Paralux

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Very nice guide Paralux!

I'm not exactly short on alts at the moment, but after reading through this I've added a Plant/Storm to the end of the "try next" list.

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Yay! The more the merrier. (And yes, I did forget to mention how proc-friendly the build was).

One last addendum, having finally hit 50. To me one of the most fun things about the plant/storm combination is that no two powers work remotely the same way or for the same purpose. When I play a blaster I get a strong single target ranged attack, a medium single target ranged attack, and a weak single target ranged attack. Meh. (I could say simmilar things about Scrappers, Tanks, and the Defender secondaries). But with a plant/storm, every power looks significantly different from every other power and is used significantly differently. SO each new power (with the exceptions of Swift and Health) seriously changed the way I played the toon, which made it continually interesting. At least until L40 - I made the mistake of choosing the Power Mastery epic and didn't really feel I had any new powers after that, making the home run seem massively dull and tedious (would have been better if I'd picked any of the other epics, but even then it would have been dull by comparison).

Gaea's Avenger (Plant/Storm 'troller) just dinged 50 (anout 4 hours ago). My first 50.

And celebrated by 5-slotting purples in two separate powers at a total cost of 40 million inf. It's nice being a controller.

Swap the doctored wounds and the Numina out for three Touch of the Nictus when you can get them? (If you have Stamina an extra 75% regen on its own should be more than enough fwiw)

On one of my three main (heroside) toons I have to say that yes, purple is better. I had a streetsweeping mission the other day (solo) and was soloing against clusters of three purples or two purples and a red without too much trouble (red Elite Bosses can be a pain to solo OTOH - and only my MM has tried soloing a purple EB (Bots/Traps with >40% defence on the bots - the EB didn't stand a chance)). The second of my main toons excels at debuffing and damage over time - if the mobs aren't purple they die so fast I sometimes feel like deadweight (and if they are purple with me around and a competent group they die fast anyway).

On the other hand, two of my main toons are trollers and the third is an offender. Buffs and debuffs galore - why would hitting or hurting purples be a problem? (My fire/psi blaster on the other hand cuts through low level stuff like a hot knife through butter but doesn't play much on the higher difficulties without a tank to hide behind).

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Got Storm/Elec here.

For some reason, elec just feels weak. I know looking at the numbers it's almost the same damage as the other sets when compairing like for like powers. I also have an elec/fire blaster and thats the same.

One of those can't put your finger on things.

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I think it's what you are missing rather than what you have. You have three AoE attacks and one's your nuke - but one of the other two (Short Circuit) does less damage than Charged Bolts. In short, your AoE damage performance is mediocre at best. Against single targets you are also below average - a number of sets have a 2.12 damage scale single target attack with a shorter range (Archery's blazing arrow is slightly higher because it also sets people on fire, psy's Will Domination is slightly lower because it's psychic damage and has a sleep effect, and Ice's Bitter Ice Blast is higher because it has a recharge of 16s rather than 10 - dark is the only other set to lack this attack). You are missing the powerful attack entirely, meaning that your single target damage is low. And your secondary effects are all-or-nothing - either you've more or less wiped out your target's end bar (meaning it's not doing much) or it has a little left (meaning that it doesn't even slow down). And your primary doesn't provide much assistance with the End drain (see Elec/Elec blasters for how it can work) so the controls go to waste.

In short, you lack the highest level single target attack, you do low AoE damage, and your secondary effect simply doesn't work most of the time.

Hope that helped

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not perma hasten anymore :S

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My Kin/Sonic would disagree strongly with that assertion. And My Ill/Rad is trying to become another counter-example. You can get perma-hasten with IO set bonusses - it's just hard work now rather than simply throwing in a handful of +recharge sets. (You can even get perma-hasten without kin or rad, but it's expensive).

Except that there are definite IOs that trigger when a pet uses a power. My Audrey has a Lady Grey: Proc for negative damage, and that thing fires off often enough. But only from the attacks that do defence debuffs.

