Argentae

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.

Ok. Three purple sets: Coercive Persuasion, WotC, and Ragnarök and I'm capable of taking out 8X +3. Slow, but it works. I think I need the +Res in Oil Slick. It will get faster from here. No incarnate and three purple sets, none new, just replacements for existing IO sets like Posi Blast and Malaise's Illusions. And I can deal with X8 +3. Once I unlock Alpha slot it will get better. Once I finish purple sets\ it will get better. Replacing SO's with A Purple set (Fortunata's Hyp) will have a bigger difference. Bit of a slog in the late 30's and 40s, but it has promise.

I just got Tactical Psychic (TS) to 50 last night. Unlocked PPP so I could try out Waterspout, Coralax, and Bile Spray. Not a bad combo, Bile Spray holds the 3 Ranged AOE dmg procs and the -Res. Range is decent, I think its 60' (same as Terrify which is convenient) but only 30 degrees so it procs pretty well comparatively. Coralax actually survives pretty well because EVERYTHING is trying to kill me. And largely missing, and not doing catastrophic damage when they hit. PG Arrow is like having 40% Resist to everything. You really have to use the full Flash Arrow - Glue Arrow - PG Arrow combo together, it's good layered mitigation. My standard opening is a corner pull into Glue / Disruption / Oil Slick, using PGA as the triggering attack. Once they are largly clumped up and bouncing, step out, light the slick and hit Mass Confusion - Confuse on one boss, Dom - Ice Arrow on another and rotate confuse with the third. I generally don't have to worry too much about the Lts and minions, I'm generally playing my old use one puppet to beat on the one you are holding tactics and just focusing on bosses. I need a bind to cycle through JUST bosses. I think I'm getting a keypad (like my old Nostromo) for Christmas. I'm totally remembering why Mind/Kin was the original driver for the keypad controller in the first place! I'm still running Posi Blast in Terrify, but have Acid Arrow procced as you had in your build. I'll probably switch to the procs when I get the +Acc from the purple sets in, but I donb't think the damage is a LOT more with the procs because the Terrify cone is HUGE which drops the proc rate I was running CoT office building missions at X8 +2 and it's doable before any purple sets or incarnate. I'm currently playing with a Ranged Def focus with Posi blast 5 packs in Terrify, Oil Slick, and Water Spout (also has the FF +Rech) I definitely liked the Spirit Ward/Mystic Flight/RoP combo on the way up, very useful and I really didn't realize how much I would miss having a +Res power in the Primary or Secondary. I guess I've been playing too much /Dark and /Storm recently, I got spoiled. 😛 Given the Rang def focus I've put the WotC proc with the other 5 WotC so I have the full 6 set in MC (+5 Ranged Def). I agree with your take on CP and contagious confusion proc in Confuse btw. I'm pulling sets together as soon as I finish this post so I'll see how it works out. I did play a bit with TK again on the way up, and totally remembered why I liked it. It's a great positioning power combined with a hold so it's perfect for pushing bosses away that are trying to get into your personal space (aka melee range). Normally I'd go Hover - Fly - Evasive Maneuvers to be able to use it in 3 dimensions. It's a lot of fun to pin mobs against a wall by pushing them diagonally from above. I dropped it in my late 30s respec when I swapped out Sorcery for the Fighting pool, but I'm pondering what I could drop to pick it back up. This build is about having soooo many types of control, NOT having a positioning control that I have access to... It just feels wrong. It would be perfect to shove those Death Mages back into the Oilslick/Glue patch. I could swap out Hibernate for TK, would lose Preventative Medicine via free slot. This is SUCH a tight build! I'm pretty sure I'm going to play with some different Epic/PPP options before settling on one. Tweaks from your build that I'm considering: Since I want the + Ranged Def from WotC in MC, I replaced the WotC proc in Ice Arrow with Sup Entomb + Rech and +Absorb. The + Rech is only 23% so I don't think it will kill the proc rates toooooo much, and the additional Absorb should help with the lack of self heal. Speaking of Heal, I have the Sandman and Entropic Heal in Mesmerize with the Glad Jav Dmg proc. Will see how it goes. Swapped out Sorcery Pool for Fighting pool as mentioned. Dark Watcher in Flash, still 4 pack, but for the +5 Rech. Actually, I'll just attach the current prospective Leviathan build: Tactical Psychic Prospective leviathan (Mind Control - Trick Arrow).mbd

