Riverdusk

Issues now fixed per the patch notes, yay.

Would be nice to see some improvements to EM, always liked the feel of the set, but never got far in it.

Electric Blast - Voltaic Sentinel still isn't fixed either. There are two versions: Defenders have one with lower damage and slightly more end drain (at max level 35.59 damage, -6% end), Corrupter/blaster/dom all have the exact same higher damage version with slightly less end drain (at max level 44.49 dmg , -5% end). Sentinels got the defender version, which logically makes little sense. I originally posted it here and a mod actually moved my post to the bug forum without me asking, so I took that as acknowledgement it is a bug anyway.

People are focusing on the blaster comparison, but the comparison given vs. corrupters is the one I more can't wrap my head around. Taking away the secondary (and are you counting scourge or not?), you are pretty much left with just the damage scaler of the AT as the difference. Sent range damage scale is at .95, corrupter is at .75? correct? That also means ANY damage boosts are going to put the Sent that much further ahead due to having a higher base. There are some minor differences in the powers damage/recharge between the two, but enough for that kind of overwhelming tilt?

The advantage of blizzard (and ice storm) I'd think is it not being limited to a 10 target cap. Seems in exchange they nerfed sentinel's ice blast single target damage pretty hard though in comparison to how it is on other AT's, not to mention getting rid of its ability to stack holds. One other notable of Ice though is that it is one of the few that is completely 100% a ranged set. Some don't care, but I know others find it nice that you never have to jump into a mob, you can just sit back and fire away.

I'd probably go with thugs/storm, but any of the top damaging pets with storm should do the trick. Liking my thugs/time and it does great damage while being very safe, but thugs/storm would generally outdamage it no doubt.

Sounds like you want an illusion controller to me (once their bugs are fixed, hopefully in the next week or so). Between the indestructible phantom army, and having a confuse power, they are probably the ones that can do more crazy end game tricks than pretty much anyone. As @Without_Pause mentioned Illusion/rad is a classic for this and works great., Illusion/dark, illusion/cold, illusion/traps would also work well. Illusion/time is also amazing, and cheaper to build with its recharge buff, but its -regen debuff is a little weak, so it may struggle a bit if you want to try soloing giant monsters. The right temp/incarnate powers could probably make it work though.

If it was only that. Sounds like NO enhancements are working in phantasm, phantom army, or spectral terror per this post: Enhancements not working at all in those pets pretty much makes the whole set of illusion unplayable to me. Really waiting for this to be fixed.

Some arachnos mobs have hold resistance/protection.

I did test it and correct, Soul Drain has no effect on bio's damage aura. Soul Drain does not boost toxic damage. Still a great pairing, but that part was disappointing.

The stealth ability also gives a huge boost to your crit chance on your alpha strike (when it is most important and least likely to be wasted on overkill). I found it a surprising boost to my damage.

Nature has a resist buff as well.

Always liked time's sounds okay as well, but I can understand. For me it is beam rifle, ice melee, and some others. I know there is the work around, but would be nice to have an option for minimal sound fx right on the power, like we have minimal fx for graphics for a lot of them.

Thermal would be on the obvious list I'd think, but you didn't mention it. Good match anyway. Most non obvious, (but still good), maybe nature?

Illusion sure seems to have gotten more than its share of bugs for this patch. Put mine on the shelf for now.

Good to hear it'll soon be fixed. Almost got me killed when I suddenly couldn't confuse or hold a boss I was fighting on my new low level illusion controller. Figured a bug crept in.

I'd probably stick with scrapper for BS over brute. Biggest advantage it has over katana is its big hits. The one time it is faster than katana is when you can one shot something that katana takes two hits to take out. More likely to do that as a scrapper than a brute.

Just to respond to this point, have you tried using the bind/macro to do this? Try /macro Caltrops powexeclocation self "caltrops" and that should do exactly what you describe. Just click the macro button instead of the caltrops button. Should work for all of those. There are even tricks to change the macro button to an image of your choice to make it look better, but that I haven't gotten into. You can also replace 'self' with 'target' to cast at your current target (I use that for phantom army myself). That would then solve that issue for you and still leave the option for those that like to be able to target it.

Wanted to let you know Bopper, that you and your build inspired me to try a Time/DP. Been testing it a little on beta server, will probably start it tonight for real. I was surprised that things seem to proc regardless of ammo type used (so force feedbacks proc even if you aren't using lethal ammo). That is amazing and gives DP more proc opportunities than I realized.

Nice analysis. Honestly though you could probably throw dice to randomly pick defender powersets, throw 8 of them together, and buzzsaw anything.

Stone Melee would like a word with you. But yeah, WM has a solid feel to it no doubt.

Yep, I always consider that as long as you hit at least 2, which isn't hard, it is worth using.

Don't believe so. Those all seemed to be listed as [all damage]. Soul drain is the only special one I've found so far that lists out all the damage types that it buffs separate and then leaves off toxic.

At level 50 GenCon does 9.38 base damage every 2 seconds. At max soul drain adds +150% damage (10 targets is (50%) +10% x 10)). 9.38 x 1.5 = 14. 14 extra damage in gencon x 10 targets = 140 x 15 tics during that 30 seconds = 2,100 potential damage lost every 30 seconds. Soul drain in top builds can be close to perma. Best case scenario of course, but I'd say that is a concern to me. YMMV. Still doesn't answer my question regardless. It just seems like a strange oversight. Probably because there was no toxic damage available in a secondary when soul drain was created, so they didn't even think about it.

So, looking at this combo and it was looking good until I happened to notice Soul Drain buffs literally every damage type EXCEPT toxic for some reason. Bio's damage aura happens to be...toxic damage. I double checked it on the beta server to make sure it wasn't just a text oversight and confirmed Soul Drain had no effect on the damage of genetic contamination. That is a major drag as of course giving dark melee some AoE damage it otherwise lacks is pretty nice. Should this be reported as an oversight/bug? Or do people think this was done on purpose for some reason? The text of soul drain certainly doesn't say anything about excluding toxic.