Considering a Controller

I have never played a Controller before. I have played a few perma Doms, for brief periods, before stripping the character for other projects. Mostly Grav Energy. I leveled just about every Dom build to early 20s once redside, thru missions, never got the whole crew to 50.

My wife just joined the cities, and is played an Energy/Energy Blaster. I made a Dark Melee/Invulnerability Scrapper to team with her, but am starting to rethink the decision.

Controllers look nice. For a Dom, they dont start cooking until Perma, and that is a ways away since my wife is fond of old school leveling in every game system.

Can someone give me a simple explanation of the Controller inherent Containment? I looked at Wiki and it was high on adjectives and short on math.

If I choose to try a controller experiment, what would be a very good choice for teaming with a Energy/Energy Blaster. Mostly door missions/tip missions/safeguards/a few story arcs.

Thanks.

Short answer on Containment: Anything that is already controlled in some fashion (held, immob, sleep, fear, stun) takes double damage from further Controller powers.

So, if you have an attack that does 50 damage, but your target is held, the power will do 100 damage total to it.

Containment does two things:

Whenever you use a control power from your primary in addition to the normal mez effect it has a 20% chance of applying a mag 1 mez with a duration of two-thirds the nominal mez duration. The net effect is that when you use a mez it has a 20% chance to affect a boss but only for two-thirds the time (although you can always follow up with a second application to keep him mezzed through stacking). It's important to note that mez powers in your secondary (such as Thunderclap or Ice Arrow) do not get this benefit.

The second benefit from containment is increased damage. Whenever you attack a foe who is mezzed (specifically immobilized, held or stunned) you deal double damage. This works like critical hits or Scourge in that the base damage of the power is doubled so all damage buffs apply to the bonus damage. This effect should apply to all powers (Primary, Secondary and Pool) except for the pet powers although in practice there are a handful of pseudo-pet powers which also do not benefit.

FYI, fear does not set up containment.

I have always considered the difference between Controllers and Dominators as the difference between a python and a cobra.

Dominators are a bit more offense oriented. Once they get a target held, they can rip it up with attacks. Controllers are more of a slow suffocation style of death.

Almost any Controller combo will work well with an energy blaster but I'm fond of two particular pairs.

1. Mind/Empathy. -- Mind has a lockdown for all occasions and can set up mobs for some of the nastier AoE effects like rain of fire. Empathy adds the buffing bonuses and (oh, yeah) you can heal as well.

2. Illusion/ Radiation. -- This is a classic combo. The radiation debuffs can take almost any target out of the fight. Illusion starts off a little slow, but becomes a killing machine once you start getting the pets.

There really isn't a bad controller combo. But, they can be a bit tricky to get used to.

I say.. embrace the chaos. Make a new defender a Forcefields/Energy. Buff and blast away. Just have fun and go all out on the knockback.

Thank you all so much for the mini education on controllers and all the advice/input. Last night I pulled off thescrapper I had been running. I first grabbed a 16th Ice Dom Ihad available. (Wife is playing a 21 Energy Blaster) She liked it, commented on the overlapping blaster style powers. She liked the control/lockdowns. But it was not a perfect fit. Next mish i switched out for a 20th tank that had been sitting for 2 years. She LOVED it. Slower killing, but she absolutely loved just letting the tank herd and then blasting the fish in a barrel. So, old old school tactics for this duo. Pulling, herding, and Blasting. I am right now leveling up a Tank she designed for the duo. (she spent a half hour making sure I got the face right...)

again thanks to all.

I see that you have decied to go with a tank, but I want to throw in my two cents in anyway.
A electric/time controller. It has a low level heal to keep you alive when starting out, and by the time you get to around 22, unless you are in a big group, it is controlling everything, so all your wife would have to do is shoot fish in a barrel all day.

An Electric/Time can probably tank pretty well once you get that sleep patch and some slots into the end drain aura. Couple that with the -tohit aura you get in Time, you should have it easy.

I never thought sleep as a control would be so crippling until I started experiencing it from that new Super Stunner Freak!

You guys are probably right about the Controller being a good way to go.... Part of the problem is I am definitely not good at running a Controller no doubt. Whereas I have Tanked on Brutes for years, and ran a soft cap Tank for a time. Sometimes people respond to how confident you are, not how good the situation is. I am very confident on a melee, especially a damage/agro sponge type. i am decidedly not so comfortable on crowd Control arch types.

I did start a Ice/Ice Dominator after this thread though. I feel Ice is the most naturally control heavy power set based on running an Ice/Ice Blaster to 40 back in the day. Plus with it starting to snow on me (should last about 6 months) I just had to lol. The reason I chose Dominator is not a slight on Controllers. I have a full Perma Dom I/O enhancer trove sitting in my base from when I stripped my last try at a Grav/Nrg Dom. Hopefully I will enjoy it more this time. My time Doming was colored by my inexperience and the fact that there ain't no love for Grav/Nrg on teams lol. I have been playing a lot more squishies since then, and hopefully Ice/Ice will get more love.

Back in the day, I learned the principles of tanking from playing my first Controller.