I am looking for a kinetics / water blast build.

[Everon56]

I normally play Tanks or Brutes and wanted to try something different, a friend suggested trying kinetics/water blast Defender. For my new alt, any help would be appreciated

[Psylenz0511]

I have not run a Kin/water blast defender, but I have run Kin./rad blast and Kin/sonic. Water blast has a defense d'ebuff secondary effect so it will make your activations 'hit' more often.

 

I like most of the water blast and kinetic abilities. Even 'Repel' can find usefulness on occasion. The second tier blast on water blast is kind of 'meh' for that level. The damage is unimpressive and it has a silly default animation. Most of my water blast characters love the self-heal 'dehydrate', but a kinetic gets a target AoE heal that you need to be inside the AoE to benefit. Dehydrate is a little redundant, but if it passes the accuracy roll, you will get heals at a greater distance and it has a decent single target defense debuff.

 

Most all abilities need accuracy slotting. Taking leadership for manuvers and tactics is reasonable. Assault is superfluous because you can hit the damage cap with fulcrum shift eventually. Assault does have some team benefits, but you should probably look for another good team ability such as: GRANT INVISIBILITY. With GI you can inviz your teammates, speed boost them and then stealth to the end of missions if you desire. Even with the invisibility, certain foes can 'see through' to hit you like nemesis snipers, rularuu 'eyeballs', and Rikti drones. NOTE: You need a separate ability to provide yourself with invisibility. Teleport target (formerly recall  friend) is always useful on defenders, too. You could try to get away without taking Hasten, I personally don't suggest it.

 

I spoke about distance in healing yourself from  transfusion targeted on a foe. There are really 3 types of 'range'. There is the usual range you think about where blasters work from to attack foes, melee range where foes can hit you (or you hit them) at close range. There is a third range I call kinetic range. Your buffs and heals will affect you and allies in the range, but its far enough from foes that they are unable to hit you with melee abilities. With experience you will find out the effectiveness of being in kinetic range without having to scurry away from melee damage as some charaters feel compelled to do (i.e. blasters), to fight.

 

I mentioned before the joyous occasions of using fulcrum shift to hit the damage cap for allies attacking targets.  Some kinetics try to hit the -recharge/speed cap with speed boosts and siphon speed. (By the way, like most kinetic activations, there is a second effect that debuffs foes, the speed debuff from siphon speed is irresistible. ) Before a kinetic ever hits the speed cap, where all  his powers are recharging at maximum rate to activate again, you will  find yourself in a curious situation where you are waiting for activations to finish animating before being able to perform another power.

 

I am sure others will hit the slotting, buffing and debuffing numbers, and a Mids build to fill  you in on the fine details of Kinetic/Water blast. Good luck