Hjarki

I have run those maps. My Dark/TW Tanker could clear the map in under 5 minutes before the changes. For that matter, there are Blaster builds that can do it. Heck, my Storm Defender can do it in about that time. I don't. He mentioned several specific builds, none of which would showcase a Tanker's AE ability. This strongly indicates that he's neither tested it nor given it much thought. Nor is his request reasonable because I'm not claiming anything. I mentioned that it's likely that Tankers could out-perform Brutes. I did not make any claims about any specific build. There really isn't anything for me to 'prove'. Basically, I proposed we examine the issue. His response to that was... ludicrous. I'm not going to go out and level up dozens of different builds while putting together a library of videos just because someone without any interest in being part of the conversation doesn't want to admit he doesn't know what he's talking about. In an AE farm, you normally have more than enough targets. Also, the arc/radius/target cap is a dramatic difference. As I noted earlier in the thread, transforming a 90/7 into a 120/10 will generally increase the number of targets hit in such an environment from 2-3 to 6-8. This is trivially easy to see - just do something like Fire/Staff and you can run a x8/-1 fire farm in the early teens to demonstrate the principle. For that matter, you can do it with a level 4 character against random street trash. Try Guarded Spin on a Tanker and on a Brute. The difference is so immediately obvious that I have trouble seeing how anyone could miss it if they even bothered to look.

Fault is almost directly inferior to Tremor. If you slot the two available procs, you'll average 69 damage per target. That's not nothing, but it's a fairly trivial amount of damage. If you were going to take the power anyway, it's one thing. But Fault doesn't have particularly good slotting options and it just replicates something you can do with the far better Tremor. It's one of those powers that you only take if you have absolutely no other choice. Hitting a button to restore endurance is something you only want to do if you absolutely need to. With Stone Melee, this isn't likely unless you willfully avoid slotting EndRed. Slow/-Recharge isn't really a big concern in most cases. Not only is it a relatively rare debuff, but you should be building towards defenses that will negate the overwhelming majority of such attacks. And, of course, if you wanted that status resist, you could just slot Winter's Gift. Likewise, the defense is the 'wrong kind' - it's defense that only works when you don't really need it (against large spawns) but not when you do (against single tough targets). It's also mostly superfluous since you're able to push your defenses up so high anyway. And again, it's a power that has few decent slotting options. You've already got plenty of LotG mules and neither defense nor EndMod sets are particularly useful. It might be worthwhile for sapping, but you've got no support for it otherwise. I don't think Hibernate is a bad power. I just don't find it particularly useful for a Tanker. As a Tanker, being able to take hits is part of the job. If you're in a fight where you need to Hibernate, you might need to rethink your build/AT - or bring someone else who can actually tank the content. I rarely ever take Energy. Focused Accuracy is hideously end-intensive for fairly minor buffs. On a build that's almost certainly at soft cap for Neg Defense and doesn't have heals with attack rolls, hit debuff resistance isn't all that useful. Likewise, Conserve Power tends to be a poor way to handle end issues (which, as Stone Melee, you shouldn't have) - if you really have the kind of end issues that require this power, you tend to run dry very quickly when Conserve Power is down. I think Fire is a solid choice. Char gives you the option of slotting Entomb or slotting for damage. Ring of Fire can come in handy if you want an AV to stand in one place and otherwise don't have a way to do that. Fireball is the highest dpa AE attack from the pools, so it can help cover an AE hole in the melee set (which Stone has). Melt Armor and Fire Blast aren't all that great, though. The reasons Soul Mastery tends to be the 'go to' choice for Tankers: Gloom is the best single target attack in any of the pools and is better than most of the single target attacks in the actual melee set. Darkest Night can solve a lot of defensive holes. Dark Obliteration is one of the best AE. Fireball is probably better from the standpoint of raw damage, but Obliteration has additional slotting options and helps with defense. Those shadow effects also go up against one of the weakest resists and they have endless slotting options from very good sets (admittedly, 6-slotting Cloud Senses isn't going to give you a particularly high damage Dark Obliteration, but it's a great set of bonuses).

