Frosticus

It's not that hard of a build to get up to about 35% s/l def (or melee if you like), but getting any of the other def types up to decent levels is a challenge.

But between Lrod, blazing aura, bu, FE, fireball how much def do you really need?

I'd personally focus on recharge to you can get Lrod, bu, fe, fireball, and healing flames up as often as possible and play it like a walking nuke. ie. handle with care.

stone spear, hurl boulder are definitely skippable. You'd get considerably better damage out of slotting ring of fire and char for damage if you really need ranged damage . Considerably better heh.

Mudpots you might find you end up not getting a lot of mileage out of even though you are a pbaoe specialist with fire control. The aoe is absurdly small and just doesn't lend itself to dominators because we don't bunch things up as tight as tanks/brutes, but rather stun/immob/quake them while they are grouped but far too scattered for such a pathetic radius.

Unless you corner pull, or are plant. Then again dom version of fissure is so small to compared to the troller version you made need to get used to finding a way to clump mobs tightly.

It seems strange that the last round of dominator changes went about making all of the pbaoes larger if they were under 15ft (ie whirling hand, Ice Circle) and all of the parton aoes are 15ft too. I thought "yay, the devs finally realized that doms don't herd like brutes " and then earth assault was released with two tiny radius aoe powers. Confusing.

Great corrs I've played or am playing.
Fire/rad (just a versatile freak, wish I hadn't deleted it at 35)
Fire/cold (wow aoe damage)
Fire/traps (lol AV's)
ice/rad (safe and flexible)
elec/kin (sapper)
rad/therm (wish I hadn't deleted it at 32)
rad/dark (only thing dark miasma doesn't excel at is -def, problem solved)

I've played a few others into the 20's like fire/kin, but just didn't get into it. But pretty much every corr is good/great, just find one you enjoy as that is more important than trying to shoehorn enjoyment into a powerbuild.

I put a cowboy hat on my fire/storm and colored all my storm powers to look dusty/dirty and my fire powers to look like dirt.

I was pleasantly surprised how well steamy mist turned out to look like I was kicking up dust/dirt as I ran around.

I recolored the kin colors to be more representative of what they do on my plant/kin. ie transference is very blue now, fulcrum is angry red, transfusion has a lot more green to it, but I haven't done anything to plant as of yet.

I've wanted to play a cold troller for quite some time and I'll probably end up making it a fire/cold. I just have to settle on a build that I like in mids before i get cracking and decide what I ultimately want the toon to accomplish.

I was a little bit sad that for w/e reason I have full color spectrum on my defenders freezing rain on my storm/son (ie can make it red/yellow/bright green w/e), but on my storm troller it only gives options for drab flavorless colors.

How to skip a travel power on x/rad.

A. get lots of +rech for as much uptime on AM as possible.
B. Slot AM with 1-2 runspeeds
C. Get swift slot with 1-2 runspeeds
D. Slot sprint with 1-2 runspeeds.
E. Get powerboost and cast before you click AM.

= ~56 mph (65 mph for the 15 sec pb is actively boosting sprint too)
w/o pb = 44.5 mph

Unslotted superspeed = 64 mph
2 slotted quickness+2slotted swift+2 slotted sprint = 46 mph

F. Get shadow shard flight pack.

Poison trap is still a really good power, just different than it used to be. Unless your team is really fast a decent traps build will have PT up every spawn, which means an aoe mag 3 hold every spawn. It's like having Flash (aoe hold) up every spawn, but then you slot it with a lockdown +hold proc and it then sort of works like volcanic gases over time too. It also flatlines AV regen (as in 0 hp/sec).

Seeker drones are a hidden gem. Ya if you have a decent damage sponge they are generally unnecessary, but for all those people that have ever cast their troller pet (singy, or pooman for instance) to break up an alpha that is exactly what seekers are designed to do.

Mez protection +21% def to all. I think FF users might be jealous

Decent -res/-def up every spawn except on extremely fast teams (which means difficulty is set too low, or your -res is unnecessary anyway). And extreme -res in tough encounters.

