Crazy Controllers - 2021 Edition

[Frosticus]

I’ll be the first to admit that controllers don’t always feel great in the end game. Rolling nukes and super IO builds that need little support leave a traditionally low damage AT that specializes in creating safety out in the cold.

 

But rather than lament those shortcomings, I embrace being left out in the cold. I prefer instead to ask, not what I bring to a team, but rather, what does a team bring to me?

 

Grab a blanket and curl up by the fire because it is about to get cold

 

Character: Frosticus

Build 1: Illusion/Cold/Psi (survival build)

Build 2: Illusion/Cold/Stone (damage build)

Build 3: Illusion/Cold/Primal (retired generalist build seen in a few screens)

 

(All the following are with NO insp/temps/lore/amplifiers)

So far I have:

MoAPEX

MoMarketCrash

MoITF

MoLGTF

MoLRSF

MoKhan

 

Some GM's/AV's (NO insp/temps/lore/amplifiers)

-Sinclair lvl 54+3

-Mot lvl 54+3

-Lusca

-Jack/Eochai

-Council Goliath Warwalker (GM)

-Kronos Class Titan (GM)

-Lt. Sefu Tendaji lvl 54

-Siege lvl 54 (BAF version w/ rings of death)

 

Kicking it off with:

MoApex

Got this on my first attempt. None of my other characters have made it to the final mission under these restictions. The Toxic snake pits can tear down builds in moments. Turns out they tear themselves apart pretty quickly too! Battlemaiden isn’t “that” hard for ranged characters (just shoot and move), the surge of adds causes my summons to lose focus slowing the fight down a fair amount. The previous mission with wave after wave of warwalkers always overwhelms my other characters. I found that it relieves enough pressure if I confused one of the warwalkers and then took on the rest during each wave.

Spoiler

 

 

 

Edited February 15, 2021 by Frosticus

[Frosticus]

MoMarketCrash

This TF is uneventful until Crimson. He is (imo) one of the more difficult AV’s in the game for most builds as he can counter most survival mechanisms. I don’t have any other character that can do Crimson Prototype with these conditions. Crimson Prototype CAN kill Phantom Army, which I was unaware of. Even though he can dispatch PA, the fact that they disperse his aggro meant he couldn’t stack a lot of debuffs. Just pay attention for when the forcefield generators spawn and watch your status bar for stacking debuffs. 31 min seems pretty quick to me, but I may look to pulling him somewhere so it chokes the skyskiffs. With everything bunched up I think it would go much faster.

 

I’ve made an attempt at him as lvl 54, but couldn’t get enough focus fire to make an appreciable dent. I called it a stalemate after about 20mins. 
 

Spoiler

 

 

Edited January 26, 2021 by Frosticus

[Frosticus]

MoITF

not really hard at base settings, but always fun. I’m by no means an aoe monster, so to complete this in a comparable time to my sav/shield stalker - pre hemo nerf (that is an aoe beast and did excellent st damage) is really a testament to how fast I can drop AV’s.

I just surged the final fight. With my summons out I can pull well over the standard aggro cap. Fun mayhem ensued.

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

Edited January 26, 2021 by Frosticus

[Frosticus]

MoLGTF

Clockwork King is more of a speed bump than an obstacle. He nukes early, so just be aware of that.The Riders can put out some mean debuffs and it can be dangerous to stand in melee range, but other than that they don’t present much challenge. Dra’gon is an underappreciated AV. He can put out a LOT of damage if you don’t pay attention. I mean Hami right? Sure it is a downgraded version, but it still feels pretty epic. It is mostly just waiting around for PA to do this with no insp. Phantom Army gets killed quickly and then don’t really engage, so you just use them to draw fire while you kill a cell. Same for phantasm. Just requires a lot of patience. I changed my hold slotting for the greens. Hro'Dtohz is easy and the Honoree is usually a roadblock given his high resistances, but he has no psi protection. 

