Wimbochismo

I have a Fire/ Blaster, but not a /Fire. Slotting is on a case-by-case basis - mainly on what bonuses you're going after and what stats the power itself needs with slotting. For instance the Decimation set. You really only need the 5 slots because that's where the bonuses are, and the 6th slot proc barely ever goes off. The recharge it provides is 62% so it works well with a quick recharging power. However, I would not put it in an attack with a very long recharge, other sets provide more rech. If you can swing 5 slots for the bonuses you want though, it can save a slot. I rarely ever use the immobilize on Blasters. It's nice to have as a set mule and early power picks can constrain you to take it, but it's not necessary. My recent thoughts on Blasters are to go with ranged defense almost every time. There's usually only one or two powers from the secondary with a dpa worth going into melee for. In that case you can play ranged and then joust in to land a higher dpa melee attack. Highest dpa single target is Blazing Bolt > Blaze > Fire Sword > Fire Blast. You could probably switch the immob for Fire Sword. Now you can stay fully at ranged (Blazing, Blaze, Blast) and/or when the mob is on a tank or held etc the higher dpa rotation is (Blazing, Blaze, Sword). As you've noted, you already have a ton of strong aoe in Fire/. Inferno, Rain, and Ball are really great. You could pick up another aoe in /Fire, but it looks like some of the options are lower dpa. Since you're going Fly and potentially Hover, Hot Feet isn't really necessary. I'm not sure if you need to detoggle Hover or just fly next to the ground for Burn. It looks like some aoe's are quite proccable. Personal preference on how much aoe you want, nothing looks exceptional, though. Beware of some longer cast times. Cauterizing Aura is most of what you need for sustain. If you can't fix end issues with it, Consume could help. Can also proc it out as an attack. Most of the time I use Bonfire as a knockdown patch. I only 1 or 2 slot it with KB-KD and a FF +rech proc.

Just wanted to mention - Venomous Gas is a 15ft radius. I've had good success with it on a ranged defense Hover build. It will hit a surprisingly large number of mobs at range, even if it works best when they're clumped. The only thing to land for is Poison Trap, but with my Beam/Poison build I have something like Overcharge mag 3 stun aoe for safety before landing.

I really like builds that dump most defense and focus on other area's. Your slotting is very thoughtful and covers many contingencies. Recharge resists, decent recharge, perma WoP, Panacea in Soothing, good accuracy against +3 etc etc. The procs are great and well positioned. So long as you stay on top of your own heals you shouldn't have an issue. My only few changes are things like the bit of recharge in Hymn and Impassioned. I totally understand the reasoning, though. Also switch to some recharge from the Superior Frozen set in Confounding. The stun is strong survivability and you can have it up more often. The endurance is a little low outside of incarnates. At 1.72 net, it's borderline ok. The problem is all the procs and paying premium end on some powers. Maybe Muscle Radial? Dunno if you're going Barrier for more survivability. I'd argue against Share Pain. It looks nice on paper, but the shtick here is that you're taking constant lower levels of dmg with high res low def. It locks you out of any healing/regen for 15 seconds. Unless the mob is firmly on lockdown, it's very risky. If you're going hardmode, I'd propose an alternate build for different scenario's. Mainly for different Epic/Patron res armors. For ITF the neg armor, Aeon the energy armor. Haven't tried a heavy resist only build in hardmode so ymmv.

