Argentae

Can't wait! Gratz to all! 🙂

And yes, clumping them up together magnifies the damage considerably. This is why I always corner pull into a slow/-res patch whenever possible then lock them in place with AOE immob. Plant Storm can use Snowstorm on a front mob from quite a distance away and pull them into Freezing Rain. Use herdicaning techniques to pack them in even tighter after you Root them in place. 🙂

So I created both. Ice/Dark: Mab Air and Darkness <- couldn’t fit QUEEN of Air and Datkness And Illusion/Dark: Carnival ReforMage Got Mab to 10, generic controller feel. Arctic Air may make it feel unique once it matures. Got CR to 19. absurdly OP doing +2/+3 x1 spawns. Superior invis NOT suppressing is insanely powerful with Deceive. I don’t think I have died even once. 5 LotGs will be stupidly easy with Superior Invis + Fade + Shadowfall + Hover + Evasive Maneuvers. Not sure what the final build will look like, but don’t need that many powers to be OP. Great single target attack chain with Flash, Spectral Wounds, and Arcane Blast.

Plant/Storm rocks. Veridicane is in every list of effective builds for me. Sooooo many pseudopets! I still remember the first time I got blinded by a Night Widow and just sort of shrugged and kept on throwing out pseudo pets until I could see again. "The end issue is strong with this one" though as mentioned above. Great fun to play and gets very strong once you start getting the storm damage pseudopets. Goes really well with hibernate (as Carnifax mentioned), I kind of like grabbing ALL the aggro, then turtling up in hibernate while my "pets" tears the spawn apart and the mobs waste attacks on my BLOCK of ICE.

I do the same filling in the attack chain in the early levels, except without the Taser, never tried it, I suppose maybe I should. 🙂 I'm trying to branch out more, and playing Fire/TA/Stone has bit of a tanky feel, kind of a fast paced somewhat squishy resistance based Tank experience. Dark/Dark can feel a bit like a def based tanker set once you start getting sets in place. I'm guessing at the experience based on playing sets with a lot of pseudo pets. I can completely see the durability overkill, now that you all mentioned it. I hadn't really thought about it that way though, so I greatly appreciate the perspective! I suppose it might be interesting just from a sort of exploring the spectrum kind of way. I imagine fights with Carnies can get visually complex with all the Illusion pets flying around. I'd probably be tempted towards Ill/Dark/Soul both for thematic purposes and AOE damage options. Plus I like Fortunata most of the patron pet options. I suppose I'd probably need to build Howling Twilight with a -regen focus as A/Vs seem like a potential end game occupation. Ill/Rad is still effective at that I imagine. I think my last Ice/ was a Dominator? It's been a REALLY long time. I'm sort of interested to see how well all the -Rech works as soft control.

Fortunata has a good AI and power set compliment, she hangs back and snipes to watch your back. If you can help her with recovery she gets much better. Soul Drain is excellent for certain builds and almost all the powers have a damage component so they can be excellent dmg proc holders. I think the armor covers 4 damage types resistance wise. It’s decent, and gives a place to slot the +def uniques. Coralax is ok if you have the mitigation to keep him alive. Waterspout is EXCELLENT (5 pack of Posi Blast and a FF +rech on the way up) , Hibernate is great for builds with lots of pets/pseudo pets or endurance issues, Armor is decent and pairs well with purple sets to give you strong smash lethal and Cold resistance IIRC.

