Enantiodromos

I think I agree with what it looked like others were saying here:

Mind/* is not the best control set by any stretch, and Ice/* or Earth/* are going to be better if you want to be "mister safety/healer" for teams.

Don't get me wrong, Mind/Emp is a lotta fun. Very surgical and thematic.

For the poster who wants to aggressively solo, I would make the decision this way:

Want to solo bosses/EBs/etc: Go Illusion/*
Want to solo big groups of minions: Go Plant/*

Now, empathy isn't the best solo set in the world. Sure you can get your own AoE Heal, Regen and Recovery buffs out of it. But think of all that focus going to waste makes me weep. I say: Illusion/Emp and Plant/Emp for agilely-small (4-man) teams.

Finally, if it were me, I'd be playing electric/Emp-- some sort of Victor Frankenstein concept maybe.

Re: Damage vs control, I say, don't slot it much.

3-slot suggestions:

Cloud Senses: Acc/End/Rech
Dampened Spirits: End/Rech
Horror/Glimpse of Abyss: Acc/Rech

Gets you all the end and acc you need, and good recharge.


Solo?
I played[1] a Mind/Emp, a Mind/Kin, and a Mind/Rad, to 50, and a second Mind/Emp to 30-- in each case, given my (bad) habits, I probably spent 66% of that time soloing (which is not to say I earned 66% of my experience solo). And I grant that people's tastes vary a bit. But I really don't think you want to *build* a mind controller specifically for soloing. It's fun at low levels (I built the second mind/emp as a small team blastroller), but in the post-30 game, solo mind is sad except maybe for ghosting non-bodycount missions. And you scarcely have Terrify up and slotted before 30.


So slotting Terrify for either damage or fear is probably a little extravagent, and you may just want to shop your slots around if you have a respec handy. Here's why I think that:

Control?
AoE Controls can be either (in-combat) mitigation-- AoE holds, Confuses, stuns (the enemy is not fighting while you're taking them down), or to contain adjacent mobs[2] -- AoE Sleeps, Fears, Intangibility (forcing the enemy to wait to be taken down).

Many will say Terrify and its ilk straddle the line. But that's really only if NObody's weilding meaningful AoE damage [3], but you still need mitigation [4]. If you're on a team of all (torrent-less) energy blasters, you know, go to town with terrify as a mitigation tool, but that seems a pretty rarefied situation to hinge a build on.

So Terrify's usual best control use when somebody's throwing AOE damage (=good thing) is containing adjacent spawns. To contain adjacent spawns with terrify, you have to either get somebody who is smart enough to tank the alpha and then switch OUT of the adjacent spawn once it's terrified (hard to make this reliable & efficient), or you have to take the alpha yourself (which should be difficult for you to do safely, if you really need it) [5]. The best use of Terrify to contain fights isn't usually that good.

Damage?
As a damage tool, it's just not that impressive in terms of its damage output over time-- moderate damage like Dominate, that's up once every 20 seconds at best. I usually take it and play with it slotted for damage & recharge, especially if I will have a second hard containment tool to alternate with Total Dom (Rad, Trick Arrow). But it's still a little silly[6].

I say, don't slot alot. Unless you've got slots to spare.


[1] Caveat: I've been away from the game 18 mos, if something big has changed about Terrify in that timeframe, the below is dated.

[2] In the strategic sense, not the 2x damage.

[3] Needless to say, if somebody does have AoE Damage, it will almost always be crazy talk to ask your team to avoid using it-- damage earns XP, not controls, and AoE damage can be hugely leveraged against larger spawn sizes.

[4] Scrappers and brutes do not need lots of mitigation, and often have AOE anyway.

[5] I realize this isn't quite always the case, but the exception is when you're far enough away and do it from stealth/invis, which is tricky/unreliable, considering Terrify is a cone and you can't always broadside a spawn.

[6] The alternative, soloing large-ish spawns with mass Hypnosis and Terrify is possible, but again the damage output over time of Terrify itself just isn't that good in the first place, and those fights will go prohibitively slowly.

