TeChameleon

... oops. Oh well.

And welcome back, CB. Where've you been hiding?

Eh, six of one, half a dozen of the other- Achilles' Heel is far more likely to go off in Freezing Rain than on the 'trap, simply because it's AoE, while the Flytrap's attacks are (almost?) all single-target. Your pick- Freezing Rain, with a little bit of recharge, is up often enough for it to be worthwhile, in my opinion.

... wait, you need a team to fight 20+ mobs? <.<

From all I've heard (and from my own experience), procs drop in value in direct proportion to the damage of a power; the higher the damage, the lower the worth of the proc in terms of actually increasing your DPS. The 'trap is high enough damage that proccing it out is probably a bit of a waste of time... although the Achilles' Heel proc might not be a bad idea, as I think that all of the Flytrap's attacks benefit from it (mind you, if you've just got the one, you're better off putting it in Freezing Rain, I think).

Hrm- alrighty, Direwolf. Here's a stab at an updated build. I've squeezed a bit of recharge out of things, and made some alterations as well; the stealth would only be in effect when Hover was active (and for 120 seconds afterwards), so I shifted the Stealth IO into Sprint and put the Freebird: Endurance in its place for if you're like me, and gravity is something that happens to other people (on this toon, a LOT of other people ). If you don't tend to hover in combat, feel free to ignore that and put the Freebird: Stealth back in, since it's much cheaper than either the Unbounded Leap or Celerity Stealth IO.

Changing out the Basilisk's Gaze: Chance for Recharge Slow for the Curare Triple makes a fairly significant difference in how fast the holds recharge and how long they last- nearly 8 seconds off recharge and 2 seconds onto duration on the AoE and 0.5 seconds off recharge and 4 seconds onto duration on the Single-Target hold. It bumps the accuracy of both up a fair bit as well ('bout 10%). The -rech proc was a bit redundant in a Grav power anyways. And the 10% regen? Uhm... self-heal? >.>

The effects of the Performance Shifter Proc don't show up properly in Mid's, but it is a gives about an 0.2 Recovery boost, which is a minor net gain from the switch from the generics, and you can get the little set bonus if you use the Performance Shifter Endmod, which is otherwise identical to a generic Endmod IO.

Speaking of Endmods- I moved a slot from Recovery Aura into Hasten (which is what I replaced Dimension Shift with, since D. Shift is... kinda useless :/). With the recharge you already had, you're actually only about 12 seconds off permaHasten, which isn't bad.

Lesse... other bits... oh yeah- shifted some slots from Fly to Hover; if you don't mind losing the little bit of Regen from the Freebirds, you could change those to BotZs and get that defense back.

Anyways, see what you think!

EDIT- If you want mez protection, pretty much the only way for 'trollers to get it is via the Psionics APP, which would cut into your damage a bit (you'd lose Fire Blast, basically- I don't think Psionic Tornado sacrifices much to Fireball).

*shrug*

I've only run into this mentality rarely, largely because it's not as prevalent in later levels, at least in my experience, and I haven't brought up a lowbie in a while.

Heh. Did hit it not too terribly long ago, though- playing my TA/A 'fender, duoed with my fiancee's Fire/Fire Blaster. Joined a Katie, and they were trying to recruit one last person (with minimal success). After a while, I suggested that we just go, and one of the team members complained that we 'needed a tank'. I proceeded to point out that we had three Controllers, plus my rather control-heavy Defender, and I think one other 'fender as well. We were going to be fine. This was rebuffed, since we 'obviously' needed a Tank.

After a certain amount of irritable sarcasm on my part, they reluctantly acquiesced, and we ripped through the TF like it wasn't there (witches spawning on a glue patch + oil slick = hilarity).

As to your comment, Blunt_Trauma, there's a simple way to put it.

"Will not play with 'pure' healers."

Eh, PvP, no clue. Plant/Thermal is wonderful in teams, and, while not brilliant solo, still quite solid.

