ZemX

The tanker version is an interesting case since both the ST and AoE child powers accept Taunt enhancement. I wonder if Perfect Zinger has a chance to hit the main target twice! In any case, you'd have to test this, ideally, with a spawn of 10 enemies packed up nice and tight in front of you with the main target in the center and preferrably a unique name, like being the only boss or LT in the group so you can see in the combat log when the proc is hitting it vs. the others maybe. An then you'd have to do that a number of times to differentiate proc rates since it's only the difference of 34.7% vs. about 58% I think, assuming no local recharge in the power. I have a Shield/DM tanker so it might be a fun experiment... for science! 🤪

ToF "executes" two powers: One for ST and one for AoE. I would assume each of those executions is passed the proc and has their own chances to proc on each target hit by them. So the ST power should use ST formula and the AoE power should use AoE formula. I think you'd have to run a fair number of trials to determine if the proc rate you were seeing was 34.7% or something like 60% for the ST portion. It's complicated probably by not being able to tell the difference between the ST and AoE procs in the combat log. It's just going to say "procname hits for x dmg" or something like that, I think. So the ST portion WOULD cause the combined proc rate to appear slightly higher than if it just used AoE formula for everything. Thunderstrike is a single power execution with multiple effects. It's just some effects only occur on targets within the inner radius. I wouldn't think that would be any different for procs than any other power that has multiple effects. You only get one proc chance per target hit, no matter how many separate effects are applied or not applied.

Haven't played one yet but Bio looks pretty similar to Rad to me. Clickies are Absorb, Heal, and T9. So I expect a well built Bio to play similarly and not need the heal except in rare situations. It does look like the absorb shield has a longish animation though. 2 seconds vs. Rad's 0.9 seconds. It's also faster recharging (90s vs 120s base) and lasts half as long (30s vs 60s). So maybe it's used more often? I can see that being a little more of an interruption than I'm used to with Rad.

Redraw is visually annoying but doesn't impact performance. Just be sure to queue attacks during the animations and they will interrupt if there's been a redraw preceding them.

I assumed they meant Elec Armor. Rad is less clicky than it looks in practice, I've found. At least if by "clicky" we mean "clicking powers to stay alive". Particle Shielding is really the only thing you'll need to click whenever it's up to stay alive. Once you're built, you'll rarely use the heal unless you turn it into a proc bomb attack. Ground Zero is another attack, so again not something you're clicking to stay alive at least. Pairs well with Staff's Form of Body for the resist bonus in Sky Splitter. I've been eyeing Invuln or SR for another Staff tanker myself though. Really want to try a defense-tanker next. Invuln is tempting but SR seems like it might exemplar better and I do a lot of that.

Divine Avalanche is probably skipped because the defense isn't that useful. Rad Armor has no defense debuff resistance so building defense on it is only useful when you're not facing enemies that debuff defense. Rad Armor is otherwise strong enough with its Absorb shield, resist, regen, and heal. Speaking of which, yes, recharge is good. You want Particle Shielding to refresh as often as possible to restore the Absorb shield and you want as much resist as you can get to prevent enemies from eating through it before it refreshes. Plus more recharge just makes everything else go faster and Rad Armor provides plenty of endurance to fuel that speed. I don't think Katana is bad damage but fast weapon sets give that impression simply by not providing the big orange numbers. It's also lethal damage so it's going to feel weak against enemies with a lot of lethal resistance. Claws would get you better AoE. That's maybe one issue with Kat. Flashing Steel is okay, wide with the Tanker inherent buff to arc but still pretty short range. Golden Dragonfly gets only slightly wider because it was super narrow to begin with. You might hit a few if you line them up well or just aim it into a pack of enemies. So that leaves Lotus Drops as your only big AoE. With the Tanker inherent, it goes out to 12ft radius, so pretty nice. I'm a bigger fan of Staff Fighting for it's three big AoEs and slightly longer reach. Smashing is a little less resisted than Lethal. You don't get a Build Up but in place of that you get Staff Mastery's three stances that offer different benefits. The nicest one, in my view, is Form of Body's +res buff when you use Sky Splitter as a finisher. 13.3% res(all) on top of the Tanker ATO (placed in one of those AoEs for best results) and you have a huge resist bonus, meaning you don't have to work as hard stacking resist with IOs if you'd rather focus on recharge, for example. Form of Body also has a nice -res in Eye of the Storm (the PBAoE) if you want to use that as a finisher instead for more damage. But Staff has the same impression of doing less damage because it's faster and does damage over time in a few powers. People often complain it doesn't "feel" impactful enough. My other advice for Rad Armor is based on experience with being debuffed. Everything hits you. ToHit debuffs will make you cry if you don't have some protection there. I picked up Focused Accuracy in the Epic pool for that. I also have Tactics in the Leadership pool for the toHit, perception (helps with blindness), and the Confuse protection (because Rad Armor has none). You've got the slow res already in your travel power, so good. Taunt doesn't need accuracy unless you plan to PvP. I like recharge there but a Psi damage proc is another popular choice.

