Eternal Wilting's Earth/Empathy guide

(All numbers are pulled from City of Data)

I started writing this guide back in I3, but motivation wasn't as forthcoming as it should have been (note to self: schedule meeting with motivation, bring guns). By the time I had anything of non-trivial length written, the nerfs came a'coming and rendered what I had written obsolete.

Had I finished this guide in a timely manner, it might have said "earth/empathy is arguably one of the strongest combinations for those interested in building a controller dedicated to nothing but enemy lockdown." Nowadays that's nowhere near true. In fact, I don't see this as a good combination at all anymore as it lacks synergy, but each set is quite effective in what it does and can be fun if you like the play style (which I do).


Section 1: I ain't seen so many caveats since the summer of '69

So, moving along, a few caveats you need to keep in mind in case you're thinking of rolling this combination; first, you're not a healer. This might sound absurd, but in truth the majority of your healing will be done in the teens. One you've moved up into your 20's, and when you hit 32/35 and your earth set has finally come into it's own, the return on using a heal power versus a control power is so absurdly in favour of tossing out another control that you wonder why you even have heals at all. When someone is dying, nine times out of ten you're better off locking down whatever is killing them and then rezzing them afterwards. This isn't nice, and we like to minimize the debt other players receive, but tactically speaking it's often more efficient to let a teammate die. Controls get priority.

I don't say this to be mean, or because I'm tired of squishies who think they're a tank; I say it to call attention to a fact you deal with no matter what archetype or power set you play, and that is opportunity cost. The clock ticks against you whenever you enter combat, the best time to lock down mobs is before they scatter, and the longer you wait the more likely they'll end up all over the place, either from knock back or the natural tendency for mobs to separate into melee and ranged groups. I probably repeat myself at this point, but the protection you can afford your teammates by utilizing your primary dwarfs any amount of healing you can do. Healing is what you do to fill in the gaps.

There are times when you will be forced into full healer mode (AVs in particular), and there are situations where you will need to be focusing on control the entire time. You will occasionally get into a situation where the combat can benefit from both full time healing and full time controlling, and it is in this situation that you'll have to weigh which one will be more effective because there is literally not enough time to do both. Occasionally it will be healing, most of the time it won't. This is the paradox of taking a healing set on a controller; your controls will obviate the need to heal in most cases.


The second caveat (this guide has gotten on the long side it seems, and I haven't even hit the powers section yet ) is that if you plan on soloing, roll a scrapper. Granted I did most of my leveling pre containment and haven't experimented with what an earth controller can do with power pool attacks, but I wouldn't recommend it. Earth/empathy is a power hungry set (although slotting light, thanks largely to ED), and you'd probably be giving up something good to get your attacks. I couldn't fit everything I wanted into my earth/empathy till level 47. Also, neither earth nor empathy have any powers to help along your damage output, empathy being mostly team-only, and earth having no damage whatsoever to speak of (only a piddling amount that serves no function than to break sleep effects).

Given the most likely route you'll go is teaming to 50, I strongly advise rolling on a high population server. I recommend virtue.


Section 2: Teh powarz

This section will merely list each power's effects. Their use will be discussed in much more detail in the strategy section.

Stone Prison

Stone prison is the first power in the earth controller set. It's a single target immobilize of a magnitude of 5, has -fly on it, and some -def. I'm told the magnitude is strong enough to get some AVs on the first application. The -def on it is for 20% for 15 seconds.

All in all, it's hardly a useless power but earth control is chock full of powerful abilities. This one is probably the most skippable one.

Recommended slotting:1 accuracy, and whatever else you like.

Fossilize

This is a must have of the earth set. It's your single target hold, which you'll be making liberal use of throughout your entire career.

It's also got -knock back on it, but it won't matter since the target is held anyway. Fossilize has a chance to crit, which will add another mag1 immobilize to the existing mag 3 fossilize has, though the duration is a bit shorter. When it crits, it will let you hold a boss on the first application.

It's also got 20% -defense on it, which is a nice side effect but unless you're soloing not all too important.

Recommended slotting: 2 accuracies, 2 holds, 2 recharge; OR
2 accuracies, 3 holds, 1 recharge

Stone Cages

This is you AoE immobilize. Like stone prison, it has -fly, -defense, and -knockback. The duration on stone cages is pretty good, and shines when you slot it. The knockback resist is considerable shorter than the duration of stone cages, so if you're trying to keep mobs in one place it's good to apply stone cages about once every 10 seconds.

