Coyote

Always put the unique Defense IOs in Combat Jumping... you have it available earlier than Weave, and it costs less Endurance to run, so you'll never have a reason to not use it in combat. You don't need to put the Stealth IO in Combat Jumping, it can be slotted into Sprint, freeing the slot for Kismet Accuracy. As KK said, put damage procs in Jolting Chain (and also maybe the Devastation Chance to Hold, and maybe Force Feedback Recharge). It can become a very useful power if it's giving you back Recharge bonus and doing noticeable damage as well as knocking down and occasionally Holding mobs. And as he said, take the slots from Conductive Aura. I would take Chain Fences over Bonesmasher, at least after a respec when more attacks are available. Even leaving out Whirling Hands, against a single targe if you slot up Jolting Chain (it's fine for use as a single-target blast), you'll have JC, TF, a Hold, a Snipe, and Power Burst, as 5 single-target attacks/mezzes. That's already enough that you're going to have multiple powers ready to go and recharged. Adding Bonesmasher gives you another higher-DPA power, which is nice, but not as worthwhile as AoE endurance drain and recovery debuffing from Chain Fences.

Lastly, Plant/Savage, my favorite. It would be soft-capped with Level 50 IOs (I design at 40 to have some leeway for leveling up), and doesn't use Link Minds so it has access to Sleet. Agility Alpha would also cap it. I would like to squeeze out more slots for Rending Flurry, and 1 more for Mighty Leap to cap out more easily, so I'll have to see if there is something that feels like it could sacrifice a slot to Rending Flurry. I don't think the defense is as necessary since I do plan on going with Agility Alpha.

Here is a Mind/Fire. It is also capped with Agility as the Alpha, or you could make some changes to cap it now: run Mass Confusion with 5xMalaise for the Recharge and the 1 Fiery Orb ATO, and that allows you to change Blaze to Thunderstrike x6 which easily caps you, or to Thunderstrike x2 plus some damage procs, which would also cap you if you free 1 slot to put into Mighty Leap for a 2nd BotZ (it could be the Fiery Orb ATO slot, that's cool but not really necessary).

Here is an Electric/Earth build. Depending on what your Incarnate is, it would be capped to Ranged Defense if you take Agility as the Alpha.

This is my planned Ice/Martial, capped to Melee/Ranged (it uses Link Minds to cap both, but it would be possible to switch to a S/L shield, move sets around to get more Ranged Def and remain capped to Ranged with some solid but not capped S/L. Doing that would allow you to get Sleet.

Electric is a very good set, but it works by standing on a Static Field, in the middle of drained mobs, hammering them at short range. Earth Assault and Martial Assault work great for melee-range AoE damage and melee-range damage. Savage is also a very good set, but its strengths are: a good -Def cone that can help mobs get hit more often, and takes -Res IOs so they get hit harder. While this works with Synaptic Overload, once the mobs are drained they're not attacking each other much. On the other hand, Plant has a better AoE Confuse and doesn't drain mobs, so they continue beating each other up better. In addition, Savage works well by moving in and out of melee, because Unkindness and its debuffs need you to be outside the ball of confused not-yet-dead people, and Savage Leap does more damage if it's done at longer range. So backing out, hitting Unkindness, using the ability to move while it's activating to back up more, then using Savage Leap to jump into the middle with a damage bonus from the extra range and more Frenzy stacks so you're at 5 stacks for Rending Flurry is taking advantage of its strengths, while standing in the middle of mobs isn't. So, I like Savage with Plant, and I like it with Darkness Control since it helps you teleport into mobs quickly and easily, with damage, and after a -Def debuff, so that you can slot up Heart of Darkness as a PBAoE proc damage power and chain Unkindness, Savage Leap, HoD, and Rending Flurry for 4 nice AoEs with debuffs and control. I do NOT like it with any primary that depends on a PBAoE aura because you shouldn't want to stand in the middle of mobs when playing a /Savage character. So, no Fire, no Ice, and no Electric. I would also avoid it with Earth and Mind because those sets do well by being all-ranged and thus work better with a good ranged set. I like Electric with short-ranged sets that do most or all of their AoEs in melee range, including targeted AoEs that can hit mobs around you. That's Earth Assault, Martial, and Energy. Maybe also with Psy, for the combination of -Endurance from Electric and -Recovery from Psy.