I'm well aware of the conventional wisdom. However, linking a 12 page thread as 'support' for your argument is ridiculous. If you feel there's something in that thread that supports your argument, you should link the specific post. Of course, you probably can't because it doesn't include discussions of the impact of Tanker arc/radius/target cap changes. Indeed, your statements strongly imply that you haven't bothered with even the slightest bit of testing. You seem to seriously believe that 120 arc 10 radius Cones only hit 2-3 targets or require some sort of specialized positioning - and anyone who has spent any time at all farming with these abilities would immediately recognize how ridiculous such a statement is. SInce I was simply discussing the issue in generalities, I can't understand why you'd expect I would post such an attack chain. However, I did point out the numbers to correct your misconceptions about what were the most important parts of such chains. I've never actually read Huffington Post, perhaps in passing. 'Ad hominem' is a logical fallacy that every educated person should at some point. It a reference to someone who refuses to provide information in a debate but instead simply attacks the other party in hopes of concealing their inability to contribute. You've yet to point out a single bit of 'false information' I've spread. Nor are those numbers 'out of context'. The reason I posted all of those numbers is to showcase what was - and was not - important in an attack chain. DPA is another way to examine how much damage you can put out. However, DPA becomes much less useful when you've got dramatic differences. Consider that the dps provided by Shadow Maul is 357 but the dps provided by Burn is only about 1/6th that value. What this means in practice is that Shadow Maul will always take priority over Burn in a rotation since even a major delay in Burn isn't worth a minor delay in Shadow Maul. If this 'vacuum' exists, then you should discuss it in more than a vague numbers-scare-me sense. You've made a lot of statements that simply aren't supported by the numbers - your enthusiasm for Burn (which I suspect is related to your failure to realize the target cap), your notion that the relatively weak AE in Spines was counterbalanced by the toggle aura, etc. Unlike the statements I've made - which are backed by the numbers I've posted without any analysis attached - you've made affirmative statements that are demonstrably untrue.

I haven't been making claims at all. You're the only one making unsupported claims. I merely showcased how the numbers run down - and clearing up your confusion about the various mechanics. If you want to address the actual numbers, go right ahead. You do this all the time. You make a ludicrous, unsupported claim. People demonstrate you're wrong. You start insulting them and doubling down on ignorance. In this case, perhaps you could register even one valid criticism of the numbers I posted? This isn't complex stuff. Which numbers did I get wrong? What detail did I omit that changes the outcome? I don't think it's too much to ask that you engage in actual debate rather than ad hominem attacks and appeals to authority. As an aside, I'd argue that 'afk farming builds' are the only builds that matter. No one spends hours and hours in a Fire farm for fun. A build that can effectively clear the farm but which requires only a brief interaction every 5 minutes is generally far superior to one that requires constant play.

