Parabola

The safest thing is to target an enemy in the middle of the back of the group. I tab target and for speed I generally target the nearest guy and position myself for the best coverage. After a while you develop a mental map of cone dimensions and get a fairly good idea of where you need to be to hit most of a group. Something I always find really useful for Seeds in particular is some form of stealth, it gives you a bit more time to line things up. Be aware that if you have Audrey and the creeper patch following you they will aggro mobs for you though. Just so it's clear all cones originate from your character and extend out to their range. They will extend to this range regardless of how close you are to the enemy you have targetted (with very long range cones like Umbral Torrent it's easy to blast right through the group you are fighting and aggro the group behind),

This just occurred to me - I wonder if it would make runners slightly less annoying if they could be flagged as 'defeated for the purposes of mission objectives' when their morale breaks. So, in a defeat all you wouldn't have to worry about tracking down every last enemy that has fled from you, and any enemy guarding a hostage wouldn't count as still holding the hostage while they take to their heels (which also strikes me as more realistic). I've no idea how the coding for fleeing works so this could well be a complete non-starter but it just dropped into my head (as I watched an enemy guarding a hostage run out of the room while the hostage continued to cower in place). Avoid effects and the like would need to be excluded of course, this would only apply to enemies fleeing due to low health.

I'm wondering if a system could be coded that would allow multiple auto-fire powers but only certain powers. Basically long duration buffs such as hasten, domination or the click mez protections could be on a list that would allow them to be set on auto-fire together. But if you set a power not on the list to auto, such as healing aura or an attack, then you are only allowed that one. That would allow the devs to fine tune the level of automation they are happy with. That being said I play using keybinds to trigger powers and it's all too easy to keep queuing powers, preventing an auto-fire power from going off. Having a power set to auto doesn't guarantee it will fire as soon as it is recharged and that would be more pronounced with multiple powers set in that way.

Dark/elec for style, shield/dark for power. I don't get on with elec armour.

Claws/nrg is indeed a great combo. Mine was one of my most accomplished characters until altitis bit again and she got parked. As a partner to shield, dark melee is a classic for a good reason. There is huge synergy between the sets. It has to be said though that this combo also works brilliantly on tanks.

I'm firmly in team taunt aura (not a real team obviously, far too antisocial for that). It has to be said though that these days the only reliably sticky things are tanks. Both scrappers and brutes have to get used to the odd enemy taking to the hills regardless of taunt auras. On the subject of power sets for my money claws is the scrapper primary. Nothing else has such a natural home for the critical strikes set. It also has fantastic single target and aoe damage, fast attacks and decently varied slotting opportunities. I'm also a big fan of shield on scrappers. It's such a shame we can't pair claws with shield...

Bio/stone is such a good combo. Once you get the aoe online in the 20's and put ff+rech in everything it's so much fun. I take everything from bio and everything but hurl boulder from stone. Proccing out DNA siphon creates a very functional extra aoe. I nearly always take focused accuracy on every melee character but it's particularly important here. Being to hit debuffed can be a death sentence with how much this combo relies on active mitigation.

I put a build together for this a while ago (never actually played it though). SS/SR with force of will and mu. If you do a forum search for 'brutinal' you should find it.

Everyone will of course have their own priorities when building characters, the beauty of this game is its flexibility in play styles. Personally I always build my characters with the levelling process and then exemping in mind. They also have to be competent at both single target (solid, end sustainable, able to solo an av attack chain), and aoe (able to clear full spawns solo in reasonable time), for as wide a spread of the game as possible. I simply would never play a character that had to wait until lv35 for aoe, or that then lost that aoe exemping down to several of the commonly run task forces. I take the epic aoe in addition to (generally one of) the available aoe in the secondary on doms. Yes, fireball for example is better dpa than whirling hands but it recharges much slower and whirling hands has both the double tap mechanic and a minor control side effect. It also allows the slotting of an extra purple set which is always a boon for dom builds.

