Shin Magmus

If Tear Gas is hovering around Mag 3 for you, that's workable for Controllers because they'll use the same builds they currently use with Volcanic Gasses. Controllers run into melee then combo the power with either: Choking Cloud, Entangling Aura, Poison Trap, or The Cooler Poison Trap. This results in overrall non-stop Mag 4+ Hold on all enemies in the area, and it's the Crux of how my Earth/Nature Controller build works.

Well tonight after work I'll actually get to do some testing again, noice. About that Defense comment... They're probably not going to bump up Def more in Cloaking Device because it provides a lot of Def already by self Stealth power standards. Remember that the best self Stealth in any armorset (besides Hide on Stalkers) on the tankiest AT in the game: Shadow Cloak on a Tanker, provides 5% Def to all base. That value is implicitly higher than what Cloaking Device "should" be allowed to have. These toggles are still barely worth enhancing even at the values they currently have: I put a 2nd slot in Cloaking Device for a Lv50+5 LotG Def/End.

Confuse does not now, and never has, set up Containment. The check is for Immob, Hold, Sleep, Stun. So without an Immob, the 2 powers in your Arsenal (I'm funny) that apply reliable AoE Containment, which is not instantly broken on damage, are the 90s CD Stun and the 240s CD Hold Patch: that's it.

If I learned one thing from my life as a whole, but scaled down to just discussing our adventures on this forum over the past month: it's that you shouldn't give up just because something feels futile. Really small margins are beaten, with changes that have positive effects for many people, just because a handful of people tried their hardest anyways even when something seemed futile. It's the principle of the thing.

If anyone is following this thread, all meaningful discussion is still happening in the Focused Feedback: Arsenal Control thread, and a new build just dropped that buffed several powers but unfortunately broke Sleep Grenade currently. Most, but not all, commenters here are active over there as well. I'd recommend reading the Build 4 patch notes for a couple reasons. The main point is that they seem to have agreed to dispense a lot of buffs to Arsenal Control as a whole, and many of the buffs are similar to what I outlined at the start of this thread. There are buffs/changes to Smoke Canister, Tranq Dart, and Tear Gas: which are all analogous or identical to what I suggested. This is important not because it validates me personally, but because the set has moved toward having an identity and being objectively strong. Arsenal Control is now truly "The Patch Control Set" as it has tons of ground-targeted powers which can be used to finesse the locations of a fight and where enemies end up "stopping". Additionally, it has more direct comparisons with Earth Control. Not only do both sets have an especially Tanky pet, but they both have a version of "Earthquake, a version of "Volcanic Gasses", and have a ground-target power to slow enemy movement tied to a 45s CD. This means that you can do a lot of the same stuff in Arsenal Control... same but different (and maybe even better since the Confuse power will be a marked advantage over Earth): Lots of good stuff. The shenanigans with the "Wet" flag are still ongoing, but that's not as much of a deal-breaker anymore when the rest of the set is finally good. If this powerset is given a truly consistent AoE Immobilize: then it will be something that I genuinely want to play. One step at a time, or like... don't look a gift-horse in the mouth. I just wanted to say thanks for all the positive feedback here: especially since I didn't make this thread myself and expected this to quickly devolve into a flame war. It was actually pretty civil and productive (once you pretend Arcane doesn't exist). There's not much else to say here though, this thread is almost entirely redundant when the pitches in the first page are just stating how the set is now. It might be worth closing.

I saw a lot of overall positive changes to the set to improve aspects of underperforming powers and just fix other ones. The increased tohit debuff on Smoke Canister doesn't really even need to be tested for us to simply math out its effect (as experienced support players) and how much it will improve the safety of teams. I agree that it's ALMOST good. It's just a shame that I'm not allowed to make enemies stay within the patches, and I'm not going to struggle with more un-fun solo testing until at least that one critical bug is fixed.

