Hjarki

Notes: Electrical Blast. While it does have a PBAoE (Short Circuit), it's not one you're ever likely to take. It does terrible damage and it can't fully end drain a target without Alpha (at which point you're simply going to Thunderous Blast them instead). Dark Blast. This relies on cones, which means you need to be at a precise range - and that range is never 'close' and frequently not 'far'. Time, Radiation, and Dark all have AE heals around the player. This means your position is dependent on who needs healing - and that frequently brings you into melee range. Kinetics could reasonably be considered 'long range' on a Defender. The reason a Defender would close to melee range would be to benefit from Fulcrum Shift themselves. However, between Siphon Speed, the player-centric portion of Fulcrum Shift, various enhancements to damage and bonuses like Aim, the Defender normally doesn't need to Fulcrum Shift themselves because they're already at/near the +damage cap. Pain Domination and Poison both have critical PBAoE -resist debuffs. This is part of the reason they're generally considered weaker sets - you can't realistically skip these debuffs as irrelevant the way you could Time's Juncture and they force you into melee range. Dark Miasma. The only cone in Dark Miasma is Fearsome Stare and it's an easily skipped power. Storm Summoning. I'm not sure I'd really put Hurricane in with the other PBAoE powers. When you first get it, it's fantastic and you can play all sorts of "I shove them in the corner" games. At 50, the relatively low magnitude on the Repel and the degree to which to-hit debuffs are resisted make it a situational power that's more defensive in nature (reacting to an enemy reaching melee range) than a proactive one (purposefully entering melee range to use it). Cold Domination. While theoretically you could enter melee range to receive more benefit from Heat Loss, Cold Domination is such a low endurance set that it's unlikely you'd ever need to do so.

Running Tactics constantly with 6 pets, I see ~10% uptime. There might be an issue where Tactics checks each target on activation but the aura itself only checks the individual with Tactics. However, I'm not sure that's particularly helpful since it just means you have a less reliable version of Aim. I'm also not sure it's terribly relevant since the Mastermind's personal damage makes up such a low percentage of their overall dps - and the proc only affects that personal dps.

Yes, they are gimping themselves by not taking Freezing Rain. I'd call Steamy Mist, Freezing Rain, Tornado and Lightning Storm the 'must haves' of the set - if you're not taking them, you really have to question why you're playing the set. Hurricane and O2 Boost are both nice, but optional. Thunder Clap, Snow Storm and Gale are more 'if I have to take this, I will'.

Kinetics doesn't really show off the value of the procs because it doesn't buff their damage. That's why most of the discussion has centered around debuff-centric sets like Dark, Time and Storm. AE is often more useful for driving Force Feedback procs than being damage augmented. Of the four types of AE damage (Cone, Rain, PBAoE, Target AE), two of those (Cones, Rains) work poorly with damage procs (lack of slots due to range requirements, procs not firing in Rains). If you're building specifically for clearing an AE moon, then you'll probably want almost all of those - and the poor performance of procs on two of them will dilute your impact. Any build will benefit by understanding the potency of various procs and their relationship to recharge. However, some builds profit so much from the PPM changes that they end up being dramatically more powerful than 'traditional' builds.

Sonic's main virtue has always been its -resist debuffs. However, you pay a huge price for them in the form of an extremely weak attack chain. In the current game, this huge price normally isn't justified because you can get similar debuffing via procs (Achilles' Heel, Annihilation, Fury of the Gladiator) with only a fraction of your attack cycle and on significantly more damaging attacks.

Procs don't scale with Fury, so they're not the kind of pure upside you see with Defenders. I do know that procs are very effective in Dark Regeneration (30 sec cooldown, 20 yard radius). Sadly, Theft of Essence appears to only proc on the activation of the power rather than each time it heals/damages. Damage auras are also a decent place for buff procs since they can be kept active without much attention. But I don't think the sort of wall-to-wall proc'd attacks like you see with Defenders are really all that practical. You really don't have worthwhile 3-set bonuses like Defender ATOs, Thunderstrike or Sting of the Manticore with melee sets. On the other hand, you do have many very solid 5-set bonuses - which tends to encourage taking a 5-set with a proc and then filling it out with another proc. Brutes also don't have the sort of dichotomy between 'proc set' and 'non-proc set'. Every offensive attack they could make can slot +psi (from taunt) and there are piles of melee/PBAoE procs. Perhaps the biggest issue is whether a set has a Force Feedback-friendly AE knockdown/knockback.

