Quason

[ QUOTE ]
Trust me. If it involved engineering, we would have found a different solution.


[/ QUOTE ]

*nod* I imagine that's the same reason an mob limit was hastily slapped onto all AoE powers rather than engineering a solution to the problem of mob stacking. It's always easier to nerf than to actually fix something, right?

You're going to play slightly differently depending on whether you're alone or grouped, so I'll deal with each separately.

Solo Strategy

The key here is stealth. You want to make sure you can position yourself for maximum effect without being interrupted. Spot your targets, make sure you have your toggled resistance power active (tough or temp invul), and make sure you have superspeed and stealth active. Position yourself so that every mob in the spawn is in range of your short circuit. Now, the fun begins.

You're going to take some damage here, and if there are mezzers in the group, you're going to get mezzed here. MAKE SURE YOU HAVE A FULL TRAY OF BREAK FREES AT ALL TIMES. I can't stress that enough. You don't need reds, you don't need blues, you don't need yellows, you don't need awakens. Bring a full tray of break frees everywhere you go. Don't worry about using them before the fight, just use them to free yourself once you're mezzed. This is why that third layer of defense (damage resistance) is so important. The mobs will aggro on you the moment you click Short Circuit, but won't actually be drained until the activation time is over, 3 seconds later. This pretty much gives everything you're fighting a free shot at you. However, with tough or temp invul, you should be able to easily survive that initial volley.

At this point, all or most of your opponents are completely drained and standing there patiently waiting on you to beat them senseless. If you've taken some damage from the alpha strike, now is a good time to hit Transfusion. Before you do anything else, use Siphon Power. The target doesn't really matter, but if there's a boss, target that. Now use Fulcrum Shift. Not only is your damage capped, or almost capped, but you've also applied your second layer of defense - damage debuffing. If you were mezzed and had to use a break free, bring back up your resistance toggle and acrobatics now. Your other toggles aren't necessary at this point. Now you're ready to start slinging some AoE electric death.

Ball Lightning is your best attack at this point. Everything should be gathered pretty tightly around you and standing there helplessly. Hurt them. Always keep in mind that your first priority power is Short Circuit. SC should NEVER sit in your tray charged and unused. If you have to delay an attack for a second or two to wait for SC, do it. DPS is meaningless when you're dead. The great thing about that, however, is that after the first application of short circuit when you open the battle, any subsequent application will be enjoying the benefits of Fulcrum Shift, making SC not only your primary line of defense, but a DAMN fine AoE attack as well.

Pretty much just chain Ball Lightning and Short Circuit till everything dies. When you need healing, use transfusion. When you need endurance, use Transference. As Fulcrum Shift becomes available, use it. The more you stack it, the more damage you're doing (until you cap) and the less damage you're taking. If there's a boss mixed in with the group you're fighting, make sure he's your target and use your single target attacks (lightning bolt and total focus if you have it) as they become available. Once you've got your first two layers of defense applied, you're safe. You can kill at your leisure. Keep telsa cage in mind... if you notice that you're still taking damage, look around for a mob you may have missed with short circuit and use tesla cage to remove him from the fight.

Once the fight is over, just make sure you bring up all your toggles (if you were mezzed) and repeat the process. The trick is learning the attack chain, or rather the lack of one. A meleefender doesn't have a particular pattern of powers he uses. He uses what he needs, when he needs it. In time, you'll develop a sense of what you need to do. Just remember your priorities. Short Circuit, Fulcrum Shift, then everything else as necessary.

Team Strategy

The way you play on a team isn't very different from the way you play solo, but it's different enough to warrant its own explanation.

If there's a tanker or scrapper, let them go in first, but don't be too far behind them. Give them just a couple of seconds to take the alpha strike, then follow them in and fire off short circuit. At this point, you and your entire team are safe. From here, you can pretty much behave exactly as you would solo. Just always remember your priorities (short circuit and fulcrum shift). If you notice that a mob has broken away from the main pack and is heading toward your blasters, just toss a tesla cage at it.

The difference between solo and team strategy comes into play against AVs. Remember how I said that this build suffers from a lack of single target damage? Nowhere is this more apparent than in AV fights. You just don't have the damage to contribute meaningfully in this particular situation. Also, AVs can't be end drained, so there goes your first layer of defense. However, you can be VERY useful if you stop focusing on drain and damage and start focusing on debuffing.

This is where Siphon Power is useful. As I mentioned, when you stack SiphP and FS, that's a -50% damage debuff on that single target. With two clicks, you can cut the damage potential of the AV in half. Reapply those powers as they come available to stack them, and you can very quickly reduce an AV to the 5% damage floor. Basically, you've just trivialized the fight. Keep those debuffs up and it's just a matter of time till the AV dies.

AAAAhhhh, but you can contribute to how quickly the AV dies as well. Not so much with the damage you're doing, but with another debuff: -regen. AVs have a very high level of regeneration, essentially negating a portion of the damage being done to it. Transfusion, however, has a -regen debuff. A few applications of transfusion, and you floor the AV's regeneration, making the fight go MUCH faster. Simply rotate Siphon Power, Siphon Speed, Transfusion, Fulcrum Shift and Total Focus if you have it and you become the worst thing that ever happened to Arch-Villians.

Just to give you some perspective on how powerful this can be, concider Nightstar. She uses Nova when you get her to 25% health, one-shotting defenders, controllers, blasters and very nearly killing some scrappers. However, when I fight her and use the tactics I mentioned above, her Nova does about 200 damage. Yeah, you read right... 200. So the attack that makes most teams run like hell when they see her approach 25% becomes a joke. Most minion attacks at that level do more than 200 damage.

The Build

Now, I'm not going to be so arrogant as to say "You must use my build or you will be teh gimp!" However, I have tested this particular build EXTENSIVELY, tweaking powers, slots, pools, etc. I promise you, this build works. However, what works for you and your own particular habits and playstyle might vary, so by all means, definately play around with it on test before you spec into it on live and make sure it works for you.

Exported from version 1.5A of CoH Planner
http://joechott.com/coh

Archetype: Defender
Primary Powers - Ranged : Kinetics
Secondary Powers - Support : Electrical Blast

01 : Charged Bolts dam(01)
01 : Tranfusion acc(01) hel(3) hel(3) hel(5) hel(5) hel(7)
02 : Lightning Bolt acc(02) recred(7) dam(9) dam(9) dam(11) dam(11)
04 : Siphon Power acc(04) recred(13) recred(13)
06 : Hasten recred(06) recred(15) recred(15) recred(17) recred(17) recred(19)
08 : Siphon Speed acc(08) acc(19) recred(21) recred(46) recred(50)
10 : Short CIrcuit enddrn(10) enddrn(21) enddrn(23) enddrn(23) enddrn(25) enddrn(25)
12 : Speed Boost endrec(12) endrec(27)
14 : Super Speed endred(14)
16 : Ball Lightning acc(16) recred(27) dam(29) dam(29) dam(31) dam(31)
18 : Swift runspd(18)
20 : Health hel(20)
22 : Stamina endrec(22) endrec(31) endrec(33) endrec(33) endrec(33) endrec(34)
24 : Stealth endred(24)
26 : Transference acc(26) endrec(34) endrec(34) recred(36) recred(36) recred(36)
28 : Tesla Cage acc(28) acc(37) hlddur(37) hlddur(37) hlddur(39) hlddur(39)
30 : Combat Jumping endred(30)
32 : Fulcrum Shift acc(32) acc(39) recred(40) recred(40) recred(40) recred(42)
35 : Super Jump jmp(35)
38 : Acrobatics endred(38)
41 : Power Buildup recred(41) recred(42) recred(42) recred(43) recred(43) recred(43)
44 : Temp Invulnerability recred(44) recred(45) recred(45) recred(45) recred(46) recred(46)
47 : Total Focus acc(47) recred(48) dam(48) dam(48) dam(50) dam(50)
49 : Increase Density damres(49)

