Coyote

Do we know that this can be done? The details that I recall seeing on powers do have the ability to set up multiple Hold levels on a target, escalating with time.... but I don't recall seeing a way to CHANGE the base stats of the power regarding activation. Now, different powers CAN be activated from the same base power like fast snipe vs insta snipe, but that's checked at power activation. Is it really possible for a toggle to change its user-affecting statistics like the Endurance cost AFTER it has been activated? I don't know that it can't be done, but I don't recall seeing a power where this shows that it CAN be done.

1: take the Confuses 2: slot damage procs into Dominate, as you will have Confuse to deal with stacking mez on hard Bosses 3: put the Overwhelming Force Dam/KB-KD IO into Tornado instead of the Sudden Acceleration one, if you can afford it, to get more Damage enhancing out of it.

No, he said Kinetics, not Time Manipulation 😛 😛 😆

Rad superteams are such a popular concept that I would be surprised if you couldn't find some SGs running teams of them on every server. It's not a strong debuffing or buffing set alone though it does cover a lot of buffs/debuffs, but exactly because it covers a lot of areas weakly it lends itself superbly to stacking.

1: Late game is all about damage, and the secondary build constraint is Defense, so your secondary doesn't have that much effect on the character's ability. Fire Blast is an excellent high-damage primary, so the combination will be fine if you build for Defense and just blast. 2: Ninja is a subpar secondary, though it has a few useful powers as you level. It can work, though it will lean a bit more on Fire Blast and Defense than most Blaster builds. The powers to look at and consider using are: 1: the single-target Hold. This can be increased to very high damage with procs. Not as much of a benefit to Fire Blast, though, than to other sets that may not do as much single-target damage. 2: the PBAoE sword attack. This is a pretty weak attack at base, but its long recharge means that it has unusually high chances to activate damage procs. Throw in as many damage procs as you can (including the purple one, since Inferno does so much damage that it doesn't need procs too badly), and I think it ends up topping 400 damage per use, which is excellent when good global Recharge bonus and Hasten can get it down to used once or twice every spawn. 3: the cone Confuse. This kinda sucks because the Confuse isn't guaranteed, until you get Contagious Confusion into it. At that point, it's less about the power's statistics, than about a delivery mechanism for 10 chances to activate Contagious Confusion on every spawn, which is great.

I don't know. There are sometimes problems presented to you, but I don't usually feel like they're trumping me. Sometimes (mostly AVs), it happens. Example: my Plant/Savage Dominator ripped through mobs and missions like a lightsaber through hot butter... and really hit a speed bump with Nemesis and Rularuu, because they have large groups that resist Confusion. So I had to figure out some other methods of handling them, but eventually I did. But on the AV side, I had nothing I could figure out to handle Lanaruu the Mad and had to give up on completing that TF. So... most of the problems that you see in the game that seem to attack your weakness ARE a problem, but are rarely a true trump card. More often they are just a problem.

Excellent summary. Making characters with basic sets of IOs is quite fine as long as you get the powers that interest you. The highly tuned "perfect combination of set bonuses" is just the extra tweaks that take up 90% of the build time for the last 10-20% of the character's effectiveness... not the kind of tuning to worry too much about as a new character. For starters, make the right characters, use the right powers, and leave the most complicated aspect (IO sets) for the future.

Remember, the "fear" component from Water Spout is teh "run away" fear, no the Terrorized effect that has them cowering in place. My build: Dark/Savage Dominator (because regardless of the number of powers, it's hard to beat Domination-powered Fearsome Stare for perma-fear on one spawn, plus Domination-powered Invoke Panic for perma-fear on another spawn). The only worry I have is that after Savage Charge into a spawn, then HoD, then Rending Flurry... who's left to scare? 😛

He's right in all that, but I would strongly suggest swapping Ice Bolt out for Frost Breath. Put lots of procs in Frost Breath, because the smaller area factor of a cone coupled with the long recharge mean that they have a very high chance to activate. You can get Frost Breath up to 400 damage or so, and it's available every spawn, and that's far rarer and more important for a Controller than another single-target attack. If you really feel the need for a single-target attack, I would drop Maneuvers (or CJ) and pick up a single-target attack from the pools (Arcane Bolt or Toxic Dart are probably the best options).

I have not sapped an AV yet... elite bosses and bosses have been sapped, and do not seem to run a lot. Many times I'm surprised to see them just standing around the fight, waiting to get back Endurance, eventually. I was actually surprised to see so little fleeing. Although I do agree that an AoE Immob is really useful, but that's more for the fire patches from the ISMs.

Beasts should work fine with both Dark and Rad, since both have toggles ToHit debuffs and PBAoE heals that make you want to go into melee range and fight there. So you get into the fight along with the beasts, and draw the aggro inwards so there are fewer runners, and overall it should work fine. You will have an issue with mezzes directed at you, and with AoE mezzes thrown at both you and the pets, but frankly that's common for MMs with a lot of secondaries. Especially ones with melee-oriented henchmen.

