Corythia

I agree with Carnifax, Plant/Storm or Plant/TA are both really good solo, and Plant is good solo from level 9ish after you get seeds. It gets a big boost at 26 with creepers. I would recommend Ice as an epic, you will start off with a cone Seeds, so doing roots, then frost breath after that will sliver most of the minions pretty much immediately. Honestly, Plant/anything is strong. I have a Plant/Nature that I think of as easy mode, and a Plant/Time that is also really resilient. All of these can solo pretty easily because of Seeds+Creepers plus whatever attacks you add later. Honestly Plant/Storm/Ice is my favorite character ever, in any game, ever.

You get 1000 character slots and for leveling, on Excelsior at least, it is fast and easy to find groups, so you can make an old char you loved, or try something you had always wanted to try, or do what a bunch of us do and do both. That's probably the worst run on sentence I've ever made, but I will let it stand. Welcome Home!

Indom is a ghost town lately, I have moved to Excel. I didn't want to do it, but I like having people to play with. Population on Excel is getting lower as well, it reminds me of when Indom began to decline noticeably. I have a feeling we will all need to concentrate somewhere as people leave. There should be enough who stay to keep one server pretty strong, this really is the best game out there.

Corythia, my Plant/Storm controller is hands down my favorite. I make other controllers and marvel at how strong they are, then come back to Cory and marvel at how much better she is than what I've just been playing. After I had hit 50 and did all the 50+ content, I went to Ouro and worked my way thorough all the arcs in the crystal. She could solo 8 man content in her 20s, and just gets stronger and stronger as levels progress. I can't think of another character where that wouldn't seem like a chore, but with Cory it's just fun to play her through the whole game. That said, any /Storm controller is amazing, and any Plant/ controller is also amazing so it's not surprising that the two together are really stunning. A couple notes on /Storm: 1) keep your hurricane in your pants. Only break it out on special occasions. It's great for AVs, it's pretty good to trap a group of mobs in an alcove. Otherwise just don't. You will want to use it, but it will always turn in your hand. 2) Control your knockback. Either use imobilizes to keep mobs from flying all over, or use KB to KD to keep things under control. Part of the power of Storm is the chaos it creates, but you need to contain the chaos in as small an area as you can manage, or your spend all your time chasing down stragglers.

Same problems as others, PC Windows 10 Homecoming Launcher Century Link ISP I was just on a live chat with Century Link, and they said everything appears to be fine on their end. I guess I will just have to wait it out. If it's not fixed in a few days, I'll change ISP.

I also have Century Link and can't log in.

I think you may have end issues with that. You can't go wrong with /Storm.

I have an Earth/Rad/Stone controller that is a scrap-troller. Between Earth and Rad you have a ton of mitigation, the fighting pool attacks added to pay to win attacks make for a decent attack chain. It was a bit slow until you get your epics attacks, then it's a steam roller. By mid 30's she could solo 7-8 player content, which is pretty good for earth.

I am looking at this build and I think you are going to have serious end trouble. You didn't slot AM or for end mod, and shorted stamina. You didn't slot enervating field for end reduction. You don't have a miracle in health, but you will be running 5 toggles. It just seems to me that you will be able to have your powers up as often as you want them, but won't have then end to actually use them. I'm not a power gamer though so I'm not sure that what I'm seeing is what you will actually encounter.

You can get away with one damage in caltrops. I keep wanting to add a second damage, but I can never seem find a slot to do it. It's aoe, and it does continual damage. If you use roots on the guys in the patch, they will get to shoot at you, but with the high defense available in traps, and with creepers grabbing a lot of agro for you, that shouldn't be a problem. As someone said earlier, it's not a ton of damage per tick, but it lasts a long time and added to everything else you will have going, will kill all the minions and sliver the Lts. letting you focus most of your attention on the bosses. It also helps with exp gain, since you don't have to do much damage to a creature to get most of the exp if a confused foe kills it, so it gives you more exp for minions that would have been completely killed by bosses or hard hitting Lts by damaging them first.

I agree with Carnifax, Seismic Smash is not something I'd ever skip. Not only does it hit like a truck, it will stack holds on a boss. Having played Traps on a couple controllers, I also wouldn't skip Caltrops; the aoe damage to rooted foes is considerable over time.

