roleki

Before I say anything, let me preface this with a disclaimer that I tend to look at builds through the prism of how *I* would play a particular combo, so don't take these observations as coming from some kind of bible of best practices. The important thing is that the build does what YOU want it to do. That said, here are the things that jumped out at me... 1) No Envenom. I would take Envenom; even if you're chunking out tons of -Def already, the -Res out of Envenom is huge (30%), and you can slap an Achilles' proc in there to get an occasional 20% -Res bonus. Being Earth, you'll want to hit harder on occasion. 2) Too many slots in Maneuvers. I'm not a fan of putting more than 3x slots into Maneuvers, even if two of them are Procs or whatever. The base +Def is so tiny (+2.625) that it just isn't worth buffing for more than endurance or muling. 3) Not enough slots in Tactics. On the other hand, I am a huge fan of 6-slotting Tactics with Gaussian's Synchronized Fire-Control - you get a damage buff, an endurance buff, and several defense buffs that are almost the equal of Maneuvers, one shot of Build-Up per minute, and a gigantic +ToHIt bonus. Combined with the -Def from Earth, the only thing that will stop you from clobbering stuff is the streakbreaker. 4) Too much stuff in Venemous Gas. I'm rolling 3x Enzyme Exposure on my /Posions; that gets me to the floor of endurance burn in that toggle, while getting -ToHit and -Def nearly to ED levels. Granted, you lose some set bonuses rolling that way, but I love having available slots in a Controller build because... 5) Seismic Smash! Take Seismic Smash, 6-slot it, and fill it with procs, glorious procs. With the -Def and +Tohit you have in the build, you can *almost* justify slotting 6 procs in the power... me, I prefer at least one Acc/Dam (or, Acc/Dam/Rech) Seismic Smash because I just know I will be kicking myself every time it misses. It still misses on occasion, even with the +Acc enchancement, but at least *I* know I did all I can. The 'cheap' slotting is two pieces Hecatomb, Ghost Widow%, Neuronic Shutdown %, Touch of Death%, and Mako's%. Slotted that way, I usually clobber an Orange Con for 900 on a 'regular' toon, and over 1200 on a /Poison. It's beautiful, and the highlight of my night every time I see our melee guys angrily whittling away at a boss, then I casually stroll up and pancake the target. 6) Try and fit Paralytic Poison in there. A second ST hold makes life super easy when you're soloing, and only helps you lock down more nerds when teams are running 4/8. 4-slot it with Ghost Widow and you have yourself a tidy little lockdown chain of Fossilize/Paralytic/Fossilize and a little extra endurance to keep on keeping on. 7) Don't bother 6-slotting Fissure. It's a good mule for the FF+Rech proc, but you're going to be pissed that you spent 120M to squeak out 1/6th of the damage that 60M invested in Seismic Smash would get you. That said, if you slot as I suggest, you lose those purple bonuses and that's not exactly insignificant. Eight) Poison Trap Slotting. Again, the purple set bonuses are nice, but if you can afford to go without them, you can six-slot Poison Trap with procs and one-shot almost/every minion in the spawn, and leave the survivors with a case of the hurls. 9) Neurotoxic Breath. If you can fit NBreath in somehow, you get a significant -Rech debuff that comes in handy when you're rolling up against stuff that hits HARD. Even with all your -Def, -ToHit, -Res, some -Rech and -Speed still comes in handy and will help you survive sticky spots you otherwise might not have. 10) Endurance. The build you linked just had the default slots in Health/Stamina. I typically 3-slot both on my controllers, throwing the Miracle/Numina/Panacea trio in Health and three bits of PerfShifter in Stamina. If you boost the straight PShift Endurance enhancement, it makes up for what you 'lost' by throwing a Schedule A (26.5) in place of a generic IO, and you get 19HP out of the deal. Having said ALL that, it may be hard to believe but I like the build. To my mind, Earth is still the granddaddy of all Controller primaries, and /Poison has recently become my favorite controller secondary because all the tricky debuffs add up to make everything you do better. If I weren't juggling the pitiable cries of a million end users who recently found themselves working from home, I would spin up an Earth/Poison RIGHT NOW.

