Oedipus_Tex

How much would it suck? I know Gravity has issues but Cold seems to have a lot of must-have powers at low levels (actually, at all levels). I'm assuming you can cold-shield the Singularity. Can you buff its max HP?

One power that just never seems to get enough respect is Arctic Air. IMO, it is one of the single most powerful abilities in the game.

What hangs people up about Arctic Air is the toggle aspect. Let me ask this. If you had a power that...
- had a 20 foot radius
- rarely drew aggro
- could accept damage procs
- could slow
- could lower recharge rate
- could confuse
- had a chance to proc Contagious Confusion every 10 seconds of every battle
- could cause afraid effect
- was up multiple times per fight
- was mobile, so that you could move it as the battlefield evolves
- was available at level EIGHT

...would you think this was a good power? The major negative for Arctic Air is that the user has to take some extra risks to get into melee. Alpha strikes can be annoying, and getting mezzed really sucks (which is why Ice/Force Field or /Sonic can ge great), but Ice Slick around a corner can do the trick.

Great suggestions. Here are a few of my own.

Gravity Distortion Field - Change this power to an auto-hit PBAoE that effects both enemies and friendlies. This results in everyone outside the radius being unable to attack anything inside the radius, but everything within the radius able to attack each other. One use of this is to make the team invulnerable for a brief period so that they can run through an area. Another would be sealing off an area against an incoming wave of enemies until you can deal with the current batch.

Propel - Add a chance to summon an object that is targetable. These objects create variable effects when they are destroyed.
- Vehicles - AoE fire explosion
- Computer Equipment - AoE electric blast
- Canisters - Small oil slick/ice slick
- Metal / Glass Objects - shrapnel (caltrops)

(Note: I am aware that this change is not compatible with the current version of Propel, and may not be possible from a technical perspective.)

Lift - Have Lift apply an unenhanceable Mag 1 Hold that lasts 15 seconds-ish. This effects no one, but stacks with Gravity's single target hold. This would make Gravity the king of boss lockdown, giving the set at least some direction.

Last on my list would be Gravity. The pet can't be healed, and Gravity isn't the strongest control set to begin with.

Plant, Earth, Fire, Illusion, and Mind have been covered. I wanted to bring up Ice. I don't have a Ice/Empathy, but I do have an Ice/Thermal.

Ice Control is a weird set. It's ridiculously powerful in some ways and really gimped in others. One of the main issues is that Ice tends to get shot at. A lot. Ice powers slow down the rate of fire, and Ice Slick can stop a lot of shots, but in the end you and your team get hit occasionally. Your pet is also much more fragile than the Earth guy. This means having a heal is really useful.

Now, the second part of this is that getting hit with a mezz detoggles one of your best controls, Arctic Air. So, Ice is very vulnerable to cascading failures. A single mezz can detoggle you, speeding up the rate of enemy attacks while simultaneously cutting off HP restoration. Then you and your team die. This can get really frustrating.

Where Ice is great is during long fights, fights with bosses, or against enemies with mezz protection. It turns out this is often when healing is useful too. Because Ice relies on recharge debuffs instead of binary status effects, Ice can shut down enemy powers to the point where the enemy just wants to run (slowly) away.

Where Ice is weak is in short fights, against things with knockdown immunity, or against anything with speed or recharge resistance.

Gravity Control is okay. It's arguably the weakest Control set but does some unique things. The only thing kind of annoying about Gravity mixed with Empathy is that you can't heal your pet.

Empathy as a Controller secondary is just fine as long as you go into it with the right expectations. It is the most healer-y of the power sets in City of Heroes but it will not make you into a Holy Priest from some other game.

Now, the reason you haven't received a lot of build advice is that there pretty much isn't any Controller (or Defender) build that makes a character viable as a pure healer. Even at level 1, you will have access to a hold (or blast). To not use it holds back your team. This becomes more and more evident as you approach level 50 and Blasters, Defenders, and Controllers start getting dropped in 2 or 3 hits. It is critical to control the amount of damage being directed at the party in addition to restoring HP. Your role is not to heal, but keep people alive.

