Laevateinn

I don't farm so I'll just talk about the trials.

Char needs to be slotted for damage. My suggestion is 5 apocs (all but Dam: Superior) + the unbreakable constraint proc. The base hold duration is sufficient for most purposes.

Fire cages needs to be procced out. It accepts a wide range of procs, it has a chance to trigger Reactive interface (chance of fire DoT on all attacks that do at least 1 damage), it has a short recharge and it has the lowest animation time of any controller primary's immobilize. Properly slotted, it is a major component of your aoe damage. Pick and choose 3-4 procs from Gravitational anchor, trap of the hunter, posiblast and the PvPIO set, then frankenslot the rest for acc, endredux and recharge. Also, remember to take the radial interfaces, the core ones do not provide comparable benefit.

Flashfire should have 5 absolute amazements, all but the proc (which is bugged, last I heard). I like a range common in the 6th slot; the default range is only 70ft which means you are at some risk of overshooting when running in to use it. 1 range IO solves this.

Hot feet is underslotted for endredux.

You also need more rech. At a minimum, I would build for enough rech to keep hasten permanent and get flashfire's recharge below 25 seconds; this plus cinders is enough control power to handle 90% of situations in which controller mezzes are still effective.

Only slot enough accuracy to hit +4s at 95% chance. In Mids', go to settings > maths and effects, and set base ToHit to 39. Then, the "accuracy" field in power info will show you the % chance to hit against a +4 enemy for that power. Some people, me included, prefer to slot to hit +3s only on the assumption that the only enemies that will be +4 or higher will be trial AVs like the Avatar of Hamidon. In that case you would set base ToHit to 48 instead.

Defense is important because fire/kin will want to play in melee to leverage the self-buffs. You cannot always rely on team buffs since not every league is tank/support-heavy, other characters are not always around to support you, there is value in being able to take initiative/act independently/initiate combat, and because defense works when you cannot stop to control, debuff or kill everything in sight (Lambda is the classic example). You cannot rely 100% on mezzes either, since trial spawns tend to have a lot of high-ranked enemies; underground trial spawns have 4-6 elite bosses per group, beyond the ability of most non-dominators to effectively mez. Fire specifically also has the problem that IDF summon battle orbs with dispersion bubbles, which counter both your mezzes, so high damage and defense are necessary to survive until you can destroy all the orbs. On an unlimited budget build I would settle for at least 45% defense - trial softcap is 59% but you can make up the rest with inspirations.

The easiest way to get def without compromising on rech is to take one of the APPs that give S/L defense toggles (either stone, ice or scorpion mastery). Stone offers a dull pain clone, a Mag 4 ST hold and additional AoE that also stuns and knocks down enemies. Ice offers Blaster-level aoe damage with ice storm, Hoarfrost and a really good ST blast. Scorp shield gives energy damage as well, which is nice because energy damage is extremely common in trials. Pick whichever you like; I went with scorp shield for concept.

Fire APP does good damage but trying to build for defense on a resist APP while maintaining overall effectiveness is very hard, and I have not been able to produce, nor have I seen a convincing example of such a build.

Last of all, have fun. Properly built and played, fire/kin dominates the battlefield with blaster-level damage, powerful mezzes and formidable team support ability. Enjoy!

It will be a valued character due to being able to output lots of -res, but more challenging than average to play with no ability to floor tohit and little mitigation.

Apoc proc should go in the fastest recharging sonic blast instead of Shout.

There are some things in your build I don't really understand, like the tiny radius oppressive gloom on a ranged squishie.

Defense is valuable and does make a big difference on trials, provided you can get it without sacrificing recharge or other parts of your build (like damage and debuff). But there are ways to live without IO defense if you are alert and good at managing your barrier, clickies, insps etc. The poor man's softcap, if you're willing to splurge a little, would be to buy super purples (+50 defense for 60s each) and eat them as needed.

Yes, but only if you can do so while also maintaining high recharge (to abuse the crashless nuke and maintain perma-DP), not skipping any mandatory powers and not crippling your enhancement values.

Also trials have a lot of exotic damage in general, and energy damage in particular. 45% S/L/E in trials will be a lot more survivable than 60% S/L and 20% everything else. I do not consider pure S/L defense builds worth playing if that is the main mitigation the character has.