I actually just finished duoing my Plant/Storm to 50 with my fiancee's Plant/Thermal a few hours ago, so I might have some insights

Plant/Thermal is... hmm. "Nasty" would be a good adjective, I think. It doesn't have the raw AoE damage output of my Plant/Storm, but it is far better at killing single hard targets, thanks in large part to Melt Armour and Heat Exhaustion- those two debuffs alone made the difference between our SG team pitilessly murdering a Psi/Willpower AV and another team from our SG having a miserable time keeping the thing down, since it kept... on... rezzing. They just couldn't kill it fast enough, despite having significantly more damage than our team.

Plant has wonderful levels of control- Carrion Creepers and Seeds of Confusion are some of the best Controller powers out there, and the Giant Flytrap, while not the sturdiest (or smartest >.<) pet out there, does quite respectable damage, especially when it can be cajoled into closing to melee.

Thermal is a quite nice jack-of-all-trades set- you have some good buffs, some decent heals, some strong debuffs, and a rez that blows up all the enemies :3

Solo, as a Plant/Thermal, you can be quite competent, and your combination of controls, heals, buffs, and debuffs will ensure that you are welcome on just about any team.

If you want to try something different, and are comfortable with Knockback, Storm is a wonderfully fun secondary for Plant, and packs some rather respectable power, especially once you get your final two powers, Tornado and Lightning Storm. Although I wouldn't recommend it if your video card isn't up to spec... my motto is 'if your video card isn't screaming, I'm not doing my job'

... good bloody hell.

Thanks for the catch, Gavin, that power is infuriatingly difficult to figure out how to slot.

*grin*

Maybe I'm just evil, but on the Plant/Storm Controller I've been playing most often lately, my motto has been "If your video card isn't crying, I'm not doing it right." Snow Storm alone is no match for Snow Storm, Tornado, absolute masses of Carrion Creeper vines, Lightning Storm, Freezing Rain, Spirit Tree, and Hurricane all going at the same time as the mobs fire off whatever pyrotechnics they have at each other, courtesy of Seeds of Confusion. Oh, and with so many Roots and Strangler vines that it can be hard to tell how many enemies are actually still alive in that mess. Heck, half the time I have trouble seeing what's going on.

Teammates mostly put up with it since everything in my pet maelstrom is firmly under control, dying before the second bounce, or some combination of both

To respond to your question more directly, eh, save your endurance. If you need things slowed down as a panic button, I doubt anybody's going to be complaining about being unable to see when the things they can't see are killing them slower.

I'd be very leery of targeted AoE procs in Creepers- they don't seem to work properly, except on the first firing of the power.

One interesting use I saw of Lightning Storm procs (and one I would use myself if I had the spare slot, but sadly don't, as I'm going purple-crazy... and have already bought the bloody things >.<) was putting a Devastation: Chance to Hold proc in there. I may actually still do that, debating on whether or not I want the extra control or the extra damage and that bit of Psychic defense. But given that the Lightning Storm strikes are actually AoE, it works surprisingly well- saw a lot of Tesla Cages during those fights.

Well- this is my final build (have everything, but need nine bubbles to fifty as I type this). Obviously, I'm going for the 'kill everything before it gets me' option.

Click this DataLink to open the build!

Proccing Carrion Creepers is a somewhat cheaper, and still quite good, way to go for setting them up for damage (they'll take Impeded Swiftness, Trap of the Hunter, and Explosive Strike, if memory serves- the Positron's Blast and Kinetic Combat ones can be slotted, but don't proc off the vine-flails, as I understand it, reducing their usefulness somewhat).

Also, if you put the Stealth IO in Sprint, you can just leave Sprint turned on and keep Stealth active- it basically becomes slow superspeed at that point.

Hmm. Don't have a lot of time at the moment, but my .02 Inf:

- Get Tornado. If you're thinking of dropping Air Superiority anyways, that's a good spot for it. Lose the slots in Snow Storm and slide them over to the 'nado- it does very nice things for your damage, and makes a decidedly handy panic button.

- I'd suggest swapping the Touch of Lady Greys for Analyze Weakness in Freezing Rain, mostly because I prefer the bonuses, but also because FR does take an accuracy check. The Achilles' Heel proc is quite nice in Freezing Rain as well- an extra 20% -res is nothing to sneeze at, and it can be comfortably subbed in for the Analyze Weakness proc.

