Argentae

Maybe Plant/TA and go TP pool for Fold Space? Drop them into the patch of doom and then confuse them all. 🙂

I think I hit 24 soloing last night on Plant/Dark. it’s working pretty well, as expected one of the biggest things I miss at the lower levers is the lack of -Def. That’s starting to get better as I start putting in some catalyzed sets. Have a 5 pack of Posi and a 6 pack of Malaise Illusions as well as a Kismet ToHit. Running pretty well at +2 X8. Later I expect to feel the lack of Rune of Protection more. I find myself toggling Darkest Night off after I have the spawn self destructing nicely, saved some end and helps them hit each other better. I think I want to do a TA next though, I totally agree on the synergy with Symph, that set it all about the cones, which makes playing at range ideal. Grav should work well as you can prepare the landing zone for your Wormhole so the spawn really drops into the middle of a VERY bad spot for them. That sounds like a lot of fun. 🙂 I probably should still do the Plant/TA next though.

Some great feedback, thanks! I should have specified that I’m currently thinking Vigor for the alpha, so that’s what this build is based on. What makes Plant/Dark different in my thoughts from my prior characters is having LAYERS of mitigation rather than having a single perfect area or two. Strong Ranged Def + Good -ToHit. Really quite decent Damage resistance for several common damage types + strong Regen. Both Spirit Tree and Soul Absorption together should be very effective. Alm of which is just backup to the “Wine of Madness” tm (SoC) with Cognitive and Contagious Confusion. And a bunch of -Rech if I remember correctly. I think I’m going to miss Rune of protection. I’ll probably lean on Clarity in the Destiny slot and carry a lot of Breakfrees until then. High Ranged Def should help there. If I do go Vigor for the Alpha the focus on healing will pay off (Spirit tree would generate +330ish% Regen added to Soul Absorption and Twilight Grasp on Dio and Fluffy. That’s a lot of healing. Vigor also largely solves the end use issue, especially with Soul Absorption on tap, and solves the Acc question as well. I normally run with Panacea, Numina, and Miracle in Health for just that reason. But putting them in sets lets me get the set bonuses at the same time, which are considerable. I never generally focus on healing as a goal, but here it’s one of the synergies. Soul Absorption is already amazing in a good team, add in the “Tree of Life” tm and it just gets BETTER. Any Regen based set will become a god if it lives in the melee. Might not work in real play terms, but I saw what a difference the Tree made with long term survivability (on Plant/Storm) without impacting my chain and it would leave Twilight Grasp in reserve as needed, should be dang effective. Preventative Medicine proc firing should make a great warning trigger to hit TG. Could certainly be off base, which is why I appreciate other perspectives! 🙂 All that said, I think you’re probably right about dropping Fly Trap to 4 and dropping one in Health and one in Stamina. :: chews lip :: Really all your suggestions are spot on. Some I wrestled a bit with in getting to this point and many of them I may well implement. examples: 1. I normally run with the four pack of Dark Watcher in Darkest Night for exactly that reason, took it out for something I thought was more important than the 5% recharge with it where it was already. Still not totally sold on it. 2.Have a Kismet +6 in the enhancement tray looking at me. Did not think of some of them like the Ribo in Dark Embrace. Vines is a toss up, I did almost exactly that on Plant/Storm, scrounged up the slots to put a 5 pack of the purple hold set for exactly that reason. Here I’d maybe be tempted to pick up Black Hole instead as it can be single slotted and still be a nigh perfect panic button, to put a sudden spawn of adds on… Ahem… Hold. I agree that Spirit Tree is the piece that could change things the most in terms of swapping something… And by itself, it is anemic. As part of a healing stack though? Would also be a great benefit for ranged combatants, here, have +330ish Regen to tide you over while I focus on the spawn. Fly Trap, Fluffy, and Fortunata also tend to hang back during the Aloha strike and for some time, so they would benefit. Sooooooo many options! 🙂

So after the great suggestions from my fellow Controller afficionados, I went with Plant/Dark for my new alt and Dionysus Eleutherios was born! I'll update the Chronology with more details as I move forward, but I soloed from 1 - 18 today with no real issues. The combo of Darkest Night + Tarpit + Roots + a couple purple insps works great to get rolling on the spawns in Perez. Once you pick up SoC at lvl 8, it just becomes so much faster. I broke my usual pattern and picked up Howling Twilight early and have it 5 slotted by lvl 18 with 4 dmg Procs + the starting Dmg+Rech + Proc . Nice. It's not up every spawn yet, but when it is, it hits hard, and adding a good AOE dmg power (Slotted with Procs Howling Twilight is 25' radius autohit mini-nuke) to the AOE attack chain works GREAT. Don't even have Creepers yet, and I'm running at X8 +2 on Troll missions. Working very well, and as I know both sets well, it's easy to prioritize powers. I haven't really noodled the build all the way through, but my current work in progress is:

