Unthing

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Siphon Power
It offers +20% dmg to you and your team while weakening target's strenght. Pick it at low lvls. You probably will end up respecing it off after getting Fulcrum Shift.''

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SP is great for debuffing 2..never respec it out..

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For a defender, never respec it out, but for a controller I'd say it is optional. After all in the situations where my defender would be debuffing with SP, a controller would probably be better off using his control powers. My defender rarely has time for his attacks so I imagine SP would be left lonely and untouched in the power tray if they was something better to spam.

This is for the same reason that last night I wasn't suprised when I was teamed with a /kin controller without Speed Boost. It is one of the best powers in the game but it is one of the most annoying to have.

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You've tried so?

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At least he has watched

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Also I did do it with my Ice/SS, which was harder with no AoE, but the stacking bug was still around so I could haymaker 5 people at a time if I was lucky.

Perez park is your friend. Providing you don't get a boss, combustion should be able to wipe out enemies 10 at a time. I would try and go for blues or greens.

Similarly the Hollows is quite nice for spawns too.

I'm assuming you are doing a levelling up build.

Some of your powers seem overslotted or slotted strangely.

Chilling Embrace:- I'd go Taunt, End red. You'll be spamming Combustion most of the time and Chilling Embrace is a damn good aggro keeper.

Wet Ice:- 3 end reds is excessive, I think you only need 1. I have 2 on mine but if/when I respec I'm cutting down to 1.

Glacial Armour:- Only needs 4 slots, 1xend red and 3x def. Putting 3 end reds in there is overkill.

Hibernate:- End mod is the least useful slotting here IMO. With stamina and the fact you are not attacking for the 10 or so seconds you are hibernating you will be close to full and most likely have Energy Absorption ready. I would slot recharge and heals ( so you can get out quicker to regain aggro ), it really depends how much you use it.

Power order.
Get Combustion at level 4 and move everything up by 2 levels. The first 10 levels are more about damage than defences and a extra attack helps in doing them quickly. Also Chilling Embrace and Combustion are likely to be your main aggro tools so getting Combustion quick will be nice.

Icicles, given that you aren't slotting this straight away I would consider moving it to the 20s, the endurance usage on this is significant and it only becomes a good damage per endurance when heavily slotted.

Swift vs Hurdle, this is personal choice but if you don't mind jumping around like a loon hurdle + CJ is faster than Swift. However you lose a bit of Jump maneuverability in doing so.

Consider getting taunt pre 20, to be honest you probably don't NEED it, as Combustion and Chilling Embrace are both good aggro control tools. I didn't notice any aggro control benefit from Icicles as everyone it hits is tuanted by Chilling Embrace anyway.

General Slotting order:-
Slot Frozen Armour, Energy Absorption as soon as you can.
The pre 20 slotting priority should probably be Frozen Armour, Combustion, Hoarfrost ( you want it 6 slotted by 12 or 13 in order to put 6 recharges in it ) and then Glacial Armour. However if you take Icicles that should be prioritised too.

According to the Corruptor numbers in the recent free Prima guide I7 update, the values of -regen are 50% for all three powers ( -90% in PvP ).

Both Transfusion and Twilight Grasp have durations of 20-30 seconds and short recharge so they are easily stackable.
Lingering Radiation I think has a longer duration of 45 seconds, but has a recharge of 90 so is stackable only with AM and Hasten. So in theory Lingering Radiation is the worse of the 3.

However from reading the forums people haven't noticed the addition of a Kin or Dark improves AV takedown quite as noticably as the addition of a Rad so I assume that either the regen numbers above are wrong or Lingering radiation is the only one that stacks. Either way something fishy is going on.


PS I don't think this has anything to do with the other buffs /debuffs because they all are about the same. Kin is recharge and +dam buff heaven, Dark has the best -res, Rad has -res and has some buffs that are significant but not as good as Kins.

I went on test and tried it out.

It does the twice the same initial damage as Fire Blast ( half lethal, half fire ) but has the same number of burn ticks.

Incidentally one weird thing I noticed was if I use multiple Fire Attacks in succession the damage goes up. It seems that the DoT ticks cause -res to fire or something.

I've never really looked at the fire damage that closely before. I wonder if this also happens on live.

Short Circuit is about twice as good as the snipe for end drain. It doesn't give you any back though.

Personally I just use Short Circuit as an end drain power, although this means you end up facing lots of angry enemies until you can get the second one off.

Really it depends on your primary.

It will increase both. However it isn't often that you get any endurance back.

However the only powers which have a noticeable drain are Short Circuit and the snipe ( forgotten what it is called ).

