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Which Genasi manifestation(s) are best?

Storm and the Templar theme. Soften up Team Monster from range with real attack powers before doing your swordmage schtick from round 3 on ...

Dec 26, 2011 -- 10:30PM, zelink551 wrote:

Dec 26, 2011 -- 7:48PM, Marshall wrote:

Dec 26, 2011 -- 3:58PM, IxidorRS wrote:

Which Genasi manifestation(s) are best?

Its very dependant on what you're trying to do with it. Storm makes you a strikefender, most of the fire versions enhance the catch-22 aspects, wind is mobility enhancement in a mobility focused class, earth is minor control...there are uses for most of them..except void which is counterproductive.

This isn't true at all. Load up attack penalties against the target and disappear. Now they're at a considerable penalty to hit anyone but you, AND YOU'RE GONE. Cheesy? Yes. But doable.

Not really. Even if you focus on dropping massive attack penalties on the enemies, if you're GONE, you can't:

* Use your aegis.
* Use other immediate interrupt/reaction powers.
* Make opportunity attacks.
* Do your job.

Part of the point of being a defender is making the monsters choose between a rock (hitting you, with less effect than hitting your teammates) and a hard place (hitting your friends and triggering your aegis or other powers). If you are, as you say, GONE, the need to make that choice is removed as well. They may be at a penalty to do so, but the monsters will attack the rest of your team, or take other equally objectionable actions, and you won't be around to stop them or make them regret it.

On top of this, the voidsoul power is only good for a round (or, if you manage to recharge it, two) during the fight. If you build around it, what are you going to do for the rest of the fight, when you can't disappear? If you've overbalanced toward mark penalties, you're probably light on defenses (at least by comparison to a more balanced build), which means the enemy will be pounding on you enough to make up for the round they couldn't get to you. I haven't analyzed the math, but between the attacks made while you're not there to stop them and the increased chance of landing a blow or three on you, I'm fairly confident this is less efficient than sticking around.

Voidsoul is a good choice for strikers and controllers, allowing them to lay down some pain or trouble and then avoid repercussions until their next turn. For defenders and leaders, who often need to be in play to trigger interrupts and reactions to save their teammates, I find it's far less useful.

Defenders are melee controllers, mainly through action denial. Defenders are awesome.

That's putting far too much into the value of your interrupts (And really, the Aegis interrupt itself is pretty pathetic, other interrupts can be amazing though). Keep in mind, we're talking CharOp builds here, pretty much everyone except poor Shamans and Sorcerers will have L+15 AC, and with monsters having L+5 to hit AC, that means just about everyone is getting hit on a 10 normally. Optimized Defenders will be L+20, getting hit on a 15. Tack on a "-10 to hit everyone but me" on multiple enemies from the defender, and the situation goes from a "Hit on 12s and risk punishment or hit on 15s" (with standard mark) to "Hit on 20s and risk punishment or hit on 15s".  Obvious choice.

Now add in Voidsoul and other self-banish and enemies are stuck with "Hit on 20s". This is highly effective action denial at least 99.75% of the time (affect 2 creatures minimum). Builds like this are a valid use of that "calculating the value of a defender" thread that popped up earlier this month, in comparison to "Standard build Swordmage with DV/TL/Aegis" this is just flat out superior Attack/Damage reduction.