Sir Myshkin

Pulled a quote from my original post talking about it. I can also confirm that not only will the procs stack on existing hold power mag effects, but they will stack on themselves if you can manage to achieve a secondary activation of the proc within the window duration. I used Gravitational Anchor's +Hold in Tenebrous and got it to stack itself to hold Lieuts/Bosses if the power fired off enough times in the 8/s window and managed to still proc twice on that target. In the realm of ST effects, that obviously pretty easy if you're firing it off a lot.

My choice of one over the other first was purely to know it was possible. The biggest aspect about dealing with aggro control is knowing the limitations of your abilities and how to use them to diffuse a room effectively. If a Tank rolls in to a crowded space and the team is on top of him but gets over aggro, I can isolate the squad and instantly remove the outside threats from beyond the perimeter of Dimension Shift giving a reprieve against outside forces. Then I can follow that up with Wormhole to bring extra into the shift, with effective KB on entry, and let the team respond accordingly. It was just to know it was--in fact--possible to do. Obviously if I were after the proc side of the equation, doing the reverse would be the most effective way to manipulate damage potential. Look at it from the reverse. Picture the same scenario as above, room over-clustered with mobs everywhere, Tank aggro-caps, what do we do? Wormhole one spawn into another, then Shift them collectively, removing them from concern instantly. By the time Dimension Shift fades, Wormhole will be nearly recharged and I can re-throw the whole cluster a second time if the team still isn't ready for them. Bonus points on the fact that Wormhole will proc FF+Rech again (most likely), and speed up Dimension Shift by a few more seconds meaning I'll probably only have a short 5-8/s delay to firing that power off again. Fully aware 🙂 I did Napkin Math on it, and since there's not really another significant choice for a Proc between Lift and Crush, I looked at the one I was likely to be able to fire more randomly-rapidly, which was Lift, and put the Apocalypse in Crush. Adding another form of Damage into either ability doesn't net much gain based on what I've got it slotted with currently (talking 6-7 some odd points, 12-14 under containment). If Decimation were to go off, I have enough of a window to fire GD > Lift > Crush > Lift in its window (or Crushing Field in an AoE circumstance instead of Crush), getting that BU effect on four full attacks. In that window I'd see ~140 (contained) damage (ST). Or a DPS increase of ~5 for everything versus ~5 from only Lift. Decimation gives that ability to spike Crushing Field if it comes up, but it was practically a net wash. Tried doing the math briefly Monday when I wrote the initial Test 3 post and figured for as much as I could spam Lift (about twice every 5.5/s, like 10-11 shots a minute max potential) that should be pretty reasonable opportunities if all I focused on was attacking. It's not, but, "maximum effort" and all. I mean, realistically I could just put Lift on Autofire and it'd cycle more than it would in an attack chain. Crushing Field. Single Damage IO +5'd, 14.68 damage. Basic 3.5 Proc in that ability gives an average of +7. Intuition, +3, contained to +6. Statistically not going to hit every target, every time, no matter what. Somewhere in there you have the potential of never hitting one of those targets with a proc at all. Guaranteed damage versus the probability of damage. If 1 point was the difference between the two, guaranteed makes a lot more sense to me than probability, purely looking at the Alpha choice. And still, that's not the only thing being impacted. Range, -Def, -ToHit, Hold Duration, Slow Movement that has a lot of rounded value in a ton of places for support roles. Like I said before, the circumstances you're experiencing with your specific build might warrant a slightly different path, and there is some flexibility in tailoring each build a bit differently. So far I've focused on generalizing the approach and haven't really min/maxed any of these to their fullest. Honestly in some of their cases they could be tailored a bit to eek out a bit more slot-based damage enhancement. Just looking at the Gravity/Time, a PB boosted Farsight actually far-oversights its accuracy. I could likely trade some of its ST slot choices a bit to push the attacks a few points each. Unfortunately the math doesn't necessarily support this. In the realm of packing high global recharge, unless there is a struggle to achieve it, Ageless is going to have less significant impact over its duration. Depending on the ability, and whether there's any inherent recharge already packed in, Ageless (at its fullest) may only shave 1-1.5/s off a high-base recharge ability. Mathematically speaking a build that can leverage a couple of FF+Rech procs will have better invested return than Ageless. I've proven that with Torrent on recycle with Tenebrous Tentacles. I managed to go a full 15/s at +100%. My limitation was the fact that the entire spawn died. Initial spike on Ageless is 70%, falls to 30% in 10/s, then 20% in 30/s for a remaining 30/s, then 10/s for the last 60/s. Effectively that's something like 15-16% normalized over the lifespan of 120/s. Napkin Math. All of your sub-10/s recharge powers will see almost no impact from this, maybe .1-.2/s difference. Depending on the slotting for a higher base recharge ability, potentially 1-2, maybe 3-4/s net gain. Now I'm purely looking at a build that already nets 175-190% on its own. Something less than that, go for it, I'm not countering against that. With as many builds as I have put together at this point, there are plenty of them that don't dramatically benefit from Ageless and could easily function without that Destiny if a player wanted to go a different route. I can't possibly sit here and tell every single player "This is the only way to play a Proc Monster." Cause it isn't, and shaving 1/s off of Distortion Field isn't going to suddenly make you a wickedly better Proc Monster over the player who didn't. And in many, many, many of the builds I've put together, the abilities that most benefit from Ageless aren't even proc-based powers (I'm looking at you, Chrono Shift). In quite a few cases, Clarion is the choice that has to be argued because it is the one that gives many builds their status protection, which can be considered far more valuable than 1-2/s off any given power's recharge. You can't look at these builds as one-lane roads, they have to be built in a way that makes each build shine most effectively. If that involves Ageless, than great, but not all of them will, and nor should they. And that's the ultimate point 🙂 I was actually going to ask near the end of this what people would like to see next. Guess the people have spoken.

