roleki

Depends. If you want the most KB going in one general direction, En/En blaster is there for you. If you want stuff flying every which way, go Bots/Storm.

Love the idea of dial-a-bubble; one of the many joys of running my Fire/FF controllers is just zipping around a zone with Force Bubble, ticking off mobs and drawing them into the murder spot... because the power is essentially useless outside of that. Having a smaller radius would allow for more precise execution, but, I would hate to lose the big bubble, because...it IS fun at times.

Always sell salvage before recipes and enhancements, so you don't list an Apocalypse for 18M, and 10 pieces of Ceramic Armor Plate for 18M.

To a couple points on this... I may pop in on my PL'd 50 and do exemped/Ouro content to give me a pipeline of level 10-30 recipes, so's I can flip them into the various Kismets and Miracles that I stuff into virtually every build. I also will Ouro back into badge missions, like Spelunker, so's I can get the Atlas Medallion on demand. As for skipping content I'm "bored with" only to run a farm mission into the dirt, there's two things afoot (for me, at least): first off, it isn't just the slog-level content I am bored with, but also the slog-level gameplay. Part of the reason is, I prefer support characters over DPS types, and the level-up experience of support types is far more tedious than that of a scrapper or a brute; while *most* DPS types start out great and just keep getting better, support types start out weak, get a little better, get great, then might as well fall off a cliff. To suffer incomplete attack chains, floored endurance bars, and unmitigated mez along the way to obviation just isn't worth it to me. Secondly, and this is specific to what I do, but I may spend ~3 hours PLing an alt from 0-50.3, but that is in 45 minute chunks with maybe 10 days in between sessions for THAT alt. In the interim, I might work on another alt in the same manner, or run around on one of my existing alts. On balance, I spend far more time outside of AE than I do inside. I've tried my hand at creating missions in AE (even had one get rated!) and respect the amount of work that can go into them; it kind of stinks that there isn't a better way to present the results of that labor to the intended audience. I have a very hard time finding the missions that *I* created, and I know exactly what to search for. How anyone found it out of the blue is beyond me. At a distance of 6' or more, of course.

Sure! Many moons ago, people came complaining that AE farmers were getting more rewards than sloggers; eventually the cacophony grew to convince the devs to curtail AE rewards. Then the complainers came complaining that AE farmers were driving auction prices through the roof, and after repeating that for a few months virtually unopposed, the devs chipped away at inf in AE. This week, @Solarversespeculated that power-leveling may be responsible for players drifting away from the game; they may not have intended that to be a call to nerf AE, but to those whose goal it is to nerf AE, "player drift" is going to become the bleating edge of AE nerf complaints, because most PLing occurs in AE farms. And when the nerfers do take up that call, and people like me are primly shouted down for being "defensive" or "not playing the game the way the devs intended" eventually the devs will be compelled to retask resources that WERE going toward improving the game, and instead focus them on finding some new way to nerf AE farming. And I am just saying, if and when they do, at least one player (me) will no longer be here, because I am absolutely done being whipped around by the whims of serial complainers. It appears that many, many people have yet to figure out that whatever player base you have today? THAT is the player base you have. Some of them slog. Some of them farm. Some of them play the AH. Chipping away at those things that keep people around? Not smart.

My apologies. I didn't realize I was replying to a goal-post mover who would wimp out and stop reading if they didn't agree with what I said. In small words, the ability to power level my characters enables me to skip the content of the game I do not prefer and head right to the content of the game that I do prefer, with a character that performs exactly how I envisioned it from the moment I finish the build. Some people may have a preference for the little dopamine spikes they get from incremental progress, I do not. If I had to nurse every character through content, I would not continue playing because I do not enjoy that experience. But... I also do not enjoy spending time shitting on people for playing a game "the wrong way" or blaming them for the natural ebb and flow of the attention span of the world at large, which is apparently a very strong urge among people who enjoy slogging. Bottom line, if the devs continue to play around with AE to mollify serial squealers, you can count on at least one less player logging in. If the game is losing players, farmers aren't the problem. If people are drifting off to play other games, power-leveling is not the problem. If a single dev out there had the answer to achieving 100% retention on a damn-near 20yo game, they probably wouldn't waste it on a damn-near 20yo game.

