Arcane Controller Primary Powers FAQ

The X and Y listed are two "Cases" where, in the X case, the geysers have no duration enhancement, and in the Y case, they have +95% duration enhancement.

The values after the "-->;" show how many vents will be in effect at that time.

An interesting question arises: how much area does VG cover compared to the standard controller AOE Holds it mimics? This is a tricky question because geysers are independantly throwing small area holds all over the place. It can stack, and thus be more effective, especially against mobs that stand in small concentrated groups inside 10' radii. It could even be *less* effective against some hypothetical spawns where MObs were all standing 11' apart. Or if it decides to (pointlessly, from your PoV) start stacking holds up on one particular mob that only needs one, or on individual mobs at the very fringes of what's important, thus missing clusters. (In practice, it seems not to do most of that negative stuff.)

Here's how to think about #vents and the equivalent area coverage. The first value is simply the equivalent radius coverage for the summed area of all vents assuming no overlap. The second value given is an equivalent 40' radius if mobs are in fewer-than-X clusters-- thermal vents are a 30' ranged attack with a 10' radius, so if mobs are standing around in X many "clusters" that are 10' radius or smaller, VG can effectively be treated like 40' radius AoE hold.

1 Vent = 10.0' Radius
2 Vents ~= 14.1' Radius, ~=40' if mob clusters < 3
3 Vents ~= 17.3' Radius, ~=40' if mob clusters < 4
4 Vents ~= 20.0' Radius, ~=40' if mob clusters < 5
5 Vents ~= 22.4' Radius, ~=40' if mob clusters < 6

Now, this "cluster" thing is not easy to eyeball-- it's a measurement I've invented just for the purpose of understanding what VG does with so many vents in play. The way that geysers pick what targets to vent on is anybody's guess-- I certainly don't know how it works.

But at least in principle, when you have say 4 vents out, and all the mobs are clusters into no more than 2 10' radius areas, probably you'll have stacked magnitude on them all (or if not 6 magnitude on each cluster, then possibly 9 magnitude on one and 3 magnitude on the other).

And if you have just 1 cluster (as when two mobs are standing close together, or you're only dealing with a single mob), you can be pretty sure you'll have 3x the # of vents, in magnitude, stacked on everybody in that cluster.

Just to give you an idea what size a 10' radius cluster is, the size of most sword scrapper melee cones (e.g., slice, flashing steel) is equivalent to a ~3' radius, some blaster cones (buckshot, Fire breath, Frost Breath) are equivalent to ~11' radius, and some of the standard blaster non-nuke AoEs (e.g., Explosive Arrow, M30 grenade, Ball Lightning, Explosive Blast, Fireball) are all 15' radius. Dark Melee's Soul Drain is a 10' AoE, Mind Control's TK is a 10' AoE, and several Tanker powers (Chilling Embrace, Energy Absorption, Fire Sword Circle, Frozen Aura, Heavy Mallet) are 10' AOEs.

Fire/Hotfeet
This one isn't too complex, but a couple things can be noted. Its base damage DOES require a hit check, but the CONTAINMENT damage does NOT, though it also is a 75% chance attack. This can make eyeballing what hotfeet does in terms of damage confusing.

Also, of course, hotfeet is a movement slow combined with a little-talked-about feature of some slows called "afraid," (or sometimes "fear") which is not a terrify (the thing that makes mobs cower in fear), but rather an effect that makes mobs want to get away from the power. Since mobs who can move, will spend significant time moving away from hotfeet, it does effectively keep them busy and not attacking. Both the slow and afraid are autohit.

Mind/Confuse & Mind/Mass Confusion
& Illusion/Decieve & Plant/Seeds of Confusion

Confusions generally are a poorly understood power; what they do is change the behavior of a foe to that of an ally, sort of. What they DON'T do is give you credit for any of the damage done by the confused mobs.

People think you get credit for damage done by confused mobs. This is NOT true. People also think that you can meaningfully lose out on getting XP when confusions are used. This is ALSO NOT TRUE.

Suppose a normal non-teamed hero (or villain if you're a villain) and you, were both attacking a mob. The mob's XP when defeated would be "fairly" distributed between the two of you, based on how much damage each of you did. In other words, the other guy on your "side" but not teamed, takes some of the XP.

A confused mob also "takes" some of the XP-- but NOT AS MUCH. When a confused mob takes XP away, only 25% of the damage he does "counts" towards his portion of the XP of the mob-- the rest magically disappears from the defeated MOb's HP total!

