Coyote

AVs will resist 85% or more of the debuff, which isn't really high anyway. Damage proc. In general, -Resist procs will help more against AVs, and damage procs will help more against Minions or LTs, and for Bosses I'm not sure but I'd lean towards the -Res.

Power Push is a ranged attack, not a melee, and in Mids it has the best DPA... I did think that I remembered some updates to Energy Assault that may have touched Power Burst, but Power Push on its own merits is excellent and I'd certainly take it ahead of Bonesmasher. And ahead of Power Burst in MIds, though I'd have to make a character to look at the in-game numbers to see if they're right or not.

Mind/Psy. Mind allows you to stack Confuses until the AV is confused, then switch to Holds, and it has a fast animation on the Hold so you can perma-Hold AVs. Drain Psyche helps with its -Regen. Other options: Mind/Fire (more damage, no -Regen... better against AVs with low Resists, worse against AVs with high Resists). Fire/Psy, Fire/Fire (no Confuse, so you start off with Holds... riskier, and you'll probably need Lucks to survive, but once the AV is Held it's pretty safe, and Fire adds damage that doesn't cut into your Holding cycle. Plant/Dark. Not as all-around against most AVs as the others since you're hover-tanking them, but with Tree of Life for Regeneration, and Dark's self-heal for healing, it has survivability. Electric/Psy. Not positive about this one, but it looks as if it should be able to End-drain an AV since Drain Psyche puts out 500%... you need about 670% to stop an AV (after level adjustments). Then the -Regen from Psy helps beat the AV's regen.

One more thing: the power to really not skip is Power Push. I'm not sure if there were updated to Energy Assault that aren't reflected in Mids Reborn, but in there it has the highest DPA, better than Power Burst and available earlier. It's also nice to have a guaranteed knockback (back or down if you put the Overwhelming Force Dam-KB2KD IO), and it has one of the best Accuracy bonuses, even better than a Snipe, allowing you to totally proc it out and still slot up the damage. Definitely take that first.

Fearsome Stare is the usual opener for Dark Control. With a 70' range and 45 degree cone it gets the whole spawn at longer ranges, and adds in about 11% To Hit Debuff. It's usually slotted for To Hit Debuff since that lasts through attacking the mobs, so slotted up it's about 15%. Over 20% with a Power Up version. It allows you to pretty safely throw Living Shadows to keep mobs from moving (and do damage, and add in about another 7% To Hit Debuff), and then go in for Heart of Darkness. Definitely way better than Shadow Field. With Power Up and slotted with 6x Cloud Senses, which has nice set bonuses and adds in some damage, FS+LS add up to over 35% To Hit Debuff in addition to the control effects. This is the real secret of Dark's defensive strength, not the actual control effects. Add in Heart of Darkness with 4 DAMAGE procs (for 250 damage or so), and that's over 45% To Hit Debuff along with a 34 second Stun or so (if you slot with 2x Acc/Stun/Rech in addition to the damage), and you're shutting down spawns, flooring the To-Hit of Bosses (leaving aside Domination), and doing about 350 AoE damage to boot. And you're in melee range at this point, so you throw in the usual Dominator PBAoE (Total Focus-Whirling Hands, for Energy Assault), and the minions in Whirling Hands' sphere are cleared. And the Boss is also Stunned since TF will stack with HoD. If you have Domination it's even nastier, but unlike a lot of Dominator builds it doesn't really rely on Domination since the -ToHit keeps you pretty safe.

Plant is a great set and works with pretty much anything, but it is short-ranged with its Immobilize and Hold. Both are worth using (the Immob is Mag 4 so it will Immob bosses in one shot), but you're drawn to being short range, so it will do well with other short-range blast sets that have good cones or PBAoEs. I"m doing Water/Plant and it's working and looking very well together. I'm also planning a Rad/Atomic... granted, it's an end-game build, but being able to rotate AoE Holds from spawn to spawn is nice. Rad works well with any other set that is oriented towards melee since it has a PBAoE and a radial AoE power that can be used well in melee. Avoid /Dark, the sustain has to hit, and it's annoying not having access to it outside of combat. If it had a way to stack like Drain Psyche, it might be a good option, but right now it's by far the worst sustain available. I'm running a Dark/Mental. They work fine, both have cones for a 3-cone AoE cycle. Dark/Energy is the other good pairing for Dark, because Boost Power + Dark's debuffs, heal, control are a great combination. And the cone Immob could use a range boost from Boost Range.

