Best for +4 AE Boss fighting
Yes EQ and IS will affect bosses, unless the player gave them resistance powers to said effects.
As far as what you have in mind, i'd suggest something like a plant/kin with perma creepers.
Kin obviously for SB and fulcrum, and the creepers are a constant source of slow and immobilize and knockdown to keep the bosses in place.
Also, if you slot seeds of confusion, confusing the bosses, while entertaining in and of itself, is very fruitful in a situation where you will be doing most of the damage to them, especially after you are buffed with fulcrum, and they're damage is debuffed by them.
I'd suggest picking up tactics, and of course roots to help keep the bosses in place. Vengeance is also very useful should a squishy or even the tank die during said events.
Fly trap can also help immobilize, though they still REALLY need to fix him, as if he gets in his entangle roots chain he'll do that pretty much forver, but if he can get into a mode where he uses fling thorns often is very nice as that power does -defense to the bosses as well.
Also when they are bunched up tree of life can have some value in this respect when the mobs are close, and if the enemies are doing smash/lethal ID REALLY can help a tank survive so many tough boss attacks.
For such reasons something like earth/kin is also very good. Lots of defense debuff, in addition to all the slows and immobilizes with stone cages that hit more accurately due to the defense debuff.
Depending on the tank a good combo can also be earth/sonic or plant/sonic. The shields help the tank survive a lot perhaps on a tank where it has its own good self heal or regeneration, and the -resist of disruption field is nice, though due to scaling and resistances not quite as good as +damage.
TA is also a good secondary with disruption arrow, glue arrow and acid arrow as debuffs/slows, as is storm, but it leads its animations to be a bit laggy for things like farms, though if you keep the bosses immobilized lightning storm helps a lot when they are all bunched up as does tornado if you are spamming your aoe immobilize so they don't knock back and of course the debuffs from freezing rain.
Plasmic's Guide to Sonic/Mental
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Plasmic Fire - 50 Fire/Rad Victory Server
Are you planning on soloing or full 8-person teams?
I use my Fire/Rad for 54s. She's a beast at it. I'm usually standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the tank, awash in pretty orange numbers. I've got some Chance-for-Hold procs in my Chocking Cloud and Fire Cages, so locking down a mob of +4 bosses is surprisingly easy. She can even soft-tank 52s if I am careful and time things right. Getting mezzed is still a minor issue (not so much on farms) but with every purp, I get that much closer to perma-AM.
The debuffs in Rad bring a nice added layer of survivability you don't get with Kin. And there are SO MANY kins running around these days, it is very rare that I'm NOT at my damage cap.
Stay Gold, Paragon. Stay Gold.
Nolite te bastardes carborundorum.
AM is only mez resistance, not protection, so your toggles will still drop if mezzed which is really the biggest concern.
And i have a fire/rad as well, consdiring +4s and the low base accuracy of fire cages vs duration resistance from a +4 boss, you can still get scatter with hotfeet.
My suggestions were for a very good conjunction on any team that has the simple basics such as a tank.
With my suggestions, its you, and the tank, the rest is fluff for damage.
FYI, fulcrum shift is the same 20% -damage as enervating field. However, it can be stacked to be 40% -damage, unlike EF.
It also has a larger radius, and will not drop if you are mezzed.
And while true rad has the -to hit from RI, fully slotted against +4s is a 18.72% to hit debuff. (tahts before any possible resistances a boss has against it, that is just per +4 level)
True not bad overall, but continues to convey that it is gone if you are mezzd, or if the target drops.
But the main thing, with that damage debuff to begin, and your transfusion/ID and controls, the tank should be abound to survive anyways, whilst having the aggro.
SO between the two in this situation rad really isn't all that much better for what the kin brings to the table in this type of a situation.
Plasmic's Guide to Sonic/Mental
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Plasmic Fire - 50 Fire/Rad Victory Server
I'd vote fire/rad. Plenty of kins out there already.
I suggest a well min/maxed fire/kin/earth can stand toe to toe with 54's, i a *certain* boss (Don't wanna get it omgnerfed) that mainly does ranged S/L damage, my troller has about 40% defense to S/l and 30% to ranged aswell as 25% to melee, which is where i usually am.
Thing about //Earth is that when u use your main stun like flash fire, you can follow up with Fissue, which is a mag 2 stun by itself, which allows you to stun bosses. You also get Earths Embrace, which is nice and easy to perma, and HP caps u aswell as being a heal you can use without a target.
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What would be the best controller...
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I'm thinking an old school X-Box controller. You know, the really huge one that you could serve a pizza on?
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That DOES serve well for damage, just throw it at the boss and watch the pretty numbers.
On the subject, you always have three basic variants of groups, and you need to vary your playstyle to them :
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1) Damage, pewpewpew!!!!1!
They kill everything so fast, it's hardly dangerous.
This works extremely well, until an accident happens.
Really, n00blets love this type of group because of "the pRetTy numBars!1!1 LOL".
2) Debuffs galore.
Debuff the enemy until it's as dangerous as a drunk kitten.
Very strong tactic if you have a big team that is poorly equipped.
Not fast killing though, since it takes a bit of time to debuff.