I'm still having plenty of fun with my Fire/TA, and will likely continue on with it for quite some time, but I know my altitis will inevitably flare up again. What do you all think of Illusion/Dark vs Cold/Dark for a next alt? I'm probably going to do those primaries next, and I have good rough character conceptions for both. Both primaries are classic sets that I haven't played to any meaningful extent in decades. I heard Ice/ got buffed? What changed? Anyway, just post audit week weekend wonderings. 🙂

This. Perfectly phrased. Fire is an AOE specialist. Enough control to fill the basic requirements, but with AOE damage as a "soft" control. In a build, I feel you should always play to the particular strengths of the power sets, though there are generally more and less subtle strengths depending on the set. In soloing, the game HEAVILY rewards large spawn sizes. It is possible to go too far towards pure damage, as you need strong mitigation to survive those large spawns, as any Blaster knows. 🙂But in addition to the mitigation requirement is the inescapable need to do enough AOE damage to take down the spawn at a reasonable speed. Fire comes with the latter out of the box. Plant does too, with the advantage that the damage from confusion scales with the spawn.

Symph/Dark is fun. Very cone based set, but effective. I’ve been playing a lot of /TA recently, just getting to the point of looking at a final build in Fire/TA/Stone. TA bring a lot of AOE dmg to the table with the awesome Oil Slick excellent Acid Arrow and Glue all chipping in. Regarding the OP options I’m kind of leaning towards Ice/Dark as an interesting build. Actually thinking of doing one of those myself as I really haven’t played Ice/ in decades. Know /Dark like the back of my hand though, so it would give a good opportunity to focus on the differences in the Primary. Got a great character concept for an Ice/Dark too. 😛 Plant/Dark/Soul is crazy strong. Doesn’t really have any weaknesses, handles +4/x8 incarnate content before even getting the Alpha slot unlocked. Strong all the way through too, not nearly as much of a late bloomer as /TA. keep us up to date on what you go with and how it plays! All controllers are fun to play. That’s my mantra…

It's a periodically re-occurring shock just how much harder +4 Bosses are than +3. I went through a whole +4/x8 CoT with 3 +4 Death Mage Bosses per spawn map and it takes a lot longer to take them down. Again, I haven't put in any more ST chain damage, so it's still anemic compared to what it WILL be. Cleared the whole map with no real difficulty, just took some time taking down the three Death Mages at the end of each +4 spawn. ********** Alpha Tier 3 slotted ********** Since I typed the above, I DID in fact get the Alpha slot opened and equipped with a tier 3 Intuition (Hold, Range, Damage, Def Debuf). I debated a bit between Vigor and Intuition, as the global endred would be VERY helpful, and if I went Core, the +45 Heal would make Earth's Embrace even more effective. Intuition just has more useful stats for me though. Range is really quite helpful when it comes from keeping the psyco imps under control. And this build is all about the damage.😛 I've slotted a fair number of Endred to keep up with the VERY end thirsty nature of Fire/TA, but it's working. I was going to go 5 pack of Armageddon in Hot Feet, but I think I'll shift the 5th purple set to Hecatomb in Seismic Smash instead of Armageddon in HotFeet. Hot feet got 5 Ice Mistral instead as it provides much better endred. I was going to put 3 Hecatomb in SS anyway, I'll just up it to 5 instead. Still have a fair bit of playtesting and tweaking to do, but BFA is kicking some serious CoT butt at this point. pretty much a romp through +4/x8 with Rock Armor off. For anything doing much Smashing/Lethal BFA is probably close to unkillable at this point. This is definitely a top tier combo. Side note: I have found Spirit Ward surprisingly helpful for keep the weakest Imp alive, and I'm using it to hold a Regen Tissue +Regen unique, so it helps me AND the most damaged Imp. With all the -Def and the multi-layered mitigation, the Imps are decently effective. I resummon when needed, but that's generally only a couple times a map. For a build with no self heal in Pri/Sec the Sandman in Poison Gas Arrow and the hefty heal in a fully slotted Earth's Embrace (perma at this point, but I sometimes hold it back to use it as a heal) works pretty well. I'm thinking at this point that I'll go Destiny: Ageless for the Debuff protection and End refresh. For interface, I think I'm going to go raw damage with Reactive. At some point I may try swapping out /Stone Mastery for /Ice Mastery. Ice Storm would be an awesome addition to my AOE damage chain, though I think I'd really miss Fissure and Seismic Smash. And Earth's Embrace make it feel a lot more like playing a REALLY fun tank!

