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Here's a good reason to play an FF defender in trials: Nerve Core Paragon, Clarion Radial, Epiphany, and Power Boost can push your ally shields to 51% def. Anyone that sits within your Dispersion Bubble will be softcapped to the new trial standard of 59% def.

I'd say masterminds of all sorts benefit from this. Even if you don't have ally shields to cast, your pets are now benefiting from the shields that a teammate may not have bothered to give them before.

Most dominators are so self-sufficient that the pets don't patch up any major weakness, compared to a controller, for example, who may really desire the mez protection from the Nemesis support pet. Of course, they may take Clarion to solve that problem as well. So, I suppose, the long answer is that the pet to take varies on from build to build.

On my plant/psi, I'm taking Polar Lights for extra assault and on my earth/fire I'll be taking the Storm Elementals to debuff things outside my Earthquake.

It's not the expense of the pvp IO's that is the primary problem. The bonuses you acquire could be easily found in other sets with fewer slots. More importantly, if you increase the uptime of your Regeneration Aura you won't need to utilize sets that grant regeneration bonuses. Shield Wall, for instance, does not offer bonuses I'd search for on a non-melee character.

As I had mentioned, recharge should be a goal for this build or for most controllers. With faster recharging controls, you can keep your team safer and buff them more often. You could easily have Stalagmites charging 10 seconds faster, Earthquake 15 seconds faster, and Volcanic Gasses with less than 10 seconds downtime. As for Empathy, it is a secondary that benefits significantly from recharge bonuses because it's most useful powers tend to have very long recharge. While your auras can't be made permanent they can be reduce to less than 1/3 downtime. With enough recharge you'll move from keeping Fortitude on one player at all times to keeping it on 4-5 at all times. You could keep Adrenalin Boost on someone at all times.

Now let's look at some of the powers that have been mis-slotted here:

Fossilize: A staple power and Basilisk's Gaze is a good set. However, the biggest appeal comes from the 7.5% recharge. Status resistance and Regen aren't very useful on a controller. You can shore up the essential aspects of the power with an acc/rech/hold from another set or use Hami-O's to enhance acc and damage.

Stone Cages: Gravitational Anchor provides more immobilize duration than you'll need. You can easily drop the Immobilize enhancement from the set and utilize that slot elsewhere.

Quicksand: A nice power, but not one that needs any kind of enhancement beyond its initial slot. Give it an end. reduction or a Hami-O to enhance its defense debuff.

Stalagmites: Another case of a slot to far. The debuff proc here is mostly useless. Most enemies will be stunned for it's duration and the proc will do nothing. Use that slot elsewhere.

Volcanic Gasses: Lockdown's +2 mag proc works wonderfully in this power. Every time the geysers fire, the proc will check to hit the affected enemies. This helps VG stack mag and hold bosses more efficiently. You could easily drop the damage proc in favor of this.

Animate Stone: There's nothing wrong with your slotting, but I prefer Expedient Reinforcements for the recharge bonus.

Fortitude: This power grants the same defense as Force Field's bubbles (11.25% def), however, it provides defense to everything, including psi, in one power with a damage and to hit bonus on top of that. The draw back is that it isn't easy to keep up on several people. However, 4-5 targets is a realistic goal with enough recharge. Squishies, especially those with high damage attacks, greatly appreciate this. I generally put 5 pieces of Red Fortune here to enhance defense and recharge while picking up the 5% recharge bonus.

Recovery Aura: This not only deals with teammates endurance issues, but also your own. While active, it give you 8 times the endurance of Stamina and makes it difficult for anyone to wreck their blue bar. Five slots of Doctored Wounds works well and grants another 5% recharge bonus.

Regeneration Aura: 500% regeneration. That's comparable to Instant Healing from Regen (at 602%), however, this is for everyone in the aura. This will greatly reduced the need for Healing Aura and it's associated endurance cost. I personally frankenslot this to get end mod and recharge though there are some appealing bonuses you could pick up with sets.

Adrenalin Boost: 500% regeneration and 800% recovery with a 100% recharge bonus and resistance to slows. This power is amazing. Have an less-than-sturdy tank? AB and Regen. Aura will keep him on his feet. Blaster loves to nuke? With a single End Mod. IO, you can provide 1100% recovery, enough to overcome the crash from many nukes. Dominator that isn't quite up to perma-dom levels? 100% recharge can shore up that trouble. Unfortunately, you'll only be able to keep it on one person at a time. Deciding who depends on the team composition and players. For slotting, I use 5 Doctored Wounds and an End Mod IO (for nukers as explained above).

Without being able to see the build in Mid's I can still see there quite a few things here that are sub-optimal. With many of these sets, the sixth slot is a waste, both in terms of enhancement and for weak bonuses in the final slot. Gravitational Anchor and Absolute Amazement, for example, are not worth investing a sixth slot into for the toxic resistance. Then there are the extremely rare, e.g. very expensive, pvp IO's.

You've also underslotted your auras and Adrenalin Boost. These are definitely worthy of 4-6 slots. Look into Doctored Wounds. It's a nice set for healing and regen and offers a 5% recharge bonus. Fortitude should be slotted for defense rather than tohit. Your debuffs in Earth will make sure things are being hit. There's another place you can pick up a 5% recharge bonus with Red Fortune.

My basic advice is this: focus on recharge bonuses. When you hit the slot you need to get thatdedicate more slots to the power round it out with what it needs (heal, acc, recharge, etc.) Six slotting with IO's is rarely necessary or even desirable unless the final slot offers a very appealing bonus.

I saw a lot of unhappy customers when this information reached some of my global channels. I forsee more rabbling when it reaches the general public and more casual players.

Some of the chest emblems are so underwhelming that I fail to see why they're locked to begin with. I'd add the same comment for the emotes.

Speaking of knockback, Jolting Chain, in my opinion, should have been a low magnitude knock up, probably .67 mag. For mitigation, it gives the same result as knockdown and appears the same. However, it would let Jolting Chain actually use some of the knockback sets without turning into random hopping scatter.

I'm a controller player with 10 controllers sitting at 50 currently (more on their way). Controllers were my only AT for a couple years; I would roll another AT, but they would rarely survive until level 20. Recently, I've taken a few dominators to 50 and try exploring what looked like some of the more interesting AT's to me (HEATS, VEATS, masterminds, and stalkers).

You seem to have a pretty good handle on how both sets work. As for Quicksand v. Snow Storm, though they have -run speed in common I view their other effects as the primary reason to take either, namely -defense and -recharge. Take a look at Cimerorans and you'll find a use for both, Quicksand to debuff their shield defense or Snow Storm to compensate for the loss of control when they buff mez protection. If forced to choose between the two, I'd probably drop Quicksand due to the presence of Tactics.

Also, a word of warning: the knockback proc in Stupefy is frustrating. As you'll generally open with Stalagmites, it'll be an annoyance to see a few mobs randomly fly back before you can cage them to avoid the spread.