Onlyasandwich

The pseudopet here is the patch itself. The patch in turn summons a few entities with a variety of powers, which inherit slotted procs according to type. Due to the nature and frequency of how they are summoned, cast, and die, then reappear, certain few of these powers proc exceptionally well. This is compounded in a large mob, as the summons scale to a degree with mob numbers, and the effects are aoe. Understanding all of this in city of data is very confusing! The optimal damage slotting was not intuitive, so Carnifax's parsing in their tool was super useful to confirm.

This is the only one that stuck for me. Great damage, durability, and a fun bag of super effective tricks. Procced out whips are actually really meaningful damage as well.

I went ahead and pulled the trigger on my respec! I did optimize the build further a bit for a better ST chain. Notably, Fire Sword is now pretty much on par with Blaze and Blazing bolt, giving you three super heavy hitters to blitz down bosses. I gave it a whirl on a +2 x 8 Fire farm (pretty favorable conditions I know) and it was lovely. None of the powers felt wasted, and I was able to keep a continuous flow of destruction whether focused on ST or aoe. The Hot Feet dance worked as expected. Endurance was quite manageable, though I did pop Consume a couple times after many back to back rotations. Once I get my Alpha slotted and pumped a bit I'll try it in more challenging content. It's already living up to what I want out of it. Edit: +3 x 8 with bosses was also fine. +4 was pretty hit and miss - doable but with death. Perhaps this will improve with incarnates slotted out. Newest spec:Blaster (Fire Blast - Fire Manipulation).mbd

Welcome, and I'd love to hear how it goes! You can ignore the levels slots were added. Just add as you see fit when leveling. It's all the same in the end. You don't lose slots when exemping - the enhancements just scale down.

I did a first pass at how I would respec my own Fire/Fire, and thought I'd share in case you share some of the same goals. Highlights of this build: Heavy recharge focus - just shy of perma hasten. Power choice is focused on ease of use in pbaoe range. All aoes can just be thrown out without need to worry about positioning cones. Although Burn is great, I didn't pick it here, instead favoring larger aoes for simple application in more spread out situations. Ranged defense at 33.75, within a small purple of softcap. This provides a strong layer that should make a meaningful difference in solo play, and gives room for team buffs to contribute something useful as well. Moderate S/L/F/C resist, all within the ~50% range. Max hit chance against +3's. 85% slow resist, suitable KB protection. Moderate proc focus in relevant powers to maximize damage. We could drop the proccing and slow resist to pursue a more traditional ranged softcap, but would sacrifice significant damage, and slow resist is quite valuable. Anticipated playstyle: As @Frozen Burn mentioned, alternating Inferno and Bonfire is the way to go. Inferno will blow most every mob away, while Bonfire provides strong control so you can get through your aoe rotation. Hot Feet keeps them slowly running away from you in pbaoe range, so less likely that melee attackers will thwack, keeping most hits targeting through your ranged defense. With Hot Feet and the fighting pool, we are putting solid pressure on even the Blaster sustain's superior recovery. However, between this and Consume as a backup, you should be fine. Optional to leave Evasive on during combat. File: Blaster (Fire Blast - Fire Manipulation).mbd

I broadly agree with you on ranged defense slotting priority for blasters (assuming you are bothering with defense), as even pbaoes can be jousted. However, if you're not staying in melee to use hot feet and/or burn, there isn't much point to taking the /fire secondary other than theming. This is what makes the secondary stand apart from others beyond just another handful of good dpa melee attacks and build up. My own fire/fire went for S/L as a compromise, bolstered by scorpion shield. I don't know if this would be nearly as effective these days with the attack typing changes, however. This does get me interested in a respec, however! I'll share my own take later on.

Thank you @Sovera! I don't know why that didn't occur to me. Edited the OP to include the file itself. Your build has a strong advantage in E/N resists and recharge (though no FFback), while mine achieves higher psi and F/C, and a ranged instead of melee focus. We have a somewhat similar amount of slot focus invested in proc strategies. Overall I think your approach is similar in spirit. Typically I think we have a fairly similar philosophy in most builds I see, so I always enjoy seeing your perspective. Ultimately different primaries afford different set opportunities, but lessons to learn either way. From a power perspective, going with Evasive instead of Meltdown is a fair trade. Extra lotg, and I really enjoy the maneuverability and extra travel speed myself. I'll see how much I end up using meltdown, and might make a swap later on. Meltdown does have a rather annoying long animation. From yours, I see that I can pump recharge in ground zero a bit more without hurting proc chances, so swapped my Avalanche choices out a bit, keeping damage pretty much the same and shaving a solid 8 seconds off.

