BlackSly

Push the Fighting Pool down below Fitness. You won't want to be running Tough/Weave and also blast without Stamina.

Yes.
Well, I use it when there are multiple targets, usually locked down with Stone Cages, but I only look at the damage when I'm down to a boss.
Which is probably the problem, as Rikti bosses have high resists, and also by then I have a lot of DoT attacks upon them, plus the procs in several drop powers, plus Animate Stone hitting on occasion, so it's hard to pick up and determine just Tornado damage.

Thanks. I'm DEFINITELY not seeing two ticks of damage a second, but I didn't run tests to isolate it, and I drop Freezing Rain, so it's probably being hidden by the FR damage spam and only some of Tornado's damage numbers appear on-screen.

There is a KNOCKBACK set that gives 7.5% Recharge with 6 slotting. You lose damage slotting, but end up with the cheapest perma-Dom available.

With Sleep and Confuse sets also very cheap, the only expensive set that you need is Basilisk's Gaze, and I think that may even be skippable since you might max out the 7.5s with the Knockback sets, depending on how many attacks you slot for max knockback.

So you get 5x7.5 from the Energy side (one could be the snipe which also has a 7.5 set in the Snipes rather than the Knockback sets), 5x6.25 from Sleep, Fear, 2xConfuse and one expensive set (either the Pet Recharge in the Patron Pet, Decimation or Entropy in a Ranged Attack, or Positron's in a Ranged AoE).

Whirling Hands gets Obliteration for the 5% recharge. You could go with Stupefy for the Stun, but it's a damage power and unlike the Knockback sets, Stupefy has no damage enhancing.

If you find that you have more than enough Recharge, you drop some Knockback sets out of melee attacks for Crushing Impacts. Bonesmasher needs CI anyhow as it doesn't take Knockback.

Frankly, the main combinations to avoid are attack sets with weapons, paired with other sets that are active during combat. TA/FF is fine, since you don't activate FF powers too much during combat, but TA/Kinetics or TA/Dark would probably be a pain.

I came back recently after a long absence, and while playing a Earth/Storm Troller, it seems to me that the Tornado ticks seem a lot slower than I recall, and it doesn't seem to eat at the health of targets as fast as it used to.

Could be that I noticed the change against Rikti, who may be more resistant than the mobs in my memory. Could also be that I just remember wrong.

Mids still shows a well-slotted 'Nado doing about 800 damage at level 50, that's 27 DPS or so over 30 seconds. The damage I see seems low... is it just lower-level impression versus a resistant enemy type, or did Tornado get its damage lowered in the last year or two?

TIA

Yes. I put 2 Damage and the -Res proc in EQ, and 1 Damage in QS. I also put two Psy Damage procs in Volcanic Gases.

The character isn't a major AoE damage dealer, but it's a whole sight better when running at +0/+4 or higher, and killing spawns with the procs and Stone Cages (and Tornado and LS, but that's based on the secondary), versus just controlling everyone and trying to do it with cycling single-target attacks.

If you're going to put yourself in situations where AoE is really useful, like large teams or soloing against large spawns, it's definitely worth the investment.

Sonic Siphon is too limited with a single debuff. It should add -Dam, or give +Res to the user, or last longer/debuff more. Right now it's too much animation time spent on a single debuff upon a single target.

The AoE Res toggle costs too much. It should be expensive, but not 1.04 EPS, that's way high. .6 to .75 or so would be more appropriate.

Liquefy is a good power, but not such a great power that it deserves its recharge. 360 is too high, 240 would be appropriate. Maybe even 180.

Sonic Repulsion is pretty strange. I don't see enough use of this power. If it were a field that may be knocked you down and maybe back, it would be more useful.

Clarity is not needed as a second option for mez protection. Though removing it at this point is senseless, maybe it could be made into a bit more of an offensive buffage power, adding +Accuracy to the target.

Cage shouldn't be changed on its own. The main thing is that all Phase powers are in most cases useless or even harmful to a party. They should try to work something useful into Phase powers rather than leaving them useless. Maybe even making them "Affect Self Only" effects upon the targets, and giving the target 50% Damage Resistance but still able to be damaged, would be appropriate.

My opinion as a Blaster was always that if I started shooting at something short of an AV, I am responsible for that target. Getting help from a Tank or a Controller is nice, but you cannot depend on it, so don't.

That means that I can't target through the Tank, or the Tank may allow me to aggro the Boss, then he switches to another target to Taunt it... and I waste my knockback attack on the other target while the Boss comes up and leaves a "do not target through others" post-it note on my body.

If you're going to finish what you started, you need to have control of your targeting. That means you target on your own, not through the Tank.

Only time I can see this being changed is with a team with several Sonic Blast characters, where everyone targets through the Tank so that everyone is hitting the same debuffed target. And there it may not matter much as the target will die very fast.

If I were to summon Singularity directly upon an AV, and use Crush to keep the AV next to Singy, would Singy be able to out-aggro me as I attacked/debuffed the AV?

4 slots if you go for the Perf Shifter +End Proc:
Perf Shifter x3 (Proc, End Mod, End Mod/anything)
1 End Mod IO

that caps you, gives you set bonuses for 3 Perf Shifter sets, and gets the proc in.

Going cheaper is 3 slots, all End Mod IOs.

Poisonous Crap Trap?

Another vote for Charged Bolts, especially if soloing. Being able to blast while mezzed is a great asset solo. On a team, likely someone would pull aggro and let you recover, but when solo, it's hard to raise the difficulty when you have fewer options to blast your way out of a mezzy situation.

I'm confused...

I think you want more offense, not more defense.

That means Plant or Fire, and you seem to be leaning towards fire.

Secondary would be Rad, Storm, or TA. You seem to be less interested in Rad or Storm, so I'd go with TA.

Fire/TA and Plant/TA are both fine pairings, and will help add offense to the team. Fire will probably work better as it has the ability to alternate Stuns with the Earth controller, and both will stack with Oppressive Gloom to keep Bosses stunned.

My WM/WP took Maneuvers instead of K/T/W. Lower values, but helps the team out and only takes one power choice. And if I were to add another power, it would be Tactics.

There are some times in CoH when the application of overwhelming firepower doesn't work.

At those times, the solution is obviously to get more firepower

My different take was a Sonic/Sonic Defender named Holy Word.
After all, the angels do a lot of work with word and speech. Exorcisms are done with words and will, not fiery swords and shields.
And being able to macro "bless you" as you fire sonic shields on the party is fitting.

Actually, I just meant that underperforming ATs got buffed. Tanks were hardly underperforming up through I4, and Controllers soloing were considered underperforming until level 32, and they got buffed pre-pets and nerfed post-pets. Khelds received several buffs from their original designs.

And the point was simply that Blasters weren't the only ATs to get buffed, although they are the ones that have so far received the biggest buffs.

Lastly, I don't consider the GDN to be a nerf to any particular AT, though it was a nerf to every AT. It just changed the game in terms of how much defense was available to everyone, rather than being a rebalance to specific ATs.