Lazarillo

I had a Fire/Earth Dominator back in the day, haven't done much with recreating her yet, but here's what I can tell ya based on my memory. Re: Hot Feet. It will detoggle if you get mezzed. It's a combination damage aura/mitigation as it causes the enemies to try to run out of the area (albeit very slowly, so it doesn't impede your melee focus). I took it and slotted it for damage and EndRed, and it was pretty great. Re: Mud Pots. On paper, it looks like it stacks with Hot Feet in a potentially awesome way. In practice, it's got a much, much smaller radius that enemies will clear out of much more quickly than Hot Feet, and deals lower damage anyway. It could have been a cool combination, but I recommend skipping it. Re: Bonfire. Can't say much about this one because I never got to try it with KB-to-KD back in the day, so I just skipped it. In theory, it looks like it's basically ranged Burn now, if you slot it properly, and that sounds pretty fun. Re: Smoke. I liked it because while it's not exceptionally strong, it works good "out of the box". It's worth taking just to have a power that doesn't need heavy slotting (which a lot of your powers will need). I combined it with Stealth instead of SS just for better movement control when stealthing, but that's kinda up to you. You don't need Smoke + SS + Proc, though. Any 2 of those three are going to make you as invisible as the game can reasonably make you.

One of the signature hero types in the game pulls off Illusion by rigging areas with holoprojectors, IIRC. Maybe just an expansion of the number of devices at your disposal?

So between this post and some feedback also over on Reddit, I think I've narrowed down my favorite options to Dark or Rad. Dark is gonna require some heavy Purpling if I want my always-accessible Phantoms, and Rad's gonna be pretty End heavy (plus I still need to come up with a concept I'd like for it), so neither is still without its drawbacks, but I think my best bet now is to do some playtesting, so I appreciate the feedback that got me here!

It does, and most teammates will appreciate you using it. It's more that, like, I can sorta justify something like Heat Loss or Benumb as "they feel cold, thus they are affected like they really were". Even Sleet could operate in a similar fashion to Spectral Wounds. But I'm not sure that that works for ice shields, minimal FX or not. I mean, granted, but I want a heal more for (probably rather slowly, granted, if things go right) plinking away at that set of Badges. That pressing need for a Badge is honestly the biggest dealbreaker for Cold. Otherwise, as noted, there's a fair amount of synergy.

Yeah, I was leaning towards Shadow Fall (if I go Dark, still not totally sure) even solo for a lot of the reasons you mentioned. It should be just as invisible as Superior Invisibility with a Stealth IO or Super Speed also running, if I recall correctly, but I was curious if I was missing something, other than just using SI for +Recharge set bonuses or something. I hadn't considered /Cold too much just because it doesn't have a Heal at all and I'd been sorta steering away from it and Thermal both 'cause they felt too "elemental". Amusingly, I could see the concept working pretty well in the other direction; if I focused on the solo-ish powers, the "cold" could also be a matter of controlling perception of temperature.

I mean, I'm sure it's workable, but it still feels to me like powers over concept to me, still (compared to Dark which has the aforementioned Yin-Yang thing going on, or Pain or Time, which both are particularly perception-y already). Still, it's an idea, for sure. If I were to do Dark, what's your take on Superior Invisibility vs. Shadow Fall + Stealth IO or the like?