I have an old Ice/Ice/Cold Blaster build I can dust off. It was something I worked on when I was just getting into building, so may not be totally optimized. I'd listen to Parabola's suggestions, they have very good advice. Blaster's are good to cut your teeth on for building because they're straight forward and benefit a lot from full sets. If you want to add procs somewhere, you're going to most likely take a hit to your global Defense and Recharge. Ice Storm is definitely worth going for as an aoe. It has the same cast time as Blizzard, and helps slow mobs. Enemies are prone to try and run out of Blizzard and Ice Storm. Dropping both at the same time will do hefty -speed and keep them around longer. Not many people like Frost Breath with the long animation time. You could probably pick up Frozen Time instead, but you'll have to dip into melee for it to hit. I kind of like a 1 slotted Ice Patch for the knockdown cc, I use it when I know lots of mobs are incoming and if I have time. I play this combo with Hover and ranged Defense. For ranged attack's, Bitter Ice Blast and Freeze Ray are your best dpa ranged attacks (and highest dpa attacks in general). I also took Ice Bolt to maintain a full ranged attack chain if needed. For melee attacks, your highest dpa option is Freezing Touch. Frozen Fists is almost the same dpa as Ice Bolt, and Ice Sword is slightly higher, but not worth going into melee for with higher dpa ranged attacks. With this, you can have your highest dpa chain be Bitter - Freeze Ray - Freezing Touch - Ice Bolt as filler. In order to use Freezing Touch you have to joust into melee briefly to hit it. I like this chain because Freeze Ray and Freezing Touch are mag 3 hold's. If you Freeze Ray before jousting in and Freezing Touch, this should be enough to briefly hold a boss and provide survivability while you're vulnerable. Like Parabola said, as your build stands you don't even need Tactic's. You can reduce slots in toggles and use them for set bonuses elsewhere or to beef up other powers. If I take the Gaussian set, it is best used in Build Up or Aim where the proc has a better chance of going off. In my build I took Chillblain because of a lack of options, it can root runners, and is a Thunderstrike set mule. IceIceCold.mxd

Nice! Good job. This looks very solid. Almost the full 45 ranged def. Any team member running Maneuver's will softcap your ranged def. Resist's are good. Accuracy against +4 mobs is 100%. The end reduction in the team shields is probably unneeded. You should be able to hit the group with it, walking between mob spawns. They last 4 minutes so it shouldn't be a big end drain, although it might be worth it at lower levels. Put your 5th LotG +rech in Vengeance. General advice - if you have endurance issues, make sure you're turning off Sprint and Super Jump etc in combat. You can probably de-toggle Tough as well with no big losses. Ideally you want Heat Loss to be perma, or for the duration of the buff to equal its cooldown. You would need more global recharge to get there. But that's more for endgame final build tuning when you're more comfortable feeling out what other changes you can make. It's not terrible if it isn't perma, though. Running something like Incarnate Alpha - Agility Core Paragon will bump up your defense to softcap and bump up recharge. Then Heat Loss is like 10 secs off perma. Last tip for once you hit 50. You can use Enhancement Booster's to +5 your Invention IO's. Do this in mids by pressing the + key on your numpad when hovering over and selecting the enhancement. This will let you squeeze a bit more juice out of enhancements in powers. You can do the same to the sets that have set bonuses (not totally recommended) , but you would have to buy the non-attuned version. It just means the set won't scale up and down as well when exemplaring to lower levels.

This is looking better. Don't forget to slot the Steadfast Protection res/def in Mind Over Body. Also slot Gladiator's Armor def all in Tough. This nets you an easy 6% def to all. They're also worth slotting while leveling for easy defense if you need it. For Arctic Fog, you'll probably get good mileage frankenslotting 2 partial Def and Resist sets. Maybe 3 Luck's, the Kismet, and 2 Reactive Armor res/end for the small s/l res bonus. Reduce slotting in Tidal Force's, at most it needs 2 slots. The Gaussian's build up proc and a rech. Can also reduce slots in Sleet by 1 or 2. Move the Miracle +rec out of Dehydrate and into Health. It works best in a toggle/always on power. The Annihilation set in Water Burst can be switched out for either a ranged def set or a recharge set. 2 slotting Blessing of the Zephyr in your travel power will give you 1.25 ranged def. One of the enhancements also gives knockback protection. If you want to, you can break the Vigilant Assault set into 2, slotting 3 of the enhancement's into two different attacks. This gives you the sets recharge bonus twice. Then you could 3 slot Thunderstrike for more ranged def. Altogether, none of these sets is super expensive. In general, the Defense and Resist sets tend to be the most expensive. PvP sets are very expensive. Everything else is do-able. The rest you can just kind of fill in as you level. Once you hit 50 the cash just flows in.

