Frosticus

Unless you are using TO's in the 20+ game then yes. The buff starts at ~6% at lvl 1 and slowly scales up to the full 30 lvl 20 (iirc).

This "help" in the early game that people are citing is less than they believe, though still better than nothing.

Defender FF's is vastly superior to troller FF, probably moreso than any other shared set. Just how defense works. (well pre powerboost for the troller anyway).

I'm really not sure what you are talking about solo'ing a controller for, but suffice to say FF trollers tend to solo slower than other trollers for much the same reason defenders do, no offensive boosting powers. Maybe even more noticable on trollers as pets benefit from things like +dam and -res as well as you.

You can argue it, but you'd be wrong. FF defs can provide 90% mitigation before a fight even begins and mez protection. Dark may well be able to provide in excess of that, but it sure doesn't happen before a fight. You have to engage the enemy and risk defeat. Also darks powers have a cast time yes? How long does it take a dark to provide that mitigation? does it expose them to defeat before the mitigation is applied?

I can assure you that even though you (and others) don't assign value to proactive mitigation the devs definitely do.

I don't recall stating it was ineffective, that was you who just said that. I did state the expected value of it and why it is perceived to be more powerful than it actually is. That information is publicly available via Starsmans testing, which to date is the most indepth analysis of the power afaik.
1. True if you are running out of endurance every single fight. But I'd suggest that if that were the case a larger issue would be needing attention.

2. I'll let you learn more about scourge before ripping this apart. But for now I'll just say that scourge results in overkill very often, that is with the low damage attacks, which means you wouldn't have been waiting for a high damage attack anyway.

I realize it is a lot easier to argue against something that was never said when you have no position against what I actually said, but I think that is called a strawman. Where you are getting this "useless" tag from must be your own mind. The only time I've even come close to saying scourge was subpar was on dark blast and that is demonstratively true.

Nor should they have an inherent that gives them "fast defeat". Well, unless corrs get an inherent that gives them "super buffs" while teaming.

That said I really don't care that defs are getting this change, my defenders that I've built with the intention to solo already do it on par with my non-fire corrs and it doesn't make much of an actual difference to sets like FF and emp while solo'ing, so I'm sure they'll be back asking for more improvements down the road.

Hey if they rework pistols so that they don't have redraw I'm game for pretty much any and every weapon coming over to doms regardless of how poorly they would perform.

Not ignoring anything, not sure why you'd even suggest that if you read what I wrote. It would be a new set for doms and would actually be awesome instead of a bottom feeder like DP would be. New set requiring similar amount of work as a new set. I know that sounds like a strange concept.

Much better than some hack job port that would be at the absolute bottom for burst, dps, and be a major PITA due to the excessive redraw when switching between primary and secondary constantly like doms do.

Regarding Illusion: I'm also not sure what you mean by "non-domination-building abilities" you know domination is primarily built by the assault powers right? Most builds don't have the ability to string together control powers as easily as they do assault powers. In which case the generally fast animations of blind and confuse will actually help build domination faster than slower animating sets.

Do you mean powers that won't be boosted by domination? Meh people said the same thing about earth when it was being ported, it worked out pretty well.

Additionally doms have been reworked to rely on domination far less. The principle is that a dominator doesn't require domination for encounters, which unless you are trying to say illusion under-performs in a non-domination state (which you'd be wrong) then you must be talking about its in-domination performance. Which you'd still have 4 control powers being boosted, which is only 1 less than earth, grav, fire and ice

So is the arbitrary cut off in your mind 5 powers being boosted by domination? What if the devs released information saying that an insignificant number take salt crystals, or flashfreeze? would that shift your arbitrary number, or would it still be 5? Just trying to get a feeling for why you are saying what you are saying.

I agree, but you'd be foolish to attempt that journey seeking something that "solo's quickly" and mate it to a set that does less damage than any other blast set until lvl 30+. That is the antithesis of solo'ing quickly.

I'll just repeat it again cause people seem to be missing my point.

If you want to solo quickly ice blast is a great choice, just make sure you get PL'd to lvl 30 because it is tied for the worst choice prior to that.

The value assigned to levels 1-30 is going to vary by person, but if you never reach lvls 30+ (like most players) then it accounts for 100% of the time spent on the toon. You increase the likelyhood of never seeing the 30+ game by selecting something that doesn't meet your expectations.