Can't speak for anyone else, but in my case... see my signature. Without the ability to PL my alts, I'm not here. If I'm not here, that's (estimating conservatively) about 70k pieces of salvage and 14500 recipes that aren't generated and dumped on the market, ~300 fewer Superpacks cracked and dispersed, and (again, estimating conservatively) about 1500 hours of leagues/teams that I'm not participating in or leading outside of AE, well over 10M healing that would have gone undelivered, ~2000 hours of leaning into Help/LFG/General, more than a handful of donation windows paid into... Sure, these numbers are all infinitesimal specks when compared to the larger whole to which they contribute, but as the population dwindles, those little numbers aren't going to be quite as little. And while it can't be quantified, based on in-game tells and Discord conversations, I've given multiple players proof that weird combos/tactics can yield spectacular results, and maybe inspired a Fire/FF controller or two along the way. This is all just a bunch of words to say, farmers can and do play the same game as religious grinders, we just make fewer trips to the hospital along the way.

My observations from some of your proposed combinations that I have run... Dark/Elec is pretty strong; nearly everything out of the primary has a -ToHit component, and with Faraday Cage and the ability to throw Absorbs and Heals around quickly, survivability is through the roof. Lots of possibilities for straight slotting AND frankenslotting; there might be a combo that can slot a wider variety of procs, but I can't think of any off the top of my head. I have mine slotted all wrong (because I had never ran either set before) and it's STILL one of my favorites. Fire/Elec is slightly less impressive than Dark/Elect... Fire Imps are the worst teammates for the EA chaining mechanic; they're flimsy and spastic, and prone to forcing you to sometimes put in twice (or thrice?) the effort to keep them/yourself alive. It's playable, but in practice never lived up to what I envisioned it to be. Fire/Nature... Fire has a lot going for it, and Nature has a lot going for it but when I mashed the two together, it seemed like both sets suffered. Nature seems geared towards longer engagements than what Fire is built to deliver, so I wound up with an uneven/inconsistent soloer. It's definitely playable (Hot Feet and Entangling Aura are a winning combination if you have the endurance to do them) but when I solo, I go long stretches barely clicking anything out of the secondary. Elec/Elec... this one is still a lowbie on my end, but having run several of each set now, I am pretty sure this one will be solid when it grows up. IMO Electric Control is waaayy underrated, especially as a solo character. The -End component is kind of a cheesy debuff (considering mobs pretty much do whatever they want regardless of how much endurance they have) but Elec gives you a really interesting mix of tools to work with... between the sleep patch and the "AoE" confuse, almost nobody notices that you're sapping all their endurance and slapping them around with chained AoEs. The AoE hold having range makes it more useful than just as a panic button, the way most AoE holds are. My only misgiving is that Gremlins are only slightly less-spastic than Fire Imps, and I fear I might run into the same problems with them in regards to EA.

TA is a busier secondary than most, so endurance is always a problem; I tend to 3-slot Stamina on TA, and I 4-slotted it on my Fire/TA controller... that's on top of a stack of Miracle/Numina/Panacea in health. You at least have *some* mitigation with Conductive Aura, but to take advantage of that you're giving up some of the benefit of TAs all-ranged approach. Maybe you spend more time in Melee on this than I think? If not, you might be able to slap a PerfShift in that single slot instead of an EndMod? I also think you can safely move a slot out of Tesla Cage by 4-slotting it with Basilisk Gaze and put a Devastation %Hold in the 5th slot, then drop the extra down to Stamina and fill it with a standard EndMod IO. You're picking up damage with the procs in your AoEs so not as much need to do so out of your ST hold. Also, it is very easy to get the Atlas Medallion, and that improves every EndMod proc that acts off a percentage.

To be honest, I rarely deploy Phantasm on my Ill/Traps, and I end up dismissing it myself more than it ever gets itself killed in combat. When you've teleported your invisible self behind a massive mob and prepared a line of trip mines for them to stumble onto when they react to the sudden appearance of your Phantom Army, nothing quite ruins the party like Phantasm finally showing up long enough to yell "HAY GUYS!? WHAT YOU DOING!? WHAT DO YOU THINK OF POWER BOLT FROM WAAAAY OVER HEEEERE?!"

Think of it this way - if a secondary had a Targeted AoE stun that increased the whole team's DEF(All) 10% and was available virtually every mob (even unslotted), we would all probably find room in our build for that power. Spectral Terror does Fear instead of stun, and chunks out 15% -ToHit instead of +Def, but in practice these are essentially the same effects. Even when mobs resist -ToHIt, they're still affected by it, and Spectral Terror has two powers that could apply the -15%, so it's possible some are getting debuffed more than 15%.

