Well, let's do a quick run-down:
Earth: Rocky has no AoE powers.
Elec: 2 Gremlins that have a weak Jolting Chain attack, but otherwise no AoE.
Fire: Imps have no AoE powers, but there are three of them and their melee attacks do more damage than many other pets
Gravity: Singy's Repel is AoE (kinda) and does no damage, but no other AoE powers.
Ice: Jack's only AoE is Chilling Embrace, which also does no damage.
Illusion: Phanty has a Torrent Cone that can hit up to 10 foes. Plus, there are three Phantom Army guys, if you count that as AoE, but their attacks are all single target.
Mind: No pets
Plant: Twoey has Fling Thorns, a cone that can hit up to 10 foes.
Thus, Illusion probably wins depending on your definition of "AoE Damage." However, until the pet bug that causes Pets to run into melee is fixed, Phanty is a bit suicidal. He is supposed to stay at range to fire off his cone and blast, but he currently tries to run into melee to get his ghosty butt killed. The greater amount of "AoE" for Illusion offsets the fact that the other powers in Illusion Control have no AoE damage powers.
The main problem with "AoE" from pets is that they don't use it with any smarts -- Phanty and Twoey will throw their cones at single targets and make no effort to line up foes in a cone.
LOCAL MAN! The most famous hero of all. There are more newspaper stories about me than anyone else. "Local Man wins Medal of Honor." "Local Man opens Animal Shelter." "Local Man Charged with..." (Um, forget about that one.)
Guide Links: Earth/Rad Guide, Illusion/Rad Guide, Electric Control
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What about mastermind pets? are they any better?
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Originally Posted by Local_Man
Well, let's do a quick run-down:
Earth: Rocky has no AoE powers. Elec: 2 Gremlins that have a weak Jolting Chain attack, but otherwise no AoE. Fire: Imps have no AoE powers, but there are three of them and their melee attacks do more damage than many other pets Gravity: Singy's Repel is AoE (kinda) and does no damage, but no other AoE powers. Ice: Jack's only AoE is Chilling Embrace, which also does no damage. Illusion: Phanty has a Torrent Cone that can hit up to 10 foes. Plus, there are three Phantom Army guys, if you count that as AoE, but their attacks are all single target. Mind: No pets Plant: Twoey has Fling Thorns, a cone that can hit up to 10 foes. Thus, Illusion probably wins depending on your definition of "AoE Damage." However, until the pet bug that causes Pets to run into melee is fixed, Phanty is a bit suicidal. He is supposed to stay at range to fire off his cone and blast, but he currently tries to run into melee to get his ghosty butt killed. The greater amount of "AoE" for Illusion offsets the fact that Illusion Control has no AoE damage powers. The main problem with "AoE" from pets is that they don't use it with any smarts -- Phanty and Twoey will throw their cones at single targets and make no effort to line up foes in a cone. |
Consciousness: that annoying time between naps.
Well, you asked about Controller pets in the Controller forum. Controller pets are only a small part of their overall powerset. Masterminds are a pet-wrangling AT, so their pets are going to have a heck of a lot more AoE, and you get at least 6 of them. I have experience with Thugs and 'Bots, but not the others.
I suggest you ask the question in the Mastermind Forum.
LOCAL MAN! The most famous hero of all. There are more newspaper stories about me than anyone else. "Local Man wins Medal of Honor." "Local Man opens Animal Shelter." "Local Man Charged with..." (Um, forget about that one.)
Guide Links: Earth/Rad Guide, Illusion/Rad Guide, Electric Control
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And that's one of the benefits of Illusion/Force Field. He stays alive a LOT longer. Of course, that comes at the price of teammates whining at you for being a little slower at shielding them, but.. *shrug* :P
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Originally Posted by Local_Man
Thus, Illusion probably wins depending on your definition of "AoE Damage." However, until the pet bug that causes Pets to run into melee is fixed, Phanty is a bit suicidal. He is supposed to stay at range to fire off his cone and blast, but he currently tries to run into melee to get his ghosty butt killed.
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Realistically Speaking, Fire or Plant are probably your best bet for damage output.|
Originally Posted by Donna_
Which controller has the most Aoe damaging pets ??
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Not because of the Teir 9 pets, but because Fire gets Hotfeet and Plant gets Vines and Seeds of Confusion, all of which can add substantial AoE damage (also Plant's AoE Immobilise is the most damaging of all Controller AoE immobs IIRC - not by a lot, but it's something to consider). One of Plant's few downsides is that Lethal damage is highly resisted.
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The ToHit Debuff in Rad's Radiation Infection helps Phanty stay alive longer, too, but it works for the entire team AND the Defense Debuff aspect help PA hit more often. The Cold shields provide much the same benefit as FF, but the rest of the secondary is far more useful.|
Originally Posted by JD_Gumby
And that's one of the benefits of Illusion/Force Field. He stays alive a LOT longer. Of course, that comes at the price of teammates whining at you for being a little slower at shielding them, but.. *shrug* :P
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Phanty's current behavior is a bug. A while ago I sent a PM to Castile, who said that the Devs are aware of it, it affacts most pets, and it was "on the list" to get fixed. When the bug is fixed, Phanty will go back to being one of better surviving pets. It used to be that he hung back, usually just behind you, cast his decoy into melee and then blasted from range. His knockback turned him into a kind of bodyguard for you, keeping foes away from you. Phanty as a melee-loving pet is far less effective.
