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Community => City of Heroes => Topic started by: zanderscotx on September 15, 2014, 10:11:41 PM
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A Ice/ Storm controller was my second character but could never finish him. I eventually finish a illusion/ rad but when villians came out dropped it for Thugs/ rad.
My dream was to finish my ice/ storm I fought along side a few and was jaw dropped once when I saw a controller drop tornado and then a water spout. I never returned to the game intime to finish my ice/storm .
With the game returning, I know its a small crowd who played controller what was your favorite combo.
Also if you could help me choose, Iam stuck between illusion/storm or ice/ storm.
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I had an Ice/Storm Troller named Cape COd. He wasn't doing much direct damage, but unleashed chaos'aplenty and put the troll back in Controller. Fun, but not for everyone. Illusion is a notoriously strong powerset, and it's hard to argue against it. That said, there's something very satisfying about blowing a mob into the corner and then dropping two ice patches under their feet.
If you want something a little different, I also had an Ill/Dark Controller named Occultation who was a fanboy of the Shadow, the Spider, and others of cape-hat-cowl fraternity. He...well...let's just say that he waltzed through Praetoria's storylines with nary a scuff on his tailored suit.
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I had an ice/storm that I got to 50, if I was solo it was slow leveling which was most of the time :(. I do have to say it had great holds and immos. When our game comes back this is one of a few that wont comeback for me.
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Fire/Dark is probably the best overall combination. Most controllers are very strong defensively, but it's offense (especially AoE offense) where they're a bit lacking, so you want to look at the ones that are high on damage. Fire is highest in most cases, and /Dark is a very strong defensive secondary that also adds to offense.
Other options I would look at would be Plant/Cold, Illusion/Storm, Dark/Storm, and Electric/Poison.
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If you are looking for something a little different that might give you a more offensive outlook for your new controller, you might consider a */NA.
I've recently convinced myself that Nature Affinity is an awesome set. Easy to see that it's biggest positive is the HoTs it can provide. It also adds -Dam, -ToHit, hold, -Res, Resistance, Regen and the Absorb ability. All together these represent a very nice bundle of goodies. Then there is the tier 9. The tier 9 is very intriguing in that it offers a hard to come by, but very nice end discount of 93.1% for controllers and a aoe +Dam of 66%.
The caveat to the whole set is that the Tier 9 is hard to make perma, but you can get pretty close.
To get the most efficiency out of NA you would want to use a primary that is more offensive. This makes fire an odds on favorite to run with it. I would also consider Dark and Plant to be very good pairings for this set.
I know it's not as offensive as a /Kin or an AV killer like /rad, but pairing with NA provides a decent amount of defensive options while still being an offensive set.
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Mine was the illusion/storm troller. Stealthy enough to sneak in. Powerful enough to go toe to toe with most pve things. And had storm powers to play havoc. If used carefully, some of those storm powers could alter the battle significantly.
I've been known to corner mobs with hurricanes and then unleash PA on them. Can't run. Can't kill what's beating the hell out of the mob. And can't hit me most of the time due to acc debuffs. Add def debuffs from freezing rain and most enemies didn't last long.
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I made quite a few controllers.. I could not tell you which was the most fun because I enjoyed them all. Fun is a very relative thing... what is fun to one could be totally boring to another..
However I had these @ close..
Grav/Time
Ice/Storm
Ice/Cold
Illusion/Rad
Illusion/Time
Controller I wish I had Made...
Fire/Rad.. I think this would have been one of the better ones.. You can build a very basic Fire/Rad and be pretty darn good..
Controllers I deleted or retired because I didnt like them...
Elec/Rad
Earth/Thermal
Fire/Thermal
Grav/Kinetic (he was retired as the Grav/Time was much better)
What I made that was better than what I deleted..
Earth/Fire Dominator was FAR better than the Earth/Thermal
Fire/Psi Dominator.. much better than the Fire/Thermal
Elec/Elec Dominator...
In the end I leaned more toward Dominators.. but I enjoyed the Grav/Time and Illusion/Dark Controllers a great deal..
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I had an Earth/Rad, the pocket tank is awesome.
Rad is debuff, but since I solo'd him. I min the secondary.
His defense was his holds.
Also had Ill/kin. Didn't like men, people always wanting Speed Boost.
If you go for bubbles, make sure people can see through them or you'll be soloing too.
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How was electric control I just noticed this in the skill calculator I just downloaded. Wasn't released when I left.
Would elec / storm be good? I found this video and it looks fun.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcXzLU-OS6o
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I though Elec Control was an average set. It had a few different control tools.. the sleep patch.. holds.. standard Immobilize.. and a Confuse as well.. so as a control set it was pretty solid.. the Pets were ok.. not great.. like fire imps.. not as bad as say Jack Frost..
As a theme i think it would pair well with /Storm.. but you would definitely want the -kb IO in Tornado or it will knocks foes all around... it will probably be a late bloomer but very solid..
However I felt it lacked damage.. I liked it better on my Elec/Elec Dominator..
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My favorite controller was Imperious Rex, an ill/rad. (And yes, I created him in 2004, I imagine long before the Imperious Task Force came about)
As you can imagine, I got the name from the words Sub Mariner would exclaim preceeding certain battles.
I also got the name Ukase Rex from the words Doc Doom used as a pass code to get Ultron 5 to do his bidding in Marvel's "The Secret Wars" comic series. Absolutely loved that series.
I also had an earth/rad, and an earth/kin, a grav/kin, a plant/rad, an ice/emp and I forget how many others. I never did try */dark, but hope to do so. In my limited experience - for me - the ill/rad was the "best". With perma-pa, I could solo monsters - not defeat them, but hold my own. Never could get the dps high enough to get them, not without a heavy or several other temp pets. But, AVs, elites - they were dealt with easily enough. It took concentration, making sure I got the PA placement reticle in position fast enough to keep me from getting the aggro. Other than that, it didn't really matter. PvP - even without PvP ios, or a PvP build, he was pretty solid.
All that being said, there probably isn't a "best Controller". Maybe a "best controller for your playstyle" would be more precise. And, I think to answer that, you'll have to play them all, lol.
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I though Elec Control was an average set. It had a few different control tools.. the sleep patch.. holds.. standard Immobilize.. and a Confuse as well.. so as a control set it was pretty solid.. the Pets were ok.. not great.. like fire imps.. not as bad as say Jack Frost..
As a theme i think it would pair well with /Storm.. but you would definitely want the -kb IO in Tornado or it will knocks foes all around... it will probably be a late bloomer but very solid..
However I felt it lacked damage.. I liked it better on my Elec/Elec Dominator..
Was there a specific combo ( any set) to keep people in the tornado?
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the Overwhelming Force -KB IO which you could either buy at the auction house... or run the Summer Blockbuster event which would give out a random Overwhelming Fore IO at the end.. so you had a 1 in 6 chance of getting it..
This IO turn off Knockback and changes it into Knockdown.. This proved to be very overpowered in some powers (Tornado being one of them) So if I remember correctly the chance to knockDown was reduced and the KB turned off... This meant that Tornado would no longer scatter targets.... and if focusing on one target it would turn into a mini buzzsaw..
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The only troller I ever ran bast 20 was a Mind/Kin , Great for soloing ran him to about 48 or so since he was a side toon.
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My absolute favorite was my Plant/Storm -- one of the fastest trips from 1 - 50, the first character I extensively IOed, the only character I seriously pursued Incarnate powers with, etc. Will be the first character I recreate if/when the COH I23 revival happens.
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My strongest controller would have been Too Much of Anything (http://r0k.us/rock/games/CoH/HallsOfHeroes/Union/TooMuchOfAnything.html), a dark/storm villain. Here is part of what I said about him on his page (linked with name):
It is sad that he only reached level 41. I was really looking forward to having seven pets unleashed at once. He might have been the ultimate controller considering his other amazing powers such as Steamy Mist, Freezing Rain, Fearsome Stare, and Possess.
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Its a common choice, but even though I liked pretty much all the controllers I played (I was leveling Grav/Time at shutdown and was enjoying that combo a lot) I still think Ill/Rad is arguably the best all-around controller. It not the best at anything, but it was good at almost everything and bad at almost nothing. Heals, buffs, debuffs, indestructible pets, stealth, rezzing, and EMP was probably the bet emergency power around. If it had one weakness, it was ironically that it had only mediocre hard control. But if you could master its "chaotic control" there was little else it could not do.
If I had to choose between Ill/Storm and Ice/Storm, that's a tough call. It would depend on what I was looking for in that controller. Ice/Storm would be the more "controlly" controller, whereas Ill/Storm would be the more "chaotic control" controller. Controllers tended to have two different ways to "control" for a team. Controlly controllers locked everything down. Grav/* for example is a very controlly controller. Chaotic controllers did the opposite: they wrecked havok on the enemies with knock, confuse, terrorize, repel, and pets. Illusion/* is a classic chaotic control controller. */Storm has obvious chaotic control elements and in an Ill/Storm combination you'd probably try to play into those strengths of chaotic control. On the other hand Ice/Storm has some discordance with Ice Patch and knockback. You could focus on chaos: stand on the patches for protection and use storm for chaotic control, or you could focus on patches for focused control and emphasize the non-knock elements of Storm like Snow Storm and Freezing Rain. You have more flexibility with Ice/Storm, but also more chances to trip on your own toes than Ill/Storm.
I actually tend to like Ice control better on Dominators that have more melee offensive options.
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I was really looking forward to having seven pets unleashed at once.
One thing I did miss about my pre-I5 Ill/Rad. Two sets of PA, three Phantasms, three decoys, and two spookies. On average, fourteen pets. Holds? What's a hold?
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I had an Ill/Rad and it was very good.. one of the best combinations for controllers in the game.
I think it was very very strongly rivaled by Ill/Dark and I would say that Ill/Dark might be slightly better in some respects. Everthing you get from Illusion and -regen, stun, -tohit,-res, a team defense buff. a +regen/Recovert tool AND an extra pet in Dark Servant.. very very good build.. worked very well.. got him to level 50 before the shutdown.
I also had a Grav/Time and it was an excellent build.. I liked it MUCH better than my Grav/Kin. I was able to get to Perma Chrono Shift and Perma Indomtibale Will..
I had an Ice/Storm controller and it was very much a very flexible build.. the -KB IO in Tornado was a HUGE difference in that build..
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One thing I did miss about my pre-I5 Ill/Rad. Two sets of PA, three Phantasms, three decoys, and two spookies. On average, fourteen pets. Holds? What's a hold?
Hehe I remember those days. My friend and I used to play together, me on my Fire/Rad and him on his Fire/Kin. He buffed me with speed boost, I buffed us both with AM, and we were able to spawn new imps constantly. The entire floor was covered in them. There were so many, we actually had lots of trouble getting through doorways, lol. Probably had like 20-30 imps between the two of us. And yeah, I guess it was just a bit overpowered :)
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I had an Ill/Rad and it was very good.. one of the best combinations for controllers in the game.
I think it was very very strongly rivaled by Ill/Dark and I would say that Ill/Dark might be slightly better in some respects. Everthing you get from Illusion and -regen, stun, -tohit,-res, a team defense buff. a +regen/Recovert tool AND an extra pet in Dark Servant.. very very good build.. worked very well.. got him to level 50 before the shutdown.
I think Ill/Dark is stronger where Ill/Rad is weaker: against a lot of weaker enemies. Against fewer stronger ones (up to and including AV fights) I think Ill/Rad is better. Ill/Dark's Achilles heel would probably be environments ironically similar to the ones it generates: where its hard to hit targets. Ill/Rad doesn't rely as much on having high tohit.
I was wondering if Ill/Dark was eventually going to steal the crown from Ill/Rad in terms of popularity, but I don't think the combo lasted long enough for enough players to become familiar with it. I think it had a chance of getting up there with Ill/Rad and Fire/Kin as a go-to controller combo.
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Ill/Rad would have still been the king for AV/Giant Monster soloing just because of Lingering Radiation. HT's base recharge is twice as long. With Rad, if you have perma PA, you easily have perma Lingering (and probably double stacked at times), so the hard targets aren't going to be doing much regenerating at all.
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Best was pre-containment Grav/FF solo.
... what?
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Ill/Rad would have still been the king for AV/Giant Monster soloing just because of Lingering Radiation. HT's base recharge is twice as long. With Rad, if you have perma PA, you easily have perma Lingering (and probably double stacked at times), so the hard targets aren't going to be doing much regenerating at all.
Not to mention the fact they aren't going to be shooting at you most of the time either. If I have to kill one single thing, Ill/Rad is my controller of choice.
On the other hand, if I was going to try the RWZ challenge, Ill/Dark might be the better choice. Ill/Rad is actually not the best choice for that in my opinion. The pets get confused when confronted with so many targets, its hard to keep a lot of +5s continuously controlled with Illusion, regeneration debuffs are not as game-changing there.
One of my best Ill/Rad stories happened late one night when I saw a few players in Croatoa trying to get enough players to take down the Jack/Eochai pair. They spent twenty minutes trying, and when I got there they were deciding to give up because they knew they could get the badge anymore: the two had spent too much time fighting each other, so they would not be able to deal enough damage to get credit. I told the four of them to not worry, I would get the badge for them if they trusted me. I told them to start wailing on the two of them while I debuffed the pair and kept spamming heals on them to keep them alive. I let them attack both for about ten minutes, and then when I calculated they did enough damage and the counters had reset I told them they would be killing Eochai now, then started using LR. All of a sudden, their damage took him out in like a minute or two and bang: badge. Then I told them to focus on Jack next, and soon enough Jack went down, and they got the second badge.
The amazing thing about Ill/Rad was not just that it could take the two GMs down. It was that I had total control over the process. If I wanted them to stay alive, they stayed alive. When I decided it was time for them to go down, they went down. In the meantime, the GMs simply could not kill those players as long as I decided to keep them alive.
Now that's a controller.
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Best was pre-containment Grav/FF solo.
You mean pre-Singularity, right?
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You mean pre-Singularity, right?
Fold Space was an awesome power. I miss it so...
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Fold Space was an awesome power. I miss it so...
I've never heard of this... or old mannishness is causing memory loss.
What'd I miss? :o
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I've never heard of this... or old mannishness is causing memory loss.
What'd I miss? :o
VERY early in the game (as in pre-launch) Gravity's tier-9 power was called Fold Space, which functioned as a team recall teleport. It was changed to Singularity just after launch.
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VERY early in the game (as in pre-launch) Gravity's tier-9 power was called Fold Space, which functioned as a team recall teleport. It was changed to Singularity just after launch.
Well some things happened before my time in CoH. ;)
I got here just in time for the smoke grenade nerf.
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If you ever used Assemble the Team, it's the same power, just on a longer recharge. Personally, I prefer the pet. :)
IIRC, Singularity's internal power ID was still Fold_Space, so that it wouldn't break characters when they changed it.
Yep: http://tomax.cohtitan.com/data/powers/power.php?id=Controller_Control.Gravity_Control.Fold_Space
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If you ever used Assemble the Team, it's the same power, just on a longer recharge. Personally, I prefer the pet. :)
IIRC, Singularity's internal power ID was still Fold_Space, so that it wouldn't break characters when they changed it.
Yep: http://tomax.cohtitan.com/data/powers/power.php?id=Controller_Control.Gravity_Control.Fold_Space
Yep, lots of powers are like that, because (I know you know this) the names we see are just text descriptions, but the internal IDs of powers cannot be changed without breaking everything that uses them. Because that would break beta testers including dev testers if they did that during beta, and changing it just before going live would create the potential for typographical errors to reach live, many powers have internal names completely different from what the players know the powers as.