- The purple Immobilize set in Carrion Creepers is a phenomenal waste. Creepers do a crapton of damage; I've got Ragnarok planned for 'em, with the Impeded Swiftness proc taking place of the Chance for Knockdown, since that's quite spectacularly useless in Creepers

- If you could squeeze another three slots from someplace and put one each into your APP stuff, adding one more from each of the sets you've got slotted in them, you could get another 17.5% global recharge. Certainly wouldn't hurt, I'm thinking. Maybe the sixth slots from Entangle, Strangler, and Roots? >.>

- Slotting Roots for damage is actually a viable option; I've got a Posi's Blast set in mine, complete with proc, heh... I actually put the purple sets in Entangle and Strangler.

- If you're taking Superspeed for stacking with Steamy Mist for full invis, you can save yourself a power pick and just use a Celerity +Stealth, or Unbounded Leap +Stealth. Maybe sub in the Spirit Tree or O2 Boost?

Anyways, not sure how much all this will help or not, but there you have it.

Nova is one of my favourite powers in the game, bar none. It's not terribly efficient, of course, but on teams, it makes spawns go bye-bye. I love the mixture of amusement and exasperation you get from the tanks when they go in to gather aggro, and all of a sudden there's no spawn any more, aside from a handful of mauled bosses.

Yes, you very, very definitely want Aim. It makes a big difference. Aim + Build Up is considerably more powerful than just Build Up by itself, and shoots your burst damage way up.

... wait, you said /Dev? Right. This right here is part of why you're having trouble with Nova. Un-boosted Nova is not *nearly* as powerful as it would be with the 166% damage boost of Aim and Build Up, but even the 66% boost that Aim offers will make a noticeable difference.

I don't think so, Hercules. And Mezzo, the 192% recharge is a bit of an artefact of how Mid's displays some procs- specifically, the chance-for-recharge one. If you don't count that, it only has 92% global recharge with Hasten running.

Oh... yeah, think that might have been a goof left over from my earlier suggested build.

Son of Amber, what was wrong with the build I suggested? You've got pretty much squat for recharge in this latest one that you posted :/

Huh. Welcome back, Acanous. Always good to see some old-school faces around. Or, well, handles, anyways

Hmm. I'm familiar with both Energy Blast and Electrical Mastery (albeit on different blasters), but not so much with Devices.

So, lesse. First up: do not neglect your hold. That was the single biggest change to the way my Energy/Energy blaster played. Being able to just lock down a troublesome Lieutenant or Minion (or even a boss- Cryo Freeze Ray recharges commendably quickly) while I mopped up the annoyances was a major shift, and a rather nice one.

Static Discharge is a handy and respectably powerful cone AoE. Not much to say about it beyond that- it's a good addition to Energy Blast's fair-to-middling AoE.

While Charged Armour won't make you a Tanker, it does give a nice boost to survivability, and the energy resist is a nifty bonus. Experiment with playing more aggressively to make the most of your enhanced durability.

Surge of Power is your panic button, really; if you're in a nasty fight and fading, going gremlin will make a major difference. Pop a green or two and laugh as things are suddenly doing half damage or less :3

EM Pulse, I'm not so familiar with. I seem to remember that it doesn't do the full End Crash, though... and a hefty debuff on a Blaster is nothing to sneeze at- if you're trying to take down a harder target, being able to debuff their regeneration is very nice.

Not sure what you need beyond that; CoH doesn't have the same sort of Endgame that some MMOs do, but it does have significant challenges open to you- badge hunting, of course, the endgame TFs (Statesman, Lady Grey, Reichsmann, and Mender Silos), Flashbacks for things you missed, Purpling out your character- build tweaking, should your interests lie in that direction, can be quite rewarding- is also interesting, and there are also the Hamidon and Rikti Raids.

