Erydanus

I originally played a Grav/Rad on live and soloed a lot. I have been enjoying a Dark/Dark on here since launch so I feel like I'm in a good position to answer this. I was not aware that some changes were made to Gravity just before the game shut down that now tilt it unambiguously to being the friendliest set to solo with the highest direct target damage in basic attacks. This is because 1) Lift was given about 63% damage increase (Controller only) putting it ahead of Mind Control's Levitate by about 25% as a direct damage attack 2) Lift was given a bonus damage packet called Impact! that triggers if you use it on someone held specifically by Gravity Distortion; looks like about 20% base damage 3) Propel had its cast time reduced making it a bit more spammable though still slower to recharge than a tier 2 blaster attack; it's about 75% more damage than Fire Blast in the Fire Mastery epic too. 4) Propel was converted into a hybrid-aoe; it's single target with respect to damaging it's main target (and takes single target blast IOs) but also has an AoE knockback piggybacked on to it. It also has a knock DOWN component built in that I'm trying to figure out, I put a chance to knockdown proc in it muddying the results. But I'm seeing a guy being shot by this and if he doesn't go flying he and 3 friends all get knocked on their butts so that's great. 5) Propel was also given a bonus damage packet called Impact! that triggers if you use it on someone held specifically by Gravity Distortion. The upshot of this is that at about level 12 with only the prestige starter enhancements slotted I can usually kill up to a yellow lt with the chain of: Gravity Distortion, Lift, Propel. This is a kill speed controllers do not normally achieve and what's making it work very well is that the secondary is /rad. With inherent stamina it's possible to take and run Radiation Infection and Enervating Field with no difficulty at all. With the toggle change, once you kill your anchor you can finish off his 2 buddies before the anchors fade. The combined effect of these 2 anchors is -25% tohit and -30% damage for them which greatly protects you; while also being -25% defense and -22.5% damage resistance. In other words, they're going to miss you like crazy and do a lot less damage when they do; you're going to hit them like crazy, and do a lot more damage when you do. Crushing Field will act as a great clumping tool. Frankly it'll be on a par with fearing a group and then immobilizing them. For soloing, Grav/Rad is now in my opinion hands down way ahead of every other combo I can think of. Now if you're teaming most of the time, that's less valuable. But I think it's great to have it as an option. As far as /Dark Affinity it's a really solid set and comes with a bonus pet who spams holds which provides you with a lot of bonus control. Both the primary and the secondary have a phase shift power, and they're typically not popular. If you do take Dimension Shift you absolutely don't need Black Hole too, so that opens space up to take an extra epic power. I think either set is a great choice for both concept and play, though if you are interested in soloing I think rad edges out dark.

I do not like that you dropped Darkest Night and its unresistable -30% damage debuff. My D/D controller was able to solo Chernobog solely because he kittenfied the EB by dropping Darkest Night on him. Just putting it out there to be on record I think skipping it is a Bad Choice. Obviously I already said I thought you should skip the fighting pool to make room for your travel power and you went with Darkest Night instead so I don't have any more comments to share.

I was surprised to read that Night Fall wasn't in the set but just looking at it in mids Tenebrous Tentacles got a big damage buff compared to the defender/ corrupters. And wow that clunker Dark Pit got dropped and a buffed up and damaging version of Petrifying Gaze, Abyssal Gaze. Man I want Abyssal Gaze swapped in to the Scrapper/Stalker dark ancillary pool now. It's 20 sec recharge 9.5 second hold instead of 32 sec recharge 9.5 sec hold, and it does damage between the tier 1 and 2. Nice!

That's good to know as I was similarly misinformed in the past!