Dinged 50 last night but didn't get to slot any purple sets etc. Did some of that tonight. Woof. BFA is not nearly at final build, but I've got some good sets in finally. 4 purple sets, a 6 pack of Preventative Maintenance in Earth's Embrace, and the two Posi Blast 5 packs plus FF +rech. I was in the mood to bash some Nazis tonight, so I've just been doing Council, but I've been romping through soloing +4/8 (no bosses, I had turned them off). Had two +4/x8 spawns on top of me at once more than one time and fought my way through. Granted, I'm running Rock Armor, so I'm well positioned to deal with Council given the Smashing/Lethal heavy damage. I switched it out for CoT +4/x8 with Bosses, and it was substantially slower, but part of that is because I still haven't optimized my single target attack chain. I have a bunch more dmg procs to scrape together for Char / Ice Arrow, and Seismic Smash is still running lvl 49 SOs. No sweat clearing it though. The reality is: this build is strong. I have zero incarnate unlocked, so I'm fighting ACTUAL +4s, not +4s with a level shift so they are really only +3s. Earth's Embrace with the layers of mitigation that Fire/TA can stack is very tough indeed. Been a uber long day at work, but I needed to take a break and smash some Nazis... BlackFire Archer was a GREAT pick for this evening. Fun. Just... Fun. 🙂 I'll finish pulling her build together later this week/weekend and do some realistic comparisons, but this is a contender. Not sure that it will get to Plant/Dark/Dark level, but it's showing early signs of being a top tier combo.

Welcome to the wonderful world of Controllers! You may find them addictive! 🙂 If you just want power, Tanks are brokenly OP at the moment IMO, but they aren't NEARLY as interesting to play for me personally. I've tried a lot of combinations, though by no means all. I pick my builds largely (with some notable exceptions) for their ability to solo effectively, with a focus on AOE damage and ability to handle large high level spawns. Of all the Controller combinations I've tried the hands down most powerful combination has been Plant/Dark. Plant/Storm and Fire/Dark are probably the runner ups and then probably Dark/Dark? Fire/Storm is a blast to play as is Mind/TA but neither is as tough as the first group. There are a bunch of other combinations as well that are fun like Grav/Storm, my original main Mind/Kin etc. Plant/Dark is strong out of the gate, teams well, and just gets more and more powerful as you go through the game. Soloing +4/x8 is no sweat, can handle pretty much any villain group, and was able to solo incarnate content at +4/x8 BEFORE getting the first incarnate level shift. I've got several chronologies around here that try to document the experience, playstyles etc of the different combination. The one for Plant/Dark is:

Just want to emphasize how well the FF +Rech enh are doing. The two in Bonfire and Fissure proc often enough that my effective recharge is significantly in excess of my system values. It makes a difference. /Stone continues to work out well. Getting like X4 XP between XP boosters and the double XP on TorchBearer, so up to about 47ish this evening. Got Cinders and dropped in a 4 pack of Baz Gaze I had handy. I'm having increasingly less trouble with +3X8, which is a bellwether for how it will do in end game content once the Alpha is at Tier 3. It's amazing how well this build does in the late 30's and 40's in terms of clear speed. I expect it will surge forward when I start dropping purple sets in. The MAIN problem is end. I have a big AOE dmg and debuff chain, and it eats blue like candy. IO sets will help, it remains to be seen how much. I may need to consider end consumption in Alpha selection which is fairly rare for my builds. On the flip side I clear spawns fast enough that adding Intuition of Musculature may be enough speed wise. Anyone ever done a Controller build for +Res? Not my forte, but it really may make sense with this build. 🙂

