Enantiodromos

This thread is a bit bizarre. You posted about defender vs scrapper solo performance, your error was pointed out to you, and you're still on about it.

Soloing anything in this game is for the bored, masochistic, or people who don't know how the game works at all. It's not just that soloing is not the best test of a defender, it's that it's wildly irrelevant.

Thanks for the feedback, all!

Re: Tornado

I'll definitely have to say more emphatically why Tornado isn't a splattroller power. One, it's a 7' radius, max 5 mobs hit power, which is a severe handicap. Two, MOb clustering, whichever approaches you use, is usually so time-intensive that, while it's great for showing off, it's not very effective XP-wise.

Believe me, I love the power. I mean. There's zillions of powers in the six sets I mention, that I love, but aren't listed here.

Maybe I can include a section overviewing inevitably awesome and unskippable non-splattroller powers.


Re: Trick Arrow
Ack! I'm sure I knew OSA was 35. Sorry Rush. OTOH, re: acid arrow-- much the same argument as with tornado: great though it may be, the radius is so small (8') that I think it's hard to count it. I see it does have a cap of 16 targets hit though-- news to me, I figured it would be 5-max-target power.

Re: Epics
I'll have to look at that more. Truth be told, Psi or Fire are the only two I have experience with. I like Fire pretty well.

Re: Fire Imps
[ QUOTE ]
I think Fire Imps would be more accuratly described as one to three single target damages, and not as a single target damage

[/ QUOTE ]

Right, which is why I said they "amount to" a very nice ST damage power. Probably it would be a good idea to expand somewhere, maybe the intro, on what's actually significant about AoE powers-- people often seem to miss that their defining feature for game play is that they scale in power to the number of affectable mobs present.

Anyway, Fire Imps are nothing like an AoE power.

Re: Giant Fly Trap

Right you are! Bitey is a weird case. That cone damage (30' 45 deg cone every 12 seconds) is nothing to sneeze at. My hesitation now is only having to field a zillion comments re: why Fire Imps aren't splattrollerey and Fly Trap is.

Re: Movement Powers

Good call. Thanks. SS is, at least in my experience, great for just the reasons you mention.

Re: Procs

I'd have to know enough about proc timing & so on to run numbers and decide whether they'd accomplish much in most of these cases. My prejudice is that they generally don't (unless purple procs do things I just don't know about, and I've tried to shy away from offering advice on end builds and super-expensive IOs), but it's hard to know for sure.

The achilles heel proc certainly merits mention though.

Two things.

One: I don't know what to think, but: suppose you could run door missions solo on a splattroller (aggressive AoE-oriented controller), and have spawns of the size a five-, six-, or eight-man team would generate.

Wouldn't you? I mean, am I crazy or wouldn't such a thing constitute a game-changing... change, at least for certain controller builds?

Second: I have a draft of a splattroller guide I've worked on, on-and-off, and may post, probably to replace my Plant/Rad and Fire/Storm build guides. Can I get some feedback? Note, the strategy section is incomplete.

SPLATTROLLERS, AN OVERVIEW

I. WHAT/WHY
II. BUILD
III. BUILD SKELETONS
IV. SLOTTING
V. STRATEGY


WHAT/WHY IS A SPLATTROLLER?

A splattroller is a build preference and playstyle for use with the controller AT, that focuses on AoE and especially AoE damage, especially in early/mid levels of the game (20-31).

"Splattroller" as a concept is noteworthy because it contrasts with more traditional approaches to controllers, which emphasize time-sensitive and surgical controlling, and cautious/defensive play generally. This traditional view was once simply the most effective way to play a controller, but a few key changes, including containment (2x damage vs held, slept, immob'd, stunned MObs), the marginalization of debt, and other minor changes like decreased recharge time on the rest power, effectively opened up an entirely different and probably unintended kind of play with controllers.

HOW TO BUILD A SPLATTROLLER

The first choice you face once you decide to try a splattroller is: what build? The best splattroller primary is Plant, followed by Fire. The other primaries make poor splatatrollers at best. The best splattroller secondary is Storm, followed by Radiation, followed by Trick Arrow, and finally Kinetics.