I never said Plant outdamages Fire. I said it does almost the damage of fire.

You're half right about Carrion Creepers fwiw. Carrion Creepers summons an intangible pet that summons the tangible underlings. Yes, the creeper vines can be killed - but they only last 15 seconds anyway, and I'd rather a mob hit a vine than hit me. The invisible, intangible (and mobile) creeper patch that summons the vines is much easier to perma than volcanic gasses (basics: 120s up/360s for the Creeper Patch recharge vs 60s/240s for the Volcanic Gasses).

Plant vs Fire - power comparison

Fully slotted, Carrion Creepers do a little over half the damage over time per mob of fully slotted and contained Hot Feet (although with densely packed targets if one vine target dies within the 15s it can hit another, and there's also damage caused by the creeper patch to anything that was near the target that died).

Then there's Roots. 1.8 times as much damage as Fire Cages (twice as much damage as the other AoE immobs) - and due to the spread out nature of many mobs, Fire Cages on its own often does more overall damage than Hot Feet. Assuming 100% dambuff and 100% recharge (the recharge really isn't hard when you count haste) then Roots does almost the damage over time per target of Fire Cages with 100% damage buff (and both can use more procs and has them trigger more often) and over a wider area. This then puts Fire Cages damage against the Creepers - which is fairly close if you've fully slotted the cages (Creepers doesn't take much slotting, of course).

Finally Audrey vs Fire Imps. At single target damage there is not even a question - the flaming monkeys absolutely rock (and that's Plant's real weakness). A very heavy win for the imps here if there is only one target, and the imps are more survivable. On the other hand, Audrey is ranged and gets to fire ranged AoE attacks (one cone spray and one AoE Immobilise), and can be procced for negative damage. Finally the Fire Imps can be immobilised which utterly neutralises them...

Fire still wins, but most of the difference is Audrey vs the Fire Imps.

Earth vs Plant in the superteam.

If we were talking one controller in a team with three blasters then I'd agree with you (and probably recommend Earth/Kin). But we've already got controls from Ice, Fire, Illusion, Rad, and Storm. I'll be impressed if anything is still moving with that little collection of controls anyway. On its own an Earth controller can normally lock down four spawns (one slept, one gassed or stunned, and one falling over in quicksand while it fights the fourth) whereas Plant can normally lock down only three (one slept, one confused, one fought). Which matters if your team mates are all blasters. But the team has three other controllers - and if you are facing off against half a dozen spawns at once you're doing something wrong somewhere. (Most controllers can lock down at least one spawn other than the one being fought).

In short, if there's one controller on the team I'd recommend Earth - and if two I'd recommend a Plant and an Illusion. With half a dozen you can control whatever you want anyway, so I'd go for the raw damage of pure fire for all the controllers.

Thing about Plant is that it does almost the damage of a Fire while having more control and not needing to get into melee. (Roots is on a 0.6 damage scale vs 0.33 for Fire Cages, and Carrion Creepers do quite a lot of damage themselves). I also haven't forgotten Mez Protection - I'm simply relying on mezzing first (Seeds of Confusion, Deceive) or distraction (Phantom Army - Threat Level 5 and taunt attacks) to severely limit the number of purples needed.

As for the balanced superteam, I'd swap out the Earth for a Plant - with three sets of AoE immobs one of Earth's two signature powers (Earthquake - the other being Volcanic Gasses) is going to be very situational, and Quicksand doesn't do much other than debuff def to foes who have already been immobilised. Finally, when everyone is slinging single target holds around and debuffing people through the floor Volcanic Gasses probably isn't going to be that useful. Plant's Seeds of Confusion, Roots, and Carrion Creepers all have nothing the rest do getting in their way.

Just thinking about putting a +recharge enhancement in a pet - would it speed up the attack speed?

