roleki

Way I figure it, if a support character is already packing mitigation, the Fighting pool is a bit of gravy to throw on after Hasten, Maneuvers and Tactics. On support characters that lack consistent mitigation, Fighting moves closer to a necessity. For instance, I could not and did not need to fit Fighting into my Rad/Rad Defender build, but I couldn't take my EA/Sonic Defender out of the garage without it. It would be easier to lean into Fighting on support characters if it didn't have the dead weight of Kick/Boxing, but, it SHOULD be a little painful to get access to extra Def & Resists.

What kind of mime theater are you hanging out in?

Grav/Storm may not be able to solo an AV, but it'll melt anything else you throw at it, and a hell of a lot faster than Earth/Storm, especially these days. Put KB:KD in all the right places, and you can just rain hell in a little 20' section of the map that nothing can survive in for long.

Wholeheartedly agree with the post quoted above. I love TA... as a Controller secondary. You need to put the lid on several mobs at once? /TA is the way. Want to debuff one mob thirty different ways? Roll a /TA. But even as someone who grew to love the set on Live, on HC I was like 15 alts deep before I got around to recreating my beloved Ice/TA, simply because I knew that by the time I hit 37 or so, my entire contribution to a team could be replaced by a pair of Inspirations. I'd really like to see what the average TA character is leveled to, within ATs and as a whole compared to other support sets. I am willing to bet that an outsized percentage of TAs are collecting dust somewhere after slotting OSA. It just doesn't DO a whole lot with higher-level mobs, and I think that's the biggest drawback of the set. I don't mind that I have to light my own Oil Slick, even though I have to first find an ignition source somewhere else in the game, then waste an attack cycle to get MY slick to do what other damage slicks do automatically; that's just the price to pay for having a Slick that can do nuke-level damage to everything in a 25' radius. I don't mind that EMP Arrow carried over the end/recovery crash from EM Pulse, even though thematically it makes absolutely zero sense that firing one arrow would wipe me out whereas another doesn't; that's just the price to pay for having a second, ranged AoE hold. I don't mind that the Recharge of key powers is so dang long; I can't think of a reason it has to be that way, but maybe it's the price to pay for a secondary that can do everything from range. I don't mind that /TA doesn't buff the team; it was conceived and delivered as a dedicated debuffing set, and that's all it should be. I *DO* mind that the game's dedicated debuffing set is miserable at the most important debuff in the game: -Regen; it should have one of the (I'd argue THE) best -Regen effects, full stop. Otherwise, as a TA you're just a useful stand-in until a Cold/Dark/Rad shows up to REALLY help the team. In terms of 'fixing' TA, I would rather not see powers swapped out or changed wholesale, or team buffs introduced. Get it some compelling -Regen, increase the target caps and AoE radii as @Luminarasuggests, and I think it would be just right for those players that know what TA does and still decide to ride it out. As for attracting new people to the set in the first place... I don't know. If they had it to do over again, I would like to have seen TA delivered with some of the same mechanics that Dual Blades brought, where executing A and B followed by C applied an AoE debuff on top of whatever the individual powers did themselves, or, maybe have it amp the duration or lower the recharge time or proc a build-up effect, or some other gimmick. Nothing excessive, but, you know, something to keep the kids pressing the buttons.

A lot do, but I don't know if it's 'most' or just 'a lot.' I don't have trouble moving your standard Radio Mission dudes around when I solo, and that's pretty much the only time things are going slow enough that I feel the need to aggregate mobs and whatnot.

