Argentae

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.

Great feedback! 🙂 The FAST recharge of LS cripples the proc rate. On a slow recharge power like HoD, HT and IS the Proc rate is very high, the recharge time on AOE powers makes a huge difference in proc rates IIRC. IMO LS is far better used as the containment setter and to hold the set bonuses from WotC. The point about HT being useful for it's -Regen is very well taken though. If I were to optimize for A/V fights, I would absolutely do just that by building in 100% rech enh so it's up a lot closer to perma. Would still be a gap though, you could get it down to about 45 sec vs 60ish recharge, but it would be effectively twice as good at neutralizing AV or GM regen. Important thing to identify! 🙂 You can certainly go with other sets, but this optimizes for high regen which is more useful than high recovery in the late game. You get plenty of that from a decent SA hit anyway, plus the 6 pack of Preventative Med gives you a 3.75 endurance discount AND 8.75 global rech, better than a LotG unique, plus not in conflict with 6.25% or 10% global recharge set bonuses Hover with EM running may be faster than you are thinking of, AND it moves with precision in 3D and it doesn't suppress. It's the best positioning combo I have used. I use Fly as a -KB proc mule and obviously as a travel power. Afterburner with EM running gets you close to the flight cap 94ish I think? 🙂In some builds I put a stealth in Fly instead and use Fly to toggle it on and off as needed. Yup. 🙂I could go even further over the ranged Def cap if I moved the 6th WotC into LS, but having th WotC dmg proc only adds about 19ish to the dmg of LS, it's much more impactful in the single target hold. Check the math on the damage from IS that I walk through in the post above, it's surprising. The thing to keep in mind here, is that after you have gone through the whole chain of Darkest Night corner pull into Tar Patch -> Fearsome Stare -> fast Hover into spawn center ->HoD -> HT ->Fast Hover back (or up on open maps, which is super easy for opening up a cone's affect) -> LS -> IS combo, there isn't much left but mopping up and a good SA hit off all the dead bodies. 😛

To update with some useful stats for those that don't have/haven't looked at it in Mids: A proced out Dark/Dark/Ice Controller has (IMO) an amazing AOE chain. Single target isn't as good as say Mind/TA, but between a proced out Dark Grasp and Apoc 5 pack slotted Ice Blast, it's not too bad especially when you count in Haunt, Umbra Beast, and Dark Servant, which are certainly non-trivial, especially when most mobs have a -50 dmg resistance debuff applied. 1. Heart of Darkness (HoD) as slotted: 119% accuracy, 25' radius PBAOE, Mids lvl 50 damage: 370 - on Tar Patch(*1.3) its's 481, 19.7 sec mag 3 stun, 3.5 ppm -20% damage resistance, -9 ToHit for 10 sec. Time to recharge: 30.51 seconds with nothing but global recharge. 2. Howling Twilight (HT) as slotted: Autohit. 15' radius mob targetted AOE, Mids lvl 50 damage: 334.2 - On Tar Patch(*1.3) it's 434.2 dmg if HoD -20 Res hit a given mob it's 501 dmg, 15.6 second mag 2 stun, 83% slow, 62.5% -recharge and -500% regen for 30 sec, 4.5 ppm Tohit debuff (-7.5), full team rez. Time to recharge: 61.02 seconds with nothing but global recharge. 3. Ice Storm (IS) as slotted: 202.6% accuracy, 25' radius targeted AOE Mids lvl 50 damage: 280.9 (though it doesn't look like this accounts for the additional +50% base triggered by Containment) - on Tar Patch(*1.3) + HoD's additional 1.2 for the Fury of the Gladiator -Res Proc it's 421.5. IF Containment damage isn't being factored in in Mids it would be 280.9*1.5(Containment damage)*1.5 (1.3 Tar Patch + 1.2 HoD's -Res Proc for a total of 1.5) = 632 over 15 seconds 547.75 if HoD -Res didn't trigger on a given mob. So balance probability is 1,614 damage on each mob the HoD -res proc triggered for (it's a 90 sec 25' radius AOE with no recharge slotted, so it procs well) If the HoD -Res didn't trigger it's still 1,462.95 I'm assuming Tar Patch in in place for all of the above, and the Containment damage in IS would be triggered because Living Shadows (LS) would set containment first. This is also ignoring any damage from LS because, well, it's kind of negligible as slotted. Also ignored is any Pet contributed damage (which is NOT negligible), and any incarnate effects other than the +dmg slotting from Musculature Alpha, all other incarnate slots are ignored. Mids is set to Enemy Relative Level: Default. It's obvious where the AOE punch comes from. 🙂 Will play with this more later and do some stats validation testing.