More interestingly, that's also why the devs kept calling /Devices "Gadgets." That's what the set was called in beta, and because you can't change the IDs of anything without breaking everything that uses it that's what Devices was called internally until the day the game was shut down. Because Geko and Castle and Black Scorpion and all the other powers team members looked at spreadsheets every day that said "Gadgets" and not "Devices" that name tended to imprint on them. They would often post about "Gadgets" prompting players that didn't know the history to go "huh, what's that?"
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Best was pre-containment Grav/FF solo.
... what?
That was my very first troller, sigh...
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That was my very first troller, sigh...
Mine too. I feel your pain.
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Ill/Rad would have still been the king for AV/Giant Monster soloing just because of Lingering Radiation. HT's base recharge is twice as long. With Rad, if you have perma PA, you easily have perma Lingering (and probably double stacked at times), so the hard targets aren't going to be doing much regenerating at all.
In general, /Dark is better for AV/GM soloing because when -ToHit fails, it still has gobs of -Damage so you don't have to worry about capping Ranged Defense, and it can still put out a lot of -Regen (Twilight Grasp is usually stacked to 150-200% plus another 50% from Fluffy, plus HT's occasional 500%, so that it almost matches Rad for -Regen). However, specifically for Illusion primary, you don't care about -ToHit and -Damage, but +Recharge is huge to allow easier perma-PA. With Illusion against AVs, you're better off with /Rad (but not that far behind with /Dark), but with anyone else, /Dark will do better.
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My only no 50 scrapper was ill/rad i toyed with making another controller and was looking at ill/dark
I know with my Ill/rad I was on a couple TF's where people accidentally pulled Dr Aeon before people where ready and the entire team but me wiped and I held off Aeon long enough for people to res or run back with PA and debuffs. Way before /dark was ever around it was a cool set.
Now you ever want to have fun join a mission with 4 Ill/ whatever secondary controllers
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In general, /Dark is better for AV/GM soloing because when -ToHit fails, it still has gobs of -Damage so you don't have to worry about capping Ranged Defense, and it can still put out a lot of -Regen (Twilight Grasp is usually stacked to 150-200% plus another 50% from Fluffy, plus HT's occasional 500%, so that it almost matches Rad for -Regen). However, specifically for Illusion primary, you don't care about -ToHit and -Damage, but +Recharge is huge to allow easier perma-PA. With Illusion against AVs, you're better off with /Rad (but not that far behind with /Dark), but with anyone else, /Dark will do better.
AVs resisted regeneration debuffs. The resistance scaled with level, but at level 50 it was 82% (at level 55 it was I think 85%). Even Lingering Radiation's -500% regen debuff was reduced to only -90% when facing a level 50 AV (and you were level 50 so no purple patch combat modifiers were in play). Radiation was *far* stronger than Dark against most AVs for this reason. I know a lot of Dark debuffers that couldn't figure out why their in-game performance was far lower than what they thought it should be, because they failed to take regen debuff resistance into account (note: I don't remember off the top of my head when regen debuff resistance was added to AVs, but it had been there for a long time by shutdown).
Rad could stack LR and shut down AV regen. Even at very high recharge Dark might do half as well against high level AVs.
Oh yeah, AVs also resisted tohit debuffs to the same degree. I think there's no question Ill/Rad beats Anything/Dark on most high level AVs.
(Also, most AVs had at least some damage resistance, and by a quirk of game mechanics damage resistance acted to resist damage debuffs. So if you were fighting an AV that had high resistance to the kind of damage they themselves liked to pump out - which was very common - they could also make it difficult to debuff their outgoing damage by as much as you think you could).
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(Also, most AVs had at least some damage resistance, and by a quirk of game mechanics damage resistance acted to resist damage debuffs. So if you were fighting an AV that had high resistance to the kind of damage they themselves liked to pump out - which was very common - they could also make it difficult to debuff their outgoing damage by as much as you think you could).
Arcana,
If you have the time, would you elaborate on the -Dam to resist thing? That's something I've just about completely forgotten over the years and was having difficulty finding the info on.
For instance, if you were fighting an AV states and he had unstoppable going he would have a smash Damage resistance of 90%? If you could throw 100% -Dam on him, it would hit reduce his damage by 10%?
I'm sure I'm not correct, cuz that would be too simple a formula.
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Arcana,
If you have the time, would you elaborate on the -Dam to resist thing? That's something I've just about completely forgotten over the years and was having difficulty finding the info on.
You asked Arcana to elaborate ???!!!!!!!!
oh boy.. this will be good..
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Earth/Storm ftw!
Fossilizing and Snow Storming and Stone Cageing and Steamy Misting and Quicksanding and Freezing Raining and Stalagmiting and Hurricaning and Earthquaking and Thunderclapping and Volcanic Gassing and Zippy the Mega-Tornado chucking things around and Pooey the Wonder Pet smashing and great epic Lightning Storms zapping everything.. throw in a little Stone Epic for Boulder Hurling and Seismic Smashing...
EarthWindandIre was by far and away my favorite troller to play. Felt like I could lock down the entire screen (or freeze it up graphically lol)
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at the end of the game. I was playing Dominators much more than Controllers..
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You asked Arcana to elaborate ???!!!!!!!!
oh boy.. this will be good..
Lol. Am I asking for it?
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Lol. Am I asking for it?
Arcana has an understanding of the mechanics of the game that is far greater than anyone I have ever seen post. She makes my head swim sometimes and I tend to think I have a decent grasp on the game.
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Earth/Trick Arrow was a blast.
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Arcana,
If you have the time, would you elaborate on the -Dam to resist thing? That's something I've just about completely forgotten over the years and was having difficulty finding the info on.
For instance, if you were fighting an AV states and he had unstoppable going he would have a smash Damage resistance of 90%? If you could throw 100% -Dam on him, it would hit reduce his damage by 10%?
I'm sure I'm not correct, cuz that would be too simple a formula.
Short answer: if your debuff was resistable, yes.
Longer answer:
City of Heroes worked on a system of attributes and aspects. Attributes were things that could have some value, like your health (Hit Points) or your regeneration rate. Aspects were, well, aspects of those attributes. Take Hit Points. That Attribute had a value: your current total health. But it also had an aspect called Max. Max was your maximum health. So if your character had max health of 2000, but had taken damage and currently had 1000 health, then the value of Hit Points was 1000, but Max Hit Points was 2000. And hey, you could theoretically buff your max health, like with powers like Dull Pain, right? But only to some limit. That was MaxMax, the maximum amount you could buff your health to. We called it the Health Cap. City of Heroes called it the MaxMax of HitPoints.
That's attributes and aspects. What about damage; how did damage work? Well, on top of an attribute called HitPoints there were these special attributes called Smashing, Lethal, Fire, Cold, Energy, Negative_Energy, Toxic, Psionic. They also had a value, and that value was always identical to the current value of HitPoints (not exactly, but close enough for our purposes). Why did these exist? Well, when someone hit you for 10 points of smashing damage, what that power did was deduct 10 points from your Smashing attribute. Since that was linked to the value of HitPoints, it caused your health to drop by 10 points. Good so far.
One of the aspects that existed was called Res. Res was the amount that you Resisted changes to that Attribute. So if you had a Smashing Res of 50%, that means when someone tried to deduct 10 points from your Smashing value, they'd actually only deduct 5 points instead.
Another aspect was Str. Str was your Strength when it came to that Attribute. Suppose you have a power that does 10 points of Smashing damage according to its definition. If your Smashing Str was 2.0, then that power would actually do 20 points of damage, not 10. The Smashing Str(ength) would boost the effects of powers you used that affected the Smashing attribute on any target.
Now, here's where it gets a little funky. Suppose I am trying to debuff your Smashing Str - basically debuff your damage strength. I am using a power that is trying to lower the value of the Str aspect of your Smashing attribute. Its an attempt to modify the Smashing attribute, so your Smashing Res kicks in and tries to reduce that effect. So if I try to reduce your Smashing Str by -20%, your Smashing Res would reduce that also by half, reducing it to -10%.
See, the game doesn't care if you are trying to change my Smashing *Value* or my Smashing *Strength* or my Smashing *Resistance* or for that matter any other Aspect of Smashing. All it cares about is that you're trying to change some Aspect of my Smashing attribute, so it uses my Smashing Resistance to counter that.
The game sees "Smashing Strength" and "Smashing Resistance" as just different Aspects of the Smashing Attribute. *Players* see those two things as totally different things: one's damage and the other is resistance. We don't normally connect the two. But deep within the game, they are just two different "Smashing things."
And that's why Smashing resistance will resist Smashing Damage Debuffs. As long as those debuffs are actually resistable, and most debuffs designed to affect enemies are.
Note: most *self buffs* were flagged unresistable, and this is why. If they were not unresistable, you'd resist your own buffs. That's undesirable. They were also flagged "unaffected by strength buffs" and the reason was that obviously the game did not want someone using Build Up to suddenly boost their resistance toggles. If that flag wasn't set, that's what would happen, and occasionally the devs would forget to flag something correctly and these things actually *would* happen. And in one interesting instance, the devs did this on purpose and caused an interesting effect. Combat Training:Offensive for Widows buffed player Accuracy, and that buff was affected by strength buffs. That means since it buffed Accuracy Str, and it was affected by Accuracy Str it actually buffed itself. The game did not spiral that buff infinitely; the engine had an intrinsic limit where that buff could buff itself, but that buffed value couldn't then buff itself again and again. But to correctly calculate what your accuracy buff would be, you needed to take this buffing-the-buff effect into account.
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You asked Arcana to elaborate ???!!!!!!!!
Let's not scare them away before I've had a chance to lay some elaborate on them first.
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Short answer: if your debuff was resistable, yes.
Longer answer:
City of Heroes worked on a system of attributes and aspects. Attributes were things that could have some value, like your health (Hit Points) or your regeneration rate. Aspects were, well, aspects of those attributes. Take Hit Points. That Attribute had a value: your current total health. But it also had an aspect called Max. Max was your maximum health. So if your character had max health of 2000, but had taken damage and currently had 1000 health, then the value of Hit Points was 1000, but Max Hit Points was 2000. And hey, you could theoretically buff your max health, like with powers like Dull Pain, right? But only to some limit. That was MaxMax, the maximum amount you could buff your health to. We called it the Health Cap. City of Heroes called it the MaxMax of HitPoints.
That's attributes and aspects. What about damage; how did damage work? Well, on top of an attribute called HitPoints there were these special attributes called Smashing, Lethal, Fire, Cold, Energy, Negative_Energy, Toxic, Psionic. They also had a value, and that value was always identical to the current value of HitPoints (not exactly, but close enough for our purposes). Why did these exist? Well, when someone hit you for 10 points of smashing damage, what that power did was deduct 10 points from your Smashing attribute. Since that was linked to the value of HitPoints, it caused your health to drop by 10 points. Good so far.
One of the aspects that existed was called Res. Res was the amount that you Resisted changes to that Attribute. So if you had a Smashing Res of 50%, that means when someone tried to deduct 10 points from your Smashing value, they'd actually only deduct 5 points instead.
Another aspect was Str. Str was your Strength when it came to that Attribute. Suppose you have a power that does 10 points of Smashing damage according to its definition. If your Smashing Str was 2.0, then that power would actually do 20 points of damage, not 10. The Smashing Str(ength) would boost the effects of powers you used that affected the Smashing attribute on any target.
Now, here's where it gets a little funky. Suppose I am trying to debuff your Smashing Str - basically debuff your damage strength. I am using a power that is trying to lower the value of the Str aspect of your Smashing attribute. Its an attempt to modify the Smashing attribute, so your Smashing Res kicks in and tries to reduce that effect. So if I try to reduce your Smashing Str by -20%, your Smashing Res would reduce that also by half, reducing it to -10%.
See, the game doesn't care if you are trying to change my Smashing *Value* or my Smashing *Strength* or my Smashing *Resistance* or for that matter any other Aspect of Smashing. All it cares about is that you're trying to change some Aspect of my Smashing attribute, so it uses my Smashing Resistance to counter that.
The game sees "Smashing Strength" and "Smashing Resistance" as just different Aspects of the Smashing Attribute. *Players* see those two things as totally different things: one's damage and the other is resistance. We don't normally connect the two. But deep within the game, they are just two different "Smashing things."
And that's why Smashing resistance will resist Smashing Damage Debuffs. As long as those debuffs are actually resistable, and most debuffs designed to affect enemies are.
Note: most *self buffs* were flagged unresistable, and this is why. If they were not unresistable, you'd resist your own buffs. That's undesirable. They were also flagged "unaffected by strength buffs" and the reason was that obviously the game did not want someone using Build Up to suddenly boost their resistance toggles. If that flag wasn't set, that's what would happen, and occasionally the devs would forget to flag something correctly and these things actually *would* happen. And in one interesting instance, the devs did this on purpose and caused an interesting effect. Combat Training:Offensive for Widows buffed player Accuracy, and that buff was affected by strength buffs. That means since it buffed Accuracy Str, and it was affected by Accuracy Str it actually buffed itself. The game did not spiral that buff infinitely; the engine had an intrinsic limit where that buff could buff itself, but that buffed value couldn't then buff itself again and again. But to correctly calculate what your accuracy buff would be, you needed to take this buffing-the-buff effect into account.
Well that was just... smashing. :)
So when you say "if the debuff was resistible". Is -Dam from chem rounds (dual pistol) then an aspect of Toxic damage? Meaning that it is only resistible to those with toxic resistances?
If so, that should make chem rounds even more effective generally since there was not a lot of toxic resistances around (assuming same percent-wise for mobs as for players).
Nevermind. I was thinking bass ackwards.
So, was it by design or a design flaw that all those attributes were together? (my little way of asking just how dev you actually were.)
And most importantly, why am I on this forum at 3:00 am instead of reviewing for my Linux Sys Admin test I need to take tomorrow?
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So, was it by design or a design flaw that all those attributes were together? (my little way of asking just how dev you actually were.)
It was by design, although I do not think they completely thought out what the ramifications were. Its actually a neat little system that has the advantage it can be computationally optimized in a lot of ways a more general system can't be. But it does have a lot of catches that go along with that: this confluence of resistance and damage buffs being one of them (although if I call those "damage resistance" and "damage buffs" the interrelatedness starts to become more obvious).
And most importantly, why am I on this forum at 3:00 am instead of reviewing for my Linux Sys Admin test I need to take tomorrow?
I can help you there. When you want to rm -rf *.txt, never accidentally add extra spaces to that command string.
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AVs resisted regeneration debuffs. The resistance scaled with level, but at level 50 it was 82% (at level 55 it was I think 85%). Even Lingering Radiation's -500% regen debuff was reduced to only -90% when facing a level 50 AV (and you were level 50 so no purple patch combat modifiers were in play). Radiation was *far* stronger than Dark against most AVs for this reason. I know a lot of Dark debuffers that couldn't figure out why their in-game performance was far lower than what they thought it should be, because they failed to take regen debuff resistance into account (note: I don't remember off the top of my head when regen debuff resistance was added to AVs, but it had been there for a long time by shutdown).
Rad could stack LR and shut down AV regen. Even at very high recharge Dark might do half as well against high level AVs.
Oh yeah, AVs also resisted tohit debuffs to the same degree. I think there's no question Ill/Rad beats Anything/Dark on most high level AVs.
(Also, most AVs had at least some damage resistance, and by a quirk of game mechanics damage resistance acted to resist damage debuffs. So if you were fighting an AV that had high resistance to the kind of damage they themselves liked to pump out - which was very common - they could also make it difficult to debuff their outgoing damage by as much as you think you could).
Yes, I know (though I think that at Level 50, AVs resist 85%). But Radiation's debuff is 500%, resisted down to 75% effective.