The -defense on stone cages is also 20%, which also only lasts about 10 seconds, but has the advantage of being able to debuff an entire group making AoE attacks more likely to hit.

Recommended slotting: 2 accuracies, 3 hold durations (if you can spare the slots, this is not a power that is high on priority for slotting).

Quicksand

This is a great power and I wouldn't recommend anyone to skip it. It's an area slow, which you can toss on top of your other control powers to prevent mobs from running out, and has -fly and -jump on it so it's useful to bring flyers to the ground. Most of all though, is that it has 25% defense debuff. This is the power you'll be using for most of your defense debuffing needs. With enough recharges, you can stack it.

Recommended slotting: 2 recharges, 2 slows.

Salt Crystals

This power was oft maligned before the controller nerfs. Nowadays, it's even worse, but it's still not quite useless as people make it out to be. It's an AoE sleep, meaning that using this on a mob that is being attacked is a pretty bad option. Where this power shines is when you pull extra groups in a mission, and believe me throughout your career this will happen very often.

Unfortunatly it doesn't last lost enough, requires you to get into melee range to use, and takes a while to recharge. To get the most out of it, you'll need to slot it some, which makes it overall a rather skippable power.

It's got defense debuff, but it's useless on this power.

Recommended slotting: 2 accuracies, 3 sleep durations, 1 recharge

Stalagmites

This is another power that lost a lot of it's usefulness when it was nerfed. Nonetheless, it's still an extremely useful power, and I wouldn't recommend anyone skip this one either.

This is your AoE disorient. Unfortunately its duration leaves MUCH to be desired, making this power less useful as an actual control as it is as a supporting power for your other, beefier, manlier controls. I'll discuss this in the strategy section later.

It's also available at 12, and it's the first truly effective area control you get in earth. I do recommend taking it when it's first available. Plus it's got the coolest animation, if there's any animation in the game that makes you feel powerful it's Stalagmites' animation.

Recommended slotting: 2 accuracies (base accuracy on it is low, don't skip on these accuracies), 2 recharges, 2 disorient durations OR
2 accuracies, 1 recharge, 3 disorient durations

Earthquake

Ahh. Here we go, the first heavy hitter of the earth set. This is an area knockback, and it'll have all the mobs in it's range flopping like fishes. This power used to define the earth set, I remember having three of these puppies out at the same time. Nowadays, you need three recharges in it for it to recharge in almost the time it runs. You'll feel mighty indeed when you take this power, and I recommend slotting it up as soon as possible.

Recommended slotting: 3 recharges ASAP.

Volcanic Gasses

This is your area hold. Not only is it your area hold, it's a pulsing area hold over the duration of 60 seconds. This thing is capable of holding everyone in it's range, even bosses, with no outside aid whatsoever.

Take it. Look deep into it's eyes. Make sweet love to it.

Recommended slotting: 3 recharges, 3 hold durations.

Animated Stone

This is your pet. If at this point you're suffered on your way up to 32, only to stumble upon Stoney as a beacon of light in the distance, the power that will finally let you solo... you're sadly mistaken. Stoney is yet another tool in your controlling arsenal, he's the tanking pet with beefier resists than my invulnerability tanker and practical immunity to control effects.

Stoney will be discussed in further detail in the strategy section, but as a quick explanation for slotting, he's useful more as a method of eating alpha strikes than he is for damage. Fortunately with ED you can have your cake and be digesting it simultaneously, so slot him up with 3 recharges and 3 damages.

Recommended slotting: 3 recharge OR
3 recharge 3 damage

And now for the Empathy Set;

Heal self, er, I mean, Healing Aura

This is the most useful power in the empathy set when it comes to your controlling ability. Pre-ED this puppy would regen 1/3rd of your health in a single activation, making you a makeshift regen controller. Nowadays it heals for much less, but it's still the power that lets you be reckless in managing your aggro and get away with it.

(oh yeah, if you're into that sort of thing, I guess you can position yourself next to your teammates when you heal yourself so they get a side benefit out of the deal )

Recommended slotting: 3 heal, 3 recharge

Heal Other

Simple enough power. You click it, and a team member gets green goodness. Your bread and butter heal.

Recommended slotting: 3 heals

Absorb Pain

This is a very beefy heal, but it does have two downsides: It injures you, and you won't be able to heal yourself for some time after you fire it. This makes Absorb Pain a tricky proposition, considering you're going to have some aggro from your controls and there's rarely a safe time to fire it.

