Local_Man

I have several characters on several servers who are in the upper 40's and could use this weekend to get that last push to 50. Earth/Storm Contr, Traps/Rad Def, Mind/FF Contr, Elec/Elec Brute, Plant/Kin Contr.

Sadly, I also have to put in some work at the office, as the end of the month for me is tough. And I have a family thing to go to Friday night.

We get a lot of "make me a build" posts . . . it is usually far more effective to try to explain your playstyle and what you want out of the build, and then post your best attempt. It might be that you want to shoot for Recharge, or you might want to shoot for Defense. Or you may want a high damage solo build. You might want Regen.

If you want a starting point on the Illusion side, take a look at my Illusion/Rad guide, linked in my sig. Slotting FF isn't too difficult once you figure out the main focus.

Hmm. I almost never use Gale, and when I do, I don't pay attention to the minimal damage. I've never noticed one way or the other whether it does Containment damage.

So, it is only the direct damage powers in */Force Field that don't do Containment damage? That seems a little odd to me -- no specific rule justification other than "we don't want FF Defenders to complain that Controllers do more damage?"

Hmm, I never really thought about whether controller secondary powers get Containment . . . mostly because just about all of the powers in secondaries that do damage are pseudopets, so they clearly don't get containment. FF and Storm/Gale may be the only exceptions.

Rad/Fallout, Storm/Tornado, Storm/Lightning Storm, TA/Oil Slick are all pseudopets. Kin, Therm, Cold, Emp and Sonic have no damage powers.

Welcome to the best AT in the game. Controllers are more strategic and more interesting than the other ATs. There are NO BAD CONTROLLERS. Some powerset combos may be more effective than others, but none of them are bad. And don't play just one Controller and think you have a handle on the entire AT . . . Controllers are far more varied than other ATs, with substantially different playstyles depending upon your powersets and your playstyle. A Fire/Kin will be fast and frantic in the middle of melee. An Earth/Therm may be controlling and buffing from range from behind the rest of the team. An Illusion/Storm will be making a chaotic mess of everything.

Electric Control is one of the lowest damage control sets. Empathy has no help in that department, either. So you are making a pure team-support type of controllers -- don't expect to solo much until maybe the 40's, and even then, it will be slow. There's no real synergy between Electric Control and Empathy. Both sets are very good at providing benefits for a team, but it will almost be like playing two characters -- an Elec Controller and a (slightly weakened) Empathy Defender. You will be able to have some good control, or you can buff and heal your teammates. While your buffed teammates will benefit from your control by taking less damage, one doesn't really add much to the other.

Compare to, for instance, Elec/Rad. Electric control has four ranged AoE control powers, three of which recharge quickly, and then a PB AoE aura for draining endurance. Rad has ranged debuffs and a PB AoE aura for holding. The two auras together are very powerful. The combination of the ranged controls and the debuffs are very powerful. As a result, an Elec/Rad is better than just Electric Control and Radiation Emission -- there is synergy between the powersets.

For a team-oriented Elec/Emp, I would say that the single-target Immobilize, Electric Fence, is skippable. In low levels, its main use is as a damage power, and you aren't looking to do damage. It can be useful somewhat to immobilize bosses and AVs, but that's not something you need much.

For Empathy, many people skip Absorb Pain. Heal Other is good enough that Absorb Pain isn't needed, and in upper levels heals are not needed as much - your buffs will be far more important.

In general, your control strategy will be to open with Static Field under a group of foes. Then you can use Chain Fences and Jolting Chain as needed, run in with Conductive Aura running to drain the foes of endurance. Synaptic Overload comes later, but that is also a great opener.

I have some good information for the new controller in my Illusion/Radiation Guide (linked in my sig). The first section or two has general information that all Controllers should know about stuff like Containment, the types of controls, understanding Confusion powers, etc. You should probably take a look at the section on Confusion powers, as you will run across uninformed players who don't understand how great Confusion can be and my tell you not to use Synaptic Overload. As long as you know to do some damage to the confused foes, then Confusion powers are awesome. My personal recommendation is usually that Ill/Rad makes a great first controller, but the most important thing is to play a character that is fun to you -- I have several characters who are "less than optimal," but are still a lot of fun to play.

