Frosticus

I think that is the general understanding. You wouldn't slot a proc in a pet that barely uses it ie. chance for smashing slow proc in a demonling becuase only one demonling has any cold attacks. you would however slot that into demon prince because just about every attack he has will be available to proc it. So it basically becomes a universal damage proc for that pet. Very good returns. Similarly, but less obvious is something like controller singularity. It can take controller ATO's. Now I put the ato damage proc into him because he uses it on both his hold and lift. Whereas I can only use it on a single attack. At which point I have to ask if I'm going to spam gd as much as singularity spams gd+levitate? what about set bonuses on my hold? or other procs? becomes less clear. But it is clear that putting it into singularity helps him rip through enemies quite quickly. For me proc slotting a pet or psuedo pet is rarely at the cost of a slot somewhere else because I only slot them if they are well utilized by the pet (or by my attack). At which point it because a high priority slot placement. The balance point for me more often comes down to proc vs set bonuses.

It's my intention to test this out maybe tonight as I just picked it up on my rad/elec project blapper. The recover/regen is auto upon casting and the kb rolls a tohit, but i'd like to try it out to see how effective it is.

If you are familiar with storm then you prob don't need a build as the pet side is pretty straight forward. The synergy is that demons do fairly significant -res, which makes your storm powers more potent. The other synergy is that demons do ok/decent aoe damage, but it is all cones and damage aura, so they benefit most from packed mobs. So getting them tight with hurricane is effective. Aside from that storm offers a bit of +res and a lot of active mitigation and -tohit so that is often enough to keep them going while the ember demon patches them up. o2 boost for spot heals.

bots/storm can somewhat improve the aoe potential of the assault bot if you are quick and skilled at packing mobs with herdicane and gale

ya plus with beta decay you can get crazy levels of +rech going. it is nuke-tacular

Depends on your standards. each hell imp is about 2/3rds as damaging as a fire imp from fire controllers. You can have 8? out at peak and you can perma the imps (though not all 8!). So over time you could probably count on 3-4 imps average with a perma hasten build. All boosted by the -res that the other demons toss around. Not many fire controllers would dismiss the damage of their imps. That said they run all over the place (like fire imps) and can't be directed to focus fire. But when they are all out and you swarm an EB/AV the damage is significant. If you want more damage and mayhem then they are great. If your build is struggling to keep your other pets standing then they are a great spot for the bonus IO's.

I often don't even summon my demons on my demon/storm if I'm just stealthing missions. Just whip out (pun intended) my storm powers and proceed to whip the boss and crew to death. Usually kill them as fast or faster than if I'd taken the time to summon and upgrade before engaging. On a team as long as you are using your aoe -res, team buffs, or your aoe +dam abilities from your secondary then you are contributing as much as many scrappers :p

Acid Mortar has two significant issues facing it: Self-stacking. Cold, Storm and Dark all 'self-stack'. That means their primary -resist debuff can be layered on multiple times. In early levels, this isn't apparent. But when you're running perma-Hasten levels of recharge, it becomes a very significant factor. So while Acid Mortar may seem like it's comparable to Sleet, Freezing Rain and Tar Patch, it's only about a third their value in a long AV/GM fight. Clunky mechanics. The entire Traps set is an ode to great abilities with serious quality-of-life issues and Acid Mortar is no different. If you're fighting a single target, then it can be effective. Not as effective as, say, Poison, Nature, Thermal, Trick Arrow, Sonic, Radiation or Time (much less Cold/Dark/Storm). But decent enough. If you're fighting an AV/GM in the middle of a crowd on minions, those Acid grenades are frequently wasted on random minions rather than the AV/GM. not sure why you quoted me as I surely wasn't talking about acid mortar considering my response was to the notion that traps really struggles in fast teams and how having an alpha breaker can be of tremendous value sometimes. That said, you should take a closer look at acid mortar and how it functions. It provides approx 80 second -res debuff with a 90 second recharge and a 2.9 sec cast. It definitely "self stacks"

The first of the PA pops out before the cast time is finished. but that said they have to attack to regain taunt. So even with perma PA you've got about a 4 second window where aggro is unmanaged. There's lots of things you could do to mitigate in that time. My personal trick on my old ill/cold is as extor mentioned - phantasm and getting him to use the decoy. Also ensuring you just nailed them with HL and benumb can really help. HL is -300% rech. Even +4 AVs are impacted by that (along with your other -rech powers). Alternately you can respec for the specific target you are fighting. Psy epic may give you a leg up against malaise. Or power mastery and keep cycling in your confuse with power boost. Granted I'm not sure if you'll get enough to confuse at +4 and it is a significant hit to dps but, if you die then dps is really low heh. Finally, unless you are strictly fighting toe to toe for whatever reason then simply ducking behind a crate or corner for a couple seconds while PA regains aggro is effective.