What you're looking for out of these sets is: area damage, good fast-recharge area controls, area -res, and/or attacks and +dmg bonuses that otherwise scale to the # of foes you face and/or # of teammates you have. The next section has a breakdown of the key powers in each set and a discussion of its overall splattrolling. Remember that these are only the powers specifically relevant to splattrolling-- some of these sets do a lot of other nice things-- but for that information, see a guide to that powerset.


Plant:
2 Roots
8 Seeds of Confusion
26 Carrion Creepers

Plant has overwhelming AoE damage potential. Among other things, its AoE immob does twice as much damage as other AoE immobs. Its fast-recharge AoE control, seeds of confusion, is hands-down the best control power, as such, in the game. Carrion Creepers comes in a little later, but it's a true splattroller power because the number of vines scale to the number of foes present-- once up, there're usually foes x 0.75 vines up at any given time. Strictly speaking, it's not an AoE damage power, but for these purposes it behaves like one.


Fire:
2 Fire Cages
8 Hotfeet
12 Flashfire

Fire brings in all three of its key powers nice and early. One thing to note is that hotfeet forces you into melee range, which makes fire splattrollers a little more exciting and risky than plant splattrollers. In some sense, bonfire could be looked at as a fourth splattroller power, but its damage-to-hassle ratio keeps it from being a mainstay like the others. Note that fire imps are not a splattroller power-- as with any other L32 pet, there're a fixed number of imps regardless of how many foes you face. They amount to a very nice ST damage power.

Storm:
16 Freezing Rain

Can a single power make Storm the best splattroller set? Yes. In addition to being much bigger and slightly more powerful -res than EF or Disruption Arrow, it's got all that lovely -recharge and -defense. Plus it can be fully slotted by the time a splattroller is ready to go into full swing. Some will argue that tornado and lightning storm merit mention, but while I love the powers, they're really small as AoE, and effectively behave much like any other pets-- as single target damage.


Radiation Emission:
4 Accellerate Metabolism*
10 Ennervating Field
35 Fallout

Radiation emission's key contribution to splattrolling is Ennervating Field. The toggle's available nice and early. Accellerate Metabolism aslo gives a damage boost to everyone on your team (used correctly), and for teaming purposes at least, counts as a splattroller power. Finally, fallout is an AoE attack with meaningful damage and great debuff, including a monster -res in a large area. So while it comes in late and is hard to find situations to trigger it, it's really awesome, and merits mention.

Trick Arrow:
28 Disruption Arrow
38 Oil Slick

Sadly, the key powers for TA come in late-- mostly past the level range in which splattrolling is its most beautiful (20-31). Still, disruption arrow and oil slick for late-game splattrolling are quite nice.

Kinetics:
2 Siphon Power *
38 Fulcrum Shift

Similar to Trick Arrow, Kinetics blooms late for splattrollers. Fulcrum shift is a phenomenal power and scales your damage up based on how many foes you're facing-- not to mention scaling up your allies' damage! Still, having to wait until 38 for it is tedious, and by then blasters AND defenders will be running their nukes, and a smart splattroller will be diversifying his control, as the good old days of splattroll wane. Siphon power is a nice steady team boost to damage, of course, and shouldn't be discounted.


Leadership:
6 Assault *

Assault does, after all, boost up the damage of pets, your teammtes and so on.

* Only counts for team play.

BUILD SKELETONS

Plant/Storm:
2 Roots
4
6 [Move Precursor]
8 Seeds of Confusion
10 [Hurdle/Swift]
12
14 [Move]
16 Freezing Rain
18 Health
20 Stamina
26 Carrion Creepers

Plant/Radiation Emission:
2 Roots
4 Accellerate Metabolism
6 [Move Precursor]
8 Seeds of Confusion
10 Ennervating Field
12 [Hurdle/Swift]
14 [Move]
16 Health
18
20 Stamina
26 Carrion Creepers
35 Fallout

Fire/Storm:
2 Fire Cages
4
6 [Move Precursor]
8 Hotfeet
10 [Hurdle/Swift]
12 Flashfire
14 [Move]
16 Freezing Rain
18 Health
20 Stamina

