Carnifax

We've been running Night Ward on our dedicated Gold side team on Reunion (The Yellow Brick Road. Yes we are Oz themed). Night ward is ridiculous. Enemies which are impossible to see in the mass bloom which is CoH teams, because all the spells are is bloom effects. Stacking slows (bloody Time Wards). Enemies which spawn masses of pets (all of which do -ToHit). And the joy which is that ludicrous "defend the mansion" mission. Honestly it reminds me of old mayhem missions where people would rush it and trigger a billion longbow ambushes.

Fissure will take Forced Feedbacks, which Nature likes. Also if you're going Earth then getting Seismic is a good idea. Even not procced up Seismic does massive damage (add procs for even more fun). I'd drop Smoke for it. Don't bother proccing Bonfire. It's essentially a placeable toggle so proc chance is lower than you'd expect. A +5 Recharge IO, Forced Feedback and KB2KD is how I slot it. That gives you back 3 slots to play with.

The only character I have using the PPP pets is my Time/Sonic/Soul defender. They're capable of making the Fort survivable. plus they have enough recharge to make them a 5-10 seconds off perma. Plus I figured the Psi damage would be useful. Tried the spiderlings on my Water/Temporal Blaster before because they actually worked concept-wise and they were worse than useless. Died in seconds. I guess I know why now. Just parsed this. Wow! I'm guessing the mechanism which passes Buffs also passes Guantlet so as a side effect. (which means that Spiderlings are just crap by themselves without having Gauntlet built into themselves)

Ice Patch is my favourite "1 slot wonder" power in the game. My Ice/Ice Scrapper had lots of "last man standing vs the horde" incidents levelling up thanks to it. Never be afraid to Sir Robin it to a nearby corner, then Ice Patch and Frost / Frozen Aura the lot of them to death as they fall over. Yup, I call my Ice/Ice/Mako my scraptroller. Mako I took mostly for Water Spout for concept but having Hibernate available was useful too. I'm strongly considering some other Ice melee char of some sort because I enjoyed Ice Melee so much (Ice Armour is fine I guess but not very exciting). Possibly Stalker since I also have a Dark/Shield scrapper on the go (which is also excellent now Shadow Maul got its better arc. Shield is, as noted above, a git for End).

As Zem says the lack of a NoRedraw setting for Staff is maddening. I have a Staff/NRG/Dark brute and found it got too much. So when I rolled a Staff I went Inv for the lack of clickies (1 occasional +hp with Dull Pain), and Weapon Mastery for Physical Perfection + Targetting Drone. No snipe or Ball Lightning probably hurts but it's bearable. More bearable than constantly whipping it out was (steady!). If the set got a NoRedraw I'd respec the epic probably Inv is also nice on a Stalker since it's a bit of everything. Very easy to stack IO sets on top of a strong base, and you get some DDR (50%). Works pretty well overall. Sky Splitter on a Stalker with crits on demand is nice. Guarded Spin on top of Inv goes a long way towards melee softcap (on top of lots of typed Def and capped s/l resists, and a big heap of extra HP).

Nope. Or at best "Yes for the tiny duration of Power Boost IF you cast it first and then FFG and it inherits the PB buff for the remaining 10-15 second PB duration". FFG is basically a floating pet with an AOE toggle. One interesting aspect of Adrenal Booster. It also does some Power Boosting for 60 seconds (a much smaller amount than standard PB). So AB could in theory boost Def toggles for 1 minute, provided they aren't flagged to ignore buffs (any power which does Def and some Resists, such as Fade, should always be flagged to ignore buffs).

EU side the Hounds of Love are pretty active (considering the time of year and the whole "emerging blinking from our pandemic bolt holes" thing) on Reunion. Reunion in general is quite compared to Excelsior but I prefer regular teams of folk I know compared to PuGs.

Yup. Cloud Senses is excellent on Fluffy. Does about 75% of his total damage when slotted according to my parses of the Combat Log with PetCombat switched on. Since (nearly) all his powers do -ToHit the proc has a chance to go off all the time. Won't be massive damage but will be constant. You want them out at all times, the PBAOE -ToHit is excellent, he'll heal and just generally be debuffing things as you work away. He's also not a bad target for Enflame if you go the Sorcery route.