Your power choices and order of powers is fine. You have all the key powers taken at the right time. My guide has a section for a recommended leveling-up build, and I recently added explanations on why I chose each power when I did. My recommended build has a few small differences from yours that aren't really important.

I find that I generally need to respec my leveling up build to get to my final end-game build. You may eventually want to consider a Respec into a perma-PA build once you have the IOs you need, as you may want or need to change a thing or two at that point.

One thing you may want to consider adding, if you spend any time on teams that like to stealth missions, is Recall Friend. There are a few powers you could drop to make room. With Superior Invis, you don't really need Group Invis -- Yes, it is a nice place for a LotG Recharge, but it has limited benefits once you have SI. Or you could trade out Mutation. Or drop Hover until later -- depending on whether you use Hover a lot or not. Once you hit level 41, you won't need Air Superiority hardly at all, as you will mostly want to stay out of melee and just blast from range.

You may want to consider trading out GI for Combat Jumping if you want a LotG Recharge mule power. CJ gives Immob protection and nice battlefield maneuvering in a very cheap toggle. On the other hand, you may get some use out of GI and want to keep it.

I'm in the process of updating my Guide for compliance with I-19. Look at the "edit" date to see if I have updated that section.

Apparently, the rumors of Matrix 4 and 5 are just Internet Rumors, as reported HERE. Neither Kenau nor the Waichowski Brothers have acknowledged that new films are being worked on.

I don't have access to Mids or game right now, but I think my slotting in Choking Cloud on my Fire/Rad is Hold, EndRdx/Hold, Acc/Rech/Hold and Chance for Smashing from Unbreakable, a common EndRdx, and the Lockdown +2 Mag proc. It gives up some EndRdx (which is OK since I use the Cardiac boost and otherwise have good recovery) for some Acc and Rech and that 15% global accuracy boost. I wish I had room for one more Unbreakable for that nice 10% Recharge, but I can't fit it in without making the power less functional.

Since Choking Cloud is essential on my Fire/Rad, I decided to commit the Unbreakable set to CC rather than Cinders. I may play with it and come up with other slotting, but that damage proc plus the Lockdown proc in CC is very nice.

Nice build, Oedipus. I think the Hold is a little bit low in Choking Cloud, but other than that, pretty sweet. Now, if you replaced the Unbreakable Hold in Glacier with the Chance for Smashing, you could put the Unbreakable Hold in Choking Cloud for the Lockdown quad, capping your Hold in CC. I would also replace the Confuse/Rech in AA for the pure Confuse to cap the Confuse in AA.

You could also cap Jack's Damage with one more slot . . . either the Recharge in LR or one of the Range from Ice Slick. Putting a Dam/Mez Hami-O in that slot would help Jack's Hold and his damage.

As for Containment . . . until the APP powers, Illusion has no AoE damage so AoE containment really isn't needed. Once you have an AoE damage power, then Containment will, of course, double your damage. But Flash isn't really up often enough to provide a significant increase in damage . . . you will probably spend more time setting up the "run in, Flash, then AoE" process than you would to just kill most of the foes with PA, Phanty and your attack chain.

As Oedipus Rex said, Power Boost will significantly lengthen the duration of Flash, as well as other controls. While Power Boost will certainly make Flash last a lot longer, the Primal APP only has a cone AoE damage power limited to hitting 10 foes. If it had a better AoE, it would be more tempting. I had Primal for a while on my Ill/Rad, but eventually went back to Fire.

However, I must admit that for sheer delight on my Ill/TA, I have on several occasions had to run in while invisible, fire off Flash, then back out, fire Oil Slick Arrow, and then hit the Oil Slick with Fireball . . . Whoosh, double damage from Containment plus Oil Slick bar-be-que sure takes down groups with style.

In addition to DanZero's comments, liberal use of Shiver will also substantially reduce the damage you take -- a lot of -Recharge will keep the foes from taking many shots at you. Fast Recharge means more use of control powers, further mitigating damage. Whenever any foe starts taking pot-shots at my Ice/Ice/Cold, that's the one I target for a hold. I often open with Bitter Freeze Ray + Freeze Ray on a boss to take out the most dangerous foe, followed by Shiver to slow down everybody else. Ice Storm then causes the foes to want to run out of the area, but they can only move slowly and they're not shooting at me while they try to run.

