Stone Daemon Legend



Join Date: Feb 2010 Location: Protector Server Posts: 1,943

Make your own build! What is Mids'?



Mids', or



How to use Mids' effectively



I’ve often had people ask for help on making a Mids' build, when it struck me—I’ve never seen a guide put together on how to make your own before. It’s like the old saying, give a man a build, and you help him for the day—teach that man how to build, and you’ve set him up for life. Ok, I may have paraphrased that one a little. And so, here are a couple tips, warnings, and my thoughts when I make a characters build. I welcome any veteran builders constructive advice and tips to this thread, to further increase this compilation of advice for newbie mids builders.



1. General building advice (You are here)

2. High End Builds

3. Advanced Mids' Options

4. Mids' Video Tutorial by Hyperstrike

5. Glossary of Useful Terms

6. Common Questions





Before you begin:



Before you start any build, you have to ask yourself a couple questions:



1. What is my budget? In other words, just how much are you willing to spend? What you may be able to pull off sometimes depends on that question, and it is very important.

2. What would this specific character that I want to build benefit the most from? This is an important question because not all characters need the same things, and in fact some will suffer if you try to build them all the same.

3. With the answer to question #2 in mind, what are my primary goals for this build, and what would be some good secondary goals to try to meet?



Now, these concepts can be foreign to first timers, so let me help you find the answers for yourselves by giving you examples. Let’s start off with #1.





Your budget



I have a good friend that takes a couple minutes every day to purchase and flip items on the market for a profit. Doing this takes him very little time and he is able to afford more or less anything he needs on a build. Myself? I don’t have the patience for such things, though ironically I don’t mind grinding farm maps for an hour for some tickets and cash. Regardless, not everyone has money at his or her disposal, and if you’re on a small budget you should keep your builds realistic to that budget. It’s all well and good to make an awesome purpled out build, but if you’ll never be able to afford it then it’s useless to you. Besides, most characters truly don’t need that level of IO’s, and doing so can often be a waste of money. One thing I’d like anyone new to character building to take away from this guide is this: contrary to popular belief, purple does not always equal better. The only time purple sets are superior are for when you character needs heavy recharge bonuses, both at 50 and at lower levels. Incidentally, the proc’s (Chance to fire IO’s) that purple sets have are also quite useful on some powers. Regardless, if you can’t afford it, a reasonable replacement can be found for it in your build, and it will have more or less the same effectiveness.





Your specific character



Ok, so you’re ready to make a build for your character. Great! Before you start, however, you need to figure out what it is your character actually needs. You need a plan. If you don’t have a plan, then you probably aren’t building your character efficiently. (If build efficiency doesn’t matter to you, I honestly have no idea why you’ve read this far.) So, take a look at your powers. This part can be tricky, so let me ask you this—what is the difference between a cold domination/Ice defender and a dual blade/willpower scrapper? What is the difference between a /regen scrapper and a /invuln scrapper? Look at the powers each of them has, very carefully.



The answer lies in performance. The difference between the Cold Dom defender and the DB/WP scrapper is recharge times. The former has several strong abilities with loooong recharge times, and the latter doesn’t—in fact, the latter doesn’t really even need recharge, unless you want to chase the elusive max DPS chain. It’s the same with the /regen scrapper and /invuln scrapper. Let’s take a look at the abilities, shall we?



Cold Domination:



Heat Loss : Heat Loss drains the heat from your enemies and transfers that energy to your allies in the form of endurance. All foes near the selected target may experience a heat loss, which will drain their endurance, slow them, and reduce their damage resistance. Recharge time: 6 minutes.



Sleet : Summons a Sleet Storm at a targeted location. Sleet deals minimal cold damage to anything that passes through the storm. It also slows the affected foes and severely reduces their defense and resistance to damage. Many foes may even slip and fall trying to escape the storm. Recharge time: 1 minute.



Benumb : Numbs a single target to its very core. Benumb reduces the target's core body temperature, dramatically weakening him. A benumbed target's damage and regeneration rate are greatly reduced. Additionally, the affected target's secondary power effects are all weakened. The target's powers' effects like heals, defense buffs, endurance drains, disorients, holds, immobilizes, knockbacks and more, are all weakened. Recharge time: 2 minutes.



These are all moderate to extremely long recharge powers that you want up as much as possible. Why? Because those are powers that you want to either stack, or keep perma on some of the tougher foes in the game. Now, look at that dual blader’s powers. He has no such attacks that need to be kept up like that, and indeed his animation times are somewhat long, so you’ll generally always have something up if you have most of the attacks. Now, maybe you’re saying “Yeah but that’s a debuffer compared to a scrapper, that’s not a fair comparison.” You forget, I compared the /regen to /invulnerability. Let’s take a look at that now.



