Lhanis

…I’m sorry, that joke has probably been done already but I can’t help but think it every damn time I look at- (Wall of text ahead, apologies. TL;DR below) I’m building a Blaster. My first one since ye olden days of early Live, an AR/Dev I loathed with every fiber of my being that somehow ended up being my first character to 50, as it was my shoe-in with the RP group I hung out with on Virtue. As such, it may as well be a whole new AT to me and I could use the help. I’m sort of married to Dark/_/Soul as primary and ppp, as this idea pretty much started as “I want to play the cooler version of Dark Blast” that I’d been side-eyeing from my nice and comfy Defender for several years. And I figure… if I’m going to be playing with cones, why not throw a few more onto the pile with Soul (I’m also a huge sucker for Dark Embrace’s aesthetic, even if a +Res armor isn’t ideal). Where I’m having trouble is settling on a secondary. I’d originally considered pushing for a nice and safe hover-blaster, but some advice I got in a previous post has me wanting to give the AT a proper try of things. Some things that caught my eye: Martial - Probably the one with the least synergies with Dark, considering I want to be away for cones and not in the middle of things. However, there are a -lot- of things that are very attractive to me here. Reach for the Limit: Not as potent, and loses utility for not being able to pick -when- you have it active, but will keep me from forgetting to press it at all. Which… does happen, I’m sad to say. Reaction Time: Having my sustain built into an always-on toggle is fantastic to me for mostly the same reasons as above, and the fact that it provides a nice safety net for when things do get in my face by slowing is just icing. Inner Will: I’m already leaning towards the Sorcery route for Rune, and having both it and this to cycle between for mez prot would put a lot of my worries about mez to rest. Eagle Claw: Character has hooves. ‘Nuff said. Maybe slow to animate, but that damage looks amazing. Ninja - I don’t generally jive with weapon sets, but a friend pointed me this way and I do see the potential here. Choking Powder/Smoke Flash: I’m not sure how useful these actually are for their intended effect, but they’re definitely fun thematically. Choking Powder also has the benefit of being procable, and helping stack mag with Abyssal Gaze, so at least there’s that. Shinobi: Stealth and baby crits, this one looks amazing. I had very much considered dipping into concealment for a stealth option to begin with, and this would help free up a pool. Kuji-In Toh: As far as recovery buttons go, this is probably the best case scenario for me beyond a toggle. Long enough that I don’t have to remember to hit it often, and a good chunk of regen… might help considering I want a Res armor, might not. Energy - Fairly self explanatory, and would push me toward that hover-blaster this all started as. Range Boost: Feels like it’d mix well with the cones, I know some of them end up being short. Energize: A great sustain, though I don’t know how much that -End consumption is actually doing for me until I have a build for it laid out. Power Boost: Helps everything. Will probably help shore up Def via the boosted -tohit dark provides too, if I come up short. The problem I foresee with Energy is just that… that's a lot of clickies to be maintaining, something I’m admittedly not great at. Honorable mentions to, ironically, Devices and Dark. Devices would give me most of what I want from a secondary mechanically between the stealth, Target Drone and caltrops, besides the fact that I remember hating toebombing with a passion. It’s also about directly opposite of what I’m aiming for theme wise, as the savage little gremlin creature with a penchant for spooky magic probably doesn’t know how to cast “Explosion!” or build an automated turret. Dark, on the other hand, fits thematically… but I’m not so fond of it mechanically. Relying on enemy saturation for damage via Soul Drain and needing an enemy to even start your sustain rolling via TotB isn’t ideal, and it doesn’t feel like it offers much that’d help with what I’m going for with its damage aura, melee cone, and stuns. TL;DR: First Blaster in a very long while. Dark/_/Soul. Martial? Ninja? Energy? Something else entirely? Any and all advice is appreciated! What do you think would be a fun and interesting combo to play? Are there synergies in other sets I might have overlooked? Interesting slotting strategies that might help?

Absolutely, and I do appreciate the explanations even without the number crunching. ☺️ A lot of my confusion and rambling probably comes from the fact that Blaster is the one AT I've not touched since early Live, being a much more skittish and support oriented player who tends to take faceplants poorly. I think a lot of what worries me about the AT is more about my idea of Blaster, rather than what it actually is, if that makes sense. And having people who actually do play it put it into perspective helps a lot. I think the best thing I can do really is just... play it, and see for myself. So I think I will. I'm still keeping hover though, just in case.