-------------------------------------------

01 : Brawl Empty(01)
01 : Sprint Empty(01)
02 : Rest Empty(02)

You'll notice that I have more slots in Siphon Speed than I recommended earlier. The reason for that is the fact that I had some slots left over at the end of the build. Otherwise, this build exactly reflects all my earlier recommendations. As far as your damage resistance pre-APP, just be sure to work the fighting pool in there somewhere and respec back out of it once you get Temp Invul later on. This is just what the build is going to look like once you finish.

Issue 5

Okay, I hesitate to put this in here, but it has to be done for the sake of completeness. I don't want to get into a big thing here about how much the nerfs suck, but we do have to address them in order to stay effective.

<ul type="square"> [*]AoE limit - I'm not going to go into specifics (check the patch notes), but the point is that your AoE powers are limited in the number of mobs they can affect starting in issue 5. This doesn't affect the Kinetics line at all - Fulcrum Shift is still going to hit enough mobs to cap your damage. However, it's a huge kick in the balls to Short Circuit. If I'm not mistaken, Short Circuit will only affect 10 mobs, meaning your first layer of defense is only effective up to 10 mobs. That's perfectly fine for solo play since you will rarely, if ever, encounter spawns later than 10 solo, but it can be a problem in larger teams. Concider sticking to smaller teams, or playing a more traditional defender role in larger teams (hanging back, buffing, etc).
[*]Tesla Cage - All non-controller holds have had their duration cut. However, I'm fairly certain that it can still perma-hold if you slot 2 acc 4 hold duration (or a suitable combination of SOs and HOs). This should affect us too harshly.
[*]Blaster Cap - Blasters had their damage cap increased from 400% to 500%. This means that our damage buffs are now useful on them. So, if you decide you want to back up to the blasters and hit fulcrum shift, that's fine. Just keep in mind that you'll be missing out on most of the damage buff yourself. That's your business. Personally, this won't affect my playstyle in the slightest.[/list]
As far as I know, these are the only changes in I5 that potentially affect this build.

Conclusion

Playstyle is a very odd thing. Something that I find mindnumbingly boring, you might really enjoy, and vice versa. For that reason, this build is not for everyone. However, I would urge anyone who already has a kin/elec and doesn't play this way to at least hit the test server and try it out. You might actually like it. This isn't a "turn your brain off and kill things" build. You're going to be flying by the seat of your pants at all times. Any little screw up and you'll probably be face planting. And faceplant you will... often. But don't let that deter you... unlike some builds where your survival is beyond your control, this one depends solely on you. If you die, you'll know why.

In my opinion, this is absolutely the most fun you'll ever have in this game. It's hectic, it's fast paced, it's aggressive, and it's exhausting... but it's incredibly fun. No matter how many times I've done it, and no matter how long I play Captain Voltaic, completely neutering a spawn with a single click of Short Circuit just never gets old. I still chuckle to myself a bit everytime I do it.

Acknowledgements

Thanks go out to LuchadorFuerte for his fantastic team-oriented Kinetic Guide, Ladioss_Sopp for his kinetics guide from which all of the numbers in this guide are taken, Sir_Payens and his contribution to the kinetics community over the last 15 months, El_Rico who no longer posts here but was the original inspiration for the Meleefender build and this guide, Hoist for showing me how powerful a kin/elec could be in the first place, DarkCurrent for giving me a supergroup home when no one else would, the defender community as a whole for always being so helpful, The Mighty Storm for being such a hilarious jerk, and Bionexus for creating The Valiant, best damn SG on the Protector server. Thanks as well to everyone who took the time to trudge through my egotistical babbling and read this guide.

Electric Blast

Before I get to the powers, let me explain something. New to this version of the guide, I'm going to be recommending that you slot a recharge reduction in most attacks. I'm doing that because I've pretty much figured out that you're going to get a better return on your slotting investment if the powers are coming back faster, than if you simply slot for more damage. Since I wrote the last version of this guide, Fulcrum Shift's damage buff component has increased, so it should more than cover the amount of damage you're going to lose by replacing a single damage SO with a recharge SO. Please, just try it. If you don't like it you can switch back to 5 dmg 1 acc, but I think you'll like it.

<ul type="square">[*]Charged Bolts - Quick, low damage attack with a fast recharge.
Quason Sez: Like you have a choice. I don't bother slotting this, the damage output just isn't high enough to justify it. I slot 1 dmg.
[*]Lightning Bolt - Good damage, slower than Charged bolts.
Quason Sez: I like this attack. Respectable damage, fast animation, decent recharge. I slot 4 dmg, 1 recharge, 1 acc.
[*]Ball Lightning - Targetted AoE. Great damage, decent recharge.
Quason Sez:YEAH baby. This is my bread and butter attack. Some of you that have read my posts may have heard me mention "slinging AoE electric death." This is the power I use to do that. I slot 4 dmg, 1 recharge, 1 acc.
[*]Short Circuit - PBAoE DoT attack with a major end drain component and -recovery debuff. Decent recharge.
Quason Sez: This is it... this is the power you rolled your kin/elec for. It's all about Short Circuit. This power is what keeps you alive and slinging electric AoE death. Don't think of this as an attack, altho once you've hit a fulcrum shift or two it WILL do some pretty respectable damage. Instead, think of this as your primary means of defense. This is the most important power in your first layer of defense. Properly slotted, SC will completely drain anything up to +3 and keep them drained with the -recovery debuff. I just can't stress enough how crucial this power is to the build. 6 slot is as soon as possible. There's some debate over how to actually slot this. Personally, I don't slot for accuracy, but some argue that you should. However, I prefer to slot for quality over quantity with short circuit. I'd rather completely drain everything I hit and miss a few than hit more mobs and risk leaving them with enough endurance to continue attacking. Slot for 6 end drain, your other 3 layers of defense will handle the damage from any mobs you miss, and the power recharges fast enough (especially if you've got a siphon speed or two on you) to hit it again and catch the few you missed.
[*]Aim - Self accuracy and damage buff. If I'm not mistaken, this boosts your acc by 100% and your damage by 50%.
Quason Sez: Personally, I just don't find this all that useful. The damage buff is worthless to me since I'm capping my damage with fulcrum shift anyway, and the accuracy bonus doesn't last long enough to be all that useful. It'd be nice to use before you run into a spawn to use Short Circuit, but I needed room in my build for other powers and this was the first thing to get the axe. If you take it, don't slot it.
[*]Zapp - Single target snipe. Good damge, long activation, long recharge.
Quason Sez: Skip this. You're going to be in melee range, and the activation time is interruptible. You'll rarely be in a postion to use it.
[*]Tesla Cage - Single target hold with DoT.
Quason Sez: Love this power. Anyone who's familiar with my previous guides will know that I recommended against this, but I changed my mind. I'm allowed to do that, you know. I'll discuss strategy in a moment, but basically I use this to remove annoying mobs like Malta Sappers from the fight, as well as any mobs I may have missed with Short Circuit. Also, two applications (and it recharges VERY fast) will hold a boss. Personally, I have HOs in this power. 3 Acc/Mez, 3 Dmg/Mez. However, if you don't have HOs, slot 2 acc, 4 hold duration.
[*]Voltaic Sentinel - Damage dealing pet. It will use Charged Bolts exactly 10 times, then disappear.
Quason Sez: Skip this. As I mentioned earlier, the survivability of this build is based entirely on the skill of the player. As a result, playing this build requires precision. Having a mindless pet that shoots at anything it sees is counterproductive to that.
[*]Thunderous Blast - The only ranged "nuke" in the game. Massive damage, long activation time, long recharge, completely drains your endurance and prevents you from regaining it for a few seconds.
Quason Sez: There's actually a lot of debate about this power. I'd say this is completely optional and at the discretion of the player. Personally, I don't take it because I hate having to turn my toggles back on after I use it. However, if you do take it, please don't slot it. Any spawn large enough to justify using this attack on is going to be large enough to cap your damage on using Fulcrum Shift.[/list]
Power Pools

