Onlyasandwich

New mids doesn't do text export anymore. Screenshot will be lacking in detail but i can share later.

I agree that it is actually pretty great! I just don't find the trade-off in ST damage to be worth it for my own playstyle, and the effects don't feel very impactful. I definitely acknowledge that it is a strong set.

Welcome to dom land, Strider! I did a rough up based on my own Electric dom. Bear in mind my build is geared towards maximum offense potential, and does not pursue any softcap defenses other than incidental easy/large bonuses. This build relies purely on aggressive use of controls. Fortunately Electric has a very reliable set to work from! You do have a set of modest resists to fall back on if needed. A softcap build may be an easier intro into Dom land, but since you are quite experienced in other ATs, I trust you'll get the hang of the dom style quickly. dominator strider elec dark.mbd This build is designed to operate in melee range. Night Fall isn't actually bad at all as dom cones go, but I find it a bit awkward to pop in and out of melee range for the animation time. Some highlights: Perma-dom (does rely on hasten). Slow immunity. Very heavy proc focus. /Dark has some of the best ST powers out there, especially when procced. You'll melt bosses easily, debuffing them all the while. The playstyle is usually to open with Synaptic or Paralyzing if up, otherwise static field. Chain Fences as you approach, then dive into melee to plow things down. You also have power sink, which not only acts as an end backstop, but an alternate follow-up to your opener. You can pop Gather Shadows, dive in, Power Sink, Fences, and keep Fences cycling to halt recovery and keep them drained. Gather Shadows is good to weave into your attacks generally as you go if safety is a concern, as it buffs your -tohit. Can also pop it before Paralyzing to ensure a longer lockdown window. Make sure you keep static field down as you go, as it is key to your survival. Go ahead and spam on cooldown, as it comes back quickly enough, and the +dam ATO is present, allowing you to keep a couple stacks up on the side. No matter what your opener, the mob tends to bottom out on end pretty quickly even if not using power sink. You'll find that tougher fights tend to sort of stabilize in this way, allowing you time to approach things at your own pace. The weakness of this approach is if an ambush catches you out. Keep a keen eye for over aggro, and drop a static field or emergency aoe hold to stay on your feet. Other power considerations: Gremlins is good on paper, but the little guys tend to die. You might consider swapping them for Life Drain if you're hurting for the heal. Life drain is suboptimal DPA compared to the other attacks even procced out, but a useful heal. If you do this, I might steal a slot from Health or Stamina to round out the 6 slot so you can maximize procs, damage, and enhance the healing a bit as well. If you don't care about the sapping strategy, consider picking up Surge of Power as a one slot wonder in place of Power Sink. You can mule one of the res +def uniques here for an extra slot, and you get another pretty effective emergency button. It also makes you feel like pure electricity!