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

Edited January 26, 2021 by Frosticus

[Frosticus]

MoLRSF

this has 19 AV’s, so it wasn’t like I was moving at a snails pace (about 4 min/AV if nothing else considered). The Future Phalanx needs more training haha. The /psi app eliminates Numina as being a threat. Vindicators sought what their name suggests, but ultimately let Ms. Liberty down. I didn’t realize she was special because Phantom Army and ample psi damage seem to be her counter. I have the tools to deal with the final encounter while not many other builds do. I confused Yin and Numina to encourage them to move closer to each other as Numina sometimes sits a bit too for Yin to focus on. Then I let Yin do her magic. When it was Yin, Babs and Manticore I was like “surprise it was ME all along!” They were dumbfounded to say the least. So much so that Yin continued to help me periodically, unsure which team she belonged to.
 

Spoiler

 

 

 

Edited January 26, 2021 by Frosticus

[Frosticus]

MoKhan

 I don’t know of any other build that has done this without at least Lore pets (I think some traps builds could do this as well). It took some thinking to say the least and I had to t4 a different hybrid for it. Basically his resistances are ridiculous, his HP is insane, plus he has unstoppable AND dull pain. Normally I use Assault Hybrid Radial for the double hit proc. But for him I leveled Assault Core to t4 so I could boost my (and PA’s) psi damage as that is his weakness. I think running musculature was maybe a mistake as opposed to agility. I had huge gaps in PA and benumb. My thought was to make them hit harder, but I don’t know if it netted me anything. I don’t plan to rerun this to get a faster time as it was a snoozefest.

 

*I left the pc running for 20hrs+ after killing 3 of his friends. Didn't want to restart the mission, but had things to do. Sucks to have to let him heal up to 100% and chew through another ~170k hp to get back to where I was... but it is what it is. 

 

Still this took about 2hrs (maybe 1.5hrs if I didn't disengage), so not for the feint of heart.

Phantasm is forever useless. As long as he summons his decoy I'm happy enough. You can get about 20-30 seconds out of Phant if you cast barrier, but usually Reich's fist of the heavens attack immediately kills him.
 

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

Edited January 26, 2021 by Frosticus

[Frosticus]

Lusca

about 2 mins per leg. 4 mins for the head. The sizing of the head makes receiving the buff from HL difficult so prepare for endurance issues toward the end of the fight. 
 

Spoiler

 

 

 

Jack and Eochia

same time cause why not? I remembered these GM’s being much more fearsome. Eochai in 2 min, Jack in 2.5 min.

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

Edited January 26, 2021 by Frosticus

[Frosticus]

Lvl 54+3 Sinclair

I was like, “oh he looks like that loser Chimera”. He is not. When he gets mad and glows red he wrecks all my other characters with overwhelming offense. And that is set as a lvl 50 AV!. I’ve always had to downgrade him to an EB to finish the arc. That said, he doesn’t hit hard enough to hurt PA!

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

Edited January 26, 2021 by Frosticus

[Troyusrex]

31 minutes ago, Frosticus said:

I prefer instead to ask, not what I bring to a team, but rather, what does a team bring to me?

I LOVE this! 

[oedipus_tex]

As always you impress with your builds Frosticus.

 

How would you rate the updated Illusion/Trick Arrow against Illusion/Cold? 

Edited January 16, 2021 by oedipus_tex

[Frosticus]

7 minutes ago, oedipus_tex said:

As always you impress with your builds Frosticus.

 

How would you rate the updated Illusion/Trick Arrow against Illusion/Cold? 

I think if I didn't have an ill/cold I'd roll an ill/ta.

Just about everything in TA compliments illusion and the synergy is undeniable in things like:

spec terror + flash arrow = huge tohit debuffs that are safely applied before the fight

acid arrow+ healback = should block some of the heal back from illusionary damage

reliable st and semi reliable aoe containment - two things illusion does not excel at

decent aoe damage from oil slick and proc'd acid arrow to round out the stellar st damage of illusion

 

That said, ill/cold is still better at killing AV/GM's, maybe by a large amount. The stacking -res is just extreme on top of benumb. But I could see myself playing an ill/ta at x8 settings and I don't really find that fun on ill/cold.

[Frosticus]

54+3 Mot

I love caesars, so I thought Mot and I would get along better. He didn't want to share his clamato juice so I took it from him.

 

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

Edited January 26, 2021 by Frosticus

[Olly]

Nice work! How do you heal or avoid damage? That was my problem when I tried ill/cold.

[nihilii]

13 hours ago, Frosticus said:

MoKhan - I don’t know of any other build that has done this without at least Lore pets

WOW! Possibly the most impressive solo achievement ever done.

