Coyote

I skipped Dark Blast because there are enough other good single-target attacks in the set. With fast snipe, Moonbeam can be part of an attack chain, then you have Gloom, Life Drain, and Abyssal Gaze... with 4 single-target attacks plus your Tier 1 Immobilize from the secondary, it's hard to find slots for Dark Blast. Otherwise, it's all good. Umbral Torrent is awesome once you get a KB to KD proc in there, having a lifesteal power is great, a Hold that does good damage is great, and Gloom is solid... good damage, though having it as a DoT is annoying. Tenebrous Tentacles is a nice combination of keeping the mobs in one place (and away from you) plus giving them a to-hit debuff that stacks with Smoke Grenade and Umbral Torrent. Tier 9 nukes are now gold, so... I skipped Dark Blast more because you can't take and fully slot all 9 powers from your primary in almost all cases, so something had to be cut.

Sarcasm is rarely the best option given that silence is usually also available as an option. In person, you can get away with sarcasm since the humor is usually easier to notice. But on a forum, you're better off not posting than posting only to be sarcastic.

The largest HP buff a tanker can benefit from is ~89%, which Frostwork can reach for a Defender with one additional slot. So assuming the tanker had no accolades, powers, or set bonuses that boost HP, they'd gain a +89% regen rate for two minutes from Frostwork. This would (on our hypothetical blank tanker) work out to 834 total HP (base regen of 7.81/s * 0.89 * 120), equivalent to a 23% heal spread out over two minutes (or a ~0.2% tick heal). For comparison, Aid Self on a tanker with one plain heal IO and no other slotting is a 27% heal every twenty seconds. It's not much, is what I'm saying. If you got a damage buff that increased your dps by a fifth of one percent, you absolutely wouldn't notice or care. I mean I'd love that on my /cold Corr, but it absolutely is substantially more overall damage protection. If you cast current Frostwork on, eg, a base HP L50 Blaster who's at half health (~600/1200hp), they already "heal" 200 HP (going to ~800/1600). That Blaster still gon die, doe. Assuming the power is reasonably slotted, your proposed version still caps out their maxhp, puts an 800pt absorb shield on them, and then also heals them to full. In the first case, they gain 200hp of mitigation. In the second, 1800. So like I said I am all about that but giving the power an active heal component is a bit overkill for the set -- it would easily be the best single-target heal in the game. (Hey you gave me a great idea for fixing Absorb Pain though) Jack, I'm not sure where your numbers are coming from. What is the current +HP for Frostwork? 800? Then, my suggestion would have added 400 to the max, 400 to the current, and a 400pt Absorb shield, giving that Blaster 800 pts of mitigation (a 400 pt heal and a 400 pt Absorb shield). Remember, I said split it 50-50, so you would get half the values as a Heal/MaxHP, and half as an Absorb, not the current values as a Heal/MaxHP PLUS as an Absorb. Also, adding 89% to the Tanker's HPs is NOT a +89% to the Regen rate. It's their CURRENT Regen rate * 1.89... if I have a Tanker who regenerates 50 HP/sec (and I have a Stalker at 35, so I doubt this is unlikely), then this Tanker would now regenerate an additional 44 HP/sec... IIRC, this would be about an Aid Self every 10 seconds. Granted, +89% to a character is unlikely given the MaxHP caps on ATs, but I don't think that expecting +50% on most targets is that unlikely, and with characters often regenerating at 20 HPs/sec or more, getting 10 HP/sec is not a minor effect. Granted, it's only an Aid Self every 20 seconds, but that's still a noticeable mitigation.

You're a villain Mastermind (at least that's how the AT was designed originally). I think that having incompetent henchmen should be part of the description. Besides, how competent DO you expect your zombies to be? Maybe they realize that they're terminally incompetent, and are rushing off in pursuit of brains to eat so they can become smarter. That probably makes sense when your brains are rotted by death or video games :D