@Galaxy Brain and others have broken them down for other AT's, but I'm not finding a handy up to date ranking. All blast sets are at least competent, so in my mind theme is always first, so pick what you think is fun! That being said, my own super loose first thoughts: Really awesome stand-outs: Ice Blast. Great DPA, highly proccable, allowing Defenders to reach stronger damage numbers. One of the best nukes around. Holds and slows help you protect yourself and others. Fire Blast. Still good here for the same reasons Blasters love it. King of damage due to high DPA attacks both ST and aoe. No utility to speak of. Won't disappoint: Dark Blast. Loads of utility with some good proc opportunities. Cones are not ideal for every primary's preferred positioning, and lacks some up front punch. However, nothing defends better while providing good damage over time. Sonic. Debuff city! Stack that -res and go to town solo or on a team. aoe sleep makes a safe soloer, though pretty mediocre aoe damage. I could break this down in super granular ranked detail set by set, but the above are in my view those that are worth calling special attention to. Others have their own special tricks and strengths of course, and my own characters use any and all according to theme. Many would put water blast as a stand-out, but I find myself a bit disappointed by it. The aoe is above average, but ST feels like a noodle and the set as a whole just doesn't feel very punchy. The little heal is nice for sets otherwise lacking, but the Defender ATO covers that just fine for me even without. Without putting them in any particular order, my impressions of the others: Archery. Fun nuke, smooth aoe chain. Lethal damage can be rough at times, and ST chain relies on Blazing arrow, which is pretty slow. Assault Rifle. Same lethal challenges here, though some diversity from Ignite and flamethrower. Every time I make this on a Defender I just wish I were playing my AR blaster, though. Above average aoe. Beam Rifle. The spread mechanic is a bit of fun, and the Nuke is a blast. Overall a great set that I would place higher than many, but doesn't stand out quite to the degree of the top performers. Dual Pistols. Actually one of my favorite sets! Relies heavily on procs to make up damage. Good for sets that like being in your face. Electrical Blast. Nothing bad to say these days! A great set that doesn't care if you are up close or far away. Lacks a third tier blast, but Tesla Cage and Voltaic make up for this to a degree. The chain mechanic is sort of incidental. Energy blast. Looks great, feels good to play, great with heavy FFback abuse. Psychic blast. Pretty okay. The wub wub projectiles are a bit slow and it has some clunky animations. Nuke feels great, and some sort of useful debuffs and soft controls. Radiation blast. Highly proccable, great "in your face" set. Pretty solid secondary effect. This used to be defender's best comparison to fire blast before proliferation, though its animations aren't approaching Fire's superior DPA. Seismic blast. Meteor is super fun! Some people don't like to wait for it to fall. Otherwise good DPA, strong theme, with a nice dose of soft control. Storm Blast. Demands your attention to really get any advantage from its special mechanic. If not taking advantage, damage is a bit soft. Could be workable on a less "busy" primary. Pretty end intensive with satisfying visuals. Though it takes setup, surprisingly good mitigation tools.

Yes - I amended my reply already above : D I'm very confident that Gather Shadows would not extend the DoT on Confounding, as it is a separate effect from the stun, and not tied to something power boost interacts with in that way. If you find otherwise it would be an interesting synergy! The small damage boost would come into play of course.

Symphony on a controller is very much like playing a dom, but with your blasts and controls rolled into one package. I really recommend giving it a shot! The cones line up easily at range, and every control in your kit can be procced or enhanced to do respectable damage. No need to leave your primary for both aoe and ST damage. Focusing on primary powers heavily also gives your Reverberant more fun things to copy, making it more useful. Most any secondary would work. /Dark combines well with anything, and would be tremendous if you find it thematically appropriate. You might enjoy having Combat Teleport for quick pops in/back to hit soul absorption, but otherwise everything can be thrown out at range with your Symphony cones. The strong +def from this secondary provides a great baseline for very flexible proc slotting in your Symphony powers. You can achieve meaningful defense without sacrificing damage in this way.\ Edit: Doop! I thought I was in the controller forum - silly me. To amend my statement, I think Symphony is great as above, but offers more to a controller. A dom will be more involved in their secondary if feeling blasty, leaving Reverberant with less to do. You'll also not care quite so much about the damage opportunities that Symphony provides - this is more of a game changer for a controller. As for doms, Gravity is a favorite of mine, and one that got me into doms! Wormhole is great fun of course, but the key is Singy. I use TP ally and enflame, with a -KB IO in Singy. In this way, I have an easily recastable opener ready at hand basically all the time, and it's on fire to boot. Doms have a high ranged damage modifier, which Enflame goes off of, so you are uniquely placed to leverage its heat. Singy keeps them knocked down and distracted while they burn and you unleash whatever form of hell you like. /Dark is a great form of hell, of course. My own is Grav/Energy, but anything that works with your theme will do.

You'll have much better luck in the controller forum. First, search existing threads and you're bound to find quite a few, as this is a popular combo.