Tactical Psychic at lvl 25 below. Note, this is NOT a recommended build. I'm making choices based on things I want to try out on the way up. For purposes of documenting the chronology this is her build at 25. For those new to TA on Controllers, pay particular note in the power details for Ice Arrow and Entangling Arrow of the durations of the (many) debuff effects. Spreading Ice Arrow around for the 1 minute duration debuff effects is worth being aware of. Also be aware that out of the box, neither of those arrows will wake a sleeper.

Agreed. I only have one proc in it, but the slow patch is surprisingly useful. I was fighting Freakshow tonight at the limits of what I could handle with a single SO of accuracy. I think it was +3 and +4, so controls other than Mesmerize and Confuse didn’t last long at all. Glue gave me enough time to deal with the mobs trying to get to melee range. The time the mobs spend running to get to melee range almost becomes an additional control. It will make focusing on Range Def very effective. Only one cone, and it’s got such a huge arc lining it up isn’t really a thing, so I don’t have to be as mobile as I’m used to. I can spend more time controlling everything. One of the things I love about Mind/. The Perf Enh +end proc in disruption arrow is like a single Enh that pretty much cuts the end cost in half, when it procs, which seems often. Very much enjoying the single target juggling capability. Recalled an old tactic of confusing a mob, then sleeping it to get a zero aggro sleep. I’ve got a 5 pack of Malaise in Confuse and the other confuse Dmg proc. Mes has Sandman heal, and the one ranged Dmg proc (plus an Acc SO and Dmg SO). So even my setup steps does some damage. Still need to slot out Ice Arrow, I think is has two procs in it too. Sandman seems to be working well, I think I may try putting it in Mass Hyp and Poison Gas too, having three sleeps is wild. It’s like a hidden self heal capability. Mesmerize is acting weird, it shows in the combat log as autohit? I did confirm that proc dmg does come before the sleep hits. i have a dmg proc and the Force feedback +reach in Lev (plus a Acc SO and Dmg SO) Dom is my heavy hitter, six slotted with 4 dmg procs, Acc SO and a Hold SO I think. Might be a dmg SO instead of Hold. I’ll update and post a current build probably tomorrow, It’s a weird leveling build atm as I have been focused so heavily on the single target arsenal. 🙂

Got my Tactical Witch up to 21 last night. Raise a glass in toast! she's allowed to have champaign now! I had an absolute romp in Atlas on at about level 5-8 or so. I made 3 levels just working through a map full of +2 and +3 Hellions in Atlas. Did a bunch of street sweeping in Steel looking for bosses, with occasional Warriors missions at about the same settings. Ending my time in Steel doing Graham Easton's Tsoo arc. I like the final mission as a bellwether and testing point. Having a ready supply of 4 bosses in a row makes it a great mission to test out different techniques. Don't quite have enough of the AoE stable that Mind/TA gets, but I'm about to get Terrify, and I have Glue Arrow and Acid Arrow, so I'm getting close. Might have to wait till 27 for the lvl 30+ sets to open up. As expected, it's a hell-on-wheels combo for single target controls. On spawns that I have any doubt on, I drop a Glue A patch that covers the spawn with some leftover on my side to give me more time to react to a mob that breaks out of my single target control rotation. Flash A is the lead-in then Mass Hyp and Glue A and pre-aggro softening prep with Confuse and Mes. Acid A gets used once things are rolling if I'm not relying on Mes to lock down key mobs. Basic attack chain is the normal Mez-Dom-Lev with Ice A and Entangle A used on the problem mobs.