Nonetheless I've taken it anyway, and it does come in handy on AVs and other situations when I don't have any aggro. The self injury on it isn't very hefty, although you can kill yourself with it if you activate it when you have almost no health left.

Probably the most skippable power in the empathy set.

Recommended slotting: 1 heal

Resurrect

Team member dies, team member is brought back to life at full health and endurance, not to mention protected from debt for a short while. Pretty important power, I wouldn't recommend skipping it, although you can put it off to flesh out your primary earlier.

A lot of people will say not to slot this with more than the base slot, but in my experience extra slots are hardly wasted. This power takes forever to recharge, and there is often more than one team member who's dead.

Recommended slotting: 1-3 recharges.


Clear Mind

This power is practically necessary. I went without it till 47 on my earth/emp, and I kind of regretted it. It's a mez protection power, giving resistance to Disorient, Hold, Sleep, Immobilize, Fear, and Confuse, not to mention the perception buff that comes with it. You can cast it on a team member who's already under one of these effects to free them from it. Very powerful power, I don't recommend skipping it.

Recommended slotting: Er, I haven't the foggiest. It doesn't need slotting.

Fortitude

A very good buff, it gives defense, to hit and +damage. I recommend taking this one too, but not over clear mind if you're short on powers.

Recommended slotting: There really isn't a set of recommended slotting for this power. With the base recharge, you can keep it on one person permanently, with one recharge you can keep it on two people. The more recharges you put in it, the more people you can have in the team running with fortitude on. On the other hand, slotting for defense is definitely not a waste. Slotting for To-Hit is less attractive, but makes a huge difference for those who are struggling for accuracy (dark/dark scrapper will love you in particular). Slot up fortitude depending on how you want to use it. I have it 2 recharge/2 To-Hit/2Defense

Recovery Aura

This is the defining power of the empathy set. It's a PBAoE that grants increased endurance recovery to anyone near you, and the range on it is pretty good making it viable to fire off even when your team members are a little scattered in the midst of combat.

This used to be a lot more important to have before the endurance cost changes. Nowadays it seems far less frequent use, as Stamina is enough for most people. Nevertheless, this is one the more powerful buffs in the set and I wouldn't recommend skipping it, especially if you're not going the fitness route.

Recommended slotting: 3 recharges

Regeneration Aura

This is Recovery Aura, but gives health instead of endurance. I wouldn't recommend skipping this one either, as it's the second power in the empathy set that allows you to handle grabbing aggro. It can also make it so that you don't need to heal as often, freeing up your time for controlling.

Recommended slotting:3 recharges, 1-3 heals if you have spare slots.

Adrenaline Boost

Turn a team member invincible for 90 seconds. It gives increased endurance regeneration, increased health regeneration, but most of all, it gives a noticeable recharge boost to all your powers, which I find to be the most useful aspect of Adrenaline Boost.

Recommended Slotting: 3 Recharges

Section 3: Not letting the blaster tank: strategy

Finally the section I wrote this guide for. To commemorate such an important section of my guide, I'm more or less just going to ramble off here and hope it makes sense...

Your earth controller won't come into it's own till after you've gotten everything you need from your primary and slotted it up with SOs. The reason for this is two-fold; your controls need recharges for you to be useful at every group, and the fact that none of your earth powers are things of beauty till you've stacked them with other powers to make them truly effective. For this, you obviously need to have the powers you wish to stack.

This doesn't mean you throw out your controls haphazardly. That was doable once, in the old times(tm), but not anymore. That road leads to situations where you need to control, but don't have any controls available since you spent them all, probably to no good effect. In time you'll learn how to ration your controls to their greatest effect.

But to start, your powers essentially fall into two camps: Powers that stop the enemy from attacking, and powers that don't. Ideally you don't want the enemies attacking, so the powers that prevent the enemy from acting are your bread and butter controls, and the other powers support your control powers to reach this end.

Lets look at the powers that stop enemies from attacking:

Fossilize
Salt Crystals
Stalagmites
Earthquake (sort of)
Volcanic Gasses

Seems like much, but salt crystals is of dubious value since you can't attack sleeped mobs. This makes it situational. Fossilize is single target, and as great as it is, can't stop a whole group from attacking. This cuts down your available powers to three. Factor in Stalagmite's short duration, and you're left with Earthquake and Volcanic Gasses as your bread and butter.

