Cognito

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Choking Cloud, Tactics, and your debuffs? I hope you have many kinetic friends to keep your end rec boosted by speed boost.

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I run CC, Assault, Tactics, 2 debuff toggles, Combat Jumping, Acrobatics, and Epic Armour without considerable problems. All are slotted with end reducers of course.

Choking Cloud is the obvious power thats missing.

After that I would say leadership powers are your next priority.

Off the top of my head

1. Shadow maul is often unpopular with brutes. Whilst it is great damage, it has a very long activation time - which translates as less fury. And you need to get as much fury as possible. Its better to quickly cycle low level attacks (much better at building fury).

2. The other way to get fury is being hit. Energy aura has no "taunt aura" which means this is hard. And makes shadowmaul even less attractive. Also, you wont be Mr #1 Choice in teams because you are going to let squishies get beaten to a pulp. I would strongly recommend you get taunt for this reason.

I dont see the problem myself. Nearly every enemy does at least some Smash / Lethal damage, including Rikti, and Invun tanks get stupid levels of Smash / Lethal protection.

I have two concerns with tanks:

1. The occassional mission with all psionic damage (Im thinking of some Praetorian Arc missions). These are very rare, but non stone tanks (i suppose ice tanks have some protection with CE) are pretty much relegated to high HP, low damage scrappers. I.e. are deadweight.

2. Granite is over-powered.


IMO all other tanks are balanced. Ice gets superior aggro management (but runs the risk of unlucky streaks), Fire gets superior damage (but is the least resilient), Invun gets incredible S/L resistance (but is less resilient to everything else), and Stone,... well... yes, Granite Armour needs a serious look at (feirce stare at devs).

I really cant see the problem. Having played all armours bar stone they all feel pretty balanced - some are weaker in some situations, some are stronger, and all have a slightly different feel, but thats how it should be.

Well coming from a Rad/Elec and Kin/Rad defender perspective (never combined the two).

A few thoughts.

1. Mutate. one Recharge and thats it. Any more than this and the team probably isnt working properly.

2. Fallout. A much maligned power. YOu cast if for the massive debuff, not the damage. Useful on AV's particularly. Can be left till late in build, and is fine with just 1 accuracy.

3. Nova (Atomic Blast). Proceed with immense caution. You will NOT do enough damage to wipe ouut a mob (although will do a lot). You WILL get end drained. This means your debuffs die, and beleive me, you (and your team) do not want your debuffs to die. If you do get it, Id only advise using after you fire of an EMP, but personally Id skip it.

4. Consider leadership toggles. As a rad defender you will be in high demand for the STF at level 50. If you are considering running this, then you will have the awesome combination of teleport corpse to feet of AV, start fight with powerboost, vengeance, mutate, fallout. Words cannot describe what a massive change in the odds you will start with.

5. Teleport: I never found this an effective way of keeping mobs clustered. Its just to damm slow. Recall freind has its usefullness for fallout / mutate however.

6. 3 x End reducers in Enervating Feild and Radation Infection is advisable.

7. Radiation Infection priority is -to hit. I usually slot 3xEnd, 3xtohit debuff. Most toons can hit most enemies with the base defence debuff.

8. I have reservations about hasten. Hasten does not add anything to your toggle debuffs (your bread and butter). Lingering Rad should be up enough to be permanent anyway. If you are relying on heals being up more often then the team arent using your debuffs effectively. If you need fallout / mutate up more often something is probably wrong. Its only really useful to get AM up more often and to speed up your attack chain. Personally, I didnt get enough bang for my buck, and (for instance) a leadership power would bring more to a team than a faster attack rate now and again.

9. Consider Choking Cloud. Its end heavy, but if you can take the risk of being in the midst of the enemy (with clear mind or mez resistance) then I have managed to tank 6 man team spawns with the combination of this, LR, EF, and RI, with healing to mop up damage. Its that good. Yes, the other 5 in the team where impressed. But if half the spawn are held at any time, they all have -damage, -accuracy, -recharge (all being clustered around you and the anchor) then the damage mitigation is superb. Your only fear is being stunned / held / slept. (Its for this reason I went with superjump and acrobatics).