Here's my full answer for the OP; if you are looking for something that solo's quickly at:
lvl 50, ice is a top 4 choice
lvl 30+ ice is a top 4 choice
1-30 ice is one of the worst choices.
1-50 based on total time spent, ice is probably a top 6 choice.

The settings you choose to solo on will determine where it ranks within each subdivision.

1. He's an on again off again player
2. He's only reached 50 once (and it was a toon that hits its stride very early and just gets stronger and stronger)
3. He's going to be evaluating it against the scrapper (decent solo from the start, amazing later on) and a tanker (generally solid from the get go (every set other than /em, /ice, and /elec has decent damage from lvl 10 on).
4. He eventually wants to be powerful and clear mass spawns

Based on that criteria ice is going to be total fail unless he magically appears in late game with a fully built toon.

I'm certianly not taking up the torch trying to get SS ported unaltered to scrappers that's for sure.

I'm also not keen on the whining that would happen if they reduced it a bunch to give it to scrappers. Probably so many tears they would end up changing tank/brute SS too just cause scrappers are so special.

Nah, I'm j/k I like scrappers, but seriously the whining would be extreme if they only reduced scrapper SS.

Not sure about pvp'ers now, but pre i13 they were also some of the best pve'ers easily matching the feats of dedicated pve groups.

less so now, but if you used to be good at pvp you were by default pretty good at the game. Considering how easy the pve game is it resulted in some top caliber pve'ers when they had to do it.

I'll make the safe bet and just figure you really don't have any idea what you are talking about.

This statement assumes the journey to 50 is a weighty issue. It isn't. Certainly not compared to years past.

But if you are looking for a toon that solo's quickly why you'd pick something that is a dog for 60% of the levels and probably upwards of 35-40% of the time it takes the toon to reach 50* is beyond me.

*No the typical toon does not take 40% of their time to reach 30, but it very likely does on one as slow as pre BiB iceblast.

I dunno, but if you recall the devs said that the average player doesn't even surpass lvl 30 (or something like that) and a person asks for a good solo'ing combo from an AT that isn't generally considered to be a strong solo'er. I figure if you want someone to stick with something when the deck is stacked against it why make it an even bigger hurdle? Play a set that is good from out of the gate imo.

OP can do w/e they like, but ice blast is a bad choice for a defender if they aren't extremely patient (for solo play), just like I suggest people stay away from cold domination on corruptors if they aren't extremely patient. Cold dom, just like iceblast turns out to be one of the better sets if you wait it out and spend some sizable inf on it.

*My brute is lvl 39 in 46 hrs. I too have spent a lot of time on the market as the toon is fully frankenslotted and has just shy of 200M. I have solo'd the toon the entire time. Actually the one night I forgot the game was running and the toon sat at the mission entrance overnight. I'd say it is probably level'd at about 1 lvl per 30 mins. So ya about twice as fast. Not bad for almost no aoe damage. when I roll up a toon to "solo quickly" I do so with the intention of it not being slow. I don't expect my toons to go the speed of a brute, but I also don't expect it to go the speed of an ice controller, which is about what pre BiB ice blast does for defenders.

ymmv.

I'm using gimped in a relative sense. If we accept that conventional wisdom says you need to select certain primaries to solo quickly it only stands to reason the same can be said about secondaries.

Prior to getting BiB in the chain ice blast is the worst st damage defender, tied with elec blast.

I'm not sure how else to state that if you are prepared to wait until you have BiB then the set is very good, but prior to that it is less good than the other options.

I'm sure this has some relevance in your mind, but it isn't equating to anything in practice. What I'm saying is your personal experience is meaningless when weighed against the numbers. Every single defender secondary would have got you there faster (except elec). the only way that wouldn't hold true is if you were playing on something like -1/x6+ so that you could leverage the high DPA of icestorm without being hampered by its very long recharge.

I guess the x/sonic defs that have been dropping GM's don't count...

Killing AV's is much more determined by primary selection than secondary for defenders. If you pick a set with a decent -regen power you need about 25 dps to outdamage its regen. Which you could do with just powerpool attacks if you really wanted. If you pick traps you could technically defeat one with just brawl.

No argument from me. Mitigating incoming damage is great. But I have to wonder how many /ice players wouldn't happily switch BiB in place for freezeray? After all, killing is the ultimate mitigation. That is effectively what arch does, instead of a non-damage mez power it gives you the tier 3 blast early. It gives you your mez power when the game spawns mezzers in pretty much every spawn (ie 30+) rather than in the teens when mezzers are much more easily avoided.

