Coyote

Agreed with that. I do my best to remain childish as age encroaches 😛

Pretty much the same in all cases for me. HT may deserve 2 Rech if you have a slot to spare.

But, be warned that the Font does a Mag 2 Stun, and only a 30% chance per pulse... and pulses every 5 seconds. So it only Stuns 30% of minions, or less (since it has to hit). It also does some AoE damage, so it's definitely a good use of a slot, but it's not going to turn the AoE Immob into an efficient AoE Hold even if we're just looking at minions. For Doms, BTW, they can slot it into many AoE attacks like Atom Smasher as long as the attack has a mez component... a small chance for an AoE Hold may not be that much on an AoE Immob, but it's really useful when added to a PBAoE attack that you're going to be spamming. For that reason, I like it in Thunderclap: put out tons and tons of Stun, stack the Thunderclap with the Font, add in the Tornado, and hold everyone in place with an AoE Immob. City of Dazed Statues, once more 😉

It tests on each target, but the effect is to have YOU summon an Energy Font at your location, so just like a Force Feedback tests on multiple targets but only sets a single buff on you if successful, you can only summon one Font from one cast. AoE powers have lower chance to proc per target, and also usually have longer recharges. They are still better, for a self-target proc like this, if you're hitting 3-4+ targets per cast. So the best place to put them is usually in the AoE Immob, and a lot of characters put them there. Frankly, I put the Energy Font ATO (and the Fiery Orb one, which does the same thing but with Fire damage, for Dominators) in every Controller I plan. But make sure it's in a power that you plan on using regularly, whether from the primary or from the secondary (such as Thunderclap).

That's my slotting also, although I put in Expedient Reinforcement (attuned) ASAP for the Recharge bonuses.

I would say that they don't lack a role, just that high end content only benefits from a limited set of roles, which comprise damage, Damage, and DaMaGe. And maybe you can squeeze in someone else with some more Damage. Or someone with -Res powers that are fast (actually, Rad's EF is a pretty fast-cast), or constantly-on toggles like Noxious Gas. But when damage has gotten to the point where it actually functions as mitigation against incoming damage, then an AT that mitigates incoming damage... is not as useful as one that adds damage. That's not a Controller problem, and that's not saying that Controllers don't have a clear role. It's just that their role is clear... and useless on high-end steamrolling teams. It is still useful on smaller teams that have the difficulty high enough to max out the spawns, or soloing. But it's not a useful role on Incarnage 8-man teams, which are generally competing in how much damage they can do right at the start of a fight.

I've played this. It is a solid combination, quite strong defensively. On offense, it's not one of the stronger combinations... but you have to balance defense and offense, and this is a very strong defensive build. 1: lot of -ToHit, which is great for a squishy character 2: a self-heal, very rare for a Blaster. And it's in a solid attack, so you can afford to spam it and not feel like you're cripping your attack chain. 3: a Hold with solid stats and good damage, and its long Recharge means that damage procs in it are at 90% chance to activate. So you get a Hold that does over 300 damage. 4: an AoE Immob in the primary. Nice. And it adds -ToHit. And you get a 100% Knockdown attack, also with -ToHit. 5: Two cones from the primary work well with the cone from the secondary, so you get 3 ranged cones... an Immob, a Knockdown, and a -Recharge. These mean that you lock mobs in place, lower their attack rate and the chance for their attacks to hit, while knocking them down regularly. Drain Psyche is normally a great power, but not quite as great for this combo: you want to be in cone range, but DP likes to be at melee range. So you'll have to do a bit of jumping in for DP and then back out for AoEs. It's basically the only downside that I've seen... and at high levels, it's not that bad, because you get Blackstar and Psychic Shockwave, so you have two more reasons to be in melee at the start of the fight before you back out to finish the spawn off with cones. Don't expect OMG wow AoE damage from the combination, but it does good damage and with great defenses (on a Blaster scale, of course).

Phantom Competencies, available to Board Controllers at Level 18. Also available to Post Dominators, but does not benefit from Domination.