10. Tear your hair out levels 1-25, Enjoy 26-40, Be worshiped levels 41-50.


Finally, If you are in the hollows and the tank starts dropping into the red/orange. If the tank screams "DEBUFF PLEASE" rather than "HEAL PLEASE", add him to your global and team with him at every oppurtunity.

Funny I couldnt see death shroud in the build? I would advise getting this quite soon - will up your damage, make you better in teams, and help with salvage hunting (i.e. solo, defeat large groups of low level enemies).

Spines / Dark for all out AoE, of course.

I even have a psionic damage proc in cloak of fear now... that makes three damage aura toggles (of a sort!)

Reward = NO
Ladder = NO

They can start giving these things out when they balance out builds so that PvP isnt simply a "who has the most PvP build" contest.

When was the last time you saw a fire blaster in PvP?

A fairly key power (Not up there with the must haves, but pretty important). Whilst skippable, it will be sorely missed.

Its not really feasible to keep it on everyone without turning into a mindless buffbot. Which is pretty dull.

I use it:

Firstly, I keep it on defenders. Defender get's mezzed and its big trouble. Im particularly thinking of "toggle" defenders like radiation, and defenders who can unmez you (Sonic, Empathy, Kinetics), but really any defender.

Secondly, providing not too much hastle, tanks - who wont say No to the big +resistance boost.

Other than that I only use it if somebody actually get's mezzed.

At high levels this is a really vital power - so much mezzing occurs that you really need to keep those defenders working.

Shockwave at 38, has a great big nerf target attatched to it (it wont be, but it should be!). It does more damage than anything bar my melee attack, recharges quickly, is a large AoE.. AND does stuns...

err.... right... thats blanced.... *whistles tunelessly*

I think the reason Psychic Scream is dismissed is its sooo bad compared to Shockwave.. but thats only 'cos Shockwave is so gooood.

Psychic scream is what an AoE should be... lowish damage, reasonable recharge, longish animation. Bear in mind psi damage is the least resisted damage in the game.

If you team (and as a dominator, you should), I wouldnt miss either and slot them both up to the max.

Arctic Air and Choking Cloud together = you walking aura of d0000m.

Trouble is the endurance hog is collosal.

Ice / Rad is a bit like Spines/Dark scrapping. It is potentially awesome, but you have to overcome massive endurance problems. With Issue 9 this is now possible - albeit expensive.

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Personally, I think the question is why do you need Hibernate.

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Massive uninteruptable +Regen, +Recovery, +Self Intangible and you won't lose aggro if you slot properly?

I'd rather have that than Aid Self to be honest. Especially when the recharge is pretty good.

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Thats the trick. This build has no taunt power and no taunt enhancers in attacks or chilling embrace. I would strongly suspect that Hibernate would loose aggro quite quickly.

Personally, I think the question is why do you need Hibernate.

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Aid Self is a pretty good power for Ice tanks. Its great on my Ice/Ice tank - but courtesy of Ice Slick I have an even greater chance of firing it off so I dont know exactly how good it would be for Ice/Axe.

[/ QUOTE ]Oh, it's very good, it's easy to fire off with most herds. Definitely a power I'm keeping.

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If its PvE I would suggest thinking about Icicles. I suspect it would have significantly better DPS/DPE Thank Fireball for instance. Also you may want to compare it to Whirling Axe and see what comes up top. Endurance is hardly likely to be an ice tanks concern, so compare DPS from WA and Icicles (and consider Icicles does not require animation time which stops your firing off other attacks).

[/ QUOTE ]The thing with icicles is, the way I'm currently playing, groups don't last for a long time. Therefore burst damage (like fireball for instance) is much more nicer. And I'd rather not take more lethal damage attacks >_>

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I was thinking more of swapping it for one of your battle axe attacks - like swoop for instance. But as you way, it depends very much on who you team with and how big the team.

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Get taunt, also STF is pretty simple on an ice tank. Learn to team.

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This.

EDIT: Why anyone would ever get Aid Self on an Ice tank is beyond me. You have Hibernate which without a doubt is one of the most overpowered things in this game. If you slot Chilling Embrace for taunt duration you wont lose aggro for the duration of Hibernate.

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STF is possible with Ice Tanking, but IMO this is the one [censored]-up the Dev's have made on the STF - resistance is so much nicer Vs Lord Recluse.