Finally got Earth's Embrace at the end of last night's gaming session. Hard to say for sure yet as it's only got the one +rech in it, but I did start feeling tankier. I was running CoT +2X8 with Bosses (finally added bosses back into the mix now that I'm starting to get some ST damage in with SS 5 slotted and both Char and Ice Arrow starting to collect dmg procs.). So I was fighting X8 spawns at +2 and +3 to me. Obviously Acc is still an issue to a degree, though Oil Slick really is a panacea for that. I've somewhat settled on an opening pattern of FF + FC -> Oil Slick - > Bonfire -> Fissure -> Disruption -> Gas -> Glue -> Acid if I'm not doing a corner pull as mentioned above. Do NOT neglect the Poison Gas Arrow, it really helps. I'm really loving Seismic Smash on this build, it hits like a truck. My numbers out of mids above are low because I somehow forgot to factor in the containment damage. On Char and Ice Arrow I get great damage from the dmg procs, but Ice doesn't DO damage inherently, the 420 per hit is ALL dmg procs so it doesn't benefit from Containment at all. Char does, but you get a lot more impact from dmg procs than by for slotting it for dmg, so again the containment damage is somewhat minimized as a factor. NOT the case with SS as is/should be obvious. I was hitting +2 and +3 bosses for 300-360 damage with nothing but green SOs slotted in SS. It gobbles Endurance, and will definitely need a fair amount of global +Rech to fit well into my ST attack chain, but my speculative slotting for it (3 Hecatomb %Dmg, Dmg/End, Dmg + 2 Hold %Psi Dmg, and the Superior Entomb +Absorb/Rech) if I slot Intuition to put it about 115% dmg slotting should generate about 578, or 751 on Disruption Arrow patch. Woof. That will leave a mark. 🙂 I may well pull back and take another holistic look at my build. I don't have any sets slotted other than the 5 Posi Blast + FF +Rech combo in both Bonfire and Fissure, so I'm still pretty open to change. I've never really tried putting together a Controller build that focuses on +Res instead of +Def, so this is new territory for me. Might make sense here though. With all my debuffs up and EE running I lived through some 2-3 spawn ambushes a lot longer than I would have expected. The Smashing/Lethal +Def of Rock Armor paired with the -ToHit of Flash + Smoke and all the other mitigations works well too especially with Council, which is why I've been doing mostly CoT. Can't wait for the Succubus bosses to go away. I never see them in lvl 50+ missions. Which I kind of think is a mistake, their Confuse power is really annoying/effective. CoT would be more interesting to fight in end game PI mission farming if they were still there instead of all Death Mages.

Quick addendum to the good advice above: I'd definitely add the Panacea +End/+Health unique in Health as well as the Numina and Miracle unique enh. Illusion/Dark is something I've been thinking about myself, I think a thematically they would be a good fit. I know Dark/ really well, but Illusion not so much. Completely agree on everything except Black Hole from /Dark unless you want BH as a panic button. I don't think you'd need it. /Dark is a really tanky (-ToHit and +Def) secondary with excellent self healing between Twilight Grasp, Soul Absorption, and Dark Servant's Twilight Grasp. Add that to the tanking ability of PA, and I think you'll be very durable. I don't have a build handy, but will post one back when I sit down to do one. Have to get through a busy week at work first. 🙂

There is more variability in the AOE chain than I'm used to, always start with Flash - Smoke but after that it varies. Pulling into a Disruption/Glue/Bonfire works pretty well. Imps of course run in and the alpha strike from the spawn is broken up and diffused by the time I step around the corner and hit them with FlashFire/Fire Cages. Run in and hit Fissure, Oil Slick, Acid Arrow and start cycling through AOE attacks and Debuffs. Gets more complex if they are grouped tighter to start with and I open with Fire's traditional FF + FC at the start then run in. As Disruption and Glue arrows and Bonfire are not already in place, they need to be worked in. I've recently been thinking about the fact that Oil Slick needs to go out before Fissure and Bonfire to get the benefit of the FF +Rech. So from an optimizing damage perspective maybe Disruption - Oil - Fissure - Acid - Glue - Gas (gives me a bit of a heal from Sandman) - Bonfire, but I really need the mitigation more at the beginning so I tend to go with FF+FC - Run in - Fissure - Bonfire - Disruption - Oil - Gas - Glue - Acid. It varies a fair bit with the details of what villain group it is. Lot of different things to juggle, which makes it fun. An unexpected use for Spirit Ward: I've found it's somewhat handy as a way of keeping the most damaged Imp from dying in the second spawn, so I resummon less, which is good for end and makes it more likely I'll have it ready when I do lose multiple imps. Not game changing, and works way better on a temporary pet, but worth keeping in mind as an option.

