Most Controlling Controller?

I just started back up again after getting sick of "the other game" and figured I'd make a new guy. I went through the first 10 pages and searched a bit and while I found some information and opinions I couldn't really find a dedicated discussion on what controller was the "Most controlling"

I want to lock down as much as possible, with useful secondary abilities as well like -res mainly so my team can kill faster.
From what I did discover, it looks like Earth or Mind are the most controlling primaries. A lot of these posts were old, so the newer sets weren't in yet though. Is Plant controlling? Or is it still distant compared to Earth or Mind? Or is there another set possibility?

For secondaries it seems like it's either /Storm or /TA or maybe /Rad. I have multiple /Rads already so that's out. I only have 1 /storm and its low in the 20s so I never really experienced late game storm firsthand and never had a /TA at all so I know nothing about it.

So what do you guys think? Any help is appreciated :-)

Earth/Storm is an amazingly powerful Controller. When used properly, but that goes without saying when talking about Storm.

My Earth/Storm 'feels' like a lockdown machine, with Gale and Huricane being essential for mob positioning etc.

Close 2nd place for me would be;

Fire/Rad - Doesn't come with as much 'Hard' control but makes up for it with added damage and the tools in /Rad are always welcome.

Yea I have a 50 Fire/Rad already and she's awesome but I just did one of the new trials on her and while I'm trying to learn again how to play I think I did terrible. I was getting 1shot by stuff exploding or just dieing a lot in general and it didnt seem like my pbaoe holds were doing much other then putting me in harms way. Kinda wanted to be at range for my controllingness.

So Earth gets it hands down over mind I take it?

Oh... Um...

From what I've been reading (Have no vested interest in trying them yet)
you should go into the new trials expecting to eat more floor than your entire career up to that point. Win or Fail, you'll still be earning shards or whatever shiny it is now.

The new trials were designed with the incarnate level shifts in mind and by default will be agonizingly hard for those unslotted.

But back OT; Mind is to single (pun incoming) minded for my tastes. But I've always had a thing against sleeps in this game, as AOE's fly like mad on teams.

I think Mind requires the most out of the player to have the set play as well as it can be played. Yes, it can be amazing. It can make you feel like you should have rolled something else as well.

Of the horde of characters I have rolled, my 2nd 50 was an Earth/storm and it will be one of the few 50s that I'm willing to do the Incarnate stuff with. I can have a team go in three directions and I'll still go, "Yeah, I got this." Earth/ta might be more controlling, but Earth/storm has more than enough and it's rather fun to me.

The problem with Mind and "locking down" foes is that slept foes will wake up if attacked, Fear'd foes will retaliate if attacked, TK's hold will be nullified if the anchor is killed, and confused mobs aren't contained... sure they're not attacking you, but you're not doing double-damage and they can still run around and escape from AoEs.

Solo, it's a monster because you don't have other players mucking you up. In a team setting, it loses its luster. Though being able to lock down multiple EBs or even AVs at once never gets old.

Its best tool, IMO, is Mesmerize. It's a 3.5 mag sleep which means even most AVs will go to sleep in one hit. VERY handy for taking care of an ambushing AV that your party isn't ready to take care of yet... just as long as no one attacks it, anyway =)

Mind Control Tier 9 = Mass Comedy

Earth Control, as has been said many times, is a very *obvious* control set. When you do something, "the earth moves" (thanks to your subwoofer) and your screen is covered with crumbly bits. Everything that Earth/* does is very flashy, with lots of graphical feedback.

Mind Control isn't like that at all. In fact, the "flashiest" think that Mind Control does is put purple bubbles on heads when it confuses hostiles. And even that isn't always that obvious a thing to do. Mind Control is very subtle in its graphics (to the point of being TOO subtle!) ... but never think that just because it doesn't make the camera shake every time you do something it is somehow lacking in power. Mind Control has an amazing selection of powers, pretty much all of which are worthwhile "out of the box" which can be made superlative with slotting.

I haven't tried */Storm or */Radiation on anything yet, but I have tried */Trick Arrow ... both on a Controller (Grav/TA) and on a Mastermind (Ninja/TA) ... and let me tell you, it's nothing to write home about. For complementing "hard control" powers, Trick Arrow is remarkably weak. Sure it's got Ice Arrow, but Ice Arrow has a ridiculously long animation time (so as to let you "admire" the frosty arrowhead, I suppose) and a pathetically short duration coupled with a really long recharge time. You practically have to 6-slot Ice Arrow as soon as you can, just to bring it up to par! Aside from Entangling Arrow (single target Immobilize) and EMP Arrow (AoE Hold) ... that's pretty much *IT* for hard control support from */TA. Worst of all, Trick Arrow is really, at heart, a Team Support powerset, meaning it's far more valuable to a team than it is to a soloist ... much like how things work out for Empathy (for example). Teams can leverage Trick Arrow's debuffs (such as they are) much more efficiently than a soloist can.

It's the end. But the moment has been prepared for ...

