Machariel

Rad/Katana tanker suggests to me that you give it a rularuu or organic looking sword and make a kaiju-styled character. I imagine science origin.

I was looking for the right combination of AT and powersets to create a tanky, mobile, run-and-gun AR-shooting character and I wound up making an Arachnos Soldier, because the best thing you can add to AR is Venom Grenade. And double leadership. I like M30 grenade in general with a force feedback proc, kb to kd, and then . . .more damage procs (bombardment, javelin volley, kinetic crash, etc). It's a very reliable force feedback generator. It's also another source of instant burst damage whereas both Flamethrower and Full Auto are long DOTs, so in addition to the knockdown/knockback M30 can help with "mitigation" by dealing damage faster >_>

One of my most played characters is a KM/EA stalker (50+3 IOs etc) so here's my thoughts: Obviously the fact that Stalker KM gets the highest DPA assassin's strike in the game - by a LOT - means that I like that KM is an early blooming set. T1-T4 being the best chain means it's a great set for rolling through low level content. I LOVE Burst. It may not be the best AoE but the animation is awesome and it looks great when you're surrounded by enemies. Please never change the 100% crit rate on Hide. This power is my MVP on things like the Citadel TF. I don't use Focused Burst, which I think is fine. I use Zapp for my ranged attack needs. I think it's good that Focused Burst is available if people want the utility of a ranged attack but I don't think it needs any changes. Concentrated Strike is, as others have stated, a noob trap. I take it because I like the animation and because you can turn it into a proc bomb which helps make up for the fact that it can't crit, but the 'recharge build up' effect is pretty superfluous with the Stalker ATO. While I'm a little torn because I think the set is strong enough without it and some people enjoy the utility, if I were to change anything on KM it'd be this power. The description of Kinetic Melee says it's a mix of slow and fast attacks so rather than speeding it up I'd prefer to see it get maybe a little more base damage and be able to get some, if not full, damage on criticals. Visually, I love almost all the animations in the set (CS is a little wack) and the sound effects.

I have also found the Recovery Serum temporary power very useful on my Spider. I suppose it's probably useful on just about any low level character, but I also find that the "jab yourself in the arm" animation is a good fit for the soldier aesthetic/vibe.

I voted for CoH and EVE and none of you can stop me 😤

Cheers to the Homecoming team and community for being one of very few things that have gotten better over the course of 2020.

I actually think Dual Blades has better AoE than Street Justice. Street Justice has Sweeping Cross (which mostly gets used when Crushing Uppercut is not available / on cooldown) and Spinning Strike which is kind of a meh attack and in both cases only hits enemies that are pretty much directly in front of you. Dual Blades on the other hand has Sweeping Strike which is a fantastic attack that in my experience regularly hits 3-5 targets and the Sweep combo which is a solid PBAoE. Granted you only get to Sweep after you Build Up but thanks to the ATO you are using Build Up all the time, but also note that Dual Blades gets its AoE for free built into its best attack chain so it costs you zero animation time. If you want more than that, then Dual Blades also offers 1 Thousand Cuts which is one of the best AoE attacks available in a Stalker primary (also one of the only but whatever). As for how important AoE is in general, it's good and it's satisfying when your Stalker can also clear tons of mobs very fast. But AoE is definitely LEAST important on the stalker AT. For small groups you are probably better off buzzsawing through enemies with your ST damage. IMO if you are playing with a team and the team needs more AoE the last person they should be looking at is the Stalker and if you are playing solo and you find yourself spending too much time clearing trash mobs and you're getting bored, just turn it down from x8 to x6 or 4 or whatever is more comfortable. A fair point but 3 attacks in Dual Blades takes like 2.5 seconds so if this is your regular experience then yeah AoE is definitely not something you need to be worried about.

Stalkers usually swap the damage aura in defense sets for Hide with 'no compensation' . . . that's pretty standard. In fact the only Stalker set I can think of that compensates for losing a power for hide is Invulnerability, which combines Resist Elements and Resist Energies into Environmental Resistance. I like Rad Armor on stalkers because Rad Therapy + Ground Zero provides a ton of AoE to an archetype that often lacks for it. Neither of those powers can crit, but most of the damage comes from damage procs anyway. But, you could do that with any other AT if desired and as the above poster noted stalkers lack Beta Decay. Elec/Shield will be a smoother ride overall. It is a classic stalker combo as Lightning Rod + Shield Charge gives you 'enough' AoE and imo going into Rad would be overkill. Rad also has a few drawbacks like the fact that it has no defense and is a clicky set, and if rad therapy is slotted out for damage then you might be a little low on sustainability, whereas getting to the defense softcap with Shield is much easier. Elec Melee is by far at its best on a stalker as swapping Thunder Clap (a useless power) for Assassin's Shock (a good power) is a pretty sweet deal.

