EnjoyTheJourney

Here's more of an aggressive blapping approach. Key differences include higher damage, considerable effort spent on shoring up mez protection to stay more consistently in the fight, somewhat lower ranged defense and slightly lower smash / lethal resistances, but noticeably higher melee and AOE defense totals and noticeably higher for most other resistances. Power boost is close to perma by default, which means boosted defense totals on a more consistent basis, and often power boost ends up being perma or very very close because of force feedback +recharge procs in water burst. Resistance to slows is 50% in this alternative build, compared to 15% in the original build; slow resistance doesn't always matter, but when it does matter it tends to matter a lot. This build has been battle tested in higher end content (not hard mode, to be forthright, but +4x8 KM ITFs, LRSF, MLTF, etc). Damage is pretty good and defeats have not been common. Having a heal built into the single target attack rotation noticeably helps. Another edge for survival was being free to take barrier core T4 with little concern for incoming mezzes in most situations*. * The most common mez is sleep because the mez protection available in this build only leaves room for sleep resistance, and not for reductions to sleep magnitude. But, sleep is also the easiest mez to break in multiple ways and in my experience it is seldom as problematic to be slept as it is to be stunned or held for a substantial period of time. The second most common incoming mez is stacked holds (by default power boost only boosts the hold protection in acrobatics from 2 to 3.57, meaning that if 2 holds land within a short time of each other then that will overcome the limited hold protection provided by acrobatics + power boost. That was not a common occurrence, though, given that positional defenses are in a decent place even without barrier, limiting the number of incoming holds that are likely to land in a short period of time (as long as situational awareness is being exercised, so, for example, you're not trying to solo +4x8 spawns that are loaded with mobs that holds). Having said all this, though, hover-blasting is such a strong defensive approach that your build will probably be even tougher to defeat in most situations than the ground-based build given in this build. Totally up to you, of course, to decide which kind of build you like better. Even this overall approach isn't to your liking, though, hopefully there are some ideas you find helpful somewhere in the build. Summoner of Waves - Blaster (Water Blast - Energy Manipulation - Mu Mastery).mbd

Here's a revised build. The main goals were better defenses, better recharge, and a way to fairly reliably get containment (the immobilize in place of caltrops). Some damage procs were sacrificed along the way. But, more recharge means more availability for some powers that still have damage procs. On the other hand, in this build there is psi nado, which recharges about every 5.5 seconds or thereabouts. It has a +recharge proc IO, it helps to keep mobs in patches on the ground, and it contributes to damage. Caltrops were removed because they work against keeping mobs grouped up, which arsenal control really benefits from having happen. The "knockback to knockdown" IO was put into trip mine to keep mobs on patches, as well. That means enemies don't get knocked out of range of control patches when you bring them in with fold space. And, many teammates will definitely appreciate the presence of the KB to KD IO. The miracle +recovery IO offers a better return than an extra slot in stamina, hence that change. The extra resistance IO in the pet should make him noticeably tougher. It's not a perfect build. But, hopefully you find some interesting and helpful ideas when looking it over. Professor Hasenpfuss - Controller (Arsenal Control - Traps).mbd

One possible build ... Dominator (Plant Control - Psi Assault- Psi Mastery).mbd

Nice video, shows the resilience of the set. Had been considering making an arsenal / dark / psi controller. Could drop the fighting pool and still softcap ranged defense with fade, get good other positionals, have good resists, have mez protection, pick up fold space, take the tri-gun and for the clear majority of content team with zero concern for whether or not a tank or any melee were present. Could easily function as the alpha taker and mob positioning specialist. Tri-gun would taunt hard targets. The main hesitation is that I have a gravity / dark / psi controller with a similar playstyle, albeit with a more fragile pet that doesn't taunt.

Figured you'd be experimenting with it. Totally understandable that if it's quite similar to earth that motivation to go through the same paces wouldn't be that high.

Given that the OP apparently values AV hunting it seems unfortunate that they gave up the taunting tank of a pet in arsenal control in exchange for the more fragile imps in fire control, thereby making AV hunting potentially more challenging. Incidentally, and this is not to put pressure on Frosticus, since arsenal control went live I've been expecting videos by Frosticus featuring arsenal control being used to defeat AVs. AV hunting is something Frosticus seems to enjoy and arsenal control is a set that has a very tough pet with a taunt to make that easier.

