Sardan

Heartily agreed.

For a while the new SS animations did work with Shield and it was pretty awesome. One of the KO Blow animations used with a shield active makes it look like the world's biggest shield bash. So cool. Very much looking forward to the fix going live.

I never played a Kin/Ice defender but I played an Ice/Kin Corruptor. Tons of fun, fantastic single target damage once you get Bitter Ice Blast. You get some mitigation too, via slows, which are hardly ever resisted. Very nice when you slow that Freakshow Tank who wants to pound you through the floor so that he's just crawling towards you.

I found Ice to be a pretty End intensive set, but partially that's due to having lots of fast-animating attacks + Hasten + stacked Siphon Speed. That is you can drain End fast but you're really cranking out the damage too.

One thing you'll LOVE about Blizzard is that you can throw Ice Storm then Blizzard then while the mobs are still flopping around on the floor, pop a blue and do Transference. You're back up to a full blue bar and ready to clean up any bosses that have survived, but they're still flopping around.

Also if you open with Bitter Freeze Ray then immediately use Freeze Ray you can insta-hold a boss. Very handy.

Yeah, that's my main problem with it. I love the idea of power/tech armor but to allow any sort of diversity of costumes (because presumably the power F/X would be tightly tied to costume pieces), they'd have to create several special costumes for it.

Well, not the whole powerset but Granite is an example of a power that prevents player costumes.

I hear ya. I think I set some kind of record for number of times I edited my own post, trying for clarity. I would submit it, read it, and go "argh, that's not the right way to state that." Wash, rinse, repeat about 15 times.

Haha, too right. I mainly wanted to try the mission at the exact same difficulty as Fire Kin Master showed in his video.

But look at this example:
Moving from 0 to 40% blocked 40 attacks, but moving from 40% def to 45% def blocks only 5 additional. It's easy to see Dechs is wrong because the phrase "as many shots" implies an absolute equality, and 5 doesn't equal 40. But although he was wrong to put it he way he did, the point he was trying to convey was very important.

Let's say that I can survive 10 incoming hits "per round". With defense at 40% I can handle 100 incoming attacks, with 10 hitting.

But now I manage to move to 45% defense. Does that give me a small incremental edge? No, I can literally double the incoming aggro compared to what I could handle at 40%, because at 45% the damage I took fell by half compared to damage taken at 40%. Since only 5 attacks will hit out of 100 but I know I can survive 10, I can adjust my settings such that there are 200 incoming attacks and get back to 10 landing for damage.

It's nonintuitive to most of us that that final 5% would cut damage in half because no previous 5% increment cut it in half. Because the first 40% allowed me to handle 100 attacks and the last 5% allowed me to handle an additional 100 attacks, this is the reason many people say the last 5% is just as valuable as the entire first 40%.

Thus I think what Dechs meant to say was not that the last 5% blocked as many shots as the first 40% but rather it lets you handle as many incoming attacks as the first 40%.

Bah, I should've just read further in the thread. Dechs wrote:

You did something wrong. Were you running at +3/x8 with bosses? I agree with the OP, there's absolutely no way you did that map in 3 min.

I tried it on my Fire/Kin and she didn't last too long. Not enough mitigation. Tried it on my Brute and the main problem was that the +3 bosses floor at 8.45% chance to hit -- when surrounded by them, that means a disturbing number of their attacks sneak through and start debuffing my defense. Once that happens, if I allow it to continue, it's game over. So using the OP's rule of "no insps" my brute wouldn't be able to clear the map without kiting to allow the debuff to wear off.

I know I'm very late to this thread, but a few comments. First, I have no doubt your build is ultra effective but Fury Flechette gave lots of very specific pointers about places you've overslotted. A respec following that advice will make your build stronger. I haven't read the whole thread so maybe at some point I haven't gotten to the lightbulb went on for you, but I don't think anyone was saying your build couldn't be a great farmer. What people were pointing out is that you labeled your build as the ultimate unsurpassable Fire/Kin farm build, and people were able to spot easy ways it could be improved right away. Listen to them and you'll be even more uber.

Second, please stick with a normal font size. The giant size you often use will tend to annoy folks. It sure as hell annoyed me.

Third, enjoyed the video. Made me want to try out your mission. But have some respect for your viewers. Mention "no insps" maybe once at the beginning and if you must, once at the end. I found myself going "yeah, okay I get it already, you're not using insps!"

I like your choice of the Stone Mastery epic although I can't bring myself to take it because the armor is so darned ugly. I'm sure I find this way funnier than anyone reading this because I went through a phase on my Fire/Kin where it was all about tweaking the numbers. I'm a guy, the character is a girl, and it just amuses me to no end that I stick with the Fire epic because it just looks cooler and more thematic with the Fire primary. I guess she brings out my feminine side, lol.

If I get the urge to farm nowadays I break out my SS/Shield Brute. Softcapped defense, huge hit points, not vulnerable to mez the way my Fire/Kin is, a damage cap more than twice the controller's. The Brute can easily run at a higher damage bonus than a FS-capped Fire/Kin solo (via Rage, Fury and saturated Against All Odds) but to get to the truly oh-em-gee Brute damage cap I have to run with a Kin. The Brute is far more survivable and packs a great mix of single target and AoE.

I'm looking forward to trying your AE mission with both my Fire/Kin and my Brute! My guess is the Brute will clear it faster unless your mobs debuff defense--if his defense gets debuffed and there's a "no insp" rule, he's toast!

EDIT: just read some of your recent comments. You need to calm down, dude. Your attitude comes across as comically over-sensitive. Maybe have a grownup proofread your replies. Hint: typing "UR JEALOUS" gets translated into "I FAIL" when people read it.

I think that's a very common feeling. For example, I know intellectually that my Fire/Ice tanker was overpowered before the Burn nerf but I can't bear to play him now because he's just a shadow of his formerly awesome self. The various changes have overall been good for the game but they can be hard to reconcile with characters we've become attached to.

My main gripe is the timing of ED. They introduced ED and were extremely vague that it was necessary for an upcoming change to game mechanics. But IOs were introduced many months later. If they had delayed ED, then introduced ED and IOs simultaneously, it would've been much better IMO.

To be clear, I think the game is much better and has more depth with IOs and ED.

I don't follow that "get close to the softcap or don't bother" reasoning. Mitigation is mitigation. If you have 3% defense, that means you're going to be taking roughly 6% less damage over time. I've had several blasters that got modest ranged defense, and having even 10-15% defense makes a very welcome difference.

If you can't notice the diff between 36% and 43% you're not in very challenging circumstances. Try doing the Scrapper Challenge in the RWZ and the difference will be dramatic.

I second Fire/Dark. Fantastic all around.

I sure hope that's going to be revisited with Going Rogue.

As to primary: SM and SS are both super fun primaries. I love the screen shaking smashiness of SM, and Rage, KO blow early, and the glory of Footstomp makes SS a perennial favorite. You'll love either of 'em.

Willpower performs well from 1-50. Very well rounded, not exceptionally expensive to make solid. SR is a different beast. Like most defense armors it starts off feeling pretty squishy. Early on you'd want to carry lots of Lucks and team with Bubblers and Colds as often as possible. I've never seen an SR cap defense around 30 as Barbie_Ink mentioned above, but SR does go from mild to wild once softcapped.

This suggestion comes up with great regularity, along with the ability to email inf to other characters. It's pretty regularly shouted down but most other successful games have both features, even NCsoft's own Aion. My guess is that it's somewhere on Positron's massive to-do list, but it might be on page 35.