I do see where you're going with this in regards to your Plant/Poison specifically, and in some cases where the powers don't even originate their own damage outside of procs, I can see Nerve making sense, but I do want to mention the fact that--in general--even the AoE Immobs will still do a reasonable amount of damage comparatively, and consistently, under containment. Even with just one slot used towards Damage, that still doesn't compare to having at least Intuition in there to act as the thing that maximizes that potential, which is why I built so many builds around it. Maximize every avenue of potential damage, and a proc might do the potential of more damage, but consistent backbone damage over the execution of the power will outweigh that proc in most cases. I haven't fully looked at Plant yet to see what you might be encountering and really seeing (for that set) what kind of balance is there, but it is something I can definitely look more closely at to see what the better average is in action versus probability. Generalist statement doesn't work. Might for your case, but not generally speaking. Nerve needs a lot more than just itself to get your Accuracy up to levels warranting +3/4 content. Depending on the build there will be more out there, but that is something that has to be specifically looked at for each power because some are under weighted out of the gate. Not every Proc build uses Ageless. In many of the cases that I've listed or "used" that power it was either out of convenience, or hardly used. In the case of the most recent test with Grav/Time, I didn't need Ageless. That build has a very long period it can run without needing endurance support, and it has Conserve Power which is actually sufficient to bring it back up to full and allow it to run another 3-4 minutes. I loaded up Ageless just out of preparedness more than necessity. Neither Time nor Dark need Ageless, and those are the two best-fit sets for Proc Builds.

Test #3: Gravity Control (w/ Time/Primal backbone) Two tests in 24 hours! Giving a ton of content update here just because Gravity is/was honestly a pretty straight forward "Did all this work? Yup, cool, moving on." I probably spent more time leveling/building it versus testing it. This really came down to more of a test on a couple of features I personally wanted to verify, get a range limiter on, and see what happens. Gravity has a lot of proc potential, so the biggest thing was seeing how much could be crammed into a single build too. Time I felt might be the most flexible, and I'd kinda hoped with Gravity being a heavier hitting ST set it might scrape ahead for damage on its own merits. Crushing Field Wanted to really explore the Font proc here, and see how many times I could get it going within the limitations of the duration. The biggest thing is keeping enemies alive long enough for it to work. Grabbing groups of 8-10, my highest successful count was 4 Fonts at a time, one per execution of the power. What's really great is that I didn't slot anything but procs and one other piece from the OP ATO for Acc/End, and it was going off enough that things were dying after 3-4 applications anyway. Dimension Shift & Wormhole With the ATO proc and Trap of the Hunter, we can get two damage procs into Dimension Shift with two triggers (once at activation, and once 10/s in), which is pretty decent if you're willing to drop the set there and dedicate six slots to DS. I know that ability is a hot button for a lot of people, but I personally find a lot of amusement in the idea of what it can do, which is also why I wanted to test something else out with it. Wormhole a group into] Dimension Shift. I don't remember ever seeing anyone talk about doing or trying this, especially not in recent couple of months. I didn't see a reason why it couldn't, but I also understand why it wouldn't logistically. Dug around RWZ for two close-knit patches of enemies relatively tightly packed themselves, shifted one, and then spammed the other into it. And it worked. If I did it fast enough (before the 10/s trigger) I could also get that new group to feel the wrath of the Shift. What I don't know is whether there is an effective limitation for Dimension Shift in how many enemies it could potentially damage in one shot. Also dropped FF+Rech into Wormhole and that thing fired off like a champ, effectively turning the recharge of Wormhole into something more like 24/s instead of 28/s. Single Target Attacks There's four ST attack options with Gravity, which is kind of a lot in a Controller set. I skipped Crush since it didn't have the same flex as animation/options the other three did (and just general space in the build). Lift and Gravity Distortion were the two strongest picks and obvious need-to-take powers, and Propel was mostly just a choice thing. Propel might not be the best choice in a Proc Monster though, it looks like. On its own in regular standard view, Propel was always that go-to ST hitter, but with 3-4 +Dam procs that can be loaded into each of the ST attacks, they can easily overshadow it by at least 10 damage per average activation. I looked back after the fact at Crush over Propel, and with 4x+Dam procs at 1.5/s for 108 damage vs. Propel at 2.2/s for 150, Crush is doing marginally better DPS (by about 4 pts), tightens the chain for Lift and GD, and a if I flip around some of the proc choices in Lift, we can toss Decimation +BU in there and run Redlynne's "Chuck lots of dice" manta in there and get the 2-3 chances to fire that per minute which'll net a marginal uptake for all three powers being able to go off in that window (Lift twice). I know Propel is a fan-favorite, but Proc Monsters are hungry beasts, and I don't think it has a home with them. Here is the tested build: And here is with Crush replacing Propel: And since it kinda feels like its just part of the process now: End run was 7:34 which felt about as dumpster-driven as the final scene when the Pylon blew up. Sadly I blame this circumstance on Time just not having a wide spectrum of strong debuffs. That's the trade off really for the level of Buff Boosting it can do for a wide group in one shot. I'd hoped Gravity would have more push from a damage perspective, but I guess it did marginally better than non-Enflame Rad/Time Defender did. Taking Dimension Shift out and trying to squeeze in Enflame could be possible but it'd cost Hover too, and 3% of the builds defense to peak Softcap. Not really worth it for an isolated scenario like a Pylon. Upcoming Tests That only really leaves Plant to test with Leviathan/Mace/Soul, and some feedback on Hot Feet/Consume from Fire along with build specs for Dark Control (since I already had that Live, I've already 'tested' it). Controllers are about wrapped up and then it'll be on to the next Proc-spective AT. I'll leave this here for anyone interested, not necessarily a "Proc Monster" build, but a proc-bent Fire/FF/Flame build that I put together for myself (my OG 'Main'). It's a rare-sight build because it doesn't have Hasten.