In algebra, where:
X= XP of a defeated mob that took damage from a confused mob.
H= HP of a defeated mob that took damage from a confused mob.
D= your damage (= H-C)
C= damage done by a confused mob (= H-D)

XP you Earn = X * D / (H- (C*.25))

In other words, when you do:
1.0% of the damage, you get 3.8% of the XP (~=2.8% bonus)
5.9% of the damage, you get 20.0% of the XP (~=14.1% bonus)
11.1% of the damage, you get 33.3% of the XP (~=22.2% bonus)
20.0% of the damage, you get 50.0% of the XP (~=30.0% bonus)
33.3% of the damage, you get 66.7% of the XP (~=33.3% bonus)
50.0% of the damage, you get 80.0% of the XP (~=30.0% bonus)
66.7% of the damage, you get 88.9% of the XP (~=22.2% bonus)
80.0% of the damage, you get 94.1% of the XP (~=14.1% bonus)
95.2% of the damage, you get 99.0% of the XP (~=4.8% bonus)

The reason this results in better XP over time-- which is the question anybody who thinks about this clearly will realize is what matters, is that the tendency of a confusion to speed up a fight almost always trumps the XP lost per mob. You could compare it to a lot of things, including XP buffing Mobs, or increasing effective damage output, or whatever. Proving exactly what effect this has requires more arcane math, that I won't reproduce here, but the gist of it is this:

The time you spend between fights (while mobs you've attacked are defeated) is what matters when using confusions. That amount of time has to be shorter than a certain value. The value is: three times as long as the fights you're fighting would normally take, TIMES the fraction of the damage you/your team is doing.

In other words, if you're doing 2/3rds of the damage yourself up against confused mobs (and most teams will do more than that), you have (3 x 2/3 =) 2 times as long to spend fiddling around between fights as you would normally be taking IN the fights themselves.

This is a standard of performance that almost any team or solo controller can beat. When you beat it, confuses start improving your XP over time (although only slightly at first).

Obviously, the area effect confuses will tend to lower the fractional damage you yourself are doing to some extent, especially to the extent you have really large spawns that all get confused-- which is most likely to happen on a team where your total damage output will be so high that a little more damage from confused MObs is going to mean better XP/time without really pushing your time-between-fights deadline.

Ice/Arctic Air:

A fairly routine PBAoE effect in some senses, Arctic Air does a lot of things, and many are poorly understood. In the first place, like many toggles, its effects take place in "pulses" that don't stack. That is, in its 25' radius sphere, it tries to apply its effects every 2 seconds.

The most obvious effect is that it's a massive recharge slow and movement slow. It also has a 50% chance of applying an afraid that falls just short of being 4 seconds-- so that on average mobs in its radius are affected by a mag 3 afraid about 93% of the time. If nothing else, this effect keeps mobs busy running AND debuffed on attack cycle recharge when they're not.

But it does two additional things. One of them is that it helps cancel the stealth on stealthy mobs in your vicinity. I rarely see this do anything useful, but I expect it must have uses in PvP vs Stalkers.

The other is that it has a 30% chance to apply a 3.725 second mag 3 confuse, with every 2 second pulse. These confusions won't stack above 3 confuse, but they can potentially extend across multiple pulses, as the confusion duration for the power can be enhanced.

Without confusion duration enhancement, after the first two seconds of exposure, AA will have 30% of the mobs confused for each full 2 second duration, and another 21% of the mobs confused for 86.25% of the duration, for a rolling average after 2 seconds, of 48% of the mobs in range confused at any given time (assuming not a lot of running in and out).

With 95% confusion duration enhancement, duration on each successful confuse goes to 7.26 seconds. That leaves a rolling average of 69.5% of mobs mag 3 confused at any given time after 2 seconds of exposure.

Also by the way, the applications of AA are on a 1 second delay, so the power really starts to take full effect after 3 seconds exposure.

With all that in mind, you can effectively look at AA as a perpetual Area Confuse on roughly a 48-70% (depending on how you slot it for confusion duration) chance, and a 3 second initial delay. And as a confusion the remarks under the other confusion powers, above, apply to it.


Plant/Carrion Creepers

Carrion Creepers probably trumps even Volcanic Gasses for being mechanically arcane, and since many of its key actions aren't visible, it is a source of confusion. Here's what CC does:

1) You cast Carrion Creepers, on a spot anywhere within 80' of you, thereby summoning three things for 120 seconds: Bramble, Carrion Creepers B, and Vines. (In CoD these are collectively known as "Creeper Patch")

2) Bramble (summoned by Carrion Creepers) is a 20' sphere that for its 120 second lifespan autohits foes with a movement slow (in .2 second nonstacking pulses of .45 seconds). I think bramble is static, but I've yet to glean from CoD how to see whether something follows you about.