Thank you all for such great suggestions and commentary. I really appreciate it! 🙂 Someday I'm going to have to do Illusion/Dark as well. Never really spent a lot of time with my lowbie Illusion characters. I know Illusion/Rad was always the FotM for A/V soloing. I haven't played Dominator in a long time either. Pyropsius (Fire/Psi) was brokenly OP as a permadom before they nerfed Domination and Psychic Shockwave was massively overpowerd before they nerf/fixed it's doing damage at a single target scale instead of PBAOE. Argent (Mind/Psi) was a lot of fun too. I think that was the only two Doms I took to 50 on live, but I really enjoyed the playstyle. Thanks for suggesting a Plant Dominator, I'm absolutely going to have to do that in the not too distant future. Of the other suggestions, I really like the idea of two (well, more than that, Plant/Traps looks like it could be a lot of fun too, but not sure I would enjoy the looooong activations of Trip Mine and Time Bomb) ideas suggested. Plant/Dark and Plant/TA I've played /Dark a lot, but I never got my /TA very high on live and haven't played it on Homecoming at all. I've been looking at the details of both sets in Mids, and /Storm probably IS the best match in terms of maximizing the effectiveness of Seeds' aoe confusion. You get the lion's share of the xp from defeated confused mobs as long as you do a decent chunk of the damage. Plant does enough with Creepers, Roots, and Ice Storm to clear that threshold easily. So really, you want the mobs to do as much damage to each other as possible as quickly as possible. /Dark lacks the self destruction synergy that /Storm has. Freezing Rain makes them hit each other more easily (-Def), and do more damage when they do (-Res) in a single power that's perma with 3 +Rech out of the box. -30 Def and -30 Res makes the mobs shred each other like rabid weasels. /Dark on the other hand, has a -15% ToHit/-30% Dmg in Darkest Night, and -30% Res in Tar Patch. The -ToHit means the mobs hit each other less often, and while the -Res means they do more damage the -30 Dmg means they do less to start with. So overall, probably a net negative in terms of how much damage mobs do to each other. Of course that also means better damage mitigation for you, and you get a GREAT pulling tool in the bargain. Pulling into Tar Patch gives you a nice clumping of the mobs, esp if you can do a corner pull, which Darkest Night lends itself to. Can't remember how procs interact with toggles, would be interesting if you could use procs in Darkest Night. /Dark provides a lot of survivability, an excellent pet, has 2 built in +Def powers to hold LotG's and pair well with the -ToHit from Darkest Night and Fluffy (Dark Servant), Soul Absorption to eliminate /End issues and provide great +Regen and it has Howling Twilight. A lot of people underestimate Howling Twilight the auto-hit A/V regen neutering mini-nuke that rezzes entire teams as a side hustle. It's an auto-hit 25' radius AOE that applies a -500 Regen, a -62.5 Rech, does a little damage, and incidentally provides an AOE ally rez. And it can take 5 dmg procs and a -12.5(?) Res proc. And it sounds so dramatic. It's on a 180 sec cooldown, so it procs VERY well. At about +170 global recharge, that puts HT available every 67 seconds or so. It's like an every spawn to every 2 out of 3 spawns depending. I think? Don't have a good minutes per spawn metric in my head, Veridicane is pretty fast on a spawn of +4 X8 CoT. /Dark is just tough to beat if you do much soloing and hell-on-wheels on a team, it lacks a -Def power, so I often end up with /Leviathan because Water Spout is just hard to pass up. It would a toss up between /Lev, /Ice, or /Soul on a Plant/Dark I think. /Soul would obviously have the upper hand on the /Dark theme. I like the surgical nature of /TA. Great big bag of tools to control the battle ground itself to shift things in you(r team)'s direction. TA has a lot of the same debuff abilities, but broken up more and all click powers. I definitely need to roll a /TA at some point, I had a Mind/TA on live that was a CONTROL monster. I think I talked myself into a Plant/Dark... When I started typing this post I was going to create both and do a side by side comparison between the two as a chronology. Now I think I'm going to do a Dionysius themed Plant/Dark, and I'll find another Alt to run with /TA. Maybe Fire/TA so I can stack Smoke and Flash Arrow? Hmmm...

Veridicane (Plant/Storm) is the one of the last builds I took to 50 on live and I've deeply enjoyed building her all over again with a LOT more optimization here. Still having a blast playing and tweaking the build. Part of what really makes it shine is, of course, Seeds. As one of the original a Mind/Kin players, I greatly enjoy the xp and damage buff of confuse, and pairing it and Creepers with /Storm is just... :: Chef's kiss :: Oh fellow Controller addicts: What else would you suggest? /Dark would be super survivable. /Kin is tempting, but haven't tried FS with Creepers, so not sure if it would benefit enough from it. Thoughts?

Soul Absorb also pairs obscenely well with Soul Drain from Soul Mastery. Soul Brothers FTW. I haven't tried Ill/Dark either, but a ton of time on Dark/Dark and Fire/Dark (Highly recommended, my second most powerful Incarnate Controller ). Fluffy (Dark Servant) works excellently with a 6 pack of Cloud Senses. The proc can trigger on almost every power Fluffy has and it does good damage both aoe and single target. The +Ranged Def is excellent which pairs very well with the Hover + Evasive maneuvers combo (and I agree, it's excellent! Gives you two LotG in the flight pool too.) Agree with pretty much everything above. Thanks for the thought! I've been thinking about an Ill/ alt as a possible next project, hadn't thought about pairing it with /Dark probably because I've done a lot of /Dark recently, so I've been thinking about other secondaries. Could be one hell of a tough build when you pair the tank like nature of /Dark with PA as an unkillable tank solution. 🙂 🙂