I have one. Not for farming though. That's the account for "I think this will be fun at 30 but I'm not running 1-30 with them" characters. So I just PL them with my Fire/Claws Tank to 30ish and play as normal then. I don't bother farming. Convert Marketing makes me enough cash to keep things happy (like I said before I don't bother with Purples or Winters bar for one or two chars).

This. As an Irish man with an interest in mythology I just tend to ignore any nod toward Gaelic mythology and assume "Generic Halloween Town" as well.

Yes and yes. As Enhancement Value gets towards 100% dimishing returns rapidly kicks in. Especially once you get over 90%. It also counts some of the Incarnate Alpha (as those are Enhancement values rather than a global boost), but some of the Alpha can ignore it.

Of course. That's one of the things they're for. It's part of my "Just dinged 50" routine (did it yesterday on my Staff/Inv Stalker for example). I buy the "normal" version, usually between level 10 and 25, slot em in so they're in place all the way to 50 (because they count as Attuned so the enhancement values rise as you do) then once 50 happens raid my Salvages, email any required Catalysts across to the new 50 and Superior them up. All the IOs in those builds are Attuned BTW, I always slot as I go. There is no Price difference on the AH between regular IOs and the Attuned versions (they essentially go into the AH as "either" so you can sell a crafted dropped version and buy the Attuned version for the same-ish price). This is one reason using Converters to convert level 31 Travel IOs and then sell the good results in the AH works so nicely (because someone can buy them as Attuned or level 50 or whatever they want). Winter IOs work the same way, but even the "basic" versions are expensive (18-24 million apiece I think). So few chars of mine slot Winters (my Fire/Claws Tank has them as does my DP/Kin Corruptor but that's about it). Best time to by Winters is in the Winter Event because they drop from 25 million per pack on the AH to 10 million and the market price for the enhancements follows too (for a few weeks).

You mean the Superior Might of the Tanker? They should be 1 Catalyst + 8-9 million apiece for the regular ones. Cats tend to drop over your lifetime anyway (or use merits to create them) so 40-45 million + 5-6 Catalysts for that set. Winters and Purples are the expensive sets (25-30 apiece) where the cost really rockets. I think overall the build would end up around ~150-200 mill. Here's mine, there's a Purple, but get one from Market Crash the first time you do it. Here's the Fold Space variant I haven't yet gotten around to trying (I'm a bit too fond of the NRG Torrent with Forced Feedback combo currently; Bio loves Recharge).

Actually Ice Storm DOES do Containment damage. It specifically has a "Controller only" version with a line for Containment (because back then the only way to do Different AT Scales was copy the power for the new / different AT). https://cod.uberguy.net./html/power.html?power=pets.epic_icestorm.icestorm&at=minion_pets The rather vague rule back then was "Did we create a Controller specific version of the Patch Power in question which we can add the Containment line to". For Ice Storm the answer was yes. For lots of other things (like Bonfire) it seems to be "No". Enflame should too, because the base damage is very low on it for Controllers. Enflame also has some (I assume new / Homecoming) checks to check the AT of the caster to decide the damage. https://cod.uberguy.net./html/power.html?power=pets.enflame.enflame&at=minion_pets So they probably should Contain, just as Ice Storm does (and it should probably also Scourge, although that could make it VERY good vs AVs) and could using this new source.owner>arch eq 'Controller' check. Mind you Corrosive is a bit of a shambles at the moment so that probably needs an overhaul in general. *Edit. In fact it looks to me that Ice Storm only adds the Cold part as Containment. Not the lethal. That's another inconsistency, but may be a balance choice.

This is sorta my Acid Arrow setup too (less one Res proc for an Acc) on my Grav/TA. I've no idea what the -Special is doing overall but having a (slightly sporadic) extra AoE which will light Oil Slick about half the time is nice (although he has Ball Lightning too now anyway).

Concept and not being giant annoying things with irritating SFX. Carni has Phantasms because she's illusion and it went with the theme. A few have Cimorians. My Time/Sonic Troll DJ defender has them essentially as "guests at a themed DJ night". They also do decent single target damage and aren't massive. My plant/stormie has Polar Lights. Could have gone elementals but pets with hurricane is a bad idea and they're a bit big. My Bio/Spines tank is one of the few with Banished because they are most like "weird deep sea creatures" like him (he's basically a merman, if you replaced "fish" with "sea urchin"). My Steampunk Ice/Traps has Nemmies.