Since the people in that thread have no love for the Force Field secondary, thought I'd go counterpoint and describe in detail one of my favorite builds of all time, the mighty Fire/FF. Wait, come back! Fire/FF *is* mighty! It's mighty fun! It's mighty fast! It's mighty quick to obliterate mobs AND endurance bars! Picture this: you step into a PI Radio Mission and for some reason, it's not a cave or a sewer. Just as you go to say 'yay!' you notice it's Carnival of Shadows. Stupid radio! But then you remember, you're a Fire/FF, what do YOU care about some Carnival jerks? Fire off your Imps, hit Power Boost and drop the Shields of Immortality on them, which also offer resistance to Toxic and -End effects, thank you very much. While PB is still fresh, you drop a Smoke on the mob to lower their ToHit even more. Now you have a choice... how do you want to knock them on their ass first? Repulsion Bomb is a good choice, followed by a Bonfire; look at that - recharge just shot up to 263%! Flashfire and Cages stupefy the lightweights as you approach the edge of the mob with Energy Torrent cued up. Blorp, another stack of +Rech. By now, the Imps are on them like 3 cheap kimonos; minions and lt's are slumping to the floor and farting blue coronas all over the place. Beset by AoE damage ripping through them, the twin Master Illusionists are spamming pets in desperation.... which is awesome, because that gives you more targets for your +Rech procs to hit. Speaking of which, has it been 12s already? Time to drop another Bonfire! And you're sure the Illusionists would like to have done something to you, but they're too busy trying to sort out which KD effect is pinning them to the floor to even look at you. And just like that, there's no more Carnival at the door. Now, if it were allowed, the sequence described above would have been replaced by an embedded video to more adequately illustrate the actual scenario, but hopefully I got the point across... Fire/FF just knocks stuff silly and will do so for as long as you have the endurance to pay for it. It's not an AV killer (or even an AV tickler), it's not a Pylon specialist, and yeah, it will melt through a Fake Nemesis in no time flat only to get cut to cheese by a group of Jaegers (Jaegers!) but for a good time on a team or a league or just killing a few minutes in a solo mission, I highly recommend Fire/FF! This is my main Fire/FF (I have two, but could only justify investing like this on one of them). Behold now the exposed guts of Tootboy! The point here was to churn out Bonfire and Flashfire as often as possible, and I think I've got that covered. Bonfire recharges at a naked 13s, or 12s when Ageless is up/+Rech proc has hit. Flashfire is at 24 and 20 under similar circumstances. I run around with 8 toggles going (Hot Feet, Dispersion Bubble, Repulsion Field, Combat Jumping, Maneuvers, Tactics, Temp Invulnerability, and Speed of Sound) at a combined drain of -2.08/s, so I had to dedicate 7 slots and two Incarnates to endurance mitigation. The great thing is, it exemps down just fine, as most of the toggles are just 'nice to have' and not 'necessary components that will result in death if I don't have them.' It's got 5 ways of keeping stuff knocked down, and plenty of procs/effects that make powers like Repulsion Bomb worth clicking. All in all, it's just a fun build to run around with. And that's all I got to say about that.

Absolutely, at least I can on characters where WH isn't just a party trick. Take my Grav/Storm for example; WH has a 1.0 base accuracy, which I have slotted for .74 Acc Enh and have an additional .54 Global Acc Bonus... that puts WH at 2.24 Accuracy. Against a White Con, my base ToHit is .75. Assuming no buffs/debuffs, my Hit Chance on that White Con with WH is 1.68 (2.24 * .75) - well above the .95 'Clamp.' Throw a +3 boss at me, and my base ToHit drops to 30%. Again, assuming no other factors, my chance to hit against that +3 Boss is capped at .672. BUT! Say I have the Kismet +6 Acc slotted in CJ. My Base ToHit vs that White Con is now 81%, leaving me at 1.81 chance to hit them. Against a +3 Boss, my Base ToHit would be .36, leaving me at .80 chance of hitting THEM. BUT! Say instead of Kismet, I took Tactics and slotted it to +14 ToHit. My Base ToHit vs White Con is now .89; now my chance to hit that White Con is 1.99. Against a +3 Boss, my Base ToHit is 44%; that would leave WH a .985 chance of hitting that +3 Boss. BUT! In reality, I have Kismet AND Tactics. White Con is 2.24 * .95, or 2.128 chance of hitting that guy. And against a +3 Boss, I have a 1.12 chance of hitting, comfortably above the .95 clamp. Again, everything is clamped to a maximum chance to hit of .95, and I'm not always operating in an environment of no debuffs (or buffs, for that matter). TL;DR: yes, I can reliably move +3 bosses around a map.

