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!

This seems like a big change. I don't think there are other pets that do this. Did a quick spin earlier on brainstorm and it's a super nice change. Would it to be possible to confirm if the inability to use Teleport Target on the Tri-cannon is by design? Reported it in the bugs forum earlier.

I picked up Teleport Target on one of my Arsenal tollers to try out teleporting the tri-cannon into the middle of a spawn (since they taunt) and running Enflame. Surprisingly it doesn't look like the Tri-cannon can be teleported. No matter what I did, even purposely getting that little bugger stuck and then trying to teleport him to me would not work. The animation plays like it's teleporting it (even gets the flash around the cannon), but no teleport. I checked, just in case, and it doesn't have any teleport protection. Not sure if this is intended or not, but it seems like a bug.

I picked up Teleport Target on one of my Arsenal tollers to try out teleporting the tri-cannon into the middle of a spawn (since they taunt) and running Enflame. Surprisingly it doesn't look like the Tri-cannon can be teleported. No matter what I did, even purposely getting that little bugger stuck and then trying to teleport him to me would not work. The animation plays like it's teleporting it (even gets the flash around the cannon), but no teleport. I checked, just in case, and it doesn't have any teleport protection. Anyone know if this is expected? If not, I can file it as a bug.

It's kind of like when there is this bright red button that says DO NOT PUSH. There's always one person who cannot resist.

It's amazing on a troller. Triple damage when it procs along with containment. My only problem with acane bolt is the cast time. I almost never use it while teaming since it almost always is corpse blasting. Solo it's fabulous.

Yeah, with 80% base resistance to everything it's trivial capping it at 90% for some secondaries..not that it needs it. I've stopped worrying about it with my arse\thermal as it just doesn't take enough damage. Instead I just make sure that Forge is constantly on it. It would certainly be nice if the set had a little more damage capability, but (like electric) that can often be mitigated by picking a secondary that brings that to the table if you really need it.

I would argue there are some differences. For example, Smoke Canister which has a gnarly -ToHit debuff (which stacks really nicely with Flash Arrow for some crazy -ToHit), but also a triggered confuse where they don't get confused until aggroed. I don't think there's another power that works this way. It's not ground braking, of course, but it is interesting and kind of a neeto take on things. So it does have some interesting mechanics. Also Tri-cannon, while all single target lethal damage, taunts (and interestingly enough, currently takes Taunt sets, including Perfect Zinger Psi damage proc). It's not a proc monster by any stretch, but the taunt is noticeable. After playing 4 different Arsenal controllers now it feels a LOT like electric control in that it's very control focused and very little damage. Pairing it with a secondary which doesn't offer additional damage (such as trick arrow, traps, storm) makes it kind of a slog solo, but I really enjoy it. I personally like the set, but I can see why others might not like. It does offer many different kinds of control\debuffs though, which maybe is what sets it apart to me (knock down, stun, AoE confuse, -ToHit, Sleep, -dmg, hold, -fly). The only thing it's really missing is -def and -res.

On the plus side while +RECH doesn't affect pets, +SPEED does. So powers like Speed Boost can do wonders for some of the slower moving pets such as Zombies (and causes some hilarity when they're affected by things like caltrops).

Another thing to do is take a look at the guides section. There is some pretty sound advice about how to make your own inf.

Or you could sit in the CoH Homecoming general chat on Discord. Same basic idea 🙂