If traps isn't working well for you in a team it is because of you, not because of traps. Now I'm not saying it is the best teaming set, not by a long shot, but it can keep up in teams if YOU can keep up in teams.

Finally, in another thread I posted a non-gimp traps/son with softcapped def to every position and every damage type possible. Think about the build flexibility that implies for a second. Seriously, I don't think there is another set in the game with that kind of flexibility. It is so easy to build a massively survivable traps def that can just go full tilt in every scenario that it is a bit upsetting for toons like my storm/sonic, that can be insanely powerful, but usually has to hold back due to survivability issues, or at best has to wait for a "tank" to gather the agro before I can unleash. That gets old fast. I don't like being babysat.

Whatever control you can get out of TF you can get more out of Tesla cage.

Add the lockdown hold proc and a devastation hold proc and pretty dang often you'll one shot hold bosses. Neither proc is very expensive.

TF:
Base 109
w/ 3 SO's = 212
+aim = 267
+aim+pbu = 354

It used to one shot stun bosses, but was reduced to mag 3 so you need to stack it with another stun, which you probably don't have.

It does 109 base damage. Comparatively Lightning blast does 59.

The only toon I've felt that defender total focus "rocks the house" on was my storm/sonic. I'd stack up ludicrous -res hit aim, pbu and hammer out huge numbers with TF, but that was an extreme corner case.

I dunno, if you really need another attack then it can work. It tends to be pretty meh on defs though.

See my thread about the traps/son mids build I made. Traps is certainly not lacking.

It won't be popular though, it has no green and it doesn't play nice with fast moving teams.

But for anyone looking to crush solo/small team, walk through AV's and even solo GM's - traps is great.

that said, I'm not sure I'll ever roll a traps fender. I'm just finishing up my fire/traps corr (48) and suspect I'll be traps'd out for a bit. I'd proly want to do a thugs/traps before a traps fender too. I've got a mids build that has softcapped s/l/e, ranged, and aoe def and all my pets are softcapped to... well just about everything.

Ya they crazy buffed the crazed. They'll tear you to pieces now heh.

Some mobs had a bunch of stuff added to them to make them more difficult. Maybe the enemies you are fighting fall under that category.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it appears you only run about 10% def?

Lots of things will end up hitting you. In fact about 4 out of every 10 attacks, which vs a large group will be a lot of attacks.

Are you fighting a different type of enemy now compared to an old one that perhaps didn't use mez attacks very much?

If dragons tail works anything like footstomp (and it does in this regard) then slap down burn and hit DT. Everything dies before it can get up and away.

Traps > this isn't your little brother's gadget set.

Ok so I was playing around with new traps and figured I'd pair it with sonic cause sonic is awesome and cause sirens' + tripmine would potentially increase the aoe damage otherwise lacking from sonic.

Anyway, I manage to softcap my def to:
EVERY damage type and position. (no use of pvp def IO either!)

It also has 66% s/l res and 47.5% global rech.

This isn't how I'd actually build the toon, more of just an exercise of whether it could be done. And the build isn't gimp at all

*just add 20.9% to all the totals as the new mids isn't set up to have FF gen as a toggle for totals (for defs only).

Seamless attack chain of shriek, scream, efence. Has howl for teams and provides 25.85% team def to all.

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I think traps looks like a pretty viable choice for defenders.

Ya def ignite looks pretty nice. Too bad they upped the recharge on it so much a while back.

Personally (and I'm am tentatively planning a rad/mm) I'd go /ice app and aim for s/l def. It just seems like the temptation to stand up close and personal is too high for me to go with a ranged def build.

Not to mention hp capped + drainpsyche regen sounds really nice ontop of that defense. Hibernoob "I don't lose" button too. Seems like a really survivable and high aoe damage blaster.

Anyway, this is just a skeleton build that already has 41% s/l def that shows just how little effort it will take as it still has lots of powerpicks and slots to play with and so far doesn't have wasted slots used just to "boost" def.

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