Fire/Radiation Emission:
2 Fire Cages
4 Accellerate Metabolism
6 [Move Precursor]
8 Hotfeet
10 Ennervating Field
12 Flashfire
14 [Move]
16 [Hurdle/Swift]
18 Health
20 Stamina
35 Fallout

Plant/Trick Arrow:
2 Roots
4
6 [Move Precursor]
8 Seeds of Confusion
10 [Hurdle/Swift]
12
14 [Move]
16 Health
18
20 Stamina
26 Carrion Creepers
28 Disruption Arrow
38 Oil Slick Arrow

Plant/Kinetics:
2 Roots
4 Siphon Power
6 [Move Precursor]
8 Seeds of Confusion
10 [Hurdle/Swift]
12
14 [Move]
16 Health
18
20 Stamina
26 Carrion Creepers
38 Fulcrum Shift

Fire/Trick Arrow:
2 Fire Cages
4
6 [Move Precursor]
8 Hotfeet
10 [Hurdle/Swift]
12 Flashfire
14 [Move]
16 Health
18
20 Stamina
28 Disruption Arrow
38 Oil Slick Arrow

Fire/Kinetics:
2 Fire Cages
4 Siphon Power
6 [Move Precursor]
8 Hotfeet
10 [Hurdle/Swift]
12 Flashfire
14 [Move]
16 Health
18
20 Stamina
38 Fulcrum Shift


SLOTTING

Splattrollers are end hogs. Hence the inclusion of stamina in the build skeletons above. But you can mitigate a lot of your pain with a little end redux everywhere.

AoE Immobs:
This is especially true of your AoE immobs, which you'll want to be spamming. Frankenslotting (slotting with multi-aspect IOs from several different sets) is one of the keys to a good splattroller build, since it helps you stuff them as full of end redux, accuracy, and damage as you possibly can (in that order of importance). Damage will pay off in Roots, but less so in Fire Cages. If, somehow, you still have room, recharge doesn't hurt either-- but make SURE you have End Redux maxed before you start slotting recharge. Two IOs that won't break the bank and will get you a long way are:

Detonation Acc/Dam/End
Enfeebled Operation Acc/End

Seeds of Confusion and Flashfire:
These need recharge, more than anything else. Accuracy is a second priority, and after that, end redux and effect duration are nice to have. Consider:

Perplex Acc/Conf/Rech
Malaise's Illusions Acc/Conf/Rech

Rope-A-Dope Acc/Stun/Rech
Stagger Acc/Stun/Rech

Carrion Creepers:
Until recently, this just needed recharge-- three generic Recharge IOs were fine. More recently, the power was "fixed" so damage and accuracy enhancement would be passed on to the vine. What that means is, by all means, once you have full recharge in this thing, give it more damage and accuracy. It hardly hurts to squeeze end redux in there too, All the pet damage sets have an Acc/Dam/End IO, and both Recharge Intensive Pet sets have an acc/dam/rech and an end/damage/rech (though those are often prohibitively expensive).

HotFeet:
Needs End Redux, Damage, and Accuracy. The power takes PBAoE Damage and Slow sets. Consider:

Multi-Strike Acc/Dam/End
Multi-Strike Acc/Dam
Multi-Strike Dam/End
Cleaving Blow Acc/Dam
Cleaving Blow Dam/End
Curtail Speed Acc/End
Tempered Readiness Acc/End

Freezing Rain:
This just needs recharge and end redux. Forget about anything else, unless you just have slot space to waste. Look at:

Undermined Defenses Rech/End
Undermined Defensees Rech
Touch of Lady Grey Rech/End


Accellerate Metabolism:
You want Recharge in this to start. You can add end mod later. (You could look at the End/Recharge IOs for Efficacy Adaptor and Performance Shifter. By level 25, you can save yourself a slot if you have both. But the performance shifter will likely cost you 1-2 mil. Otherwise, just) 3x each generic IOs.

Ennervating Field:
This just needs a single generic End Redux IO. Yay, an easy one. You could be ubar-frugal and put a second end redux in later.

Fallout:
You want recharge and damage, nothing else really. Detonation and Air Burst have cheap Dam/Rech IOs you can use.