Regeneration



Instant Healing : When you activate this power, you can regenerate your health at an astounding rate. This boost to your regeneration rate lasts about a minute and takes a long time to recharge once used. Recharge time: Roughly ten minutes.



Moment of Glory : When you activate this power, you gain Resistance and Defense to all damage types except Psionics, recover Endurance more quickly, and are highly resistant to Knockback, Sleep, Disorient, Immobilization, and Hold effects. Recharge time: Long. Duration: Very Short.



Dull Pain : Using ancient techniques, you can make yourself more resilient to pain. Thus, you can take more damage before being defeated. When you activate this power you will increase your maximum Hit Points for a couple of minutes. Recharge time: Six minutes.



Reconstruction : Through perfect control of your body, you can concentrate for a few moments and heal yourself. The effects of Reconstruction also leaves you resistant to toxic damage for a while. Recharge: One minute.



The difference between regen and invulnerability is massive. Put simply, regen needs as much recharge as possible to survive, because it’s only defensive abilities (worth mentioning) are reactionary ones. In other words, if you get hit, and your heal is still recharging, you may run into trouble. Invulnerability, on the other hand, is a toggle on and forget armor set. The only power that you could argue a serious benefit from recharge is Dull Pain, and even that is merely icing compared to necessity.



So what is it you do when you don’t need ample amounts of recharge, as in cold domination and regenerations case? There are other options. Building your characters defense is a very good choice. Building your maximum HP cap. Working on your inherent accuracy. There are others—you just need to look at your character and see what sets you need to make it all it can be. Moreover, you aren’t limited to just a two dimensional “choose X or Y to build for” build. Indeed, you can, on certain builds and budgets, cover multiple fronts and make a monster of a character.





Your Goals



Now that you have an idea in mind for what your character needs, you need to find out what enhancements have the set bonuses you need. If you go in the options of Mids', it will have a set bonus finder, which will let you look up any enhancements that have the bonus you are looking for. Keep in mind to try to work on a secondary objective as well.





When to build for Defense



One of the most common things to build for, defense helps you not get hit. Naturally, it's a very nice thing to build for, and most characters can only benefit from it. So, when should you build for it and what should you build for? That depends. The first question you have to ask yourself is if your characters' powers give it any sort of defense to build on. If the answer is yes, you'll typically want to build upon that defense, rather than trying to start from scratch on a different defense type. In other words, if your character majors in typed defense (Smashing, Lethal, Energy, etc), it's generally unwise to focus on giving it positional defense (Ranged, AoE, Melee). And vice versa. If your character has no defense inherent in it's powers, does it get a patron or epic pool power which can give it defense? If so, you can build upon that. If the answer to all of those questions were no, you have one last question to answer. Will you be spending most of your time in close combat with your enemies? If yes, I would recommend trying to build for some defense, if you can without hurting your build. If all those answers are no, I wouldn't worry too much about defense. And for more information on defense (and how it works), please see the Glossary of Useful Terms.



Softcapping for Newbies (and why those IOs are so expensive!)



Softcapping one’s defense is popular, but how does one go about it? As I’ve said elsewhere in this guide, you should build upon what you have. There are two main categories that are covered by those who have inherent defense—Positional and Typed. For example, /Shield and /Super Reflexes scrappers use positional defense, as does Widows and Soldiers of Arachnos. Powersets that use Typed defenses include Willpower, Invulnerability, and Ice. There are others, but you get the idea. To see what type of defense your character uses, simply check your combat attributes in game.



Before we begin



There are powers you can take to stack up your defense. Such powers include pool powers such as Combat Jumping, Weave, and Maneuvers. There are also epic pool powers (depending on your AT) that boost defense. Blasters and Controllers (among other AT’s) have access to these, and examples range from Scorpion Shield (Mace Mastery) to Frozen Armor (Ice Mastery) and Rock Armor (Stone Mastery).



The useful IO’s



Now, what to use? Well, what you can use to softcap depends largely on your powersets and AT. There are many, many IO’s that boost defense, and proper use of frankenslotting is sometimes needed to get the best result. That said, here are some of the most popular choices:



Unique IO’s:

Steadfast Protections Res/Def IO gives you 3% defense to everything, as does it’s slightly more expensive cousin, Gladiator’s Armor.