Speaking of Stamina you have it 3 slotted but one's a proc, one's 100% endmod, and the third is 1/2 endmod half accuracy - so while you are getting a set bonus, even using level 50 IOs you aren't at the ED threshold for stamina. Might as well cram another performance shifter like endmod/recharge in there and hit the ED cap for stamina and collect another 2.5% recovery boost. What I'd do is actually yank the sets out of there - just go with the proc and 2 generic level 50 endmod IOs. Did you know that only stalker primary Placate puts you back in hide? Misdirection will let you escape if you're swarmed but it won't let you AS, if that was your intention. Is there any special reason an epic pool was skipped? Ghost widow has a +def power in her set so you can have another place for a LOTG ... and you could skip boxing, tough, and weave to pick up some new tools like a snipe and a hold.

How are you liking the feel of the set? I noticed that the power cut to make room for an Assassin's Strike is the form toggle that other versions get. That seemed like gutting the thing that gave it flavor. So are you finding it good? I have a buddy who is playing Staff/Rad as a stalker and he seems to love it.

I get the feeling you play defenders a lot because the way you've prioritized your powers it feels like you thought to yourself that you took enough controls to check off the minimum and then you were allowed to go to town on the buffs. I said this in another post a few weeks ago and it got a lot of traction so I'll repeat it here: "As a controller, you should not need to worry so much about your personal defenses. You should be using your primary to prevent the mobs from acting and your secondary to mitigate what you can't prevent with your primary." You took maneuvers, kick, tough, weave, combat jumping, and you talked about making fade basically perma. If you were taking several jumping powers to get to Acrobatics or sorcery powers to get to Rune of Protection I would respect that because self-mez protection is important. But I think you're just focused on self damage protection because you expect to need it? With all the hard and soft controls and -hit in the sets you have? What I don't see here is a focus on actual control, I see you blowing off things that would increase team damage (and doing more damage, whether solo or teamed, is also control because dead foes don't act) and expedite killing. I think you sort of intuited you made this misstep because in your point 3, you admit you kinda blew off Tar Patch and Howling Twilight but this is a much bigger issue than you realize. I'm not going to worry about your exact set slotting, just which powers you picked and how much love you gave them. But I will say I never think it's worth being lured by set bonuses into skimping on essentials. And that includes screwing a cornerstone power in order to get perma hasten. You do NOT NEED perma hasten. Yes it's buff cascades back into your build to make other powers come up more, but if you've fundamentally undermined your powerset to get there there's no point. It's like having unlimited pizza but CRAPPY pizza. Non-perma hasten will still do a lot. I get you're really proud that you can softcap defense with this but so what you're a controller not a defender, get it? If this is really what you want to do that's fine but acknowledge that you're playing a "Def-troller" not a "Controller." I'm not saying this isn't a valid playstyle choice but be open about it to yourself and others. 1. Twilight Grasp. It's true healing is not an essential for a controller but that power has -50% regen debuff and -10% damage debuff, plus that small heal might turn the tables for you. Worth more than 1 slot though! 2. Tar Patch. You dismissed this because it can only be slotted with slow (sets?). This is a huge -30% resist power as well as anti-fly and movement slow, and your focus should be just getting it up more. 2 generic level 50 recharge IOs is the minimum in my book. Consider also there is a -recharge in Pacing of the Turtle and a smashing damage proc available in Impeded swiftness. (Why does nobody ever crow about getting Tar Patch perma? Maybe your permahasten was doing that, if so fine good call there.) 3. Howling Twilight. This is not an A-rank power. This is not an S-rank power. This is an SS+ rank power. This is an area effect control power that auto hits. AUTO HITS. Would you like to stun a large collection of minions and lieutenants? This power will do that. Automatically. Regardless of their defense. It auto hits. Congratulations you have a power that can always trigger containment on anything below boss without specific mez protection. It cannot crit so you can't do this with bosses but it also is a mag 3 fear so you got them anyway usually. It is also a -500% regen power for 30 seconds, just like lingering radiation. It is an AV killer. The downtime is longer than rad but that's ok because you're a controller and you're going to make it so your team can kill the AV in 30 seconds. (Plus it does have that side effect of full-rezzing your entire team to max health and stamina but you won't be needing THAT aspect, right?) Additionally if that mag 2 stun isn't enough you could just stack it with: 4. Heart of Darkness. Wait, what? You skipped your AoE stun? You skipped a primary set AoE stun when you have another AoE stun in your secondary that you could stack with it to generate extra mag in case the mag 3 stun of HoD doesn't crit for mag 4 and nail the boss? QUESTIONABLE. Now I, personally, put this power off to quite late because I wanted sorcery powers for thematic reasons but I had enough recharge in HT that it was up when I needed it to carry me through. I might take it at 35 instead of Black Hole but skipping it? Nope. 5. Finally if you want a travel power take one. Cut out the fighting pool. If you just have to slot something with a defense set for a bonus make it combat jumping. You shouldn't need personal shields below near-final levels. At that point you really might need one, but then you're into epic pools and they have one. With the room you make you can take scorpion shield earlier and slot it up a bit. I'm not expecting you to love these comments, especially me saying perma hasten shouldn't be a priority. People get so fixated on perma. You don't need 100% uptime. You need a good amount of uptime. It's not going to end the world if you have a short period when powers like hasten and fade aren't up. It's just so much more important for you to have all the tools to control things.