Disruption Arrow[1]:
You want Recharge and End Redux in DA. Only takes generic IOs, so start with 2 x Rech, 1x End Redux. Add another of each later as slotting permits.

Oil Slick Arrow[1]:
You want Recharge and Damage in OSA. Detonation and Air burst Dam/Rech for the win! End redux wouldn't hurt either, if you can.

[1] Thanks for filling me in, Rush Bolt!

Siphon Power:
Accuracy and Recharge. Maybe some End Redux. Doesn't take IO sets, so however you see fit. Doesnt hurt to add end redux to it either.

Fulcrum Shift:
Same as siphon power.

STRATEGY

Repeat after me: "My teammates are responsible for their own survival."

The essence of splattroller strategy is vaguely similar to blaster strategy, and can be summed up: "Kill them before they kill you."

As a splattroller, you don't expect and don't try to make sure spawns are 100% locked down while you're fighting them. You just need to make sure they're locked down enough that you can survive despite getting a lot of aggro from them.

Another important abstract point of splattroller strategy is to go up against, at bare minimum, three MObs at once. The more the better. The ways to do this include:

1) Play in teams of at least 3, and
2) Play on Tenacious or Unyeilding, OR, as a last resort
3) Street Sweep, especially hazard zones where two factions are commonly found facing off.


Specific Combat Openings:
As a rule, the first thing you'll do in a fight is throw out your fast-recharge area control-- Seeds of Confusion or Flashfire. This will ideally buy you enough of a headstart killing the enemy that you'll have them down before they have you down. You'll of course be nursing your green and purple inspirations in case you don't have enough of a headstart.

(Of course, if you're a Fire splattroller, before you do anything else, once you have a spwn in your sights, you'll turn on hotfeet-- but that's just toggle maintenance.)

One exception is that /storm splattrollers will sometimes wish to drop freezing rain first-- this is especially true if for some reason you're feeling especially leery of whether your stuff will hit, and are NOT facing any mezzing mobs or a group that can easily kill you twice over with it's alpha strike. Similarly, once a splattroller has Oil Slick, they might sometimes choose to drop it first under similar circumstances-- among other things a fire/TA can light it up with the first throw of fire cages, that way.)

Next, most splattrollers will immobilize the group, debuff (EF, Disruption Arrrow, siphon power & fulcrum shift, and possibly Freezing Rain and Oil Slick Arrow, if not already used) them, and start spamming their AoE Immob as endurance permits. Fire splattrollers will move into the center of the spawn during this phase (and may not spam their AoE immob quite as much). Also, once they have Carrion Creepers, Plant splattrollers will want to drop it at this stage if it's available.

From there on out, it's about outliving your oppoonents. Once there're two or fewer, you may want to drop using your AoE Immob, and Hotfeet, and finish the mobs present off, single-target.

If it hasn't already been mentioned, along with this idea, it would be nice to see epics added to ATs to match newer primaries.

I'd also like to see set options expanded to fit the origins-- e.g., a tactical de/buff for natural defenders and controllers. But I'm not holding my breath.


Rad and Sonic Manip would be cool.

"Molecular Blast" = EB.

A psy de/buff set would be cool.

Force Control = Gravity.

An "Improvization" secondary for MM would be highly cool.

I guess the simple answer is: I prefer blue and squishy. These are my over-14s.

AT: Count (sum of levels)
Controller: 10 (385)
Blaster: 6 (209)
Defender: 5 (178)
Scrapper: 5 (165)
Tanker: 3 (87)
Mastermind: 1 (35)
Corruptor: 1 (32)
Dominator: 1 (21)
Brute: 1 (20)

[ QUOTE ]
After that, it's pure upswing for controllers compared to defenders, IMO

[/ QUOTE ]

You know what I'd like to see? What % of playing defenders are /Archery at 25, 35, and 45.

[ QUOTE ]
So to answer Enantiodromos' question,

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't recollect asking a question, but then my attention span's flaky these days.

Thunderclap's hardly comparable to the AoE Immobs one is obviously looking for something comparable to. The AoE Immobs are 30' radius (like FR), peg half of all bosses in one hit, and the other half in 4-8 seconds. Containment on lieuts and bosses certainly *does* matter, regardless of whether it gets you a defeat on them at the same time as the defeat on the minions.