I didn't read the whole post but I recall seeing it before. On Invuln and EA I think it's still up to date. The main thing that was changed for Stalkers on Invuln was Reinforced being a flat 10% toHit and 7.5% defense. This is half the maximum that Invincibility can reach on a Scrapper when surrounded by 10 enemies. I suppose it's arguable how often a Stalker is surrounded by 10 enemies vs. just 5 but that's down to your playstyle and what you intend to do with your Stalker. The Stalker version can be seen as an advantage if you're less often going to be surrounded because you get that flat buff all the time whereas Invincibility gets very little against a solo opponent, for example. If you want to explore it a little further @Croax's build thread in this forum has builds you can load into Mid's and just compare. This lets you see an example of where each might end up with a full endgame IO build. It's easy to see where they start from but better to look at final stats like that. Invuln, for instance, will take more to get to the soft-cap for defense than EA. You can see what it takes to get there on a final build like that.

I'm not convinced this thread isn't a troll job. Robot players? This can't be serious.

I think there are several empty buildings you can walk into in KW. Ran into the same thing ToTing last couple nights.

On my Rad/Staffer I used the other stances a bit while leveling but I hardly ever am out of Form of Body these days now that my build is complete. Form of Body's Sky Splitter bonus gives +13.3% res(ALL) to a Tanker for 15s making the "damage" stance for Staff, ironically, the most defensive. And it's easy to keep that rolling if you want. I put MoT in Eye of the Storm and use it as a builder instead of a finisher. So MoT procs two or three times reliably for 12 to 18% res(All). That's a whopping 25.3 to 31.3% +res between them. On my Rad/Staffer this caps everything but Cold resist and makes it that much harder for anything to eat my Absorb shield before it refreshes. Gauntleted Fist went in Guarded Spin, so it too has a decent chance to add a bit of absorb to what I already have in Particle Shielding. Staff's AoEs were generously sized to begin with so the Tanker inherent just makes them huge (for melee anyway). Eye of the Storm is as big as Foot Stomp, a little faster to recharge, and available at 16 instead of 38 which I love because I exemplar a ton. Easily gets and keeps the attention of an entire spawn just by itself. And if used as the finisher it deals -10% res, so while I leave my Staff Mastery set on Form of Body all the time, I kind of switch between offensive and defensive "mode" just by deciding which one to use as the finisher. Sky Splitter if I want to be tougher. Eye of the Storm if I want to deal more damage. I think what keeps a lot of people from trying Staff is it just doesn't "feel" like it's doing a lot of damage. It's not a slow set that deals big orange numbers. It's fast and tends to deal it's damage as short duration DoTs. It's decent damage. Maybe middle of the pack. But it feels like less.

