Auroxis

For me it's less about chasing specific bonuses. It's more of a priority checklist: Plan out the optimal DPS rotation and AoE opener of your build. This includes epic power picks. Grab all essential powers (DPS rotation, AoE's, mandatory support/armor/cc/pet powers, hasten, at least one def and one res power for unique IO's) Work out how many power picks you have left to add picks of interest (leadership, LotG mules, fold space) Slot out your attack chain and AoE attacks to the maximum slots, assume any of them with recharge of 8s and above will be procced out and any others will be used as set mules. Slot out your other powers, knowing you'll want to chase certain IO sets for recharge and accuracy set bonuses. Start placing "mandatory" IO's. Kismet +Acc, LotG's, Steadfast Protection +Def, Gladiator's Armor +Def (often 3-slot for KB prot), Shield Wall +Res (sometimes 4-slot for e/n res), Reactive Defense +Res (sometimes 2-slot for s/l res) Start placing the purple/ATO sets and other premium stat sets (i.e preventive medicine, cupid's), knowing you want accuracy on your procced-out damage powers to reach 95% against +3's. Think about your res/def caps. If you're using a resistance armor like fiery aura, you want at the bare minimum your s/l res capped. If you're using a def armor, you want softcaps on your defense. Check your hasten uptime and see how far you are from it. If your build has FFB procs, do some simple napkin math to work out how much they'd actually add in practice. Decide on your alpha slot. At this point you'll know if you need Accuracy from it. Think about your endurance sustainability. Usually 2-3 slots in Health and Stamina are enough, but this part varies a lot and often requires field testing. Think about your recharge debuff resistance. If you've almost no defense and no CC, you need some investment into it. Especially if you plan to tank for your team. Work out your flavor goals. You wanna make a fiery aura tanker with an E/N res cap? You wanna make a dominator with passive permadom? This is where you let your creativity go wild, and where most fun is had. In the end, your goal should be less about having certain set bonuses, but rather to have the most optimal build for the content you have in mind, and then experiment with fun flavor additions. For regular +4x8 soloing, you want an optimal procced-out attack chain, a reliable AoE opener able to take down minions/lieutenants in about 10s, being able to hit +3's at 95%, having near-perma hasten, and enough mitigation/sustain/cc to deal with the bosses and keep you alive until those minions/lieutenants are dead. For tankers and brutes, you also want to emphasize resistance caps to handle excess packs.

Much like how slotting in the power affects magnitude rather than duration, I believe this is the intended behavior specifically for this power, aura of madness, and the new cloak of fear. One Mez HO/D-Sync can get you to where +0 bosses and +3 lieutenants are impacted, and if you want to go all-out on mez slotting to affect +3 bosses that's possible, though requires a lot of dedicated slots. You can also choose not to invest in mez at all and only affect minions at +3, which focuses on the damage aura aspect of it (useful for brutes).

FYI you can build Dark/MA to have a fair amount of AoE if you want. Some damage procs in Dark Regeneration, as well as damage procs and a Force Feedback +Rech proc in Dragon's Tail to get both AoE's and ones from your Epic Power Pool (like procced Fireball) back up and recharged quickly.

@BRADICAL did some solo testing on controller primaries on X/Marine and everything was found to be at least serviceable except Mind. Marine can carry almost any primary for soloing, though pairing it with Pyro or Elec gives the highest combined AoE+Single Target damage output. Outside of Marine, Dark Affinity has some unique perks on Controller which really lend well to soloing in Fade and Soul Absorption. Another good option is Nature, which gives you a lot of tankiness and some damage buffs. Though due to a reliance on Overgrowth is a bit of a late bloomer (pun intended). Kinetics is a popular option for solo farming, but doesn't protect you well against certain mobs and doesn't scale its damage as much against single targets.

D3 is significantly better on Controller. Dark Affinity has some great extra tools in Fade and Soul Absorption, and while Darkness Control isn't one of the top tier primaries it holds its own if you build it well. Here's how I would build it: Controller (Darkness Control - Darkness Affinity) 2.mbd

I put some extensive time into testing and playing out this combo at the top-end (+4x8 soloing, pylon DPS min-maxing, GM's, starred TF's, incarnate trials). I greatly enjoy it and personally believe this combo gets the most out of the AT's strengths. Here are my suggestions: 1. Twilight Grasp is far from your best proc option. Use healing sets in it. 2. Hypnotizing Lights works great as a proc bomb, you should focus on procs with it. 3. You should invest more slots into Fade and Shadow Fall. Getting Fade uptime high is great and it uses both resistance and defense enhancemnets, Shadow Fall is similar except you need to invest more in endurance reduction. 4. Soul Absorption is an amazing recovery tool and I recommend putting more slots into it. 5. I don't put much stocks into Sparking Chain over Sparking Cage. The AoE Immob isn't as useful because you're getting rid of minions and lieutenants so fast with this build and have your CC's and taunting pet keeping stuff in place. Sparking Cage can be used as a DPS filler (I like just slotting Apoc +5 Dam IO in it) and maintain containment on hard targets. 6. You should decide on a travel Power. I'd replace Hover with Experimentation's Speed of Sound, as you can utilize the Jaunt aspect of it to quickly go from throwing procced CC's from range to entering melee for your Incendiary Aura and Soul Absorption. The lack of Stealth on Speed of Sound (when compared with Super Speed) also doesn't matter because of this combo already having Shadow Fall. Here is my current build (You can replace Maneuvers with Darkest Night for more AV/GM safety, I don't value it that high): Controller (Pyrotechnic Control - Darkness Affinity).mbd