I did some more A/V testing using Black Scorpion as the test subject in "Max's" "Recover Slinger from Arachnos" mission in the DA incarnate Arc. It's obvious that I hadn't done much A/V soloing before, the first few attempts at taking down a +4 Black Scorpion A/V... Did not go well. Properly handled this build CAN solo a +4 Black Scorpion without a Signature Summon temp pet. Need the Lore Pet though, I used a Tier 3 Longbow Cataphract and Warden. I dropped back and did the same mission at +2 X1 so I could jog through the long map (and didn't have to deal with 2 bosses in addition to the A/V) to get to Black Scorpion. After doing some better planning and starting the fight as outlined below, +2 was not a real problem. Same thing at +3 though it took a bit longer. On the +4 run I let the A/V slip free of the immob briefly at the very end and he immediately jumped to a beam up in the ceiling with a sliver of health left. That cost me the expiry of the Cataphract, and I almost didn't get the job done. Pulled it out by the skin of my teeth. Definitely needed the Longbow Cataphract Lore Pet for the -Regen and extra tanking/damage at +4. Might be easier with Interface switched from Cognitive to Degenerative, didn't try that yet. #1 tactical mistake I made was not coming in above the A/V and quickly stacking the Roots for Immob. Plant/Storm is all about building a patch of doom and keeping the target on top of the Freezing Rain, Creepers and stacked Lightning Storms and Tornados all while you and your beat down crew are standing in the +Regen area of 1-2 Spirit trees. Key lessons learned: Having Roots 6 slotted with WotC is extremely useful, it stacks and lasts well enough to keep an A/V nailed to the ground and as long as you use it periodically while only costing about 6 End (running 4th tier Vigor Alpha so Roots is +112.7 Endred ). Stay in the air and out of melee range. Start with Spirit Ward on Cataphract so it survives the alpha while you get everything set up and your Spirit Tree(s) going. Make sure you have at least a Good Luck running at all times in the beginning (can slack off later when all your pseudo pets are out) and bring some Take a Breather (blue candy) with so you can pop off all powers rapidly and mostly continually. The most important things you are doing is keep the A/V from moving and keeping Freezing Rain under his feet while popping Tornado and Lightning Storm as often as they are up. Spam Strangler and Arcane bolt (for the periodic FF +Rech) as Endurance allows let up on Arcane Bolt if end is getting dicey, then slow down with Strangler if needed. Use blue insp fairly freely though, I would have done better if I had kept up a faster pace and burned through blues more. Creepers as slotted above helps, but not nearly as useful against a single hard target as it is against large spawns. Keep an eye on Cataphract and Warden and use O2 boost as needed, do not let them die. Flytrap is easily resummoned. Not sure where Black Scorpion falls in the difficulty level of A/V soloing experiences, and I did NOT use Poisoned Daggar from the P2W vendor, which might have helped. All in all though, I continue to be impressed with what Veridicane can handle. Running through the entire Arachnos map on +4 X8 the first time I ran through the mission last night really drove home how effective a build it is. Arachnos is generally a PITA on my controllers, and I switched out Clarion for Ageless to handle the "Blinded" issue, but honesty it wasn't needed. Veridicane can just keep stacking pseudopet powers and Spirit Tree keeps me on my feet while I use Tornado to target Freezing Rain and Ice Storm. Hurricane makes it very hard for them to really do much to me and Lightning Storm, Tornado, Flytrap (with Spirt Ward) and Creepers have my back. Outside of a mission with an A/V at the end, I don't think I've hit anything I can't handle pretty readily at +4 X8, and as mentioned above, the only reason I dropped from +4 X8 to +4 X1 was convenience and to avoid the distraction of having two +4 bosses running around while I was trying to concentrate on the A/V. A word about Spirit Tree and Flytrap: As slotted with a 6 pack of Preventative Medicine, I have about a 27 second period where I only have one Spirit Tree out, so I'm only regenerating 28.02 HP/Sec. When I have two out I'm regenerating at 44.12 HP/Sec. That makes a huge difference in keeping pets alive during a tough fight like a +4 A/V. On merely challenging fights with just Flytrap out, having Spirit Ward on Flytrap (single slotted with + Heal IO and with Vigor providing another +33% Heal) and a Spirit Tree (+121.1 Heal enhancement for a total of 331.71% Regen) makes Flytrap a surprisingly tough little pocket tank. Audrey II rarely dies, and almost never while Spirit Ward is still running. I've found that tossing an O2 boost and retoggling Spirit Ward on is generally all I need to do rescue my little bitey buddy from near dead. Flytrap is really a pretty decent pet and synergizes well with the rest of the Plant/Storm toolkit. 🙂

That makes complete sense, thank you. 🙂 I suppose the main thing is I hadn't really thought about CC being a pseudo pet that summons more entities, so I was thinking about it like Tornado and Lightning Storm. I should run some tests with Force Feedback +Rech in CC to see how often that procs. It's hard to pay attention to the short lived FF +Rech buff icon, and last time I checked Hero Stats wasn't working to parse the logs at all. I suppose I'll put pet damage/combat chat in a tab and scroll through that to see how it does. I tried this out last night with the slotting above. It's highly effective against X8 size spawns, particularly minions and Lts. Bosses still take a while to whittle down if they get spread out instead of clumped together. CC, Lighting Storm, and Tornado all do massively more damage if targets are tightly grouped. I see the procs going off with decent frequency in the Pet combat chat stream. I have whole new things to look at. 🙂

Dang. That's good to hear. 🙂 I did not expect that? I thought pseudo pet powers pretty much only procced when cast? No Force Feedback + Rech? Granted it doesn't fire as often as Tornado and Arcane Bolt, so that makes some sense. I moved Ice Storm from Posi 5 pack to Artillery 6 pack for the hefty +Ranged Def (over +4) with better overall +rech for Ice Storm itself and still get the +9 Acc. I'm planning on offsetting the +Rech loss of the 5 pack of Posi by adding a slot to Vines and 5 slotting Unbreakable Constrain purple for the + Rech + Acc. Could probably finance most of the Unbreakable Constraint by selling the Apoc set... On the Chronology side, I tried something I never really bothered with before on this build: soloing A/Vs! I did Infernal at +0 X8 and I used Lore pet (Longbow Cataphract). Went down pretty fast and easy. Tonight I did Nightstar on +1 X8 with NO lore pet or poisoned dagger -regen. I did use Backup Radio PPD. Took longer, but with 1-2 Spirit trees out I was pretty safe and the A/V went down. Slowly, but went down in a couple minutes. I'm considering switching Interface from Cognitive to Degenerative to see how much difference it makes. No idea how that stacks up. I know sets like /Rad or /Dark with hefty -regen can manage it if careful I was impressed that Veridicane was able to pump out enough raw damage to whittle down a +1 A/V with no -Regen. Also considering trying Musculature in Alpha instead of Vigor, though vigor works soooo well with this build I'm unsure if it will be worth it. Overall I HIGHLY recommend Plant/Storm all the way through, starts strong and just keeps getting better and better all through the progression. At this point I'm going for best possible build, just not sure what that looks like yet. Veridicane is already stronger than my previous best Fire/Dark (LotR) or my Fire/Storm (Lavan), Dark/Dark (Shadow Fallen), or Dark/Symphony (Killashandra). I'm not going to mention my couple of tanks, they are brokenly OP ever since they got the AOE buffs. 😛

The big benefit in Symph is the focus on cones, slot them for mostly damage but don't ignore control as Wimbochismo pointed out. Play around with the pet as you have some control of what the pet uses power wise, which can be handy. I really wish you could slot Will of the Controller in the pet! 🙂

