Local_Man

That's only because her videos are at least as awesome as anything the Devs put out.

/em golfclap

There is a pretty good book by Piers Anthony, On a Pale Horse, with the Grim Reaper a/k/a Death as the hero. At one point, he goes on strike, and all those people who have suffered life-ending injuries and illnesses continued to suffer. I would say that doing your duty that ends suffering, as unpleasent at that duty may be, could be considered heroic.

(On a Pale Horse is the first book in the Incarnations of Immortality series . . . unfortunately, the first book is the best.)

You could also use the the show, Dead Like Me as a basis to say that a Grim Reaper is a hero, mostly.

Nice to know that you are so fantastic at controlling that nobody on your teams ever takes any damage or gets mezzed . . . including that crazy blaster you picked up who keeps running into melee before the tank gets there.

Me, I'm not quite so perfect all the time. O2 Boost is a wimpy heal . . . but it is enough to keep your pet alive at times. It is enough to heal your pet or your teammates between missions when you would otherwise be standing around looking at his red healthbar. It is enough to take away the stun a teammate has after using a wakie. (In fact, I have used O2 Boost for a teammate who uses a wakie near some foes . . . timed properly, it is faster than popping a Wakie and then a Break Free.) It is enough to add a little bit of Endurance Drain resistance to a teammate when dealing with Carnies.

Sorry for the sarcastic tone, but the "you shouldn't need it" tone is a little bit irritating. O2 Boost has several uses other than its wimpy heal. I find times that it comes in handy, even if I don't need it most of the time.

And Snow Storm? Since my Ice/Storm relies upon Arctic Air most of the time, I don't use it that much. It becomes my way of handling a group bothering the rest of the team when I'm up with the melee guys -- especially if I just used Ice Slick. But on the ITF, I use Snow Storm a ton on those EBs and AVs . . . who resist most controls but not slows.

Take a look in my Ill/Rad guide. Near the end of the thread, I posted my current Perma-PA build, which only uses 3 LotG Recharge IOs (in Hover, SI and CJ) and one set of 5 purples (confuse). It might give you some ideas on how to increase that Recharge a bit.

Do you really need to STACK slows? Isn't one ranged slow power pretty much at the runspeed and -Recharge cap? On my Ice/Storm, I use AA all the time, and only pull out Snowstorm when I need to handle a group at range . . . it doesn't get used all that much, except during the ITF, when I throw it on all the EBs and AVs.

Personally, I like SS over Shiver on my Ice/Storm because of my playstyle -- I throw it out at range, and then I can focus on the foes around my melee teammates without worrying about it. I'm familiar with Shiver, since my first level 50 Blaster was an Ice/Ice who uses Shiver constantly. I like to have O2 Boost for Jack and to pull teammates out of stuns -- I think it provides more benefit to me than Shiver would.

The most recent build of Mids includes Electric Control.

Enough? You can never have enough! (Looks at his stable of 2 Ill/Rads, 2 Fire/Rads, Plant/Rad, Earth/Rad, plus low level Ice/Rad and my new Elec/Rad.)

Because Elec is can be a melee-centric character, */Kin is a good option. However, any pairing will work. I generally think of TA as a ranged set, but you can play it melee. Storm is always fun, but Storm has a lot of powers that will conflict with your controls -- it will be a challenge to make an Elec/Storm effective, but with the right strategy, you can do it. Cold, Therm, Emp, FF and Sonic can add a lot to any team, and let you buff teammates before the fight.

Last week, a buddy of mine and I were duoing my Elec/Rad controller and his Elec/Elec Dominator . . . at level 13. He was actually herding up ghouls into a group, and then I would hit the entire group with Static Field. Beddy-bye time for the entire group. We both walked in with Conductive running and hit them with Fences, waited a sec for all the endurance to drain, and then hit a steady stream of Fences and Jolting Chain while he used his attacks to take them down one by one. With just a little bit of Recharge, Static Field was up just about as fast as it expired.

We were both amazed at how effective this was. Killing speed wasn't all that fast, but we came out of killing a huge group of foes with full health and endurance . . . at level 13. That convinced me how effective this combo can be.

It is a Targetted AoE patch that pulses sleeps, much the same way that Earthquake pulses knockdowns . . . but Sleep gets Containment. I think in some ways it compares to Spectral Terror -- if you attack the foes, they wake up to do one thing before the next pulse puts them back to sleep.

It was really thoughtful of the Devs to make the damage for the AoE Immob all up front damage rather than DoT, since the DoT would wake them up on the sleep patch for every tick of damage. Instead, they wake up when the power is applied, and then go back to sleep again. Furthermore, since the Aura does no damage, it does not wake up the foes, so you can drain their endurance while they stand there snoozing.

I have found Static Field to be one of the better AoE control powers in the game.

You can't really get the experience of playing a Warshade until at least 22. What makes them so good is the versatility, combined with the huge ups and downs of the buffs from live and dead enemies. Basically, it is a roller coaster and uses a lot of strategy.

At level 20, you finally get Dwarf form, and you can be a scrapper/Tank, jumping into the middle of groups to go toe-to-toe with 4 attacks. Then at 22, you get one of the best Warshade powers, Stygian Circle. From there on, most of the powers you get will lend themselves to a new strategy, a new way to play your character.

Yeah, slots are tough to find. Personally, I slot up the forms because I use them a lot, and find myself flipping in and out of forms.

I haven't checked my Ice/Storm or any of my Earth Characters since GR hit. A few issues ago, the Pet Recharge nerf was added specifically because pets were failing to cycle their attacks -- they would often get stuck with one attack, sometimes the ranged one. The excuse given for the nerf was that the Recharge seemed to be affecting the AI to cycle attacks, so they eliminated the ability to give Recharge to pets. After that, the pets seemed to be cycling their attacks.

I'd put the Firefly series ahead of all of that. Then the movie, Serenity.

Like the OP, I was late to the party. Never got around to seeing the show when it was on, and have regretted it . . . but it is pretty nice to see the entire series without having to wait between episodes.

Two controllers are good . . . depending upon the controllers. Two Fire/Rads are a wonderful pair. Two Illusion/Rad or Illusion/Storm or Illusion/Trick Arrow would be great.

Ice is the lowest damage controller primary, just slightly lower than Earth and Electric. Its only damage worth mentioning is its single target hold, its single target Immob and its pet. It provides great control/support, especially for larger teams. Can you solo with it? Uh, yeah, but very slowly. My Ice/Storm at 50 can solo, but even with vet powers, the late storm powers and the APP powers, it still is pretty slow.

I would say that an Ice/Storm can make a good teammate with a high damage melee partner, especially if you take Arctic Air. As for your question, I'd recommend the Storm/Ice Defender.