I wouldn't say that it wouldn't work. I mean, you'll lose some protection for the beasts as they run out of the cage (and more importantly, out of chain range for heals and absorption refreshes), but in many cases they'll chase down stragglers, at which point they're not in great danger. You may have to resummon a bit more than if you're using Cold or Thermal or some other set where the protection goes with the beasts, but it's not going to be such a major issue that it will break the character.

They're solid but not great, and have a nice option to flip between offensive and defensive stances by using Fortify Pack. They have to attack in melee, so even though they are fast, they will be a lot more efficient if you can group the spawn for them. For EA specifically, this would keep them in the radius of the chains and Faraday Cage... so you may wish to consider using Provoke, or else a set with a toggle debuff that will draw aggro to you so that you can pull spawns to corners and such in order to group them. I run them with Nature and that's an excellent pairing. With EA, I would prefer to use pets that are mostly ranged... Mercs, Bots, Demons, Thugs.

Nature, Rad, Dark, and Time all work well. I think so would Pain Domination. The first four have toggle debuffs that can be used to group spawns, and the last one stacks -Resist with the solid resists of Beasts. EA is an excellent set, but works best when the henchmen are all grouped together for the buffs and heals. However, Beasts run all over the place, even worse than Ninjas (Ninjas at least have an AoE Immob from the Oni, and some ranged attacks, so they'll at least slow down in chasing everyone). So they won't be in the Faraday Cage for protection, and they won't be in the area for the chaining powers, unless you corner-pull mobs with Provoke. It'll be playable because both are solid sets, but it will have positioning issues. One good thing is that the +Recharge from Energizing Circuit will make it easier to run perma-Fortify Pack if you wish to go for that kind of build.

Acid Arrow doesn't use a pseudopet, it's just direct power effects, some instant and some over time. So Tactics and global accuracy will help with it. Pseudopets aren't affected by tactics. Well, they are, for the duration of one Tactics pulse, which I think is 2 seconds.

Great job. A far truer test of gamer grit than taking a FOTM and seeing if you can beat a 50 minutes time with it. I didn't think the PBAoE Nictus problem could be solved with Ninjas, and I'm happy to see that inspired play shows I was wrong. Personally, I'm waiting for TA buffs before I start my own "to ninfinity and beyond" masochism 😉

Do not proc it out, due to its short recharge it won't activate the procs too much. On some builds I slot it out because you only get your next ranged attack with Call Hawk, so I wanted to have a way to kill runners without having to aggro the next spawn or to fight AVs without having to go into melee. But when I slot it out, I only look at the set bonuses... Decimation, Devastation, or Thunderstrike, depending on what bonuses I need. Procs are used only for being part of a set I'm using already.

No, they're great powers until you get to steamrolling teams at max level. But when you're on those teams, then 90% of the powers for most characters are useless, so it doesn't matter if you ended up taking some powers that were only useful while levelling up or when exemplaring. And they don't need that many slots, either. Do not skip Rad Infect, Lingering Rad, or Enervating Field... they're too useful at lower levels. And they're useful if you're on smaller teams or soloing at higher levels, when spawns don't die so fast.

Although it is a Tier 9 power, I don't have any problems with requiring the character to add more mezzes to the Bosses, whether Holds, more Confuse, or Sleeps (it's not like the set doesn't have enough), in order to guarantee safety. A single power that can provide enough safety to clear a +4x8 spawn without having to worry much about Defense or other powers seems overpowered. If you give the character 25-30 seconds of safety, that's long enough to clear the minions, Confuse the LTs with single-target Confuses that will then have them fighting for you, and Hold 1-2 Bosses. If there are 2 Bosses, you may have to Confuse them instead of the LTs, which is also doable by using Terrify to keep the Lts inactive. I think that Mind Control would still easily have enough tools to be safe while clearing a spawn, but it doesn't all have to come from a single power that, because it's so good, then makes the rest of the set's control superfluous. Remember, while Plant has damage but not much backup control, Mind is loaded with controls to back up an every-spawn Mass Confuse even if the confusion doesn't last long enough to clear the spawn. Especially since it's loaded with single-target controls, and you're likely down to the Bosses by the time that the confusion wears off. Lastly, I'm not sure that you can't clear a spawn fast... I remember fighting Vahzilok with a Plant Dominator... and some spawns, depending on how they aggroed on each other, literally fell to pieces in 5-6 seconds. Granted, that's because Vahz do ridiculous damage at short range so they kill each other FAST, so other mobs won't kill themselves off so quickly. But this isn't a question of doing enough damage to clear a spawn in 30 seconds by yourself... the mobs are going to be helping you do the clearing. Heck, sometimes you'll need to rush to do damage so you get credit for everyone before the two Bosses fire AoEs and erase the minions for you. I'm really not expecting much of an issue with having a large portion of a spawn survive to the 30 second mark. Post-lastly, if we're talking +4x8, my opinion is that this would be a highly tuned build, and may well have capped Defenses, solid Resists, and probably if it's having problems clearing a spawn in time, an Alpha slot that boosts the Confuse duration by about another 5 seconds.

