Argentae

Been quite a while since I started a new Controller, been playing lot with my 9 and 10 year old kids and they generally need me on a *mature* control build ;-). I've got tons of Controllers (maybe not as many as Lewis, but then who does? ) and Dominators, they remain by far my favorite ATs.

Anyway, I've been waiting for a Dark/ set since I-2 so I HAVE to roll a Dark/ controller when I-22 drops. :-)

Soooo the question is: Dark/Dark or Dark/Time?

I've played enough Dark powersets to have a pretty good grasp on the synergies on Dark/Dark, but I haven't really played with /Time much at all as I haven't leveled up a new Controller alt in quite a while.

So I ask my fellow Controllers (Esp those that remember ye olde "solo controller project" and the Control channel ) that have played /Time more than I (which is, like, pretty much everyone here) what are your thoughts on the synergies between Dark/ and / Time?

TIA for your thoughts.

Arg

Heh. Thanks?

I actually had more in game time yesterday than in a long while... My 10 year old son and 9 year old daughter really got into it and created the "Improbables" SG on Triumph. Had a blast playing with them, very labor intensive, but fun. My son's getting into the base design thing so I dusted Viri off, ported her to Triumph and ran some missions with them to start stockpiling some prestige for him to play with.

Also spent some time on Beta playing with Dark Controller and Dom sets, as well as MM Beast summoning. Very much enjoyed all of the above, though /Dark Assault is a bit meh.

I still plan to get back to the Plant/Kin at some point, 1.5 levels to FS! :-)

Arg

Heh.

Well, unfortunately I've only gotten back to Photokinthesis relatively recently. I think he's in his mid thirties, so I really don't have anything to contribute in terms of a final build. I originally played a lvl 39 Plant/Kin and a lvl 39 Plant/Storm during one of the Beta level bumps and I found the Plant/Storm sooooo much more flexible/durable that I focused on Viridicane and got her to 50 while her sibling Photokinthesis just kind drifted along getting played for a bit every now and then.

For me, a lot of the fun in Plant/Kin lies in playing /Kin again (my main and first 50 was Mind/Kin). As Local said, Plant/Kin has better control than Fire/Kin, and playing the Plant/ side effectively doesn't take a ton of your time up the way a lot of other primaries do (Creepers help enormously), so I have some time to deal with the frenetic pace of playing an effective /Kinetic.

I think Plant/Storm is still my fav Plant/ combo simply because it's got such a HUGE bag of tricks, but Plant/Kin is certainly a lot of fun to play.

Scrappers/Blasters are soooo going to go up in flames over our overpowered balance breaking l33t contained brawling.

Esp the SR scrappers... I can here the whining now. Contained Brawling > Practiced Brawler!

Arg

I'm just dipping my toes in the waters as a Brute, been playing Controllers and Doms (mostly) for over 6 years.

Just looking at the powers in the sets in a builder app SS/FA looks like it will work out well as a soloing build vs larger size lower lvl spawns. Since I started playing it I did a little trolling through this forum and from what I see it seems like it's a popular build for farming, but that's not really what I'm looking for.

So far the trip to 13th has been very quick (though I've used a LOT of insps and died more than a couple times!) and a fair amount of fun.

Are there any tricks to SS/FA to make it more survivable on the way up?

Or would I be better off looking at one of the alternatives like DM/FA or SS/ELA?

Is there a Primary that offers decent AOE early on that could be paired with a set like WP or SD for an alternative? I didn't see one, but it's not uncommon that powers turn out to be different in practice than they are on paper...

Anyway, thanks for any insight and advice that you can share with an experienced player that just hasn't played melee in general and Brutes in particular that much.

Arg

I'm just starting with Brutes (Controller/Dom player from waaaaay back) doing some soloing myself.

As I'm more enjoying the dmg output for large spawns, I went with SS/FA, more for the FA AOE dmg than anything else. I wish there was something with more mitigation to pair /FA with... But ::shrug:: when you go for dmg in the armor set, that's what you get.