Melee attacks:

For typed defense users, you’ll generally want to use kinetic combats on melee attacks to improve your SL defense, as it’s the best way to get a lot in a few slots. For positional defense users, Touch of Death gives good melee defense, and Mako’s Bite gives good ranged defense. For all the numbers, see



PBAoE’s:

For typed defense users, Eradication gives excellent energy and negative energy defense. It also gives Ranged and AoE defense. Obliteration gives good melee defense (and adequate SL defense). For your other options, see



Ranged:

In terms of defense, your only useful option here is thunderstrike, which gives excellent ranged and energy/negative defense. For the rest, see





You’ll forgive me if I don’t go over the other myriad sets, such as immobilizes, holds, pet damage, confuse, fear, tohit buffs, and so on and so forth. You can see all of those sets







Layered Mitigation



If your character already has a fair bit of defense on it's build, it's useful to focus on other ways of making it sturdier. For example, if you have resistance shields in a patron/epic pool you can acquire. Having defense is great, but all enemies get lucky shots, and resistance can lower the damage of those lucky hits. Resistance isn't the only way to mitigate damage, either. Self heals, such as pseudo Dull Pain powers that give you +Max HP (that are found in certain epic pools), or even Aid Self help keep you alive. Note that taking Aid Self and using it in battle is inadvisable unless you are at or approaching the softcap for whatever damage type you are currently facing.





When to build for recharge



Most characters benefit from recharge, but in particular, those with long recharging powers benefit the most. There are times when it is inadvisable to build too much, however, and that is when your character has endurance management issues. Fortunately, there are ways to mitigate most, if not all, endurance issues--you just have to be willing to pay for that extra performance. Invention enhancements such as Numina's Regeneration/Recovery, Miracles: +Recovery, Performance Shifter IOs, and building up some recovery set bonuses here and there go a long way to solving any sort of endurance problem. And if that fails, you can acquire the Cardiac Alpha and/or Ageless Destiny power.





When to build for other things



There are many other things to build for, but fortunately building for the above will inadvertently net you some of those things. Increasing your HP cap is particularly nice, and I recommend aiming for those set bonuses whenever you can. Having a bit more inherent accuracy is nice on builds that get no +tohit boost from any other means. I've already mentioned recovery on the previous section. Regeneration is nice on melee characters (especially those that already have powers that increase self regeneration), but on other characters it is less helpful. If your character is particularly slow, you can dig around for +movement bonuses (I'm looking at you, stone tanks). There are a few other goals, you just have to ask yourself if your character needs it, and what you can do accomplish those goals.





Traps to watch out for



When building your character, there are certain pitfalls that most newbie builders run into. For example, building without a plan. Let’s say you throw a bunch of Aegis resist shields onto your scrapper, and some Crushing Impact’s and Mako’s Bite, and random other enhancements. They give good stats and have nice set bonuses, right? The problem with building without keeping track of what bonuses you’re putting on, however, is that they can end up being wasted. If you’re building for defense, you need to make sure you’re focused on what you’re trying to build. Putting a little AoE defense here, some melee defense there, isn’t helpful if you don’t build for it. To avoid this problem, try setting a primary goal for yourself. Say you want to focus on getting the ranged softcap for defense. After you are able to build for that, see if you can play around with the build to tease out some more defense of another type without removing what you already have.



This brings me to the second pitfall that even moderately experienced character builders can run into—only using full sets. Set bonuses are fine, but if it isn’t something you’re actively building for, you need to be focused on maximizing your effectiveness for the minimum amount of slots you can. You have a limited amount of slots, and if you 6 slot a power that can be maximized in 4 just because it has a nifty toxic resist or defense bonus you aren’t building for, you are wasting slots that can be put to more use elsewhere. Therefore, if you don’t need those extra set bonuses, the best choice is to Frankenslot. Frankenslotting is an appropriately named term for when you take IO’s from different sets, and put them in the same power to maximize enhancement effectiveness. For example, the acc/rech from multi-strike and obliteration, along with dam/end and dam/end/acc goes a long way in reaching the Enhancement Diversification level of your average PBAoE attack. For those who aren’t familiar with the term, Enhancement Diversification is the point at which your gains from slotting enhancements starts to taper off, and becomes less effective with every additional enhancement of that nature.



Speaking of set bonuses, another thing to watch out for is the Rule of Five. The rule of five is called that because you can only put up to 5 of the same set bonuses on a single character, and any further identical bonuses do not count. This rule can be tricky, because there are similar bonuses in certain IOs that are exclusive to each other, and thus do not add up when the rule of five is being factored. To find out if you are breaking the rule of five, when you finish your build on mids, check out your active bonuses tab to ensure that there are no errors in your build. If you have red text at the top of that tab, you have gone over your limit, and scrolling down will tell you exactly where that error is. Once you find that error, it is a simple matter of seeing what you can do to replace the set with a different one (or frankenslot it to improve the effectiveness, if you don't need other bonuses from other sets), and you can do this with any of the powers that use the set that is breaking the rule of five.