I have a Plant/Nature controller, and I refer to her as easy mode. Kill speed isn't quite what Plant/Storm is, but the amount of control is stupidly strong, so you are rarely ever in danger. For Plant I recommend /Storm, /Nature, and /Time. All of them are remarkably strong.

I agree with Uun, try slotting Arctic Air with 3x end/confuse and a end/slow and it will work really well for mitigation. Also go back to Ice/Storm someday. Hurricane is one of the most difficult powers to use because it's situational, usually it isn't all that helpful, so I keep it just to pin things in a corner or debuff an AV, but mostly it isn't on. Other /Storm powers are great though, Freezing Rain may be my favourite power in the whole game, and combined with Ice Slick, anything that actually gets to stand up for a second is likely confused, or doesn't have the recharge to do anything to you. If you really don't want to do /Storm though, you might try Ice/Rad, or Ice/Nature. Arctic Air + the hold aura from either of those is really effective in shutting things down in a pretty good area. I would probably go with Ice/Rad, but both should work. Honestly with anything Ice control, you are looking at mid 30s before it begins to show its true power. Before that you may have some difficulty.

I've been thinking some more about this, and I am wondering if you chains while mobs are being knocked down on oil slick, will the mobs instead be knocked off it? I know some times when I stack enough kd in one patch that some mobs will be knocked back. This happens with Earth Quake + Freezing Rain + Gale with a kb to kd IO some times on my Earth/Storm. Since Electric's cages don't prevent kb, will this be likely with chains + oil slick? If so, it might be poor synergy. I might be off on this, but I know sometimes things get knocked off my kd patches when I have multiple kds being applied at the same time. With fire, Ice, and Earth you can use cages to stop it, but electrics cages don't.

I don't know about others, but I am not really impressed with Electrics confuse power. It hits a single target, then spreads from there one target at a time. By the time it's spread to a majority of the mob, you could have already defeated most of them doing something else(say sleep patch followed by spamming chains and cages). Also it doesn't last long even when slotted for confuse, so the first mob is unconfused before the last mob is infected. If you really want to confuse mobs, Plant is MUCH better. Seeds is up more often, lasts longer, and hits an entire spawn in one shot once you get used to aiming it. It's not that I won't use electrics confuse - it's an OK opener when soloing, it's just that it's not all that effective so I wouldn't base a strategy on it. It's best use is like that of Illusion's single target confuse, to take control of a very nasty/useful lieutenant at the start of the fight, anything it accomplishes beyond that is gravy, because it's not all that reliable.

Or Fire/Storm is good, you can put kb to kd in the knock back powers, or just cages everything to prevent kb, either works. My Fire/Storm put some extra slots in Gale, and was able to keep pretty much everything on it's back most of the time between freezing rain, Gale, and bonfire nothing but nemesis robots could keep their feet.

Honestly with Earth/Storm, there are so many good powers, it is hard to choose, and hard to decide a rotation. It's very strong and versatile, especially on teams. Earth has very low DPS, but /Storm can make up for a lot of that with Freezing Rain (-res), Lightning Storm, and Tornado. There are several openers that will work, I just listed what I tend to use. If you can open from behind a pillar or around a corner, that's best, but even when you can't you cam stack aoe control 3-4 powers deep to limit return fire.

Attack Chain is: Stalagmites, Freezing Rain, EarthQuake, Cages, hold, hold, hold. Later on, Stalagmites, Freezing Rain, Earthquake, Cages, Hold, Lightning Storm, hold, Tornado, Hold, cages, etc. If you can target from around a corner, out of line of sight, then it's Earthquake, Freezing rain, turn corner and Stalagmites. I tend to hold volcanic gasses for emergencies. Somewhere in there you will want to do quicksand as well. Once you have your epic, after the first three powers, you will jump in the middle and do a fissure and thunderclap in there to stun all the bosses(stacked with stalagmites). You have so many good powers, it's hard to fit them all in, and in a fast moving group you will probably alternate with Stalagmites, earthquake, then stalagmites, freezing rain every other group. You can mix it up depending on what you're facing but that's the basics.

