favorite synergistic combos

I'll overview three of my controllers who have great synergistic powers. Very interested in your feedback on my guys, and to hear about your guys as well.

* Colt Blue -- ice/force field
Sounds kind of old fashioned, and definately old; Colt is my first controller, and first 50. He's a control powerhouse, though. Arctic Air is one of the best powers in the game. Tie that with Dispersion Bubble's mez protection (except sleep), The synergistic gem of this build, though, is you can become the best alpha-strike tanker in the game.

Say what -- Alpha strike tanker? Picture this scenario -- huge mob ahead, possibly including an AV or GM. Here's what you can do.

1) ask teammates to stand back for a moment, until you signal them to come in.
2) enable Arctic Air (AA), Dispersion Bubble(DB), and Personal Force Field (PFF)
3) run into mob and annoy them. You are minor distraction because they know you can't hurt them with PFF up. eventually they'll release their alpha strike on you though. laugh at the 27 damage they did
4) call in team
5) mob will quickly switch attention from you.
6) release PFF, instantly nerfing the foes with AA and adding to everyone's defense with DB
7) extend the nerf with either Ice Slick or Glacier
8) if you had Jack up, he probably died bravely, and quickly. resummon him


* Frozen in TIme -- ice/time/psionic
You already know I love AA, a large aura with multiple debuffs centered on you. What could be better? Another large debuff aura, with even more debuffs: Time's Juncture (TJ).

-- AA: confuse, -speed, -recharge, and old-fashion mozy-away fear
-- TJ: -speed, -damage, -toHit

Once you can get it from the Psionic Mastery epic, add a third debuff toggle:

-- World of Confusion (WoC): confuse, with a much smaller radius, but stacks with AA

He has the Malaise Illusion damage proc in both AA and WoC. He's protected by Farsight, and with Hasten and three recharges in Indomitable Will, he won't likely be mezzed. All he needs is a pick-your-nose emote to show his ultimate disdain for the foes around him.


* Too Much of Anything -- dark/storm/leviathan
This guy is only 30, and already he has stacked PBAoE stun with Heart of Darkness + Thunder Clap. His two Haunt pets are up a lot of the time offering a nice distraction even if they aren't doing a lot of damage yet. But in the final build, his name becomes clear:

-- stacked stuns
-- two haunts
-- Umbral Beast
-- Water Spout
-- Lightening Storm
-- Coralax
-- Tornado

That's a lot of pets and pseudo pets attacking a lot of stunned foes...

A couple of my fav combos:

Grav/Storm/Stone
* Stacking multiple stuns with Wormhole, Thunder Clap and Fissue
* Positioning foes with Wormhole so they are grouped for freezing rain
* Positioning foes with Wormhole so they are in a corner for Lightning Storm and Gale (so they don't scatter)
* As Crushing Field doesn't prevent KB it works well with Freezing Rain, Fissue and KB>KD'd Tornado keeping foes grouped and yet providing soft control
* Boosting defence with Stone Armour and Steamy Mist

Mind/Trick Arrow/Fire
* Stack sleeps with Mass Hypnosis and then Poison Gas Arrow
* Lighting Oil Slick Arrow if Fire Blast/Fire Ball without having to be Tech or Magic origin
* Using Mass Hypnosis on a group allows you to set up Oil Slick Arrow, Disruption Arrow, Glue Arrow before without agro before using Fire Ball (for containment boost) and Acid Arrow

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zwillinger Quote: 16. Has Paragon Studios redefined "player" to require your mouse to subscribe separately from your keyboard? If your mouse has greater processing power than your gfx card, the answer is yes.

I explained in my Ill/Rad guide how Illusion and Radiation have a special synergy. Now, Time Manip also has many of the same benefits.

In particular, Illusion's key power is Phantom Army. Because they can't be buffed, you can only make them better with Defense and Resistance Debuffs. Plus, getting a Recharge buff makes it easier to get them perma. Radiation has a 30% Recharge from Accelerate Metabolism, plus a Defense Debuff in Radiation Infection and a Resistance Debuff in Enervating Field. Time has a 50% Recharge buff in Chrono Shift, and a Resistance and Defense debuff in Slowed Response. Both sets add an AoE Slow to help with Illusion's lack of AoE Control.

While all secondaries work well with Illusion, and all primaries work well with both Rad and Time, Ill/Rad and Ill/Time have strong synergy.

If you want the ultimate AoE Control character, Earth/Trick Arrow is huge. It has two of:

Single Target Immob
Single Target Hold
AoE Hold
AoE Slow
AoE Knockdown
AoE Sleep

Only Earth's AoE Sleep is PB AoE; all of the other powers are ranged. Of the three remaining powers in Earth, Stalagmites+Stone Cages is another Ranged AoE combo, plus Animate Stone is a very sturdy aggro magnet. TA's remaining three powers are debuffs.

Earth/Trick Arrow is the one combo that could arguably be said to have too much control.

Don't forget that Volcanic Gasses will set your Oil Slick on fire.

I have never been able to play controllers very often (too much of a punch-and-go kinda guy), but I made an Electric/Dark a couple days after /Dark went live, and I immediately fell in love with him. He's 44 currently, and I went with /Stone for my epic.

Favorite things about him:
* I'm pretty much always in melee range, which is a major plus since I'm more of a melee player
* Stacking slows from Static Field and Tar Patch (almost have enough recharge to double-stack both of 'em), and the end drain and -res make it even sweeter
* Soul Absorption and Conductive Aura make a great combination (20+ or 30+ hp/s and 7 end/s usually, if I can get them mostly stacked). Earth's Embrace makes the +regen even better
* Fissure and Jolting Chain are fun for constant baddie bouncing

Can't say I'm a huge fan of the pets of either set, but he's still a fun toon. Hope to get him to be my next 50.