Well first off it's good that you realize proc builds don't rely on inspirations, at least on AT's other than the two you mentioned. However, Stalkers can definitely heavily utilize procs and be tanky enough without insps. I personally had successful solo +4x8 proc builds on /Shield, /Rad, and /Bio. So that only leaves Blasters, which while indeed relying on teammates more than other AT's, can definitely hold their own solo without insps by nuking the minions+LT's out of the pack and then leveraging CC's, set bonuses (yes, you can have set bonuses while also having procs), and their buffed sustain powers to deal with the remaining bosses. That's a compromise the devs made ages ago. Would I care if it went away? Not really, but after over a decade with it in the game it's something every knowledgeable builder is used to and readily gives new players assistance with, so just uprooting it also has the potential of confusing a playerbase used to this mechanic. Seeing as the net gains wouldn't be great, I don't see this as a high priority issue. Though Iike I said, I wouldn't mind it. This is a new one. Procs don't do nearly enough damage on their own to make damage debuffs useless. Even a Super Strength character only relies on procs to stay afloat for those 10s of rage crash, it doesn't turn you into a damage dealing beast by itself. You want procs to be affected by damage buffs? I'm not sure I wanna go down this rabbit hole, but I'll just say there are other ways to address brutes (if the tanker nerfs didn't already). Are they stepping on their toes? The meta 4-star comps have Corruptors and Blasters, not Controllers and Defenders. The meta farming AT's are Tankers and Brutes, not Controllers and Defenders. Enhanced Recharge issue aside, PPM was part of live for a very long time. Were procs more intuitive way back when everything was a flat 20%? Probably, but they were also boring IMO. Reverting procs to those levels removes a lot of slotting variety and nerfs AT's that don't deserve nerfs the most.

I do notice insp usage, i have buff windows open often out of an old habit. It is genuinely something i've never seen used on that level. Not sure why you decided to go down this confrontational BS route but at least keep the outright lying to a minimum. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that you simply misunderstood my words and move on with my life.

New Liquefy is quite nice. The high recharge can be leveraged to get a 90% proc rate on the -res proc as well as a hold proc (with recharge+ToHit debuff slotting). The hold proc stacks with the Liquefy hold, which lets you CC bosses for a short while (useful to buy time or get a quick containment setup). I agree though that it only shines once you get your personal recharge levels up, and that it doesn't do much against AV's.

Ok?... It's great that you enjoy min-maxing inspirations, but even without insps a build can fill its attack chain with procs and still make room to hit good defense/resistance targets. What I'm railing against is Lunar's assertion (from what I understood anyway) that builds with procs only work because of inspirations.

@Lunar RoninAll you did was link to some posts encouraging the usage of inspirations, and only two of those talking about storing them in e-mail/auction house. It has nothing to do with your assertion of proc builds relying on insps, and doesn't come close to proving that insp hoarding is somehow a widespread and common affair. To further illustrate the point of the proc and insp discussion being separate, here's a link to an actual benchmark thread against difficult +4 mobs where builds were forbidden from using inspirations, and proc builds still came out very much on top. It turns out killing stuff fast is good for staying alive, and you can in fact build to be tanky and endurance stable while still having procs in your attacks. Possibly you've seen this already of course, but maybe you weren't paying attention.

It would be pretty apparent in gameplay seeing someone pop insps over and over, and it would be discussed more often and not kept as a secret if proc builds were so reliant on insps.

I've never seen anyone do this. If you're using "builds with heavily procced attacks are bad because those players use insps to stay alive" as an excuse to stay away from procs, then all I can say in the nicest way possible is that you're missing out. You can in fact build to be tanky while having quite a few procs in your build.

Symphonic Control's active proccy playstyle really works well when your support secondary is fairly hands-off and doesn't have a lot of ways to contribute damage, which makes Symph/Time a good combo. You can go Symph/Time/Energy to get PB Farsight and Energy Torrent for another proccable cone in your AoE arsenal.

1. Building for procs isn't free, it requires more attention to details when building as you sacrifice endurance reduction, accuracy, and global recharge. It rewards players who put extra effort into builds instead of just 6-slotting sets everywhere. 2. Only a few AT's in Controllers, Defenders, and arguably a few others get a significant chunk of their damage through procs, and none of these AT's are meta for farming or speeding through 4-stars. So procs aren't a problem IMO, and them being a problem is definitely not a consensus. What I can accept as a problem is players feeling forced to slot a certain way, and that's something that can be addressed via the addition of proc boosting to existing enhancement sets. I very much welcome competitive slotting options, but not at the expense of nerfing already off-meta AT's and/or nerfing existing slotting options to the ground.