Frosticus

it may have changed as I haven't run a pylon since well before incarnate content was added on live, but back then they had resistance to everything except psi. As a result I had to account for that when testing my ill/cold/ice which simar to psi melee didnt do entirely psi damage, but the psi damage portion was skewing things a bit.

I don't thing PB is supposed to work with fade, so build accordingly for if/when that bug is resolved. Unless they sorted things out and it now works with other def powers that provide enhanceable resistance as well? (ie cold shields). But imo that would make /cold super overpowered relative to other sets making it a top tier buffing set while being a top tier debuffer with just SO's.

It's been many years since I had that character :) but if memory serves carrion carries over your buffs, but can't be buffed after. So fulcrum then carrion works, but only for the duration of fulcrum and then it can't be further buffed even though it is so long lived. But again, i'm pulling that info deep from the cranial vault haha. That said, carrion just does what it does. Seeds bunches them all up so your fulcrum is more effective followed by the aoe immob and fissure. Contained seismic vaporizes anything that has the audacity to survive haha.

everyone is different, but plant/kin/earth had that feel for me. chaotic, hefty feeling and extremely powerful. Fulcrum shifted seismic smash never gets old as well as unlimited endurance and speed to power plant control.

I might be mistaken but they stack if you zone between castings. Most things do. Given how fast a min/max team can rip through content, or even how fast you will be able to solo, that might be something to keep in mind. That said the excess slots are likely used better in other spots. I'd suggest that if you are taking mace then find a way to take poison ray (single slot acc is fine). It is almost as strong as your enervating field and makes a big difference on hard targets. It is super slow, but you only use it once every 30 seconds. You might also want to solve your endurance issues. Nic's build looks like it has about 30-40 seconds of combat before it flatlines. Even less if you use choking cloud. Tall order to get perma PA and have no end issues though outside of /cold.

The only issue with traps is the slow animations and ff gen moving along at a snails pace. (it's not honestly that bad though) It takes forever and a day to get down an acid mortar and even longer for it to spread the potential for destruction over a spawn. Compared to other aoe -res like sleet, tarpatch, enervating field etc. But the additional control it offers to a set like illusion (webnade, trops, choking of poison trap) and the way seeker drones can eat an alpha when your phantom army is down make it a pretty strong team controller while still retaining the ability to solo extremely well. On a fast team you might not feel like you are doing much as you are usually there just to be a forcemultiplier, but traps is too slow for that, On a slower, more methodical team it is an unreal combo. Against big baddies /cold will let your team spike the target harder (sleet, heatloss and benumb), but as the fight goes on /traps is second to none. Very strong combo and very capable with just regular enhancements.

Black Scorpion can help you out there. Poison ray helps your summons beat down stuff even faster. Enervating field, maybe some -res proc(s) and poison ray will have your pets taking down bosses and EB's fast enough that you won't miss containment damage. ill/rad isn't really an aoe combination so I wouldn't worry about high damage fissure or fireball. Fissure isn't bad for the additional control though.

Ill/Cold is hands down my favorite pairing for controllers, probably in the whole game. However, it takes a long time to reach maturity and while pretty decent with basic enhancements it benefits tremendously from set bonuses. /dark is good pretty much from the get go and stays strong the whole way. /cold can't really protect itself if you join a bad pug and you pull a lot of aggro with your powers so prepare to faceplant. /dark imo doesn't have as high of a ceiling as /cold but can arguably help a mediocre team better if/when things go wrong.