Coyote

Lord Recluse Strike Force

No, Phantom Army is not affected by any buffs or debuffs.

I have to disagree... Mental may not be the end all for GENERAL soloing, but it's the best for AV/GM soloing. The other abilities that other sets bring are, defensively, not that much better than Drain Psyche even on a single target. Yes, they're better, but not tremendously better. Meanwhile, the huge -Regen brings effective damage against AVs that is unmatched by other secondaries, and is even stronger against GMs. You can solo AVs without Mental. But it's far easier with Mental. Same for GMs, but double. For general soloing, the -Regen is less valuable, and so Mental is just a good set rather than the clear best. But against AVs, it's clearly unmatched.

No, not in the slightestest. Red Tomax's site on the wayback machine unfortunately doesn't handle nested power lists, so you can't see what powers a summoned entity has... well, there are places to see WHAT powers it has, but not what their stats are. However, I believe that the various hero designer programs such as Mids', Mids' Reborn, etc, have the correct values, which are: -15% ToHit Debuff (enhanceable) on the AoE Fear effect (Cloak of Fear) -15% ToHit Debuff (NOT enhanceable) on the single-target fear (don't recall its name). So against a single target such as a boss, Spooky puts out -30% unenhanced and about 22% enhanced. Against AoE, it's 15% unenhanced, and 22% enhanced. Note that both powers will benefit from IOs such as the Controller AT IO that does damage, or the Glimpse of the Abyss damage proc, so you're getting double the damage effect from these procs.

Some of these include sets that you've already used, but I really like the synergies of a few combos: Ill/Traps Gravity/Storm Fire/Dark Earth/Cold Ice/Rad Plant/Kin

I generally split them this way: High damage primaries do better on Controllers as they need the damage more than Dominators. Primaries that are stronger defensively do better on Dominators since their secondary is more offense-oriented than Controllers. So, Gravity, Plant, Fire, and probably Electric on the Controller side. Earth, Dark, and Mind on the Dominator side. Ice wants to go with Dominator to help its low damage, but with Controller to help stack debuffs onto its knockdowns, -Recharge, and intermittent Confuse.

Remember that Heart of Darkness takes PBAoE damage sets, and procs in it will have a 90% activation chance. With 5 or so procs, it's over 300 damage, and with the build being so strong defensively I feel that it can use offense more than defense. Personally I'm underslotting Darkest Night and a couple of other defensive powers in order to turn HoD into a mini-nuke.

I tried the ATO in Spectral Terror, and I can confirm that it fires when you summon the power but not afterwards.

Jack Frost and Animate Stone each have a single-target melee Hold attack, and I think that Umbra Beast has an Immobilize power and an AoE Fear.

I tried, but I could only manage about an 8' radius 😉

Illusion/Rad CONTROLLERS would like a word with that claim. As would Earth/Cold who are properly built to have Animate Stone tank the AV. As would many X/Dark Controllers who can tank most AVs. As would x/Empathy Controllers who generally depended on buffing their teammates as a major part of their strength, and whose buffs were even more important before the IO sets when many melee ATs needed more help in tanking AVs. It's true that a Controller's main strength in AV fights is based on their secondary (other than PA), or maybe using their single-target Immobilize to keep AVs from running around like marathon stars. But that's still a contribution. In fact, if you take the only Blaster out of an 8 man team, I bet you notice less change than if you take out the only Controller, because having the AVs Immobilized and debuffed with a small amount of added damage is more useful than no Immobilize and no debuffing, but a large amount of added damage. Frankly, it's AV fights where high-end Controllers seem to have more use, and high-end facerolling teams where they seem useless. Immobilizes and debuffs are still useful against AVs, and you actually have time to apply them. Mezzes are, many times, useless against the normal spawns, and you may not even have enough time to apply debuffs before the spawn is gone. And stationary buffs like Acid Mortar or Tar Pit work better in longer fights like AVs than in shorter fights that are over in 10 seconds and you're off to the next spawn... with your -Resist power still recharging. Yes, Controllers have a problem in end-game content, but it's not AVs. It's the speed with which spawns get erased, which make controls nearly useless and debuffs hard to apply.