Since my first reply, there's been a fair bit of development in terms of how we think about power sets. As of now, I'd actually recommend skipping Hydro Bolt and taking either Flame Mastery or Psychic Mastery as your epic pool so you can get Char or Dominate to round out your single target attack cycle with a fast activation Hold. This allows you to slot an additional purple proc you wouldn't otherwise be able to slot. Tidal Force should absolute have the Gaussian's proc (the rest of it is up to you - depends on build requirements). In terms of pool powers, generally you're looking to soft-cap ranged defense and have 5 different defense powers for LotG. I normally go with both Flight (Hover and Afterburner) and Leadership (Maneuvers and Vengeance). Dark already has a defense toggle. Dark's Hold could also theoretically used for this purpose, but it's relatively slow activation and it doesn't deliver any actual damage itself so it's not nearly as strong.

I play DA/TW and what I've discovered: Procs aren't really that big a deal. The loss from 5-slot bonuses is simply too great to justify an extra proc in most of the powers. While my offensive powers do have procs, they tend to only be Force Feedback and the ones that arise 'organically' (Hecatomb, Armageddon, ATO, etc.) The only power I have "proc'd out" is Dark Regeneration - I think I have 5 procs in it. Dark Armor has a problem with Energy/Toxic. I don't much care about Toxic. However, Energy is one of the most common damage types. Because it comes paired with Negative Energy on all IO sets (and in the toggle), you end up with a 40+ point disparity between your Energy and Negative resistance - trying to bridge that disparity means putting your Negative at some ridiculous number over 90% and I'm not even sure it's possible without committing your entire build to it. I went with S/L and Melee Defense. More to the point, I went with S/L Defense and Melee came along for the ride. The two are paired virtually everywhere. I wasn't concerned with Psi defense because my Psi resist is capped, but I'm still a purple away from Ranged/AoE/Energy. Endurance problems (mostly) disappear with T4 Cardiac. I've still got Energy Mastery as my pool but that's more a matter of not having any slots left over for ancillary/patron pools (so it's a big pointless to take more attacks). I run with Defensive Sweep, Follow Through, Rend Armor, Whirling Smash, Arc of Destruction. I did take Ageless, but I took the debuff resist version (the build natively has no defense debuff resistance and that can be a huge problem - pretty much every time I've died has been to an avalanche of defense debuffs). I take all of the first six Dark powers and none of the last three Dark powers. The fear aura has some nice set bonus opportunities but it's not a terribly useful power. Likewise, the resurrect can slot healing sets (I could just drop Preventative Medicine proc in there and save a slot) but the power itself isn't very useful. The stun is junk. The lack of diversity in TW attacks means it's tough to meet recharge goals. While I get a lot of recharge from Force Feedback, I'm still below perma-Hasten because the only types of attacks I have are melee and PBAoE. I could potentially do a build where I use epic/patron pool attacks but they're so dramatically inferior to the TW attacks that it's hard to justify that decision.

I don't like this solution for two reasons. The first issue is that there are sometimes pathing issues. BAF is notorious for this, where target binds can't find a short enough path to the target (even when you're standing right next to it). The second issue is that you lose a major virtue of location AE: they're not tied to a target. You don't have to worry about the center of your AE suddenly shifting halfway across the room because someone used knockback or the mob decides to start running. You don't have to carefully target the precise mob in the center of the spawn. What I tend to do with Location AE is bind them to shift-lbutton and alt-lbutton. These buttons allow one button clicking in the environment and I in term bind them to extra buttons on my mouse so I don't even have to push the modifier keys - I just click one button.

I'm not sure about 'amazing'. FF recharge only procs when you hit a target, so you need to be standing in the middle of not just a crowd but a tightly packed crowd (9 yard radius) - with no ability to actually pack that crowd (no taunt). Assuming you do so, you'll end up with about 50% up-time at the expense of 1% end/sec (can't be reduced) and 0.78%/sec (can be reduced). Moreover, while it will slow down attacks against you, it won't actually stop them - you still need defenses capable of operating in melee range for prolonged periods of time (without either status protection or defense debuff resistance, you're going to spend quite a bit of time dead). Compared to using AE knockdown in primary for the same (or better) recharge, it cost ridiculous amounts of endurance while putting you in extreme danger. Something to remember is that the guys who thrive pulling aggro in melee don't just have decent resists. They have decent resists, strong defenses, status protection and debuff resistances. It's possible to build a Corruptor/Defender that has some of those elements. Trying to build one with all of those elements? When your support set can't slot IOs that improve your defenses to any meaningful extent? That's not practical. About all you can hope for would be something like a "pure fire farm" build where your defenses are strictly tuned to protect against fire (and only fire) but you're useless anywhere else.