I'm thinking, of course, about the secondary effects - a +Recharge from Undermined Defences in Audrey - or a +End/Rec from Kinetic Crash in the Phantasm.

I was trying to figure out the ultimate All [Archetype] Superteam. I reached controllers and got stuck.

The reason is that I'm trying to justify a fourth controller in the team as adding something beyond extra DpS and Burst Damage (even on the all 'fender superteam, you get the rolling nukes). What I have is:

2 Mutant Plants (Plant/Rad)
1 AV Killer (Ill/Rad).

Reasoning behind rad:
Accelarate Metabolism. Every 120 seconds, the team comes together for a group hug for +90% recharge, +90% Recovery, +60% damage, and a lot of speed. Who needs Stamina when you've got Perma-Haste and +90% Recovery (+slots) by the time you can pick up SOs.
Debuffs. 'Nuff said.
Choking Cloud. If something does make it into melee, overlapping choking clouds can handle it.
Mutation: Why would the odd death slow us?
Heal.

Reasons for plant:
High control - with a +160% recharge before slotting, and a significant tohit buff from leadership, Seeds of Confusion is going to be up extremely fast.
High AoE damage. Buffed by three assaults, three AMs, and possibly some enervating fields. (And the assaults and the enervating fields are going to affect the Carrion Creepers as well).

Reason for the Ill:
Tank in a pocket - the Phantom Army can take the hits - and it's going to be recharging fast.
Invis for the party.
Deceive to pick off the bosses and stragglers SoC misses.
High single target damage - can go head to head with GMs on its own sometimes (and often with AVs)

Is there anything I've forgotten from this flatten everything superteam? Hits hard, damages fast, has massive control. Slotting light (with that recharge and three tactics, little will be needed for the attack powers other than three damage SOs). No fitness needed with the +recovery from slotted AM. Should be on invincible immediately after finishing the Penelope Yin arc in Faultline... Also is there anything better?

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Ummmmm..... NO!
your comment about not having a self heal is actually incorrect..

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Doh! Mea culpa. On the other hand those are all 360s recharge heals, so I consider them buffs-that-heal rather than actual heals. I should have mentioned that in the guide, and mentioned the hp boost.

As for invul, there are reasons it's been significantly boosted with i13. Yes, good play and good slotting can compensate for almost anything - and Invul is superb against smashing/lethal. But as a set pre i13 (I don't know about post the changes) it was weak against anything else. I will plead guilty to focussing on the strengths - DA is IMO an underrated set with the strengths not being that well known.

OK. I am now officially jealous of the US servers. And Aspirant (US Servers) is claiming a screenshot of soloing one of them

Quick I13 update: the bug in the Fly Trap has been fixed, causing some of its resistances to be increased to somthing respectable (20% if the City of Data preview is accurate). On the other hand this means that resistences to cold, fire, and negative are now strongly negative (plants burn). Fortunately the two more common problems here (Fire and Cold) are partially covered by steaming mist if you are close enough.

The best secondary for Dark Armour is almost certainly Energy Melee. For the first 25 levels it looks OK. But at L26 you simply turn on the Mag 2 Stun aura of Oppressive Gloom and never look back. With Oppressive Gloom thrown in, bosses are stunned 30% of the time by a simple energy punch (or 10% of the time with a barrage). Stun (the power) is now effectively a Mag 5 stun with a base duration of 12 seconds, a base recharge of 20 seconds, and that can stun all bosses in melee with you and within 9' of your target. Oh, and the HP loss from Energy Transfer (damage scale 8.3 and 11 foot radius (!)) can be utterly cancelled by the superb heal in Dark Armour.

For 90% of the game's content an Ice tank is definitely stronger than a Dark tank, so I'm not surprised he finds it slightly weak. On the other hand psi ignores any defence ice armour provides, and a lot of weapons (especially rad) do defence debuffs.

Can you Flashback before L25 anyway?

30% def? Nice. Why is it easier with Dark than others? (And could you post the build please?

