issue 27 Focused Feedback: Symphony Control

[SeraphimKensai]

Personally I wish we had an option for a Bass Guitar and make the music sound like I'm laying down a funky groove, aside of that I'll echo a few things:

1. Removing the damage component on the single target confuse, so that the power doesn't notify
2. Reordering the powers a bit to:

 

Powers:

 Melodic Binding  Ranged, Light DMG(Psionic), Immobilize, -Speed
 Hymn of Dissonance  Ranged, Light DMG(Psionic), Hold, -Recharge
 Aria of Stasis  Ranged (Cone), Minor DMG(Psionic), Immobilize, -Speed
 Impassioned Serenade Ranged, Minor DMG(Psionic), Confuse

  Confounding Chant  Ranged (Cone), Superior DoT (Psionic), Foe Disorient
 Enfeebling Lullaby  Ranged (Cone), Moderate DMG(Psionic), Sleep
 Dreadful Discord  Ranged (Cone), Minor DMG(Psionic), Fear
 Chords of Despair  Targeted AoE, Hold
 Reverberant  Reverberant Pet Summon

 

    3. It's would be kinda a cool either for a "crescendo" mechanic that as you chain your symphony powers in an attack chain the arc of the cones expand via a modifier, but that's just a little niche idea that I figure matches the overall theme of the set.

 

overall good work.

 

[Darmian]

2 minutes ago, SeraphimKensai said:

Personally I wish we had an option for a Bass Guitar and make the music sound like I'm laying down a funky groove,

Have wanted guitars as part of Titan Weapons for ages!  Having them here would also be cool.

[arcane]

I don’t totally get the raving about the set’s damage unless proc bombs are assumed in multiple cones.
 

Unless I definitely have room to proc bomb the other cones, I feel like I’ll only want the S/T hold and confuse, the cone stun and immobilize, and the pet. 5 powers.

 

Seems like the cone stun with superior damage is more or less the highlight of the set. I will at least proc bomb that one. Just not convinced on bothering with the fear/sleep cones after that.

Edited July 28, 2022 by arcane

[twozerofoxtrot]

The Stun Cone is what you want to set slot for bonus, since it actually does good damage.

 

The fear cone gets an extra damage proc from Glimpse of the Abyss so it's a good candidate.  The cone dimensions and recharge give it a fair proc rate as well.

 

The Immob cone is terrible for damage procs, but better for triggering singular effects. I put ATO procs in there (build up, fonts).

 

I didn't bother with the sleep on either my Controller or Dominator builds; power economy. 

 

 

Overall I felt the damage was good. Much better than I'm used to from Controllers, on par with what I expect from Dominators.

[KaizenSoze]

On 7/26/2022 at 7:37 PM, arcane said:

That’s what I’m leaning towards first, Symphony/Storm. Song of Storms vibes 🙂 

I tried out Symphony/Storm. I found it to be a bit too chaotic as mobs were sliding out of edges of the cones.

 

Symphony/Dark is a strong combo, not a quick killing combo, but safe and kills fast enough solo.

[KaizenSoze]

Symphony/Trick Arrow Controller is the strongest combo I had found so far.

 

You can stack a lot of mezz, damage and tohit debuff, to keep the pet alive.

 

And it does good damage with oil slick and Confounding Chant.

 

 

[arcane]

I had thought of something more like Symphony/Trick Arrow just to stay all-ranged for max synergy with the cones. Also thought about Symphony/Nature.

Edited July 29, 2022 by arcane

[Bionic_Flea]

3 hours ago, KaizenSoze said:

Symphony/Dark is a strong combo, not a quick killing combo, but safe and kills fast enough solo.

I made a Symphonic/Dark as well with Ice Mastery's Frost Breath adding another cone with great damage (with procs) and Ice Storm for more damage and slows to keep things at range.  I liked it and think it does good damage as a solo controller x8.

 

I liked that one a lot more than Symphonic/Sonic Dom.  You'd think it would be a good pairing, but I found it less than good.

[KaizenSoze]

19 minutes ago, arcane said:

I had thought of something more like Symphony/Trick Arrow just to stay all-ranged for max synergy with the cones. Also thought about Symphony/Nature.

The synergy is amazing.