Failure to logic, here. The argument was that something CAN'T be OP just because it may require teammates, and I disagreed with the basic premise of that argument. I did present silly numbers, of course, because sometimes the direction that an argument is taking is easier to see when extended further. But the basic premise is still there: it should be possible for a power to be OP even if it requires teammates either to work or to be OP, but by your argument if a power requires teammates to work or to be OP, then it can't be considered OP. Which is an incorrect argument to try to support. Regardless of Brawl, or Vengeance, or other examples used to burn down straws or other materials... the idea of saying that powers don't need to be balanced if they require teammates is something that any designer will laugh at if they're working on any teaming game.

I'm not arguing for or against Brute damage cap being broken... but this argument here is unreasonable. It makes no sense. If Vengeance gave every teammember +1000% to every buff for the remainder of the mission, the argument "you couldn't reach that on your own" wouldn't prevent it from being brokenly OP. If an ally buff were similarly ridiculously powerful, the same argument wouldn't prevent it from being OP. If Kheld teaming bonuses were 10x as strong as they are now, they would be OP even though they obviously require teammates to work. The game has some powers and abilities that are designed around teaming, and the argument that something CAN'T be broken merely because it's very unlikely to happen in a soloing situation is not an argument that makes sense in this game. To argue that a power that requires teaming should then be stronger than a comparable one that doesn't, makes sense. Limitations on power use are balanced by making the power stronger when it CAN be used. So, to argue that a damage cap that requires teaming to be reached is harder to become broken than a damage cap that a character can reach on their own, would make a reasonable argument. But an argument that something can't be broken because it requires teaming is not a reasonable argument except in a game where teaming is either not allowed or extremely rare.

Both, kind of... FF will fire ON YOU when the pet is summoned, giving you a buff. It will also fire ON THE PET when the pet hits with a knockdown power, giving the pet a +Recharge buff... but pet powers are coded to ignore Recharge modifiers, so the buff will exist on the pet but have no in-game effect. Not even to counter -Recharge debuffs, since pet powers ignore all Recharge modifiers including debuffs. To give more examples, if you put a -Defense Debuff damage IO... it wouldn't fire when you summon the power since the summons didn't give a -Defense. But if the summons power gave a 15' -Defense debuffs to enemy mobs in the area where you summon a beastie, THEN it would fire. And if the beastie had a -Defense attack, it would also fire afterwards. Putting a Controller ATO in Spectral Terror will summon an Energy Font (usually) when you summon Spectral Terror, because the ATO doesn't care what kind of power is being used. And I believe that it will TRY to summon an Energy Font at the Spectral Terror's location when Spooky hits with either of its Fear attacks... but fail because the ATO is coded to only work for Controllers and Spooky isn't a Controller.

Storm may play better if you're willing to charge ahead with Hurricane and draw aggro while the Mercs stay behind and shoot from safety. As SS has said, if your worry is letting the pets take aggro and survive it, then Cold is clearly stronger. Storm sucks a lot of aggro, and that can be beneficial for a Tankermind who is trying to keep shots off the pets... but a focus on keeping aggro on the pets and keeping them alive is not its strong point. I like the idea of a Stormy ahead of ranged pets, but if that's not how you want to play it, then Cold will do better.

In most cases, Storm. The DoT effect of the Storm powers makes up more effective DoT than the -Regen from Cold. However, the -Regen is not affected by Resistances, so if you face an AV with high resists, then damage is lowered but not regen debuffs, so at this point it's Cold. And generally the AVs that give problems are the ones with high resistances. Dark is not it in either case... its -Regen is about Cold but a little bit less, its -Resist is also a bit less, and while it adds some damage it's not that high. So... if you average out the time to kill all of the AVs in all of the ordinary single-player story arcs, Storm will kill them all faster on the average. But Cold will have the lowest maximum time, and there may be a few whose Resist are high enough that Storm can't kill them all (Lt Sifu Tendaji, and Madame of Mystery, Siege, Diabolique... maybe others). So who is better depends on what is more important to you: average kill time, or ability to kill absolutely everyone. BTW, just as a note... Traps is actually the best. It puts out -Resist that's up with the better ones, and the best -Regen in the game, along with adding its own Immobilize to keep the AV from moving away. And if you're not running Illusion, its Defense/Mez Protection helps a lot with fighting AVs that may actually shoot at you. But that's only for soloing... on teams its setup time makes it clearly behind Cold.

