New to Controllers

I got my main scrapper (Kat/SR) to lvl 50 and since got quite a case of altitis. I knew I would eventually like to get around to playing a controller and I guess that time is now. I am confused though, what might make a good build that can solo pretty well. I like teams, but my playtime can be interupted often which is rough on teams (I hate being the guy who has to "brb" more than once in a mission), so I play mostly solo.
From what I've read, plant seems to be a decent solo build (I was eyeballing plant/rad). Any suggestions?

I've heard about Plant, but my own experience is with Illusion/Kinetics, and from talk here I'd say it's strong, too. I also have an Illusion/Rad, and while she's not built for soloing, she's actually surprisingly good at it.

The best way to solo a Controller is to get some good holds and damaging powers (and Spectral Wounds is about the best there is) and then add a Power Pool attack on top of that. If you have them, the Vet Rewards of Sands of Mu and either of the staves can take the place of a Pool attack. You won't get Containment with the Vet attacks, but you get about double the damage anyway since Temp Powers aren't effected by your AT. That should give you the damage you need to solo.

Kinetics and Rad are good choices because they help you do damage, too. You've got a fairly good heal (and Kin's melee only heal isn't really a problem since you want to use that melee attack anyway) and with the other defensive capabilities you should be pretty sturdy. I'm pretty sure Rad would work great with Plant, too, especially since Plant has lots better AoE capability than Illusion.

I'll let someone else get down to the details of exact build. I'd just say in general you want plenty of holds/immobilizes and other attacks that deal damage. You also want just enough of your Secondary to make sure you're safe. Then just lock down the foes, drop Enervating Field on them, and go to town.

Ugh, I've always felt that people that try to solo on a controller are trying to punish themselves to appease some sense of guilt. Every troller build I've ever played feels slow and painful, even with pets.

I'll usually street sweep a little with whatever troller I'm in love with at the moment, while I'm waiting for a team to get together. It's fine to pass away a few minutes, but it always reminds me why I never solo. It's slow, and because I've locked down and nerfed my enemies, it's pretty dull as well.

I don't mean to turn you off to controllers, and I salute your consideration of your teammates. However, I'd hate to ruin what little time you might get to play with an AT that feels slow and frustrating on solo play.

You might want to try an Ice/Ice Blaster (awesome solo build, useful on teams, and some trollerish abilities) or a Dark/Dark defender.

Weird. I love soloing on a controller. I guess different strokes for different folks.

Lewis

I have my lvl 20 Plant/Thermal I'm working on right now.

I've solo'ed missions on +0/+0. It can be slow, but confuse helps alot.

ILL/RAD I solo'ed at a pretty decent speed, and it's a strong combo, but...I enjoyed playing it before...but now, it's really only fun for AVs/GMs...so I don't tend to play it anymore.

Fire/Thermal, I found slow to lvl untill 32, which picked it up a bit.

If it must be a controller (you want the buff/debuff secondary,) absolutely go with Plant. Great deal of fun. It and Mind are probably my most played, followed closely by Earth and Ice. (Cannot *stand* Illusion - not enough control, but hey, two ways of turning people invisible, yay.)

If you just want to play a control *set,* look into Dominators as well (either now or post-GR, if you don't want to play redside at all.) Control + Damage + Domination = Glee.

See my Guides and Tutorials

I've played a Fire/Kin and a Plant/Storm to moderately high levels (neither is 50 yet) and I'd suggest Plant. Fire/Kins get good when they get Fire Imps, great when they get Fulcrum Shift, and ungodly when they get Fire Ball or Fissure... but that leaves 31 levels of "suck" and 7 levels of "so-so" before the real fun starts at 38. Plant is a lot stronger early on, and also a lot safer... get decent accuracy and max recharge on Seeds of Confusion and you'll have most enemies shooting each other instead of you, which not only protects you but also boosts soloing speed considerably. /Storm, /Kin, or /Rad are all good solo, with /Storm probably giving the largest damage boost pre-38, /Kin giving the most late-game damage, and /Rad giving the most safety.

Fair warning though... even the best Controllers solo slowly until high levels. Once you get your pet(s) and especially once you can get a decent attack or two from your ancillary pool they start to pick up, but things like Fire/Kin that can hit Scrapper level speed are the exception rather than the rule. Controllers are a lot more fun on teams. If you want to get on teams very easily make a /Kin, though a /Rad will be better against AVs if you like fighting those.