As it turns out though, Earthquake on it's own is almost all you need most of the time. It doesn't stop enemies from attacking per se, but between the constant flopping the attacks they do get in will be easily coverable by Healing Aura or a few Heal Others here and there. Three recharges in Earthquake will have it up for every group you fight most of the time. Occasionally you'll get into group that kills faster than Earthquake's duration. In those groups, you probably don't really need to do any controlling, but if you're like me and like to have mobs controlled regardless, you can alternate it with Stalagmites since any group that is killing groups of mobs before Earthquake runs it's duration is also killing mobs before Stalagmites runs out.

If you do that, and heal, you'll have earned your keep in most groups. Things get dicier of course when you're fighting tougher mob groups that don't die in 30 seconds or less, but we'll get to that in a moment. For now, let's add another layer of complexity and look at your 'support' controls.

Stalagmites, like all disorients, induces mobs to wander around dazed. Earthquake can be resisted in bursts, and enemies that are trying to close in onto melee will eventually walk out of the Earthquake radius. Given that most of your controls are AoE, and given finite range, scattered mobs become anathema to earth controllers. Fortunately you have two powers to help you control scatter: Stone Cages, and Quicksand. Now, Stone Cages has -knockback on it, so tossing it on top of Earthquake is a bad idea since it'll render them immune to the Earthquake. Stone Cages works wonders with Stalagmites though. You can toss it on the mobs after you've disoriented them. In fact, I recommend it.

Quicksand is the slow power, and is much more useful for Earthquake. It won't render them immune to the knockback, and will bring fliers down into the Earthquake effect (plenty of fliers are immune to knockback though, more on this later). The downside to Quicksand is that unlike stone cages, mobs can still move, and they'll walk out of your Quicksand and Earthquake if you don't have Quicksand slotted properly. Even with a well slotted Quicksand, if the mobs survive long enough that you need to toss in another control after Earthquake has ended, they'll most likely have scattered some and things will be more difficult. There is a way around this, but more on that later. For now, let me stress how awesometasticly awesome Quicksand is.

And it's not just because of the slow, or the -fly. It's for the -defense. 25% debuff that is in effect the entire time the Quicksand is down, and you can stack it if you cast multiple Quicksands. Two 25% defense debuffs, now that is hefty, and this is why you don't need to slot any accuracies into Animated Stone, Volcanic Gasses or any of the epic or power pool attacks. Not only that, but your entire team benefits from this. AoE attacks will have little trouble hitting.

Also consider Quicksand's duration: 45 seconds. This means it's longer than both Stalagmites and Earthquake. It's shorter than Volcanic Gasses. Given that you cast Quicksand right after, or before, every control, you can use it as a yardstick to measure duration. When Earthquake ends (30 seconds), I know I'll have to reapply Quicksand soon. When Quicksand ends, I know Volcanic Gasses (60 seconds) is going to end soon. Stacked Quicksands can be tricky to tell apart, but you can tell how many you have down by the density of the brown.

Keeping one group controlled indefinitly

There isn't much need for this, but it's a good exercise because eventually you're going to run into missions where each mob needs more than one control before it's dead.

Attack chain philosophy applies here. On my dark scrapper, I have three attacks: Shadow Punch (fast activation, fast recharge), Smite (fast activation, medium recharge), and Shadow Maul (long activation, long recharge). For the least amount of downtime, the attack chain goes Shadow Punch>Smite>Shadow Maul. If it went Shadow Maul>Shadow Punch>smite, then I'd end up with all three attack down at the same time and sit there twiddling my thumbs waiting on one to recharge. If I lead off with shadow punch though, by the time the shadow maul animation is over shadow punch will be up again, and then smite comes up shortly after shadow punch is over.

The same applies to your earth controls, the order you fire them has an impact on which ones will be up when. If you open with Volcanic Gasses, in the time it takes to recharge you can blow through the duration of both Earthquake AND stalagmites and end up with a short duration where all the mobs are shooting you. On the other hand, you can open with Earthquake, then Volcanic Gasses, then Earthquake again, then Stalagmites for the short duration till Earthquake is up again. By the end of the second Earthquake after Stalagmites, the Volcanic Gasses should either be up or pretty close to being up, and both Stalagmites and Earthquake will be ready by the time Volcanic Gasses ends.

In truth, I don't know if that works out as perfectly as I've described, because only once have I had to keep a group locked down for an extended period of time and I had hasten running which makes you able to just kind of toss them out haphazardly as if you were back in I3/4 again. Where the sequence is applicable is on teams where you're furiously moving from one group to the next, with quick slaughter and a minimal amount of time in between mob groups.