Aid Self is a pretty good power for Ice tanks. Its great on my Ice/Ice tank - but courtesy of Ice Slick I have an even greater chance of firing it off so I dont know exactly how good it would be for Ice/Axe.

If its PvE I would suggest thinking about Icicles. I suspect it would have significantly better DPS/DPE Thank Fireball for instance. Also you may want to compare it to Whirling Axe and see what comes up top. Endurance is hardly likely to be an ice tanks concern, so compare DPS from WA and Icicles (and consider Icicles does not require animation time which stops your firing off other attacks).

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Any comments/Suggestions?

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Yeah get Taunt

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Depends on what you want this Toon for

If you going for PvE and teaming, I would suggest getting Icicles

If going for PvP I would suggest at least two IO in hibernate (this is a totally rocking power in PvP from my experience) - Id suggest you want this power as close to max out +recharge. Wheras for PvE I find this power spectacularly bad.

If you are aiming to use it for STF then taunt is quite frankly as close to a necessity as you can get.

Taunt would be good to get by level 40+. Its not easy holding AVs attention without it. I didnt see any taunt enhancers in any attacks or chilling embrace either.

Id guess from the build this is looking more like a PvP / Solo tank but I could be wrong.

Three priorities for a tank are: Smash/Lethal Armour, Mez resistance, and taunt aura. Pretty much impossible to be a tank without them.

Next priorities would be the HP increase/HP heal, and the various energy/fire/cold protection. All highly useful.

After that takes your pick. Personally, I would say taunt is the next priority, but opinions differ on the matter (See tank/taunt thread).

My musings from my level 50 Rad/Elec defender:

Synergy:

Actually nothing spectacular. Short Circuit and EMP have a slight synergy (end drain and -recovery) but firing off both will NOT end drain everyone. It will hold them for an awfully long time.

This combination works best as a melee defender. Of course, you cant always do this when lots of AoE mezzing gets flung at you because if your debuffs die, you tend to aswell.

The most effective combination is. Lay down the holy rad trinity (Enervating feild, Lingering Rad, Radiation Infection) and jump in. Everyone clusters around you (and hopefully the tank). All enemies in a nice neat debuff radius. CHoking cloud kicks in, as a fantastic hold. You unleash short circuit. 2 applications of this will end drain everything to zero.

Put all this together, and you may not be suprised to hear that you can actually "tank" mobs as long as you dont get mezz'd.

Acrobatics for kb protection is useful. Getting flung out of a tightly packed group is annoying at best, disasterous at worst.

A few other observations:

Rad Must Haves: Enervating feild, Lingering Rad, Radiation INfection, Choking cloud.
Rad Goods: Everything else. (And yes, I include fallout particularly if you want to do the STF but I would get it late for AV hunting)

Elec Must Haves: Short Circuit. Do. Not. Miss.
Elec Goods: Telsa Cage
Elec Miss: Thunderous Blast. Do. Not. Get. You have no endurance = enemies have no debuffs = calamity.


Stamina is NOT skippable. The elec endurance buff (to you) is small. Short Circuit on a large mob is about the only time you will notice a net end gain from a power. THe endurance buff, at best, should be thought of as something that allows you to blast without huge end problems.


Overall I think Rad/Elec is a very effective build for neutralizing enemies. It debuffs everything, end drains, and has very effective holds in primary and secondary. In addition, ELec offers at least two energy damage AoE effects which is a nice damage boost for a team.

Overall I prefer to it Rad/Rad. With the rad primary enemy defence is debuffed quite amply, and the extra effect of your rad secondary (-defence) is generally academic unless you are fighting high level AV's.

Oh dont get me wrong Teleport is about the only way to go for a Granite brute/tank or even Stone brute/tank. I certainly wouldnt contemplate a different power pool

[NB With IO there is limited potential to speed up movement rate now...]

I'm not knocking Granite at all. But the reality is its immense resilience is balanced by decreased damage output and less flexibility.

Of course, a fair proportion of the time, a Granite should have no difficulty in grabbing most of the aggro.