Played the respec build a fair bit last night. For context I'm largely soloing +2-3X8 CoT (Council is easier given the Smashing/Lethal Def focus of Rock Armor), though I have bosses turned off ATM as my live build is pretty heavily AOE dmg focused. Single Target will utilize Seismic Smash for both control and damage along with Char and Ice Arrow, which will give me THREE good ST hold/damage powers, but just got SS, so it's only got it's default slot. Char, Ice Arrow, and SS will all get 6 slotted with mostly Procs. ST attack chain should do over 1000 (SS is nearly 400 and SS+IA+Char total's something like 1060ish) All are heavily underslotted ATM as I've been building out the AOE. From the hold side, SS is a one shot boss hold at mag 4, and then Char + IA has the second held while everything is bouncing in Bonfire/Oil Slick. While it can be fragile at times as I'm NOT building for +Def at all, the clear speed when everything goes right is impressive even with a build that's not fully mature. Once I get Earth's Embrace it should be one of the tougher Controllers I've played and more in a can-take-a-punch way than my normal soloing build. The build above is totally speculative, while I've dabbled with /Stone in the past I've never stayed with it largely because I generally use fast hover for 3D positioning reasons, which is simply incompatible with Fissure. I've really grown to like Fissure with this build. The FF +Rech procs pretty reliably, as it does in Bonfire, so I have two solid FF +Rech AOE powers that both fit very well into an AOE attack chain that meshes well with HotFeet melee fighting. I tried filling Fissue with dmg procs in mids and the dmg total of 176 (5 dmg procs and the FF + Rech) is 176.5, while a 5 pack of Posi Blast is 84.3. A difference to be sure but not a HUGE difference. Set bonuses from Posi Blast are solid as always and one of the things I like about Posi Blast is the nearly 50% endred, This build is end hungry. Could also slot it for the Stun, but it's something I spam in combat, and getting decent dmg from that seems to work well. Eh. Still playing around with options, appreciate all the great perspectives of the Controller forum as always!

I would probably lean towards Leviathan myself as Waterspout fits so perfectly with /Storm. Hibernate is a natural fit in my mind as Plant/Storm has an absurd number of pseudo pets out, and after you have dropped everything on a spawn you can just turtle up in Hibernate if something gets a lucky shot in, there's an unexpected second spawn of adds etc. Veridicane (Plant/Storm) had a lot less issue with Arachnos then some of my controllers because being blinded had very little effect on her. Just keep dropping everything in the kill zone. Occasionally things would go bad though, and on +4/8 it can snowball FAST. Pop Hibernate, get full heal and end back to full while you take a bit to look at exactly what's going on, spot the nasty pair of bosses from another spawn that snuck up in the chaos etc. Fire/Storm is another massively end heavy build though I think I went with Ice on that one, I still use Hibernate the same way. It's amazingly useful with just the default slot, which you can use just for a rech IO or to hold Preventative Med.

