Coyote

TA was always a weak set statistically, but I always thought that it was "easier" to play than other sets... all attacks are ranged. All attacks are either single-target or AoE, no worries about cones. If you ignore Flash, Illusion is also an all-ranged set, so they work together very well in playstyle. This smoothness of play means that you get closer to achieving the optimal efficiencies of both sets, whereas other combinations may have higher on-paper statistics, but it's hard to actually achieve them because you have to worry about switching ranges, aiming cones, getting near teammates for AoE buffs, etc. Ill/TA is a good combination in terms of powers and statistics, and a great combination in terms of playstyle, so it plays a lot more effectively than the sum of its stats. For example, Earth/TA would seem to do the same since Earth is also all-ranged, but it doesn't do nearly as well because you end up with too many Slows, too much -Def, Earthquake neutralizing the Sleep, etc. Illusion/TA has PA gathering mobs together for Acid Arrow, it lacks an Immob or Slows, it benefits a lot from enemy-oriented debuffs for PA while Earth likes to have buffs up on Animate Stone, etc. Sometimes, some combinations work together because of complementary powers. Sometimes they work together because of playstyle. When you get both, then the combination really plays better than the sum of its parts... and while TA is by itself kind of weak, Illusion isn't. So you end up with a surprisingly strong character.

What Tex said... Drain Psyche is both the best defensive power in the Assault sets, AND the best attack power for use against AVs. While also taking care of any Endurance issues. The rest of the set is completely lackluster... not actively bad, but nothing interesting in it, but Drain Psyche basically carries it to the top.

With those numbers, the Defense would be better... the mobs start off with 10% base to hit, and do 65% of their normal S/L damage in the first option. The second option has the mobs at 30% (3x the damage) and 25% of normal damage (5/13 of the damage in the first option). So, just in S/L damage, you take less with the defense version. In addition, the first option also protects from other damage types if they are combined with any smash/lethal damage. Psy attacks that do some Smashing, Toxic attacks that do some Lethal, etc. In further addition, being missed protects you not only from the damage, but from mez and debuff effects.

Actually, I think that the Jolting Chain in the above example (4 procs, 1 Acc/Dam/End, 1 Acc/Dam) is nicely slotted. The reasons are as follows: 1: slotting it for actual damage is not that useful, and Electric usually doesn't have need for much End slotting, and you don't want to slot Recharge in a proc-heavy power. 2: there are only 2 non-purple damage procs to use, and using 2 slocs for Acc and Dam is enough. This leaves you with 2 slots to spare, and you have 3 good procs: Apocalypse for Damage, FF for Recharge, and Entropy for Heal. 3: the power's first attack is treated just like a single-target attack for procs, so if you were willing to put a +Recharge or +Heal proc in a single-target attack with an 8 second recharge, then it makes sense to put them in here. This leaves us with the power fully slotted, as above, and only one option: do we replace either the Heal or the Recharge with an Apocalypse Damage proc? I think that looking at the build, he's not going for a max-cost build, since he didn't use the purple Damage proc in Tesla Cage, so if we're not looking to max out the procs regardless of cost, then the slotting looks good. IMO, the optimal option, especially once you're at 50 and usually have good +Accuracy and Endurance management, is to drop the Acc/Dam/End (which is pretty expensive itself), and put in an Apocalypse damage proc... and put the purple damage proc in Tesla Cage, too. But for a cheaper option, slotting 2 damage, the Recharge and the Heal proc, and 2 mixed IOs for Acc/Dam/End is a solid design.

On another thread, a mention was made that Call of the Sandman's Heal proc is useful in Static Field.

Cloud Senses x4 in Fearsome Stare, or x6 for the Defense bonus. It's your main defensive power, and slotted for -ToHit along with spamming Living Shadows ends up with a huge ToHit debuff. I don't even use Darkest Night most of the time. Heart of Darkness is a very rare power, a PBAoE mez power that takes PBAoE sets. I like 4-5 damage procs in it, turning it into a PBAoE mini-nuke with about 300 damage and a solid mez.

Rularuu. Why vote for the lesser of two evils?

Procs hit beyond the first target, but it has a weird design where the first attack is a single-target attack, and subsequent attacks are treated as PBAoEs, which lowers the chance to proc to about half as much as on the initial attack. Slotted with damage procs, mine averages about 190 damage to the first target, and 100 to subsequent targets.

When character power creeps to where you EXPECT high-level characters to play at +2/x2 at a minimum, then having 4 characters on a team maxes out the spawn sizes. So, as you add players, you increase the power of the player's team, but the power of the computer's "team" stays the same since the spawns are already maxed out. So, once you reach max spawn size, increasing the team drops the difficulty level. If you don't like high-level steamrolling, you need to stop increasing the team size once the spawns are maxed out. As Shred Monkey has said, 3-5 is a solid balance between having enough characters to feel like a team rather than a duo, but not overwhelming the spawns with twice as many characters as were needed to max out the opposition.

There aren't official tiers for blasts, but generally if they recharge in 3-5 seconds, they're tier 1, about 6-9 is Tier 2, and 10+ is Tier 3.

Subdue is an Immobilize, not a Hold, and you're right, it has 80% chance to Immobilize while Dominate automatically Holds. Dominate is a control power first and foremost since it has great control. Subdue is a damage power first and foremost, with a minor secondary effect of Immobilize. They're kind of different... Dominate is a must-take, period, for Holding mobs. Subdue is a decent attack but not so great that it's a must-take, so it's basically useful to fill out your attack chain if you don't have a full chain... and if you do have a full chain without it, it's not necessary to pick it up just to get an Immobilize effect.