Know what to build for



Say you’re on a character that has no inherent defenses to speak of. A dark, fire, or elec armor character, or a non-melee type of character. While it is possible in some cases to build for the softcap in melee/ranged/AoE defense in those characters, your build will generally be gimped in doing so. By gimped, I mean that your stats (such as accuracy, damage, endurance cost) will suffer from choosing set bonuses over making sure your powers are effective. The best way is to find balance in the two, and if you don’t your build can suffer. So, in those situations, if you wish to build defense on a defenseless character (pun intended), the best way to do so is by focusing on one aspect of defense. Smashing/Lethal defense is the most common type of damage in the game, and it is generally the most useful to build for. Another good choice is ranged defense, especially if you’re on a character that has several single target ranged attacks, as thunderstrike is quite useful in building for ranged/energy defense.





Exemplaring



Many people wait until their final levels to finalize their build. I myself generally do this, in fact. When slotting their builds, some people restrict their choices to level 50's for many reasons. Enhancement values, for one, are obviously higher at level 50. Another reason I have seen is as mundane as wanting to have all of their pretty powers showing 50 because it makes them feel better. Whatever your reason, keep in mind that you will lose any set bonuses you have accrued from your enhancements if you go over three levels under their levels.



For example, say you join a Numina Task Force, which exemplars you to level 40. Bam. You no longer have a softcap to all your defenses, and many other sets you've built for are now gone. (Note that Purple, PVP, SBE, and ATO set bonuses are not affected by what level you exemplar down to.) Even if your enhancements aren't all at 50, keep in mind which set bonuses you'll lose as you start dipping under the levels of your highest leveled enhancements. Take the same TF, different enhancements. For the sake of argument, you have one attack slotted with Mako's Bite that has the following levels: 34, 37, 42, 47, 50, 50. This person must have slotted as he leveled up! Anyhow, you'd only be able to keep the first 3 set bonuses out of that set.



How do you get around this, then? By slotting enhancements that are lower levels, of course. The general "optimum" enhancement level to slot your IO sets is 30/35, because that is the point where higher percentages in enhancement values stop making any real difference thanks to enhancement diversification. Incidently, that is part of the reason level 35 IO's are so expensive on Wentworths, and level 50 ones are so cheap. (The other reason being supply.) What's more, what little enhancement value you lose because of this can be regained by using enhancement boosters, which can be gained via veteran rewards or through various ways on the paragon market.





Things to keep in mind



 Say you have a



 Defenders, corrupters, and blasters generally benefit from lots of recharge, but if you build for that, you usually have to forgo building for defense, right? Wrong. While it is true that you have to make sure you pick sets such as decimation for recharge bonuses over thunderstrike for defense, they have access to powers such as Scorpion Shield in the patron pool ancillary powers, which give a hefty boost to defense. From there, it’s a short bit of work to softcap, or at least reach 32.5% defense (so that one small luck inspiration softcaps you) in smashing/lethal, with a bit of defense in energy as well.



 This isn’t as straightforward in terms of slotting a build well, but it’s important to keep in mind build synergy when you make a new character. For example, Fire controllers are excellent at melee range, because they have hot feet and a pbaoe hold. As such, it’s prudent to pair it off with a secondary that works well with being in melee range, which is why /rad is such a popular choice for them, because of choking cloud. Flavor of the Month powerset combos aren’t magically chosen—they’re chosen because the two sets complement each other well. And when you get powersets that synergize well, it’s important to keep in mind where and how you’ll be fighting, so that you know how to build your characters build effectively.



 Set Mules. Set mules are powers that you take not because you need them or plan to use them, but because you have an extra power selection you don’t need to use, and there is a power that you can take to get a useful set bonus from. Be careful when picking up set mules, though, as you don’t want to forgo a power that could possibly be of more use to you. For example, I generally try to fit in grant invisibility and invisibility into high recharge builds so I can use them to mule a Luck of the Gambler: +Recharge IO. Another good example would be to mule the Rectified Reticule set in Tactics for SL defense. Tough can also be a set mule for Steadfast Resistance: Res/Def, which will give you 3% defense to everything.



 If you have Ninja or Beast Run, you can typically put off taking a travel power, or even not take one at all! I have several characters without travel powers, and they get to taskforce and normal missions before most of the team does. I still, however, recommend getting either Combat Jumping or Hover, as you can put a –kb IO and/or LotG: +recharge in those.