Rock!
It's funny, I've been looking at poison combos the last few days, wondering if they were ever going to proliferate it. Naturally I'm interested in Mind/Poison-- clickiest build since mind/kin, eh? Heck of a lot of single-target clicks. Might even reroll my original main (mind/emp) as a mind/poison. I played 30 levels of thugs/poison, though I'm not sure I explored the outermost limits of the set. Isn't it pretty good with soloing elite bosses, etc? I wonder how that positions Mind/Poison exactly.

Seems like it might be effective with Fire too, and certainly appealing conceptually with plant/. Or even earth/.

So, I have a 38 Kin/Rad and a 26ish Traps/Arch blueside, both of which I really liked, when I stopped playing 20 mos ago. I'm still pretty much an amateur with Traps compared to the guys I know who levelled a couple Trappers to 50, and used to love the set but don't talk about it so much since the Proc nerf.

With the PBAoE and Cone in Rad, seems like it might be pretty positional, but does that play well with Traps?

Will I be much happier carrying on with my Kin/Rad and Traps/Arch?

Any specific build advice?

Recent changes (or differences between sets blue v red) that will surprise me?

So, my guide (sig) is not that out of date. It just doesn't have anything on Electric Control.

If I was you (the OP), and you enjoyed mind and rad (I did!), I might look into plant/rad splattroller. (Also in sig).

So. I can't remember if cast times are entirely out of the picture now. I know-- like it matters that much for a controller-- but still, if I'm comparing, say, AoE Immobs and want to talk about them in terms of maximum cast/time, slotted normal max recharge (95%)...

Set Base Rech + Cast
Plant: 8+1.67
Fire: 8+1.03
Earth: 8+1.17
Gravity: 8+1.33
Electric: 8+1.17
Ice: 8+2.07

Is the # of seconds per use for fire cages 4.1 or 5.1? Is seconds per use on frostbite 4.1 or 6.2?

Please don't regale me with how there're incarnate ways of going way beyond 95% + recharge nowadays, so my head doesn't go asplody.

I always found my Plant/Storm adequately defensible, Uni, without geeking on Def (which I never do anyway, but I DO solo sometimes), nursing inspires a bit, especially after seeds. Course I've been away 16 mos, maybe you're looking to play at diff levels, or somethin', I don't even know about.

It's exciting to read about new controller options in your own guide to all controller options. Haha! If I actually get the chance to play enough to have anything meaningful to say about the new combos, I surely will!

It is a packed build. I'm very fond of having the trio of hard controls (Total Dom, Mass Confuse, EMP) all ready to go for optimum oldschool lockdown. And you combine that with the other key fun of Mind/Rad-- being a corpsebomber with recall/venge/fallout/mutation. And really you can't neglect the rad basic trinity RI/EF/AM... he question becomes what to exclude. The answer really is several powers in Mind, as far as I'm concerned. Something like:

1 Radiant Aura
1 Mesmerize or Levitate (3-6 Slotted as a ST Damge tool)
2 Dominate (4-6 slotted Hold&Rch&Acc&End)
4 Radiation Infection (1-2x End)
6 Confuse (3-6 slotted Rech&Acc mainly)
8 Accelerate Metabolism (3x Rech to start, 3xEMod later)
10 Enervating Field (1-2x End)
12 Swift/Hurdle
14 Health
16 Hasten (3xRech)
18 Total Domination (6 slot: Rech&Hold&Acc)
20 Stamina (3xEMod)
22 Recall Friend
24 Teleport or Superspeed
26 Terrify or Mass Hypnosis
28 Lingering Radiation (1-4 slotted Rech&Acc&End)
30 Mutation
32 Mass Confusion (5-6 slot rech&acc, then conf)
35 Fallout
38 EM Pulse (3-6 slot, rech, then acc & conf)

... would suit me, though some will flip over TK and Mass Hyp or Terrify going missing... they're do-without-able. Missing either Mes or Lev may actually be less desireable, from a soloing standpoint, but I tend not to build to solo. Personally I'd also try and squeeze in Leadership for vengeance. Full-bore corpsebombing on a team that's steamrolling is some of the best fun in the game.

Fulmens--
1) Maybe there's some overwhelming modal Target Cap per Sq Feet and a few outliers that will make the thing moot. Or, maybe not.

