Riverdusk

Since no one else has suggested it I'm going to say plant. No one can lock down a spawn as early, often, and effectively as plant. Seeds of confusion is available at level 8 with a huge cone and a 1 minute recharge that effectively neuters a mob. Then later you get a usual AoE hold and then carrion creepers that allow you to lock down twice more. All three can safely take an alpha strike for a team (although some minor stealth would be suggested). Carrion creepers are also where you get some nice damage (and AoE damage even). Also of note, Plant for whatever reason has its AoE immobilize power deal twice as much damage as most other control sets. Last, the pet is decent. Other sets can start to catch up to plant's control later, but early on it saves those lowbie teams from themselves. Honestly any secondary can work. I tend to go rad for the extra damage/recharge/-regen/-defense/-tohit/+recovery/status resistance. You know, all the awesome things rad offers. The funny thing is I got both a plant/rad controller and a plant/ice dom to 50 during live and ended up not even noticing much killing speed difference between them. Plant does so well on its own. Edit: Forgot, if you go rad you also get EM Pulse which is yet another AoE hold you can use to shut down the mobs.

Alas, Dom's can't get illusion control. Or did you mean mind?

Agreed there and probably the biggest part of why I remember giving up my kat/dark scrapper and moving to willpower. Without the taunt aura that WP has things running away all the time I found so annoying. One of the things you don't hear talked about much. Why I like sets like WP, shield, and invuln on scrappers where they get the taunt aura just like brutes do. Ice armor would probably be okay as well since it has a slow aura at least. Not sure on some of the newer sets.

I remembered domination in the past having a damage buff, and looking back on the wiki, I remembered correctly. "The Dominator was revised in Issue 15. The inherent power Domination lost its damage buff and the buff was moved directly into the archetype's Damage Scale instead. All Dominator secondary Power Sets were adjusted according at the same time to be more equalized." However, hard to argue it was a nerf as it sounds like they adjusted their base damage scale to make up for it. Some secondary sets it sounds like may have been "nerfed" though depending on what the wiki means by "equalized".

Phantom army doesn't do knockback and I'd think you could slot a knockback to knockdown IO in phantasm? Sounds like another good one to me.

I've noticed a lot of missing info on the in-game power info for a lot of different sets, not just on scrappers. So, I don't worry about it too much. If someone wants to run some long term tests though, feel free. :)

I know I just find crits more fun than fury, no matter what the numbers say as to which is better for each powerset (up that even more with the +crit Scrapper AT IO). Definitely more fun to me than constantly chasing fury. Considering the extra hps and therefore regen brutes get, brute probably would have been the better choice for my kat/wp, but that doesn't matter enough to me. Not to mention that with the lower resistance cap of scrappers, Strength of Will becomes pretty skippable considering I'll already be close to the smash/lethal resistance cap after tough and IO's. I prefer to look at that as being able to take a different power somewhere else instead. Have to admit it is also fun to tank as a scrapper when it is needed and surprise people instead of being a brute where it is just expected.

You can actually see this on the power descriptions, "Damage per activation time:" listed right below damage. Early on before you have a lot of attacks or recharge it doesn't make much difference, but at the end game it can certainly make a difference.

And a helpful tip, for the +end or +hp procs, you can see when they go off by adding the "healing received" channel to one of your windows.

A shame I can't design a katana/shield character, or a spines/shield.

How do you get into range of the Sky Raiders to use boggle's 40' range without them immediately dropping the FFG? I was thinking about dropping combat jumping for stealth. You can confuse the FFG itself directly after it is dropped. As to stealth, you can also get stealth via super speed or a stealth IO. Some people really dislike the movement penalty the power pool stealth gives.

Forgive my noobness, but what is it about scrapper that makes this combo perform better? He also changed his secondary, not sure which improved it for him, or both. Shield does add more damage. Broadsword is slow, so building up fury is tougher compared to the more straightforward scrapper damage perhaps.

Ice armor also end recovery powers. Pretty heavy endurance user itself though if you want to run all the toggles, the debuff, and the damage aura. For ice armor I'd go scrapper as I think Icy Bastion looks better than hibernate.

Good to hear!

It also has one of the best controls in the game, confuse (via the boggle power). Have those annoying tsoo sorcs heal you instead of your enemies. Sky raider force field generators now work for you. Malta sappers? They now drain your enemies for you. So many great and fun things you can do with a confuse power to make the truly annoying enemies work for you instead. Also the purple confuse IO set bonuses are amazing and usually (relatively) cheap.

I assume by ice/ice you mean ice/cold? Both are good sets and with the combo you'd be on the stronger side of the control scale as well as one of the best at helping take down AV's and Giant Monsters thanks to infrigidate, benumb, sleet, and heat loss and good buffs to teammates. Only warning I'd have is ice (along with earth) is probably the weakest damage of any of the control sets. So solo would be a rough go. Fantastic combo if you like to team though. Ice/storm is another option that might work for your concept? It would give you more damage, but the buffs and debuffs aren't as good. So that would be the tradeoff.

I've run up probably half dozen characters so far into the 20's or close to it and by level 22 I've always gotten at least one rare salvage drop (usually 2 or 3). Simple sell at the auction house for close to a million inf each. Easily covers the cost of SO's at level 22 and/or to start dipping into standard IO's instead. Maybe running at a full +100% exp rate you'll get unlucky and not get a rare drop by 22? Might happen, but would be unusual from what I've experienced.

Just curious if anyone knows why controllers don't have access to the "minimal Fx" version of Cold Domination, and yet defenders and corruptors do? One of the reasons I never played the set for long in the past was because of the ice shields turning your whole party into ugly Jack Frost clones. Maybe it is minor to some people, but it just annoyed me too much. It is nice defenders and corruptors have the option around that now, but controllers still don't. Would be nice to see.

Most important long term goal in an illusion build in my experience is getting enough recharge to get phantom army up full time or very close to it at least. They pretty much take care of both your damage and defense for you (as they are very good at keeping the mobs attention with a built in taunt effect). You'll be able to solo any high level content you want at that point including any AV I ever tried. My experience was with both illusion/rad and illusion/dark. /time from what I can see is just as powerful and should make the recharge goal even easier.

Plant/trap sounds really good. Confuse everything then safely go in and set your traps to finish them off.

Keep in mind katana is pretty much a carbon copy of broadsword but superior damage over time. There are still reasons to go broadsword of course just for personal preference (or wanting to pair it with shield), but if you are going for efficiency, katana would be the better route.