If you're going to run ahead, Then you leave a trail of dead. Just saying, that's proper etiquette in the realm of being "that guy." If you're going to do it, do it well, and make the team envious, don't do it poorly, and end up angering people. I've had plenty of scenarios playing my Scrapper where I'm pushing the team forward as politely as I can at encouraging speeds, even racing to the next spawn as the last body is dying in the previous one. I've even had Tanks defer to me on alpha because waiting for them was slowing us (sic: me) down. But never leave the team hanging, and don't leave a littered field of living between you, that's just unprofessional.

Took a walk tonight with the weakest Controller Primary on the block. Earth/Dark/Stone, Standard Rules of Engagement T4 Intuition Radial and Ageless Core No Interface, No Hybrid, I'm a monster! A Proc Monster! 4:58 (256 DPS) The sick part is that time can technically be improved. And this wasn't a specialized ST build; I was using Fissure in my attack chain! Fossilize, Seismic Smash, Hurl Boulder, Fissure, Volcanic Gasses (when up). Keep Stony Alive and drop Howling, Tar Patch, an occasional Soul Absorption, Fade, Ageless, and Hasten.

Test #2: Earth Control/Dark Miasma/Stone Mastery Alright folks, its been a few days since the last test I dropped, so here we go. First I want you all to answer a question in your mind before I get into this: Do you think Earth Control is weak from a damage aspect? Yes or No. Hold on to that thought. I talked about the different aspects I'd be targeting in the preliminary post, and I've finally had time to roll around into testing out what Earth and Stone would provide as potential proc fodder. I've come back with some interesting things to talk about, some unexpected results, and some rather amusing ones as well. Stalagmites This was kind of just a 'proof of concept' for this power. I hadn't actually said "Yeah, I tested procs in [that] power." All the sets have very similar long-range fired targeted AoE, figured I should make sure it didn't have any quirks. I didn't. And honestly, I was rather pleased with it being a decent burst damage opener with just the ATO Proc and Posi in it. Earthquake Bad news bears are about to walk in on this one. I ran this power on loop over and over for five minutes and I only got to see one trigger of Achilles Heel, and it did what Rain powers do, disappeared within a flash of its existence. I have no idea why, and the game didn't feedback any other recordings of it ticking off. I also didn't get any damage procs off on it. I did, however, get pretty consistent procs off of FF+Rech, which was pretty awesome. So great there. Gets to save some slots! Fun note: The game reports this in the combat log as "Ice Slick." Hmm. 🤔 Hurl Boulder I took this more as filler, but also to mildly test it as well, and I was actually pretty surprised. With a base recharge of 10/s, and an animation 2.5/s long, this thing gets close to the cap of probability and fired off its procs pretty regularly. Super awesome and would probably be worth a couple more slots in a situation of lacking ST attacks with fun flair. I kinda feel like the 2x+Dam and the FF+Rech make up for its long animation. Heck, who am I kidding, take the power! Volcanic Gasses This power, this power, this power. Kinda like Poison Trap if you can keep the mobs in the patch. Something a little different here is that I tossed in the -Res proc, and just like Earthquake, it was a ghost in the machine. I saw this one pop up twice in total, and both times they flashed and disappeared. Damage wise, however, the procs seemed to be fairly consistent, so I absolutely don't have an explanation there other than "do I need a larger sample test? Or does this proc in certain powers just not 'work' right?" Volcanic does okay damage on its own. If the procs didn't go off at all, then I probably wouldn't even consider relying on VG otherwise, but for an AoE effect, they followed expected protocol. With there being four in the power, and having a 60/s duration (6 ticks), it was worth dropping for the 1.32/s animation time. Even if I only got 4 or 5 hits, that (and its own damage) were enough to make it a valid attack choice even in ST focus. Fun note: The game reports this as Voltaic Sentinel, and then also occasionally Voltaic Geyser. Has me curious how this power is coded and if that explains why the -Res proc doesn't 'work'. 🤔 Fissure I forgot to pull a sample clip of this things routine kick-back, but I have nothing but good things to say about this power. The Annihilation proc did seem to be a bit hard-core about a 10/s duration, I couldn't seem to get it to extend the duration, just kept cutting off at 10/s regardless if the proc notified it went off. I know this because I saw the trigger, and then a second later the effect wore off, which was 10/s from when it originally triggered. I've never noticed Achilles doing this, and this is the first power I've dropped Annihilation -Res into that's been able to recharge fast enough to reapply with considerable speed. I had a FF+Rech in the power, which proc'd pretty consistently, and between that and Ageless (depending on which stage I was in), this thing was bouncing back in >5/s. Pretty much if FF+Rech went off, its 5/s duration was long enough to carry Fissure to recycle (5.6/s under +!00%). I want to point out that this is technically a T-AoE, and I got really good returns on impact despite that. So much so that I still included using it as an attack in my Pylon attempt. I'm curious if this power is actually a ST attack with a splash caused by a Pseudo Pet. Not speculating on effect in the game, mostly just curious how the devs set up powers like this to work, and if their overall effect changed how they applied it. Not every swing of this power resulted in a proc, but I feel like it definitely averaged out to be 2 of the 4 on the regular. Plus I had FF+Rech dropped in there which gave me the occasional spike too. Seismic Smash Alright, lets all admit we came here for this attack. It hits hard on its own, it takes a bucket load of procs, it gets containment, and Controllers get the chance to really feel that crunchy smash! I think this will kind of speak for itself as a random sample: 526.58 Damage?! And we thought Dominate hit hard! That was performed against a Pylon with no active debuffs. Toss a double Tar Patch and an Annihilation proc in there, and that one single attack is crushing. Absolutely crushing. Originally Tested Build Since there came about things that warranted being changed due to the results I got back testing these powers, here is what the original build was, and I'll also add a modified build that corrects the things that didn't come back positive. And the updated build post-test: Yeah the only primary goal was to get Dark Servant back into the build, I kinda missed his ugly mug. So why did I ask you to think about Earth's damage potential? For years everyone always had complaints about Ice and Earth as being sub-par for damage compared to the other sets. I wanted everyone to hone in on that fact before going into the obvious that I did, of course, try and take this against a Pylon. The biggest thing about being a Proc Monster is whether procs take a mediocre or lack-luster set and give it impact, or even a good set and pushes it over the edge. Did you answer no? Would you change your mind if I told you I took down a Pylon under the 'Standard Rules of Engagement'? T4 Intuition Radial and Ageless Core. I forgot to actually slot in Interface before hand because its procing interferes with my normal testing and I hadn't put it in before I so hurriedly bashed on a Pylon. Given that, this time quite definitely can be improved. Further enhance Hurl Boulder, or determine how much impact Fissure fully had, as I know I was favoring it when I probably shouldn't have, and add Dark Servant back into the mix. Fluffy may not be a lot of damage, but he's better than not having him. The video starts exactly when Stony tosses a rock at the Pylon, which was before I got to toss down Darkest Night or really much of anything else, but did have Fade/Hasten/Ageless popped before we came around the corner. The Pylon pops at 4:58. I think that's pretty good for being "the worst damaging set." Some other Responses (Consolidating Replies) I wouldn't say that in the slightest. Toggles run on a 10/s activation period which isn't any different that patches dropped from T-AoE or L-AoE effects with durations. They still cycle on a given time window, and can still do really good for what they are. Some better than others, but it really comes down to a playstyle choice on whether you were running the power anyway, and what value it ultimately has. Nerve might help a small focus area of things, but the bigger impact of something like Intuition isn't just in Damage, but also Range, and in some cases -ToHit increases, there's a lot that Alpha actually does for a wide spread of relevant builds. But the biggest is making it so all those other abilities that were only getting 2-3 slots to shove in Acc/Dam/End were still able to get a reasonable value in on Damage before they fell short of even their most basic abilities. Tactics and a Kismet IO easily fix a lot of other accuracy woes, so if you really wanted to push your luck, there's probably the best way to do it.