So back in the day, one of the very first characters I created (in fact, the first of many alts to possess the name of my global handle) was an Illusion/Empathy Controller. He was a fair amount of fun, and I want to try Illusion again, but I'm not sure that I necessarily want to pair it with Empathy again. I'm trying to work through some ideas from a few different secondaries and decide. The three biggest things I'm looking for are: -I feel like I need to be able to get Phantom Army permanent (if not early on, because a build's gotta get pretty twinky for that). -While I enjoy teams, I enjoy just as much playing at my own pace and doing story arcs...something I feel like I haven't done enough of since the game came back. -I want to do some badging with this character, and thus, having some healing ready for that particular chain would be nice. With those in mind, I'm still considering, and would welcome some extra feedback on are: Darkness: Positives - Light in the primary/Dark in the secondary feels like a cool yin-yang-ish sorta concept. Fade and Soul Absorption will also benefit from my efforts to make Phantom Army permanent. Negatives - Nothing in the set itself assists with Recharge. Can do healing, but requires accuracy checking. Primary and Secondary both have Stealth powers that are mutually exclusive. Empathy: Positives - Well, I know it can work. The powers are fairly potent, if considered somewhat underpowered to a lot of more "modern" support sets. Strong heals that can be uses without limitations. Negatives - No self-Recharge buff to help with Phantom Army. Similarly, long duration auras that can't be kept up without downtime. My previous experience had me finding it "okay", but it didn't blow me out of the water or anything. Kinetics: Positives - Plenty of damage buffs for when I take things solo, and Recharge buffs for keeping Phantom Army up. Plus, who on a team doesn't love some Kinetic support? Negatives - Both heals and self Recharge buffs require hitting enemies. Particularly frustrating on that second part since I'm trying to keep the buffs up as much as possible. Pain Domination: Positives - Like Empathy, but a little more friendly for when I'm soloing. Easy to keep buffs/debuffs going when I've got the Recharge I need for Phantom Army. Kinda feels conceptually-appropriate with Illusion. Negatives - No self-Recharge buff. Kind of a late-blooming set. Radiation Emission: Positives - Ill/Rad is considered OP for a reason. Has healing and self-Recharge buffing in addition to all the other goodies. Negatives - I don't feel like they conceptually match up very well and don't want to play a set just to be strong. Time Manipulation: Positives - Self-Recharge buff. Gets into the thick of it in melee, which I like and synergizes nicely with Flash. Negatives - The main I've been playing on, badging on, and even Incarnate-ing on is already a Time/ Defender. I need some variety!

You don't need much. Shield's mez protection is permanent with two SOs in Recharge Reduction slotted (of course, that's assuming you're not hit with a slow or something). Slot it for that, click it to auto-fire, and you're basically set. Can swap it to Endurance reducers if/when you get enough Recharge from other sources. Because it has an offensive component (it taunts enemies and debuffs their damage). Toggles that cause some sort of effect on enemies get dropped if you're mezzed, toggles that only affect you are suppressed and don't do anything during the mez effect but don't fully deactivate.

Then wouldja believe that in comparison to the sets you mentioned, Kinetic is actually faster than Spines or Energy on the whole? And average activation times are only slower than Electric by a few milliseconds? I think the "busy" aspect to the animations makes them look more time-consuming than they actually are, whereas the straightforwardness you see with some of the other sets, similarly, makes them feel faster.

In PvE, I feel like Kinetic Melee is one of the strongest Stalker primaries, just because of the auto-Crit on Burst (or was that "fixed" by the Homecoming team?). The tradeoff, of course, is that Concentrated Strike can't Crit at all...well, it can, but its Crits recharge Build-Up instead of doing extra damage on their own. I'm curious how that maths out when added to successive attacks, but I digress.

Mostly. Putting a taunt aura in the mez protection seems like poor in-set synergy with a set that also gives you (partial) Stealth.

Two random ideas I'd have for "wouldn't it be cool", pie-in-the-sky-type Mastermind sets: one would be, if Illusion isn't gonna get ported to Dominators, port it to MMs instead. First tier pet is Phantom Army, second is Phantasm (and Decoy), third is a mobile Spectral Terror. They'd need some power upgrades, but it could work. Damage would be high, but use the Spectral Wounds mechanics. The other idea is Doppelgangers. All your pets look like you, and the blasts for the set are the same ones the pets use (not sure what attack type would be appropriate there, though).

My Thugs/Traps is still in her teens, but for me, I've just been playing "Tankermind" style. Pets on Defensive, they spring into action when I run into plant a device (or just glock somebody if my Traps are still Recharging). The damage is spread out, so it's rarely too bad.

Actually, I tend to be the same way. I've gotta have a "reason" to pair sets before I can play 'em. Amusingly, I actually felt like I had a stronger concept for Nature ("I make things come to life! Apparently that has weird effects on things that were formerly alive, though.") than I did for Kinetics (Mad scientist who wondered why zombies in all the old movies are always so slow). But I'm not above working backwards when I think up what sounds like a fun combo to play, either.

I'm debating between trying this or Necro/Nature. Both seem like they'd have a fair amount of synergy, but I'm not sure which one will work better.