2) Yeah, I'm looking at the tick time. I never know what to call which thing-- I would call the 3.47 on Death Shroud the cast time. Thought that was the Red Tomax nomenclature. It's the 2 second intervals I'm interested in and use.

3) Archery/Fistfull = 50' radius with 30 deg cone. That's a radius equivalent of 14.4 Feet. It fires roughly every 5.3 seconds (at max recharge) for base 56.9 lethal. Ball lightning is 15' radius every 9.3 seconds for base 63.8 energy... Oh, I see, I hand-calculated the value for Ball Lightning, but left out the DoT. Zoink. Funny, because I specifically hand calculated stuff I noticed that had DoT because I was afraid the Damage Scaling thing was wrong. Ha.

4) Yeah, I agree activation time means something here, but I like the simplicity of emphasizing it by simply assuming max recharge. I certainly don't think it's as important as in actual chains. If you can think of a more elegant or convincing approach, lemme know.

Katten--

Right, well. As I said, I don't imagine I'm prepping a final way to "know what's what," but a starting point for numerical comparison, where we can then look at inherents, buildups, rages, Against All Odds, etc.

Some of those will be easy to eyeball alongside a rating, others less so. It's fairly straightforward to remark that "After containment's set (for sets that can do so AOE, anyhow), figure on doubling this value." Some will be hairy and impossible, and that's where you say, "Yeah, but remember you can get up to +300% damage" (or whatever) " out of fulcrum shift, so obviously plant/kin rox" or whatnot.

The goal is just a condensation of information to bring to those conversations that have to involve intuitions about real play. Do you want to bring huge but dangerous AoE DoT to uncontrolled mobs as a /kin controller? (I mean, yes, but.)

TopDoc--

I definitely mean to leave buildups, Rage, inherents, and other things distinct. Embedding them in a final rating of a power would add to the confusion, which is the opposite of what I intend. I definitely am interested in ways to make things like Fury and Containment easier to understand, to present alongside, and with things like buildup, possibly present a boost-per-time or maybe a boost-coverage-across-native-AoE-chains figure.

Actual play is obviously the ideal, but there's no way to measure that that's not prohibitively laborious, and I don't trust even the tools available for approximating such data collection. Science is half empiricism and theory for a reason.

Sailboat-- Yeah, a above, I'll be trying to decide on how diverse cap-per-area-coverage really is, and come up with... something, based on that.

Silverado-- No, you can see I didn't include rage or fury. If you have reasons you think I should, feel free to explain, but as I was saying, I think it would be more confusing to embed such things rather than to treat them distinctly.

xen10K--

Yeah, as above, I guess I'm goign to have to figure a way to incorporate cap explicitly, especially if cap-per-area is all over the place (I'm not sure).

I guess it's just that, going from three distinct factors (time, damage, and radius) to four factors, two of which are indistinct, seems like a mess.

Maybe I'll rate each power on DPS and some arcane composite rating of Area combined with target cap.

The reason for radius (or radius equivalent) rather than area is that sq feet is, yanno, logarithmically "heavier" in the equation than damage. (It varies as a square of radius). I actually thought about going the opposite direction with it; maybe radius ^0.8 or something. IOW: considering there is soft floor on density of mobs, even radius over-values large attacks. Look at the values for roots, and then consider the fact that that figure does NOT include containment. Roots is a huMONgus damage tool, but with extensive experience with it and Rain of Arrows, probably two of my favorite powers in the game, I balk at saying Roots is 118% the tool RoA is.

I agree the target cap is something of an issue. But it's also in a sense redundant with the measure of area that radius provides, since there's an effective minimum density of mobs in realistic door-mission rolling play. Of course there're some powers that are way outside the "norm" for target-cap-per-square-feet-covered, and a detailed accouting of this would probably need footnotes on about a dozen powers like that.

I tend to think the damage enhancement thing is negligable, except in the rare conjunction with damage self-buff (pretty much Kinetics-- resist debuff is another story).