And now Mids is back to crashing every time I try to export. Ah well! The newest version has been really awful for me in this way, and there are no answers pending in the Discord unfortunately. Certainly that makes it hard to engage in a productive feedback process. Thank you for taking the time to respond regardless. I have indeed maxed out slow resist. The Winter ATOs in place to round this out are pulling useful duty for their superior enhancement value, along with extra F/C resist already, so no real slot savings to be had by working in the Winter's Gift. I agree that pursuing ranged defense on a resist build with no DDR is largely a waste if you are sacrificing other important goals. In this build, I'm not sure that there is a great return on investment for refocusing the slots dedicated to this, however. As it stands my attacks are fully enhanced, and those with productive proc engagement are maxed out from this angle as well. Dropping all ranged defense set focus could net me: A bit more recharge swapping the Numina 6 slot for Panacea. A little more recharge and smattering of set bonus resists from swapping Artillery in Chain Lightning to Posi or Bombardment. 2-3 extra slots from the gladiator's set in Proton armor. 5 more slots from dropping the Zephyr ranged def bonuses. The refocus in set bonuses for existing slots is a relatively minor change. The big difference would be the pretty hefty 6-7 slots I gain in the build all told. Then it becomes a matter of where I can productively focus these slots. My attacks are effectively maxed, so not here. My resist toggles could add a little extra exotic resist with set bonuses. The gains here would be modest (Say ~6 S/L resist added, a similar amount of total exotic resist depending on what set I choose). All told, the gain would look something like ~13% extra recharge, ~8% S/L resist, ~10% exotic resists (some combination of E/N/P depending on set chosen). Some of the extra free slots would give me freedom to drop a recharge in Intensify and Meltdown as well. Not a terrible return! However, not a slam dunk by any measure. I am less concerned with the extra little bits of recharge as well, since I have incorporated FFback into both my aoe and single target rotations. If I can get Mids to exporting again, I'll share again with a hopefully functional link. Until then, I welcome any criticism from a power choice perspective, or other less specific context! Of special interest to me would be any experience you all have running /Rad on a sentinel, where you focused your survival tools, as well as how sturdy you found it overall.

Hello again, Sentinel land! I've been away for some time, and am pleased to see some nice improvements to the AT. I'm itching to try my hand at Storm blast as well. The busy nature of the set looks to lend itself pretty well to Sentinels, so here I am. I understand Storm has its detractors, being seen as a bit end hungry, and lacking many of the valuable proc optimization possibilities that help other primaries compete in damage. I'd like to make the best of it either way! I'd love to hear of anything you see that I may have missed in pursuit of the build's goals: Ranged defense focus, with the goal of being within small purple of soft cap. Any easy extra bonuses I can pile on here would be great, and if you see a clear path to soft cap without sacrifice, all the better. Shoring up resists across the board. I do plan on keeping Meltdown on healthy rotation when needed. Secondary focus on recharge so I can keep a full rotation within storm powers alone (no epic attacks). For the few powers that take procs decently, optimize for damage in this way. I love slow resist. Thank you /Rad, you make this easier to cap! Max hit chance against +3's. Concerns: It looks like I have plenty of end to cover the thirst - do you think I'm still short? I am keeping Jet Stream without KD conversion. The plan is to actually use it as a soft control, FFback enabler, and KD when I actually have storm cell up. Do you enjoy this power without KD conversion? Overall survivability. Between the heals, solid resists, and layer of ranged defense while keeping distance with jousting/Jet stream, I think I can hack survival while solo. What is your experience with /Rad? Does it really ask for any pieces I am missing here? Build: Note that I have procs disabled in view for hailstones and jet stream to avoid FFback reporting on totals, so to view actual damage will need to toggle these on. Edit: Added build file directly. Sentinel (Storm Blast - Radiation Armor).mbd Visual: Sentinel (Storm Blast - Radiation Armor).mbd

@Carnifax helped me with some damage parsing for Carrion Creepers, and the results are worth considering. Certainly your set bonus with Ragnarok is strong and slotting as is will work fine. However, consider the following: Bombardment Acc/Dam/Rech, Bombardment proc. Artillery Acc/Dam/Rech. (May as well +5 it) Posi Proc, Javelin Proc. Trap of the Hunter Proc. With this slotting Creepers do enormously more damage. Seriously, they eat entire spawns all by themselves. Targeted aoe procs are most effective given the pet power types involved, with immob procs being second place.

