Onlyasandwich

Hover is far superior for precision control in flight, though combat jumping does remove a little of the slipperiness from flight powers. I would vote hover for sure. You can also use jump pack for a speed boost when needed so slotting hover for speed is less necessary.

Thank you for clarifying the reason it doesn't work. I did get that it would only last for 10 seconds on a toggle. The plan was to use it as a sort of quick defense boost to softcap when needed in a tight spot, but we'll have to do without I suppose! I wonder if they excluded these toggles for balance reasons, or some coding limitation that would otherwise force power boost type effects to enhance the damage resist alongside defense, even if power boost isn't flagged to enhance resist to begin with. Oh well! Who needs softcap when you have perma-dom, right?

I've been running my lovely Grav/Energy build and having a great time. It finally came time for me to slot up Frozen armor and - whoops, Power Up doesn't seem to be affecting it at all! Was there a memo I missed about it not affecting epic defense armors at all? It affects my pool defense powers just fine. I checked in Combat Attributes and its S/L contribution doesn't move a millimeter even for a second with Power Up on. Mids is showing it boosted of course. Fairly disappointing if this is by design - perhaps an oversight?

Dominate is the closer. Otherwise just spam the other stuff as it's up. You want dominate to benefit from all the -res possible, so set it up with the others first.

I am partial to my own build, but @beradical's build in that thread is similar and should be able to accomplish AV/GM soloing feats as well. After a certain point, it comes down to personal preference. It is the character you are playing, after all! Some people really want an actual travel power - my build here does not have one. If you don't care at all about exemping, you might be more inclined to drop radiation infection, though it does come a bit in handy for AV/GM soloing. Here is my build for reference:

Welcome to the non-granite life! It's a good one. I'm a big fan of Stone out of Granite - the cosmetic options are certainly superior, and you can still build a really solid tank with layered defense and resist, as you have shown here. That being said, it can take a bit of inf investment to make the most out of it. From a power choice perspective: You have no mez protection. This is a non-starter. Was there a particular reason you didn't choose rooted? Obviously it provides your mez protection, but it is also a full 1/3rd of your DDR, and DDR is hard to come by in stone. The regen is a nice bonus as well. Note - Rooted doesn't "root" you to the ground any longer, nor does it affect your speed. No mud pots! Not only is this a beautiful power (it would look really good tinted to look like lava if you're going for that theme), but Taunt auras are a fairly essential part of any Tanker's kit, and its aoe damage adds up very well over time. Personally, I would drop tactics and physical perfection to pick these up. Super speed would be an option as well, depending on your tolerance for using Ninja Run or something instead. You especially won't have any need for Physical perfection if you are going Cardiac core. Incinerate is actually pretty good. Fire melee could use some love, but this is your best ST power. It has better DPA than Greater Fire Sword with the same slotting, and recharges faster for better rotation. If you are choosing it for the theme of big fire swords all the time, that's fine. From a slotting perspective, there is a much that I would do differently, though a lot of the foundations are really solid. Rather than getting super granular, I'll plot out a few basic principles I have in mind. I wouldn't worry about chasing any additional fire/cold defense or resistance beyond what you get through the natural course of slotting. Most of these attacks have a S/L component, so are defensively handled already, you will still have modest baseline resist, and they are also relatively rare, especially cold. Ideally you would have your Might of the Tanker ATO proc in one of your most often used ST attacks. It is only going to be up in the least useful situations, and rarely even double stacked if you have it in Fire sword circle. Fire sword would be a much better place for this. You are over capped for S/L resist. I would recommend shooting for ~80%, giving the Might ATO proc room to make up the difference. This would free you up to focus slotting priorities elsewhere like extra damage procs or other useful benefits. It looks like you dropped in a few -KB IOs, potentially in the interest of replacing part of your mez protection. Just pick up rooted instead - this is a waste. The same holds true of the overwhelming force set. You would be better served slotting BoF for maximum damage/procability, or a even a purple set for bonuses. There is certainly more to be said here, but these are some initial observations. If you'd like to examine for comparison, here is my own non-granite Stone/Ice build. There are some similar powers, though one less aoe, so a lot of the secondary slotting could go more or less 1:1. My build has slightly lower E/N defenses, and fewer hard-capped resists, but is within striking range to hard-cap with ATO procs. I use Barrier when the extra bit of defense may be needed, which so far has been never. I hope you find my input useful!

Think of ignite as a single target boss burner that can sometimes be leveraged as an aoe. It really shines on hard targets, and AR doesn't otherwise have stellar single target damage.