Thunderclap's 25' (30% less area), and a mind/storm will never go above mag 2 with it. Plus they're PBAoE-- and while PBAoEs can be fun on a Fire/ or /kin 'troller, they're rather dismal with a mind/, unless they're just monster sized (think EMP).

And BTW... why does red tomax say FR's 20' radius? Anyone? Did they nerf the size of the thing redside when they ported it?

Of the three you mention interest in, Mind/Kin's the only one I've played extensively. It's heaps of fun, and can definitely tip a bad fight in the opposite direction. Only thing not to like about it is the up-close and personal, accuracy intensive nature of Kin, versus the range and fewer issues with accuracy of mind. Aside from the fact that you can Mass Hyp mobs before you walk in to FS them, in the late game, and the fact that extra recharge is nice to have with mind's pair of long-recharge AoE controls, I don't see any special synergy, but Mind's a fun and powerful-feeling set, and Kin is a monster. You can hardly go wrong.

Though I'm a huge fan of storm, what I can't get over about Mind/Storm, and the reason I'd never play it, is the fact that Storm has one AMAZING power, freezing rain, whose core feature is its huge area resist debuff-- which magnifies AoE damage. But a Mind/Storm is going to have durable large AoE containment set only half as often as FR is available. In absolute terms there's nothing wrong with Mind/Storm, but compared to nearly any other /storm troller, it has this big drawback.

Mind/FF probably makes an interesting soloist, and like mind/emp and mind/sonic, is liable to make awful pick up groups survivable.

But for competent team play, I think Mind is much better matched with Kin or Rad.

Nice guide! One thing I note is: Fallout and EMP merit mention on /rad splattrollers, I think. Especially EMP on plant/ which in late game will be very happy to take on the traditional role with a pair of long-recharge AoE controls (or stack them).

Personally, I think an element you only touch on indirectly, in speaking about the splattrolling lifestyle, is that it's almost a sort of reaction against uptight "nobody must take any damage, definitely not me!" styles of old-school controlling. As I think I mentioned someplace or another, the marginalization of debt and the lowered recharge (at the time I wrote the first splattrolling guide) on rest, are important factors in splattrolling, alongside the marginalization of control in the game in general with I4, and the unbalanced buff (at that time) to controller damage via containment.

It's one thing to come to controllers to play a splattroller, it's another to "be" a controller and turn around and splattroll.

Also, I should note I was hardly the first person leveraging this style of play. I think I named it, but the tradition of fire/rads goes back... arbitrarily far, doesn't it?

The inclusion of plant made a lot of sense, AJ, but illusion never did. Whether the tie in is theme or synergy.

Anyway, sorry I couldn't be there.

Empathy's a great secondary for duo/trioing with damage dealers. Personally I think that's its best use (aside from all-empath defender teams, which rock HARD. You laugh.) To that end, I like it a lot with Mind. It's the first controller secondary I played to 50, and maybe I'm jaded, but I'm pretty sure it's not my favorite.

Plant control is a great aggressive/big-team control set-- probably my favorite for that purpose. The area damage boggles the mind. I like it with Rad, and LOVE it with Storm. I'm sure I'd like it with Kin or Trick Arrow, too. It might be interesting and balanced with Sonic.

About the time-travel reduplicated you-- I think it'd be cool to make the pet genuinely invincible, but buffable & effective, with a recharge time substantially longer than a fixed duration, and a short but mandatory phased & invisible period when the pet despawns at the end of its duration.

Personally I still think the way to go about this is to start from the "templates" apparent in the standing controller primaries, and their variation. Then try and decide which new concepts would best fit the most worthwhile variations.

1. A ST Hold and an AoE Hold (of some kind, if you include the cascading earth pseudopet).

2. An AoE Aggro management that's not (very) useful at ground zero of combat (sleep, phase shift, group invis, Smoke).

3. ST and AOE Immobs OR ST Dmg, ST Confuse, Cone Fear, but no selection from #5*.

4. A Pet. (Except for control sets that start with "M"*.)

5. A fast-ish recharge total control, e.g., AoE Stun, Arctic Air, Seeds of Confusion.

6. A specialty AoE Slow, and a specialty AoE pulsing knock. OR A multiple pseudopet and a vaguely defenderish power. OR A pair of ST damages. Or Mass Confusion, TK, and Mesmerize.