Veridicane mostly Incarnate update: Still tweaking the build a bit, but so far I'm pretty good with /Ice Mastery. Hibernate is really powerful/effective for a Plant/Storm, Ice Storm is great AOE damage as always and for groups with a substantial Smashing/Lethal aspect Frozen Armor is excellent. I swapped out my prior slotting for Lightning storm for a 6 pack of Thunderstrike for the +3.75 Ranged def and filled in a 5 pack of Overwhelming Force for Tornado (which has the better +Dmg/KB -> KD enh) + the ForceFeedback +Rech. so current build looks like this: Big difference in effectiveness. I'm going to put a 5 pack of Ragnarök (everything except the KB) in Carrion Creepers to boost things a bit, but probably more for the better enh values than the increase in set bonuses from Posi Blast -> Ragnarok which is incremental. The additional +Rech will be nice in Creepers though. Endurance usage is looking pretty good, I have Hibernate for End recovery at need, and can swap out Clarion for Ageless in Destiny slot if really needed. Flytrap with Spirt Ward is dang durable with just the default Spirit Ward slot with an IO +Heal and the +Heal from tier 4 Vigor in the Alpha slot. Dropping Spirit Tree (6 pack of Preventive Medicine) adds substantial survivability to both Audry II (Flytrap) and myself, though it's not needed often. My bellwether check was doing my first Incarnate content (Ephram Sha) Talons of Vengeance mission at +4 X8. No problem. Ran though the mission at a good speed and even though I forgot there would likely be an ambush I got through with no sweat. Hurricane 4 slotted with Dark Watcher for -ToHit makes a huge difference with the flying Boss assassin mobs. With all my pseudo pets out I can turtle up in Hibernate to deal with any unexpected situations. I don't think I used ANY incarnate click powers in the mission. Previously my most effective Controller for incarnate content was my Fire/Dark Lord of the Ravens (LotR) who does pretty well at that mission with those settings, but I have to be somewhat careful and remember the quirks of the build. My Fire/Storm (Lavan) struggles a bit in the same situation and has to lean on Ageless a bit for debuff resistance. Veridicane just basically blew through the mission first try. Nice. 🙂 Highly recommended build!

Just unlocked the Alpha slot last night, and I did get a perfect opportunity to use Spores. As I had originally expected, It worked very well when presented with two spawns close together. The range on it and the fact that it triggers aggro unlike the much better sleep in Mind/ Mass Hyp makes it less useful. It really came down to internal debate on Spores vs Snow Storm. Snow Storm: Very useful as a pulling tool, which can be VERY effective with a Plant/Storm. The hefty slow effect makes the spawn clump up a bit, and they take a bit to get to you so you can have ALL your pseudo pets up and waiting for when they get there. I think the -Rech might also mesh very well with the pseudo /Regen I've been pondering on this build. Slowing all the mobs down gives you more time to react and position yourself well, which can be meaningful if you use Hurricane effectively. Spore Burst: Situational. If there are two mobs side by side or around a corner from each other, sleeping one after confusing the other can be useful. They will wake up, but it generally holds most of them under control well enough that your AOE Maelstrom of Chaos can absorb them as they wake. It was quite useful in the right situation. Tentative Debate Answer: I think Vines is better than both. With a 4 pack of BasGaze I get excellent +Rech and Vines will be up more often than not. It's a lot better than Spores as mitigation, and I don't need two spawn capability THAT often. Vines is also better as a reaction to a sudden set of unexpected Adds and with decent Global +Rech should be up fairly consistently. Hurricane. Just want to spend a minute highlighting Hurricane. If you are a /Storm player, and you're not using Hurricane on your controllers, it might be worth a focused effort to master the positional control it gives you. If you can stack all the mobs into a tight corner, when you unload all your AOE and Pseudo pets on them the speed of the damage goes up substantially. This is largely due to the Area effect attacks from Tornado and Lightning Storm (small 5' and 5 target cap IIRC) and all the Creepers packed into a small area where they do a lot more total DPS. The difference in spawn clearing speed is VERY large. I expect it's currently exaggerated by the fact that I have zero IO sets slotted, just key individual uniques, and as a result my (single +Acc lvl 35 generally) accuracy running at +3X8 is dodgy. Once the fight is rolling it's not an issue with the -Def from Tornado and Ice Slick. So as a result, my initial SoC and Roots opening misses more than it should, and there are often a good handful of runners, esp Council Wolves. Using Herdicane techniques even a little bit can help a lot. I generally set my Spirit Tree, edge in front of it, and then push forward into the spawn the first few mobs to pack the spawn before hitting them with SoC and then Roots. Spawns have a tendency to clump up a bit when they attack each other, and Ice Slick and Tornado make it easier for them to hit each other while doing more damage. War Wolves are a PAIN. Vines will work better on them than Roots if there are an abnormal number of wolves running around. That's the other reason tight clumping is amazingly more effective than normal on a Plant/Storm, it puts more confused mobs in melee range of each other. VERY satisfying. Really waffling on /Ice vs. /Primal too. Even without any sets slotted or any /Incarnate capability this build is doing pretty well at Council missions running into +4 mobs in +3 missions. What I have slotted now is a mix of lvl 30 or 35 IOs and lvl 50 SOs. My slotting choices have been more driven by my desire to play around with specific powers on the way up. Picking up Vigor Radial Paragon on the Alpha slot will help +Heal, +End, +Acc, +Confuse, and +Sleep. My current Acc and Endred requirements should ease up substantially as I add IO sets in and the Vigor Alpha slot addresses those issues. +Heal will be quite useful. I guess I feel this basic config is good enough to optimize a bit and see how it plays before trying the /Primal option. I will still want to try PB on this combo. I have a suspicion through that Spirit Tree may be bugged as the "power in effect on you" icon for Spirit Tree shows +150 Regen and not the almost 300 that the tree is slotted to. I think I'll try using Clarion as a PB stand in first. Anyway, this is an intermediate build I'm currently going to try out. Won't have all of the handful of the purple sets here, and if I decide to take it further I'll go back and swap out some Sets for more expensive options. I only need 2 Overwhelming Force enh, and I'll borrow WotC and Coercive Persuasion sets from another character to get this build going.