I alt too much for my own good, but even though my personal character is only in his 20s, I want to sing the praises of Fire/Dark/Ice.

We all know Fire control offers decent control with a good bit of damage and plays best when you are safe enough to support being in closish range. Dark provides a number of tools for survivability (Darkest Night, Fade, Fluffy, am I right?), sustainibility (Soul Absorption is an amazing power) and moar damage(Tar Patch anyone? Or even better 2 of them!).

While I'm not fully there yet with mine, I've played with a number of more complete builds to witness what someday will be an awesome toon.

I am going to chime in for Ill/Rad and Ill/Time as synergistic Nirvana.

My most recent fav sets with synergy:

Plant/Storm/Lev: Viridicane was my favorite alt for quite a while. Excellent synergy between Plant's AOE confusion, -KB immob and all the mitigation and dmg available from /Storm. Very durable, versatile set with excellent AOE damage. Plant/Storm actually has a use for the +regen Tree, as it fills the hole left by /Storm's lack of a self heal.

Dark/Dark/Lev: Awesome. The stacking of the -ToHit from both sets with the hefty +def from /Dark makes for a combo that very quickly becomes effectively def capped esp if you focus on +Ranged def IO sets. This is one combo where I honestly don't think there is any need for AOE controls, esp with the powerful heal that both you AND Dark Servant have. It's amusing to watch the mobs try soooooo hard to hurt you and utterly fail. With five pets (2 Shades, Mrs O'Leary, Fluffy and Waterspout) it's like playing a MM but with a full control primary.

Dark/Storm/Lev: Not as powerful out of the gate as Plant/Storm or Dark/Dark, it does start to come into it's own as you get Tornado and Lightning storm. Esp if you pick up the KB -> KD IO from the Overwhelming Force set. This one goes Dark/Dark/Lev one better by having SIX pets counting Tornado, Lightning Storm and Waterspout. It's also very handy having the -Def from Freezing Rain to help leverage Vet Attacks (Blackwand/Sands of Mu/Nem Staff) to help with the targeted single target damage... AOE damage this build has in spades.

Fire/Dark/Lev: Still working this build up through the levels, got it to 28 so far, so I can comment on the synergy of having Fade and Soul Absorption on a Fire controller. In a word: Yum. Don't even have Imps and Fluffy yet, and on a nearly pure SO build (I've got a set of the ATO in Flashfire and the KB->KD Overwhelming Force IO in Bonfire) it's damn effective. Running at +8/+0 with no real problems, and having a lot of fun with Bonfire + Hotfeet + Tar Patch + just enough Fire cages to keep the immob going. If you time it right, the -KB of Fire Cages wears off just about as the mobs come out of the stun from Flashfire. And the -ToHit from Darkest Night actually makes Smoke's -ToHit worthwhile. Soooo many different kinds of mitigation in this combo, and they work together very well to drastically reduce the basic fragility of Fire/ by itself. I fully expect things to get a lot better once the psycho-aggromagnate-monkeys and fluffy are added to the mix. The combo of 3 melee damage pets with the melee -ToHit and healing from Fluffy should allow throwing bosses into the mix without noticeable problems.

Arg

As a slight change of pace consider Electric/Time. It has the double aura effect with Conductive Aura and Time's Juncture. It also has a very nice double patch combo with Static Field and Distortion Field.

Basically enemies slow down or stop and then flop around from Jolting Chain (from the Gremlins too) and run out of endurance. It's soft control for the win and a good amount of hard control should it be required.

Plenty of other fun tools as well, of course, but those are less directly synergistic.

Earth/TRick Arrow:

See that mob over there, allow me to corner myself. Quicksand, Volcanic Gas, Disruption Arrow, Earthquake, Oil Slick Arrow. Go downstairs make sandwich. Come back to dead mob and I never even took a shot. Hell I don't think they even know what happened. I imagine they are in jail, goin WTF was that??? Faster if I take the time to step forward launching Acid Arrows. Spice (Epic/Patron) to taste.

Gravity/Dark!!: Hear me out..
Singularity and Fluffy!!! Need I say more?? The best lockdown and damage pet combined with the best pet for keepin you safe. It should be criminal!!!

No one has said Fire/Rad yet? Granted, its a total end hog but you can't deny how well the powers compliment each other. Fire cages to immob all enemies. Radiation Infection and Enervating Field to debuff damage and defense. Fire cages to whittle away their health. Choking cloud to hold minions and Lt's. All the while fire imps are taking out everything around you. I used to farm faster than fire/kins with my fire/rad before I lost my farm map....

Have to also agree Ill/time is an awesome combo.

Fire/Rad will always be my go-to.

Earth/Storm has some nice redudancies. Stacking stuns, stacking KD patches.

I enjoyed Ice/Time/Energy quite a bit, too. Very low damage, but hefty defense plus -tohit, massive amounts of slow, and confuse to boot means you can stroll into any mob and turn them into a bullet time wax museum. And that's before you even uncork any "hard controls."

Earth/Kin is nice too. Lots of hard control, and lots of -def to make sure those kin powers hit. And low endurance, so you can run leadership toggles with no problem. Probably my favorite pure support toon.

I'll chime in with my favourite troller combo fire/time. Fire to burn things Time to keep you safe. Can farm easily on SOs.

Ill/Storm is by far my favorite. It's great fun once you get used to the chaotic nature, and it looks freaking awesome. Actually has a bit better control now with the summer kb>kd proc. I am actually considering speccing out of hurricane because I don't usually even need it.

It is well written, easy to follow and understand just like your guides. While there some awful folks here in the forums, there are some awfully intelligent AND HELPFUL people here too.

That is what keeps me here daily, seeing helpful people actually helping not just me but everyone here.

People like you make the community better. Good looking out.