A quick bit of general advice for a new player making money - it will vary if you decide to take the p2w xp booster. Slot the p2w enhancements for free proc dmg. Do DFB x 4 for the buffs, this will offset sub optimal slotting and set you up till the 20's. You can do the same up into the 30's if you run DIB. Run some TF's, probably starting with Posi. Convert the merits you get into enhancement converter's/booster's. Sell them on the AH and this should net you millions. By around lvl 27-30 you can afford all the lvl 30 IO's like in your build. As you level, shore up weaknesses you find like end issues. You can take performance shifter, panacea etc rather early and they help a ton. They're not too expensive, but if they cost too much, find other enhancements in the set that are cheaper and use those enhancement converters to in-set convert it to what you want. I've pulled off plenty of builds that only take the 2 ATO sets as purples. If you buy them as oranges they typically run around 8 million, with enhancement catalyst's around a million. That's probably the most expensive set you'll have to buy, if that puts things into perspective. A lot of the yellow/orange sets, especially the cheap ones might only cost around 1 million - 4 million per enhancement. Find the cheap sets in your build and it can be affordable. For the build, it's valuable to have something in place around 30-40 to start shooting for. You look like you already have a good idea of how to make builds and what you want. You're beefing up ranged defense and going after recharge with 5x lotg's etc. You can probably drop Steam Spray and pick up Water Jet to give yourself more single target dps. You already have Water Burst, Whirlpool, Geyser for aoe. I usually 3 slot Touch of Nictus accurate healing set with proc, and add more procs to Dehydrate. This makes it an ok heal and better dps. You may not even need Dark Consumption for end with Heat Loss covering end problems. If you want you can go with a different resist shield epic. I've posted a FF/Water build somewhat recently that you could probably partially port over to this combo with a few changes. ffwater def.mbd

I've been wanting to do a deep dive into WoC to quantify why I dislike it. Let's start with what we get. It has a low end cost. Requires a to-hit check to land, so needs accuracy. An 8ft radius - melee range and attacks are 7ft so it's very tight and means you need to be in melee. A 100% chance for a 1.5 sec mag 2 confuse, 20% for a 1 sec mag 1 confuse, and 3.6 psi dmg. The activate period is 4 secs, I'm pretty sure that means all of this "ticks" every 4 secs - someone correct me if I'm off. Confuse does not set up Containment. If you want to use it for the confuse - to start out the duration doesn't equal the application chance. It needs hefty +confuse for it to be worth it. If you want to use it for the dmg, as in slot it full dmg set. It's a nice little bonus that pairs well with containment and a melee def build. I've seen people rave about proccing it. All offensive toggles are normalized for procs to go off every 10 seconds. There's a formula around for proc chance based off of the radius of the toggle. I'm not the best at the math for it, but I think with an 8ft radius it's around 50%? proc chance for a 3.5ppm proc. So you're really only getting a 50%? chance for each proc every 10 secs. It also needs accuracy and maybe still some end red so 4-5 procs total. Not that great. If you're a melee/s/l def build then it could be a nice little addition. Taking it precludes you from getting a s/l def shield, though. You'd need good survivability from your secondary to risk being in melee. If you're a ranged defense build, it's only worth it if you can cc and lock down the enemies first. You can't effectively strafe the mob and apply it, because of the 4 sec activate period. Going into melee puts you at risk. In a group mobs are best clumped by a tank. Solo/group it has a good showing on builds that also take Fold Space. Gravity would be the best pairing. Wormhole clumps the enemies tightly and applies a stun that sets up containment and keeps you safe. TLDR: With how tight builds can be and trying to free up slots for it, I rarely ever take it. It can be a nice little addition but I most definitely wouldn't design a build around it.