Any plant control character not taking seeds or carrion creepers may as well play another set. Those powers are plant control. Also I've no idea where this 'don't take whirling hands' thing came from. Dom's are painful enough to level without waiting until epics for direct aoe (seeds and creepers will provide quite a bit of indirect aoe but you still want a button to push that spreads damage around). WH with it's double tap mechanic makes energy actually decent at aoe. It's almost like getting two aoes in one power, with the benefits that they share slots (very efficient) and are both pbaoes (unlike most sets that awkwardly have to juggle a cone and a pbaoes).

I really wouldn't drop siphon life. With no recharge it fires 3.5ppm procs at something like 70%, and a chain of smite, siphon, smite, midnight is reasonably easily achieved. Put two winters in it (acc/dam, acc/dam/end) and four procs and it hits like a truck. And it heals you.

I'm pretty sure the OP is engaged in some obscure form of performance art at this point.

Fire control has always had extra damage and less control than other control sets. That is how it was balanced from the start of the game. The addition of kb->kd added extra control but it was never supposed to be a balancing factor for the set. I admire your enthusiasm but the entire basis of your argument is unfortunately mistaken.

I'd also love the option to have the travel auras without the trail effects. A couple of them look fantastic when you are still but are far too much when moving. The rainbow and radiant effects for example are dynamic and interesting effects but both make flying a nightmare.

I thought there had been some mention that procs were only going to be addressed by making changes to individual over performing powers rather than a systematic change?

I wouldn't bother with the damage procs in Choking Cloud and slot it heavily for hold and end red instead. It ticks slowly so you need to ensure that the hold duration lasts until the next set of ticks, but it is autohit so you don't need to worry about that. Procs aren't fantastic in auras and toggles and you've got a whole damage set so there's little need to eek out more by proccing powers you really need for survival. Proccing out Char is a good idea though and it can become a serious hitter with its fast activation time. Otherwise your basic plan is sound. Choking cloud is underappreciated in general, particularly when it can be stacked. Procs also don't scourge and as you say they don't benefit from damage boosts.

I've tried both these combos. Elec melee looks very cool with dark armour but in all honesty it really needs some help on any AT other than stalker. It manages the trick of sacrificing single target performance for more aoe and then not actually being very good at aoe. Avoid until buffed. Staff is decent without being great. It has a ton of utility and really benefits dark armour in particular. I was put off it the first time around by the forced redraw every time I used dark regeneration, but redraw 2.0 should have fixed that problem. I might revisit this as I loved the theme I had (might go brute though to change things up a bit). Another suggestion is energy melee. This also layers on stuns, both aoe (less reliably) and single target (guaranteed). It is also very endurance efficient as energy transfer is free. This is another one I have in brute form and it works well enough.

I can give you some general bio advice but dual blades is not a set I'm all that familiar with. Bio lives and dies by the three clickie heal/absorb/regeneration powers. You want to build a basic level of mitigation, e/n/f/c defence soft cap and as close to 90% s/l res as you can get (factoring in the offensive mode debuff), but after that go all in on recharge. Actually brutes are good candidates for looking at running the defensive mode when necessary as fury overpowers the damage debuff so if you're struggling that's always an option. Look for opportunities to slot ff+rech, particularly in aoes. You really want to get parasitic aura up well over half the time and push that uptime as hard as possible. Many other tier 9's are used as a last resort, bio's should be used on cooldown. It goes without saying it needs to be fully slotted for recharge and healing. I like 5 doctored wounds in it when I can spare the slots (all but the heal/end iirc), three boosted heal/rech when I can't. On brutes and scrappers I don't proc bomb DNA siphon but slot it mainly as a heal. As it provides regen as well as an outright heal it straddles the line between reactive and proactive use. Whichever way you use it I find it a good candidate for hybrid slotting - three eradications for the defence and some heal pieces on top for example. The other thing bio loves is any soft control your attack set can provide. Even minor disruptions to the flow of incoming damage can make a huge difference when you are regenerating at the kind of rates bio can achieve, and of course it's all precious seconds for the next clickie to recharge in.

My CoH addiction doesn't worry me too much. My Mids addiction though? Terrifying...

I'm wondering if this isn't better evidence that phantom army is a problem rather than that the GM's need more buffing?