To be clear, I don't have a problem playing at closer range on Sentinel. My sticking point with Blaster in general is that I don't feel comfortable staying there to keep working in the melee attacks with the secondary on an AT that doesn't have the defenses or mez prot to do so safely. ie; with /MC, I didn't see myself being able to comfortably keep Storm Kick and Eagle Claw in the rotation. What I think I failed to get across is that I'm not really looking for build advice, or recommendations of one AT over the other for my particular setup. I worded it poorly, and that's on me. What I'm trying to ask is more along the lines of... what is the actual difference from a numbers standpoint? With the example I gave of Dark Blast/MC versus, say, Dark/SR Sent, if I'm leaving out the melee attacks... what actually changes between them. MC may not have been the best set to use as an example, it just happened to be the one I had my mind on at the time I was thinking about all this. In the grand scheme of things, I'm looking more at the concept of Hoverblaster Vs Sent in general, not specifically in this one instance of me trying to make a build. Between the two ATs, using the same Blast set... what does Hoverblasting have over Sent in exchange for that armor now that the damage is much closer than it was? Is there still a reason to Hoverblast at all? That sort of thing.

Edit: Poorly worded, please see my second post. So I was trying to put together a ranged/hover blaster setup with Dark/MC, as I'm not particularly fond of blapping. Having a PBAoE nuke doesn't bother me, I'm just not comfy staying in melee on an AT with no mez prot. Burst of Speed looked like a quick and fun way to get in and out for it, too. But if my intent is to largely skip most of the melee portion of the kit, would I just be better served by rolling it as a Sent instead after Sent's scalar buff? Dark is already a middling set on Blaster that wants to be procc'd out more than it wants %Dam, so aside from the loss of RftL (or a different buildup clone in general) and a bit of range I'm not actually sure much actually changes. Torrent loses 4 targets, but Oblit is still 10 and arguably easier to use than the short cone Tenebrous Tentacles has. I suppose the actual question I have here is... is there even a point to hoverblasting now that Sentinel has closed the gap in damage?

Very nice! Should be a lot of fun to play, here's hoping!

Looks fantastic! Solid defenses, Great recovery, near-perma hasten, accuracy is covered well, pretty good slow resist... giving me ideas for my own _/SR/Psi. My nitpick would be that Link Minds is a great place to have the entire Reactive Defenses set sit, as you get quite a bit of goodies out of it and you're already having it take 5 slots there anyway. It'd push Hasten to Perma and let you get more DDR out of Dodge. But I'm not even sure you really need the End Redux and you lose a smidge of %Damage, so that's largely just personal preference I think. Great setup, overall!

I will always shill for Dark as a fantastic do-all set if you don't hate the Haunts and learn to embrace HoD as a proc bomb. Earth is also a great pick in primary too, probably the most CONTROLery of the Controller primaries if that's what yer looking for, it's a very safe set to play... if you don't mind how slow the damage can be. Ice and Electric (no matter how desperately I want to love the latter) just don't feel... good. Especially if you want to solo as a controller. Ice has it's merits, it's a lot of fun on Dom, but doesn't have a lot going on. Very set and forget, which is great if you want to focus on your secondary... but not so much when you want to be able to actually kill things soloing. Elec is the opposite, very busy, but little payout in dps. Great if you want something to play in a group, much harder to feel good solo. I will second what @roleki says and say EA secondary is a lot of fun, and controller sidesteps the awkward fact that you need someone else to chain off of for your abilities by having pets to work with. It is a very busy set, but also a very good one. I would definitely pair it with Dark over Stone, especially since you have extra pets to make use of those chains. Cold Dom and FF are also great, lots of good debuffs and a few shields to keep your pet alive, and the -res effects in the sets helps you bring down enemies quicker. Of the two I'm more partial to Cold's grab bag of tools, like the stealth aura and heat loss. Pain Dom is... not a bad set, but it loses a lot of it's luster without other players to use it on. If the intent is to solo things, your pet will only get so much benefit from it. In a duo though, it's a great pick. Especially for a more DPSy party member who can really take advantage of the buffs. Poison is a fantastic set too, but I've not played it since Live and so probably am not the best person to talk about it. Great debuffs, but a bit of a one trick pony and needs a lot of setup time... people will love to have you when an AV pops up, though, and the Hold aura will help stack the magnitude for things like bosses. Hope this helps!

