MentalMaden

I knew it! The pet revolt has started. Run away! Run away!

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Alternatively, you can skip the shields altogether if you don't want to be a buffbot and get the rez. That's what I did and I don't regret it. However, you WILL have endurance problems if you're acting as the teams main healer and controller, *especially* if you're using the rez so keep that in mind.

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If you don't want to take the shields, then don't take thermal or just solo or pick a non-buffing AT. Roll an /emp if you just want to heal.

Truth is everything in thermal is good and worthy of taking. Only power I would think skipping as an option is the rez (or put off til 49 like I did) given that with inspiration combining rezz's aren't near as important as they used to be. They are helpful on high level TFs and raids, thus why I took it at 49. Thermal builds are tight, but that's because they are so good.

Except they don't give you money. You gain influence with the community by the acts you do and its that influence that allows you to puchase things, not money.

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Please help me decide on one of these. A good discussion of the pros and cons of each set would be appreciated.


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I jumped straight on the ice thing and didn't really finish.

Ice/Storm- would be a slow specialist, using less "traditional control" and more slow slow slow. As Local points out its very effective on an ITF.

Grav/Storm- will embrace the true meaning of chaos control. Sure you can't use your hard controls to "settle down" the chaos of storm. With a Grav/Storm you embrace the chaos and use THAT as a means of control. i.e. your melee teammates will hate you.

Fire/Storm- (one I've leveled to 50) is a damage monster, a nice soloist, and an endurance Vacuum! (smart IO slotting is really needed with fire/storm) This set truely is a ton of fun (the imps are fine by the way, may squishy but hey you have 3 of them!) I was street sweeping +4s rather easily in Cimerora in my mid 40s.

With storm you'll have to realize that things like floppity flops are going to be used a little differently due to the knockaround nature of storm. But thats ok because that knockaround nature is also a form of control and/or damage.

Oh and Earth/Storm is a beast.

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I still click the powers too! Nothing wrong with that.

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Same here.

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Ditto.

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Yeppers, same here. Just don't like using the numbers. Click FTW!

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All the CCs completely negate Ice Slick because they prevent the mobs from falling down.

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That's only if you assume that Ice Slick is the only way to control. Now it may seem to be the best that ice has to offer, but remember that you're wanting to go with /storm where the -kb can be helpful. So don't rule out those types of powers. Of course you can go the route of chaos and leave out the -kb. But then a lot of your stormy powers will be knocking stuff out of your slick anyway. Decisions...decisions.

Given its only a percentage chance to stun, unless you are looking for a particular set bonus, I'd consider it a damage power and slot accordingly....

Common wise: I'd go minimum 2acc 3 dam leaning towards 2 acc 2 dam 1 rech (5 slotted) or 2 acc 3 dam 1 rech or 2/2/2 acc/dam/rech.

Frankenslotting can pull some nice returns as there are a lot of troller friendly sets (regular or purple) that would fit.

Secondary is also important in this decision.

I leveled up my plant/fire dom before the improvements and haven't played her a bunch since hitting 50. I'm currently leveling up a plant/kin (46) and find it a much much better pet. Now I don't know if it just "works" better with controller than a dom, or if the +damage of /kin is the reason or what, but I see its contribution much more now than when I leveled up the dom.

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I was dupin' some rares and just jerk hacking in general and broke the servers. Sorry.

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This game has gone to the Americans!

Remove rewards from the MA; watch it wither and die.

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dont need Fitness

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Dr. Cox would like a word with you.

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Is Mind really that bad off? I have limited experience with it, but whenever I've teamed with a Mind Controller, I've always felt really, really safe. Mind just seems to offer so many powers that are consistently useful for keeping stuff from shooting back.

Pets can be useful solo, but on large teams I find them much less so. I often find myself wishing I had "just one more control" I could throw at the crowd. Instead I often have a dim witted pet that runs off and pulls aggro, dies, and gets me killed instantly.

I also think the problem might be less that Mind lacks Containment, and more that Containment itself becomes overpowered at high levels. I'm going to be murdered for saying this, but I've long thought that Containment should only apply to single-target attacks and not AoEs. Which would be rough on us, but the fact that we regularly outdamage Defenders, who have a Blast set as a Secondary, has long puzzled me.

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Did you play a controller pre-Containment? A man build with brawl only outdamaged controllers pre Containment. We gave up a lot control wise for containment (in a round about sort of way), but it did allow for controllers as a whole to be viable soloers. Not the fastest but at least possible.

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I much preferred the pre-containment/ED days when we were actually a support AT(a damned good support AT) instead of little wannabe blasters.

So many controllers focus on damage now rather than locking down everything so the real damage dealers can let loose. If I wanted a blaster I'd make one.

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I wouldn't argue with you there and strongly agree with many of those points. What I meant though was I doubted if (for arguments sake) containment was removed we'd get all of our pre containment goodies back and that wouldn't be good. But I whole heartedly agree that I appreciate the AT more as a support role.