My first Fifty is still somewhat active, although I've been somewhat sidetracked since my fiancee started playing and I began duoing characters with her instead; but that first Fifty (an Energy/Energy/Munitions blaster, actually) is my main badger, and as such comes out of retirement every time a new badge turns up, or every time I manage to muster the willpower to work on the last few (and mostly incredibly tedious >.>) badges I have left to go (about seventy, I think, at last count <.>

Hrm. Wiccania has a point- I don't think the magnitude of the single-target immobilize (Entangle) is actually any stronger than the AoE version, but it is absolutely invaluable in AV fights (AVs are the City of Heroes equivalent to... eh, sorta like Raid Bosses- high-powered enemies that it typically takes a team of characters to bring down).

Checking Red Tomax' power quantification (Paragonwiki is a superb link; Titan Network has both that and a quite a few other of the most popular and highly useful City of Heroes/Villains resources)... aaaand it turns out I was wrong; Entangle is a Mag 4 immobilize, and as such can immobilize bosses in one shot. Interesting.

Er... to explain; every 'control'-type power has a 'magnitude' (or mag), determining how high a rank of enemy it can affect with a single application. Oh- and higher-magnitude mezzes also affect all lower ranks of enemy as well. This Paragonwiki page explains it better than I was trying to :/

Heh. I call my flytrap "OmNom". And it can produce some nasty damage, especially when the bite attack comes up in the cycle. Just don't forget that your 'trap has fact-recharging ranged thorn attacks >.>

Pay careful attention to the power descriptions; I'm not sure, but it sounded like you said you had taken the immobilize and Roots... which is the AoE immobilize. If you have not taken your hold ("Strangler"), you really should at the first available opportunity.

Random aside- something that may cause confusion for you is the fact that others may complain about your confuse. Enemies give experience (to a certain degree) by how much damage your team has done to them; if somebody not on your team does the lion's share of the damage (either another player, or a confused mob, or an Architect Entertainment single-mission-pet- a rescuee), then your exp will be reduced. However: according to the math that I've seen run, the experience-over-time gain is faster with the mobs helping to kill one another. So even though each mob gives less experience, the fact that you're ripping through them much faster means that there's a net gain.

This is more to the nature of an aside, but how do the Controller sets stack up for (potential) damage, anyways? I've been vastly enjoying my Plant/Storm, which can send up decidedly satisfying clouds of orange numbers, but my more general 'troller experience is limited- just a Grav/Kin in the mid-thirties, otherwise.

Welcome aboard, Danny.

Yup, CoH is a wee bit different from the bog-standard MMO. There's no such thing as a 'pure' healer, or at least not an effective one.

I'll echo the 'don't neglect your primary'. When mobs are busy murdering one another, getting bludgeoned by thorn-tentacle things, eaten by your pet, being locked down and/or unable to move, or asleep, they're not going to be doing a lot of damage to your teammates.

And the buffs, are, indeed, quite tasty. Buffs and Debuffs are king in City of Heroes. A team of all-Controllers, or all-Defenders (or a mix of the two), are going to make a team consisting of Trinity 'toons look like chumps. Take a look at what a Supergroup called the Repeat Offenders have accomplished sometime.

Honestly, it seems to me that the very fact that there's this much debate about it- and on the Controller boards, no less- suggests that there might be less difference than some think.

My gut instinct on this- beyond what I posted last time- is that while it may be possible for Controllers to optimize better than 'fenders, one runs into the human factor. That is, for those of us who have not already achieved the Singularity and become one with our machines, we can only do so much at one time- if nothing else, we can only hit keys so fast. Assuming I represent any kind of baseline as an 'average' CoH player- my playtime is somewhat limited, but I do some theorycrafting and I've been playing for close on to four years now (with a two-year gap in the middle)- then our hypothetical 'average' CoH player is going to have a rough time pushing Controllers far enough to seriously overshadow Defenders, simply due to the complexity of action and situational awareness needed for it.

And also because Controllers tend to fill the screen with FX, so you can't see what's going on anyways. Eesh >.O

*shrug*

All I can go with is my relatively limited experience (one defender to fifty, a second in the early forties, and a controller at 47 and one in the mid-thirties). But what I've found is somewhat similar to the whole Scrapper/Blaster dichotomy; my Plant/Storm Controller can completely neuter piles of minions and lieutenants; but once you start adding bosses or AVs into the mix, my FF/Electric Defender is more effective at keeping the team vertical.