No, because the point isn't that a SINGLE character is challenged. You could make a non-OP build and run with unslotted powers, and still be on a team that rolls from spawn to spawn about as fast as the characters can run from spawn to spawn, activate 1 or 2 AoE powers, and run to the next spawn. Your challenged build will not even be noticed in many Incarnate teams. Now, at levels below Incarnate, there is a challenge and your build choices can make a difference. But in teams with characters that could each solo +4/x8, or at least do it in duos, what challenge can you create for your character. Without drastic changes, though, I think that the only way to get real challenges is to solo or duo TFs, especially using some of the difficulty options. Not normal teams at Incarnate levels.

I'm with Bopper, I've seen Achilles Heel scale with level. And I also thought that it used the Grant Power mechanism, but apparently that got updated and it's now using a different mechanic, that allows level differences to affect the modifier.

This is excellent advice for all ATs and all builds.

I don't think that Illusion Control will play nearly as well for Dominators as for Controllers. But... I also don't think that this should be a determining factor. Mind Control plays far better for Dominators than for Controllers, for example, and nobody is complaining that it's available. The same for Gravity, also... far better for Controllers, but while most players will suggest that it's not as good for Doms, nobody is saying that it's a bad thing that it's available to Doms. In the end, I think that people hoping for great Doms with Illusion Control will be disappointed, but I also think that people won't complain if it's made available.

My Ill/Storm has ripped through all content except AVs, which have been problematic on occasion (since it has no Immob). You could do very well with it if you don't care too much about AVs. Fire/Storm would do very well also, and either Dark/Storm or Earth/Storm would be a more defense-focused build (but still good damage for a Controller due to Storm). Gravity/Storm will also solo very well and the pair mixes very well since Wormhole puts mobs into a small area, and that works great with the small-radius AoEs from Tornado and Lightning Storm.

All allies are, including all summoned pets, henchmen, and so on. The only exceptions are non-tangible pets that can't be targeted such as Tornado, and pets that are immune to buffs/debuffs (IIRC, only Phantom Army is in this category).

Thank you. I did read that it was the Grantpower effect, but that was on Red Tomax's site, and that was based on a pretty old database version. It makes sense that by now it's been updated.

That would be really weird. I haven't looked at the Homecoming database, but when Red Tomax had the site up, I recall seeing the Bruised power as an automatic self -Res power, and the Tanker attack as granting it to the target. So I don't know how you could even set it up to be affected by the level of the mob that granted the power to the target. In addition, that brings up an interesting question: what happens if you have a -2 character triggering Achilles Heel on a target that was already affected by AH from a +2 character? If they all affect the target as if they were +0, then it wouldn't matter, but if they are affected by level, could you actually diminish the debuff effect upon a target?

As I understand, several of the -Res "procs", including the Tanker Bruising effect, aren't direct debuffs from you to the target. Instead, they trigger the target to cast the debuff on itself. This has two corrolaries: 1) Because it's the target casting the same debuff on itself, it will only refresh rather than stack. 2) Because the source of the debuff is the same as the target, the debuff is always at even level... so if you're 48 and trigger Achilles Heel on a level 50 mob, the debuff should be -20% rather than -16%.

Um. I state damage at level 50, against +0 mobs, because that's a simple and clear way to compare damage across powers. You are doing 91 instead of 71, but that's because of -Res, not because of the base damage being 91... that -Res improves the base damage of Freezing Rain, also. But it also improves the damage of Fissure, as an example. Or Stone Cages. Since all of your sources of damage are improved by -Res in the same fashion, if we're trying to figure out what is the best source of AoE damage, then it makes sense to use base damage for comparisons. I am quite a fan of using proc IOs on Controllers to do more damage. I've even put up some posts on the topic. I don't have any problem whatsoever with someone trying new ideas and builds. It actually seems to me that you are fixed on your idea of an earth/storm and are really close minded to having a mathematical analysis of DPS, and try to beat down anyone who tries to analyze numbers, but that's how damage is accurately measured. I actually think that if I were playing Earth/Storm (and I did on Live), and interested in soloing with AoE ability, I would be squeezing procs into Freezing Rain and Earthquake, also. But I wouldn't do it without analyzing the numbers, and ending up saying "This is a pretty poor return on the IOs, but there really is nowhere else to add AoE damage to the build".

Did you ever say what level those mobs were? I figured that they had to be lower level, since you're doing 200+ damage, using procs that are listed as doing 71 damage base.