 

Stacking -damage

Stacking immobilizes

Two AOE holds

Stacking sleeps

Only one hold. I didn't take ice arrow, no room or slots.

 

I am happy with the damage w/o any procing. One downside, it's an end hog end with Cardiac.

[Mezmera]

4 hours ago, KaizenSoze said:

Only one hold. I didn't take ice arrow, no room or slots.

 

You crazy!  Ice Arrow is the best debuff in TA.  I'd make room!  

[KaizenSoze]

28 minutes ago, Mezmera said:

 

You crazy!  Ice Arrow is the best debuff in TA.  I'd make room!  

Haha. It's a great debuff no argument, but I just don't have the slots.

 

Also, I would have to give up a power, the crazy thought would be to swap out Ice Arrow for the confuse. Then I would have the slots.

[Mezmera]

2 hours ago, KaizenSoze said:

the crazy thought would be to swap out Ice Arrow for the confuse

[Redletter]

On 7/22/2022 at 12:42 PM, Mezmera said:

bad enough everyone and their mother gets Ghost Widow's awesome hold, except for actual control characters...

 

Don't remind me 😭

[Redletter]

18 hours ago, Bionic_Flea said:

I made a Symphonic/Dark as well with Ice Mastery's Frost Breath adding another cone with great damage (with procs) and Ice Storm for more damage and slows to keep things at range.  I liked it and think it does good damage as a solo controller x8.

 

I liked that one a lot more than Symphonic/Sonic Dom.  You'd think it would be a good pairing, but I found it less than good.

 

Symph/Sonic was a lot of fun, especially since all of your Sonic powers that have a hold, can get Hold enhancements procs, so you can really cheat the rather small chance for hold they normally "enjoy". Plus, that's just a new category for procs if that's your kind of thing, and many of those procs are Psi Damage! Everyone's favorite damage.

 

But. Like many of the Assault sets, it necessitates you be very active, changing from ranged control to melee slugging. That's not a problem for something like Mind Control that really likes saying "Ok here's an AoE that literally turn's mob packs into punching bags that will sit there and let you kick their drooling teeth in" whereas Symphony's love of cones means you're opening with an AoE, going in, hitting, then swapping to cones. Because cones are cones, you'll likely need to reposition to get the most out of it, and if you're control effects arent in the right order, or are resisted, or they miss, you're in a worse position now, since you're in smacking distance of all the people who were happy to nap until you mezz'd up.

 

The pet helps with this, sometimes. Othertimes, the pet will ruin your chain, because it used a power that didnt apply its CC but did apply its damage, breaking any sleeps you'd e set up on enemies you weren't engaging. But besides, I do find that Symph preforms best when you have a set that capitalizes on it's unique "optimum" range. Sonic/Dark dom has been my favorite so far, as far as Symph doms go.

 

It reallt shines on controllers though, like, god, Symph/Dark controller has been enormously fun (double the pets, tripple the controls!), Symph/Elec troller is a riot since the Symph pet is a target for your circuit powers (and Amp Up, which is nice) so, when alone, you form an actually symbiotic symphonic relationship with your pet? It's just silly, since the pet is a mini you! Hit it with Amp Up and you basically negate the fact its controls are marginally weaker than yours. Symph/FF lets you abuse Personal Force Field because once your pet has powers, you can just hop in your safety bubble and let the pet scream at enemies until it runs out of echo juice. Symph/Sonic on a controller is, ironically, way better than symph/sonic on the dominator, since once again the pet can be hit with the shields. That -Res goes a lot further on the support sonic set than on the assault sonic set, and, even better than -res, yiu can slap Sonic Repulsion on your pet! Everyone LOVES Sonic Repulsion! My experiments with Symph/Storm have been less than stellar though, while I love storm, it doesnt really have anything to add to Symph that it wasn't already doing for other troller primaries. This is also true for Symph/Time, perfectly fine (even great) combo, but there's nothing to remark on.

 

/TA also goes into the category of "It's great, but it doesnt do anything remarkable it wasnt already doing" but, at the same time, it ALSO falls into the category of "TA is the best support set in the game, there is literally zero debate about this, the discussion ends here." so while I don't feel like it needs to be said, it does demand a section where I mention it, because there are, remarkably, to this very day, people who DON'T accept TA as their singular lord and savior, the second coming of support Christ. I know, it's weird, right? Anyway, try /TA.