Yeah so I tried playing without Sleep Grenade and... I'm just not going to bother testing Build 4 any further. Since I'm not allowed to have an Immobilize on Arse/Traps, I was specifically relying on the Slow from Sleep Grenade + the Slow from Caltrops to play at all. You guys saw how much I needed that in my video. Last build, Sleep Grenade broke frequently but still helped a bit before it broke. This build, I'm just down an entire power... so I have to play without any Immobs and also now without any AoE Sleep or AoE Slow from my primary: solely reliant on Caltrops to slow the entire spawn and keep them from running: this isn't playable. I'll plan out my build and how to incorporate Tear Gas into the next iteration but I'm not going to playtest an Immob-less Slow-less Controller who can only reliably prevent a single target at a time from running all over the map. The irony is that if Sleep Grenade was simply replaced by Wide Area Web Grenade, I'd be able to play right now with no issues and the set would probably be in a pretty good place.

Hello, It's me: Mr. Shin the angry person who wants Arsenal Control to work. I'm encountering the exact same bug: Video Recording for Reference Okay, I was going to Respec my character and test out the changes in Build 4. Before doing that, I went ahead and checked the info on the powers and tried to use them. I cannot use Smoke Grenade now... I mean we seem to be literally unable to cast the power in any way. Things I've tried: Zoning, Unslotting everything in the power, re-logging, moving it around in the trays: no fixes. Things I'm going to try: Respeccing.

Okay, I was going to Respec my character and test out the changes in Build 4. Before doing that, I went ahead and checked the info on the powers and tried to use them. I cannot use Smoke Grenade now... I mean I am literally unable to cast the power in any way. Things I've tried: Zoning, Unslotting everything in the power, re-logging, moving it around in the trays: no fixes. Things I'm going to try: Respeccing. Check out my recording, it's pretty funny! (I'll crosspost this to bug reports)

Sleep Grenade didn't work correctly before. It did disappear for you, it disappeared for all of us. It disappears in the video of my testing (in Build 3). A proc nuke is just a band-aid for underperforming powers and sets. I'd shoot Proc Grenade at a group -> the target died -> the VFX instantly disappeared -> Sleep and Slow canceled. At least after the fix we have a power that works and does something instead of a button that was, and I'm not sure I can stress this enough, a button that did nothing besides apply the procs then completely disappear. Unfortunately, now the power doesn't work period: bug reported.

I will be testing my same character on the Carnie mish again for comparative analysis, but I might drop a power to take and test Tear Gas as well now. I just can't upload that new stuff immediately cus I have work... I'm excited to at least hopefully see 2 of the powers in this set that didn't even really work in my test maybe start working now. ("Wet" is still fundamentally a terrible idea, especially for this powerset, but everyone else can already see that.)

This thread is about the Ancillary / Epic Power Pools, and we should be giving feedback along the lines of how to make those powers better for all players and how to bring underperforming pools up to the level of the others: i.e. how I mentioned that Build Up's 10s dmg buff will be worse than Spirit Drain's 15s dmg buff (and it's also an attack, another advantage) in 99% of cases... so Build Up should have the same CD or slightly lower CD than Spirit Drain. We should be trying to get numbers adjusted to make it so players have a meaningful choice (the ideal, not current) instead of only having one good choice for a function (Spirit Drain dumpsters Build Up and Soul Drain right now, cleanly killing Ice Mastery and Soul Mastery). Yet another Cottage Rule fight is just so stupid... and even if you use semantics to make it seem like the new Telekinesis(TK) breaks the Cottage rule: the old TK was a literally broken power that didn't even help teams in almost any context. Trying to herd enemies with TK was several hundred times harder than trying to herd enemies with Hurricane or Force Bubble, for objective mechanical reasons based on how the power worked; Old TK sucked ass. The biggest problem was that fringe enemies would "get away" from the target of TK and that broke all the work you were trying to accomplish. Now fringe enemies are "pulled towards" the target of TK, so in a way you can use it how the devs on live probably wanted you to. This is one of the only really good changes we're getting in a sea of mediocrity so don't fight about that power.

If the devs don't correct the course of this set, and keep it similar to how it is right now, you're going to want her to pick Water Blast. Then at least the enemies will always be "Wet".