The power is granted to the MM by the IO, so the tier of the pet power does not affect its effect. You may need to put the unique IOs in different tiers for each set, for several reasons: 1) Some tiers, for some sets, may have useful enhancement options that are only useful on that tier, so you may want to save slots for those enhancements... Tier 2 for Thugs may have a use for Defense enhancements, but not Tiers 1 or 3. Demons may have a use for Resist enhancement in their Tier 2s. Etc. 2) Some sets may have -Defense (Mercs) so don't need as many slots to slot up for Accuracy. 3) Some secondaries may put out -Defense, so again you don't need as many slots for Accuracy. 4) Some MM builds may build for Ranged Defense and use Provoke, so you may want to use full IO sets in some Tiers in order to get Defense bonuses, forcing you to put multiple Resist or Defense IOs crowded into a single Tier. 5) Some MM builds (/FF) may have high enough defenses that you feel you don't need all of the Resist/Defense IOs in the pets.. while Kinetics focuses on offensive buffing, and probably wants all of the defensive IOs to help it keep the pets alive. These are only some of the reasons why you can't get a general answer on "where to put the IOs". It differs not only by primary, and not even by primary/secondary, but also by the build design... how strongly is it focused on MM defense or Recharge, how much defense do you feel is fine for the henchmen, etc. I could almost see someone building a character with all of the IOs as a high-D characters for tough missions, and having a 2nd build with all offense slotting for the times when you are in a steamrolling team.

Stone Melee is probably the best as a melee control set. What should be a 2nd AoE for the set is instead an AoE knockup/Disorient power, and it has a very good single-target Hold attack with very high damage.

I didn't see one point mentioned in favor of +MaxHPs: increasing the MaxHPs on a character increases their Regeneration rate by the same amount. So a +25% MaxHP increase will increase someone's regeneration rate, which may matter for a lot of characters. Absorb has its purposes, but let's not pretend that MaxHPs is not a very nice buff to add onto someone. Personally, I think everyone can be made happy: Split the power's benefit 50-50 between MaxHP and Absorb, and give it a Heal component equivalent to its MaxHP boost. This way it can be used as an Absorb shield, as a MaxHPs boost (with a lower chance of being wasted due to HP caps), and as a long-timer Heal power. It doesn't deliver more overall damage protection so it's not just a free boost to the power, so we don't need to worry about balance issues, and it can be used on any target for a noticeable benefit.

Why would you expect it to perma-confuse foes and do noticeable damage also? 1) A Tanker's Lightning Field does about 20 damage every 2 seconds, so 10 DPS or so fully slotted. This does about 5 DPS in a smaller radius, so it's clearly not as strong as a true damage aura. But it's a mez aura that does damage, not a damage aura, so this seems reasonable to me. Mud Pots does ab bit more than 2x the damage, for about 4x the End cost. 2) Slotted, it's duration is about 2.6 seconds on a 4 second tic (guaranteed Mag 2 Mez with small chance for Mag 3). That's about 50% damage mitigation from minions, and a bit from Lts. Not that terrible for a single control power, and stacked with Arctic Air it will Confuse a Boss about 25% of the time. Statistically, the power seems quite fine. The problems are twofold: 1) small radius. Increase it to 10 or 12 like Oppressive Gloom, and it's fine 2) player perception that a Confuse power should shut down spawns like Seeds of Confusion. I think that the other Confuse powers in the game are overpowered, based on an old duration vs recharge formula that was more applicable when Confused foes took a higher share of the Experience from a defeated foe. But compared to other mezzing powers, it's not bad... half as strong in damage mitigation as Oppressive Gloom, but does damage also... it's easier to stack Stuns, which is why OG is considered a good power, but you're still getting a good amount of melee-range mitigation from a single toggle power. Expand its radius by 50%, increase the End cost by 50%, and the power looks fine compared to other mez toggles. Consider the End cost of Arctic Air and Choking Cloud, for example... sure, they have a stronger effect, but they also cost 4x as much, or more, Endurance to run.

1: Dark Blast doesn't have the Accuracy bonus of some weapon sets, or a -Def, but otherwise has normal accuracy. 2: Dark Servant puts out a LOT of -ToHit debuffing. I would always take him, and 4-slot Cloud Senses to improve his debuffing. He is a walking (floating) debuff zone with pretty regular AoE heals, go next to him to be pretty safe from melee opponents. His heal also does -Regen and -Dam, so he's a useful power against AVs. I wouldn't skip him in any case. 3: Tar Patch now is limited to one out at a time? It certainly had the ability to stack back on the Live servers. 4: Dark Pit is a pretty weak power. Oppressive Gloom is a pretty weak power. Combined, they stack up to 4 Mag, so everyone in the area (12' radius for OG) is Stunned for about 10 seconds, giving the team plenty of time to wipe out the minions and establish control/debuffing on the Bosses. I don't know whether it's necessary to add yet another defensive option to what is a very strong defensive pairing already, but there is certainly a case to be made for taking the powers in tandem. This is especially true for secondaries that are not as strong defensively as Dark Miasma.