To me the important thing about a tank isn't what it can tank - even a well built i12 invulnerability tank can do a respectable job of tanking if you don't want to herd half the map (or it does smashing/lethal damage), it's what it can't tank that measures the power of the tank. Every tank was designed with weaknesses - this is a feature, not a bug. But it is my claim (and the claim of this guide) that although there are better tanks in most circumstances than Dark Armour, Dark Armour will never be the wrong tool for the job.

The Duty of a Tank: Holding Aggro

The role of a tank in a team is to hold aggro - and the reliable means of holding aggro is through taunts and taunt auras. The only type of tank to fail at this step is the Willpower tank, which only has a Mag 3 taunt aura, and so has a much harder time keeping the attention of bosses than other tanks do. (All taunts come from the secondary). Note that the Dark Armour tank will regularly be running Mag 8 worth of Taunt Aura after L26 or so. Although this is a place where Dark Armour wins (being able to strip and hold aggro against other tanks) it's not that serious.

Holes in the Tank: Late Appearing Defences

Here again the Dark tank wins. It has access to all its defensive toggles (and its excessively powerful (but expensive) heal) by L12. Although taking all these may lead to putting off Stamina to L22 (it did with me). That said, L18 for a defence isn't that serious. And you can even cope with waiting longer to finish your defences - for one thing most tanks (other than Ice) are going to want tough. There is, however, one clear loser here: Stone. Stone form is comfortably the worst tank until you get granite armour, meaning it takes 31 levels to really get going (before that it's a weakish tank with no self-heal). For most tanks the L32 power is either god-mode or a res.

Holes in the tank: Damage Types

Here is where my favourite, and last survivor of the big three (Ice/Willpower/Stone) fails. Most tanks have something they don't resist or defend against. And in most cases that's Psi damage.

Ice has neither defence nor resistance to psi damage (and is weak against fire but laughs at cold). Stone tanks can be forced out of granite armour by psi damage (although minereals is more than sufficient to handle most psi). Invulnerability running all the toggles has negative protection from psi in i12 (psi actually has a better chance of hitting and does full damage if unyielding is up). And fire has no protection at all from psi. Willpower has decent resistance from psi. But the runaway winner in the tanking psi stakes (it's barely even a contest) is Dark Armour. 50% resistance to psi damage before slotting. (Almost 80% with just SOs)

On the other hand even Dark Armour has its weaknesses in resistance - if you ignore toxic (20% resistance here is the same as most other tanks) it only has a 20% unslotted resistance to energy (and 5% unslotted defence). Annoying, but most tanks have such minor holes - and energy damage isn't all that common and the hole isn't that big. Shrugging off almost a third of damage when slotted in your worst damage type is not that bad.

Holes in the Tank: Def

Only a minor case here. But half the mobs in the game seem to do def debuffs. Especially Praetorians. This really weakens Willpower against Rad, and causes Ice to struggle badly.

Dark Armour Weaknesses: Knockback and Slow

Then there are holes in Dark Armour's resistances (most tanks have them). To slow, knockback, and recharge slow. The lack of knockback resistance is ... annoying, but fairly easy to fix (4-slotting kinetic crash in Kick will handle most of it, and then there are two anti-knockback IOs you can get). As for the lack of slow resistance, on the rare occasions you need it (rather than simply taunting the enemy into coming to you), there's a simple solution: Superspeed (see below for why to take superspeed) - and simply overpower the slow. Likewise you need a lot of recharge slow to overpower Haste. Not that recharge really matters for a tank other than on the heal anyway...