 Concept does not have to take the backseat to your build. If you have to have X power, or you cannot have Y power, do not fret! You can build your character however you want, and it will still be a welcome addition to any team worth playing with. Mids', or Mids' Hero Designer , is a player made program that lets you make a build, slot that build with enhancements, and see the stats of said build. It is an incredibly effective and useful tool in planning your characters ahead of time.I’ve often had people ask for help on making a Mids' build, when it struck me—I’ve never seen a guide put together on how to make your own before. It’s like the old saying, give a man a build, and you help him for the day—teach that man how to build, and you’ve set him up for life. Ok, I may have paraphrased that one a little. And so, here are a couple tips, warnings, and my thoughts when I make a characters build. I welcome any veteran builders constructive advice and tips to this thread, to further increase this compilation of advice for newbie mids builders.Before you start any build, you have to ask yourself a couple questions:1. What is my budget? In other words, just how much are you willing to spend? What you may be able to pull off sometimes depends on that question, and it is very important.2. What would this specific character that I want to build benefit the most from? This is an important question because not all characters need the same things, and in fact some will suffer if you try to build them all the same.3. With the answer to question #2 in mind, what are my primary goals for this build, and what would be some good secondary goals to try to meet?Now, these concepts can be foreign to first timers, so let me help you find the answers for yourselves by giving you examples. Let’s start off with #1.I have a good friend that takes a couple minutes every day to purchase and flip items on the market for a profit. Doing this takes him very little time and he is able to afford more or less anything he needs on a build. Myself? I don’t have the patience for such things, though ironically I don’t mind grinding farm maps for an hour for some tickets and cash. Regardless, not everyone has money at his or her disposal, and if you’re on a small budget you should keep your builds realistic to that budget. It’s all well and good to make an awesome purpled out build, but if you’ll never be able to afford it then it’s useless to you. Besides, most characters truly don’t need that level of IO’s, and doing so can often be a waste of money. One thing I’d like anyone new to character building to take away from this guide is this: contrary to popular belief, purple does not always equal better. The only time purple sets are superior are for when you character needs heavy recharge bonuses, both at 50 and at lower levels. Incidentally, the proc’s (Chance to fire IO’s) that purple sets have are also quite useful on some powers. Regardless, if you can’t afford it, a reasonable replacementbe found for it in your build, and it will have more or less the same effectiveness.Ok, so you’re ready to make a build for your character. Great! Before you start, however, you need to figure out what it is your character actually needs. You need a plan. If you don’t have a plan, then you probably aren’t building your character efficiently. (If build efficiency doesn’t matter to you, I honestly have no idea why you’ve read this far.) So, take a look at your powers. This part can be tricky, so let me ask you this—what is the difference between a cold domination/Ice defender and a dual blade/willpower scrapper? What is the difference between a /regen scrapper and a /invuln scrapper? Look at the powers each of them has, very carefully.The answer lies in performance. The difference between the Cold Dom defender and the DB/WP scrapper is recharge times. The former has several strong abilities with loooong recharge times, and the latter doesn’t—in fact, the latter doesn’t really even need recharge, unless you want to chase the elusive max DPS chain. It’s the same with the /regen scrapper and /invuln scrapper. Let’s take a look at the abilities, shall we?: Heat Loss drains the heat from your enemies and transfers that energy to your allies in the form of endurance. All foes near the selected target may experience a heat loss, which will drain their endurance, slow them, and reduce their damage resistance. Recharge time: 6 minutes.: Summons a Sleet Storm at a targeted location. Sleet deals minimal cold damage to anything that passes through the storm. It also slows the affected foes and severely reduces their defense and resistance to damage. Many foes may even slip and fall trying to escape the storm. Recharge time: 1 minute.: Numbs a single target to its very core. Benumb reduces the target's core body temperature, dramatically weakening him. A benumbed target's damage and regeneration rate are greatly reduced. Additionally, the affected target's secondary power effects are all weakened. The target's powers' effects like heals, defense buffs, endurance drains, disorients, holds, immobilizes, knockbacks and more, are all weakened. Recharge time: 2 minutes.These are all moderate to extremely long recharge powers that you want up as much as possible. Why? Because those are powers that you want to either stack, or keep perma on some of the tougher foes in the game. Now, look at that dual blader’s powers. He has no such attacks that need to be kept up like that, and indeed his animation times are somewhat long, so you’ll generally always have something up if you have most of the attacks. Now, maybe you’re saying “Yeah but that’s a debuffer compared to a scrapper, that’s not a fair comparison.” You forget, I compared the /regen to /invulnerability. Let’s take a look at that now.: When you activate this power, you can regenerate your