Are slows useful in PvE?

Just wondering as I've rolled an Ice/Time Controller and am enjoying her, but not sure where I want to go with it. Hoping the slows actually impact mobs but expect that as mobs gain "experience", for example Archvillains and such will have resistance to slows and recharge debuffs and such.

In other words, if I were to stack a bunch of slows on mobs, would we see a combat deficiency on their part or would it be trivial with the current speed of player combat vs. mob resistances?

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IMPE, with my /Devices Blaster, slows are better for low defense characters against melee mobs. Of course, almost every mob has a ranged attack, but those attacks will be weaker than their actual melee attack. Of course, holds are better, but typically, many holds are single target only, whereas many slows are AoE or Targeted AoE. But on my /Devices Blaster, it would be hard for me NOT to take Caltrops, for example.

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Also, -Recharge debuffs are fairly useful in PvE, but it's sometimes hard to tell, and this definitely applies to certain mobs. Most mobs get a version of brawl which recharges pretty quickly, and so you may see mobs attacking fairly rapidly even with a decent amount of slows on them. However, the amount of damage you're taking over time will go down.

However, -recharge only affects powers once the enemy has used them, so alpha strikes can still hurt a lot.

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On susceptible mobs, slows can be very useful, but you won't want to make that the primary focus of your build as there are too many enemies that either heavily resist slows (such as AVs) or ignore them altogether (such as Warwolves). That said, on many mobs a good slow will give you some breathing room and making kiting them child's play.

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Well the two different types of slows (movement speed and recharge slow) need to be looked at separately. The following is mostly about regular foes, slows are essentially useless against AVs.

For recharge slows, the longer the combat duration the more benefit slows provide. They increase the time between enemy attacks (or at least between their more powerful attacks) as such unless the unslowed enemy would have time to make at least two attack chain rotations they don't do anything. As such they are most useful when the character(s) cannot kill enemies in a few hits. For a soloer recharge slows make fighting bosses a lot easier and on a team they can really help on higher difficulty (but are generally superfluous at +0).

Movement slows are more situational. They are a positioning tool and as such depend on having a team that can take advantage of them. For a team of ranged characters keeping enemies out of melee range is very useful but for melee characters it's a lot less useful.

For comparison purposes, my Devices Blaster uses movement slows to keep enemies out of melee and bunched up whereas my Time Defender is less concerned with movement slows but does use recharge slows to reduce incoming damage.

In terms of Time I think the analogy people use with Regen is actually appropriate: if you can survive the first 10 seconds you're invincible. It's not quite as true for Time as it is for regen but it is a similar situation. The Alpha strike is painful but if you can survive that the combination of Recharge time reduction and Holds reduce the number of attacks you face down to a very survivable level.

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For a melee character (mostly scrappers, brutes/tanks get taunt in their attacks and all defensive sets) move slows can help in keeping enemies from running away.

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Culex's resistance guide

I like slows in PvE, especially with -recharge. -Recharge can be a huge factor in denying a mob a chance to cycle its attacks. Unfortunately, this can lead to mobs fleeing... but if they're slowed, that's not much of a problem.

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