I've only gotten the new alt just barely started (lvl 13), but so far he's doing well on 0 (lvl)/+3->+5 eqiv no bosses(+5 gets rough). He generally lvls more than once in a single mission and it's really more a matter of surviving long enough for FA to burn down the spawn while I focus on any Lt's.

While I'd dearly love some of the durability of WP or one of the other high survivability sets, the sheer AOE carnage FA wreaks on minons more than makes up for it so far.

I've considered changing to DM/FA to add a little more survivability...

Arg

Thanks Z!

Myself and both my kids thank you and the dev team for not throwing us Mac client users to the wolves. Having a *supported* Mac client is a major reason that we came back to CoX from CO, well, that and we like the game more. But with a lifetime sup to CO and free accounts for the kids it's a LOT cheaper (like free) per month. With Freedom coming to handle the kids accounts, a single VIP account becomes quite reasonable for us, as long as we can run it natively in OSX. I'm sure the kids will pop for the odd piece from the store too as they get more involved down the road, and the roll out of Freedom let us make CoX our Friday night gaming solution.

Anyway, just wanted to chime in to add another voice to represent all the Mac client users that normally don't say much.



Arg

Well, I haven't been keeping up my copy of Beta (so yes it's nearly a complete game download), BUT My wife and daughter are away for the week and my ten year old and I have been duoing in the evenings. Soooo... I'll see if I can't get the full download completed and he and I can test out the shinyness tonight! :P

Arg

I just tried this on Arg (Mind/Kin) in the Portal Corp parking lot and Psi Tornado DOES work this way. I was able to use Mass Hyp, then hit Psi Tornado immediately queueing up Terrify and both attacks got containment dmg. This is kinda what I remember from when Containment first came out, but Arg was already 50 by that time and I wasn't doing too much soloing with her at that point.

Anyway, for those wondering I tried it out to answer Oedipus_Tex's question: Yes, it works with Psi Tornado. :-)

Arg

I'm fine with waiting a bit, but I REALLY hope that the Dark/Dark blaster sets are being used to test out powers for a Dark/Dark Dom set... I've been wishing for a Dark Dom since CoV beta began. I want Fearsome Stare dang it! A Terrify attack without the dmg attached to it wouldn't trigger the alpha in my teeth, and is a fundamentally better CONTROL power because of it. And it's totally thematically appropriate for a VILLAIN/ROGUE/VIGILANTE. They SHOULD be quaking in their boots! ;-)

Just remember that any repositioning of the mobs will also wake them up, it doesn't have to cause damage. For instance the repel in Hurricane or TK will both wake up sleepers.

TK *used* to be a very useful tool... But when they dropped it to *5* max targets and didn't reduce the incredible end cost they pretty much gutted it. It's sad, because it was one of the few powers that really required player SKILL to be effective, now I'm not really sure it's worth it. And I was a HUGE TK proponent back when I was originally lvling up Arg (Mind/Kin). It's still handy for stacking mag on things like Paragon Protectors with MOG up, or holding a tough boss ASAP, but it's a pale, pale shadow of it's former self.

Very sad. :-(

Arg

I'm slowly working up a Plant/Kin on Freedom, let me know when you get out of Praetoria? Photokinthesis is currently 26, but I have problem exemping down either. Be awesome to see a full team of Speed Boosted Plant/. Tentacles EVERYWHERE (post 26 of course) Viridicane is a 46 Plant/Storm also on Freedom, if we needed a bit more challenge, and Aggroactive is an 18/19 Plant/Rad that I could certainly get to 20 so he'd be ready when the group gets to Paragon. :-)

Arg

@Argentae amazingly enough.

Lots of great feedback, thanks! Good to hear the positive experience with it.

Miladys_Knight had some really good points about aggro and perception range. I'd probably slot it with a set of Sandman, and IIRC that has some range in it? In any case, that sounds like an excellent thing to keep in mind.