health at an astounding rate. This boost to your regeneration rate lasts about a minute and takes a long time to recharge once used. Recharge time: Roughly ten minutes.: When you activate this power, you gain Resistance and Defense to all damage types except Psionics, recover Endurance more quickly, and are highly resistant to Knockback, Sleep, Disorient, Immobilization, and Hold effects. Recharge time: Long. Duration: Very Short.: Using ancient techniques, you can make yourself more resilient to pain. Thus, you can take more damage before being defeated. When you activate this power you will increase your maximum Hit Points for a couple of minutes. Recharge time: Six minutes.: Through perfect control of your body, you can concentrate for a few moments and heal yourself. The effects of Reconstruction also leaves you resistant to toxic damage for a while. Recharge: One minute.The difference between regen and invulnerability is massive. Put simply, regen needs as much recharge as possible to survive, because it’s only defensive abilities (worth mentioning) are reactionary ones. In other words, if you get hit, and your heal is still recharging, you may run into trouble. Invulnerability, on the other hand, is a toggle on and forget armor set. The only power that you could argue a serious benefit from recharge is Dull Pain, and even that is merely icing compared to necessity.So what is it you do when you don’t need ample amounts of recharge, as in cold domination and regenerations case? There are other options. Building your characters defense is a very good choice. Building your maximum HP cap. Working on your inherent accuracy. There are others—you just need to look at your character and see what sets you need to make it all it can be. Moreover, you aren’t limited to just a two dimensional “choose X or Y to build for” build. Indeed, you can, on certain builds and budgets, cover multiple fronts and make a monster of a character.Now that you have an idea in mind for what your character needs, you need to find out what enhancements have the set bonuses you need. If you go in the options of Mids', it will have a set bonus finder, which will let you look up any enhancements that have the bonus you are looking for. Keep in mind to try to work on a secondary objective as well.One of the most common things to build for, defense helps you not get hit. Naturally, it's a very nice thing to build for, and most characters can only benefit from it. So, when should you build for it and what should you build for? That depends. The first question you have to ask yourself is if your characters' powers give it any sort of defense to build on. If the answer is yes, you'll typically want to build upon that defense, rather than trying to start from scratch on a different defense type. In other words, if your character majors in typed defense (Smashing, Lethal, Energy, etc), it's generally unwise to focus on giving it positional defense (Ranged, AoE, Melee). And vice versa. If your character has no defense inherent in it's powers, does it get a patron or epic pool power which can give it defense? If so, you can build upon that. If the answer to all of those questions were no, you have one last question to answer. Will you be spending most of your time in close combat with your enemies? If yes, I would recommend trying to build for some defense, if you can without hurting your build. If all those answers are no, I wouldn't worry too much about defense. And for more information on defense (and how it works), please see the Glossary of Useful Terms.Softcapping one’s defense is popular, but how does one go about it? As I’ve said elsewhere in this guide, you should build upon what you have. There are two main categories that are covered by those who have inherent defense—Positional and Typed. For example, /Shield and /Super Reflexes scrappers use positional defense, as does Widows and Soldiers of Arachnos. Powersets that use Typed defenses include Willpower, Invulnerability, and Ice. There are others, but you get the idea. To see what type of defense your character uses, simply check your combat attributes in game.There are powers you can take to stack up your defense. Such powers include pool powers such as Combat Jumping, Weave, and Maneuvers. There are also epic pool powers (depending on your AT) that boost defense. Blasters and Controllers (among other AT’s) have access to these, and examples range from Scorpion Shield (Mace Mastery) to Frozen Armor (Ice Mastery) and Rock Armor (Stone Mastery).Now, what to use? Well, what you can use to softcap depends largely on your powersets and AT. There are many, many IO’s that boost defense, and proper use of frankenslotting is sometimes needed to get the best result. That said, here are some of the most popular choices:Steadfast Protections Res/Def IO gives you 3% defense to everything, as does it’s slightly more expensive cousin, Gladiator’s Armor.For typed defense users, you’ll generally want to use kinetic combats on melee attacks to improve your SL defense, as it’s the best way to get a lot in a few slots. For positional defense users, Touch of Death gives good melee defense, and Mako’s Bite gives good ranged defense. For all the numbers, see here For typed defense users, Eradication gives excellent energy and negative energy defense. It also gives Ranged and AoE defense. Obliteration gives good melee defense (and adequate SL defense). For your other options, see here In terms of defense, your only useful option here is thunderstrike, which gives excellent ranged and energy/negative defense. For the rest, see here You’ll forgive me if I don’t go over the other myriad sets, such as immobilizes, holds, pet damage, confuse, fear, tohit buffs, and so on and so forth. You can see all of those sets here If your character already has a fair bit of defense on it's build, it's