And if you are rich and really want to be able to solo anything but don't care how long it takes, make an Illusion / Rad and get perma-PA. I'm pretty sure a good player with a fully purpled out Ill/Rad can defeat any non-timed encounter in the game except Hamidon and possibly Lord Recluse in the STF. They've soloed pretty much every other AV and giant monster around, though some of the fights take several hours (I think the guy who soloed Lusca took over 5 hours to do it).

Mind/Storm/Earth comes to mind as a steady soloer who can sub in for teams when s/he feels like. It's not a farmer but you should be able to kill just about anything short of an Epic Boss you come across solo from level 1 to 50, and sub in for teams when you feel like it. The fun powers are about evenly dispersed across your career, with great opener single target attacks from Mind that make up for Storm's slow start, and a great AoE from Storm right when Mind really needs it at around level 16.

Some really strong soloers I've had are:

Illusion/Storm, Plant/Storm, and Fire/Rad. All three of these can be built to solo pretty well from early on, and really well even before getting pets at 32.

One thing I tend to do as a controller soloing is to try and take advantage of procs in powers that will be hitting a lot of bad guys. With enough of them incorporated you can end up softening up the bad guys so that each of them only needs a little bit of individual attention to put them down.

Of course if you've just started the game, you won't have any veteran attack powers, so you will need at least one pool attack(Air Superiority or Flurry are my favorites) to help put mobs down. You can usually respec out of these in the 40s when you get APP attack powers. Actually be new to the game, I would probably go with Illusion/Storm or Fire/Rad as those two would be least reliant on veteran attacks for damage.

I love my Imps what can I say. Blue side I have Fire/Rad and Fire/Emp at 50, a F/Kin at 33, a F/Storm in the low 20s and am currently working on a F/Trick Arrow which I am sure will be super tough. By far my favorite, and possibly even my 'main' hero is Miss Kin Ception my Fire/Emp. The combination of the two allow you to create near indestructable eating machines. Good clean fun.

The problem withe the Fire set, and probably the others as well is a lack of damage early on, although honestly I haven't really tried many of the others. It takes a while for it to kick in, really lvl 32 when you get the Imps, so you spend your time foccusing on the controls. This is after all what a Controller set is about anyways.

Solowise it may be a little slower going. Often times I buy the Temprary recipes at WW for Revolver and the Bat just to have some damage. Plus there are Shivans and the WOlves you can get.

SO soloing a Troller is entirely possible, just takes a bit more effort. And yaaaa for Fire/Emps. Need more of these in the world.

Okay welcome to the wonderful world of Controllers LOL Here's a few combos I use and enjoy that I have soloed with quite nicely.

ILL/EMP - Superior Invisibily coupled with Confuse and your Phantom Army and Phantasm equals mayhem in the ranks of you opponent. I have stealthed into missions cinfusing entire mobs and watching them pound each other while I fired off my attack and send in the pets to finish them off. Empathy allows you to heal yourself, along with boosting your recovery and recharge rate although I have done missions where I didn't take a single hit point of damage. With Dual Builds i even have one set to team and one for solo

Plant/Rad - a little slow soloing at first until you get enhanced and then between all those crushing holds and Immobs along with your debuffs you can handle just about anything solo. Here again I have dual builds because teams love my holds, immobs and debuffs.

I have other combos and have soloed ith them but I tend to love to team. those two I have soloed with very succesfully with and think they are worth considering Oh by the way i have a 50 level Ill/Emp that soloed off and on all the way to level 50 and even did missions against Malta and drove the Sappers and Gunslingers insane turning them against their own comrades. Hey have fun!

Welcome to the controllers world I love rad with alot for solo due to choking cloud and aura for heal. Ill/Rad is very nice as is Mind/Kin but i also like Fire/Rad as well. I hope you have alot of fun controlling the heck out of some baddies.

Personnaly, I reall enjoy playing my Fire/Kinetic. She's 50 now but she was a lot of fun to play early on too. Of course, you're not getting the badass powers like FS and Transference until 35, which is when you start killing stuff, but if you want damage, I don't think Fire is the way to go. Sure, it rocks with FS damage-capped but I think Fire is more about Holding your target and slowly burning it down. The holds are nice when solo'ing plus you get the Fire Imps at 32

Like someone else said, it's a safe set but not the funniest to play if you don't want to invest time in it.