3) Carrion Creepers B (summoned by Carrion Creepers) is a 20' sphere that for it's 120 second lifespan APPEARS to try to summon, in 10 second pulses, Creeper Entangle, on incapacitated foes.

4) Vines (summoned by Carrion Creepers) is a 20' sphere that for its 120 second lifespan, in 10 second pulses summon on a 50% chance, apparently on each foe (autohit), up to a maximum of 10 foes, a Creeper Vine.

5) Creeper Entangle (summoned by Carrion Creepers B) is an 8' sphere root/immob with a 1 accuracy, that does 0.6 Base L50 smashing/lethal damage.

6) Creeper Vine (summoned by the power "Vines") are MObs with 15 second lifespans that have a ranged and melee (prefer melee) attack that they cycle one of: Vine Smash is a base 0.56 L50 dmg (mostly toxic, some smashing) melee attack that cycles at 4.9 seconds. Vine Thorns is a base 0.46 L50 dmg (mostly toxic, some lethal) ranged attack that cycles at 4.83 seconds. IOW, one vine summoning attempts ~1.58 L50 damage to a single target.


So. Suppose you put fresh CC under a 3-mob spawn. At 11 seconds, you have certain odds of having none, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6 vines up:

No vines: 1.6%
1 vine: 9.4%
2 vines: 23.4%
3 vines: 31.3%
4 vines: 23.4%
5 vines: 9.4%
6 vines: 1.6%
7+ vines: impossible.

And to generalize:
At second 11, E[vines under X mobs] = X.

For the first 10 seconds of exposure to the spawn you'll have half that. Expected average number of vines up at a given time, over duration of the fight (assuming CC up from the start) will be just slightly less than the number of mobs present, IOW, though the number of mobs present used to determine that is capped at 10.


APPENDIX A: Understanding Control Effects

There are several types of controls available in controller primaries. Some terms have been adopted but used in different ways, to describe various powers. Here I will define terms and control types:

Soft Control: Controls that can't provide their full control effect while you're actively attacking the mobs controlled. (Includes Sleeps, Terrifies, and Intangibilities.)

Hard Control: Controls that DO provide their full control effect while you're actively attacking the mobs controlled. (Includes Holds, Confuses, slows, stuns, pulsing fractional knockback effects, immobilizes.)

Partial Control: Controls that reduce, but don't entirely eliminate, the frequency of MOb's attacks (debuffs, etc) made on you, while in effect. (Includes pulsing fractional knockback, slows, immobilizes. Could in principle also include damage debuffs such as are found in some controller secondaries.)

Total Control: Controls that entirely eliminate a MOb's ability to attack (or debuff) you while in effect. (Includes holds, stuns, confusions, intangibilities.)

Immobilizing: Controls that deny a MOb the ability to move under its own power. (Immobilize powers, Holds, Intangibilities).

Mobilizing: Controls that force a MOb to move rather than fight (Includes knockback, afraid.)

Rooting: Controls that prevent a MOb from taking knockback while under the effect. All roots are immobilizing to my knowledge. (Includes most immobs except gravity's, and gravity's holds.)

Debuffs: Certain partial controls that achieve their effect by fractionally reducing some trait intrinsic to the mob, such as recharge or movement power. (Slows. Could in principle also include damage debuffs such as are found in some controller secondaries.)

Detoggling: Certain controls actually force toggle powers a target is using to turn off. (Includes Stuns, Holds, Sleeps)

Disputed points about these terms:

Some contend that powers that aren't immobilizing either aren't hard, or aren't total, controls (Stuns, Confuses).

Some contend that debuffs and control are mutually exclusive terms, on the grounds that controls involve definite states.

Some contend that powers that don't detoggle either aren't hard or aren't total. (Confuses.)

Some contend that Immobilizes aren't controls because they don't necessarily even achieve partial control.


Stuns: A hard total control that detoggles but does not immob. Affected MObs stop using powers, are detoggled, and wander around at their base ground speed, for the duration.

Holds: A hard total control that detoggles and immobs. Affected MObs stop doing anything, are detoggled, and are subject to one of several hold animations.

Confuses: A hard total control that does not detoggle or immob. Affected MObs attack your foes and buff you and your allies, their damage is discounted from XP figures favoring you.

Slows: A hard partial control and debuff, reducing a foes' global recharge rate and movement speed-- usually-- though there are some powers that ONLY reduce recharge OR movement rate.

Sleep: A soft total control, that ends entirely when the MOb is successfully hit with anything that deals damage. Affected MObs stop doing anything, are detoggled, and are subject to one of several sleep animations.

[to be continued]