Coyote

Time is a good secondary. And you could call the character Bullet Time 😉

Plant/Savage

The Clockwork Rebellion. Or, A Game of (Clockwork) Thrones. Wherein an alliance of upgraded Barons and Dukes rebel against their rightful ruler, the Clockwork King. And to prevent a Clockwork War (and her friend from going insane), Penny forms a TF to defeat the Rebellion. Babbage is the "end AV", controlled by a cabal of Elite Boss - level Clockwork Princes.

Plant clears spawns better than any other Controller set. They fight for you because they're Confused so they kill each other, then your AoE Immob does double damage compared to others, and later Carrion Creepers really do a lot of AoE damage. Its weakness is single-target damage, with all Smash/Lethal damage. Load up the Hold with a lot of damage procs, as many as you can afford, and also slot up the Immobilize. Now you need a 3rd single-target attack... you can go with Project Will (and then Weaken Resolve can get slotted with damage procs and an Achilles Heel), or you could drop Force of Will, and slot up Paralytic Poison with 3 damage procs (4 at 50). Either method will get you enough single-target damage to solo AVs. Note that, as @Frosticus said, much of this is DoT damage, so it won't feel as high when you're trying to finish off straggles in a spawn. But damage procs aren't DoT, and so relying on them will push more damage up front and help with quicker spawn clearing. Personally, I skipped the Willpower pool... not enough slots for everything, plus the Stone Mastery pool later (for Fissure and Seismic Smash), so I couldn't properly slot its powers up. I like the pool, it's useful for a Controller since Wall of Force can do over 100 damage as a decent AoE plus set up a Force Feedback proc, but Plant/Poison is pretty slot hungry.

There are no cooldowns. The percentage chance of the IO activating in Stamina every 10 seconds is such that it will AVERAGE one activation every 90 seconds, but it's not guaranteed, and there is no lockout on it. Similarly, the chances of the IOs in the attacks activating will result in an average activation of once every 90 seconds (assuming spamming the attacks, but with no global recharge), for each attack separately... but each attack could get lucky and have the proc activate on consecutive power activations. It's all based on percentages, not cooldowns or lockouts.

They use an AT modifier like other attacks, so the base damage will be lower. However, they do benefit from Containment, so they end up pretty decent after you mez a target.

Mind is a good primary for Dominators since it really works well with the Domination mechanism. Dark secondary is not impressive at all, but it's not bad, either. Its ToHit debuffs make up for when Mind's hard control lapses, or helps survive return fire from mobs that are feared by Terrify but still able to shoot back. Damagewise it's not impressive but okay. I think everything in Electric is good, so it's kinda hard to skip anything. Frankly, going for a draining build, I'd skip the AoE Hold since AoE Immobilize + End Drain = permaHold. Static Field and Synaptic Overload are available every fight and useful, and Conductive Aura is part of the End Drain plan. OH, for a Dominator, skip the single-target Immobilize... you can drain a single target with Tesla Cage plus Jolting Chain, and generally will have a Boss Held anyhow. It's needed for a Controller's damage, but a Dominator will have better attacks. So that gives you two powers to skip. Frankly, the AoE Hold is a useful power with 4 Basilisk's Gaze IOs for a nice Recharge bonus, so I would try to take it, but it's not useful in every fight like the other powers.

Electric also works well with cheap sets because it can rely on an Endurance drain mechanism for safety, but then you pair with a secondary that is short range. Electric works well with Earth, Savage, Martial, Thorns, and Energy. Maybe Ice also.

Sounds like a standard build in the 20s for me, bar a Panacea and the two +Def uniques, maybe. Otherwise, it's probably impossible for an AT without an armor set to cap defenses in the 20s or probably even in the mid 30s, even with the best IOs that you can buy. You'd need to be an exemplared character so you could have slotted more sets for set bonuses, even if you do lose some enhancement values due to exemplaring, in order to be running this arc with soft-capped non-armor characters. I think that story arcs should be balanced around characters leveling up at that level, not around exemplared characters with max slots and full IO set bonuses.

This is your Sustain power. It gives you back Endurance and Health when you're running it. Well, not all of them give Health (regeneration)... some actually do give Health (regular healing ticks), and some give Absorb. But it all has the same function. All of them should be 6-slotted. If nothing else, max out a Healing set in there... Preventive Medicine for the Recharge, or Numina's for the Ranged Defense. If you wish to mix, if you feel the character's Endurance recovery needs more help, you can mix it mostly with Healing, and with some Endurance Modification since they're stronger than Stamina. Personally, I feel the base endurance recovery on top of Stamina is good enough, and just slot them for Health/Absorb and set bonuses.