Dark is around 200% (plus an average of 250% if Howling Twilight has a 50% uptime), which is resisted down to 67% or so. It's actually less effective, because you can over-stack Dark's -Regen, at which point the additional -Regen is wasted, so its average Regen debuff on a Level 50 AV is probably only around 60%.
However, Dark has a stackable -Resist, which increases damage more than the 15% difference in AV regen rates (since the AV regens about 100 DPS, the difference is only worth about 15 DPS), so in terms of dropping HPs from an AV, /Dark is as good as /Rad, or better. Not as good against GMs, because at triple the Regeneration, GMs would probably regenerate 40-50 more HPs against /Dark as against /Rad.
As for the -Dam, it's true that AVs resist -Damage with their base resistance. But that's also where Dark's stackable -Resist increases its own -Damage debuff. The -Resist debuff pretty much cancels out a 30% resistance from an AV (although most AVs have higher resistances against the damage type that they commonly do). I have a Fire/Dark build that uses Twilight Grasp once every 7 seconds, and stacks to about 106% -Damage against an AV that has -30% Damage Resistance... clearly it would not do as high against AVs with 40% or higher, but it would still put out very noticeable -Damage.
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Earth/Storm ftw!
Fossilizing and Snow Storming and Stone Cageing and Steamy Misting and Quicksanding and Freezing Raining and Stalagmiting and Hurricaning and Earthquaking and Thunderclapping and Volcanic Gassing and Zippy the Mega-Tornado chucking things around and Pooey the Wonder Pet smashing and great epic Lightning Storms zapping everything.. throw in a little Stone Epic for Boulder Hurling and Seismic Smashing...
EarthWindandIre was by far and away my favorite troller to play. Felt like I could lock down the entire screen (or freeze it up graphically lol)
I absolutely loved my Earth/Storm. She was so much fun to play and you are right it felt like you could lock every mob down.
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Agreed, Earth/Storm is one of my favorite controller combos, and one of only two characters that I took the time to purple out (and fully incarnate). It's definitely one of the most "controllery" feeling combos. Fairly low damage, but can lock anything down, in multiple ways.
You've got lots of hard control with Stalagmites and Volcanic Gasses. Some very nice soft control from Earthquake and Freezing Rain, slow (Quicksand/Snow Storm), and the second best tank pet behind perma Phantom Army. If things really go bad, you've got Tornado and Hurricane for emergency chaos backup. Lightning Storm for damage and to help out with personal defense. Oh, and a ton of -Res and -Def debuff on top of all that, with some -ToHit for the icing.
I could easily lock down two, sometimes even three full x8 spawns at once. Genius -- my animated stone -- could easily tank AVs and even giant monsters with some help from O2 boost.
Earth/Storm also has a lot of location AoEs that can be dropped around a corner in perfect safety, for those really tough missions. I even went Ice Mastery to get Ice Storm for one more.
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It was by design, although I do not think they completely thought out what the ramifications were. Its actually a neat little system that has the advantage it can be computationally optimized in a lot of ways a more general system can't be. But it does have a lot of catches that go along with that: this confluence of resistance and damage buffs being one of them (although if I call those "damage resistance" and "damage buffs" the interrelatedness starts to become more obvious).
I can help you there. When you want to rm -rf *.txt, never accidentally add extra spaces to that command string.
Awesome explanation Arcana, thanks for that. I think I mostly got it. I'll have to let this settle in my brain for a bit though (ramifications and whatnot).
Interestingly, it seems that a lot of those ramifications they may not have fully thought through are some of the more frustrating and genius areas of the entire game... to me anyway.
Oh, and I can top that. I jokingly called on of the test admins to ask him to run a rm -R / on a machine. His response was priceless.
Ok, Arcana, you so smart. what actually happens if I run that command? Will it erase the machine entirely or will it crash at some point before finishing (i.e. remove the rm command and confuse the system)? I've never gotten to test that.
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Oh, and I can top that. I jokingly called on of the test admins to ask him to run a rm -R / on a machine. His response was priceless.
Ok, Arcana, you so smart. what actually happens if I run that command? Will it erase the machine entirely or will it crash at some point before finishing (i.e. remove the rm command and confuse the system)? I've never gotten to test that.
rm -rf / will wipe your system. In Unix (and POSIX-like systems) rm will unlink the file and free its inode from the filesystem. However, if the file is still open then the file handle will still point to the file correctly and act to prevent its blocks from being freed. As soon as the file handle is released, the last pointer to the inode goes away and the file is ultimately freed.
An inkling of what will happen if you rm -rf / a Linux server is to note a trick many programs use on temp files. You open /var/tmp/mytempfile.txt for writing. Then you delete it. Believe it or not, the app still has an open handle to the file and can still read and write it, even though it doesn't appear in any directory listing. This prevents other applications from accidentally touching the temp file. Even if another app opens another temp file in the same directory with the exact same name, it won't affect your temp file. The moment you close it, its gone. In the same way, every file the OS need to keep running that is open at the moment you mass delete everything will still be open and useable, at least for a while, until they are closed or something else needs to open a file. That's usually long enough to make your system go bye-bye.
In any case, since rm runs in memory on invocation, deleting its executable will not affect its ability to run to completion.
Just to make sure this is not a trick question, rm -R / won't necessarily wipe the entire system, because without the force switch you will likely get prompted a lot for files that rm ordinarily wouldn't delete. Also, rm can't delete files and directories from read only mount points regardless of how you invoke it. But on the whole, your system will be basically gone.
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In Unix (and POSIX-like systems) rm will unlink the file and free its inode from the filesystem. However, if the file is still open then the file handle will still point to the file correctly and act to prevent its blocks from being freed. As soon as the file handle is released, the last pointer to the inode goes away and the file is ultimately freed.
That behavior is not completely consistent across all flavors of Unix. Some systems, HP/UX comes to mind, will prevent you from removing the last link of a file that is memory mapped and has pages resident, of which the most common case is a running executable. For HP at least, the reasons have to do with the non-overcommit VMM implementation.
Linux is one of the variants that will happily let you delete or even write to running executable (the latter will usually cause the process to fault). On the other hand, Linux systems also tend to have lots of random pseudo-filesystems mounted, most commonly /proc and /sys, which tend to cause a recursive rm on the root to choke before finishing. It will definitely get far enough to leave the system in a mostly unusable state that won't be able to boot again.
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Yes, I know (though I think that at Level 50, AVs resist 85%). But Radiation's debuff is 500%, resisted down to 75% effective.
Dark is around 200% (plus an average of 250% if Howling Twilight has a 50% uptime), which is resisted down to 67% or so. It's actually less effective, because you can over-stack Dark's -Regen, at which point the additional -Regen is wasted, so its average Regen debuff on a Level 50 AV is probably only around 60%.
However, Dark has a stackable -Resist, which increases damage more than the 15% difference in AV regen rates (since the AV regens about 100 DPS, the difference is only worth about 15 DPS), so in terms of dropping HPs from an AV, /Dark is as good as /Rad, or better. Not as good against GMs, because at triple the Regeneration, GMs would probably regenerate 40-50 more HPs against /Dark as against /Rad.
As for the -Dam, it's true that AVs resist -Damage with their base resistance. But that's also where Dark's stackable -Resist increases its own -Damage debuff. The -Resist debuff pretty much cancels out a 30% resistance from an AV (although most AVs have higher resistances against the damage type that they commonly do). I have a Fire/Dark build that uses Twilight Grasp once every 7 seconds, and stacks to about 106% -Damage against an AV that has -30% Damage Resistance... clearly it would not do as high against AVs with 40% or higher, but it would still put out very noticeable -Damage.
Hmm, lets work out the math on this one, since its been a while since I've done it. Also, with Codewalker lurking around if I make a mistake somewhere someone will likely catch it.
Twilight Grasp has a -50% regen debuff. The debuff lasts 20 seconds and the power has an 8 second recharge and 2.37 cast time. That means its base cycle time is 10.37 seconds. You're suggesting you can keep it quad stacked on average, and that requires getting TGs cycle time to about 5 seconds or less. However, since powers start recharging after they cast, that means reducing recharge from 8 seconds down to 5-2.37 = 2.63 seconds. That implies total recharge of about 3.04 or 304%. That's difficult, but not impossible. Presuming about 100% global recharge, that checks, but with some effort. But hold this thought.
Howling Twilight has a -500% regen debuff that lasts 30 seconds. HT has 3.17 seconds of cast time and 180 seconds of recharge. You're suggesting 50% uptime which presumes about 60 seconds of cycle time. That requires 317% total recharge, also possible. You're up to requiring close to 120% global recharge in the build to get this far, which is starting to push it, but still not impossible.
Lingering Radiation has a -500% regen debuff that lasts 30 seconds. LR has 1.5 seconds cast time and 90s recharge. If we presume the same level of global recharge (Rad should always be able to at least equal if not exceed Dark on recharge for the same build effort because of AM) LR's cycle time should be able to drop to 90/3.17 + 1.5 = 29.9 seconds. This means given the same assumptions put into Dark above, /Rad should be able to keep LR stacked continuously.
According to my notes, I misremembered AV res; you're correct on AV resistance: 85% at level 50, increasing to 87% at 55. So we have /Dark doing about -700% debuff about half the time and -200% debuff the other half of the time. Actually, a little less than that because every time you use HT, you will lose stacking on TG: HT's cast time is longer than the recharge time of TG in this situation. The sequence TG->HT takes 5.54 seconds (even longer with Arcanatime) which is longer than the 5 second cycle time we're running TG at to keep it quad stacked. We'll let that go for now, but its probably worth a couple percent lost -regen. When HT is up, your net -regen is 700 * 0.15 = -105%, which is effectively capped at -100%. When HT is down, your net regen is 200 * 0.15 = 30%. Thus, your net average -regen is (100+30)/2 = 65%.
Rad's calculations are a bit easier, since LR is always stacked we're going to just state Rad's -regen is 100%. I will point out, however, that with stacked LR Rad's -regen is strong enough that it remains basically strong enough to halt AV regeneration even at +3 (where it would be -97.5% with purple patch combat modifiers).
Now, to counter the -regen advantage, Dark has some advantages. It can stack Tar Patch. Tar Patch's resistance debuff is -30% and it lasts 45 seconds. TP's recharge is 90s and cast time 3.1 seconds. To fully double stack that would require reducing TP's net cycle time to 22.5 seconds, which would require 464% recharge. Now I'm going to call that one out of bounds. Assuming we stick with the same 317% total recharge we assumed for HT, TP's cycle time drops to about 31.5 seconds, which means it overlaps about 30% of the time. That means 70% of the time the debuff would be -30%, and 30% of the time it would be -60%, and the average would be about -39%. That's 16.5 percentage points better than Rad. Is it enough to overcome the difference in -regen?
Well, there's a really big catch I alluded to earlier. When you're spamming TG at the rate we're discussing, you're actually spending 2.37/5 = 47.4% of your time doing just that. And even if we ignore Arcanatime and the fact you can't do two things at once, even if it was possible to spam HT without interfering with TG you'd be spending 3.17/60 = 5.3% of your time doing that, and 3.1/31.5 = 9.8% of your time just spamming Tar Patch. That's 62.5% of your time just doing those three things, assuming you could even do them as fast as the calculations above suggest without interfering with each other, just to get the numbers we've estimated. That means you only have 37.5% of your time to do anything else, including attack. And Arcanatime lag ensures you won't even get to use all of that. A rough estimate of the true time you have to attack would be closer to 35%. And that's assuming conditions we know are mathematically impossible, because even one use of HT disrupts the TG cycle. But assuming those disruptions are small, only 1/3rd of the time the */Dark controller can attack. That won't affect pets of course, but the Controller himself or herself would be losing substantial damage due to not being able to shoot attacks. The Rad controller would only be spending about 1.5/45 = 3.3% of their time spamming LR, and the set up time for the two toggles is small relative to the length of an AV fight.
Now, the one thing I haven't taken into account is the Dark Servant. It also can use TG and therefore contribute to -regen, and it also has damage, but I don't have time at the moment to fully analyze what its net contribution would be. That would take more time. But I do think that setting it aside for now, there are significant questions about whether the edge in resistance debuff would be enough to overcome the huge opportunity cost of not being able to attack. In effect the Dark is getting 16.5 percent more total damage, but losing about 65% of all his non-pet damage potential. I'll have to think about that a bit more before making a conclusion.
I should also point out that this comparison assumes very high recharge on the */Dark controller which ironically the */Rad would have a much easier time reaching than the Dark (AM offers +30% recharge and is not difficult to perma).
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That behavior is not completely consistent across all flavors of Unix. Some systems, HP/UX comes to mind, will prevent you from removing the last link of a file that is memory mapped and has pages resident, of which the most common case is a running executable. For HP at least, the reasons have to do with the non-overcommit VMM implementation.
Spend a lot of time on Bobcats, do you?
HP-UX was always a weird unpredictable one.
Linux is one of the variants that will happily let you delete or even write to running executable (the latter will usually cause the process to fault). On the other hand, Linux systems also tend to have lots of random pseudo-filesystems mounted, most commonly /proc and /sys, which tend to cause a recursive rm on the root to choke before finishing. It will definitely get far enough to leave the system in a mostly unusable state that won't be able to boot again.
I remember someone accidentally nuking all of /sys once, but it was a while ago. I'm now tempted test what happens on something more recent.
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rm -rf / will wipe your system. In Unix (and POSIX-like systems) rm will unlink the file and free its inode from the filesystem. However, if the file is still open then the file handle will still point to the file correctly and act to prevent its blocks from being freed. As soon as the file handle is released, the last pointer to the inode goes away and the file is ultimately freed.
An inkling of what will happen if you rm -rf / a Linux server is to note a trick many programs use on temp files. You open /var/tmp/mytempfile.txt for writing. Then you delete it. Believe it or not, the app still has an open handle to the file and can still read and write it, even though it doesn't appear in any directory listing. This prevents other applications from accidentally touching the temp file. Even if another app opens another temp file in the same directory with the exact same name, it won't affect your temp file. The moment you close it, its gone. In the same way, every file the OS need to keep running that is open at the moment you mass delete everything will still be open and useable, at least for a while, until they are closed or something else needs to open a file. That's usually long enough to make your system go bye-bye.
In any case, since rm runs in memory on invocation, deleting its executable will not affect its ability to run to completion.
Just to make sure this is not a trick question, rm -R / won't necessarily wipe the entire system, because without the force switch you will likely get prompted a lot for files that rm ordinarily wouldn't delete. Also, rm can't delete files and directories from read only mount points regardless of how you invoke it. But on the whole, your system will be basically gone.
it's the last part that interests me. I figured (never actually read it anywhere) that it would remain in memory and go to completion but at a certain point there must be a failure if there wasn't files that were immune from the rm command even with a force envoked.
it did seem unlikely that it would just eat the whole system clean and save itself for last.
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That behavior is not completely consistent across all flavors of Unix. Some systems, HP/UX comes to mind, will prevent you from removing the last link of a file that is memory mapped and has pages resident, of which the most common case is a running executable. For HP at least, the reasons have to do with the non-overcommit VMM implementation.
Linux is one of the variants that will happily let you delete or even write to running executable (the latter will usually cause the process to fault). On the other hand, Linux systems also tend to have lots of random pseudo-filesystems mounted, most commonly /proc and /sys, which tend to cause a recursive rm on the root to choke before finishing. It will definitely get far enough to leave the system in a mostly unusable state that won't be able to boot again.
Oh, now the HPUX safeguard is interesting. Kinda goes against the whole "you know what you're doing" impetus of unix. Not that that isn't broken quite often.
Glad I'm not the only one who gets curious about ridiculous questions like that.
