evetsleep

I have a stupid concept character that is a troller who fights in melee. Cross punch actually benefits from containment, which makes it a solid melee attack if you're willing to go into the fighting pools. It's not as amazing as arcane bolt, but it absolutely slaps on held/immobilized/slept/stunned baddies and doesn't result in corpse blasting nearly as much due to to faster activation time.

I think this is the real answer. It buffs/debuffs and does damage and is uninterruptible. That's why it has the recharge it does... probably.

Just wanted to add that while sleep canister isn't static field, it does work in a similar way where mobs that wake up can (and do) get put back to sleep as it's a pulsing sleep. One thing I've been doing to squeeze out as much AOE damage as I can is open with smoke canister, then flash bang to set up containment and then used sleep canister as an AOE damage power. It works quiet well once recharge is in a good place in a build (and macros set up). It's no nuke, but it does respectable SAFE damage on my arse/kin controller since I can drop smoke canister, run in and fulcrum, then pop out and drop flash bang and sleep canister. What is left is cleaned up pretty quickly between me and the Tri-cannon (which gets containment damage boosts too!).

I have a bots/sonic that perfoms quite well. I do often send in the assault bot into a pack with sonic resonance running, but honestly it's rarely necessary. Most baddies come into melee range without me needing to do much. The heals that bots offer helps /sonic tremendously. So I wouldn't say it's purely necessary to have a melee pet.

I'm pretty sure when I tested it by holding a baddy each shot got containment damage. I'll retest tonight. When I was running around on brainstorm the damage boost was very noticable.

Agree with @Uun on the slotting, but I just wanted to add that often I take the arrow attacks for the crit chance bonus for the ninjas, not for the damage. Keeping them going gives 9% (3% each attack) increased crit chance to all the ninjas for 30 or 60 seconds (can't remember how long). The attacks don't even need to land to get the crit bonus.

If only brutes got combustion like tanks. Cremate isn't horrible, but the loss of that AOE hurts sometimes. I suppose that's why brutes are better at single target over tanks. But yeah... All in on fire is a fantastic combo albeit squishiest of the brutes.

I've got poison all over the place and I agree with @Uun. I really want it to work with my MMs, but it just falls flat. I know that's not what you're looking for @LNXFOX and maybe someone does, but as fun as ninjas are poison just doesn't help them in the way it should. I've tried ninja/psn since the update and got it into the 30s (with all the pet uniques for improved survivability). It does reasonably good in small encounters. But the small splash debuffs and single target heal make it a chore (for me). If anything since Noxious Gas is obnoxious.. I wish they'd at least give it an AoE heal. But you do you! If it's fun for you knock yourself out!

Frank and Beans!!!

There is a new mechanic coming to Tri-cannon which I think is kind of interesting and will help the damage output of Arsenal. They're adding containment damage to the cannon so that anytime it hits a mezzed baddie that would normally proc containment for a controller it also procs for the cannon. I gave this a spin on brainstorm and the cannon does indeed get the containment damage proc on mezzed mobs. For builds that don't offer a lot of damage this'll be a nice way to squeeze out more. For those that have a lot of damage already...sploosh.

Yeah sorry. I was referring to the Tri-cannon now doing containment damage which I had though was new.

Agree with everything Carnifax has said (I have an arsenal/TA and its solid). The damage from archy can be painfully low. I'd go corruptor if I were you to get access to scourge (which works on the nuke if memory serves). The debuffs will be a little lower, but I think it would be worth it.

Really anything goes, but I personally really like Trick Arrow. Lots of debuffs that go really well with all the control that arsenal offers. You can get some crazy stacking of -ToHit between flash arrow and smoke canister (which has the fabulous secondary of confuse). Solo I like to drop smoke canister, then trigger the confuse with poison gas arrow (which does a little damage so I get xp and adds in -defense to make them more capable of hitting each other while confused). Of course the obvious /traps will work too. Pretty much ever arsenal I saw opening day /traps. But that being said other than /sonic I don't think anything wouldn't pair well with it. I've made a lot of pairings so far (only one I haven't made yet is /rad, which I suspect will be awesome). Lately I've been running arsenal/dark. I love the Tri-cannon. The taunt is really nice and the damage is respectable.

I logged in with both my ice/ and earth/ controller and neither frosty or poo man were doing containment damage to immobilized baddies. Both of those taunt from what I recall. Am I missing something (maybe I'm blind). I had the pet damage window up and never saw containment pop up either on screen or in the damage log. Is there another pet that does this maybe?

I've never noticed this. Thanks!