Parry is melee/lethal defense so Invuln and EA, being typed, will only stack lethal defense. Personally, I think melee defense is more often protective on a Stalker than Lethal, but none of your options listed are positional defense sets unless you want to give Ninjitsu or Shield Defense another look. Shield does have some nice dark themed shields in the costume creator and Ninjitsu can be colored to look very dark/mystical just as EA can be made to look like dark energy. Dark Armor has only very minor defense for Parry to build on and, more importantly, doesn't give any Defense Debuff Resistance. You need either soft-cap defense and strong DDR -or- you need to be well over the soft-cap to be protected from debuffs. Dark Armor doesn't get you either and, as primarily a resistance set, isn't as strong on a Stalker as it is on Brutes/Tankers. Invuln I've not had any experience with on a Stalker but I know it lost the scaling defense/toHit power, Invincibility, and was given a flat defense/toHit buff in Reinforced. This is due to the age of the set. It hails from the "good" old days of Stalkers being thought of as hit-and-run assassins rather than melee combatants who might be surrounded by enemies. Other ATs with Invuln get a nice boost to defense and toHit when surrounded. Kind of makes Stalker Invuln a whole lot less interesting to me, but someone who has experience with it might tell me what I'm missing out on. EA is probably your strongest option of those listed. It doesn't need any synergy from Parry to achieve solid defense. Energy Drain is very thematic for a dark theme because it's draining endurance from foes and giving it to you. Solid choice you can't really go wrong with.

Then give it to someone else. I up front acknowledged that it depends on the team whether doing this shit slows anybody down, so if it's not slowing you down then I was never ranting, angrily or otherwise... at you. You're the one who had to pretend like it's never a significant problem. You're just wrong. It's not never a problem. It's just never a problem in the teams you choose to run with because you're 4x overkilling spawns anyway and so it doesn't matter you're only hitting one fourth of the targets with an AoE. How nice for you. For the record, I NEVER bitch at people in game about this. And this is why. It's never going to be well received. And I agree with you there. it just wastes more time if you try. But I might politely excuse myself after the mission if it's killing the fun factor for me. That's fair. It's a game. People should play it to have fun. Not to please anyone else.

Yeah, it's an i7-8700K. I don't do CPU upgrades very often because they historically haven't made that much a difference in games until they're at least 5 years old. The CPU before this one was a Sandy Bridge i5. It's the GPUs I update more frequently... or at least I used to before they became impossible to buy. This 1080ti might be the oldest GPU I've ever had in a PC. 🤪

And my point is that this simply isn't always true. Maybe for you it is, but not on the teams I play on. AoE Immobs cover a 30 foot radius area and very few AoEs damage powers are that big. Most of the common ones used to wipe a spawn are 10-15ft radius. Or to put it another way, the AoE immob is covering four to nine times the area of common AoEs. The difference between hitting 16 targets with a Fireball and just 4-5 is huge. The only time it doesn't matter is when you're on a team so overpowered compared to the content it doesn't matter that they are doing a third or a fourth of their AoE damage. And I don't play on teams like that if I can help it. The irony here is that it might just make careless AoE immob usage that much more detrimental even to teams that would otherwise steamroll content. For one, it could much more likely kill the person doing it, but even if it doesn't it sounds like you'll be wanting that team AoE efficiency all the more. We'll see, I suppose.

What you want to look for in LFG is a mission team or contact mission team. Or even a radio team that ISN'T in Peregrine Island. These tend to be less over-powered steamrollers of exploding suns and more just normal teams moving through a map. You still aren't going to see a lot of pulling or herding. You might see someone jump ahead to gather up a loose spawn into a tighter formation but that's about it. Mid-level teams like this also often run at higher difficulty settings than a speed TF does because the point is earning XP, not getting to the end quickly for a merit reward. Radio teams will also usually be easier to follow because they will all be in the same zone so you aren't dealing with trying to follow a team full of people that already have every temp teleport power at their disposal. But again, even contact mission teams are a little more relaxed because there's not as much pressure to get through things quickly as on a speed TF. Acronyms... nothing to do here but learn em. People aren't changing. Ask in /help channel what they mean. Nine people will reply. /help is pretty good about that.