In my experience it is just a different approach, but can still be of comparable value to sets like storm, or dark, or similar. Where those sets would just drop their -res power and blast on a fast team I find the best power a trapper has in that situation is seekers. Get out fast and cast them right away into the next spawn to break the alpha. At which point just about anyone can leap in without worry. That may or may not be of equitable value to an aoe -res, just depends on the team.

agreed. very good synergy in the pairing. I really like mine.

it can work without an aoe immob. I mean few corrs, defs, or mm's make use of that tool and storm ranges from good to amazing for them. two places i'd slot the KD IO are gale and tornado. it turns nado into a legit damage dealing option in almost all scenarios. In gale it gives you a rapid cycle aoe knockdown. Not on par with earthquake, but in the same ball park with enough recharge. I leave it out of hurricane and LS. I skirt the edges of the spawns and continuously circle the group, so when hurricane tosses someone it throws them into the center of destruction. LS is usually set up away from the group so when it knocks them it pushes them back toward the kill zone. However, a KD IO in LS might let you summon it right in the middle of the spawn to maximize it's small aoe damage. The flee mechanic is generally overruled by the taunt of PA. However, PA won't grab everyone, so that's why you continually bounce around the edges pushing those that try to flee back in. You can generally pack a mob pretty tight which maximizes everyone's aoe better.

while it may be true that acid mortar targets enemies and spreads a bit better if you put it down in the middle of a group it actually has much better range than would seem. However, it generally needs you to personally move near the group before it will start firing. It does require accuracy to effective against higher cons.

the issue with gravity for doms has already been covered more or less. I will add that controllers use propel and propel has a good aoe knockdown which gives them good soft control while they deal damage. doms generally dont need propel which just leaves you with a hold and lift as mitigation until wormhole and singy show up. dim shift is generally skippable. When you need it the action is too chaotic for teammates to understand it and they just get mad. I will say that wormhole with the kd IO can pack mobs very tight. So if you have small aoes it can be very beneficial. grav is sufficient for doms but what it excels at (high single target damage and st control) isnt generally preferred by doms because every dom has high st control via domination and usually better attacks available.

Meh sometimes you get stuck with people who use knockback poorly. I either just adjust or move on to a different team. As much as I personally min/max, while I'm playing I don't fret about xp/min really, or else I'd be on a farm. If a stormy shows up and ruins my fun then I just move on to another team. I can't control other people or tell them how to have fun, I can only ensure those things for me. The reality is knockback can be a lot of fun for the user. I love flinging things all over the place with my grav troller, it feels super powerful. So i'd throw the whole kitchen sink at knockback -chance for minor -res (weakened armor from impact) -chance for slow (injured leg) -chance for disorient (hit head against wall) -tiny chance for confuse And i'd throw a visual over their head (maybe crippled haha) just like so many other powers get in the game like domination, overpower, impact, critical, etc Up the % based on kb mag. Obviously not huge numbers, but enough to see it working.

Your trusty right hand man phantasm has the solution to your problem. You know him as the guy that does ok damage and has an affinity for being punched in the face. Most of us just leave him to do whatever he wants to do, but his single best power is so often wasted by his AI. The decoy he casts also taunts and it is typically one of the initial powers that phantasm will cast. So for AV's that only want to run, or for situations that are simply too dangerous to have aggro turn your way for even a moment then consider (re)casting phantasm a short while before PA drops. It isn't a 100% solution, but for a runner in particular, the extra cycle or two of having it stick around is often enough to finish the job.

A Dom can perma-Hold AVs, so you CAN put out a DPS chain that can be done against AVs without worrying about dying, BUT... the Hold has to be slotted for Hold Duration rather than damage, and it has to be spammed. So you would have to plan the cycle with the heavy inclusion of a much lower-damage attack. I did spreadsheets to see which combinations could put out enough Mag to perma-hold AVs, what their DPS was, and what their EPS burn was. Fire/Fire (with Sleet) was by far the highest, but some others (especially /Psy with its -Regen) put out pretty good DPS also. They were significantly higher on the average than Blasters. DPS chains against AVs aren't necessarily a good measure, because spamming a Hold about every 3 attacks is a serious DPS hit, so they can do even better if they don't have to worry about spending so much animation time defending themselves. This is why my planned builds for this server include several with soft-capped defenses, so that I have a chance to put out more of the DPS powers than defensive mezzes. exactly yes I recall reaching the same conclusion about fire/fire even before they had access to sleet. iirc mind and fire animate fast enough to hold an AV. the others not so much without powerboost. I think we agree that putting down the theoretical max dps of a dom would tank considerable to achieve that. Defensive is good, great even, but most doms (not all) have some melee attacks that they use. When you walk in to use those you might be safe due to your defense, but your haunts or imps or whatever else is supplementing your dps is less safe. At best they get mezzed or knocked around. At worst they splat from aoes. the reality is some builds can realize their theoretical dps in lots of situations, others have a harder time. For instance fire/fire doms are largely theorycraft. I tried pretty hard with my earth/fire dom but personally never had much success and stoney is a lot more hardy than imps. .

basically just look at the dps of some of the high damage assault sets and then add perma haunt+dog (or imps) and boost it all by sleet and there is no reason a dom can't produce good numbers. Putting those numbers out in actual game might be a different story but ymmv.