Grav/Trick Arrow works well too. All ranged. Wormhole a mob into a spot, drop horrible debuff patches on them. Oil Slick the lot and flambe them.

Fissure stacks well with Flashfire and the stun in Tornado, and is another good place for Forced Feedbacks (along with Tornado and Lightning Storm). Nowadays with it being chainable (won't stack but will extend and no lockout period any more) you can sustain it nicely. Seismic is the heaviest hitting controller attack going, holds bosses and takes a lot of procs. And since Fire likes melee range thanks to Hotfeet you aren't forcing yourself in to use them. Ice Storm is fine but not amazing (meh for procs as it's a patch). Both sets have spots for the Resist set uniques (Frozen armour and Earth's Embrace) but you have Steamy anyway. Hibernate is good as "combat rest", excellent for End heavy stormies who can Hib up and let the chaos carry on around them. Frost breath is slow but not terrible as more AoE. If your End woes are tolerable I'd go Earth. If you can deal with the look of Earth Armour (Ice is ugly too but can be tinted dark blue / purple to become tolerable).

Rain of Fire will keep waking them up, but they'll miss you a lot. Especially if Darkest Night and/or Fluffy are also in the mix. Slot Fearsome for -ToHit, not Fear and treat it like a debuff with a side of Mez. Soul Drain raises your damage, Tar Patch lowers enemy resists. Between the two of them you have a multiplicative effect so they go VERY well together (this is true of any +Damage buff coupled with a resist debuff). Howling Twilight is a box of tricks. It rezzes. It stuns (minions on its own, can be combined with other stuns if you have them to cover lieuts and even bosses). It makes things run in fear (if not stunned. It's slightly annoying). It debuffs Regen. It debuffs recharge (but not run speed). It has the best SFX in the game. And it autohits. So no you aren't wasting it by spamming it, but most of the time -Regen isn't needed and the Afraid run away effect can be annoying (but that's what Tar Patch is also for). It's excellent against AVs thanks to the -Regen.

A known issue within a known issue. Knowissueception From 2 months ago 😪

This just got me killed. Looks like EMP Arrow no longer Holds things. Just creates the Cage. Here's me hitting a couple of -30 Miners in Sharkshead with it. Checking both CoD and ingame there's no mention of a Hold in the effects any more. https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=controller_buff.trick_arrow.emp_arrow&at=controller https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=redirects.trick_arrow.emp_arrow&at=controller

It's really not hard to make enough Inf to slot a character well (well = ATOs & IOs, + a few PvP IOs, with little or no Purples or Winters). Most of my chars end up costing around about 150 million. That sounds like a lot but 2 rounds of "Buy Yellow Travel IO Recipies, use Merits for converters, craft the IOs and then do Conversion Roulette" will do it. One round of that (30-40 recipies) takes 20-30 mins over 2 days and you end up at least 80 million. If you're going for "5 sets of purples" then that cost goes up drastically but you can make kick ass characters without needing Purps (every char gets one for running Market Crash anyway) or Winters for the most part.

So I learned today that Plant has one more reasonable Proc candidate. Fly Trap. They'll take -Def sets, so Achilles and Touch of Lady Grey. In my parses the TOLG came about equivelent to an extra SOs worth of damage. So if you have Fly Trap maxxed out for damage and you don't mind losing the ranged def from 6 Expedients it can be worthwhile since it's essentially "free" damage. Not sure about Achilles, because parsing debuffs is awkward, but on one single council map ending with an EB (Defeat Nocturane from the New Praetorian arc) Lady Grey went off 28 times, I guess Achilles would be the same rate.

Earth's Embrace is also an option for slotting the 2 +Def resist uniques if you are skipping Fighting, very useful on my "I need Sorcery AND Teleport" Ice/Traps controller.

Actually RoP isn't bad as a 1 slot wonder now as it has fixed recharge anyway. Stick in Steadfast for the +Def and a bit extra resists when it is up (which is 1/3rd of the time now). Very useful if you've skipped Fighting and have nowhere else for the Resist uniques (or just to save a spot if you did)