I started down the path with Tactical Psychic, so I’m sure my thoughts will evolve. I'm doing much better at balancing the sets on the way up on this one. Have pretty much all the Arrows up to Acid Arrow and everything except TK and TD on the mind side. I think I’m going to plan on a respec when I have enough of the AoE powers available to shift from +2/3 X 2/3 spawns to larger numbers. Now that I have Ice Arrow, Glue Arrow, and Acid Arrow I’ve been playing with integrating them. I’m about to pick up Terrify so I’ll have a working AOE chain as I have enough slots to go around. I’ll probably try out some different options, so may have different thoughts than the above. It’s absolutely a small spawn hard target monster. I love finding a pair of +1/+2 bosses out street sweeping. Or a Boss with a Lt. that’s the sweet spot. 🙂

I've been toying with running a /TA controller for a bit. I dipped my toes into the water with Blackfire Archer (Fire/TA), see appropriately named chronology. Got to about 32 in Blackfire Archer and then I spent some time really looking at the build https://forums.homecomingservers.com/profile/9634-onlyasandwich/ posted in My original main on live was Mind/Kin, and I've really missed playing the set. The recreated Arg is still fantastic and incredible fast paced to play, but underwhelming in AOE damage even with Ice Storm added in. I've always loved the incredible tactical capabilities though. I have a running joke about the most powerful character in any novel would be a tactical psychiatrist. Seriously, most plots complications would just go *poof*. So my just-in-time-for-Christmas new alt is: Tactical Psychic Complete with Christmas tweaked witch outfit her backstory is: Sierra's fellow students at the Midnighter's Academy of the Arcane laughed at her when she took up archery. "You're a Mind Magic caster with a minor in potions!, Archery... What are you thinking?!" Well, none of them had her creativity and sheer vision. Sierra had stumbled upon a way to make vials of psionic magic potions reliably aerosolize to cover large areas when a vial was dropped and broken. All she needed was a delivery method. Hence: Archery. It was perfect. Once she worked out a cantrip to manifest and dismiss a psionic bow with just a thought, she was ready! Battlecry: Aerosolized psionic potions FTW! First Powers: Mesmerize Entangling Arrow Dominate Levitate Confuse Mass Hypnosis How does it play? NICE. The sets definitely play nicely together so far, and I expect the synergy to get better and better as TA provides a lot of the AOE dmg that Mind lacks. And EMP Arrow will sit perfectly in rotation with TD and Mass Confusion as damage elimination AOE controls. Mind is always a machine gun at low levels, but Entangling arrow directly plugs a hole in Mind's single target attack chain, while providing a second durable containment setter and -damres debuff that has the same range and inherent high accuracy as Dom. It fits in with Mind's single target chain perfectly. I started with 2 dmg SO in each of Mes and Dom and an immob SO in Entangling Arrow, Acc in Levitate then two dmg. additional acc slot in Entangle and an acc in Mesmerize. Confuse doesn't need a slot in the beginning. Just an acc. Just picked up Mass Hyp which is basically god mode soloing as you start combat with an easy pause button that keeps all the mobs snoozing while you set up your single target controls. Rotate through Mesmerize while you keep one mob beating on your target (confused), and you cycle your attack chain on the rest, repeat till all are rag dolled on the floor. Swap out the confused tool...err...pet half way through and bounce the new tool off the ceiling to wake them up so they can help you cardiac-arrest the previous pet. Ice Arrow is going to fit in beautifully with the rest giving you 6 single target controls. Then Mass Hyp for the first of your AOE. These two set mesh like finely tooled gears in a watch movement. It's going to be a fun ride... 🙂 BTW, use Entangling Arrow on a mob then levitate them. It looks like they get rubber banded back into the ground. Good visual fun!

