StrykerX

Bots/Traps is very good against AVs for several reasons:

1) Bots focus on ranged damage, and AVs tend to be more dangerous up close.

2) Bots are tough. They have healing and force fields that give them decent defense, plus innate resistances. Traps adds Force Field Generator to make them even harder to hit. Add in a pet defense aura IO and Maneuvers and you can basically softcap most of the bots' defense, making them extremely hard to hurt.

3) Bots also provide a +defense shield to the Mastermind. Add in FFG, Maneuvers, and some IOs and you can softcap yourself (or get close) and use Provoke or Challenge to take the aggro yourself. In bodyguard mode with high defense you are almost immortal if you keep the bots out of AoE splash range, and since Goto Defensive and Stay Defensive also give Bodyguard as long as they're within Supremacy range (60 feet) you can park them on one side of a Triage Beacon, stand on the other side, and alternate Web Grenade and your taunt to keep an AV standing still shooting you while the Beacon heals the Bodyguard damage. You even have -damage debuffs in Seeker Drones to help farther.

4) The Assault Bot has -regen in a couple of his attacks, and Poison Trap also has a lot of -regen. Nothing speeds up an AV fight like killing their regeneration. The -resist from Acid Mortar helps too.

Bots/Traps is an almost perfect combination of debuffs, positional controls (caltrops and web grenade), mitigation, and solid damage. After all, people have soloed Giant Monsters with Bots/Traps MMs using SO only builds. My own (fairly cheap build) Bots/Traps MM has something like 40% Ranged and 35% AoE defense and Challenge (I only tank AVs). I can keep an AV or EB stuck in a web and shooting at me while my bots burn him down, and even with less than softcapped defense I can keep the bots going with just Triage Beacon and a rare Aid Other while keeping myself healed with Aid Self. With a higher end build I doubt I'd even need those... the Beacon alone would probably be enough.

EDIT: I forgot one of the big benefits of Traps: Force Field Generator protects from stuns and holds. You can't taunt or web if you are stunned or held, so it really boosts your ability to hold aggro and keep the bots from getting trashed.

/Pain and /Thermal are primarily support sets. They really help a team, but they do little for you while solo (especially before you get your debuffs, which those sets only get at high levels). In addition, Energy Blast is only an average set and Dual Pistols is one of the worst blast sets in the game (performance wise, it looks great). Essentially you are playing a gimped Blaster with a self heal and a bunch of team-only powers until you hit the 30s.

I would suggest a high damage primary (like Fire) or maybe a high utility primary like Dark or Ice. Pair that with a good debuffing secondary like /Dark or /Rad, or /Storm if you like it (some love Storm, some hate it). /Traps can also be good... you lose the self heal and have slightly lower debuffs but you gain defense and mez resistance. Fire/Dark is probably the nastiest solo Corruptor... you get the highest possible damage plus massive debuffs and an excellent self heal. Or go Dark/Dark for so much stacking to-hit debuffs that you might as well be softcapped... though in that case I'd go Defender instead of Corruptor for even nastier debuffs. Honestly, the prime advantage Corruptors get over Defenders is that Defenders can't get Fire Blast... Fire plus a good debuff secondary is the way to go for a solo Corruptor unless you just want something else for theme.

Praetorian Clockwork actually don't have resists, they just heal faster than normal (according to Paragonwiki). Resistance and PPD do have decent S/L resists though, which makes Archery and AR a bit tougher (DP is always a bit tougher ). Heavy AoE is also less useful solo, since you can't adjust the difficulty settings in Praetoria. My suggestions would be:

Ice/Energy - good single target damage, good control, very early Build Up

Ice/Mental - add some AoE and utility to Ice Blast's solid ST damage and control

Rad/Energy - you won't miss much, and you still get stuns and fast Build Up

Fire/Energy - dead mobs can't hurt you. This combo makes mobs dead very quickly.

Energy/Energy - good single target damage, moderate AoE damage, and a surprising amount of mitigation. Plus it's a fun combo as long as you don't team and start tossing AoE knockback wildly.

You could always go Fire/Energy and use Boost Range plus a couple of Damage/Range HOs... that would give you an 80 foot Fire Breath, which should hit a whole spawn reliably when used at long range and followed up by a Fire Ball.

