What secondaries go particularly well with elec/?

I have never liked the designation of "hard" vs. "soft" control. Different people have different opinions on what constitutes "hard" or "soft" control. Is a Sleep power "hard" or "soft?" What about a Confuse power? Some forms of "Soft" control are equally or more effective than "hard" control. For example, if an AoE Hold has lower accuracy so it misses a few foes, the controller could take more damage than if the controller used several types of "soft" control that provide complete protection. Some "soft" control can be made perma quite easily while "hard" control is temporary -- e.g. Spectral Terror vs. Flash. Is an AoE stun where the foes can wander all over the place and only minions and lieutenants are stunned better than an AoE knockdown patch where the foes stay in place and which can control Bosses?

And Blind's itty-bitty AoE aspect is a Sleep, not a Hold.


As Ketch suggested, please, please do not perpetuate some of the biggest bits of misunderstanding in the game. Players who dislike Confuse powers generally don't understand them. The net effect of Confuse powers depends on how well you understand them and use them. Used properly, Confuse powers have a negligible effect on the amount of XP and can increase the RATE at which the team earns XP by helping the team earn XP faster. My Illusion/Radiation Guide has a section discussing the misunderstandings about confuse powers in the context of Illusion's Deceive.

It does. Actually what it has is IMO simultaneously the best and the worst of the confusion powers. It's the child of Mass Confusion and Seeds of Confusion. No aggro, ranged, extremely reasonable recharge. It just has that critical chance to miss. Solo, it's gold. It lets you operate in secret and makes enemies clump together, which is exactlly where Electric needs them. On a team, I find it more difficult to use (ESPECIALLY when there is a ton of knockback going on--Electric Control and knockback are 90% enemies).

Static Field, though, is the most freaking ridiculous thing I've ever seen. It too varies between incredible solo and just ok on most teams. But the thing with Static Field is it requires almost no investment and has amazing uptime. Because it pulses, just about everything gets put to sleep. And if they don't, they're slowed. And you can cast it through walls by angling the camera.

Solo, an opener of Synaptic Overload followed by Static Field is probably the safest possible move available to a Controller primary, besides, arguably, Phantom Army. The only major risk to Electric is the stupidity of the gremlins.

On teams Electric is very much like Ice. It can make you kind of hate your teammates. Especially. Freaking. Storm. Masterminds. With. Durr-icane. Rampant knockback was always kind of a setback for me with other control sets, but with Electric it can make the whole act come down like a house of cards. But other times things go rather nicely.

This, I think, points to one of the big advantages of Elec - it's control is incredibly sustainable. From level 13 on, with some cheap sleep set IOs in Static Field, I could go up to fairly sizable groups of even level mobs and (as long as none of them were Fortunatas) keep them controlled essentially forever. I sure couldn't do that on my Fire - Flashfire has too short a duration and too long a recharge, and once it wore off I'd be out of options. Even with my Fire at well-enhanced levels, I think my (much lower level and less-enhanced) Elec probably equals if not beats it in mitigation.

Maybe that's not such a good comparision, with Fire generally being considerd a bit low on control? Perhaps. But Elec's non-binaryness goes a long way. If an AoE hold or stun misses, that's *it* for that power until it recharges, which is going to be a while. Static Field gets to try again in two seconds. And, if you're like me and put it at your feet, anything that misses is going to be getting regularly drained by Conductive Aura, so enemies still aren't likely to get a chance to attack. And if more enemies wander in, they just get absorbed by what I'm already doing. It's very rare that I need to think of using a "panic button" power. (Which is a good thing, because I don't have one yet.)

Probably Elec's biggest disadvantage is the delay between my opening Static Field, and when full control is established. I don't find this to be a major issue when solo, and it's not bad on small teams either. Large teams, yeah, it's going to do a lot less. But that's about how I feel on my Fire on a large team too - minions go down so fast, it's hardly worth the effort to try to control them a lot of the time. So more of my focus ends up on keeping particular nasties out of the picture and using my secondary. Not that it'd be bad to Flashfire every spawn.... but most of the TFs I've done have been at levels where I don't have that much recharge yet.

As for things to pair with Elec... Well. Looking at the numbers, I'm not too thrilled by Cold. A lot of it seems to be -recharge, which feels redundant with end draining - by the time they get the end to attack again, something's probably going to have recharged regardless. Rad I'm finding to work quite well so far. Elec's end recovery makes the toggles much more managle, and the toggles reduce the chance that any gaps in control will amount to anything meaningful, as well as improving damage. Trick Arrow looks like it'd do more for damage output, but maybe a bit less for mitigation. Less risk from mez though. Storm looks like it could be a lot of fun if you're good at leveraging knockback.

I'm a level away from it yet, but it sure looks that way. If it misses, you get nothing, but I'm under the impression that if it hits (and you have enough accuracy), it essentially *will* hit everything that's standing close enough together to chain. And if I'm reading the in-game numbers correctly, it doesn't notify enemies to your presence. Combined with the quite short recharge... Well, it's not the be-all end-all of confuses, but it still sounds like a power I'll enjoy using whenever possible.

I agree with this but I just wanted to comment on the /cold part. I take and use every power except for Snow Storm and Frostworks.

Infrigidate: -speed/-rech/-def It's a great power to slot a Achille's Heel -res proc so you'll hit more and hit harder.

Ice Shield/Glacial Shield: +def for your teammates/pets is great.

Artic Fog: +def to all and +res(fire,cold,energy,slow) while also giving stealth.

Benumb: -dmg/-end/-regen to one target. That's a great debuff on any hard target and it recharges fairly quickly.

Sleet: -speed/-rech/-def/-res Great location AoE with a pretty good radius while also a small DoT. You can also slot the -res proc in this for even more -res goodness. Slotted with rech and with hasten this thing is up quick enough to help mitigate elec's lack of dmg.

Heat Loss: -res/-end/slow and +end/+recov to you and surrounding team mates. LONG recharging power with a good duration attached to it. When it's up you can attack all you want and never run out of end. Also gives good -res for more dmg.

I'd say /rad is better if you just want to fire and forget but is pretty end intensive and you get a heal so it just depends on the playstyle I suppose.

Dont forget static field is a team buff too.