The problem with end drain is that most enemies can happily use all their powers for 3 hours without running out of endurance. So unless you drain them to zero they are still as effective as if they weren't drained.

Short Circuit, if slotted with 3 end mod single origin enhancements is able to drain enemies in 2 applications. Because it has a -recovery component you can keep enemies completely helpless.

I have a Fire/Fire blaster and am loving the AOE damage combo of Combustion/Fire Breath/Fire Ball.

However my single single attack chain is somewhat lacking, only consisting of Fire Blast and Blaze. I was considering Fire Sword, but from the hero builder it seems to have the same end cost and recharge as blaze but do about 60% of the damage, surely that can't right can it?

Does anyone have any comments on how good Fire Sword is?

Whirlwind, FA and Tactics but no stamina... might be running out of end a lot.

I assume you know that Whirlwind no longer prevents rooting, so the only useful PvP purpose I can think of is to perma knockback squishies ( unless it interrupts stalkers ).

Isn't Aid Self on a regen a little bit excessive?

I would expect resilience might be better for PvP than revive, as the extra disorient protection may come in handy against energy melee types.

I assume you are level 50 and this is a respec build.

I would say not enough end reducers, Conserve power is not up all of the time ( maybe 1/3rd ), with no end reducers in attacks, the only toggle with one being Assault and no stamina I think you'll need a pet kinetic to speed boost you. Especially as you have Focussed Accuracy and Tactics which are both expensive.

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Nice to know that One more thing.. Why do most ppl put 1rech on Hibernate instead of 2 or 3? Yes, 45seconds is little recharge time but sometimes, while fighting purples and stuff, you probably could use it more often.

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I slot Hibernate 1xRecharge,1xHeal.

The problem with Hibernate is that whilst Hibernating you lose aggro. So I try to limit it to around 10 seconds at a time. Also I sometimes use it in the Rage crash as I'm completely ineffective for 10 seconds then anyway.

I rarely find I need it more than the 30-45 seconds it recharges in ( I have Hasten too ), but reducing my time in the ice is useful. The times I have needed it were when I had used it unnecessarily.

In the most challenging tanking I have done in I7 ( +3 carnies as the highest level character in a 6 or 7 man team ) I found it was available enough with 1 recharge.

I'm happy to bring Golden Golem along again.

Inv/Fire.

6 slotted taunt and Dull Pain. Respeccing into Pyre Mastery so I will have Char on the day.

Has the 2 hitpoint buff accolades and Hasten. No fly.

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Therefore with 3-slotted Fast Healing and Integration you'd get (100 * (1 + 0.95)) + 50 + (75 * (1 + 0.95)) = 391.25%.

Adding in 3-slotted Health you'd get:

391.25 + (40 * (1 + 0.95) = 469.25% - about 20% extra.


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However because I need stamina I would get health and 1 slot it.
391.25 + (4- * (1 + 0.33) = 444.44% - about 13% extra.

The difference between 1 slotting and 3 slotting is about 5.6% extra regen.
This is about the same percentage ( 5.5% ) as picking 1 slotted Combat Jumping for the defence, when you have no other defence powers, however as you also have reconstruction as an every combat heal, I suspect the difference between 1 slotted health and 3 slotted health is far less.

PS. Using Dr Rocks Sustainable Damage comparison with Fast Healing and Integration 3 slitted for heals and reconstruction 6 slotted heals/recharge you can take 112.2 dps.
Add health 1 slotted, you can take 116.6
Add health 3 slotted, you can take 118.7
Add Combat Jumping 1 slotted, you can take 117.0
Add Combat Jumping 3 slotted, you can take 118.7
With Health 1 slotted and CJ 3 slotted, you can take 123.4
With Health 3 slotted and CJ 1 slotted, you can take 123.8

So Health is slightly better than CJ on a regen, on any other character it is probably better.

PS I used combat jumping as an example because most people consider it to be not worth slotting for defence and a fair amount of scrappers have it.

PPS Note for sustained damage number, they assume you will last for ever. However when going over sustained dps number regen/heal heavy builds die quicker than defence/resistance heavy builds.

That's a novel way to use the forums.

Is the slow in chilling embrace so that Ice Storm is more effective?

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Get flaming arrow sooner, it does massive damage for a defender

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I agree Flaming Arrow is the only reaosn the single target attack chain for Archery isn't completely rubbish. It is a snipe level damage attack.


Personally I think Combat Jumping + Hurdle is not very natural looking.

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Is there life post 38 for Kinetics Defenders?

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I sure there is for me.