I'll list the pools I don't think you should take and why first, then list the four I think you should take.

Presence

I don't think I have to tell you why this is a bad idea. There's just no reason for anyone to take this pool at this point, imho.

Medicine

Say it with me, folks: "We are NOT healers.. We are NOT healers.." You've already got a heal. It's good enough. There's nothing in this pool you need.

Teleportation

Do you really wanna be the guy that has to go to the mission door and Recall everyone there while they go take bio breaks and make sandwiches? Me either. Skip this.

Flight

People generally take this pool for hover. It's a great power, don't get me wrong, but it's just not the right choice for a melee-centered build. You want to be right up in the mobs' hostile little faces (Fight Club reference for you, there), not floating 10 feet over their heads.

Leadership

Okay, here's where we get controversial. Personally, I've NEVER liked leadership, but after having recently done a quick and dirty poll of kin/elecs and what pools they took, I ended up looking like a moron since just about all of them had leadership. *shrug* Oh well. However, I'm still going to stick by my recommendation to skip leadership, especially in light of Issue 5 (I'll specifically address Issue 5 in another section). Since the Defense of maneuvers has been gutted in I5, Assault is completely worth less for a kinetic with fulcrum shift, and Vengeance requires a dead ally, the only really useful power in the pool is Tactics. I'm just not a big fan of blowing one of my four pool choices on a pool that I'm only going to use one power from. So, I still say skip this.

Fighting

I recommend that you take this pool, and then respec out of it later. Why? It's our third layer of defense. You have to throw away a power by taking either boxing or kick (doesn't matter which, you won't use either), but Tough is well worth it before you get your APP. Don't bother getting Weave, however. It's defense was also gutted in Issue 5. Also, don't worry too much about slotting tough. You won't really have the slots to spare for it, and the small amount of base resistance to smashing and lethal it gives you is going to be enough for now.

Fitness

The general wisdom is that kinetic defenders can get away with skipping this pool, and for the most part they're right, but for this build I still recommend that you take it. This is a VERY hectic and VERY aggressive build, requiring you to click buttons just as fast as your little fingers will move. As a result, you use a HELL of a lot of endurance. You're going to need both Stamina and Transference to stay ahead of the curve. Take Swift and Health, but don't slot them. Then take Stamina and 6 slot it as you're able.

Concealment

Stealth is a BIG part of this build, as I'll explain in a moment. I previously recommended that you slot stealth heavily for defense, but the defense component is supressed after you attack in Issue 5, so I'm backing off on that. Just leave it with the single slot and put an end reducer in there. If you want to take grant invis and phase shift, that's fine, but it's not necessary.

Leaping

As I mentioned when I discussed Inertial Reduction, I recommend you take this pool as your travel power rather than relying on IR. The reason is knockback. Like I said, this build requires that you're always active. If you slack off even for a moment, things can get very bad for you very quickly. That's why knockback is so deadly to this build. Those few seconds that you're on your back, your opponents are regaining their endurance and negating your first layer of defense. Acrobatics to the rescue! Acro has a very high magnitude protection against knockback. It will get broken through once in a while, but it's rare. This is hands down, far and away the best defense against knockback available to you. Combat Jumping is also nice for immob protection, but immob isn't nearly as fatal as knockback for the build. Take Combat Jumping (1 end redux), Super Jump (1 jump), and Acrobatics (1 end redux).

Speed

This pool is absolutely critical to the build. Hasten gets Short Circuit back up more often, enabling you to keep your foes perma-drained. Super Speed, when stacked with Stealth, grants you completely invisibility, which you'll need to position yourself to open fights with Short Circuit. Simply put, this build won't work without the Speed pool.

Ancillary Power Pool (APP)

The APPs were put into place in order to help shore up weaknesses in the Archetypes in the later levels. For kinetics, it's generally a toss-up between Electric Mastery and Power Mastery. The other two, while occasionally useful, just don't offer the tools that these two APPs offer kinetics. It seems like most kin/elecs take the Electric Mastery, but that's a bad idea for this build. I'll explain...

This build does massive amounts of AoE damage. "Slinging AoE electric death," remember? Well, the problem is that it doesn't do very well in the single target department. You'll see a spawn of 15 minions and LTs in a hazard zone and think "Lunch." You'll see a boss by himself in a mission and get nervous. It's just the nature of the beast. You'll take down the boss fairly safetly, but it'll take you a while. Power Mastery is the cure for that. Lets take a look at the powers...

<ul type="square">[*]Conserve Power - This power isn't all that great for us. Between stamina and transference, we're good on endurance. You can probably skip this.
[*]Power Build Up - Not only does this increase our damage output, making that boss easier to kill, but it also increases pretty much everything else we do to him as well. It makes our end drain powers more effective, it makes our Telsa Cage hold last longer on him, and if you don't want to go through the trouble of stacking two Tesla Cages on him, it makes the disorient effect of Total Focus last longer. This is just a great power all around. Slot this with whatever you can spare when you get it, all recharge.
[*]Temp Invul - Toggled resistance to smashing and lethal. The base is huge, so it's very noticable. Even after applying your first two layers of defense (drain and damage debuff), you'll notice a sizable decrease in the damage you're taking once you have this power. Slot it ASAP with 5 resistance, 1 end redux.
[*]Total Focus - LOVE love love this attack. This is the reason we're going with Power Mastery instead of Electric Mastery. While Thunder Strike, the equivalent power in Electric Mastery does similar damage, its secondary effect isn't nearly as good. Thunder Strike has a minor disorient effect that happens so rarely it can't be counted on at all, and even worse, it knocks back. As we discussed with Repel, knockback is BAD! Total Focus has a 100% disorient effect (at least I think it's 100%, i've never seen it NOT disorient) and doesn't knockback. Best of all, the disorient is longer than the recharge of the attack, meaning that you can keep a single target perma-stunned just by using this power. I slot 4 damage, 1 recharge, 1 acc.[/list]

Update Notes

First off, let me point out for anyone that might have been looking at my previous guide that so much has changed since that guide was written that this version will completely replace the last one. This is not going to be a compendium to v2.0. This guide will stand alone and include a LOT of new information and tactical suggestion. From now on, please disregard the previous version, as it no longer reflects my recommendations regarding the build.