It depends on the set, but the truth is that Dominators going for perma-Dom will necessarily have good Recharge, so you don't need to take all of the attacks from the secondary. And most primaries have some power or two that can be skipped.... heck, I skipped half the powers on my Ice Dom, since, well, there isn't much there 😞 ... that leaves a lot of room for Power Pools. For Fire, I would skip either Ring of Fire or Fire Cages, as you don't need two Immobilizes, possibly Smoke, possibly Cinders. On the Ice side, it has a good amount of good attacks, but you can't use them all. IIRC, it has 3 ranged attacks and 2 ice sword attacks, plus using the single-target Hold, so that's definitely more than you need in any attack chain. 4 attacks is usually good enough, so if I were going full-ranged I'd take the blasts and the AoEs plus the boost power, and leave the swords alone. If I wanted to go melee, I'd take the swords and 1-2 blasts. A more balanced approach is 2 blasts, 1 sword, and the Fire Hold for damaging. Plus, of course, the AoEs.

It's not a great CONTROL set, but it's a great power set. I think it would work nicely for a Dominator who builds up their personal defenses, as there wouldn't be that much controlling, but a good amount of debuffing and the decoys would grab some of the incoming attacks. So set up some defenses, make sure you're not in melee with a +4 Boss without having it Held, and it could work very well. Now, as the main control character for a team, Illusion's not that great. But it solos great, and it can help teams since even a low-control Control set is still pretty good controlling.

Against AVs, with Illusion as the primary, you don't really need much defensive ability. So the great defensive buffs/debuffs of Dark are mostly wasted. Force Field Generator plus an epic armor is usually enough to survive the 1 shot an AV may take between PA summons, so it's all about offensive debuffs. Frankly, given Dark's defensive abilities, I would always suggest it NOT paired with Illusion just because it seems better to put Illusion with a weaker defensive secondary, and save Dark to use with combination where you actually face incoming damage, like Fire/Dark. On -Resist, they are pretty comparable. I think Dark can stack better, but Traps can put nice -Res procs in Acid Mortar, so I think Traps ends up ahead. On -Regen, there's no comparison. Dark puts out an average of about 500% debuff, varying based on whether Howling Twilight is up or not, while Traps puts out a permanent 1000% debuff (or more, since you can stack Poison Gas Traps). Permanent. 1000. You need 667% to shut down an AV's Regen if it doesn't have increased Regeneration, and with a level shift, a 54 AV is going to suffer 70% of the debuff, or a bit more than is needed to completely shut its regeneration down. No other set can do that.

Try this version: 1) Much higher base Defense values 2) Much more damage from the AoE powers... slotting Sudden Acceleration may help with global Recharge, but you still need to do damage 3) Much more damage from Seismic Smash... about 300 up to over 600. Yes, the hold duration is down. And so is the guy who got hit with it. 4) Better total Global Recharge, I believe. 5) Force Feedback procs in the AoEs, allowing for better AoE chaining in addition to doing more AoE damage. Which also helps with more knockdowns/ups.

1: Global procs in Spirit Tree will work, but not procs that are on a 2-minute timer like Regenerative Tissue. And also, since it's just slots, if that's what you want out of the power, then just 1-slot it with Preventive Medicine (that's a global so it will fire just for having it slotted), and move the other procs to Health. It's the same slots, and you have them available earlier. 2: Unleash Potential seems overslotted. 3: I would 6-slot the ATO set into Vines over 5-slotting the purple set, to get the extra Ranged Defense. 4: I don't know how the end usage is, but the best bang to fix it is to put the Theft of Essence proc in Rad Siphon. Frankly, that power should be frankenslotted since it can take ToE which is a great proc, Achilles which is also a great proc, and now you're down to 4 slots... better to 3-slot it for enhancement and stick a damage proc in there. 5: Fly Trap can probably be slotted well with 4 slots of that set, and that frees up a slot... put it into Combat Jumping, put in the Resist IO, and you get better overall resist bonuses than the 5th set bonus. 6: Carrion Creepers does very well with procs. I'd put Positron, Gladiator's Javelin, and Annihilation in there, then maybe Trap of the Hunter, then slot for Acc/Dam/Rech with the last 2-3 slots.

If you start off both Weave and Maneuvers with 2xLotG (Global Recharge and Def/End), you can afford to drop the purple set from Static Field, and then move the ATO set to Static Field. This frees you up to slot Chain for End Mod... and you can take a slot or two from Conductive Aura, it's over-slotted with End Mod right now. Another option is to do the above, and drop Chain Fences to about 2 slots (Accuracy/End Mod, probably), as it's good for sapping. Use the slots to put Apocalypse into Stone Spears. This way you keep the +10% Recharge from the Sleep set, gain the 15% from the 2 LotG, and get a better power slotted (Stone Spears over Static Field... Field is actually a better power, but doesn't need slots to be good, while Stone Spears does). If you can squeeze an extra slot, you could put another FF: Recharge in Stone Spears also.