Supposed Dark Armour Weakness: End

It is commonly thought that Dark Armour is end-heavy. This is a partial myth. The defensive toggles for almost all tank sets are either four defensive toggles at 0.21 End/s or 3 at 0.26 End/s, and one PBAoE damage aura at 0.52 End/s. The expense in Dark Armour is twofold - firstly the heal is extremely expensive (33 End unslotted) but can easily heal a tank 100% of the way. Secondly, Dark Armour tanks have extra taunt auras. One of the two does Mag 2 PBAoE Stun and does trivial damage to the tank (damage low enough that this isn't an actual worry) but costs trivial End. The second is probably chosen more often and does a fear and to hit debuff - but has a base cost of 0.52 End/Second, and it is this second taunt aura combined with getting the toggles early that gives Dark Armour its reputation.

Conclusion

So there you have it, the weaknesses of the Dark Armour tank are smaller and easier to overcome than that of any other tank armourset in the game if you want to tank

Its main weakness is therefore that it lacks a decent tier 9, and can not just wade through any type of enemy (other than minions who simply get tenderised by the combination of the stun aura and the damage aura) without at least occasionally needing to self-heal unlike Ice, Granite, or even Willpower (which lacks a self-heal but gets a lot of regeneration to make up for it).

Note: Dark Stealth-Tanking

The concept of a stealth tank seems like an oxymoron, but without even trying too hard, Dark Armour has all the tools needed to pull it off. Cloak of Darkness (the immobilise resistance and 5% defence bonus) grants stealth, and running superspeed can upgrade that stealth past the perception limits even of most archvillains. This allows you to both ghost missions, and to choose who gets to see you. But taunted foes will stay taunted until the taunt expires. So you can rush in before the alpha strike lands, and seriously screw the enemy up. It's a useful little trick that no other tank can use (the results when a tank uses a Stealth IO appear to be pretty bad in most cases from what I hear).

And the inf cost of the above is ... ?

Seriously, it looks as if you've made level 50 katana wielders very effective, and grats on that - but I want my builds to start coming good before the late 40s.

1: Acc and Dam on carrion creepers don't work. They do lots of damage - just in small ticks.

2: I'll tell you on my planty when I've got it (I'm thinking probably not).

3: What do you mean minimal damage? The damage of Roots is double every other controller AoE other than fire - meaning that spamming roots often does more damage over time than an Electrical blaster spamming his AoE does (see my plant/storm guide for details). Seeds of Confusion can eat entire spawns alive on its own and provides very good aggro management. And Carrion Creepers again does low damage per tick - but the ticks add up when you've got about 9 creeper vines wacking half a dozen targets (and you didn't even need to cast it in combat).

What's probably confusing you is the small size of each damage tick - plant certainly has no shortage of total damage output, especially against large spawns. (IME it's just as fast to take down a dozen lieutenants as it is to take down one with plant - and no more dangerous if they start bunched up).

Just to put the numbers into perspective, one hit from a carrion creeper vine does about 30 damage, two thirds of that toxic (the least resisted damage type of all IIRC). They'll get three attacks over the course of their life for 90 or so damage (now we're getting somewhere). Say 75 allowing chances of missing. Half the mobs spawn a carrion creeper - 37.5 damage per target per ten seconds. Doesn't sound like much, I'll agree. But that adds up - ten targets give an average of 375 damage on a 10 second cycle from one cast of the creepers, and the damage cascading if it kills one mob. Throw in Roots and Melt Armour (or freezing rain in my case) and most blasters have a hard time keeping up with your total damage without nuking.

And the best thing about Carrion Creepers is that they form no part of your attack chain (following you around as they do) and can be cast from round corners.

I don't offhand know if plant or fire does more total damage as a controller set but for AoE damage the two are comfortably in the lead and nipping hard at the heels of many blaster sets. And Fire doesn't have Seeds of Confusion - which is an absolutely monstrous control.

Note: The City of Data indicates that the Empower combination has a damage buff of a third of the damage of Blinding Feint. Stalker Dual Blades is claiming +10% to hit, +20% damage.

I'm trying to work out whether to go Weaken or Empower first on my tank (given the Dark Armour auras).

OK, thanks.