I know everyone NEEDS +Def, but I have to imagine Plant/Time will have enough controls/buffs to make +Def more of a "comes in handy every so often" kind of thing, rather than being the difference between the build being playable or not. With Hybrid Control? Forget about it. While I am completely underwhelmed by the workflow of my Plant/Nature, I sometimes forget to use any of the secondary while I am soloing because the primary is already so survivable out of the box. ETA: my Plant/Nature is where I discovered how devastating Seismic Smash could be when you stuff procs into it... I was "arresting" Fake Nemesis (Nemesii?) faster on this guy than even my Rad/Fire brute. ETA2: I meant to say, my Plant/Nature. I don't have a Plant/Time. ETA3: Yet.

Eh, some Controllers are more of a slog than others, but to my mind, that just makes it that much more rewarding when they finally DO turn the corner. If that takes the form of Stone Mastery/Seismic Smash, so be it. Myself, anything that has significant -Res debuffs leans straight into Seismic Smash because seriously, why not leverage such a devastating ST attack? That said, I have plenty of working controller builds that barely touch an EPP. 99 ways and all that.

Good on you for trying, but you're never going to talk people into admitting their favored in-game activity is anything but harmful. I mean, someone stated their "buy low, sell high!" strategy somehow gives others the gift of time. Fact of the matter is, they steal time from me. I'm not paying their inflated prices, so I have to take time to roll my own. That's not a fucking service.

No, but I generate about ~5 an hour by sinking excess inf into Super Packs, to keep myself at a constant level 1.9BN.

That's the crazy/good thing about this game... what *I* may think is awesome, you may think is pedestrian, and somehow neither of us is wrong. But there's also a tipping point on some builds that, for one reason or another can make or break a build, function-wise. I was so amped over what Mind/Poison did, I rolled a Fire/Poison and... hated every minute of it. Two endurance-sucking auras and a bunch of self-preservation toggles kept endurance at crash levels, and the lack of ST attacks/mitigation made Melee combat more of an adventure than a controller should endure... but much as your cussed determination willed your Mind/Poison to 50, mine got me to drag that Fire/Poison to VL3 where a T3 Cardiac Alpha and T3 Clarion kicked in. Suddenly, Fire/Poison became very awesome in it's own right. I still prefer the Mind/Poison 'workflow' but my Fire/Poison is a viable solo'er at 50 now, which was the goal.

I almost feel bad for FF. Nobody needs +Def or -Mez anymore, and the two things it does for mitigation (KB, Intangible) are vastly underappreciated by most. At this point, the "great" thing about /FF as a secondary is that it has so many skippable powers and the few you do take, don't need much slotting. I wish there was time/inclination for devs to revisit this set, maybe combine the functionality of the two +Def bubbles into one, and convert the unused one to an Ally +Absorb or a critter -Res debuff of some sort. It needs SOMETHING.

Two. I can say it exactly twice.

You'll have two PBAoE auras, so you'll want to be on the ground during combat, and you'd probably want Combat Jumping for that. Not saying to keep out of Fly for a travel power, just that if you take Fly that means you'll be dipping into two, possibly three travel pools (if you opt for Hasten as well). I would consider NOT skipping one of Shiver or Neurotoxic Breath, or at least trying them once you get your MUST HAVES out of the way. With so many skippable powers in Ice/Poison, you'll have room, and neither requires slotting beyond an acc/slow in the default slot. Shiver fired off after Ice Slick pretty much ends combat, period. While you'll hit the Slow Cap (there is one) either with or without Shiver/Neurotoxic Breath, doing so from range can save you most of the pounding you'd get once you close into melee, and will keep mobs relatively clumped so your narrow AoE debuffs have a tighter group to hit.

While we all hope that new alt works out, the fact is some builds are better than others. What builds worked so far above/below expectations that it left a notable impression on you? My most recent example of an unexpected success was my Mind/Poison Controller, Dr. Jonas, who is some kind of heroic CIA spook who terrifies and poisons villains for... justice? Alternating between Mass Hypnosis and Terrify to control the bulk of the mobs, the debuffs out of /Poison allow my limited cycle of ST attacks to hit like a freight train; it's not uncommon to unload a Seismic Smash for over 1200 damage on an orange-con boss. This has really amped up my appreciation for the /Poison secondary, and I look forward to making a few more of that brand in the future.

