Some thoughts on Guardians in general, and Rad / Rad Guardians in particular

[Alephred]

As suggested, here is the cut and paste of my post on the Rebirth Discord:

I have some detailed thoughts about Guardians in general, and Rad / Rad Guardians in particular:

I've got my Radiation Assault / Radiation Composition Guardian up to level 32, and it has painful and not much fun most of the way, and I am seriously not interested in playing it further to see if it gets better.  As a hybrid AT that pulls powers and mechanics from most of the other ATs, this particular blend is dysfunctional and suffers from whatever the opposite of synergy is.  Noncomplementary?  Radiation Assault for Guardians has multiple features that work against themselves, some particular to the power set, some more generally applicable to the Guardian AT.

I don't hate Guardians, truly:

I got my Kinetic Assault / Energy Composition Guardian up to level 50 and into iTrials and Incarnates within the first couple of weeks of release.  That one is a joy to play.  Kin / Energy enjoys Transference to alleviate the Guardian endurance problem.  Inertial Siphon increases attack rate, which builds stacks of Impulse faster with every attack.  Attacking faster means the Coalescence proc has a chance of happening faster, which increases accuracy, which in turn increases the odds of the proc, etc.  Synergies galore, and it feels great.

With Rad / Rad, I was hoping for a close-range fighter that could take advantage of the point-blank area-of-effect buffs and debuffs some of the support classes enjoy.  That sounds like a fun hybrid of melee, ranged, and support powers, right?  That sounds exactly like a Guardian.  This is definitely not the case, as Radiation Assault has no buffs / debuffs, and Radiation Composition has to split its power list between personal defenses (taken from Radiation Armor) and support powers (taken from Radiation Emission).  Unfortunately, this is a case of a hybrid being less fun than its constituent parts.

Problems with Radiation Assault: Radiation Assault makes Contamination awful

As a primary power pool, Radiation Assault take powers from melee sets (Radiation Melee from Brutes, Scrappers, and Tanks), and ranged sets (Radiation Blast from Blasters and Corruptors).  The problem with Radiation Assault is one inherent to Guardians - being a mix of ranged and melee means Radiation Assault's special mechanic Contamination is rarely ever usable.  In archetypes with Radiation Melee the user is constantly in melee range, so the occasional Contamination proc can be immediately exploited via Radiation Siphon, which is similarly a melee attack.  In combat the Radiation Assault user will employ a mix of ranged and melee powers, probably at both close and long ranges, and if Contamination happens to proc while fighting at a distance, it will not be possible to use Radiation Siphon to capitalize on the Contamination (the self-heal over time.  The other special effect of Contamination (minor damage to surrounding enemies) is basically so slight that it is basically imperceptible.  In short, you'll see Contamination less often, and you'll capitalize on that Contamination only a small fraction of the times you do see it, and that just feels bad.

Problems relating to the Guardian archetype: Melee-style defenses do not synergize well with ranged attacks, and together they are an endurance hog

By now, it's pretty commonly agreed that Guardians suffer from endurance problems - the common discourse is that extra slots in Stamina or Epic Pools and Incarnates are required to properly alleviate them.  The original archetypes have a more balanced endurance consumption profile: for the most part personal defenses (e.g. smashing / lethal resist toggles) are limited to pure melee classes, and the support ATs typically do not have those style of toggles.  This is an issue for Guardians in general, as they have both a variety of attacks as a primary pool, and defensive toggles in their secondary pools.  This combination results in a character that consumes endurance at an unsustainable rate.  I suppose I could either not attack, or not use defensive toggles in the middle of a fight, but both result in being worse at fighting than the constituent ATs, as noted above.

In conclusion:

Rad / Rad is awful for Guardians, and suffers from anti-synergies specific to its power set, in addition to exacerbating the common issues of Guardians in general.

tl;dr: Rad/Rad Guardians suffer from whatever the opposite of synergy is.

[RandomRabbit]

At least you didn't roll a martial infiltrator.

I got a level 38 Rad/Rad Guard.  It's painful.  But I got it off the ground eventually.  6 slot accelerate metabolism for endurance mod and recharge.  Get haste, six slot that for recharge.  Now try to keep AM up as often as possible.  It'll keep your endurance.  Accelerate metabolism is the difference between me getting 2.47 end/sec vs 3.47 end a sec.  That's a 40% increase on my endurance recovery right there.  That an Enervating field isn't your friend, at .79 end/sec it drains more out of you then all your toggles combined.

