Slotting Terrify

Quick question. Whats the best way to slot terrify on Mind control? I always slotted for fear duration but someone suggested to me the other day to slot for damage instead - and I can kind of see their reasoning behind it.

My normal slotting is to just stick five Glimpse of the Abyss in there for the recharge and accuracy bonus but I could get the same effect from five Positrons Blast.

Thoughts please?

On mine I have five Positron's Blast (not including the proc) plus the proc from Unspeakable Terror (chance to disorient).

I personally use Glimpse of the Abyss in Terrify on my Min/Kin ... Ms Givings.

Why?

Because it gives me plenty of overlap between duration and recharge so that I can use Terrify at convenience, rather than at need, to refresh the Fear. And although it is perfectly possible to slot Terrify with Positron's Blast instead ... the damage gain really isn't that great, and Positron's doesn't offer all that much in the way of Recharge. Because Terrify has somewhat weak base damage, you're not getting all that much return on investment with Positron's in absolute terms.

Another point is that when soloing, sustaining Fear is more valuable than dealing damage with your one and only AoE attack ... which is then regenerated before you can dispatch all the hostiles in the Cone, because you're limited to single target attacks while waiting for Terrify to recharge (ie. you can't chain attack with Terrify, no matter much how +Recharge you've got).

Given all that ... I've found that enhancing the Control aspect of Terrify's Fear tends to be more useful, in more situations (solo and group) than Terrify's Damage, even with Containment boosting the damage.

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

Re: Damage vs control, I say, don't slot it much.

3-slot suggestions:

Cloud Senses: Acc/End/Rech
Dampened Spirits: End/Rech
Horror/Glimpse of Abyss: Acc/Rech

Gets you all the end and acc you need, and good recharge.


Solo?
I played[1] a Mind/Emp, a Mind/Kin, and a Mind/Rad, to 50, and a second Mind/Emp to 30-- in each case, given my (bad) habits, I probably spent 66% of that time soloing (which is not to say I earned 66% of my experience solo). And I grant that people's tastes vary a bit. But I really don't think you want to *build* a mind controller specifically for soloing. It's fun at low levels (I built the second mind/emp as a small team blastroller), but in the post-30 game, solo mind is sad except maybe for ghosting non-bodycount missions. And you scarcely have Terrify up and slotted before 30.


So slotting Terrify for either damage or fear is probably a little extravagent, and you may just want to shop your slots around if you have a respec handy. Here's why I think that:

Control?
AoE Controls can be either (in-combat) mitigation-- AoE holds, Confuses, stuns (the enemy is not fighting while you're taking them down), or to contain adjacent mobs[2] -- AoE Sleeps, Fears, Intangibility (forcing the enemy to wait to be taken down).

Many will say Terrify and its ilk straddle the line. But that's really only if NObody's weilding meaningful AoE damage [3], but you still need mitigation [4]. If you're on a team of all (torrent-less) energy blasters, you know, go to town with terrify as a mitigation tool, but that seems a pretty rarefied situation to hinge a build on.

So Terrify's usual best control use when somebody's throwing AOE damage (=good thing) is containing adjacent spawns. To contain adjacent spawns with terrify, you have to either get somebody who is smart enough to tank the alpha and then switch OUT of the adjacent spawn once it's terrified (hard to make this reliable & efficient), or you have to take the alpha yourself (which should be difficult for you to do safely, if you really need it) [5]. The best use of Terrify to contain fights isn't usually that good.

Damage?
As a damage tool, it's just not that impressive in terms of its damage output over time-- moderate damage like Dominate, that's up once every 20 seconds at best. I usually take it and play with it slotted for damage & recharge, especially if I will have a second hard containment tool to alternate with Total Dom (Rad, Trick Arrow). But it's still a little silly[6].

I say, don't slot alot. Unless you've got slots to spare.


[1] Caveat: I've been away from the game 18 mos, if something big has changed about Terrify in that timeframe, the below is dated.

[2] In the strategic sense, not the 2x damage.

