Wiggz

This. Fire/Ice combines the most damaging primary with the most survivable secondary. When you go Ice/Ice you almost stop being a blaster and seem to focus as much on control as anything else - and more importantly, you are automatically soft-capped against anything you've already killed.

My Fire/Ice blaster - Thermatrix, one of my favorite characters to date - played as if she was drawing the heat out of the ground (Chillblain, Ice Slick) or the air around her (Chilling Embrace, Shiver) and re-directing that heat through her attacks. Great for teaming and the most solo-able blaster I've played 1-50.

There are no dumb brutes - only dumb players

Seriously - as he said. The fury builds off of getting attacked rather than getting hit, so from a technical standpoint, defense is generally better than resistance for a brute.

Obviously I concur with everything our esteemed resident expert has to say. One caveat to my comments is that I'm specifically talking about teaming. Assuming someone to absorb the alpha, maybe a couple of damage-dealers... this is not necessarily the build I would want to solo with or go AV-hunting with, but rather an incredibly effective controller set to team with, one that is effective from day one and out of the box without even a nod to IO sets needed to make it 'workable'.

Ah - and for the record, this particular build is going with Earth EPP, more for theme than anything, so eventually single-target damage won't be an issue.

Well, you have to understand that with Hasten and three AM's up and running, Howl is recharging every 3.5 seconds or so for each of us. That's plenty fast enough for our purposes and we'd rather have the stacked -Res essentially doubling the damage and save all of the power selections and enhancement slots for better purposes.

A 30 degree cone with a range of 70 firing every 4 seconds or so from each of us and layering -res every time is all of the AoE we've needed so far - and we're still using DO's. It also makes the positioning easy and uniform, rather than trying to manage cones, PBAoE's and targeted AoE's all at once.

Keep in mind the slowing effects of essentially being able to perma 3 Lingering Rads if we so chose and mix in a little kiting. The purpose of the build isn't to necessary fully leverage Choking Cloud - that's just another tool in our box. As is Dreadful Wail, which would be fairly easy to pop every mob or so if we wanted without too much ill effect.

How would that slotting affect the endurance costs and holding abilities though?

Also, do damage procs gain the benefit of reduced damage resistance. I would think so...

Amplify was brought in purely to use with Wail and/or EM Pulse. Good point about considering dropping it though - even though that damage bonus is really amplified with all of the -Res floating around.

Actually, it was my opinion that that's the way the actual world works. Not everyone is born with the same degree of intelligence, physical ability, talents, will or starting point economically. We have wildly differring skill sets and personal experiences all - at least in my opinion - without a 'writer-god' pulling the strings and we somehow manage to have personal triumphs and failures regardless.

I'm okay with the next guy being smarter than me or better looking (though, honestly, it doesn't happen often in either case ) and I'm damn sure no going to whine to my 'writer-God' to 'balance' everything out to make it fair. Because of that philosophy, I'm fine with oen power set not being able to do exactly everything that another power set can do with exactly the right degree of effectiveness. I'll find what makes it unique, carve out a niche for myself and succeed... or I'll try something different.

Will there ever NOT be exploits, ever NOT be fotm toons, regardless of how much tweaking is done? Will the pure min/maxers ever run out of ideas to challenege the game and its rules? Of course not... so lets not hold the casual gamers hostage to their relentless pursuit of perfection.

Because, when it comes down to it, perfection is boring... and I'll bet once those power-gamers have succeeded in exploiting the system and becoming truly 'uber' with this ridiculous build or that, they'll get bored... they'll eventually start looking for another challenge. A real one.

All without the dev's changing the rules of the entire world in response to them.

And yet I've been happy here for more than six years. I'm not even complaining now really, and certainly not about any particular nerf or update. This is merely a philosophical point.

It seems like a lot of people are taking my comments personally and responding in kind. If you - or anyone else - thinks never-ending 'tweaks' (even if the tweaks are at times dramatic and substanial enough to chase off frustrated players) are a good thing, you're certainly entitled to your opinion. I happen to disagree. The never-ending quest for balance should - again, in my opinion - take a back seat to the never-ending quest for expanded content, new power sets and costume options.

For instance, I'd certainly enjoy underwater zones a whole lot more than finding out that my favorite character is going to have to change how he plays YET AGAIN...

