_Tundra_

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My Mind/Emp is now at a point where I have the option of either slotting in a Numina's Heal OR a Numina's +Reg +Rec on Healing Aura. I only have 5 slots in it and I've got all the other Numina's enhancements already in. I don't have Fitness' Heal on my build. I also never PvP.

So, what I'd like to read, is your opinion about which one I should go for. If anyone wants, I'll post Blue's build. Thanks.

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Would you gain any enhancement benefit from slotting the Heal? I may be wrong, but it looks to me like you probably haven't maxed out the enhancement bonuses with the four componenets of Numina's you've got slotted so far. As far as I can see it your options would be:
i) Slot the Numina's Heal. This way you'll heal for the maximum amount on each application. You also get the 5-slot bonus (Hold resistance) if you find that useful...
ii) Slot the Numina's +Reg/+Rec. As Cynic mentioned, this would work quite well but would require you to activate the power every 120sec. It would also give you the (rather lacklustre) 5-slot bonus. TBH I wouldn't go for this one myself. If you've managed to get this far without Stamina then you probably don't need it - in addition, without Stamina to stack with it really isn't that big a bonus. YMMV, of course
iii) slot with something from another set. Personally I'd go for either a Heal/Rech or End/Heal/Rech from another set (Doctored Wounds would make sense) and maximise the enhancement aspects of the power.

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They can chain criticals with placate (and nin has a couple of them, one of which is aoe too). And unlike trollers, they can have their criticals without actually needing to stack two attacks. Besides, stalkers can crit on mezzed baddies too, just like containment

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That is an interesting set of comparisons, but still substantially different from Containment - if you have to apply placate between attacks, you aren't chaining criticals.

Looking at it in the same way as I did above, a controller will achieve containment damage in n-1 of n power uses (there are a few exceptions to that, but it should be possible for all controllers under most circumstances). For Stalkers using placate, n/2 power uses will get criticals (the other n/2 being uses of Placate) so the damage boost is not that high (the safety boost is huge, of course). Nin is an exception to that, as you point out, but the same principle still applies.

As far as I'm aware, Stalker attacks only have a chance of critical (20%, I think) against Mezzed enemies.

Your points are well taken, but Stalker criticals still don't provide the constant stream of double damage + double buffs that Containment does, although they are the closest comparison. That said, although I don't like the doubling up mechanism much even there the Stalker AT is all about gaining critical damage by setting up the fight to your advantage - surely it's not really right that they can do it only with a fraction of the efficiency of a Controller? That of course is a thematic distinction not a mechanical one and so really belongs in another post

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Stalkers can control it too, they just got to be on hide

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Thanks for that. Do your Stalkers find they can constantly chain criticals? If not it's quite clearly mechanically different from Containment.

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Mechanically, the double (buffed) damage is unlike any other buff in the game

[/ QUOTE ]Except for scourge, and scrapper/stalker crits.

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It's different from both of them as it can very easily (and in a controlled, predictable way) be made to apply to practically every attack ( n-1 in an attack chain of n attacks for any Controller who cares to try).

As you already knew.

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Surely thats the whole conceptual point of the inherents to bring something different to the table. If you do the change you mention you automatically nerf the dominator's concept. To whoever mentioned it: the reason doms got good buffs in PvP is because they have the lowest HP of any CoX AT, no defences and were found to be grossly underperforming (source?). Take any dom build to SC and I bet it won't be long before you die (its also so grossly imbalanced in the favour of heroes already [censored] would anyone want it more so?)

Also the dom and troller are both hard to solo generally (saying in descriptions of both even at character creation) - I always thought that was largely the whole point to be a small, frail char that requires careful thought and strategy to win rather than just hold and plough. If they messed around with the inherents of these ATs I'd probably stop playing both.

And no you can't have my domination either

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Hey, you can't have my Domination either, and I suggested it!

I did say in the original post that it was much too late to make a change like that now.

But, conceptually, doing a load of extra damage to helpless enemies seems more villainous to me (and so would make sense as a villain inherent) whereas getting supercharged control powers for a bit as a reward for using control powers would seem to suit Controllers. I wasn't seriously suggesting that such a change could/would/should be made.

Tuarus said:
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To answer the question, if containment was going to be replaced, i would replace it with a modifier that decreased damage for team size, but increased mags of holds. This would work by allowing the soloer to do more damage, but then as people joined the team I would decrease in dishing out damage but be able to hold the bigger mobs for longer etc. Dont know how hard to implement but just a suggestion that would keep most happy.


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Sugar_Rush said:
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If I were going to change the controller inherent, I'd start with making containment a global buff/debuff effect (although much lower than it is, a similar amount to the leadership Assault buff maybe) so all team members get the benefit; buff the controllers holds and immobs so they last longer (seriously, some of the holds are stupidly short) and maybe increase controller base damage a smidge.