[3] Needless to say, if somebody does have AoE Damage, it will almost always be crazy talk to ask your team to avoid using it-- damage earns XP, not controls, and AoE damage can be hugely leveraged against larger spawn sizes.

[4] Scrappers and brutes do not need lots of mitigation, and often have AOE anyway.

[5] I realize this isn't quite always the case, but the exception is when you're far enough away and do it from stealth/invis, which is tricky/unreliable, considering Terrify is a cone and you can't always broadside a spawn.

[6] The alternative, soloing large-ish spawns with mass Hypnosis and Terrify is possible, but again the damage output over time of Terrify itself just isn't that good in the first place, and those fights will go prohibitively slowly.

i have glimpse of the abyss slotted in terrify on my mind dom and im pretty satisfied since he needs the control

Sort of a long reply.

I slot it for damage. It's a Tier 1 attack, so cast-for-cast it does exactly as much damage as hitting everything in the area with Dominate one time (including Containment). The "issue" of sorts with using it as a damage power is the longish recharge.

Technically speaking, the power does less damage than the standard "AoE immobilize" style powers when you compare them side by side. For example at Terrify's base 40 second recharge:

Chain Fences: 9.18 x (40 sec / 8 sec) = 45.9 every 40 sec
Terrify: 30.6 damage x (40 sec / 40 sec) = 30.6 every 40 sec

However, these numbers are a little misleading. Terrify has an animation time investment of a little over 2 seconds. Cage powers cast 5 times typically cost you between a little less than 6 to a little more than 10 seconds. Sometimes people examine this purely into terms of lost DPA chains but IMO on a typical Controller (esp a Mind Controller) the question is more "What debuffs/buffs/controls were you NOT able to use because you were doing damage?" Terrify is fairly quick way to throw out low but not completely ignorable damage, and then move on to do other things.

In terms of damage type, many mobs are vulnerable to Psi damage. Many others are resistant. It's a very flip-flop damage type. Terrify's damage is also up front instead of a DoT.

Anyway, Terrify is generally not worth slotting with damage procs like cages due to low-ish DPR. The reason I slot damage is because if you're going to do AoE at all, it and your epic attacks are you only options. By my reasoning you might as well make it hit as hard as possible.

Fear duration isn't necessarily a bad idea. I have Power Boost on my main Mind Controller so the base duration is already ~60 seconds, but knowing enemies are rooted for a while isn't a bad thing.

IMO the best proc investment you could put in the power is Ragnarok: Chance for Knockdown. It prevents any enemy you trip from shooting back at you and delays any attempts they might have to run. Paired with Energy Torrent or another knockdown, you can limit enemies abilities to return fire significantly, as they won't be able to attack if on their backs when the damage hits.

You could slot it for both Control and Damage . . . with Hami-Os. 1 Acc/Dam, 1 Acc/Mez, 2 Dam/Mez, 2 common Recharge IOs.

I slot it as an attack. I have so much recharge on my mind/kin (hello, Siphon speed, hasten, and recharge bonuses!) that the fear aspect is ALREADY perma without adding duration. And the easiest mobs to control are dead ones.

Adding a chance to KD or disorient isn't a horrible idea, but make sure you can't use the slot somewhere else. IMO, you'll get more mileage out of a chance to hold proc in your other powers.

Yeah, I perosnally use HOs to slot Terrify for both damage and fear duration as well. My Mind/Emp already has plenty of recharge in her build, enough that while an additional 6.5% recharge wouldn't hurt, it's not that huge of a deal. She already has perma-hasten without it.

Right now, I'm using 3 Dam/Mez HOs and 3 Acc/Recharge IOs. Not quite as much recharge as Local Man's suggestion, but somewhat more accuracy. I'll have to consider that suggestion, actually. Hmm.

I went for Posi's Blast based on the increased recovery in the set bonus and the recharge time. Now I'm working on Incarnate stuff I might look again at the power but for now it works the way I want.

With a base duration of 28 secs at level 50, I didn't feel the need to slot it for fear.
My slotting is 5 posi's blasts+1 rech IO since the Posi set only gives about 26% recharge.