That's a *really* good build. It's actually super useful for me personally, as I haven't built out an IO set build for /TA yet. One of the gems I saw in the set is the plethora of AOE powers, I hadn't really started looking at what could be done with proc slotting yet, and the result is quite impressive. 🙂 As mentioned elsewhere, the addition of EMP Arrow as a third long recharge AOE control with TD and MC is a lovely addition, and the AOE damage from all the procs in TA Arrows should go a long way towards addressing the lack of AOE (obviously leaving out Terrify) in Mind/. :: sigh :: 😛 Now I simply *have* to put Blackfire Archer on pause and work on a Mind/Trick Arrow. I've been missing playing Mind/... I recreated the original Argentae (Mind/Kin) on Torchbearer , but spent a lot of time on various Fire/ and Plant/ combos since. I think all my commentary is more along the lines of playstyle. TK: For context, I was a huge fan of TK back in the pre-ED times before it got shafted. It was one of the few powers that was limited by PLAYER skill as opposed to slotting. You could do some amazing things in terms of hall sweeping and clumping up spawns, but it took practice. When they dropped it to target cap of 5 WITHOUT changing the massive end consumption it really gutted the usefulness of the power. It's still handy for quickly stacking mag on something like a Paragon Protector to keep them from going MoG on you, or helping control two bosses more effectively, but it's such a pale echo of it's former self that I find it almost painful to use now. Really long lasting PTND (Post Traumatic Nerf Disorder) for me. That said, given the addition of Ice Arrow to your single target control stable (Mind's forte) I would personally prefer to have Mesmerize instead of TK. Single target sleep is amazingly useful for putting outlying problem mobs on hold, and given it's inherent accuracy and massive duration, with all the +Acc slotting I think you could probably use it as a Sandman heal proc mule with just the single slot you have now in TK. Obviously I'd play with it on the way up and see if your playstyle really benefits from TK enough to make it worthwhile, but even with Panacea, Miracle and two Perf Shifters (love the Perf Shift proc in disruption Arrow btw) I think Mesmerize will be a better power to have though still situational. On the positive side, TK used in bursts is somewhat useful as a positioning power, which certainly does have some use. You went Musculature, which makes a lot of sense. Did you specifically weigh Intuition Radial Paragon against it? It has the +Dmg, ToHit, and adds Hold, Range and Slow as well which are all useful for Mind/TA. You have so many hold powers and with Dom and Ice Arrow both fully slotted for procs (which I 100% agree with) that +Hold in Intuition Radial Paragon would be quite helpful. The +Range would have good benefits for TA in terms of your setup arrow(s) if nothing else. You would lose the +Endmod (limited effect given only Stamina would be affected), and Immob (only Entangling Arrow as the immob from the Terrify Proc wouldn't benefit). What are you thinking for Interface and Destiny? I'd be tempted to go with Diamagnetic or Cognitive for interface and probably Clarion for Destiny. <Edit to add> To clarify: You have a single Call of the Sandman slotted in PGA, but it's NOT the heal proc. Typo or choice? I might try and free up a slot to add to Mass Hyp and slot a Sandman heal proc in Mass Hyp, Poison Gas Arrow, AND Mesmerize. All three of them would have a decent chance to proc, and that could go some distance towards providing the self heal that Mind/TA is missing. </Edit to add>

I did some more specific testing this morning, and it appears that it works up to the purple patch kicking in, so probably not as useful in late game content when pretty much everything is purple.