I think people are slowly assimilating the consequences of those i24/i25 changes. The sniper changes were perhaps the first thing people latched onto, but they're beginning to see the impact of the PPM and knockback changes as well. However, unlike the Sniper changes, the PPM/knockback changes both cut across people's long-held understanding of the game and involve a lot of detailed examination of what can and can not be effectively slotted. For example, the Storm Summoning thread on the Defender forums features a long (pages) back-and-forth between myself and a few other players with different builds - and, if you read between the lines, you can see how seemingly trivial distinctions led to significant changes in the final outcome. In terms of Rains, the general answer seems to be that they don't trigger most procs at all. I know they trigger self-buff style procs (mine are slotted with the Defender ATOs and are capped proc chance). Sadly, the proc I most want to slot in a Rain - Force Feedback - doesn't recognize that there's a knockdown involved. This tends to mean that Rains are primarily worthwhile for Corruptors. Because they can't slot procs usefully, you can easily get away with 4-slotting or 3-slotting them. Because they have the benefit of Scourge on later ticks, they remain potent. For Blasters and Defenders, this is not the case - they're going to be considerably weaker vs. click nukes than they were pre-I24/I25. That being said, I find there are two mitigating issues: Larger area. With a decent tank and some herding, 15 yard areas are fine. When you're the tip of the spear, there are just too many places where the spawn is spread all over the place and the 25 yard radius is the difference between "must as well use single target attacks" and "can use mass AE". On my Storm/Water Defender, I eventually dropped Water Burst because there were too few places where it was worth the bother of activating. ATO sets. The ATOs are some of the most powerful enhancement around and you're often stuck trying to figure out places to slot them. Rains are a great place to dump them because you don't care all that much how they're slotted - as long as you've got maximum damage and some recharge, you're fine.

Sonic is mediocre for Corruptors since the -resist values are scaled down but the abysmal base damage is not scaled up. You can also get that -resist on other sets via procs like Achilles' and Annihilation. AE dps tends to function with two different types of recharge: Burst dps. This is the classic "nuke the entire spawn" approach. What you're counting on here is that most of the long recharge will be consumed by travel between spawns. So really you're not concerned with the precise value on the recharge numbers but the very granular "number of spawns per use" figure for your nuke. In most cases, this is going to be the same between Blizzard and Inferno. While Inferno will have a lower recharge, it still won't be low enough for every spawn use. You really need powers like Geyser, Overcharge or Hail of Bullets for that (or Archery/Assault Rifle with their 60 sec base recharge). Sustained dps. This is what you're concerned with in something like an AE farm. However, Scourge tends to offset the longer recharge on Blizzard, making the two effects a wash. Also, none of the ultimates are particularly good sustained dps. For use as burst dps, I think Blizzard tends to be much better because it can be used very safely. It's a ranged effect that can benefit from debuffs laid after the fact and paralyzes an entire spawn (bosses included). In contrast, Inferno requires you stand in the middle of a spawn during its very long activation time - an activation time that needs to come after you've already alerted the spawn with your attempts to pump it up - and then leaves the bosses standing, completely uncontrolled and undebuffed, right next to you and able to strike back. It's possible to build a character who can operate in that environment. But it is significantly more difficult than building a character who operates at a distance - and that difficulty translates into having to make compromises that inevitably reduce your damage output. I'm also increasing skeptical of the notion of Kinetics as a 'tier one' set due to the i24/i25 changes. Consider: The gap between current and capped +damage has shrunk due to Gaussian's. Almost anyone who could use Gaussian's has an Aim/Build Up style ability, probably slotted with Gaussian's. Since it's nearly an automatic proc, this means a +130% damage shift right before their big attacks. The amount of additional value added by Fulcrum Shift isn't nearly as great as it was on Live. The increasing prevalence of procs means that less and less of a player's damage is subject to Fulcrum Shift. For an i24/i25 build, you're almost certainly going to be getting between 20% and 40% of your damage from various procs - but that damage can't be buffed in this fashion. It can only be increased by debuffs. This means that Fulcrum Shift'ing someone to cap will often have less impact than simply using an effect like Slowed Response which provides a straight multiplier to all of their damage.