Slot Dominate for Hold, not damage. Controllers would slot for damage with Procs, but they don't depend on their controls as much for their defenses, and they don't have other damage sources. Right now you're slotting up SEVEN ranged single-target attacks, which is more than you can fit into an attack cycle. That doesn't count Confuse which would also fight for use. So... drop either Levitate or Mesmerize, though both are useful. Slot Dominate for Hold. Don't slot Flares (except early for leveling, but respec the slots later). With Blaze, Blazing Bolt, either Mez or Lev, and Fire Blast, you'll have enough damage attacks, and you still have to find animation time for Dominate and Confuse. Dropping Mez or Lev and unslotting Flares gives you the slots to take and slot Wall of Force, which is a great power for you... it will match with the use of Terrify and Fire Breath, and it will take a Force Feedback proc to help your AoE controls recharge faster, which is exactly the time that you'll be using it. Also Weaken Resolve takes damage procs... since you'll want to be using it, if you have free slots you might want to add damage to it. Personally, I'd slot Terrify for damage, or with procs, or a mix of Fear and Damage. You can get by without Mass Hypnosis, but frankly it's a great power for only putting one slot in it and still getting good effects when you use it.

Yup. It's one of the main reasons why I was saying that an Earth/Cold Controller is better at soloing than one would think, for an AoE and team-buffing powerset combination. Fossilize with damage procs, Infrigidate, and Arcane Bolt make for a decent ranged rotation. And debuff Defense enough that you can use the veteran powers for attacking at lower levels and still plan on having good chances to hit with them.

I like Wall of Force on a Dominator, you can put Force Feedback into it and get a pretty consistent Recharge boost as long as you're hitting multiple targets. As Mezmera said, Weaken Resolve(?) with an Achilles Heel proc is quite good. You can actually also put a couple of damage procs into it as they will have a 90% chance to proc. Taking every attack from the secondary is kind of weakening your damage... you can't really slot up all those attacks and also all of the controls. I didn't take the melee range powers since I wanted all ranged. While Incinerate isn't a bad attack, Fire Blast, Blaze and Blazing Bolt are all excellent attacks and it's hard to slot and use all 4 especially with mixing in Domination and Confuse.

No, my mistake, I thought you were talking about Ice Control's Flash Freeze, which I've seen as a partially useful power. Salt Crystals has always been so skippable that I didn't even recall its debuffs.

I think it's quite reasonable. The mobs are sleeping, but your presence amongst them makes them have bad dreams. So when they wake up, they check under the bed to see if Chuck Norris stopped by.

It does, it puts mobs to sleep. Other than that, what effect are you talking about? Mass Hypnosis doesn't aggro mobs, and having it do damage would cause it to aggro... a small amount of damage isn't worth losing a major benefit of the power.

As long as the AVs aren't unusually resistant to Immobilizes, you should be able to hold them in place with Web Grenade.

Start with a FF: Recharge IO. With the last 5 slots, I see a few options: 1: 5xPositron (with Damage/Range): you get to increase the cone range, and you get Recharge bonus 2: 5xRagnarok: higher Recharge bonus, and a Knockdown proc. More expensive and no range. 3: 3xDamage IO (Explosive Strike, Positron, Gladiator), 2 for Accuracy/Damage/extra (could be Endurance or Range, depending on the +Accuracy that you have in the character). This is the highest damage option and not too expensive, but with no stat bonuses. I would go for 3 unless I'm chasing +Recharge, in which case I'd go for 1.

