oedipus_tex

Based on these requirements I would consider a Dark Control/Thermal Controller. The resist shields, plus your healing, plus the -ToHit debuffing you do is a formidable combo, and a perfect argument for taking Leadership to add additional team Defense to stack with it. Alternatively if you don't mind the rezz requiring an enemy target, I would consider Dark/Dark. Personally I think Controllers tend to fit the "ultimate support character" designation more than Defenders do, depending on how you define "support character." Defenders do have better base modifiers and some Defenders have debuff in their attacks. Controllers make up for that with the volume of options available them. IMO Controller is the strangest class in the game. There are huge differences in each powerset combo.

I happen to think Traps is the most slept on Defender set. Force Field Generator is a plain fantastic power. FFG with 2 Defense IOs and +6% from globals gives you a starting base of 25% Defense to every position and mezz protection against Hold, Stun and Immobilize. In theory Traps lacks healing, but Defenders get a heal proc as an ATO bonus. Virtually any secondary would work, but Water stands out to me as strong. I wouldn't bother with Dark Blast, just because you'll likely not need the -ToHit that much with so much Defense.

While it's not necessarily always ideal to slot the T1 attack this way, a key to end game Defenders is remembering you can split the ATO that provides +10 Recharge between two different attacks and net a total +20 Recharge from it. For some builds, putting 3 of the slots in the T1 attack is a good idea.

There are ways to make this combo okay, but you're right it's likely always going to be a low damage performer. Gremlins aren't very strong damage dealers and will take a long time to kill things. You can try to proc out your attacks to make it a bit better, but Therm is more of a support set. If you're open to reimagining the character and damage is important, Elec/Fire Dominator would be the same theme but good at damage. You'd lose the ability to play support, however. If you want to stay with Therm you could also do a Elec Blast/Therm Defender. Electric Blast was recently revamped.

I haven't tried to prove it, but based on the publicly available code, it seems you get bonus Domination points for every team member, without regard to whether that entity is a player or a pet. So, keeping pets around (probably) actually has a semi-useful extra side function. A Fire Controller with 3 imps and a APP pet would build Domination as if on a 5-man team. Also, it's an unexpected synergy between Dominators and Masterminds. 🙂

Flash Freeze has certainly benefited a lot from the autohit Sleep changes. One thing I sort of wish is that Sleeping targets didn't slip on Ice Slick, since it removes the Sleep. Always wished Ice Slick was designed for that slight bit of extra synergy.

I put Hasten on auto-renew and manually click Domination when its up. It helps a lot to turn on the visual timers for icons so you can see exactly when they will recharge. I do have the problem of not being able to go to the bathroom without Domination falling off. Hazard of the class. 🙂

Electric Control usually has trouble flooring endurance in team content at low to mid levels. You don't have the enhancements yet. Solo, it's a lot more doable. Just drop a Static Field and stand on enemies with your CA running. End game Electric Control builds often recover some of effectivness. You can see a video of me running CA in this Elec Control video (on Elec/Psi/Psi build).

CA is a must-take power on any Electric build for me. Like most powers, its effectiveness can vary depending on the situations you find yourself in. The debuff side of is pretty straight forward. Unenhanced, each tick, it drains enemies of 10% of their endurance. It does roll for Accuracy so you'll want some in the power. The endurance debuff is equivalent to what you get from a cast of Electric Fences, although completely free and hitting only 8 targets instead of 16. On the buff side, Unenhanced, Conductive Aura supplies +0.03125 recovery to the caster. If you hit 8 targets with it (the cap), you're getting exactly as much Recovery as Inherent Stamina (0.25 Recovery). That's enough reason to take it even if you aren't actually able to floor endurance, which might happen at early levels. It also provides 0.05 Regen per target, not enough to likely matter, but its better than nothing I suppose. Conductive Aura as far as I can immediately recall is the only or one of the only toggle powers that is completely free to run. It's an inverse of the endurance hogs Arctic Air and Hot Feet in that it gives you endurance instead of taking it from you. There's no reason to not run it unless you need to avoid aggro. In terms of CA's overall role in aggressive sapping, you'll probably find the sapper role easier later on in your career. Electric Control is heavily tilted in my opinion toward certain specific secondary combos, especially Psi, Dark, Earth, Ice, or Energy, all of which have either extra -Recovery (Psi) or Power Boost style effects, Grabbing an Alpha slot that increases Endurance Modification makes a huge difference in how viable sapping is as a role. If you want to be able to sap Elite Bosses easily you can also take the Mu pool for Power Sink. The combo of Power Sink, Conductive Aura and Electric Fences (because of its fast anim time) is undeniable. There aren't a ton of situations where being the Elite Boss sapper is all that critical, but it can be fun to instantly destroy the ability of the all-Cyclops packs in the ITF to respond. There are situations where turning CA off is advisable, For example, I don't run it in iTrials, because sapping isn't really needed there, and it just drags aggro back to me needlessly, It may also be worth avoiding in situations where you're trying to be sneaky with Synaptic Overload--again, certain iTrials come to mind.