Plant is very strong and it lends itself to the two archetypes in different ways. For controllers it offers huge amounts of effective aoe damage that they don't normally get. Confuse, contained double damage roots and of course procced out creepers combine to do very respectable damage. Ideally you want a secondary that works with this, buffing recharge to cycle creepers more quickly and debuffing defence and resistance to make confuse even more deadly. Rad is a good secondary, the only slight niggle being that the debuff toggles pair something that helps confuse with something that hinders it. This isn't a huge issue though. Storm as mentioned is another good pairing, as is time. Traps and trick arrow are also decent pairings, I kind of enjoy the thematic mix of plant and tech too. Dominators enjoy having the extra aoe damage early on as this is something they tend to lack. They also like the fact that plant doesn't need to take too many powers freeing up room for secondary picks. I suspect plant is the easiest dom to level and the most exemp friendly because of these. In terms of secondary pairings it wants much the same things so thorns (huge defence debuffs) and sonic (res debuffs) are fairly natural fits. As doms are less reliant on confuse to carry their damage (once they mature at least) really anything will work though. I am currently levelling a plant/psi and psi offers nothing in particular to plant but the combination is still enormously strong. A side note for plant on either archetype is I've found it useful to have some form of stealth or -perception. Seeds is obviously your lynchpin control and being a cone it ideally wants to be carefully lined up to ensure maximum coverage. I've also been experimenting with using full stealth to drag the creeper patch into spawns, the downside of this is that as soon as it alerts them you attract aggro so you can't use it to tank in that way. Many spawns are quite spread out and my hope was that I could use creepers to pull them in a bit before firing off seeds but results have been mixed. Nothing beats toggle corner pulling if you have access to that.

The way IO's interact with this power is also worth bearing in mind. The radial control power accepts stun, knockback and taunt sets (on archetypes that do taunt), and the cone damage power accepts ranged aoe sets. Any basic enhancement like accuracy applies to both powers regardless of the source, however damage enhancement of course only affects the damage cone. Procs are only triggered by the power that accepts that type of enhancement, nothing double dips. I have fault on both tanks and a brute and slot it with acc/dam, acc/dam/end winter pieces, and then 3 damage procs and a ff+rech. I build heavily for accuracy and feel that even on tanks the radial control is a bigger area than the damage cone (also somewhat easier to aim), so I like putting in the taunt and kb damage procs alongside a single ranged aoe proc. If you have less accuracy you might get more mileage out of three ranged aoe procs. I think fault is a superb power. The accuracy of the control power has to be worked with but if you do it is very reliable mitigation. The recharge is quite slow at first but when your global recharge ramps up that becomes a strength as it's a good vehicle for procs. And it's enormous fun. Big, loud, stampy fun.

Fault is two powers activated with a single click. One is the old radial aoe control power that does stun, taunt (on tanks and maybe brutes?) and knockdown but no damage. The other power is a cone aoe damage power. Both powers roll to hit independently and the radial control power has an accuracy penalty. On tanks the cone damage power is affected by the arc bonus and if you take a step or two back from the pack seems to hit most of the area covered by the radial control. On other archetypes it will be a good bit narrower though.

The irony being that in my opinion stalkers are one of the most team friendly archetypes in the current meta. Any discussion of bad pug experiences tends to bring up the common habit players have of blowing up the minions and moving on, leaving bosses behind for squishies to deal with. Resurrecting bosses just makes this worse. Turn up to a team with a character specifically designed to delete bosses and a willingness to actually fight them and you are making a huge contribution.

I keep advocating for an HP buff that is related to team size: One person: normal HP. Two persons: 20% more HP. Three persons: 50% HP. All the way to 8 persons and... 200%? Numbers would be tweaked. This would let mobs last longer and not crippler a soloer. I suggested scaling enemy buffs based on team size ages ago. If we accept that we can't put the 'soloing 4/8' genie back in the bottle it seems the most sensible way to approach the problem to me. The hard mode content seems to be along the same sort of lines but it is so limited and is clearly time consuming to create. Universal buffs could be applied much more quickly and widely. My thoughts were that the buff would probably need to gradually ramp up between say levels 30 to 50 as lower level teams aren't often running into the difficulty ceiling.