Let me take the moment and extol the virtues of hasten: I'm not saying it's necessary, but... aw hell, it's necessary. Not because you need it to be an effective controller, but because during crunch time, no amount of rationing controls will save you. You WILL find yourself in situations when all your controls are down, and it is during those moments that hasten will make it so that controls are always ready before the one prior is done running.

This whole analysis also takes for granted that one AoE control is all that's necessary to keep a mob locked down. In real play, that's not the case for any mobs of non-trivial difficulty. You'll often find that due to scatter, misses, or shortened durations against higher levels that you'll need to toss out two controls on top of each other for complete lockdown. Hasten only becomes more useful in these situations.

We don't need no stinkin' tank: Leading in a team

You're not really a viable replacement for a tank anymore, but it's fun to pretend that you are. If you happen to be able to convince a group that you don't need a big burly muscly man to hide behind, you're in for some of the most fun you can have on your controller.

The biggest challenge here is opening. You're squishy, and alpha strikes will eat your face off. Fortunately, you have a few tools in these situations. The most obvious and foolproof are your pet and Stalagmites. You can choose where to summon your pet, and it just so happens that in the middle of that group of Nemesis is the best possible location you can think of. Your pet is pretty damn beefy, and given that you're an empath you can buff him with fortitude or Adrenaline boost immediately after you summon him to make him even beefier. Or you could just heal him, too. The next thing you want to do is summon Quicksand under the group, since Quicksand generally doesn't pull aggro the way a damaging control usually does, and you want the defense debuff in effect for whatever control you choose to put afterward. Once you've got the group controlled, your team members can jump and smack things around.

Of course, even with three recharges, you pet is not up often enough to eat the alpha strike for every mob. This is where Stalagmites is useful, because despite all of it's downsides, it makes up for them by being instant. This lets you disorient a whole group before they ever have a chance to shoot at you. Given that you won't have Quicksand on top beforehand, it's important not to skimp on the accuracies as the base accuracy on Stalagmites is pretty low.

I've found that either the pet or Stalagmites will be up by the time we get to the next group, you can alternate between them as an opener for each group. Again, hasten helps.

One last trick: Your AoEs don't require line of sight to cast. You can hide behind a corner and drop Quicksand and an Earthquake and they won't be able to get at you.


A thought on mob types

Throughout your controlling career, you'll notice that different mob types react differently to your controls. I'm not going to go into too much detail here, but it's generally the case that each type usually does have a weakness (unless they're carnies... in which case, just hide behind the tank and save yourself the debt.). It's just a matter of experimentation to find out what will work on each one (Only Volcanic Gasses will work on Jaegers for example). Once you know, you'll have to shift your strategies, and it'll probably be vastly annoying as it forces you to work outside the rationing chain that you're used to, but them's the breaks. The game wouldn't be very interesting if you could apply the same strategy everywhere.

Fossilize


This is a vastly useful power, so much that it deserves it's own little blurb.

First off, this is the power that neutralizes bosses. Two applications will get most of them, and occasionally one application will suffice. I'm not sure how it came to be, but for the most part this is what you're expected to do: lock down bosses.

But even more useful than bosses are the annoying, "special" type mobs. You know the ones I'm talking about: sappers, sorcerers, quantums, shamans, those explody zombies, and so forth. When I get on my scrapper, I always feel about as strong as a wet paper bag because I've gotten so used to all these mobs being no problem at all, and getting my [censored] kicked by them is a whole new experience. It's important to note that fossilize detoggles enemies. This is particularly pertinent for Shamans, who will often have hurricane or snow storm running even if they're flopping on an Earthquake.

The last frequent use for fossilize is getting those mobs that for whatever reason are outside of your AoE controls. And if you're like me, you'll have all the mobs within an AoE control fossilized too. This is one power you shouldn't feel bad for tossing all over the place.

Real play situations

This is the "everything else that is on my mind at the moment" section.

Fliers will frequently be a pain in the [censored]. Fossilize doesn't work against them, Quicksand often fails to bring them down. You'll often have to resort to stone cages, or if you have it, stone prison. In mixed ground/flier groups is where stone prison shines, as if you don't have it you'll have to immobilize the entire group which erases Earthquake off your list of options.

