Hjarki

You'd lose that bet - my conclusions on Sonic are the result of extensively playing the set. I pulled the info from Mid's because it's far more convenient than loading up the game and looking at the numbers there. However, the 'corrections' aren't actually more accurate - for example, Bopper used two completely different metrics for evaluating Sonic vs. Beam Rifle/Dual Pistols. What people are saying just doesn't match how the game is played. They're talking about idealized situations that never happen - infinite length battles with uninterrupted chains of attacks in battles which somehow speed-to-kill still matters. What I'm trying to stress is that the single big -resist debuff is far more important than the rest of the chain - to the point where the rest of the chain barely matters at all. So crippling your performance in every other aspect of the game so you can do slightly better on an AV/GM where it probably doesn't matter isn't a good tradeoff. Sonic is a set like Force Field or Empathy. It's fairly good at low levels when you're still in 'team mode' and you've got people wandering around in groups of 8 carefully engaging spawns. But as you start to reach higher levels and your 'team' is 5 - 8 different solos/duos spread across the map, the notion of 'support' being a 'force multiplier' vanishes. The only time the team comes together is for that big AV/GM battle. But in that battle, it's almost never about dps - it's about control and mitigation.

Actually, I think I'm the only who is using metrics that have bearing on the game while everyone else is trying to argue from some sort of sandbox that doesn't mimic game play. Against trash, Sonic is horrible. -Resist has to be applied before attacks, not after. Saying "ooh... I can stack -100% resist!" isn't really meaningful against enemies that are dead long before those stacks occur. In terms of single target nuking power, Sonic doesn't come remotely close to what other sets deliver even with the -resist debuffs - those other sets have attacks that are literally 3-4x the dpa of what Sonic brings once you slot them up. So you're left with AV/GM fights. But not solo AV/GM fights (where Sonic's abysmally low personal dps overwhelms the value of its -resist debuffs). Team AV/GM fights. But you need team AV/GM fights that are going to last a reasonable amount of time, where you've got enough dps to overwhelm your personal dps shortfall, where the kill time matters and where you don't have so many debuffs that your -resist debuffing isn't watered down. That's a pretty precise target to hit. I think the problem is that people are imagining the value of Sonic rather than observing it. It's a set like Empathy - you can speculate on all sorts of "other players will love me!" notions, but eventually you realize that other players just don't care - and, if they do care, their primary concern is that you're a burden on the team because you're ineffectual when you don't have someone helping you. Note: Another analogy would be relationships like Force FIeld vs. Time or Cold. Technically, Force Field can buff defense to greater values. But this comes at such a cost that's almost never worth it. The same could be said for Sonic. The cost is simply too high for the marginal benefits it provides.

I just pulled the numbers from Mid's, so they may differ a slight amount from the in-game values. However, the relative value should be similar to what I posted. The problem that occurs with the fast recharging attacks is the same that occurs with procs: powers you use whenever they recharge gain far more benefit than powers which recharge 'too fast' in your rotation. In terms of the stacking issue, these powers 'self-stack'. So if a better power (longer duration) is available, you always prefer that power. What's effectively happening is that Dual Pistols/Beam Rifle get their version of the best power in the set - the power that constitutes about half of your debuffing - while being able to exploit that debuffing with far more effective attacks.

Note that DP/Kin can also be done with typed defenses easily:

The various attacks all self-stack. A good metric for judging how good they'll be is debuff * duration / activation: Screech = 20 * 14.9 / 1.716 = 174 Shout = 20 * 10 / 2.904 = 69 Scream = 20 * 6 / 1.848 = 65 Shriek = 20 * 3 / 1.188 = 51 Piercing Rounds = 20 * 8 / 2.64 = 61 Piercing Beam = 20 * 10 / 2.508 = 80 What this means in practice is that virtually all of the advantage Sonic has over Beam Rifle or Dual Pistols rests with Screech - which does so little damage it's more like a pure debuffing attack. Moreover, the Dual Pistols/Beam Rifle attacks can slot Annihilation with nearly 100% uptime. While Annihilation procs from different players will not stack, this normally isn't a concern because no one except Dual Pistols/Beam Rifle users can usefully slot Annihilation for use on a single target (the AFs on the proc chance kills it unless the underlying attack has such a huge recharge that you can't maintain reasonable uptime). So your stacking concerns are limited with Annihilation. Unless you're playing with an 'all one power set' group, chances are you're the only person using Annihilation. You're certainly the only one using Annihilation on the target if you're solo or attacking the mob by yourself (which is virtually all single target attacks except AV/GM). To compound this difficulty, Sonic Attack is a lot worse than it initially looks because of the inability to slot procs into its powers. Attacks like Penetrating Ray deal about 4x the damage of any Sonic Attack single target power once you've accounted for those procs - Beam Rifle can literally beat Sonic Attack's entire attack chain with that one power. Even in a team setting, this massive shortfall in personal dps is difficult to overcome. The benefits of Sonic Attack are almost exclusively on AV/GM (targets tough enough to stack multiple -resist) in a team setting, while its damage is painfully inadequate anywhere else. However, in a team setting you often have so many debuffs on the target that the slight marginal advantage it provides in -resist debuffing often isn't enough. Sonic Attack really ends up being a 'pure support' Blast set. It's terrible as a Blast set and it's only value lies in the fact that you might potentially be helping the rest of the team. But the situations for this help to be meaningful are narrow enough that you're almost always better off going with a Blast set that can actually Blast. Even after you've laid in your -resist (a process that takes long enough that non-AV/GM targets would probably already be dead under normal circumstances), you're still under-performing traditional Blast sets.

I'd argue that Sonic is actually one of the worst Blast sets in current play. The value of a -resist debuff is based not just on its existence but also its duration and activation time. In practice, about half the value of the entire Sonic Blast -resist debuffing comes from a single power: Screech. Moreover, nothing in Sonic Blast permits you to slot Achilles' Heel, Annihilation or Fury of the Gladiator procs. This leads to a result where both Dual Pistols and Beam Rifle are roughly equivalent to Sonic Blast in terms of debuffing potential. They may only have one -resist debuff, but it's capable of slotting an additional -resist proc (and one that will rarely be on a single target except from users of those sets) and it's better than anything Sonic Blast has to offer (by a large margin) except for Screech. The advantage Sonic Blast has over Dual Pistols/Beam Rifle is minor, but the penalties it pays are massive in terms of the damage it deals. Moreover, Sonic Blast is a poor choice for any 'active' support set because the more time you spend with your support set, the less time you spend with Sonic's debuffing. Overall, I look at the following features of Blast sets (in no particular order): Knockback, especially on AE. A little bit of knockback (or, even better, knockdown) is a good thing since it lets you slot Force Feedback. However, you don't want enemies flying all over the place with every attack. Low activation times. The amount of damage you can realistically do is limited by the activation time of your powers. As a result, sets with relatively high activation times do a lot less damage than those with low activation times. High recharge. Due to how the proc math works, you really want higher recharges (up to a point) on your powers. Low recharge powers are ones that will inevitably deliver worse performances with procs. Proc-friendly secondary effects. For a Defender, you're going to get a lot of your damage from piling procs into your attacks, so you want secondary effects which permit this. Slow, -hit and KB all have an additional proc while -def has 2-3 additional procs. Sniper attacks. Due to the sniper changes, Sniper attacks are now high damage, fast-activating attacks. Rain effects. These are abnormally strong for Corruptors, but they come at the cost of not being useable against Flying targets. For Defenders, they're normally a negative. Ultimates. You're normally better off with lower recharge on ultimates and ranged > PBAoE in most cases. Aim. This can end up being active about half the time on a high recharge build. Holds. Holds have the best slotting opportunities of any powers. Cones. Cones are, in general, bad. However, extremely narrow arc cones that are effectively single target attacks tend to be good as well as extremely long range Cones. That being said, Cones have an inherently issue with poor close-range performance, so they need to be paired with sets that operate at long range. Multiple single target attacks. While all sets have multiple single target attacks, I'm really talking about multiple good single target attacks. Pairings like Gloom/Moonbeam, Blaze/Blazing Bolt, Freezing Ray/Bitter Ice Blast, or Psionic Lance/Telekinetic Blast stand out. However, most of these sets actually work better for Corruptors.