I agree that the decision to assume 95% recharge enhance is significant. Here's why I chose it: It's common, I think for good reason, to look at damage per cast on powers, and while that plays less of a role for my stated purposes, still it's significant, and unlike the issue with damage enhance it's not subsceptible to simple division by 1.95 to get the equivalent-- cast times are fixed value. So, it effectively hikes up the relative weight of differing cast times, and is closer to how the power will be realistically played.

I want a "simple" measure of AoE Damage ability for the purpose of comparing individual powers and sets, mainly for the sake of gaguing performance in big-team/large-enemy-spawn/well-protected/rolling combats situations.

I propose to use R * D /T, where R = Radius (or radius of a circle of equivalent area, for Cones), D= Damage @ L50 & +95% Damage Enhancement, T = Cast Time + (Recharge Time at 95% recharge time redux), or for toggles, activation time.

Here are a few examples of figures I get:

Blaster/Archery/Fistfull Arrows: ~304
Blaster/Assault Rifle/Full Auto: ~189
Controller/Plant Control/Roots: ~186
Brute/Super Strength/Foot Stomp: ~140
Scrapper/Fiery Aura/Blazing Aura: ~107
Blaster/Fire Blast/Inferno: ~79
Blaster/Electrical Blast/Ball Lightning: ~59

Why ought I not be satisfied with this measure (what will be misleading about it), and is there a measure that seems preferable?

Though generally I would not be comparing across ATs, if I did use the measure as stated, what should my "simple way to compare apples to oragnes (AT to AT AoE damage)" guideline say?

I think others have said, if you're on the track of doing the most possible damage, the tools to look to are Levitate (which you don't have), Mesmerize (which you do, but you may not have slotted for dmg), and Terrify (ditto-- but also, it's tricky getting terrify damage contained on a consistent basis. Mass Hypnosis can be brought around to do it... so long as basically, you're soloing).


I dunno, I sort of think of myself as a kineticist with backup controls, on my Mind/Kin. Seeing orange numbers of your own is exciting, I realize, but unless you're solo, it's a terrible measure of your effectiveness, assuming you have a de/buff set in your repertoire.

Controllers can definitely, definitely perma-hold AVs.

I think I understand that you were really asking "can a solo controller hold an AV," but the question and the way it was answered in some cases was a touch ambiguous.

Any three decent controllers should be able to perma-hold an AV after a short ramp-up. Two controllers built for lots and lots of hold output might also manage it, therefore, I would guess. For the same reason, I suspect it's out of the question for even the most hold-spam-tastic solo controller.

It definitely will be interesting to see how they construct a Dark Control primary-- such a set would likely straddle the substantial divide between the ST/AoE Immob sets and the ST Dmg/Cone Fear sets. Of course, Gravity almost that, and like Dark Miasma, has an AoE Intang.

Now I'm worried Dark Control could be built on a Grav Control template.

I get the impression I'm stepping into what's become a Fire/Kin debate-- not that I mind those considering how obvious it is that something needs to make kin + containment respect the damage cap-- really "Fire/Kins need nerfed" ~= "I hear it's going to be a cold winter."

I'm really posting just to ask, since it's related to the thread title:

Why do people think there's ANY sense in balancing any two given individual powers just because they appear in a set at the same tier? Is this some kind of holdover from WoW or something, like healers? Because I mean, it's a lot like saying we need to balance Fulcrum Shift with Force Bolt because they both start with the letter F, or saying we need to Energy Blast debuff defense because Dark Blast does.

I remember taking my Mind/Emp to 50. I can imagine being burnt out on it too.

I'll just point out one or two things that I think address some of your questions. Illusion is genrally stronger than Mind, and considering Empathy's a good small-team (or pet!) buffing set with no special synergy with Mind, I think it's largely a given that Ill/Emp would be a substantial improvement. OTOH, though I realize Illusion pets throw torrent now and again, which puts a little AoE in Illusion, but I doubt that's significantly better than damage-optimized Terrify (which is itself not exactly a feast of AoE damage.) Neither set has meaningful AoE damage-- certainly nothing on par with Fire and Plant.

Last, I think you'd have some adjusting to do in terms of going from MC & TD to PA, Flash, Spectral Terror. I don't think one of those two is head-and-shoulders above the other, but they'll play quite differently, even if they're not far apart in effective mitigation.