Coyote

Fungi use a sleep, and then if you've drawn aggro, more damage will wake you up, but the sleep will have shut down offensive toggles. Main thing is to try to let the pets take aggro, especially since your AoE Heal will wake them. And if they get slept, it's not such a big deal. Also, convert all inspirations to Break Frees, and see if you can fit in Rune of Protection. I use these for my Demons/Time and it works well enough.

Ummm.... //Ice works nicely with an an ice-based look, and also does great AoE damage which is rare on a Controller. It has a minimal graphics option, where the armor is a frosty ice crystals effect rather than the old "ice block all around you"

Stacking more -Res is not a bad thing, it will keep boosting damage. -MaxHP is also useful against AVs. To be honest, if it's not an AV, the interface proc isn't that useful except for the chance-for-damage, as mobs usually die before you stack much -Res on them. The Control set also helps a bit with damage, so it's not a bad thing. You might ask around specifically for the interaction of the +1 Mag and Arctic Air... if they work together well, then that's a no-brainer, because pushing AA up to Confuse Bosses is a Big Thing. Lore is whatever you like, but I like the Storm Elementals for my Illusion/Storm. Judgment is also pretty balanced, though you go Pyrrhic if you want a fast animation, and the Electric if you don't want to bother aiming and just want to hit everything on the map. For my Ill/Storm I went with Ageless since I don't get attacked as much, but an Ice Controller really needs Arctic Air to keep running so they need mez protection.

The chain heal is really weak. The AoE Immob is excellent, especially for E3 who will have mobs drained and looking to run away. It will also help with draining and -Recovery. ST Hold is not needed, as mobs should be drained & Immobilized (effectively Held). Edit: think of the E3, in terms of Control, as shutting mobs down with a combination of Immobilize and Drain, not with actual controls. With Thunderous Blast and Short Circuit slotted with some End Mod, plus Power Sink as a backup, the only reason you won't permanently shut down entire spawns in two hits (and one more to Immobilize most) is the target cap.

Alright, I've reworked the build to how I would run it. The main thing, is that Controller base damage is pretty low, it's always better to use damage procs to increase the damage, than to slot up the damage. Then, the next thing is that the Immobilizes have really long durations, so slotting up their duration isn't very important... same for Sleeps, because usually the effect will be broken by damage or by Ice Slick before the effect ends. Lastly, Surge of Power has a hard crash at the end, it's not very survivable for squishies, and ones that are resist-capped for S/L don't really need it except for mez protection. If mez protection is that important that she can't wait for Clarion, I'd rather get Indomitable Will or Rune of Protection instead. The only option where I'm unsure is the slotting on Ball Lightning... this does way more damage, but Artillery would cap out the Ranged Defense. I'm not sure it's important enough... if it is, switch to Artillery for more defense.

Oh, I see. Yeah, that would be way too much trouble. Especially since the point is to get a way to defend against them... and if you're inviting a team, likely someone will be able to tank it, or give out team buffs, or debuff it, or something. Looking for End drain specifically as a mitigation method seems like something only practical if you have a set team built for draining.

Well, if you're soloing AVs, there is the question of how to survive. While a lot of squishies can range-tank AVs, some AVs are really hard to tank with just Defense since they have -Defense abilities. Others will self-heal, or summon, or do other unpleasant things. Sometimes, shutting down their abilities and attacks is really important, and End draining is an option (though a pretty difficult one). Especially an AT that doesn't have much self-defense like a Dominator, and not all Doms can perma-Hold AVs.

I ran an attack chain analysis once for an Electric Blaster to drain an AV (I forget if it was /Ele or /Nrg), and found that it could drain a level 50 AV, on the average... this includes the -End effect, so it doesn't necessarily mean 0% Recovery... but if the AV did get a tick once in a long while, it would be re-drained quickly. The catch was, however, that it relied on spamming Tesla Cage and Short Circuit, which do little DPA. So it could drain, but then wouldn't beat the AV's Regeneration. An alternate attack chain could beat an AV's regen but wouldn't be able to drain it. However, an Ele/Psy Dominator would be using Drain Psyche for -Regen anyhow, so using it for -Recovery doesn't hurt the attack chain, and using Tesla Cage slotted with damage procs wouldn't be a big loss given the relatively weak attacks in /Psy. And Static Field, Conductive Aura, and Gremlins contribute to the draining without taking action time. So I think one could both beat an AV's regeneration and drain it. Eventually... you would still have to survive a couple of minutes of draining it, you do have 800 points of Endurance to work through even if the AV is helping by making attacks.