Remember what I wrote earlier about mobs walking out of Earthquake and Quicksand? The easy solution for that is a three slotted for duration stone cages. Open with Stalagmites, then stone cages, and once the disorient duration is over plop down the earthquake. By then, the -knockback is over, but they'll still be held in place by the Stone Cages so they can flop without the chance of scatter.

Volcanic Gasses is an easy way to hold a boss quickly. Plop it down and follow up with Fossilize.

Having other Earth controllers on your team will either be time for jubilation or extreme frustration, as nothing quite boils your blood than watching other controllers, who have somehow made it into the 40's, follow up every Earthquake with Stone Cages.

AVs: You'll mostly be healing, as they're generally resistant to being controlled. For the most part, you'll spam either Stone Cages or Stone Prison to keep them immobilized, plop down Quicksand for the defense debuff, and Volcanic Gasses so you don't have to spam Fossilize and are free to concentrate on healing and buffing.

Occasionally someone will spam "heal" "heal" in the party chat. The correct response to this is "fight" "fight". Of course the amount of times you encounter a person who does this is exactly 1/3rd as often as a group will say "We can't go in yet, we need a healer".

Section 4: Is this guide over yet?: Power Pools

The only things that need to be mentioned here is that you should strongly consider taking Hasten. Stealth pool is good. Stamina is another story, I've yet to experiment with a Stamina-less build since I haven't respecced since I3, but I will say this: if you take Stamina, you won't have to worry about endurance. Um, ever. If anyone has a video of an Earth/Empathy running out of endurance in regular play, send me a link. I'd like to see what that's like.

Section 5: Almost to 50! I can taste it!: Epics

I'll probably expand this later when I've experimented with the epics more. For the time being however, let me say this: You might, after a long career of being unable to solo, be immediately drawn to the fire epic for the attack powers. This is a completely natural reaction at your age, and I in fact encourage it to the fullest degree. When you're in the maniacal rush you get when you first lay hands on fireball and someone complains that you're blasting and not controlling, remind them quietly that you now have the power of fire and they shouldn't be so brash in voicing their opinions lest undesirable consequences arise.

Section 6: Build


This is the build I'm using right now. It's the same build that I was using in I3; I didn't get around to slotting everything I liked before ED came around so I was able to transition seamlessly into the nefs and ED without actually having to respec.

I don't neccesarily recommend this build, but it's here for reference.

Exported from version 1.5C of CoH Planner
http://joechott.com/coh

Archetype: Controller
Primary Powers - Ranged : Earth Control
Secondary Powers - Support : Empathy

01 : Healing Aura hel(01) hel(3) hel(3) recred(5) recred(5) recred(7)
01 : Fossilize acc(01) acc(7) hlddur(9) hlddur(9) recred(11) recred(11)
02 : Stone Cages acc(02) acc(13) immdur(13) immdur(15) immdur(15)
04 : Heal Other hel(04) hel(17) hel(17)
06 : Quicksand recred(06) recred(19) slw(19) slw(21)
08 : Hasten recred(08) recred(21) recred(23)
10 : Resurrect recred(10) recred(23)
12 : Stalagmites acc(12) acc(25) disdur(25) disdur(27) recred(27) recred(29)
14 : Super Speed runspd(14) runspd(29)
16 : Absorb Pain hel(16)
18 : Earthquake recred(18) recred(31) recred(31)
20 : Fortitude recred(20) thtbuf(31) thtbuf(33) defbuf(33) defbuf(33) defbuf(34)
22 : Hurdle jmp(22)
24 : Health hel(24)
26 : Volcanic Gasses hlddur(26) hlddur(34) hlddur(34) recred(36) recred(36) recred(36)
28 : Recovery Aura recred(28) recred(37) recred(37)
30 : Stamina endrec(30) endrec(37) endrec(39)
32 : Animate Stone dam(32) dam(39) dam(39) recred(40) recred(40) recred(40)
35 : Regeneration Aura recred(35) recred(42) recred(42) hel(50) hel(50)
38 : Adrenaline Boost recred(38) recred(42) recred(43)
41 : Fire Ball dam(41) dam(43) dam(43) recred(45) recred(45) recred(45)
44 : Fire Blast dam(44) dam(46) dam(46) recred(46) recred(48) recred(48)
47 : Fire Shield damres(47) damres(48) damres(50)
49 : Clear Mind Empty(49)

-------------------------------------------

01 : Brawl Empty(01)
01 : Sprint Empty(01)
02 : Rest Empty(02)

Great to see a guide by a fellow Earthie! Huzzah! A very enjoyable read full with good information. Thanks! I loved it.