People keep asking me about Poison, "Why no Poison" and I decided I'd just "put a build on file" at this point, and I knew going in when I did the Defenders Proc thread that Poison just... Kind of poor for a lot of things (imo) other than pure target debuff. Definitely not my playstyle personally, and really isn't suited to proc builds because you can't find a path to help keep it alive. For Controllers they can flex a lot of mez abilities to that effect, but still. Anyway, the whole thing I was getting to is the fact that with the damage sets available to Poison's version of the trap, that thing has a hypothetical damage output greater than Blackstar (on Defenders), on a 20-25/s potential recharge (purely just looking at global, and that's half the cooldown of the reduced Blackstar cooldown) for just the initial cast alone, never mind the fact that it just sits there for a while, still going off. Now, that's not enough to make me role a Poison set, but that's very scary.

Suppressive Fire (4x+Dam Proc, 2 Acc/End IO's), Executioner's Shot (-Res, 2x+Dam, fill last 3 w/ Acc/Dam/End mixtures only), and Piercing Rounds (-Res, 2x+Dam, Sup Frozen Blast Acc/Dam/End options) wrapped around Dominate (4-5x+Dam Procs and Acc/End) and Mind Probe (3x Acc/Dam/End mixture, fill Procs) will give you a really hard hitting chain if you put the right procs in it. Suppressive Fire, with Procs, will average a hit value nearly the same as Executioner's Shot (~20 pt difference). Global Recharge effects have no impact on the Proc Formula, only recharge enhancement in the power itself. Small amounts can sometimes still be okay for powers with a base rech greater than 15/s, but anything less, stick to global only (which should be sufficient anyway). So Ageless is safe to use, Alpha's like Spiritual or Agility however will impact as it "slots" into those powers like an enhancement.

There's a ton of AoE and ST going on, adding another Dark or TA power is up to you, but what I'd suggest would probably be to actually at the Disruptor into the mix from the Epic. In general combat missions when dealing with large spawns, Tenebrous and Torrent are going to keep them pretty occupied and slowly whittle them down, but having that Arachnid climb into the mix while they're incapacitated would be a nice way to speed up your damage. TT can be cycled fairly quickly with Torrent, especially when Torrent procs the FF+Rech and recycles itself faster. When your fights boil down to just you and one or two enemies, between Flash Arrow and the -ToHit components of the dark attacks, you should be able to stay 30-40% -ToHit which is going to be a pretty significant amount. AV's can resist some of that, but it might be enough to give some reasonable level of survival to the Arachnid when you're fighting a singular hard target, and the added damage--again--would be nice. Going this route does put a trash Mace power into the build, but honestly just about anything that got added was going to be an excess un-needed power anyway. If you would prefer to do something like one of the Dark abilities, then I'd suggest maybe going Glue Arrow (base slot with a proc) and Dark Pit as a little extra "oh crap" power to disorient a group on occasion. I don't see either of those seeing a ton of use though, so that's why I think going with the pet is a better choice since it can stay active and around as much as possible, and be of some benefit.