What Nihili said. /Energy is really good, and provides a good secondary effect, places for the FF proc, and Power Up. /Ele's secondary effect is generally poor, and has Build Up instead of Power Up... you want the +Special for your controls more than you want extra damage. The only thing it has going for it is that it can slot the FF proc in an AoE. But it's an otherwise poor AoE, so... it's not much.

Well, you regain 5% of your Endurance whenever you get an Endurance tick. So you can't use powers that cost 20 Endurance. An AV has 800 or so Endurance, so they regain 40 points whenever they get a tick. So they CAN use powers that cost 20 Endurance. I'm not sure that there is a single power that has a cost higher than how much an AV regains in a single tick. AVs can be drained, especially at middle levels. Their resistance gets weaker by about 1% per level below 50, so a 35 AV suffers 30% -Endurance and 30% -Recovery. Given that there are powers like Drain Psyche with -500% Recovery, 15% of that won't shut down an AV's recovery, but 30% would. It is really hard for a single character to do it, you pretty much need two sets that both do -End/-Recovery. I'd bet on a Ele/Psy Dominator, maybe Ele/Nrg Blaster (for Power Boost), maybe Ele/EA Defender. I drained Nosferatu in the late 30s with a Bots/EA MM, but I can't drain AVs at Incarnate levels, since their debuff resistance increased... but if a /EA MM could do it in the 30s, then probably a double-Electric Defender can do it at 50.

Good write-up in general, but to me this is the gem of the post. Other than power-boosted EQ, Earth Control is a good set on Dominators but not really special. However, Doms generally get -ToHit only in Dark Control and Dark Assault... having a long-duration -ToHit that can be Power Boosted to about 16% is a huge difference between Earth Control and other control sets. Even without the knockdowns, it's a huge defensive benefit. Now, run it with Dark Assault and add in -13% from Engulfing Darkness and the Life Drain. You're now running about -30% ToHit debuff around you, with mez protection and a self-heal. Very different from the usual Dominator who depends on mezzing opponents for safety. Especially since you can still mez them. But even if you don't, it's pretty easy to hit the softcap to everything, have mez protection, a bit of healing, as well as damage... if you're not facing -Def debuffs or +ToHit on the mobs, you can pretty much tank spawns at x8 even without having them controlled.

I customize pretty much everything, usually, including most of the character having multiple costumes and using a file-load keybind to cycle costumes, even though it's usually just changing colors. Like using orange lightning for 15 seconds, then switching to green, then blue, etc.... keeps things changing and interesting. Though I do have a character who is a nature spirit, and who changes between animal-themed costumes.

Congratulations, and moreso on playing with the kids again. And the grown-up kids. And the grown-ups who are still kids ;). I remember your forum name... I was BlackSly, though I left somewhat before the shutdown so I'm not sure if that handle would still be in the memory of anyone besides the Immortal Arcana.

No, FF has no cooldown. It's a 5 second duration and the duration will stack. My Illusion/Storm usually stacks Tornado/LS, each with FF, and with a 90% proc rate, 81% of the time that I use them back to back, I get a 10 second +100% Recharge boost. It's the secret to perma-PA on an Illusion/Storm.

That's doubly true for /Storm, as Tornado doesn't need LOS to be summoned. You can literally dump controls AND damage on a spawn from around a corner... EQ, FR, QS, VG, and Tornado.

He also appears as an AV in the Night Ward arc of the Nameless Sorcerer named Pazzuzu.

But that wasn't what you asked for earlier. It sounded like a "what is an auto-driving combination of powersets that can't go bad". If you just asked which combinations of sets kind of work against each other, you'd probably get a much bigger response. And even then it would be contingent upon builds and playstyle... Energy/Electric is completely antagonistic within the combinations due to having Knockback-oriented primary paired with a melee-oriented secondary. And then you add in Knockback converters into the primary attacks, and everything that the character does is Knockdown and can be used in melee, and the pairing actually becomes worth running.

Just to note about powers: weapons are considered natural, and Warriors use them. Greeks used, well, Greek Fire. We have Arsonists and Demolitionists in the game. There are web projectiles already (grenades and arrows), could someone just throw a web directly? Probably with a shorter range. Between fire bombs, webs, Caltrops, Leadership, and Presence (Taunt from a high-resistance mob that's otherwise not dangerous so you'd prefer to leave it for last can be very effective). Greeks used shields, that could be something to add to them, especially with Shield Charge. Or Spring Attack (as mentioned) for some of those who don't have shields. Battle shouts like the Cimerorians, or a battle standard that is planted like a DE emanator and gives Leadership buffs around it. Stealth and Perception abilities can also mess with character plans. There are all sorts of inventive ways to make combat with them more interesting, without having to leave the area of powers that look Natural.