It's interesting that they have a fix for Phantom Army that allows you to change its graphics to be a copy of your character. It opens up the idea of a Duplication Mastermind to seem quite possible, now. Maybe even two Duplication sets... one like Ninjas based on melee attacks (and with melee attacks for the MM so that they all act similarly), and one based on Illusion and with ranged attacks.

Yeah, I'm having the same problem. It's a bit ameliorated by summoning PA on the opposite side... that way, smaller blasts and cones won't always hit Phantasm and Spidey. So they last a bit longer. Spidey lasts about 2-3 minutes instead of 4, which makes it worth summoning. Phantasm lasts long enough to summon a decoy, blast twice, then run in... get blasted down to 20%, then 10 second later get blasted. It has about the same lifespan as the decoy :(.

Both Spectral Wounds and PA only lose part of their damage as a heal-back, and for both powers, the heal-back is a fixed amount, while the damage of the power can be increased through slotting, making the healback less as a percentage of the damage done as you enhance the power (and as you get Damage boosting). The secondary for AV killers is also usually picked to have either hefty -Regen (Traps, Cold, Dark, Thermal, Rad) or a lot of damage (Storm).

Does anyone know how well does Reactive Interface work through pet summons including pseudo-pets like Tornado? I've gone with Degenerative so far since I've read that the procs work well through the pets, but I'm thinking that given how much damage Illusion/Storm does, multiplying that with -Res debuffing would be better. But that's only the case if the procs work well through the pets, because depending on my personal attacks to stack -Res isn't going to do very much at all.

It's okay to do it to scrappers and Brutes 😛

It works well with Plants because putting out -Def helps Confused mobs do more damage. With good AoE and helping mobs damage each other, it should be good at clearing out larger spawns. But like everyone else, I looked at that, and I looked at Savage with -Def from Unkindness and far more interesting special abilities (and a cool stack effect), and I went Savage. I mean, Thorntrops... or Feral Charge. You make the call ;). Granted, if you don't like summoning birds for your ranged attacks, I can see Thorns being a lot more competitive then. And it works a lot better thematically with Plant Control than Rad Assault.

I think Levitate is a huge knockup which does move targets. Still, anyone who complains about the small location change from a knockup power is being too picky. You don't need to spend a slot on mitigating that. I forgot about TK Thrust, but frankly that power's main point is to knock mobs back and away from you. Bonfire is great IF you take the IO for it, but it's also a low-slot power, so you could conceivably just leave a single slot in it and put the KB to KD in there. Though I would put 2-3 slots in it to get some Recharge... but it still has room for a KB to KD IO without filling out its slots. Knockup is useful, it keeps mobs from acting. I don't think it's BETTER than Knockdown, but it's not so much worse that it's worth slotting to eliminate it. Knocking up half the mobs prevents them from acting, or from leaving rain patches. It's a good effect, not really far behind knockdown. Especially with a relatively low knockup like Psychic Tornado has.

Huh? Like which? Psionic Tornado is KnockUP. I think the tooltip may say knockback, but the power specifics show knockup, and that's what it does. Knockup is useful... and fun. TK Blast does do knockback, but in general you don't need to worry about single-target knockback. The rule is: if you knock it back, you finish it... and that's not usually a problem for a Blaster to clean up a mob that's picking itself off the ground. I wouldn't spend a slot to convert that to knockdown, though it would be an improvement. It's just not enough of an improvement, when I would like it enhanced nicely and I already would put a slot for Force Feedback's proc.

You can only put one Achilles Heel on a target, so if you're taking Mace Mastery and getting Poisonous Ray, you'll have to decide which power should get it. I wouldn't spend the slots to put Achilles Heel in both powers.

