Riverdusk

Yep, I always consider that as long as you hit at least 2, which isn't hard, it is worth using.

Don't believe so. Those all seemed to be listed as [all damage]. Soul drain is the only special one I've found so far that lists out all the damage types that it buffs separate and then leaves off toxic.

At level 50 GenCon does 9.38 base damage every 2 seconds. At max soul drain adds +150% damage (10 targets is (50%) +10% x 10)). 9.38 x 1.5 = 14. 14 extra damage in gencon x 10 targets = 140 x 15 tics during that 30 seconds = 2,100 potential damage lost every 30 seconds. Soul drain in top builds can be close to perma. Best case scenario of course, but I'd say that is a concern to me. YMMV. Still doesn't answer my question regardless. It just seems like a strange oversight. Probably because there was no toxic damage available in a secondary when soul drain was created, so they didn't even think about it.

So, looking at this combo and it was looking good until I happened to notice Soul Drain buffs literally every damage type EXCEPT toxic for some reason. Bio's damage aura happens to be...toxic damage. I double checked it on the beta server to make sure it wasn't just a text oversight and confirmed Soul Drain had no effect on the damage of genetic contamination. That is a major drag as of course giving dark melee some AoE damage it otherwise lacks is pretty nice. Should this be reported as an oversight/bug? Or do people think this was done on purpose for some reason? The text of soul drain certainly doesn't say anything about excluding toxic.

An Illusion/rad would be better off speeding Ouro missions and/or TF's to rack up merits to sell I'd think. To me that's a more enjoyable playstyle anyway, but to each their own of course.

Just curious why you have acrobatics? I've taken it on some just for the bit of hold protection, but not really needed in this case since you have force field gen. Clarion seems a bit redundant for same reason. If going for a support build maybe throw in group invisibility instead? It does stack with superior.

If you already have a brute click on powers, combat attributes, base, rt click on damage bonus. You'll be able to monitor it for yourself and get an idea.

Yep, traps is one of the best solo sets going. Both illusion and gravity I'd consider especially strong to go with traps. If you still want the force field type theme, traps is also a good substitute for it since it also has a force field. Have a 50 illusion/traps myself and it is a solo machine.

That and more for stone melee. Stone melee is such a fun smashy feeling set, to me it signifies how a brute should "feel" more than any other melee set. However, it's one and only real AoE power (tremor) is absolute garbage with the now old 3.3 sec activation time and whopping 12.64 base DPA because of it. Added insult that tremor is the tier 9 power that you'd think would feel extra good. Tremor even being lowered to "only" 2.5 seconds activation would make it at least a little more decent. Love seeing the boost for the dom version though!

So, a mind controller? 😀

One tip I read a long time ago back on live forums that can help cut down on that is to set up a macro to put them into an emote stance whenever you are not fighting, something like holdtorch or atease. That stops their yelling which they do when they are idle.

Also doubles its psi resistance. Ninjitsu as a set can get amazing psi resistance because of this.

Minor thing I know, and I know some people love them of course, but I find animated gifs annoying and distracting (like the dancing/flashing avatars people choose). It is why to this day I don't have them enabled in Twitch chats. Any way to disable them here? To be clear, it'd just be an option for those that choose not to see them, I don't mean globally.

Still say there is no need for the 15% to hit penalty aoe holds have at this point, which is worse since it is basically a tohit penalty, not accuracy. It is just insult on top of injury. And I'm not counting on a bunch of IO accuracy set bonuses just to make my pathetic aoe hold hit at a rate that all other powers hit at a baseline. Looking it up on paragonwiki against +4 enemies a normal attack with base 75% tohit gets reduced to 39. The aoe holds have a base of 60% tohit, which I would think means it'd be down to 24%. Not sure where you are getting 43% from? Unless that info is out of date or I'm not understanding it.

You'd need not only a ton of global recharge to pull this off reliably, but a lot of global accuracy bonuses as well. Not sure even tactics alone would be enough considering the accuracy penalty aoe holds have, unless you are fighting even level stuff. The accuracy penalty the powers have is something else I think should be done away with regardless.

Probably the most "noob" friendly set is plant control. Seeds of confusion that you get at the low level of 8 is a game changer. I'd suggest giving that one a try. Secondary almost doesn't matter.

Good topic. They definitely need something. Even regardless of the nuke buffs, my favorite controller is illusion, which has probably the worst of the worst AoE hold powers in flash. PBAoE and a horrible animation time on top of its already lackluster effect. It is a definite skip. Heck, you don't even need to look at nuke buffs, oftentimes controls/holds in secondary sets are better at controlling than the controller primary aoe hold. EM Pulse, distortion field, and poison trap I'd throw out as examples. I'd take any of those over flash, no question.

Same. And it is easier than ever now to keep base buffs up by using the slash command /enterbasefrompasscode <your base passcode> . It will tp you to your base from wherever, when done use the exit portal and it will put you right back to where you were before the tp. Literally takes just a few seconds to get that 1.5 hour buff now.