A level 54 lieutenant has 867 health. A fully Fulcrum Shifted Blizzard will deal approximately 1816 damage, leaving nothing but the bosses alive. However, this also tends to mean that the AE portion of the fight is over because the bosses are normally spread out enough that you're going to need to use primarily single target nukes. In a team setting, you'll also have team mates who bring their own Judgements and alpha strike attacks that will compound this. Even when split up, I find that the duration of the AE phase of a fight in a level 50 +4x8 group is 3 - 4 seconds. After that you're just finishing off bosses and picking off stragglers. If you're fighting purely melee enemies with a decent tank, they might be able to keep them clustered but this is a bit of a rarity with high level enemies outside of farms.

Kinetics also works well with Masterminds in the same way: it's a primarily buff set, so it helps to ensure you always have targets to buff. What I was trying to point out is that Kinetics is very difficult to build because the set is nearly useless for slotting set bonuses.

Damage procs. I tend to take a 'might as well' attitude here. It's effectively free damage, albeit not much free damage. Repel. While knockback is experiencing a renaissance, I think you'll be disappointed with Repel. It requires you be in close melee range with enemies - a place where you'll take far more damage than Repel could ever possibly prevent. As a Mastermind, there generally isn't any reason to Fulcrum Shift yourself, so you might as well stay far, far away from melee. Any slotting opportunities offered by Repel are also offered by Kick (which is necessary to get Tough/Weave). Invoke Panic. If this was a first tier power and you didn't have to consume one of your 4 pools to get it, it might be worthwhile. As it stands, you need to take multiple (useless) powers to reach it. At best it could be argued that you could mule some recharge along the way if you've got 7 spare slots for Glimpse and Perfect Zinger. That being said, if you're taking the pool all the way to Invoke Panic you probably should grab Unrelenting as well. I suspect what you'll discover is that Kinetics is a very hard road to walk. Because Kinetics provide so few slotting opportunities, it's incredible difficult to get meaningful defenses. The offensive boost it provides is also far less than you imagine. Melee love Kinetics because they've got high +damage caps, difficulty mustering enough recharge without wall-to-wall purples and atrocious endurance demands.

I'm not sure this is the case. It's hard to tell, but my experience is that 'cone' is a bit a misnomer - it's more like 'triangle'. The same is true of other AE. While they may have spherical graphics, they don't have spherical effects - you don't have to be that far above the ground to fly right through a Tar Patch like it wasn't even there or avoid damage from a Rain. With a conventional AE, you end up with a slightly thick circle of effect parallel with the ground. With a cone what seems to happen is that you end up with a slightly thick triangle of effect. The problem with launching cones in the air is that one of those ends is anchored to you, so the cone inclines up to you. If you're hovering right above your targets, you don't get a circle on the ground so much as a rectangle of effect with a length equal to the expected radius and a width of maybe 5 feet or so.

I'd suggest there are broad categories of powers, since that's inevitably how they would be coded. My observation is that Sleet and Freezing Rain have an initial chance to proc, but no subsequent chance to proc. This implies (at least to me) that the procs can be 'slotted' into the initial power, but not the subsequent ticks. The powers might also have multiple different effects that have different proc patterns. For example, Sleet/Freezing Rain are both a damage effect and a slow/debuff effect. Procs triggering from damage wouldn't trigger from the slow/debuff portion while slow procs wouldn't trigger from the damage portion. I'd also speculate that there are powers - such as Hurricane - where the chance to proc is dependent on the chance of the underlying power to proc. My experience was that Explosive Strike (knockback proc) occurred seldomly in Hurricane; my speculation is that this is because of the 5% chance for kb (so 95% of the time when it could proc, it doesn't because the underlying power doesn't proc). This could theoretically be an issue with Distortion Field as well, although my observation was that it proc'd far more often than that would indicate. It also doesn't explain a disparity between purple and non-purple proc rates (that might just be a sample size issue). I observed the same thing with Repel. If you just stand around in the middle of nowhere, your Force Feedback will never proc - it only starts proc'ing once the field starts triggering. However, I do not believe that each power is individually coded.