This would be a massive buff and sizeable nerf at the same time, but promoting a controller's controlling abilities over the damage-dealing ones, which I think is the OPs intention.

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I like the ideas behind both of these suggestions a good deal.

The problem (as far as I understand it) with setting up Containment as a buff is the order in which checks are carried out - when a power hits, it checks for the held/immob/stun/sleep state of the target and applies a second chunk of damage if true. Applying a buff at that point is to late to buff the same power, since it's already hit...

Sugar_Rush's suggestion would work around that nicely. I'd see it working as an aura type effect which checks the Mez status of all mobs within a given radius and applies a global buff as described. Personally, I'd have no problem with that still being a damage buff to all (including the controller) but I do agree that buffing Mez duration for the Controller would be more conceptually pleasing.

My problem with Containment at the moment isn't that if increases damage output (that's what it was introduced for, even if it does feel conceptually awkward), but that it increases damage output in a broken and thoroughly imbalanced way. Very nice suggestion for a way to improve that situation.

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I was adviced once on forums by several people just to slot Earthquake with 3xrchg on my Earth/Rad, at the end of the day, while foes are getting knocked down, they aren't going to hit you much and you get enough -def from your radiation powers so I decided to follow the advice and so far it works fine.

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I think for Earth/Rad that would be true - it can vary a little with context. On my Earth/Storm I spam Stone Cages like crazy to leverage damage from Tornado and Lightning Storm. That means Earthquake essentially acts as a debuff and is much more worth slotting for -ToHit (still don't bother with -Def, though). In my case it gets +Recharge, -ToHit and an Achilles Heel proc for a little extra -Res. Nice!

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Besides mind is not the less dmg primary on trollers precisely

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Much of it's damage is based on mass confusion though, which doesn't benefit from containment.

It applies for anyone who chooses to build a controller based around controls though: if you don't take direct damage powers you geing minimal benefit from containment.

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Ever tried Terrify? It's a perfectly decent damage power even without containment... Not to mention that mind is one of the few Controller primaries that gets a direct ST damage power too. Definately no lack of damage in Mind. Mass Confusion doesn't really enter into things when comparing the ability to take advantage of Containment - no other primary's lvl32 power takes advantage of containment for damage either (the closest to an exception being Singularity since it at least sets up contained enemies).

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I don't see why - my APP Blast on my Fire/Rad/Primal isn't exactly stellar and it certainly isn't AoE.

It's only a limited number of power combinations that really ramp up the damage, especially after the change to APP Blasts for Controllers.

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Sure - but your Controller had access to AoE damage from an Epic and still does if you respec. You chose not to take it, which is fine of course, but you certainly had access to it like all Controllers do. And somehow, I doubt your Fire/Rad needs the Epic attacks to do AoE damage in any case...

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And do Defiance (2.whatever) and Critical's only work on base damage? I was under the impression they stack buffs/enhancements too, but I admit I don't know whether that's true.

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Defiance (both versions) is a damage buff. It increases the damage a blaster does considerably but also contributes towards the damage cap.

Scrapper criticals do indeed add a chunk of base damage - but only on a relatively small proportion of attacks (5-10% depending on target rank). The rather large difference is that in principle there's no reason why any of a Controller's attacks after an opening control should not be boosted by containment.

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As for the AoE attacks: they draw a lot of agro, and certainly for the Grav set, only provide very small ticks over time. Added to which, the Immob, as I said before, draws the agro (and uses more Endurance the more targets it hits) and doesn't stop their ranged attacks, and the AoE Holds do little more than buy a few seconds before they all recover and come looking for your blood.

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I agree with a lot of this in principle, the problem is that in the high end game (where this imbalance really starts to bite) it's all too easy to offset recharge and End issues, and aggro means almost nothing to an AT that can Mez at will.

And if you think about it for a moment - if you had a power that simply caused all your attacks to do double damage with no other side effects, you'd use it without thinking twice. The AoE Immob. you're talking about does that on top of providing Immobilization... some easily mitigatable aggro is a small price to pay.

Once again - I've no problem with Containment providing enough extar damage to ease soloing. Making the extra damage unbuffable would still achieve that (in the low level game, with relatively few damabe buffs around, that's mostly how it works already). But I'd ask again - do you really think that making all effects of damage slotting and buffing for Controllers twice as powerful as those for any other AT is really justified?

Well, all of them have at least some AoE damage, I think, and certainly all have access to it in their Epic sets. Since +Recharge is so easy to come by they don't need many attacks, just a couple they can repeat.

To some extent though, that's beside the point - it's more a general game balance issue. I have no problem with Containment providing enough of a damage boost to ease soloing. My question is this: Why should Controllers get double the benefit of every slotted damage enhancement and every damage buff compared to all other ATs?

