New Controller help

[Khan668]

Had a Fire and Earth toller in the first run. I remember Fire being pretty awesome, Earth to but Fire was beastly with Imp Army. Is this still possible? And what are some other strong sets? Dark looks cool and it wasn't in the original. You used to be able to stack your imps and destroy everything lol. Still possible? With any set? Thanks. Also are there any go to secondaries?

[Hjarki]

Imps, Gremlins and Fly Trap are all about the same damage. Umbra Beast is higher damage, the rest of ultimate pets are less (Phantom Army is comparable to Umbra Beast).

 

Perhaps the biggest difference for Fire from live is the value of Bonfire. I'd argue it's become the central power of the set - basically a high damage version of Earthquake with KB -> KD enhancements. The PPM changes have also increased the value of Earth (-def means Earth can slot a far broader/better set of procs than other control sets). Dark (mostly) shares this virtue.

 

[Zumberge]

Had a Fire and Earth toller in the first run. I remember Fire being pretty awesome, Earth to but Fire was beastly with Imp Army. Is this still possible?

 

Fire Imp armies are no longer a thing.  They removed the (pick one) bug/feature/exploit/thingy where you could have multiple pets, but in exchange they don't die whenever you use an elevator and you don't need to keep resummoning them every four minutes or so.

 

And what are some other strong sets? Dark looks cool and it wasn't in the original.

 

Yeah sure Dark is a pretty good set BUT HAVE YOU HEARD ABOUT OUR LORD AND SAVIOR PLANT CONTROL?  An AoE that shuts down entire spawns at level 6, AoE confusion that's up for every mob and synergizes with Coercive Persuasion's proc so well it should be illegal, and two minutes of constant vines tearing out the ground and smacking around enemies that follow you through the map and can be made permanent?

 

Also are there any go to secondaries?

 

Honestly, I could make a pretty good argument for all of them.  Depends on what you want to do, aside from "be powerful" or "be useful," which is a little vague.

 

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...oh, shows how often I team with Fire Controllers nowadays.  Yeah, the whole Fire Cages-Flashfire-Bonfire combo that Fire/Kins used to cook groups alive is even better now that you can keep Bonfire from tossing enemies out of the fire pit with a single IO that is relatively easy to get.

[Greentea]

Honestly, Fire Control is good and all, but Plant. PLANT! It's an amazing control set.

 

Seeds of Confusion is a gem, Roots will bring flyers down and use Vines (Vines only work on the ground). Carrion Creepers are so beautiful. A lot of people underestimated Fly Trap. She attacks fast unlike Stone or Ice pet, with Achilles heel proc, she's about to get nasty. She also have high resistance to just about every type, high defenses against Psionic, but weak against Fire and Lethal. That sounds awesome, right? Spore Burst can be useful for soloing or set bonuses. Spirit Tree is a pretty tree, but kind of annoying you can't move it around and your secondary powerset offers better results than Spirit Tree. <shrugs>

 

Plants works really well with every secondary abilities, yes even Trick Arrow, Sonic Resonance or Force Field.

 

PS Fire Imps are so damn squishy.

[oedipus_tex]

Fire Control is currently absolutely ridiculously powerful thanks to the KB to KD proc that you can place in Bonfire combined with the fact that AoE immobilizes no longer cancel knockdown. Right now I'd say Fire Control is first in both overall control power and damage, with all the other sets lagging behind.

 

Plant is probably second (Seeds of Confusion has always been great). Earth is high in control and the -Defense is useful for pick up teams, but damage is still very low.

 

Dark is probably the third strongest set, to the degree that things can be measured that way.

 

Ice isn't strictly bad but has one of the weakest pets and has been significantly robbed by the fact that its signature Ice Slick power is hugely outperformed by Bonfire for any character who bothers IO (and for sure the kb to kd proc should be the first investment of a Fire troller these days).

 

Mind Control is not in a great place due to extremely long recharge times on some key powers. Mass Confusion has an absurd recharge time despite being nearly the same power as Synaptic Overload. Fix this and the set is pretty decent. Til then... meh.

[Khan668]

Thanks for the replies, made a Fire, Dark and Plant guy. Have to play them all to decide. Looking mainly for solo play.