Both Time and Water are relatively well-explored sets. I've done up a basic build below:

As noted above, ally buffing isn't all that useful in endgame. However, the larger issue is that virtually any Force Field build you could come up would work better with another set. There's not much of anything in the set that isn't done as well elsewhere - and generally done in conjunction with far more useful supplemental features.

This is my basic Fire/Kin build: The main variations would be the choice of Epic/Patron pool. The above has an Energy/Neg hole, but better offense. The Ice version would have the same Energy/Neg hole, but be better for fire farming. The Mace version closes the Energy hole, but comes at the expense of having to mule sub-standard attacks. The basic premise is that Kinetics permits you to avoid efficient slotting and just pursue set bonuses (in this case, all those Winter sets for typed defenses). Because it provides you with large amounts of +damage and +recharge, you don't need to worry about things like wasting your single target Hold on Entomb. In the above build, Sorcery is used for status protection/resist (intermittently). The basic resists aren't great, but aren't terrible.

Slotting +End proc is actually a lot less effective than simply slotting EndMod into the power. Jolting Chain works on a different mechanism of summoning pseudopets. Proc slotting Jolting Chain is advantageous over, say, proc-slotting an Immobilize since the individual proc chances are much higher and they are immune to recharge reductions (beyond the first target). So you can slot three procs into Jolting Chain, drop its recharge down into the 2-3 second range, and generate a lot more procs than you could with a comparable AE power. I wouldn't look to get much from the proc slotting of EA powers. Most of the opportunities involve doing something less effectively than the power you're slotting already does.

In most games I've seen - not just CoH - additional classes/archetypes are almost always a mistake because the original design included a broad swathes of concepts that they don't actually expand on with the additional classes/archetypes. The Sentinel is a perfect example of this. Instead of creating an entirely new archetype, why not just add Blast sets (with an adjusted ranged Damage Scale) to Scrappers? So you could choose Dark Blast/Dark Armor or Dark Melee/Dark Armor as a Scrapper if you so chose.

A good way to think of Electric Affinity is that it's Kinetics with Fulcrum Shift traded out for Sonic Dispersion. So that should give you an idea of why it might not be the most popular set. The major limitation of the set is that you need an ally to gain a personal benefit from most of its powers - and that ally needs to be in close proximity. While you can fire the powers from across the room, they can only bounce to nearby targets. The major benefits of the set are burst +recharge and the bubble. Taken together, I'd argue that Dark Control is probably the best choice. It has the quantity of pets you need to ensure you always have an ally, it can benefit from the recharge and the bubble will help protect them.

When last I checked, Rain effects did generate procs - but they were generated on a 10 sec timing rather than a 60 sec timing, making them nearly useless.

I don't know that I have 'tips' so much as 'cautions'. Electric Control is generally the most 'Controller-ish' of the Control sets. It has two of the best absolute lockdown powers in any Control Set - Static Field and Synaptic Overload - as well as the best sapping of any set and the ability to feed endurance to its other power set. This makes it fantastic for supporting very aggressive secondaries. However, what it does not have is particularly significant amounts of damage. This means a combination of Electric/Radiation is really two sets trying to support something that isn't there - your offensive really needs to come from somewhere else. I'd also argue that Electric is a control set, not a damage set - and trying to re-purpose it as damage doesn't work very well: Chain Fences. AE Immobilizes from Control sets aren't actually very good damage powers. Even Plant's Roots is only barely at the level of Defender 15' nukes, much less 'real' AE nukes. As such, I think they're best used as control effects to provide Containment rather than damage effects in their own right. This is especially true of Chain Fences, which is one of the best sapping powers in the game. I'd actually slot this primarily for EndMod/EndRed/Recharge - and not really bother with procs (the proc chance is extraordinarily low) except perhaps Performance Shifter or Power Transfer (to leverage large numbers of targets). Jolting Chain. This is a bit of an oddball power since it acts differently as a single target power and an AE power in terms of proc rates. For AE damage, you want triple procs (Apoc, Javelin, Explosive Strike). For single target, you might as well slot EndMod/Recharge. I tend to avoid slotting actual damage here and I like a high internal recharge because normally when I use it on a single target I use it for sapping rather than damage. Conductive Aura. Procs generally don't work in this power and it's nearly useless for personal recovery/regen. The only reason to take it is if you're planning on sapping endurance on nearby targets - and the only thing it can usefully slot is EndMod. Two EndMod are normally all that's worthwhile unless you really need to mule it. Static Field. This is a commonly overlooked power but it's a beast. Not only can it readily 5-slot for 10% recharge, but adding EndMod (IO, it can't slot EndMod sets) can create a 'negative cost' power that can fuel the rest of your build. Synpatic Overload. The other major control power, this accepts CP if you're working towards Ranged Def. However, normally I'd 5-slot it instead with either Archetype IO or CP because Contagious Confusion isn't really necessary. Gremlins. I simply assume these will die in any situation where I don't have a total lockdown so I just normally mule Expeditious into them and - maybe if I have space - something like Soulbound Allegiance or Power Transfer. Radiation is well-trod territory - you take the 5 powers (RA, RI, AM, EF, LR) and slot them as customary. Neither primary nor secondary has a particularly major demand for recharge, so your main concern will be amassing defense. For an Epic/Patron, I think this sort of light damage primary/secondary combination really demands the melee structure of Cross Punch/Seismic Smash. That would give you S/L Def as a matter of course and your ability to use SF/SO to shut down spawns long enough to zero out their end bars would suffice for the rest of the protection you'd need. Against AV/GM, it's a bit trickier since Electric Control needs 5 - 10 secs to zero an AV/GM. That being said, Static Field can still help in that situation and you can always eat some inspirations until the battle stabilizes.