Leveled up a lot doing my normal run through the Trilogy mission arc farming each mission where you have one of the boss level mission pets. By level 47 I'm soloing at +3 X8 Main reason I don't go to +4 is I only have a single Acc slotted for each power that needs it. Hitting is getting iffy at +3. Spirt Tree makes a solid difference. On the leveling build I went with Ice Mastery, and that's really not a bad fit. Ice Storm is excellent targeted AOE damage which meshes very well with the basic AOE attack chain. No IO Sets slotted, but I have 4 LotG global +Rech, and the Panacea, Miracle, and Numina's unique +Rec enh slotted in Health, Stamina 4 slotted with 3 Endmod and the Perf Shifter + End. Three pack of Overwhelming Force slotted in Tornado with the KB to KD enh included. I'm heavily slotted for Endred. Spirt tree is 6 slotted with 3 Heal, and 3 +Rech. I tried out Spore burst. Not terribly helpful, and I like sleeps generally because I solo a lot. Doing largely Council missions to maximize the utility of Frozen Armor. What I've currently been doing is: Have Hurricane, Steamy Mist, Frozen Armor, Hover, Evasive Maneuvers, and Combat Jumping and Spirit Ward on Fly Trap all running as toggles. Drop Spirit Tree close enough to the spawn that when I move forward to hit the spawn with seeds I'm still in the Tree's effect radius. Edge forward to potentially compress the spawn a bit with hurricane if needed, pop Seeds of Confusion followed by Roots. Then Freezing Rain, Ice Storm, Carrion Creepers if it's up, Lightning Storm and Tornado. Make sure Audrey Two (Fly Trap) is in good shape, hit a coupld of O2 boost if not, then Hibernate and let all my AOE do some work. If the geometry favors clumping up the spawn tighter with Hurricane DO IT. It increases the AOE effects of Lightning Storm and Tornado a lot. Then it's clean up with Strangler and Arcane Bolt using other power as appropriate. This build will get a LOT better with a lot of global +Rech and probably Vigor for the Alpha slot. Will probably get a chance to try switching to Primal and playing with Power Boost later this weekend. Will post some build(s) if I can...

Thoughts evolving towards the idea of using Power Boost and Clarity (incarnate) in rotation to make Veridicane a pocket /regen. Powerboosted Spirit tree fully slotted should be around +485(ish) on Regen. Up to +50% Regen from LotG 2 packs. +80% from slotted Health (+120% with PB/Clarity) +Regen from enh and sets I'm not sure on totals yet, but it's should be enough to be useful. Focus just on /Range for +Def set bonuses and use Hurricane to block melee. Very high Smashing/Lethal +Res from Rune of Protection + Temp Invulnerability. Probably at cap with PB? I think this is the first time I've looked at a controller build and thought: Hmmm Tanky. Fire/Dark tanks well, but it's a you can't hit me kind of tank rather than an I don't care if you do kind of tank. Vigor for Alpha. Clarity for Destiny Control Core for Hybrid Cognitive Core Flawless Interface

Veridicane was one of the last builds I took to 50 on Live, I recall it being a lot of fun though. I've had a lvl 20 version sitting on Torchbearer for a long time and just got back to playing with it the last couple of weeks. Just dinged 32 v (all soloing) last night. Yup, a lot of fun. Other than the end hog nature of EVERY /Storm controller it's quite a good combination with fun synergy. Plant's multiple sources of immob/KB control powers mesh well with Storm's Hurricane and Ice slick for providing tightly bunched groups that really leverage the AOE effect from Tornado, Lightning Storm, and Carrion Creeper (aka Vegetative Tentacles) Using Spirt Ward and the occasional O2 boost on Audrey II (flytrap aka Bitey) is very effective, and Seeds of Confusion (aka Dance my Puppets, Dance!) increases the speed with which full spawns are defeated very effectively. Running Hurricane makes you nearly immune to Melee attacks and provides excellent positioning control when paired with Hover + Steamy Mist + Evasive Maneuvers. I tried going deep into the Sorcery Pool to use Enflame, but while it worked to a degree, it didn't really play too well, and wasn't worth having another end heavy toggle that I had to manage the targeting for. Audrey isn't the best target as they tend to hang back and shoot from range for quite a bit. Mobs tend to keep dying for some reason. 😛 Hover-Fly-Evasive is great for mobility for the herdicaning as mentioned and targetting Seeds cones from on high can be very useful. Seeds definitely benefits from some +Range. Spirit Tree was underwhelming initially, but I think will come into it's own later. Waffling between Ice Mastery and Leviathan. Hibernate from either, too useful for a /Storm controller. Ice would get me: +Def Frozen Armor for a 5th +LotG set. Thinking of doing two packs of LotG (Global +Rech and +Def to get the +10% Regen and better raw Def) for each. Ice Storm massive AOE dmg to speed up spawn elimination Leviathan would get me: Water Spout as another FF + Rech and Achilles -Res vector, love Water Spout. Coralax, which is usually somewhat fragile, but I think will live fairly well with this build and help with stacking damage Loosely also considering Soul Mastery as Dark Consumption would be handy for End management till I hit incarnate and can be slotted as a mini-nuke with dmg procs, +Dmg from Soul Drain would be useful , but it doesn't blend well with the cone and Targetted AOE nature of the rest of the build. Fortunata is a good ranged pet, so always helpful. Intuition Radial Paragon is a likely Alpha pick Though Cardiac and for this build Vigor are also strong contenders. I have to really think about this one. I'll post a current build later, editor is doing weird things as I type this which is making it awkward to edit.

I resemble that remark. I used to make it a point to NOT take the fitness pool on my characters simply because almost EVERYONE did. 🙂

Depends. If I'm building for a +Def -ToHit build like /Dark, then Weave is just too dang useful and Tough makes a decent mule to hold +Def uniques. That's generally only on an endgame build, I generally respec into Fighting if I'm going to go that route. Leveling I almost ALWAYS eschew Fighting pool on the way up because I'm focusing on the Pri/Secondary power combos I haven't played with before.