Again no argument, you are absolutely right about being limited on slots while leveling.

Which makes it really nice that both arch and sonic have much faster cycling attacks built right into the set.
Arch: 2,4,10
Sonic: 3,6,10
Ice: 4,8,12

What this means is that both arch and sonic have much lower requirements to have a saturated attack chain. Ice ultimately has a higher DPS potential under high recharge if you ignore the -res of sonic, but it takes a lot of money to acheive it. With just SO's ice is surpassed by both arch and sonic in ST damage.

Yep the cone is useful, so is howl+shockwave and it does a lot more damage and more mitigation than frostbreath. Fistbull of arrows, while less damage than Frostbreath, cycles 2x faster and actually does more damage in the same amount of time.
This of course assumes you only fight a group once per minute and that you have a primary that can keep them in it for the 15 seconds

I'm willing to accept that pre BiB ice is a quick solo'ing set in the same way that forcefields is a quick solo'ing set. But I think that most would agree that the extra safety they afford probably isn't worth the reduction in kill speed from a solo stand point.

If you switch it over to their evil brothers, fire blast is far and away the most popular set for corrs both solo and teamed. This is because even with reduced values the mitigation offered by the buff/debuff sets is "enough" to get you to the point where more damage is the main goal. Especially if you are looking for something to fit the definition of "solo quickly".

Its a bit less that it is buffing "base" damage as all damage buffs operate the same way and a bit more that that scrappers have higher buff scalar than brutes for damage.*

If AAO was equal strength on a brute ie 19.38 w/ 1 enemy, 81.3 w/ saturation instead of 15.5 /w 1 enemy, 65 w/ saturation their damage would be much closer. Scrapper would still edge it out, but brute has a lot more survivability.

If Shield Charge was able to use the brute ability to have low damage leverage by ridiculous damage caps it would be more in line with the scrapper version. Unfortunately, a brute just has sneeze at a spawn and they can hit the ceiling on SC. The result is that scrapper SC ends up being nearly 1.5x as good as the brute version. When you consider brute SC is already crazy good and then make it 50% better than that well....


*The same thing can be seen in defenders vs corruptors except in their case it is the AT that starts out lower and without crits that has the much stronger buff scalar. The result is that soul draining defenders can actually surpass average corr damage even with scourge taken into account. It helps that def soul drain recharges in half the time of the corr version, but that is a different discussion.

Well it is actually lvl 31 before your St chain is decent. And no the trip to that point is not quick when you only have a 4 and 8 second attack. It's quick if you team it, but the thread title disagrees with that condition. It's so not quick it is actually slower than every defender blast set except elec.

IME if the time it takes to get a painfully slow set up to speed is any point after 30 then it is very nearly half the leveling time. Not to mention it pretty much sucks playing it up until that point, but ymmv.

If someone is asking me about a quick soloing defender I'd only recommend ice if they have a PL to 30 ready to go. It is great after that point.

Sonic and Archery are the correct answer if the question is something that can solo quickly throughout the entire game, they mature early and keep getting stronger. Ice joins the mix if you are ok waiting until lvl 31 to start solo'ing "quickly".

And if you are looking at end game solo'ing speed I'd probably say a traps/arch/dark is the fastest you can make. It has the best primary for the task, the best aoe, decent st, and can self cap damage quite often. It tears through 0-1/x8 quite quickly even by the standards of other AT's.

Just to highlight what I'm talking about:
Arch gets a nice st chain by lvl 10. That chain eventually does 34.5 raw dps (arcanatime included) and burns 4.4 eps.
Ice gets its chain by lvl 28. That chain eventually does 38.5 raw dps and burns 5.8 eps

The question at that point is whether you want to wait that long to gain a little bit more damage and you will definitely need to have your endurance consumption under control if you plan on going ice.

For an AoE perspective it is the opposite, ice matures earlier, though arch isn't gimped in the early game like ice is for st. And in the end arch is way ahead of ice in aoe even with ice storm and blizzard set to blaster standards.

I think it will still be quite some time before they port over the sets with extreme DS attacks (like KO blow, seismic, ET). IIRC they even lowered the damage a bit on Greater Fire Sword during the port to scrappers.

If/when those sets finally show up for scrappers I very much expect the extreme attacks to only partially crit, similar to total focus for stalkers.

You would have never "caught up". AAO is quite a bit better on scrappers and Shield charge is soooooo much better.