I tend to view melee AT as a holistic set rather than individual AT - and each power set works better or worse for certain AT. Ice Armor is 'Stalker set' in my mind. You lose Icicles and Hibernate, but you gain the far more useful (at least for survivability) Icy Bastion. In practice, an */Ice Stalker is actually 'tankier' than an Ice/* Tanker because the Stalker can - at for a time - hard cap their non-Cold resists. Stone Melee is (obviously) not a Stalker set. So if your heart is set on this combination, you're stuck with Tanker. Let's start by examining Stone Melee: Stone Fist. You have to take this attack, although you probably don't want to. Stone Mallet. Skip this - it's a weak attack. Heavy Mallet. Your second best single target attack. Take it. Taunt. Some Tankers take it, some don't. However, one of the major reasons to take it is enemies like Lord Recluse - who will shred an Ice Tanker in an eyeblink - so I'm not sure how useful it will be. Build Up. This really depends on your level of recharge. In general, Build Up-type abilities are much better for Blasters (who have massive burst dps abilities) than melee AT. However, it can still be useful. Fault. Non-damaging Mag 2 Disorient is... meh. Skip it. Tremor. One of the best powers in the set. Hurl Boulder. Worse than your epic/patron choices. Skip it. Seismic Smash. One of the best single target attacks in any set. Take it. Ice can be broken down a bit more easily: Take: Frozen Armor, Hoarfrost, Chilling Embrace, Wet Ice, Icicles, Glacial Armor. These are fundamental powers and you'll slot them more or less as expected. Permafrost. I'd skip this. You don't need the Cold resist and the amount of Fire resist it provides is trivial. Energy Absorption. There are better ways to manage your endurance. These sorts of AE drains tend to lead towards builds that are great against large spawns and then fall apart in the final fight. Hibernate. This is a tough call. This would be a truly fantastic Blaster power. As a Tanker power, it's a bit less fantastic. While you can use it to heal and restore endurance, the 'invulnerable' portion is a bit counter-productive because you're the guy who is supposed to be able to take the hits. In terms of recharge, you want to make Hoarfrost perma-. This requires +200% recharge. +100% (a bit less) can come from internal recharge. You can get 50% + 37.5% from purples and LotG. Then you can slot Force Feedback in Heavy Mallet and Tremor. This means you probably don't need Hasten. You definitely want Toughness. Leaping/Concealment/Leadership can round out the set, giving you plenty of slotting options. Soul Mastery is the obvious choice of epic/patron for Gloom/Dark Obliteration/Darkest Night. Intuition seems a solid choice for Alpha, although this depends on endurance/recharge issues. Ultimately, you should be able to reach soft-cap on all typed but your resists will be weak for a Tanker. You'll be weak against Toxic/Psi.

You mean where I 'ignored' it right here? Now I just pulled the numbers from Mid's to illustrate how your understanding of the various powers was incorrect. But those numbers seem fairly accurate to me. Do you have any legitimate objection to them? Except you haven't. You've been doing the equivalent of playing an Ice/Empathy Controller and then boldly proclaiming that Controllers can't do decent damage.

Blazing Aura is 4.59 dps. So a single damage enhancement would be worth 0.42 * 4.59 = 1.93 dps. A 71.75/3.5 proc would be 3.5 * 10 / (60 * 2.2) * 71. 75 / 10 = 1.90 dps. A single end reduction would be worth 0.15/sec endurance, or about the same as you'd get from two purple sets.