My Illusion/Radiation Guide discusses it in detail. See the link in my sig.

Flash has a 20% Accuracy penalty like most other AoE control powers. Plus a somewhat short duration and a long Recharge. However, it can be quite useful as a fill-in control when PA is recharging or if you want AoE control or in a "panic button" moment (although EM Pulse is better for that).

With SOs and common IOs, I suggest 2 Accuracy, 2 Hold, 2 Recharge. With sets, you want to get a good amount of accuracy (at least 66%) with a good amount of Hold and Recharge. On a high Recharge build, I use 4 Bas Gaze and an extra Acc/Hold/Rech (Essence of Curae is cheap) to get Acc/Hold/Rech all to about 73%.

Having both Flash and EM Pulse is better than either one alone -- you can use one knowing that the other is there as a back-up, or you can use both to hold bosses. Since you can be invisible when casting Flash, the PB AoE aspect shouldn't be a problem. Many times I use Flash on teams simply as a way to mitigate damage -- once the Tank (or other melee guys) go in to take initial aggro, I may run in and hit Flash -- this stops most of the foes from being able to attack while teammates wipe the foes out.

I use two different computers for CoH -- one is a desktop with a game keyboard and built-in game keypad on the left, and the other is a laptop with a standard keyboard (with a keypad). For the most part, I use the W and S keys for forward and back movement, and steer by holding down the right mouse button and moving the mouse. Every now and then I'll turn with the Q and E keys, but I almost never use A and D for sideways movement. I place my most often used attack (and control) powers in the 1-6 slots for the number keys. My usual single-target attack chain is set up on the 3-2-1 keys, with 3 being the single target hold. I have a lot of buttons on my mouse, and use binds to attach a lot of powers to those buttons. (my Desktop mouse is a Razer Naga with 17 buttons, my laptop has a Logitech G-9 mouse with 9 buttons.)

I use an old program called CityBinder to set up the same arrangement of binds for every character. I start with a standard set of binds, and then customize it for each powerset -- easy to do with CityBinder. CityBinder also includes the "Speed-On-Demand" binds, several types of buffing binds (which I usually set for the keypad), various complex chat binds, Mastermind Binds and even Kheld binds for swapping trays -- all built in. The original author has left the game, but a couple of other folks have gone in to make some modifications and bring CityBinder mostly up to date with the newer powersets. CityBinder has some quirks (like all file names must have no spaces) and no documentation, so I have pretty much learned how to use it by trying things out. But I use it on every character (and I have a lot).

Welcome to the forums! And nice job by actually taking a shot and posting your build. It would help if you explained a little bit about your play style and if you have questions about particular power choices or slotting options. But let me take a shot based on what you have posted.

Let me first explain my view of the role of an Ice/Rad controller. Ice/Rad is a unique build. Very low damage (one of the lowest in the game), so your focus is on team support and control. Trying to solo an Ice/Rad will be frustrating -- possible with the right build, but very, very slow. What really makes Ice/Rad special, however, is the interaction between Arctic Air and Choking Cloud. Both are PB AoE Toggle powers that use a ton of endurance but provide continuous control. Both are somewhat weak on their own, but are great when stacked with other forms of control. Which means that individually, AA and CC may not be all that great, but together they are great. This means that you will generally be in or close to melee, just behind the Tank and other melee guys. Generally the playstyle is to let the melee guys run in and grab the aggro, then use Ice Slick to knock the foes down, run in with CC+AA running to control all the minions and lieutenants and use Block of Ice (plus the hold in Choking Cloud for stacking) to control the bosses and foes at range. You can apply the Rad debuffs as needed to boost the kill rate. Save Glacier and EM Pulse for "panic button" moments.

Your biggest problem will be endurance. So, you need to keep an eye out for Recovery bonuses and bonuses that will increase your amount of endurance. Your second problem may be taking some damage, so you want some healing and maybe some defense. Ideally, your melee teammates will be taking the aggro so you can provide control and support.