There's probably some information on the long Storm Summoning thread about what I did with Storm/DP. What I can tell you is that I eventually abandoned it for Storm/Water. The reasons: Weak ultimate. Having a PBAoE ultimate puts you at enormous risk. It's one thing if you're Time/DP and can soft-cap all positionals. It's quite another as Storm/DP, where you've only got a minor boost to defense before you have to rely on pools and set bonuses. I did Ranged/AoE on Storm/Water, but getting Melee as well would have been a bridge too far. Clunky attack chain. You really need Fire rounds for the AE (to suppress knockback without consuming a slot) but you need Lethal rounds for the -resist debuff. This creates a situation where you're constantly switching back and forth between Fire and Lethal - and this imposes a 'tax' on your attack chain. Cone rather than Rain. While Rains are weaker over-time in an ideal situation, neither part of that statement reflects 99% of the game. In most cases, the 25 yard radius and positioning freedom absolutely trumps the need for both yourself and your target to be in exactly the right spot and you don't gain much benefit from the higher cyclic rate of the Cone. Farming is one of the few situations where this can be the case, but I suspect even there the Rain would be better simply based on QoL issues. No Aim/Build Up. Since this comes up as often as your ultimate, it's a massive boost to your overall dps. Not having it is going to severely limit your ability to maximize farming speed.

For Defenders, most sets can be broken down into "one crappy attack, one good attack and Char/Dominate from epics" as a single target rotation. Snap Shot mostly certainly fits the 'one crappy attack' standard - it is the crappiest of them all. However, Archery does have the one good attack (the Sniper shot). What I'm not sure about is Rain of Arrow. If it acts like Ice Storm, then I'd say Archery as a set is a non-starter. If it works like Geyser, then Archery actually becomes a reasonable choice. Its backup is a knockback AE (unfortunately, which consumes your OF kb->kd), which is solid. Moreover, the 60 sec cooldown is amazing for procs. Most of the ultimates have an artificially low dps due to the fact that they exceed the 90% proc chance cap even with recharge. With Rain of Arrows, you can pile recharge into it and barely reach the 90% mark (rather than greatly exceed it).

The build you tested used a rotation including the first two attacks while the build I suggested used a rotation with Char/Greater Fire Sword instead - by my calculations, the second build will deal ~70% more single target dps than the one you presented. So your test wasn't really a judgment on Radiation as a set but rather one specific build for Radiation that didn't necessarily make the best use of it. Note that this is likely to be the case with most builds - Char/Dominate are an enormous boost to dps since they normally replace relatively low dpa attacks. Comparing a build optimized in such a fashion to one that's simply using a basic rotation isn't a 'fair test'. You're also not slotting Distortion Field for damage. With quad procs, Distortion FIeld does ~750 damage per activation. That's a lot of dps to leave on the table when you're comparing builds.

