Best Controller

[Ankhammon]

<---- too much out of practice to remember that trick.

Codewalker! You broke Arcana!

[blacksly]

Large Wall of Text hits you for 1,874 damage.
You have been defeated.

I love dealing with numerical professionals

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.

[Arcana]

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.

[Fridgy Daiere]

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...

[blacksly]

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.

[blacksly]

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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

[Arcana]

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).

[Fridgy Daiere]

Thanks for clarifying!

[Arcana]

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=78DA6593594F13611486BF69A7D4B2480BB25328052C163AED08E89DA86C41012B18AE4432C220938C6D332D095EFA03F4C20D970B37564DBC54E3EF30EA9F5070BBF1A69ECE7BA04D66D2E639DFDBB3CD39FDA6D6462ADF8DDF1E12927FD8D4B2D985E1742A67A54D53B7BCB38B869E5AD4053D55E756ADB4A585E6D2564E5FF392D259743C8851264C73356BA4530742B8C4E7FCEAF2B232A32D195AAEE0317AD3C8165C0313A915DDD25339E5C0A849A629D515DDD43354CCF6AEB6A5495D5BD2ADEC8A91A9B0CF63A6716325576EDBB3195D5F0A8C668C4565CCB0F485292D9BD3AD5B8DD46894BECF25C14F5E16319710AA2CCA14B0320E1E4D305570BA34E6A2646B5D5360F412731A8C25C117048963A475424416FEC7CC2760FD53B0F9195848E5B683F26EF77BD4EEFC04767D647E005F919F87F37B46A0B58D821D631C3BCE9C000BAD7991DFE3BD07EDC87DE603B0FC21F30ECFE42ED84D9BF6A19EF01506495A84B40AD62A58BB4CF9ABA049551DD062CC0DFAAD1AF545751DE6B44908C0DF13D847AD9A5FCCDFE0B13DE610587F169CA5D85AAE5FDB8B1AAF49AB430DA98E6B44FDE04B4203CFAC41438EC6ABCC79307E0D5417C02D8A69E2FE9AB6DCB6D6BC0DB6EE3077C1B637A0FA160CD07C5AD08BAB857BE918A4A3EC1611662DF9047927C10DDEE32618D9626E83277698BBE036C5B5736FED3CBB10CF2EC4B30BFDE4FFC45FCC27FE07671FD50DF32EC2DCDB1CA11BF9DCDD9FC92F288BE3DF985F985FC10D7AC51E9E654F3FF73500F60D324F81B1D3E026C5F4F23C7A4F62467D0D929D4F55710E535F0AEF4FE19DC69933A42778DF09D65AE5C3BB491F7AC4A44349CA87775148B6122CFAE493E5B6A76DCF97D85A897DBDC4F6F9E996B2FD9D74492ACDFCC3A1EC15159774066FEBBA20D937DE3587C9EF177DDCD23AA625F30D95F986963D02138EF78B3A14D5A10C38947E87F2AF9E0AA08BFC7F92B609BB

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?

[Microcosm]

... 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...

[Arcana]

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.

[Arcana]

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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

[ukaserex]

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.

[Codewalker]

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.

[Arcana]

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.

[Arcana]

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.

[blacksly]

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.

[blacksly]

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.

[blacksly]

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.

[MWRuger]

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!