[Frosticus]

I throw a vote for gravity. It solo's extremely well from right out of the gate giving you blaster-ish damage from contained+impact lift and propel. Propel knocks down everything near its impact point (and along its path from what i've seen) letting you chunk down the lut/boss while everything around them flops.

 

Honestly, no other troller solos as well as gravity from lvl 2 (gd+lift beats blind+spec wounds) up until your build is strong enough to take on larger spawns at which point the lack of aoe damage is apparent.

 

Singularity isn't the highest damage pet but it is much better than it used to be. It can also take controller ATO's.

 

For teams you sometimes hear how people want a higher aggro cap or a higher team size setting for larger spawns... wormhole w/knockdown proc is basically that setting. If two spawns are remotely close to one another I will grab the second one and plop it down with the first one. And it packs them tight so melee toons with their tiny aoe's can be more effective as well as getting further use out of patch powers from the rest of your teammates.

 

I've played a lot of controllers over the life of this game, gravity in its current form is in great shape both solo and teamed. It also "feels" really strong in that lift,propel and wormhole are all very visceral, weighty powers.

[Without_Pause]

Thanks for the replies, made a Fire, Dark and Plant guy. Have to play them all to decide. Looking mainly for solo play.

 

For solo play, I would rank them Plant > Fire > and Dark. Dark just takes longer to get up and running. I think it is fine in the end.

[Dahle]

I absolutely love my Fire/Dark.  It is a monster of a Solo-er and I usually feel like I am contributing the most on it.  With Fade and the soft-cap on def for it I am ablt to initiate with Fire Cages + Bonfire and then throw out Flashfire. The just stand in the middle as Hot Feet melts everything.  And with it's Melee orientation i also get use out of the PBAoE Disorient from Dark.

 

My Electric/Kin is also a lot of fun, I'm only in the 40s and the pairing just feels right, though I have so many buttons at this point that I am lost sometimes.  I might be a bit slower these days.

 

Plant/Rad has been fund, but I just cannot get into Plant's animations...  It is a solid set though.

 

Dark/Storm/Lev is my most recent Toller. And I made it as a trolly idea i had.  I want to throw out a ton of pets, cast Gale a bunch (KB to KD IO FTW) and in general watch the chaos.  I don't know how viable this is going to be though.  (Just for a count, Haunt is 2, Umbra for 1, Tornado for 1, Lightning Storm for 1, Water Spout for 1 and Coralax for 1.  So 7 "Pets", 1 is out all the time, most of the rest are Perma in my build, just have to be cast for either the encounter or to every 20sec to minute.  And I haven't confirmed but I think I can have 2 Tornados out at once.)  So CHAOS!

[Griffyn]

Tornado would also be a great candidate for the KB to KD IO especially if you have Gale slotted to KD so you don’t have a easy way to cram the mind into a pile for Mr Twisty.

[Dahle]

Tornado would also be a great candidate for the KB to KD IO especially if you have Gale slotted to KD so you don’t have a easy way to cram the mind into a pile for Mr Twisty.

 

I have Suddne Acceleration KB to KD in almost every KB power on my Dark/Storm, paired with a Force Feedback.  But this build is just for the giggles, so it has lots of odd combos like that and Chance for Res Debuffs all over the place.  Energy Font in Living Shadows... Haunt with Overwhelming Force KD Proc...  You know, stupid choices, that are not at all optimal.

[Sarkastik Observer]

I throw a vote for gravity. It solo's extremely well from right out of the gate giving you blaster-ish damage from contained+impact lift and propel. Propel knocks down everything near its impact point (and along its path from what i've seen) letting you chunk down the lut/boss while everything around them flops.

 

Honestly, no other troller solos as well as gravity from lvl 2 (gd+lift beats blind+spec wounds) up until your build is strong enough to take on larger spawns at which point the lack of aoe damage is apparent.

 

Singularity isn't the highest damage pet but it is much better than it used to be. It can also take controller ATO's.

 

For teams you sometimes hear how people want a higher aggro cap or a higher team size setting for larger spawns... wormhole w/knockdown proc is basically that setting. If two spawns are remotely close to one another I will grab the second one and plop it down with the first one. And it packs them tight so melee toons with their tiny aoe's can be more effective as well as getting further use out of patch powers from the rest of your teammates.

 

I've played a lot of controllers over the life of this game, gravity in its current form is in great shape both solo and teamed. It also "feels" really strong in that lift,propel and wormhole are all very visceral, weighty powers.