Ice Control mitigates damage pretty well over a period of time, but it doesn't do well at front-loaded mitigation. Instead of shutting down mobs, it limits the effectiveness of their attacks. For this reason, it works very well when paired with a Controller Secondary that lowers enemy ToHit and has an AoE heal... these Secondaries usually have other means of also lowering attack effectiveness such as -Dam. So when you pair Ice Control with a secondary like Rad, Time, Dark, etc, you get mobs that attack very weakly, and you can easily keep the team healed with most of the incoming attacks at very low attack rate, missing often, attacking each other because they're Confused, etc. However, for a Controller, Ice does low damage and with a defense-oriented secondary they're still lacking damage. So it's not a good set for a Controller who wants to solo at any time. For a Dominator, the lack of damage is not a big deal since they get damage from the secondary. But its lack of front-loaded mitigation leaves you open to taking a lot of damage early. Instead of shutting down the mobs for 12 seconds which gives you a chance to kill some before they start acting, Ice Control allows all of them to attack you at the start of a fight, even if afterwards their attack rate is reduced. For this reason, it only works well when paired with a secondary that has good damage mitigation: Dark, Earth, Martial Arts, probably. However, there is one trick that I'm going to try with my Ice/Martial: take and use the AoE Sleep. It will shut down a spawn and prevent the alpha strike, giving you a chance to go in with Arctic Air, give it 4 seconds to run through two Confuse ticks, while you Hold a LT, and then you start the fight with Ice Slick but half the mobs are Confused, and 1-2 are Held. If you run it with Earth instead, you can use Seismic Smash to shut down another mob, so you can start the fight with 3 mobs Held and half the others (not Bosses) Confused. This should mitigate the alpha strike nicely. Another option is to use /Dark, and after Holding someone, open the fight with Power Up and the PBAoE attack... this will give them a solid -ToHit so that their opening salvo doesn't hurt as much. As you can see, it looks as if there are tools to make Ice Control work well, but it is the most finicky of the Control sets to get the most of its abilities. It relies on extended damage mitigation with a pulsing but not permanent Confuse, Knockdown and -Recharge, but has little way of defusing the alpha strike. So you have to figure out a way to defuse the incoming alpha... if you do this, it looks like a good set. But other sets don't have such a large hole that absolutely needs to be patched up with other powers before they can be considered good.

I really like Electric/Storm since Electric helps with Storm's End problems, and Grav/Storm since Wormhole's ability to pack mobs into a small space turns Tornado and Lightning Storm into reasonable small AoE powers instead of practically just single-target powers.

What's the point of perma-PA? Basically, so that it has the highest control uptime against AVs. Against spawns it's good but not great control, for damage it's also good, but losing a few seconds off its uptime is not a big deal. So, other than AVs, I think that perma-PA is good but not so paramount. If you want to solo AVs better, then going for set bonuses is more important. If you want to solo better in general, then going for more damage via procs is more useful. If you think that you can solo AVs in general without needing perma-PA (which is how I do it), then feel free to drop a set bonus or two, and proc Blind and maybe another power for damage.

I'll second Illusion/Cold at the top end, though it's only tops once you get a lot of +Recharge. Illusion/Storm is also excellent... just took down Jurassik so it can handle GM regen (with an envenomed dagger, but I was also 43 so once Incarnate it should be able to discard the dagger). Illusion/Rad should also be solid, I remember taking down GMs with one on Live. Other options are Mind/Psy Dominator... perma-Hold or perma-Confuse the target, and use Drain Psyche to keep it from regenerating much while you work on it. Also Fire/Psy, though without Confuse to start the fight it will be more dangerous until you stack enough Hold magnitude. Note that Bio Armor also has some -Regen, so a melee character with Bio and the Envenomed Dagger should be able to stack enough -Regen to handle GMs. Fire/Dark Affinity Controllers may also be quite good... DA has such strong debuffing that it even neuters AVs, and with its -Regen and the damage from Fire it should be able to beat Regen values.

Mass Hypnosis has an unusually high chance to Overpower, at 50%.

Is it a bug, or intended, that this power takes Accuracy enhancements, and debuffs both ToHit and Defense... but doesn't take both Accurate ToHit Debuff and Accurate Defense Debuff sets? It only takes one of the two Accurate groups, I forget which. It does take both To Hit Debuff and Defense Debuff (the non-accuracy versions), so both debuffs are enhanceable.