Request: Controller suggestions for 2-person team with a Savage/Fire Brute

[Sirrocco]

So, I'm setting up to paly paired characters alongside a Savage/Fire Brute as a bit of father/son bonding time.  Savage/Fire is a pretty classic Brute package that's resist-based, a little light on the protection, heavy on the damage, and even more interested in blitzing from one fight to the next than normal Brutes are.

 

I've largely been playing solo up until now, and the whole "controllers are terrible at solo" thing has kept me from really even looking into the archetype in a meaningful way... but if this is a paired character, then that might actually work out pretty well.  So... I could use some advice.

 

I know that I want at least some healing in my secondary, ideally early on, but I'm thinking that the "single-target not you" heals might actually be better for my purposes than the "area heal yourself and everyone else" ones, as long as I can keep from stealing aggro too badly.  I don't want to depend *too* hard on my kid's aggro management skills.  He's very nearly brand new to the game.

 

I know I care more about the early game, even the very early game, than the late game.  I play a lot of alts, and not one of them has gotten past 25, and I honestly don't expect this pairing to get even that far.  If it's a setup with a very solid early game that just kind of whimpers out at the higher levels, I'm prepared to be happy with that.  "But it has a really cool capstone" isn't a huge draw.

 

I'm somewhat worried about complexity.  I have an expectation that playing a controller is kind of complicated, and... well, one or my favorite archetypes is Mastermind, and there are mastermind secondaries I don't play (like, say, Marine and Trick Arrow) because they just take way more attention and control than I'm prepared to deal out even when my minions are mostly taking care of themselves.  So *that's* a thing.  I'm quite fond of toggles and autopowers, but I understand that there's not but so many of those in controller space.

 

At the same time, I *do* want a character who's doing *something*.  In particular, I want to be doing something interesting in the fight that goes beyond just "keep the shields up, stay in aura range" or whatever the equivalent is.

 

We are not interested in full builds.  We will not be twinking anything.  We'll be figuring stuff out as we go and paying our own way, and probably not even using all that much from the P2W vendor.  I expect we'll be playing blueside, and I do know the available missions in the appropriate level ranges pretty well.  Suggestions about "this build is great at fighting X but not Y" are cool.  (Example from the Tanker side: Electric armor is fantastic against standard clockwork.  It's really not great against Vahzilock.)

 

So yeah.  I have a fairly solid grasp of the support pools.  I got *nothing* on the control pools, and I also don't know even the bare minimum about the basic stuff you need to know to play a controller well.  Mostly, I'm hoping for suggestions about primary, secondary, combos of the two (if that even matters) and any random bits of advice on playing a controller properly in this environment.  Explanations of why this or that option is good or quick explanations of the differences are even better than just "I suggest you play X".

 

Thank you for your time.

[tidge]

11 minutes ago, Sirrocco said:

I know I care more about the early game, even the very early game, than the late game.  I play a lot of alts, and not one of them has gotten past 25, and I honestly don't expect this pairing to get even that far.  If it's a setup with a very solid early game that just kind of whimpers out at the higher levels, I'm prepared to be happy with that.  "But it has a really cool capstone" isn't a huge draw.

 

I'm somewhat worried about complexity.  I have an expectation that playing a controller is kind of complicated, and... well, one or my favorite archetypes is Mastermind, and there are mastermind secondaries I don't play (like, say, Marine and Trick Arrow) because they just take way more attention and control than I'm prepared to deal out even when my minions are mostly taking care of themselves.  So *that's* a thing.  I'm quite fond of toggles and autopowers, but I understand that there's not but so many of those in controller space.

 

I highlighted some things that stand out to me. This is just my opinion, but I don't think ATs even start to feel like they are coming into their own until sometime between level 12 and 20. The other constraints (the "no twinking of builds") isn't really a concern when you won't have many slots to choose from.

 

It sounds to me that you want a Defender, not a Controller. Helping an Ally is much easier with a low-level Defender than it will be with a low-level Controller.

 

[Sirrocco]

Eh... the real thing is that I want to try to play with the control power sets a bit.  Like, I do a *lot* of solo, and I've done a lot of digging into the support power pools of various sorts to feed my mastermind habit, and Defender is basically just... that but better at it.  The Control power pools are something that I have zero experience with, and I'd kind of like to change that.  Well, their main issue (as I understand it) is that they're real bad at solo, because they can't keep up with the necessary damage pressure... and I have a brute buddy who can ensure that plenty of damage gets done.

