Frosticus

stick with your ill/rad it is a good choice

Extor Prime, it isnt my job to make you believe, or hand you a build to do it. But I will explain mechanics so you can better understand. Heat loss works like fulcrum shift. just like fulcrum shift 1 buff centers on you (auto) and 1 buff centers off each target hit. You need to hit the target and be close enough to it to receive the buff. Solid build has the rech of under 100 sec on heat loss and it lasts 90 sec. You should be recovering well over 6 end/sec while it is up vs 1 enemy. Used against a full spawn heatloss would let blasters recover thru their nukes back when they crashed. Accelerate metabolism is a good power, but HL is truly a tier 9 power when you have high uptime on it. You want approx 125% global rech+hasten + full slotting in recharge intensive powers (HL, PA, benumb). That isn't that hard to do pre incarnates. Something like ill/rad or ill/dark is very strong and has a much larger margin for error. Ill/cold has a much higher ceiling and requires a more focused min/max approach to realize said potential. It isnt for everyone though just as say a tw/bio scrapper isnt for everyone and I might be inclined to say it underperforms if I jumped on a 50 without a good build and a lack of experience with the power interactions. But that doesn't mean the insane results others are achieving with it are embellished.

You shouldn't need incarnates to have perma PA you just need to really focus on +rech sets. Incarnates make it easier, or allow more personal protection to be acquired. Heat loss is probably (one of) the best recovery power in the game but it also needs a ton of recharge. high recharge cold should have no endurance issues and doesn't even need to slot stamina really. you either want ice epic or mace depending on how you have built your character. poison ray is basically guaranteed Achilles proc. ice blast takes an extra damage proc. I'd suggest hitting your target with heat loss about 7 seconds before your PA drops (perma PA builds still have to cast the power). Even AVs are impacted by the amount of -rech it produces. And make sure they are be numbed at that time too (-50% dam). You can also recast phantasm at that point because it likely will summon a decoy right away which taunts.

Mind solo's well right out of the gate too. Gravity just does a lot more damage with it's three attacks is all. Just looking at base damage. Mind takes 5.28 sec to do dom>lev>mez (second two contained) to produce 172 damage Grav takes 5.41sec to do gd>lift>propel (second two contained+impact) to produce 262 damage you also get singularity helping out. For comparison an energy blaster: 5.28 sec to do bolt>blast>burst to produce 298* damage *didn't factor in defiance That's what I mean when I say grav feels blaster-ish. Now obviously blasters have defiance, aim/bu, higher cap and more attacks available, but trollers get some nice damage buffs or -res debuffs. It is a satisfying experience. If you time it right you can get contained damage on terrify and fireball after mass hypnosis which is satisfying aoe damage provided you can handle the retaliation. Or at least you used to be able to. I haven't tested it since relaunch.

Controllers can end up being a very high damage class, but a good deal of their damage is generated through their pets and debuffs. So that means it is usually quite late game where they start to shine in terms of damage. Even then the damage they produce might not be satisfying to some people as it usually comes from multiple sources or lots of dot stacking.

I have never been a big Blaster player, generally losing interest in most I've tried, but I have played Dominators. What Dominator set is close to Blaster damage, keeping in mind that half of a Dominator's blast set is occupied with melee powers and that what limited AoEs they get generally require being almost on top of what they are hitting? I have Dominator's with both Energy Assault and Thorny Assault and they don't hold a candle to what my Blaster with Beam Rife can casually toss out and that well before we consider T9 powers. Fire's cone requires you to be within range 40, and at upper levels that can be a pretty unsafe range to be at. Dark gets range 60 with it's cone but its an arc of 20 degree. Several of the "blast" sets for Dominators don't even a ranged, AoE attack. And then there are the Blaster sets with no analogue on the Dominator side. A disintegrate Dominator might be loads of fun, but inherently it (and the other sets that did not get proliferated) probably violate some design rule about AoE damage. But I would imagine just about anything paired with TA would come closest. I do not disagree with Ice/TA being suggested for a controlly blaster. It was my first thought when reading the IO. I am greedy though so I would probably shoot for the best of both worlds and do something like Beam Rifle/Tactical Arrow. Of course that could be my new found love of Beam Riflle speaking. ;D Generally /fiery because blaze is so good and fiery embrace is a 85% damage buff for 30 seconds to fire damage. Some other doms do satisfying damage, but imo /fiery is the only one that will sometimes cause a blaster to look at you with envy.