Introduction and Argument

This guide is NOT intended to be an introduction to the Kinetics or Electric Blast powersets. I'm going to assume a certain level of familiarity with the powersets, so I won't be explaining each power in excruciating detail. For a very thorough and well-written introduction to the Kinetics powerset, please see LuchadorFuerte's guide.

This is a guide for a specific build using the Kinetics and Electric Blast powersets with a focus on melee range offense and defense. While it may appear to be a solo-only build, it isn't. I've spent a long time testing, tweaking, and perfecting this build with the intention of making it as solo-capable as possible while retaining usefulness in a team setting as well. This is the best balance I could find. Please be aware that this is a fairly difficult build to play, as it relies entirely upon your own skill rather than simply passive and toggled defenses to keep you alive. Whereas your typical scrapper or tanker's survival is binary in nature - he's either within his capabilities and immortal, or he's outside his capabilities and drops like a rock - the survivability of the Kin/Elec meleefender is solely dependant on the skill of the player. When you die (and you WILL die), you won't have to look far for the cause. For that reason, I do NOT recommend this build to anyone who might be new to City of Heroes, or even anyone who's new to defenders. My suggestion if you'd like to eventually follow this build would be to create a kin/elec defender and play it by LuchadorFuerte's guide. Then later, once you've advanced in levels and gotten a feel for the powersets and the archetype, concider respecing into my build.

Why Melee Range?

I get asked this a lot, and I can understand why. To someone unfamiliar with the build, it can seem strange for a defender to be in melee range with the tankers and scrappers. A defender's home is in the back with the blasters, right? Well, not in this case. I believe a Kinetic defender is much more effective when he stands up front with the meleers.

Take a look at the kinetics powerset:
<ul type="square">[*]Transfusion - AoE heal centered on the mob. Must be in melee range to benefit from your own heal.
[*]Transference - AoE endurance recovery centered on mob. Must be in melee range to benefit.
[*]Fulcrum Shift - This one is complicated, but also the best reason to be in melee range. When you activate this power, several things happen. First, the target and all mobs around him have their damage debuffed 25%. The debuff component is ranged, doesn't matter where you stand for that. However, the damage buffing component matters. There's a 50% damage buff centered around the caster, and a 25% AoE damage buff centered on each mob effected. In other words, I can stand back with the blasters and buff them 50%, while the meleers get buffed 25% for each mob. In that case, the only benefit that I the caster get is the 50% buff. However, if I stand in melee range, I and all the meleers get the full blown effect - the 50% caster buff and each of the 25% mob buffs. By concentrating the effect in this manner, I cap my meleers' damage and my own damage, rather than spreading out the effect.[/list]So, there's a very strong argument that kinetics should be in melee range anyway. Most kinetics do play this way, however most of them will run into melee range to active one of those three powers I mentioned, then run back out once they're done. That's all well and good, but personally, I find it a bit annoying. I'd rather just pick a spot and stay there. So, I choose to stay in melee range where I can be most effective.

Stayin' Alive

So, if I'm standing in melee range, how do I not die? Because as we all know, range = defense (blasters would argue with us about that, but that's the topic of another guide). So, what's my defense when I'm in melee range? Also, please note that when I'm saying "defense" (self-protection), not "Defense" (the % chance that mobs will miss you in the CoH game mechanic).

A kin/elec meleefender's defense is four-layered. The four layers, in order of importance are: End Drain, Damage Debuffing, Damage Resistance, and Healing. I'll give each of those four layers their own sub-heading in this section:

<ul type="square">[*]End Drain - End drain is the strategy of removing 100% of your opponents' endurance and applying a -recovery debuff so they are unable to regain that endurance. By doing this, you remove their ability to counterattack. Some people refer to end drain as "ghetto crowd control." I love that description. I'm not a controller, I don't "hold" mobs, but the effect is the same. They stand there helpless while I beat on them. And, despite what you may have heard to the contrary from Statesman, fighting statues IS damned good fun.
[*]Damage Debuffing - There are two powers in the Kinetics powerset that reduce your opponents' damage output - Siphon Power and Fulcrum Shift. Both of these powers reduce their targets' damage capability by 25% per application. I'll get more into specific strategy using these two powers in a later section, but essentially, with two button clicks you're able to reduce the amount of damage you're taking from all foes by 25%, and the most dangerous foe by 50%, and if the fight runs on long enough, the effects are stackable.
[*]Damage Resistance - Prior to getting your APP (Ancillary Power Pool) in your 40s, your damage resistance is going to come from Tough from the fighting pool, which I highly recommend that you take, altho I wouldn't necessarily slot it. Later in your 40s, you're going to take and 6-slot Temp Invul from the Power Mastery APP (assuming you follow my guide and take that APP). Basically, all this does is reduce the amount of damage that's still coming through after the first two layers of defense.
[*]Healing - Say it with me guys - "We are NOT healers. We are NOT healers..." However, we DO have a heal. Use it. You should be in melee range already, so you're right there in the perfect position to benefit from it. I mention this as the last layer of defense because it's not exactly reliable. No matter how much accuracy you have, this power will still miss 5% of the time. A 5% miss rate may not sound like much, but if Murphy's Laws taught us anything, it's that this power WILL miss when you need it most. Count on it. However, it's a good insurance policy to take care of any damage that you're still taking after the first three layers of defense are in place.[/list]

So, now that I've convinced you that MY way is the RIGHT way and that all these other losers (I'm looking at you, Luchador) are just plain wrong, lets get on to the specifics.

The Powersets, and YOU

As I mentioned previously, I'm not going to go into a whole lot of detail about the powers. I'll just give a rough overview of what the powers do, and follow that with my own recommendations.