useful to focus on other ways of making it sturdier. For example, if you have resistance shields in a patron/epic pool you can acquire. Having defense is great, but all enemies get lucky shots, and resistance can lower the damage of those lucky hits. Resistance isn't the only way to mitigate damage, either. Self heals, such as pseudo Dull Pain powers that give you +Max HP (that are found in certain epic pools), or even Aid Self help keep you alive. Note that taking Aid Self and using it in battle is inadvisable unless you are at or approaching the softcap for whatever damage type you are currently facing.Most characters benefit from recharge, but in particular, those with long recharging powers benefit the most. There are times when it is inadvisable to build too much, however, and that is when your character has endurance management issues. Fortunately, there are ways to mitigate most, if not all, endurance issues--you just have to be willing to pay for that extra performance. Invention enhancements such as Numina's Regeneration/Recovery, Miracles: +Recovery, Performance Shifter IOs, and building up some recovery set bonuses here and there go a long way to solving any sort of endurance problem. And if that fails, you can acquire the Cardiac Alpha and/or Ageless Destiny power.There are many other things to build for, but fortunately building for the above will inadvertently net you some of those things. Increasing your HP cap is particularly nice, and I recommend aiming for those set bonuses whenever you can. Having a bit more inherent accuracy is nice on builds that get no +tohit boost from any other means. I've already mentioned recovery on the previous section. Regeneration is nice on melee characters (especially those that already have powers that increase self regeneration), but on other characters it is less helpful. If your character is particularly slow, you can dig around for +movement bonuses (I'm looking at you, stone tanks). There are a few other goals, you just have to ask yourself if your character needs it, and what you can do accomplish those goals.When building your character, there are certain pitfalls that most newbie builders run into. For example, building without a plan. Let’s say you throw a bunch of Aegis resist shields onto your scrapper, and some Crushing Impact’s and Mako’s Bite, and random other enhancements. They give good stats and have nice set bonuses, right? The problem with building without keeping track of what bonuses you’re putting on, however, is that they can end up being wasted. If you’re building for defense, you need to make sure you’re focused on what you’re trying to build. Putting a little AoE defense here, some melee defense there, isn’t helpful if you don’t build for it. To avoid this problem, try setting a primary goal for yourself. Say you want to focus on getting the ranged softcap for defense. After you are able to build for that, see if you can play around with the build to tease out some more defense of another type without removing what you already have.This brings me to the second pitfall that even moderately experienced character builders can run into—only using full sets. Set bonuses are fine, but if it isn’t something you’re actively building for, you need to be focused on maximizing your effectiveness for the minimum amount of slots you can. You have a limited amount of slots, and if you 6 slot a power that can be maximized in 4 just because it has a nifty toxic resist or defense bonus you aren’t building for, you are wasting slots that can be put to more use elsewhere. Therefore, if you don’t need those extra set bonuses, the best choice is to. Frankenslotting is an appropriately named term for when you take IO’s from different sets, and put them in the same power to maximize enhancement effectiveness. For example, the acc/rech from multi-strike and obliteration, along with dam/end and dam/end/acc goes a long way in reaching the Enhancement Diversification level of your average PBAoE attack. For those who aren’t familiar with the term, Enhancement Diversification is the point at which your gains from slotting enhancements starts to taper off, and becomes less effective with every additional enhancement of that nature.Speaking of set bonuses, another thing to watch out for is the. The rule of five is called that because you can only put up to 5 of the same set bonuses on a single character, and any further identical bonuses do not count. This rule can be tricky, because there are similar bonuses in certain IOs that are exclusive to each other, and thus do not add up when the rule of five is being factored. To find out if you are breaking the rule of five, when you finish your build on mids, check out your active bonuses tab to ensure that there are no errors in your build. If you have red text at the top of that tab, you have gone over your limit, and scrolling down will tell you exactly where that error is. Once you find that error, it is a simple matter of seeing what you can do to replace the set with a different one (or frankenslot it to improve the effectiveness, if you don't need other bonuses from other sets), and you can do this with any of the powers that use the set that is breaking the rule of five.Say you’re on a character that has no inherent defenses to speak of. A dark, fire, or elec armor character, or a non-melee type of character. While it is possible in some cases to build for the softcap in melee/ranged/AoE defense in those characters, your build will generally be gimped in doing so. By gimped, I mean that your stats (such as accuracy, damage, endurance cost) will suffer from choosing set bonuses over making sure your powers are effective. The best way is to find balance in the two, and if you don’t your build can suffer. So, in those situations, if you wish to build defense on a defenseless