Yes. ED only applies to your enhancements. You can still get lots of other buffs, like fulcrum shift. You can still get to the damage cap. ED means you can only bring the first 200% (base + 100%) instead of the first 300% (roughly).

Controller pet damage is set where it is because they don't have containment. It's a scale up to give them that comparable damage.

No not at all. The issue is a level 27 character only has THREE primary powerset attacks and taunt, and is not slotting them with any accuracy because he's running Tactics. I wouldn't be surprised with that few attacks if he has Sands of Mu or other temp powers on his tray for all-the-time use instead of as low level filler attacks. (Note that at newbie levels, you get a starter accuracy buff so temp powers like that actually hit pretty well... but then later they're more of a crapshoot). He has diluted his build with extra junk that he doesn't need instead of taking more cornerstone powers and wasted slots that would make his powers potent and effective and end the fight before he runs out of endurance. He stated that he DOES NOT SOLO so why even touch Medicine at 27? I guess it's fine to start working on it since every build has room for some options. I think I covered the problem of not doing enough damage leading to exhaustion but I guess I'm going to have to lay out what should have been done. Mind you when I had an Elec Brute I also took Jacob's Ladder but I know some people just don't like cones so I went ahead and skipped it. But I did pick up Havoc Punch because when you're down to 1 guy or working on a boss using nothing but AoE is just not going to work. It should be maybe CB, HP, CB, Thunderstrike, rinse, repeat. Level 1: Charged Brawl Acc-I(A), EndRdx-I(3), Dmg-I(3), Dmg-I(11), RechRdx-I(23) Level 1: Focused Fighting EndRdx-I(A), DefBuff-I(7), DefBuff-I(25) Level 2: Havoc Punch Acc-I(A), EndRdx-I(5), Dmg-I(5), Dmg-I(13), Dmg-I(15), RechRdx-I(17) Level 4: Focused Senses EndRdx-I(A), DefBuff-I(11), DefBuff-I(25) Level 6: Build Up RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(7) Level 8: Thunder Strike Acc-I(A), Dmg-I(9), Dmg-I(9), EndRdx-I(13), RechRdx-I(15), Dmg-I(17) Level 10: Practiced Brawler EndRdx-I(A) Level 12: Taunt RechRdx-I(A) Level 14: Agile DefBuff-I(A) Level 16: Dodge DefBuff-I(A) Level 18: Chain Induction Acc-I(A), EndRdx-I(19), Dmg-I(19), Dmg-I(21), Dmg-I(21), RechRdx-I(23) Level 20: Evasion EndRdx-I(A) Level 22: Fly Flight-I(A) Level 24: Injection RechRdx-I(A) Level 26: Aid Self Heal-I(A) Level 2: Swift Run-I(A) Level 2: Health Heal-I(A) Level 2: Hurdle Jump-I(A) Level 2: Stamina EndMod-I(A), EndMod-I(27), EndMod-I(27) ------------ At this point I kinda think the mods should move this thread over to the Brute forum, if any come along.