 

What I noticed about Symph/ on the controller, is that the nature of the set means it heavily benefits any set that has Targeted AoE Toggle Debuffs (like /Rad). The pet doesnt do enough damage to accidentally kill your target AND it has enough control presence to help keep them disabled. So! You can like, ACTUALLY benefit from the fact a boss level enemy is causing all his goons around him to take 30% extra damage, while he takes a nap. The cones naturally incline you to positioning yourself to make the most affect of your powers, so youre usually in the prime spot to make the most of those sorts of debuffs from the very start of an engagement as well! Very handy.

 

Once thing I noticed though, was how P O T E N T /Traps was on this set. I fell in love with /Traps on my Illusion/Traps controller, but the problem I was having was the main quirk of /Traps being that you need to set up. Now, Superior Invis helped me do that, but it's hard to do that in the MIDDLE of a fight. SOMETIMES I could get away with it, sometimes. The main problem being the pets for Illusion are unreliable. The nightmare's fears are inconsistent and can cause enemies to RUN away from my bombs, Phantom Army is great, up until they run off and the taunted enemies follow them AWAY from my bombs. The only one that tended to work was the Phantasm, once slotted with KB/KD, it would reliably knockdown enemies, but, it's a deceptively squishy pet. In bigger mob groups, it really likes things being either preoccupied with PA pets, terrorized, or otherwise controlled by other means (such as Flash which has an uncomfortably enormous cooldown, or Poison Trap, arguably the best AoE hold in the game that you never ever will ever ever know about ever because nobody ever ever takes it ever because for SOME reason I can't put my mine down on the ground, in the air - physics are for losers! Let me plant the mine on thin air!).

 

Symph, hover, has enough control on tap to give you enough time to set up straight up in the middle of a brawl. This has led to instances where between me, the reverb, and the poison trap, i've casually walked through dark astoria's spookiest areas with not a soul being able to move before an untimely demise... TO TIME BOMB. It's fantastic. The fact that /Traps is NO slouch in the damage department either really helps. Symph doesnt NEED damage, really, it does a good job, especially for controller primaries, but I'd say if you're the kind of person who likes seeing Procs pop off like crazy, Symph/Traps is for you. You will, however, need a lot of Ghost Widow Embraces. That's most people greatest desire anyhow (her hair is just so pretty, they can't help it) but it's especially true for this combo

 

Symph/Nature has been my next undertaking, I really enjoy the debuffs nature provides, but the buffs it offers for the pet seem less potent, since the pet needs them less than other pets might. 

[KaizenSoze]

2 hours ago, Redletter said:

/TA also goes into the category of "It's great, but it doesnt do anything remarkable it wasnt already doing" but, at the same time, it ALSO falls into the category of "TA is the best support set in the game, there is literally zero debate about this, the discussion ends here." so while I don't feel like it needs to be said, it does demand a section where I mention it, because there are, remarkably, to this very day, people who DON'T accept TA as their singular lord and savior, the second coming of support Christ. I know, it's weird, right? Anyway, try /TA.

Once thing I noticed though, was how P O T E N T /Traps was on this set. I fell in love with /Traps on my Illusion/Traps controller...

Don't let Voltak hear you say TA is better Elec for support. 🙂

 

Trick Arrow works extra well with Symphony, even better than my Earth/TA controller, because TA buffs Symphony's good damage. On top of the stacking, and of course you can play completely at range. My Earth/TA is a control monster, but really lacks damage. Symphony/TA is a very good controller with great controller damage.

 

Traps... sigh now I have test another alt. Because I always wanted to have a traps character. There is still the issue with it being too slow for the current player meta.

[KaizenSoze]

2 hours ago, Redletter said:

Symph/Sonic was a lot of fun, especially since all of your Sonic powers that have a hold, can get Hold enhancements procs, so you can really cheat the rather small chance for hold they normally "enjoy". Plus, that's just a new category for procs if that's your kind of thing, and many of those procs are Psi Damage! Everyone's favorite damage.