As maps, the Hazard Zones are great. The Faultline story arc is also great, and a good reason to visit there. Striga and Croatoa also have good enough arcs to take a character or team through them. But the other hazard zones other than RWZ are missing good story arcs to attract play. They are also, pretty much all of them, missing a reason to go there when you're not the right level for the story arcs (again, outside of RWZ). A stronger support presence is needed in most of them to make it more comfortable to be in the zone for a longer time, and then more door missions located in them.

1: It works in EQ with a 90% chance on the drop only. -Res procs aren't good here due to the large area and 10 second tick time that makes the activation chances really low. I put a -Res in Volcanic Gases, though. 2: Animate Stone is very good, especially soloing, and especially with some secondary that can keep him alive against AVs. Then you get the ability to tank AVs for the team at need, or if soloing. Damage-wise he's solid against a single target, but has no AoE damage so at the usual large spawn sizes of a team, he doesn't really do much. 3: Quicksand is a waste, you get -Def from Earthquake also, then everything else does -Def also. And if you go with /Rad, you get more -Def from Radiation Infection. Kins do like -Def, but Kinetics is a busy set, and Quicksand is a slow animation, and I'm not sure it's worth taking even though it doesn't need slotting. Salt Crystals is also unnecessary, as the knockdowns from Earthquake will cancel it out pretty fast... it's only useful against adds, and even then it's a PBAoE so you have to go meet the adds... just not that useful. 4: It has the usual End costs of comparable powers for most Controllers, but has pretty slow animations in most cases. Well, except for Stone Cages, which has a fast animation, high End cost, and short Recharge... so if you want to bottom out your Endurance, it's one of the better AoE Immobs with which to do it. But since you don't really need to spam it, the other slow animations actually prevent you from burning Endurance as fast as you might like otherwise.

Group Fly is good for ranged MMs who don't have a keep-away power like Caltrops or Hurricane. It can keep mobs away from you and your ranged henchmen, and if you're in a mission, you're generally not going around at full speed. In fact, I'd give it a really good rating (situationally) except that sometimes one robot breaks its AI and movement restrictions and zooms around the map at Warp Speed. If you've seen it, you know what I'm talking about ... if you haven't, I'll try to describe it: it's like Superspeed in air, except about 3x as fast, and it seems to go back and forth between two points repeatedly. You have to go back next to it or give it a GoTo command to reset it. Also... it has a ToHit debuff? I know it used to, but I thought that was removed quite a while ago. Lastly... rename your Robots as Valkyrie Drones, Valkyrie Protectors, and Assault Valkyrie, have them turn on their cute boot jets as they fly with you, and play Ride of the Valkyries as the Assault Valkyrie rains missiles down on poor Nemesis, and teach that Prussian Pretender about how tactics later than the 19th century include the concept of air superiority.

They are based on AT modifiers to different abilities. Interesting that the the Panacea and the Power Transfer IOs use different modifiers to determine how much they heal, so each of them would heal for different amounts on different ATs. I think one is using the modifier for healing other targets (where ATs with buff/debuff sets should be better), and the other is using the modifiers for self-healing, but I'm not sure I recall that detail with great certainty.

It depends on the level of debuff, but in any case, the debuff would be based on reaching a max value as the mez reaches full effect. So if we say that a max debuff of -20% Damage from being Held, or -15% To Hit from being Stunned is the top limit, then stacking 1/3 of an AV's Stun protection upon the AV would only give a -5% ToHit... and getting halfway to its Hold resistance would only give a -10% Damage. I'm well aware of the powers of stacking debuffs on the one hand, and on the other hand, control powers already control... and usually have a secondary effect... and usually do damage. So adding yet another layer of debuffing, which I think is really warranted, would be on the order of a third or fourth effect and would also be capped upon any particular target. Suffering stackable, unresistable -10% debuffs could be crippling... suffering stackable, unresistable -3% debuffs that top out at -15% will have an effect, but not a really major one.

Time is really strong defensively, but not a great boost to offense. You want to pair it with a set that's stronger on offense, so I'd run it as a Corruptor in most cases to get higher damage. The defenses are probably strong enough that losing some defensive buff strength isn't as important as getting Scourge and higher base damage modifier. Actually, I'd REALLY run it as a MM, probably, but that's a different type of story. But as a Corruptor/Defender, I'd run it as a Corruptor, probably with either Fire Blast (for higher offense) or Ice Blast (for a ridiculous amount of stacking -Recharge and -Move).

I agree, though my idea is to have mezzes automatically give an unresistable debuff depending on the mez type. Like Slept/Held = -Def/-Res since you can't dodge... Immob = -Move, Stun = -ToHit/-Damage, etc. So while the melees can shrug off the hard effects of the mezzes, they'll still be affected by them. And it would give control-oriented effects a use against AVs, also.