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I've decided to replace one of the characters I never play with a Fire controller, since that's a set I've never played yet. I was thinking of either Storm or Radiation as a secondary, and can't seem to decide. I've looked at the controller guides, and they really don't narrow it down. (The simple fact is, if a combination is possible, someone, somewhere, thinks it's the best thing ever.) A major consideration for me is that I solo a great deal, which is why I was considering Storm in the first place - Rad has some nice powers, but several of them require another player character to function. In fact, Mutation and Fallout both require a dead player character, which can be tricky to get even on a team. (Unless it's a *bad* team, then they're all dead.)
Before anyone decides to be clever with the "trollers R 4 teams, lrn2play n00b," my only level 50 hero is a Plant/Thermal controller, and does quite well solo. I just don't have any real experience with either the Radiation or Storm powersets. While I mostly solo, I don't actually make anti-teaming builds. So if I do team up for some reason, I'd like to not instantly be the most hated person there just for what powersets I have. (This is the reason I don't have an Energy/Energy Blaster, for example.)
Radiation pros - early access to a self-healing power, large number of debuff powers.
Radiation cons - Accelerate Metabolism no longer hastens pets, Mutation and Fallout both require a defeated player character, EMP has a really, really long recharge.
Storm Summoning pros - some decent slows/stuns/debuffs, and two additional pseudo pets (Tornado and Lightning Storm.) Steamy Mist has stealth.
Storm Summoning cons - no self heal, and O2 Boost is a very weak heal other. Powerset includes Hurricane. Tornado pet is insane, does knockback, and will happily scatter or aggro (or both) every group of critters it can find.
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I have a Fire/Rad, and it is one of my faovorite characters. It is uniquely built to take advantage of Choking Cloud. Rad is overall the most flexible secondary powerset. Because AM and the debuffs come early, the lower levels are easier on a Rad. For example, Fire Cages + Radiation Infection is almost a hold, since the foes can't move and they have a lot of trouble hitting you. Your "cons" about Mutation and Fallout? I skipped those two on my build. While Mutation is a nice Rez, it is far less needed now that we can combine Insps. Fallout is powerful, but it is the MOST situational power in the game. I have it on my Earth/Rad, but had no room on my Fire/Rad.
I skipped Smoke and Ring of Fire on the Fire side, and Mutation and Fallout on the Rad side. Ring of Fire is actually useful if you plan to play solo a lot -- slot it for damage. I actually had Smoke leveling up, and felt it was the weakest power in the set, but not useless. Plan on 6-slotting Choking Cloud and Hot Feet. Max CC with EndRdx and Hold, and slot Hot Feet with EndRdx, Damage and a little bit of accuracy. Some people skip Bonfire -- I like it, but agree that it is situational.
Fire/Rad, like all fire controllers, don't really hit their peak until you get those Fire Imps, but Fire/Rad has a lot of tools to get you there.
I haven't taken a Fire/Storm up to 50 --I only have a low level one. It is HORRIBLE on Endurance -- just sucks down the blue bar like crazy. Storm is crazy fun, and visually the coolest secondary. However, you have to learn when to use certain power and when not to. Fire is a melee set, and Storm tends to send a lot of things out of melee if you use Gale and Hurricane and Tornado and Lightning Cloud. Still, I know several people who claim that their Fire/Storm is their most fun character.
LOCAL MAN! The most famous hero of all. There are more newspaper stories about me than anyone else. "Local Man wins Medal of Honor." "Local Man opens Animal Shelter." "Local Man Charged with..." (Um, forget about that one.)
Guide Links: Earth/Rad Guide, Illusion/Rad Guide, Electric Control
Storm is about lock down. if you can get the mobs with -kb then storm is best. I have an Illusion/Storm and if I don't play with corners and walls my targets end up getting knocked out of range of Tstorm then such.
Plant and mind would be my first two picks for storm. Followed by Earth, then Ill. Though I admit that grav/storm would be nice for diso stacking AND it has the best pvp hold. Fire has more damage. Plant has more flexibility and a damage pet. Earth has more control options to cover numerous scenarios, but none of them is really super-effective in pvp.