1) No power is mandatory and in steamrolly teams you may not need to use the taunt power very often, in the sense that crowd control in general becomes less useful on strong teams. But, for the price of one power and no additional slots, a dedicated taunt is a powerful tool. Your inherent will be pretty good at holding aggro but a dedicated taunt should make 100% sure that the AV can't switch off of you onto the IO'd out blaster or scrapper for whatever that's worth. 2) Hasten is valuable if you have powers on long cooldowns that you want to use as often as possible and/or some of your attacks are significantly better than others. To me this describes most characters in the game so while hasten isn't mandatory it's a lot of power for again fairly minimal slotting and the power that I see skipped the least. 3-4) Others have already covered end use but a dark armor specific tip is that most of your end usage comes from dark regeneration with its base 30 end cost. This is a great place for the Theft of Essence +endurance proc which can trigger multiple times and leave you even or even ahead on endurance. 5) I think relying on enhancements is a better plan. I prefer finding the extra enhancement slots (or set bonuses) to locking up a pool power pick 6) As Luminara says the utility is there, but I think this is one part where Mid's can get a little buggy so definitely confirm with the Combat Attributes tab in-game 🙂

My favorite stalker build and probably my #2 fav char overall is a DB/EA stalker and I oppose these changes. #1 Thousand Cuts: already skippable as a power as the existing Sweep combo (BU -> AS -> Ablating) and the existing Sweeping Strike is sufficient AoE for me, and it's free AoE that happens to come with my existing ST chain. But if you want more AoE, thousand cuts is available and it has pretty decent stats for a stalker AoE. I certainly don't think it needs to be nerfed. In a similar vein, while the increased area and target cap of sweeping strike would be nice, I guess, I don't feel like it's necessary and would go to waste a lot of the time, and reducing the recharge reduces the effectiveness of damage procs in this power. 11sec is pretty short as-is. #2 Combo order changes: Like my colleagues above I don't bother with the combo system since ablating / sweeping / assassin's blades is more or less all I use. I think the proposed changes are based largely on the 'feel' of how the combos work, which is very subjective. Personally the empower combo makes sense to me: build up, assassin's strike, placate, boom now you're empowered to hit the same guy again. I like the Sweep combo as-is in part because ablating strike is up much more often than sweeping, so every time build up gets recharged i always have the sweep combo on deck. I guess this would change if sweeping strike's cooldown were reduced but as above I don't support this. If you really wanted to improve the combo system though you could make Sweeping Strike or 1 Thousand Cuts the finisher for the Attack Vitals combo. While Attack Vitals is normally a cone PBAoE on Stalkers it's a single target effect because the finishing move is vengeful slice, which is easily the worst power in the set (long animation, low DPA, single target). But even still I doubt this would be optimal as long as nimble slice and power slice are both required to execute the combo. The fact that Ablating/Sweeping/Assassin's are just SO much stronger in terms of raw DPA (on top of maintaining 2 -res procs) says to me that without massively boosting the power of the combos and/or flattening out the differences in the powers stats, any form of 'optimal' play for Dual Blades will continue to involve leaving the combos alone. But, I don't see any changes being necessary. The set overall is quite strong and IMO still fulfills the flashy dual blade power fantasy just fine.

i can count on one finger the number of times i've gotten into any form of argument or dispute with someone in game. (the number is one btw)

I mean, I didn't say that it should be, but enjoy your upvotes. I just think it's weird to say "well for my concept I want to do x y and z" but then draw the line at "which AT will have the best performance under that condition?" Like... just pick whichever AT fits your concept the best. Doesn't matter to me 🙂

Scrapper, but why do you care which is most effective if you're already gimping yourself?

great idea. they should really add some game mechanic to conveniently boost your hit chance at lower levels 🤔

once I activated Secondary Mutation while I was 3/4 of the way through one of the shadow shard zones . . . turns out this isn't the wizard of oz and monkeys can't fly -_-