Build Up If you're running a constant single target rotation at 1.3 ppm, this means you're getting an average of 80% (?) * 1.3 * 5.5 / 60 = 9.5% more damage. Pistols is 36.15, Dual Wield is 47.71, Executioner's Shot is 76.63. If we assume +150% damage from other sources, your rotation will be dealing (36.15 * 2 + 47.71 + 76.63) * 2.5 / (1.188 * 2 + 1.848 + 1.848) = 81.0 dps. Build Up procs will raise this to (36.15 * 2 + 47.71 + 76.63) * (2.5 + 0.095) / (1.188 * 2 + 1.848 + 1.848) = 84.0 dps, for a marginal gain of +3.0 dps. A single conventional damage proc has a 3.5 * (4 + 1) / 60 = 29.2% chance to proc for an average of 0.292 * 71.75 = 20.9 damage. With two attacks per cycle, this would be (20.9 * 2) / (1.188 * 2 + 1.848 + 1.848) = 6.9 dps. Or over double the return on that slot as you got from Build Up. Rotation Your current rotation is Pistols, Dual Wield, Pistols, Executioner's Shot. We'll use that 81.0 dps figure from above. A rotation of Pistols, Piercing Ray, Pistols, Executioner's Shot would require +255% recharge on Piercing Ray (perma-Hasten is +275% and perma-Chrono Shift is +300%). This would yield (36.15 + 83.14 + 37.59 + 76.63) * 2.5 / (1.188 + 1.848 * 2 + 2.64) = 84.5 dps. For comparison, a Pistols, Piercing Ray, Char, Executioner's Shot rotation would yield (36.15 + 83.14 + 39.75 + 76.63) * 2.5 / (1.188 + 2.64 + 1.32 + 1.848) = 84.2 dps. However, this undersells the value of this rotation since it implicitly applies single target Holds and allows you to slot Unbreakable Constraint. A Piercing Ray, Char, Greater Fire Sword, Executioner's Shot rotation would be (83.14 + 39.75 + 76.63 + 91.08) * 2.5 / (2.64 + 1.32 + 2.508 + 1.848) = 87.4 dps while allowing slotting both Unbreakable Constraint and Hecatomb. A Piercing Ray, Char, Cross Punch, Executioner's Shot rotation would be (83.14 + 39.75 + 38.70 + 91.08) * 2.5 / (2.64 + 1.32 + 1.32 + 1.848) = 88.6 dps. This rotation costs a lot of slots in otherwise unused powers, but does provide +30% global recharge. I made a quick 'melee Defender' out of Time/Rad (on the proc thread) that is an example of this sort of approach. However, for general purposes I tend to be leery of the costs involved in entering melee range. Given that you're likely to either be interleaving single target and multi-target or you're fighting a single tough target, Dual Wield seems like a poor investment. Note: In most cases, you have to include Piercing Ray in your rotation anyway due to the resist buff. Swap Ammo This is a tough call. For AE, you want to be in Fire. For Piercing Ray, you have to be in Lethal (presuming you want to -resist debuff the target). Switching between the two involves a dps cost that you probably don't want to pay - so you just reduce the knockback on Bullet Rain and spend all your time in Lethal (making Swap Ammo superfluous). Procs in General I find the greatest payoff usually comes from triple-slotting your attack powers. With 3 slots you can still pick up Ranged def from Thunderstrike/Sting of the Manticore and you can still 3-slot the ATO for recharge (or, potentially, range since you're using Empty Clips). This maximizes dps and you can normally find enough recharge elsewhere. For example, my configuration for Time generally involves 5-slot Doctored Wounds (Chrono Shift), 5-slot Panacea (Temporal Selection) and 6-slot Preventative Medicine (Temporal Mending). Putting heavy set bonuses into those powers doesn't reduce their impact like placing 5- and 6- slot set bonuses in offensive powers does. Consider your basic rotation. If you triple proc each power, you'd get: Pistols = 3 * (4 + 1) * 3.5 / 60 * 71.75 = 62.8 Dual Wield = 3 * (8 + 1.67) * 3.5 / 60 * 71.75 = 121.4 Executioner's Shot = 2 * (10 + 1.67) * 3.5 / 60 * 71.75 + (10 + 1.67) * 4.5 / 60 * 107.1 = 191.4 Total = (62.8 + 121.4 + 191.4) / (1.188 * 2 + 1.848 + 1.848) = 61.9 dps This would constitute a 76% increase in single target dps. For comparison, consider the Char rotation I described above. The additional powers we need to check (taking Pistols/Executioner's from above): Piercing Ray = 2 * (15 + 2.5) * 3.5 / 60 * 71.75 = 146.5 Char = 2 * (16 + 1.07) * 3.5 / 60 * 71.75 + (16 + 1.07) * 4.5 / 60 * 107.1 = 280.0 Total = (62.8 + 146.5 + 280.0 + 191.4) / (1.188 + 2.64 + 1.32 + 1.848) = 97.3 dps In total, that means the fully proc'd Char rotation deals +128% more damage than the rotation you're running (without procs). Procs in Time This can take 5 different procs (4 if you ignore the unique Unbreakable Constraint). Because these proc at the expected PPM, those 4 procs would yield 4 * (71.75 * 3.5) * 45 / 60 = 753.4 damage per target per cast. While it's unlikely that you'd get more than a fraction of this (due to the length of the effect vs. the length of your average fight), it's still a hefty chunk . Also, Distortion Field doesn't need slotting at all - it functions out of the box just fine. Your global recharge brings it up fast enough, it has no accuracy requirements and its slow is already capped. Slowed Response can only take two non-Achilles' procs. Since its proc chance is capped at any level of recharge you could possibly slot into it, this means you can get another 0.9 * 71.75 * 2 = 129.2 damage per cast by slotting Lady Gray and Shield Breaker. While this doesn't transform it into a major damage effect, it does add some damage to an effect you're using anyway. Time's Juncture can take Impeded Swiftness, but this will only add 4.19 dps. For comparison, a Spines/Fire Brute sitting at +400% damage would get 15.7 dps out of Quills (slightly less than the quad-proc'd Distortion Field above does).