It's about unicorns, isn't it?

And I would be the last person that advocates that all sets must be able to solo like a scrapper. I'm one of the few old timey Control board regulars that still believes trollers are meant to be on teams and function best in groups. But trust me, we don't have a few things now that we at least had pre containment (like faster recharging and longers mezzing aoe holds and multiple pets...and we'll never get those back) and a reduction in containment would cripple controllers.

Fire/Kins were powerful pre Containment. My point was if you want to nerf containment, then controllers (non- Ill/rad, fire/kin, etc) would be relegated to the "must have team" types that they used to be.


Imagine a pre Containment Ice/FF.

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Is Mind really that bad off? I have limited experience with it, but whenever I've teamed with a Mind Controller, I've always felt really, really safe. Mind just seems to offer so many powers that are consistently useful for keeping stuff from shooting back.

Pets can be useful solo, but on large teams I find them much less so. I often find myself wishing I had "just one more control" I could throw at the crowd. Instead I often have a dim witted pet that runs off and pulls aggro, dies, and gets me killed instantly.

I also think the problem might be less that Mind lacks Containment, and more that Containment itself becomes overpowered at high levels. I'm going to be murdered for saying this, but I've long thought that Containment should only apply to single-target attacks and not AoEs. Which would be rough on us, but the fact that we regularly outdamage Defenders, who have a Blast set as a Secondary, has long puzzled me.

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Did you play a controller pre-Containment? A man build with brawl only outdamaged controllers pre Containment. We gave up a lot control wise for containment (in a round about sort of way), but it did allow for controllers as a whole to be viable soloers. Not the fastest but at least possible.

QR- isn't all this just fodder for the "official farming discussion thread"?

I'd agree, coalition with some like minded people, but keep all your hard work in your base. Get playing with some of the Level 50 and Guardian chat regulars, see who you fit in with and ask for Coalitions. Before you know it you could have a big network of people to play with. My group is on pretty much every night 9 pm central til ? we're currently running MA arcs in RWZ so we can play mixed teams, currently 44-47ish level.

What is your normal teaming session? Team (large/small), typical mission type, difficulty, etc.

The thirties are always the hump, but thankfully you are beginning to become more powerful...controllers really don't hit their stride, IMO until epics in the 40s.

I have a 50 mind/sonic, if you have specific questions feel free to PM me any questions.

After my 6th lvl 50 controller, I swore I wouldn't level up another................
Oh who am I kidding, my plant/kin is 44 and I'm already trying to figure out what controller I want to make next.

Most fire/storm builds are solo friendly.

And all are FUN friendly!

Awesome. Great to hear. Go Anna Go!

Solo spawns, mass hypnosis is just fine.

Say you have the standard 3 enemy spawn.

MH....Dominate one (containment damage....enemy now held).....Hypnotize the next (containment damage....enemy still slept)........Dominate the next (containment damage....enemy now held).....Levitate the first (containtment damage.....enemy still held from earlier)....Dominate the second (containment damage...enemy held)....... (well you get it)

OR

MH........Terrify (containment damage)....then start working on them with your ST damage powers.

All this can be done pre MC.

And this is all talking soloing. Dont' forget that controllers are better on teams and certain powers become much more effective in a team situation, as long as your teammates know how to work with your powers. I'm not saying any set couldn't use a tweak or two, but mind is a pretty solid set as is.

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Why do people still play blueside again?

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Because some people actually enjoy it. If all you know is one side of course you'll see the differences as "strange" or pick it apart. Blueside was the first, so of course redside has improvements overall. That's to be expected. There are improved zones heroside (Faultline and the RWZ) where the devs learned what worked redside and incorporated them blueside. Some people though find the Rogue Isles ugly and unattractive....may not be a legitimate excuse to you, but one thats important to them. My personal opinion is to laugh when someone complains about travel blueside...please! Play some of the other MMOs then come complain about how long it takes to get across one of our zones. (Hint- its nothing.) Are our attention spans so short now instead of thirty seconds to get to a mission door 2 minutes is too long???? Besides, improvements in the trams, Oro, base and WW portals make travel to any zone so, so , so much quicker than it used to be.

Now I won't argue that some of the original 6 TFs could stand some "plastic surgery", esp Posi and Citadel but I'll say that some of the others are quite fun. And if you think the 35 store openings are annoying now, they used to not be listed on the maps, so you had to look for them, which proved hard if you'd never used a particular origin before. Truthfully though since IOs I don't even touch those stores anyway.

Personally I like both sides for different reasons, strangely travel times have nothing to do with it. As an "old timer" thats seen the game since Issue 1 those things (while improvements) aren't really what turns me on or off to either side. One thing to do is expect Praetoria to be an improvement even on what we have now, then prepare to hear people talk about how terrible redside is because they started the game after Rogue went live. Maybe just look at it as all one game and stop thinking about blue v. red.

facepalm