Got her up to lvl 32 last night. For context, since the late teens I have been running at +1 X8, as I ALWAYS focus on AOE whenever a powerset supports it. The aggro gabbing tanklike behavior mentioned above isn't sustainable, it was really more an artifact of that particular level, and fighting mostly warriors, which I more than half suspected was the case. So now that I've played with more of the full TA powerset (everything but EMP at this point, which I will respec into when I do my normal early/mid 40's respec. I wait till the 40s as I really need more slots before I put that build together) I have a somewhat better appreciation of the set, though I still don't know it well enough to really make decisions. Part of that is because I focused on leveling up the character quickly, as it was obvious that you have to get to the higher levels to really get a feel for the set. So despite my initial intention of picking up all the TA arrows as they became available, I ended up taking every /Fire power as THEY became available, and working in the fighting pool to provide the +def to work with the -ToHit of Flash Arrow and Smoke. 1. TA as a set is definitely more complex than most of the secondaries. I definitely need to do some focused testing which I haven't spent the time on yet as I've been focused on just leveling it up. Most sets have a couple main things they focus on, and the synergies are generally pretty easy to see as what they do is fairly straightforward. TA is probably the most debuff focused set that I've played. /Dark is debuff heavy, but it also has a mixture of buffing and healing that complement the debuffs well. /Storm is also a good debuff set, but it's got several damage heavy powers and does have an (admittedly somewhat anemic) ally heal. TA really needs some time to grow, not just for the slotting and powers, but for players not used to it, it takes time and a bit of focus to work through the learning curve. I'm not done on that part yet. 2. Like /Dark TA can do a reasonable corner pull into a patch, but it's not as effective at it as Plant/Dark or Fire/Dark as the lack of Fluffy's healing reduces the durability of the Imps substantially. I have a feeling it will still work ok once the build is fully mature, but it's a bit more complex. I also always run HotFeet and Weave as toggles and start with Flash/Smoke and then a debuff arrow (which is a super vague term as they are ALL debuff arrows) to pull the spawn into a Bonfire. I had skipped Glue Arrow and was using Acid Arrow as the pulling power originally. I don't recommend that combo. Instead, I now use Glue Arrow, Disruption Arrow with Bonfire a bit ahead of the center of the Disruption/Glue combo. I use Poison Gas (with a +range slotted) arrow for the pull to provide the -dmg mitigation so that the hits that DO come through are a lot less impactful. Once the spawn has clumped up and is bouncing well, I'll step out and use Flashfire, Oil Slick and then Fire Cages and start locking down any bosses with Char and Ice Arrow. 3. For spawns that are tighter clustered together to start with, standard Fire/ opening seems to work better; Flash Arrow + Smoke -> Flashfire + Fire Cages -> run in and drop debuff patches in the middle of the spawn and start locking down bosses etc. 4. The lack of any healing +the fragility and crazy behavior of the imps are, as expected, one of the problems with this combo. I expect Plant/TA is much more effective for my general playstyle. 5. This combo absolutely cries out for global +recharge. Bonfire and Oil Slick Arrow are the limiting factors, if you had them up often enough this build would be enormously more effective. As I haven't started collecting sets yet, it's hard to judge, but I'd lay some heavy odds that that will be one of the watershed changes. Some Range/Melee +Def will also be game changing. I swing back and forth about how effective it will be when fully mature, but my gut reaction is it will not eclipse Plant/Dark and likely not Fire/Dark. It's obvious that it's a late blooming combo though, so I'm reserving judgement till I get it slotted out with IO sets. At this point's hard to see it blowing through +4 X8 the way Plant/Dark does. I am very much enjoying the TA bag of tricks though, and the fast animations and complete focus on debuffing should play very well on teams, though like most debuffing it's likely to not be recognized by players that don't play debuff sets. 😛

Sounds like a great project. My original main was Mind/Kin and I had a lowby Mind/TA that I never finished leveling on live. Was a control monster from the start. Needed more AOE damage, but I never got him to Oil Slick levels. didn’t get a chance to look at the builds yet as I’m on my phone, but will do so!