I made some further modifications swapping around recharge values in Frozen Blast per @Wimbochismo's suggestion. Perfect! More recharge in Confounding now with basically no loss in damage, with a better enhanced Aria as well. Here's the final build for any that would like to reference: View This Build In MRB The character is at 43 now, and the game plan pretty much works as expected. I can take +1 x 8 with bosses. With luck I can go higher, but it's more dependent on which targets reverberant chooses, as I am a vulnerable to bosses without softcap or a reliable mechanism to immediately lock them down. Overall I am quite satisfied! The damage output is exceptional for a controller. I would even say it approaches my Fire/Storm on average, which is quite high. It's also much easier to drive, as everything is in similar, smoothly applied cones. The only repositioning needed is to setup Anguishing Cry. As a result, I don't use it too often. It's mostly reserved for team situations when other stuff is on cooldown. Folks have pretty mixed things to say about Reverberant. I'm loving it! Even without using the purple confuse set yet, this pet does a great job of layering controls to shut down bosses most of the time when I'm applying my alpha, piles on stacking holds in single target, and its damage adds up nicely. Even better, the gimmick of copying your powers helps you control the timing of its activations to some degree, which makes them more impactful than if they were fired off at random.

I'm starting to feel this at times already. I do like the powerful burst and may keep it just to keep a taste of pain's "heal and buff self damage" gimmick, even if less than ideal. End consumption is a bit lower than that, as i don't keep mystic flight on. I do feel that is a bit borderline as you say though, so think keeping power sink is a good idea. Thank you for taking a look at the build! It's very freeing to dump the softcap mentality. I haven't tried hard mode content before, so will keep your recommendation in mind as a tool to get though if i find myself hitting walls there. I'm very impressed with the primary so far! Tempted to pair it with storm as well. Edit: I went back and checked what you pointed out on recharge. Thanks for the catch! Indeed it is a waste to put the purple ATO proc into Hymn, as the proc formula actually brings a non purple proc ahead without the extra recharge that this ATO brings. I replaced it with Gladiator's net and added the purple ATO proc to dreadful discord, which now does way more damage as a result. Serenade will have to stand as it is, as there isn't a third piece for Winter's Bite that lacks recharge. No big loss overall - I want these set bonuses.

I bind everything that isn't a toggle. It all goes within a finger's reach of wasd, which means ample use of shift and alt as well. 1 to 4 are also in use for whatever i see fit. I have some basic patterns to this, but no hard and fast rules. It takes me a minute to resettle into a character i haven't played in a while. An essential for every character is r set to target_enemy_near. For flying characters I use a speed on demand hover to fly bind, and a similar setup for other travel. Teleporters get a location target bind on shift+f to pop to anything in range. Super handy for engage and catching up. Those with combat teleport and cones have a more elaborate setup that includes backward porting far enough for cone execution before porting back in, along with quick directional ports for all cardinals to bamph around flexibly.

After playing with this some more, I think sticking with Rune is the way to go. Managing Indom is just a bit too fiddly, and the emergency staying power of rune is both more flexible and easier to use. The teleport from Mystic Flight plays no small part in this as well! I moved the pretty weak annihilation proc from enfeebling and added overpowering Knockdown chance to the aoe immob. This rounds out damage, and gives me a solid way of blunting the tagback when hammering on feared groups. I'm at 27 so far, and even with the limited slotting and powers thus far, it works pretty well! Here's how combat typically goes: Open with Lullaby. Discord or Confounding depending on if confound is up, taking advantage of the containment. Reset containment with aria. Focus bosses with Hymn/Serenade as I wait for aoes to come back. Keep spamming aria on cooldown, cycle other aoe controls as above until done. Having the backstop of power sink for end crisis is also pretty appealing. I intend of testing this build in hard mode content, and want to be well prepared for a variety of messes!