Nooo! I missed this post. Who cares about "raw" damage numbers for Psi-Blade. The set is hella fun. It has so much mitigation it's sick: you get TK Blow to knock up and juggle things, you get Boggle to make enemies hit their friends, and you get Mass Levitate to juggle a bunch of things. Plus if you trigger the Insight mechanic, Greater Psi Blade might as well be called "Total Focus but cosplaying as Psylocke." It's an absolute beast it's like having 2 AS's to fire off. Dunno how it synergizes with energy aura though I'm playing willpower.

In almost all damage sets the first two powers are set up like this: 1) a 3 or 4 second cooldown lower damage power; often this is the designated spam to fill attacks power for the set 2) a 6 or 8 seconds cooldown higher damage power. Broadsword doesn't do this. Broadsword's first power is the higher damage one, as if the devs developing this meant to put a sticky note saying "TAKE THIS ONE IT'S SLOW BUT THINGS WILL DIE". But slash, at 4 seconds cooldown ... is it the set's spam to fill attacks power? NOPE. That would be Power #5 (for the other versions): PARRY, a 3 second cooldown spam attack that yes, has less damage than the 4 second cooldown attack, but also applies a stacking defense buff. I see in the Stalker version it's the tier 7 power which is probably more about bumping it to make room for build up and placate than actually balancing it to give stalkers a later filler attack. I could probably make an argument for cutting it for Assassin's Slash and leaving Whirling Sword in so that stalkers have both it and the cone AoE slice, but I'm not really invested. Overall this set seems OP due to not being "balanced and reworked slightly" for stalkers. Oh well, just keep playing the Stealth Swedish Chef and going bork bork bork guys. :)

THAT is the cornerstone of your problem. Everything you need to know is already detailed in my post.

Earth/Storm is so solid. You tell most people you have an ____/Storm controller and they'll go "Oh. really." You say you have an Earth/Storm controller and they'll go "Oh, REALLY??"

As a hard core grav/rad on live, I think having a 2nd copy of a singularity out would be supremely OP like, y'all can keep your Lore pets and I'll take Second Singularity for $100, Alex. (I'm planning on Northern Lights for that reason ahahaha....) Whenever you think, "This is good but I'd like JUST A LITTLE more" it usually means the balance is right on. And that's how I've felt on all the controllers I played including also Fire and Illusion.

Thank you so much for the concise but satisfyingly nerdy explanation for us. Frankly, it makes me really happy to read words like "one of your CPU cores that normally sits there doing nothing will do this minor thing that makes you happy."