Kinetics

<ul type="square">[*]Transfusion - Mob targetted AoE heal centered around the target. Requires a to-hit roll. Most powerful AoE heal in the game (eat your heart out, Empaths).
Quason Sez: Take it, 6 slot it. As I mentioned, this is your fourth layer of defense. I slot 5 Heal, 1 Acc.
[*]Siphon Power - Single target buff/debuff. Subtracts 25% from the target's damage potential and adds 25% to your damage potential, and any allies in an AoE around you.
Quason Sez: Nice to have, but not 100% necessary once you get Fulcrum Shift. Post-FS, this becomes much more useful as a debuff than as a damage buff, since you'll likely be capping your damage with FS anyway. The debuff is VERY useful however, especially on Arch-Villians. I slot 1 acc, 2 recharge.
[*]Repel - Toggled knockback power. Basically, once you toggle it on, it "pulses" every second or two, knocking back any mobs in melee range and taking a pretty sizable chunk of your endurance for each mob it hits.
Quason Sez: No. Oh sweet lord no. Do NOT take this. I mean, honestly... a knockback power in a powerset geared towarded melee range? Who the hell thought this was a good idea, anyway?
[*]Siphon Speed - Single target speed buff/debuff. Decreases target's run speed and attack speed while increasing your own. The attack speed buff is a .2 multiplier (compared to Hasten's .7 multiplier).
Quason Sez: Fantastic power. Simply one of the gems of the powerset. While some people recommend replacing Hasten with this, I don't (I'll get to power pools in a moment). We want our most important powers to be up as quickly as possible, so the added recharge that this gives in addition to Hasten is absolutely indispensible. I slot 1 acc, 2 recharge.
[*]Increase Density - Single target ally buff. Grants mez protection, frees mezed allies, and grants a small damage resistance buff against Smashing and Lethal.
Quason Sez: Meh. I take it, but not until later. Personally, I just don't concider myself that type of defender. Leave the mez protection buffing to the empaths. If you do take this early and make use of it, please for the love of god don't try to keep it up on all your teammates all the time. It only lasts 60 seconds, so if you're going to try to keep it up, you'll be making Increase Density a full time job. Just give it out on demand when someone gets held.
[*]Speed Boost - Single target ally buff. Increases run speed, endurance recovery, and attack speed.
Quason Sez: Blessing and a curse. This is the power people are invite you to their team for most likely, so I mean, you pretty much HAVE to take it. However, after listening to people scream "g1v3 m3h cr4ck!!!11!" for a couple of months, you'll wish this power didn't exist. I slot 2 end recovery, and haven't ran into a situation yet where that wasn't enough.
[*]Inertial Reduction - AoE jump buff. Many kinetics use this as their travel power. Basically grants you and anyone near you the superjump travel power for 60 seconds.
Quason Sez: I hate this freakin power. I mean, I really really hate it. HATE it. Did I mention that I hate it? Cuz like... I do ya know. I hate the fact that I have a travel power in my primary powerset. If I want a travel power, I'll take a travel pool. Give me something USEFUL in my primary powerset. Well, what's done is done... it's here and it's not going away, so if you want it, take it. However, I'm going to recommend later that you take the leaping pool anyway, so you might wanna just skip this. Needless to say, I don't have it.
[*]Transference - Mob targetted endurance drain/recovery power. AoE recovery effect around the target. Drains a HELL of a lot of endurance from the target, especially if you slot right.
Quason Sez: Absolutely crucial to the build, especially for the drain component. Remember, end drain is our primary means of defense. I'll discuss strategy later, but when you're up against a boss, you'll open the fight with this power. Also, PLEASE NOTE: you should NOT be slotting this power for end drain. I'm not sure if it's a bug or by design, but endurance RECOVERY enhancements and endurance DRAIN enhancements both affect the drain component of this power in the exact same way. However, if you slot for recovery instead of drain, you get the added increase in endurance recovery. I slot 1 acc, 2 recovery, 3 recharge.
[*]Fulcrum Shift - Freakin complicated power. Targetted on a single mob. Debuffs the damage of that mob and all mobs in an AoE around it by 25%. Grants a 50% buff to damage centered around you, and a 25% buff to damage centered around each mob affected. Get all that? If not, check out LuchadorFuerte or Ladioss_Sopp's guides. They explain it better than I do.
Quason Sez: Another build essential. Not only does this increase your damage output conciderable, it also provides the basis for that second layer of defense I mentioned - Damage Debuffing. I slot 2 acc, 4 recharge.[/list]

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What's the worse that can happen? Customer Service will be swapped with people petitioning for badges they may or may not have earned and other people who are seriously stuck in a timed mission or are being harassed have their GM intervention delayed because of a badge.

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As if that's not going to happen anyway when people log on to find they don't have the badge they earned?

Honestly, please post something constructive to the thread or don't post. This kind of thing is just contentious and contributes nothing.

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We now have 18 months worth of data. We looked for a more effecient solution, but our estimates still come out at 2 years to datamine and get you your badges.

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So let us send a petition and ask for our badges individually. Hell, if even THAT would take too long, then just give everyone that petitions about it a badge for it and be done. What's the worst that could happen... someone that didn't do the TF gets the badge for it? I mean honestly, would the world really stop spinning if that happened?

At least that way those of us that earned the badge would have it with the minimal downside that a few lying jerks got a badge they didn't earn. I think most of us could live with that.

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I have NO idea why so many people are obsessed with them and think the Devs should sacrifice their firstborns for not making it easy for every single character to get every single badge. OCD! Take a step back and get some perspective people!

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Before you look down your nose at someone, please try to look at things from their perspective. Badges are content. Those of us that have been at level 50 for a while are starving for new content. They impliment new content, then require us to repeat boring, 12 hour taskforces to acquire the new content. Hence, the complaints.

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As for datamining the TFs for badges, all I can say is...suckers! Ahahahahahaha! I knew they wouldn't be datamining them.

[/ QUOTE ]

Oh real mature. Kidding or not, that's just ridiculous.

Getting pretty tired of this. Can't be bothered to find a better solution to the problem of mob stacking than to set an AoE limit. Can't be bothered to find a better solution to balance than chopping us off at the knees. Can't be bothered to post a dev response in the "Dev Response - Defender" thread, forcing us to sit around in limbo wondering what's going on. Now, you can't be bothered to do a little datamining and give us the badges we've already earned.

There's no excuse for this. None.

We REALLY need some way to like, vote griefers out of the zone or something. It's been really bad tonight.

That's the coolest [censored] thing I've ever heard. It's just amazing to me that a bunch of complete strangers with absolutely nothing in common but a video game can band together and do something like this. I mean, you see people doing some really disgusting things to themselves and each other... then you see something like this and you think maybe people in general aren't so bad after all.

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I'd send you the info, but it's all in my signature, so why bother?

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Ditto. Count me in.

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Out of curiosity, did you try slotting some Rchg into your attacks as suggested above? I find I perfer the Healx3/Acc/Rchgx2 Transfusion over your Healx5/Acc version. If not is that slotting idea planned for the next test batch?

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I'll definately try that. To be honest, I'm not optimistic about slotting stuff for recharges. As I mentioned in the strategy section of the guide, fights are already a mad clickfest for me. Powers coming up faster is just going to make that worse.

As it is, I have some powers sititng in the tray unused occasionally. Having the powers recharge that much faster will just be a waste of resources for me, I believe. But I WILL try it, tinker with it, and see if I can get results from slotting just one or two powers (like ball lightning and transfusion) with recharges.

yeah yeah... make fun of the kin/elec. everyone point and laugh at poor quason. *sigh*

For real tho, Siphon Power is definately getting squeezed back into the build somewhere, but I have to figure out what to drop. Any suggestions?