I'm a big fan of FF in certain circumstances... not entirely sure that THIS is one of them. /FF will give you plenty of places to dump LotG and FF +Rech, so you'll have no trouble reaching Perma-PA (which is the foremost goal of an Ill controller!) but other than that, there's not a whole lot that FF does for Ill. So far, my favorite Ill/ pairing has been Ill/Dark, but Ill/Traps is growing on me.

Something something Blasters.

This. Wormhole a purple boss into Singularity, and not take a single tick of damage? Yes, please.

For a game that absolutely nobody wants to play, they sure seem to meet their donation goal in a hurry every month.

AE arc #9620 (Cave Jam) uses Atta's caves as well, and is geared for S/L. A 50+1 can take a doorsitter from 0 to 32 in about 30 minutes running at 2/8. The arc is geared to take a character from 0-50+ in five missions, though I usually do it in four. My process is to roll an alt, go through Cave 1, park it for a week at 32, go play other stuff, dust off the alt and take it to 42 in Cave 2, park it, repeat until 50. That generally gives me a new 50 in about 2 hours of farming. If I'm impatient, I can drag it to 50 in about 2:45ish real time; that's on a Rad/Fire Brute that I slapped together haphazardly... someone with a tuned build could probably breeze through it a lot faster. Bottom line, it doesn't take much of a machine to run two instances of CoH on the same box, and there are numerous arcs out there that you can run to bring a 0 up to a playable level. You don't even have to take the alt all the way to 50 - if you just want to skip the slog to 18 on an Ill, you can get there in about 15 minutes. If you're not interested in Grav/ without Wormhole, you're about 24 minutes out from having it fully slotted. I mean, if you enjoy DFB/DIB for the camaraderie, by all means, go that route; you're still accelerating past the real tedious parts of the game. But if you're in a real hurry, AE is where it's at.

Oh, You.

It's funny, because I am working on slotting an Ill/Traps right now and I'm kind of stuck on the whole Perma-PA thing myself. Then I see this thread, says it's posted by "You" and I'm like, man, I'm getting old, I do NOT remember posting a thread looking for help with this.

I think karma is a thing... I meant to increment a bid on a Kismet +6 Acc from 4,000,000 to 4,100,000 but instead bid 41,000,000. To wipe out this new 'deficit' I hopped into an AE cave, and by the time I had worked my way to the last cranny, I had racked up 3x purples and 3x PvP recipes. I'm used to getting them one or two here and there; three of each in ~25 minutes was pretty awesome.

Not kidding, I hopped on Indomitable my first night with HC and I haven't had any reason to look anywhere else. Never have trouble getting a team going, the 'regulars' are of a good sort, and the organized TFs, Hami raids and Mothership Raids are all top-notch. Plus, as a lower-pop server, if you wish to partake in say, dual-boxing, it is not a bad place to do so, usually.

Nah, that's what Siesmic Smash does 6-slotted with five procs and a Hecatomb A/D/R. Poison has all that -Res, might as well use it!

Got one of those, too 🙂 Mind/Poison/Stone, and it's another of my favorite builds. Nobody expects a controller to unload a 1600 pound single-target bomb every 8 seconds.

The nightly Indom MSRs *are* great, they're appointment gaming to me. The core group running the raids have it pretty much down to a science; about the only mystery is which grates to go to once the shields are down. I'm still trying to figure out the best combination for overall merit-siphoning; a lot of it is down to what your role is and your team composition, but it's not exclusively a "do damage, earn merits" equation. My EA/Dark Defender is a guaranteed 1600 per raid, whereas my Fire/Storm is usually at 1500, and that thing is nothing but AoE damage. (1500 being a magic number, because hitting that in two raids gets you 100 reward merits)

I think this would need an inherent power that brings your crit chances up to 95% but only if you use the exact, unpublished combination of 11 different enhancement sets across the power tree.