I know mind doesn't get you goin, but it's actually not a bad pvp primary. Mind has a mag 1.5 infinite duration hold. If the word "infinite" in front of the word "containment" doesn't get you a little hot, then check your pulse and call 911, because your heart has stopped beating.
The OP is rather quite funny when you read it with knowledge of both power sets. Fire excels at AoE damage. Storm might be pretty as hell, but it throws your opponents everywhere. This is fine when using a ST control set like Mind, but with Fire? Knockback isn't really your friend. Mutation and Fallout are the only two powers of Radiation that require another person. If you join PUGs regularly, people will die. There's always a bad player or someone who acts a little reckless every now and then. Sometimes the team make up isn't necessarily best equipped to deal with the task.
But you want to solo, so that isn't a problem for you. Having two powers in your secondary that you don't want isn't a curse. Consider it a blessing. Would you really want to have to select all 9 powers in your Secondary? You could easily get away with just taking Aura, Infection, Accelerate, Field, and Lingering. The sets acts almost as the opposite of Kinetics. Instead of buffing your teammates into killing machines, you debuff your enemies into total push overs. And EM Pulse should have a long recharge. It's a Tier 9 "Oh crap" button. Enjoy it.
Virtue: The-Invictus (Blue)
The Emissary of Justice - Level 50 Fire/Fire Blaster
The Emissary of Justice. - Level 50 WP/Fire Tanker
Mesmerius - Level 50 Psi/Mental Blaster
Nucleoa - Level 50 Rad/Son Defender
A Fire/Storm controller should never have any problems with knockback: Fire Cages, in addition to immobilizing and setting up containment, makes the enemies (effectively) immune to knockback for ten seconds. Your Tornado and Lightning Storm can eat away at the enemies, and they won't move an inch.
I team with the Repeat Offenders.
Thank you for the replies. By the time I'd come back to check, I'd already gone ahead and made the Fire/storm. We'll see how it works for now, I guess. I should have mentioned, I suppose, that PvP is not a consideration. I won't enter the PvP zones. Ever. There isn't a single thing in the PvP areas that's worth having to put up with the kind of player you're most likely to notice in PvP.
I'll try to get to level 12 or so by tomorow evening, to see whether I like Fire/Storm or not. And Fire Cages works fine against the knockback from Gale, at least. I don't really plan on taking Hurricane. It's knockback and repel, and the end drain looks massive. The only use I could see a for it, is to push thing back out of melee if they escape Cages, and frankly, Gale seems more than sufficient for that.
I do wish this game had a "danger room" mode, where you could temporarily be set to level 50 and fight a few waves of training dummies. It would be nice to know whether a given AT/powerset/build is going to fit my playstyle without having to waste ten or twenty hours first. I don't have tons of experience with the game yet, so I don't know the ins and outs of everything. And so far, a few powersets that were a lot of fun at level six felt more like slamming face first into a brick wall at level 15.
As far as the other primaries go, I already have at least one of everything but Mind, Fire, and Stone. I tried stone, and didn't care for it at all. (If I don't like it by level 10, I don't generally assume that it'll get better later on.) I'm not sure yet about Gravity - I only have it on a Dominator, and even then only because it was the closest thing I could find to a 'bad luck" powerset. (Flying up and hitting your head on the ceiling, then getting hit in the face with a forklift seems pretty unlucky to me.)
For the secondaries, as a solo player I don't really see the point of taking Kinetics or Empathy. My only level 50 hero is Plant/Thermal, and that's more due to stubbornness on my part than any fondness for Thermal - I'd gotten a lot of the Holiday stuff with that character and wandered up to the mid twenties before it really became apparent that Thermal isn't much use to a solo player. (That was about the third character I had made at that time.) With the pet, I can get some use out of it, but only until I exemplar down to a point where I can't call the flytrap anymore. (Such as Ouroboros missions.) If there was a way to re-choose the base powersets, I'd drop Thermal in a heartbeat. I'd considered Radiation, obviously, and I already have a /sonic. I've got a Force Field Mastermind, and one character with that set is plenty. And I have two with Trick Arrow.
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Storm might be pretty as hell, but it throws your opponents everywhere. This is fine when using a ST control set like Mind, but with Fire? Knockback isn't really your friend.
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Fire Cages, Ring of Fire. -KB in both.
