carroto

I did this with one of my tankers. Since they get attacks so much later than other melee ATs (and can't skip the usually horrible first attack) it's hard to make a build that maximizes the lower-level attacks and also the higher ones, which tend to be the better ones. Not enough slots to go around. So I made one build for exemplaring to low levels and one for playing at level 35+. An expensive proposition so not something I do often.

I wanted to know which armor set would provide the biggest damage boost to Energy Melee so I ran some numbers. Thought I'd share here in case anyone else might be interested. If I left out any other good contenders let me know. Shield could be in the mix but it really only gets good when surrounded by lots of enemies and that's not something I want to count on when playing a Stalker. There might also be other valid considerations other than just +damage, like +recharge, but I wanted to keep it simple. Both Bio (with Offensive Adaptation) and Stone provide damage procs, but they work a bit differently. Stone's proc damage is based on the activation time of the attack, while Bio's proc is based on the recharge of the power. They end up being pretty similar for most powers but vary more for outliers. Power Bio total +dmg Stone total +dmg (avg) Bio proc dmg Bio +dmg Stone proc dmg (tick) Barrage 36.70 28.87 18.35 18.35 14.79 Energy Punch 32.25 18.02 16.13 16.13 9.23 Bone Smasher 45.60 27.57 22.80 22.80 14.12 Power Crash 52.19 24.12 25.06 27.13 12.36 ET (fast) 90.65 21.71 27.25 63.40 11.12 ET (slow) 90.65 57.97 27.25 63.40 29.70 Total Focus 98.99 54.93 49.49 49.49 28.14 Here I factored both the toxic damage proc as well as the 25% damage boost from Bio's Offensive Adaptation. For Stone's fire damage proc from Brimstone Armor it has the typical 80% chance ticks with cancel-on-miss. So I calculated the average damage for 3 ticks at 80% chance. For the most part Stone's proc and Bio's came out pretty close, with slow Energy Transfer being the big exception. Stone generally came out ahead on proc damage, and when you factor in the damage type it's the clear winner here. But once you add in the 25% damage boost, Bio pulls way ahead. Probably not a surprise to anyone but I wanted to see the numbers. Checking of those numbers and other discussion is welcome.

Well I guess that's what I'm hoping for. Some consistency. As I said most of the other similar attacks have a 6-second cooldown. LBE with a longer activation time does worse damage (in terms of DPAS) than those attacks while also having a longer recharge and higher end cost, so kind of a triple-whammy. It would be nice if it and Shuriken were brought in line.

No they're kind of all over the place. Typically those have not factored into the design formulae though. Laser Beam Eyes has one of the longest animations among the epic single-target ranged attacks, so that attack gets most of the worst of it. Long animation and therefore low DPAS and also higher end cost and recharge, all for the same damage as faster recharging and animating attacks in say Soul, Dark, or Mu epics. Shuriken is pretty bad in this department too. Fast recharge and low damage but not a fast animation relatively speaking. Weapon Mastery is bad all around in this sort of way. It's so low performance that I can't imagine anyone taking it except as required by theme. It's like a dev hated Natural origin characters and wanted to punish them.

Did this one get shut down? I get this message

Most of the Stalker epic single-target ranged attacks are set the same at 6 seconds recharge, 6.5 endurance, and scale 1.0 damage. However Weapon Mastery->Shuriken has the same 6 second recharge but lower endurance (5.46) and much lower damage (scale 0.84). This one might be WAI but I'm not so sure about... Body Mastery->Laser Beam Eyes has an 8 second recharge, 8.076 endurance, but still only scale 1.0 damage. This doesn't seem right at all. I'm not sure what the damage should be because the epic attacks don't seem to follow the standard design formulae. I'm guessing it should be scale 1.3.

When I get a mayhem mission I smash a bunch of stuff to accrue time on the clock, then multi-box and log in each toon that needs the badge from that mission, get it for each. Redsiders, bluesiders, they all get it. Eventually all alts have the badges they need, and my bluesiders just have to switch sides when desired to get the badge. Kind of a hassle but it's concentrated into a handful of single events rather than having to do all of them separately on each toon. I don't know if I've ever gotten TF Commander on any toon the old-fashioned way. I just didn't play blue side much before Going Rogue.

Don't ever play Dark Blast then. The cones are radically different, so to even try to get good use of them you're constantly moving in, out, in, out, in, out. It's most of what combat is with that set.

As best I can recall a number of weapon sets ( but not all ) were given a pass a long time ago to stop redraw from affecting cast times. I don't remember which ones still have the redraw issue but I think Spines is one of them, and so I'd expect Thorn to have the issue as well, given that it's mostly a copy. Just because some sets were tested and don't have the redraw penalty doesn't mean that some don't still have it. If the specific set in question hasn't been tested then I wouldn't presume.

