Laevateinn

Not at all true. Spike damage helps you kill troublesome targets quickly and by frontloading all your best DPA attacks. Wiping out most of the lieutenants/minions in a single AoE volley helps reduce the damage you take. The huge ToHit buff allows you to land hits when heavily debuffed and end fights that you otherwise couldn't because every other hit is whiffing. Spike damage is especially important for Blasters who usually can't stand there to trade hits. Even if you're playing a softcapped whatever, when fighting defense debuffing enemies you'll usually want to kill things quick before cascading defense failure can set in.

Holds are better than stuns because 1) the mezzed enemy does not move, 2) holds are more prevalent and more easily stackable and 3) they provide the ability to slot hold IO sets. 1) is a minor benefit since a single-target mez will not cause AoE scatter. While I haven't tested it personally, the description on the enhancement screen implies that you can slot Hold IO sets in it regardless of whether you have Swap Ammo. If true, then 3) doesn't apply since you don't need to take Swap Ammo to get the benefit. That leaves 2). There's a benefit, no doubt, but is this what you'd call "incredibly" useful?

Wrong. Ranged/Aoe and Energy/Negative/Fire/Cold tends to be pretty cheap to get, while Melee and Smashing/Lethal is comparatively expensive (and even then there are usually budget options). Kinetic Combat is expensive because it's a huge S/L defense bonus for just 4 slots, making it incredibly slot-efficient and well worth the huge pricetag it commands.

I can't find a source right now, but I believe the actual quote is that content will not be balanced around IOs. I don't believe the dev team ignores IOs when balancing powersets against each other. Like you said, it's lazy game design and I doubt Paragon Studios is that bad.

The problem with PvPIOs isn't the price, it's the fact that supply is intermittent and very low. You may not be able to buy one even if you can afford it.

Don't forget that two-thirds of the ATs have access to DP also have access to buff/debuff sets, and in this game, there is nothing as hideously overpowered as stacking buff/debuff sets. 8 petless MMs would be a formidable force because they all have buff/debuff secondaries. I predict that many of the "My all-DP team just obliterated X content!" posts, such as yours, in addition to having the usual flaws attributed to anecdotal evidence, will have an even more skewed perspective because you are not seeing DP performance in a vaccum. You are seeing stacked buff/debuffs making up for DP's sub-par performance.

I'm a big proponent of "moderate defense, extreme recharge". What I don't quite understand is how you seem to have gone for a mix of S/L, melee and ranged defense, though. Dropping the ranged defense in particular would free up some valuable room to get more recharge.

Your Aim is underslotted and your Consume will have trouble hitting without any accuracy.

Flares is underslotted. As a 1.125 damage mod AT you want to try and get ED-capped (or close to it) damage on all attacks. Drop some other attacks to free up slots if you must. Fewer well-slotted attacks > many badly-slotted attacks.

Posiblast overdoses on damage and is anemic on recharge. Standard slotting, if you are using level 50 Posiblasts, is 5 Posiblasts (dropping either the Dam/Range, Acc/Dam or Dam/End depending on the power) and 1 recharge common IO.

3-slotting health isn't worth it. You'd be better served foregoing the HP bonus for a miracle unique.

Don't 6-slot Armageddon; the 6th slot bonus isn't worth it and will cost you another 200 to 400 million and placed in Inferno the proc won't fire often, if at all. Actually if you want to invest in a purple set I recommend Apocalypses since you're already at the limit for 6.25 recharge bonuses.

Hot Feet is an attack, therefore it should be slotted like one: accuracy, damage, endurance.

You really want a -KB IO somewhere, or you risk being knocked out of position when aiming PBAoE attacks.

You're not stacking substantial defense bonuses of any sort so drop the Lockdown in Char and replace it with 4 Basilisk's Gaze for the 7.5 recharge bonus.

Instead of Burn I would take Fire Sword Circle. Burn has a lot of problems, mainly that it's a tiny-radius DoT that does Tanker scale damage. FSC is slower, but does heavy burst damage (it's almost the same damage as Fire Breath) and has a larger (10ft vs 8ft) radius.

Note that if this is a levelling build you will not have enough slots to take and slot 6 attacks before level 20. If you have not made the character, I strongly recommend delaying 1 AoE to your 20s or beyond. Fire Breath + Ball is enough AoE for the low-level game.

My example. You have about 10% more recharge, FSC instead of Burn and are about 2 hitpoints short of the HP cap with all accolades, a Miracle unique, Flares and Hot Feet have better damage enhancement and better recharge in fireball. I gave you a range enhancement in Fire Breath (the increased cone size is very noticeable). You also have a -KB IO (very useful since you do not want to be pushed out of place when positioning your PBAoE attacks). This build will cost you about 2bn, which is comparable to your earlier build. I removed the Ribosomes which should save you a few hundred million. The most expensive pieces are the Apocalypse (minimum 1.2bn for the set) and the Obliterations, so if you're looking to cut costs I would start there. I finish with my customary observation that you can use level 35 IOs for most of this build while sacrificing very little performance.