Just as an aside, a bunch of the new ATTACKS are perfectly fine, but new buff and utility power variations in Recharge time are downright stupid. Corrs/Defenders getting their iconic and somewhat broken Soul Drain nerfed to Spirit Drain is at least understandable... so hey now it's still a damaging attack on a 120s CD that gives you a buff objectively superior to Build Up. "Oh hey look, they're also letting us just take Build Up in Ice Mastery. Let's just check the numbers and-" Build Up has a 180s CD compared to Spirit Drain's 120s. This is objectively wrong and bad design. Nobody will ever take Build Up. If these 2 powers had identical CDs of 120s each, then Build Up would still be the inferior power 99% of the time but it would at least be usable as often. I have an Ice Blast Defender and I'd love to take Ice Mastery for theme but not with a 3 minute CD Build Up and a 9 minute CD Hoarfrost. Nobody is going to take those powers, and I can't honestly believe any of the devs think that we would.

I'd say try Doms more but I understand why someone would prefer Controllers. The main reason to play Doms, aside from better attacks overall, is that none of their damage is tied to Containment. So take Mind Control for example: Terrify is a fearsome AoE attack but also a good Opener to start fights... however a Controller would never want to Open with an attack. They'd be losing out on 50% of its potential damage, so a Controller would want to use a different Opener, then use an AoE Immob to ensure Containment, then use Terrify 3rd: this is very very silly. It basically results in the optimal damage flowchart for Mind Controllers to be Mass Hypnosis -> immediately waste that power and break all the sleep with Terrify -> now the fight starts but you have no more ways to set up Containment so you're gimped for the rest of the fight. Compare that to playing the same set on a Dominator where you just click Terrify and get all the damage you were ever going to get; No stupid setup or dumb combos required... just damage. Some sets are infinitely more pleasant to play on Dominators because of this. It highlights an issue with Controller damage scales + inherent as a whole, but that's unlikely to be fixed or changed at all in the near future. Since most Control sets were intelligently designed around their inherent: the issue is not apparent on nearly all Controller primaries. In fact, it only really matters on Mind Control, and now Arse Control: just 2 sets. Illusion can't really set up Containment but the pets also can't proc Containment damage: therefore the weakness is less apparent and the DPS loss is less significant.

This actually incentivizes me to fight them more. I have a question though: how much does this change the sub-group of Dimensional/Rocket Council who spawn on some PI story arc missions and who are different from the "regular" Council who spawn on PI Radio missions? Spawnsets are something I genuinely don't really understand and never looked into, except noting that random grey-conning enemies sometimes appear in otherwise even-conning enemy groups because of spawnset issues.

Also, the bug was already reported, but Sleep Grenade's patch canceling on initial target death makes testing Arse Control's performance just that much harder. It means you have to both know the bug exists and also play around not-killing certain enemies like pre-buff Rad Emmission toggles. I also think it's weird this bug is even possible because the power summoned a patch in build 1 and does again in build 3 but isn't ground-targeted for some reason: and ground-targeting for these types of powers is objectively a buff in how and where you can place them. Enemy-targeting only makes it better in one specific way: which is increasing proc rates via silliness of the game's code. Hot take: if Arse Control was a better set, we wouldn't need a proc-nuke attack to try and make it work. Sleep Grenade that can't be proc-bused, but that works correctly and can be placed preemptively, would be a buff: then just add more damage to another power to compensate. To put this in a more damning way: I'm slotting both of the Sleep powers in Arse Control with damage enhancing sets, Slow enhancing sets, and damage procs: because they work better that way. I'd look at that from a dev perspective as reason for change.

If the jack of all trades box of powers had a stronger debuff in each one or more total debuffs in each power, then the combined sum of all the debuffs would be good enough to have an impact even when the controls fail. Doing this really would just be simple numbers tweaks for the devs. That alone would improve the pairing with any other debuffing set like Traps or Poison, as well as giving it some kind of identity. The movement slows need to go way up as of right now though: especially if the weird conditional Immob they added remains impossible to proc for most builds.

