After about a week and a half of not feeling the CoX urge, Margie and I spent several hours this weekend doing two of our higher-level characters, Kitsune-chan and Ex-Terra, dinging them up to 43 and securely into the lower end of Peregrine Island.
Kitsune’s an Illusion Controller, but unlike my first 50, Psi-clone, she’s Ill/Rad, rather than Ill/Emp. The difference in play style is interesting. With PC my job was (aside from providing controllerish stuff with Phred the Phantasm and Scary Sam and the Boys) to keep Amorpha on her feet. Lots of buffs and heals, and let her do the heavy lifting.
Kitsune, on the other hand, only rarely fires off heals, since she has just the one. Instead, her job is to debuff the biggest boss on the board and then control the mobs while Ex-Terra spine-AoEs the snot out of them. It’s an effective combo — more of a team effort than PC/Amorpha, as both of us are AoEing the heck out of the baddies. Indeed, by the time I get around to actually doing any attacks, the baddy minons are usually down to a sliver. Aside from simple goofs, we seem pretty unstoppable at Unyielding (which provides more mobs, if not quite as high level as Invincible); I’m tempted as we get into the final story arcs to bump to Invincible and see how effective we are duoing vs AVs.
As Margie notes, there’s a reason that /Rad controllers are so in demand in PUGs.
Fun times.
I’ve been soloing my Rad/Psy defender recently. She’s quite is awsome once you’ve greened up the bad guys, and her output is great when within the virtuous-green-circle of Radiation Infection/Enervating Field, but outside that Defender damage sucks a bit.
Plus the Knockback from TK Blast or her Nemi Staff can knock mobs out of the debuff AoE (esp if you accidentally hit the mob you’ve anchored your debuff to).
Mmmm! The green yumminess of Rad! I have a Rad/Rad defender who is TREMENDOUS amounts of fun! He’s part of an RO SG called Faithful Fans of Fallout. They’re ALL Rad/* defenders and when they roll, they ROLL!
It’s funny to play an FFoF Defender on a ‘regular’ team, because one of my greatest weapons is Fallout. On a full FFoF team we’ll take turns dying so the others can Venge and Fallout the corpse, sometimes dragging the body around with TP for a while before rezzing. And the Rad/* rez is completely awesome as a buff.
On a regular team I often find myself hoping someone will faceplant and cursing when they rez before I get full use out of them . . . =)
And any Ill/* Controller = Win!
Have you tried Ill/Storm? With Tornado and Lightning Storm added to the Ill pets and it’s a heroe MM! =0
Maybe I’ll do that for my next Ill Controller, Arty, once I get #2 to 50. 🙂 (Starts pondering concepts.)
I actually haven’t done anything with the Vengeance/Fallout bits. Margie rarely faceplants, so it wouldn’t be all that useful. Generally on the occasions she does, between /Rad debufs and Ill pets, I can keep on my feet while she pops a Rez.
Margie has a Fire/Rad controller, Old Star, that is a totally soloable troller. I’ve got a similar combo, Al McGordo, that I’m slowly working up the scale.
Greppo, clearly the best thing there is to grab Blackwand for the non-knockbacky damage. 🙂
But KB is FANTASTIC mitigation!
I think it depends on the situation. Solo? Absotively.
On the other hand, most of the Controllers I’ve run have been duos with a Scrapper that Margie was playing. KB + Scrapper who is tanking and making hyper-optimal use of cones and AoE = Not so good. Heck, half the time I’m chastising Phred the Phantasm for his KB on mooks that Margie’s carefully gathered together for an endurance drain, spine swirl, or some other massive attack.