Note that six slotting stamina with DOs (not SOs or level 25 IOs) is valid and will not trigger severe ED. It's no different than 3 slotting it with SOs. Move the slots later or stick procs in there or go nuts and slot a set that has benefits you want. If you are using level 25 enhancements you should probably respec and move them if you don't have "A Plan" for the redundant slots. Slotting more than 3 of any level 25 IO or SO will result in you only getting just a couple % enhancement. Like with attack it's something like: 32->64->92->98. (Note that it's the VALUE that is the trigger for diminishing returns, not just the number of enhancements. You crack 92%, you trigger a huge nerf; for enhancements that are about 20% as SOs like defense and endmod, the cliff is 56%.) That said the problem is not your auras it's your attacks. One end reducer is normal and some people get by without them. Why? They put the end reducer in their attacks. I also knew someone who had crippling endurance problem and the issue was that he didn't have enough damage slotted. He literally took 3x as many attacks as he should have - high cost attacks mind you - to finish off a mob. As a brute, maintaining your fury is essential and if you're not at 50% you are actually in the situation of having less than base damage available because brutes were scaled around at least 50%. Conceivably, low fury could be the biggest contributor to your problem. It's a balancing act. Incoming endurance, endurance passively spent on toggles, and endurance actively spent with click powers and attacks are all very closely connected. Trying to solve the problem by addressing it at only 1 of the three points isn't going to work - the returns diminish. Further, as noted, because you may nopt be fully enhanced with level 25 IOs / SOs (IOs are better truuuussst me) the amount of enhancement you have in your powers is not really developed yet. So here's what you need to do: - thoughtfully disable any defensive toggle you're not using. Fighting a bunch of council who are just shooting you in the face? You want your smashing/lethal protection and your knockdown protection running. Move on to Hellions? On goes the protection versus fire. Don't fight with ninja run much less it and sprint on. I goof up and leave them on all the time myself and WOW that will suck you dry. - balance how you use your slots and prioritize your enhancements. Missing an attack is the biggest waste of end there is. Accuracy probably comes first. Slot your attacks with 2 accuracy DOs at teens levels and then prioritize getting 1 full value IO or SO at 22. Needing to hit them an extra time is also bad; some damage is important but put it in the attacks that it will have the most impact in first so the gain is greatest. Brutes generally have a 3 or 4 second recharge power (OR BRAWL which is totes valid) on autofire for fury building, but that attack is typically very low damage. You put end in that attack before damage, maybe even 2 if you are still struggling. So for example if you were electric melee I'd take charged brawl and slot it accuracy, end, recharge first, and then add 1 damage every time I could spare a slot; damage procs are often better than raw damage in this type of power and you might not even put 3 damage in it. Meanwhile in Havoc Punch I'd probably go Acc, Dam, End at first, then add more damage and recharge as needed to get my attack chain going.

I quite honestly don't bother with enhancements until at earliest the late teens and then it's just going to be 2 accuracy DOs (or I will be getting 1 accuracy IO when my crafter is better set up). At very low levels the game applies a temporary tohit buff to you to make it easier. At level 12 you could do the invention tutorial and get a level 15 IO and maybe just slot some DO drops... I just tough it out until 22.

Actually the low level arcs are already quite merit rich and for some reason people have been skipping over them and not noticing. The Hollows arcs award a total of 95 merits. NINETY FIVE. Someone else in the thread complained about having nothing to do but FrostFire over and over and counterpoint to that: what the heck? Do you think after the tutorial stuff in Atlas there's nothing else to do? There's enough content in Atlas and King's Row and Steel Canyon to beat a Hellion to death with. I know in the past sometimes people would go into the Hollows and not realize that it was a 6th, alternative story path and that they could just turn around and come back and do something else. Is that still a thing? Do people not realize that even if you do the new tutorial and get given the new contacts, you can talk to any of the 5 origin contacts and start their paths? Miss Azuria? Go talk to her. She still has a stolen necklace for you to find. Then at level 5 she'll introduce you to Laurence, Paco, or Genevieve who will at 10 introduce you to Hayley, Hugo, or Trevor for more magical shenanigans. Personally I'm currently working on the original clockwork storyline from that range. There is a LOT of content to do in every level of the game. Some of the newer choices are more dynamically written or feeds more into the meta than the old content but with all kinds of seasoning a little of this and a little of that is probably best.