Okay, we just finished a couple of hours of testing, and I think we all learned a few things.

I learned that knockback CAN be a good thing for kinetics. Whoda thunk it? Syphon Strike used it to his advantage, and kept mezzers on their backs.

I learned that Siphon Power needs to go back into my build. Everyone but me (I was the only one who didn't have SP) was able to easily tank a DE giant monster without using temp invul, using only the debuffing ability of FS + SP.

I learned that Power Mastery is by FAR not the only viable epic pool for a kinetic. JB used dark mastery to amazing effect, stacking dark pit + oppressive gloom for controller-like AoE mezzing, and tenebrous tentacles to keep the dazed mobs from wandering off.

I learned that Whirlwind is a good power, believe it or not. I'd never had a good experience with it, but Bombast was able to use it to lessen the impact of the alpha strike from large spawns.

I think my build (kin/elec/power) was the safest soloer. I was able to handle pretty large spawns of +2 and +3 mobs in missions with less risk than the other three testers. I also think I might have killed large spawns just a BIT faster with my AoEs than the other three.

Syphon (kin/psi/power) was the fastest boss killer. To test this, he and I found two death mages side by side and attacked them at the same time. His died a good 10-15 seconds before mine did.

JB (kin/dark/dark) enjoyed the most convenience while fighting, I believe. By using TT, his mobs stayed nice and packed the way he wanted them to, and the mezzing affect of dark pit + OG made things quite a bit less hectic for him as he was fighting.

Bombast (kin/energy)... wow. His was the most unique fighting style I think. Stealthed into a spawn, lined himself up, activated whirlwind to lessen the alpha strike, then just cut loose. While the other three of us stayed more or less in place as we fought, he zipped around the mobs like a gnat. It was very entertaining to watch, and very effective.

I think the whole point of this was to establish the fact that this thread has little to do with just a kin/elec build, or any kinetic build for that matter since we also had a rad/rad with us for a while. I think it's more about learning to let go of a little of that "support class" stigma and cutting loose on some mobs solo once in a while.

If anyone else would like to share your build and your solo strategy, I'd like to hear it. Thanks to JB, Syph, and Bombast for helping me test and teaching me a few things.

The shard really isn't going to be a good place to test this out. Takes too long to get deep enough into it, and a lot of ppl don't like traveling around in there.

I think the best idea is going to be to get as big a group together as we possibly can, set the mission slider to "Invincible" and hit a mission. That way, we can test out builds by all going into the mission and taking on the bigger mission spawns.

For that reason, I'd really like to get as many people to show up as possible.

Out of curiosity, J_B, you say you're bringing a 6 slotted CP build. What other power in the power mastery pool got the axe so you could 6 slot that?

I'd LOVE to 6 slot CP, I just can't find the freakin slots to do it.

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Incidentally, if I remember correctly, one of my now long-deleted posts actually came up with a build that managed to run a ridiculous amount of toggles without going into the red in terms of endurance regenerated per second by slotting about 4 end redux enhancements total in the right powers.

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That'd be an interesting alternate build. I wonder what you'd do with the spare pool, powers, and slots then. I think I'd probably get the fighting pool back, take boxing, tough, and weave, and dump the 5 slots in Weave.

I imagine, tho, that you're putting those end reducers in Stealth, TI, and Weave in that case. I'm thinking that the decreased def and resistance in that case (by replacing def/res enhs with end redux) would negate a good bit of the added protection of taking weave in the first place. It'd be a tough thing to balance from a min/max standpoint.

41 - PBU
42 - 3 slots in PBU
43 - 2 slots in PBU, 1 in whatever
44 - TI
45 - 3 slots in TI
46 - 2 slots in TI, 1 in whatever
47 - TF
48 - 3 slots in TF
49 - CP
50 - 2 slots in TF, 1 in CP.

*****, you're right. My bad. Okay then, make that 2 slots in CP and thanks to J_B for pointing out the mistake.

Doesn't affect the build at all, but I've got a bit of egg on my face here. Sorry about the screw up. The epics aren't in hero planner yet so I had to do the last few levels by hand. Edited the OP to reflect how it should actually end up, to save a little face.

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I would think you'd pull some damage SOs from your attacks (which will hit the cap via FS) and switching them to recharge reductions.

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That's an EXCELLENT point, I hadn't concidered that. I'd really like to get the numbers on exactly how much FS has been improved before I make any changes to my plans tho, and I don't want to start datamining this stuff till all the changes going into I3 are set in stone. Things still seem to be in a state of flux atm.

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If fighting ranged foes and the boss wanders too far away, the mobs might stay put shooting you from range while you auto-follow the boss. Tesla Cage allows you to not worry about that. If you have the spare power slot, might be worth considering.


[/ QUOTE ]

Two things tho... first, I can exercise a bit of judgement when I fight. If the boss is wandering off too far, I'll just break off pursuit, nail him with a transference to make sure he's drained, then forget about him and go back to the rest of the mobs. I'm not gonna chase the ******* halfway across the zone. Second, I honestly just don't have any room for another power in the build. Every single power I've taken is useful to me in some significant way. Even unslotted, I couldn't afford to take it.

I don't doubt Tesla Cage's usefulness. I've seen it used in some very creative and effective ways. I personally just don't have a use for it that superceedes the use of any other power in my build.

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I would actually love to see you in action just to compare it to my own experiences.

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Ditto. I'll be hitting test later tonight, around 10PM eastern time if you care to hook up for a bit. Same goes for anyone else reading this thread who'd like to take a look at the build and what it can do. I'll be on Captain Voltaic (no numbers, i'll delete the Captain Voltaic I already have and recopy).

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A docile Boss, never met one of those before

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You've never seen me fight a boss.

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Hmmmm Apparently Slowing down bosses isn't an advantage


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I'm in melee range, they're mostly going to be staying put and docile anyway.

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Hmmmm Apparently have a travel power at lvl 6 isn't an advantage either!


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Concidering it only takes a few hours to get from lvl 6 to 14 if you know what you're doing, no. It's not.

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Hmmmm Apparently not get the Accuracy Penalty associated with Super Speed isn't an advantage either!

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SS doesn't have an acc penalty.

Seriously, If you have a comment, by all means state it, but this kind of hostile post really doesn't further the conversation at all.

Fixed, thank you.

Introduction

Before I even get started, let me point out that this is not just a guide for kin/elecs. Please skip down to the conclusion to see why.

Some of you may be familiar with my first Kin/Elec build guide, some may not. I think the first thing I should do is explain the intent of this guide, and of the build. This guide is an outline. I'll get very specific about powers I do and do not recommend for the build,and how I recommend them to be slotted, but the decision is, of course, ultimately up to the player. For example, I detest the leadership pool and refuse to take it. Others swear by it. To each his or her own, that's fine. It's not my intention to set forth a "cookie cutter" build and insist that everyone build it exactly to spec to meet with my satisfaction.

