Doomguide2005

I turned way too old on January 3rd. Best belated birthday gift ever was knowing the game was finally ours again without a swords hanging overhead on the the 4th!

Fire sale!!!

Any confusion on my end has to do with the CoD entry

No but resistance debuffs and procs do bypass the damage caps.

Two things are true here. One I love Empathy, I currently have 4 Empaths at 50 and all 4 commonly see play with several more climbing in levels. I ran with the Repeat Offenders Green Machine Supergroup and was a Leader in the SG on Live. Second I'd pretty much agree with @Uun Empathy has sadly fallen rather behind more recent Defender sets when it comes to supporting a team in the endgame, in particular, especially as a sole Defender/Support. It has several very strong but single target buffs and other issues enumerated in other threads. I still find it fun to play and in particular low and mid level teams comprised of leveling characters it can still provide invaluable support. If I were to pair it with a controller primary I'd almost certainly look to Illusion. Illusion thrives on high recharge in the build like Empathy, solo you can focus on buffing the heck out of Phantasm and on a team PA lets you essentially fire and forget letting you focus on your Buffs and Healing as needed/when needed. Most other controllers I find need to focus on the battlefield and the foes making concentration on the team to keep up buffs etc.. much more difficult and frankly requires intense concentration to maintain over multiple missions.

Also just to pick a nit: It's a 50 foot range and 60 degree arc on Seeds of Confusion. Apparently we've all been hit by it. Sorry it was bugging me 🤪

Fair enough, especially the part about turning things on or off. The rest I did say it was an old build, pre Liquefy. Sorry if there was confusion about it being anywhere near a final build. It is not, nor is it the build I'm currently using. It was merely to demonstrate the recovery and +max end methods i was using to fight off the heavy end usage. The rest of your criticism is noted but mostly assume the build was intended to be followed. It's not where it ended up at 50. Sorry again if I didn't make that clear enough.

I can understand both your thinking and why JJ put Smoke so late. I'm not even sure my actual Live build even has Smoke. Two reasons the first is it's no longer low level but fully Incarnate so generally I'm either rapidly appearing among them (combat tp), they're getting mezzed first (usually Flashfire) or they get brought to me (Fold Space). At that point the Imps are busy. And secondly Hot Feet. Pretty much all non-boss foes are trying to leave Hot Feet (Afraid mag 3) while i focus on the Boss (Char) and get Bonfire laid a top Hot Feet and so on. I'll try a get the current build into Mids and posted.

Biggest issue I found playing a Fire/Sonic controller was the the end usage is heavy to put it mildly. You have 3 relatively expensive toggles to keep up. Hot Feet, Disruption Field and Sonic Dispersion. That's 2.16 end/sec prior to endred enhancement. No Fighting or Leadership pools yet included nor are your attacks. You can drain your blue bar to zero faster than I can type this. JJ's build above for example nets 0.62 end/sec (0.9 end/sec with accolades). Ageless and chowing blue inspires non-stop I'm not sure would keep you from bottoming out. The build I have in Mids is old, pre changes to Liquefy but you can see where I went with producing +max endurance and +recovery. That build will not leave you panting non-stop and gives you more freedom in choosing what Incarnate abilities you want (and more importantly to me you can exemplar below 45 and not fall over gasping). Push comes to shove you can essentially sit there while Hot Feet and the Imps chew on stuff and you recover end. I would recommend taking Char and put a bunch of procs in it. It will help enormously in finishing off foes quickly otherwise you are a DoT machine, and death comes in steady tics but not quickly comparatively. As for healing you will take amazingly little damage. The Afraid in Hot Feet leaves them trying to run away not attack you or hopefully your Imps. And try very hard not to spam Fire Cages, yes, the damage tics are nice, but the end usage can be a major source of end loss. And a last thought, most controllers I love recharge and lots of it. But this build really doen't benefit nearly as much as your typical controller build. It runs toggles and Hot Feet is a major source of damage. I have enough recharge without particularly seeking it out to have Liquefy up probably every two to three spawns, it and Fold Space are the two powers I use where the cool down is important and while sooner would be nice they are back fast enough vs running the blue bar to zero to cut the cool down further. Tine Sidhe FireSonic (v1.10 i27.6).mbd

I think my 7 yr old is guilty of few *cough* winners like this as well as naming a few that would do a gold-spammer proud. Still the ones he does now are way ahead of his 2024 versions

The only definitive way is to ask him ... or maybe his Mom.

I do know the most potent team my group of friends and I put together on LIve, this one around i16 or so, was a dark themed team. Only 5 of us. One Dark Melee/WP scrapper and 4 Defenders (DM/Arch, DM/Dark Blast, Cold/Dark Blast and a Sonic/Dark Blast. In our low 20's we were chewing up +4/x8 Arachnos in Faultline with very little trouble. I think in fact it was a little too easy and we got bored and playing them sort of petered out. I think only my Sonic/Dark actually made it to 50 playing with PuGs post 30ish.

Ain't that the truth as well as part of the beauty of this game.

So Empathy/Dark Blast or Dark Miasma/something for you? And here I was getting all excited about 6 Empaths destroying everything from about level 15 onward.

On my phone but when I get a chance I'll definitely check it out. One of the things I felt leveling an Earth/Emp on Live is to avoid Controller pairings. For me my Controller is watching the battlefield nd the team window is secondar. For my Empaths it's the opposite and even more pronounced. If it's all going south I practically don't see anything other than the team to buff and heal. Now that said I've often thought Illusion might be a control set that would work paired with Emp. PA is indestructible and largely uncontrolled by the character. It's fire and forget, about the only thing is to worry about recasting.