Kinetics likely makes for better farming support in most situations, and also in most situations also dishes more actual damage. That said, farms are by definition tailored to the player, so if the farm is specifically set up to make Radiation effective--for example, by including a good place to fire and forget the -Resist debuff toggle--it could potentially be useful. Even so, Radiation is usually considered a midling -Resist set, since it can't stack it. Cold, Poison, or Storm are probably better suited to that kind of support. TLDR most farmers probably don't truly need either Radiation or Kinetics or any other buff set to perform, but won't really be hurt by it either. It's also possible the people asking for Kinetics are remembering the pre-AE game, where Kinetics was a premier farming build. It's still pretty good. Radiation was never known as a farming build, altho I did used to run an Ice/Radiation toon during the "conference room fire farm" era and he did marginally okay.

Hot Feet is potentially skippable if you never solo but I consider that an "offbrand," unusual build. There are legitimate situations pre-IOing where it can put you at unneeded risk. It costs a lot of endurance to run, and if you end up on a team where you're much lower level than the rest of your group it can in some situations create more problems than its worth. However I would definitely not skip it on a build where you plan to do any soloing. Hot Feet with Containment does respectable damage. The ability to solo well is a feature of Fire Control, so if you do skip it you're not taking advantage of that feature. Plus, Fire Control should in most cases be able to run Hot Feet safely in some team content and contribute some damage that way. Once you have a strong end game build it depends a lot on how you intend to play. In most content its probably safe to run. You'll want to be smart about it though. It's often not worth using in content like iTrials, for example. Even if you use it only occasionally though it's still a power most people do want in the build for moments when they can use it.

I'm going to agree with the rest of the crowd that Stalagmites is a key power. I'd be reluctant to skip it. If you are adamant about stacking it, you can combo it with Fissure in the Earth APP, which has a 50% chance for Mag 2 stun. Between the 20% chance to Overpower and 50% chance to Stun with Fissure you can stun a signficant number of bosses. Anything that's not stunned you can hit with Seismic Smash, which is Mag 4 and will always hold a boss and will help a lot with your single target damage hole. It does mean venturing into melee range, which may or may not be attractive to you. I'd also recommend skipping Tactics. Earth Control has -Defense as its secondary effect so +ToHit isn't as needed as it might be otherwise. Tactics is useful for avoiding Blindness, true, but there are better ways to deal with that in my opinion. BTW I wasn't able to open the build and look at it because my version of Mids won't open it, but make sure you proc Ice Arrow with damage procs. It hits like a truck when procced out. I notice Ice Arrow wasn't in Journey's build, I would definitely add it in. It makes a huge difference on Controllers.

Prior to the AE taking such a prominent role as a farming locale and access to incarnate powers, Fire/Psi Dominators similar to what jeolman1 posted were popular for a couple of reasons. Back then, endurance management was much tougher than it currently is, and was one of the top priorities. That is why Fire and Plant combined with Psi Assault (on Doms) or Kinetics (on Controllers) were so popular.

The key powers in Gravity Control for most people are Gravity Distortion, Lift, Wormhole and Singularity (the pet). Propel is a cool looking power that is an optional addition depending on how you want to handle your single target attack priority. I take Propel 50% of the time, mainly hinging on whether I took Arcane Bolt to open the Sorcery tree. From Empathy, I'd personally take everything while leveling up and then once you get to incarnate levels respec out of Clear Mind, and replace it with Clarion Destiny, which does more or less the same (not exactly the same, but close enough) thing but better. There are a small handful of situations where the ability to stack mezz protection is useful, but its very rare, the self-mezz protection is a lot more valuable in my experience. You can also optionally spec into the Clarion tree that has power boost style effects if you want to play with that. Keep in mind Regen is not boosted by Power Boost effects, although the Defense buff in Fortitude is. IIRC the Gravity pet can't be directly healed, but you can still boost its Regen, so when solo, put your T9 power on it along with Fortitude and it should be nearly impossible to kill, especially if you also hit it with Regen Aura.