 

If the real answer is "This is a bad choice.  Controllers are bad at low levels." or "This is a bad choice.  Controllers need more than one ally." or "This is a bad choice.  Controllers are inevitably complicated to play." then... well, okay.  I can adjust based on that if I need to... but the way I'm seeing it, this might be my best opportunity to get some experience over on that side of things, and I'd like to try to work with that.

[SeraphimKensai]

I'd suggest plant/storm or plant/poison. You get tons of control, damage mitigation, and decent controller damage with plant.

• Storm gets you a team friendly stealth that also gives res/defense, debuffs, and a lot of damage output with tornado/lightning storm (place a kb to kd IO in your tornado to help your son playing melee).
• Poison gets you some of the strongest debuff powers in the game and really leans into just softening everything up for your pets/carrion and son to demolish.

Other suggestions would be illusion/rad (a classic) or dark/cold (more control/debuffs, and also defense shields/more HP for your son). Also Dark Affinity is pretty amazing of a set.

Edited October 4 by SeraphimKensai

[Without_Pause]

3 minutes ago, SeraphimKensai said:

Other suggestions would be illusion/rad (a classic)

While yes, Ill to a default is one of the best sets to make soloing essentially boring due to ease, it is not one to bloom early. You need PA to have a decent amount of Recharge to get it to be more tolerable. Phant also does KB unless you can possibly slot the KB to KD IO in it. I don't know. I haven't looked. KB can be a bit of an issue for Brutes.

 

I settled on Plant/cold. /fire will love the shields. Plant at least offers some regen even though the build lacks the targeted heal you are seeking overall. /fire has it's own quick recharging heal. It will be fine. Really, as long as you have the shields and Seeds, you are basically on auto-pilot and you get those early. While yes, Seeds would impact Fury on some level, I've never really had an issue with generating Fury on a Brute. They literally have an ATO for it.

 

My only issue with the combo is ST damage could be better, but Savage's lack of a worthy higher tier ST attack is less likely of an issue if the focus is on early gameplay. 

[Uun]

Looking at sets that get good stuff early, my recommendation would be Dark/Nature, Ice/Nature or Electric/Nature. All of these give you ST hold, ST immobilize and AoE immobilize early.

• Dark gives you Fearsome Stare (cone fear) at lvl 8 and Heart of Darkness (PBAoE stun) at lvl 12.
• Ice gives you Cold Snap (cone slow/fear) at lvl 8 and Ice Slick (location knockdown) at lvl 12. (Defer Arctic Air until later. )
• Electric gives you Jolting Chain (chain knockdown) at lvl 6, Conductive Aura (PBAoE end drain) at lvl 8 and Static Field (location sleep) at lvl 12. (Static Field reapplies after being broken by damage.)
• Nature gives you Regrowth (cone heal) at lvl 1, Wild Growth (PBAoE +res/+regen) at lvl 4 and Spore Cloud (targeted AoE -dmg/tohit) at lvl 10. 

[tidge]

12 hours ago, Sirrocco said:

Eh... the real thing is that I want to try to play with the control power sets a bit.  Like, I do a *lot* of solo, and I've done a lot of digging into the support power pools of various sorts to feed my mastermind habit, and Defender is basically just... that but better at it.  The Control power pools are something that I have zero experience with, and I'd kind of like to change that.  Well, their main issue (as I understand it) is that they're real bad at solo, because they can't keep up with the necessary damage pressure... and I have a brute buddy who can ensure that plenty of damage gets done.

 

Controllers are great solo, but if you don't go beyond level 25 you are very unlikely to experience this. The 'classic' CoX experience for Controllers is slow, but that means ignoring START attacks, not slotting to address Endurance, single-target controls (Containment is supposed to help with damage) as opposed to DPS. Until powers can be cast in a chain, and you have AoEs, it is hard to see how Controllers are really shining.

 

The most no-brainer Controller primary is probably Plant Control. You will be able to see Containment very early, and Seeds of Confusion is rather OP, especially for a level 8 power. If you quit at level 25, you will at least have been able to experience Carrion Creepers.