Note: Switched this over to a chronology thread, as it has the beginnings of Blackfire Arrow already. Soloed her up to 24 tonight. Definitely starting to work. I generally shift to larger spawns fairly early with Fire Controllers given their ability to put out at least some AOE early on with Hot Feet and Fire Cages. On this character I had switched down to 2-3 team equivalent as I crossed the old SO threshold and the mobs got harder. Tonight I got Bonfire back (currently 3 slotted with KB->KD, FF +Rech, and PosiBlast Dmg proc), and picked up Disruption Arrow and Acid Arrow. It’s getting good. At 24 I’m back to being able to handle a full X8 spawn at even con/+1 WITH Bosses included. it plays very different from Fire/Storm or Fire/Dark. Both of those lend themselves to a corner pull into a slow patch to clump up the spawn, but Fire/TA plays almost more like a somewhat fragile tank. I run HotFeet (6 slotted with 3 dmg and 3 endred) and Weave toggles. I may or may not pop a luck then Flash+Smoke on a centrally located mob. Then I run in grabbing aggro as I go so they run into the Bonfire I drop in the center. Once I get them clumped up pretty well, I pop Fire Cages, Acid Arrow, Flashfire, Disruption Arrow, and start holding the Bosses with Char & Ice Arrow as feasible focusing my single target dmg chain on one Boss till he drops. The combo of the heavy -ToHit and the Knockdown from Bonfire is really decently effective. The -ToHit from Flash and Smoke is better mitigation in most cases than the -ToHit from Darkest Night in /Dark. It’s durable and less likely to get screwed up if the anchor gets loose, or a boss runs out of the range of the anchor. Definitely renew both at least once when they recharge to get mobs that might have been out of the AOE at the start. I have to occasionally refresh Flash/Smoke and pop useful insps when I remember, generally don’t need them, though the lack of a self heal is troublesome. I have the panacea unique, which helps. I’ll definitely be adding the Numina and Miracle uniques. Still have to add Poison Gas Arrow, and I think I’ll try slotting the Sandman heal enh as recommended on one of the guides. Also need to pick up Entangle Arrow, less of a priority in the early levels, but the extra -Res will be helpful in taking down bosses. Oil Slick Arrow will fit into the existing chain perfectly, more knockdown and more damage? Yes please. Obviously lighting the slick will NOT be an issue. 🙂 I meant to check if Disruption Arrow stacks or not. I did dig through the combat log and didn’t see any evidence of the -ToHit being boosted by Acid Arrow on a Tsoo Boss I was fighting. I’ll take a look at both tomorrow, the Tsoo may have been an anomaly.

Yes, if you are using any form of stealth with either Flash Arrow or Smoke you get the equivalent of full invisibility. That makes complete sense. I’m not sold on the need for both, but Smoke with a single IO (or very green SO) ToHit debuff slotted gives about another -7 to every single mob you just effected by Flash Arrow (given how perfectly they mirror each other) which is not negligible. -23 + 11 Def (Weave + the two +3 Def in uniques) is not at all as effective at mitigating damage as -30 + 11 Def. Granted, once set bonuses come into play the calculus changes, but this is on the way up starting at lvl 18 when I picked up Weave. Acid Arrow also probably shifts it a lot, but as mentioned it triggers Aggro and IIRC it also lacks anything close to the huge radius of Flash Arrow/Smoke. Having both in effect also has the effect of team full invisibility tied to the mobs not the team/pets. Not sure it’s super useful. But it’s INTERESTING. :-)

I did some testing using Flash Arrow and Smoke. Either makes it so you can get close, but if you walk up to an even con spawn they WILL see and attack you. If you stack both Flash and Smoke, then a +1 boss containing hazard spawn (Perez in this case) is completely unable to see you unless you actually attack them. At this point (soloed to 12) I have pretty much everything from the Fire/ side and just Flash Arrow and Ice Arrow from the /TA side. Entangling Arrow I definitely need to pick up, but not sure I will have a use for Glue Arrow. Been awhile since I played something without either Steamy Mist or Shadowfall, so I hadn't thought about not having a +Res power to slot the +Def unique enh into, so it feels like I'll have to go with the fighting pool for Tough. Weave is always good with a build that has high -ToHit. My math shows that if I slot Flash and Smoke for -ToHit I should be able to get them to about 30ish, and I saw a /TA guide that one of the Arrows has a debuff that decreases resistance to -ToHit which should get the total up to close to -40, which is pretty decent. Add the fish flopping of Bonfire (KB->KD slotted) and Oil Slick and it should be decent mitigation added to the standard FF + Fire Cages. Not sure it will be as tough/effective as Lord of the Ravens (LotR) is with Fire/Dark, and won't have the sheer environmental FX and barely controlled chaos of Lavan FireStorm, but It looks interesting enough as a pairing with TA so I can get a feel for how TA plays now. Ill/Dark I think I'll still want to try too, but Blackfire Archer has I think made the cut so far. I might start a Chronology for her...