I like that idea of +recovery and ya time bomb is very lackluster. The rest of traps is good to great, it just plays a lot differently than many other sets. In general a bit faster cast times would be all I ask for. I took down a ton of AV's with my fire/traps corr back in the day and never felt useless or too slow on most teams. However you have to get extremely aggressive with traps to keep up when the team starts steam rolling.

without considering much else I think mu mastery would solve most of your endurance issues as powersink can be up every 40ish seconds and is autohit. You don't give up a ton of aoe damage relative to fire mastery as ball lightning is fine.

Apparently the font is a mag 2 stun pbaoe that also does like, 10 damage to whatever mob its sitting on top of. in that case I'll move it to wormhole and give it one more shot. (yay enhancement unslotters!) I would not put the Energy Font proc in Wormhole as it will cause Wormhole to create aggro. If you avoid damage procs and Energy font Wormhole has the ability to reposition enemies without causing aggro on you. yay I like the does not notify feature of the new wormhole. I was hoping (without much reason) it would summon the font upon release. if it summons it upon initial casting then it would be useless in my case as the spawn is often relocated so it would then have to travel over to them. oh well. can't win them all.

Apparently the font is a mag 2 stun pbaoe that also does like, 10 damage to whatever mob its sitting on top of. in that case I'll move it to wormhole and give it one more shot. (yay enhancement unslotters!)

I don't recall poison having any particularly strong -regen abilities. Now if SCORE would swap in the poison trap from traps then I'd be all over poison.

I throw a vote for gravity. It solo's extremely well from right out of the gate giving you blaster-ish damage from contained+impact lift and propel. Propel knocks down everything near its impact point (and along its path from what i've seen) letting you chunk down the lut/boss while everything around them flops. Honestly, no other troller solos as well as gravity from lvl 2 (gd+lift beats blind+spec wounds) up until your build is strong enough to take on larger spawns at which point the lack of aoe damage is apparent. Singularity isn't the highest damage pet but it is much better than it used to be. It can also take controller ATO's. For teams you sometimes hear how people want a higher aggro cap or a higher team size setting for larger spawns... wormhole w/knockdown proc is basically that setting. If two spawns are remotely close to one another I will grab the second one and plop it down with the first one. And it packs them tight so melee toons with their tiny aoe's can be more effective as well as getting further use out of patch powers from the rest of your teammates. I've played a lot of controllers over the life of this game, gravity in its current form is in great shape both solo and teamed. It also "feels" really strong in that lift,propel and wormhole are all very visceral, weighty powers.

dark/storm has some nice synergy and offers a ton of -tohit from moderate range. Fearsome cone and then start herdicannng. And has two pbaoe stuns if you like that sort of thing. single target damage is very high (by any AT's standards) if you strive for it. But comes very late. Benefits from lots of +rech and needs to sort out endurance issues (common to most storms) and personal survival as you can pull heaps of aggro. Similar to the fire/storm you once had (which i also enjoyed myself), but with more synergy. I personally prefer storm on a MM as it allows me to dedicate more of my time to storming. grav/traps has unreal synergy as well and offers a play experience unlike anything i've run with to date. i've run traps up to 50 with a fire/traps corr and a traps/son defender, but this character just meshes together so well. traps really benefits from the new powexec_location binds to smooth out its play (storm does too). Wormhole with the new mechanics and the knockdown proc is one of the most unique powers in the game and used creatively helps traps play well on faster moving teams.

Moved it to my single target hold... I will be selling it shortly... I think it would work well in wormhole based on the rech/aoe proc formula, but the second issue is even when it procs i don't really see the little guy do anything.

I put it in my singularity thinking it would be as good as the proc from Will, which i'm pretty happy with in the pet as it using it with both the hold and immob and has added some nice damage. It is not. Seems to only proc when you summon singularity. I watched for a good 20 mins of him killing things and didn't see it go off at all. But it fires when you summon.