I'm going to offer an alternative view to some of what has been said here.

IMO Controllers can not just be excellent healers, they can be among the best healers. We just have to define "healer" as someone who is capable of repairing HP damage, removing/preventing status effects, and reviving KO'ed heroes in addition to other things like mezzing enemies or dealing damage. Following the team around and healing to the exclusion of all else, as is done in some other games, is not usually a viable tactic in CoH.

A Defender can achieve better heals-per-second and heals-per-endurance-point, but IMO a Controller's primary set makes up for this with by providing more ways to slow incoming damage. It's hard to say whether the Defender or Controller is the better "healer," but clearly Thermal Radiation and Empathy characters are better healers than, say, characters with Martial Arts or Invulnerability.

Some argue that if a Controller was doing his or her job, there would be no need for healing. I think this is more true in theory than in practice. Except under specially engineered circumstances a single Controller cannot stop 100% of the damage coming at the team. Having a heal around is often useful if for no other reason than to keep the team moving.

It is also true that there are team make-ups that make having a healing character less useful. This is kind of irrelevant though. There are team make-ups that make tankers, bubblers, mezzers, and just about any other -ers less useful, so that fact that one can build a team without a healing character shouldnt be mistaken as a sign that healing powers are useless. It is easy to engineer situations where the entire Controller archetype is useless.

As for the single-target heal vs aoe heal topic--it turns out in this game that the 3 main "healing" sets (Empathy, Thermal, and Pain) have both single-target and AoE heals. Both the single target and AoE are useful to have, so I wouldnt recommend specializing with one set or another. Your reaction time will never be good enough to target each team member as damage is done, and an AoE heal hits all team members, their pets, and any NPCs that are assisting the party. As a matter of course, when there are Masterminds in the party it is a good idea to occasionally fire the AoE heal even if you are just "guessing" damage is being done, as can often happen in chaotic fights or if your target is obscured by a doorway.

Of the other sets that are capable of healing HP Kinetics and Radiation both have only an AoE, and Storm has only a weak-ish single target heal that doubles as a useful anti-mezz.

In terms of maximizing returns, I would go with Force Field.

Sonic isn't terrible, but IMO the +Defense from Force Field is better than Sonic's +Resistance. Especially since if you really want +Resistance you can go with Thermal Radiation and lose almost nothing except the AoE mezz protection.

Force Field offers you Personal Force Field for emergencies, great +Defense on allies and the pet, and an AoE stun to stack with Wormhole. As a Gravity/FF you also get the unique advantage of being able to immobilize enemies and still knock them back with Force Bolt to position them exactly where you want them. Also, as a FF you will need to expend fewer slots than the very endurance heavy Sonic, leaving you more slots to invest in your primary.

I'm not an expert on building for set bonuses, but the one major change I'd make is swapping the Shiver power pick with Arctic Air. Arctic Air is an endurance hog, yes, but it is also ridiculously effective at low levels. Six slot it as fast as possible, concentrating as much on endurance as you can. As you level up, gradually replace the endurance with confusion duration, until you get high enough to actually trick out the power.

Ice/Kin makes a perfectly fine team character. It can also solo, although slower than a damage primary like Fire. What it lacks in damage it makes up for in safety, particulary in a team environment.

Ice may be the safest Controller primary set for constant melee, and Kinetics is a melee-heavy set. Ice also has an endurance heavy toggle, which Kinetics can make less painful.

The only major challenge is that the Ice pet is pretty fragile without support, so keeping him alive might require extra effort. This isn't an issue on teams, where the pet becomes less important.

Arctic Air begs for the Contagious Confusion proc. Frankenslotting AA with 2 endurance reducers, 2 Confuse durations, and a Contagious Confusion makes AA extremely powerful. You can also add a damage proc if you want.

If you're not opposed to a healing set, Illusion / Thermal would actually be a great addition to this team.