Your experience is the same as what I got with Poison Trap from the Traps set when I tested it on Defenders. I would assume that the abilities are the same (code wise) in the game. Yes, procs in that powers are pretty crazy. Sadly it's the "only" thing Poison really gets to play with.

So I've given this concept a lot of thought since Homecoming went live and I rolled over and over on whether I wanted to recreate my Fire/FF Controller. I've spent thousands of hours with Force Fields, so this isn't coming out of left field when I say: I get how to use and abuse it, but we are all supers of action, lies do not become us. Half the set sucks. Rumor had it that Force Fields was one of a couple sets on the review block to be spring-boarded into the "current" environment, and I spent a lot of time trying to come up with what the might envision. Lets talk about a few ideas here: Absorb Barrier mechanic, think like how Energy Shields work in Sci Fi space shows, or Sue Storm's powers (at one point, depending on the writer) could weaken and break, letting things through. Absorb acts like that "untouchable, but not unbreakable" aspect. We acknowledge that a bad implementation of this would potentially over-power Force Fields into that realm of "holy cow, we just can't be killed!" Absorb is just flat out not enough to balance Force Fields into relevancy. Debuffs When it comes to being violently impacts with an invisible wall of [whatever], it makes sense a target could take impact damage, or suffer a crack in their armor, or whatever, so at the minimum -Def has always made sense, and should be in there in certain places (Force Bolt, Repulsion Bomb, Repulsion Field). Could we thematically find a place to add -Res? Wearing an opponent out, weakening them? That's a tricky one. -Damage. To extend into the idea of the Absorb concept, -Dam could apply the same way, and there might be a path for this, possibly one that could include -To-Hit. Utility Detention Field is probably one of the most skipped powers in the game. That needs corrected. There's an excessive amount of Knockback effects in this set. I'm not bashing its functionality, but there's just an unwarranted amount of it. At least half of us can agree on that. I'm not saying we should take it out though, Sudden Acceleration's KB/KD altering IO validates use for a lot of these powers. What they do lack is flexibility Force Field does great on the level-ramp, but in the 48-50 world of IO's, finds itself unloved, and then again gains some traction in Incarnate content because it helps all those folks who go to 45% suddenly find the iCap of 59% and move forward again, but that's not enough to keep them alive, they need DDR for that to be relevant. These are the thoughts I'm proposing be looked into as a way to validate, update, and enhance Force Field as a set, for all AT's it applies to, using currently available "resources" within the game: Deflection and Insulation Shield Add 15% DDR to each shield, combining total of 30% for both. Defense is the bread-and-butter of what Force Field is, it should have a way of tolerating a bad hit. Personal Force Field Allow for a non-combat status and a combat status like Superior Invisibility. While static, does everything that PFF does now. When combat is initiated by the player, suppress to 10% Defense and 5% Resistance, enhanceable so that a player can get those values to 15/10. That, in combination with Disperssion Bubble would get them around 28-30% Defense. Add 20% DDR, you're a master at these things for crying out loud! Force Bolt Add a -Def component Bump to 33 base damage Add KB/KD splash (ala Propel) Repulsion Bomb Reduce the cast time to 1.7/s to bring it in line with comparable tier 8 targeted AoE's Reduce the recharge to 16/s to bring it in line with comparable tier 8 targeted AoE's Add -Def component Detention Field Keep intangibility stasis effec, change power description to "You've contained a foe in your strongest impenetrable field, while trapped they cannot break out, but the intense pressure of the field will slowly begin to crush them, wearing them down. This ability is taxing and can't be held for long." Add -Def and -Res component with the following conditions: Detention Field becomes a toggle with a max duration of 30/s. Initial activation will apply a -10% Def and -20% Res with 50/s duration. At 10/s an additional -10% and -10% respectively for 45/s, and at 20/s another -10% and -10% for 40/s 1.0 EPS toggle cost with a 10/s -Recovery on Player (balance end cost on short kicks). Repulsion Field Option 1: Alter to match Disruption Field as a toggle AoE on target ally. Causes -5% Def and -20% Res. Primary KB, Sudden Acceleration allows it to become KD. "You warp your Force Fields around an ally, all foes that get too close will get pushed back and struggle to make contact. The field is so tiring to deal with and hits so hard, enemies will wear down quickly." Option 2: Turn the field into a "pet" similar to Singularity using existing models for the fields. Pet is a traveling KB/KD in the same nature as Singularity. Will chase down enemies. Has no attacks, and the aura has the same -5% Def and -20% Res attribute. (This option keeps the field stable for Solo FF users, but gives the ability more diversity, and keeps the support role out of Melee, and it would be a somewhat "unique" mechanic to just FF). Dispersion Bubble It's perfect except for one small thing: Grants 20% DDR to all residents in the field. Force Bubble Change power to "Influence Bubble" Grant player three toggle options that alter how the Influence Bubble acts: Force Bubble When toggled, Influence Bubble acts exactly as Force Bubble does now, no change for the purists. Oppressive Bubble "Your abilities are impressive, and in these fields you are the master of their effects. You use your Force Fields to slow your enemies and misguide their attacks." -Dam, -To-Hit, Slow within the field, adds secondary effect to Dispersion Bubble when active, creating layered effect. Dispersion Bubble gains +Absorb on all allies within Dispersion Bubble every 10/s. This value must be weighed and tested for what would quantify an appropriate amount, my initial guess would be something like 5% stacking up to five times. The power description would be something like "Simply oppressing your enemies movements allows you to focus on your allies, improving the shields around you and your team, giving them greater density against enemy attacks" Chaos Bubble Alternate field to Force Bubble, swaps to 50% chance to KD, 20% chance to Stun in the large field, 5 damage every 2/s. "Shifting your focus from your allies to your enemies you put all your energy into making tiny force pellets, pummeling those who enter your Chaos Bubble and knocking them down. The pellets move so fast they'll do minor smashing damage, and possibly hit hard enough to disorient an enemy." Gives Dispersion Bubble: "Dispersion Bubble is your ultimate domain, an enemy who manages to make it this close will feel the full force of what your fields can do." Force Bolt and Repulsion Bomb Doublehit. 100% chance to KD Collectively these changes would give Force Field a couple of debuff utilities, improve the damage of the set and stay more in line with a thematic use of what Force Fields should be capable of. Expand the T9 power into a more diverse and impactful tool representative of a T9 ability, and introduce a "new" mechanic to the set (borrowing from multi-layering ability effects used in Dual Pistols and Bio Armor, and then the Absorb mechanic itself). The alteration of PFF would give FF the ability to reach safer levels of defense without relying on pool/epic powers just as Time (and several other sets) can currently achieve within their own set. Adds relevant debuffs to the set, some thematically minor, but in a way that returns value to Force Field across all spectrums of the game. And lastly, introduces a new playstyle method with Detention Field by making it relevant to entrap an enemy by allowing a team to prep for the fight, and then unleash a collective assault, but also keep the "oh no, immediate danger!" response of the power and tossing it on an unexpected threat. Thoughts?