One of the best bang for your buck (for global +rech) sets is Kinetic Crash (Knockback). It's expensive in terms of enh slots (you need the full 6), but it does get you 7.5% AND a -KB for yourself so you can laugh at all the CoT/Scientist earthquakes

The major downside is that not too many folks WANT to enhance KB. Levitate is a good candidate for it, it gets you decent +acc, +rech, endred and +dmg (66% or thereabouts in the late 40s range of IOs). The BIG benefit if you are going for perma-dom on a budget is that it's cheap. Like DIRT cheap. No rare salvage and ALL the recipes can generally be picked up for a song.

Arg

I'd just like to say:

Welcome back!

Fire/Kin Farming really isn't my cup of tea so I won't try to get into the nitty gritty of the build optimization other than to say that I'd probably spend some time digging into what choices you will want to make on the Incarnate side as that will likely make a substantial impact on what you want to do with the rest of the build.

Arg

Just off the top of my head I would probably swap Terrify. Mass confusion and Total Dom around? TD is handy, but Terrify is one of your staple controls, and decent AOE (very rare on a controller primary) to boot. Mass Confusion is a set defining power for a good reason, it's essentially the Crowd Control version of a Nuke. I would probably pickup Terrify at 26 (as it becomes available) then Mass Confusion at 32 and only later would I fill in with TD when you have the space for it, unless you can shift something else around. Both Terrify and Mass Confusion are far more valuable (IMO) than TD.

Would need to see the slotting to provide a lot more feedback, as it makes quite a difference.

Hope that helps?

Arg

I'm taking another look at Spore Burst as an option on my Plant/Kin. It was pretty underwhelming/unnecessary on my Plant/Storm and Plant/Rad builds, but with the increased fragility of Plant/Kin I'm considering it.

Could those of you that have used it more than I have (which means practically anyone that has it ) provide some feedback? I know it's not going to have quite the godlike effect on soloing that Mass Hyp does for Mind/, but it looks like it might be a fairly solid option for dealing with mobs hiding around a corner from the main spawn etc. And probably a decent F.S. Setup power.

I don't need to be sold on the value of sleep as a status effect, Arg was a Mind/Kin back in I-2 long before either were considered "cool" sets. I'm just looking for some input on Spore Burst itself and how you feel about it's utility as part of your controlling toolkit.

Thanks!

Arg

Oh... Forgot to ask.

I never really used Spore Burst on my Plant/Storm as it just wasn't needed, but it might well be a lot more useful on Plant/Kin given the higher fragility of the overall build. For those Plant/ Controllers that have used it thoroughly, care to share your thoughts/experience using it? I know I'll miss the aggroless nature of Mass Hyp, but it's still an aoe rather than a cone, yes? So it can reach around corners to catch the mobs that Seeds would miss?

Arg

Got back to Photokinthesis last night... Got into a decent PUG and jumped him from 14.5 to 18.9 in a handful of missions. So he's finished slotting out Roots, Seeds, Stamina now and has picked up Assault and Tactics, as he already had Super Speed and Hasten that's it for his base choices from the pools.

Obviously he's going to pickup Speed Boost at 20, really looking forward to the AOE effect change coming in the next update. So... Just over a single level till Photo gets SB! Yay! Getting a team mysteriously becomes sooooo much easier once you hit 20th as a Kinetic.

As with all /Kinetic builds, it's going to be quite a while till the build actually matures, but at least Creepers is in the near future, and that makes *such* a difference for Plant/anything.

As the dmg normalizes and the mobs start the late teen -> early twenty ramp up, it's getting tougher to handle the larger spawns. However, I find myself remembering more and more WHY I was such a melee focused player when playing Mind/Kin, Fire/Kin, Grav/Kin etc... Seeds generally gets *enough* of the spawn, that regular Transfusion hits can keep me on my feet as long as I'm careful.