On the other hand, there is a way to make a "ranged" Ice/Rad, mostly by using Shiver, Ice Slick or Frostbite (but not together) and the Rad Debuffs. In that case, you would skip both Choking Cloud and Arctic Air. My view is that this is inferior to the melee build.

Your build did not include Choking Cloud, but did include Arctic Air. AA needs to be slotted for maximum (about 95%) EndRdx and Confuse. Choking Cloud should be slotted for maximum (same 95%) EndRdx and Hold. It is best to do this by "frankenslotting" -- mixing set IOs from different sets to get the best enhancement.

When making an IO build, you go several ways. You can try to slot to maximize the powers, going for a few bonuses that will provide a little bit of help for the character. This a good way to start. As you get more experience, you can aim for an IO build that chooses sets to focus on one attribute or another -- most often Recharge or Defense. Or you could build for a character who can get a lot of damage out of a low damage combo, by getting lots and lots of damage proc IOs into the build. Your choice.

As for your build:

Chilblain: I view Chilblain as mainly a single target damage power that also provides Immob. I slot it only as a damage power -- if you need one. You definitely need it if you want to try to solo. Whether you need it for a team build is debatable, but it is nice to have. I'd still slot it as a damage power. Decimation set for Recharge, or Thunderstrike for ranged defense.

For the Radiation powers and slotting options, take a look at my Illusion/Radiation guide. That guide goes over the Radiation powers in detail. A link to that guide is in my sig at the bottom of this page. The guide also discusses some basics for Controllers in general, which might help you out some.

Frostbite: The Damage from Frostbite is minimal, and not really worth slotting for damage. If you are going for Smash/Lethal defense, then the Enfeebled Operation set works here. If you really want damage, you should slot this for Accuracy and EndRdx, and then load it up with procs. The procs actually do more damage than slotting the power for damage.

Arctic Air: Slot this to maximize EndRdx and Confuse, then add damage procs to any slots left. If you aren't willing to devote 5-6 slots to this power, don't take it. At level 50, make it a high priority to put the Contagious Confusion proc from the Coercive Persuasion purple set in this power. That proc makes the power much more effective.

Enervating Field: 2 EndRdx, no Recharge needed.

Ice Slick: 2 Recharge. That's all I put in it.

Flash Freeze: I didn't take it as it is rarely useful on teams -- teams will wake them up almost immediately. I can see where it might be useful solo on occation, but most sleep powers are not much appreciated except for Mind and Electric Controllers. I would take Shiver over this any day. If you keep it, slot it as a Sleep control power, not for Damage -- Acc, Rech, Sleep.

Ling. Rad: Acc and Recharge is all you need.

I'm not a big fan of spending 6 power picks and a lot of slots on Leadership and Fighting. All those toggles using up your endurance for fairly small benefits. (And they are boring, too.) Leadership does provide some benefit for the team, but it is minimal unless you can stack with others with the Leadership buffs. Fighting Pool is just for you. Some people use one or the other for a high Defense build, but I would rather have more control powers.

Take Choking Cloud at 28 and slot it up with EndRdx and Hold. Then procs if you have room, starting with the Lockdown +2 Mag proc. See my Ill/Rad guide to explain why.

Mutation: One Recharge and that's it. Maybe two if you spend a lot of time rezzing people. No EndMod needed. This is an optional power that could be dropped if needed.

I didn't know that Ice Blast takes ToHit Debuff, but it certainly is not worth slotting in there.

Ice Armor: Slot it for Defense, not Resistance! Then you can try to build for Smash/Lethal Defense if you want a Defense build.

Hibernate and one of the AoE Damage powers from the Ice APP are nice to have -- better than most of your other choices.

And Perma-PA Illusion Controllers.

In addition to the good advice above, you can load up on temp powers, too. There are a bunch of Temp power attacks that you get for running various story arcs, like the Iron Blade mentioned above. See here. Some of them can be renewed through Ouroborus unlimited times. Then, there are the ones you can get from recipes. They are cheap to buy and not too expensive to craft.

These may help you until you can get your pet at 32 and the APP attacks at 41+. Since you can't enhance your accuracy, liberal use of Infridgidate with its Defense Debuff will help those hit more often.