Agreed. I may have to remake my Plant/Ice to Plant/Son at some point. As for Symphony it seems to be clearly made with Controllers in mind. I'm not sure why I'd want to use it on a Dom, but maybe some day I'll be bored enough.

I'm a fan of the absorb proc. There have been quite a few times that I suddenly took a burst of damage, HP dropped dangerously low, and it fired bringing me back into a more comfortable range. Might not have meant the difference between defeat or not every time but without a doubt it has saved me many times. Since the odds of the proc firing go up as my HPs go down, it tends to fire just when I need it. Especially if you can use incarnates when you get there to address the end issue, seems like the way to go to me.

This is the one I'm going to notice the most. Every time I run that last mission in the first RWZ arc, which is full of large groups of monkeys, I'm shocked at how much of a punch they pack. It's easy to get into trouble really quick if I don't take them out fast enough.

1000% more well-rounded, yes. Of those you called out what holes does Elec have? Ninjitsu covers everything except KB. The amount of slot and IO investment to cover that hole relative to other sets' holes is not in the same galaxy. Nin even has confuse protection. It's probably not talked about because it's not available on two of the three most popular melee ATs. It's a great set an a great example of a well-rounded set. As for the popularity of the sets with those holes like Invuln and EA, we'll see if that changes a few months down the line after this page gets released. The changes to defense in this release making smashing/lethal defense somewhat less valuable as catch-alls might affect those sets to some degree. EA could get hit more by negative attacks, for example, which the S/L defense would have caught in the past. Might not feel quite so strong in quite as much of the game's content. Or not, we'll see. It seems like the jury's still out on how much of an impact that will have in actual play.

Like what? 1% end drain resistance? Not trying to be snarky, but I honestly don't get the claim that these minor buffs mean that other more well-rounded should also get token buffs.

The way some sets are so binary, hot/cold when running most content and then when running into toxic or psi is what turned me off of my ice armor and EA characters (never played invuln) and got me to reroll them and shelve them permanently. I realize many people aren't bothered by it and take the nakedness against not-actually-all-that-uncommon damage types in stride, but it doesn't work for me. These seem more like token buffs rather than really substantial ones, that won't really change the experience much. They'll mostly be a help to people using IOs to try to plug those holes. I doubt they'll be felt in game during normal gameplay at all. I'm surprised to see people saying they're too much.

No argument here but presumably if someone wants to farm with a Sentinel maximum speed is not the priority. I've farmed with a Kin Corruptor with only 75% resist and I wasn't constantly healing but I did have to of course.

75% is fine as long as you're softcapped and have a heal. Not as good as 90% of course, but you won't faceplant unless you just walk away for a while to make a sandwich while surrounded by mobs.

Have you had this issue recently? I thought maybe it had been fixed. I did eventually get a GM to resolve it for me.

I made a tool for doing this visually (in my sig). The powers info is not complete up-to-date, since the creator of the tool to obtain those data abandoned the project, but most is still accurate and you can check it all and change it if needed.

It would help with the people who form "50+ only" ITFs. I'm always disappointed to see that. The ITF is one of the best ways to level after hitting 35 but it's usually best if a 50 forms it because people want access to all their powers. So I'm reliant on others to form them, but when they exclude levelers it's sad to see.

While solo Trip Mines are my mez protection. I throw one down, some caltrops on top, and snipe. If I get mezzed and the enemy tries to run up on me they tend to get blasted into the air. Between that and my T1 and T2 attacks I can finish them off. On teams I toe-bomb and they're good for that but not great. Now that they're not interruptible you can set them to auto so I can go AFK and lay down a bunch of mines. So if I'm about to face a difficult foe it's a great time to take care of a thing or two IRL while I stack mines.

Yeah you just need to craft one more of the other level. If you've been crafting 30s craft one 25.

From what I understand it was decent until it was "fixed", and it's no good now. I shelved my Savage Stalker I was leveling when the change was made.

Without Tough you're going to have a hard time bringing your S/L resistance to a high enough level to really have good survivability. If you're going that route I'd push for +def instead of trying to get a ton of +res from IOs. Of course Weave would help there as well, but I think you'll have an easier time shoring up your defenses than resistances without the Fighting Pool.

I believe that's one of the 120 second IOs. You will get the boost for 120 seconds after activating the power. In auto powers you don't have to think about it of course. In a click you'd want to make sure you activated the power every couple of minutes. If it's something you use in combat and you mostly need +recovery in combat, then you can probably ignore it and it'll work fine.