Note: I've read that the actual damage from Attack Vitals is either half that of the Vengeful Strike cone in the combo or based on your target's initial hp. Also that Empower increases damage as well as tohit.

Scrapper:

Attack Vitals:

Cone - 5 * 12.51 damage on target. (Half Vengeful Strike?)

Empower:

+3.3% to hit for 10s

Sweep:

35.66 lethal damage (=half of Typhoon's Strike), 0.67kb knockback (i.e. knockdown)

Weaken:

-7.5% to hit and defence for 20s

Tanker:

Attack Vitals:

Cone - 5 * 8.90 damage on target.
Note: I've read that the actual damage from Attack Vitals is either half that of the Vengeful Strike cone in the combo or based on your target's initial hp.

Empower:

+3.3% to hit for 10s (? - this doesn't seem to match other sources)

Sweep:

25.36 lethal damage (=half of Typhoon's Strike), 0.67kb knockback (i.e. knockdown)

Weaken:

-7% to hit and defence for 20s

Brute:

Attack Vitals:

Cone - 5 * 8.34 damage on target. (Half Vengeful Strike?)

Empower:

+3.3% to hit for 10s

Sweep:

23.77 lethal damage (=half of Typhoon's Strike), 0.67kb knockback (i.e. knockdown)

Weaken:

-7.5% to hit and defence for 20s

Stalker:

Attack Vitals:

Cone - 5 * 11.12 damage on target. (Half Vengeful Strike?)

Empower:
10% to hit/+20% damage for 20s

Sweep:
31.70 lethal damage (=half of Typhoon's Strike), 0.67kb knockback (i.e. knockdown)

Weaken:

-7.5% to hit and defence for 20s

Thanks.

I hadn't spotted the heal bonus, thanks. On the other hand, it only takes the effect of the heal up from 44.3% of your health bar per target to 46.1%. Not sure which way I prefer given your way drops regen by about 6%.

The defence from the cloak doesn't suppress in combat :-) Therefore it provides the same defence as Weave, at a lower end cost and with quite a few goodies thrown in for good measure. (The only downside is that instead of seeing a character you see an amorphous black blob).

Also there's one silly mistake in the build - take kick not boxing. Your hands are full anyway so boxing would probably cause redraw. Also if you're feeling poor, take kick at 30 and 4-slot it at 31. This will allow you four Kinetic Crashes (doesn't matter which - you won't be kicking anyway), providing Mag 4 knockback protection for less than half a million inf. (And having done that you can push Toughness up to L32, finishing off your defences six levels early but pushing Attack Vitals back from L35 to L38).

I've seen the power quantification on Red Tomax, but been utterly unable to find any quantification on the combo moves for tankers - does it exist? If so, where, please?

What are people complaining about Phalanx Fighting for? Slotted it's an autopower that can provide p to 10% defence for free - that's nice.

But what everyone seems to have missed is that it says "Each friendly entity", not each player. There's no way that my Plant/Storm controller is going to be that close to a tank (a Blapper or fire/kin might). But between the tornado (which doesn't cause knockback through the rootspam), Audrey, the Carrion Creeper generator, and half a dozen Carrion Creeper Vines my plant/storm is likely to be providing seven entities at close range (for the full defence bonus) on his own. I'm assuming here that the tank will be right in the thick of things - at which point the creeper vines show up near them. And with a little positioning by the tank then there will be a 10% defence bonus. As an autopower. (And then there's the entity known as Freezing Rain, and a few others)

Off the top of my head, Fire/Kins only manage four - themselves (running Hot Feet) and three fire imps. Sometimes the power will be worthless - but it only takes a couple of the right sort of controller (or sometimes other types) and the defence will really spike at times. For that matter, it'll be really useful in AV/GM fights (i.e. the most important sort) - all the scrappers, tankers, and melee pets are going to circle round the AV.

Situational, and dependent on the right team. But certainly worth a slot. Especially on a def-heavy set.