I agree with Canifax, you don't need perma PA, but the less down time it has, the better. With /Time you have Chronoshift that can help with recharge so getting good recharge on PA doesn't take as many hoops to jump through. The to hit debuff aura combined with spectral terror should help you make it through the time hen PA is down. If you expect to solo AVs, you will want to perma PA. Honestly, I tend to use Chronoshift as an emergency heal rather than a recharge buff, so my PA on an Ill/Time controller would probably suffer from that usage. Essentially with Illusion, you will be confusing useful LTs and some bosses, while holding other bosses, all while letting PA and Spectral terror deal with agro. With time, you get a second single target hold, which will make locking down bosses a breeze. You will want a pool attack of some sort (flurry maybe) to help with single target dps, as Illusion doesn't get a lot of options for containment making AOE damage harder to leverage. Generally I tend to hold something and spectral wounds it, then move on, slivering mobs for PA to finish off. While doing that you keep the bosses confused or held, then deal with them last. That's sort of Illusion in a nutshell.

I would probably recommend Earth as well, you will be in the middle of the mobs for your Hot Feet to be working, which is exactly where you want to be for Fissure and Seismic Smash. With Ice, you have to get outside the mobs to line up frost breath, which is a great power, but works much better with a controller who is staying at range. If you find yourself spending most of your time at range, then perhaps Ice would be better. Earth's Embrace, if slotted is a good heal and doesn't take you out of the fight like Hibernate does. The nice thing about /Storm is that there is so much KD that you can be in the middle fairly safely.

This would probably put a cramp in some of your desired min-maxxing, but when I made my Fire/Storm/Earth I went with a concept I had been wanting to try for a while which was making heavy use of Gale as a control power. I named her Gail Warning. I ended up 5 slotting Gale for end reduction, accuracy, and recharge along with the kb to kd. It is wildly effective. I was on a +4/Kill most ITF this weekend and was able to completely shut down pretty much everything with her using a build that's a lot less optimal than yours. Just a thought, it's really fun and surprisingly effective, giving much more control/safety than Fire/Storm would otherwise have. I just noticed you left out Thunder Clap. You realize that with Flashfire + Thunderclap you can aoe stun bosses ... I think it's one of the better combo's available to this build.

I mostly play controllers, and for whatever reason, the designers put a massive chunk of our DPS into our pets. Think of putting up with our pets as the price you have to pay for the buffs, debuffs, and control we dish out. I've always loved pet classes, and control classes, and getting both in one in controllers is literally the best of all worlds for me, so if I get blocked at a doorway or pushed around once in a while, that's OK with me. If they were weaker I would maybe not bother, but as it is, unless the team is steam rolling so fast I am not doing much anyway, the pet contributes enough to be worth it. On a really fast team, I will often not bother putting it out.

I tend to run a character up to vet level 9-15 where they are pretty well IOed, and have mostly rare incarnates. At that point, I make something else I have been wondering about or wanting to try. I dig those 50s out from time to time, but mostly I am engaged on the journey. So if you gave someone enough to finish their build, it was probably appreciated, but also likely led to that char being stabled, since it was now complete. There are quite a few people who will get into a new game, play hard to 50, do a lot of the post 50 content, then quit and find another game. It doesn't matter how much you give or don't give them, they weren't going to stay anyway. For the most part, if they are going to stay, a big gift could go a long way, since it can fund a lot of experimentation/exploration of the game. I think most people don't stay though. Of the 9 friends and family I started Homecoming with, one is still playing regularly and he had played for years before sunset. So I think you are looking at only 5% or less who will stick around for any real time. Maybe smaller gifts (60millionish) spread out more might be more likely to actually help someone who is going to stick with the game.

55. I started CoH about two weeks after launch, but didn't really get into it until 3 years later after ED.

As roleki said, Fire/Dark is very strong, both solo and on teams. Like /Kin you will be following your Imps into the middle of things, and have enough to hit debuffs and defense buffs to make your team very hard to hit. Damage output isn't what /Kin is, but it's a VERY safe build, and you can toggle pull groups to stack them up at a corner for the aoe debuffs and hot feet, and to keep your imps together for heals. With epic pool aoe attacks, you will clear groups of bad guys pretty quickly. The Dark Pet heals often enough and well enough that I mostly use my heal as another debuff rather than really needing to heal. I would definitely recommend it, it doesn't play like anything else really.