Can't go wrong with Ill/cold. A more optimized "monster" build will greatly speed up kill times and ultimately, which AV's and GM's you can take down because a bad run is ultimately the undoing of /cold whether it be successive hits taken, or a couple misses with benumb/heatloss ruining you. I think I was around 90 AV/GM's solo'd on my ill/cold back in the good old days. I don't have the checklist anymore sadly. But I'm slowly rebuilding the character :). I think the only one that really gave me fits was Lord Recluse, but there were probably others. With the addition of incarnates and some new IO's since then I doubt there is much that can stand in the way of an Ill/cold. Solo'ing some of the TF's is certainly within the realm of possibility. Dropping the mothership's shields is another fun one to push for as it can get pretty frantic. I hope this thread keeps going.

it may have changed as I haven't run a pylon since well before incarnate content was added on live, but back then they had resistance to everything except psi. As a result I had to account for that when testing my ill/cold/ice which simar to psi melee didnt do entirely psi damage, but the psi damage portion was skewing things a bit.

I don't thing PB is supposed to work with fade, so build accordingly for if/when that bug is resolved. Unless they sorted things out and it now works with other def powers that provide enhanceable resistance as well? (ie cold shields). But imo that would make /cold super overpowered relative to other sets making it a top tier buffing set while being a top tier debuffer with just SO's.

It's been many years since I had that character :) but if memory serves carrion carries over your buffs, but can't be buffed after. So fulcrum then carrion works, but only for the duration of fulcrum and then it can't be further buffed even though it is so long lived. But again, i'm pulling that info deep from the cranial vault haha. That said, carrion just does what it does. Seeds bunches them all up so your fulcrum is more effective followed by the aoe immob and fissure. Contained seismic vaporizes anything that has the audacity to survive haha.

everyone is different, but plant/kin/earth had that feel for me. chaotic, hefty feeling and extremely powerful. Fulcrum shifted seismic smash never gets old as well as unlimited endurance and speed to power plant control.

I might be mistaken but they stack if you zone between castings. Most things do. Given how fast a min/max team can rip through content, or even how fast you will be able to solo, that might be something to keep in mind. That said the excess slots are likely used better in other spots. I'd suggest that if you are taking mace then find a way to take poison ray (single slot acc is fine). It is almost as strong as your enervating field and makes a big difference on hard targets. It is super slow, but you only use it once every 30 seconds. You might also want to solve your endurance issues. Nic's build looks like it has about 30-40 seconds of combat before it flatlines. Even less if you use choking cloud. Tall order to get perma PA and have no end issues though outside of /cold.

The only issue with traps is the slow animations and ff gen moving along at a snails pace. (it's not honestly that bad though) It takes forever and a day to get down an acid mortar and even longer for it to spread the potential for destruction over a spawn. Compared to other aoe -res like sleet, tarpatch, enervating field etc. But the additional control it offers to a set like illusion (webnade, trops, choking of poison trap) and the way seeker drones can eat an alpha when your phantom army is down make it a pretty strong team controller while still retaining the ability to solo extremely well. On a fast team you might not feel like you are doing much as you are usually there just to be a forcemultiplier, but traps is too slow for that, On a slower, more methodical team it is an unreal combo. Against big baddies /cold will let your team spike the target harder (sleet, heatloss and benumb), but as the fight goes on /traps is second to none. Very strong combo and very capable with just regular enhancements.

Black Scorpion can help you out there. Poison ray helps your summons beat down stuff even faster. Enervating field, maybe some -res proc(s) and poison ray will have your pets taking down bosses and EB's fast enough that you won't miss containment damage. ill/rad isn't really an aoe combination so I wouldn't worry about high damage fissure or fireball. Fissure isn't bad for the additional control though.

Ill/Cold is hands down my favorite pairing for controllers, probably in the whole game. However, it takes a long time to reach maturity and while pretty decent with basic enhancements it benefits tremendously from set bonuses. /dark is good pretty much from the get go and stays strong the whole way. /cold can't really protect itself if you join a bad pug and you pull a lot of aggro with your powers so prepare to faceplant. /dark imo doesn't have as high of a ceiling as /cold but can arguably help a mediocre team better if/when things go wrong.