Can be hard to explain to a n00blet to hold the damage until debuffs are in.
3) Buffed out the wasoo!
If yout tank/healer can take everything thrown at them, all you have to worry about is not getting aggro and deal damage. This can be achieved by good equipping or really good buffs. The advantage is that you can do the buffs between fights, and you are less prone to alpha-strikes from the enemy.
Also, by not having to debuff like mad, you deal damage from the get go, so it's faster killing than the pure debuff route. n00blets don't really understand these groups, since they get kicked all the time!
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The best groups often have good damage, good buffs and a few debuffs thrown in, along with some crowd control to lower initial incoming damage. And that means .. knowing your own character, as well as the others.
Yeah .. it's almost like work.
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I'd vote fire/rad. Plenty of kins out there already.
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one can never have too many kins
Spines/ D A lvl 50 Scrap, stone/wm lvl 50 tank, Kat/reg lvl 50 Scrap
Grav/Kin lvl 50 Cont, Fire/Enegry lvl 50 Blast
Warshade lvl 50, PB lvl 39, nightwidow lvl 50, crab lvl 42
plant/thorns lvl 50 dom, ice/fire lvl 40 dom, grav/nrg lvl 41 dom
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I'd vote fire/rad. Plenty of kins out there already.
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one can never have too many kins
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I heartily disagree, but YMMV
You may be at the damage cap, but the multiple fulcrums will still debuff the bosses even more.
Not to mention the multiple stacked speed boosts, and either controls or blasts that the kin defender/troller will be bringing to the table.
Really depending on how you slot your attacks you can benefit from 5-6 speed boosts for the +rech, which will always help in a farm situation.
Multiple kins also allow for more of the initial fulcrum buff that centers around the caster to hit those blasters that don't go into melee to get more +damage.
Plasmic's Guide to Sonic/Mental
Plasmic's Guide to Regeneration
Plasmic Fire - 50 Fire/Rad Victory Server
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you can benefit from 5-6 speed boosts
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Nothing- not even my own carelessness and stupidity- gets me killed faster. Nothing like rushing into a mob to AoE hold... rushing past... rushing WAY past... hey, rushing into a whole brand new mob-! Splat. I feel like Elwood Blues just glued my gas pedal to the floor.
Of course, you'd have to find more than one kin who knew how to SB before you could get in that kind of trouble.
Stay Gold, Paragon. Stay Gold.
Nolite te bastardes carborundorum.
My fire/storm/stone does extremely well.
With flashfire/thunderclap/fault I'm able to keep most of the bosses stunned most of the time, and there's plenty of damage from freezing rain, fault, hotfeet, cages+bonfire, imps and so on.
In my experience, I do better toe-to-toe with big groups of bosses than any fire/kin can, but of course teams love the SB and FS that kins bring. Freezing Rain is a good damage boost, especially because the -defense helps people hit +4s, but the +damage is nothing like FS, of course.
It's the constantly-stacking stuns that really make me popular on boss farms though. Thunderclap really does make a big difference in this regard even though by itself it's only mag 2. But with Flashfire and Fault also cycling, the stuns make it really easy for everyone to do their thing and stay alive. The bosses really don't get a lot of chances to attack.
I can spot-solo spawns of +4 bosses on 8-person teams, too, but it is risky, and of course it's much faster with a team helping.
Earth/TA... If you want control this will not fail you.
@MarvelatMee and @COL Burn
24 - 50s
Too many ALTs
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You may be at the damage cap, but the multiple fulcrums will still debuff the bosses even more.
Not to mention the multiple stacked speed boosts, and either controls or blasts that the kin defender/troller will be bringing to the table.
Really depending on how you slot your attacks you can benefit from 5-6 speed boosts for the +rech, which will always help in a farm situation.
Multiple kins also allow for more of the initial fulcrum buff that centers around the caster to hit those blasters that don't go into melee to get more +damage.
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After 1 or 2 kins, you're much better off adding aoe -res to a team to give that capped damage even more bang for the buck. There are a lot of sets that offer aoe -res so it's usually pretty easy to pick up. Also, adding variety means you pick up some additional surivability debuffs/buffs which is also helpful.
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You may be at the damage cap, but the multiple fulcrums will still debuff the bosses even more.
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I'd still prefer no more than 2 kins. Maybe 3 if they all were good players. Give me rads, storms and TA's instead of more kins. And defenders with those powersets, and dark on top.
Side analogue: Like an earlier thread where someone postulated Rad is clearly superior to dark (defender versions) because of having AM and the toggle nature of its powers (this was the focus of the argument): Tar patch is not up often enough to use spawn to spawn and is therefore inferior to EF. I completely disagree. If anything, I prefer tar patch vastly to EF and I have plenty of characters with each powerset. There's a big advantage to not having to retoggle as things die off, and if you establish a 'kill zone' and pull many spawns to it, it frees you up to do more damage.
How is this related to the kin argument? Well, fulcrum shift is a great power, but it's pretty limited in that you only get one shot & 10 max targets and it's got a hefty recharge. Rad can retoggle in 2-3s if an anchor dies and get full potency of debuff on any 16 targets in the area while the toggle is up. Storm and dark don't care if you move in and out of range, once you're tagged you're debuffed, even better.