I use just 1 Thunderstrike in Shadowy Binds, and 4 damage procs. It does more damage, and the great majority of it is front-loaded and doesn't care about Containment. For other Immobs, not all can take that many procs, but if they can... use them. I also hate waiting for the DoT 😞

No, because you won't be in Energy Focus mode.. you have to stick Total Focus in before Whirling Hands, as Oedipus said, in order to be in Energy Focus mode before firing Whirling Hands. You should have time in Power-Up's boost period to fire HoD - TF - WH for a lot of Stunning, Whirling, and Focusing. And Energy.

Best place to put the ATO Orb IO is in a PBAoE damage power if it takes it. For Earth, that's Fissure. Unfortunately, it breaks up the set, but the set doesn't have a Recharge bonus so that's fine. For the other ATO set, it should go in a commonly used mez that benefits from Recharge, other than a Confuse (because you probably want Contagious Confusion there). For Ele/Earth, the AoE Hold if you take it, and Static Field if you don't.

I agree that it's a good pairing, and also that it runs through Endurance pretty fast. Combat Jumping doesn't give such great Defense, I wouldn't spend the slots to slot it up. Sleet is low damage, it also doesn't need enhancing for Damage. I like Force Feedback: +Recharge in both Tremor and Fissure. And I would put the Fiery Orb ATO in Fissure, it should fire pretty often. Seismic Smash is probably your best attack, it deserves 6 slots including both the purple damage proc from Hold and from Melee. Maybe 5xHecatomb and the Hold proc. For Jack Frost, I would go with 6x Expedient Reinforcement to get both Recharge and Ranged Defense.

I actually like Trick Arrow with a Mind primary. It's probably the only way I'd play a Mind Controller... TA adds in damage by proc-slotting Ice Arrow and Acid Arrow, and later with Oil Slick Arrow, but the main thing is that now you get 3 AoE Holds/Confuses, and single-target versions to stack them. So every spawn you can AoE Hold then stack a ST Hold, and basically roll shutting down spawns. It's hard to manage it with Mind's Hold/Confuse alone since you need to really build up for Recharge if you want to rotate Total Domination/Mass Confuse, but as soon as you add a 3rd AoE mez, it becomes a lot easier. Even the longer recharge of EMP Arrow isn't a big deal when you only need it up every 3 spawns. And if you're willing to consider Oil Slick Arrow as a workable mez, you can go: Total Dom + OSA, Mass Confuse, OSA alone, EMP Arrow, and have 4 openers. Then you really don't have any recharge worries. The character becomes again the old City of Statues that the Devs frowned upon.

I'll be another one to echo: If you're going for a melee Defender, go with Time. Kinetics will help with DAMAGE (outgoing damage, heal incoming damage, debuff enemy damage), but it won't help with mezzing or debuffing. You'll have to make definite design concessions to handle the mezzing and debuffing. With Time, you will still have to worry about them, but with slower incoming attacks and most of them missing, you won't get mezzed nearly as much. You can't meleefend when you're meleedazed instead. Electric is another PBAoE option other than Rad and DP, allowing you to stack Holds with Time's Hold... with two Holds, you don't need to slot them up much as Hold, so you're free to put 4-5 damage procs in them.

Spectral Terror is REALLY GOOD. Deceive is a MUST HAVE. I would try to find room for Spectral Terror, but there is never a need to "make room" on any character for a non-aggroing Confuse power... it's automatic that the character will take it.

Oh, and the REAL reason why Rad is considered better is that Traps was not available on Live, and so it has a much longer track history and more players having tried it and recommending it. But statistically Traps is clearly ahead. Oh, and it also has better defensive options, so you worry less during the PA drop.