I rolled an ill/rad controller like I was supposed to, I guess. The character is stuck at, I think, 42; she still has grossly inadequate mezz protection for soloing, and is both fiddly and fiercely boring on teams, and gets harassed for buffs from the brute who ran well ahead of everyone else. The only worse experience in the game is being 'the kin'. If I ever do get her to 50 I'm sure she'll be popular because she's 'the rad' and get invited to the exclusion of my tankers, sentinel, or blaster. I would run her like my fire/regen scrapper in the service of the characters I want to play: but once you start talking incarnate content, most routes to play for the benefit of other characters are cut off. Illusion/traps solves the mezz protection thing and you don't get harassed for buffs. It could still be labeled as "fiddly" though with all the traps set up. Main fiddly problem I have is with force field gen getting stuck on something, not keeping up, or blowing up at the wrong time. On fast teams of course you don't have time to set up much unless you run ahead and you aren't as "wanted" as a rad is, even though your debuffs are actually more powerful. Despite all that, I'm enjoying mine very much so far. Certainly not a farming character, but for one to "take on the tough challenges" and being able to solo practically anything, it should be near the top of the list. Yet, you almost never hear about it. More fun to me than the famous bots/traps or yes, illusion/rad, I do hear raved about all the time for similar qualities. Last bonus, one of the very few combos where trap's web grenade that you are forced to take is actually useful. An immobilize for illusion which it lacks otherwise. Easy containment damage setup, no running AV's.

With how often purple inspirations drop (at least solo), another more reachable goal is to go for 32.5% defense. Then with one even small purple, you are capped. If you are in a group chances are good someone else is going to have some kind of defense buff to help you. Sometimes people get a little obsessive about the 45%, and I can understand why as it is nice, but in the vast majority of cases it really isn't needed. Especially when you start considering all the controls and other debuffs a controller in particular typically has access to. Even on my /traps controller that has a huge head start with the +10% defense force field generator I'm only planning on hitting mid 30's defenses (to everything in his case). Instead I concentrated more on recharge and adding some resistances to round him out more.

Someone cast this on me just the other day it was still doing the translucent shadow effect with the glowing eyes and the annoying flickering. I personally strongly dislike the graphic effect of it, as even though some may like it, heck even if I liked it, I'm against forcing such a drastic appearance change on my teammates. For the simple fact I know a lot of the appeal of this game for many is creating a "look" for their character. Having a buff that so drastically affects the appearance of all my teammates with no option on their part I think is a bad design choice for this game. Was the same reason I so wanted a minimal fx option on Cold's ice shields.

A solo Defender gets a 30% damage boost. Couple that with aggressive Debuff'ing of enemy resistance and defense, and well-slotted attack powers? Compared to a fairly baseline (IOs but no sets) Sentinel? Sure, I can see it. But, as I'm sure you will agree, that's a ridiculously biased comparison, there. Yep, as I said he offered no qualifiers, making a blanket statement, which is pretty ridiculous, and potentially misleading as it was during a conversation where someone was asking about whether sentinels were worth playing in particular.

Hyperbole, much? Sentinels stand at range. Shorter range than Blasters, sure. But still at range. As for damage? Blasters: 1.000 melee, 1.125 range Sentinels: 0.95 melee, 0.95 range Defenders: 0.550 melee, 0.650 range Corruptors: 0.750 melee, 0.750 range Sentinels, clearly, are MUCH closer to Blasters than Defenders (or even Corruptors) in terms of damage potential, especially in melee. Meanwhile, their defense scale is 0.700 .... just short of Scrappers at 0.750. Essentially, they are a Blaster with Scrapper secondaries, and then all of it watered down just a tiny bit to keep from becoming an all-powerful Tankmage. I actually saw someone in help channel the other day insisting that defenders do better damage than sentinels. Of course he might be right in very specific combo's (say kinetic/sonic), but of course he didn't qualify it and just called the whole AT junk. I didn't even bother getting into it with him beyond the silent facepalm I did.

He said in another post he wants to run dual blades, so suggesting shield isn't going to work for him. My suggestion is to just go with Ninjitsu if that's what you want. It may not be the absolute "uber" choice, but especially with the right IO's it will do great. Pre-IO's it is actually one of the better choices. Good defense as well as a heal and endurance regain powers and a built in stealth/travel power makes for a very easy time in "normal" content. I'm not an expert in it as my katana/Ninj is only lvl 31, but mine has been amazing so far and one of the easiest leveling scrappers I've tried. As I said in another thread it almost feels like a scrapper/stalker hybrid to me with the way it plays. The build I have planned anyway, I still manage to get around 50% s/l resist and around 40% to most others (including toxic). It can actually be one of the best sets at psi resist as it's psi resist is on a click that can stack, so psi would be pretty easy to cap actually. Only resistance "hole" on mine is energy/neg which is only around 20%. That was just my first tentative build try. Also, we're talking scrapper here, some combos might be a bit better than others, but in the end they are all just different levels of awesome.

Great summary. Also doesn't take into account the scrapper ATO's which increase crit rates. I'm not sure how those compare to the brute ATO's.