How in the world is it that you (and Arcanus) can keep the details completely in your own ready memory really baffles me. I can follow both of you mentally but when I attempt to correspond it comes across more like the country lawyer. "Well, I'm no high falutin' big city lawyer, but I recon'..." :)
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Linux is one of the variants that will happily let you delete or even write to running executable (the latter will usually cause the process to fault). On the other hand, Linux systems also tend to have lots of random pseudo-filesystems mounted, most commonly /proc and /sys, which tend to cause a recursive rm on the root to choke before finishing. It will definitely get far enough to leave the system in a mostly unusable state that won't be able to boot again.
So apparently Ubuntu on a 3.13 kernel will not allow rm to delete the proc or sys filesystem, but neither does it halt rm: rm happily skips them as "Operation not permitted" and keeps on trucking. At the end of rm -rf / you'd still have those file systems, although I'm not sure how you'd know that since none of the commands you'd use to see them would be there anymore.
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Oh, now the HPUX safeguard is interesting. Kinda goes against the whole "you know what you're doing" impetus of unix. Not that that isn't broken quite often.
It's not so much a "keep the user from doing stupid things" safeguard so much as it is necessary for the OS to do because of certain guarantees it makes about memory management and about all pages in memory being backed by something on the disk that can be addressed, whether it be in the swap partition or in a file on a file system.
HP/UX is definitely a bit of an odd duck in the way it implements non-overcommitted memory, but commercial Unix systems have always had their own idiosyncrasies.
So apparently Ubuntu on a 3.13 kernel will not allow rm to delete the proc or sys filesystem, but neither does it halt rm: rm happily skips them as "Operation not permitted" and keeps on trucking. At the end of rm -rf / you'd still have those file systems, although I'm not sure how you'd know that since none of the commands you'd use to see them would be there anymore.
That's what I would expect, since /sys is not real but is merely a VFS-like interface to some kernel info. However, I wouldn't have put it past them to have complex machinery to emulate the "files" being deleted despite there being no good reason to do so -- Linux does some silly things at times.
After the rm -rf / completes, you can use "echo *" to get a listing of files in the current directory. Both cd and echo are shell builtins, so they will continue to work even in a completely empty filesystem. A handy trick for recovering from broken systems where "ls" can't be executed due to things like missing or corrupt shared libraries, or ABI mismatches.
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After the rm -rf / completes, you can use "echo *" to get a listing of files in the current directory. Both cd and echo are shell builtins, so they will continue to work even in a completely empty filesystem. A handy trick for recovering from broken systems where "ls" can't be executed due to things like missing or corrupt shared libraries, or ABI mismatches.
<---- too much out of practice to remember that trick.
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<---- too much out of practice to remember that trick.
Codewalker! You broke Arcana!
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Large Wall of Text hits you for 1,874 damage.
You have been defeated.
I love dealing with numerical professionals :D
Some notes... I used a Fire/Dark Controller and a Necro/Dark MM. Both of them use fast attacks, with a naturally incomplete attack chain, and rely on pet damage for much/most of their damage, which lessens the effect of the TG spam on the DPS.
Specifically, the Fire/Dark uses: Ring of Fire - TG - Ring of Fire -Char as the attack chain, which cycles in 6.768 seconds without lag. This is while Hasten is up (it does have a few seconds downtime). The Necro/Dark uses: TG - Gloom - Dark Blast, with a cycle time of 4.928. It also assumes Hasten is up, and Hasten has a short downtime. The MM slots TG more heavily (75% Recharge slotting) to make it fit.
The MM has a 51 second recharge on HT, the Controller right around the same. Again, during Hasten.
I put Dark Servant at about 25 effective DPS (including his TG debuff, including a Damage IO on every power due to Cloud Senses, including the -Resist fromTar Patch, but also assuming a 30% AV resistance).
Your analysis is spot on for not knowing the builds I put together, with a minor quibble, and a major quibble...
Minor quibble: most of the -Regen powers should lose 5% effectiveness due to the chance to miss. HT is auto-hit. It's a pretty minor effect in the end since a good chunk of Dark Miasma's -Regen is done by TG, which suffers the loss of effectiveness.
Major quibble: I don't understand how you projected Rad to have a constant 100% -Regen. Did you take the -500% debuff and calculate it as a 100% effective debuff? It's only a 75% debuff (500*0.15), up a bit over 100% of the time, with a 95% hit rate... about 72% -Regen overall. If it were -100%, it would be a really tight race.
On the other side, though, Accelerate Metabolism does add about 13% damage from its +Damage, and it tightens up the attack cycle (which for either a Controller or a MM usually has gaps). It also helps if you go with a redside epic, by shortening the recharge of the patron pet summons.
Dark Servant's damage more than makes up for the 11% or so loss in Regen.
Dark then pulls ahead with the greater -Resist.
But then Rad comes closer with the AM bonuses.
In the end, I think that Dark ends up slightly ahead in most cases (but less so with lower-damage sets since -Resist is stronger with higher damage, and since with lower damage sets, the Patron Pet is a larger % of your damage).
Dark ends up ahead defensively for most sets with a stronger heal and a much stronger combination of -Resist/-Damage.
Rad ends up ahead defensively for Illusion due to the +Recharge.
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Major quibble: I don't understand how you projected Rad to have a constant 100% -Regen. Did you take the -500% debuff and calculate it as a 100% effective debuff? It's only a 75% debuff (500*0.15), up a bit over 100% of the time, with a 95% hit rate... about 72% -Regen overall. If it were -100%, it would be a really tight race.
For some reason I misremembered LRs recharge as 60s and not 90s and didn't bother to look at the numbers (I was in a hurry heading out the door). Most likely because my Ill/Rad did overlap it some of the time. A more refined calculation would presume the same amount of global and slotted recharge (317%) and add AM's 30%, arriving at a cycle time of 27.4 seconds. Factoring in 95% tohit rate (which I did not do for either set) gets to an average regen debuff of 64.25% for /Dark (factoring in that HT autohits), and 77.17% for /Rad.
Specifically, the Fire/Dark uses: Ring of Fire - TG - Ring of Fire -Char as the attack chain, which cycles in 6.768 seconds without lag. This is while Hasten is up (it does have a few seconds downtime). The Necro/Dark uses: TG - Gloom - Dark Blast, with a cycle time of 4.928. It also assumes Hasten is up, and Hasten has a short downtime. The MM slots TG more heavily (75% Recharge slotting) to make it fit.
The Fire/Dark, given that cycle time, actually only averages -140% regen and not -190%. That with a 50% uptime on HT that would be closer to 60.5% average -regen. TG-Gloom-DarkBlast can't actually cycle in 4.928 seconds in-game because factoring in Arcanatime it takes 5.016 seconds to execute. But its close enough to 5.0 to consider it quad-stacked in that case (of course, its also not a controller). For completeness sake, my calculations show you should be able to cycle RoF-TG-RoF-Char in 6.468 seconds, not 6.768. That doesn't change the -regen calculation by much. But 39% of your time is being spent using TG. I would have to presume that a Fire/Rad of similar build would be able to generate significantly more damage with the extra time. In fact:
In the end, I think that Dark ends up slightly ahead in most cases (but less so with lower-damage sets since -Resist is stronger with higher damage, and since with lower damage sets, the Patron Pet is a larger % of your damage).
I would think the opposite was true: control sets with higher damage would be better able to leverage /Rad's lower time requirements to generate more damage, while control sets with lower damage would be less affected by /Dark's higher time requirements.
There's one more factor to consider, and that's EMP. EMP is -1000% regen for 15s. It also stops recovery for the same 15s. If you can handle 15 seconds of no recovery, you could use EMP as another source of -regen. Its recharge is long (300s base) but at the levels of recharge we're talking about (in the case of /Rad, 347%) its cycle time would be about 89.4 seconds. That means for about 17% of the time /Rad can in fact floor regen. That would increase /Rad's -regen potential in this hypothetical case from about -77.2% to -81%.
We are drifting a bit from the question of which one would be better in general to which one has the strongest potential with maximal builds. Maybe you should post the Fire/Dark, and I can calculate a more specific estimate for HT and then post a counter Fire/Rad to see what an apples to apples comparison would look like.
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That requires 317% total recharge, also possible.
I'm stuck on this. Is this possible without taking pool powers as IO mules? I seem to remember hitting a wall somewhere between 200% and 250% on my Ill/Rad...
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I put Dark Servant at about 25 effective DPS (including his TG debuff, including a Damage IO on every power due to Cloud Senses, including the -Resist fromTar Patch, but also assuming a 30% AV resistance).
I was thinking about this feeling a bit high, and after checking the spreadsheet, found that I put the -Regen from TG in two spots... as a separate -Regen debuff, and also directly into TG's direct damage. After fixing, Fluffy does about 17 DPS against AVs (10 or so against non-AVs), almost all of it due to the IO and -Regen.
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For completeness sake, my calculations show you should be able to cycle RoF-TG-RoF-Char in 6.468 seconds, not 6.768. That doesn't change the -regen calculation by much. But 39% of your time is being spent using TG. I would have to presume that a Fire/Rad of similar build would be able to generate significantly more damage with the extra time.
What happens, though, is that TG falls into the RoF-Char-RoF- PAUSE gap, because Fire/Dark doesn't have another worthwhile attack. You could, I suppose, use a pool attack. I find that the damage is higher from going with either Leviathan, Mace, or Soul than with an EPP that has a blast which would fit into that gap. If you do go with an epic blast I think you'll lose more damage from losing the pet and either Waterspout, Poisonous Ray, or Soul Drain. If you go with Boxing, I think you will end up with the highest DPS attack chain, and at this point the animation requirements for TG would make a serious dent in the /Dark damage. But going with a full attack chain with Boxing and /Rad puts you in a dangerous situation of trying to melee AVs with a Fire/Rad, which I think is only workable if you put 3 Centrioles in Boxing and stay at 10.5 range.
I would think the opposite was true: control sets with higher damage would be better able to leverage /Rad's lower time requirements to generate more damage, while control sets with lower damage would be less affected by /Dark's higher time requirements.
That is true for sets like Gravity which are higher damage because they have a full attack set. It's not true for Fire, which due to fast animations, has larger gaps in its attack cycles into which it can fit TG. I think it's more of a question of how full an attack cycle is for a set, than its damage. But, in general, sets with faster animations are usually both higher damage and with larger cycle gaps, excepting Gravity and Mind.
There's one more factor to consider, and that's EMP. EMP is -1000% regen for 15s. It also stops recovery for the same 15s. If you can handle 15 seconds of no recovery, you could use EMP as another source of -regen. Its recharge is long (300s base) but at the levels of recharge we're talking about (in the case of /Rad, 347%) its cycle time would be about 89.4 seconds. That means for about 17% of the time /Rad can in fact floor regen. That would increase /Rad's -regen potential in this hypothetical case from about -77.2% to -81%.
Right. I didn't consider it because my Ill/Rad couldn't handle the endurance drain. It would be a solid benefit if you can handle the drain, though I wonder if a build that's designed for that much endurance efficiency is not sacrificing too much recharge or damage bonuses for the efficiency slotting.
We are drifting a bit from the question of which one would be better in general to which one has the strongest potential with maximal builds. Maybe you should post the Fire/Dark, and I can calculate a more specific estimate for HT and then post a counter Fire/Rad to see what an apples to apples comparison would look like.
Kind of true, but we ARE on the topic of "vs AVs", which pretty much leads strongly towards discussing maximal builds. There are completely different arguments to be made in non-AV play, such as spawns not lasting long enough to stack Tar Patch, -Regen being less effective, not being able to summon Dark Servant in range so that its Chill of the Night is on the target the entire fight, etc. I think that due to Fluffy's extra PBAoE abilities and to Tar Patch's immobility, Dark is not as effective when moving regularly from spawn to spawn, while Rad loses nothing.
For the build, here is one version, though I'm not sure if you can open it. I modified my Mid's to include new I24 powersets and power pools, so I'm not sure if the character can be opened in a normal Mid's. But the powers used should use the original power IDs, so it's probably okay.
http://www.cohplanner.com/mids/download.php?uc=1522&c=701&a=1402&f=HEX&dc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I'm stuck on this. Is this possible without taking pool powers as IO mules? I seem to remember hitting a wall somewhere between 200% and 250% on my Ill/Rad...
317% total recharge would be +217% in slotting and bonuses (everyone starts at 100% recharge, not zero).
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Thanks for clarifying!
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Right. I didn't consider it because my Ill/Rad couldn't handle the endurance drain. It would be a solid benefit if you can handle the drain, though I wonder if a build that's designed for that much endurance efficiency is not sacrificing too much recharge or damage bonuses for the efficiency slotting.
To be honest, I was also starting to think the same thing about your posted chains, because they burn a significant amount of endurance. From my own recollection playing Necro/Dark, it was always spamming TG that got me in endurance trouble.
Kind of true, but we ARE on the topic of "vs AVs", which pretty much leads strongly towards discussing maximal builds.
Ah, but one of the reasons why Ill/Rad is considered the king of AV hunters is because it takes far less than most builds to get there. You really only need to focus on recharge, and you're basically there. Once you have Hasten up enough, and AM up enough, perma PA makes you basically indestructible against an AV and LR is strong enough to make even the low damage from the Phantasm enough to take down almost any AV. Even in the days after ED and before inventions from I6 to I8 Ill/Rads were still taking down AVs much easier than any other controller combo, through intelligent use of decoys.
Also, we're focused on "on AVs" because the other half of the equation "and GMs" has already been conceded to /Rad. Ill/Rad tends to be the king of the hill here because its effective damage mitigation continues to be effective against GMs (because PA and Decoys are indestructible) and the benefits of higher -regen are magnified. And I think the Ill/Rad combo specifically also does better than other controller combos because of the synergy of the complimentary nature of Ill/Rad against very strong single targets.
For the build, here is one version, though I'm not sure if you can open it.
Seems to open fine. For comparison, this is my Ill/Rad's ATIO build:
http://www.cohplanner.com/mids/download.php?uc=1550&c=709&a=1418&f=HEX&dc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
One thing your build seems to suggest is that your TG chain isn't sustainable, at least not with everything else up. You've got about 2.53 eps available but TG alone burns almost 0.75 eps by itself. Char burns almost 1.0 eps and RoF almost 0.9 per use. That's about 3.5 eps just for the chain. Spamming EMP at its best cycle time on my build actually only costs about 1.25 eps at my recovery rate by comparison. Am I seeing the right build numbers in Mids?
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... which I think is only workable if you put 3 Centrioles in Boxing and stay at 10.5 range.
Much to my chagrin, that doesn't actually increase range on melee attacks. I thought I was pretty clever trying to increase the total area of the katana tier 9 with centrioles, until I tested it out...
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Here's something I just thought of. If you are a */Dark controller, then should you even be using Twilight Grasp at all against an AV?
It sounds crazy, but consider the net effect of TG on the AV itself. I'm assuming if you need to heal your pets then of course you're going to use TG, but what if they are currently at full health. Does it actually make sense to incorporate TG into your attack chain as if its a good way to defeat an AV? A level 50 AV has 28,272 points of health, and regenerates about 94.24 h/s. Every time you use TG you are going to hit the AV with a -50% regen debuff for 20s, assuming you hit. The AV will resist that effect by 85%, reducing its net effect to -7.5%. That means that debuff will reduce the AV's total amount regenerated by 7.5% of 94.24 over 20 seconds, or 94.24 * 0.075 * 20 = 141.36. In other words, TG hits like an attack that does 141.36 damage in a 20 second DoT. That sounds good but TG takes 2.37 seconds to cast (2.51s under Arcanatime). That means if we evaluate TG like an attack, it only has a DPA of 59.6 (56.4 under arcanatime). That's good for a controller attack, but is it good enough? And actual controller attack would be increased by resistance debuffs and damage buffs while this value is unaffected by damage buffs or resistance debuffs. You have to wonder if replacing TG with actual attacks (if you had one available) would kill the AV faster, and if building to optimize the use of TG is actually a potential handicap.