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Thank you for the replies. By the time I'd come back to check, I'd already gone ahead and made the Fire/storm. We'll see how it works for now, I guess. I should have mentioned, I suppose, that PvP is not a consideration. I won't enter the PvP zones. Ever. There isn't a single thing in the PvP areas that's worth having to put up with the kind of player you're most likely to notice in PvP.
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I see three reasons to go into PvP zones: Shivans, Nukes and Badges. That's about it. The few times I have actually tried to PvP, it became evident that those zones are Jerk-magnets. It wasn't fun.
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I'll try to get to level 12 or so by tomorow evening, to see whether I like Fire/Storm or not. And Fire Cages works fine against the knockback from Gale, at least. I don't really plan on taking Hurricane. It's knockback and repel, and the end drain looks massive. The only use I could see a for it, is to push thing back out of melee if they escape Cages, and frankly, Gale seems more than sufficient for that.
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Gale stinks. I almost never use it. I was on an ITF yesterday, and while I used Hurricane every now and then, I never used Gale. Gale can be used as a positioning tool in just the right situation, but it has a 20% accuracy penalty so to use it with any regularity, you need to put 2 Accuracy in it minimum. I haven't freed up a slot for a second accuracy on any of my Storm characters.
But Hurricane has good uses. It has a HUGE to Hot Debuff if you learn to use it with skill. My favorite use of Hurricane is in those Cul-de-sacs in offices. Stand at the entrance, toggle on Hurricane, Lightning Storm, AoE Immobilize, Tornado, then anything else that does damage. Bad guys are trapped and mostly can't hit you.
I use Hurricane sometimes as a kind of "Panic Button" power, to get the foes outta-my-face and give me a chance to pop an Insp or run away. And sometimes, I use it to position foes AFTER they have been immobilized -- the -knockback does not stop the Repel in Hurricane, even if it stops foes from falling down. And remember that the -knockback only works for the first 12 seconds for Fire Cages, 15 seconds for Ring of Fire. After that, the foes can be knocked down in place. Useful to know for Freezing Rain.
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I do wish this game had a "danger room" mode, where you could temporarily be set to level 50 and fight a few waves of training dummies. It would be nice to know whether a given AT/powerset/build is going to fit my playstyle without having to waste ten or twenty hours first. I don't have tons of experience with the game yet, so I don't know the ins and outs of everything. And so far, a few powersets that were a lot of fun at level six felt more like slamming face first into a brick wall at level 15.
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Several power set don't really "come together" until late in the set. Illusion totally changes when you get Phantom Army at 18, and then again with Spectral Terror at 26. Storm really needs at least level 16 and Freezing Rain. Fire is somewhat like that, in that you really need to get to SO-level and get Flashfire and Hot Feet fully slotted to get to appreciate them, and then the Imps at 32. Fire/Rad even moreso -- You really can't see what the charcter is really like until you get Hot Feet, Choking Cloud (Level 28) and Fire Imps (Level 32) fully slotted.
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As far as the other primaries go, I already have at least one of everything but Mind, Fire, and Stone. I tried stone, and didn't care for it at all. (If I don't like it by level 10, I don't generally assume that it'll get better later on.) I'm not sure yet about Gravity - I only have it on a Dominator, and even then only because it was the closest thing I could find to a 'bad luck" powerset. (Flying up and hitting your head on the ceiling, then getting hit in the face with a forklift seems pretty unlucky to me.)
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I love Earth Control, but admit that it is much, much better on teams. The damage is low solo, but can be solo'ed in upper levels. Take a look at my Earth/Rad guide if you want an idea on how well the set plays.
Grav is the only controller set I have not taken past 32. The two key powers are Wormhole and Singularity at levels 26 and 32, so I want to get there eventually. Other than Propel, Wormhole and Singularity, the powerset seems pretty boring to me. Still, I want to get my highest Grav/Storm, currently 21, high enough to experience those key powers.