Good luck with your build! The force feedback +recharge IO should proc off of the phantasm's attacks that have knocks. IIRC pets don't benefit from recharge enhancements. Not totally sure whether or not the force feedback +recharge proc affects your controller or not, but leaning toward "procs from pet attacks try to affect the pet, not the controller." Thus, the force feedback +recharge IO probably tries to affect the phantasm when it procs, it fails because recharge does not affect pets, and in the end a force feedback +recharge proc slotted into a pet ends up doing nothing.

The listed incarnate picks should work just fine. It's only if you are spamming powers one after another after another that you might run into endurance issues. But, transitioning from spawn to spawn and taking a bit of time here and there to make occasional decisions about what to target with what power and where to place spectral terror should create enough gaps to seldom run into endurance issues. If a problem does arise then you can switch off superior invisibility and use group invisibility instead. I hadn't played this character in a while so she came out for a spin tonight. Brought on a grin, forgot how fun she is to play. Did just fine on a +4x8 KM ITF with a team that seemed to be struggling, as many of the characters were a bit underpowered for what we were doing. With a good kin and with poison providing debuffs we pushed our way through fairly smoothly overall, despite many many defeats -- never had such a workout for poison's ally rez before tonight. This build went to a low end life total a few times when lots of damage was incoming. But, hit points never went to zero, so no defeats for that TF. Edit: Forgot to address the question "Why no phantasm?" It can do a fair amount of knockback, which teams don't always love. It has a tendency to enter melee randomly and then get quickly defeated. Also, this build is meant to remain invisible when entering a new spawn and to provoke no aggro until venomous gas is already at work on the spawn. Phantasm occasionally alerting mobs with a quick ranged attack would undermine that. If a key goal is to solo AVs then there's a much stronger incentive to work to keep phantasm in the build. After reviewing Uun's build, which is interesting and thoughtfully done, it occurred that replacing the ghost widow's embrace psy damage IO in poison trap with the superior will of the controller psy damage proc decreases recharge by a little over one second to slightly less than 17 seconds and also increases average damage by about 32 for each casting of poison trap (ie: to 393). It's a clear "net win" for the build. (Doh, after trying in-game it wouldn't let me slot the superior will of the controller damage proc, despite Mids letting me do that. It appears that the game doesn't allow the controller sets in poison trap)

Attached is a sample build. This build was run through a 4* ITF once and survived quite well, despite predictions of dooooom for taking a melee range controller into the highest hard mode difficulty. It is key to try to keep some particularly dangerous mobs at very close to the edge of the 15 foot radius for venomous gas and to know when to step back from time to time. But, spatial awareness gets better with experience and it is absolutely workable to stay in or very very close to melee range the substantial majority of the time. For ordinary content this build on a team just makes everything melt. Phants having taunt helps to reduce incoming attacks. Also, a big factor in reducing incoming attacks is all the -to hit and the mezzing. Spectral terror inflicts about -22% to hit for mobs at even level (65% of that total for +3 mobs because of purple patch effects). Venomous gas adds about an autohit -14ish% to hit debuff (also subject to purple patch effects). Weaken adds another to -32% to the main target and -16% to enemies in the splash radius (purple patch matters again, of course). With ranged defense already sitting at basically 36% there is more than enough to hit debuffing of enemies to effectively softcap your controller against the kind of positionally based damage that seems particularly likely to be directed at your controller (as long as you are not just standing still and getting wailed on in melee, which is something you'd probably naturally avoid anyways). As one note of caution, even with agility core endurance costs are quite high and endurance usage does need to be monitored. One way to help manage this, if running low or out of endurance becomes a recurring issue, could be to switch off superior invisibility and to cast group invisibility whenever it comes up. Tainted Dreams - Controller (Illusion Control - Poison - Psi Mastery).mbd

Not sure about a guide. I do have a sample build, which is attached. Wouldn't call it perfect, by any means. But, it hopefully provides some ideas that end up being helpful. Dominator (Ice Control - Icy Assault - Ice Mastery).mbd

I could and should have tested that on my own. It would have been easy to do that, as well. I apologize for adding an unnecessary "to do" item to your day.