Primarily I just wanted to complement you guys on another fine update and also thank the community member who supplied some cleaned up art. Honestly that is some serious life quality improving art. Regarding the DFB adjustment, I have to say I really love it especially since it's exactly what I suggested they do; some people thought that was limiting options; I think it's just normalizing reward. Plus you know how everyone wants an Oro porter? Well if you DFB to 15, and then go do Faultine's story arcs, you GET an oro porter as part and parcel of that! But I will address one other comment because I think it's coming from an uninformed place: (some text snipped to consolidate the main points) I can see where you're coming from but at the same time I feel like you're asking for a lot. You say you're doing a lot of low level content and have lots of alts ... so why do you need any sets? Why aren't you using mostly generic IOs and maybe a few special pieces. Karma: Knockback protection costs a mere 20 merits! When you say you need 100 merits for a "good one" are you talking about the level scaling archetype enhancements? Those are like the crown jewels that used to cost 400-500 merits. PVP IO recipes also can cost 100 but as far as I've seen the normal set recipes are 20 for an uncommon and 50 for a rare, and that is a serious price reduction from live when uncommon set IO recipes were 50-75, and rares were 125-275. Here is the list of Original Dev prices for things bought with merits: https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Merit_Rewards#Rewards_Purchases If you feel you can't buy specifically what you want still, maybe a better tack for you would be to spend 10 merits on a random roll and then just sell the most valuable recipes and use that to buy modest replacements for yourself. But it really does feel like you've chosen to stretch yourself very thin and want to still be able to gear up in the same way someone who focuses on just a couple characters can.

When the game shut down, many of us lost cherished bases we worked so hard to create. And just as many people are working to recreate their lost characters many of us are recreating our favorite bases or new versions of them. Today I got a notice that my house in Final Fantasy XIV is getting auto-demolished in a week. They use a non-instanced system and eventually condemn and foreclose on your property if you don't login monthly. I actually quit playing almost more than a year ago but kept my sub up and logged in once a month just to preserve the little cottage I made. While you can't customize nearly as much as here the house represented as much effort to me as end game raiding gear to some people. Members of my guild helped me out by crafting pieces of furniture which usually took high levels of master crafting and rare materials to make. I worked hard finding just the right little bits to give it personality. So the house represented the same kind of love and effort a character would. I couldn't understand why I just kept "forgetting" to cancel that sub, but now that we're back in City and building bases it's suddenly so clear. The base/housing is a character for the architect, just like a playable character. It also puts something else in perspective. I had to quit playing City before the sunset, primarily because of computer issue. But there was an emotional factor too - around then there was a bit of supergroup drama that came out of nowhere. I'm not going to air detailed dirty laundry but the short of it is that someone got manipulative and was given permission to completely delete a base I had created for an alt supergroup. (The manipulative person just wanted to have a base to build and didn't like what I had done, I guess.) The SG co-leader later apologized as they realized that they had been misinformed and made a huge mistake. But the damage was done. The work I'd absolutely slaved over was erased in a fingersnap. And now I realize why it was so painful: it was no different than someone getting on my account and deleting a character. I was so angry and hurt and I never wanted to play with those people again. I knew that I felt robbed by the situation, but it wasn't until I was writing this all down I figured out the whole emotional context for having such a strong reaction. Anyway, please pardon the rambling ... the point I wanted to make was that when the game Sunsetted everyone shared their grief at losing their characters but I bet a lot of us had an extra hurt that we maybe didn't share. And maybe, like me, you didn't even realize you were walking around with an extra dose of loss.

I did this trick to create a simple in-base network. I used the police boxes, colored blue of course. Then I set them against the wall to conceal the beacons. And thus, I have an in-base TARDIS network.

I was actually thinking of making a character vaguely along these lines and I'm considering Mind Control/Sonic Resonance controller. The mind control would represent singing to entrance the listeners and the sonic resonance buffs the application of hard musical energy for defense.

Those graphics look better than mine and I started with my card on the regular Ultra settings and then pushed everything that could go higher, higher. Do you think they have some extra HQ textures there too or what?

It's also entirely possible that some of the people trying to cause problems are not actually "of" this community. There has been this very toxic culture in gaming and it's entirely possible some ass lurking in the depths of the internet saw someone having fun and decided to cause problems. One of the other servers was hit with a low grade hack attack? Sounds more like random trolls than actual City players. First because I think it's unlikely "we" would do something like that. And second, if someone people in our extended community were to turn dark side like that and make an attempt I think it would be more professional. This game has a higher % than typical of programmers and IT pros playing it. If "we" tried to do something bad it would be "Nemesis Army" level competent not "Hellions" level competent.