If you want a challenge as well as a very powerful character, I recommend any controller with the storm secondary, but building without defense bonuses in mind. You could of course go for softcap, but relying instead on your many powerful controls and positioning abilities is interactive and fun. I recommend storm secondary because it has outstanding damage and lots of extra tools to pull out proactively and tame the situation. For AV soloing ability, illusion may be most ideal, but lacks the immobilize that helps you better leverage aoes. Other primaries will excel in other content, but will be more restricted in what AVs they can solo. My personal favorite is fire/storm.

I pulled the old patch notes. Looks like it's just for controllers and Doms! This would imply that epics don't get the same treatment. Still good stuff to know. :D

They didn't change it based on what sets have knockdown, they did it across the board. The idea was to keep those kd reliant controllers from feeling useless just because a teammate threw out an immobilize.

Yes, they changed this back a while ago. The stats for the controller immobs look the same as far as kb and ku mag goes, but they do indeed still allow knockdown to happen. I'm guessing the epics may be the same. If a troller uses aoe immob and tosses ice patch, ice patch still does its work.

Have you tested this? I know that the controller aoe immobilizes were changed to allow KD to happen, even though they protect from KB. I'm not certain if they updated epic immobs as well.

You weren't kidding! I did my respec tonight and got to play with it on some good missions - ran Black Scorpion with a team. I can't imagine life without it now. TP Target +Singy is indeed mandatory for optimal fun and performance. It gave me an excuse to pick up combat teleport as well, which I'm always wanting anyhow.

You convinced me! Goodbye fighting pool. I went for Frozen Armor rather than an epic resist, so may be squishier for sure than your build overall. I did manage to maintain softcap on S/L though, so perhaps that will be enough in concert with controls. Can't wait to login and respec later to try this out!

For you lovely people who have been working through this particular combo, I would love your input on my latest iteration. I was really struggling to find a way to work teleport target into the build. I already had 4 pools. Speed, Fighting, and Sorcery are pretty integral to the build, so Flight seems the only viable drop. I'm not 100% certain if it is worth sacrificing a lotg and an early-game unique defense IO mule in hover, not to mention cheap-running combat maneuverability. I can still fly, at least. The idea here is to have S/L defense with a strong baseline, and high enough that Power Up will push me beyond softcap on demand. The primary line of defense is of course the controls and singularity, but this is the slotting goal at least. I also happen to be a big proponent of recharge resistance as well. My dream would be to keep these same basic power choices and build a stronger baseline of ranged defense as well. My last build tried to shore up ranged where possible, but this is harder to balance without hover while preserving my damage/proc slotting. I ended up bailing on any semblance of caring about ranged defense here to optimize the core goals, with the philosophy that it's not worth focus unless I can achieve ~32 or more.

I've been agonizing over this a bit myself! My current Grav/Energy build is pretty tight on powers, and has already dipped into four pools. I just created a new build where I drop Hover in favor of teleport target. I hate missing out on the extra lotg and more affordable in-combat maneuverability, not to mention the earlier slotting opportunity to defense uniques. Do you think tp target is enough of a game changer with Singularity to make such sacrifice?

If you are juicing enough recharge for perma-dom, It doesn't honestly need a lot of attention. I just threw a couple Winter ATOs in there for the set bonus and some incidental recharge. It's up every ~28 seconds, which is good. Rain powers in general aren't that proc-friendly, so I ended up siphoning all of the procs I had in there at first for other purposes. I just got Singy myself, and oh boy is this build fun! Just wormholing stuff onto Singy when solo while Enflame burns down the house, or combining spawns with wormhole when on teams, going to town with my big controls. I am very happy to have this guy as my first dom!

+1 for a classic! Fire/elec further optimizes the already outstanding fire ST damage with some some beautiful punches. Shocking grasp and charged brawl are stand-outs in my experience. Force of Thunder can be an interesting "get off my back" KD with the -KB proc slotted. It animates quickly compared to other similar powers. I am personally not a big fan of Thunderstrike, but you may like it. I find it a bit cludgy getting stuck in that long animation in melee. /Temp puts on a really good show for Blapping as well. End of Time is a worthy pbaoe, and Future pain is indeed very painful. You also get a more generally usable control power and a grab bag of other little buffs. Although it's not the most popular, I give /Ninja a good nod as well. Blinding powder once procced with the purple confuse proc is almost like having Seeds of Confusion in your pocket, and the melee attacks were significantly buffed in the last pass. Honestly though, Good old Fire/fire works really well. You aren't gaining any real ST melee power here, but Fire/ doesn't really need it as much as other sets. You also get a lot of passive damage just standing in melee range, and hot feet is pretty minimal scatter with rain of fire blasting down from the sky. Everything is slowed very nicely while roasting alive and running away from you. I don't really recommend Combustion or even Fire sword circle. With modest recharge slotting, they won't factor into your aoe chain from the primary, and they are suboptimal compared to all of the primary aoes.