Ice isn't really strong in this sort of AE. Ice is dependent on long cooldown times between fights, rather than a constant fight. Fire is ordinarily considered a strong AE set, but it lacks the ability to slot procs effectively. Most importantly, it can't use Force Feedback in an AE knockdown power. With such powers, you can get near-constant +100% recharge. The sets that can do this are Archery, Assault Rifle, Dark, Dual Pistols, Energy, Psychic and Water. Archery, Energy and Psychic have very limited slotting opportunities beyond the Force Feedback proc in a single attack. So I'd argue the best 'farming sets' would be Assault Rifle, Dark, Dual Pistols and Water. In terms of primary sets, the first consideration is survival. The two sets mentioned previously - Time and Storm - both provide considerable defensive benefits (a massive +defense boost and a +defense/+fire resist toggle). Most other sets can be compared to Time and Storm - and come up short. Traps is a possibility, but it's not a set I've looked at very carefully.

Stone Prison does 30.59 damage with a 2.112 activation. If we slot a purple and two regular procs, assuming +150% damage and Containment, we'll end up with: 30.59 * 2.5 * 2 + 2 * (3.5 * (4 + 2.112) / 60 * 71.75) + (4.5 * (4 + 2.112) / 60 * 107.1) = 253 / 2.112 = 120 dpa Arcane Bolt does 45.27 damage with a 2.244 activation. Same assumptions as above: 45.27 * 2.5 * 2 + 2 * (3.5 * (8 + 2.244) / 60 * 71.75) + (4.5 * (8 + 2.244) / 60 * 107.1) = 394 / 2.244 = 176 dpa For reference, Fossilize: 30.59 * 2.5 * 2 + 2 * (3.5 * (8 + 2.244) / 60 * 71.75) + (4.5 * (8 + 2.244) / 60 * 107.1) = 321 / 2.244 = 143 dpa You want to slot procs at as high a base recharge as possible. That is, you get the best results when your recharge is precisely when the ability is needed in the rotation. A two-step rotation of Arcane Bolt/Fossilize does that - your perma-Hasten level of global recharge means you can endlessly cycle those two attacks. In contrast, any rotation involving Stone Prison will be highly inefficient because its recharge will be well below what is needed to fit it in the rotation. Likewise, Stone Prison is a weak use of your unique Controller ATO proc for the same reason. Slotted into Stone Prison, it only has a 46% chance to proc. Slotted into Fossilize, it would have a 76% chance to proc. However, your rotation uses both Stone Prison and Fossilize at the same rate so the lower recharge on Stone Prison is a pure penalty to proc rate. In most cases, you can also find a better place than Fossilize to put the unique Controller ATO since it can slot into any of the control powers. The epic pools are a different story. There are relatively few single target attacks that can slot the necessary procs and the attacks are all lower damage than Arcane Bolt.