Thanks for including your build; I might try your approach (fewer attacks) later on/second build; now that I have it to 50 and fully-slotted & alpha is coming online, I can see where I could easily get by with just a handful of attacks and throw even more focus on survival... really, BF+Attack Vitals is all you need vs. ST, but I would miss Typhoon's Edge when I jump into a 4/8 spawn. For now, I'm running with everything from DB except Power Slice, Confront, and 1K Cuts. I've grown attached to having combos I can exemp down into, or bring up when the situation calls for it, even though I KNOW I could streamline the build some. And maybe I am mis-thinking Bio, but I rarely see a build that throws more than a couple slots into Inexhaustible or Parasitic Aura; meanwhile I six-slot both... maybe that's why I have a hard time fitting everything I want into a Bio build, because I'm trying to make a poor man's /Regen out of it?

That's a recipe for disaster 🙂 Always let the general public beta test MS updates for a few weeks before patching! ETA: In recent years, Microsoft seems to have gone to a "whenever the hell we feel like it" patching cycle, but could be that sysadmins are so used to monkeying with updates on a Tuesday that they stick with it for old times' sake.

Thanks; definitely will throw Superior Critical Strikes into Vengeful, and will find a home for Plain Old Superior Scrapper Strikes somewhere upwind. I appreciate the info everyone has provided so far, this has been one of the tougher builds to puzzle out that I have tried. If only Bio wasn't so damn slottable.

Follow-up question... if I'm building around the "Attack Vitals" combo, do I want the Scrapper ATOs in Ablating and Vengeful, then whatever set I pick for Sweeping Strike? Or should one of the ATOs go in Sweeping Strike?