Tankers can deal 0.95 * 5 = 4.75 damage while Brutes can deal 0.75 * 7 = 5.25 damage, which is a 10% damage advantage to Brutes at the damage cap. Tankers hit either 100% more targets (for Cones) or 60% more targets (for PBAoE). On Cones in particular, the difference between 7 yards/90 arc and 10 yards/135 arc is normally the difference between 2-3 targets and 6 - 8. I also wouldn't use the sets you're talking about (Radiation, Fire, Savage) for the purposes of Tanker AE. But consider Radiation: Proton Sweep (Brute): 59.64 * 5 / (8 / 3.75 + 1.848) = 75 dps Proton Sweep (Tanker): 63.62 * 10 / (8 / 3.75 + 1.848) = 160 dps Atom Smasher (Brute): 64.65 * 10 / (22 / 3.75 + 3.168) = 72 dps Atom Smasher (Tanker): 68.96 * 16 / (22 / 3.75 + 3.168) = 122 dps Burn (Brute): 103.4 * 5 / (25 / 3.75 + 2.244) = 58 dps Burn (Tanker): 107.4 * 5 / (25 / 3.75 + 2.244) = 60 dps Blazing Aura (Brute): 4.59 * 10 = 46 dps Blazing Aura (Tanker): 4.89 * 10 = 49 dps Total (Brute): 75 + 72 + 58 + 46 = 251 dps Total (Tanker): 160 + 122 + 60 + 49 = 391 dps All the above would be multiplied by your +damage. Out of the box, a Brute would likely have 3.5x damage (between internal and Fury) while a Tank would have 2x damage (just internal). So our Tanker would be dealing about 90% of the damage of the Brute. At cap, its 7x vs. 5x and our Tanker would be dealing 10% more. (There's some actual rotation here - I haven't played around enough with Radiation to figure it out - but it will almost certainly involve gaps). Irradiated Ground is roughly the same between the two ATs because it's generally slotted for procs. Proton Sweep also isn't particularly worthwhile on a Brute while it's more valuable on a Tanker due to increased arc/range. Spine Burst (Brute): 47.39 * 10 / (16 / 3.75 + 3.168) = 64 dps Spine Burst (Tanker): 50.55 * 16 / (16 / 3.75 + 3.168) = 109 dps If you compare to the numbers above, Spine Burst is a slightly better choice for auto-fire on a Brute and a significantly better one for Tankers. Burn is slightly better for Brutes in terms of dpa, but dpa only really matters if you've got a complete rotation (which you don't). I think you overlooked the target cap on Burn. Now, compare all those numbers I've listed to these: Jacob’s Ladder (Tanker): 115.3 * 10 / (8 / 3.75 + 1.848) = 290 dps Thunder Strike (Tanker): 150.6 * 16 / (18 / 3.75 + 3.432) = 293 dps Spin (Tanker): 106.5 * 16 / (14 / 3.75 + 2.54) = 272 dps Eviscerate (Tanker): 122.9 * 10 / (12 / 3.75 + 2.508) = 215 dps Shockwave (Tanker): 63.68 * 10 / (14.4 / 3.75 + 1.188) = 127 dps Typhoon’s Edge (Tanker): 50.72 * 16 * 1.5 / (12 / 3.75 + 2.508) = 213 Sweeping Strike (Tanker): 75.63 * 10 / (11 / 3.75 + 1.452) = 172 One Thousand Cuts (Tanker): 105 * 10 / (15 / 3.75 + 3.432) = 141 Flashing Steel (Tanker): 44.04 * 10 / (6 / 3.75 + 1.32) = 151 The Lotus Drops (Tanker): 68.51 * 16 / (14 / 3.75 + 1.98) = 192 Guarded Spin: 51.53 * 10 / (8 / 3.75 + 1.98) = 125 Eye of the Storm: 54.72 * 1.2 * 16 / (17 / 3.75 + 2.772) = 144 Innocuous Strikes: 73.85 * 10 / (10 / 3.75 + 2.376) = 146 Shadow Maul (Tanker): 121.5 * 16 / (11 / 3.75 + 2.508) = 357 Pendulum (Tanker): 80.26 * 10 / (15 / 3.75 + 2.244) = 129 Whirling Axe (Tanker): 42.26 * 16 / (14 / 3.75 + 2.904) = 102 Cleave (Tanker): 116.6 * 16 / (15 / 3.75 + 2.508) = 287 Combustion (Tanker): 57.83 * 16 / (15 / 3.75 + 3.158) = 129 Fire Sword Circle (Tanker): 79.46 * 16 / (20 / 3.75 + 2.904) = 154 Breath of Fire (Tanker): 71.01 * 16 / (15 / 3.75 + 2.904) = 165 Now, there are a lot of nuances to those numbers. A 120+ arc is significantly better than a 90 or 75 arc in terms of practical value (much less a 30 degree arc - 16 targets is... optimistic... for Cleave). The AE's with knockback permit slotting Force Feedback so they tend to have a significantly better performance than you'd otherwise expect. Some of those are ranged AEs (that would require gaps in your rotation to 'pop up').

My numbers for Spines included the sum of the damage aura and the PBAoE on auto-fire.

You plant yourself in a high traffic spot with wandering mobs. You turn on your toggle damage fields and an auto-fire power... and then you walk away. Mobs wander into your vicinity, aggro on you and die from the damage left running.