 

But. Like many of the Assault sets, it necessitates you be very active, changing from ranged control to melee slugging. That's not a problem for something like Mind Control that really likes saying "Ok here's an AoE that literally turn's mob packs into punching bags that will sit there and let you kick their drooling teeth in" whereas Symphony's love of cones means you're opening with an AoE, going in, hitting, then swapping to cones. Because cones are cones, you'll likely need to reposition to get the most out of it, and if you're control effects arent in the right order, or are resisted, or they miss, you're in a worse position now, since you're in smacking distance of all the people who were happy to nap until you mezz'd up.

 Yes, I have always found the constant back and forth between melee and range and issue with almost all Dominator assult sets.

 

Savage/Symphony with the teleport pool solves a lot of the those issue, but there is the pet problem.

 

The pet is really important to the set and it is too fragile and aggressive. Dominator do not have the tools to keep it alive. Controllers do have the tools, hence why I think this is a best on a controller.

[Redletter]

13 hours ago, KaizenSoze said:

 Yes, I have always found the constant back and forth between melee and range and issue with almost all Dominator assult sets.

 

Savage/Symphony with the teleport pool solves a lot of the those issue, but there is the pet problem.

 

The pet is really important to the set and it is too fragile and aggressive. Dominator do not have the tools to keep it alive. Controllers do have the tools, hence why I think this is a best on a controller.

 

The secret to the pet on the dominator, and you'll say im insane, but have you considered taking "Taunt" from the power trees?

 

I know, I know, but... you have all these cones. And enemies like to run at you, once taunted, in neat and tidy cone-able clumps...

 

It's something I did on my Gravity/Dark/Soul Dominator, mostly because Gravity has THE DOME OF DOOM which was a weird power I really loved, but everybody seemed to hate, so I set it up so I could "psuedo tank" by taunting mobs, dropping the dome, letting them chase me into the dome, and then mez them or kill them depending. Worked very nicely in smaller groups on higher settings, and for the Symph dominator, being able to taunt groups into crowding together helps your powers catch them more neatly -- and by extension, it helps your pets powers do that too, while also keeping it fairly safe. It's not perfect, and the reality is you'll likely never run into this problem on a team, but if you solo, it's not awful.

 

You... do end up with the problem that Symphony is the kind of primary where you want nearly, if not definitively, EVERY power. So you're power selection is already really tight, and most doms want perma dom so you're looking at haste, and ideally 5 powers you can slot a gamblers into, so that's like... flight, leaping, fighting, leadership and mace already spoken for... and that's not even talking about your secondary! Which could either be a set where you take like, maybe 4 powers at most, or, it might be something where you ALSO want nearly ALL of the powers...

 

But! It DOES mean you can slot P E R F E C T    Z I N G E R and really, truly, how could you resist slotting such an exquisitely named enhancement set? I know I can't.

[Redletter]

13 hours ago, KaizenSoze said:

Don't let Voltak hear you say TA is better Elec for support. 🙂

 

Trick Arrow works extra well with Symphony, even better than my Earth/TA controller, because TA buffs Symphony's good damage. On top of the stacking, and of course you can play completely at range. My Earth/TA is a control monster, but really lacks damage. Symphony/TA is a very good controller with great controller damage.

 

Traps... sigh now I have test another alt. Because I always wanted to have a traps character. There is still the issue with it being too slow for the current player meta.

 

I'll admit, Traps on ANY team is going to be slower than the team. It's the sort of set where you're either in constant communication with your team and shot calling with YOU as the guy who kicks things off, or, you kinda just summon the things that are quick to summon and/orpersist and follow you around, orrrrr you hold out until the boss where you set up acid mortars, healing pylons, maybe lay a trip mine (never time bomb, AVs will die before it goes off even on a OMEGA level teams).

 

But solo? Where you're always engaging on YOUR terms? Where every encounter you're like "Ok so how do i play this?" then Traps is where it's at. Trip Mine with Overwhelming Force is a phenomenal damage dealer on any class that can take it, but especially on controllers, and especially on controllers who can reliably control enemy groups. It even synergizes really well with teleport, because you set the mine, set the poison mine, then Fold Space everyone on top of you, then just start screaming. If your pet still has echoes, it'll scream too. So far, Im able to clear the kinds of groups that'd kill my ill/traps controller doing this tactic.