To add to all of this. I've been giving any new character I make about 5 million to to buy odds and ends p2w stuff. The recovery/defense etc temporaries are cheap at level 1 and have lasted some of my guys until the 30's. You can slot miracle, panacea, perf shift pretty early in levels. Buy em and slot em asap. SR runs several toggles. On my SR Sent in the early levels, I only ran with the ranged def toggle and acted like a ranged Blaster. Here you could only run the melee def toggle and that should be all you need.

That build may be lacking in accuracy, especially in a key power like Confounding with a 70% against +4. End management is a bit low, at least until incarnates. Symph/Storm should work pretty well together. Like most Stormies, you're chasing after enough recharge to get near perma Hasten and multiple Tornado's etc. You'll probably want to throw in Force Feedback +rech procs and KB-KD. The trade off on high recharge is typically sacrificing defense of your chosen type. This is especially true for Controller's and 1 lackluster ATO. The side advantage comes with control uptime. With a low defense you want to use cc for survivability. You have soft cc fear in Dreadful, which doubles for dmg and is proccable. Emergency hard cc in Chords. But it mostly center's around the Confounding stun and how often it's up. Unfortunately it has very low base accuracy and is also one of the higher damaging more proccable attacks. You have to choose between a full dmg set, Superior Will set, or some hybrid of cc duration/procs. There's also the option of treating Hymn and Impassioned as procced dmg attacks or using dmg sets. The build you listed takes some of this into account and points you in the right direction. At a quick glance, maybe drop Hurricane for Tactic's. Drop Enfeebling. Switch Ice Epic to a resist based one. If you take and use a resist shield you can switch the Red Fortune's in toggle's to x2 Gift of the Ancients or something for the +recovery bonuses. Move a slot to Health for Panacea and a Perf +end in Stamina. Reverberant is take it or leave it when it comes to slots. Set mule it, or if the slots are better used elsewhere, move them over.

Haha yea that's been my experience with it. I brought it up bc your ability to max stack Rending Flurry more often is then dependent on the cooldown of Blood Thirst. On a perma Hasten build with a rech slot it can be around 30 second rech. It may be worthwhile to go harder on rech in it to then increase aoe dmg potential.

I have a Water/FF Corruptor and the Seismic/SR Sent. It's a bit of an odd comparison but I'll give a run down. Both sets have perma Hasten. I didn't feel like I had any issue's on either when it came down to choices and power picks. Both combo's play very differently and involve different amounts of power/slotting investments. For powers and slotting - SR needs lots of slots and most of the powers in the set. Outside of SR, I needed kick/tough/weave and Combat Jumping to softcap all positional defenses. Seismic needs most of the powers as well. On FF I just needed full slotting in Dispersion and Force Bomb, but needed Maneuver's in addition to Fighting and Jumping pools. More slots can go to attacks and you can select more Epic pool powers, though. In terms of procs, with no detriment to other area's of the builds, I could fit roughly 20 dmg/FF rech procs in my Water/FF. For my Sei/SR I could get around 16 procs. On SR I have 45 to all positional defenses. Debuff Resistance/Status Protection/Status Resistance are all much higher and wider ranging on SR. For FF I have 45 ranged defense, and 30 to all other defenses. This is sans Power Boost because it doesn't play well with toggles. Debuff Resistance etc is lower than SR. In terms of damage? Seismic win's out in single target, with the inherent and how I have my slotting. For aoe the Water Corruptor wins out. For Sent's, you have a target cap of 6 on cones and 10 on targeted aoe's. On Corruptor's, especially Water the target caps on all aoe's is 16. You can partially get around this with faster recharging aoe's on Sent's. Quick summary: SR Sents are just flat out way tankier but needs more slotting investment. In the long run I still had flexibility to choose 2 additional powers and one different pool, and an Epic melee attack. Better single target dmg. FF Corruptor's can easily softcap only 1 (maybe other's if you pick Scorp Shield etc) positional defense. You have more slotting flexibility, and chances to pick more Epic powers. But you more easily get locked into Speed/Fighting/Leadership/Jumping(or Stealth/Flight). They're less tanky overall but excel in aoe dmg. Edit: With the caveat that my FF/Water is made for aoe. I don't know how Sent vs Corr single target dmg plays out.