I suppose you were still working on further iteration as I typed! I opened the latest version listed in OP at the time. I'm just not super impressed by the 3 slot bonus from Spider's bite, so am not certain that splitting to double dip on it is all that impactful. The global toxic proc is of course amazing, and you want it living somewhere for sure. Follow Up can be slotted to maintain nice recharge and actually be one of your best DPA powers overall, all the while buffing your chain! Here is my F/U slotting in my own more melee focused Fortunata for comparison - it does 332 damage with musculature radial and no other buffs active, without ignoring other aspects as well. Bear in mind that if you want to hit F/U as much as possible, you are dedicating valuable animation time in your cycle for it, and it will benefit you even more to maximize its damage with procs: Superior Blistering Cold Acc/Dam Superior Blistering Cold Acc/Dam/Rech - Note that the recharge resist is also very nice! Gladiator, ToD, and Mako Bite procs. Mako Dam/End - this could be dropped or switched for whatever. I just liked it to round out damage enhancement and end usage.

I like the new build much more, and the same criticisms don't really apply. I think the OF KD proc is a neat idea in spin, though I would personally prefer to slot the Fear ATO proc here instead. I would consider switching the Dominion set to Spin as a five slot including the fear proc, with a sixth as damage proc or whatever. If you want to preserve your recharge from the lost oblit bonus, you could swap decimation into TK blast instead. This also gives you the build-up proc in your ST chain. The fifth ATO in follow-up is marginal in utility. I would rather see more proccing here, and even an extra from a slot elsewhere. Follow-up is used so much it's worth giving it extra attention even if it is not a totally optimal PPM power. Personally I find it really nice to have at least one of the aoe controls as a fallback "reset" in case I get overwhelmed with debuffs. This is certainly a personal playstyle thing. Overall looks strong!

Apologies, @Harakh. I was looking at the latest thread entry, rather than the OP.

A few basic observations upon first review: You can save a slot by dropping the PM proc in Aid other or Spirit Ward. It works 100% of the time regardless of whether a power is in use. I love Rune myself, but is it a worthy investment in the Sorcery pool overall here? The mez protection doesn't help, and you have heavily slotted it for very marginal return. New Rune doesn't benefit from recharge enhancement, and the set bonuses you achieve are marginal. Overall, I'm not sure what you are really gaining here versus doubling down on fighting pool, thus buffing your other positionals and giving you more a constant S/L resist boost. I get that you have played around with more traditional builds, so probably have your reasons for taking the power in the first place. If you do keep it, I would just leave it as a one-slot wonder. You could drop the steadfast +def in it to save a slot, leaving only the glad +def in Indom will. I like your general attack slotting and prociness. It would be very worthwhile to put one of these saved slots into confuse for the 5% ranged bonus. As you mentioned, Fortunatas are lacking in DDR. This helps pad for defense cascades, and gives you more baseline for incarnate content. The other extra slots from leaving Rune as a one slot wonder could easily go to Mystic flight with a zephyr set for extra positionals, more love for tactical training, leadership, extra procs in tentacles, more aid self healing, and rounding out TK blast with a proc.

@nebber Definitely has the right idea! For sonic, you want some type of proccy "big punch," and Dominate or another proccy hold is a great way to leverage the stacking resist debuffs you are throwing out. We had a really great discussion with a few interesting builds linked here in this thread:

Typically just prior to Fulcrum Shift - just a quick poomp to mez out the minions and diminish alpha. I used to run oppressive gloom and stack it for full lockdown, but am a bit too mobile managing /dark cones for this to be worthwhile, so dropped OG. I do think it could use a little something for sure, but there are definitely worse stuns out there. If you have a reasonable source of stacking, it does the trick, and mitigating minion level damage is not worthless given the cooldown and fast animation. I'm actually pretty okay with it only being a minion only mez. Maybe an accuracy increase, and/or increased slotting opportunities (add some damage, maybe tohit debuff) - this would both give it a bit of extra up-front utility on non-minions, and give you a chance to proc it out if so desired.

It does have a fast animation and exists in the secondary, making it infinitely better than thunderclap. I actually like it okay on my kin/dark. One more purple set to slot as well.