Remind me why you play if that's really every team for you. I mean, think about it. You're telling me tactics don't matter. No matter how badly someone is playing it has "negligible" effect on team performance. So why play then? Sounds like a completely pointless game. I wouldn't be talking about slowing teams down if I hardly ever saw it happen. But I also only see it happen because I choose to spend most of my time on mid-level random PuGs that are playing for XP, not speeding TFs at +0 for merits or doing kill-most ITFs on No-Challenge settings with a bunch of IOd Incarnates. Often I am one of the only heavily IOd characters on one of these teams and nobody is Incarnate because we're below 45. We'll have a few people who are side-kicked and the mission will be on as high a setting as doesn't wipe the team. So no, we are not just face-rolling every spawn. And yes, it DOES matter when people are doing certain things that prevent the team from doing its best damage. Doesn't mean it always matters on every team. What I said was... it depends on the team.

Paraphrasing your argument here a bit. 🤪 (<-- wonky smiley face makes it okay).

Simply put: What you are doing on a team is either speeding that team up or slowing it down. There's no way to theory craft which that is here on the forums because people will always trot out the team composition that makes them right and everyone else wrong. But there ARE situations where knockbackers slow the team down. There are situations where AoE immobilizers slow the team down. And yes, there are teams where some tanker insisting on rounding up a spawn will be slower. But which, if any of these, is true depends on what kind of team you have. About the only thing that keeps me playing this game is joining random pick up teams and then figuring out how each new team works. If every team I joined was the same level 50 incarnate steamroller it seems everyone on the forums always claims is the case? I'd have quit already. I cannot imagine anything more boring than that. I spend more time exemplared below 45 precisely to avoid this kind of team most of the time. Can't wait to see if what the devs have planned for "Hard Mode" can help.

I used to have a ninja blade / ninjitsu stalker on Live. The KoA costume was perfect at Halloween. I had the sword, Hide, and of course... caltrops!

Out of curiosity, I ran Health Check on my gaming PC last night and this is what it ran into. I don't recall consciously turning that off so maybe it was just the default on my motherboard. I suppose if I enable that it will tell me the next problem if it sees one? I bought this mobo and the CPU three years ago along with memory and NVMe flash drive, so if it's already considered "too old" for Windows 11, I'm just going to sit back and laugh at Microsoft. What are they aiming this at? 5% market share?

Sometimes jokingly referred to as the "Stoppable" button because of that crash. 🤪 For future reference, City of Data is a great resource for things like this: https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=tanker_defense.invulnerability.unstoppable&at=tanker Look in the effects list for those that say "after 180s". That's the crash. In this case it can be a little confusing. There's a Global Chance thing in there that involves using Unrelenting together with powers that crash. But the other stuff mainly says you lose all endurance and nearly all health. The health part is odd to look at in CoD because "-100% max health" sounds like it ought to kill you but obviously doesn't. But the main thing is what you already saw when you tried it. That crash makes you super vulnerable if you are still fighting. The idea is to use it to carry you through the end of the fight. But that's also the problem with it. Few fights last that long. Maybe if you're trying to solo an AV yourself. Otherwise, using it means you survive the fight you're in but then have to watch that icon like a hawk for the next several fights until it starts blinking to tell you "You'd better not be in the middle of a fight when this stops blinking". Or else just be ready to pound a few inspirations, I guess. I agree, it's probably more use earlier or just as a mule later.

I've seen it too. I don't imagine the GMs are joyriding our toons when we're not looking so, more likely, there's just some server process that "touches" their records and causes the date to be updated occasionally.

Don't use it from range. "/powexec_location self Shield Charge" Now it's a PBAoE! Might even be better that way since I'm not sure AAO has a chance to tick and increase your damage if you teleport attack into the middle of a group of enemies. It only ticks once per second. It's a bit less fun looking that way but if it's making you sick...

Soon.

Not because of the i7 tho. Must be something else on your laptop hardware that's not supported by Windows 11 drivers.