Blasters don't inherently do more damage in melee. But they do get access to a 2nd set of attacks, and this may mean getting access to some better ones. For example, Water/Electric... Electric has Charged Brawl and Shocking Grasp (usually slotted with some Hold procs), while Water Blast is known for low single-target DPS. Alternately, Ice/Fire... Ice covers single-target DPS very nicely, but Frost Breath and Ice Storm don't clear spawns as fast as the much faster DoT and higher damage of the PBAoE Fire attacks. Lastly, you can set up AoE attack chains that are complete... Electric/Fire and Rad/Fire, I think, can just run PBAoE/AoE attack cycles with good enough Recharge. In addition, there are some other PBAoE effects. /Electric has two PBAoE knockdown powers, helping you juggle mobs. Add to them an AoE from the primary with knockdown, and you have 3 AoE attacks doing knockdown. It may be safer in melee knocking everyone down, than at range with only one knockdown AoE. Not to mention all the Force Feedback opportunities. Not all combinations result in improved DPS either in single target or in AoE, nor necessarily in improved control abilities. But usually, most Blappers pick sets that benefit from being in melee in some way, and it's not always pure DPS, and even when it is, it's usually because of specific attacks being better, rather than melee attacks in general being better than ranged.

Just to note, Sentry mobs also have protection against Confuse effects, making it harder for some Control sets to handle them. They were probably the worst mobs for my Plant/Savage to face, especially as his secondary defensive method (high Ranged Defense) mattered even less than Seeds of Confusion. And just for kicks, by flying they're mostly protected against knockdown effects, too.

The first thing I would suggest is to make a Dom who doesn't play like a Dom. In other words, less focus on controls. This means looking at a Dom who can fire controls a bit, and then is free to rip face off. It could be Ice because much of its control is from a toggle so that frees you up for attacking, or it could be Plant with its use of a single fast-animating mez. Other sets like Dark and Earth can work if you slot up the AoE Stun for damage, and treat it as a AoE or PBAoE attack opener rather than as a long-term mez. Then, you concentrate on attacks. So get a secondary with fun attacks. Energy, Savage, Martial, and Earth all are interesting to me, though other players may have other preferences. My favorite, and first suggestion, would be Plant/Savage. Seed the lot of them, then jump in and start ripping faces off. Repeat until you meet Rularuu and cry.

Wow. Watkins sounds like a jerk. And the idea that a hero failing a mission is "dereliction of duty" goes against the concept of heroes... if you couldn't fail a mission except by dereliction of duty, then how much of a hero are you for succeeding in it? Not very much, if it's that easy. Leaving aside the fact that it wasn't that easy. But as a hero, you should be expected to take on small odds (but NEVER tell me the odds 😉 ), and thus, fail sometimes. It's part of the hero business, and therefore, so is failure. It shouldn't be considered so unusual.

I do recall a few other missions where the dialogue is annoying. Especially some "rescue so and so" and "prevent this from being destroyed", when I play at +1/x5 in the 20s. Good luck preventing splash damage from destroying the object in the first salvo, or in keeping so and so alive when he jumps into a fight... and then knocks back some mob into the next spawn. So I'm already annoyed that I failed because the idiot NPC got himself killed before my Blaster could save him, and then... the NPC who sent me there tells me how disappointed he/she is with me. And it is really annoying, I agree. Having a possible failure mission, then failing it (especially the first time you see it, when you're unprepared for all the tricks), and then being told off by an NPC for sucking as a hero, yeah, that makes want to reach into the screen and punch some NPC right in their favorite pixels. It is a bit of a dialogue failure here, especially with a pretty difficult mission that is not that hard to fail.

That was my feeling also... this arc is a lot tougher than older arcs, but it's in line with arcs from First Ward, actually easier than Night Ward, and comparable to the newer content both blueside and redside. And I prefer having the difficulty raised up with ambushes, weird opponents, and elite bosses, than some really nasty AVs.

I managed to squeak by the timer on that mission, but I do play at high difficulty, so I didn't think too much of it. So I didn't get to see the "failed mission" dialogue. I also wasn't too pleased with the dialogue at the start of the mission, it feels like the character is given several choices in the dialogue... and then railroaded into selecting the right one. If that was the design goal, I'd have preferred to have the dialogue just tell you what you're doing in the mission. So, dialogue-wise, I agree, it's a bit lacking in some ways. However, I don't think it's all that bad. I mean, it has a LOT of dialogue. With that much content, it's not a surprise that some of it is lackluster... but I'd rather have a lot of writing, than some story arcs that have very little writing, no choices, just "Ubelmann the Unknown" and finding out information after information about him, with little NPC dialogue, no choices, etc. Give me more writing, and I'll deal with the fact that not all of it will be top-notch. For the game mechanics, unquestionably, it's more challenging. It may well require lowering the difficulty level. But I managed it on the usual difficulty for that character, who was a MM (and thus extra vulnerable to all of the AoE fire and Zombicide explosions). Unquestionably, if you switch from Scroll of Tielikku to that arc, the difficulty level will surprise you. However, compare it to the other new arc in the 20s with the cloning, that ends in a fight against Protean... it's only a bit harder, but has an Elite Boss rather than an AV. Although each mission will actually be more challenging, overall it's probably easier to complete this on most characters than the Clone War arc. I mean, a Peacebringer in the 20s trying to fight Protean is likely to end up as sushi. Or fried calamari. Overall, given HOW MANY new and interesting things were put into a single story arc, and comparing it to Task Forces that use all normal mobs, little or no special dialogue, and only a special mob as the end AV, this is definitely way better than the average, IMO.