(Holy necropost!) I actually prefer Soulbound in demons and use a similar setup to the above due to the prince already having several consistent procs available. Not only does Gargoyles fire aura help, but he's (iirc, it's been a hot minute) also responsible for a good bit of your AoE and is a solid chunk of your damage output. Ember may not get as much use of the proc, but I'd argue anything he does get out of it is just icing anyway.

While I don't have any combinations or themes to point you at that you might enjoy, I will say that if you haven't played Dark Affinity you should definitely take a crack at it. It's a fantastic set, both the best version of Dark Miasma AND imo the best support option a controller has available. Fade and Soul Absorption absolutely are worth the loss of the ST hold and Fearsome Stare from Misma. You end up providing AoE Rez, -500% regen, -res and slow field, infinite End, a frankly massive +Def to all as well as a handful of +Res, with the fluffy pet and stealth field as icing on the cake. They're also all easily made perma or very close to it (Fade can be tricky to get there). Forcefield is also a lot better than it was, and it's a keystone for things like 4* content. It's more than just +Def bubbles now, providing a slew of debuffs and the amazing new T9 which creates a zone of fantastic buffs, and a slew of debuffs for the enemies as well. As for the control sets, I don't have any experience with Grav. Ice is a lot of fun to play with, but I see it as more of a Dom set as they get quite a bit more out of Arctic Air via domination, and want to be in melee for their assault secondary anyway. Jack never felt like a great pet, either, but that might just be personal preference. I've been spoiled by Umbra Beast and Fire Imps, who can put out surprisingly well despite Controller's dps limitations. Just my 2c, hope this helps!

An additional point in Necros favor would be that gang war thugs... are kinda useless (if we're talking about damage, anyway, they make great distractions). I'm sure the lot of them together amount to some damage output, but iirc they generally only have a melee attack and a throw rock/shoot pistol attack on moderate cooldowns. Even if Necro has slightly less total, Necro gets a heck of a lot more out of them, and more often. Soul Extraction has definitely become a fantastic "I win." button while it's up, and I love it to pieces.

Don't underestimate the rifle side of things! My favorite 'Bane' is still the mace-less Huntsman setup, leaning into Heavy Burst, Venom and Frag 'nades for a full AoE rotation. Feels like a dps-y defender, with Venom and Surveillance providing fantastic debuffs and the double leadership toggles for support. Not exactly a traditional setup, but its a blast to play. Even on a more normal Bane setup, I'd argue Burst and Heavy Burst are better than the equivalent first 2 mace 'beam' attacks, due to how long the animation time is for them. Redraw changes doesn't help the awful DPA of the skills, unfortunately. But I will second @twozerofoxtrot on Crowd Control crits being an absolute thing of beauty. (PS: Don't underestimate the potency of a proc-bombed Poison Ray! A lot of folks skip it, but if yer playing with mace its a great addition to the kit!)

Good ideas all around. This is something I frequently forget exists, at least in regards to the SG buffs. I didn't realize Phant was heavy on KB, so that's also good to know, as I had originally thought to put OF proc in the army. I'm glad you brought that up. Yeah that was really my only concern, the low end of Ouro flashbacks. But in the grand scheme of things that's an area no controller ever feels great in, and it's a small enough sliver of content that I really shouldn't be worried about it. Spectral Wounds and Decieve should be more than enough there. My final build has PA down to only a 5 second downtime, which I am largely content with, now that I remember I can just fix that with base buffs and/or destiny. Though in hindsight my immediate reaction was to add Intuition Radial as my alpha (being that Dark usually benefits from it a lot), but the lack of Fearsome Stare in DA and the emphasis on recharge makes me wonder if Agility would be a better option instead to close that gap.

