Maxzero

Thats the point. They are comparable despite being team wide powers. Adrenaline Boost is 1 target only (not even perma without very heavy +recharge) and that target can never be you. Buffing isn't even Time/Nature/Dark's only trick either. They all have access to excellent debuffs in addition to their buff kit. Would be a really interesting to see, on the test realm, Empathy (and others such as FF) get self targeting buffs. No doubt all these people would take Empathy since it would be OP and solo AE 801 because it gives 'tanker level mitigation' right?

So you are telling me if Empathy had self castable Fortitude and Clear mind it would be better then Dark Affinity or Time Manipulation for soloing? Even after the change Empathy would still be weaker because Empathy has been power creeped to hell and back. Its noticable that all the later buff power sets (Dark, Time, Nature) all heavily toned back or near removed entirely the Ally only mechanic (Ally Rez be definition would be Ally only) . Even the developers on Live realised how poor a mechanic it is I don't know why players cling to it so. The powers are not even toned down despite being team wide: Wild Growth, Overgrowth, Farsight, Chrono Shift, Fade and Soul Absorption are some of the best abilities in the game so the argument that if self targeted they would be weaker is just plain wrong. Dark, Time and Nature showed that being a support can be more then just being a buff bot and can solo perfectly fine.

Yeah it does. My question why does it have to be that way? These changes won't make Empath as good as Time or Dark solowise so why make Empath even more locked into team only play?

Honestly its not even my build its one a speed runner gave me the idea for. Demons/Cold is actually a very strong combo since the resists and defence bonuses acually line up almost perfectly. The Demons end up at like 45% def and nearly 90% res to most things. The Burnout thing is a bit of a gimmick. I don't play MMs a much anymore since pets tend to suffer a bit in the current meta. But for ST damage they are obscene because powerful pets are one of the few ways of not being limited by single rotation. Its why Lore pets can such a big impact on DPS. Crab soldier 'Masterminds' can get extremely high ST DPS for the same reason.

Lol no it wouldn't thats complete nonsense. My Controller would still be better off with Time or Dark.

Not really. Is an Empathy Defender suddenly become some sort of solo powerhouse? I can already make a perma near Regen cap character with my Plant/Dark Controller. The buffs are team wide and I also get a huge selection of debuffs and pets to go with it. Empathy will self targeting buffs is still not that good.

Is there any reason why we still have these? Why do some sets loses 50%+ of their effectiveness if they have no one to cast their buffs on yet other powersets do not? Its not like Empathy is going to be OP if players can cast Fortitude on themselves. You now have implemented QoL changes where certain ST shields and buffs affect the whole party except the person using the power. You end up in situations where everyone wants to group with a /Kin but no one actually wants to play one because the /Kin player gets all the grunt work while everyone else gets the fun. So is this something that can be looked at?

One thing to note on Illusion when fighting pylons is that Illusion has no way to setup Containment but Pylons due to be stationary automatically proc Containment. Just pointing out that you will have slightly reduced performance on non stationary targets. If you are willing to spend a lot of runs on it to get good RNG a Demons/Cold MM could be very good on pylons. There is a video of a 9 second kill but that use Lore and all Temp powers so I don't know how slow it would be without them. Hah, the video is still around after 3 years. Obviously this is not a contender for the leaderboard but it may give someone some ideas. The Pylon dies before the debuff rotation finishes but they basically use Burnout to double stack Sleet and Heat Loss combined with Demon -res for a few hundred total -res.

The key thing with Plant/ is that its the only Controller Primary that does good AoE damage. Seeds and Creepers are so far ahead in AoE clearspeed its not funny.

Funnily enough that /Storm can proc the Immobilize is actually really useful otherwise Tornado and LS will just make enemies run everywhere. A Arsenal/Storm combo might actually work...kinda. The turret would probably work better as a tank if it were shorter range. Be cool if it were a flamethrower like turret (maybe a Cryo version for theme?) instead of a boring old gun turret.

In your way you are right because Controller gain so much power from another broken system: procs. Outside of procs Containment is literally consistent double damage for Controller attacks. Can you make a viable Controller without using Containment? Sure if you rely the crutch of PA (which itself is problematic balance wise) otherwise you are going to a rather boring time.

The thing is Arsenal Control as it is now is actually in an okay position. The problem isn't the set itself but the Immobilize Containment meta that its trying to fit into. The same way you didn't fix Defender and Tanker damage issues by giving them new OP attack sets you are not going to fix the reliance on Immobilize by adding new sets (unless those new sets are crazy OP which just causes new problems). No other AT is so critically reliant on their passive for damage as Controllers are and it has and will continue to hamper design until its solved. Control sets are cookie cutter because Containment makes them so. This was never fixed on live but you guys now have the power to finally solve it.