I solo almost exclusively and have found the best solo primaries are illusion, plant and mind. Fire is decent due to the AE damage of hot feet but starts off a bit slower than the other 3 and gravity is ok due to the single target damage in propel and lift but lacks good control until wormhole at 26 and singularity at 32. I haven't tried ice and earth as they look to be extremely slow going until you get your pet at 32 and I prefer sets that solo at a reasonable speed at all levels. Some specific advice on each primary:

Illusion: Unlike most control sets this primary relies mostly on its pets for damage as it has very few control options so you can't leverage containment as much. Instead the goal is to get phantom army up as much as possible. Secondaries that work best with illusion are those that debuff the enemy mobs as PA is immune to your buffs, which is why rad, storm and TA tend to be good secondaries. Illusion also does decent single target damage when you combine blind + spectral wounds + a pool attack. Local_Man's guide for Ill/Rad is excellent and can probably be used as a starting point for all Illusion controllers

Plant: Seeds of confusion + roots are your primary early methods of killing off spawns, adding in carrion creepers at 26 and fly trap at 32. Since a lot of the killing speed of plants depends on the AE confuse secondaries that reduce the ability of mobs to kill each other are going to slow you down, although they will still work. I find both TA and Storm work very well and although I haven't tried it I am sure Kin would also be a good secondary. Rad would be a very safe secondary but a lot of its best debuffs are going to be somewhat counter productive.

Mind: The safest and best soloer pre-32 due to its solid lock down (mesmerize + dominate + confuse for single targets and mass hypnosis for groups, all available by level 8) and good single target damage mind slows down after 32 because it doesn't get a pet. Pretty much any secondary will work with mind because the primary is so effective.

Fire: I am not sure I would recommend this for a first, solo controller. When everyone talks about fire's awesome solo ability what they really mean is that its the best set for large scale farming at high levels. When it comes to soloing though fire lacks the single target damage offered by mind and illusion and its AE damage is very end intensive. Plant has a similar problem with single target damage but having seeds of confusion up twice as often as flashfire tends to make up for that. Prior to the i16 changes to the difficulty levels this meant that fire struggled to finish off LT's and bosses although you burned through minions as if they didn't exist - now that you can change your settings to generate large groups with no bosses it should be easier to get through the lower levels. Any secondary that increases your damage and helps you stay alive at close range will work well with fire: rad and storm are probably the best for soloing at all levels, fire/kin is considered the premier farmer but that is because of fulcrum shift, which you won't get until 38.

Gravity: So far I have done one gravity controller - a Grav/Rad who is L19. I find that crushing field + RI makes for a decent ghetto AE hold (CF locks down the mobs and RI keeps them from hurting you to much) and crush + gravity distortion + propel makes for fast single target damage. I am not sure if any other secondary would work so well solo as neither CF or crush completely prevents incoming damage and getting to 26 to get wormhole could be pretty ugly. Storm would probably work but I suspect it won't take off until you get freezing rain at 16 - and storm is a tough secondary to use so I am not sure you want it on your first controller. TA will add some extra control but most of it does not completely stop incoming damage, it just keeps the mobs at range and you don't get any really good stuff until L20 (acid arrow).

In general if you expect to mostly solo I would not recommend any of the secondaries focused on ally buffs (cold, empathy, ff, sonic and thermal). Most of them are very low on ability to boost a solo controller and will only take off when you get a pet and can buff it up. Empathy and cold are probably the best soloing secondaries in this list although I can't speak from personal experience.

How about if we hook you up with a guide? Enantiodromos' "Choosing a Controller Build, V2"

Be Well!
Fireheart

I have enjoyed playing to 50 and mostly solo:
Earth/kin
Ill/kin

I have in the 20s

Plant /ta
Ice/Cold
Ill/storm

in the 30's
earth/storm

I enjoy playing them all because each combo brings something completely different to the game either solo or on a team.

Earth did move more slowly but the control is awesome.
Plant is moving slow, but is exciting and fun to play. Great holds, and very cool visuals.

/Storm is an incredibly powerful set and if played correctly, will tear SH** APART!

Have fun with which ever sets you try and try a few out for size. One will fit and that will be the one you get to 50.