* M is for Moriarty

Freedom, 8:30 PM Eastern 7/16/09 (because it's a largish sample size; N=906.)
<font class="small">Code:[/color]<hr /><pre>
Levels Tank Scrapper Defender Controller Blaster
1 to 10 28 42 21 29 43
11 to 20 15 27 18 9 22
21 to 30 13 25 18 13 33
31 to 40 21 33 22 27 25
41 to 50 72 99 40 105 106
</pre><hr />

(Traditionally) damage-dealing ATs dominating the game (again)-- Scrappers plus Blasters are more than half the sample. I thin this represents a little bit of an uptick in blasters since the last time I looked, not that they were ever sparse. Controllers relatively sparse early/mid-game but vigorous in the endgame, defenders relatively robust in early/mid-game, but sparse late.

For a while it looked like there was a trend for more controllers overall, and more in the late levels particularly. That looks perhaps to be slowing down. Defender attrition in late game, and tanker under-representation overall, look about the same as they've been a couple years now.

Thanks for all the advice guys! If I get around to testing any of the theories here and come up with anything reproducible, I'll post about it.

Personally, I think this has always been fun to discuss, even though I don't in the end like the idea, knowing what I do about Mind.

Still, meh, it's fun to discuss. Never been sure why people call anything they themselves have discussed previously "stupid."

BLZB: A splattroller is a controller build that focuses on maximizing AoE damage, at the exepense of the AT's (long-ago, far away, oldschool) reputation as a defensive powerhouse. Considering how minimal debt is.

A well-designed Fire or Plant + Storm Summoning or Radiation Emission build is pretty much automatically a splattroller, but the playstyle's very different from a surgical control/utility (think Mind/Emp) or massive defense (think earth/FF) build.)

Fire or Plant are your damge builds, mostly irrespective of secondary. If you can't stand the idea of playing a plant or a fire with the ones you already have built, hard to say.

I guess a lot of people think Mind is #3, but I think they're wrong except for soloing-- and you'll be getting more spawns that that just with two people. Anyway, probably Illusion is the answer. Illusion/kin I think, has a minor drawback that you can't boost PA, but. I hear good things about it.

I've not played mind/sonic, but I've played a LOT of mind, and a grav/sonic. A few notes.

As for what's been said here so far-- the "hard" control thing is a confusion not about the game but about terminology. Hard and soft vs partial and total have never been well defined. I tried to force definitions, but meh.

Mind isn't really exceptional with AoE control-- matter of fact, as feeble as Terrify (without acc debuff) is as a control, Mind is low/mid-range in terms of AoE control (Grav and Illusion are weaker). OTOH, for AoE effects that are readily broken-- which can be good for managing aggro but isn't the same as a nice in-combat control, it does pretty well with Mass Hypnosis and Terrify.

Also of note, Mind doesn't root (make controlled mobs reist knockback), and it doesn't have much that's good for regularly setting AoE containment. It doesn't have anything quite comparable to the standard AoE Immobs, IOW.

Mind is very good ST damage and ST control, and it's very good at delivering aggro-free mitigation, thanks to Confuse and Mass confusion. Those are its strong points.

ST control can be useful in teams, but controller-level ST damage is much less so. For teaming, mind frankly just doesn't have a whole lot, and what it has is mostly defensive.

When you pair that with something very team- and defense-oriented like FF, Empathy or Sonic, you run the risk of backing yourself into a corner where to be relevant, you need a team full of gung-ho blasters or something. And sadly you can't even throw the sonic disruption bit, or your bubbles, on a pet.

Reckless teams with short attention spans, e.g., pickup groups, will probably love you to the extent they realize what you contribute. Some people find that frustrating.

When last I posted about this problem, it was something I'd just run into, and I don't think I could even get anybody to understand the problem, or if they did, nobody but me was having it.