I don't think the BU-AS-run playstyle is dead, it's just unnecessary most of the time and especially at 50. But it's still important to the identify of the AT that Stalkers are able to do it, and it's undeniably more burst damage than the follow up / blinding feint / power siphon etc that other ATs get. The extra burst also helps get the best usage out of a stalker's smaller number of AoE attacks - when my only good AoE is say ball lightning getting the guaranteed +160% damage bonus (build up + gaussian's proc) at the start of the fight sounds much more useful than than working up to 100% from stacking follow up. So overall I think keeping Build Up is important and justified on all stalker sets and is as close to being a "required" power as you can get. It requires minimal slotting and is a huge boost to something that is in my eyes core to the stalker experience which is single target burst damage.

made it! thanks again for all of your hard work, we love you ❤️

damn that's good. i may steal some of that 👀

you may have been the most individually survivable character on the team, no arguing that (though with IOs etc any given powerset/AT can wind up in that spot). but, part of a tank's role is not just not dying but keeping the rest of your team alive by holding aggro (which stalkers are not good at), and, the title of this thread is "best tank in the game" which is quite an audacious claim 🙂 what you are actually describing is really scrapperlock, which is now Not Just For Scrappers™️

space sailboat is extremely cool but there’s something about the Mach that just does it for me 😎

First time posting here but I wanted to share a character I made the other day: Kanawa, the Iron Ring of Jealousy I'm a big fan of the Dune series and my SG does a small themed costume contest each month and this month's theme is "emotions". From "God Emperor of Dune," So Kanawa is sort of a desert revenant with my crack at a Fremen stillsuit. I like what I did for the face.

regardless of how sturdy you can make /bio, the fact that the rest of the team died means it can't be the best tank, since even an invincible stalker can't hold aggro well enough >__>

I think you misunderstood. Yes, only in the sense that it’s possible to make mistakes and aggro too many enemies. Sure. But that’s not what I was talking about. There’s very few powers that actually slow you down from being able to defeat the enemies you’ve aggroed. The only ones that come to mind are phasing (by design) and then immobilized (locking them in spread out positions which weakens AoE) and knockback (similar.)

Placate to me is a great one-slot-wonder power. The days of using it in-combat to guarantee a crit are pretty much over now with the assassin's focus mechanic and the stalker ATOs. But, once in a while you might find yourself wanting to tell something big and nasty to leave you alone (edit: or indeed for the free crit in cases like Tsuko's above). My anecdote is that I used it the other day soloing the ITF to help separate Romulus from his Nictus friends. I think Placate should grant two stacks of assassin's focus. 👀

Discounting 'defeated', I would rank them roughly like this: Confused > Held > Stunned > Immobilized > Slept > Phased > Placated. Based on the following: Confused: Enemy poses no threat to you and helps you defeat other enemies faster. Possible con: confused enemies can run away (though they often clump up on their own as well) Held: Enemy poses no threat to you and is held immobile. Stunned: Enemy poses no threat to you, but can move around a little. Basically held. Immobilized: Enemy can still attack normally with ranged attacks or if you are in melee range. But, immobilizing enemies and then just walking away is an effective way of 'controlling' enemies provided you're not interested in defeating them. Also in many situations (say, the enemies are mostly melee and you have a high ranged defense), simply immobilizing them is a potent control on its own. But unlike every other control on this list, Immobilize doesn't let you just walk past enemies by itself. Slept: Held, until they take damage. If you're trying to get mobs to leave you alone and not interested in defeating them (for whatever reason), and if you're alone, just as good as a hold. But this is rare. However, AVs don't resist this mez very well so it has a niche application. Phased: Even more situational than sleep. Can be used to deactivate towers on the MLTF. Placated: Basically a sleep without the immobilize, and they can still attack your friends. Not much of a control power. I think of knockback/knockup as being (barring powers like Ice Slick / Bonfire) very short duration holds. With the exception of confuse, generally speaking control powers don't help teams kill faster and can even slow down a team if used sloppily (the infamous 'AoE Immob Spammer') and IMO have kind of a weird interaction with the rest of the game. What I mean in that having both a dominator and a tank on the team can be redundant - when every mob is confused there's little point in trying to get aggro and vice versa. It'd be nice to see more situations in the game where control powers and, mitigation in general were more useful at high levels.