Storm has always had the highest ceiling. I had a bot/storm that was up near the top of the pylon thread way back in the day and the build wasn't proc'd out. I abandoned it because assault bots -regen wasn't working. who knows now... storm/son/power was one of my favorite beasts. I played a little mini game to see how hard you could get total focus to hit with all the -res+aim+powerbuildup Regarding the plant/storm in the pylon thread keep in mind that is an insp run. rebuilding that combo for sufficient survivability would likely have serious dps consequences. Storm has a couple issues to overcome though. In practice they can be very detrimental and allow cold to surpass it for the task of AV killing. -Hurricane hurrican't keep you alive vs AV's. Similar to cold you have to build for s/l or ranged def. Unlike cold you don't have benumb gutting their damage output. -Endurance woes. An aggressive storm uses endurance almost as fast as it drains hp from foes. HL allows cold to build for pure aggression rather than end management -Fleeing enemies. nado, LS, freezing rain, overwhelming odds. All those things cause fleeing. Believe me an AV will run from Atlas park to Peregrine Island once the flee kicks in. They can't get away from the debuffs of HL and benumb. So to squeeze out max performance you gotta build for +def, +rech, resolve endurance woes, and find a way to make enemies stay put. That's a tall order. But not impossible. I'm still in the mindset that if the -regen of assault bot works then bots/storm/mace(mu) could do some unreal things. I'm slowly leveling a demon/storm that i have some pretty high hopes for. At the very least it is a hoot.

If you like that chaos try a demon/storm someday. I've seen 5 maybe 6 little fire imps running around with living hellfire plus all my demons. it is hilarious.

Basically you are supposed to draw attention with PA and hold everyone else with spec terror meaning that the only time they retaliate is when hit by PA. You are also supposed to lower your threat ranking with superior invis, so they seek others before you. In practice that has pretty mixed results so prepare to pull aggro vs large spawns

of those two? fire/fire because it will eventually have as much or more control than ice and waaaaaay more damage. neither solo's well until deep into the 20's though. Or later depending on your definition of solo'ing well. Unsolicited advice: Pick a primary with a confuse (plant, dark, mind) because it is very efficient damage Pick a secondary with a solid +dam and/or +tohit power because missing really hurts doms and despite the solid base damage they are nowhere near the damage of blasters/scrappers. -def can really help doms too, so earth control and/or rad assault (rad also offers up a +dam/tohit power and a situational heal). Those factors matter less when you are high level, but could make or break a solo leveling experience. I'm solo'ing a dark/fire myself. I wanted a strong ranged attack chain otherwise i'd have gone dark/rad for smooth leveling. But insta snipe changes has me rethinking rad assault

I'm not an expert as i'm just diving in to new procing. But, they are always beneficial, it is just a matter of how beneficial. Basically under the old rules you'd slot a proc in your fastest and most used attack in the chain to maximize the number of times it would occur. You can still do that, but you might be better off putting it in a different attack now from an overall dps standpoint. For instance 3.5ppm chance for smashing in icebolt with no rech slotting has a 29% chance. The same thing in iceblast has a 56% chance. So if you use icebolt twice as often in your chain you are still better off (by a tiny bit) with it in bolt. But if you need to slot recharge in bolt to get your chain flushed out, but don't need any in blast then blast becomes the better choice over time. Basically it just adds another layer to maximizing dps chains while also balancing set bonuses. Vs players a set like ice has a few hard hitting powers with long base recharge. Which means they are ideal for procs as well as proc diversity for more proc action. (PVE) If you don't need set bonuses from a blast try a ++acc/dam hami and a +5dam IO with 4 procs (if the power can take it). Regardless of the blast that will give you a lot of extra damage over a more conventional slotting method. Pets and psuedo pets are a whole different story. Some work really well, some don't. More testing is required.

While i prefer traps on a controller; the set is geared heavily toward long duration fights that require little mobility. As such it excels quite well at dropping AV's. I will say though that some encounters can be very risky to get close enough to use poison trap (pretty slow cast time). And without poison trap in play then traps isn't that noteworthy.

This is a pairing that I eyed heavily as well for the same reasons you state with the exception that I planned for earth epic Of note though is that poison>poison trap isn't the superstar power that traps>poison trap is. The poison version does not debuff regen which leaves poison as one of the weaker regen debuffing sets available.