60 second downtime
7. Blizzard : Won't proc often so may as well go 6 Winters and hit 45% on Fire and Cold. Never really worth Proccing Ice Storm or Blizzard sadly, I've chugged the numbers via Log parsing. 
   For Ice Storm a full set of Ice Mistrals might be better. Proc still isn't great but just to get that AoE Def if you want it. Ice Mistral means Slow enhancements so stuff runs out of it slower which is always good. 
8. Health and Stamina looked underslotted so added slots to those and got a Miracle and a End in there
9. Similarly if you're going Hasten then 2 slots for 2 50+5 Recharges maxes it out. 

 

 

Force Blizzard2.mbd

Edited March 19 by Carnifax

[BurnTheWitch]

On 3/19/2025 at 7:20 AM, Carnifax said:

Freeze Ray > Bitter Freeze Ray. That's an easy swap. The reason is the animation time. FRs Damage per second is nearly twice that of BFRs. Bitter FR is sloooow and you'll end up corpse blasting a lot. Freeze Ray is quick and snappy. You can dump a Freeze Ray + Bitter Cold Blast onto someone and Bitter Freeze Ray is still animating (2.07 for the 2 compared to 2.5 seconds for BFR). 

 

I've messed around with your build and come up with this variant. A lot of your set bonuses were small enough (1.5% smashing resist isn't work 2 slots IMO). 

1. BFR -> FR I've discussed. Essentially you get a decent and very quick blast. Corpse Blasting begone. With the PBAoE heal ATO it becomes "Spam and hopefully green numbers will show"
2. Force Bomb has crap damage, so turn it into Proc Bomb instead. Forced Feedback procs give jolts of recharge, good for self-recharge (since we're going the proc route), Elemental, Hasten and your nuke. It's 0.67 knockback so didn't bother with a KB2KD IO. 
3. Switched Replusion Field (which is annoying on Teams) for Flash Freeze for giggles. Solo / in a duo it can be a useful panic button. It'll do a little bit of a heal now. Also since it does damage you can get away with proccing it (the sleep comes after damage + damage procs so it's not self-breaking). 
   You could go for Repulsion Bolt as a "Get out of my face" with another Forced Feedback instead if you like (and / or a KB2KD to turn it into "Fall at my feet")
4. Hoarfrost is a Heal + MaxHP. So slot it for that. Going Numina's gives you max HP from it, Ranged Def which is good for getting over the magic 45% and +Regen and +Recovery for 120 seconds after triggering.
5. Frozen Armour was underslotted for Def. It's going to give you the main chunk of S/L defence so might as well max it. Good spot with the uniques in here, no need for Fighting. 
6. Ice Elemental is now useful for you (and gives some Ranged Def and Recharge as good Set bonuses). 60 second downtime
7. Blizzard : Won't proc often so may as well go 6 Winters and hit 45% on Fire and Cold. Never really worth Proccing Ice Storm or Blizzard sadly, I've chugged the numbers via Log parsing. 
   For Ice Storm a full set of Ice Mistrals might be better. Proc still isn't great but just to get that AoE Def if you want it. Ice Mistral means Slow enhancements so stuff runs out of it slower which is always good. 
8. Health and Stamina looked underslotted so added slots to those and got a Miracle and a End in there
9. Similarly if you're going Hasten then 2 slots for 2 50+5 Recharges maxes it out. 

 

 

Force Blizzard2.mbd 40.8 kB · 6 downloads

 

 

Thanks so much for all of this insight. We often forget things like animation time unless when know a Powerset well.  Do you think the ice elemental is worth it from a DPS perspective?  I was never sold on the power but couldn't really figure out what else to place there.

[Carnifax]

Honestly I've never used it. From reading CoD (https://cod.uberguy.net/html/entity.html?entity=pets_iceelemental) I can see it's a melee pet, and you'll be able to make it tough as nails with FF so I could see some worth as a tough Tank & extra damage. It's essentially "free" damage in terms of animation times once you have them out, they'll just attack things for you (but you have no control on what they attack). 

 

The most important thing is that it has a loooooong recharge so if you do want it you really want to slot it up to have it around as much as possible and as damaging as possible. Plus good set bonuses. 

 

I have Epic pets on a few chars. They tend to be on chars with a lot of Global recharge to make them perma (Illusion / Dark controller with the spider from Mace Mastery and a Time / Sonic / Soul Defender who has silly amounts of recharge from Chrono Shift & set bonuses so has a perma Fortuna). I do have the Mu pet on a Grav / Trick Arrow, not quite perma but still useful. 

 

Definitely not required or build defining but if you like it keep it. It'll be pretty unkillable with Forcefields buffing it.