I'm not sure if anyone has ever mentioned this. Not sure if it's a bug or a feature. I tested it again tonight on my Savage/Dark Brute. If you execute something like Rending Flurry at full stacks you will get locked out of Frenzy. But if you Blood Thirst, this still gives you full stacks of Blood Frenzy and cancel's the lock out. Worth thinking about.

Yup, all on the ground. It has some -fly too. For aoe: Upthrust, Rockshards, Meteor, and the PBAoE KD as you gain stacks. Stalagmites is also mag 3 stun. You can play it anywhere on the battlefield. I took Cremate and stay in melee for the PBAoE too. It's great because you can cycle your attacks and have options on where to burn your stacks. For aoe, Meteor then a stacked Seismic Force, Meteor asap, cycle aoes, spend more stacks on Rock Shards. Single target use Stalagmites stacks, Seismic Force with no stacks. All the powers besides Meteor activate fairly quickly so it's pretty fast.

Force Field: FF is very strong for group defense, but also your own defense. Dispersion Bubble is a huge chunk of your def, consider fully slotting it for def and -end - something like full Reactive Defenses is nice. Slotted this way, it is 11.8 def across the board. Depending on your other power picks, still consider Personal FF as a LotG mule if you need it. Force Bomb is actually a very nice aoe when procced with -res as a bonus, is roughly equivalent to M30 but doesn't need a KB-KD slot, and can take a Forcefeedback +rech proc. If you need more slots elsewhere, consider dropping slots from the 2 group buffs. It's personal preference, but gives you more slot economy. Finally, Soul Mastery is nice for a FF Corruptor. You get +dmg in Soul Drain, a res shield, and Power Boosted shields - potentially making up for a slotting deficit in the group shields. AR: I don't have any experience with AR. From diving into it, it looks like a theme you have here is the opportunity for Forcefeedback +rech procs everywhere. You'll probably also need some KB-KD if that's your preference. A perma Hasten build could be worth it. Corruptor's have an advantage here with Malice of the Corrupter full slotted 10% rech, and Scouring Blast set split in 2 for an easy 20% rech. I'm confused as to why you wouldn't take the snipe? In combat snipes become instant cast and are typically a high dpa part of a ranged attack chain. Looking over your highest dpa single target attacks in mids for AR, you have: Snipe>Ignite>Slug>Beanbag=Burst I don't know how Ignite's damage is calculated in mids. If it is just considering the single target, it is a high dpa single target attack. If it is including the puddle dmg, it does less dmg then indicated. I'm going to advocate for picking Ignite, though. The dot lasts 5.25 secs and it creates a small puddle. The big benefit of Scourge for Corruptor's comes from persistent dmg effects like Rains and Dots. Your personal preference, though - and I don't know how it actually performs. Between Beanbag and Burst, the dpa is the same and it depends on if you want the mag 3 stun or the -def. The mag 3 stun may add more survivability. I wouldn't proc either, though. Just go with a straight dmg set. Beanbag can only take like 2 procs, and Burst can take more but with a 4 sec rech it isn't worth it. Someone else may have more insight into what AR can do.

Taking Master Brawler further synergizes with Focused Senses and Focused Fighting. They then give you mez protection.