1. I have a 25% advantage on your powers over the Controllers powers for equal slotting.
2. I have probably spent at least 20-30% more slots on those powers than they have.
3. I can afford to spend more of my time being Kinetic ( because of 1 and 2 ) than they can because they have other things they are expected to do. Which means I can spend time doing my thing.
4. I have a secondary that is different to their primary.

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I have a lv50 En/Dev Blaster, and obviously didn't have Build Up due to my secondary, but I never took Aim from the primary either.

I don't think I suffered as a result, I was still the last man standing in most of the missions during the 30-50 level range, and could take down enemies with relative ease, and still can post-ED.

All I'm saying is, although it's a nice addition, it's far from being essential.

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I was amazed how much difference Aim made on my Ice/Dev blaster. It was [almost] the same level of why didn't I get this power beforeness that I had when I first got Dull Pain in I5 on my Inv tank.

For the Dev blaster, getting Targetting Drone, removing an Accuracy and putting either recharge or end in your attacks ( depedning on the attack ) results in around 33% increase in DPS for the same EPS. This is the same increase in sustainable damage output as Build Up but obviously without the frontloaded burst damage advantage. Note that when you add Hasten into the mix Targetting Drone falls behind.

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I still think blasters need a bit of loving with a primary damage buffing though...either that or nerf Impale! Or both!!

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I assume this is a PvP related comment. Impale is essential to make Spine a viable set in the early levels. If they made it less effective then Spines would be completely rubbish until level 26.

On pure damage I think Impale is probably about even with Bitter Ice Blast, which is not the best blaster single target non snipe power but is close ( Flaming Arrow is the best, then Blaze ).

I think whoever designed Spines gave it too many secondary effects, it has the secondary effects from both Ice Blast and Fire Blast at the same time.

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Soloing : You really suck at this. Far more than nearly any other AT. Ok at level 26 I got Transference and that helped a bit, but its so slow and boring soloing him

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I take this comment very personally, because it is sooo true :P.
But seriously Fulcrum Shift helps a little for soloing but not enough. I can get things to a stalemate and feel pretty safe but actually taking enemies down takes too long to be fun. My I5 build was a pretty good solo build, I had 6 slotted attacks and short circuit, but ED stopped this being practical. If I want to solo, I'll play a scrapper.

Another important point it that whilst these powers are very good post 22 when you are slotted up with SOs, they are actually far better before that when you powers aren't slotted with SOs.

My latest blaster, a Fire/Fire picked up Aim at about level 12 and Build Up at level 16. Being able to use one of these powers most fights really made a huge difference with the 3 AoEs I have as it meant I didn't run out of endurance because the fight only lasted a maximum of 2 attack cycles.

My Ice/Dev blaster on the other hand didn't pick Aim up until I started playing him a bit in I6 after having him for over 6 months. I think that was a mistake, Aim is a good power. I think Build Up is better though.

Last night I felt like a bit of a change and logged in as Booster, my Kinetic / Electrical Blast defender.

So I got a blind invite ( pretty quickly too, he was a /DA scrapper and my invite message says about endurance buffs ) as I was on Looking for Missions, pretty soon we had a team of a scrapper, a tanker, a blaster and me.

I forgot how fun it was to run in just behind the tank and just try and stay alive by spamming Transfusion. It was awesome...

I got a complement on my healing from the tank, many thanks for speed boosts and in a rare downtime where the scrapper said Fulcrum Shift was the best power in the game, I told him what Transference does and why it was also great. I don't think many people notice that power they just assume that their full endurance is due to Speed Boost.

From an xp point of view it felt like power levelling.

I was trying to think why I ditched him last time, I think it was the lack of tanks. Sometimes with just scrappers I end up attracting just a bit too much aggro ( whoever I hit with Fulcrum Shift / Short Circuit ).

Is there a point to this post? Probably not.

Well on my defender it seems to work well. 2x Short Circuits makes enemies ( including bosses ) go down to nothing.

So basically back to I6 effectiveness ( although it is still the worst hit power on any of my characters from the ED changes ).

Interestingly when I tried it on Lusca I noticed that the end drain actually seemed to be doing something, I think I got her endurance down to about 50% before she was wiped out.

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Acrobatics is a must for fire tanks, period.

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I have a workable flying Fire tank who will disagree with you.
But I do agree that Acrobatics is superior to Hover as knockback protection as it has less disadvantages ( -fly disables Hover, Hover is slower than jumping, having to land to use Burn which you need for your immob protection ) and so would only choose hover over acrobatics if you really really really want to fly.

This sounds like a fun event. However until I know when it is I am not going to sign up.

I just realised as it is on Union, in order to sign up I have to delete a character... oh dang it!