Frosticus

Yes. Buy a cheap one/convert one. Then imagine 5 more going off. Healback in illusion is generally overstated, but the faster you kill the less of factor it becomes.

They work. Depending on your expectations though you may end up slotting something different. I've been trying on the defender ATO's in it because why not have them working passively in the background rather than negatively affecting my other procs on my attacks? Plus the defender ATO's originate from you, so while shifting tides might be on a scrapper 100ft away I'm still popping out extra absorb+heal at my location. Needed? probably not, but unique to marine in its ability to go into a toggle.

Ya it's server side. If several small knocks occur at the same time it can become a big knock.

Dominator (Earth Control - Psionic Assault) 24mbd.mbd Should be basically a direct swap out of psi app for soul assuming you take dark embrace, dark oblit and soul drain. Might want 1 more slot of soul drain though. Stoney is slotted as needed. Depending on content he might need more/all of the res/def procs.

If you check my sig ive had a lot of success with earth/psi. I too primarily solo. Illusion can do well, but imo it is much better on controllers.

Sometimes whitecap into tidepool will knock enemies back. It's not unique to the combo, just the way the game behaves sometimes.

Controller one definitely fires in poison- poison trap. This image is from my poison guide. It has Armageddon and controller proc slotted (among other things)

Slotted for hold it will consistently stack up to and remain at mag 9 vs lvl 54s (mag 12 vs even con).

Earth and arse are both good on doms. Similar playstyle in that they both use a lot of patch powers . Earth has more control in a like for like comparison, but arse has smoke can which makes a huge difference. I feel much safer on my arse/sav, than my earth/psi as a result. Neither assault set you picked is my cup of tea but energy is very popular

exactly. I've never once cared about containment on any of my illusion trollers (cold and marine) Which is why I appreciate the increased base damage of the power and the fact it has low containment damage is not of concern to me. Most bosses die well before the healback kicks in, not that it matters once you factor in all the +dam and -res, it's just not a consideration for me. It's rare trollers get an early direct attack. The other 6 second options are lift and levitate. I personally prefer spec wounds over either of those, even with lift having been buffed with the distortion proc simply because the damage is so delayed.

Maybe. It gets used a ton on my ill/cold/stone which is a st monster. I'd like to have it on my ill/Marine/mace, cause brine is so so to spam against AVs, but it came down to that or the patron spider. I picked the latter. That choice weakens me in lower level content like penny Yin tho. As for an ill/sonic I'm not sure what attack I'd replace it with, the power pool attacks are meh and you generally want 3 (at least) st attacks to make a chain.

Stone melee turns most spawns into popcorn.

Spec wounds is fine. The healback is a drop in the bucket. We still love PA and it has lots of healback that kicks in after 5 seconds vs 10. I will take spec wounds over something like arcane bolt in a heartbeat. Spec wounds can slip into small attack chain gaps and the damage is instant hit compared to the corpse blasting of arcane. (As an example). Sometimes you have to make build choices though. My ill/Marine dropped spec and ends up using whitecap and brine in my st chain. That isn't always optimal, but you only have so many powers available.

Just build for like 90% +rech, take hasten, slap in procs where you can, try for at least 50% res to slow and make sure you have enough acc/tohit to comfortably hit +3s (keep in mind this combo has very limited access to +tohit)

If anything we got a glimpse behind the curtain of how the devs feel the armors stack up against one another. And hopefully they gained some insight about how significant downward change will be received.

Stone armor (geode) was given a huge buff that seemingly went unnoticed, and ice armor t9 was buffed a bit in that test patch too. EA was nerfed a bit iirc. Regardless, the bio changes were significant and toppled everything over. Maybe we'll eventually see some of the buffs get a second chance at passing if they aren't coupled with the nerfs.

In fairness elec armor was buffed pretty decently in that same test patch. It got dialed back a bit because the regular complainers couldn't get on board with grounded being a keystone power/playstyle. The rad changes weren't that significant. Though unpalatable to be sure.

Kyoyo gives me equivalent of about 3 eps. I find it fantastic.

Roman's get pretty slippery when they clump up.

softcap? what about incarnate softcap, or solo'ing starred content? Retsu+ kyoyo's unique synergy is too good to pass up and lets you push nin into areas of capability that the other def sets struggle to approach without running away, or otherwise mitigating the crash. You can just power thru with nin

I went stone/nin/fire. Perma t9>unleash potential. Clarion radial boosting everything. It's pretty nuts. Only like 20% res though, so you still get 2 shot sometimes.

Ya my ill/Marine is definitely a few notches above my ill/savage on the power scale. But doms are my favorite AT.

Dominator version of Phantom Army has ~70% healback of the base damage. So if an attack does 50 damage, 35 is returned after 5 seconds. The amount that is healed back is consistent, but you can enhance their damage via enhancements, soulbound proc, and -resistance debuffs. So if you get that attack up to 150 damage, it still only heals 35 back after 5 seconds. As to your question of whether or not illusion/x doms can handle lvl 54 AVs? No not in my experience, it can't consistently confuse a +3 AV and put out enough damage at the same time. But if you are willing to pound inspirations, or use temps, or lore pets then pretty much any combo in the game can at that point.

I like elec armor a lot conceptually and visually, but it lacks a bit. Grounded should do a lot more visually and in terms of power. Powersink should give scaling res just as the def versions (ea and ice) grant defense Energize cycles a bit too slowly given the constant damage you take compared to /ea's usage of energize Powersurge needs a revamp to match the visuals. The crash is too harsh.

Every choice has positives and negatives. I find on trollers if you aren't using hurl boulder+seismic then your damage is probably coming from elsewhere or at least relatively slowly. Teams are what they are. Whitecap, toss some aoe, summon lore+pa against AVs. Starred content needs a bit more, like adding barrier and sometimes double checking before you whitecap in.