I'm not really sure. Everybody laying the same anchor and then targeting through a leader makes it pretty easy to avoid killing them so probably so. Choking Cloud will keep him from running off and we're not AoE or KB heavy so we shouldn't off him by mistake.

If you had enough End to run Choking Cloud and Hot Feet I'm sure we will be fine. if we find ourselves wishing we had the after-death effects, we can always re-spec.

Thansk for the advice and commentary. Exactly what I'm looking for.

How many Fire tanks (or Brutes or anyone else) do you know who uses Temperature Protection? For sets, for fire resistance, for anything?

I don't recall proposing 'my definition' of what might be viable or better. There are smarter people than me to figure that out.

But a 2nd grader could improve on a power no one takes.

Were you running leadership toggles and/or Choking Cloud?

At the moment the way we're basically looking at dealing with most mobs is running Tactics, Assault and Choking Cloud all of the time, raising RI when we're in sight of a mob, and then running in to deal with them (to keep them more or less grouped and to stay within range of RA's). We target through a leader to stack all of our -Res sonic effects and just kill one bad guy at a time really, really fast.

Something that's often overlooked IMO in this world of PUG's is that 10 bad guys half-dead are as big a threat as 10 bad guys fully alive, while 5 bad guys alive and 5 dead... aren't.

I suppose my point is - aren't we reasonably assured that after months of design and months of play-testing, when a set comes out it would be +/- %20 relative to other power sets in effectiveness? My earlier statement wasn't that we shouldn't have balance... its that endless trimming around the edges to make every diverse option as balanced as possible ultimately defeats the entire point of diversity to begin with. especially after the fact when players took a power set and spent hours of their time with the reasonable presumption that they were being handed something carefully made and already balanced.

This is an assinine statement, so I'm going to assume its just a reflexive response and not the result of reading what I actually wrote. As I said before, I've been here since the beginning and only have a couple of 50's, with literally hundreds of characters from every AT on both sides leveled into the 30's... why? Not because I'm trying to 'keep my overperforming powers', but rather because I love the diversity this game offers - and its that diversity I'm trying to protect with my comments. I don't PVP and I almost never do TF's.

I believe the dev's focus shouldn't be on 'underperforming powers', it should be on powers almost no one ever takes within their native sets (or on continuous new content). There are many that could be adjusted, not to make more or less powerful, but rather replaced with more viable options. And I'm not categorically for or against nerfs or buffs to any particular set or AT... just against constant and oftentimes needless tweaking when those efforts could certainly be better spent.

I think its funny that the same few and very specific examples are mentioned over and over again as justification for this endless tinkering after the fact, which in fact proves my point. What about everyone else? Pretty much every single power set and every single AT has seen modifications, most multiple times... and out of all of those updates and changes that affected gameplay for pretty much everyone in the game, in some cases driving off frustrated players, its these very few examples that are pointed at.

I can grant those, though I still think it should have been unnecessary in the first place - can you defend all of the many, many others?

Then why have more than a single power set for each AT?

I wouldn't mind the help of a couple of number crunchers as well. Figure each character starts off popping Hasten and their AM, so that we have +160% recharge on top of 98% recharge from the slotting itself. I'd be suprised if that weren't enough to make them both perma from the start. Three AM's add an additional +175% or so endurance recovery, as opposed to Stamina which offers less than +50% once full slotted. Admittedly not an inconsequential amount and probably a nice buffer against the loss of AM's for whatever reason. It might be a play-and-see issue to determine whether or not we die often enough against high-level foes to warrant 3 powers and 3 additional slots to take advantage of it, or if we have enough endurance to keep our various toggles runnign without concern.

The only place I can see adding Manuevers (which I'm still considering) is in place of Dark Embrace, which begs the question is 15% defense (give or take) more or less advantageous than 40% resistance to s/l, considering all of the -To Hit going on. I suppose initial alphas are our biggest danger while the RI's are getting dropped, and in that vein I suspect the resistance might be the greater benefit, slowing big hits enough for a couple of Radiant Aura's to catch us back up.

If anyone knows, what are the effects of the Achilles Heel proc in a toggle power like RI? Three of those going might add a nice touch to all of the -Res we'd have flying around already.