Insanity Trio?

Ok here's another in my Trio of Doom ideas and I'd welcome your input

The basic concept is simple and I'd achieved most goals already but there's a twist: 3 Trollers to start from the ground up as a team and go through all the TFs and SFs (cuz we can now ) but... where possible teh trio will do "Master of" runs... No temps, no deaths you know the drill.

So far we've got 2 of us and are looking for a regular 3rd (on Defiant if anyone here cares to put in for it) and I'm thinking something like earth/sonic & fire/rad and maybe an Ice/something...

But if you were a lunatic like us, what would you bring to the table?

Edited to add that I chose controllers for having a good combo of holds and de/buffs with the potential for pets to take alphas if needed. Some might suggest Defenders or the need for a tank but that's not the point of this exercise tho I can probably see the reasoning for suggesting that.

"You got to dig it to dig it, you dig?"
Thelonious Monk

Illusion/Rad, if you are going with Fire/Rad and Earth/Sonic. Deceive to take the tough foes out of the fight before it begins. Phantom Army to take the aggro. Earth and Fire can handle the AoE control and damage, and Ill/Rad can handle the toughest foes, the mezzers, etc. AM to stack with the Fire/Rad. Rad debuffs to stack with the Fire/Rad. Plus, Illusion can act as the team spy for stealthing missions with Superior Invis and Recall Friend.

But if you are doing a trio of controllers, consider making all three Fire/Rads. Stacked AM, stacked Choking Cloud+Hot Feet, 9 Imps running around and all the Rad debuffs. Everything melts in seconds. (I'm just finishing up my second Fire/Rad -- he's 49 and working to gather up the IOs he needs for his final build. I wanted one on my main server to team with my buddies so that we can all be on Fire/Rads to cruise through stuff.)

I'd suggest cold, thermal, and either kinetics or trick arrow for the secondaries.

You'll have shields aplenty, heals, and resistance and regeneration debuffs.

My personal preference would be trick arrow; melt armor plus sleet plus acid arrow plus disruption arrow is 82.5% resistance debuffing, and the Achilles Heel proc can add in another 20%.

Primaries, I'd go Illusion, Earth and either Mind or Fire.

I've got an Ill/Sonic at 50 and frankly I don't like it that much... but that's not IO'd or anything, and an earth/thermal 50 that's a whole lot more fun to play.

One of the problems wtih the Ill we came across was that on the Imperious TF, the Nicti heal off the pets too much so their damage is mitigated.

I've said in another thread I'm not a huge fan of /kin controllers. I've played a kin defender to 50 and retired him and I've played a kin troller to 40 then deleted it and played others too - but I've never found the debuffs of a kin to be so good compared to sonic or rad

Past trios and duos I've tried haven't been single AT types but one of the big issues I've noticed is that it's a breeze if you don't rush, until the AV, which is a huge step up.

The toughest AVs to beat in my experience are Hero 1 and Ghost Widow and the collective Freedom Phalanx on LRSF (but if they can be isolated then it's less difficult.)

Bear in mind we won't have nukes or shivans on Mo runs, so we'll be limited to what we can produce between us.

"You got to dig it to dig it, you dig?"
Thelonious Monk

FRAD teams are sick powerful.

Are you willing to consider replacing one troller with a Dominator? If so, I'd consider:

1) Controller: Illusion/Cold
2) Controller: Fire/Radiation
3) Dominator: Mind/Fire

If replacing one person with a Dominator isn't an option, I would try for something like Plant/Cold. I prefer Cold shields to Radiation debuffs for these types of tasks because they don't lose value against AVs. 2 Colds and 1 Rad is a perfect blend, IMO.

If you do take the Dominator, you can use him or her for fantastic damage and the ability to hold elite bosses and even possibly AVs. I selected /Fire as the secondary but you could do anything. I picked Mind because so many of its power benefit from Domination mode.

The only thing three Fire/Rads really lack is mez protection. But then that's what Indom Will is for. Three Fire/Rads may not be as interesting as some other combinations, but it's really synergistic and effective.

Nothing stacks better than Fire/Rad in this game, and mez protection indeed can be had in your epic, which w/3 AMs can come pretty close to perma-ing, depending on how expensive you make your builds. Even before IW, w/3 AMs, most mez effects won't stick for very long (though retoggling HF + CC is a pita). If you really miss the hard control, you can still alternate your 3 FF's every spawn, though I pretty much guarantee you won't need it w/3x CCs running all the time.

The reason I said to consider x2 Colds is because of it's performance against AVs relative to Radiation:

- -50% damage vs -20% damage
- +14.5% defense vs -3.75 toHit (because of AV resists, numbers shown are bases before IOs)
- -64.5 recharge during Heat Loss up time vs -11.25 (because of AV resists) -- you want two Colds here to floor the numbers permanently and slow AV attack speed to 1/4th normal value
- 30% resistance (-60% during Heat Loss cycles) vs -22.5%
- +1.04 end/sec (minimum, can be much higher) vs .5 end/sec
- 93% healing vs -0% (not sure if this is resisted by AVs)

Radiation does provide a very useful +30% Recharge, an AoE hold, and heals. It is a truly great set although IMO it excels more at dealing with crowds than with AVs specifically (at least relative to Cold Dom), and my opinion is that is where your trio is most likely to run into problems. I also have selfish motives though, in that I'm kind of bored with Fire/Rads and would like some other type of Controller to play flavor of the month once in a while.

Well as I said above we've started as a duo, a Fire/Rad and an Earth/Sonic and just the 2 of us have munched through the first 8 levels in just a couple of hours.

I do like the idea of a /cold - but I'm also thinking that a /poison MM might be good. I've got one at 50 and never really got on with the MM AT but by all accounts the Thugs/Poison is an AV killer so with the other de/buffs we bring that may be fun.

So it could be that we'll just throw the final slot open to anyone who can bring something interesting and make an interesting team, or we'll just pick up somebody for the TFs/SFs as required.

"You got to dig it to dig it, you dig?"
Thelonious Monk

We've now got a 3rd member, an Ice/Cold troller so we now have the following combo:

Fire/Rad

Earth/Sonic

Ice/Cold

I think we have probably most bases covered - especially in forms of damage - and appreciate all the advice here.

"You got to dig it to dig it, you dig?"
Thelonious Monk

Both Ice and Earth are very low damage, so your Fire/Rad will have to provide most of the damage. Until you get to 32 and all the pets, that trio will be pretty slow.

I'd still throw down EQ for the debuffs, similar w/QS, even if everything's caged. Personally, I think running around w/HF, CC & AA all on would be pretty cool. In fact, if everyone also took WoC as their epic (I know, small rad, but there'll be 3 of them), I'd almost drop CC from the mix, and just immob/slow, confuse & burn everyone to death.

Tex, not sure if you've read above but we're hoping to do some Mo runs so temps won't be much use.

Local, our newcomer has 2 grav 50s and wanted to try something else. It's taken me like 2 days to get a toon from 1-25 with PuGs so I'm guessing there'll be no real issue with reforming if something looks especially broken, but there's a big element of playing something fun for all of us.

We'll see how it goes once we've got a few hours under our collective belts and take it from there.

"You got to dig it to dig it, you dig?"
Thelonious Monk