Deacon_NA

I rebuilt my elec/elec to 30ish% melee def the same time Energize came out. Survivability went up dramatically after that respec. Unfortunately I can't make an assessment of which of those 2 had the great effect.

I do disagree that Rikti resistances are "hella frustrating". I think the number is 20%ish. I can't access those Culex spreadsheets right now, so I'm going from memory (which is subject to failure, cascading failure at times). Yes, they take longer. I did choose Gloom to help with that scenario as well. If another spawn is close enough, I'll just drag them over so I can begin the AOE chain all over again that will kill the old bosses without me having to spend too much time with the weak(er) ST attacks.

I think if you got to 90% resistance, across the board, you'd have a toon that would get less debt (maybe none ever) than a 45+% def toon.

Back in ye olden days, I'd park my /elec armor brute in that back room of Rikti in that AE mission (you know the one), go away for a half hour, let my damage aura do its thing, come back to aggro more Rikti and go afk again. I could not die with 90% resists to the energy damage. Statistically speaking, you WILL hit an unlucky streak eventually, I doubt a Def based only character could ever afk farm.

This 90% resists toon doesn't exist in nature though. I suppose a Dark Armor toon with a Sonic (for all but Psi) and a couple of Darks (for psi) could cap across the board.

This has proven extraordinarly frustrating doing the jailbreaks in mayhem missions. I go upstairs, a +2 PPD Kheld Boss (or 2) starts hammering me, probably mezzing me (I know, carry BFs). Meanwhile the pets sit there getting whittled down by aoes (or direct attacks if I'm mezzed) and doing NOTHING. This encounter right now is the biggest challenge my MM faces, even over 90% of EBs. For now I have to chew down 2-3 purples and a BF before I can enter the elevator and pray I don't get an unlucky 5% hit, else the def debuff cascade happens real quick.

My Cold/Ice is one of my personal “signature” characters, a go-to for Master Runs, CoP, whatever is a challenge.

Weakness – leveling up you will most certainly be the least protected member of the team. Now, with a mature IO set build, that’s no longer the case for me, but from 1-49, I saw more death than the rest of the team (I’m quite trigger happy with the AOEs).

Strengths – It’s not just a “Jack of all trades” it’s also a “master of some”. By that I mean, even on teams high on Defense buffs (VEATs, bubblers, other Colds), there’s still a bunch of debuffs that are always useful (Sleet for –res, -def) and Benumb is an AV crippler.

As for what to take, both sets are full of goodies. I’m not such a fan of Bitter Freeze Ray and can’t advise taking it. With the i19 changes to Fitness, I’ll certainly work Frostworks back into my build, even if it’s 1-slotted with a Health IO.

Sounds like you're dual boxing.

In that case, you want

a) A low maintenance secondary
b) self sufficient henchmen for a primary

For a), I give a strong recommendation to /FF. Bubble up every 4 minutes and go. You can just bubble the brute if you want. Thermal would be quite nice too, with Shields+ Forge. Dark is an active set and I don't suggest that for what you're doing. Traps would be ok if you dual-box well (just hit 2-3 buttons for each spawn).

Demons should be fine to satisfy b). Zombies should work too. Just so your Brute holds aggro well enough.

To get the henchmen to attack, I suggest placing the boss, one lt and one minion on aggressive. The MM won't take much fire, other than AOEs, so 3 in BG mode will diffuse enough damage.

Edited to add - my one dual-box combo I took 1-50 was a Brute (elec/elec) and Thugs/FF. Worked very well. In fact it was eye-opening (in a bad way) when I started taking my Brute on teams and that layer of defense was missing (he's since been built with IOs to be more self-sufficient).

They both sound like high-end options to me. Do you do super speed tf/sf runs? If so I'd suggest the ranged def option. I think of how painful LGTF super speed runs can be on my squishies without high levels of def. Cap range and pop a break free and you should be able to make it to objectives with no issue.

One of these days I'll write out the analysis, but without a doubt, the Gauss proc is substantially better off in Tactics than Build-up and it's not close.

This does make me want to check out some heroside pugs to see "I'm invincible" tanks meet up with stacked disruption fields and a liquefy, among all the other goodies Longbow offers.

No no, we should report this as giving pvp rewards (rep and PVP IOs) so that it gets on a fast track to fix.