So ran with the TP Pool for 5-6 levels in the late 30's. It's not terrible, I actually do like it as a travel power, and combat TP is useful on a build that needs +ToHit. The problem is. Fold space only seems to TP mobs that are in LoS. So for office maps for instance it means I generally have to do the full combat twice as I work through the second part of the spawn. It's not un-useful, and would probably be more so at lower levels when breaking the spawn up would be more useful. At the late 30's though I'm finding the workflow to be better when I don't try to use fold space. I tried to be consciously aware of the fact that I have a knee jerk comparison with Wormhole, which is just not fair. After due diligence with this build though, I think another pool would be a better fit for my particular playstyle. For the moment I've fallen back to Sorcery, though I waffled a bit on Fighting instead. The big thing is that both Sorcery and Fighting get you a -dmg res set so you can slot Dam Res IO sets like the two +3 Def enh and the + HP unique. I have found this build to be the one that best meshes with Stone Mastery of all the builds I have played yet. Mainly because it DOES provide a +def power to hold LotG, AND Fissure is a surprisingly good fit. It works really well with a 5 pack of Posi Blast (Do NOT slot the +Rech containing enh ) + the FF +Rech. Might look at it for the Absolute Amazement purp set, but I really like Posi Blast in it. So if I'm going /Stone, then the +Res of RoP works well with the -Dmg debuff of Poison Gas Arrow and having status protection on tap makes the +HP and makes the regen knockon effect of Earth's Embrace extra useful. I'm going to see how it works out, nice thing is it's a mitigation style I haven't really tried for a Controller, so that will be nice/useful all by itself. I've done -ToHit + High Def a lot. 😛 BlackFire Archer Controller (Fire Control - Trick Arrow).mbd

Woot! Gratz to all that have worked so hard for so long to get to this point. I always retrain myself to a single 🙂 per post. However: :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-)

Circling back to Fire/TA this morning, and looking at the idea of including Fold Space into the build, I find that I can have everything in Fire except RoF, and everything in TA except Ent A and still fit in Hasten, CTp, Tp, and Fold Space by level 32. And BFA is currently at lvl 32 and begging for a respec. Coincidence? 😛 This has a lot to recommend it, as Doomguide said above. When you add it to the ability to use Flash/Smoke to blind nearby mobs, it would make parts of maps (Wedding Cake of Doom and one spawn in a hallway and another in an adjacent room for instance) a proverbial cake walk. Welp off to do a respec and try it out... 🙂

Lots of great info here! I absolutely did not know that dmg procs have a separate tohit check even if they are in an autohit power. Very interesting... I'll probably need to spend some time looking at that. Thanks for the heads up! I did note the Recharge affect in the WotC and OP procs, but it's 23.2 which is barely over the 20% threshold where it starts to affect the proc rate IIRC? I haven't really seen much of a negative impact on the dmg proc rates on the ST hold in my other controller builds, but it's a good point! One of the benefits Controllers have is the inherent acc of the ST hold that makes it quite accurate with as many dmg procs as you can slot in them, at least once you start racking up the global +Acc in Purple sets. With a full compliment of dmg procs they hit quite hard, and IMO it helps a lot with the late game single target damage. 🙂

What did you use to parse the combat log? Herostats wasn’t working when I tried to download/install a copy.

Reality check. Fun. 🙂 Hover + Evasive Maneuvers is 37+ mph, doesn't suppress, and great positioning control as expected. The sequence as designed works very well, and it scales amazingly well with large spawn sizes. I was running largely a CoT mission that has a couple of ambushes that clump up at the exit, so that's two +4X8 spawns stacked together, so 6 bosses and a crap load of Lt's and minions. The basic pattern of verify that Umbral and Dark Servant are good to go then Fade -> Darkest Night -> FS -> LS -> Fast Hover into center of spawn Tar Patch -> SA -> HoD -> HT -> IS -> Back up -> Fearsome Stare -> LS -> Haunt on Boss and switch to largely single target using AOE when it's back up works at least as well on double spawn as it does on single. The HUGE +regen makes you and your pets nearly unkillable because everything you are fighting has like an 8.5% chance to hit you. Pop a purple and you cut that down to 5% which is a LOT less likely than even 8.5%. The heals and -ToHit from Dark Servant and Umbral make a big difference. I'll keep looking at the build, and I appreciate any feedback, but it's got a pretty fast clear rate and survivability is excellent on +4 X8. I didn't test against Dark Astoria Incarnate missions tonight, but pretty sure it will be a romp there too. To be fair, this is a largely tier 3 incranate build, not a new lvl 50, but the basics are performing exactly as expected. The sequence matters a lot. The 20% -Res really does make itself known. And Darkest Night + Fearsome Stare as slotted followed by Living Shadows Fast hover in and Soul Absorption is an excellent and reliable alpha strike.