May be worth adding that Plant does enough damage to be viable on a Controller and still deal pretty serious hurt. Storm, Poison, Kinetics and Trick Arrow and a few other sets all perform monstrously well with Plant Control, if that's the direction you'd prefer. Plant is an S-Tier set on either archetype.

I've always thought it was a shame Electric Assault didn't get a version of Lightning Rod. It's definitely a set with a lot of opportunity for some love from the developers.

It's not a noob question. Bill is right, the Alpha slot works like a free enhancement slot. However it only buffs enhanceable powers. If you need Recharge from an incarnate power, you can use Ageless Destiny. It provides a global Recharge bonus, which works more like Speed Boost/Hasten/etc and does cause Domination to recharge faster.

Yep, Ice Arrow. Personally I don't proc out EMP Arrow, tho you could. Acid Arrow and Ice Arrow for sure though.

To play devil's advocate for a moment, if money is no object, a +100% chance proc is probably the best slotting you can put in Kick just because nothing else is likely to make a difference. You'll still probably never cast it, but if for whatever reason you do, a chance for 100% Recharge is probably the best outcome you could ask for.

Does it have to be a Controller? This is pretty much what Dominators are known for, although not so much attacking with the Fighting pool as much as using it for extra survival. Cross-Punch is an okay attack on Dominators though. Less so on Controllers because I believe (but could be wrong) it doesn't receive bonus damage from Containment. Martial, Savage, Energy, Psi and a few other Assault sets operate well at close range. On Controllers the Earth pool is a pretty good close range power set. Fire/Kinetics/Earth and Plant/Kinetics/Earth are well known close range fighters. You won't be using the fighting pool attacks a lot though. For the record, I don't recommend Ice/Sonic Controller for anyone but the very dedicated. Like anything you can make it work, but the huge endurance costs of Ice and Sonic combined make for a trying time.

In addition to what others have mentioned about Feral Charge being an AoE, it's maybe worth noting that you can Feral Charge while hovering or flying. This allows a Savage Dominator to have the safety and extra defense from Hover without the movement penalty. In addition, for some reason Unkindness does not root the caster, or at least does not prevent upward movement from hitting spacebar while Hovering. This allows you an easy way to hover away from the enemy and then Feral Charge back into range for extra damage.

Unfortunately Dominator powers aren't consistent about proccing Domination. Each power is hand-coded to react to the Domination flag, and some of them were either missed or technical aspects of the power made it difficult to implement, so the power was passed over. For example, there isn't consistency about whether pseudo pets Dominate; Shadow Field does, Synaptic Overload does not (but probably should).

On live, Fire, Ice, Earth, and Plant's immobilizes had both KB resistance and KB protection. This cancelled all knockback and knockdown. Electric Control went into beta with both knockback resistance and protection, but it was removed during the test period so that the cages would not cancel Jolting Chain. Gravity and Dark never had either KB or protection that I can remember. On Homecoming, the devs removed the KB protection from the sets that originally had it, while leaving the KB resist in place. The result is those powers now allow knockdown but not knockback. I have mixed feelings about whether it should be added. Some variety is nice after all. I do wish the original dev team had thought to give Electric Control the resist-without-protection treatment though just to prevent Jolting Chain from occasionally knocking enemies backward.

Corruptors are force multipliers so a big pack of them, or Defenders, will do well. Blaster and Tanker are damn, and I mean damn fine archetypes though. Back on Controllers, they can do alright, coz they are also force multipliers. I'd usually prefer one to a Dominator for iTrials. Some of them struggle harder than others though. Mainly Ice, Earth, Electric and Mind on Controllers. I like the flavor of those sets a lot but I have to admit the control they bring doesn't often mean a lot unless they're built in a really particular way. People spamming ice cages probably don't know they have a base DPA of around 7 and you'd be better off casting almost anything else in a team setting, most of the time.

For a true soloist, meaning you're going to be soloing enemy packs as well as the end boss rather than just sneaking past them, I'd consider Illusion/Trick Arrow. Proc out TA's hold and Acid Arrow for damage and they are actually very good attacks. Oil Slick Arrow will be up every other spawn or so and provides an extra AoE.