The intent of this build is, simply put, to make a tankmage. I am a min/maxer and make absolutely no apologies for it. I've studied these forums for a while now, memorized numbers, learned the math, tested the powers, and found ways to squeeze every ounce of effectiveness out of every last power, pool, and slot as was possible within the confines of the game mechanic. Priority is given to this build for soloing, with a nod to grouping. This build will retain its usefulness to a group, in some very unique ways not found in any other defender (or even kinetic defender) build, but its primary focus is soloability. This can be taken to the solo extreme by dropping powers like Increase Density and Speed Boost, but taking it much closer to the grouping extreme will negate what I've made here. Again, it's ultimately the decision of the player whether or not to do that.

One more thing before I get started. For the most part, I'm not going to give descriptions of the Kinetic and Electric powers. This is an advanced-level guide. I'm going to assume some basic knowledge of the powersets. However, there are no stupid questions. If you don't know or understand something, PLEASE ask me, no matter what it is. I'll do my best to answer.

Powers

Kinetics

Transfusion: Definately a must-have. The melee-range nature of the heal matches perfectly with the playstyle of the build. Slot with 4 heal and 2 acc, because you REALLY want this to land. Be careful of the "false positive" bug on this one. Be sure to target the mob with the most remaining HP when you use this power, just to be sure it doesn't die during the cast. Also, while transfusion does drain a bit of endurance, the amount is relatively small and a non-factor for this build.

Siphon Power: Must have for the early game. Not so much for the late game. This is your only means of damage buffing until you get Fulcrum Shift at 32. Slot it with 1 acc and 2 recharge. It's not a big deal if it misses. Concider specing this power out, or atleast moving the slots out of it, once you get FS. Be sure to utilize the debuff of this power as much as the buff. Always target the biggest damage threat you're currently fighting.

Repel: Absolutely useless, and in fact detrimental, to this build. It runs completely counter to what you're trying to accomplish here.

Siphon Speed: Not recommended. I just don't get any use out of this power.

Increase Density: Must have for anyone that's not going for a 100% solo build. Use it before battle as status protection, or retroactively once someone is mezzed to free them. Also, keep in mind that ID also gives damage resistance to Smashing and Energy. This is great during the praetorian archvillain battles, especially against mobs like Nightstar that use Nova. Slot with a single recharge reduction, end reduction, or damage resist.

Speed Boost: Recommended. You could skip this if you're going for a 100% soloing build. Otherwise, slot with 3 end recovery enhancements.

Inertial Reduction: I don't recommend taking this power anymore. My new build includes the leaping pool, and I'm going to recommend taking superjump, making this power useless.

Transference: Must have. Essential to the build for MANY reasons. I recommend slotting with 1 acc, 1 end drain, 2 recharge, and 2 end recovery. You could also replace the end drain with another accuracy if you wanted.

Fulcrum Shift: Must have. The usefulness of this power just can not be overstated. Slot with 2 accuracy and 4 recharge.

Electrical Blast

Charged Bolts: Must have, only because you have no choice but to take it. I'm really not a big fan of this attack. I just don't feel like it's worth slotting, and this build is more about AoE damage than single target damage. Slot with 1 acc or damage or end drain or end reduction or whatever. It doesn't really matter.

Lightning Bolt: Must have. This will be your only decent single target attack for a long time in this build. Slot with 1 acc and 5 dmg.

Ball Lightning: Must have. Absolutely essential to the build. This one of your two bread and butter attacks. Slot with 1 acc and 5 dmg.

Short Circuit: Must have. Absolutely essential to the build. This power is your primary source of defense. Slot with 6 end drains. You'll get your damage out of this power from Fulcrum Shift, the end drain is more important.

Aim: Optional but recommended. It's nice to have the accuracy buff when you need it, but you won't gimp yourself by skipping it. Slot with a recharge, and maybe dump an extra slot or two into it if you can find them lying around.

Zapp: Not recommended. Since this is an interruptable attack, it's usefulness is very low in melee range, which is where you'll spend much of your time. This is ordinarily an attack people use at the beginning of a fight, but you'll be opening fights with Short Circuit, so it's pretty worthless.

Telsa Cage: Not recommended. You'll be "holding" your mobs by end draining them. I've never taken this power, and I've never needed it. It might become useful during PvP, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

voltaic Sentinel: Optional. I really don't care for this power at all. It might be nice if you could manage to slot it, but I just can't spare the slots for it. Also, it can be detrimental due to the fact that you'll be running around invisible, and it tends to have a mind of its own. It's gotten me killed before.

Thunderous Blast: Strangely enough, optional. I really only use this to end fights faster. This build is going to be very toggle heavy, and having to turn off those toggles back on after you use TB is very annoying. I don't recommend even slotting this beyond a single recharge reducer. You'll cap your damage with Fulcrum Shift on any spawn big enough to justify using this.

Power Pools

Only going to list the relevant powers here. If I don't list it, I don't recommend it. I feel that all the powers I do list here are must haves and absolutely crucial to the build.

Speed

Hasten: Another powers whose usefulness to this build cannot possibly be overstated. It's imperitive that powers like short circuit, ball lightning, transfusion, and transference cycle as quickly as possible. Slot with 6 recharge.

Super Speed: This + Stealth = invisibility. You REALLY want to be invisible with this build. Slot with a single end reducer, since you'll be turning it on and leaving it on.

Fitness

Swift: Throw away power.

Hurdle: Throw away power.

Stamina: Kinetics are always going to debate about whether or not we need stamina, but for this build, I don't feel like there's even a question. It's absolutely 100% necessary. We're going to be running a LOT of toggles, and if you don't have stamina, you WILL have a net loss of endurance while standing still between fights. Slot with 6 end recovery.

Concealment

Stealth: Again, this + Super Speed = invisibility. Also, this power provides quite a substantial defense bonus. Not getting hit is a good thing. Slot with 6 def buffs.

Leaping

Combat Jumping: Mostly a throw away power, but it DOES have a small defense bonus, which is nice if not completely necessary, and makes you immune to immobilization, which is also nice. Slot with an end reducer. I find that the small amount of end cost reduction an end reducer gives is preferable to the 1% def bonus a defbuff would give.

Super Jump: Vertical travel is a good thing, and since we're taking this pool anyway, we may as well take this power and drop Inertial Reduction. Slot with a jump enhancer.

Acrobatics: The reason we took this pool. Status effects are always going to be a problem for this build, but atleast this partially mitigates it. Protects against holds and knockdown, but not sleep and disorient.

Power Mastery

I chose this pool over electric mastery primarily because of Power Build Up. Increasing your end drain is ALWAYS going to be a good thing on this build. The damage buff is often academic when you're using Fulcrum Shift, but it's nice against smaller spawns of tougher mobs.

Power Build Up: Increases damage and end drain. It's supposed to increase healing too, but it doesn't for kinetics. Geko says this is a known bug they're working on. I'm suspecting that it doesn't increase the endurance gained from transference either, but it's hard to tell. Also not sure what kind of effect it has on Fulcrum Shift and Siphon Power. This will need to be tested. Slot with 6 recharge.

Temp Invul: YEAAAAAAAH!! I'm SO glad we got something like this so I could drop the fighting pool. Currently, it appears as tho this gives a 33% base resist to smashing and lethal, enhanceable up to 72.6%. This very well be reduced at some point, but even if it does, the value of this damage resistance is immeasurable. Slot with 6 damage resists.