But if you lowered the recharge to 120 seconds, a high recharge build will have it up in 30 seconds or so. So, a 20 second base duration, enhanced, will push that to over 30 seconds. So 120/20 would be easily permanent on +1, maybe +2s at the high end. 37 is easily boosted to over 60 seconds, which is just all kinds of overkill. I think we'd be better off if we're willing to trade off some duration, with regards to persuading Devs to lower the Recharge of MC. So there's my vote: trade down as much Duration as is necessary to get it to 120 seconds, and if they're willing to drop it down to 90 seconds (or, Gods of Balance forbid, 60 seconds), then keep trading. At that point, we'll be using it every spawn, which is beyond awesome even if it's only enhanced to 30 seconds or so. It would have to be a pretty low damage build to not kill off all the Minions by then even against +3s, and have the Bosses permanently Confused in any case. Still, to be honest, while it would be lovely to get a set-capper like a fast-recharge Mass Confusion out there... Dominators are fine. Fixes to MindMasters should probably look at Telekinesis, fast-recharge Mass Hypnosis, or other ways to set up Containment more regularly.

Wait, did they change Amp Up? On the test shard, it did NOT boost +Defense powers. It SAID that it did in the power description, but that seems to have been a copy-paste from other Power Boost - type powers. Unlike the majority of Power Boost powers, at least in testing, Amp Up was not actually boosting the effects of +Defense powers despite claiming that it did. I recall specifically thinking that it would be great with Thugs and Robots for boosting the AoE Defense powers, or with Demons or Ice Control to boost the Smash/Lethal Defense of the Demon Prince or Jack Frost... and had to shelve that idea.

Yes, and with a large AoE, the chance for a proc to activate is pretty small. Most procs are used in longer-recharge pwoers that recharge faster due to global recharge bonus, and pet powers can't take advantage of the global recharge bonus. Note, however, that in a way Freezing Rain can.... increasing Recharge (and global recharge) gets it out faster, so it gets more chances to proc, etc. However, the real problem with FR is that the rain patch only lasts 15 seconds, so you only get two rolls at a relatively low chance. If it were like other powers that have long debuffs because the patch itself remains for a long while, like Distortion Field, so it got more rolls with each proc, it would be a much more useful place to stick a proc. Now, all that being said... FR usually has slots to spare. And if you're using it a lot (and you pretty definitely are), and Tornado and Lightning Storm are usually wanting 8 slots or so, it might be better to stick a proc in FR to get it out there even at a lower chance, than to put it in another power that doesn't get used that much, or to make room for it in Tornado or LS.

You might try to change RAdioactive Cloud to have like 2 IOs for Accuracy/Hold/Recharge, and 4 damage procs. You can get it to around 300 damage that way, making it like a lower-damage version of your main nuke. And with the AoE damage of a Blaster, minions should be dead by the time the Hold wears off even if it's not fully enhanced, and if you're alternating Aim and BU you don't need to worry about Accuracy too much. This would probably make a better rolling style where you can nuke-hold every spawn rather than just doing the damage with your opening AoE Hold on every other spawn. I thought of making a Rad/Atomic, and that would be my plan if I do.

Hehe, and other Ninja jokes. "...and disappearing in a puff of smoke.... from a Fireball, not from their own smoke" "...and run to the nearest morgue" "...I wouldn't be watching them, since I'd be too busy re-summoning them" 😄 Heh, yeah, the Ninja comment was just because I was thinking about pairing high-offense/low-defense primary with a high-defense/low-offense secondary. I'm not sure if EA would work well at all with Ninjas, and probably the only way it would is to make a brawling Mastermind, using Defibrillate as a PBAoE drain to stack with Discharge, run in the middle of mobs and drain them, and add in Thunder Strike or KO Blow to make it worthwhile. Then they wouldn't run out quite so much because you'd be in the middle of the spawn with them, and they might survive if they just go to chase a single straggler. At least, until they chase that straggler into another spawn and die too fast to even register damage.

Just my 2 cents, is that Mass Confusion is actually crippled by its long duration. I mean, who cares if the duration were halved if that got us a 90 second recharge? Heck, even 120 second recharge, with half the duration, would turn it into an awesome power. Right now you can make it permanent, so if you halved both it would remain permanent, and what more do we really need? Personally, I'm willing to drop the duration as much as necessary in order to get the recharge down... heck, even if it means lowering the duration:recharge ratio. If it were like Seeds but at half the duration of Seeds because it's non-aggro... that would seem both fair and a great power. Well worth a Tier 9 set defining power. The amount of damage or control you could put out in half the duration of Seeds should be quite enough to solve any issues.