I can't seem to find the toggle that explicitly simulates being in combat. Perhaps it's "damaged" or something like that in the "suppression" window?

Dominators can sometimes end up doing more damage with vigor than with musculature. Being able to lighten or not even bother with slotting for accuracy and endurance management tends to allow for more procs. Plus, with many dominators living in or near melee they can at times be damage-capped by external buffs even without musculature; at such times vigor will clearly lead to more damage than musculature. Even when not damage-capped, heavier proc slotting can make vigor and musculature very very close in the damage that they can help to generate. A lot of players opt for the assault radial hybrid because that allows them to do more damage once they're damage-capped. In a way, facilitating getting more procs into a build by taking a non-damage alpha is kind of like taking assault radial hybrid. Sorta kinda.

In case some are curious about how to get arcanatime casting times to show up in Mids, below are a few screenshots showing what screens to access to make that change. You click on the "options" menu at the top, then "configuration", then click on "effects and maths", then toggle on "Use Arcanatime for animation times." Then close the menu.

Did a bit more "napkin math" on the vulnerabilty inherent and on aim + the Gaussian proc. They both boost DPS, especially when they're stacked. Vulnerability has an animation time of 1.167 seconds and it lasts for 15 seconds in total. After subtracting out the animation time it still comfortably covers two full cycles of the 3-power single target attack chain (abyssal gaze, antumbral beam, life drain), which means 2 * 0.15 * 1751 * 0.95 = 499 DPS added at the cost of 1.167 seconds of animation time (15% resistance debuff = 0.15, 0.95 represents 5% chance to miss). That should increase overall DPS, even if not by a large amount on its own, given that 499 extra DPS is well above the baseline DPS of 274. Aim + the gaussian build up proc can't possibly lower overall DPS. An arcanatime casting time of 1.32 seconds leads to AG = 822 damage, AB = 844, LD = 603 DPS while the Gaussian proc is active (realistically, just AG and AB will be affected because the Gaussian proc has a short activation period). With aim active and the Gaussian proc not active AG = 718 damage, AB = 709 damage, LD = 523 damage). The total extra damage done with aim + the Gaussian proc is way higher than 274, which means that using it should push DPS up beyond 274. Vulnerability pushes all of these numbers up by another 15% and, since vulnerability is up more often than down, overall DPS should be noticeably higher than 274. Instead it's lower. Not sure why. The build tested is attached, in case any are curious and would like to explore further. COD entry for vulnerability: https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=inherent.inherent.vulnerability&at=sentinel Sentinel (Dark Blast - Stone Armor - Mu mastery),v2.mbd

An adjustment that I eventually learned needs to be made is to use the arcanatime casting times to figure out how long each power takes to cast, when calculating DPS. The arcanatime adjusts for delays in CPU processing for activating powers. The arcanatime casting times for the five main sentinel dark blast single target attacks are as follows: dark blast - 1.188 seconds gloom - 1.848 seconds abyssal gaze - 1.848 seconds antumbral beam - 2.244 seconds life drain - 2.112 seconds When I did some calculations using these totals the chain looked like as follows: AG --> AB --> LD = 653 + 625 + 473 = 1751 1.848 + 2.244 + 2.112 = 6.204 seconds for one rotation (DPS = 1751 / 6.204 = 282 without the use of aim or the vulnerability inherent) Looking for gaps using arcanatime casting times ... AG: 2.244 + 2.112 = 4.236 seconds arcanatime cast times for AB + LD vs AG recharge of 4.17 seconds (4.236 > 4.17 = no gap) AB: 1.848 + 2.112 = 3.960 seconds arcanatime cast times for AG + LD vs AB recharge of 4.15 seconds (3.960 < 4.15 = 0.19 seconds gap) LD: 1.848 + 2.244 = 4.092 seconds arcanatime cast times for AG + AB vs LD recharge of 3.04 seconds (4.092 > 3.04 = no gap) = total gap across all 3 powers of 0.19 seconds Adjusted DPS calculation, accounting for the 0.19 second gap ... 6.204 + 0.19 = 6.394 seconds (DPS = 1751 / 6.394 = 274 without using aim or vulnerability) If I always took the base attack speed upgrade I'd get 20% more recharge and then recharge for abyssal gaze would be 3.94 seconds. Then the attack chain would be seamless. But, I'm way too lazy to be doing that on a regular basis to eliminate a 0.19 second gap in an attack chain. Also, with an attack chain this close to seamless trying to add in powers with lower DPS seems likely to lead to lower overall DPS. I was discouraged because the "on paper" DPS seems noticeably higher than pylon testing showed, given that using aim and vulnerability when they are available should boost pylon DPS higher than the initial calculations suggested. Since the attack chain is dead simple to execute (just 3 powers, always the same order should work fine, 2 others to substitute when they're available) it was surprising when DPS was noticeably lower than expected. If there's an improvement to make that can be guided by some napkin math, it would be to check on where to insert aim and vulnerability to get as much value out of them as possible. Perhaps I'm missing something about the way in which I went about using those. Thank you for taking the time, nonetheless.