 

If you want more direct damage with a side of Control, Gravity (provided you take Propel) will meet your needs. If you want to be the support, then the secondaries of Kinetics or Empathy will allow you to support the kid. Dark is great, but Twilight Grasp is something you might get bored with spamming.

[Without_Pause]

15 minutes ago, tidge said:

If you want more direct damage with a side of Control, Gravity (provided you take Propel) will meet your needs. If you want to be the support, then the secondaries of Kinetics or Empathy will allow you to support the kid. Dark is great, but Twilight Grasp is something you might get bored with spamming.

Propel's DPA isn't great. I never took it on a Grav/ta. They said they wanted something on the less complex side see auto powers. I won't say Kin is complex, but it is very busy. If you are spamming TG, you are doing something seriously wrong. /dark is so good it would take until 28 to find a power not worth taking. The only time I even remotely spam it would be on an AV for the -Regen although HT essentially takes care of it by itself. TG is seriously one of my least used powers. While I find Fire Armor to be one of the weakest armor sets, there's no reason to spam TG for it. 

[SeraphimKensai]

2 hours ago, Without_Pause said:

I settled on Plant/cold. /fire will love the shields. Plant at least offers some regen even though the build lacks the targeted heal you are seeking overall.

I do like this pairing myself and only didn't suggest it due to it not having a targeted heal that the OP was looking for.

 

That said the OP can always take the medicine pool if they really want and the ice shields reduce the need for healing to begin with.

[Auroxis]

If you want an early bloomer, then Symphony is a great pick-up due to the early CC's and proc bombs. And in general as a controller, to keep things fun for your brute buddy you'd want to wait for him to get mobs near him before you start popping off with CC's (so his AoE's can actually hit stuff).

[tidge]

44 minutes ago, Without_Pause said:

Propel's DPA isn't great. I never took it on a Grav/ta. They said they wanted something on the less complex side see auto powers. I won't say Kin is complex, but it is very busy. If you are spamming TG, you are doing something seriously wrong. /dark is so good it would take until 28 to find a power not worth taking. The only time I even remotely spam it would be on an AV for the -Regen although HT essentially takes care of it by itself. TG is seriously one of my least used powers. While I find Fire Armor to be one of the weakest armor sets, there's no reason to spam TG for it. 

 

The OP has said that they rarely take characters above level 25, and made comments that imply that they won't leverage "modern" (my words) slotting techniques. It also sounds (to me) that they basically want the child to be on "easy mode" (as a Brute) and the only admitted pre-conceived notion is that "Controllers are slow." My point about spamming the heal is made because the other low-level Dark powers have recharge times such that they won't be available for every fight, and it will likely be hard to tell (at low levels) how they are "controlling" the fights.

 

This feels to me like there may be enough preconceived notions that I probably should check out of this thread. I wouldn't give a young, inexperienced player a Brute... I don't even think it's best (at low levels) for "blitzing" enemies. An inexperienced Controller would probably learn the introductory Controller tricks better by supporting a Scrapper or Blaster teammate.

[Without_Pause]

9 minutes ago, tidge said:

 

The OP has said that they rarely take characters above level 25, and made comments that imply that they won't leverage "modern" (my words) slotting techniques. It also sounds (to me) that they basically want the child to be on "easy mode" (as a Brute) and the only admitted pre-conceived notion is that "Controllers are slow." My point about spamming the heal is made because the other low-level Dark powers have recharge times such that they won't be available for every fight, and it will likely be hard to tell (at low levels) how they are "controlling" the fights.

 

This feels to me like there may be enough preconceived notions that I probably should check out of this thread. I wouldn't give a young, inexperienced player a Brute... I don't even think it's best (at low levels) for "blitzing" enemies. An inexperienced Controller would probably learn the introductory Controller tricks better by supporting a Scrapper or Blaster teammate.

Seeds is the primary form of mitigation and DN can do wonders to mitigate damage intake. You don't need all of the Dark powers all of the time. Rotate as needed. Shadowfall is a toggle. Again, if you are spamming the heal, then you are doing something wrong outside of a possible ambush. The learning curve on a FA character is that their KB protection isn't what it is compared to other sets so leveling can be annoying. 1-25 isn't exactly the land of the high difficulty settings. They should be more than fine learning the ropes. Even soloing, I might go x3 at best in my 20s. I don't look for +0/x4 until my 30s.  While yes, I IO builds. I'm also doing this solo. Two characters should cakewalk +0/x2 even with basic slotting. That's literally what the game is originally balanced around.