 

The only thing is that Poison Mine is mandatory, slotting it with +2 from lockdown is also mandatory, as is slotting it with Ghost Widow's Embrace and Neurotic shut down. Poison Mine looks weird on the surface, but functionally, it works similar to caltrops. Once the mine goes off, it creates a cloud of gas that persistently makes checks to hold per tick. Every tick is an opportunity for procs to go off, it's not like Trip Mine or Time Bomb which are set then explode and that's it.

 

Also! Don't make the mistake I did. Neither trip mine nor time bomb can take procs. I thought they could, and spent like, a bajillion inf on ever proc under the sun for them in the hopes that when the bombs went off, they'd do something like this?

 

But uhm. It didnt go that way at all. Ironically, Time Bomb was doing less damage than Trip Mine or Posion Mine (with procs). It was so staggeringly disappointing that the only reason why i took it into testing for Symph control was because I noticed that between the pet and me, mob packs were barely able to move. I decided to see if I could mez a mob group, and keep them mez'd long enough to set up time bomb AND see it go off -- you can, though it does require you to make sure you mez in the right order, and this was with a character who had the incarnate that gave you a 100% chance to stun any target who was immobilized and feared, i also had a ton of "chance for disorient" and things like that stuffed in my powers for even MORE control (but that's how and why I love Symph control, i played it proc'd out for damage and that was great, but volume of control is more my style).

[TygerDarkstorm]

13 hours ago, Redletter said:

It reallt shines on controllers though, like, god, Symph/Dark controller has been enormously fun (double the pets, tripple the controls!), Symph/Elec troller is a riot since the Symph pet is a target for your circuit powers (and Amp Up, which is nice) so, when alone, you form an actually symbiotic symphonic relationship with your pet? It's just silly, since the pet is a mini you! Hit it with Amp Up and you basically negate the fact its controls are marginally weaker than yours. Symph/FF lets you abuse Personal Force Field because once your pet has powers, you can just hop in your safety bubble and let the pet scream at enemies until it runs out of echo juice. Symph/Sonic on a controller is, ironically, way better than symph/sonic on the dominator, since once again the pet can be hit with the shields. That -Res goes a lot further on the support sonic set than on the assault sonic set, and, even better than -res, yiu can slap Sonic Repulsion on your pet! Everyone LOVES Sonic Repulsion! My experiments with Symph/Storm have been less than stellar though, while I love storm, it doesnt really have anything to add to Symph that it wasn't already doing for other troller primaries. This is also true for Symph/Time, perfectly fine (even great) combo, but there's nothing to remark on. 

Your feedback on all the combinations you've been trying is wonderful to read. I too found Symp/Storm to not be all that great/interesting--granted I didn't bother to run it at 50 and incarnated out--but for me, I think it'll be hard to love a storm toon as much as I love my Demons/Storm MM.

 

Symp/Sonic on a controller is just oodles of fun, as I've waxed about in here several times, lol. Pet gets super tanky. We were taking on 2 spawns at a time in some missions (running at +0/x4) and barely breaking a sweat in most cases, and that's with my noobish attempt at slotting and running at level 40. It'll probably be one of the first toons I make when the page goes live, lol.

 

Quote

Once thing I noticed though, was how P O T E N T /Traps was on this set. I fell in love with /Traps on my Illusion/Traps controller, but the problem I was having was the main quirk of /Traps being that you need to set up. Now, Superior Invis helped me do that, but it's hard to do that in the MIDDLE of a fight. SOMETIMES I could get away with it, sometimes. The main problem being the pets for Illusion are unreliable. The nightmare's fears are inconsistent and can cause enemies to RUN away from my bombs, Phantom Army is great, up until they run off and the taunted enemies follow them AWAY from my bombs. The only one that tended to work was the Phantasm, once slotted with KB/KD, it would reliably knockdown enemies, but, it's a deceptively squishy pet. In bigger mob groups, it really likes things being either preoccupied with PA pets, terrorized, or otherwise controlled by other means (such as Flash which has an uncomfortably enormous cooldown, or Poison Trap, arguably the best AoE hold in the game that you never ever will ever ever know about ever because nobody ever ever takes it ever because for SOME reason I can't put my mine down on the ground, in the air - physics are for losers! Let me plant the mine on thin air!).