(Numbers from Mid's) Spine Burst is 47.39 damage with a 16s recharge and 3.168s activation. Quills is 3.13 dps If we assume +80% global recharge (Hasten isn’t an option) and +80% internal recharge, that would be 47.39 damage with a 6.12s recharge and the same 3.168s activation or 5.08 dps. The sum would be 3.13 + 5.08 = 8.21 dps Compare to Thunder Strike. This is 81.75 damage with an 18s recharge and 3.432s recharge. However, we can slot it for Force Feedback, which averages to 90% extra haste. That would yield 5.14s recharge, or 9.54 dps. Note that both numbers scale the same way with +damage multipliers. Now, an argument could be made that the Force Feedback proc costs you some other proc. However, that proc won't scale with Fury and you've got roughly the same proc opportunities between the two abilities. With that in mind, the kings of active farming are like Tankers with the right sets due to the increased target caps/arcs/radii and the fact that you can eat reds like candy, minimizing the value of Fury.

Radiation tends to be better than Spines for farming. Also, if you're going to just afk farm, you could easily just go with something like Stone Armor and make a build that can sit afk in a cave but also go out in the world and fight virtually anything with hard-capped resists to all except Psionic and soft-capped defenses to all typed except Psionic.

The way I'd probably approach it: I usually skip Power Sink and Power Surge, but take everything else in Electric Armor. It's a fairly conventional resist-based set that you'll probably slot in a standard way. Dark Melee isn't a very good set, but its good abilities are truly exceptional. Shadow Maul is weak on anything but a Tanker, but it's a monster AE on a Tanker. It's your main AE tool and Shadow Maul by itself can beat the AE of entire sets. Soul Drain is the other key ability. While it's not much use against a single target, it effectively makes you into a Brute when you're farming large spawns. Beyond this, Midnight Grasp is a decent enough ability. Siphon Life is probably superfluous with Energize. Taunt is dealer's choice. Some Tankers take it, some do not. Smite is unnecessary since you're forced to take Shadow Punch. Touch of Fear isn't a particularly good ability. Dark Consumption isn't a particularly good way to restore endurance and it's unnecessary with Electric Armor. To augment Dark Melee, a good choice would be Soul Mastery for Gloom/Dark Obliteration/Darkest Night. For the build overall, you need to drop both Energize and Soul Drain from 120 sec to 30 sec. That's +300% recharge. 5 LotG (37.5%) + 5 Purple (50%) + Hasten (65%) + Internal Recharge (100%) = 252.5%. That's a long way short of where you want to be. One possible solution is Cross Punch. Cross Punch has an AF of 1.19 (if my math is correct). If we slot it with Armageddon, it has a 5.01 adjusted recharge. We can put Force Feedback in the 6th slot (once we've got Armageddon's 5-slot recharge bonus). This would be 2 * (5.01 + 1.67) / (60 * 1.19) = 18.71% proc chance. If we use it every 5 sec, we end up with +28.71% average recharge. However, this requires both Kick and Boxing (which may be one more power than you want to invest). Still, 23.71% average recharge is a decent choice for an attack that's a good backup for Shadow Maul. In all likelihood, this probably means taking either Spiritual or Agility Alpha to make up the remaining recharge. So this leaves us with the various attacks for slotting: Melee: Shadow Punch, Midnight Grasp PBAoE: Shadow Maul, Soul Drain, Cross Punch, Lightning Field Ranged: Gloom Target AE: Dark Obliteration We already slotted Cross Punch. We're playing Electric Armor, so splitting the ATO doesn't make sense. Might of the Tanker will generally go in the damage aura (Lightning Field). So let's go with Gauntleted Fist in Soul Drain because it has more internal recharge, which leaves Avalanche for Shadow Maul. For the two melee attacks, we've got Blistering Cold and Hecatomb. Blistering Cold is probably better for the rarely-used Shadow Punch while Hecatomb potentially gives us a spare slot in Midnight Grasp for a proc or other utility. At this point, we've slotted 3 10% recharges, so we're left with Apocalypse and Ragnarok for Gloom/Dark Obliteration. The 6th slot in each is available for optionals (or you can simply slot the full 6-set). Taken together, this will give the 50% recharge we need plus a lot of miscellaneous defenses and we'll cap out 6% F/C resist bonuses. We'll also need 5 Defense powers. We get none from either primary or secondary. Weave provides one. Combat Jumping is an obvious choice for another. We're committed to Hasten, so that means our 4th pool would be Concealment with its 3 Defense powers. If you're willing to be short one LoTG, you can go with Leadership for Maneuvers/Vengeance. Between our Resist and Defense powers, we'll need all the uniques (Steadfast Protection, Gladiator's Armor, Shield Wall, Reactive Defenses, Unbreakable Guard). Kismet may or may not be necessary - the offensive powers may or may not be accurate enough for +3 enemies since they're all straight-slotted. Most of your Resist powers will probably use either Aegis or Reactive Armor since you don't need Energy Resist (and raising just your Negative Resist is normally not all that worthwhile). Either Red Fortune or Reactive Defenses can be used to fill out your Defensive powers - just pay attention to the return on your slot investment by boosting your defense powers. Darkest Night can be 4-slotted with Dark Watcher's Despair if you want the 5% recharge bonus (emphasis on -hit and endurance). Energize can either be shot-slotted for Heal/Recharge or you can go up to 5-slot Panacea or 6-slot Preventative. Lightning Speed takes a single Run Speed IO. Sprint takes Celerity +Sprint. Health takes Panacea, Numina's and Miracle uniques. Stamina has various options from Performance Shifter and Power Transfer uniques. If you've got plenty of slots (you almost certainly don't), you could pair both with the EndMod from their sets. You'll probably end up with hard cap resists with a toxic/cold hole. Psionic probably won't reach hard cap without multiple Impervium + Aegis uniques. Your defenses will be a bit all over the place, but should be in the low 30s or so - if you're really in a dangerous situation, Darkest Night should go a long way towards bring the difference (on top of the fact that your attacks also debuff hit slightly).