That's what containment allows at the moment, and it seems rather clearly unbalanced to me.

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I thought they did something with threat levels that made it possible to pull aggro of a tank that had been taunting mobs by doing lots of damage or did I understand that wrong.

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The latter - but in either case it doesn't really matter. A controller's safety comes from enemies not being able to attack back, so it doesn't really matter who has their aggro.

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Where the hell is this complete safety part come from. My farmer dies regually but it doesnt bother me either. The safety of a farming toon comes from the fact that the toon is 50 and debt is irelavant.

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I said almost complete safety. Surely you aren't arguing against the idea that a Controller operates from a position of vastly greater safety than a Blaster?

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Position is no guarantee of safty.

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If you mean distance from enemies, I agree. I'm referring to Controllers normally spending most of their time in the position of attacking enemies that have no way of attacking back. Fairly safe, I think you'd agree!

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Where the hell is this complete safety part come from. My farmer dies regually but it doesnt bother me either. The safety of a farming toon comes from the fact that the toon is 50 and debt is irelavant.

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I said almost complete safety. Surely you aren't arguing against the idea that a Controller operates from a position of vastly greater safety than a Blaster?

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I don't think that's entirely true, especially after the revision of Defiance.

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I certainly haven't tested it after the changes to defiance, so you could be right.

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So.......

Why say you can when you havn't tested the latest game version?

Isn't that like saying my blaster in issue 1 could one shot an AV now???

I think someone needs to get off their high horse (no names)and join us in the real world (well Paragon City anyway).

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Blasters will certainly get closer now - and and some I'm sure will outdamage some Controller builds. But even with the new Defiance they don't get to run at a near-constant 600% base damage from a position of almost complete safety.

Controllers, thanks to containment, do. Which is why I think it needs to be changed.

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Please can you say why you want suggestions for a change to containment which is one of the best inherents in the game.

Is it because you dont think controllers should be able to do damage? Do you think containment should increase some other stat as opposed to damage?

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Well, personally I have no problem at all with controllers being able to do damage. I do have a problem with them being able to do more damage than most scrappers and some blasters and all from a position of almost complete safety.

I understand the reason for its introduction in the first place was to provide some extra damage for Controllers to make soloing them at low level more bearable. That's fair enough. I agree with PRAF that conceptually boosting holding power would be better, but soloability is pretty important in this game so a compromise is reasonable.

The problem with the way containment currently works is that it introduces a force multiplier in that a controller not only does double damage, but receives double effect from buffs as well - this is particularly obvious if the Controller in question can apply those buffs themselves, which most combinations (having buff/debuff as their secondary) can in one form or another, but it's still broken if that's not the case. What, really, is the justification for a Controller receiving twice the effect from a damage buff that a Blaster, Scrapper or indeed any other AT does?

Ideally, I'd rather see it as a 100% +Damage buff. With no other buffs in place (and typical slotting for control powers) this would have exactly the same effect as the current containment but be far less open to abuse, since it would contribute to the damage cap rather than ignoring it. There are technical problems with doing that, though, since the chack for the held/stunned/immob/sleep state of a target is made only after an attack has hit - too late to apply a buff to that attack!

Adding base damage but making it unbuffable would be the next best thing, but not untyped - that breaks all sorts of things. I would think that 100% base for single target powers and 33% base for AoEs would be a reasonable starting point (since AoEs are balanced around hitting three targets). It still feels a little wrong since it will still effectively be damage that's added over and above the damage cap, but at least it's by addition not multiplication, so the potential for abuse is very much less.

TBH, I'd have preferred either for a damage boost for ST powers and the controllers' critical holds being defined as their inherent, with the probability of it occurring being increased if necessary (but it's probably too late to roll back to something like that now) or for the inherents to be swapped between Controllers and Dominators - doing extra damage to the helpless feels far more villainous than heroic to me. Even then, of course, the force multiplier problem would need to be dealt with, but it wouldn't be quite as severe in an AT that can't buff itself.

Yes, very soloable - mine has soloed quite a lot off and on up until his present level (also 46, oddly enough).
It's a lot easier with Vet. rewards (Nemesis staff was by far my best attack until I got Tornado). Air Superiority will help - I used it a lot in earlier levels, but have respecced out of it now. FWIW, Volcanic Gasses is a very fine home for damage procs - mine has three at present.

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Have't tried it without the bonus (i think its actually quite small), but the damage is certainly good, I even use it on my level 50s.

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The extra damage from origin is 50% of base, so well worth having. Even without that, though, damage-wise the Staff/Blackwand will be the best attack your controller gets for a very long time.

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But how to do ok damage for sets like ice or stone? I often get stuck from about lvl8-10, where it takes quite alot of time to take down a boss.