Congrats on choosing a fantastic Controller combination! Dark/Dark FTW. I'm in the process of rebuilding my Dark/Dark ShadowFallen, partially because I snarfed all her IO sets for other builds, and partially because I have gotten my head wrapped around the proc options better than I did when I first re-created her. This is an end game build, so 5 purple sets and 5 LotGs, not cheap. BUT: I expect it will be a killer build. She was great at most everything before, and I've definitely made some improvements. A couple of things that may not be totally intuitive if you haven't played around with procs much in control powers: 1. Howling Twilight is the BOMB. It's literally a bomb, an auto hit mini nuke that stuns the spawn, and oh by the way is a team rez. You can swap out the -ToHit Absolute Amazement proc, but it builds on the -Tohit that the entire build is based on, so think about it. If I was goiong to swap it out I'd probably use the -Res proc in Annihilation. 15 ft radius. 2. Heart of Darkness is similarly a mini nuke that stuns the spawn with a 25 ft radius, so you can either use them back to back to get all the bosses, or you can space them out to keep things stunned longer. Neither is slotted for stun as they are largely all dmg procs. Remember, your control isn't stuns, it's -ToHit paired with high def. 3. I went with Ice Mastery for the 5th LotG and the huge AOE damage of Ice Storm. You have enough pets that you can also duck into Hibernate for a bit if needed, so that's useful. 4. Don't forget to start with a Darkest Night corner pull into a Tar Patch if possible, it clumps the spawn up well. 5. This build has +63 Acc from sets, so if you are fighting high def mobs you should make sure you use Fearsome Stare with the Siphon Insight + ToHit proc before you drop Heart of Darkness (Howling Twilight is auto-hit so it doesn't matter). Happy to answer any questions, and would love any feedback/thoughts on the build! 🙂 Shadowfallen Controller (Darkness Control - Darkness Affinity).mbd

A lot of it comes down to Oil Slick’s amazing damage -def and mitigation all rolled into one. That one power … amazing. Your proc slotting combined with the -res in Disruption Arrow and all the -res procs really adds a ton of AOE damage. Bile Spray may be a narrow cone, but it procs extremely well and holds 3 dmg procs plus another -res. Having the same range as Terrify is super convenient. I think I get most of my AOE damage from Oil Slick and Bile Spray. Terrify is such a huge cone though that it hits pretty much everything. Acid Arrow doesn’t proc as well, and it’s smaller area makes it less effective unless you have everything clumped up well, which is why I still like to use a corner pull into Disruption - Glue - Oil Slick where reasonable. Wish Heroststs still worked, parsing the combat log manually is slow and labor intensive. I used to use PG Arrow as the pull, but now that I use it to hold the Sandman heal, I like to pop PGA near the end of the opening chain to get the benefit of the heal. As you said. It’s a huge toybox of things you can do to the spawn, I simply couldn’t resist adding TK back in to have the ability to shove bosses back into the debuff patch. It’s such a fun power. I pinned a boss between the wall and Coralax the other day, watching him bob up and down while we both beat on him… good times. 🙂 I keep thinking about swapping out Super Speed and something else to pick up Fly and Evasive Maneuvers. Another LotG in EM and a stealth IO in Fly would work well. the positioning and maneuverability of Hover + EM is so handy with TK. I could drop Combat Jumping and SS. That would make it a wash for LotGs, but better maneuverability. Kind of leaning that way at the moment I think. How did the immob proc work out? I think you had one of the Purple procs in Terrify?

