Help me rebuild a toon or four

squirrelloid

At last I am whole again! The gold @squirrelloid has returned!

But seriously, all my old toons are *pre-alert*. Many of them are *pre-3 SS*. It's been a long long time, and I need some help rebuilding them. I also have some ATs from my recent stint as silver that I'm going to be converting to freeform. I figured I'd start with a couple of 40s and work from there.

Gear: You may assume I can afford a set of Heroic and have spare R5 mods. I do have a decent pile of level 40 purple secondaries to sort through, although highly desirable combinations may be limited. I can afford some vigilante, but i prefer to defer that until i can upgrade primaries to Justice.

#1
What it currently is: Glacier AT
What I want to do with it:
-I want to stay focused on ice powers
-I want to tinker with SS a bit
-I want to remove stuff i never use (ice cage! Maybe some other things - honestly, i never use shatter really, and that will probably remain true if i stay a tank)

Questions:
-Is Ice really a good tanking powerset, or should i switch over to a dps mode?
-How well would Ego primary work as a tank? (if i stay a tank) Loses the knock resistance from con spec, which is the big worry with doing so.
-Endurance really needs to go as a SS. But can I get away with something like Ego/Con/Dex? Is that overkill? Should i go Int or Rec instead to aid energy management? (If i stay con primary, is Con/Ego/Dex workable? That would let me pick some dodge chance up with the appropriate Con spec)
-Desperately needs an energy unlock. Was looking at the crit-based one (Killer Instinct?) - i presume that will work with ice?
-Desperately needs a personal heal. Is there one which doesn't depend on presence?
-Probably needs a self-res.

#2
What it is currently: FF munitions / gadget primarily with some stealth abilities. Attacks: experimental blaster, holdout shot, shotgun, sniper rifle (with VB-A1 Eagle power replacer). SS: Dex/Ego/Int? Used to queued pvp with it primarily (Mostly UTC + ZA). Slotted passive: Targeting computer. Toggle: IDF

What I want to do with it:
-Stay munitions, especially sniper rifle. No 2gm.
-More/better stealth possibly
-Don't really care about pvp
-SS open to change

raighn

#1
- Ice has incredibly high single target DPS potential from Ice Blast w/Hard Frost and some reasonable AoE with Avelanche. That said, you can easily go either way as a Tank or DPS. So long as you maintain Chill on enemies and hit them with Ice Blast taps you'll find it hard to lose aggro (in either spec)
- For tanking it's generally accepted that STR primary is the best option for tanks even ranged tanks... however, I can tell you from experience that CON primary is perfectly viable for tanking as well. EGO primary on the other hand is lacking in defensive specs and should NOT be primary for a tank.
- I would suggest taking Int or Rec for the energy management honestly.
- Killer Instinct & Hunter's Instinct both only work within their respective power sets. As do most Energy Unlocks... The description for KI specifically states "with munition powers" and HI states "with archery powers". Unfortunately those are the only crit based EUs in the game, The only EUs not locked to a single power set are MSA & Overdrive, which means you'll either need some short CDs or regularly use Maintains.
- The only personal heals that scale primarily off stats other than PRE to my knowledge are Resurgence (AD), Regeneration (Passive), Enrage w/Endorphin Rush (Melee Form), Quarry w/Fair Game (Passive), Shadowform (Passive %heal chance), and Palliate (%heal) - All of these scale with CON
- Self Res really isn't needed TBH, only take one if you've got a spare power slot

#2
- You will have to change your passive to Night Warrior for any real stealth now, since the Sneak ability is now directly linked to that passive (as in you can't even have sneak without it)
- I would suggest INT/Dex/Ego for your SS. The INT primary spec tree boosts the effectiveness of your secondary stats and grants some nice defense penetration which will stack nicely with the penetration from Night Warrior. As a result you're base damage will be higher, you'll get more Crit from Dex, more damage from Ego, more of everything from all non-super stats, it's a lot like having a personal mini-AoPM.

flowcyto

Eh, Ego PSS can be okay for ranged tanks, imo, since Force of Will is decent enough and 6th Sense can work for crit-enabled heals. I still wouldn't normally recommend it for a tank, though (perhaps if it did have passive knock resist).

I guess that's another point to raise- even if ya get a heal that scales w/ bonus heal (which are most of them), and ya don't have Pres stated, they can still be decent when fully ranked, and (if crit-enabled) then having high crit% and severity allows them to crit to help make up for lower base healing power overall.

Ice has a bit of an issue getting a good energy unlock, since Shatter is imo not really worth it either way. Pretty much have to shoe-horn MSA or OD in, or (if the theme allows it) use Thermal Reverb + a blue-colored Flashfire to work into the build (MSA scales mostly w/ Int, OD w/ Rec, and TR w/ End).

For the 2nd build, if ya wanted to be more sturdy then I'd drop Ego as a 2ndary if ur using Int primary, and get Con SS instead.

Raighn covered most of it. It appears the forum revamp messed up the links again..