Solo-friendly mentalist: blaster or controller?

Yes, I do understand about the problems facing any psychic-oriented character as she levels up - the increasing resistance (including, boo, among enemies I like to fight), and all the rest. So when I say I want one anyway, I understand that I'm talking about a character I'll have some fun leveling and almost certainly end up shelving along the way.

Nevertheless, I want one, because deep inside me is still the adolescent girl who was fascinated by Marvel Girl and Emma Frost, Saturn Girl, and characters like that.

So! How do Psychic Blast (presumably supported by Mental Manipulation) and Mind Control (supported by, um, dunno, might be Empathy or Force Fields or Kinetics) compare for soloing: Speed? Escape options? Endurance hogging? Stuff I don't yet know enough to ask about?

Make a Dominator- with that you have the best of both worlds. Safety through controls and the punch of a blaster. Mind/psi concept Ftw.

IMHO blaster- if you're looking primarily to solo, always go with damage.

I've had a mind/kin controller for most of my CoH career and despite folk who sing the praises of the combo I can't stand soloing him. He's an awesome amount of fun on a team, but soloing him is best described as "tedious". Given the way /kin boosts your damage, I can't imagine any other combo doing any better.


I have a psi/dev blaster (concept PPD character) who's still fairly 'young' at level 20-ish but who solos quite nicely and is a lot of fun to play. The changes to Defiance made a huge difference in blaster soloability, no need to keep a tray of break-frees handy at all times anymore.

/edit
and yeah, Doms are a nice hybrid option. =)

I agree with Nethergoat, I have a mind/kin at 50 and it really isn't that impressive. Even damage capped (which I am most of the time) the damage feels pretty subpar.

However, it will do a lot more damage than a mind/psi dominator with my main three 'attacks' doing between 240 and 320 damage. Comparatively the dom (without outside buffs) will be seeing 170 to 228 with their damage moves.

I've done a psi/em up to 40 and it solo'ed easily enough (not anywhere near as safe as mind control though) and had enough punch to move quickly through targets.

IME if I were to roll another mentalist it would be in this order because I value damage with 'enough' safety rather than an abundance of safety with a lack of damage.
psi/x blaster (where x has buildup)
mind/kin troller
kin/psi def
mind/psi dom

Mind Control is about the safest possible soloer you can build for everyday missions. It's certainly not the fastest, but to get killed you have to really, really work at it. The only, uh, "weakness" is it can't solo AVs, not because it's a bad set but because--dangerous sidebar rant alert--AV fighting is a cheeseball gimmick dominated by completely arbitrary rules (AVs have high regen and don't resist -Resistance like they should due to game limitations, basically).

Mind/Kin is so clicky I'd probably break the keyboard in frustration. Mind/Rad, Mind/Cold, and Mind/Storm I find much more palatable. And good old Mind/Force Field can be IOed into a kind of rolling tank.

I personally think Psi Blast is kind of not so hot on a Blaster, for a long list of reasons. The Defender/Corruptor version's not as bad. But I'd still generally have Mind Control over any of the Psi Blast sets. The damage difference between them isn't that big and the mezzes in Mind Control are MUCH better than the blast sets... actually one of the top mezz sets in the game. Plus unlike the Blasts, Mind Control ignores positional defense (so force fields, for example, provide no extra protection).

Mind Control is a much better solo-er if you take Levitate than if you dont.

It does 33% more damage than Dominate or Mesmerise, and does Smashing damage, especially nice against robots.

If your concept includes a bit of TK as well as telepathy, you're golden, otherwise, you may find Mind Control a bit of a drag if you skip this power. For a pure telepath, I'd prefer a Psi Blast Blaster or Defender.

I think the best answer is probably a Fortunata

It will come in as less damaging than the psi blaster, but more damaging than the next closest being the mind/kin.

It doesn't have all that much less control than a mind troller/dom, but has a lot more damage and is arguably more survivable than most mind trollers and way more survivable than a psi blaster.

If you are flexible in your build it can do a lot more aoe damage than any Psi blaster (excluding psi/fire) and definitely more than any mind troller/dom.

Now that they unlock at lvl 20 there would be little reason to exclude them from the list and in terms of being a mentalist they are tops.

so in terms of damage it would be:
psi/x blaster(where x has bu)
fortunata
mind/kin
kin/psi
mind/psi

In terms of safety it is arguably:
mind/kin
fortunata
mind/psi
kin/psi
psi/x

Fort and Mind/kin come near the top in both categories. Having played both I can tell you the fortunata does quite a bit more damage has more than enough control and softcapped def is pretty crazy on top of all that.