Super Reflexes on a Sent allows you to choose Master Brawler and Enduring. It doesn't really do anything for your damage. What it does give you is the ability to easily softcap all positional defenses, get perma Hasten, has DDR, and fixes any endurance issues. On top of that, the Master Brawler absorb can be made perma, and synergizes very well with the set. You're much less likely to get 1 shot with the absorb, but if you lose health the innate resists kick in. The absorb also becomes massive when lower hp, so your hp bar pretty much stops moving down. It's pretty tanky. All of this together means that you don't have to pursue as many set bonuses for recharge and defenses. In terms of slotting it frees you up to proc out and play with powers in your primary and other pools.

In my build I have a 23.69 sec recharge on Meteor. If I'm reading city of data correctly, someone correct me if I'm wrong - every Seismic ability you use reduces the cooldown of the other abilities by a flat -1 sec. At max stacks, Seismic Force reduces the cooldown of the other Seismic abilities. For Meteor, this is -15 seconds. So 8.69 sec, less if you use other Seismic powers. It's not sustainable, but if you add +5 recharges to Seismic Force on a perma Hasten build... maybe some FF procs on top of that? Fastest recharging nuke in game.

I don't think I've made any huge achievements in game on my Sents... But, in my Seismic/Super Reflexes build I have 45 def to all positions, perma hasten, and a sub 8 sec recharge on Meteor. Yup, a Tier 9 nuke every 8 secs...

Yes, it's still true. Just be aware that some of your survivability as a Controller is tied into using them as controls, as well. You can definitely go for pure dmg sets if you need set bonuses. But if your secondary/build allows for it, Symph truly shines when it's procced. Just about every power is heavily proccable. Impassioned Serenade and Hymn of Dissonance turn into hard hitting single target attacks. Confounding and Dreadful are great aoe dmg. Try it out!

With respect to @Snarky, he tends to make more themed and out of the box builds. In this one, as he says, he leverages the stuns. The stuns are only mag 2 so you'll probably still be getting hit by bosses occasionally. It has almost no defenses so if an enemy even sneezes your way, you'll need to start spamming Twilight. Basically, it is eschewing the typical defense safety net and you'll have to use powers non stop preemptively and probably say a few prayers for your source of safety. It looks like you'd drop Dark Pit, move in for Oppressing, layer in -tohit, desperately take out bosses, heal what you can, hug fluffy like a lifevest. A more common way of building a /dark is going to softcap range defense and getting enough recharge/perma hasten for double Tar Patch and to treat Howling Twilight as a debuff. This is a more comfortable "starting point" that you can then make tweaks to depending on what you desire. This way is also going to be natively tankier and strong rech is great for blasting dps.

I'm still getting used to Storm slotting, but I have a few Time characters. At a first glance the build is going to do everything you want it to, but poking around a bit you could do a bit of optimizing. Right now you have perma Hasten. Chrono Shift is about ~7 secs off of perma. If you're relying on FF +rech procs then that will cover those last few seconds. However, if you want to smooth it out you could dedicate another slot to it for rech. I'm mentioning this because CS is helping your rech and end recovery. The +rech lasts the whole 90 secs, but the heal and rec buffs only last 30 secs of the duration. If you toggle off Chrono then your net end recovery is about 1.6. Basically you may have end problems 1/3 of the time, but sticking another endmod/rech in it will boost the end recovery for those 30 secs as well. Conserve Power isn't perma either but alternating it with CS should manage your end. This suggestion is just to be aware of these interactions. Toggling on Power Boost is skewing your accuracy a bit. PB only lasts for a few abilities, though. Against +4's your accuracy is a bit low. Jet Stream, Hailstones, Time Stop, Cloudburst, and Slowed Response have low accuracy varying from ~67% to ~85%. Especially dedicate some slots to Slowed Response, since as a Time Def this is a valuable debuff, and the -def could cover your other low acc. Time Stop is a take it or leave it power. The -regen is very low, but proccing out the power is a good move and makes it more valuable to use in an attack chain. If you cannibalize anything for slots I'd take them from here first, though. You could potentially even switch this power with a 4 slotted Time's Juncture. It will allow you to dedicate more time to blasting with Storm instead, and I believe spamming Storm powers is how to get the most benefit from the set. Chain Lightning doesn't do well with procs. If your intention is to mainly proc against the first target, that'll work. But subsequent targets in the chain have a very low proc rate. You dedicate a lot of slots to Tough and Weave. If you don't intend to toggle them on, or to only do so in certain circumstances, you can remove some slots. You could effectively remove 2-4 slots from them for other set bonuses. Adding some +to hit slotting to Farsight could help accuracy overall, for instance. Also maybe a Kismet +acc in Hover? This is mainly just to get you thinking about toggling on and off powers and look at power interactions in more detail.