Compare to Howling Twilight (and for that matter Lingering Radiation), which hits for -500% regen for 30 seconds. Factoring in AV resistance, that's 2120 points of lost regeneration in 3.17 seconds of cast time (3.43 at) for a whopping 669 effective dps (618 at). Using HT on an AV is like hitting it with a mega nuke. Lingering Radiation is even faster at 1.5 seconds, its effective dps is a completely ridiculous 1414 dps (1236 at).
Against an even level 50 AV, both Howling Twilight and Lingering Radiation are the best powers in your arsenal: it makes sense to use them as often as possible. But specifically as an offensive weapon, is Twilight Grasp always your best option? I'm not so sure. It maybe be more like a really good heal that happens to deal some effective damage to the AV, and less like a really great offensive weapon that happens to heal. You might be better off using TG only when necessary, not as often as possible.
Ironically, spamming TG might make /Dark look worse than it actually is.
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So here's a little experiment to expand on my earlier thoughts. I took the blacksly Fire/Dark build and created an alternative Fire/Rad build that was basically exactly identical in terms of everything except the secondary, which I replaced with Rad. All other slotting in the primary and pools is identical, with one exception: I moved one slot out of the secondary powers and put it in Fire Cages. This is about as close to an apples to apples comparison as you can get. I don't think its optimal, but its a reasonable proof of concept. The build data link is at the end of the post.
Using Mids numbers for damage (so I don't have to calculate those by hand, I get the following damage for Ring of Fire and Char in the Fire/Dark build (assault turned on):
Ring of Fire: 230.1
Char: 136.2
Using my earlier calculation, I estimate the amount of effective damage of a single use of TG as being 94.24 * 0.5 * 0.15 * 20 = 141.36. That makes the RoF-TG-RoF-Char chain deal 737.76 damage in 6.468 damage, or 114 dps.
My Fire/Rad build has AM, and thus slightly higher damage. It deals:
Ring of Fire: 243.6
Char: 149.6
Fire Cages: 61.58.
It also has slightly more recharge. It can execute RoF-Char-RoF-FC in 5.148 seconds dealing 698.38, or 135.66 dps. That's actually more damage than the chain that uses TG. Now suppose we throw Tar Patch and EF into the equation. I will presume -22.5% res continuously on the Rad and based on TP's cycle time (28.69s) in the Fire/Dark build the average res debuff is about -47.05. That would increase the Fire/Rad dps to 166.18 dps and the Fire/Dark (keeping in mind TG's -regen value doesn't increase with -res) to 157.4. Interestingly, Fire/Rad's damage output without TG is higher than the Fire/Dark's damage output with TG, even factoring in resistance debuffs.
If we factor in the 95% tohit ceiling, then those numbers drop to 157.87 dps for the Fire/Rad and 149.53 dps for the Fire/Dark.
Next, the bigger regen debuffs. Rad has LR, Dark as HT. We're going to assume for simplicity sake for these long cycle time powers that they do not interfere with the attack chains above. Dark's HT cycle time is 54.35 seconds and HT's debuff is -500% for 30s. I'm going to approximate that it always gets full value for HT, even though it will sometimes be clipped a bit because of TG's debuff above. The value of that debuff is 94.24 * 5 * .15 * 30 = 2120.4, or 2120.4/54.35 = 39 dps of effective damage. Fire/Rad's LR cycle time is 24.9 seconds. That overlaps, and you can't do better than 100%, so the debuff value is 94.24 * 5 * .15 * 24.9 when its single stacked, and 94.24 * 5.1 when its double stacked, for a total of 2240.56, or 2240.56/30 = 74.69 dps. Factoring in 95% tohit ceiling, that averages to 70.95 dps (Howling Twilight autohits, so doesn't need this adjustment).
The net effective dps at this point is 157.87 + 70.95 = 228.82 dps for the Fire/Rad and 149.53 + 39 = 188.53 dps for the Fire/Dark.
I'm going to take your word for it on the Fluffy, and assume it deals 17 dps and factor out the 30% AV resistance for these calculations, making that 24.3 dps. It should probably be slightly less than that because HT should reduce the maximum impact of Fluffy's -regen, but that effect is probably low. That increases Fire/Rad to 212.83 dps.
That leaves the pets. Both builds have the same imps with the same slotting: +96.89 damage. The Fire/Dark has +28.5% damage in global set bonuses and assault, while the Fire/Rad has 48.5% due to the +20% additional buff in AM. So whatever the Imps base damage output is, the Fire/Dark ends up being (1.9689+0.285) * 1.47 = 3.31x base damage, while the Fire/Rad ends up being (1.9689 + 0.485) * 1.225 = 3.01x base damage.
So the question is, what's bigger: 0.3x base Imp damage, or 16 dps. Or alternatively, is there any chance that base, unslotted, unbuffed, zero resistance Imp damage is 53.3dps or higher? I suspect its lower than that.
And this tries hard to keep the builds identical, but in one respect that puts handcuffs on the Fire/Rad. I replaced TG with Fire Cages in the Fire/Rad attack chain, but that attack is horrible. There is an opportunity to juggle the build around and add a better attack such as one from the epic pools. Almost anything would increase Fire/Rad dps substantially. But even with that low DPA power, Fire/Rad looks competitive, if not outright exceeding Fire/Dark on this basis.
The one problem with this entire analysis is that neither build can actually sustain the attack sequences being described, at least based on the numbers I'm seeing. I had to assume that to the extent one can supplement their endurance in a way to power this level of activity, both could.
I haven't discussed EMP yet. Here's what EMP would do in incremental terms. EMP would floor regen for 15 seconds. That's worth 1413 effective damage, and the posted build has 82.15s cycle time for EMP, which would be 17.2dps if used at maximum frequency. But it would also stop recovery for 15s and burn 15.62 end as well, which (at the recovery rate of the build) be an effective cost of about 4.07 * 15 + 15.62 = 76.67, or 0.93 eps. If you had unlimited endurance, it would be worth it. Otherwise, its very difficult to sustain.
In any case, I think a strong argument can be made here that Fire/Rad would outperform Fire/Dark, if only by a small amount.
http://www.cohplanner.com/mids/download.php?uc=1523&c=702&a=1404&f=HEX&dc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Can I just say that I've popped some popcorn and am reading this discussion with more interest than just about anything else I've read in quite some time?
Love this kind of numbing number talk! I'm not at all proficient in the higher mathematics, but I very much enjoy reading the logic behind the statements you folks are making. It humbles me, realizing how much I don't know, but at least now I know I don't know it and can now learn it.
But - I do have one question for Blacksly and Arcana
When you two were actually playing - did you actually use those attack chains repeatedly - or did certain battles call for a different attack, thus throwing the optimal chain out the window?
I think - and it's only based on my experience with my own ill/rad - with no experience in any controller with dark, that ill/rad is going to be easier to play just because of perma PA. Which, in practice would make it "better". Not everyone is going to have the nimble fingers with nifty keybinds at the ready. But with Perma-PA, it's basically idiot proof playstyle.
Still - love these kinds of discussions. Just wish we had the game up and running so I could roll a dark/fire or a dark/dark just to learn more about it firsthand.
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Hmm, lets work out the math on this one, since its been a while since I've done it. Also, with Codewalker lurking around if I make a mistake somewhere someone will likely catch it.
Well, I had a big long post written up about the fact the the debuff duration actually starts on the "hit" (which for TG is 1.87s), and needing to that that into account when figuring any potential stacking.
Then at the end of it all when I went to actually go calculate the difference, I realized I was derping. For spamming the same (non-projectile) power continuously, the hit delay will always be the same, so for stacking purposes it also shifts the deadline back a little, too -- the two adjustments cancel each other out. It's a wash and cycle time really is the only thing that matters.
Of course, I still contend that particular mechanical detail makes Blaster Defiance buff durations a little wrong due to the designer compensating for the entire activation time. The hit time on subsequent powers doesn't matter for that as the final damage for an attack (including buffs that affect it) is calculated up front at the instant activation begins, not on the hit. But that's a different discussion entirely, and not something that makes enough of a difference to worry about.
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But - I do have one question for Blacksly and Arcana
When you two were actually playing - did you actually use those attack chains repeatedly - or did certain battles call for a different attack, thus throwing the optimal chain out the window?
I think - and it's only based on my experience with my own ill/rad - with no experience in any controller with dark, that ill/rad is going to be easier to play just because of perma PA. Which, in practice would make it "better". Not everyone is going to have the nimble fingers with nifty keybinds at the ready. But with Perma-PA, it's basically idiot proof playstyle.
Well, there's two sides to your question. Tackling the second one first, I think when most players approach the problem of "best controller to tackle AVs and GMs" they start where you're starting: Illusion being the best primary because you get indestructible tanks to start. That's easier to manage than attempting to out-defense, out-debuff, and out-heal an AV pounding on you and your pets.
Then they ask which secondary best compliments Illusion in that situation, and Radiation tends to come up as the best. Why its usually seen as the best is usually because it has strong -regen, but even back then that assertion was seen as a very strong oversimplification. As we used to say even back then, -regen isn't magic, its just a kind of damage. The advantage of most -regen powers, as the above analysis shows, is that it delivers a huge amount of effective damage for relatively small cost in (cast) time and endurance.
And that gets to your first question: did I use the chains I show above? No, because in actuality (and I think most AV-hunters of all archetypes will agree) the single most difficult to manage bottleneck for fighting AVs and GMs is endurance. Its easy to build a build that can output a huge amount of damage on paper. But one of the reasons why the pylon tests were seen as interesting was that they demonstrated what a build could sustain over a (relatively) long period of time. To take down a pylon (which is basically a kind of AV fight) you needed to balance high damage with endurance management and enough damage mitigation to survive in a practical (at least for that test) build package.
In practice, my Ill/Rad could always "do more" than I could sustain in endurance drain over long periods of time, so I had to pace myself. In practice, I think that's part of what made /Rad such a good AV killer: LR was, in effect, an immensely efficient DPE attack.
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Of course, I still contend that particular mechanical detail makes Blaster Defiance buff durations a little wrong due to the designer compensating for the entire activation time. The hit time on subsequent powers doesn't matter for that as the final damage for an attack (including buffs that affect it) is calculated up front at the instant activation begins, not on the hit. But that's a different discussion entirely, and not something that makes enough of a difference to worry about.
The devs were aware of that (I made them aware of that) but they did not want to change the math to account for that. Also, doing it "wrong" didn't alter the balance-purpose of the buff enough to argue the point.
The problem showed up again with regard to the Eagle's Claw critical buff (which was intended to increase the chances for the next attack to crit if it landed), and there it was more important, but it was tricky to try to account for until better engine options became available.
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Here's something I just thought of. If you are a */Dark controller, then should you even be using Twilight Grasp at all against an AV?
It sounds crazy, but consider the net effect of TG on the AV itself. I'm assuming if you need to heal your pets then of course you're going to use TG, but what if they are currently at full health. Does it actually make sense to incorporate TG into your attack chain as if its a good way to defeat an AV? A level 50 AV has 28,272 points of health, and regenerates about 94.24 h/s. Every time you use TG you are going to hit the AV with a -50% regen debuff for 20s, assuming you hit. The AV will resist that effect by 85%, reducing its net effect to -7.5%. That means that debuff will reduce the AV's total amount regenerated by 7.5% of 94.24 over 20 seconds, or 94.24 * 0.075 * 20 = 141.36. In other words, TG hits like an attack that does 141.36 damage in a 20 second DoT. That sounds good but TG takes 2.37 seconds to cast (2.51s under Arcanatime). That means if we evaluate TG like an attack, it only has a DPA of 59.6 (56.4 under arcanatime). That's good for a controller attack, but is it good enough? And actual controller attack would be increased by resistance debuffs and damage buffs while this value is unaffected by damage buffs or resistance debuffs. You have to wonder if replacing TG with actual attacks (if you had one available) would kill the AV faster, and if building to optimize the use of TG is actually a potential handicap.
Compare to Howling Twilight (and for that matter Lingering Radiation), which hits for -500% regen for 30 seconds. Factoring in AV resistance, that's 2120 points of lost regeneration in 3.17 seconds of cast time (3.43 at) for a whopping 669 effective dps (618 at). Using HT on an AV is like hitting it with a mega nuke. Lingering Radiation is even faster at 1.5 seconds, its effective dps is a completely ridiculous 1414 dps (1236 at).
Against an even level 50 AV, both Howling Twilight and Lingering Radiation are the best powers in your arsenal: it makes sense to use them as often as possible. But specifically as an offensive weapon, is Twilight Grasp always your best option? I'm not so sure. It maybe be more like a really good heal that happens to deal some effective damage to the AV, and less like a really great offensive weapon that happens to heal. You might be better off using TG only when necessary, not as often as possible.
Ironically, spamming TG might make /Dark look worse than it actually is.
As a note, while we're discussing DPS (and theoretical best-case DPS, at that, since I agree that most of the chains are generally not sustainable for a full AV fight), the other half of the question is: can you SURVIVE against AVs/GMs?
Now, Ill/Rad has an easy answer to that: perma-PA. Earth Control with most secondaries can generally say "Yes", since Stoney can tank most AVs (and pretty much all AVs with a Thermal, Sonic, FF, or Empathy secondary, and probably with Cold).
But for everyone else, in order for the answer to be "yes", you need one of two reasons: You cap out Ranged Defense (including -ToHit, although usually only Dark puts out enough to consider that a major defense), or you nerf the AV/GM's damage.
Now, IF you could keep up the Fire/Dark's chain as listed, it puts out just over -100% Damage Debuff (assuming 30% damage resistance for the AV, which is probably slightly on the optimistic side... I'd wager that AVs are probably around 30% resist overall, but more likely 40% or even 50% to their own primary damage type). It also puts out -15% or more -ToHit (that's after the AV's debuff resistance), and it spams heals (as does Fluffy, at a slower rate). Basically, you have no worries about dying due to incoming damage (mez, maybe).
That's not the case, however, for most Fire/Rads. You would have to build for a Ranged Defense, which is probably less offensively capable.
As you say, Twilight Grasp is about a 150 damage attack, which is right about comparable to a single-target blast with a damage IO slotted. It's nothing special offensively, but the Fire/Dark is not really using it specifically for offense. If he were, I'd consider going /Psy instead and using Mental Blast, for better endurance efficiency and activation time. But TG is the last part of stacking close to 100% damage debuff on the AV (the exact stacking would depend on the AV's actual Damage Resist to its own damage type), plus it helps with stacking -ToHit. It's basically part of the defense that allows the character to survive basically any normal AV's damage, while also helping on offense, rather than an offensive-oriented power that does a bit of defensive debuffing like Dark Blast would.
The Fire/Dark would, I believe, try to fight without Maneuver at the least. In fact, I'd drop Shadow Fall also, and see how the damage is. Alternately, I'd run Shadow Fall, fight for a minute, see if the character's health bar is rock solid at 90% or higher, and if so, drop Shadow Fall. Dark Embrace can also be dropped. From what I saw with a Dark/Dark Defender (not at 50), AVs do not do any damage once all the debuffs are on them. Madame of Mystery may be a rare exception since she resists Psy so strongly.
For pure offensive calculations, you're right on the nose: TG is a 150-damage attack (good for a Controller) with a 7.8 base cost (poor), and a really slow animation. It has the advantage of ignoring Resistance, but also cannot be buffed by Assault or other damage buffs. Overall it's okay as your worst attack to fill out a damage chain, but it's usually worse than most alternatives. The reason to use it is for its defensive debuffs.