[tidge]

40 minutes ago, Without_Pause said:

 1-25 isn't exactly the land of the high difficulty settings. They should be more than fine learning the ropes. Even soloing, I might go x3 at best in my 20s. I don't look for +0/x4 until my 30s.  While yes, I IO builds. I'm also doing this solo. Two characters should cakewalk +0/x2 even with basic slotting. That's literally what the game is originally balanced around.

 

So they are teaming up, they are going to be two of them at x2. I agree that things should be a cakewalk; I'm going to step out of the recommendations here because if a player is playing a lot of alts, and none of them have gotten past 25, I kinda feel like the OP is playing the game a LOT differently than many of us. START was explicitly pointed out as something they wouldn't take advantage of.... so yeah, a solo controller without P2W attacks is going to be a little slow to complete content below level 16.

 

With the sorts of written constraints and my own reading-between-the-lines, I feel like a grindy pre-16 experience is what is in store... and the likely issues are going to be burning through endurance and missing attacks (they can't turn off Beginner's Luck!). I feel like the "try a Controller" is not even the right way to attack this. If the desire to test a Controller was the main driver, I feel like the other member of the team wouldn't be a Brute. As I wrote above, I don't even think Brutes are the simplest to play for a youngster. If they are prone to get upset when getting defeated, a Tanker is probably better. If they can emotionally handle defeats, a Scrapper or Blaster will give the Controller more of a chance to shine, plus offer the dopamine hits of finishing enemies off.

 

IMO, Controllers might be the AT that benefited most from the lowering of the levels for picking certain powers... but a player would have to go past level 25 to find out.

[Without_Pause]

Been awhile since I soloed a Controller from Level 1. ST Immobilize, Hold, And Arcane Bolt can get you going. AB can be respected out later. This says nothing of primaries which have access to another ST attack. 

 

And yes, up to this point they have focused on solo play. They are looking more towards team play for now. 

[Funkenstein]

Hi,

Beside any primary/secondary choice*, think about Sorcery pool :

Arcane Bolt with containment is huge.

Enflame add a second aura to the brute at lvl 14 which is very potent.

Spirit ward add some absorb to the brute.

 

 

 

[biostem]

19 hours ago, Sirrocco said:

I have a fairly solid grasp of the support pools.  I got *nothing* on the control pools

Let me make a simple suggestion, then:  Go with a Gravity/Pain Controller.  Gravity plays very much like a blast set, with there only really being 3 small things to keep in mind - skip "Dimension Shift", because it introduces some finicky mechanics and can be annoying to use, IMHO.  Second, for the power "wormhole", you basically target an enemy, then activate the power on the ground somewhere else, and you forcibly teleport them and some nearby enemies to the targeted location, whilst disorienting and knocking them down.  Lastly, there is a mechanic where "gravity distortion", the single-target hold, imparts a sort of debuff on enemies, which causes the other powers "lift" and "propel", to deal additional damage.  With regard to pain domination, it basically provides basic and useful healing, with a few useful buffs.  From my perspective, the keystone power is "World of Pain", which provides extra damage, tohit, and damage resistance, to anyone in it's PBAoE, and can be made to be almost always on you two...

[Captain Fabulous]

Plant/Nature is a good combo that will give you lots to do and is very effective.

I'm a big fan of Earth Control, I think it's grossly underrated and often overlooked. Fire is a can't-go-wrong classic, and I find Arsenal to be great fun.

Dark, Kin, Storm, Marine, and Time are all top-notch secondaries, and all have some kind of heal. You can't go wrong with any of them.

[tidge]

9 minutes ago, Captain Fabulous said:

I'm a big fan of Earth Control, I think it's grossly underrated and often overlooked.

 

My current project is Earth Control primary, partially chosen because of the character name/concept and partially because it is a set that I see, but only rarely. My chosen secondary was Cold Domination, so not nearly as rare to observe in the wild. It fit my concept better than any other.

