Metatheory

For soloing I think the blaster, dominator and sentinel as suggested offer the easiest path to at least partially ranged out of the box, and survivable. Theme-wise, I think 'WIllpower' secondary for Sentinel is the more obviously psi-adjacent defense set, as it has good psionic resist in it's basic shield, and psi defense in the mez protection. Don't forget the pool powerset 'Force of Will' which is a fantastic set of tools for a psi character, a must-have in this case it sounds like! You get three ranged 'blasts', one of which does a debuff, and the other two do light-ish damage plus either ST knockdown or a cone of kb which is a very handy tool for protection. The set also has a travel option and a 'tier-9' type self buff on a long cooldown. If you are curious about a melee psi-themed character (psi melee /WP for ex.) you can get them partially ranged by taking the blasts from the force of will pool.

My fave scrapper, and I've played a few, is my Ice/Dark. You don't see many around, and I don't care that 'you shouldn't play resist sets on a scrapper' or 'it doesn't have a taunt aura'. /DA is a super capable set on a scrapper - you have the big heal, exotic resists, stealth that means you can fight in close proximity to other groups without aggro-ing them, auras... and Ice is just fun fun fun, with a super reliable knockdown, some heavy hitting ST attacks, a literally cool cone attack... I just zoom-hover about looking like a flying smudge freezing stuff.

I would go so far as to say Defense is not the META for tanks; resist and absorb/heal is most likely superior. For DA you have the greatest heal in Dark Regen and it's not just a backup, it's part of your mitigation and you should expect to use it. So reducing endurance cost and enhancing recharge - both for the power itself and globally - are at a premium, as well as accuracy/+to-hit. The chance for +end proc is a no-brainer here. No one comes back from the last 5% of health like a DA toon surrounded by enemies! Energy resists are the weakest important area, and relatively important later in the game, so that should be a focus for patching the hole. On the other hand psionic protection is second-to-none. The stun and/or fear are important layers of protection - take at least one. Katana is not particularly synergistic, but it's a nice enough set with a bunch of useful powers and a cool taunt. My most played character on LIve was a Kat/DA scrapper and was great fun. I encourage you to stick to your (metaphorical) guns. You won't regret it.

Hello 'Trollers! I've been having fun with my Ice/Nature and I'm thinking how to build him out properly. I don't know ice control very well at all, either pre- or post- changes, but I have played nature a fair bit on controllers and 'fenders, so I know may way around there fairly well. The reason I rolled this combo is that I wanted to see what could be done with a PBAoE toggle approach. Mainly I wanted to leverage: Glacier and Entangling Aura. They combine for an up-to Mag 5 hold aura. Arctic Air and World of Confusion from the Psionic Mastery APP. They should combine for an up-to Mag 5 PBAoE confuse aura - always on! Factoring in Overgrowth's wild (see what I did there?) To-Hit buff, these powers should hit often. That seems to me like it could be pretty good, but you do have to get pretty close to the action to affect plenty of mobs. Probably the main risk there is getting mezzed (and dropping offensive toggles) so secondary power picks could be looking to provide a layer of mez-protect: Taking Psionic Mastery makes Indomitable Will available which offers a nice range of mez resistance Rune of protection can also be taken to use in emergencies as a super-BF Of course, one could also go down the defense road for mez-protection, but building up comprehensive def on a 'troller takes quite a lot of effort, and possibly isn't worth it (?) as this build should aim for a lot of recharge in order to get Glacier up as often as possible. In addition, Ice Slick is a single power pick, possibly a one-slot wonder, and offers a LOT of protection vs many mobs in the game. If it works as well as Ice Patch on melee characters it will offer a lot of mitigation. But *IF* one were to go down a defense route, how would you do it? Positional? Typed? Keeping in mind that this is a PBAoE based control character. So that's 11 powers I'm pretty much committed to (including Hasten for recharge, and the two qualifiers for Rune) which leaves a lot of room for creativity. There is one other power I want to take, which is Chillblain, as I'm sick of fighting AVs where the blasters haven't taken their T1 immob and the Brutes haven't taken a taunt. Not having the AVs run all over the map is a nice QoL feature, and fixed with one pick. And besides, it is very nice for setting up containment on bosses in one shot, and potentially a good place for a controller AT IO set. And, at the end of the day, controllers can't Brute/Blaster-shame if they haven't taken their T1 immob... Given the context of leveraging the PBAoE potential of Ice/Nature, what other power picks or strategies do you think would make sense?

You might want to mention that the point of the pet is mainly to cast ally powers on, which can then chain to yourself when solo

Lots of good information in here, thanks. Seems that /EN is still alive and kicking in blaster world. I like the potential for power boost to interact in interesting ways, and the clear path to get a lot of mez protection without going down the sorcery route. I have been playing a dark/en and I do like energize a lot, it feels good for a sustain.

How do people feel about /EM in the current game? Still useful? Any good tricks beyond making cones better or niche uses of power boost? Any secretly good synergies with blaster primaries?

Confirm that I cannot get this story arc from Ann-Marie Engels at level 18

Jill Pastor's first contact introduction offered me only Kong Bao and Mercedes Sheldon. I'm level 15 so Kong Bao seems correct, even though the wiki does not mention him under 'introduces' - I assume hcwiki is incorrect as he is a 15-19 contact. Mercedes Sheldon a) has no description, and b) cannot be selected as her minimum level is 20.

Love this story thread - looking forward to the next update!

Dr. Graves (Mercy Island) and Twinshot (Atlas) are the contacts. It would work exactly like it does now in all respects except when you craft you would be able to sub any common, uncommon or rare for the salvage stated on the recipe. From the market perspective it already works the same. If you wanted to craft a LotG +global it would cost 2 commons (any) 1 uncommon (any) and 2 rares (any) but in your inventory it would look exactly like it does now, with different types and so on.

+1 to the idea of bucketing salvage for crafting, not just for the markets This can be done without losing the lore and flavour.... the individual salvage would remain, but any drop would be useful Most of the objections in this thread are pretty much gaslighting IMHO - over focus on the OP's mention of newbies for justification without addressing the main proposal

Holy moly!

Dark Armor on scrappers. In life, cool beats numbers.

That's all well and good, but it's still fun on a scrapper ;) Seriously though, great information, thanks for sharing it!