I've found Repel increasingly useful. It's quite handy for keeping the mobs Seeds missed off my back (literally), and when teaming last night I found it was highly effectivel for immediate reaction control to protect my fellow squishies. I found I could keep a target selected that was in the middle of the melee scrum, and pop off Transfusions to keep the tank/scrappers upright, while I ran around and used Repel to bounce the mobs that broke free if the tank lost aggro BACK into the melee, then a quick Roots to keep them there. Very handy. Now that Stamina is 3 slotted (only DO's, but still significant) running Repel is a lot more doable, though I'm still quite surgical with it, generally using it in bursts.

Tactics... I just love Tactics on a /Kin controller. :: happy sigh :: Not sold on the end usage of Assault (though it's worth it when teaming), but with so many to-hit powers in the primary/secondary Tactics helps so much, esp as the mob level starts rising above your own.

The only other Pool powers I'm considering for Photo are Stealth (unless I can get a celerity +stealth IO for Super Speed) and Hover. Looking ahead it seems that I'm going to have some extra power slots available, so I'm seriously considering one or both of those. Oh, almost forgot Combat jumping (to hop in/out of melee range to setup cones etc), that's also a strong possibility.

'K. I think that's pretty much brought Photokinthesis up to date build decisions wise. I've been working him through the Midnighter arc(s), though with the amount of teaming I expect him to do in the near future, not sure how far I'll get through them.

Arg

Agreed.

I've never been a fan of the fighting pool on a Controller, building for soft cap on Smashing and Lethal often means quite a few compromises in core powers for the rest of the build.

On a Widow VEAT? Absolutely, they are built to be defense based, but I feel you give up too much of the flavor of the AT, the playstyle and the real synergy of the build by focusing on building a 'Troller for defense. It makes sense for farming builds (which you said you were not looking for), but I really prefer to build for flexibility and to play to the particular strengths of a given build.

Kinetics has a LOT of powers that require an ToHit check, and Leadership's ToHit buff (as opposed to an Acc buff) gets more effective as the mobs level (and/or def) climbs above your own. I'm not a big fan of the end expense for Maneuvers or Assault but Leadership is generally my #1 pick from the pools after Hasten and Superspeed. After those I'll generally pickup combat jumping and/or hover.

Hover works very well with /Kin as you can use Siphon Speed to boost it to flight speeds, and it'll help a LOT with vertical zones and maps like the Oranbega cave complexes with multiple levels. The Good Vs Evil jump jet (available as an account wide power via one booster pack or another IIRC) also boosts hover speeds greatly.

Superspeed is very useful to help you keep up with the team that you boost to "super rabid weasel on a 6-pack of redbull" speeds. and as L_M said, dropping a +stealth IO into SS gives you full invis which can be REALLY useful when lining up to get the most possible members of a spawn with Seeds of Confusion.

I'd post a build of Photokinthesis, but I don't really have one worked up... I know plant and Kinetics well enough now that I'm pretty much just building it as I go. I 6 slotted Roots first, it's your AOE dmg, and Strangler and Transfusion both have extra acc built in. Seeds was next up for extra slots then Stamina and Hasten then I'll start filling in the rest.

I expect Plant/Kin to be a fun build, really looking forward to seeing the effect of FS on Crawlers. ;-)

[edit]
I forgot to mention that Leadership also comes in VERY handy when you start to run into night widows... The +percep is one of the few things (like popping a yellow insp if you have it) that helps with their blasted smoke blinding!
[/edit]


Arg

Everything L_M said above is solid advice. I've played a lot of Kinetics, and the lack of defense/mitigation is the biggest Achilles Heel of the set. On a Mind/Kin (for example) that's not really an issue as Mind/ has so many varied control options that there is no problem with Kinetics being light on the dmg mitigation front.

I've actually been working up a young Plant/Kin though (Photokinthesis is currently about 14.5 or so) so I'd like to underscore the comment about Repel. For a Plant/Kin, it's useful. /Kin lacks the tools to let you survive a corner pull or other method of clumping up a large spawn (I generally play Plant/ characters on on LEAST 4X/+0 and after the build matures on 8X/+1 or +2 to take advantage of their AOE capabilities ), so you will often miss a couple mobs with your initial Seeds of Confusion. Repel gives you two important things:

1. It lets you ignore a melee focused minion or two that keep trying to attack you from behind until you have the main spawn completely under control.