General outline attached below. Tactics mostly just a placeholder in case acc is low enough to need it, could be swapped to assault if I don't. Either way gives me Veng to mule. Not generally fond of the 4min cd AoE holds, but it's nice to have a mule for Basilisk. Invis seems like a moot point, when Shadowfall and a sprint IO will do the same with additional benefits. Teleport Target is mostly just a nice-to-have rather than something I need, but can be replaced. Would love to get 5pc Absolute Amazement in HT, slotting permitted, since Ill is light on control options. Not sure at all what to do with the pets, or even if Terror needs more than a Cloud Senses setup. How exactly do you treat Spectral Wounds and Blind? Is it worth making Blind into a proc attack, or do I want to slot WotC ATO there? Is Decieve worth more than a one-slot wonder for CC proc? So many questions, ugh. Controller - Ill Dark wip.mbd

There's plenty of topics about the set out there, but rather than necro a 6 month old post I figured I'd just make something new here. I have this weirdly distinct memory of a friend I used to play with PLing an Ill/Dark for me and taking me through DA's incarnate arc to mess around with it back at the start of Homecoming, but when the mood struck me to give the set another shot (I wasn't a fan of the reliance on PA, iirc) I... couldn't find the alt? I figure I must have deleted it by accident, but I can't find the build either in my folder of folders, so I'm starting from scratch here. I have more than a few trollers and am fairly confident in my building skills, but Illusion is a weird set, and I'm not entirely sure what is worth taking/slotting out, and what isn't. The early levels look... barren, and having two invis toggles mixed in there probably isn't helping. I have a general outline of what I want to do with the build, and I won't be GM hunting with it so slotting doesn't need to be super strict on recharge, but advice on power picks in general would be handy. On the other hand, I'm also curious about... exemping. How painful is that going to be here, for content where I'm dropped below the threshold for PA, or even in general since any exemping is likely to cost me recharge to make them perma? If I want to, say, take the toon through low end Ouro arcs, am I just better off writing off the set? As always, any and all advice is appreciated!

Boring answer, but I have to agree with Snarky. The fact that we're even here still blows my mind 4 years later. I can't think of another game so handily raised from the dead and still kicking. I'm also incredibly thankful to all the amazing folks both here on the forum and in the discord who've helped me work through the learning process that is Mids. My time on live was predominantly filled with basic IO builds due to the frankly insane costs of sets, so I'd never really learned the set-bonus tetris required to really flesh a character out. Going from that annoying guy asking for people to make me a build to someone who can confidently craft my own has given me so many more hours of enjoyment out of the game. I have no idea if you frequent these forums Arklide and Shin_Rekkoha, but ya'll are wonderful people.

I am the first to admit I have a... problem. Damn near every single toon I've made that has the option to take Dark Miasma/Affinity does, and my "Main" is a Dark/Dark controller. So I feel like I should be at least qualified to say... Fearsome Stare is a huge part of the sets it is in. I have to agree with @Uun here, there are a lot better things to drop from DC - Haunt, Binds, LS, etc. To each their own in regards to playstyle, but Heart of Darkness is potent enough to build around all in itself with it's fantastic proc options and long duration stun, and FS is the largest -tohit the set provides, and in a massive cone to boot. I would personally drop even Shadow Field before either of them. I have 0 experience with TA so I have nothing to say there, though I'll say that Mu mastery is not a terrible option for the extra AoE in ball lightning to help with the oil ignition, if you're willing to take a resist armor rather than defensive. Focused Accuracy is all well and good, but at that point Tactics might be a better pick with troller's support scale and team utility role. Just my 2c.

I will always be Redside at heart, I love the arcs and the general vibe of Recluse's little corner of the world. I'll take papers of radios any day, but it does feel a bit sad that that's all folks seem interested in there. I know it's a comparatively small part of the game's content, but I'd love to see more folks doing more than just the weekly SF and papers/tips out in the isles. That said, I know I'm not alone, and luring folks out there isn't all that hard. I've never had crickets in my chatbox when I ask if anyone wants to tag along with me running The Radio or Von Grun arcs for fun.

While most of my characters are OCs now, on both live and here on Homecoming I have an homage to Illyana Rasputin ("Magik"), as she was always my favorite from the X-Men comics growing up. Was actually my very first character to reach incarnates, as I wasn't around at the end of live to do so back then. Broadsword/Invuln mutant Scrapper, teleport pool for "portals", costume change macro to give her the armor in combat. Good times. I may end up remaking her now that scrappers can use EA though, eventually.