Really great conversation, only in the Controller forum would you get such a good compare and contrast. I really appreciate the feedback and viewpoint. Might be worth trying it both ways to see how it plays, the different builds have a lot of similarities, and hopefully we're giving the OP some great ideas! 🙂 I think you're right that you CAN get similar numbers out of a proced out LS, as the formula is intended to achieve a PPM value after all. You would need to spam LS constantly though. By bunching it up into high proc rate slow recharge AOEs it takes less animation time and end cost overall. I suspect running through the above is faster to get the same dmg output while also accomplishing a lot more damage mitigation faster, basically by taking things you are doing anyway and making them hit like a Mack truck. I think one of the differences is that your focus (which is absolutely a traditional and time tested Controller mitigation path) provides much stronger Stun/status effect mitigation duration, while mine relies more on massive -ToHit combined with high def and focuses on doing as much AOE damage as fast as possible to take out the small fry so I can get to single hard target take down sooner. Looking at the way you have LS slotted, Mids is estimating 54.69 or 71 on Tar Patch with a recharge of 2.45 seconds and 1.67 animation, so call it 4 sec total cast to cast. you can get about 15 casts in 60 seconds, which would be something like 1065 if you cast LS every time it's up over 60 seconds. I've never played around with Energy Font though, and I highly doubt Mids is factoring that in. How does Energy Font work out in practice? I've always been a bit curious about it... If I maximize LS dmg, Mids gives LS with 6 dmg procs in it (including the WotC, so the single target damage chain would be worse) a damage of 104.2, on Tar Patch that would be 135ish. If I pull the WotC proc it drops to 116 on Tar Patch, though you can offset that a bit with the Annihilation -res in LS in place of the WotC it's only -12 res and will proc sporadically so you don't get the benefit as much as a high proc rate 20% -res at the beginning. Looking at the 135 you would have to spam it ummm... 10-12 times to get similar damage to HoD + HT + IS? Something like that, depending on the # of mobs hit by the HoD -20 Res. That would mean something like 17-20 seconds of LS animation time with about 3 seconds recharge. Doable like you said. With no endred slotted that's going to drain your blue bar pretty quickly and would take something like 45-50 seconds. If you stayed at range the whole time and you have 4 more slots dedicated to End recovery than I do so staying completely at range works better on your build. If I hit about 3 targets with SA I get about the same amount of recovery you get from Miracle + Numina + 2 more endmod in Stamina. If I use my usual rule of thumb of 6 targets, as slotted SA gets me about +106% recovery + 25% for stock stamina. You get the something like 75-80% all the time which is helpful, mine drops to 25% outside of SA. We're both getting Panacea (probably the single best enh in the game, especially from early levels) so that's a wash. The primary difference with SA is the Regen. As slotted with a 6 mob hit I get about +400% Regen. I love SA. As you said I think a lot comes down to playstyle. I'm generally focusing on the single hard targets (bosses etc.) once I get through the AOE chain, so getting all that AOE dmg kind of frontloaded frees up attention for other things. Great conversation! I really appreciate the feedback and viewpoint. Might be worth trying it both ways to see how it plays. I still like HoD at the start with the -20 Res, but might be worth putting LS in earlier and getting IS in before HT, since HoD is back in mini nuke form in ~30 and the same for IS they would probably come back around before the end of the spawn if you are soloing at 4/8. I hope to do some playtesting of the build this evening so I'll be able to update with some reality check. :: rubbing hands :: Not everything that looks good in Mids pans out in actual play.