Only one side of the story is being told here, so no reasonable conclusion can be reached. Next.

FF/sonic is good in the sense that sonic makes up for one of FF's big weaknesses - no ability to boost the offensive power of the team.

Sonic is a single-target DPS set that also does -res, and the -res debuffs stack with themselves, even the ones from the same power. A good starter attack chain that stacks -res reasonably well and requires very little recharge is shriek > scream > shriek > shout > repeat. High recharge heavily-procced builds can afford to skip shout and still do roughly the same DPS, but FF does not benefit much from high recharge. Screech is a single-target stun that also applies a long-lasting -res debuff relative to other sonic blasts. Howl is your only real aoe and is great for debuffing large groups at once.

From Sonic, at the minimum you can skip the nuke. Nukes that crash end and recovery have very little use in the incarnate era, and detoggle your mez protection. Other powers that may or may not be skippable, depending on playstyle and the power of your build are shockwave (KB, does not do -res, Force bubble is better for positioning), siren song (helps soloing but not really necessary on high def builds), and Aim (every bit of damage helps, but the damage bonus is small on defenders).

Alpha is tricky. I would go with musculature core myself. Although the benefit for your blasts is minimal, it increases the damage of your judgement and lore pets. I would only consider nerve if it means the difference between softcapping all 3 positions (on you, not other players) and not. The bonus is very minimal even at the VR level because defense boosts are on schedule B. To give you some idea of how weak it is, an SR scrapper would only get +3 def to all with VR level nerve boost. If you must take a defense buff, consider waiting for Agility boost in the next issue, which boosts EndMod, rech and defense.

Make sure to take reactive radial interface, which adds a chance to proc fire damage to all your damaging attacks. None of the other interfaces offer comparable benefit in most cases.

Time only displays its full power at 40+, when you have slowed response and chronoshift fully slotted, and perma-farsight to go with them. Try to stick it out until then before giving up on the set.

It is viable, and I would actually recommend it for a new player, since it will teach skills (situational awareness, insp management, resourcefulness, tolerance for frustration) that will let you turn softcapped builds into complete monsters later on. But it won't ever be as powerful as a balanced build that combines both high defense and recharge.

It comes down to whether you can meet your build goals (rech, endurance recovery, defense etc.) without resorting to the alpha slot.

If you can do so, by all means go for musculature. It will buff your judgement and lore pet damage as well.

Note that even with reactive interface, you still won't be mowing down hordes of enemies the way top-tier scrappers/brutes can. My corrs and fenders solo +2/x8, but slowly.

If mez is detoggling DN, clarion destiny will fix that (gives mez protection that can be made permanent).

If you have to chose between defense and recharge, go with recharge. Defense is still worthwhile on high-end builds that can build for it without losing rech, because 1) purple patch reduces your tohit debuffs, and 2) there are situations where you have to take hits without from undebuffed enemies (speedruns, Lambda warehouse/lab, fighting over the aggro cap etc.)

I'm preeeetty sure that TJ actually has a 25ft radius, not 15ft. That's the size of a blaster nuke, enough to cover most spawns. I'll be running it on my endgame ill/time build, which will play almost entirely in melee. Nearly all the time buffs and heals are PBAoE, so I might as well save myself the hassle of running back and forth. It'll also make a nice aggro grabber in case I need to tank in a pinch.

Huge -Tohit that floors the hitchance of everything in sight, massive heals and exotic resists make them impossible to kill. Tarpatch, Reactive radial interface (gives a chance to proc fire damage on every damaging power) and lore pets (the best ones do damage comparable with top-tier melee builds) help to kill things.

Surprisingly hard, now that a lot of sucky powersets and ATs have been directly or indirectly buffed. Fiery aura, EA (buffed twice), elec armor, peacebringers, the list goes on and on. My money's on a mixture of psi blasters and non-Elec/Nin stalkers, and even those two at least do damage. But given that modern top-tier builds can solo endgame TFs, even a team of the worst characters ought to be able to finish with little difficulty.

Life begins at 50+3 and a 15 billion inf build for me these days. The process of getting there is just a really long testing period to see if I like the character.

It's about the destination, not the journey.