In many ways the issue isn't Arsenal Control but the Containment passive itself. If you are literally going to lock of 50% of an ATs damage behind the presence of certain debuffs that anything that cannot provide that debuff is going to struggle. The exception that proves the rule is Illusion Control: the set literally has multiple, taunting and invincible high damage pets just to be competitive with Containment. You want to break the Immobilize meta or at least weaken it? Fix the cause of it Containment instead of reworking sets over and over trying to make them fit in a broken meta.

Especially when you realise the Containment mechanic itself is a stop gap solution for Controllers doing crappy damage. If they don't want Immo to be so important how about increase base Controller damage scaling and change Containment into something to do with CC/support (or anything really) instead of damage? We now have an adhoc solution to an adhoc solution instead of fixing the root problem. Tanker's and Defenders got their passive reworked maybe its time for Controllers to have their turn.

You know a ST only Immo is not too bad for me. Most spawns will die fast enough anyway its the stupid AV that runs around like an idiot which is the real pain.

Since they are reverting the Sleep Grenade change making it pulsing again if the Stun was also also pulsing it would actually serve to create a bit of a theme with Arsenal Control. It would trade damage for multiple powerful AoE CCs. At least it would have a unique niche then.

Agree with everything Dispari said. In addition having a 45sec CD Sleep as your second ability is almost a bit of a trap. Since you can pick one of the first 2 abilities if you pick the Sleep Grenade you are actually left with no damaging attacks except Brawl. Also some of the powers have high activation times but below average damage compared to other Control sets. Traq Dart for some reason does less damage then all the ST Immo's the other Control sets get plus a longer cast time then everything except Symphony and Electric. When you combine that how hard it is for Arsenal Control to setup Containment due to lack of Immobilize you looking at some meagre damage numbers.

Also for ST Immo's not only does it setup Containment well for AV targets its also far less of DPS loss. You have to use it less often and typically does more damage with a lower animation time then AoE Immo. I think switching my Plant/Dark ST rotation from 3 attacks +Roots to 2 attacks + Entangle was like a ~70 DPS increase.

One big advantage of Indom Will is that is also has a lot of Psi defence. This matters because many CC attacks are Psi attacks that do not have a positional defence tag (range/melee/AoE) but only a Psi one. What this means is that you can all the ranged defence in the world but most Psi attacks will just plain ignore it. Finally IW also is a higher mag (10) and covers 5 different CC types (Hold, Stun, Confuse, Sleep, Terror). Both the Traps and Sonic Bubbles are weaker and narrower in their protection The downside of Psi Mastery are that its the weakest offensively with the worst attacks. The biggest cost of Psi Mastery is the inability to take a strong offensive epic like Frost or Leviathan.

I think the main issue is that Soul Harvest and Fade have such quick turn rotationa. Doubling the CD and Duration of each would be a nice QoL upgrade.

Its hard to beat Troller /Dark. It literally has everything. Teamwide Heal/Def/Res/Rec/Regen/DefDeRes buffs. AoE -Dam/-Res/-Hit/-Def/-Rec/-Regen/-Rech/Slow debuffs. Dark Miasma was already a top line Buff set and Dark Affinity took 2 of the weaker abilities (at least on Troller) and replaced them with two of the best buff abilities in the game.

Genshin Impact. Finally got my 5 star roll for Kazuha banner and lost my 50/50. Feelsbadman.

Damn near compulsory unfortunately. Ill/Storm for example works amazing till it does not.

Even then you have to be in melee range and the other confusion power is doing the heavy lifting while World of Confusion adds a mag 2 confuse for 1.5 seconds. The AoE confuse proc in Mass confusion is way more useful then World of Confusion. It also costs no energy to run.

The key to pylon times is action economy. Crabberminds and MMs dominate since they can run a ST rotation while their pets do good damage. Controller has one Primary that can also do the same thing (Illusion) but Illusion sacrifices its AoE and CC for that ST strength. Plant is amazing AoE but weaker ST. Just completed are min max DPS Plant/Storm and 1.40min is about the limit. In comparison my 2 year old poorly optimised Ill/Storm did an easy 1 min flat. Plants AoE and CC is incredible though. Honestly I am finding the weak point if Plant/Storm isn't Plant but Storm. Freezing Rain is great for debuffing but Tornado and LS seem to really only be useful ST. I do wonder if I could run a Plant/TA and get similar pylon times while not being so clunky to use and end heavy.