Looks like a really solid build! I like your plan of using Entangle with minimal slotting on a proc focus. The build has a really healthy recharge total as well, while still reaching range defense softcap, and also devoting good attention to a few proccable powers. The only slight question I'd have is end. With fly off, you're running a 1.93/s surplus, which is on the line of sustainability. It will be hard to go all out without outside support from inspirations, team buffs, or incarnates, though you can certainly pace yourself and manage. Since you're a bit over softcap, and not really meaningful close to incarnate softcap, I'd consider stealing a couple slots from one of the 6 slot ranged defense IO sets (probably the one in Fly Trap). Good targets for these slots being: Health Uniques, a bit of extra stamina slotting, another recharge in HT, a ribo in Dark Embrace, Darkest Night extra slot for the Recharge bonus, Kismet (Soul drain is not perma, and +3's are not at capped hit chance without it up), Soulbound buildup proc in either Fly trap or Seer, Proc in Dark oblit, or resistance enhancement in Shadow fall. Personally I'm not huge on Spirit tree, and would rather have my Panacea in health so its effect isn't so conditional. If it were my own build, I'd swap it for Vines and drop a 5 slot of the purple hold set. You're still only at 4 10% rech bonuses, so would benefit, and Vines is a nice button to have in your back pocket.

Power boost buffs deflection/insulation to incredible levels. This persists for the shield duration, even once pb wears off, allowing this to be effectively perma. While pb is up, it buffs dispersion as well.

It provides above average defense compared to pool options, substantial exotic resist, and stealth as a bonus. Not to mention the outstanding slotting options as @Frozen Burn highlighted! Stand out power in a strong set.

~.75 - 1 defense to all per slot is a pretty good return compared to most set bonuses when you're chasing softcap, especially on an AT without a solid defense foundation. Often such builds are muling a whole power mostly for the 3.75 defense bonus that comes with it. Ideally one leverages this in powers where the enhancement value itself is also a primary investment, but sometimes this aspect is marginal compared to the defense bonus. Absolutely the Uniques and pursuing defense bonuses from sets that usefully enhance other powers is the first step. However, you inevitably start looking for low-hanging fruit to round things out, and 1-2 extra slots in Weave is often the efficient answer.

Where is sentinel? I think storm blast is uniquely suited to the AT. Storm blast benefits from being able to focus on the blasts to leverage storm cell and c5's special mechanic. Without this, damage feels on the softer side. Sents can just toggle up defenses and blast away. Damage scales are now strong with the sent buffs as well. Blasters want something a bit punchier, and if playing optimally will be spending a good bit of their animation time on the secondary. Def/corr have their own distractions with their excellent support sets. My own choice was storm/rad, which provides some extra aoe. Here's my Sent build for context. I colored the Rad powers white to look all cloudy. : ) Sentinel (Storm Blast - Radiation Armor).mbd

I have eleventy thousand billion. I email myself not to store inf, but to brag to myself about my own glory.

Weave is definitely worth an extra slot or two if you are building defense in earnest. It has a better shot per defense return than most IO bonuses you can chase outside the uniques.

I've been iterating on this a bit, and came to an interesting compromise that might make sense. I've dropped leadership for stealth. This keeps my lotg's, but creates an accuracy problem with the loss of tactics. However, this is mitigated by a few things: Most powers are still at max hit chance anyhow. Those that aren't will be helped by -def from the primary. The Gaussian in Forge will proc nearly every time, and I can pre-cast it on stoney to guarantee a hit when needed. This is useful for personal damage generally speaking as well. The powers that are short on hit chance (really just heat ex) are mostly used in longer encounters, where the debuffs are likely to be in effect. This build also runs lighter on end, and has the extra utility of personal and team stealth when needed, as well as of course the use of quicksand. Creative slotting still manages to just eke out S/L softcap. Rune takes the place of Earth's embrace as my emergency power, and also frees up a mule slot so the Gaussian fits in. Now I have a reactive tool if I get mezzed as well. Controller - Earth Control - Thermal Radiation corrected arcane stealth vers.mbd

Plant is really the whole deal by itself. I vote go dominator! Plant/fiery amazing.

For sure! Maybe even just half the cast time would be enough for a slam dunk. I guess it's still an overall good power. The fact that I'm waffling simply means there are interesting choices to be made.

Appreciate it, I have and will! Thank you all for taking the time to review. It's always interesting to me to see how different people value certain powers. For context, I do already have CJ, and my power pools are maxed out. I have worked out a separate build that drops leadership for stealth. This maintains the # of lotgs, but loses a couple percentage points of defense due to the lost opportunity to slot rectified reticle in tactics. There aren't other low slot bonuses for S/L to sub in. With incarnate, most powers are still at max hit chance, but heat exhaustion and melt armor will rely on all the earth def debuffs to max out. This second build does have the benefit of modestly less end consumption as well. Stealth is also pretty useful. Note that, in order to maximize procs and slotting in general, the current build relies on Vigor Core, tactics, and kismet for most of its hit chance beyond native power slotting. Other +acc bonuses would require leaving a ton of damage potential on the table. Just gonna roll as is for now! I don't mind at all dropping out of flight to hit stalagmites. It's easy enough to pop with my binds, and has not been an issue.