The reason Super Speed was in the build is two-fold: One, I absolutely hate having to siphon anything just to get jump-started traveling somewhere, and then it wears off, and I have to do it again, so Super Speed will always be in a Kin build (for me personally). Two, when creating a build that's going out for public use like this, having that intrinsic slot for a travel power is kind of a courtesy for others to trade out with their own preferred option. With CJ in there, that gives SJ, and the ability to take out CJ and replace it with Hover and take Flight as some prefer vertical mobility. As for what you did with the LotG sets, in the process of added mild +Acc (to fix what you stole), you also dropped HP in the process, and only the Unbreakable Unique is what brought you up again. Adding a slot to Stamina means nothing to a Kin (and honestly I haven't run a single build in a very long time with anything more than two slots in Stamina) with Transference. Of which, the reason Transference was slotted for End Mod was to increase its initial hit towards 100% (stops shy at ~96%). The relevant core of what you added: Unbreakable Guard's HP Unique, Tactics, and Reactive Defenses Resist Unique. To fit Tactics, upon kind of really considering it, Aim is kind of unnecessary here given all the floating damage buffs possible, and the fact that I pretty much C&P'd Ice Blast out of my Corruptor when I puzzled the build together. If I trade out Aim for Tactics, I only need to move one IO, and one slot to do all this. Now has more inherent accuracy across the entire build, without sacrificing any of the initial integrity. The reason the .3/.6% Defense being off in Energy/Ranged isn't a huge deal: Bitter Ice Blast. Against difficult single targets, BiB has a -15% (w/ Intuition) To-Hit Debuff and that way over compensates. Plus Repel is going to turn you into a canon ball, so it matters even less. All-in-all, worthwhile adds that don't take much to slide into the build, so good catch, just didn't need to chop-suey so much to do it 🙂 And the hidden-build trick is done through the spoiler tagging option. If you're in browser, it's the little eye icon in the reply options. On mobile you can use the BB spoiler code [spoiler][/spoiler]

Can confirm, Disruption Arrow will stack on itself, and you can have multiple Oil Slicks out, but that power has a lengthy recharge, and isn't likely to get down to 30/s to even have it perma. If you were to Burnout, then it'd be possible, but that's a rare option. Acid Arrow will not stack the debuff, but the damage aspect will still apply accordingly. Based on my own video run of a Pylon with TA/A, Acid refreshes its debuff duration when it hits. If you want to maximize debuff potential, put the -Res procs into it (Annihilation and Achilles Heel), they'll go off fairly reliably and give you an additional -32.5% Res. Flash does not stack.

Globally speaking it was determined that whatever step the devs took to stop rain effects from being insanely broken, basically just broke the powers collectively. I tested these way back when I did my Ice/Storm Corruptor and talked about those tests in the Storm Summoning (Defender) thread. The rate that the procs go off is abysmal in the rain abilities, making the effort to slot those extra pieces a bit of a waste. In the event of things like the -Res procs, I only ever got two triggers over (I don't even remember how many minutes of just re-dropping Freezing Rain and Ice Storm), and in both cases it was literally a blip on the Pylon. It showed up for less than a full second, just enough for me to go "crap, did that hit?" For whatever reason the debuff was pushed off the moment it applied. I've been over FR, Sleet, Blizzard, and Ice Storm, all feedback the same way: "Don't bother."

Looking at it, no, I can't say there was something obvious to put there, so probably something in error. Very possible I unintentionally pulled a slot from somewhere, but nothing else looked out of place. I did notice a different path to get Energy defense closer to 45% and give Ranged a padding closer to 32% though:

Begs the question of whether that combination of mechanics might make Force Field too strong. It does make a lot of comic-lore sense to have something that "breaks down" and softens incoming damage, maybe eventually allowing some things in as the shields "fail" (burn out Absorb), like you see in a lot of Sci-Fi Space shows involving "Shields." But in CoH terms, Defense applies first, then what comes through hits the absorb field, then HP. How much Absorb do you give? How quickly do we get to stack it? What gives it? How many times can I stack it? Can I give a player 100% absorb by just firing my bubbles over and over? It has the potential of making a player unkillable. As an example, see Bio Armor.