Kin/Sonic is not only fun, the pairing has a true synergy. Kinetics to get much (max frequently) damage, /Sonic to pad -Res debuffs, to take teammates to the damage cap and beyond. It's not "easy" since /Sonic's main AOE requires you to jump out for cones, but well worth the effort.

This statement was a puzzle to me:

Well this is an easy one, there's no alternatives to Brutes for SS/Inv, SS is not available to Scrappers. You could go Inv/SS with a Tank. That is a viable alternative. Which is better? Do you like Smash or getting Smashed?

I had this dilemma too. I'm sure this won't be a problem once we learn by heart where the contacts are and what level to visit them. For now, as someone trying to experience the new content with a fresh perspective (in other words, not reading any info on the zones), it's quite frustrating.

I ended up just joining a higher level team for 4 levels to get from 4-8. I really wish it was more clear how to get these contacts.

The Fear, Confuse and Sleep sets that offer 6.25% recharge should be cheap and easy enough to have slotted out by level 30ish. On the other hand, those are probably not the powers you want 5-slotted early on. 6-slotting Kinetic Crash in either of your kb powers will give 7.5%, also a snipe gets 7.5% at the 5th slot. This combo can get a pretty hefty global recharge early in life.

There's no reason Mind/Sonic shouldn't solo just fine and be a solid teammate.

By all means Fitness (to include Stamina) is needed because Sonic Resonance can be brutal for endurance consumption.

For soloing, Dominate, Levitate, Confuse and Mass Hypnosis create ludicrous amounts of safety and respectable damage. Sonic Dispersion from the secondary is great for solo. Sonic Siphon, which you have to take (first power in secondary), can make her damage more respectable.

Since you mentioned teams, Sonic also has two ally bubble powers that will make your daughter a welcome addition, she just has to remember to reapply them before they expire 4 minutes after given. My last thought for teams, Terrify would be very helpful for teams, for crowd control.

I'd be careful about using KB sets in Jolting. It has a .66 mag kb so it does knockdown. Adding enh (and almost all pieces of the KB sets add more kb) will increase the mag >1, which will knockback, away from your Aura (and everybody else). Not what you want.

My Dom is only lvl 10, but I think both are useful. JC recharges pretty quickly and CA seems surprisingly effective at sapping.

The journy continues...

If the OP is finding Demons "squishy" I'm not all that sure s/he would find Bots what s/he needs. It's my opinion that though Demons are probably a bit less survivable on their own (independent of secondary) than Bots, but the difference isn't so great. Demons have heals too, and resistance.

The OP mentions being 21 and that's just a tough stretch for MMs. Better days are around the corner though. At 24 you get your 2nd T2 and at 26 your boss pet. A level 21 Bots MM is no picnic either. I say stick with it, I see no reason why Demon/Dark wouldn't be as effective as any MM combo (though I've never paired them).

Went for Elec/Energy, simply because /Energy and /Thorns are the two Assault sets I haven't taken to 50 and Energy seemed to mesh better (ST versus AOE centric).

I think Shadow Meld will be more effective for Scraps. With my Stalkers, the choice is:

a) Start with SM and waste some of it's time up as I activate BU + AS
b) Use SM after using AS and waste some of the BU

Without having to deal with the AS animation, Scraps should be able to get a lot of use out of it.

I spent a good half hour on this once before finally reaching out to one of my SG channels. For me there was no glowing, I had to find the spot where the cursor turned to a hand. Quite annoying, exacerbated by the fact (well, my opinion) that the mission is extremely annoying all around.

I think it comes down to how you value the Shields. Slotted out, the Defender will add 31% +Def to a team, 23% of that is of the "go run off and solo cysts" variety (meaning ally shields). The Corr gives 23% and 17% respectively. That's a very real difference.

While it's tempting to say the Cold Dom set is about equal across Corrs and Defs (Trollers too) because the two sexiest powers are identical (Heat Loss and Sleet) so roll a Corr, the standard Defender buff/debuff advantages do apply to all the other powers.

Still, for me it comes down to the Shields when I need higher performance (SG wants to do super speed ITF/LGTF kinda thing) so I opt for my Cold/Ice over my Dark/Cold for those.

Also note that your DP attack's debuffs will be greater for the Def.

Having said all that, my post is merely to offer a differing viewpoint in a thread that had a lot of pro-Corr support and little for the Def and I just wanted to offer support for Def. The reality is that either will perform very well and if you (the OP) have any preference for one over the other, for whatever reason (Corruptor comes first alphabetically for example) then by all means go with your preference.