If you're making an Ice Dominator, make sure to build strongly for +Ranged Defense. Since you're slowing incoming damage with your knockdown and confuse abilities, rather than shutting it down with hard mezzes, you want to minimize the effects of the shots that mobs do get to take. Recharge is always important, of course, but Defense (Ranged as a priority, but S/L or Melee wouldn't hurt either) is important. My planned build for Ice/Martial has softcapped melee and ranged, and I expect it to be very effective in surviving alpha strikes for that reason. Because it doesn't matter how much +Recharge you have, if you don't have good fight-opening controls (and you don't) and therefore can't survive the first few seconds until your controls get established.

I'm sure it's doable, as I've done it on a Dark/Dark while leveling. Fire/Dark should put out more damage (though not that much more for single-target). But once you get Dark Servant, defense isn't much of an issue, and between Twilight Grasp and Howling Twilight, there is enough -Regen that it should be quite possible to solo them. Defensively, the trick is that -Resist improves your -Damage. I took Weaken Resolve and put an Achilles Heel into it... with stacked Tar Patches and Weaken Resolve I expect at least 40% or so -Resist, but usually more like 60%. On higher level AVs that probably drops to 40%, but that still multiplies the damage debuffing by 1.4. You put out 30 from Darkest Night and another 30 or so from stacked Twilight Grasp, and Dark Servant puts out 30 from its Darkest Night and close to 20 from its Twilight Grasps. That's 110% -Damage... multiplied by 1.4, you're over -150%. Even a +3 AV is at the damage floor, and you're spamming heals (which happen to stack -Regen also). There is no way that any AV can hammer damage through that debuff and healing, not even counting all the -ToHit and base Defense. Carry Break-frees or use Clarion, and mezzing isn't an issue. So... incoming damage isn't an issue and mezzing isn't an issue, and between about 5 stacks of Twilight Grasp and about a 50% uptime on Howling Twilight, there is enough -Regen that even a low level of damage should be able to drop its health bar. And if you build for damage, you should be able to output more than a low level of damage. I think the Imps alone put out about 63 DPS base, before the -Resist (on even-level AVs, though... only about 40 DPS on +4s with a level shift). So... numbers look pretty solid for soloing AVs with an kind of /Dark Controller except maybe Mind (because you're using a lot of animation time, so getting "free" damage from your pets is big). And I think the top 3 should be Illusion, Dark, and Fire... maybe Grav, but you're having animation time issues with that.

Singularity is theoretically ranged-only. Its only melee-range effect is a knockback that is intended to throw mobs away so that they're not in melee anymore. A lot of players have slotted a KB to KD IO into it and use it as a repeated knockdown power, which is great... but I think that conceptually you could easily argue that Singularity is intended as a range-only pet and should use the same AI that keeps it from advancing to melee.

Roots is a decent damage power, slot it with 5x Positron's for Recharge and if you can spare, another damage proc. Move the ATO set to Strangler instead, which is more useful as a Hold than as a damage power.

I can confirm that it does NOT take Accurate To Hit debuff sets, taking its damage down from 183 to 122 at level 50. :(... at 183 it's probably worth the slotting and activation time. At 122, it's not worth it as a damage power, and it will put out about 30% -Resist debuff but eat up about 20% of your activation time in doing so, while also doing a bit of damage. It's worth it, IMO, on my Illusion/Storm because so much of the character's damage is not coming from the character's activations, so there is time to fit it in and increase the damage from all of the Storm powers and summons by 30% (more like 20%, actually, given level differences). On a Dark/Time, I'm not sure it's worth it... it's a single-target power, and your single-target damage is mostly coming from two procced-out Holds plus an Immobilize as a filler. Speaking of that, I see that the build is tight with power choices. But if looking at single-target damage, Time Stop with 4 damage procs (move the Hold purple in there, since Dark Grasp has enough proc options) is about 290 damage. That seems worth it to me, and also gives two Holds to immediately Hold problem Bosses. But it does seem hard to fit it into Dark/Time with so many good powers.