I'm going to throw in a vote for Mind/Trick Arrow.

I've gotten one to 50 and found that he is a very safe build to solo. Not overly fast at first in the earlier levels but with the sheer amount of single target and AoE control you get you will be very safe. You get:
* 2 ST holds
* 2 AoE holds
* 1 ST sleep
* 2 AoE sleep
* 1 ST confuse
* 1 AoE confuse
* 1 cone fear
* 1 ST Immobilise

If you take the 3 ST damaging powers from Mind that helps, as people have said Levitate does decent damage and isn't just Psi damage. And then when you get Oil Slick Arrow you will have something that will happily deal with those pesky Psi resistant mobs!

Mass Hypnosis (or Total Domination/EMP Arrow for sleep resistant mobs) => Disruption Arrow => Glue Arrow => Oil Slick Arrow => Fireball (or something else to light the Oil Slick pre lvl 41)

That combo is one of my fav and it eats mobs alive! Espcially if you are stealthed and once they are burning you can throw on an Acid Arrow for some extra -res and clear up with your ST attacks and terrify.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zwillinger Quote: 16. Has Paragon Studios redefined "player" to require your mouse to subscribe separately from your keyboard? If your mouse has greater processing power than your gfx card, the answer is yes.

Dominator all the way. You've got safety, you've got damage and you've got options:

Safety = vs a controller or blaster, a dom will give you mez protection plus ridiculous control. Blasters only get 'kinda' mez protection and controllers none at all until epic pools (and you probably won't make it that far seeing as this is just an alt for you).

Damage = close to a blaster. But a dom does lack BU/Aim, a nova and extra attacks from the manipulation pool. It's arguable if controllers do more damage, especially with Mind control. With no pet to buff, the secondary will go to waste if it's buffs and counter to your confuse if its debuffs like -rech, -tohit, -dmg etc.

Options = Blasters and Doms can go Psi/ or /Psi but Controllers only have one mental set. If you want to go pure psi, those two can but if you just one partial psi, you've got the option to mix damage types (moreso on Blasters). This will get around the resistance of enemies (just smack the robots with Energy Melee or something).

Also, I believe Dom Psychic Shockwave is better than Blaster version (I think...could be wrong but never played /psi on Blaster). It's not as ultra powerful as it used to but it's still very nice.

I would go with a Fort or a Mind/Energy Dominator.

Fort for the reasons stated above, fantastic survivability, good damage, mez protection and team buffs. Great if you want to team a lot.

Mind/Energy Dom because well, /Psy is a lot more balanced since the changes but it's still an awkward set. You can recolour the Energy stuff to look more psy like and it does great damage now. Mind/Energy would a beast at soloing from very early on.

A Psy Blaster would be good if you like the playstyle. Problem is, while it's got damage in boatloads, that's basically all it's got. A Dom or Fort would bring enough damage to the table while being much safer to solo/team with.

Edit: in response to villside depressing you, GR is coming soon so you can always side-switch your character to heroside.

Wait for GR and roll a Mind/Fire dom. Ton of fun. (Or don't wait and play redside. Cranked up the difficulty at level 3 and have kept going.)
If you want controller - sure, Mind/FF is safe, but boring. You don't have anything really assisting you when you solo, nothing boosting your damage (or debuffing the enemies, etc.) Mind/Emp I found - well, dull. Then again, I played (and deleted) it before dual builds, so I was trying to keep some balance between solo and group utility. Dual builds will help with that quite a bit.

Oh, and I disagree with fortunata. Sure, they unlock at 20. Then you have to play them to 24, deal with the forced respec, THEN start "being a fortunata." I've gotten to really dislike that entire aspect of the VEATs. (Aside from finding them just flat out "not fun.")

Regardless, I still don't see Psy blasters as "mentalists," personally. But that's personal bias (and nothing against the set.) Speed, they'll be faster. You asked about escape options, though? How about confusing, terrorizing, holding and/or putting to sleep everything that faces you? You can, of course, pair that with /Rad, lowering enemy defense, resistance and damage, plus buffing yourself and your teammates - it'll be a somewhat tight build with all the stuff you'll want to take, though.

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Go with Fortunata. Sure, you'd have to unlock it with a lvl 20 on villain side, but 20's easy to do. Then you have to go through 24 levels of being a melee character. But in the end you'll have controls (early ones are confuse and dominate), damage, status protection of a melee toon, option to have your second build into a night widow in case you get tired of fortunata and want a melee stalker/scrapper alt.

On top of it all, you get all the leadership powers for cheap for you and your team (should you wish to team) and enjoy great positional defense and sliding resists.