If you're me, you run with Speed of Sound and Superior Invisibility on at all times, drop PA to get the attention of the mobs, then while they're distracted, Jaunt behind them and drop Mines on the bad guys. It never gets old.

And that all makes sense, if it were still 2005 and THAT was the state of the game it was balanced against. You would have to agree that the game has evolved a little bit since then; after all the amps that have been handed out willy-nilly in the intervening years, it seems odd to declare TA as the line in the sand. Myself... in light of the fact that the debuffs out of TA are so much more effective *and* EMP Arrow has been amped into a pinata of Frankenstein abilities, I would suggest they drop the DPS of the lit oil slick, add the slightest pinch of fire damage to some other power, and call it a day. OSA was a saving grace when TA was the weakest set; now that it's finally getting brought into line with other 3rd-tier sets, maybe it won't need a nuke in its pocket to generate interest. The reason I care so much about this is because it is ridiculous to think an archer what would carry such an outlandish array of arrows would forget to bring a goddamn match with them. Throughout human history, wherever there has been a bow, there have been arrows that were on fire. If Bo & Luke Duke could do it, so too should a Defender.

It's for no-scope sniping.

I've hopped on so many "4/8 PI Radio tm lfm" where I was the only one with Tactics, it made me think that maybe Leadership had been deprecated sometime between my walking away from CoH and its return. I understand people can get amazing Accuracy bonuses from sets and Incarnates, but to my mind, there is no substitute for raw +ToHit. I'd rather the streakbreaker occasionally disappoint me than constantly save me.

For my money, Grav/Storm is the most fun you can have with a controller, bar none. There are a ton of ways to play the combo, too - you can trend towards mass chaos or complete battlefield control, play as a tankmage or as a methodical tactician. It's really just, flat out fun. My Grav/Storm leans more to the control/tactician side of the equation; I set up a "kill zone" around a corner, drop the enemy into it, and proceed to let my pseudopets whale on them until death do us part. Thanks to a focus on global recharge and a strategic dash of the Force Feedback +Rech proc, I spend most of combat at 286% recharge, which allows me to crank out Lightning Storms every 18s and Tornadoes every 12s. Thunderclap stacks with the stun off Wormhole to knock silly anything that managed to keep its wits en route; Control Hybrid just exacerbates their problem. With the FF+Rech and KB:KD enhancements, Gale transforms from turd material to an MVP candidate; I could go (and probably have gone) through a 4/8 map without firing off any ST attacks even once. I've also probably made it through a 4/8 PI radio without taking single a tick of damage. That's not to say I could go to DA and just stand there naked, or take on an AV or something... just that, for typical churn-through-it content, Grav/Storm does the job handsomely.

I took Polarrhoid (Ice/TA controller) out for a spin on Test... it's a big improvement, for sure. EMP Arrow is kind of weird now; the -Regen duration was badly needed, and nobody is going to turn down mez protection and debuff resistance but it seems oddly-placed in a T9. Since I can't really test it on... Test, I am going to assume that when they say the buffs apply to ANY ally in the target area, that THAT portion skips the max targets of 16. So now a /TA can cover the bowl in an MSR? Cool! Stacking -DMG was a nice and unexpected bonus, and combined with the additional -ToHit from Flash Arrow, increases survivability a LOT. The additional -Res in Entangling Arrow gives you a reason to fire the darn thing, even against a Pylon. Speaking of -Res, the decrease in recharge/amp in duration for Disruption Arrow mean the two Recharge IOs I ported from my 'live' build are serious overkill. I'm not sure I'll ever take advantage of the new EndMod set possibilities opened up by the -End debuff component that's been added to DA, but I appreciate the opportunity to move a slot elsewhere. The changes to Acid Arrow sound interesting, but either it doesn't work for your own debuffs (which makes sense) or the Power Analyzer is misreporting, because it seems none of the numbers move whether Acid Arrow was applied or not. So far, this feels about right, with more meaningful debuffs and some stacking that encourages actually USING things like Entangling Arrow and PGA. It will definitely force a /respec on my existing TAs, if only to adjust slotting a tad. My Fire/TA corruptor may have to drop out of the Fighting pool to fit Flash and Glue arrow in 🙂 My onliest gripe is that they looked straight at /TA and still didn't give it a way to ignite its own OSA. The rationale that "well, anyone can go get some temporary powers to ignite their OSA if they want to" only proves that it should be an ability inherent to the set itself. To add insult to injury, they now allow you to boost range of OSA, so you can run further to get into range with your miserable Taser Dart or whatever, watch it miss, wait for it to recharge or go to use your temp power but oh damn, you're out of charges... it's a ridiculous and arbitrary hoop to jump through.