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So the question is, what's bigger: 0.3x base Imp damage, or 16 dps. Or alternatively, is there any chance that base, unslotted, unbuffed, zero resistance Imp damage is 53.3dps or higher? I suspect its lower than that.
I have Fire Imps damage at 71 DPS assuming 90% damage slotting. 90% is a bit conservative especially since the power would get to use +Damage set bonuses. So at base, they at 37 DPS.
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But - I do have one question for Blacksly and Arcana
When you two were actually playing - did you actually use those attack chains repeatedly - or did certain battles call for a different attack, thus throwing the optimal chain out the window?
Illusion perma-PA builds do use a set attack chain, because you have no real reasons to change. You don't take damage that you have to heal, ever, and you usually shut off all defensive toggles for that reason. Your drops (PA, Spectral Terror) are going to interrupt the chain a bit, as will your self-buffs (Hasten & AM), but otherwise it's a set chain.
Anything/Dark may use the same attack chain through a fight, but NOT the same chain. See my reply just above... unlike Illusion with perma-PA (usually Rad), you DO take damage as Any/Dark. That damage is usually quite slight, and you heal it fast. TG heals a LOT on each cast, and you're casting it once every 6-8 seconds depending on your chain, and Fluffy is casting it once every 10 seconds (though his is usually not slotted). What does this mean? It means that you out-heal incoming damage by a ton, when running everything.
But... you can't run everything. As Arcana showed, you can't sustain the Endurance drain. The build can be changed around a bit for more Endurance efficiency, and it still would run reasonably well. I made the build as a max-DPS calculation, with only a bit of looking at sustainable DPS for 5 minutes. It can be improved in efficiency, at the cost of some DPS. However, your question is perfectly relevant in this way: do you need to improve its max-use efficiency, or can you get away with just dropping toggles?
I am pretty sure that against almost any AV in a solo arc, you can drop defensive toggles (Shadow Fall, Maneuvers, and Dark Embrace) and be fine. You might even get away with not casting TG on every cycle (as I said, it's not a great offensive power). But you don't know until you fight the AV, and see how strongly you can debuff its damage, plus what its base damage normally is, how many toggles you can drop. Also, it's not just a question of pure steady-state damage mitigation. You want to be in a situation where your HPs drop low enough to make the healing worthwhile, but not to the point where, if you miss a TG when damaged, you have a chance to die before your next TG cast. So you probably want to keep the HPs at 50% and higher as long as TG is hitting. This is something that you'd have to see for each AV, so you will have to kind of vary the rate at which you use TG in the cycle, as you see how the incoming damage is.
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I only had one controller that I really liked. Madame Mardi Gras. She was an Illusion/Time. Since I know nothing about controllers, I just picked what seemed fun to play and fit her concept. She may not have been optimal, but she soloed all the way to 35 before the end. She made me want to try more controllers and maybe some dominators as well. Here's her back story because:
Charhonda Marcel was born in New Orleans and lived there most of her life. She was a part of a troupe of performers who worked the French Quarter and entertained tourists. Charhonda had secret, she new magic and her illusions were incredible. All that changed with Katrina. The troupe was devastated and she nearly died trying to save her sister. Desperate to change what has happened to her city and friends, Charhonda tried to turn back time and fix what had happened. Although she failed, she discovered that she could manipulate time to a limited degree. Even with her new powers she could not reverse what had happened.
Depressed and haunted, she left New Orleans for a new home, Paragon City. Determined that what befall her would pass others by, she would use her power of illusion to make the world safe for everyone to party ala Mardi Gras style!
(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3272965/Madame%20Mardi%20Gras.jpg)
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Well, there's two sides to your question. Tackling the second one first, I think when most players approach the problem of "best controller to tackle AVs and GMs" they start where you're starting: Illusion being the best primary because you get indestructible tanks to start. That's easier to manage than attempting to out-defense, out-debuff, and out-heal an AV pounding on you and your pets.
Then they ask which secondary best compliments Illusion in that situation, and Radiation tends to come up as the best. Why its usually seen as the best is usually because it has strong -regen, but even back then that assertion was seen as a very strong oversimplification. As we used to say even back then, -regen isn't magic, its just a kind of damage. The advantage of most -regen powers, as the above analysis shows, is that it delivers a huge amount of effective damage for relatively small cost in (cast) time and endurance.
And that gets to your first question: did I use the chains I show above? No, because in actuality (and I think most AV-hunters of all archetypes will agree) the single most difficult to manage bottleneck for fighting AVs and GMs is endurance. Its easy to build a build that can output a huge amount of damage on paper. But one of the reasons why the pylon tests were seen as interesting was that they demonstrated what a build could sustain over a (relatively) long period of time. To take down a pylon (which is basically a kind of AV fight) you needed to balance high damage with endurance management and enough damage mitigation to survive in a practical (at least for that test) build package.
In practice, my Ill/Rad could always "do more" than I could sustain in endurance drain over long periods of time, so I had to pace myself. In practice, I think that's part of what made /Rad such a good AV killer: LR was, in effect, an immensely efficient DPE attack.
First of all, I'll second this: Illusion/Rad is the premier AV killer throughout the game's history because it's the simplest, the easiest to build to a competent level, and also the one that has a high top-end ability. Now that IOs are out, you can use Earth/Thermal to make an AV-soloer much more easily (you really just need the two pet Resist IOs)... but the top end DPS for Earth/Thermal is a lot lower since it doesn't have the PA damage. You can also do nice things with some other builds like Ill/Storm or Demon/Storm, but they're not nearly as easy to build up to the point where they handle 80% or more of the AVs, and they require more skill since you can take damage. So, overall, Ill/Rad is unquestionably the single best bottom-to-top AV-soloer.
Second, I respecced my Ill/Rad multiple times, and several of them were done for Endurance purposes... I eventually ended up in the Primal Pool simply because Conserve Power made End management so much easier. However, since going Primal rather than a more-damaging pool inherently pushes the slider towards efficiency rather than max DPS, even if I could go at max speed all the time, you could say that my max speed was inherently throttled. So the idea that you have to hold back on damage is true.
How much do you have to hold back on damage? It's ironic... the more damage you're doing, the less you have to hold back. An Ill/Rad who fights for 30 seconds at full bore, and sees the AV's HP bar move a lot (meaning that it's not resistant to your damage), then looks at the 20 CABs that he brought along (if you're using inspirations), and says "they will be enough", and keeps going at max speed. Now, say that the AV's damage looks a lot less. Now the player says "At max blast, I use a CAB to refill every 30 seconds, and they will not last me the full fight. At some point I will have to slow down", and he probably slows down a bit, spreading out his CAB use to once every 40 or 50 seconds. But you don't know if you're going to do that until you fight the AV. You also have to hold some back in case the AV has a last-ditch defense, or heals at 25% health, so that you can burst it down after its low-HP defense wears off (or heal gets used).
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As a note, while we're discussing DPS (and theoretical best-case DPS, at that, since I agree that most of the chains are generally not sustainable for a full AV fight), the other half of the question is: can you SURVIVE against AVs/GMs?
Now, Ill/Rad has an easy answer to that: perma-PA. Earth Control with most secondaries can generally say "Yes", since Stoney can tank most AVs (and pretty much all AVs with a Thermal, Sonic, FF, or Empathy secondary, and probably with Cold).
But for everyone else, in order for the answer to be "yes", you need one of two reasons: You cap out Ranged Defense (including -ToHit, although usually only Dark puts out enough to consider that a major defense), or you nerf the AV/GM's damage.
Now, IF you could keep up the Fire/Dark's chain as listed, it puts out just over -100% Damage Debuff (assuming 30% damage resistance for the AV, which is probably slightly on the optimistic side... I'd wager that AVs are probably around 30% resist overall, but more likely 40% or even 50% to their own primary damage type). It also puts out -15% or more -ToHit (that's after the AV's debuff resistance), and it spams heals (as does Fluffy, at a slower rate). Basically, you have no worries about dying due to incoming damage (mez, maybe).
That's not the case, however, for most Fire/Rads. You would have to build for a Ranged Defense, which is probably less offensively capable.
I'm not sure how Dark generates -100% damage debuff. TG stacks -10% damage for 20s, which does a little better than triple stacking for between -30% and -40% damage. If you use Darkest Night you get an additional -30%. Factoring in 95% tohit ceiling on TG, that's between -58.5% and -68% damage debuff, and that's assuming zero resistance on the AV.
I also cannot verify the calculation on tohit debuffs. AVs resist those by the same amount as -regen, so to get to -15% tohit would require being able to generate -100% raw tohit debuff, and TG's tohit debuff is -5% base. Its slottable but I don't see how you can get to -100% (your posted build does not slot for -tohit on TG and only slots DN to -21.91%, making its actual tohit debuff between about -37% and -42% - which is reduced by AV resistance to -5.55% to -6.3%).
While Dark does have more defensive potential than Rad, I'm not convinced its an overwhelming advantage when fighting AVs. Rad has four defensive abilities relevant to AVs, only one of which requires a tohit roll. There's the healing in RA, the -25% tohit in RI (resisted to -3.75%), the -20% DMG in EF, and the -75% recharge in LR (resisted to -11.25%). In the Fire/Rad build I posted RA's cycle time was 4.12s. If that build decided to spam heals to keep the controller and pets alive, the healing output of RA would be about 47.8 h/s. That compares to the 58.6 h/s that TG will average in the posted Fire/Rad build and chain and factoring in 95% tohit. That's not an overwhelming advantage and the advantage rapidly shifts to the Rad in situations where the AV has defense or tohit debuffs.
If we look at sustainability, RA has to slow down, but not by much. Spamming RA like that costs 1.92eps. That's a lot. But the posted Fire/Rad is capable of turning on EF, RI, Assault, CJ, Dark Embrace, and Maneuvers (basically, all defensive and offensive toggles) and have 2.13eps to spare. If it chooses to keep LR single stacked every 30s that burns 0.276 eps. Perma Hasten costs 0.125 eps. Perma-AM costs 0.13 eps. That leaves the Rad with 1.6 eps. With that budget I can use RA every 4.95 seconds at maximum sustainable endurance burn without compromising defensive powers or offensive buffs and let the pets deliver the offense. That's 39.8 h/s.
The Fire/Dark is a bit more endurance friendly but only because of Soul Absorption. In fact, when Soul Absorption misses (to the best of my knowledge it only autohits dead things, it would not be autohit when fighting an AV) the Fire/Dark is almost unplayable for 45 seconds until it recharges. If it misses twice in a row, the Fire/Dark would almost certainly have to disengage the fight completely. And that could happen. Even at the 95% ceiling, in a fight that lasted, say, 6 minutes, SA would be used eight times. The odds are about one in 14 of seeing a double miss in that fight. And in any AV fight where tohit is in question at all, I believe that */Dark's mitigation unravels.
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Second, I respecced my Ill/Rad multiple times, and several of them were done for Endurance purposes... I eventually ended up in the Primal Pool simply because Conserve Power made End management so much easier. However, since going Primal rather than a more-damaging pool inherently pushes the slider towards efficiency rather than max DPS, even if I could go at max speed all the time, you could say that my max speed was inherently throttled. So the idea that you have to hold back on damage is true.
Endurance bottlenecks was why I switched to Agility Core Paragon at my earliest opportunity. Also, why I loved Ageless Core Epiphany in the appropriate content. More endurance, and faster recharge meant I could throw fireball into the works more often and without endurance problems. Otherwise, fireball was a burst but not sustainable power for my build.
Agility Core Paragon is why my posted Ill/Rad build has such monster recovery (4.74eps). I could spam 237.36 heals every 3.88 seconds without running out of end, which is about 61.2 h/s which ain't bad for a Controller.
Actually, I turn them off in Mids when comparing builds, but because I had all the accolades my Ill/Rad actually had 5.2 eps of recovery. And even at that, I was always looking for ways to make the build more endurance efficient.
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I'm not sure how Dark generates -100% damage debuff. TG stacks -10% damage for 20s, which does a little better than triple stacking for between -30% and -40% damage. If you use Darkest Night you get an additional -30%. Factoring in 95% tohit ceiling on TG, that's between -58.5% and -68% damage debuff, and that's assuming zero resistance on the AV.
I also cannot verify the calculation on tohit debuffs. AVs resist those by the same amount as -regen, so to get to -15% tohit would require being able to generate -100% raw tohit debuff, and TG's tohit debuff is -5% base. Its slottable but I don't see how you can get to -100% (your posted build does not slot for -tohit on TG and only slots DN to -21.91%, making its actual tohit debuff between about -37% and -42% - which is reduced by AV resistance to -5.55% to -6.3%).
Dark Servant runs Chill of the Night, which is a -30% ToHit Debuff. It also runs Darkest Night, with -15% ToHit and -30% Damage Debuffs. So it puts out -45% toggled, plus another 5% from TG and/or Tentacles. So to keep it simple, that's 50% ToHit Debuff, and with a reasonable 40% enhancement on it (best slotting is 6x Cloud Senses), it puts out 70% To Hit Debuff. While it's alive, the Controller has the 100%, although there will be a vulnerable time when you have to re-summon it next to the AV. As a note, that Chill of the Night is part of the reason for its damage, since it ticks for about 3 DPS plus 1.4 from the IO.
Dark Servant just about double-stacks TG on the AV, which is another -20%, but call it about -18% due to animation conflict. So it puts out almost 50% -Damage (with its Darkest Night), some of which is persistent through a resummon.
So we have about 60% -Damage from the Controller's DN and stacked TG, and 50% from Fluffy. Tar Pit is about a 45% Resist Debuff, so the total Damage Debuff is 110 * 1.45 (against even-level) for right around 160% -Damage. If the AV has 40% Resist, it suffers a 96% Debuff (capped at 90%). Even a 50% Resist has it with a 80% -Damage, which is strong enough with the ToHit debuff, base Defense, and Healing.
The only catch is the short period when you re-summon Fluffy, because not only does the new one have to appear, but it also has to bring up the toggles. As I recall, at least one of them (I think Chill of the Night) is the first thing it does when it appears, so it will have them up quickly. But you do have a period during which its debuffs will be lower (usually just the -15-20% damage from the prior one's TG). It's not usually a serious problem, but it is something to have to be aware of. If running on low toggles during most of the fight, it may be a good idea to retoggle (losing DPS) before a resummons.
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I don't think I've seen it mentioned, at least on this page, but are you taking into account the 9.375% (unenhanced) defense from Fade? It's not quite perma, but pretty close at the recharge levels being discussed.
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The only catch is the short period when you re-summon Fluffy, because not only does the new one have to appear, but it also has to bring up the toggles. As I recall, at least one of them (I think Chill of the Night) is the first thing it does when it appears, so it will have them up quickly.
Dark Servant's (http://tomax.cohtitan.com/data/powers/summon.php?id=Pets_V_DarkServant) Chill of the Night is an autopower, so it goes active as soon as the pet is summoned. The power description text says Toggle, but it's a lie.
Darkest Night does have to be toggled on. I can't remember if the Pet AI will keep the toggle on all the time, or if it will turn it on and off regularly like enemy critters with toggles do. Arcana might know, she's done far more analysis of AI behavior than I ever did.
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Dark Servant's (http://tomax.cohtitan.com/data/powers/summon.php?id=Pets_V_DarkServant) Chill of the Night is an autopower, so it goes active as soon as the pet is summoned. The power description text says Toggle, but it's a lie.
Darkest Night does have to be toggled on. I can't remember if the Pet AI will keep the toggle on all the time, or if it will turn it on and off regularly like enemy critters with toggles do. Arcana might know, she's done far more analysis of AI behavior than I ever did.