I guess I could've posted this weeks ago, but I do have some experience with Control sets outside of angrily posting on forums. This is my Control Page with my current lv50 CC Archetypes. Dominators: 1 - "Shin Magmus" is an old-school Fire/Psy/Fire Farmer who now runs the regular Warrior and Council maps in PI. She has a 2nd PvE build but it's so hilariously strong that it's almost not fun to play... almost. 2 - "Glacial Spear" is an Ice/Thorn/Ice Dom who can stack more autohit AoE movement slows than any other Dom: and who has the ST Immobilize in Chillblain which is often skipped. This character specializes in preventing enemy movement, including AVs, and is good at preparing areas ahead of ambushes or known spawns to force them to "herd themselves" by coalescing on the leading edge of a powerful slow field. This build completely outclasses Arsenal Control in its current state. 3 - "Mentaculon" is a Mind/Sonic/Fire Dom who is a Mentok Expy. She is the most powerful at debuffing enemy Resists and is a support character. I've already respecced back into Telekinesis ahead of the patch and will be teaming exclusively on the character as she's not built for soloing even though Mind Control is known for it. Controllers: 1 - "Lethal Lava Larissa" is a Fire/FF/Fire Controller who just jumps into melee after setting up Containment, and goes Force Bomb -> Fireball while racking up HotFeet damage. This is a strong contender for my favorite character. 2 - "It's Not Real" is an Illusion/Traps/Mace Controller whose build is completely focused on fighting AVs/GMs and that's it. This is a one-trick-pony. 3 - "TIME-Z0NE" is unsurprisingly a Grav/Time/Mu with Fold Space who uses Combat Teleport and recalls Singularity into the middle of the spawn with herself. This specific character trope is done to death and I'm not the first person to spam Wormhole and Fold Space onto Singy. Fun gimmick but low individual damage. 4 - "RICHTER RAMPAGE" is an Earth/Nature/Stone optimized for FUN with tons of redundant attacks out of Earth Mastery and several Nature powers skipped. The crux of the character is being tanky via the buffs I do take, then jumping in to stack Entangling Aura with my other Holds while I click ROCK BUTTONS AND GO BRRRR. This character has a 2nd build that is more traditional and has heavy focus on Nature as well as full Leadership to be a dedicated support Controller for Hard Mode ITFs. *Fixed spelling errors*

Of course not. I typed the comment that is the OP: but only in the Feedback Thread. A moderator moved it here and picked the name of this post for me.

Nah I have Intuition Radial alpha and I forgot to switch off the Global tab to the Combat tab.

Such a list on Controllers would be tricky because they have to build and slot *one way* to be able to have enough Recharge for their Opener to be up and ready every spawn, or else they die... but they have to build and slot *another way* to purely maximize their possible damage and speed up fights: which can speed up a fight too much and result in it being harder or impossible to get the Opener's Recharge low enough to be up in time for the next fight. Such a list on Dominators would also be fairly meaningless, since they can get 80-95% of their potential damage on many set-combos from just their Assault Set and their incredible assortment of Epic Pools. In a solo scenario, if your Opener(s) are on CD: you either wait or you die. In a team scenario, you can just click damaging buttons as soon as the meathead melees run in. So when Controllers are on teams, they can use squishier builds with higher damage potential and lower recharge, which can skew the results of which set clears fastest heavily. Alternatively, the best damaging Control sets deal disproportionately high damage via just a few powers such as HotFeet and Carrion Creepers: so it's easy to maximize the damage slotting of those powers without making compromises elsewhere in your build. That's why those sets keep pace in endgame and why they make Controller as an AT feel much less shitty.

My initial impression is that Arse/Storm will be one of the only good ways to get the Immob because they're tying it to Wet, not to immob powers. So unfortunately, it's one of the only ways to make Arse Control *feel good to play*. As for Dominators and their options... get fukt? Chilling Embrace in Icy Assault and Thorntrops in Thorny Assault at least give you an extra slow, and that might have to be enough. ...but I don't want to play Arse/Storm, so I am trying to make Arse/Traps work.

I understand that's how it has been and I understand that this situation is frustrating because I'm extremely frustrated right now. However, unlike the last few times, I thought I should at least try a little harder this time to try and get the new powerset to not be another dud set (that nobody plays).

No, Jack, the devs implemented it that way for a reason. By making the Tier1 and the Tier2 both Sleep powers, it made taking Sleep unavoidable. That was actually by design, so that the person on the team with the hard-on for Sleep could force anyone trying this set to try Sleep in a push to make the playerbase like the effect more. The inherent problem of allowing a noob to start with a 45s CD power, and the second inherent problem of NOT allowing a Controller to start with a Hold or Immob for some sort of guaranteed Containment attack chain... were both ignored (initially).