 

(I know people have soloed incarnate trials, and I respect the accomplishment; but the nature of Lore + mailed insps + several accounts just to start puts a barrier of entry to the whole process that makes it more "luck-based" in my mind, in that for each attempt time must be spent in gathering resources and hoping for a good roll of the dice.)

 

Whereas a no insp/lore/amp MoKhan is sheer deterministic victory. Fantastic job.

[Frosticus]

12 hours ago, Olly said:

Nice work! How do you heal or avoid damage? That was my problem when I tried ill/cold.

My survival build is as the name suggest. Softcapped ranged and psi def, full time mez protection, melee hybrid and barrier as well as respectable resistance to most damage types (toxic/neg hole). 

It hovers out of the fray and only steps in for the Heat Loss buff. I can handle a fair amount of attention.

 

My damage build doesn't really avoid damage. It dishes it out haha. It only has 38% s/l def, but it does have rune of protection, barrier and perma dull pain. It relies on survival through chaos. Bouncing things with fissure and sleet, spectral terror, PA and sheer offense that rivals anything I've built.

 

That said, there are times you simply have to disengage to regroup. I got into a bad funk on a recent marketcrash causing frequent endurance crashes and had to flee back into the cave 2 times. Or vs the warwalker waves in Apex. I fought them all over that map to keep creating distance. There is nowhere to hide, but you can briefly break line of sight. If they are moving, they aren't attacking. I made them travel through my drop patches and summons which allowed me to layer some confuse on them and then press the advantage.

 

I spend most of my time on my damage build, but if I'm walking into a situation that I know is going to be dangerous, I hit the macro to flip to my survival build. It puts everything in to cooldown, but that is the only drawback.

[Frosticus]

9 hours ago, nihilii said:

WOW! Possibly the most impressive solo achievement ever done.

 

(I know people have soloed incarnate trials, and I respect the accomplishment; but the nature of Lore + mailed insps + several accounts just to start puts a barrier of entry to the whole process that makes it more "luck-based" in my mind, in that for each attempt time must be spent in gathering resources and hoping for a good roll of the dice.)

 

Whereas a no insp/lore/amp MoKhan is sheer deterministic victory. Fantastic job.

I think it is just a culmination of the right tools for this build.

-A lot of psi damage, which I switched the build around to accentuate. Unstoppable had a small impact on my dps, whereas it normally flatlines most builds.

-Uninterruptable dps. He can't stun PA and I'm out of range of it. The few times he got me, benumb makes the duration pretty short.

-Ability to quickly kill off his friends, but also nearly halt his regen while I fight with them. His HP would barely go back up while I'd deal with his generals. Most builds lose a lot of ground during this period, which is frustrating. 

-Finally, I think it was actually -recharge that did him in. Even through AV resistances I avg about 40%-rech. Slowing down his dullpain cycle may have been the deciding factor. When he was at about 10% hp I "knew" it was in the bag because I would outpace his dullpain cycle. But I was still sweating the thought of an error getting me killed. He didn't get off another dullpain though.

 

This fight is an absolute snooze-fest. 0/10 would not do again.

[VV]

On 1/16/2021 at 2:58 PM, Frosticus said:

I prefer instead to ask, not what I bring to a team, but rather, what does a team bring to me?

Ahahahahahhaaaaaaaa. This has kind of been my attitude since live.

 

Have you taken on the MoITF?

[Frosticus]

9 hours ago, VV said:

Ahahahahahhaaaaaaaa. This has kind of been my attitude since live.

 

Have you taken on the MoITF?

Indeed. 0x8 is super fun. 

4x8 has proven to test my patience too much as I have to lean heavily on confuse. I skip the dwarf ambush up top.

 

Interestingly enough if you confuse the nictus into killing the crystals in mission 2 the ambushes struggle to zero in on you and just sort of run around aimlessly. 

 

I've never really examined how to separate romy from his nictus so I ultimately get overwhelmed in the final fight.

 

[Olly]

On 1/20/2021 at 1:50 PM, Frosticus said:

I've never really examined how to separate romy from his nictus so I ultimately get overwhelmed in the final fight.

