Flavor of the Month - Missing 50s

[Zepp]

I was looking through the level 50 FotM thread and noticed that there were two builds that did not appear in the lvl 50 Controller numbers, Ice/Sonic & Ice/Traps.

 

Just wanted to ask, does anyone play these builds?

[Coyote]

In Outer Space, no one can hear an alien scream, "It's a trap!!!"

[Zepp]

I was thinking Cold Silence and Calamari On-ice as character names...

[Mercurias]

Ice Control, as a set, is based on soft controls like slow and -recharge. There isn’t much synergy between it and either Sonic Resonance or Traps.

[swordchucks]

Those are very interesting stats, so thanks for cross-pollinating that.

 

Anyway, ice isn't in a great place right now (nor is Mind - presumably Electric isn't, either, though I haven't played it enough to tell).  Sonic doesn't do much to help the parts of Ice that aren't great and Traps has a learning curve to it and doesn't mesh well with some content.

 

That said... I'm surprised that those numbers, in general, line up with my own impressions of the different sets.  It's also embarrassing that my level 50 controllers are three of the four most common pairings (and I'm leveling the fourth).

[Sir Myshkin]

If the build didn’t appear (even once) than no one had it at 50.

 

That aside, Ice is currently the lowest performing set out of all the Control sets. Illusion and Plant are in the top. Fire, Dark, and then Earth, Grav, Electric in respective group orders. Mind is hard to quantify a real value given how much of it is bent towards Confusion utility.

 

Finding so many Electric and Earth in the “unfavored” zone (the bottom) is amusing. If more people knew how dramatically Procs change those two sets, there’d probably be a lot more people playing them.

[Ankhammon]

11 hours ago, Zepp said:

I was thinking Cold Silence and Calamari On-ice as character names...

Calamari On-ice that's nice.

 

 

And if anyone winces when reading this... I win.

Edited September 4, 2019 by Ankhammon

[Frostweaver]

Electric/traps doesn't seem to be terribly well favored either, and it is a brutal combo, especially with all the -resist and -regen combined with electric's affinity for procs...those prrocs do a LOT more damage.

And Thematically? Perfect for a tech hero or a Wizard-style villain.

Edited September 10, 2019 by Frostweaver

[The Key]

On 9/4/2019 at 2:39 AM, Sir Myshkin said:

Finding so many Electric and Earth in the “unfavored” zone (the bottom) is amusing. If more people knew how dramatically Procs change those two sets, there’d probably be a lot more people playing them.

Could you be more specific ?

[Sir Myshkin]

4 hours ago, The Key said:

Could you be more specific ?

Take a look at this thread.

[Tater Todd]

Don't even get me started on Elec and Earth.  I've always noticed the shortage of them but I thought I was imagining things...turns out I wasn't sadly.  I'm glad there's more discussion about sets that do well with procs and the ind depth discussion that follows suit.  Turns out a lot of folks are not that Mids Lords so they go by word of mouth and popular combos a lot of the time.

[oedipus_tex]

Ice/Sonic is an endurance hungry build that lacks any kind of reason or synergy so I am not surprised to see it is rarely played. I once specifically listed it as one of the worst possible combos in the game during a 'least synergy' contest. With 3 endurance heavy toggles (Arctic Air, Sonic Dispersion, and Sonic Disruption), incredibly low damage, a requirement to obtain the pet before you can run Disruption solo, poor slotting options for IOs, and no hard controls to speak of, Ice/Sonic is easily one of the worst builds available.

 

The only kind of synergistic thing about this build is Sonic Dispersion provides mezz protection to keep Arctic Air running, but this build struggles with endurance so much its hardly worth it.

 

FWIW I've long advocated that the endurance cost of Arctic Air and Disruption Field is too high and should be half their current values, among other changes to make these powers better (e.g. Dispersion should deal direct damage, -defense, or another effect so that it can be slotted for something).

Edited September 20, 2019 by oedipus_tex