FS is a great power, but I wouldn't build a team with only FS.
FS isn't that much on recharge. I know pretty much any controller with hasten, not to mention siphon speed and speed boosted by another kin or more, can double stack it at a minimum. But like you said mmmv.
Spines/ D A lvl 50 Scrap, stone/wm lvl 50 tank, Kat/reg lvl 50 Scrap
Grav/Kin lvl 50 Cont, Fire/Enegry lvl 50 Blast
Warshade lvl 50, PB lvl 39, nightwidow lvl 50, crab lvl 42
plant/thorns lvl 50 dom, ice/fire lvl 40 dom, grav/nrg lvl 41 dom
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FS isn't that much on recharge. I know pretty much any controller with hasten, not to mention siphon speed and speed boosted by another kin or more, can double stack it at a minimum. But like you said mmmv.
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Yep, even at 60 base recharge I wouldn't be surprised to see people with it up every 15-20s or so. Still, I heavily prefer enduring debuffs or location debuffs - I want kin for the damage buff of FS, which has a decent duration and stacks well, but it's also very easy to nigh-constantly cap a blue side team for +damage with just *one* kin.
For res debuffs? Rather go with other powersets.
One more point I want to make about +4 boss farms;
I've seen more kins FS & die in a heartbeat than any other debuffer. The reason is they want to get near the mobs to use FS, they last 1-2 hits, and often there's more than the agro cap floating around (or they're not controlled) so the mobs take umbrage at the debuff and pop 'em like balloons. (Ed: I personally enjoy killing 2+ spawns at a time, without a tanker - which is quite doable on a good team - but getting near them as a squishy just isn't wise)
Everything else can debuff from a pretty safe distance, and trollers have immobs. Fire/storms who know how to use hurricane to push immobed mobs back into the killzone are by far my favorite conceptual troller for farms. Pity I never see them
I would argue Fire/Kins still are at the top of the heap (as far as controllers are concerned) for farming no matter what you're trying to kill. I personally farm 54 bosses with ease as long as I have a tank that's able to keep aggro to some extent.
52 bosses I can farm w/o a tank.
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I would argue Fire/Kins still are at the top of the heap (as far as controllers are concerned) for farming no matter what you're trying to kill. I personally farm 54 bosses with ease as long as I have a tank that's able to keep aggro to some extent.
52 bosses I can farm w/o a tank.
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The discussion is stackability of fire-kins. Having one on your team is always good.
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you can benefit from 5-6 speed boosts
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Nothing- not even my own carelessness and stupidity- gets me killed faster. Nothing like rushing into a mob to AoE hold... rushing past... rushing WAY past... hey, rushing into a whole brand new mob-! Splat. I feel like Elwood Blues just glued my gas pedal to the floor.
Of course, you'd have to find more than one kin who knew how to SB before you could get in that kind of trouble.
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Um... Don't try superspeed. Because there IS a running speed cap, and a run in SS will do it (may need swift cant remember)
So 5-6 speed boosts is going to be the same speed as 2 speed boosts in most scenarios.
and not being able to control yourself with that speed, is your problem.
Plasmic's Guide to Sonic/Mental
Plasmic's Guide to Regeneration
Plasmic Fire - 50 Fire/Rad Victory Server
To get back on subject, I think the discussion was originally which primary/secondary would be best at assisting a tank on +4 boss farms.
Spines/ D A lvl 50 Scrap, stone/wm lvl 50 tank, Kat/reg lvl 50 Scrap
Grav/Kin lvl 50 Cont, Fire/Enegry lvl 50 Blast
Warshade lvl 50, PB lvl 39, nightwidow lvl 50, crab lvl 42
plant/thorns lvl 50 dom, ice/fire lvl 40 dom, grav/nrg lvl 41 dom
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You may be at the damage cap, but the multiple fulcrums will still debuff the bosses even more.
Not to mention the multiple stacked speed boosts, and either controls or blasts that the kin defender/troller will be bringing to the table.
Really depending on how you slot your attacks you can benefit from 5-6 speed boosts for the +rech, which will always help in a farm situation.
Multiple kins also allow for more of the initial fulcrum buff that centers around the caster to hit those blasters that don't go into melee to get more +damage.
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After 1 or 2 kins, you're much better off adding aoe -res to a team to give that capped damage even more bang for the buck. There are a lot of sets that offer aoe -res so it's usually pretty easy to pick up. Also, adding variety means you pick up some additional surivability debuffs/buffs which is also helpful.
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I wasn't saying 5-6 kins is BETTER than other teammates. I was just saying they it can still help to have another one added to the team for various said reasons.
Plasmic's Guide to Sonic/Mental
Plasmic's Guide to Regeneration
Plasmic Fire - 50 Fire/Rad Victory Server
What would be the best controller for the +4 Boss missions?
I would like to be able to keep them together by the tank.
Being a +4 Boss I wasn't sure if Earthquake or Iceslick effected them.
I was thinking /Kin for Fulcrum shift but I'm open to suggestions if you thing something else would be better.
Thx for your input.