I take a different approach to FF. I usually 1 slot LotG or at most 3 slot the 2 team buffs. My opinion is that at lower levels the defense really shines and can carry groups. At high end when people fix their defenses it becomes overkill. It does help with cascading debuffs, but Damping does ddr now so that defense won't shift as much. This gives you much more slot economy for other powers. Personal FF is a lifesaver and LotG mule or skippable. Repulsion Field, Detention Field are skippable. Repulsion Bolt 1 or 2 slots. Dispersion Bubble fully slotted for -end and ~15 defense. Force Bomb procced and force +recharge. Damping Bubble can be minimally slotted. Dispersion Bubble carries ~15 of your overall defense. This will let you hit your defense softcap easily so you can slot how you like elsewhere. FF plays very well into a recharge build with all the LotG mules and force feedback +recharges. It looks like Dark has Torrent for another feedback. Other than that, you may want to focus on recharge bonuses and just proccing Dark like crazy. Just don't go Agility alpha if you do this. I feel like I've been talking up Force Field a lot with all the threads on it recently. So I'll share my FF/Water Defender to show you what can be achieved with it. Even with this build minimally slotted for team buffs; between the team buffs, Dispersion, and Maneuvers you're providing 38 defense to the team.

I think that you've explained the differences between the two pretty well. If your question is a meta, which one is better than the other? They each provide the different "flavors" you listed, but in my view it comes down to their slotting. In this case I think they are quite neck to neck depending overall on what abilities you want from each. The way I build Controller's is to be a bit more "selfish." So I'm more worried about hitting my defense goals and then proccing abilities. In Time you typically want a lot of the abilities. On top of that they need some slots. You probably want Shield Breaker in Slowed Response. Heal set in Temporal Mending. Dark Watcher's in Time's Juncture. Perma Farsight which gives ~14.5 defense slotted but needs to be made perma. Enough recharge for perma Hasten and Chrono. On my Time builds, I can typically hit my defense goal and perma Hasten while fully proccing 3 Controller powers. For FF you have the opposite. You can choose or not choose some of the powers and most can be 1 or 2 slotted. Personal FF is a nice life saver. You can slot up the 2 team buffs or 1 slot. All 3 of those powers are any easy LotG. Repulsion Bolt is a 1 or 2 slotter -res now. The only powers to fully slot are Force Bomb for procs, Force Feedback proc and does -res. And Dispersion Bubble which unlike Farsight is just a toggle and easy ~12 defense, no recharge needed. On my FF Controller's I can usually hit defense goals while fully proccing 3 powers + another 2 or 3 powers partially procced. In some cases still maintaining perma Hasten. So it more depends on what kinds of powers (including primary) and what your overall goal is for each. Having easy access to a heal is awesome, being able to proc Fireball or Consume is cool too. I think both are great.

I made a Def, but a Cor would still have higher damage. Since most of the dmg comes from procs though, it's not terribly different. It's up to stronger defense buffs or higher dmg, either would work great. There's not a huge difference the defense buffs give out, something like a 10 defense difference between the two? I didn't bother with Power Boost and instead went Dark to proc out Dark Consumption and make managing end better. Super high defense is desirable, but when people get around 32 even on low defense builds, you only need like a 13 buff to make them hit 45. That's my own take on it, though.