It cropped up a few issues ago, around the time they made some minor improvements to things in the UI. (I can't remember what the changes were, but they were definitely related to this issue.) Anyway, the problem:

If I have my chat window split into two sections vertically, chat continues on down past the bottom of the window (is no longer visible), rather than causing text to scroll off the top. I'm perpetually forced to jog the slider to see what's being said.

And, no, if I drag the scrollbar to the bottom, it does not stay that way. Sometimes it stays there a little while, but it's liek something's jogging the scrollbar a fraction off the bottom of its range. (Unusual things I do include scale the windows to 85%, use a quake-like (fvas) move key mapping, have my right mouse button mapped to *toggle* mouse look rather than on-demand mouse look, select mobs with the cursor rather than by tabbing (I like surgical controlling), and always fire powers from the keyboard-top numeric keys with alt and ctrl.)

Anybody got any guesses as to what my problem is with the window refusing to scroll? (One problem at a time, thanks. ^_^)

1. Total Dom is in line with other AoE holds. You're proposing a change to controllers overall when you speak of TD. I agree that aspect needs tweaked.

2. While I personally would love a faster recharge durable AoE containment setter in Mind, and though I'm not at all the sort who screams "everything is perfectly unique exactly as it is! Change nothing!" the tendency to bring sets in-line with each other does effectively start closing out meaningful distintiveness between sets. I think lacking this is a fine tradeoff aspect of mind.

3. TK stacks with other holds, and is useful. It's ridiculously overpriced in endurance cost considering its tiny size. I doubt they can easily change its "spread" as you put it. Finally, a toggle hold with damage seems unlikely, whether it was on-application or tiny DoT.

4. The real problem with Mind is its lack of a fast-recharge AoE control that's hard and total (or at least nearly so). Obviously terrify has never filled that role-- it certainly doesn't stack up against the AoE Stuns, knockdown patches, or arctic air, to say nothing of Seeds of Confusion. But again, you're up against "legitimate variation," and a proposed change to fix this should also "fix" illusion, which is in a similar boat.

Just to chime in late, I don't at all think /kin needs a buff. I grant that buffing cycles are laborious on teams of 8. OTOH, I do them routinely through TFs, with my controllers, without any special binds or even hitting the sequential teammate select buttons. I manage.

/kin 'trollers are a tradeoff of sorts, and a well-balanced one. It's understandable if you don't want to spend your time SBing. It's less understandable if you have a power but don't use it, but it's all a series of choices you face.

Personally, I've always thought an Ice/Kin would be a good combo just because AA's a toggle and Ice Slick's a fight opener, leaving you plenty of time to buff at your leisure. I've not played one past 5 or 6, though.

[ QUOTE ]
Also, using total domination (with mass hypnosis primer), and mass confusion, alternating every other battle, makes you one of the few controllers out there who can shut down enemy mobs every battle, without taking abusive alpha damage. And control mobs effectively even if your the only controller on the team. and shut them down to such a degree that healer/tank are really only needed for AV's. Its less an issue with more than one controller on the team, but if you're the only one, its important to be able to give mobs an aoe-lobotomy every battle.

[/ QUOTE ]

Did you get to play this game pre-I5? If not, I dearly wish you could've. ^_^ (The good old days of fighting statues.)

If you think this is good, BTW, you should try out a Mind/Rad or Mind/TA with the EMP. Can be tricky if you're accustomed to all those ranged targeted AoE mezzes, but that's almost like oldschool.

Again, great guide.

Good guide! Very thorough.

I was particularly interested to read what you said about FR w/ damage procs. I'll have to give that some thought.

Also BTW, since it sounds like you're pretty conscious of mob positioning and AoE work, it's worth noting that confuse is a great tool to get individual stragglers to cluster with their much-hurting brethren. If all the mobs but one are, say, pinned with TK or hurricane, confuse will get remainder's attention (though I imagine you'd have to step aside for him if you're running hurricane, which is suboptimal.)

I'm a lot closer to rolling a mind/storm ATM than I was before reading your guide.

Now then, a couple words about your word about confusion.

Though it's at least partly a matter of terminology, it's important to note that confusion (nor damge from confused mobs) can never take XP away-- at all.

