Guero

Argh, say it ain't so. I've been trying to find an Elec/ that I can stand to slog through, and thought /Storm would be it... what don't you like about it?

That's why you roll a Fire/FF and PL yourself

As for TA, *I* think it's a great secondary, but I can see why more people don't take it/try it for a while then scrap it. When a /TA gets into the mid-20s and sees that by that point other secondaries already have 'defining' powers (AM, Speed Boost, etc), it's hard to get excited about the prospect of unlocking PGA or Acid Arrow.

That looks like exactly what I was after... problem with set IOs is you can easily get wrapped up in thinking you need 6 of them - any of them - rather than a little from here & some generics to round it out.
Tell me about it; I was soloing Snaptooth night before last, and had him pinned in the corner with a sliver of health left. Blind-SW-Nemesis Staff should take him down, but the Staff misses and all the sudden a pillar of green numbers goes shooting out of his head, and he's at 1/4 health now just as my PA blinks out of existence. Not cool.

Funny you mention that; the whole reason I'm looking to get 'more better' at Blind/SW is because the Vet attacks are so sporadic for me. I am going to give some serious thought to adding Air Sup... I've never taken it before but Ill Sonic is a loose enough build that Air Sup would fit right in, and may help me drag Phantasm into melee range, so he can get some benefit Disruption Field.

Hrm, Air Sup is looking pretty good now that I check it out on City of Data... instantly adds 130 + 30 contained, with Sonic's -Res to cancel out the fact that Smashing is so heavily resisted.

Interesting...

If you're committed to Earth/Storm, you certainly haven't made a bad choice. Not many situations that you can't lock down with that beast.

If you're still open to suggestions, I'd like to put in a good word for Fire/FF. It's not as fast as your typical Fire/Kin but its combination of firepower & durability opens up options for your duo, i.e. your gf doesn't necessarily have to roll a support-bot in order for the team to be successful in what you've described you'd like to do.

I'm not guaranteeing a leisurely stroll through +3 Knives maps or the ability to pimpslap AVs or anything like that, but you'd be surprised at how effective Fire/FF is in farm situations, especially when there's another body there doing actual damage with you, instead of tending to your boo-boos.

If you're ever on Victory, hop over to the wall in Cimerora & you'll likely find my Fire/FF clearing the wall non-stop. Non-stop meaning, if I feel like doing it, I can hop from group to group to group as fast as they can spawn, without ever re-casting my imps, without ever taking a knee, for as long as I can stomach the repetition. Granted, that character is pimped out, but he got that way on his own steam by basically doing the same thing on farmable maps.

Yeah, I know. I took a 9-month break & came back last month, loaded up my main who had ~560m in his pocket when I left, and figured I'd be able to siphon funds from that for my Spines/Regen and my Ill/Sonic... I was surprised to find out that slotting just a handful of powers on my Spines/Regen left me destitute... so now I have to be more careful about what I spend on the Ill/Son.

But anyway... I appreciate your suggestions; I assumed that other people who ran Illusion controllers would have run into the same problem, that being, as an Illusion controller you have two attacks, one with a default recharge of 9s, the other on a 6s timer.

Because of this, you never have endurance issues. But... say you go balls-out and reduce the recharge by half in both attacks. Does endurance become a problem then? Is there a sweet spot on Blind that maximizes the return on Damage & Recharge, wherein neither is pumped to 99.1% enhancement, but moreso in the 80/85 range?

Given that Blind has more set options than SW, maybe there's an approach that makes more sense than laying out 45m for half a set of Decimation and a smattering from Hold & Sleep sets... things like that, I thought would be a good question for the forums. Especially when even middle-of-the-road slotting will run you 50m these days.

In any event, when somebody writes into the boards with a question about AA or Singularity slotting - subjects I'm more familiar with after running Ice & Grav builds for upwards of 5 years - I'm glad my first reaction has never been to call them lazy, because seriously, what kind of response is that? Either you can help or you can't. If you can't, why even chime in?

You could leave it unenhanced? Maybe use the Walk temporary power? Hire a gang of Knives to walk in front of you and toss caltrops in your path?