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Radiation Emission secondary

Last updated 2007-Nov-20

My first experience with a fire controller was on a fire/rad. Due to the extremely low natural damage of controllers back before containment, trouble getting a team (I played on Champion, which is a low population server) and my unwise skipping of Hot Feet, that character stalled out at level 27 and sat for a long time. Thanks to a friend’s excess influence and a stored free respec, I rebuilt him shortly before containment was put in to the game, picked up hot feet, and started powering through as a solo character some more. When I teamed my fire/rad with my friend’s defender and some of her supergroup teammates, the character got much more fun to play.

Once he finally hit level 32, things really started to pick up. And at level 33, with a dozen or so imps out at a time thanks to permanent hasten, permanent Accelerate Metabolism, and 3 recharges in my imps, man was my fire/rad finally super powerful. Unfortunately for him, before I earned too many more levels, the devs put in enhancement diversification and limited imp spawns to a single summon. By then, however, we’d been given containment to boost our damage (yes, I play a lot of alts and advance slowly). All of these changes shifted how the character played and reduced the overall power, but these things sped up low level controllers, made soloing more feasible pre-pets, made teaming more desirable for controllers post-pets, and did make the game more fun in general (although I’ll admit to missing that army of 60+ imps when multiple fire/ controllers teamed up).

All that is the explanation of why I personally like fire/rads. Since that first one (who is now only level 42, by the way), I’ve played an Ill/Rad to 50, a fire/kin to 49, another fire/rad to 36, and a few other controllers to somewhere in the teens – Ill/kin, Ill/Storm, Ice/Storm, Ice/Kin, Ice/Rad, Fire/Storm and probably a few others I can’t recall now. Since I’ve already started working on the fire/ primary write-up, I wanted to take a break from that and start looking at the secondaries for a bit. First I’ll cover the radiation emission secondary, as it’s a very fun secondary to put with fire/ primary.

As with my fire primary write-up, all specific number are taken from City of Data and are stated for level 50 characters. To get the values for lower level characters, you will need to do a bit of simple math detailed below (??? simply math write-up still needed). The associated writeup and the animations shown are from personal experience and recordings of my own play time.

Radiation Emission

The powers:

Radiant Aura: Your basic area effect healing aura. This is not a strong heal, but as a fire/rad controller, you can often mitigate enough damage via control and debuffs that you only need a moderate heal to top off your green bar (and your teammates’, of course, if you are teaming).

Effect: Heal 117.799 to all heroes in 25 foot radius sphere

Available at: 1

Accuracy: N/A

Recharge: 8 seconds

Endurance Cost: 13

Tick Frequency: N/A

Range: 25 foot sphere centered on character

Accepts: Recharge, Endurance Reduction, Heal

Animation Time: 2.03 seconds

My slotting: 1 Recharge/3 Heal/1 End reduction

Max targets hit: N/A

Looks like:

Radiation Infection: Your first debuff, and it’s a nice one. Put this sucker on an enemy strong enough to survive for a little while into a fight but not strong enough to be the first target of the fight. The target and every enemy within 15 feet of your target will have a large tohit debuff applied and a defense debuff applied. This makes the enemy both less likely to hit you and easier for your team to hit. Against even level enemies, this single power will reduce damage received by around half. All affected enemies will have a green debuff cloud on them, with the toggle target having an additional animated ring on the ground at their feet.

The downside of this power is that it feels like the animation takes forever. Do not use this to open a fight that you know will be over quickly nor use it on a foe you know will be defeated quickly. Typically, targetting a Lt. near the middle of the pack is a smart choice – most teammates tend to focus on the boss first and many teammates have area effect attacks which will eliminate minions quickly, making either class a poor target choice in most instances. Make sure you don’t use this power on a teleporter, and if your chosen target starts to run, turn off the power immediately, as every enemy touched by the RI cloud will aggro on you and come looking for you (up to the aggro cap).

Effect: -25% ToHit and -25% defense per tick for 0.75 seconds (does not stack from same character)

Available at: 2

Accuracy: N/A – autohit toggle

Recharge: 8 seconds

Endurance Cost: 0.26 per tick

Tick Frequency: 0.5 seconds

Range: 70 feet

Accepts: Recharge Reduction, Endurance Reduction, Defense Debuff, ToHit Debuff, Range

Animation Time: 3.1 seconds

My slotting: 3 ToHit debuffs – optionally add 1 Endurance Reduction to drop cost from 0.52 end per second to 0.39 end per second and 2 defense debuffs to make hitting easier for your team

Max targets hit: 16

Looks like:

Accelerate Metabolism: This is what makes radiation emission the sweetheart secondary it is. Sure, all the powers in the set have appeal, but AM is simply one of the best buffs in the game. Get 8 controllers together to all use accelerate metabolism and you have a recharge buff better than hasten, a substantial damage buff for every attack you use, strong mez resistance (you’ll still get mezzed, but the effect will clear verrrrrry quickly), roughly superspeed run speed, a huge endurance recovery boost, and pretty much a permanent AM buff as the power will recharge about the same time the effect wears off.

Take this power as soon as it is available. Get it to 6 slots as quickly as you can. Until you get to single origin enhancements, slot this with all recharge enhancements. Use it frequently. I recommend creating a bind of some sort to announce when the power is recharged and you are ready to activate it. Learn to position yourself well to get as many people as possible if your team doesn’t want to gather for AM. Do not use near the end of a fight, as the downtime looking for the next fight is time without the buff. Try to use AM just before starting a fight, so you get the maximum amount of time out of the buff.