Ugh, I hate JRangering, but I kind of feel that I have to /jranger Accolades are something that your character gains. Like Experience, Influence, IOs, Levels, unlocking Patron Pools, and so on. It doesn't seem reasonable to me that if one character EARNS Level 50, or opens a Patron pool, or does anything else that they have to unlock, that other characters shouldn't have to do it because they're on the same account. Now, if you want to argue that no character should have to unlock anything, that's a different argument. But I think that anything that is unlocked by having your character achieve something... should then have to be unlocked by some other character, by that other character also doing something. Boring and repetitive? Um, that's inherent in alt-itis. You ARE doing the same missions and the same content, for the same unlocks. If that bothers you, to be doing it again with a different AT and powersets... then why are you making that other alt? Just as you have to through some of the same content on your 20th character as on some of your first 19 (usually) in order to level up, I don't see the argument as "but I'm doing the same thing again" as a good reason why it should be freely unlocked. Alts have to earn their own experience, do their own story arcs, and for the same reasons should have to earn their own accolades.

There is another thread around, titled "What's the deal with Controllers at 50?" That thread laments how many powerful teams don't need all the defense that is available to teams, that a defense-oriented Controller can bring. Some good points are made in it, about how you may need a defensive character at times, but less often at level 50 when other characters have their defenses fully set up. So... given the good points in that thread, doesn't it make a bit of sense to add SOME damage to the team rather than some completely useless debuff power? Or worrying about always keeping up Endurance for emergency heals... on a team that is mowing through content? Even if the damage seems worthless at 100 points when someone else has a comparable blast that does 180, that 100 can kill a minion just as dead when the minion has a sliver of health left. Damage is always useful, in every team, ever. In a few cases it's not useful ENOUGH to spend animation time and Endurance on it... but there are more cases when you want more damage than more defense, than the other way around. Building primarily for defense when your main damage output is pets makes sense... building for no offense outside of the pets limits the character on strong teams.

A Fire/Kin doesn't need Purple sets too much. Purple sets help with +Recharge as their main benefit, and Fire/Kin doesn't need much help with Recharge. Instead, go for a Defense build, using Kinetic Combat in any melee attacks that you may take like Air Superiority, Obliteration in PBAoEs, and Thunderstrike in Ranged attacks. Siphon Speed/Hasten will help a lot with +Recharge, so build for +Defense and you will probably do better. Or +Resist would also work, though I prefer +Defense since it also helps prevent getting mezzed.

While it's a shame to waste the Recharge enhancing from it, and the End enhancing is weak, the Coercive Persuasion proc works great in both Arctic Air and World of Confusion. Since it has a flat strength (mag * duration), it benefits weak strength powers like AA and WoC more than powers that already have a strong Confuse effect.

I was thinking 4 slotting Cloud Senses with a 2 slot Lockdown for the chance for +2 Mag Hold. I wouldn't. The use of Lockdown's proc is the chance to insta-hold a Boss. A CHARACTER who slots it into their Hold knows this, and will preferentially target a Boss with their single-target Hold. But Fluffy will throw it at anyone around him, which is far more often a Minion or a Lt... and in this case, they'll be Held in any case. So, not only do you have to worry about the proc not firing, but you also have to worry that most of the time when it DOES fire, it will be just to uselessly stack magnitude on a Minion or LT who is held by the base Mag anyhow. Damage is always useful, minion or Boss. Extra Mag on a Mag 3 Hold is only useful when using it on a Boss, and since you can't control the use of it by Fluffy, the proc will rarely have a useful effect.

Remember also that Fluffy, slotted with 6-slotted Cloud Senses, will give +Ranged Defense, while also putting out about -30% to hit in a large area around him. So between that and Darkest Night... well, things get REALLY dark :p. Personally, I had so much RngDef on my Dark/Dark, that I dropped Cloud Senses to 4 slots, and I'm using the last 2 for damage procs on Fluffy... probably two on the Hold to give him some single-target damage, though I could go with one Hold proc for single-target and one Immob proc for AoE.