Ill/Traps is, IMO, the premier AV killer. 1: AV attacks? Powers? Abilities? Who cares? Do they 1-shot you? Who cares? Do they debuff you to 1 HP and THEN 1 shot you? Who cares? Do they turn you into a Rikti Monkey? Or do you do it yourself with Secondary Mutation? Who cares :p. Basically, it ignores almost everything that an AV can do other than leaving the area so that it loses aggro on the decoys. 2: AV defenses? Who cares? When their Regen is down to 0 permanently, it doesn't matter how much they regenerate or what their Resists are. They may go down SLOWLY (Madame of Mystery, it's not a mystery why you're so hated), but they're going down. Even Phasing won't help them greatly as the debuff will follow them into the phasing. The only thing they can do is heal (Siege, I hate you for that). And you're also putting out solid -Resist to help with the damage dealing. And you have an Immobilize which Illusion normally lacks, preventing Romunictus from spontaneously breaking out into a over-the-hills-and-far-away marathon. There's nothing else that does the job as well on both sides of the ball. You do have a few very rare cases like Ill/Poison being able to neuter Siege's self-heal, but against almost all AVs, Ill/Traps is the go-to for all of your AV disposal needs. As for Epic, the build wouldn't rely on the epics so it doesn't matter much. I like Ice with it because looking at the rest of the game, although you do have Caltrops and Trip Mine, more AoE is a good thing for Controllers, and you can stack Caltrops slotted for Slow with Ice Storm to get most of its damage. Plus, Poison Trap will provide an every-spawn Hold that can be used to Hold minions for Ice Storm while lasting long enough to drop Ice Storm and back up for Freeze Sneeze to get Containment, which is another thing that Illusion usually lacks. However, Mu is also a good Epic since Storm has Endurance problems, and Earth is an option since it has Fissure which stacks Stuns with Tornado and Thunderclap while getting Force Feedback to proc so you get Tornado/LS up faster. I tried Mace with Ill/Storm, and the Tarantula kept going into melee with AVs, at which point they said "ewww, spider" and squished it. Actually, I lie... they didn't even notice it, and still squished it accidentally. So, there you go... Ill/Traps/Ice is my top pick overall for AV killing with a side of AoE, and //Mu for a bit more single-target damage add-on from the Guardian if you really REALLY want to concentrate on Pylon times 😛

Well, the Demons start off with solid Resists (26%) to several attacks, and the Ember Demon adds about 20% to S/L. With the pet IOs that's about 80% Resists to S/L for everyone but the Ice Demon, who adds some Defenses to that. Then you get the Fire/Cold resist from Steamy Mist... the Demons vary in resists based on type, but the average elemental resist is about the same as S/L for the fire/cold ones, and 12% less for the hellfire versions. That's pretty solid resistance. Defense would be a bit nicer since it would cover Psy, Nrg, Neg, and Toxic, and be more consistent across the damage types, but it actually helps that their main strength is S/L which is most of the incoming damage. I don't know if my resist numbers are accurate, though... the Ember Demon has a 13% and a 6% Resist shield listed (unslotted), and I think one is for the pets and one is for the summoner. I assumed the larger number is for the pets, but if it's the lower number, then the resists are about 10% lower. They do fine... overall damage mitigation isn't as good, but it's also less subject to -Defense debuffs.

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Hm. For my Ill/Storm, it was sets with Recharge bonus all the way. But most attacks go at the decoys, so I don't need that much defense. For an Ice/Storm, you will want Defense also, to avoid the mezzing and detoggling issue that Oedipus mentioned. So I like sets that provide both: Expedient Reinforcement x6 in Jack, the Controller ATO set that has Ranged Defense in a control... I like slotting up the single-target Hold and Immob for damage, so I would put the ATO set in either Glacier or Thunderclap. Both Tornado and Lightning Storm should get a Force Feedback: +Recharge IO. Lightning Storm then goes with 5x Apocalypse, while Tornado has many options... the one I like the most is an interesting mix, as in the following build. I left in some of the power slotting that I used, though it's not fully applicable to an Ice/Storm: In particular, you may want to get the Resist globals into the build earlier in Steamy Mist, since you will want a LotG: Recharge in there. I didn't use it because I had enough Defense powers to put 5xLotG without it, but Illusion has a pair in the set. So you will probably want to put a mix into Steamy Mist. The Flash slotting can go into Thunderclap or Glacier. I also didn't have a single-target Immob so you can't see slotting one for damage, but if you put 3xThunderstrike in there (no Recharge) and 3x damage procs you won't be on the wrong path.

Demons are Resist-based pets, so while they won't soft-cap Defense they still have good defenses. Don't know about better or worse than Thugs, but definitely on the better side for MMs. Demons may not be able to take Achilles Heel, but there are other ways to apply it. Just as an example, Tornado... and having the lower tier pets apply it means that it has a weaker debuff due to the level difference. 2-3 Tornados may not be as good at applying it as 2 Enforcers, but... not that much difference. Meanwhile, however, Demons put out a LOT of -Res themselves. I think about -16% from the Tier 1, -18% from the Tier 2, and probably about -30% from the MM (if you can afford to attack regularly, which as a Stormie will be hard... but Ageless may be enough to keep up with it). So that -50-70%, depending on your attack rate, is far better than any other MM primary, and it boosts the damage from Storm by a lot.