2. It gives you a way to group mobs together by immobing them and then using Repel to bounce outliers into the center.

Repel can be a very useful tool.

On a Plant/Storm (or even on a Plant/Rad to a lesser extent) Spirit Tree is actually VERY useful to shore up your self healing, it makes a great set and forget healing solution to help you survive the dmg that gets through and reduce your downtime after the fight.

/Kin's Transfusion is a LOT more powerful of a heal than /Rad's (and /Storm doesn't have one at all) though, so I'd rate the Spirit Tree as a lot more skippable on Plant/Kin.

Snow Storm is useful for grounding flyers as A_A said, and a great debuff to use on a A/V and/or EB.

It's also a great debuff to use as a large spawn pulling tool. Trigger it on a mob in the spawn and run around a corner. Turn on Hurricane and drop Spirit Tree (you'll have plenty of time generally ). As the spawn slooooowly comes around the corner they run into the debuff from Hurricane and their slow speed breaks up what little alpha HITS you into well spaced out hits that the 'Tree can generally deal with. Once they are all clumped up, Root 'em, drop the hurricane jump into view of the whole spawn and hit 'em with SOC. Add in Crawlers etc as you have them available. It's sometimes a useful way to handle bad terrain like a police station, caves etc.

Anyway, I've found that Snow Storm is also useful as a soft control to help mitigate incoming dmg with groups like Nemesis that laugh at confusion. Since it really only needs an endred in the default slot, it's a great way to use one of the extra power slot picks that I always tend to end up with on Plant/Storm builds.

Arg

Update: Tsoo STILL suck!

Aggro has been working through Kong Bao's missions trying to get the spelunker/fortune teller mission. So I hade the wonderful experience of hitting a mission with two spawns (one Trolls the other Tsoo) that were essentially intertwined. On 8X/+1 that was a total beast. I think I died more on that mission than I have in all missions so far put together! It was fun though...

Aggro's up to about 17.5ish, picked up Spirit Tree at 16th. I have to say I LOVE the tree on my Plant/Storm as it's the only self heal I get outside of the medicine pool, and slotted with a 5 pack of Dr. Wounds, it makes quite a bit of difference when I drop it at my intended kill-box before I start.

On a Plant/Rad I was expecting that it wouldn't matter nearly as much (given /Rad's self heal ), but I'm finding it still quite useful. I really think the 'Tree gets a bad rap. It's not suitable for use on a fast moving steamroller team, but it's DANG useful when soloing really large spawns at the limit of what you can handle.

As a LONG time Mind/ player I have to echo what Ace_of_Hearts said.

Having another containment setting AOE power is a definite benefit for Mind/. Even though it's on a looooong timer, Emp is an awesome AOE hold, and having something that will let you pop off multiple aoe attacks and get containment on all of them helps a lot when taking down a large spawn.

And

DO
NOT
UNDERESTIMATE

the impact of Oil Slick! Oli Slick followed by a fireball is just... Well, it warms my heart.

T/A is a great set, and it actually does have some decent synergy. I loved using Flash arrow and Mass Hyp to to totally control the flow of battle on those layered-cake-of-DEATH maps where teams tend to get swamped with far too many spawns at once.

Having Ice Arrow to stack with Dominate is also very VERY nice. Mind/ is a very strategic set, you can do quite a bit to shape how the battle goes, using things like Mes to snipe outlying mobs and keep them snoozing till the team is ready to deal with them etc. Confusing key mobs (Tsoo Sorcerers etc). T/A is similar in it's ability to strategically affect things using things like Glue arrow, Flash, Oil Slick and EMP arrows to control what happens. Mind/TA is very much a thinking player's build IMO. You can exert an enormous amount of control on the battlefield.

Plus Oil Slick is just awesome as added AOE damage, something that you really don't get from other Secondaries. /Storm comes closest, though it works better as addition single target dmg, and Mind lacks the -kb to really leverage /Storm's dmg potential.