Total Focus: Your new bread and butter single target attack. Does insane damage, and can perma-disorient a boss. Surprisingly, this disorient can occasionally be a bad thing since the mob can wander out of melee range, but I find that if I just put the target on follow and chase him around as he staggers, the rest of the mobs come with me. Slot with 1 acc and 5 dmg.

Conserve Power: I find the best use for this power is when I'm in a particularly rough fight, and miss a much-needed transference. The recharge on this power is too long to use every fight, so it's best used in emergencies. Reduces the amount of endurance each power uses significantly, making endurance pretty much a non-factor for you for the duration of the power. Since I'm recommending that you take this as your last power, at level 49, the best you can do is 2 slot it, which I recommend you do. 2 recharge.

Finished Build

Archetype: Defender
Primary Powers - Buff/Debuff : Kinetics
Secondary Powers - Ranged : Electrical Blast
Slot[01] Level 1 (Starting Primary) : Transfusion /Heal,Heal,Heal,Heal,Heal,Acc
Slot[02] Level 1 (Starting Secondary) : Charged Bolts /Dmg
Slot[03] Level 2 : Lightning Bolt /Dmg,Dmg,Dmg,Dmg,Dmg,Acc
Slot[04] Level 4 : Ball Lightning /Dmg,Dmg,Dmg,Dmg,Dmg,Acc
Slot[05] Level 6 : Hasten /Rchg,Rchg,Rchg,Rchg,Rchg,Rchg
Slot[06] Level 8 : Increase Density /DamRes
Slot[07] Level 10 : Short Circuit /EndDrn,EndDrn,EndDrn,EndDrn,EndDrn,EndDrn
Slot[08] Level 12 : Speed Boost /EndRec,EndRec,EndRec
Slot[09] Level 14 : Super Speed /EndRdx
Slot[10] Level 16 : Swift /Run
Slot[11] Level 18 : Hurdle /Jump
Slot[12] Level 20 : Stamina /EndRec,EndRec,EndRec,EndRec,EndRec,EndRec
Slot[13] Level 22 : Aim /Rchg,Rchg,Rchg
Slot[14] Level 24 : Stealth /DefBuf,DefBuf,DefBuf,DefBuf,DefBuf,DefBuf
Slot[15] Level 26 : Transference /Acc,EndDrn,Rchg,Rchg,EndRec,EndRec
Slot[16] Level 28 : Combat Jumping /DefBuf
Slot[17] Level 30 : Super Jump /Jump
Slot[18] Level 32 : Fulcrum Shift /Acc,Acc,Rchg,Rchg,Rchg,Rchg
Slot[19] Level 35 : Acrobatics /EndRdx
Slot[20] Level 38 : Thunderous Blast /Rchg
Slot[21] Level 44 : Temp Invul /DamRes,DamRes,DamRes,DamRes,DamRes,DamRes
Slot[22] Level 41 : Power Build Up /Rchg,Rchg,Rchg,Rchg,Rchg,Rchg
Slot[23] Level 47 : Total Focus /Dmg,Dmg,Dmg,Dmg,Dmg,Acc
Slot[24] Level 49 : Conserve Power /Rchg,Rchg

Solo Strategy

I'm not going to list group strategy here, because that's not within the scope of this guide. Also, your best bet is to find the largest spawns you can possibly find, since most of your damage is AoE. The more mobs you fight, the more DPS you'll be doing.

Setting Up

Toggle on super speed, combat jumping, acrobatics, stealth, and temp invul (told ya it was toggle heavy). You're now completely invisible to anything but Rikti Advanced Drones, Knives of Artemis, and Rularuu eyeballs. Position yourself as best you can into the dead center of the spawn you're attacking, locate the primary threat, and put it on follow. Hit Aim, Power Build Up, and short circuit, quickly followed by Fulcrum Shift. If the boss isn't quite drained, hit him with transference to finish him off. Hopefully, you just completely drained all endurance from all mobs and are perfectly safe. If you missed a few, don't sweat it. Trust your defense, damage resistance, damage debuff, and self heal to keep you safe. At this point, if the spawn is big enough (or you're just lazy) you can hit Thunderous Blast, transference, clean up, and move on. Otherwise, proceed to the next step.

The Battle

We're picking up here after the first Fulcrum Shift. The rest of the fight is going to consist of hitting buttons as fast as you possibly can. Short circuit is your #1 priority. NEVER let it sit in your powertray charged and unused. If you have to delay another power for a moment, even your heal, do it. Short circuit is your primary defense from mezzes and damage. Your next priority (aside from end and HP recovery) is Ball Lightning, which is going to be doing the majority of your damage in most fights. Toss in total focus and lightning bolt as you have time on the biggest threat. Be sure to keep the target of total focus on follow so you can keep with it as it staggers around. The rest of the mobs should keep up with you. Basically, what you're doing here is clicking buttons just as fast as your finger can hit the mouse button. Fights can get frantic at times as you try to hit transfusion, transference, fulcrum shift, lightning bolt, total focus, short circuit, and ball lightning as quickly as they recharge. Thankfully, most minions drop after a SC,BL,SC,BL volley. It's mostly clean up after that.

Conclusion

Please note that this guide was intended to be a compendium to my first Kin/Elec Meleefender guide. Basically what I've done here is bring all the info in THAT guide up to date with some things I've learned, as well as the addition of the epic pool. You can find a link to that guide in the Defender Guides thread in the defender forum. The build I propose in this guide is a respec of the build I propose in the first guide. Your best bet is probably to build something closer to what I have in the first guide, work it up to level 42, and respec to the build I propose in this guide. I find the fighting pool to be absolutely crucial to the success of this build before the epic pool defenses become available.

This build started out as a "what if" scenario between El Rico (who I haven't heard from in a while) and myself, and has just blossomed from there. Since I wrote the first guide, this build has steadily become more and more viable. The availability of large high-level spawns in the Shadow Shard make leveling easier and faster in the late game. Also, Issue 3 will be a godsend to this build as well, bringing the epic pools, increased healing from transfusion, and better results from Fulcrum Shift and Siphon Power.

Finally, as you can see, I've left this guide relatively sparse. All I've included here is a rough outline of the proposed build and some basic strategies. The reason I did this is because I'd like this to become a joint project of the entire defender community. I don't wanna get on a soapbox here, but I'd really like to see the defender community rise above the "support class" role and establish some real independance. As the other ATs undergo change after change, defenders have mostly kept to themselves, quiet and under the radar screen. Don't tell anyone, but Defenders are the real tankmages of this game, enjoying an even better synergy between damage and defense than many scrapper builds. It's just that, under the thumb of the support role, a lot of that potential has yet to be realized.

So, I'd like to hear input from ALL defenders on this, regardless of primary or secondary or level. If you can do something similar to what this build can do with a different set of powers, or a different strategy, I'd like to discuss how. Again, tho, I'd like to keep this primarily to soloing discussions. There are already many many discussions and build suggestions out there for grouping defenders.

Thanks for reading,
Q

Isn't this just arguing semantics? What difference does it really make if we call them archetypes or classes?