Effect: +20% damage buff for 120 seconds toSmashing, Lethal, Fire, Cold, Energy, Negative Energy, Toxic, and Psionic, 173% resistance to Hold, Stun, Sleep,

Available at: 4

Accuracy: N/A

Recharge: 422 seconds

Endurance Cost: 15.6

Tick Frequency: N/A

Range: 25 feet radius sphere centered on character

Accepts: Recharge Reduction, Endurance Reduction, Run Speed, Endurance Modification

Animation Time: 2.03 seconds

My slotting: 3 Recharge Reduction, 3 Endurance Modification

Max targets hit: N/A

Looks like:

Enervating Field: When you put Radiation Infection on an enemy group, it makes them fight like they are blind. If they hit you enough, though, you’ll still get defeated – it just takes longer. When RI is not enough, add in the effect from Enervating Field to neuter those blind enemies so the are hitting like kittens. OK, the effect isn’t quite that dramatic, but the reduction in hits you’ll suffer from RI plus the reduction in damage you’ll suffer due to EF will leave your team sufferring about a quarter of the damage they would take against enemies who are not debuffed. Also, your team will hit every affected enemy for more damage due to the resistance debuff in EF. (??? Need how much extra damage this is against an enemy with 0 resistance)

Because EF activates so much more quickly than RI, many defenders and controllers choose to open fights with EF instead. This is especially smart to do against enemies that can hit hard enough to really feel it, but are easy enough to defeat that the fight won’t last long.

Effect: -20% damage per tick for 0.75 seconds for smashing, lethal, fire, cold, energy, negative energy, toxic, and psionic damage (does not stack from the same character) and -22.5 resistance per tick for 0.75 seconds to smashing, lethal, fire, cold, energy, negative energy, toxic, and psionic damage (does not stack from the same character) to target and all enemies within 15 feet radius sphere

Available at: 10

Accuracy: N/A

Recharge: 8 seconds

Endurance Cost: 0.52 per tick

Tick Frequency: 0.5 seconds

Range: 15 foot radius sphere centered on target

Accepts: Recharge Reduction, Endurance Reduction, Range

Animation Time: 1.5 seconds

My slotting: 2-3 Recharge Reduction

Looks like:

Mutation: Your teammates sometimes die. You might want to blame yourself for that, but the truth is you are a spectacular player. Surely they did something to cause their death. Don’t be too hard on yourself.

OK, sometimes it is your fault. Sometimes bad things happen and it is nobody’s fault. Regardless of where blame lies or what happened, if you survived whatever got them killed (or you have an awaken and the enemy spawn went away), you can use this to resurrect a teammate and buff them bigtime so they can continue fighting.

Effect: Resurrect a defeated teammate to 100% health and 100% endurance with buffs: +200% recovery, +100% recharge buff, 40% damage buff to Smashing, Lethal, Fire, Cold, Energy, Negative Energy, Toxic and Psionic, 30% ToHit buff and 100% Null (no idea what that means) for 90 seconds followed by the following debuffs: -40% damage buff to Smashing, Lethal, Fire, Cold, Energy, Negative Energy, Toxic and Psionic for 45 seconds

Available at: 16

Accuracy: N/A

Recharge: 180 seconds

Endurance Cost: 26

Tick Frequency: N/A

Range: 15 feet

Accepts: Recharge Reduction, Endurance Reduction, Range, Endurance Modification

Animation Time: 3.2 seconds

My slotting: Skipped. Do not slot this. If you frequently need it recharging faster, you are fighting at too high a difficulty or with too poor a team. Stick to the default slot and put in a recharge reduction.

Looks like:

Lingering Radiation: Due to high -regen in Lingering Radiation, this power used to be the ultimate Arch-Villain killer to the point that no other debuffer in the game was sought after as much as the radiation defender or controller. After some changes to the power it no longer holds quite the lead over other debuff primaries or secondaries, but it is still quite strong and often available.

When you hit an enemy with this, they will be slowed significantly both in movement and in power recharge times, and their regeneration will take a big hit. Against /regen scrappers and stalkers, you’ll be especially unpopular. Stack this slowing effect with the debuffs from Radiation Infection and Enervating Field and you’ll find yourself with a fairly long running effect on a battle that will generally get your team to around 10-15% of normal damage for the duration of Lingering Radiation. Pull this out against an Arch-Villain or Giant Monster in the game and you can turn a long, difficult fight into a quick and easy battle generally.

I highly recommend 3 recharge enhancements in here, which will drop the recharge on LR enough that you can have it available about 66% of the time.

Effect: All the following effects for 30 seconds: -75% to run speed, recharge rate, jump speed, jump height, and fly speed; -5.25 max runspeed; -500% regeneration (for critter targets); -6.92 regeneration (for other player targets)

Available at: 20

Accuracy: 1

Recharge: 90 seconds

Endurance Cost: 15.6

Tick Frequency: N/A

Range: 80 feet

Accepts: Accuracy, Recharge, Endurance Reduction, Slow, Range

Animation Time: 1.5 seconds

My slotting: 1 Acc, 3 Recharge, additional Acc or Slow enhancements to taste

Looks like:

Choking Cloud:

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Fallout:

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EM Pulse:

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As with my fire control primary information, this is very much a work in progress. Obviously I have a lot of numbers and details to add. Keep checking back, as I will update it as I have time.

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