Got back to my Tactical witch a bit over the holiday. Did another respec to drop Fighting pool and pick back up TK, Super Speed (for easy movement/stealth) combined with Hover. Before dropping Fighting I did missions for awhile with Weave turned off, and there wasn’t a major impact. Still not completely settled on the final build. Leviathan is quite effective, but not totally sure I’ll stay there. When I dropped Fighting I needed to pick up Shark Skin to hold the +def uniques, dropped Hibernate so I lost Preventative Medicine. The +absorb Entomb in Ice Arrow compensates. I switched from Mesmerize to Levitate. At end game I find I need another strong attack more than another single target control, and Levitate can slot FF + Rech. So points to Onlyasandwich on that one. I ended up putting the Sandman self heal unique in PG Arrow after all. 🙂 My old technique of Dom - Lev - Dom to hold bosses is even better as Lev - Dom - Ice Arrow. Endurance is an issue, even with all the +recovery uniques in Health, Perf + end and Endmod slotted in Stamina. Per my standard solution for end issues I slotted some endred in each of my single target attack chain, Ice Arrow uses the most, followed by Dom and finally Levitate (Lev got the Dam/End Apoc to pair with the Apoc Neg Dmg proc for the +regen. With those changes End issues were completely fixed. Could have gone with Ageless, but I prefer Clarion for the Status protection and control powers boost. Running Intuition tier 3, Clarion tier 3, and Cognitive tier 3 (12% confuse and 25% psi proc). Works well so far. Hybrid slot I was torn between going with Support or Control, but with the end issues resolved, I’m leaning towards control for the Immob. Biggest play style change has been a gradual shift to opening with (single application, second will come from MC shortly) Confuse a boss - Flash Arrow - Oil Slick - Mass Confuse - Glue - Disruption - Poison Gas - Bile Spray - Terrify - Acid arrow. By this point the slick is almost certainly burning from one if the fire Dmg procs, but if not I’ll light it with apprentice charm. Minions are generally gone and Lts mostly, so I’ll pop Waterspout and Coralax to help take down Bosses. Confuse one. Lev - Dom - Ice Arrow another. If I’m feeling energetic, I’ll swap them once one is getting low on health. Overall impression at partial incarnate: strongest CONTROL character I have played. Refreshing the Flash - Glue - Disruption - Poison Gas is really important until you are completely sure you have everything locked down. Coralax and Waterspout are very effective at helping with single target damage output. Coralax will likely die fast on an AV fight. This is not an AV specialist build. I expect Carnies/Arachnis will be a PITA. Been mostly chewing up and spitting out CoT and Council. Dionysius (Plant/Dark) is still my most powerful controller. Not NEARLY as much raw controlling ability, but mows down mobs more quickly and safely. The Triple Threat Pet Corp is very tough when backed by /Dark’s buff/debuff and in particular the massive regen, def and heal abilities. Mind/TA is a total blast to play though! One of my favorites… 🙂

Good choice fellow silver aficionado! 😛 It's a great build. If you haven't seen it, my experience with Plant/Storm was documented on: Loved Veridicane on live, and just as much fun here.

I typically corner pull, and the Glue + Oil Slick + Disruption patch combo of slow and KD does an excellent job of clumping up the spawn, making it likely they will miss or wasting time running through the Glue while they keep getting knocked off their feet. If they do hit, it's weakened by PGA, so more survivable. I went fighting pool in my respec to get the +Def from Weave while still getting a power as a Resist set uniques. I've been agonizing over slots. So many things. As mentioned on the other thread, I put all 6 WotC in MC for the +5 Ranged Def. It's my goto AOE control to drop on the spawn once they are debuffed to bleep and flopping on the slick. MC while targetted on a Boss then Confuse the same boss to be sure. Contagious confusion in the single target Confusion makes a lot of sense, it spreads extra confusion throughout the fight. Also having Confuse zero aggro again is nice (6 pack of Malaise Illusions has a dmg proc in it which can aggro a boss). So last night I raided other builds to give TA 3 purple sets (6 Coercive Persuasion, 6 WotC, and 5 Ragnarok in Oil Slick), and put bids in on a 5 pack of Fortunata Hypnosis for Mass Hyp. I'm going to try the Placate out, never really used it before, but I can definitely see how it would make a nice addition to the Pause Everything (except robots) button. I need like 2 Emp Merits to craft the Tier Three Intuition. I'm thinking with the amount of confusion this build can generate, I'm almost forced to go Cognitive Core for the additional confusion. TA to spawn" "You don't know I'm your enemy, probably can't hit me if you try, and won't do that much if you do. BTW, use up your attacks on each other so you have to wait for something to recharge before you can even try to hit me." 😛 There are so many different layers of mitigation here. I want to pick up TK again though... Hate to lose Hibernate, but it's not as useful on such an active playstyle build as it is on a heavy pet & Pseudo pet focused build. Waterspout is great, I've taken to using it at the end to help chew through the last bit of Boss health once everything else has been mowed down. Coralax is surprisingly durable since the mobs are so rarely able to fight back effectively. I miss having Spirit Ward for him. I need a few Breakfrees in my tray until I get Clarion Radial for the Status resistance and Secondary/Control effects boosting. Level of effort Leviathan build attached. Tactical Psychic Prospective Leviathan (Mind Control - Trick Arrow).mbd

I've been playing my Mind/TA a lot recently. There IS an advantage to having to do something specific in lighting the Oil Slick. I open with Flash, then pull using PGA into a Disruption/Glue/Oil Slick patch, but DON'T light the slick until the whole spawn is flopping around so you get full damage. I really like Doomguide's idea... I've sort of been looking for a good reason to do a fold space build. Makes sense here.