I've been iterating on this build and came to an alternate concept that shares some more choices with @Carnifax's rendition, though am still weighing the benefits of each approach. Struggling to decide if the trade-offs are worth it! I'd still love to hear from others who have informed opinions here. Pros: Almost permanent mez protection in indom will. Much higher global recharge in support of near perma indom will (10 sec downtime). On my fliers, I really enjoy having evasive maneuvers. I don't consider any of the power picks "dead" here as Spirit Ward was on the other build. Modest increase in defense totals, though certainly nowhere near any soft caps. Will more easily softcap with the addition of a single defense oriented teammate, or the application of vengeance when able. Negatives: No emergency end management tool in Power Sink. Ratios don't look too bad here though, and I'm wondering if I might get away with my end consumption as is. Although I have higher up time on mez protection than Rune provides, I lack the extra layer of exotic resist Rune can provide on-demand. Additionally, I need to actively manage my mez protection, as Indom will can't be cast when mezzed as Rune can, leading to another potential failure point. No teleport from Mystic Flight! There is no greater tool for playing catchup and doing silly things in missions. I dropped the annihilation proc from lullaby. This proc is rather weak anyhow, but having it in my typical opener is actually pretty nice. Visual: Build Link: View This Build In MRB

Ah! I was under the impression that was your goal. I've personally run an Elec/Psy dom, and it was truly a blast. /Dark is a good Dom secondary and will serve well if you go that path. Honestly /Dark for Doms is like the greatest hits of Dark Melee and Dark blast combined - it would support you masterfully. Electric Affinity looks pretty cool as well, but I've found it a bit too busy for my taste. It's effective for sure, and contributes best on midsized teams, as some of its buffing power is limited by how many players it can bounce to. The real problem with Electric Affinity for me is finding time to use my secondary properly. This is a bit of a problem on Defenders and Corruptors, as I want to be blasty! A Dark/Electric Controller might have an easier time with this, as you can largely rely on Fearsome Stare in your opener and interact with your other primary powers more situationally. EA would also be quite suitable for any number of masterminds, where the pets are doing the heavy lifting for the primary. Necro is the closest you'll get to Dark there.

@Carnifax have you had the opportunity to drive this build yet? I just came back after a break, and am intrigued by the blasty nature of Symphony. I haven't played /Pain yet either, and have a good thematic concept for the two, so am inspired. I'd love your thoughts based on experience with the set, or the insight of others. My goal is to play this similar to my dominators. I like to more or less ignore the pursuit of defense stacking, only picking up incidental strong bonuses like the uniques or the odd set bonus. Instead, I'm leaning straight into as much damage as possible while maximizing resistances. The idea is to rely on controls for survival, with strong resists and heals to patch any mistakes or overflow. Rune provides a good solution when I'm caught out of rhythm with mezzes or miss key mobs as well. It's true that softcapping would provide more safety overall, but the reward of more damage and real sense of danger here makes my control-oriented characters more fun to play! With such builds, I like to jam as many procs into well-cycled powers as possible. Symphony is really great for this! Confounding Chant is almost like having a controller nuke. Focuses here: Slow resist Maximize damage through all means in heavily cycled powers. Grab as much recharge as I can along the way. Maximize my resistances across the board. Max hit chance against +3's. Power Considerations. Power Sink is a bit of a cludge to fix what appears to be a pretty end hungry combo. Does this combo run hot in your experience? I skipped Enforced Morale and even Ball lightning - both good powers. Do you think this unwise, and would you make a swap for anything chosen if building for yourself? I figure I'll be spamming most of my damage through the primary, so no need for blasts from the epic. Also, best to be using powers Reverberant can copy as well when possible. Anticipated Solo strategy: Open with Enfeebling Lullaby to silence the alpha and get in position. Follow up with Confounding chant or Dreadful Discord as available. Spam Aria for containment and font procs, cycling Discord and Lullaby for aoe damage. Single target focus should be strong with proc bombed Hymn and Serenade. If things go south, I have Chords for the quick aoe hold, or Rune to carry me through and allow time to heal and get controls back up. Refill with Sink as needed. Visual: Link to build: View This Build In MRB

If you do choose this path, @oedipus_tex has some great posts and builds that go into detail for elec/ specifically.

Electric is pretty solid across the board these days, but I'll drop a vote for Dominator with elect/elec/mu. Electric control works really well on doms, and Electric assault is a fun melee oriented mixer. Power Sink gets some extra mileage here, as the control set is great at keeping mobs drained once the big blue has been sucked away. This isn't necessarily a primary strategy, but tends to stabilize fights, and allows you another control approach when needed. This isn't necessarily from the "100% most powerful option" perspective, but something fun to do if you haven't tried Electric control before. If we're talking strictly on power scales, I would probably lean towards a pure theme blaster. /Elect secondary has always been top tier on blasters, and the primary is looking good after buffs as well. Personally I just really enjoy the balance of the dom playstyle. I don't chase softcap or even much in the way of resist bonuses, instead relying on the raw strength of the powers and proactive control in domination mode.