Been trying a Beast/Cold, since they felt thematically similar. Still only in the late teens, and outside of the hindsight 20/20 realization that I really shouldn't be fighting Tsoo, it's done okay. I definitely feel the lack of healing, especially because, since I can't do much for my own defense, I pretty much have to let the puppers tank things. On paper, the build should eventually allow all the pets to be soft-capped, though, so that should be...interesting.

Posting this on behalf of @Tsubaki, who hosted a little theme team this past weekend. We had a buncha fun running an Electric team and sapping things to impotence. So far there have been 4 of us, but we're definitely looking for more who want to come hang around watching enemy blue bars drop to nothing. We're planning to continue regular runs Tuesday/Thursday evenings at 8 EDT and Saturday afternoons at 3 EDT (though times may change as we get more people with more defined schedules). If this sounds like fun to you, too, then bring your sapper on over to the Rogue Isles on Everlasting and let @Tsubaki know! He can also be reached on discord, Scrangos#2136.

I had some issues with this on my Fortunata back in the day. What I did was mix in a fair number of Patron Pool attacks and generally did fine. Since it's actually possible to take even more of those in the game's current form, it may be something to look into. For Stalkers, the Blaze, Dark, and Mu Mastery pools are probably the ones with the most offensive "oomph" to help you compensate.

Yeah, I don't think there would be too much to be done, at least, from a powers perspective, not more than was done with Sentinels and some of the other i25 proliferations, but finding a way to make FX work for a "nuke"-type power might be the snag, as I can't think of a way to add that (short of maybe ditching my concept for one noted above and having the top tier be "Bigger Exploding Shuriken", or something. Still, since they revised a few of the FX on other powers a patch or three ago, I'd like to think it's not impossible, either. Whether anyone could be convinced to make it a priority or not, on the other hand... I actually considered a few of these (and Throw Sand, too), but since Blasters and Sentinels already both get several of those powers, I figured it wouldn't be a good choice. That's not a bad idea. Poison Dart is a little faster (and Dart Burst significantly slower) than most Tier-2 blasts, and I know back in the day, standardized activation times were deliberately put into play when Defiance 2.0 came out, but I don't know if that's a technical limitation and/or how the current team would regard it.

As long as any changes maintain it as a Regen buff and not a refreshing heal/absorb...I'm not much for feeling like numbers over my head are part of my costume.

So this is pretty pie-in-the-sky, but the idea came to me, and I don't think it's as crazy as some set ideas, so I'mma at least say my piece. And that is: I think it wouldn't take too much to stretch Martial Assault's throwing star powers into an entire "thrown weapons" blast set. In the set, we already have: Shuriken Throw, Trick Shot, Masterful Throw, Exploding Shuriken, and Envenomed Daggers, which I think would pretty much work as straight ports. Also, I've been told (though I haven't gotten either of my /Martial Dominators high enough to confirm) that Martial Assault's Exploding Shuriken is also similar to Thunder Strike in terms of AoE: it's mostly a single target hit that splashes a little AoE onto nearby targets. If that's the case, there's a second "Exploding Shuriken" in the Scrapper/Stalker APPs that could also be in a set with it. Thus, it feels like 6/9 powers are already "ready". Add in a second low tier clone of Shuriken Throw, a nuke of some kind (I feel like the character animation for Bullet Rain could do the job, as if you remove the guns and it still looks like the hands are throwing a bunch of stuff into the air...though I'm not so sure how effects could be created...probably the biggest hurdle in this?), and maybe a light control power, and bam, you've got a set for more Natural-oriented characters that doesn't involve pulling out a weapon.

Are you dismissing and re-summoning the pet after slotting the enhancements?

A-HA! I think I've found what's wrong, so putting this here for anyone else who experiences the same problem. It seems that at some point, the tags for some of the categories were changed. For example, Blaster Sonic powers were changed from just Bright/Dark to Bright Sonic Attack/Dark Sonic Attack/Bright Sound/Dark Sound Wave. If the game doesn't find the right tags, it won't display the set to be loaded. Luckily, fixing the tags in Notepad seems to fix things in the game, too. Hopefully all the tags will turn out to be...intuitive.

I really like BillyMailman's assessment. Don't have much to say beyond that.

I'mma bump this up, just in case it got missed by someone who knows. I promise not to make it a habit.