Thanks. I THOUGHT it might be, since I recalled Fluffy appearing with its graphic around him, but I checked the power description and got fooled.
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I don't think I've seen it mentioned, at least on this page, but are you taking into account the 9.375% (unenhanced) defense from Fade? It's not quite perma, but pretty close at the recharge levels being discussed.
No, just looking at -ToHit and -Dam in the discussion. Fade would make it easier to add to IO sets and the -ToHit so that you're softcapped against Ranged (maybe even Ranged & AoE), but I fought AVs with a Dark/Dark Defender back on SOs without taking noticeable damage unless mezzed, so the softcapped defense is just an extra backup layer of defense. It's nice when softcapped Defense (including -ToHit) is the 2nd layer of defense rather than the first, and you're also spamming a very strong heal as the 3rd layer.
Too bad they all go down together when mezzed.
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Also worth noting, using the rad heal completely stops your damage output for its activation time, as opposed to TG which you guys have already covered as having a certain amount of effective dps. Not necessarily a big deal, but if you have to hit whatever heal you've got very often, I would prefer to be getting damage out of it.
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Dark Servant's (http://tomax.cohtitan.com/data/powers/summon.php?id=Pets_V_DarkServant) Chill of the Night is an autopower, so it goes active as soon as the pet is summoned. The power description text says Toggle, but it's a lie.
Darkest Night does have to be toggled on. I can't remember if the Pet AI will keep the toggle on all the time, or if it will turn it on and off regularly like enemy critters with toggles do. Arcana might know, she's done far more analysis of AI behavior than I ever did.
My recollection, although I'm not 100% certain of this, is that the pet AI did similar things as the critter AI, although some player pet AI was specifically tweaked to make them work more efficiently. I know that sometimes critter AI failed to use toggles at all - the AE custom critter powers had all enemy toggles changed to clicks because they often failed to use them, and I know that part of the reason was related to problems with critter AI getting confused by recharge buffs.
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My recollection, although I'm not 100% certain of this, is that the pet AI did similar things as the critter AI, although some player pet AI was specifically tweaked to make them work more efficiently. I know that sometimes critter AI failed to use toggles at all - the AE custom critter powers had all enemy toggles changed to clicks because they often failed to use them, and I know that part of the reason was related to problems with critter AI getting confused by recharge buffs.
As I recall, this sounds right. Dark Servant should have an "open" attack chain, since it can't fill it up with attacks (its shortest Recharge is 8 seconds), so normally it will have time to activate DN, even if DN is at the lowest priority, because at some time all of its other attack powers will be recharging. But if you could increase its Recharge, then it could actually keep attacking, and never have time to bring up DN. But with its Recharges now set to be unmodifiable, it will always have the empty activation time in which to bring up DN. The real question, which I don't recall, is whether, once it brings up DN upon an AV... does it ever stop it, after 30 seconds or a minute. I do not recall the details.
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problems with critter AI getting confused by recharge buffs.
Perhaps you could help me clear something up. I developed a method of farming in the AE that relied on confuse and critters with AM. I just gave them that one power in their secondary and so once I hit a group with seeds of confusion I was instantly buffed to godhood. This capped recharge, damage and recovery (i think - can't remember exactly what AM gives now) and the result was very successful farming indeed! I never saw any mention of this method on the forums but i can't imagine I was the only person to try this.
Anyway at some point in the life of AE updates a change was made that nerfed my farming method. Critters no longer spammed AM on me until I glowed. I would catch a few but then they would stop casting it. One thing I noticed was that in general the critters would have AM on them when they stopped casting it (seeds would always miss a couple in a group). I was never sure if the devs had put in a specific nerf to stop this sort of thing or if they had simply made an update to critter AI that had inadvertently nerfed me. Your statement above suggests it could be the latter? If recharge was breaking critter AI one thing they would have to ensure is that critters didn't stack buffs like AM on themselves. A 'if I've got AM on me don't cast it' would have this effect I'd have thought?
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Perhaps you could help me clear something up. I developed a method of farming in the AE that relied on confuse and critters with AM. I just gave them that one power in their secondary and so once I hit a group with seeds of confusion I was instantly buffed to godhood. This capped recharge, damage and recovery (i think - can't remember exactly what AM gives now) and the result was very successful farming indeed! I never saw any mention of this method on the forums but i can't imagine I was the only person to try this.
Anyway at some point in the life of AE updates a change was made that nerfed my farming method. Critters no longer spammed AM on me until I glowed. I would catch a few but then they would stop casting it. One thing I noticed was that in general the critters would have AM on them when they stopped casting it (seeds would always miss a couple in a group). I was never sure if the devs had put in a specific nerf to stop this sort of thing or if they had simply made an update to critter AI that had inadvertently nerfed me. Your statement above suggests it could be the latter? If recharge was breaking critter AI one thing they would have to ensure is that critters didn't stack buffs like AM on themselves. A 'if I've got AM on me don't cast it' would have this effect I'd have thought?
I recall the devs changing the AI of the custom critters in the AE to reduce their desire to use buffs when they were already buffed to prevent buff spamming. I don't think they were specifically targeting your farming method as it was observed that sometimes custom critters would just stand around, say, spamming clear mind on each other over and over and not actually attack anything.
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I guess it depends on your definition of 'best'
For mob farming, Fire/ was a good primary. People talk about /Kin and /Rad, but I had a Fire/Sonic that was pretty impressive for solo farming.
For AVs and Monsters (and at one time, Hami) Ill/Rad seems to be the go-to choice.
For pure team-oriented crowd control, I have to vote for Earth/. Secondary would be a toss-up for Trick Arrow or Storm Summoning (in the hands of a person that knew how to herd with Storm)
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I recall the devs changing the AI of the custom critters in the AE to reduce their desire to use buffs when they were already buffed to prevent buff spamming. I don't think they were specifically targeting your farming method as it was observed that sometimes custom critters would just stand around, say, spamming clear mind on each other over and over and not actually attack anything.
Ah that makes sense. It was a real shame though, obviously the method would only work with plant or mind later on but you didn't need much apart from the confuse power and a little aoe to rake in the xp and tickets. Not cebr type no slotting efficiency but pretty good. Worked very well for level locking at 35 too - I was obsessed with creating builds that would exemplar well so was always hunting for those.
On topic, i can't speak for the end game incarnate stuff as I never went anywhere near it but for the rest of the game I couldn't believe how good plant trollers were. Lots of secondary's worked well with plant but storm was probably my favourite from a fun point of view. Really struggled for end though!
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I really liked Fire/Kin. VERY popular on Victory but I didn't see them as much as others on other servers. It had a decent power output to do solo missions and enough support for team play, and I found it fairly easy to use
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Also worth noting, using the rad heal completely stops your damage output for its activation time, as opposed to TG which you guys have already covered as having a certain amount of effective dps. Not necessarily a big deal, but if you have to hit whatever heal you've got very often, I would prefer to be getting damage out of it.
True, but we've been flipping back and forth between comparing Rad and Dark on offensive benefit and defensive benefit. I think a more interesting analysis would focus on the sustainable effort possible from both sets. Let me throw this out for discussion purposes.
To defeat a level 50 even conning AV you need to be able to deliver 28272 points of damage on top of (or neutralizing) its 94.24 h/s regeneration. You also need to survive the AV. Its difficult to estimate the average damage output of an AV, but a handy rule of thumb is that most single target attacks deal about 0.15 DS/sec when handed to a critter, based on cycle time and AI issues. As a practical matter, most AVs have about 4 *usable* attacks when attacking a single player, and on average one of them is an AoE which tends to reduce the per-target damage per second by about 3 (on average AoEs are balanced around hitting about 3 targets, although this varies by attack). A rough estimate, then, is that an AV might average about (3 * 0.15 + 0.15/3) * 874.66 = 437.33 dps not counting tohit, and about 328 dps factoring in baseline tohit of 75%. At range, that number drops to (3 * 0.15 + 0.15/3) * 524.79 = 262.4 dps raw and about 196.8 dps at baseline tohit of 75%.
These numbers "feel" about right, in that they say that an unprotected level 50 player running no real defenses might be expected to live for about 4-5 seconds standing next to a level 50 AV and taking aggro, and about 6-8 seconds at range.
Those are big numbers. The question is, when Dark and Rad are built to mitigate that much damage, how much gas is left in the tank to actually kill the AV? Both of them likely be, when maximizing survivability to survive that much damage, doing some secondary damage or regeneration debuff on the AV to help offense, but ultimately you'll still have to generate some offense to defeat the AV. In terms of both endurance efficiency and available activation time, which set offers the best options past that point? I'm not exactly sure thinking about the numbers.
This gets back to why Ill/Rad is considered the best AV/GM combo. Perma-PA immediately solves an enormous problem right off the bat. Once you solve that problem, all you have to do is reduce AV/GM regeneration enough to make it a matter of attrition, and LR is strong enough to do that and simple enough to use. Dark is a much more complex set to analyze (as we've seen) and also requires two very tricky elements to function correctly. It needs to use Soul Absorption to get into the same sustainable endurance class as Rad, but SA is a PBAoE: more dangerous to use than AM. Second, it relies in part on the Dark Servant, and that's an unpredictable ally: it doesn't always use its powers efficiently, and it can get itself killed.
If anything, these calculations seem to muddy the waters a lot, but it still appears to me that /Rad is a much simpler set to build around and manage as an AV-killer, while Dark, even if its capable of eclipsing Rad in some situations, requires a lot of shepherding to get there. In other words, Rad seems to be good-enough, and more straight forward.
That's not to denigrate /Dark, which appears to be capable of equaling or even exceeding /Rad in some areas. There's no question its a *capable* AV-killing support set.
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If anything, these calculations seem to muddy the waters a lot, but it still appears to me that /Rad is a much simpler set to build around and manage as an AV-killer, while Dark, even if its capable of eclipsing Rad in some situations, requires a lot of shepherding to get there. In other words, Rad seems to be good-enough, and more straight forward.
That's a good summary. Dark has higher theoretical numbers (in some ways by far), but even without endurance questions there are constant hiccups in its numbers, which require skill and practice to manage. Rad is very straightforward, has good early performance, and good top-end performance.
I still like Earth/Thermal, BTW, as a cute contender in the "straightforward, simple build" category, just because it's such an unknown combination.
Also... Poison's Poison Trap.... is the -1000% Recovery debuff shown in Mid's accurate? City of Titans has it as a -100% debuff with a 10 Magnitude, is that the same thing as a -1000% against an AV (resisted to -150%, heh), and if not, what does the 10 Magnitude mean for it? Because if it really is -1000%, then I see Electric/Poison as a really interesting AV-killer option.
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I had an Earth/Thermal Controller with just plain Vanilla IOS and SOs, and decided to try to solo the level 44 AntiMatter. (I was in that range.)
Stone Phillip and I were able to stalemate him alright, but we didn't have the power to put him away till I busted out a Shivan. Still, I was pleased at just how tough the Stone Pet was.
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Should we muddy the waters even more and add ill/cold vs ill/rad? Same -regen from benumb as from lingering radiation (longer recharge though), along with also reducing an AV's heal ability, which could be pretty beneficial depending on the AV. At the levels of recharge we're talking about, cold dom would not have to worry about endurance problems like the other two, and pumps out a bunch more -res with Sleet (which you can stack more than one patch, like tar patch) and Heat Loss. Sleet also adds a fair amount of its own damage.
Not sure if the extra -res makes up for less -regen, but it's probably a contender either way.
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I was never big into " I can solo an AV " thing... I usually teamed a lot.. so as long as I was effective in a team.. I was happy.. now having the ability to solo an AV is a cool thing..
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Should we muddy the waters even more and add ill/cold vs ill/rad? Same -regen from benumb as from lingering radiation (longer recharge though), along with also reducing an AV's heal ability, which could be pretty beneficial depending on the AV. At the levels of recharge we're talking about, cold dom would not have to worry about endurance problems like the other two, and pumps out a bunch more -res with Sleet (which you can stack more than one patch, like tar patch) and Heat Loss. Sleet also adds a fair amount of its own damage.
Not sure if the extra -res makes up for less -regen, but it's probably a contender either way.
Illusion/Cold is, like Illusion/Storm, also a good anti-AV combination... but only at the very top end. The reasons are as follows:
1: You do not have good personal defense powers.
2: You do not have +Recharge powers, thus you won't have perma-PA until the build is very mature (Lv 47+, with several purple sets). And for most of the earlier builds, the PA-gap is going to be large.
Yes, you can put out the damage, the -Resist, and some solid -Regen. But on the defensive side, they both need an expensive build to make up for the lack of +Recharge (for perma PA), or other personal defensive powers like a heal (until you get PA permanent). So it's a contender only in the "top builds" category, not in the "simple and cheap". You can probably do better with Ill/Cold than with Ill/Rad, at level 50 with an expensive build. But the difference is that I soloed my Ill/Rad to 50 going through every AV that got in the way, pre-IOs, starting with Envoy. Illusion/Cold starts a lot later, and with a lot higher price tag.
If that's the only place where you really want to fight AVs, at level 50 or near it, then both Ill/Cold and Ill/Storm work great. Storm does more damage, but has Endurance issues... Cold does less damage than Storm (but more than Rad), but also has very strong Endurance management.
I would not put Ill/Cold in the "best controller" category, though. It's a bit too specialized (good early on teams, but not so much soloing... good late against AVs but not until end game... not a great soloer at any time due to a lack of AoE... not very good AoE controls for larger teams). It's good in certain situation, but has too many gaps where it's not especially strong. Fire/Dark and Fire/Rad are good in all situations, if Ele/Poison can sap AVs then it's also good in all situations, Ill/Rad also lacks AoE damage but it's still a better generalist than Ill/Cold, etc. Ill/Cold is good, but not a contender for top Controller builds, I think, except in the specialist case of AV soloing at level 50.
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I was never big into " I can solo an AV " thing... I usually teamed a lot.. so as long as I was effective in a team.. I was happy.. now having the ability to solo an AV is a cool thing..
I'm planning a lot of builds in Mids.... they all must follow three main rules:
1: they can fight an AV (survive)
2: they can kill AVs (200+ DPS including -Regen)
3: they must have AoE capabilities (damage and control/debuff).
What I found is this: #3, which is the main thing on teams, is pretty easy. You only use a few powers against AVs, and you have plenty of left over powers for teaming. A lot of the extra powers are used for IO set bonuses, but because that usually requires multiple slots in a power, picking up powers that are good with just 1-2 slots is pretty easy. Most buffs work well with just 1-2 slots. So the AV-soloing builds usually are a bit underslotted in their teaming powers, but not so badly that they suffer significantly. And the places where you push the build (Recharge, Endurance, Defense) are still useful in teaming roles. About the only design goal against AVs that is not useful for a teaming controller is +Damage from IO Sets. So you're not wasting too much of the build when fighting large spawns on a team.
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I was never big into " I can solo an AV " thing... I usually teamed a lot.. so as long as I was effective in a team.. I was happy.. now having the ability to solo an AV is a cool thing..
What I liked about Ill/Rad was that it was a good controller combo in all situations, and at all levels. It just *happened* to be really good at assassinating AVs and GMs. But you did not need to handicap your build to be able to do that: perma-PA was good tool for all occasions and once you got there the rest was just having enough endurance to stay active enough, which is also a good thing to have in general But with damage buffs, defense debuffs, tohit debuffs, resistance debuffs, recharge debuffs, regen debuffs, slows, holds, indestructible tanking pets, confuse, rez, and one of the best emergency pause button powers around (EMP), it was a very versatile controller. If I throw two darts at a board and randomly select, say, Electric control and Trick Arrow, that would be a very good teaming controller if played to its strengths.