 

You will need either super speed or Teleport. My notes on how to do it:

"ITF AV separate -- the barrier for cut scene is right before the 2nd council soldier"

 

Meaning, you want to stay hidden and get as close to the cut scene trigger barrier as you can, with SS or TP at the ready. Once you're there (and it has not triggered), either SS or TP towards Romy. The scene will trigger, and you will have a few seconds to get to where he is standing to soak up the nicti aggro.  Once Romy appears, get his aggro, then run away to make sure you don't have nicti aggro as well.  Let the aggro reset, then do a pull on Romy. (I usually go up to the roof or to the side) The nicti shouldn't follow. Note that this isn't exact, and it may take a few tries to get it to work.

 

"2nd council soldier" = 2nd closest one from the cliff edge

 

I use ITF +4/*8 for testing my ranged solo alts, like trollers and blasters, so I did a fair bit of testing and research to learn this.

 

PS You will need to turn off stealth to get the nicti aggro prior to Romy appearing. So turn off arctic fog before you break the cut scene barrier, and SS if you are using it.

Edited January 22, 2021 by Olly

[Frosticus]

Council Goliath War Walker 

I've heard some people say this guy couldn't be solo'd. I don't think that  is the  case because I just did it no insp/temp/lore/amps, so I'm sure other builds could succeed. 

My first go at this GM was super fast (like 15 min), but I didn't have a timer going or lock my insp/temps etc. So I ran him again later. It took way longer this time. Not sure why. I sort of gave up hitting him with HL. His model is too big, so I hop away and buff off the greys nearby every second HL cycle. Otherwise I'd shut nearly everything off and try to run off just the 1 buff. This run took me about 23 min.

At any rate, I think he has like 70% resistance to all damage. He his pretty hard and stuns often. I had to use my survival tools pretty often, though was never in real danger.

Edit: 15 mins is repeatable

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited January 27, 2021 by Frosticus

[Frosticus]

Kronos Class Titan (GM)

This GM has a surprising amount of offense. It is much less hardy that the Council Goliath Warwalker though and went down in less than half the time.

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

Edited January 27, 2021 by Frosticus

[DocMidknight]

Truly very impressive,   I remember an earlier post you made regarding the greatness of the ill/cold troller with all the things it could do and it made me make one immediately, if I remember correctly it was ill/cold/ice. That build was really fun but has been sitting idle for a bit....what upgrades would you recommend to breath some life back into him? Thanks

 

[Frosticus]

@DocMidknight

I was in the same boat. I kept stalling out on the way to 50 in favour of other characters even though ill/cold was able to solo missions set with AV's from back in the mid 30's, well before I had a high recharge build in place. 

 

I think the issue (for me) is that illusion is so strong vs a few enemies, but pretty anemic against large spawns. An illusion build geared toward range and survival makes the game pretty boring either through ease (few enemies), or inefficient arresting (large spawns).

 

What revitalized the build for me was to go all in on offense. The output that this combo is capable of is astounding. In addition to that I basically asked myself what this combo can do as a standalone? no aids such as temps/insp/lore/amplifiers because it has so many tools at its disposal. All of which are quite sharp! Some builds respond exceptionally well to inspirations and such, but I don't feel illusion/cold does because so much of the damage comes from summons and procs. 

 

So now I'm in there like a dirty shirt side by side with my PA (and phantasm cause he loves melee too!). Rolling up and stomping down an AV in under a minute feels great. Scrolling back through the combat log and seeing seismic smash producing ~1500 damage is pretty satisfying. 

[DocMidknight]

@Frosticus...thanks for the reply. After dusting him off and running through parts of Maria arc I've come to realize how truly special the build is. I'm sitting at ranged soft capped as well as s/l soft cap and enough recharge to perma PA and hasten with heat loss off by 5 seconds from perma. I'm usually all about the dark but in this case I actually believe my ill/cold may be better than my ill/dark builds......thanks sharing and letting those of us know about this epic combo 

[Coyote]

This is why I say that //Ice is the best APP for Controllers... they can generally handle everythign else except large spawns (other than Plant or Fire). But Ice handles that best with a lot of AoE to clear minions fast, and the second option for offense is Stone because Fissure is good as an attack and also slots Force Feedback so it can improve its own recharge often. Both my Ill/Storm/Ice and Earth/Cold/Stone clear spawns at x6 surprisingly fast for Controllers who aren't Couch Potatoes (Plants).

Edited January 27, 2021 by Coyote