I can't decide whether or not I like my Ill/Traps controller or not, but you may have sold me to trying a Symph/Traps controller lol.

 

Thank you again for all the feedback you've give in.

[KaizenSoze]

Working my way through the priority testing list:

• Symphony Control/Hymn of Dissonance: Fixed a particle bug that was ignoring color tinting.
  • Color tinting appears to be working
• Symphony Control/Enfeebling Lullaby: Will no longer apply damage on targets that are asleep.
  • Lullaby will not break sleep on a sleeping target. I would sleep with Poison Gas Arrow, then appled Lullaby.
  • Also, Lullaby will not break Lullaby
  • One caveat, if Chant has a knockdown proc, it will break sleep. This is working as designed.
• Symphony Control/Reverberant: Significantly lowered the delay between the player activating a Symphony power and Reverberant being able to repeat it.
  • Casting speed does seem to be quicker

[KaizenSoze]

On 7/29/2022 at 7:38 PM, Mezmera said:

The test off between the double proc hold vs hold/confuse is closer than you would think, but double proc hold wins by a little bit.

 

Obviously, single target double with double proc hold is much higher, but so is end usage, and misses. When fighting 4x8, I noticed the misses quite a bit and the reduced hold times.

 

Misses can be mitigated by Acid Arrow, but ageless is a absolute requirement if you're going to proc the holds. Symphony/TA is end heavy already, procing attacks pushes it over the edge to required ageless.

 

Non-proc'ed hold/confuse and live w/o ageless, but you do have to watch your end bar in long fights.

 

tldr Two holds procs, but better damage, requires ageless. hold/confuse no procs, better control, doesn't require ageless.

[stryve]

Don't have much to add that hasn't already been said in the last few pages, but I did notice something odd when playing around with Symphony Control since the last update.  I have the Energy Font proc in Aria of Stasis, and occasionally I'd end up with 4-8 Energy Fonts shortly after engaging a group of enemies.  It was intermittent, so I never managed to catch it happening, just look down and realize the pet list was larger than I expected.  If I waited around after the fight most of the flock would go away simultaneously, so I figure they must have been mostly triggering off one attack.

 

I've never seen that many Energy Fonts proc at once on any my Live Controllers (2 Gravity, Plant, Dark, Ice) so it stuck out.

[KaizenSoze]

7 hours ago, stryve said:

Don't have much to add that hasn't already been said in the last few pages, but I did notice something odd when playing around with Symphony Control since the last update.  I have the Energy Font proc in Aria of Stasis, and occasionally I'd end up with 4-8 Energy Fonts shortly after engaging a group of enemies.  It was intermittent, so I never managed to catch it happening, just look down and realize the pet list was larger than I expected.  If I waited around after the fight most of the flock would go away simultaneously, so I figure they must have been mostly triggering off one attack.

 

I've never seen that many Energy Fonts proc at once on any my Live Controllers (2 Gravity, Plant, Dark, Ice) so it stuck out.

I haven't seen this in my testing, but I believe you. It's possible you got very lucky with the rolls. The proc rate on Aria is poor, but if you're hitting enough targets you could get a couple of streaks.

[arcane]

10 hours ago, stryve said:

Don't have much to add that hasn't already been said in the last few pages, but I did notice something odd when playing around with Symphony Control since the last update.  I have the Energy Font proc in Aria of Stasis, and occasionally I'd end up with 4-8 Energy Fonts shortly after engaging a group of enemies.  It was intermittent, so I never managed to catch it happening, just look down and realize the pet list was larger than I expected.  If I waited around after the fight most of the flock would go away simultaneously, so I figure they must have been mostly triggering off one attack.

 

I've never seen that many Energy Fonts proc at once on any my Live Controllers (2 Gravity, Plant, Dark, Ice) so it stuck out.

That sounds normal to me..

[KaizenSoze]

Final note about controller testing. Unless something changes.

 

If you want to solo regular content I would suggest Symphony/Storm.

More team orientated or hard mode content I would Symphony/TA.

 

Of course, you can use either for solo or team. Both can solo 4x8.

 

Trick arrow just brings more debuff that stacks nicely with Symphony for very tough mobs.