I listed a build elsewhere on this forum for Fire/Poison where I went with the approach of using positionals rather than typed defenses. The justification for this was against standard enemies, Venomous Gas enables you to short-change Melee defense and Ranged defense is easy to pile up on a Controller since you can get +5% bonuses from both ATO and Coercive Persuasion.

Indomitable Will from epic/patron has a recharge 4x the duration, so it can be made perma- or nearly so to close the mez hole.

This description doesn't really match the set: 'Busy'. Electric on a Controller might potentially be 'busy' because you'd use Jolting Chain a lot. On Dominator, you normally wouldn't take Jolting Chain because you've got actual AE in secondary. Once you eliminate Jolting Chain, all the unique parts of Electric are long duration fire-and-forget powers. 'Melee'. Electric only has a single melee-only power and it's only useful if you intend to use endurance sapping as a core concept. While it technically restores health/endurance, the amount is so trivial that no one uses it for this purpose. Moreover, if you're sapping on a Dominator, you're almost certainly playing Electric/Psi and you're forced into melee range not by Conductive Aura (which you may not even take since Chain Fences does a pretty good job all on its own) but by the Psi melee powers and Drain Psyche. 'Procs'. The set is actually far less proc-friendly than most. While it can proc out the ST Hold/ST Immobilize/AE Immobilize, it's less likely to use these powers as sources of damage on Dominator than other sets. I already mentioned not taking Jolting Chain as a Dominator. That leaves effects that you normally straight-slot like Static Field and Synaptic Overload - you're certainly not slotting them with damage procs. I suppose you could layer healing procs all over the place if you chose. 'Recharge'. Electric is amongst the least recharge-sensitive control sets because its two primary control measures can be used every spawn even without any global recharge. Moreover, because those powers are self-stacking, you don't need to layer them multiple times even on a Controller. 'Endurance to your team'. While this does appear in the description of Static Field, it's such a minor effect that you'll never notice. You also can't slot it for endmod sets (although you could place endmod IOs in it if you chose).

It's mainly built for grinding, with poor single target damage. You'd also run into issues with AV/GM resisting the -hit buffs - if they can close to melee range, your melee def isn't capped. In theory, you can just Immobilize them and stand at close-but-not-melee range. So if you're anticipating solo'ing x8/+4 LRSF, it's probably not a good choice. However, on a team your lack of personal single target dps is compensated for by your excellent -resist debuffs.