Been a long bit since I've revisited this chronology. I played with Soul mastery for quite awhile. It works very well when doing regular spawn sweeping at +4 X8, so no slouch. Fortunata was a good ranged dmg pet. Soul Drain works GREAT at burning down patches of mobs. Struggle a bit with certain debuffing mobs. Talons of Veng in the DA incarnate arc in particular. Aracnos Night Widows are also a huge pain without Tactics or other +Percep. I tweaked my incarnates a bit and swapped to Alpha Musculature Tier 4 Radial, and swapped out Clarion for Ageless Radial Epiphany. That helped with Talons. Needed to switch Smoke to +Range to compensate for the loss of +Range in the Alpha Musculature. Changed to /Leviathan, and absolutely appreciate Water Spout all over again. Coralax was a decent boost but dies fairly quickly if things get dicey. Current version I finally gave in and added the Fighting pool in, lost Coralax, Hibernate (always a useful pause button if things get dicey), Arcane Bolt (Excellent damage slotted with 4 dmg procs including Apoc neg dmg proc), but I'm at Perma Fade levels of +Rech, so just Char slotted with 5 +dmg procs including Unbreakable Constraint and Apoc is back up fast and does about 307/hit while holding problem mobs like Night Widows. I miss confuse. 😛 The addition of about +7 def/all is, as always when you are close to the edges of the bell curve, impactful. I adopted the +4 Unbreakable Guard slotting from Camel's guide. Considering swapping the Cloud Senses 6 pack for the Galdiator's Net 6 pack suggested there, it would move about 3 Ranged Def to AOE Def. Wouldn't proc as often though, and I really benefit from the -Tohit Debuff, as this build is largely based around +Def PAIRED with high -ToHit on Mobs in layers. The discussion of using The Sudden Acceleration +KD in Imps paired with the not-yet-tried +Build-Up is leaning me toward removing the +Range in Darkest Night I still use it to pull spawns apart and into a Tar Pit/Bonfire corner pull pile up when needed, or for fun. Will likely have to switch back to Intuition Radial for the +Range.I lose the +Endmod from Musculature though, which affects Soul Absorption quite a bit with Preventative Medicine 6 slotted. Adding KD to Imps would pair really well with Bonfire and Water Spout though. And if the Build Up procs decently during Imp Attacks it could be an excellent trade. I have stuck with Flight though it would have been a reasonable swap out for Fighting. Thematically wings are really just massively appropriate, and the mobility from Hover + Evasive Maneuvers is really REALLY useful for getting in the middle of a spawn in a cramped room/hallway. Toggling Evasive and if I get toggle dropped is fast and Hover - > Fly gets me quick def and moving out of danger fast so I can bail if needed and come back with all my friends. Less of them, I miss the Epic pet, but it doesn't slow me down much to not have it. I was one of those players that built to avoid the pseudo-mandatory Fitness pool way back in the day just because it was a fun goal. I do that with the Fighting pool now, but I enjoy +Def builds so much I almost always have to do it eventually. So, that's where I am at the moment. Still one of my favorites to play, and now even if I miss the dang Night Widow in the spawn, I can stand in Bonfire/Tar Pit/Water Spout and outlast the "Blinded" status if I don't have a yellow insp handy. 🙂

[Edited to add the target build, and fix a mistake I made with the Intuition Radial Paragon, forgot it was +Def Debuff not +Def. 😞 ] I’m going to try the purple Build Up proc in Imps and see how it does. Fluffy does really well with the Clouded Senses set as pretty much everything he does triggers -ToHit. just hit 38, spent a big part of the day pondering a new build. I think it’s almost there except Avalanche is a lot more expensive than I expected, so I’ll swap something else in at the pre-purple stage for Soul Drain. Did a fair bit of Council missions, then went to talk to Null the Gull in Pocket D to go red side to do Ghost Widow’s Patron arc to open up Soul Mastery. Came back to Blue side and started doing Circle of Thorns missions in Founders Falls at +2-+3/X8. No bosses yet. Overall the new build is doing well. Major changes: Removed Fighting pool.Tried Cross punch first, interesting, esp the +5% Rech/target hit but I don’t have time to use it effectively. Picked up Smoke, with a single -ToHit slotted it gives -6.2 ToHit to entire spawns which offsets the loss of Weave. The -perception is useful in keeping Imps in line. you have to remember to use it, but it’s like the equivalent of a + 6 Def buff for your whole team that lasts a minute and is VERY End efficient. Removing Tough and Weave help with end usage. Picked up Fly and Evasive Maneuvers, which greatly improves mobility. Slotted -kb in Fly. Lord of the Ravens SHOULD be really good at flying and very hard to knock around in the air. If I do get toggle dropped, Evasive Maneuvers buys me some breathing room by putting up about +20 Def to all while I get everything set back up. Will test playing with dismissing Imps, Hotfeet and DN off starting with Smoke, and running in with EM and Fade (and maybe SF, though that might suppress EM). Should put me at the Def cap while the spawn clumps on me and Fluffy helps keep me alive. Then DN, FC, FF, TP, Soul Drain (to boost my Acc and Dmg to the sky), Bonfire, Imps, SA, Hotfeet and spam FC, Bonfire, TP etc as they refresh. Picked up Maneuvers out of leadership, so if you want to try Tactics it is an easy swap. I haven’t really needed it. Hotfeet and Bonfire are autohit I think, and the rest seem good with a single lvl 35 +Acc IO up to +3/X8. Have a few sets contributing +Acc and the Kismet +ToHit. All five Def powers get LotG 7.5 Rech/Def and + Def Enh. That should put them at a good +Def value while also building quite a bit of +Regen to add to Soul Absorption. If I decide I need another +3 Def to all, I can change to Nerve for the Alpha, but I think the -ToHit is more useful than that, especially when you factor in all the other things Intuition brings to the table for this build. I’m thinking Preventative Medicine for SA. Three Touch of The Nictus in TG, might put the Dmg proc in just to see how it plays. Single Target attacks: Procing out Char. Added Arcane blast full of procs as well including the FF + Rech. So I’ll have two FF + Rech, one in Bonfire, and one in Arcane Blast where it should trigger reliably. with good Global +Rech Char and Arcane blast alternate well and do good ST damage. Positional Control update: You really need to max out range on Darkest Night, it makes it s lot easier to pull a spawn without the Imps Aggroing and ruining the corner pull. Smoke helps. Will post an updated build probably tomorrow. Next major inflection points are getting Soul Drain and then a huge jump when I slot Intuition Radial Paragon in the Alpha slot. It adds +Range, +Slow, +Dmg. + Hold AND -ToHit. This build gets major boosts out of each of those. Promised Build:

Lvl 30: The Unkindness of Fluffy Still pondering a fair number of things with this build. Not posting a Mids' build yet, I intend to do this chronology as more a discussion of the start and evolution of the build, not a final end state after massive investment in IO sets forces compromises. To me, a character is not just an end state build, it's a whole progress through the game from starting conception to full incarnate. I do a lot of soloing and some teaming. A Lot of the time I'm playing with weird power combinations, so I try to do experiments that may fail in private. 🙂 Basic assumptions of synergy has been more or less shown to be accurate. Love the costume and design my youngest adult child (Sonny) helped my fine tune. I'll post some pics later. Black purple base color and violet highlights, the powers looks great, though still fine tuning them a bit. The Imps look a bit like featherless birds on fire when you can see their bones better, which was the inspiration for the Lord of the Ravens concept. General thoughts: IMO you should be running at +0/X8 spawns before you leave Atlas, say somewhere in levels 4 /5/6. Very melee focused as expected. The mitigation of /Dark (especially Darkest Night (DN), Tar Patch (TP), and Twilight Grasp (TG) ) is very effective at keeping the Imps alive and working as semi-autonomous elements in the LotR mob ( <- Corvid humor... 🙂 ). Tactically, it plays much the same at 30 as it did at 4. It's a good balance of planning and juggling, but more forgiving as you pick up more parts of the final build. Fluffy is the best Imp wrangler a fallen angel heroic pseudo demon could have. Keeping the Imps under control involves controlling where the combat occurs, and keeping all the mobs ( <- not MY mob of course, we are an Unkindness, not a mob ) grouped up together and locked in place. Fortunately, this build excels at doing just that. Well, except for Warwolves, they are a PITA, I expect chain KD aka fish flopping should work on them though. As I start kitting out the IO sets, my focus is on +Rech as Global +Rech doesn't tank Proc chances the way that slotted (and Alpha) +Rech does. Second Focus is on +Def. On My Dark/Dark and Symph/Dark I focused on Ranged Def, not as familiar with Melee Def sets. Might switch to a deeper dive in the Fighting pool is the Melee sets are where I'll be getting global Melee Def sets. Positional control: I have had excellent luck with using Darkest Night to pull a spawn into a Tar Patch. As most COH players know, corner pulls are best as it clumps the spawn up into a tight group, while just pulling them into a Tar Patch without a corner will spread the spawn out in a line. Pulling the spawn into a line works great for Symph/Dark's quad-cones of doom, but Fire/Dark prefers tighter balls of mobs for PBAOE effects. Build progression: 1: Char (C) 1: Twilight Grasp (TG) 2: Fire Cages (FC) 4: Darkest Night (DN) 6: Tar Patch (TP) 8: Hot Feet (HF) 10: Kick (K) 12: Flashfire (Ff) 14: Tough (T) 16: Weave (W) 18: Shadow Fall (SF) 20: Fade (F) 22: Bonfire (B) 24: Soul Absorption (SA) 26: Fire Imps (FI) 28: Hover (H) 30: Dark Servant: This as far as I have gotten so far. Next Steps: I still need to fit in Hasten, that's probably next at 32. Given the Raven focus with the wings, Fly (Fl)+ Evasive Maneuvers (EM) makes a lot of thematic sense (as well as being a good LotG mule), and makes a fast hover a lot more effective. EM is also useful to throw up a quick +21 Def while I retoggle if I get sapped or don't see an end crash coming. SA makes that largely a non-issue, but edge cases do still happen. Also plan on going with Soul Mastery as the Soul Siblings (SA + Soul Drain (SD) ) are just too perfect a pairing, and will supercharge the burn them to the ground phase of spawn harvesting. Dark Embrace is decent and holds one of the +Def Unique IOs. Summon Seer (SS) is a good ranged pet that holds her own and helps me take down the hard targets from a safe distance. Howling Twilight (HT) is going to be a late power, probably 47th and I currently plan on slotting it as a mini-nuke as I did with my Symph/Dark. Incarnate: Intuition Radial again, it's too perfect a paring with a Controller /Dark. Reactive Interface Assault Hybrid Current thoughts on powers taken so far: 1: Char (C) Basic ST Hold. Slot with procs for ST Damage, this becomes a cannon in the late game 1: Twilight Grasp (TG) Useful throughout the entire game. Great heal for Imps and yourself/team. stacks a little -Regen on hard targets which is never bad. 2: Fire Cages (FC) This is a core power from the beginning. Pay attention to the End cost though, 15+ End per cast is expensive. Slot originally with most of your free starter IOs, Recharge / AOE area is so high they won't proc much, but the aggregate is still useful and saves you having to replace enh for quite a bit of the early game. 4: Darkest Night (DN) So critical to the way I play this build. +Range is very useful for pulling things from outside the Imps awareness. DN's -ToHit is a very hefty part of the mitigation that keeps me and the melee pets alive and harvesting. 6: Tar Patch (TP) Powerful debuff that effectively multiplies ALL the damage you do (including proc damage) by 1.3, and it STACKS. Make the Tar Patch a Tar Pit every time you can. Speed of spawn Harvesting goes up as does your ability to establish positional control. 8: Hot Feet (HF) At least 2 SO worth of EndRed and damage. Not sure about sets yet. Speed of spawn harvesting goes up again. 10: Kick (K) Path to Weave, but proced out will probably be part of the final ST chain, or possible a melee set mule 12: Flashfire (Ff) Excellent AOE control tool while you get everything setup especially when the geometry just doesn't favor a way to pull the spawn together, or when things are getting a bit out of control. 14: Tough (T) Good +Def unique (Steadfast, Galdiator) or + HP (Unbreakable Guard) 16: Weave (W) You live in Melee, this is a key defense power your second best after Fade 18: Shadow Fall (SF) Your third best +Def power, almost +6 fully slotted and slightly better with +Def in the Alpha slot. Also takes +Res and has enough Nrg, NegNrg, and Psionic res to stack well with Dark Embrace and Fade. All at a team AOE level. Oh and it's also a team stealth power which can come in handy. Though not with Imps around. They aggro way too soon for the +Stealth to matter much. 😛 20: Fade (F) The best +Def power ~+14 Def to all when slotted for your whole team (makes Imps much more durable). As well as more Smash, Lethal, NegNrg, and psionic Res AND resistance to Def Debuff, very useful for a +Def build. This has the same radius as Shadow Fall, so use that as your guide when positioning. 22: Bonfire (B) Good mitigation with a KB -> KD io slotted (Overwhelming Force or Sudden Acceleration). Oddly though, the mitigation is better if you DON'T slot a -KB -> KD and just spam Fire Cages instead. The entire spawn will fish flop in unison. With a KB -> KD only some of them will flop. Easier to use the KB -> KD, but I'm thinking of taking it out and saving the slot. 24: Soul Absorption (SA) The first of the Soul Siblings, you regen like a pint sized /Regen (slot a Healing set in here, I've used a 6 pack of Numina's before) and you pretty much cannot use your end up, should end the combat with a full, or close to it, blue bar. The important thing to note is that this a 20' radius. So your whole team, and again, it makes the Imps a lot tougher. Making it Perma is tough but doable. Better in my mind to focus on up whenever you need it. 26: Fire Imps (FI) Everyone knows these hyper aggressive aggro magnates. You CAN keep them alive with the tools in /Dark, and Fluffy is key. 28: Hover (H) It may seem like hover doesn't pair well with Hot Feet, but as long as you are close above the spawn's head it still works. It's better for getting into the middle of tight packed groups and being able to maneuver in 3 dimensions is surprisingly helpful at times. 30: Dark Servant: Fluffy is the BEST. Seriously, Fluffy is a great Imp wrangler. Helps you keep immob up on everything, hits the whole spawn with another Darkest Night -ToHit, TG healing pulses etc. Ok, that's it for this installment! I appreciate any commentary or suggestions. Lavan Fire/Storm was a different control by chaos style this plays differently, closer to Shadow Fallen Dark/Dark but obviously more melee focused.