Just looking at the build real quick, and a couple things jump out: You only need 2x RechRdx in Hasten; boost one of them +5 and you're golden. I would try and squeeze Leadership in there somewhere, so as to get ahold of Tactics; it helps you help your pets help you and helps you too. As for the IO thing, this is just MY opinion, but I feel *most* sets aren't worth the sixth slot. It's not that the 6th bonuses are bad, but going 6 on one power robs you of a 4th or 5th slot on another power, which could bring enhanced values on THAT power to the ED cap or nab you a +Rech bonus or something important. This is my current Ill/Dark/Fire build. I prioritized +Rech over any other bonus, and that led to dipping into lower-capped sets in a few places. The end result is 140% global +Rech before Hasten kicks that up to 210%, which gives me perma-Hasten, perma-PA, and perma-Fade. All that extra +Rech is useless without addressing endurance, so I added a bit of Endurance Discount (6%) and +MaxEnd (9%). And while the resulting Def/Res is lower than most people would want, honestly, between all the -ToHit, -Dam, Heals, +Regen, and aggro-sapping PA, I find that surviving is no problem. Hero Plan by Mids' Reborn : Hero Designer 2.6.0.7 https://github.com/ImaginaryDevelopment/imaginary-hero-designer Click this DataLink to open the build! Dr. Unconventional: Level 50 Technology Controller Primary Power Set: Illusion Control Secondary Power Set: Darkness Affinity Power Pool: Flight Power Pool: Speed Power Pool: Leadership Ancillary Pool: Fire Mastery Hero Profile: Level 1: Spectral Wounds -- Apc-Dmg(A), Apc-Dmg/Rchg(3), Apc-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(5), Apc-Dmg/EndRdx(13), Apc-Dam%(23) Level 1: Twilight Grasp -- Prv-Heal(A), Prv-Heal/EndRdx(3), Prv-EndRdx/Rchg(5), Prv-Heal/Rchg(13), Prv-Heal/Rchg/EndRdx(23), Prv-Absorb%(27) Level 2: Blind -- Dcm-Acc/Dmg(A), Dcm-Dmg/EndRdx(7), Dcm-Dmg/Rchg(9), Dcm-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(15), Dcm-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(31) Level 4: Fly -- Flight-I(A) Level 6: Flash -- GldNet-Acc/Hold(A), GldNet-Acc/Rchg(7), GldNet-Rchg/Hold(9), GldNet-EndRdx/Rchg/Hold(15), GldNet-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg/Hold(31) Level 8: Darkest Night -- DarWtcDsp-ToHitDeb(A), DarWtcDsp-ToHitdeb/Rchg/EndRdx(11), DarWtcDsp-Rchg/EndRdx(11), DarWtcDsp-ToHitDeb/EndRdx(25) Level 10: Howling Twilight -- AbsAmz-Stun(A), AbsAmz-Stun/Rchg(17), AbsAmz-Acc/Stun/Rchg(17), AbsAmz-Acc/Rchg(36), AbsAmz-EndRdx/Stun(46) Level 12: Group Invisibility -- LucoftheG-Def/Rchg+(A) Level 14: Hover -- LucoftheG-Def/Rchg+(A), Flight-I(48) Level 16: Shadow Fall -- Rct-Def/EndRdx(A) Level 18: Phantom Army -- ExpRnf-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(A), ExpRnf-Acc/Rchg(19), ExpRnf-EndRdx/Dmg/Rchg(19), ExpRnf-Acc/Dmg(21), SlbAll-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(21), SlbAll-Dmg/Rchg(25) Level 20: Hasten -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(31) Level 22: Fade -- LucoftheG-Def/Rchg+(A), LucoftheG-Def/Rchg(42), LucoftheG-Def(42), LucoftheG-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(43) Level 24: Tar Patch -- TmpRdn-Rng/Slow(A), TmpRdn-EndRdx/Rchg/Slow(37) Level 26: Spectral Terror -- SprWiloft-Acc/Conf/Hold/Immob/Sleep/Stun/Fear(A), SprWiloft-EndRdx/Rchg(27), SprWiloft-Acc/Conf/Hold/Immob/Sleep/Stun/Fear/EndRdx(36), SprWiloft-Acc/Conf/Hold/Immob/Sleep/Stun/Fear/EndRdx/Rchg(40), SprWiloft-Rchg/Dmg%(45) Level 28: Soul Absorption -- CldSns-Acc/ToHitDeb(A), CldSns-Acc/Rchg(29), CldSns-ToHitDeb(29), CldSns-%Dam(36) Level 30: Deceive -- CrcPrs-Conf(A), CrcPrs-Conf/Rchg(34), CrcPrs-Acc/Conf/Rchg(37), CrcPrs-Acc/Rchg(40), CrcPrs-Conf%(46) Level 32: Phantasm -- ExpRnf-Acc/Rchg(A), ExpRnf-Acc/Dmg(33), ExpRnf-Dmg/EndRdx(33), ExpRnf-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(33), ExpRnf-EndRdx/Dmg/Rchg(34) Level 35: Maneuvers -- LucoftheG-Def/Rchg+(A) Level 38: Dark Servant -- CldSns-ToHitDeb(A), CldSns-Acc/ToHitDeb(39), CldSns-ToHitDeb/EndRdx/Rchg(39), CldSns-%Dam(39), UnbCns-Dam%(40) Level 41: Fire Ball -- Rgn-Dmg(A), Rgn-Dmg/Rchg(42), Rgn-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(43), Rgn-Acc/Rchg(43), Rgn-Dmg/EndRdx(48) Level 44: Fire Shield -- UnbGrd-ResDam(A), UnbGrd-ResDam/EndRdx(45), UnbGrd-EndRdx/Rchg(45), UnbGrd-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(46), StdPrt-ResDam/Def+(50), GldArm-3defTpProc(50) Level 47: Tactics -- GssSynFr--ToHit/EndRdx(A), GssSynFr--ToHit(50) Level 49: Afterburner -- LucoftheG-Def/Rchg+(A) Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A) Level 1: Containment Level 1: Prestige Power Dash -- Empty(A) Level 1: Prestige Power Slide -- Empty(A) Level 1: Prestige Power Quick -- Empty(A) Level 1: Prestige Power Rush -- Empty(A) Level 1: Prestige Power Surge -- Empty(A) Level 1: Sprint -- Run-I(A) Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A) Level 4: Ninja Run Level 2: Swift -- Flight-I(A) Level 2: Health -- Mrc-Rcvry+(A), NmnCnv-Regen/Rcvry+(48) Level 2: Hurdle -- Jump-I(A) Level 2: Stamina -- EndMod-I(A), PrfShf-EndMod(34), PrfShf-End%(37) Level 50: Clarion Partial Core Invocation Level 50: Support Partial Core Graft Level 50: Degenerative Partial Core Conversion Level 50: Ion Total Core Judgement Level 50: Seers Total Radial Improved Ally Level 50: Agility Radial Paragon ------------