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For the secondaries, as a solo player I don't really see the point of taking Kinetics or Empathy. My only level 50 hero is Plant/Thermal, and that's more due to stubbornness on my part than any fondness for Thermal - I'd gotten a lot of the Holiday stuff with that character and wandered up to the mid twenties before it really became apparent that Thermal isn't much use to a solo player. (That was about the third character I had made at that time.) With the pet, I can get some use out of it, but only until I exemplar down to a point where I can't call the flytrap anymore. (Such as Ouroboros missions.) If there was a way to re-choose the base powersets, I'd drop Thermal in a heartbeat. I'd considered Radiation, obviously, and I already have a /sonic. I've got a Force Field Mastermind, and one character with that set is plenty. And I have two with Trick Arrow.
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Don't count out Kinetics. It is actually quite effective solo. My Fire/Kin has mostly soloed her way up to 40. Speed Boost, even with the recent change of not helping the recharge on pets, still benefits Imps in running around faster. Fulcrum Shift boosts the damage of your Hot Feet and your Imps. My Fire/Kin dies more than my Fire/Rad, but kills stuff faster. Although a Fire/Kin has become a cliche' in this game, it really is a very powerful combo, even solo.
And Kinetics is another powerset where you can't really appreciate it until you get the last two powers in the set.
LOCAL MAN! The most famous hero of all. There are more newspaper stories about me than anyone else. "Local Man wins Medal of Honor." "Local Man opens Animal Shelter." "Local Man Charged with..." (Um, forget about that one.)
Guide Links: Earth/Rad Guide, Illusion/Rad Guide, Electric Control
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I'll try to get to level 12 or so by tomorow evening, to see whether I like Fire/Storm or not. And Fire Cages works fine against the knockback from Gale, at least. I don't really plan on taking Hurricane. It's knockback and repel, and the end drain looks massive. The only use I could see a for it, is to push thing back out of melee if they escape Cages, and frankly, Gale seems more than sufficient for that.
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Gale stinks. I almost never use it. I was on an ITF yesterday, and while I used Hurricane every now and then, I never used Gale. Gale can be used as a positioning tool in just the right situation, but it has a 20% accuracy penalty so to use it with any regularity, you need to put 2 Accuracy in it minimum. I haven't freed up a slot for a second accuracy on any of my Storm characters.
But Hurricane has good uses. It has a HUGE to Hot Debuff if you learn to use it with skill. My favorite use of Hurricane is in those Cul-de-sacs in offices. Stand at the entrance, toggle on Hurricane, Lightning Storm, AoE Immobilize, Tornado, then anything else that does damage. Bad guys are trapped and mostly can't hit you.
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This needs to be seconded. It's -tohit effect alone adds greatly to your survival, especially later when you start running into enemy EBs you can't lock down or knock away. It's also very useful against enemies like Warwolf bosses that are both hard to hold and hard to immob - but can be held off by Hurricane.
Arc #40529 : The Furies of the Earth
I've decided to replace one of the characters I never play with a Fire controller, since that's a set I've never played yet. I was thinking of either Storm or Radiation as a secondary, and can't seem to decide. I've looked at the controller guides, and they really don't narrow it down. (The simple fact is, if a combination is possible, someone, somewhere, thinks it's the best thing ever.) A major consideration for me is that I solo a great deal, which is why I was considering Storm in the first place - Rad has some nice powers, but several of them require another player character to function. In fact, Mutation and Fallout both require a dead player character, which can be tricky to get even on a team. (Unless it's a *bad* team, then they're all dead.)
Before anyone decides to be clever with the "trollers R 4 teams, lrn2play n00b," my only level 50 hero is a Plant/Thermal controller, and does quite well solo. I just don't have any real experience with either the Radiation or Storm powersets. While I mostly solo, I don't actually make anti-teaming builds. So if I do team up for some reason, I'd like to not instantly be the most hated person there just for what powersets I have. (This is the reason I don't have an Energy/Energy Blaster, for example.)
Radiation pros - early access to a self-healing power, large number of debuff powers.
Radiation cons - Accelerate Metabolism no longer hastens pets, Mutation and Fallout both require a defeated player character, EMP has a really, really long recharge.
Storm Summoning pros - some decent slows/stuns/debuffs, and two additional pseudo pets (Tornado and Lightning Storm.) Steamy Mist has stealth.
Storm Summoning cons - no self heal, and O2 Boost is a very weak heal other. Powerset includes Hurricane. Tornado pet is insane, does knockback, and will happily scatter or aggro (or both) every group of critters it can find.