LOCAL MAN! The most famous hero of all. There are more newspaper stories about me than anyone else. "Local Man wins Medal of Honor." "Local Man opens Animal Shelter." "Local Man Charged with..." (Um, forget about that one.)
Guide Links: Earth/Rad Guide, Illusion/Rad Guide, Electric Control
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I agree that FF's main trick is Defence, to the point of almost being a "one trick pony" and that Cold brings a far wider variety of stuff to the table - mainly debuffs such as -res/-def/-regen/-recharge etc. but I wouldn't go as far as to say Cold is "far more useful" than FF. That'd be entirely situational.|
Originally Posted by Local_Man
The ToHit Debuff in Rad's Radiation Infection helps Phanty stay alive longer, too, but it works for the entire team AND the Defense Debuff aspect help PA hit more often. The Cold shields provide much the same benefit as FF, but the rest of the secondary is far more useful.
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Cold doesn't get AoE Mez protection, the shields it has aren't affected by Power Boost, and FF's Detention Field and Force Bubble can both be very handy in certain situations.
For optimised high-level teams which already have Defence buffs and stacked mez protection? Sure, by all means take a Cold over a FF... but I'd rather have a FF with me than a Cold on a Statesman TF, for example. Same would go for a Rad. Debuffs just don't scale well versus higher level foes, especially AVs (~85% debuff resistance?)
I'd argue that Empathy would be more suited to directly replacing FF than Cold would - it's also very buff heavy (+Defence and Mez protection like FF, plus +tohit/damage/perception/regen/recovery/recharge. Even a little healing!) and Fortitude at high levels of recharge can reliably buff most of a team. The defence component of Fortitude is also on par with FF bubbles and IS affected by Power Boost.
The Illusion/Empath combo also has a major advantage over Illusion/FF in that none of FF's power gain much from building for +recharge to get perma-phantom-army, but the faster you can get Empathy's buffs to recharge the better it performs.
Having said that, I'm biased... I've got a Cold/Dark Defender (built for debuffs + damage), a Illusion/Empath Controller (built for buffs and Perma PA 'mob lockdown') and a Demon/FF Mastermind (built for survivability + damage). I'd get bored silly with /FF if I didn't have a busy primary. Illusion would probably count, I know Demons *certainly* does.
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unless you're kinetics, where now he constantly runs into FS and transfusion range. timing is the key issue but at least he has a chance to be buffed and healed before he knocks them out of range again, instead of just keeping them from ever getting close. he does die more often, but i just resummon...
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Originally Posted by Local_Man
Phanty as a melee-loving pet is far less effective.
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50: Ill/Kin(A+,R,J)-1047 badges RE/Dark(A) Fire/Elec Warshade BS/Regen Necro/Poison Ice/Fiery(A+) Son/Son Bane(A) FM/DA(A) DM/Nin Grav/Icy
lvling: Inv/EM DM/Sheild Arch/MM Bane NW Elec/Earth Grav/Elec Elec/FA Rad/Ice
Paragon Elite/Rogue Elite Joined Oct 2004
What? Of course Fire has the best AoE pets. The Area of Effect just happens to be 3 mobs. 
An Offensive Guide to Ice Melee
A little off topic: Force Field deserves to be buffed. However it does have a specific edge in a few areas:
- FF shields provide endurance drain resistance (encountered vs: Carnies, Hellions, Clockwork, Freakshow, the Cabal, Malta)
- They also provide Toxic resistance
- FF shields can be Power Boosted and Cold's cannot
- Unlike Arctic Fog, Dispersion Bubble provides protection to everything, not just melee/range/AoE, so it is much easier to IO a Force Fielder to absurd defense levels, even versus exotic defense types like Psionics
There are other, smaller things like the fact that Repulsion Field cannot miss and does not cause movement suppression. On a team it's not the best but solo it can be abused rather gloriously, particularly by Mind and Illusion trollers. The trick is to run at the enemy instead of waiting for them to come to you. Enemies are too stupid to queue attacks so when you close distance quickly they go flying without being able to strike back. Arachnos, in particular, have mobs vulnerable to this, because they lack knockback protection but have tons of status protection. At least 2 of the 4 elite bosses in the alpha arc are also vulnerable to this trick.
Beyond that, FF really needs to have to defense debuff added to its shields and a few other small tweaks done. The set is excellent team support on the path from 1 to about 45 but isn't a great choice for extreme end game. Meanwhile, Cold, IMO, sucks prior to about level 40. I don't actually consider my Cold Controller a decent replacement for Force Field, because I skimped seriously on shields due to overall build needs. Exemped under 40, I don't consider him a replacement for much of anybody. But he does clean house rather nicely at 50.
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When they hit level 32, but you basically don't have pets as a controller anyway until then(ignoring the sets that do even indirectly). Bots and Thugs are the best AoE based MM pets, although I say that not knowing how well Demons do. Since they are fire, I assume they do more then ok in the AoE depeartment.
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Originally Posted by Donna_
What about mastermind pets? are they any better?
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Which controller has the most Aoe damaging pets ??
Consciousness: that annoying time between naps.