I don't know about videos or gifs, but you CAN hop into the Test server and give yourself as many particles as you want to test them all out. The costume vender in P.D. has a shop interface you can just buy them from.

Psy powersets tinted white/gold, or a human-form PB make the most sense to me, given the whole divine theme. Psychic Dom especially feels like it'd fit an Exorcist character fairly well, binding it's enemies with the light. @ZemX's Idea is a really cool take too though, Staff with some pool/epic powers to fill it out would be neat!

Hours long arguments in my SG over whether Fitness was really mandatory and if you had to RP your character as out of shape if you didn't take it. Making a fresh alt, throwing them into the sewers with some like-minded madmen and not coming up for a good ten levels, struggling through to another zone exit with only your starter powers... I miss this. The trial we have now just isn't the same. Controllers actually being a useful AT I have this one oddly specific memory when AE first came out when a friend of mine built the Secret Cow Level as a farming map, back before the devs realized what a mistake the pre-nerfed xp/inf was. People in our little 15 man SG would log in and just ping chat with "Moo?" to get cycled into the farm team that was almost always running. It became such a consistent thing that it actually carried to other MMOs some of us played together, as sort of a weird in-joke.

Ice Melee with either Ice or Stone armor are my favorite combinations to use on Stalker. Such a fantastic set all around. Just wish I didn't have to mute my game when playing it to avoid the migraine-inducing whistling sound that drowns everything else out while the sword is in your hand...

Uh... oops. I have to many builds >.< I saw "2" and hit post. Also... good catch on the Fade slotting! Link fixed. I will say I don't usually +5 anything that isn't a basic IO, as I do tend to play a lot of exemp'd content and prefer attuned sets. A quick glance at the old Dark/Dark reminded me that Hami-Os are a thing though and I should slot those into Darkest Night instead of generic End Redux.

All good points, some of which I already addressed in my tweaking after Wimbochismo's comment. I did in fact drop the third attack entirely and grab the aoe immob, in theory I was thinking that Lullaby's sleep would be enough to get containment onto a group for Confounding Chant, and that cycling the two STs would handle the rest. In practice... not so much. So I dropped Bolt for Aria and migrated the ATO set there to free Lullaby up. Teleport Target is a specific need that I try to work into characters as often as possible. I duo quite a bit with a... lets say, directionally challenged friend who gets lost or stuck/separated quite frequently. It helps a lot to make sure they can keep up with a group in some content, and is sometimes easier to just yank them than try to describe where to go. It's not a hard requirement, but I'd rather have it than not. Aegis Unique and the slots in Maneuvers/Tactics is more just personal preference. The tweaked build now has perma-SA and Fade with a 1.6s gap, but the lack of global accuracy makes me feel like I need to at least give Tactics a little push, and both it and Maneuvers are end hogs if SA slips. I could probably do without them, but my issue isn't really lack of slots so much as to many powers to take. Aegis Unique itself is just me being annoyed with no pre-incarnate protection from mez, and liking to have the status resist more than the psi resist. I did actually consider taking Chords if only to mule the set, but I'm strapped for power picks. Short of dropping a LotG mule or Teleport, I can't find something for it to replace. Unless I once again drop Darkest Night for it. This is what I have now, after actually playing with the set for a bit and taking a peek at the examples you both gave. I'd love to get more procs into DD and CC, but I couldn't find a comfy way to do so without losing chunks of the global recharge I need to keep Fade and Hasten as close to gapless as possible. Overall, I'm happier with this setup than what I started with, but may revisit it after some more playtesting. Controller Sym Dark wip2.mbd

Soul/Dark Embrace was mostly for theme, I'm just a sucker for the visual. You're right though, I don't think Arcane Bolt is worth the loss of Hasten. I took it as a replacement for Melodic since it has better DPA and can slot a FF proc, but I think I'm just better off dropping Sorcery to get hasten back, especially since I'm taking flight to mule LotGs anyway and not using the the travel power. I like some of your slotting replacements, and I think I will end up dropping Chords like you suggest. The cooldown is hefty and I don't have the slots to proc it out anyway, so it feels like the power i'll miss least. I appreciate the second opinion!