I dunno, I mean, I get where you're coming from on Dimension Shift, but at the same time I feel the fault of not enough people knowing about the power is more the issue than the power itself. From a design standpoint, that power is brilliant. Wait, hear me out! Over in Warframe there's a character called Limbo who has an ability very much the same as Dimension Shift, but it works on a larger scale, and that scale can be enlarged even further (almost to the point of absurdity). I used it like mad because it causes damage, and it also isolates. I can toss a couple of damage procs into Dimension Shift and use it quite literally the same way. Turn on, spike damage, temporarily isolate a mob, turn it off. Or I can leave it running... For Melee, DS has no transitional difference to them, they're heading into the zone regardless, and they're honestly perfectly fine being in there, potentially alone, more so than, say, a Blaster. What the shift allows you to do is not only separate and control a mob, but also very abruptly, and very efficiently, protect any number of the people on your team from taking any damage from the mobs within that field while also giving them the opportunity to prepare, and then go in and take care of business. Yes an AoE hold, or tentative sleep, or stun could do similar, but stun will wander; hold won't hit everything (possibly lieuts, probably not bosses, definitely not EB/AV), but Dimension Shift will grab that spawn and put them in isolated time-out. Your team can still act, they just have to be cognizant of the ability. By comparison, it's really no different than Force Bubble, just in reverse effect (and... well, Force Bubble is ginormous) and points all the attention at you instead. Definitely doesn't fit everyone's play-style, but not all powers will. As it stands though, Dimension Shift--in my opinion--is a pretty sweet deal.

'Time Manipulation > Distortion Field' is what 'Gravity Control > Gravity Distortion Field' should've been from the get-go. Change my mind.

I'm going to share something here that no one's seen yet. I haven't tested it yet, it's third on my list behind Earth/Dark/Stone. Grav/Time/Primal "Proc Monster" And it does hit 46.8% Defense to All under Power Boost. Did you guys know Dimension Shift can take two damage procs? Things gun-get spicy.

In regards to Dark Blast. With how I slotted Tenebrous Tentacles and Torrent, I was able to safely, and pretty much indefinitely, spam an entire spawn into oblivion with absolutely no concern for my own safety as they spent the entirety of the effort in endless KD while tightly packed in Immobilize. A Blaster would just do it faster considering the higher damage potential. The thing to keep focused on though is what @Hjarki pointed out. You catch yourself sacrificing in areas to make a build work, and Blasters will struggle even more than any others on building any form of defensive stance. When I first started this process with Ice/Storm on a Corruptor, like I mentioned before, to get where that build needed to be meant giving up on the ability to functionally be a "Proc Monster." Just like with Controllers right now having such a significant different in base values for things like Weave and Farsight, the newest build I'm preparing for my (eventually) third test (haven't even done the second one yet), I had to pull two powers out that I wanted to mess with just because I had to scrape together 5% more defense. That aside, for what you already have, Fire/Storm is probably the most effective damage dealer you have, Fire/Time is probably the safest, but by no stretch a "Proc Monster" because Fire only has one damage proc it can put in most of its abilities, so you're really not stretching/maximizing much of anything. I did look at */Time for Blasters as I've honestly not done anything with it (nor even really looked at it). There's a surprising number of abilities in there that can get massively loaded up with Procs. Water, as a given and already proc-proven blast set, also has a lot of potential, and decent AoE, but you're going to be looking at a struggle of coming up with a way to stay alive that doesn't involve chugging purples/oranges/greens if you go proc-heavy. /em shrug I just really haven't gotten in to Blasters. I only know of one method that's an absolutely monstrosity on focus and timing that cheapens the effort to get 45% defenses without a lot of set investment, but does require a lot of recharge... it's... an ugly build. Don't discount the idea of fast-tracking a new toon though. A 50 can be achieved relatively quickly these days with the 2XP boost, run a couple of MSR's and then PI Radios once you hit 40 and you should hit 50 within ... eh, 8ish hours? Maybe less? I never really timed it, but I got TA/A up to 46 within five MSR's (at 45mins total a piece) and a couple hours on AV teams (so decent, but not excessively fast XP speeds).

