Psyonico

I'm in agreement with the others... Life giving spores is kind of a skippable power, but Spore Cloud is a really good power. Playing my Symphony/Sonic the other day I realized that the Fear cone doesn't seem quite as potent as other fears for some reason, so I was taking more damage than on say a Mind or Dark controller. Spore Cloud's debuffs would be a good pairing to ease that return fire.

It's not that I'm against the idea... I just don't think it's necessary. Empyrean merits have basically been completely drained from the economy because there's just not anything you can convert them into that is worth anything to anyone but your own account. So yes, people will have hordes of them, but it's to nobody's detriment.

The way DDR works is actually by cutting a percentage of the debuff. So is you have 95% DDR (the tank cap) and get hit with -100 defense debuff you'll be hit with a 5% defense debuff. Now that being said, you can still use Ageless reactively, it could end up being beneficial, but the way I generally play, Ageless becomes my auto power once I got T4 on it.

Water's big boon to poison is Dehydrate's self heal makes a nice compliment to poison not having any self sustaining powers. I have a pre-page 5 Poison/Water somewhere that I've been meaning to Respec. I just don't like the tier 2 water blast, so I'll be changing that out for something else.

The difference, I think, is that scrappers have a 75% damage resist cap while brutes and tanks have a 90% cap. When you're farming +4x8, you generally want to shoot for capped resist and soft capped defense. That extra resistance cap can make a big difference.

Well, Assault provides a 10.5% damage buff to your team. It's not a ton, but it's nice for sets that's don't have an aim or build up power. The real question is, what are you forgoing to take assault?

Yes, Carrion Creepers has the vines that come out of the ground.

I've got several /spines tanks. It's a strong set with lots of AoE potential. I haven't done Rad/Spines personally, but it sounds like it could be a good combination.

It reduces XP per mob but increases your XP per hour, seems like a fair trade off.

Mass Confusion is a great power, I will admit it probably needs a little bit of a buff (Recharge reduction/removing the accuracy penalty)

Vines just looks like an AoE version of the Strangler.

You can't control glowie sounds specifically, no.

I'd rather see WP get some DDR over to-hit or accuracy

You're not reading something right. Base (for a tanker) Heightened Senses provides 3.3% defense to Smashing and Lethal but 13% to F/C/E/N. Weave provides 5% defense to all. So Heightened Senses is significantly better than weave at F/C/E/N defense, which is the primary thing it's supposed to be good at.

Battle Axe as a set got a buff in page 5, yet you're complaining that one power isn't good enough. You need to look at the set as a whole and not just compare individual powers. That being said, I am not an expert on Battle Axe, so I really can't say one way or the other if the set is balanced.

Poison is kind of a weird set. It's really good against single targets until you get venomous gas, then it is good at AoE too. But venomous gas changes your play style from ranged to melee. I'd recommend a secondary with fewer cones. I have a poison/water stuck around 35 because of the weird play style. I'd say water is a good choice for secondary just because of the self heal and only 1 cone.

Earth is one of the best controller sets in the game. Not sure what you mean by "the holds aren't very good". Yes, the damage is low, but that's most controller primaries. I'm not sure Animate Stone needs a buff. It's the tankiest pet (not including Phantom Army) and does acceptable damage as well.

If Domination recharges before it wears off, your Domination bar will be full still, allowing you to recast it without having to build the bar again.

You aren't required to do the snake missions. Much like Blue Side got Matthew Habashy, Red Side got a series of arcs that has you taking back Mercy from longbow. I don't remember the name of the first contact, but you should see him through the Find Contact button, or he may even be just given to you if you skip the tutorial.

Did you look at your combat attributes? The last time I used take off it worked as intended.

The game is terrible when it comes to it's descriptions of damage. Minor, low, moderate, etc. are all rough guides, but that's it. As for the defense, yes, it has to hit to get the bonus.

I think the other one is the entrance to the "clear out the police station" mission.

Not all sets are for everyone. I appreciate Electric Affinity, but don't enjoy playing it. Trick Arrow's major downside is that there aren't any bad powers in the set, so you either take everything and miss out on secondary/pool power opportunities, or you skip something delicious.

There is always something urgent happening in Paragon City... The real question is why are the cops in the station so nonchalant about it?

I would put TA into the first category. With the (not so recent) buffs to TA it is a great set for soloing and teaming. FF is better than it used to be for soloing with the 2 -res powers now, but I don't have much experience playing it since the buffs that happened in page 5, so I don't know if it should be in the first or second category. I would probably lean towards Traps as a primary if you want to solo. There are no teammate only buffs that would be pointless. My BR/Traps Corruptor is the only toon that I have soloed a GM with. Traps/water or Traps/Dark would be good for solo since both of those secondaries have self heals. Water gets Dehydrate earlier than Dark gets Life Drain, so probably point to Water.