character (pun intended), the best way to do so is by focusing on one aspect of defense. Smashing/Lethal defense is the most common type of damage in the game, and it is generally the most useful to build for. Another good choice is ranged defense, especially if you’re on a character that has several single target ranged attacks, as thunderstrike is quite useful in building for ranged/energy defense.Many people wait until their final levels to finalize their build. I myself generally do this, in fact. When slotting their builds, some people restrict their choices to level 50's for many reasons. Enhancement values, for one, are obviously higher at level 50. Another reason I have seen is as mundane as wanting to have all of their pretty powers showing 50 because it makes them feel better. Whatever your reason, keep in mind that you will lose any set bonuses you have accrued from your enhancements if you go over three levels under their levels.For example, say you join a Numina Task Force, which exemplars you to level 40. Bam. You no longer have a softcap to all your defenses, and many other sets you've built for are now gone. (Note that Purple, PVP, SBE, and ATO set bonuses are not affected by what level you exemplar down to.) Even if your enhancements aren't all at 50, keep in mind which set bonuses you'll lose as you start dipping under the levels of your highest leveled enhancements. Take the same TF, different enhancements. For the sake of argument, you have one attack slotted with Mako's Bite that has the following levels: 34, 37, 42, 47, 50, 50. This person must have slotted as he leveled up! Anyhow, you'd only be able to keep the first 3 set bonuses out of that set.How do you get around this, then? By slotting enhancements that are lower levels, of course. The general "optimum" enhancement level to slot your IO sets is 30/35, because that is the point where higher percentages in enhancement values stop making any real difference thanks to enhancement diversification. Incidently, that is part of the reason level 35 IO's are so expensive on Wentworths, and level 50 ones are so cheap. (The other reason being supply.) What's more, what little enhancement value you lose because of this can be regained by using enhancement boosters, which can be gained via veteran rewards or through various ways on the paragon market. Say you have a Dark Melee/Fire Armor scrapper . Naturally, fire armor has no defenses, and it could really benefit from them. Unfortunately, it’s prohibitively expensive to do so, and even then you also need to worry about recharge, because you’ll need Healing Flames up often (because fire armor doesn’t have the best resistances either). Scrappers get access to Shadow Meld (In Soul Mastery—Ghost Widows Patron pool power choices), however, which is a long recharge defense click power. If you build for lots of recharge and a moderate portion of defense in your set bonuses, you can build a fire armor scrapper that’s softcapped to all defenses for half of the time, with a heal that is up every 10 seconds. Defenders, corrupters, and blasters generally benefit from lots of recharge, but if you build for that, you usually have to forgo building for defense, right? Wrong. While it is true that you have to make sure you pick sets such as decimation for recharge bonuses over thunderstrike for defense, they have access to powers such as Scorpion Shield in the patron pool ancillary powers, which give a hefty boost to defense. From there, it’s a short bit of work to softcap, or at least reach 32.5% defense (so that one small luck inspiration softcaps you) in smashing/lethal, with a bit of defense in energy as well. This isn’t as straightforward in terms of slotting a build well, but it’s important to keep in mind build synergy when you make a new character. For example, Fire controllers are excellent at melee range, because they have hot feet and a pbaoe hold. As such, it’s prudent to pair it off with a secondary that works well with being in melee range, which is why /rad is such a popular choice for them, because of choking cloud. Flavor of the Month powerset combos aren’t magically chosen—they’re chosen because the two sets complement each other well. And when you get powersets that synergize well, it’s important to keep in mind where and how you’ll be fighting, so that you know how to build your characters build effectively. Set Mules. Set mules are powers that you take not because you need them or plan to use them, but because you have an extra power selection you don’t need to use, and there is a power that you can take to get a useful set bonus from. Be careful when picking up set mules, though, as you don’t want to forgo a power that could possibly be of more use to you. For example, I generally try to fit in grant invisibility and invisibility into high recharge builds so I can use them to mule a Luck of the Gambler: +Recharge IO. Another good example would be to mule the Rectified Reticule set in Tactics for SL defense. Tough can also be a set mule for Steadfast Resistance: Res/Def, which will give you 3% defense to everything. If you have Ninja or Beast Run, you can typically put off taking a travel power, or even not take one at all! I have several characters without travel powers, and they get to taskforce and normal missions before most of the team does. I still, however, recommend getting either Combat Jumping or Hover, as you can put a –kb IO and/or LotG: +recharge in those. Concept does not have to take the backseat to your build. If you have to have X power, or you cannot have Y power, do not fret! You can build your character however you want, and it will still be a welcome addition to any team worth playing with.



Make your own build!

How to make incarnate powers work for your character __________________ Last edited by Stone Daemon ; 05-17-2012 at 01:34 PM .