Martial, Savage, and Earth are probably the best melee. I prefer Earth, it has good safety in melee with a great Hold and multiple knockdowns, but Martial is also very good with the knockdowns. Savage isn't as safe though it has a self-heal. Earth does have a great feeling of SMASH!!! and the ability to slot multiple FF procs (as does Martial).

Both need accuracy, but Static Field like other dropped field powers won't show miss on your screen. The messages you're seeing are from Conductive Aura.

Actually, Radiation Siphon ONLY heals when it hits a Contaminated target (stripping the effect). It does heal twice as much as Life Drain, in return for being only conditionally usable.

SO: 6 Coercive Persuasion (5 Malaise earlier) SF: 1 Acc or 1-2 Acc/Sleep/Rech

I'm not sure that there is much use for Snowstorm on a Controller, especially an Electric Controller. Snowstorm lowers the quality of a mob's activity... if a mob isn't acting because it has no Endurance or is knocked down, then having -Recharge is not useful. Basically, -Recharge, constant knockdowns, and Endurance drain all allow mobs to act, but put time periods in which the mobs can't act because their powers aren't recharged, or they have no Endurance, or are getting up. But preventing a mob from attacking because it's getting up... gives its powers more time to recharge. So -Recharge debuffs are more useful when paired with -ToHit and -Dam, which basically say "attack as often as you want, but weakly". Using multiple sources of "you can't shoot for the next 2 seconds" isn't as effective as using a single source combined with debuffs that weaken attacks.

Jolting Chain gets procs, period. Electric Fence probably gets procs, because enhancing Immobilize isn't very useful. Same for Chain Fences. Synaptic Overload should get a good set like the AT set, but Confuse sets are also quite good and Coercive Persuasion is probably its best option. If you take Paralyzing Blast, this is probably a good place for an AT set. This leaves Synaptic Field and Tesla Cage. The Field is a decent place to put an AT set, but it also doesn't need much in the way of slotting, so you're slotting it more for the set bonuses. Tesla Cage is basically your only real choice: I slot it with damage procs for damage since single-target Holds get in the high 200s when properly slotted, and that's great for a Controller. Now, I can see the argument for slotting it for control, but I don't think it's relevant especially for Electric... the reason is that your main defense is draining everything around you down to 0 Endurance, combined with recurring Sleeps and Knockdowns. Holding is nice, but if mobs are Immobilized and End Drained, a Hold's effects aren't as useful as more damage. So... slot up the Confuse with the purple Confuse, and then you get to use other sets for bonuses (AT or purple) in the Sleep field and the AoE Hold. Proc up the single-target attacks (Jolting, Tesla, and the Immob). You get 3 damage-oriented powers and 3 control-oriented powers. You're not going to put enough slots into Conductive Aura for a set bonus, and Chain Fences should either be set up with procs, or left lightly slotted... it doesn't have effects worth enhancing, whether Immob or Damage.

Not sure if serious... 😜 But if you are, then naming the character after some Clockwork could be cool. Maybe Clockwork Prince, or Steampunk Clockwork.

As DougGraves just said above, those days still exist. At about levels 10-30 or so. And as he also said, the fights were hard and wipes were possible, but with good play they could finish. I don't recall any time when you HAD to wait for particular teams unless the players were generally bad. I recall all-Blaster teams doing TF, and that's probably the worst composition that I can think of in the early days (at least Issue 2 on, since in I1 you had the broken Smoke Grenade). Really, there were some tough missions but in general door missions without AVs, lopsided teams just meant you had to take a bit more care playing, pull away from adds, adn so on. Right now, at the higher end (40+, if not 30+), there are enough players with enough set bonuses that you can't really team wipe... at least some of the players will be capable of tanking the entire spawn while the weaker half of the team runs back from the hospital. This is not greatly to my liking, as I prefer a challenge and so have to solo if I want to risk being killed... but I have seen that a lot of players do like to just faceroll opponents and crush them before you and listen to the lamentation of their Carnies, and use the game as a relaxing "we stomp everything" experience rather than as a challenge. I suppose it's hard to make everyone happy all at the same time.

So... you're saying... if you DO have to make a deal, make it with a dragon?!?! 😆

-Res is better overall. -Regen is better against AVs IF you're soloing them. If you're in a team, then there should be enough damage output that -Res matters more. I've soloed GMs with /Storm, which has no -Regen, so Regen isn't absolutely necessary. But it does help against big targets. Against all other targets, -Res matters more. Also, Traps is better statistically than Cold, IMO, but Traps also has a clunky playstyle that works better for soloing than in teams, while Cold plays smoothly on teams.

IIRC, they last for 20 seconds and have a pulsing damage/stun aura. 30% chance for a mag 2 Stun, and I think the total damage over their lifespan is 66 damage at level 50 (11 ticks of 6 points). Damage is Energy for the Energy Font, and Fire for the Fiery Font (Dom version). Or something like that. If you're fast, you can spawn one then click on it and find out its powers before it fades.

/Cold or /Traps. Cold does more -Res, and Traps does more -Regen. Dark is stronger overall but most of its strength is in -ToHit and -Dam, and with PA that's far less important than with any other primary. Rad is a solid set overall, with good debuffing and gets all of its good powers early so you can solo AVs in the 20s. But at the top end it doesn't put out as much -Regen as Traps, or -Res as Cold.

This is a bad idea simply because you can proc both out. Use the purple Hold in Ice Arrow, and the purple Single Target in Dominate, and both should be around or close to 300 points of damage. It doesn't hurt to have two big hitters, especially for a Controller, and especially since you then get two attacks that don't depend on Containment for most of their damage but set up containment for other attacks like Levitate.

Animate Stone is great on a Controller because a Controller can buff it enough to tank AVs. Otherwise, you probably want something that both contributes and is also survivable, which makes me think Singularity is probably best.