Frosticus

@SirBronco Of the ones listed I would do fire/marine, it has the most synergy and fire gains the most from marine. That isn't to say it is the strongest, for that you'd want illusion. If you've never done an illusion playthrough marine is pretty great with it. Yes PA will fill up your shifting tides stacks (almost instantly), no issues. Ill/marine is probably in the running for top combo in the game when you consider st damage, aoe clear, team buffing and personal survival as a package. Lots of good marine pairings though, it offers a lot.

I mean, that's certainly a thought process. Players ask for things all the time, some good, some bad. I'm all for doom-casting and enjoy pretending the devs are out to ruin the game as much as the next guy, but it doesn't really hold up under scrutiny. The closest recent comparison I can think of is static for Tesla cage and how elec manipulation for blasters is allowed to build it. It only has an interaction if you pair them. Did elec blast or manip get nerfed as a result? Nah, elec manipulation is in the running for the strongest blaster secondary.

If you spam your st confuse then that is your playstyle. I don't play passively. I also don't chase a 5% ranged def bonus on an AT that has no defense and is better focused on aoe mez and damage. I've put up tons of vids for my earth/psi/psi, the approach works extremely well. WoC is a bad choice for a passive ranged build, no question about that. Ymmv.

Imo tanks and stalkers are both very easy to cruise thru solo missions. For different reasons mind you, but both super smooth out of the gate. Just solod a bio/sav tank. Among the easiest 1-50 I've ever experienced. IOs felt completely optional while leveling.

I almost never use my single target confuse on anything other than symphony. So contagious is a waste there imo.

I can't imagine anyone that has actually tried dominator WoC on a melee build saying many negative things about it, but as always ymmv.

Yes take and use placate a lot. It is both an offensive and defensive boon. Huge solo/small team, still really good on a full team. Here's a quick demo showing how you can use it to gain an advantage. *it's an overload build so probably didn't need to use it defensively here.

Sure, that's good, but it is only 15ft of stealth, you still need smoke grenade if you want to stealth click an objective, which arsenal has a better version of (16 vs 10 targets among other things). In all other scenarios the 200ft of cloaking > 15ft of field operative.

Arsenal Control (and illusions) version of superior invis does not suppress unless you click to activate something like a terminal. So you can hit an enemy and immediately jump to the next spawn and they won't see you. Arsenal also has smoke can that debuffs perception. Group invis (ill troller exclusive) also doesn't suppress when attack/attacked, but if you activate a terminal it will cancel until recast (although the visuals remain). The relatively unknown advantage is that the -threat modifier doesn't suppress when you attack (unlike superior invis) making you very slippery.

Both my ill/cold and ill/Marine very easily stroll thru GMs and 54 AVs without insp/amps/temps/lore Both do ~1k pylon dps though so chewing thru single targets is what they do best and having invincible taunters makes it just that much smoother. I've had lots of success against lvl 54 AVs with arse/sav and earth/psi doms, the latter has taken a number of gms, but nothing with the ease of the ill trollers. If you are ok with imps/temps/lore then pretty much anything can do it.

As far as I remember the "wet" status was only granted an interaction with a single power (nitrogen) and never got past the phase of discovering which powers applied it (or should apply it). Interactions with lightning such as spread, or a steam burst from fire were never implemented or even indicated by the devs. There was no indication that a wet target would take less fire damage, as that goes against pretty much everything in the game.

It was a mechanic the devs wanted to test out. It made some people extremely angry (understatement) for a variety of reasons. The flag remains on a fair number of powers, but currently doesn't do anything. Hopefully the devs revisit it along with some other conditional statuses as it could open up a bit more depth to some areas of the game.

I've done 3 different combos that all live in the t9 armor and have enough recharge to cycle t9>unleash>t9>unleash. em/ea stalk, stone/ea stalk, and stone/nin scrap. the stone/ea makes almost no compromises compared to a traditional ea build because the high uptime of ffback still allowed me to proc out every attack, and take musculature. the stone/nin did require agility, but the 0 end recovery power and click mez in /nin are perfect for pushing through the t9 crash. I was even able to take clarion radial (powerboost) for overall higher runspeed/def from retsu, which is like being perma speedboosted as you zip around. They do require a bit more management of course, but the crash of the defensive t9s is not that hard to get through without inspirations, let alone with. Its an addicting playstyle when you see what you can throw them into.

If you goal is a lot of summons that do stuff then also consider ill/traps. Another would be symphony. The pet mirrors your powers, not just in that it has more or less the same suite of controls, but it will only use them if you cast it first.

Glad you are enjoying it. Not much has changed in the game other than being able to skip your t1 in the secondary and they nerfed rune of protection a bit (less slots needed tho). I still use my poison/fire pretty often. I really like poison still.