[TheSpiritFox]

Earth/Fire/Plant/Illusion paired with dark, cold, kin, or rad. 

Each brings differentish stuff to the table but all synergize well with any brute. If youre going to be fire farming I particularly recommend illusion and fire. One has amazing aggro magnets that are invulnerable, the other is the general farmer of choice for fire farms. You can't go wrong with the classic fire/kin. 

 

[Captain Fabulous]

1 hour ago, Death2Tyrants said:

Overlooked I could understand. Even with the various customization options people still complain about stone protrusions blocking their view. To those I say "It's under control."

 

Underrated? Hardly in terms of capacity to control. The ability to deal with multiple groups at the same time makes it is one of the stronger control sets you can pick if not the strongest. I would even go as far as say it can carry the weakest of secondaries IMO. Wanna max it out to eleven? Earth/TA offers a silly amount of control.

 

Low damage is the only negative critique of the set but it has some decent PROCing opportunities at the cost of bonuses.

Underrated as in a set that's really good that most people skip over.

[Sirrocco]

Okay.  I thank you all for your input.

 

I actually went Illusion/Thermal.

 

Thermal... it's like cold, but the shields are resist shield rather than Def shields.  I'm thinking that'll help the kid hit his resist caps that much easier, because I'm not really thinking he'll get there from there without them - not with the kind of slotting we're likely to see during expected playtime.  It also comes with two early heals, and, if I make it to 16, an ally rez.  It's nothing all that involved, but I feel like a lot of the stuff its' giving me is stuff that I want.  Admittedly, my res hole in toxic lines up with his res hole in toxic, but that just means that we need to stay away from Vahzilock.  The res weakness to cold... well, there just isn't all that much cold damage in the game in the first place, honestly.

 

We're planning on mostly running storylines, for those sweet, sweet Merit points.  All advice that's talking about things like proc-bombs is imagining much higher budgets for enhancements than we're actually working with.  there's a decent chance that we won't ever slot anything more complicated than a common IO.  It's possible that we'll buy a class ATO or two with merit points, if we get that far.  I do intend to slot for endurance, and talk the kidn through it.  One of my mains is a Dark/Rad tanker.  I know about slotting for endurance.

 

I grabbed illusion because looking at it, it looked like one of the major illusion drawbacks was the tendency for illusory damage to heal itself over time.  Well, if I have a Brute tearing out their liver, then that'll help drop them before that gets to be a problem, right?  So far it's sort-of working.  We'll see how it plays out.  I'm looking forward to having superior Invisibility to play with once we hit level 8.  It says it doesn't break on attack.  If it also doesn't break on glowy interaction, it's going to enable *so much* ninja-running of missions.  It also seems like the sort of thing that's useful for keeping the attention on the big guy.

 

For those confused about my initial logic train, it went sort of like this:

- My kid and I decide that we want to play this game together.

- I explain the options to the kid, and he decides he likes the idea of a Brute.  A bit more discussion of what he wants and a bit of research on my side, and we settle on Savage/Fire... which, as I understand it, is a pretty popular Brute build, and not just for farming.

- I'm trying to figure out what to play to work alongside that.  It occurs to me that I was avoiding Controllers because I'd heard of their difficulties while soloing, and this was an opportunity to try them out while *not* soloing.  Sounds good.

[Uun]

8 hours ago, Sirrocco said:

I'm looking forward to having superior Invisibility to play with once we hit level 8.  It says it doesn't break on attack.  If it also doesn't break on glowy interaction, it's going to enable *so much* ninja-running of missions. 

While technically true, this is also poorly explained. When you attack a foe with SI on, the foe (and some or all of its group) aggros on you. They will attack you regardless of your stealth status. You will, however, continue to be undetectable to another group nearby. Sorry to dash your plans, but SI's stealth does break if you click on a mission object.

[Psyonico]

10 hours ago, Sirrocco said:

If it also doesn't break on glowy interaction

 

Alas, it does break in this instance.

[Sirrocco]

Bah.  Well, it is what it is.

 

Presumably it's at least no worse for these situations than standard power pool stealth.

[Without_Pause]

The good news is you can essentially have PA out and go past a group dragging PA into said group. I tend to clear out the area and then lick on the glowie.