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PRAF is quite right about veteran powers - Nemesis staff was comfortably my Earth/Storm's most damaging power until he finally got hold of Tornado. It's worth noting that this strategy works particularly well with Earth/ since the -DEF debuff from most of your controls nicely offsets the inability to slot Sands/Axe/Nemesis/Blackwand for Acc.

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The earth powers currently doesnt take the new defense debuff sets. I'm sure this will be corrected in a future i11 build though.

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Yep, really it should given that a lot of Grav powers happily accept Slow ones.

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On the one hand I agree - and it would certainly be nice to be able to slot them. But on the other, none of the Earth powers except for Earthquake accept normal enhancements for Def debuff either whereas both Ice and Grav powers can normally be slotted for Slow. So I guess it depends on whether being unable to slot Earth powers for Def debuff is a bug or WAI. Personally I was hoping to be able to slot that chance for RES debuff proc all over the place, so I'd like to see it change, too. Can't say I'm entirely optimistic, though...

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Actually thinking about i11 and the Defense Debuff sets theres a lot to be said for slotting Stone Cages with 3 PROCs later in life (can already take the Immob and AOE Damage one). I've my AOE Immob 3 slotted with damage procs and its pretty cheap and evil (Gravitys Crushing Field).

In fact you've so many AOEs that are just begging for PROCs : Quicksand, Snowstorm, Gasses & Cages. Plus Freezing Rain and Lightning Storm.

Pity Stuns only get that chance of knockdown one.

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I like to put procs in Cages to, but sadly (and strangely) only Earthquake will accept the Defense Debuff sets. The rest of Earth control can't be slotted for Def debuff, and won't accept the sets either. It's still proc-tastic, though, and you do get two bites at Def debuff sets with Earthquake and Freezing Rain.

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Also I'd try to slot Gasses for Holds too (if it takes it, I'm assuming it works like a Placable choking cloud with its to-hit tick hold).

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Actually, it seems to work quite a bit differently to Choking Cloud, and in a good way. Gasses sequentially summons 6 short duration pseudo pets which cast the Holds. Hold durations help a little but aren't really needed since it's able to stack with itself to hold a boss even without them (see City of Data for details of the pets and their hold powers). Myself I slot it with Recharge IOs and damage procs, since each pseudo-pet has its own chance of the procs firing leading to quite a substantial level of DoT - I have the Positron's Blast, Ghost Widow's Embrace and Neuronic Shutdown procs in mine and the extra damage is very noticeable indeed.

On the subject of procs, it's worth remembering that Lightning Storm takes ranged damage sets, meaning that it will accept a chance for Hold proc from Devastation - works very nicely!

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Stone Cages seems overslotted to me. Acc and End should be enough. Really you only need it for is Tornado damage.


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I'd have a recharge in it as well for exactly that purpose - but then my Earth/Storm is very much built around leveraging the damage from Tornado and Lightning Storm so the -KB is very desirable to me.

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Quicksand & Snowstorm is good enough to stop things running out of various patches or getting very far when stunned and they won't interfere with all that lovely Knockdown. I'd actually take the single target immob first for damage in the low levels and then replace with Cages in the 20s somewhere with a respec (probably at 27 when you need to replace SOs).

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This is certainly good advice for leveling to 35, though.

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i would also love any other advice for the build in general. And finally, how the heck do you solo with such a char at level 16

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Well, in my case I took Air Superiority instead of Hover which is a nice extra (Containment using) attack for soloing. Veteran powers help too - don't know how many of those you've got, but the combination of -Def and -Res you can lay down makes them very powerful. I'd also leverage temp. attack powers for all they're worth, and if you feel like playing the markets I might be inclined to keep a Gabriel's Hammer handy for tough fights.

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When I eventually convinced him to let me attack 1st, he ran in with me. I couldn't pull aggro from him fast enough as he was hitting with an AoE before I could TP behind the mob & Taunt.

[/ QUOTE ]Wouldn't it be more efficient to get IN the mob with your aggro aura on?

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For the most part it would - unless the enemies use a lot of cones. Standing in the middle of a mob of eg. Nemesis can get your squishies killed quite quickly, despite you having all the aggro. If you're on the far side of them all the cones are pointing away from your team.

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As of Ice vs Elec, elec has Zapp as compensation. It does bitty more damage then BiB, same recharge but only its a long animation and interupt (but that case Nrg loose bigtime). Both get holds, the Nuke of Elec beats Ice any time. (Blizzard just isnt what it should be). The sentinal is actualy funny to have, does okish damage and just looks funny.

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Personally, I think that the Sentinel tends to balance out both the AoE and ST weaknesses of Elec/ a bit. If you're fighting a lot of enemies it will tend to spread its attacks around, making it effectively a weak (but very cheap) AoE. If you're fighting one tough enemy, it will receive all of the Sentinel's attacks, boosting your ST damage by quite a bit.