So far, so good. I don't hate the changes, but, could REALLY have used Acid Arrow or PGA or darn near any power in the set combining to ignite OSA. Don't give me that "it was never intended to be a damage set!" bs. We're playing a game that was intended to be shut down almost a decade ago, I don't see you people clutching pearls on THAT one.

Rolled two characters on Indom tonight, both indicate their First Appearance was 2020-10-26. A random check of newbs in AP and Mercy show we're all from tomorrow. Everything's working fine; just struck me odd, is all.

Sadly, I keep a spreadsheet to track what level/vet level my characters are at, and use that to try and keep the same "generation" of characters within reasonable level of each other. I usually cycle through the 4 or 5 of that group, and play them until I get a catalyst, then switch up. That "backpressure" keeps me from just running the same four or five characters over and over, or from being logged out of a character so long that I forget how to run it.

Fire/Dark is an excellent all-purpose controller, almost up there with Ill/Dark. One of the great synergies of Fire/Dark is wading into melee and firing off Soul Absorption. Endurance issues: solved AND your pets get a huge +Regen bump on top of that, plus all the -ToHit and whatnot. Dark is a great secondary for anything, but it really works well with Fire.

I can only speak to the T9s I carry around myself, but here goes... Electrical Affinity - Amp Up. Very far from a set-defining power, but I suppose if a great support set is going to have a skippable, I would prefer it to be a T9 so I can spend more time doing what the set does best, and get my pets/Epics fleshed out that much sooner. If I could, I would have it use the chaining mechanic the rest of the buffs in the set are known for, with first target hit getting the best portion of the buff, and every subsequent target getting less, and have the buff factor in how much Static you have built up. THAT would feel like a T9. But... I still probably wouldn't take it on most EA builds. Force Field - Force Bubble. I actually *like* Force Bubble as an idea, even though it is useless on MOST teams, has an insane endurance cost for what little effect it actually has AND it completely invalidates the T7 from its own tree. For being a T9 with that kind of endurance cost, the bubble should pulse Hold instead of Repel, or floor Regen or some other massive, game-changing effect. Traps - Time Bomb. Awful cast time, awful delay, awful damage. Would rather see this ditched altogether and replaced with a "swap ammo" or "equip robot" kind of power, wherein it makes your other Traps powers a little differently in a given situation. Trick Arrow - EMP Arrow. Shave a minute off the recharge and remove the -Recovery component, and you've got a legit T9 here. As it stands, if I'm in a situation where I need to fire off EMP Arrow, I am probably also in a situation where I can't afford to go without endurance recovery for 15s. I understand they just ported it from Rad, warts and all, but unless an EMP Arrow weighs 15 pounds, there's no reason I should be exhausted after firing it.

Ion Judgment is a thing of beauty in a League-sized, wall-to-wall free for all... provided you're the first one to get the shot off. Being second or third is the highway to sadness.

Seconding Grav/Kin as the basic noob Controller, because that was the first thing I rolled when *I* was a noob.

Grav/Time can solo very easily, but it doesn't pick up speed until 27 or so, when you have Wormhole on a decent recharge. Once Wormhole is fully armed and operational, you pretty much stop taking damage while soloing; besides just repositioning mobs, WH is also an AoE stun. Drop the mob where you want them, hit them with Crushing Field to keep them from wandering, and proceed to beat the poo out of them. Any bosses disagree with you, you have two ST holds to keep them buttoned down. Aside from the standard ST/AoE Immobilize and Holds that most primaries get, Grav also has Lift and Propel, extra ST damage powers what benefit from Containment and a mechanic called Impact where extra damage is applied to critters that have been mezzed. Time gives you extra holds, heals and buffs that affect yourself, and some decent debuffs on top of that. Stick it out past 26, then proc out Crushing Field, and use the KB:KD enhancement in Wormhole, and you'll be soloing like a crazy person. For extra melting fun, go Stone Mastery for the epic, where you can get two proc bombs in Fissure and Seismic Smash. With your -Res from Time, Seismic Smash will routinely hit orange cons for 1300 every 8s. It's amazing.