Im speaking more from a tank persepctive now, but all sets have different strengths and weaknesses - and all sets are better in some situations than others. For instance, facing a pounding AV like Lord Recluse in the STF I would definately prefer a Granite (providing the tank has taunt six slotted). Facing a shed load of cabal, sky raiders, or knives of artemis with 20 caltrops on the floor, I'd rather have an ice tank who can float over all those caltrops and maintain aggro happily.

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Also, Sonic/Fire = PBAoE pwnage :P

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Sonic/Fire might be quite solo unfriendly early on. However it makes up for that in high damage team friendliness, especially at low levels before there is much in the way of AoE.

Siren's Song and the DoT from the fire powers are going to be at odds though. So really the only synergy you have there is the -res from Howl and the AoE damage from the 2 PbAoEs.

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My blaster, Loud Speaker, is Sonic/Fire. Im the only one I have seen.

There is no particular synergy.
Siren's Song is not suited to any AoE. So i dont use 'em.

What I do find is that /Fire allows me to do lots of AoE damage that Sonic is sadly missing. Allows me to be more of a team blaster.

Standard tactic is teams is to start with build up / amplify, use Howl for cone damage and -res, Jump in to mob unleash /Fire PBAoEs, jump out again may have time for a few ST attacks on boss/Lt, Howl cone again, jump back in etc etc. An entertaining dance.

Only lvl 33 at the moment so looking forward to Burn and Hotfeet (slotted with slow) to really up the AoE damage.

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From what I've seen, taking Teleport as your travel power totally annihilates the "granite mobility" problem.

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Mitigates, does not annhilate.

In a tightly controlled team, on flat surfaces, against non-flying non teleporting toons, with none of your team using knockback or fear/scatter powers, with no ambushes, patrols or accidently aggro'd second spawns, then teleport will almost always compensate for granites lack of mobility.


Personally, I would say that, at least solo, Brutes work best be keeping up a huge amount of fury from rapid attacks (not being attacked) and charging without pause from one enemy to another. SS/Elec fits the bill: lots of nice single target attacks with +recharge from lightning reflexs, the option of using air superiority and haymaker to keep foes bouncing (and thus you not taking damage)

My Elec/Stone Brute is level 29. Sure, I can solo on him, but he dosent do so well. I have to teleport from mob to mob and I simply dont get that "Steamroller" feeling I do with otherbrutes. On a team, much easier. Teleport into a mob, taunt, get pounded, agro bar whips up straight away (I find getting hit much more effective than hitting for building fury) and unleash AoE hell.

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Due to the aggro cap ( 17 IIRC ) and that Auras/PbAoEs have a 10 target minimum, generally herding more than 20 is a good way to get your team killed. This means 1 spawn max on 8 man teams. Also AoEs have a limit of 10-16, so again, why more than 20...

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Yet despite this facts, I still see some teams try to group 3 spawns together. Complete waste of time at best, dangerous at worst. And they carry on, in a pig headed way, even when it blatantly isnt efficient and I mention these caps to them. So frustrating.

"Herding" by which I mean gathering several groups together has got to DIE!

"Clustering" by which I mean getting a spawn into a nice tight contolled group for AoE hell, should LIVE!

To my mind, SS/Elec.

Lots of single target damage.
Offensive secondary (Lightning feild, Lightning reflex)


As opposed to Elec/Stone [Granite]
Elec has more AoE attacks (Three clear ones + 2 semi ones iirc)
Stone looses mobility, cant steam-roller on full fury like Elec (running from one mob o another). Stone works best, IMO, as a team brute-tank (Brank?.. Brunk?... Trunk?) gather aggro from being hit and then unleashing big AoE attacks.

Im not quite sure why you specify the levl 20-38 range?

But id say go with whats more fun.

Aggro has to go somewhere. This basic fact seems to elude much of CoX players who think that if they avoid using AoE and only attack minions the aggro seems to magically evaporate into the ether.

If not the tank, then who?

Should update. Done the STF twice now with my rad defender. On the first run we would not have suceeded without fallout, in the second it was extremely helpful.

Forget the damage. Its a massive debuff that really helps hammer those +4 AVs.

If you are considering the STF, I would highly recommend this as the "filler" power at level 49. Its quite handy just 1 slotted for accuracy, but if you really want overkill you could 2 slot acc and maybe a recharge. Mines just 1 acc and it really, really helped.