Steamy Mist provides Energy Resistance.

This is getting rather tedious, since it's apparent you're just interested in arguing in bad faith at this point. You acknowledge with your own build that Storm is preferable to Cold or Poison for this sort of general tack-onto-random-set approach. Everything you're saying is just trying to snipe at the edges of what I'm saying rather than address the central point that Venomous Gas imposes a PBAoE limitation on the set. Do you have anything constructive to add?

Against those AV that flee, you'd normally invest in an Immobilize. That's every Controller except Illusion or Mind and every Defender/Corruptor who deems it desirable. Defenders tend to use Hurricane more than Controllers do. With standard slotting (DWD), it's a -8.5% hit debuff after the 85% AV resistances. With the stacking -resist fields it's even more. The pylon tests disagree with you on Cold vs. Storm. Against a hard target, Storm will normally debuff -resist an equivalent amount and the -regen component is significantly less important than the Tornado/Lightning Storm damage. I have indeed tried farming with Poison - indeed, I posted a Fire/Poison farmer that does so very efficiently against 8x/+4 enemies. Admittedly, you wouldn't farm Carnival or Rularuu with it, but that's not exactly a reasonable criticism. I don't believe Storm is 'grossly over-rated' - it's generally considered the most powerful standalone support set for good reasons. However, it doesn't seem like you understand it very well. The reason we use the math is so we can identify what is objectively true, rather than just going on 'feels'. Even with relatively simple math we can identify efficiencies that you seem to believe aren't important - but become so once you start piling them on top of one another.

Normally you can two-shot bosses, so that -40% resist is only worthwhile if your secondary attack is significantly smaller than your primary one. Storm is fantastic against AV/GM. Tornado and Lightning Storm are amongst the highest dpa attacks in the game. Every top pylon build using a support set uses Storm Summoning for a reason. Cold tends to be a weaker variant on Storm. While it has -regen and an additional -resist debuff, they require a hit roll and are on relatively long recharges. In any case, they don't counterbalance the damage put out by the Tornado/Lightning Storm. Overall, I think you're fanboying over Poison a bit too much here. The core value in Poison is that Venomous Gas will debuff -resist and -hit without having to waste time activating a power. This permits it to be used in a 'farm spec' very efficiently against large spawns with minimal status resistance. But you can't depend on Venomous Gas for defense against AV/GM (who will resist the -hit component heavily). Nor does Poison as a set provide any of the sort of supplemental bonuses that make slotting easier - +recharge, +resist/defense, etc. That makes Poison fundamentally different than sets like Storm and Time. Storm and Time can be randomly tacked onto anything and do pretty well - and, if you look at the builds people post, you'll see that's precisely what happens. In contrast, Poison really requires a specific type of build - one that is optimized for Venomous Gas - to thrive.