I'm pretty sure Banished Pantheon zombies are weak to Lethal and Fire. I'm not sure about other zombies though, like Vahzalok.

I'd say Bots are the best for AVs if you have a -KB immobilize. They tend to use less-resisted damage types and the Assault Bot's burn patches are extremely damaging if you can keep things in them (at least they are when working right... hopefully they'll be fixed soon).

If you don't have a way to keep the AV from being knocked out of the fire Demons may be a good option. They do a wide range of damage types and they have some -resist on the Hellfire using demons.

Also, both Bots and Demons have healing and some added mitigation. Dead pets do no damage, so being able to stay alive against an AV helps a lot. Bots are the toughest pets, but Demons aren't exactly fragile. Ninjas may well be the best for pure single target damage, even with the more resisted Lethal damage type (they hit hard), but they also die really easily and don't provide any buff to the MM to help them tank. The other reason Bots are so good on AVs is that their force bubble can help the MM softcap and tank for them.

If you stand there turning World of Confusion on and off you aren't using your attacks. Assuming you have 10 targets in range (not at all certain given the 8 foot radius) that's an average of two hit per proc, so 10 total hits of around 72 damage. That's 720 damage in 4 seconds, or 180 DPS at level 50.

By comparison, Buckshot also hits up to 10 targets and deals about 64 damage at level 50. That's 640 damage per shot and it can easily be used every four seconds, so that's 160 DPS just from Buckshot. Slotting one proc in Buckshot and using the other five slots for ED capped damage and recharge plus some accuracy raises it to about 780 damage per shot (assuming the proc hits two out of 10 targets), or 195 DPS. Now factor in that you can go Buckshot -> M30 Grenade -> Buckshot -> Flamethrower and all of those hit at least as many targets as WoC can, but at range... even at Defender damage scales you're doing at least twice the damage unloading with your various AoEs that you would repeatedly toggling World of Procfusion.

Now on some Defenders that don't have much AoE (I'm looking at you, Ice Blast) it might be worth trying. But AR has massive AoE damage so the comparison isn't even close in its case.

That would be funny, and should indeed have a chance to proc every time you toggle it on. Of course your total damage would be less than leaving it on and using other powers, but it would be funny...

Thanks for the build. That looks extremely tough, though it seems better suited for tanking or boss killing than wiping out hordes since Dark Melee has no real AoE damage. Does Mud Pots do enough damage to take care of the minions in the time it takes you to beat down the Lts and bosses, or is it a team tanking build where you assume other people will do the AoE damage?

A couple of Controller suggestions are Fire/Kin and Plant/Storm. Fire/Kins are infamous... they obliterate huge spawns once they are IOed out well but are late bloomers. Once you can use Flashfires every spawn and you have a good AoE from your epic pool you can shut down a large spawn and then use damaged capped AoEs and Hot Feet to finish them off. There's a reason it's the top choice for farming...

Plant/Storm is just a ton of fun. You can turn a spawn against itself with Seeds of Confusion, debuff the heck out of their defense and resists with Freezing Rain, and then bury them in Roots and Carrion Creepers. It takes a fair bit of recharge to do it to every spawn, but once you get there it's a lot of fun and x8 is very doable provided the enemies don't resist confuse. And later on you can dump Tornadoes and Lightning Storms into the mix too while negating the KB from them, which makes them quite good damage sources. It's a decently fast (not as good as a Fire/Kin, but what is?) combo that's really fun to play.

I doubt RttC has enough to-hit debuff to matter, especially against purple con enemies. Even fully slotted it's only about 3% against +4s and not much better against +3s, and it's far more likely to be slotted for regen. I've always looked at the to-hit debuff as more of an extra source of threat since mobs don't like debuffs...

I think Stone Melee is probably the way to go due to the higher mitigation, but I'm not sure if WP, Shield, Electric, or SR is the best secondary. I looked at Dark Armor (specifically going for Dark Regeneration every 10-15 seconds with a Theft of Essence proc) but even with the massive healing I'm not sure 50% resists and 15-20% or so defense (at best) would survive for even 10 seconds against a horde of +4s. Stone/SR might be the best approach, simply because SR laughs at defense debuffs and high end mobs have quite a few of those...