- Phantom Army for extra damage or to make up for a lack of Tanker
- Option to skip Thaw, because Sonic Dispersion provides AoE status protection
- Melt Armor stacks with Sonic's -resistance and increases team damage while getting around the caps on Fulcrum Shift
- Shields stack with Sonic's for massive +resistance
- Excellent on-demand AoE or targeted heals
- Heat Exhaustion much mor able to hit thanks to Earth's massive -defense modifiers
- Forge for a huge damage boost to the Scrapper, who will loooove you
- Superior Invisibility all but eliminates the chances of the primary healer (you) getting ambushed
- Potentially adds a rezzer to the team

Arctic Air loaded with a Contagious Confusion proc, in a map filled with enemies who use gang war. Only really possible in the AE, but an incredible sight.

I've said this many times before but I would recommend passing on Power of the Phoenix. It's not a terrible power but the endurance cost and recharge make it one of the less useful rezzes, and Thermal already has so many useful powers that you'll be hurting for slots. I would carry a few extra Awakens and distribute as necessary. You can Thaw the recently awakened to remove the stun. This still leaves them without endurance but *you* will still have endurance, avoid drawing aggro, and prevent a knockback effect.

Plasma Shield is a very useful power, IMO more useful even than Cauterize (since you are stuck with an AoE heal anyway). If you haven't picked it up yet I would definitely make it the highest priority. I see you have Hot Feet already; if you do a rebuild I would consider swapping Hot Feet out until after Stamina and taking Plasma Shield in its place.

Defender: Thermal Radiation
Controller: Dark Miasma
Blaster: Dark Blast
Scrapper: Ninjitsu
Tanker: Energy Armor

You should put Force Bubble on alternate build if only to experience the thrill of "minion hockey." To play all you have to do is use Super Speed to run at a pack of level 1s hanging out in Atlas Park. The resulting repulsion is so great they'll often go flying out of line of sight, even passing through thin obstacles, like fences. Once you get really good you can vault them past the police drones and right under Atlas' legs. Pointless? Mostly. Fun? Definitely.

I don't want to have an even match for every powerset. Why? Because when there is a "correct" match it makes most everything else seem sort of "wrong."

The best powerset matchups in the game, IMO, are the Controller sets, because for the most part they don't line up 1 for 1.

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You won't be able to use the Cold shields on the Imps - due to thematic reasons they'll melt as soon as you apply them (or the Imps will die, not sure which yet).

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The thermal shields work just fine on Frosty, not sure why cold shields wouldnt work on imps.

Wondering what Fire Imps in covered in Cold shields will look like.

For that matter, what Frosty will look like in a Cold shield--all spikey, like "Ultimate Jackfrost"

What are you going to pair it with?

(Look at http://www.cityofheroes.com/news/gam..._overview.html if you haven't seen it's coming yet.)

Bonfire is also ridiculously powerful on certain office maps. If you toss it on top of the table in one of those "conference room" type rooms enemies cant escape the radius and just get thrown repeatedly into the wall. It's like Earthquake or Ice Slick with damage.

I'm drooling for Insect Control, Air Control, or Water Control. Especially Insect since that is such a comic-booky type thing and not a concept that is supported anywhere else in game.

IMO Force Bubble would be better if it only affected a cone in front of you (perhaps 30 ft wide.) The biggest problem I have with it is it is so huge that it goes off my screen and I end up aggroing stuff that's behind me or on the other side of a wall.

One thing people rarely note about Force Field is it is by far the least slot-hungry set for Controllers if not in the entire game. You can easily survive with just 5 powers from this set:
- the single target shields (usually 2-3 slots each)
- Dispersion Bubble (2-3 slots)
- Personal Force Field (1 slot)
- Repulsion Bomb (4-6 slots)

You can elect to take the other Force Field powers if you want them--I personally am not a fan of the knockback powers but Force Bubble is ok in some situations (and usually only worth 1 slot). Add Manuevers from the Leadership pool if you want to improve your bubbles further.

Force Field is the set for players who want to increase team survivability, the survivability of the pet, and have lots of slots and power picks from their primary pool or from auxilaries.