I definitely like the power, and have enjoyed its benefits on other characters. The question here is more where it stands in comparison to other tools available, and what I could potentially swap, or if indeed a swap is worthy for my build. At higher levels for me the utility is mostly in its ability to get mobs to glob up more easily with creative engagement. At times the -defense will even still be pretty relevant. However, the present build is pretty tight! Thus far, the considerations are: Earth's Embrace. A bit dubious, as this power provides substantial staying power for things that get past my defense. Vengeance. Vengeance is actually super strong as we all know when the use case arises. Beyond that, losing the lotg would hurt. Swap away from leadership entirely and see if I can sort out my accuracy without tactics. Would likely pick up a pool with two lotg mules (flight, stealth). Not sure how this would work out - may dig on it later. QS helps with accuracy of course, but it is very much less than ideal to rely on it across the board given the animation time. I want my openers to hit reliably. Something else? Not a high stakes question, in any case! The build will work fine without.

That is just the toggled on FFback procs. I only have 55% global recharge outside of hasten and FFback.

But muh lotg! An idea worth considering.

I've been revisiting an old Earth/therm build lately, and have come to the point where I think I want to squeeze Quicksand in. On paper, it seems largely redundant with the hard controls Earth has at hand, and the -def is covered in other powers as well. However, there are a few points I see in its favor: Less obtrusive than cages on teams where the visual effects can be annoying. Auto-hit (not a huge advantage with proper slotting, though some situations where useful). Another location based aoe I can initiate while out of LoS. Casting it at the foot of the nearest mob in a group creates nice clumping, allowing me to more efficiently follow up with my other aoes. What are your thoughts? Do you consider it a must have on your Earth? If so, what other uses have you found for it beyond the above? What would you consider dropping in the attached build in favor of it? I'm thinking Earth's Embrace would be an easy drop, as it would be 1:1 for slotting. Both are one slot wonders. However, the ~300 extra max HP and occasional heal provide some beef to my defense based build that may give vital time to heal back up when something makes it through. Definitely on the edge here! Controller - Earth Control - Thermal Radiation corrected arcane.mbd This build's priorities: S/L defense softcap. High recharge through combination of set bonuses and FFback incorporated in both aoe and ST chain. (note for the sake of totals that FFback powers are toggled on, so detoggle for accuracy on global recharge) Spammable ST and aoe chain. High slow resist. Pay attention to /Therm's team support tools (give love to shields, heals) Proccy proc proc where I can proc a meaningful proc or two. Prawk. In an effort to avoid Ageless and maximize proc potential, this build does rely on Vigor Core for accuracy. End management is tight pre-incarnate, but workable with good management. On an unrelated note, I'd love to swap Arcane bolt for Hurl boulder for thematic reasons. However, I just can't get behind a 2.5 second animation lock for the payoff. Arcane also comes ahead in damage pretty firmly. Do you actually enjoy boulder in your build?

I don't typically run AE all that much myself. If I'm stress testing a build I'll just type in "smash" or "fire" and see what comes up, and pick from the results. Nothing wrong with mitigating the KB of Rise! However, I had it as is for the mule slot on the PM absorb proc. Typically if I'm rezzing the KB isn't that big of a deal, or even desirable.

I agree that jolting is solid single target. However, what controller primary would you identify as truly worse in damage once procced out? Ice is a contender, but now has good proc options for cold snap and a more survivable pet that will actually stick around to apply its damage. I do think that electric has enough damage to to get by just fine, and is a good set overall. However, I'd still rank it very low compared to others based on primary damage potential.

To my earlier point, this would make an outstanding dom! Electric is a great control set, and only better in the hands of a perma dom. Dark is also one of the better assault secondaries. Damage will be very high indeed when properly slotted.