I've been thinking about trying a Brute again (never stayed with villains long pre-GR), and I'm wondering what would be best for really high end mobs since that's what I'd want a Brute for. Ideally, what I'm looking for is something that can survive +4/x8 spawns of as many different enemy types as possible (ideally all of them). AV soloing isn't a big concern, since I find that a bit tedious... I just want to be as tough as possible against all damage types while still packing enough damage to kill things. (Preferably not Stone Armor since Granite's penalties are a pain.)

Does anyone have any suggestions? Obviously this won't be cheap, but it's more of a long term project. I'd prefer to avoid purples and PvP IOs but aside from that I'm willing to buy expensive sets and uniques. I suspect a softcapped SS/Shield with lots of recharge might be a good start, or possibly SS/WP or Stone/WP. Or is fighting all factions at +4/x8 even possible on a Brute? I know some are, but things like Malta, Carnies or Rularru might be a bit tricky. I know Ill/Rads can solo anything in the game that can be soloed, but I'd really like to see what a good Brute can do...

It sounds like it's set up so that AVs can occasionally be knocked down by a "lucky shot" but not reliably enough to be useful mitigation. I kind of like it, because just making them immune is boring while this system prevents any meaningful chain KB while occasionally allowing a "cool, I just decked an AV" moments.

With Bots / Storm your main strategy will probably be to drop Freezing Rain and debuff with Hurricane and / or Snow Storm as needed. I'd suggest focusing on getting enough recharge to use Freezing Rain every spawn and then worry about enough recovery to keep the storms blowing nonstop and some defense. At higher levels high recharge is especially nice since it lets you drop multiple Tornadoes and Lightning Storms (I'd go with the Mu patron pool to get the AoE immobilize with -KB). As for defense, your Protector bubbles give you positional defense and Smashing but not Lethal, so I'd focus on adding a bit of Ranged (also good for avoiding mezzes) and rely on Hurricane for the rest. If you don't use Hurricane, you may want to try for high Ranged defense or go with Scorpion and try for S/L, but I'd recommend focusing on recharge and recovery plus a bit of Ranged defense and using Hurricane or purple pills when you really need to not be hit.

Even against AVs Hurricane fully slotted for to-hit debuff is over 5% debuff, and against normal spawns it's a massive 35%. Against +2s or even +3s you won't need a whole lot of extra ranged defense beyond your Protector bubble (and Maneuvers if you choose to run it) to be effectively softcapped against Hurricaned targets, and most things won't be meleeing you at all. Once you get good at Hurricane herding you can shove things into corners and watch the bots burn them down while barely ever getting hit. Add in Freezing Rain for extra damage and as many Lightning Storms and Tornadoes as you can spam (just because it's insanely fun to do so ) and you've got a great wrecking machine. The Tornadoes may actually hurt your damage unless you can immobilize the targets, but you'll have trouble resisting using them while solo because it's just so darn funny. Just don't do it on teams unless there's plenty of -KB or they don't mind chasing (that's why all-Storm teams are so fun, they never mind.)

I mainly use Hurricane in two situations:

1) When I have an enemy group I can shove into a corner or other tight quarters

2) When I need to debuff a group in order to safely fight them

In the second case, I don't actually stand there for long. I just run / jump by and brush them with the Hurricane without shoving them too far. The debuff lasts for ten seconds, so you can just circle a spawn shoving them in closer together and the debuff will last until your next lap. In the case of bosses or higher, just shove them a bit every few seconds and stay back out of repel range the rest of the time if there's no handy corner to shove them into.

Hurricane is a huge to-hit debuff and also a -range debuff, so it makes a big difference in tough fights. You just have to practice nudging things with it long enough to debuff them (one tick, or 1/4 second) without scattering them all over the place.

(It's especially fun on office maps with large teams where you'll get a huge spawn standing in a little alcove... just walk up to the front of the alcove from one side and flatten the whole spawn back into a corner, where you of course drop Freezing Rain and a Lightning Storm on them. )