Commendable! He couldn't even buff his Confused victims.

Thank you for clarifying; I'll have to invest in a Power Analyzer and see what's happening with the other -Res procs.

While I am thinking about it... I know -Res doesn't stack from the same source, but, is that "same source" as in "Player X's copy of PowerName" or is that any -Res from Player X, period? Reason I ask, I have a Fire/Poison controller with some -Res built into the secondary, and the opportunity to put -Res procs throughout the build (Hot Feet takes Annihilation, Poison Trap takes Gladiator, Cinders takes eh, a -Res proc, and there are a couple places to stick Achilles' Heel as well.) Anyway, with all the potential for -Res from so many sources, does that all add up in a stack, or does each effect replace the last?

I had ten weeks off this summer, so, 1600 of those hours might have been me.

Maybe I'm a bit of an oddball, but I would rather see where the HC team takes this under their own steam, without direct input from the player base. Not saying they should ignore the playerbase, just, I think we should give the benefit of the doubt to people who cared enough about the game to give it a proper resurrection, given that such folk would probably have some pretty good ideas of their own without people like ME monkeying it up. That said, they should hurry up and implement the -KB Accolade I suggested.

You're right that resistance resists resistable resistance debuffs; Paragon Wiki has an example of this, wherein a Tank with 45 Lethal Resist and 20 Energy Resist gets hit with a -22.5 Resist All, leaving them with 32.625 Lethal Resistance and 2 Energy Resistance. Here's where I diverge from PW; either I am THAT bad at math, or their formula is formatted incorrectly, but this is how *I* get the numbers they arrive at: NewResistance = OriginalResistance - (DebuffAmount - ((DebuffAmount * OriginalResistance) / 100)) In their example, that goes: X = 45 - (22.5 - ((22.5 * 45) / 100)) X = 45 - (22.5 - 10.125) X = 45 - 12.375 X = 32.625 for resulting Lethal Resistance And Y = 20 - (22.5 - ((22.5 * 20) / 100)) Y = 20 - (22.5 - 4.5) Y = 20 - 18 Y = 2 for resulting Energy Resistance They go on to say that an attack for 100 Lethal would have only hit the Tank for 55 damage before the debuff, but now hits it for 67.375 damage, or, 22.5 percent more damage.

I SEE EVERYTHING TWICE!

@Veracor Out of curiosity, how many Shards/Threads do you have on your VL2273?

I had done some testing with the Controller ATO procs and found those weren't firing as often as the PBAoE procs, either, but without any of the data on what PT actually DOES I don't know if that's just RNG being *that* random or if the 'hold' only fires once. As far as -Res procs go, they have been very effective for me in other builds so I tend to throw them into my first draft of any character. As you suggest, it may be of lower utility in THIS build because it already has so much -Res and not a lot of heat out of the primary, but, I am hitting orange-con bosses for 1200+ off Seismic Smash with this dude, which is never not hilarious to me.

I wonder if anyone ever started with a Mind/TA controller as their first, and, if they ever came back.

Ugh. Can't people just be happy price-fixing LotG's and whatnot, they have to try and do it with salvage, too?

I'm not near a machine to see it NOW, but late last night I was buying salvage of every stripe and the prices were 'normal' for a Sunday night - common was ~500, uncommon ~5000 and rare was ~550000. If the last 'sold for' amount is crazy, it might be from a particularly impatient crafter; I know I'm guilty of occasionally bidding 10x or 20x for white/yellow salvage just to speed up the buy.

@Frosticus That all makes sense; I wound up dropping the Damage/Endurance for a 6th proc, 5 that do damage and one -Res. Naturally, with an additional proc I am seeing more hits, as well as more frequent '2nd pulse' hits. I think I will test swapping out one or both procs from Ghost Widow/Neuronic because I notice those are only ever firing off on 'alpha' and never get secondary pulses. I'm wondering if the power only rolls 'hold' at cast.

That may be my problem there: I have a pretty high stack of global accuracy (47%), but no global ToHit. To that point, I just read that the Kismet buff is +6 global ToHot, not accuracy... is that correct?

I could easily see where a Blaster can do without Miracle, but unless that slot is getting me a global recharge or defense bonus out of another power, I would have a hard time cutting it.