Venomous Gas implies you'll be in melee range. This makes anything Cone-based problematic (you really don't want to move your PBAoE aura around all that much). It also places an unusually high value on other PBAoE effects since you're there anyway. I chose FIre simply because it did the most damage and I don't place a particularly high value on the 'Control' aspects of Control sets. Having enemies debuffed and flopping around is enough Control for 99% of situations I find myself in.

I believe the numbers are (Base, Fury, enhancements/other estimate, Rage): Brute: 0.75 + 0.75 * 2 + 0.75 + 0.75 * 0.8 = 3.6 Tanker: 0.95 + 0.95 + 0.95 * 0.8 = 2.66 Also, the general rule isn't that Tankers are tougher so much as Tankers are broader. The Brute version will normally have similar levels of resist/defense against common types like S/L. Where the extra value from the armor sets on Tankers comes is in terms of unusual resists/defenses. Tankers tend to have fewer 'holes' than Brutes (although obviously some of those holes are simply a feature of the set). However, this is less useful than it might initially appear because you can just pick n' choose a Brute for an individual encounter in many cases. So while a Tanker might be built to tank both Hamidon and Lord Recluse, there are Brutes who are just as good at Hamidon and Brutes who are just as good at Lord Recluse. This means a lot of players who pick Tanker end up wondering why they bothered if Brutes can just do what they do.

When evaluating Tanker primaries, I tend to consider Defense Debuffs, Hit Debuffs, Psi Defense, Toxic Resist and resist holes. Bio is terrible against Defense Debuffs, it's good against Hit Debuffs, weak on Psi Defense, weak on Toxic Resist. It has a 'resist hole' to everything that's not S/L. Overall, it depends an enormous amount on proactively debuffing, which can be problematic with spawns that exceed the target cap, are out-of-range or that heavily resist debuffs. When you put it all together, I'd argue that Bio is actually one of the weaker Tanker primaries. A large part of the reason you play Tanker (rather than Stalker, Scrapper or Brute) is because you want to be tough against the things that kill other people. But Bio just isn't that. It's not the sort of primary you want if you're going to go after a random AV or fight unusual enemies. When I look at Bio, I'm really thinking 'Scrapper' more than anything else.

Fire is better as a Scrapper than a Stalker. Losing Incinerate (one of the best Scrapper single target attacks) for Assassin's Blaze (one of the worst Stalker Assassinate abilities) is not a good trade. Shield Defense is probably slightly better as a Stalker than a Scrapper. Losing Phalanx Fighting for Hide is a sidegrade defensively, but having Stalker-level Hide without having to invest a pool in it can be quite handy.

Steam Spray ends up being your 5th best AE (after Judgement and the three other AEs in the set). This means that somewhere around 10 seconds into the fight, long after the spawn has either been defeated or spread so much that AE is pointless, you finally get around to using it. On my Storm/Water, I even ended up skipping Water Burst because of this - there just wasn't any circumstance where I ended up going that deep into the AE arsenal.

For Water, Dehydrate and Steam Spray are both skippable. Dehydrate isn't a particularly good attack and it's not all that useful as a heal (especially in conjunction with a secondary that heals). You'll also usually skip one of the two basic attacks. For Nature, you have to take Corrosive Enzymes (it's a decent power anyway). Beyond this, you normally want to take Wild Growth, Spore Cloud and Overgrowth. Most of the rest of the powers are either superfluous or narrow use.

It doesn't really matter what procs you slot if you're not using the attack. Neither Kick nor Boxing are likely to ever make an appearance in your rotation. Even if they did, their chance to proc would be very low due to quick recharges.

I think 'viable' the wrong word. You can do a lot with set IOs/pools, so even if you never use any of your secondary powers you can still come up with a somewhat 'viable' build. The proper term should really be 'optimal'. Unfortunately, it's difficult to find such an optimal build for Pain Domination. It really doesn't do anything particularly well and it doesn't have any standout features to it. So almost any time you look at a Pain Domination build's key features, you end up asking "wouldn't this be better as...?"