I didn't explicitly do anything testing here for Storm Summoning because this thread already focuses specifically on that set, and is kind of where I got the itch to go down this path of testing mechanics and looking for the best options for Proc Monsters. Over there I was testing and building an Ice/Storm Corruptor. There's a ton of good insight from @Hjarkiand @Obitus about their time with Storm, and other mechanics I looked into like verifying the state of Rains (Freezing and Sleet specifically there) with procs (they "don't work"). For the build I had been going for over there I couldn't take it in a direction that really demonstrated some of the insanity that Procs could get away with, and thus... here we are. Storm itself is a really offensive set and really screams for needing a lot of global recharge to get Lightning Storm and Tornado cycled fast, so it's a little trickier cause its harder to bend sets and recharge bonuses while keeping things packed with procs, but it is kind of the ultimate proc-centered monster out of all of them (for Defenders). I posted a Storm/Dark in the original topic post in my "update edit" for those that might be inclined to try that set out. Dark is the most effective proc blast set, so I pulled what I had there and paired it with the Storm as appropriate. It has a lotgoing on. But if you want more exploration info on the set, see the above link. As for Poison, I also talked about that set in a couple places, but not through extensive testing. Poison doesn't really have anything you can bend for procs against. Envenom has a couple +Dam and the Achilles, Paralytic Poison can take 3-4 (just as any standard hold power) and can temp as a light-use ST. Poison Trap is the only real crazy ability in the set as it can take quite an assortment, but it'll end up working just the same as Poison Trap from the Traps set (which was tested in this thread). Venomous Gas can also take an Achilles, but since they can't stack, and Envenom recharges so quick, slotting it there doesn't really have any benefit. So, yeah, holistically Poison doesn't really have much going on for Procs, and doesn't provide any significant level of defensive capacity. It's really focused on just tossing around a few debuffs and... that's it. With the primary focus being Solo, half of what Poison does is also absolutely useless to a solo player, which resulted in a set where a Solo player would only be looking at 4-5 of the powers. Even in the situation of teaming, several of those other abilities are kind of useless in today's meta. The only powers I'd even consider would be Envenom, Antidote, Poison Trap, and Venomous Gas, maybe Weaken for the -To-Hit aspect being so strong. That's all primarily just debfuff centered abilities, and of that, primarily -Res and -Regen. I can get both of those in copious amounts for two abilities in Radiation, Cold, Thermal, Dark... Poison isn't a very good set in my opinion. If you really wanted to bend some kind of Proc Monster out of it, I'd suggest taking the above mentioned five abilities and pair it with Dark Blast, grab the standard Tough/Weave/Scorpion Shield, Arcane Bolt and Enflame from Sorcery to really hammer home on -Res effects, then shove in Medicine for Aid Other, Self, and Field Medic. This is a very hastily tossed together shell, slot placements are subjective in some places. You can pull the Dark Blast enhancement slotting out of any of the other builds I posted (doesn't change on any of them). This is a very fragile concept with Poison as it relies massively on Weaken and Venomous Gas to deliver -37% To Hit debuff, and that is a very tiny 8' radius of effect. S/L/E will be fine under Scorpion Shield, but you really want more.

Anyone following the Proc stuff I've been doing, with a shift over to Controllers I've just tossed Electric/Dark/Primal at Pylon, bringing those results over here. T4 Clarion and Degenerative Core, Intuition Radial (No Hybrid) Standard Rules of Engagement. 4:39 (265 DPS) And it comes with a video! https://youtu.be/bKgz4pN-Op0

Okay. Okay. OKAY! I couldn't help myself. It's not my fault. And it's definitely y'alls problem. I went and fought the Pylon. I knew Elec/Dark could do it, just needed to fix up a couple of things to make it happen, so I did. Flipped the build over to Primal Epic and filled it in with Power Blast and Torrent as Mules slash actually decent supplemental powers. Mostly, I did it for Power Boost on Fade. I also altered the build across the board and am now suggesting an alternative slot option on the pet that will likely carry forward for any pet work done forward. Overwhelming Proc for standard content to get the KD, and then the Edict of the Master 5% +Def (All) unique for ST fights and Incarnate Content. The unique, with PB+Fade, puts the Gremlins at 41%, and Darkest Night (with Intuition Radial Alpha) puts them at effectively 59%. The Pets, the rest is just gravy for the player as PB+Fade puts them above soft cap, and decently above iCap, and with the DDR padding, should allow it to take one or two potential hits without cascading failure. I loaded up with T4 Clarion and Degenerative Core, and Intuition Radial. For doing so real little actual attacking myself, this came out pretty nicely. In case anyone was wondering, I follow standard practice Pylon Rules of Engagement every time I do these tests. So no Lore Pet, no inspirations, no temporary powers (Power Analyzer aside as that doesn't do anything), only the weight of my build against that pesky meatbag Tower. Final run time was 4:39. Feel pretty good about that. Not quite as good as what I pulled with Dark/Dark/Psi Defender, but we're talking about an AoE centric Controller here, and that was a better time than several other versions of Proc Monsters I've tested so far. Here is the updated build: Oh, and I did a video thing: So What's Next? Looking towards the next thing on my checklist I, of course, want to try and pack as much into a singular test as possible. It not only looks to see if things can get crazy and packed, but also what kind of extreme build options might be out there. So for the next test, because it is a bit thematic, I'm looking at Earth Control and Earth Mastery. Since I already know that Dark Miasma is a stable platform, I'll like pair it with that again since it is self contained and compensates a lack of defense with -To-Hit and keeps it legitimately well-rounded. It might be a couple days before I get around to doing the full test, but I have a vague idea of the build in mind and it's a doozy. A lot of proc-tential in this setup, a lot to confirm. Expecting some of this stuff to be pretty straight forward "Yup, just as expected." But we never fully know just how some things end up playing out. An interesting one here is going to be another Distortion Field like effect of a drop-zone Hold with minor DoT in Volcanic Gasses. That power could potentially act as a Mini-Nuke. Then we have Seismic Smash, an attack that can take 8 (!!!!) damage procs! Here is the planned test build: Small side note: Yes, I did take Dark Servant out. I know he's got some great utility, but I wanted to pack a lot of tests into this build and slots and powers became kind of tight. In most cases Fluffy was purely a set-mule anyway, and just convenient to have as a pocket-controller, but in this particular case I'm packing a huge array of control effects and Fluffy is kind of just baggage on my slots, so I pulled him out (for now). You may also notice I've tossed in the +6% To Hit IO for the first time ever, in conjunction with Tactics. This build really hurts for accuracy since I just Proc'd it up! So fixing some accuracy issues with those to utilities this go-around.

"Circumstantial" probably wasn't the right word choice there. I don't doubt that Electric could do it, but I also don't think just any generic build is going to work. For me to toss Electric/Dark at it, I'd have to approach things differently and get some KB protection into the Gremlins, and also get another ST attack into the build. Achieving that, I'm certain it'd be doable, but the more AoE centric build I tossed at it initially just wasn't going to cut it in a way that was worth the effort. I probably could've done it with the build I already had, it would've just taken ~10 minutes, and I just really really didn't have that in me for an "eh, why not" kind of run.