Fire / Dark Controller is one of the builds that I consider a top power build. It can solo, it can team, and it can solo AVs. 1: Power Boost will boost Fade for the entire duration of Fade if Fade is activated when Power Boost is active. So you don't need to worry too much about the uptime of Power Boost as long as you time them together. 2: You don't really need such high Defense. The -ToHit from Dark Miasma is high enough that you have no problems flooring the chances that mobs have to hit, even at 30 Defense. It's nice to have high D, I wouldn't go against it, but you don't really need to worry about it... slotted Darkest Night is about 22% -ToHit, and you will have other powers up also. 3: Against AVs, you can't floor their to-hit as easily, but you can still put out an impressive -ToHit against them (over 100% base against a single target, which they resist down to -15%, which is still impressive)... more relevant, though, is that between Darkest Night, spamming Twilight Grasp, and the debuffs from Fluffy, you should floor the AV's damage while putting out constant strong heals. Basically no AV in story arc missions should be able to beat you through damage (except if using undebuffable damage like Tornado), and if you carry Break-Frees you can avoid being mezzed. Dark Miasma is a very strong defensive secondary, and adding it just a bit of controls from the primary means that the character should have little problem soloing at higher difficulties even before loading out with expensive IO set. And Fire Control fits great because it focuses on more damage, which is the right idea when you have a high-defense secondary. All in all, a great combination, and if I weren't already playing Fire Control and Dark Miasma on other characters, I would strongly consider running it myself.

Sure they can, its simply a matter or picking what animation is most appropriate (from a ton currently available) and attaching it to the power. Blaze, Fire Blasts highest damage 80ft range instant attack is the same as what Energy Transfer used to be and is currently the same as Freezing touch in the Ice Melee set (among others). I build abilities myself in another private server, its pretty standard stuff. Bespoke brand new animations would of course be nice but they are certainly not necessary. You need to get an existing power that has a suitable animation and also has exactly the same animation time as the casting time of the new power as well... that is a lot harder to do than just pick a random animation. If the animation is shorter than the cast time, you get to move earlier - before it's actually fired off. If the animation is longer than the cast time, you cant move until x time after the power had fired off. Also, Just because two animations match cast does not mean you can use a punch to fling fire balls. FX changes may be needed to make the effect come off the right body part. Well, it is easier to adjust a database than animations... so you adjust the cast time to match the animation that you have found. If this means that the power needs a small change to its recharge to balance it, and then to the damage & endurance, or to the duration, to rebalance it... it's still easier than changing animations.

PPM proc rates don't favor fast attacks. It would work fine in another attack instead of AS if you prefer. I think people might be over-extrapolating from StJ, where it goes really well in AS because that also gives two combo points, so you're frequently using CU or another finisher right after AS. Riiight the accursed proc rate changes that keep tripping me up. :( Still, I wouldn't want to use AS and go back into hide. My AS would still be on cooldown! I would want the option to do AS or another big attack and that means for me a mid-speed attack that I typically follow up AS with. That is the point of putting the ATO in AS: 1: you set up AS with Assassin's Focus points to get a guaranteed critical with the combat-version of AS. 2: This AS crits, and the ATO procs and sets you into hide.... 3: ...at this point, you follow up with the set's "big hitter" for a guaranteed crit. Depending on the set, the big hitter could be a really high damage attack. Some sets have their big hitter as an AoE (Spines and Electric, as I recall), so it may not help them too much... but other sets that have a single-target big hitter that will do a lot of damage with a crit will benefit a lot. So the point of using AS to enter Hide is that you can already set up a guaranteed crit for AS using Assassin's Focus, and now you set up a crit for your set's top-tier attack. So now you have a attack rotation that always crits for AS and for something like Crushing Uppercut, which you can't match if you slow down the attacks by going into Hide for the hidden version of AS.

Given how some of the other sets have abilities where power effect depends on how previous powers affected the target (Beam Rifle, Rad Melee, Atomic Manipulation), it should be possible to have Electric stack up a charge on a target with some attacks, and then have that charge released with some "finishing" moves for a burst of AoE damage around the target and a chance to Stun the target.