Earth/TA has the most overall ranged control. 2 Ranged AoE holds and 2 ranged single target holds. 2 AoE knockdowns. 1 AoE Immob and 2 single target Immob. 1 ranged sleep and 1 PB AoE Sleep. 1 Ranged AoE Stun. 2 AoE Slows. Lots of Resistance Debuff (30% total). The one thing it significantly lacks is -Regen. Yes, there is a lot in EM Pulse Arrow, but the long Recharge makes it not very useful as a -Regen power.

However, I find both Earth/Rad and Earth/Storm to be more flexible builds. Rad adds some nice handy -Regen, an AoE heal and a great team buff, a rez and a blow-up-a-teammate's-corpse thingy. Storm has so many useful tools, including good damage in the last two powers, but lacks -Regen and a self heal.

You may want to take a look at my Earth/Rad guide, linked in my sig. I haven't updated it in a little while, but it still has a ton of useful information on Earth Control even if you go with Earth/Storm.

Another one you may want to consider is Earth/Cold. Great debuffing and defense for the team.

Mind certainly is a good AoE control set, but it just feels a lot weaker than Earth for AoE Control.

In the context of the 2 new raids, at least one of them features extremely difficult all-boss spawns that pour on top of the team. It's not clear how hard these enemies will be in the future when we have 2 level ups. However, I have been on several raids that failed during this phase largely due to teams being unable to handle these enemies and their extremely powerful attacks, especially because their accuracy and damage go up the longer the enemy remains alive. One of the enemies also has the ability to Placate you, run up invisibly, and more or less one shot you with a critical hit. I'm fairly sure (but not certain) I've been critically hit from Range too, and killed almost instantly.

I have not tried them, but my guess is that any of the standard mag 3 Controller AoE powers are not very workable. However, Earthquake, Ice Slick, and even Bonfire are extremely effective. I suspect Jolting Chain is as well. Earth Control's single target hold *might* be able to stack enough hold to grab some of the bosses.

The whole thing with this part of the fight, though, is that if no one on the team bothers to engage the enemies, they will aggro off some of your powers, turn around, and practically one-shot you. My Ice/Fire and Ice/Rad regularly saw the reaper due to Ice Slick, for example. Controlling these particular enemies isn't absolutely critical, because some teams can handle them pretty well through other means, but its nice to have a character who can deal with them when the team can't. The trick is finding some way to engage them both effectively and without having to try to tank it.

FYI on the Lambda trial, Mind Control is almost cheat mode during the race to take out crates. A Mind Dominator technically has an advantage here, but in the end I'd still prefer the Controller for the buff/debuffs to deal with the difficult boss that follows.

Earth is the most control-heavy primary, at the cost of damage.

Illusion doesn't get a lot of control, but what it does get is of extremely high quality. It's hard to imagine any other controller primary handling tower Recluse.

Mind control is only average on controllers. Total Dom and Mass Confuse combined have less than Flashfire's uptime. Combining Terrify and Mass Hypnosis makes up for this, but that's a lot of power choices and slots to pay for control that's not significantly better than e.g. Fire or Plant, and detracts from Mind's other advantages.

Earth/TA +1

I also think Grav/TA would be a ton of control especially later on in levels.

You build mags easily and when you get singularity you really have all the control and some neat damage as well.

Plus, you can pull flyers down easy enough onto a burning oil slick.

Im not really keen on sleeps, but you know Grav has many skippables allowing you to choose some other cool things from epic pools which would allow even more control/damage later on.

My Grav/FF feels like the most control-oriented controller I have, if you count knockdowns and the occasional Phase Shift (and a controller pet!).

Re: the new Trials
The first few I ran with My Fire/Rad, I ate A LOT of floor. A whole lot. I spent more time waiting for the silly hospital doors to unlock than actually battling. Things have gotten considerably easier in the past few days, and I would chalk it up to a few things:
1. The learning curve. What exactly you need to do, the best order and places to do it, and who exactly your are up against.
2. Incarnate powers. Everyone has gotten more powerful. More damage, more buffs.
3. Confidence. Tanks know what they are up against, so they are more willing to take on aggro. With the tanks doing their part, damage dealers feel free to cut loose and uncork some whop-***.

The AVs on the BAF drop so fast, it doesn't even take much coordination to take them both within seconds of each other. The prison break section goes much more smoothly, with everyone really playing to their strengths. Between Bonfire, Fire Cages, and my Imps running down the Lts, I can damn near hold a spawn point solo. I can blast through 2 BAFs in an hour, casually. Yeah, that cut scene sucks, but that's what Alt-Tab is for.

Definately say go with Earth anything but trick arrow. Simply because it takes too long to setup all those arrows to do what another powerset can do in only 1 power. As for as mind control goes I would not bother with it on a controller. Maybe on a dom since you get a damaging secondary that way. The real problem in the set is how sleeps are handled in this game and mass confuse being on way too long on a timer compared to say Seeds of Confusion. I know the whole because it causes no aggro bit but thats kind of pointless if the mobs are confused anyways. There is no reason why mass confuse couldnt be an every spawn power like the way seeds of confusion is.