The to hit buff from activating domination only lasts for 15 out of the 90 seconds that domination is active. When calculating accuracy for powers it's best to have domination switched off so you end up getting a more accurate picture of how accuracy will be most of the time. (I may be misreading here. But, a noticeable number of players frequenting the forum have believed that permadom meant an effectively permanent bump in their to hit, myself included for a while. That's not the case, though.)

Power boost doesn't seem to enhance debuffs that affect enemies other than, perhaps, endurance modification in powers that sap endurance from mobs. It does seem to enhance controls applied against enemies, though. Here's the City of Data entry for power boost ... https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=blaster_support.energy_manipulation.power_boost&at=blaster

The holds and flash bang are your best bet within the primary. But, there are multiple secondaries that offer one or more of stuns, holds, and/or immobilizes. Arsenal control is still quite strong, though, as was mentioned earlier.

You can laugh at or curse at the attached build, if you'd like. But, hopefully it provides some fodder for thinking through the alpha choice and how to get some more slow resist into the build. I went ahead and put agility core into the build. You can click the button for it on and off to see how recharge figures and damage numbers change when you have it and when you don't have it. Check out the better recharge on freezing rain (helps the whole team's damage, as well as yours) and (especially) the better recharge on your single target powers. Check out the longer time interval with multiple tornadoes and lightning storms up. Notice that agility doesn't adversely affect your AOE powers much because of their long recharge, and that their availability improves with agility. When you account for better recharge, meaning greater availability for your ST powers, the "on paper" DPS isn't radically different for your single target powers with agility core (single target powers are the most adversely affected for their DPS, at first glance). When you factor in that some percentage of damage will end up being "overkill" damage (which is wasted damage) and that more frequent power availability with agility means quicker mob defeats, agility can lead to smoother and quicker battles than musculature. My first foray into non-damage alphas was with a storm / water defender. I took musculature radial at first for her. But, I eventually shifted to agility core for her to better tame the huge endurance expenditures of storm and to have better nuke and storm power availability. More slotting flexibility because of better defense numbers was also helpful. With agility she fairly often used to solo one side of the ITF's final mission while the other 7 players worked their way through the other side of the map, on the path to the courtyard. She usually defeated a lot of mobs when competing directly with 7 other players' characters, arriving at a similar time to the rest of the team at the courtyard. That experience opened up my thinking for alpha incarnate choices other than musculature and intuition radial. SYMPHONY STORM - Controller (Symphony Control - Storm Summoning) (2).mbd

To address your question, recharge in the alpha from taking agility would affect proc rates. Ageless will not affect proc rates. Also, despite saying you're not about numbers your build is really solid through and through. You could take the procs out of one primary power and put artillery in there. Dreadful discord or enfeebling lullaby could be good picks for that because they have slower recharge and if you math out how much extra DPS you lose by taking procs out of one of them, it's not that high. You'd gain some slots and could find room for a -res or two, which would further help damage. You could squeeze a slot into brawl and get 15% more slow resistance there and get the winter's gift 20% slow resistance unique IO into the build. Agility could help you take that further, in case you ever decide to experiment with it. FWIW I resisted taking non-damage alphas for quite a while. But, having experimented with agility, nerve, cardiac, and vigor for different characters I've found that they can all be very reasonable choices, depending on the build.