Huh. I really liked it. Lots of new enemy types, some with new tactics. Some interesting action point events in missions. The dialogue between the character and the agent was a bit forced for some kinds of characters, but that's about all that I didn't like.

Easy answer, I think: Illusion/Dark Illusion can tank basically anything, it can Deceive basically any combination of Bosses, and in the ridiculously few situations where it fails, /Dark puts out enough -Damage to tank basically anything through that. You would need Break Frees against mezzing AVs, but that's all you'd need to carry. Even in situations where tanking the direct source of damage isn't enough (for example, Lanaru the Mad summons Storm powers that are unaffected by debuffs or Taunt effects), you can move away from the storms and outheal their damage. Offhand, all I can think of that you'd bounce off would be Siege, because he needs like 400+ DPS to beat and without heavy investment in sets that may not be doable. But Siege isn't going to be beaten by any build without high-end sets anyhow. And a few multi-AV fights would be difficult, but those are generally only in Task Forces.

Dark Miasma is absolutely top tier when soloing. On teams that are steamrolling, its defensive abilities are usually irrelevant, and you generally want ways to increase the team's damage... +Damage, +Recharge, and -Res on the opponents. DM doesn't do any +Damage or +Recharge, and its -Res is slower to activate and slower to recharge, so if you're wiping spawns in 20 seconds or less, you won't have Tar Patch up for the next fight. At this point, you can help shut down the spawn's attacking ability, but if the team's defense are already strong enough (and in steamrolling teams they are), that's an irrelevant contribution. Thus, DM in the end game is only good in three situations: 1: soloing. Okay, it's great here. 2: teaming with weak teams. Okay, it's great here also, but usually there are enough good builds even on a PUG that it's a rare situation when a team is weak enough that there isn't already a Tank or someone else who can tank or control the spawns, even if it helps if the rest of the team is protected from adds. So it's useful sometimes, but not as much and not very often. And, unfortunately, if you get on a good team, it's superfluous. 3: against AVs. Stacking Tar Patches are good -Res, it does solid -Regen, and the -Damage that it puts out neuters most AVs. Granted, a lot of teams could tank AVs anyhow if they're doing missions that have them, but there are still plenty of times that a team can use a bit more AV neutering. But since most teams in the end game are steamrolling missions, or else organized for TFs by experienced players who generally have builds that can tank spawns or AVs... on most teams, it's not a useful set.

Couple of notes: 1: If the Blaster is defeating the spawn with an AoE attack (even, say a Build-Up/Aim and Nuke)... we're talking higher level Blasters. At this level, the Controller for most builds should have an AoE shutdown mez that neutralizes everyone except a Boss. So just as the Blaster is removing all the minions from being a threat, the Controller is doing the same for minions/lts, and then stacking Holds on the Bosses. So this adds a lot of protection. 2: The Defender heals/bubbles/whatever. The Controller's buffs/debuffs are not far behind the Defender, except that they follow an AoE mez that just shut everyone down. If the Defender's protection abilities are valuable, the Controller's slightly weaker abilities, with mezzes added, are far more valuable. And a personal experience: on Live, back when IOs were still pretty new and kitted-out leveling characters were almost non-existed, I remember my team saying "OMG, we're going to die horribly"... in the 20s, and I had the difficulty cranked up to max (this was back in the 4-difficulty-level system). So the spawns were +3/+4 to me, and 4/5 to most of the team, in the 20s. My Earth/Storm led the way, shut down the mobs, and we had zero deaths in a kill-all with a max sized team. Because all of the mobs were falling down over and over again, when they weren't Stunned or Held. Heck, I was the only one in any danger ever, because I was taking the alpha. That's the defensive ability of a Controller, and almost no Defenders come close. And that was with /Storm, not even one of the stronger defensive sets.

Not quite UniqueDragon level, but a fair effort. And... it took months to get a TW scrapper to the point where he can stay alive in a fight? What's his secondary, Tissue Paper Armor? My TW Brute only dies to every other Lieutenant, but at least he's /Regen, so I have an excuse 😝

I'd go for Plant, for Carrion Creepers, and Electric Affinity for Power. Or Kinetics. Plant/Kin is a power combination, too, so that makes it powerful as well as creepy.

I'm using it nicely on a Robots/EA MM, to group mobs up for the AssBot's Towering Inferno of Burnination. And to bunch them tightly so that I can use Electric Field's small 10' radius to Immobilize them in the flames. But the character is built to take aggro and has Provoke, so I don't have a need to use it out of LOS. While other characters may have a use for it, the character has to be able to take an Alpha. Or, for example, an Earth/Storm who sets up a killing field, then opens with Stalagmites and then Folds the mobs into the area of doom rather than wasting time bringing up Tornado, LS, and FR AFTER throwing Stalagmites. So if you can avoid the aggro with a ranged AoE mez, that can also work.

Dark Miasma, Storm, Time, or Traps for me when soloing. Sonic, Dark Blast, Water Blast, Dual Pistols, or Ice Blast would be my choices on the blast side. Also, some other choices may work like Fire Blast paired with one of the stronger defensive sets (Dark, Time).