For XP to be taken away, it would have to be first earned, at least in some degree, and the situation you're talking about is one where that XP has definitely not been earned. When drones kill something you've damaged and the mob never experiences defeat, hence you lose opportunity on something you've invested time and endurance in damaging, *that* is stolen XP. Damage from confused mobs can defeat mobs. And contrary to the impression the manual gives, you still get the XP you earned based on the damage you did.

Confuses never steal XP.

What they do do, in some sense, is take away a finite amount of XP opportunity. The most important thing to know about this, though, is that the XP opportunity is not finite in the game-- Infinity minus one is still infinity.

The most realistic concern (which is more true of a set like Plant that can have AoE confuses out more than 30% of the time) is with depletion of *nearby* XP opportunity. If you want to worry about it, 50% damage or less is not the key. The key is:

How long would the fight take without any confuses? Multiply that by three. Now multiply it by the fraction of the damage you're actually doing. The question is: can you get to the next group faster than that, or not?

If you can't, then using confuses is slowing down the rate at which you draw XP out of the infinite pool of XP-for-damage.

If you can, confuses are speeding up the rate at which you suck the marrow out of life, rawr, chomp.

In my experience, fights take longer than the moves between fights. So if you're doing astonishingly little damage at 33%, you'll have plenty of time to find the next fight and keep the net effect of confuses on your side.

Finally, sorry about your experiences with nerfs and PvP. Personally I don't see playing PvP until powers perform there and PvE with close equivalency, which at least in the case of confusions, will never happen. Statesman was both totally right and totally wrong when he said, long ago, that CoH would never have PvP because it would be impossible to balance into the game.

Vines themselves, which the Creeper Patch summons, can be buffed-- at least in principle. But they have 15 second lifespans, so anything that's a click buff will be irritatingly limited, as vines constantly expire. Speedboost would almost be completely pointless, for example, and even Fulcrum Shift is very limited in its effect on vines. Don't hesitate to make a plant/kin, by all means-- even if they had zero synergy, CC and FS are both great powers you'd want to use all the time. But effectively, you'll never have fulcrum-shifted vines up more than 33% of the time.

I'll see if I can get numbers on damage up in this thread soon. Or maybe make an updated splattroller guide. But for whatever reason lately I've not exactly had time to kill.


Also, as a general UPDATE:

<ul type="square">[*]I'm now *reasonably* sure that there's little to no point in slotting anything besides recharge (well, and end redux) in Carrion Creepers.[*]Plant/Storm turns out to be an even nicer splattroller build than Plant/Rad, now that I've played both. (They're both good.) I trust that if you read the fire/storm splattroller build guide, you can piece a plant/storm together.[/list]

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when two (or more) people disagree, it's absolutely certain that at least one of them is wrong. (To do with reality being objective.)

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I think I would disagree with that, since people disagree often on things that are a matter of personal perferance. Is superspeed better than fly? Is a tanker useless unless they take taunt? Is Key Lime cheesecake better than chocolate mousse cake (man, now I want both!)? If people only disgreed about the number crunching stuff, then your statement would be quite corect. But people argue about the subjective frequently, not just the objective.

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When somebody asks a question like "is broccoli or cauliflower better?" one of two things is going on:

1) Context sufficiently explains what "better" means. For example:
...a) If, in context, better means "greener," then the person who says cauliflower is definitely wrong.
...b) If, in context, better means "Enantiodromos will prefer it for lunch on 12/26/08," then the person who says cauliflower is definitely wrong.

2) Context does not define "better," in which case both parties are wrong beacuse they're speaking gibberish-- all answers might as well be "Ceci n'est pas un chou."

As a rule, when people have ambiguous disagreements about personal taste, both parties are definitely wrong.

This satisfies my description, which is not that "precisely one party is wrong," (which would not be true in case #2), but rather "at least one party is wrong."

It's long been popular to claim that people's inability to say what they mean, and/or willingness to babble incoherently, constitute examples of "everybody is right, even when they disagree." But really, it's just a cop-out of those who don't care about anything except the most superficial kind of "harmony." (Essentially, the harmony of silence and the grave.)