The build looks really good👍. Hopefully you can reserve the name "Symphony of Thunder" or "Conductor of Storms" or some such for it. It seems highly likely that you know the following, but here goes ... If you can make endurance work with Agility core alpha then that might complement your build quite well. A bit more defense would offer a little more build flexibility while still remaining soft capped to range. Storm loves recharge almost as much as it loves making a stormy's endurance bar disappear forever. An extra 33% recharge from Agility would help to more frequently summon freezing rains, tornadoes, and lightning storms. Endurance modification would also help to manage the endurance-swallowing beast that is storm. Intuition radial offers range and slow, which would also be quite helpful. But, it doesn't offer recharge and recharge seems to be what makes storm sing.

Thank you for taking time to provide a thoughtfully considered and very reasonable set of changes. Your efforts are appreciated and the build you've suggested would do absolutely fine as is. I like what you've proposed overall, as well, and will incorporate several elements into a revised build for my character. Just got this character to level 50 and I'm currently getting his IOs in place. I'll stick with world of confusion instead of gravity distortion field, at least for now. I'd like to see the effects of "portaling" mobs into world of confusion with the contagious confusion proc in place. It would be helpful to have some extra accuracy from the AT set, though, and gravity distortion field can be a nice "ah heck" power to have. GDF may go into a later iteration of the build ahead of world of confusion. Also, I realized only after posting that I had clicked the button for lift when calculating accuracy. So, I had inadvertently assumed that the decimation build up proc was always activated when settling on how much accuracy to put into powers . Thank you for noticing the effects of that error. And, I completely spaced out about not having immobilize protection. Having no immobilize protection is usually a pretty dumb move and it may be for this character as well. But, perhaps hovering a bit above the ground and having teleport makes being immobilized noticeably less problematic in at least most cases. Not much experience with teleport + hover and so that's something I'll figure out as I go. Intuition radial is a very reasonable alpha pick. I may go for it if indomitable will seems likely to reliably be perma without spiritual. Still wavering on the alpha. Also, will take assault hybrid for 4* runs; those aren't the majority of my gameplay, but it would hopefully help damage at least a bit for those runs. Because I exemp a fair amount I tend to attune most IOs and to use PvP IOs a fair amount, as those can be boosted and will still work all the way down to level 10. So, some choices may seem a bit odd, at first glance. Mage of Dark Portals - Controller (Gravity Control - Darkness Affinity - Psionic Mastery),v2.mbd

Attached is a build plan for a "dark portals" gravity / dark / psi controller. With wormhole and fold space, a key goal is to "portal" mobs to wherever it helps the team most to have them be. By default mobs will be dropped near the team's tank(s) / brute(s). Sometimes mobs will be moved onto a waiting tar patch or an ally's debuff field or control power field. Regarding cross-set synergies, gravity and dark seem to complement each other in several ways. Wormhole and fold space, in particular, work well with soul absorption, tar patch, and world of confusion. Keeping allies fairly close by having mobs brought to the tanks / brutes probably helps for keeping fade on more teammates, as well. The package of benefits from taking the spiritual radial alpha incarnate seems just a bit more appealing than from taking agility core. Never taken spiritual as an alpha incarnate before, not totally sure it's the right choice. Recharge received a lot of focus to perma soul absorption, fade, and indomitable will and to have wormhole and fold space quickly recharge. Feedback would be much appreciated. Thank you in advance. Mage of Dark Portals - Controller (Gravity Control - Darkness Affinity - Psionic Mastery).mbd

I appreciated the feedback and looked over the build in light of it. Thank you for taking the time to provide it. Unfortunately, I ran into a basic problem when testing out the build. A pylon test came out with 246 DPS, which caught me off guard with how low it was. The build is already a bit lower on AOE than I would have preferred. That fact, when added to lower end single target damage, has led me to put this possible build on hold for now. I have a few more projects I've been theorycrafting and after those have been worked through I'll take another look at this primary / secondary combo to see if damage can't be improved somehow without substantially reducing survivability.