I've been toying with running a /TA controller for a bit. A lot of good recommendations for Plant/TA in another thread, but I've played a LOT of Plant/ between Veridicane (Plant/Storm) and Dionysus (Plant/Dark). I'm also tempted by Ill/Dark because I think it'd be thematically very strong together, and it's been... a looooooooong time since I played an Illusion controller. So I'm kind of wobbling back and forth between a Fire/TA and an Ill/Dark. Fire/TA would get to stack Flash Arrow with Smoke (pretty much the same exact power, just Flash Arrow does a lot more -ToHit at -15 vs Smoke's -5), fully slotted that would be about -30 Tohit in zero aggro -percep targetted AOE with the same 80' range and 35' radius according to Mids. Not sure what the effect of having stacked -90% perception would be? Might be interesting to find out. Ill/Dark Would be a spooktacular build with a lot of visual interest and decent synergy. I'm trying the Fire/TA at the moment. And while it's not amazing out of the gate, I think it's getting better. Fire is strong by itself, and although I have no self heal ability, the -ToHit is quite strong, and I DID test the -perception... It's effectively total invisibility. Which is kind of cool. 🙂

Nightshade is a great name. 🙂 Combat Jumping is very often a part of my Defense / LotG solution, but I’ve found myself leaning more and more to Hover/Fly/Evasive Maneuvers. I tend to take Hover early for the same basic reasons https://forums.homecomingservers.com/profile/71263-bionic_flea/ mentioned. Hover + Evasive is two Def powers and gives amazing positioning control for lining up cones, and it’s a lot faster than might be expected. I think it’s like 43 mph at 50 with just the single slot in Swift slotted for fly. The defense in Evasive is not particularly, but the heavy immob protection and raw 3d movement capability is very useful. I absolutely love the negligible end cost of CJ though, and it is a GREAT early build mobility and Def power as mentioned.

On the inspirations, have you tried using the P2w vendor option to refuse some of the types ? I refuse Dam Res drops, Rez drops and sometimes others depending on the build I’m playing. Once I get to the point that I’m running against X8 spawns I generally refuse small drops too which cuts down the types of drops to the point that three of a kind is much more likely. If you keep a couple three packs around you can create anything needed and still have room for a large stack of Med Defense and Emerge insp. I go with Evasive maneuvers and high Ranged Def, if you get it into the high 30 low 40 range you get mezzed a LOT less often, to the point that Clarion is all I ever need. Before incarnate I carry some break free as mentioned. I often do the Sorcery pool and pick up Spirit Ward to use on Primaries that have a single strong pet instead of Imps or Gemlins. Also great at keeping Fluffy (Dark Servant) alive or a mission temp. Pet that likes to get killed. It’s surprisingly effective if you slot it with a single heal IO and go with Vigor in the Alpha. Arcane Bolt is actually pretty decent at taking procs including a force feedback + Rech and does good damage when you have the Arcane boost (forget the name atm) triggered so you get 3x the damage instead of the normal 2x from containment. Rune of Protection reduces your break free usage to almost nothing, and gives a nice Damage res boost too. Couldn’t quite work it into Dionysus’ build, but I tried. 🙂 just too tight with only one skipped power from Primary, one from secondary and 4 out of 5 of Soul Mastery.