While the knockback is frequently cited as the core flaw of the set, it's not a tremendous flaw. You really only need to reduce the knockback on the AE powers. When you use single target powers you're generally either fighting something immune to the knockback or you're fighting an enemy by yourself so no one else cares. So I tend to take a most positive view of Energy than most. That being said, I can get most of the advantages of Energy from other sets that only have one or two knockback attacks (Archery, Dark, Psychic, Beam, Dual Pistols, Water) while also having faster activations, better secondary effects or a better overall structure.

If the fight is over before stacking -resist debuffs, it's probably not worth tossing Envenom in the first place. Indeed, I specifically made a distinction between the types of quick trash fights you're talking about and more difficult fights where you want significant debuffing.

I used the same damage for the sake of simplicity. It's a bit hard to break down the precise values without full builds. The Controller has more recharge due to the inclusion of Cross Punch as well as longer activation times, so their chain is tighter. Char is a possibility, but it's not as effective as the Controller's single target Hold (much lower inherent damage, slightly longer activation). Energy Transfer's DPA isn't appreciably different from a basic attack. Seismic Smash is actually an extremely effective attack in its own right. However, the key issue is the question: why use Poison? From the standpoint of -resist debuffing a single target, Poison isn't all that great. It forces you into melee range, but doesn't really hit the values that the stacking debuff fields do. The protective value of the -hit is minimized against single hard targets compared to the +defense you might get from other sets. On the other hand, from the standpoint of -resist debuffing a large spawn, Poison really pays off because you can run the debuff field constantly and the -hit debuff does matter.

You normally wouldn't slot Overpowering Presence (or Will of the Controller) into the single target Hold because they contain recharge and reduce the proc chances of all the other procs you place in it. You place procs like that into long recharge powers like Poison Trap where they have essentially capped proc chances but you can still benefit from the recharge. In terms of single target damage, a Controller would have a setup (w/+100% damage) similar to: Char: 67 * 2 + 72 + 72 + 38 + 38 = 354 / 1.188 = 298 Cross Punch: 109 * 2 + 60 = 278 / 1.848 = 150 Seismic Smash: 160 * 2 + 107 + 72 = 499 / 1.716 = 291 +10% or so from Fury of the Gladiator procs Higher recharge due to Cross Punch and more accessible purple sets Minor additional dps from Bonfire/Hot Feet Potential for extremely high dpa from Fire Imps Damage for above is for minimal slotting (w/5-set purple bonuses); full proc slotting is much higher dpa The Defender Fire variant would have: Blaze: 99 * 2 + 88 + 46 = 332 / 1.188 = 279 Blazing Bolt (assuming full +hit): 112 * 2 + 67 + 67 = 358 / 1.33 = 270 Flares: 37 * 2 + 13 = 87 / 1.188 = 73 Intermittently higher +damage due to Aim. Normally have gaps in the rotation An Ice Blast variant: Bitter Ice Blast: 82 * 2 + 102 + 56 + 56 + 56 = 434 / 1.188 = 365 Freeze Ray: 72 * 2 + 102 + 47 + 47 + 47 = 387 / 1.32 = 293 Ice Bolt: 36 * 2 + 22 + 22 = 116 / 1.188 = 98

Pretty easily, I imagine. Remember, Controllers have almost double the Damage Scale of Defenders once you take into account Containment. Something like Fire/Poison/Earth would also be able to field Hecatomb, Will of the Controller, Overpowering Presence, Apocalypse and Unbreakable Constraint procs - which is a lot of extra damage.

I think you're missing what I'm trying to say. Being in melee is a cost applied to your build. It requires more comprehensive defenses than you'd otherwise need. But you only need to pay this cost once, no matter how many powers require it. What I'm trying to point out is that Irradiate isn't significantly better than Fireball... and that's the issue. If you're going to pay the cost of using Venomous Gas, you want abilities that reward you for paying that cost. Those abilities are rare for Defenders/Corruptors/Masterminds but they exist for Controllers.

Most Assault Rifle builds would probably be better off as Beam Rifle - it's a legitimately weak set. Traps has a lot of value, but it tends to be out-of-sync with the rest of the game. If you're solo and can proceed at your own pace, it's a nice set. But the moment you team up, it's tough to keep up and still get the full use out of your powers.