So, LotR (no similarity to any other LotR is intended) was an idea I had in the middle of the night thinking about what alt to try next. I've played a fair number of Fire/ controllers (Fire/Storm the most recent to hit 50), but it's been awhile and I had a craving to see how it meshed with /Dark. having Darkest Night and Tar Patch stacked with Bonfire, Hot Feet and spammed Fire Cages seemed likely to be pretty effective, and with all the +Def and -ToHit from Fluffy and I, I expect the Imps will be more durable than usual. What I did NOT really expect was how effective LotR would be out of the gate! From level 4, I ran at +0/X8. Corner pull with Darkest Night into Tar Patch and spam Fire Cages with occasional Char and Twilight Grasp until everything is dead. Don't remember any previous alt being able to do that. Still running +1/X8 at lvl 24. I did street sweeping in Perez from I think lvl 6-10, then hit the Hollows to do my traditional run through the Frostfire arc. By the time I dropped Frostfire (farmed the missions a bit, but not excessively) I was lvl 20 and went straight to Talos to pick up the glory that is Fade. Got Bonfire at lvl 22?! (did they change the lvl powers open up when I wasn't looking, or is there a bug?) <- Have pic to prove [Edit to Add: I missed that part of the last patch notes. Wow. What a difference. :-)] Got Soul Absorption at lvl 24?! (same as above) <- Have pic to prove [Edit to Add: I missed that part of the last patch notes. Wow. What a difference. 🙂] Three LotG Def/Global +rech slotted and a few other choice IOs, but still too early to start buying much in the way of sets. Will post a build later, still figuring out the overall plan, this build is a lot more effective than I expected, and it's still maturing. 🙂

So, got Killashandra Ree a lot closer to a final build. Apologies to the OP, in the long arc of the build I did end up doing the same thing and putting WotC in Aria. 😛 WotC REALLY belongs in Reverberant, but you can't slot it. 😞 Did and up going back and respecing into the Fighting pool, Weave is just too useful. Mostly built around stacking +Def (esp Ranged), +Range, +Rech, and +Acc. Still tweaking a bit, but pretty effective. Mostly playing her to earn inf for Lord of the Ravens (my new Fire/Dark alt)

I'll comment in more depth another time, juggling things at the moment, and almost buried in a new Fire/Dark alt that's a blast so far. BUT I'm taking today and all next week off, and I plan to be posting more. 🙂 I have played a LOT of Mind/ builds (Arg was Mind/Kin way back in I-2). | Also played a lot of /Dark including my Original Dark/Dark (Shadow Fallen) nearly final build of Symph/Dark (Killashandra Ree) and newborn Fire/Dark (Lord of the Ravens) so I very much understand a lot of Luxlorica's POV. Perma Mass Confusion is worthwhile all by itself. 🙂 Howling Twilight is an amazing power. I grok your point in optimizing for -Regen uptime, makes sense and just a great example of how much of a Swiss Army knife Howling Twilight is! I use it in a different role as a mininuke that fits in my opening attack chain on Killashandra Ree: Corner pull spawn into Tar Pit using a -ToHit focused Darkest Night. AOE Sleep cone once grouped up. Soul Absorption Soul Drain (from Soul Mastery) Howling Twilight full of damage Procs but no slotted recharge, so the procs go off VERY reliably. It's Autohit and does a surprising amount of damage: [/list]Level 44: Howling Twilight (A) Positron's Blast - Chance of Damage(Energy) (46) Javelin Volley - Chance of Damage(Lethal) (48) Bombardment - Chance for Fire Damage (48) Ice Mistral's Torment - Chance for Cold Damage (48) Bombardment - Accuracy/Damage/Recharge/Endurance

Heya Control! (Old channel reference) I've been having a lot of fun with Killashandra Ree (Symph/Dark) and wanted to provide my possibly nontypical build and solicit feedback and advice. She's in mid Incarnate stage, Alpha is 4th tier Intuition, Hybrid 3rd tier Assault and Control (working on 4th tier control for the Fear + Immob -> perma Stun), Interface 3rd tier Flawless Radial for the 75% chance of fire DoT, Lore 3rd tier BP, Destiny 3rd tier Clarion but thinking about having a Barrier option for mob types that are resistant to the -Acc +Def combo I'm using for survivability. Current build: Planning to replace the set in the ST Confuse with the purple Coercive Persuasion, replace The Posi set in the Cone of Awesome (Confounding Chant) with a 5 pack of Ragnarok, and tweak Fade to add two more LotG so it looks more like: Prospective build: I'm pretty happy with how the current build plays, it's a ton of fun. But I think she needs a bit more +Def and +Acc. Adding the purple sets and Fade tweaks should help with that a bit. Thoughts?