It's an energy hungry set, .59 end/sec for me with some end reduction.  infiltrator is forty something with no endurance recoup option.  Fire by far is the best so far for endurance, only 2 toggles demanding .39 end/sec out of me AND I get an endurance recovery move EARLY.

I don't like when the answer given is "get it really high level and slot it with IO sets."  Not everyone wants to be carried to level 50 via a flame farm, nor does everyone has resources for that stuff off the bat.  New players are perpetually starved for resources, if they try a guardian first thing and the wrong set of powers they are just in for a punishing experience without knowing what they are getting into.

[Alephred]

I have another lengthy analysis of a Guardian, this time highly favourable!

The Kinetic Perpetual Motion Machine

Here's my breakdown of a Guardian that enjoy playing very much, and good examples of synergy.

My initial inspiration for a Kinetic Assault / Energy Composition Guardian was the thought of playing a melee-focused kinetic defender.  Although this is was not the final shape of my Guardian, it happily grew into something I still enjoyed quite a lot.  The key concepts here are synergy and recursion, and abusing the hell out of recharge.

Recursion

Everyone loves recharge, why wait for anything?  Of course, there are good reasons things liking cooking meatloaf and baking bread take time, but those don't apply to superpowers.  The limiting factor in CoH would be running out of endurance very quickly, but we can deal with that later.  Energy Composition enjoys TWO inherent sources of +recharge: Inertial Siphon (drain the speed from foes you hit), and more excitingly Entropy Shield - an otherwise standard defensive toggle that ALSO PASSIVELY BUFFS RECHARGE.  Incredible.  Throw a Hasten (an extremely common choice in any build) and a Burnout on top of that, and you have enough casual recharge to stack a number of self-buffs, INCLUDING YOUR OWN RECHARGE BUFFS.  Let me reiterate for emphasis: your recharge buffs will buff the recharge times of one another.  This has implications beyond raw recharge speed, but more on that later.  RECURSION.
-
Let's look at Kinetic Assault.  It enjoys an intriguing mechanic named Impulse - like several of the powersets introduced late in the game's publication history, some of its standard attacks build stacks of Impulse (Kinetic Bolt, etc.), and other attacks expend banked Impulse for extra effects (Mass Driver, etc.) - similar to Combo and Bleed in Street Justice and Savage Melee respectively).  A side effect of Impulse is that using a power that consumes it with five stacks has a chance to instantly refresh Coalescence - a power in the fashion of Build Up, which buff your chance to hit and damage.

Synergy

So we have our first harmony: Coalescence buffs your damage and chance to hit.  Your attacks hit harder and more accurately.  Attacks that hit build Impulse stacks.  At maximum Impuse stacks, you can expend Impuse for a chance to instantly refresh Coalescence.  Your increased recharge shortens the refresh of your Impulse builders, Impulse consumers, AND COALESCENCE ITSELF. Coalescence's buff is always a fixed duration, so if you're fortunate you can proc the instant refresh before it runs out.  Hit harder, more accurately, and faster, and if you're lucky, double hard and accurate.  Build and consume Impulse like a machine.  SYNERGY.
-
I'm sure all this sounds great, but the weakness of increased recharge has always been that your faster powers will quickly outstrip your ability to pay for them with endurance.  Fortunately, Energy Composition also enjoys Transference, a power that takes endurance from your foes and gives it to you and your nearby friends.  It requires an accurate hit on a foe, but that's no problem with stacking accuracy buffs from Coalescence, and with your massive recharge bonus, it is available to use pretty much spontaneously.  Your ability to generate endurance pretty much outpaces your ability to spend it.

All other powers in the two sets, Energy Composition and Kinetic Assault, are gravy.  All the Impulse builders benefit from fast recharge and accuracy, and of course you build Impulse quickly.  The same goes for the Impulse consumers, with the added benefit that you can pick the shape that best suits your situation: a cone, a straight shot, a point-blank explostion, whichever.  Do you need even MORE damage buffs in addition to multiple stacks of Siphon Power and Coalescence?  Well, you'll love that Fulcrum Flip recharge quickly enough to use in every single fight.  Oh, by the way Coalescence has an Accuracy buff component, and Snipe-style powers become instance when you exceed 90% accuracy.  Stacking Coalescence means you will also have the insta-snipe ready for every alpha strike.  With all the buffs enjoying a casual 100% uptime and occasionly having your Accuracy, Recharge and Damage buffs stack with themselves, your new baseline is a cool +100% in all three of them, minimum.  Sometimes more.  SYNERGY.  RECURSION.  IS THIS WHAT COCAINE IS LIKE?

tl;dr: Buff yourself, your damage, your accuracy, your recharge, and YOUR BUFFS.