Interesting, but one question: Is there a reason to create 3 files? It seems to me that all of the keybinds could be set to: auto-Dominate.txt: +<key> powexec_auto Dominate $$ bind_load_file auto-Hasten auto-Hasten.txt +<key> powexec_auto Hasten $$ bind_load_file auto-Dominate Instead of +<key>, use the keys that you will use: +right, +left, +space bar, etc, repeating the lines until you have all of the keys that you want to bind set up. Then you only have one file to load, and two in the directory. Once you start making lots of alternating load-file binds, having fewer files will keep things neater.

Trip Mine is great for a few Controller sets. Control all the mobs, go into them, and lay down Trip Mine with KB->KD, followed by Poison Trap. Lots of AoE damage, and for an AT that usually has to struggle to find AoE damage, this is better than gold... it's multi-Platinum :p Electric/Traps is thematic and great... Sleep, Confuse, then go in and Mine/Poison them, follow up with Fences and Jolting Chain, and you have a Controller with high AoE damage that isn't Fire or Plant :p. Though, you could go Plant/Traps also.

+1. Even before, if you used a proc, it became a great power. Now you don't even need a proc. It does high damage AND high control at the same time, what's not to love? I would still put a KB to KD proc in it, so that you can open around a corner with it and avoid an alpha strike. Ring of Fire is good for soloing, if you're not going to solo then a slot DoT is useless. If you are going to solo, then Controller damage is low enough that you shouldn't pass up sources to do more damage. Mutation is, IMO, worthless. Everyone depends on wakies to wake up, not on rez powers. I would also skip Choking Cloud... it's a good power especially for someone who is going to be in the middle of mobs, but you'll be running Hot Feet, Enervating Infection, and Radiation Infection plus any defense toggles like Maneuvers. Adding another toggle with a high End Drain, which mitigates almost no damage if you have the mobs Stunned, is not something that you can maintain. Fallout is not worth it, IMO, except if you know you're going to be in a mid-size team at higher difficulty rating. It has too many limitations, though its damage and debuffs are great. The problem is on a large team that is going through spawns pretty well, by the time that you have a body on the floor, and are done with your controls and debuffs, most or all of hte minions are dead. So there aren't really enough live bodies left to make it a great power. It's not worth the power and slotting investment to take a power that isn't going to see regular use, and when it does, the spawn is down to Lts and Bosses, when you need all the slots for better powers.

To continue off Tremalion and Sulhythal... the only times when specific characters are NEEDED, is when the team needs their DEFENSIVE abilities. However, at level 50, enough characters have their defenses figured out strongly enough that they can provide defense for the team, and so any other defensive character on the team is not necessary or especially useful. Offense is always useful, thus a low-damage AT like Controllers, and an especially low-AoE-damage version like Ill/FF, who brings almost no offense, will not be able to feel useful by bringing offense to the team. And if defense is not needed, then that character is not helping the team much. That applies to all defense-focused builds at level 50. Teams are strong enough defensively, that bringing a defense focus is not especially useful, and lacking good offensive ability hurts. It's not purely a Controller issue, though it applies to them more than to anyone else since they have some of the lowest-AoE damage builds in the game. There is no real solution, but it's because you're bringing a fork to a soup dish. Controller have a Primary that is mainly Defense with a secondary effect of Damage, and a Secondary that is mostly Defense with some -Res or +Dam (but only for some sets)... it fits, that a Defense/Defense character feels useless in an end game where the team usually has enough Defense. If you get into smaller teams who are still running missions at x8, your defense will feel more useful. You have to fit the character to the type of gameplay... a strongly defensive-oriented character like Ill/FF should be on a smaller team fighting tougher foes, since then the team will have use for the extra defensive abilities.

It would most likely be doable as a Hellfire Assault set, combining hellfire ranged blasts with melee whip attacks. We have 4 attacks including the Empowerment animation. Add in Combustion as a PBAoE to give it two AoEs, two ranged blasts and a lifedrain, and some self-buff, and you can fill out an Assault set with what's available in the game. Trying to make it a set where all the attacks use a whip in the hand for the attack animation is not going to have enough animations, and adding new animations is probably the hardest part of creating new sets. Ideas and numbers come cheaply, and testing is not that much harder.

That's my choice also. ...AoE sets --> Stalker ...Single-target sets --> Scrapper with a Damage Aura secondary