Frosticus

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.

I'd skip both if I could on my ill/marine and my marine/seismic def, but they both have the heal. My elec/marine corr is using soothing a bit more as I don't have any pets to take some of the focus and the set is much weaker than the defender version, especially with the defender procs in play. I haven't incarnated the corr yet unlike the other two. Discord is certainly more active, but that's about where it begins and ends imo.

It's ok with the contagious proc, but gotta be 50 for that. Dom version gets boosted to mag 3 + contagious. I've put up vids of a dom clearing war walls in cim with just that power and drain psyche. Which is to say, give it a try at 50 again with said proc. I've you give a bit of breathing room, drain psyche can get you thru some intense situations.

Rain of fire used to do 3x damage when it scourged rather than 2x, so it holds more reverance in the minds of the players based on how it used to perform. Rains perform better with scourge because they keep checking target hp the whole duration and it's hp should be going down creating higher scourge chance. For blizzard which does very high damage this can be significant, for Rain of fire/icestorm/whirlpool it's more of a visual thing than a big difference maker because they spam the screen with "scourge"

I have doubts that brimstone gives any bonus damage to storm cell or cat 5. Probably doesn't work on the chain jumps of chain lighting either. So that would be disappointing. I have an elec/stone, if that ticks any of the boxes you are seeking and it works quite well.

If you know you have a competent kin you forgo damage slotting and load up on procs. Similarly you forgo an alpha that boosts damage in favor of vigor. This is extra true if you ARE the kin because you know you will cap your own damage, so no need to slot for it. Vigor allows for maximum proc slotting. Fire/kin is the correct answer. I prefer water/kin personally, and it isn't so far off that it will be an issue.

Psi stalkers are ok. AS in exchange for psi sweep is a good trade. Crit gpb with insight is satisfying. Insight lockout is frustrating.

Confuse one, hold another, blast the one that's free. Set level relative to you so that you aren't missing often. Increase spawn size as you develop aoe control/damage. Don't hesitate to move back if an uncontrolled enemy is getting close. Proactive inspiration use (def/res) is usually more efficient than reactive healing.

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.