I have a few differences of opinion in the Earth powers, but I won't repeat here what I covered in my own guide.

Kudos!

More thought on Earth controlling that would leave ever the most ardent defenders of a healthy ability to concentrate wishing that someone had taught me to be succinct

Soloing

This will generally only happen after you get your epic attack powers. At first glance, you'd think with containment you'll be dishing out some good damage, but sadly to say the damage you'll be dealing is moderate at best if you take pains to have containment set up often, and pathetic without containment. I have difficulty imagining any earth/empathy controller soloing effectively, by which I mean quickly, without devoting a good amount of it's build to that purpose. Chances are the most you'll have is the two attacks from the epic pool and possible an attack as a pre-travel power.

It also occurs to me at this point you might have veteran powers. Unfortunatly I know nothing about these new-fangled toys you geezers have, so moving along...

You want to make the most of the limited attack powers you have. This means you'll want containment up whenever you hit anything, and it means you'll want to slot your attacks with 3 damage/3 recharge. Accuracy shouldn't be too much of a worry because you should be plopping down quicksands everywhere you can, not to mention the -def on other earth powers. Similarly you can slot your pet for 3damage/3recharge to take advantage of being able to use him to eat alpha strikes. Your pet doesn't have to worry about accuracy because you have fortitude.

I recommend taking the AoE power in the epic pool if nothing else. With containment, you can mow down white and blue mobs quickly, which will provide much faster experience than going after a few tough targets. If you've gone the other route and selected several single target attacks, hunting lieutenants is probably the way to go. If you've got a mix, it's probably still better to go after big groups of white mobs and use the single target attacks to finish off stragglers.

Setting containment is easy, though time consuming. You'll notice Volcanic Gasses is the best power to use while soloing, which is annoying in it's own right considering it's long recharge time. Earthquake unfortuantly doesn't set containment, Stalagmites doesn't last long enough for you to kill things, and Stone Cages leaves you open to attacks. If you're going after low-conning mobs, you can just outheal whatever damage you recieve, otherwise you might find yourself waiting on Volcanic Gasses inbetween mobs. My usual approach to soloing is summoning my pet into a group first, then laying quicksand, which won't pull aggro, and then laying Volcanic Gasses last. The quicksand will make Volcanic Gasses hit a bit more reliably, and the quicksand will help in keeping mobs from rushing to melee you and therefore run out of what is probably a nice arrangement for an AoE attack.

Your pet will be dishing out some good damage if he's three slotted with damage and has fortitude on him. With Quicksand, he practically never misses, and can kill bosses fasted than I can with the two Epic attack powers. He is a bit tricky to control though, considering you can't give him direct commands. The AI is fortunatly predictable, which leads us to...

Controlling your pet

I'll admit I usually just leave him to run around and smack things at his leisure. However, he can be a nuisance in many situations.

The first thing you need to know is that you can dismiss your pet, and should probably do so often. Never stealth a mission with your pet running. Your pet also has a larger aggro range than most mobs, you'll often find that your pet will go berserk and aggro mobs prematurely while you're waiting on your team to get ready, leading to wipes. Stand a bit farther than you normally would. If you ever sneak by a mob, dismiss your pet. I've learned it's simply better to dismiss your pet in most situations rather than risk it.

As for controlling your pet in combat, you're ability to do so is limited, but your pet will usually not attack held or controlled targets, and will usually not attack whatever target you have selected.I say usually because the pet is not consistant, certain factors cause him to diverge from that behavior, but you can gain some measure of control through them. While you're soloing, keep the middle minion in a group selected for optimal AoE coverage and your pet will leave him alone. Similarly you can direct your pet's attacks to a certain mob if you manage to get every other mob controlled and/or selected.

The longer your pet has been smacking a certain mob around, the less likely he'll want to switch targets, so the best time to implement these pseudo commands is in the begining of combat. This does have it's advantage in certain situations however; if your pet has been smacking the mob you want him to smack for a while, you can be reasonably sure he won't go haywire and attack another mob if you need to switch to his target to apply some control or blast it yourself.

I've also noticed that your pet will never cycle his attacks. He'll stick to either hurling boulders, punching, or hitting with the mallet, but once he's doing one he rarely ever switches. I'm not sure which one of these has the highest DPS, but I'm willing to bet it's the punches. Regardless, if anyone knows how to make him switch or cycle through his attacks, let know.