Personally, I find both Darkest Night and Fearsome Stare superfluous since Tar Patch does the same thing - neutralizes enemy attacks after the alpha strike response - and does so while also providing useful debuffs. Indeed, controls in general I don't find particularly useful at 50. For the most part, controls are only useful up to the point where you've built up your defenses. At which point, it's all about damage and damage multipliers. This is slightly less true for Controllers and Masterminds (whose pets never really get tough enough to survive), but that's another story. Pylon tests are a useful metric for Scrappers since they are a close match to how much dps they can actually put out in a practical situation. While their dps will scale down against higher level opponents, it will scale evenly for all Scrappers. For non-Scrappers, you need to start throwing around asterisks. One of those asterisks is -regen. -regen is not a damage multiplier but scales instead with the length of the fight. This means its value does not scale to most content. Outside of trying to solo AV/GM (which is similar to a pylon fight), -regen tends to yield far smaller benefits than a pylon test would show because fights tend to be much shorter. For example, your four minute time actually represents dps more akin to a seven and a half minute time due to the -regen debuffs. Pets are another one of those asterisks. One of the central problems Masterminds face is that as you ramp up the difficulty, their pet damage collapses because the pets are lower level than their master. That being said, I rated Radiation Blast as a 'C' in my long evaluation of procs because the first two nukes are atrocious. Playing it as a traditional stand-back-and-nuke Defender just isn't going to get you good results. However, I do believe there's a build where it would work: Time/Radiation Corruptor. Presuming you can get your defenses high enough, you ignore/mule the basic attack you're forced to take and then build a single target rotation around Proton Volley, Cosmic Burst, Char and Greater Fire Sword. This gives you Apocalypse, Hecatomb, Unbreakable Constraint and Corruptor ATO procs all in your rotation. Your AE consists of Irradiate and Atomic Blast - both of which can mount an extraordinary number of procs due to their PBAoE nature. You can maximize your procs by the conjunction of Farsight + Tactics + Kismet + global accuracy bonuses + defense debuffs negating most of the need for slotting accuracy. Essentially, you're building a Scrapper off a Corruptor base. However, getting enough defense to avoid being crushed in melee range is probably tricky. Because it peaked my interest, I threw together a sample "poor man's Scrapper". I couldn't do it out of Corruptor (at least not with significantly more work), but the Defender version (below). Alternatively, two slots could be spent to get a fully buffed Cross Punch (which would close the minor recharge gap on Chrono-shift/Hasten), but I'm not entirely sure on the damage it deals. | Copy & Paste this data into Mids' Hero Designer to view the build | |-------------------------------------------------------------------| |MxDz;1458;694;1388;HEX;| |78DA6594CF4E135114C6EF6DA7604B29A594FFD0DA165A684BE92026C6684810310| |A4582C66D33A14399A49486964497BE822E7C0117E8C2A551773E8051A360041EC0| |7FA0899AE80A4FEF770075269DFC7ABF73EE3DDF39D369EEE694F7D1A5DB1342FA2| |E948C6A353F652E99E582B9E6CA19456B51D4AF46BAC3877A7E727D692973DD5A31| |F339A36C55D64B46CD5A2D1FC7178C72D12C64168C82A522F9493AB7263CF3ABABA| |5CCB58A69165AD4D759D3A0F4EAB2556956EB69ABB85CB3CA45EF61B4428B8E8B15| |6B314367E7A74B862A59AD996BB7BAC8519CEECDA0E0EBC025F69C42E89A707C647| |E02B5CFCC0F60C317F0B5E3682F7DE8125B749A84E294CF28DCAF899EC70E959D78| |02EA4FC137042757769E8176E21CF32C2A785E60ED390F4626A0C768A02EEC75B87| |6116BD8017BB6C14023E65E77D71811E88804376B6EE5B895942609C74DED526579| |83CCEFA8E6DF079D94DBCCB9CD9D5275E73B8D5C5F16F48F839B64A285BB6B7959A| |FEE1623AFC0D161A7DA3BCADDE9699CAFBF85CB6D9A622BEAB85AD953803D0542C8| |098EFDCB2ED6B7E8C836EEB0ED01CED7C8773BFB6EE7F33AFCCC19D4EE9A06DB28B| |713B9B27383A77E1FDC215FDD7C76F7F37A214DBC23F4729FBD1B9AEAAFEF21B301| |7D8674EC0F71BF21EEB7836AF5A396E8675FBB54230C4D0B5F8576729E39CBCC819| |139B0292944943D44D3A811CB322F3379E6032BD833C01EDE537890F70E8E6B4A8B| |EBCC31A6406E621FBFE804F7E1A5BA43EC75680C39C3BF993F983FC1E42FD0477B5| |25C2F1577A839A593CC1872D2790A2734313284F5480AF5A234AF0C3F9B4C0ACF7B| |9419A458969F4D9667D9A7FDFF7E266D4AD6A6E836E5944D19B729B33665AEAEC0E| |DC1BC76F4BF20A48ABAFD476FFFC19E87A2F2EFE8D76345CA2B524D63E006BADAB7| |657F3B561CF21E6695BCC3BC0BCED04BA1B39B3F3D77F010| |-------------------------------------------------------------------|

Recharge rate affects the proc rate of all click powers. The unanswered questions are: Is the power a click power? Some pseudo-pet powers act as toggles (which have click rates independent of recharge, based solely on activation time) Is recharge clamped before or after the calculation? Pets and pseudo-pets used to be able to take recharge bonuses. However, they applied a 0% recharge limit to pets to fix some problems. Normally, these limits are applied as the very last step. However, the code we've seen indicates that click powers are using the stored recharge values - even if those recharge values will later be clamped. This implies that slotting any recharge in a pet/pseudo-pet with click powers would reduce its proc rate. That being said, I'm not familiar enough with the code base to answer definitively.