Its hard to find a controller combo that was not very effective in teams in some way. So discussions around controllers rarely addressed which combos were effective or team-useful, because all of them were. Discussions tended around the margins: farming (Fire/Kin), AV soloing (Ill/Rad), maximum control (Grav/Time?), and other extreme oddities.
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In regards to whats the best, I can tell what isn't: ice/rad when solo to 50 (my first 50 hero), is excruciatingly painful :roll:
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The second or third character I ever created was a Grav/Emp controller, which I tried to solo at first.
Very safe, I almost never died, but taking anything down took FOREVER.
Teaming helped quite a bit. Well that and realizing that I shouldn't have skipped Propel (I was new and read the description as it being mostly a knockback power).
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Now unveiling the best controller ever! :)
http://www.cohplanner.com/mids/download.php?uc=1503&c=696&a=1392&f=HEX&dc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
I think it might actually work...
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The second or third character I ever created was a Grav/Emp controller, which I tried to solo at first.
Very safe, I almost never died, but taking anything down took FOREVER.
Teaming helped quite a bit. Well that and realizing that I shouldn't have skipped Propel (I was new and read the description as it being mostly a knockback power).
Low level pre-containment controllers were an adventure all around. My Ill/Rad ran out of endurance trying to defeat a Jump Bot boss and had to settle for slowly Blinding him to death. Very, very slowly. It helped that I slotted Blind for hold. Because, you know, it was a hold.
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Low level pre-containment controllers were an adventure all around. My Ill/Rad ran out of endurance trying to defeat a Jump Bot boss and had to settle for slowly Blinding him to death. Very, very slowly. It helped that I slotted Blind for hold. Because, you know, it was a hold.
Heh. Yeah. I had Flurry on my Ill/Rad because it was at the time the best DPE available. A shame that Brawl cost Endurance back them, if I recall right, or I'd have slotted that instead.
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Now unveiling the best controller ever! :)
http://www.cohplanner.com/mids/download.php?uc=1503&c=696&a=1392&f=HEX&dc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
I think it might actually work...
I also have an Ice/Nature plan.
I went with some Power Pool attacks since Ice is likely to be in melee, and since it needed more damage powers.
http://www.cohplanner.com/mids/download.php?uc=1533&c=706&a=1412&f=HEX&dc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I also have an Ice/Nature plan.
I went with some Power Pool attacks since Ice is likely to be in melee, and since it needed more damage powers.
http://www.cohplanner.com/mids/download.php?uc=1533&c=706&a=1412&f=HEX&dc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
See you had an actual plan that could be attempted.
Mine would be the most boring thing ever. Flash Freeze/Ice slick/run in/stand there and wait for procs (and procs and procs) to hit. then open up aoe (more procs) when you believe everything is confused or held.
And for procs sake it might actually work. :)
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See you had an actual plan that could be attempted.
Mine would be the most boring thing ever. Flash Freeze/Ice slick/run in/stand there and wait for procs (and procs and procs) to hit. then open up aoe (more procs) when you believe everything is confused or held.
And for procs sake it might actually work. :)
I think that Ice/Nature has several strengths:
1: Ice has a good Immob as a damage power, since it's one of two fastest casting ones. And it does Cold damage. So leveraging it as the main attack rather than Block of Ice seems like a better damage option. As for Block of Ice as a damaging attack, I can see that... but with Arctic Air running, I don't think it has the Recovery to really use both of those attacks. So I'd go for Chillblain, and maybe a pool power (since they cost less than a Hold).
2: Rather than Ice Slick, I depend on Frostbite/Spore Cloud as the main defense for every spawn, and add enough defense that with Spore Cloud, the mobs are generally missing. If you can't spam Frostbite as the AoE damage option because you're depending on Ice Slick, there is no AoE damage other than the procs. So I'd rather go with Frostbite/Spore Cloud, let the mobs attack at reduced rates, with small chances to hit, with reduced damage if they do hit, and with some Resistance and Heals so that the few hits can be healed off. Ice Slick then becomes the backup AoE control. This is why my build has Frostbite at Level 10, so it's available for Spore Cloud at 12.
3: I like World of Confusion and the whole Psy pool as the epic. I went for Stone to leverage short-range Stunning attacks, but I can see going for max-Confuse instead.
4: Jack Frost has 25% (or higher) defense to EVERYTHING. Given that, I think that he gets a lot of mileage out of the +Defense pet IOs, for the same reason that Animate Stone gets extra mileage out of the +Resist IOs... adding more Defense to existing (but not capped) Defense is worth more as damage mitigation than the same Defense bonus added to 0 Defense. Having Jack Frost with 35% Defense makes him really tough for a non-tanking pet.
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In regards to whats the best, I can tell what isn't: ice/rad when solo to 50 (my first 50 hero), is excruciatingly painful :roll:
Hah! You think that's bad? I played Ice/Emp to 50, and I was having so much trouble finding teams at the times I was playing that I soloed almost all of the 40s. The reduction in damage to controller APP blasts came right in the middle of that, and IIRC Jack's AI was pretty screwy at the time. It was not a quick process.
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I also have an Ice/Nature plan.
I went with some Power Pool attacks since Ice is likely to be in melee, and since it needed more damage powers.
http://www.cohplanner.com/...
Some fun ideas there I might use for my planned Plant/Nature. (One of the few times I actually combine primaries and secondaries by the same theme.)
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So I read that wind controller was about to come out before shutdown. What would have gone good with that?
http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Wind_Control
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I think that Ice/Nature has several strengths:
1: Ice has a good Immob as a damage power, since it's one of two fastest casting ones. And it does Cold damage. So leveraging it as the main attack rather than Block of Ice seems like a better damage option. As for Block of Ice as a damaging attack, I can see that... but with Arctic Air running, I don't think it has the Recovery to really use both of those attacks. So I'd go for Chillblain, and maybe a pool power (since they cost less than a Hold).
2: Rather than Ice Slick, I depend on Frostbite/Spore Cloud as the main defense for every spawn, and add enough defense that with Spore Cloud, the mobs are generally missing. If you can't spam Frostbite as the AoE damage option because you're depending on Ice Slick, there is no AoE damage other than the procs. So I'd rather go with Frostbite/Spore Cloud, let the mobs attack at reduced rates, with small chances to hit, with reduced damage if they do hit, and with some Resistance and Heals so that the few hits can be healed off. Ice Slick then becomes the backup AoE control. This is why my build has Frostbite at Level 10, so it's available for Spore Cloud at 12.
3: I like World of Confusion and the whole Psy pool as the epic. I went for Stone to leverage short-range Stunning attacks, but I can see going for max-Confuse instead.
4: Jack Frost has 25% (or higher) defense to EVERYTHING. Given that, I think that he gets a lot of mileage out of the +Defense pet IOs, for the same reason that Animate Stone gets extra mileage out of the +Resist IOs... adding more Defense to existing (but not capped) Defense is worth more as damage mitigation than the same Defense bonus added to 0 Defense. Having Jack Frost with 35% Defense makes him really tough for a non-tanking pet.
OK. I wasn't going to do this, but rationale for my build...
Artic Air and Entangle Aura are the central theme of my build. This along with Wild Growth and Lifegiving Spores would make the character completely safe in melee except for a very large alpha. To counter that, the sleep and ice patch basically will delay any chance of that until you get to them and your two auras get a chance to dig in their teeth.
Once there, you should be able to do whatever damage you can to clear things out.
This brings us to the end usage. Normally running those two auras plus the other things you need with this build would be pretty horrific on your endurance. You have two things in NA that will help more than you might think. The most important of these is Overgrowth. The tier 9 includes a very nice end discount in it (half as potent as conserve energy). The other is the Lifegiving Spores. It doesn't regenerate endurance, it just gives it to you every 4 seconds. To the point that it's noticeable even without slotting for it.
I actually got a 2.06 End Gain with everything running on the character which would be quite nice.
The rationale for the psi pool is simply that the build relies on three toggles heavily for offense and defense. If you get mezzed they go down. if I remember correctly all three would actually deactivate and not just stay active but do nothing for the mez duration.
I wasn't completely serious when I started making this build, but had to admit it just might work out pretty well.
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I still like Earth/Thermal, BTW, as a cute contender in the "straightforward, simple build" category, just because it's such an unknown combination.
Thermal vs. Rad was something I looked briefly at when it came out. It seemed, at least on the surface to be very much like radiation, at least from the powers description. However, only just now, I looked more closely and see that it does differ a lot with some of the powers. Just a shame I only compared the first one (warmth vs Radiant Aura is a tie) and assumed the devs had just rewritten the descriptions of the same power.
Sometimes I am just an ignoramus.
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I have a fire/force field named Aggro Vader who I created pre I6. I soloed about 90% of his time playing. As we all know that, with Controllers, (at least in my case) all you have to do is look at them cross and they end up in the hospital... that is until I reached level 32 and now had fire imps. I remember being able to spawn and bubble 6 fire imps and then an additional 6 with perma hasten.
After having my butt handed to me for 31 levels, it was nice to have my minions devour purples while I sat there and giggled like a school girl. Having my own little army felt like payback for all the debt suffering I had incurred. I could have taken on a whole hoard of Freakshow Tanks and slaughtered them.
I luckily dinged 50 before the "great nerf" occurred. I really lost interest in playing him after that.
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One of the best controllers I played later in the game was a Ice/Cold Controller.. he wasnt very good solo until late in the game when I finally got some attacks.. but on teams he was awesome..
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So I read that wind controller was about to come out before shutdown. What would have gone good with that?
http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Wind_Control
Judging by the animations in Icon (which are all placeholder animations from other sets, mainly Ice Control), it wasn't anywhere near ready, and it probably wouldn't have come out in I24. I don't think we would have seen it until Issue 25 at the earliest.
That said, it really sounds nice, and I wish I could have played it. (I probably would have matched it up with Storm Summoning, just for theme, but I doubt I'd be the only one to make that combination)
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The best Controller is whichever one I was playing at the time!
Mine too. I feel your pain.
Mine too. It was also my first 50, and my main until the game closed. Oh how I loved him.
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If you are looking for something a little different that might give you a more offensive outlook for your new controller, you might consider a */NA.
I've recently convinced myself that Nature Affinity is an awesome set. Easy to see that it's biggest positive is the HoTs it can provide. It also adds -Dam, -ToHit, hold, -Res, Resistance, Regen and the Absorb ability. All together these represent a very nice bundle of goodies. Then there is the tier 9. The tier 9 is very intriguing in that it offers a hard to come by, but very nice end discount of 93.1% for controllers and a aoe +Dam of 66%.
The caveat to the whole set is that the Tier 9 is hard to make perma, but you can get pretty close.
To get the most efficiency out of NA you would want to use a primary that is more offensive. This makes fire an odds on favorite to run with it. I would also consider Dark and Plant to be very good pairings for this set.
I know it's not as offensive as a /Kin or an AV killer like /rad, but pairing with NA provides a decent amount of defensive options while still being an offensive set.
That's all well and good, too bad I found the effects to be hideous and overbearing.
IMO, the team went way overboard with the powers crafted from Dual John Woos onward.
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That's all well and good, too bad I found the effects to be hideous and overbearing.
IMO, the team went way overboard with the powers crafted from Dual John Woos onward.
I pretty much agree with your assessment of the basic look of the set. I did find that if you recolor it to a very dark or all white coloring it gives the set a much better feel.
You definitely have to work a theme not to make it look all Disney.
For example, Fire/NA with all brown (burnt) coloring for NA named Florist Fire. Imagine Hot Feet running while you push your already burned animation.
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I wanted to throw out my pick for favorite, "best", controller into the ring:
mind/kin.
I loved how i could arrest the villains without feeling like I was sending them to the emergency room.
A mind/kin was such a great bag of tricks that there was always at least something useful to do in every fight (control wise) and usually there was a whole list if things I wanted to do all at the same time. In all cases except a solo av fight a mind/kin was a wonderful thing. With mass confusion, confusion, and fulcrum shift alone a mind/kin could turn the tide of a losing battle: although a mind/kin usually made the phrase "losing battle" into an oxymoron. The incarnate introduction content was soloable thanks to confuse. The telekinesis + repel combo was one of my most favorite least utilized combos for instantly controlling anything from a group to a boss. A mind/kin was both solo and group friendly and broke the holy trinity mold in such a way that I've been ruined for every single game since.
Once incarnate content came out I switched mains from my scrapper to my mind/kin controller because I knew how overpowered and universally useful he was and I wanted both that character specifically to become as overpowered as possible and and wanted to have a character that could utilize incarnate abilities to the fullest.
I miss being able to fly through Paragon City knowing that the best of the City's powers were at my finger tips.
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My best controller was my grav/rad/psy, it had awesome controls added with being a av destroyer with rad :)
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The only controller I regret never taking all the way to 50 was a Fire/Rad..
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I don't know if it's the "best" controller (which is a very open-ended question) but my Plant/Rad/Psi was very strong. Definitely on my remake-if-I-get-to-play-again list.
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Not to threadomance, but this is a fascinating discussion. Shouldn't Time be in the conversation with /Rad and /Dark? Chronoshift makes perma-Army even easier, and it's pretty close on -regen and ally buffing.
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God, I miss this game!
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Not to threadomance, but this is a fascinating discussion. Shouldn't Time be in the conversation with /Rad and /Dark? Chronoshift makes perma-Army even easier, and it's pretty close on -regen and ally buffing.
What -Regen? AFAIK, Time Manipulation had a 100% Regen debuff that could be kept permanently (easily), and a 50% Regen debuff that could also be easily kept up permanently, but neither was stackable. So it put out a relatively low -150% Regen debuff.
Meanwhile, /Regen keeps up a pretty permanent -500%, and /Dark had about -300% if you kept Twilight Grasp stacked, plus another -500% from Howling Twilight that was up almost half the time. Given chances to miss and the fact that when HT was up for /Dark it actually had wasted -Regen, both Dark and Rad can break 450% while Time is at 150%.
-Resist is higher for Dark, and about equivalent for Rad. Rad puts out more damage output boost with A-M and a Recharge boost, while Time only has a Recharge boost.
Defensively, Time does kick butt. And for Illusion specifically, it's even easier to make PA permanent with Time than with Rad. So you do cover the defense pretty strongly with Time (although against an AV not as strongly as Dark's ability to layer Defense, -ToHit, and -Damage). But offensively against an AV, Time is pretty far back.
The leaders in secondaries for offense against AVs are Storm, Ice, Dark, Rad, Poison, and Thermal, in about that order. There are a few shifts that happen depending on primaries (/Kin becomes good when paired with Fire, for example), but Time is really in the set that does some damage boosting but not a great amount of it. It's basically better than Empathy and Force Fields and that's about it.
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Right, missed that Time's -Regen doesn't stack. Just looking for new powersets to play, but my theorycrafting was weak. Thanks!
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/Rad was amazing...but not necessarily the only AV killer. I had seven solo (no Warburg nukes or Shivans...legit solo) AV takedowns with my Ill/Kin, pre-Incarnate. Mind you, this was probably a 2.5 billion inf build with perma-Phantom Army, but she could take down certain AVs, in time. The majority of AVs could out-regen her DPS, but there were a few she could beat by herself. And no /Kin ever lacked for team invites, when I wasn't solo'ing her...
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The best controller is a wireless xbox 360 controller, made for PC :P
Seriously though, the only controller that I did really well with was an illusion/time controller. Even soloing, that guy could tear it up. For some reason, that was the only time I really got "into" the controller class. Otherwise I was kind of meh about it. I think I tried gravity/rad and earth/sonic, and a few other combinations.
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The most fun was my Plant/Storm, hands down.
My Fire/Rad was also very powerful, could literally melt groups of mobs.
Tried a few other combinations, but nothing else really clicked with me.