Hey Life Guardian,

Finally, someone wrote a guide for us rare arch troll species. Thank you very much. Just to say that I thought you were right on with most of your comments in your guide. Sometimes you’re the bug (Earth) and sometimes you are the windshield (Empath). I think that we are primary earth trollers with a healer as our backup - our primary goal is all lockdown possible. In the earlier levels it is probably a 50/50 split and then as we progress higher it shifts to more 70/30 to earth and later on 80/20. There are times though depending the level of the mobs that you end up being a primary healer starting out buffing the team and then fall back on your earth primaries…that's my typcial attack strategy unless there is a dedicated healer.

One point I would like to make is Stone Prison. Believe it or not, you really should not skip this power. I played my Ged StoneEarth to level 50 and can't tell you how many times this power was used on bosses and AV's to keep them from running. How many compliments from tanks/scraps on the AV containment and also to take out the annoying freak or skyraider flyer. Plus, picking up Stone Prison is better on the aggro scale than using Stone Cages to compensate - don't want to bring on the extra aggro. I have been flagged by my SG a couple of times to bring out Ged to help with Bobcat and other runner Avs and it has been great fun.

I went with Teleport as my travel power but use Hover during battle and stealth on like almost 24/7. We are squishy type and this was my saving grace so many times when team wipes occurred and I was next on somebody's menu. Picked up the Psionics Mastery for 2 reasons- Magic Origin forever battling carnies and for the Indominable Will Mez protection and Mind over Body Armor. I picked Salt Crystals at 49 and really think it is good in the beginning levels but later in the game with all the rains from defenders or blasters to cancel the sleep it is very situational. I am tempted to go back and respec for the Fire Mastery though - I was on the fence picking those 2 for a while.

Cheers...

I'll admit to never having actually tried out stone prison. There's so many good powers in both sets that I've never been able to get everything I wanted, plus stamina and hasten. I'd take everything in both sets if I could.

I was very tempted to take psionic mastery as well, but guardian is a barren wasteland of a server and I've often found myself soloing. Teleport was my first travel power as well, but eventually dropped it so I can save a power and took superspeed.

Curious, did you ever try a build without stamina these days?

Want to laugh - my earth/empath Ged did not have Stamina or Hasten. There were a few times when I popped a blue inspiration here and there but mostly felt it was not necessary. The duration times of the earth powers are long enough that I hover and go into Medic mode. I had all the powers in the Earth and Empath except Adrenalin Boost. I heard early on that it was basically like Absorb Pain which I recommend but just gave out endurance. Later on I read the details as was like - whoh I should have picked it up. How did you like it? Did it drain all your endurance and left you disoriented?

My new toon has been my Dark Archer Ravens Knight. It is my first shot at dark and archery and so far I like it especially for the theme…cross hawkeye with the Crow. Hehehehe… Raven will need the Stamina though. After laying down the dark debuffing he would go into attack mode so yeah he gets stamina like my 41 Storm/Energy Blast defender Leoric.

I'm also a big fan of Stone Prison. Took it early and used it all the way up through 50 on a regular basis.

[ QUOTE ]
Want to laugh - my earth/empath Ged did not have Stamina or Hasten. There were a few times when I popped a blue inspiration here and there but mostly felt it was not necessary. The duration times of the earth powers are long enough that I hover and go into Medic mode. I had all the powers in the Earth and Empath except Adrenalin Boost. I heard early on that it was basically like Absorb Pain which I recommend but just gave out endurance. Later on I read the details as was like - whoh I should have picked it up. How did you like it? Did it drain all your endurance and left you disoriented?

[/ QUOTE ]

I got up to 30 something without stamina, back in i3/i4. I didn't feel it was too necessary back then, the best part of /emp and hasten was that you could have recovery aura almost perma. I did take stamina eventually so I could teleport long distances without having to pop a blue.

These days with the global endurance cost reduction I find that I never run out of endurance unless I'm throwing blasts in. I've been toying with dropping stamina so I can pick up more powers I want, but it's a bit hard to let go of stamina after you've had it for a long while. I play a dark/dark scrapper without stamina, you'd think I'd be used to managing endurance.

Maybe I'll get on test and try out a few builds. This guide seems like it's in need of an update, or at least some trimming and quality control. Wish you could edit these things.

Good Guide... well done.

I am earth/storm, but I can tell by the layout and even your playstyle that we think alike in our approach to the game..

Good bits of humor in there too.