 

I would say mind control although blastery as well is able to solo out of the gate with the first 3 powers mesmerize dominate and levitate. I have to vouch for terrify as an insane way to dmg and control at the same time. Mass confusion makes soloing way to easy. You do have to increase global recharge though. Mass hypnosis procs containment for terrify and they are both up basically every mob. But you can alternate between mass hypnosis and TD  for double dmg on terrify until you get higher global recharge.. Or use hasten. I love mind control if you know how to use it it's OP.

 

P.S - I don't care for hasten to much

[Hjarki]

Fire Control is currently absolutely ridiculously powerful thanks to the KB to KD proc that you can place in Bonfire combined with the fact that AoE immobilizes no longer cancel knockdown. Right now I'd say Fire Control is first in both overall control power and damage, with all the other sets lagging behind.

 

Making Bonfire into Earthquake definitely gave Fire a boost. However, remember that Plant has both twice the damage on AE Immobilize but also a much higher damage AE power in Carrion Creepers. Its pet is also more likely to stay alive and functional. For single target damage, I think Dark has the lead right now - the pet is stronger than others, it has supplemental damage from Haunt and it can slot -hit procs into damaging powers.

 

In terms of control power, I wouldn't rank Fire particularly high. Bonfire is a great trick, but Fire doesn't really have any decent 'anti-alpha strike' abilities. The classic examples are Confuse abilities, but other examples would Illusion's Phantom Army, Gravity's Wormhole or Electric's Sleep field.

 

I think that Earth and Ice are definitely lagging behind. Illusion and Gravity are really in a category all their own since they play very differently. I think the real comparison would be Electric, Plant, Dark and Fire.

 

For single target damage, I'd probably say Dark > Fire > Plant > Electric. For AE damage, probably Plant > Fire > Dark/Electric. For control, I'd probably go with Electric > Plant > Fire/Dark. Fire is still a well-balanced set, but I don't think it's quite the superstar you're making it out to be.

[Dahle]

Making Bonfire into Earthquake definitely gave Fire a boost. However, remember that Plant has both twice the damage on AE Immobilize but also a much higher damage AE power in Carrion Creepers. Its pet is also more likely to stay alive and functional. For single target damage, I think Dark has the lead right now - the pet is stronger than others, it has supplemental damage from Haunt and it can slot -hit procs into damaging powers.

 

I find that my Fire troller doesn't even need to Flashfire to create any lockdown.  I open with Bonfire and the mobs that don't immediately bounce instead try moving out of the area of effect instead of attacking.  One fire cages for containment and everything is a bag of popcorn, the attack are coming scattered enough that i can soak it myself and stand in the middle of the enemies with hot feet. Things literally melt on my Fire/Dark and the enemies do little to nothing.  It may not be able to lockdown AVs and may have trouble with some things that resist KB, but everyone has an enemy type that is an annoyance.

[Frosticus]

I would say mind control although blastery as well is able to solo out of the gate with the first 3 powers mesmerize dominate and levitate. I have to vouch for terrify as an insane way to dmg and control at the same time. Mass confusion makes soloing way to easy. You do have to increase global recharge though. Mass hypnosis procs containment for terrify and they are both up basically every mob. But you can alternate between mass hypnosis and TD  for double dmg on terrify until you get higher global recharge.. Or use hasten. I love mind control if you know how to use it it's OP.

 

P.S - I don't care for hasten to much

 

Mind solo's well right out of the gate too. Gravity just does a lot more damage with it's three attacks is all. Just looking at base damage.

Mind takes 5.28 sec to do dom>lev>mez (second two contained) to produce 172 damage

Grav takes 5.41sec to do gd>lift>propel (second two contained+impact) to produce 262 damage

you also get singularity helping out.

 

For comparison an energy blaster:

5.28 sec to do bolt>blast>burst to produce 298* damage

*didn't factor in defiance

 

That's what I mean when I say grav feels blaster-ish. Now obviously blasters have defiance, aim/bu, higher cap and more attacks available, but trollers get some nice damage buffs or -res debuffs. It is a satisfying experience.

 

 

If you time it right you can get contained damage on terrify and fireball after mass hypnosis which is satisfying aoe damage provided you can handle the retaliation. Or at least you used to be able to. I haven't tested it since relaunch.