Ugh, don't be petty. I didn't say a word against her options or design. She just asked "why isn't anyone else doing this", and I answered exactly and only that question. To be honest, I didn't really examine her build so I could even have an opinion on it overall. I only answered "why would someone who knows about damage procs, NOT be using them in AoE rains when you can do AoE damage with them?". And I think my answer was pretty fair and reasonable, and explains why other people aren't doing this... but I never said that she's wrong to be doing it. I can see reasons why you might try to shoehorn a build into a role that doesn't fit it very well, if you don't like making too many alts. Remember this: CoH is easy, so "a build that works", when giving advice on the forums, is a very low bar. When we're discussing builds, usually the discussion is focused towards min-maxing the builds in some way, because otherwise there are just so many "play as you would like" options. So when people suggest changes for builds, it's usually not in the context of "you need to do this to succeed", but more like "you'll do more damage (or have more defense, or whatever) if you do this, but if you are fine with your build, then that works too".

To add another version of this advice, I soloed Protean in the 20s with a Mind/Fire as an AV. Obviously I couldn't have perma-Dom at that time, so I had to deal with him as if I were a ranged character... without having fully IO'd defenses for capped defenses. So I bought a jetpack, came in loaded with Purples, and fought him while flying. His DPS is a lot lower at range, and I was able to survive while emptying out my entire tray. It was tough, but using flying helps a lot. You could also look into re-slotting, as I have for most of my Doms, with Entropic Chaos on the ranged blasts. It still adds +Recharge, and an attack cycle using the Heal-self IO pretty much doubles your Regeneration, which doubles the incoming DPS that you can survive long-term.

Because, on each activation, the chance to proc is 18% or so for Freezing Rain... which adds about 13 damage to the power, per IO. So, 3 slots into FR with damage IOs have you do 36 damage with it, on the average, per target at level 50. And another 36, 10 seconds later. I think it also does 25 damage base, so you COULD slot it up for about 40 damage with Damage/Recharge plus another 2x38 from procs. But that only puts you at 116 AoE damage. Now, 116 is really NOT bad damage for a power whose main purpose is a lot of debuffing. But that's because the power does a bit of damage on its own... Earthquake doesn't have that, and can't put as many IOs, for example. So you end up with multiple AoE powers all at less than 120 damage and all with pretty long recharges. With enough of them plus your own Epic AoE attacks, you actually can manage to do some reasonable AoE damage... but it's a LOT less than other AoE damage options even when just looking at Controllers (See my Dark/Poison thread for an example). So people who are making builds for AoE damage are really not going to look at this type and level of damage, and people who are teaming aren't going to bother spending slots on relatively weak DoT damage when in a team spawns melt too fast. So in the end, what you're doing works, but a min-maxer will likely look at better AoE options.

With Containment, you go from about 24 to 48 damage... so if you use 3 slots for damage, that's about 8 points increased per IO. However, because it has a smaller Area Factor than most AoE Immobs for Controllers, it gains 14 points of damage per damage proc, and it doesn't need Containment for that (without containment, you're getting half the damage from the damage IOs, but still full damage from the procs). If you're chasing set bonuses it's a different story, but personally I use about 3 slots for enhancement slotting, then 1 ATO Energy Orb and 2 damage procs. Putting Siphon Insight in there is also a good option, since it only has to activate on one target to get you the full bonus, but at high levels a lot of characters don't need to worry about accuracy boosts.

Dark/Dark... enough debuffs to neuter even AVs, decent damage output Earth/Cold... lower damage output, but Stoney can be set up to tank pretty much all AVs you'll meet in solo content, and Cold's debuffs will help kill them.

And it's really good damage, I think. Due to the way it's coded, the procs have different chances to proc on the primary target and on the secondary, so when slotted with like 3-4 procs (including a Purple), it does about 200 single-target, and 100 AoE damage. 100 AoE damage isn't bad on an 8 second recharge power that also has great control effects, and 200 single-target damage with guaranteed knockdown isn't bad for a single target attack. The End cost isn't bad, and it helps an Electric Controller drain mobs. I'm very happy to have it on my Electric/Earth, and it's not like you're going to have such a full AoE attack chain without it, that you won't find time to use it and knock down everyone around you. Or around the target, but usually you'll be using it at point-blank range. And... Jolting Chain is so much fun, too 😉