Thanks Strider! Life has been offering some good things lately indeed. Glad to see you still around.

If Time isn't doing it for you, what Defender primary is? It has most everything you could want, and every power affects you as well. If people are hitting optimal defense/hit/recharge/recovery on their own, there's precious little any Support powerset will offer them. There again, they could also stand to slot their own AT's more aggressively for max damage and procs, allowing room for Support sets to contribute more when present. Slowed Response is a really solid -res debuff in any case, with the added bonus of higher than average proc bomb potential for powers in this category. Only very select few sets that specialize in it bring more offense to the team than this pretty standard contribution anyhow.

Hello again, Tankers! It's been over a year since I last played or reviewed builds, and the reworked BA, as well as readjusted Invuln have caught my eye. I'd love your perspective on missed opportunities in my first pass. Goals: Keep my slow resist as is. Primary focus on broad resists across the board. Secondary focus on squeezing in valuable procs for relevant attacks, with FFback support. Not too concerned about softcapping defense at the expense of the above. I'm okay relying on invincibility saturation or team buffs when needed, or just the strength of layered defenses. For S/L resist, I'm wanting to keep tough toggled off unless needed to protect from resist debuffs. Basing my slotting on this assumption. Power choice considerations: I love combat teleport on all my melees, but am open to swapping it for the right benefit. I'm picking unstoppable both as a mule and to see how useful it ends up being in hard mode content or heavy resist debuffing scenarios. Open to swap this as well, however. Gash seems like a great attack! I'd love to work it in well slotted if possible. However, I think relying on chop and my higher level heavy hitters with this level of recharge should be fine. A proper travel power would be nice, but not necessary. CT would be an easy trade if I feel like it. Epics? New BA looks fairly end heavy, so Energy Mastery seemed a simple slot-efficient direction, and the special resistances provided by FA are pretty valuable at times. I previously had CP as well, but pulled it in favor of taunt, which is nice quality of life and a handy extra set bonus. Do you have thoughts on a more effective epic for this context? I'm fine relying on the MoT proc for regular resists as well. My current slotting accounts for single stack at all times, though of course it can have 2-3 stack uptime. FFback is toggled off in all powers for totals, so proper proc damage review will require toggling back on where relevant. Build: View This Build In MRB Visual: Totals:

Mids is showing scourge as well, so the actual gap is not so great I find it serviceable overall. Aoe is really nice. RoA is good dpa, and explosive animates quickly, also providing a great place for ffback. Single target is a bit weak, as you dont have many extra proc opportunities to gain ground on corruptors. A proccy snipe goes a long way though.

This is correct! I very often pick up spirit ward for this reason on builds that want Rune. Makes the trek to Rune a bit more palatable, as I want the PM proc somewhere anyhow in most builds. Free slot!

All of these are super strong choices - you can't really go wrong. If you're going Time, I might recommend a Defender, as you can do amazing things with the better baseline defense values and power boost. Corruptor can achieve similar results, but it takes more stretch and slotting will be less flexible. Cold and Storm are a tossup. Cold will offer more -res debuffing overall, and will probably edge ahead in damage for that reason. You will have a tougher time building your own defenses for solo work, however, as you don't have the -tohit of hurricane to fall back on. Storm makes up for the slightly lower -res debuffing with high damage pets. If you have super high recharge and infinite end, Storm might even pull ahead in damage in an extended encounter. You'll be sucking wind until Ageless or epic end support though, while Cold has strong end support built-in. Rain powers do work nicely with Scourge - this is true. However, Freezing Rain/Sleet is a very negligible source of damage on its own, even with scourge. It is there to debuff and for KD. Location based powers still have a target limit. As mobs die, the ones remaining will be able to be debuffed as long as the patch persists, so this does extend the effect to some degree. Slowed response definitely needs acc slotting, and is also a prime spot for some great procs. It turns into a nice little damage power this way in addition to its baseline debuff. There is no reason to slot Freezing Rain and Sleet for accuracy or damage. Procs are also very poor here. Recharge and maybe end redux is all you need. You might consider muling a fun set that achieves those goals if you have the slots, but I often just leave it at 2 +5 recharge IOs.