Yomo Kimyata

Even though they say that you can run CoH on a potato, I have been unable to play this game without some sort of electric power, either AC or battery operated. So I guess powergaming works with every AT.

To be honest, I tend more to the "loads of fun" aspect. It's not like I'm getting paid to play this game.

I made a Dark/Dark stalker long ago as a fear/fear experiment. HOs are your friend when it comes to the Cloaks. I almost never 6-slot purples if all I get is toxic resist. Split Assassin's Mark 3-3 and put the proc in an AoE. Put Gaussian's proc in Build up and you won't need a recharge if you have Assassin's Mark proc in an AoE. I'd put a lot more slots in your defenses than in your offenses. I actually skipped Shadow Maul, but that may have been mostly in protest about changing the arc from 30 degrees to 120 degrees. I generally get KB protection from 3-slotting Fury of the Gladiator and/or Gladiator's Armor and use the 20% slow protection proc.

For reference, what do you use for a finding macro? I usually use "/macro T targetname sapper" and it is quick and easy to edit the target name to something else.

This has happened to me many, many times and every single time it was because I screwed up the name rules. Too many ",". Not enough "!". Try something extremely similar and see if that passes muster.

I'm at the point in my life when I realize that as much as I want to work with other people, it kind of depends on them if they want to work with anyone. @Diantane came on the scene hot and bothered. We eventually accepted that. He seems to be mostly hot and bothered. What would you do if your child, or husband, or best friend said to you "Nothing to look forward to"? There are many answers to that, but not a single one is "bust their balls because I don't like what they do."

Your "main" was extremely overpowered at the time. If you chose your main because of that, well, you might want to choose another main. Currently Axe Melee is pretty overpowered, if that helps.

It is currently an incredible pool. Unleash Potential is maybe the most versatile power in the game.

It doesn't?

How about we cut Sorcery back from being so powerful? Change recharge on Rune of Protection to 10 minutes.

Let's rename it, hmm, Regeneration!

The only thing I see you are missing is “scents”.

One of the things that keeps me tuning in is guessing which perfectly satisfactory power set is going to get reworked and made into the new top tier because one of the devs likes it but it isn't nearly overpowered enough for their tastes. This is a long shot, but I'm taking Fire Control in the betting pool. Let's add a 65% resistance debuff to Smoke and double damage from Imps!

It is my understanding (which is certainly not infallible) that a few episodes back they added a hidden accuracy check on damage procs for powers that are auto-hit. Non-damage procs should be auto-hit, which is one of the reasons I slot them over damage procs. I'm looking at Caltrops from the Scrapper epic pool Weapon Mastery, and a pure accuracy IO or SO cannot be slotted. You can, however, slot IOs that enhance accuracy as long as they also enhance one of the other core characteristics, like damage or recharge.

I don't ever parse combat logs because, well, it's a huge pain in the butt and I just don't care that much. That said, my "optimal" slotting for Caltrops is 2x Superior Frozen Blast (A/D/R and R/proc) for the slow resist, 2x Ragnarok (D/R +5 and chance for knockdown proc) for the end recovery, 2x Annihilation (-res proc and D/R) for the extra endurance. Accuracy doesn't count (unless you are putting in damage procs), but damage and recharge do. Sometimes I slot for slow, but rarely. In theory it rechecks for procs every ten seconds, or so I've been led to believe, but I'm mostly concerned with the initial placement and the flopping from the Ragnorak proc is evident. My minimum slotting would be the Ragnorak proc and the Annihilation proc.

It depends on the level of the set. Air Burst is the only Ranged AoE set from level 10-19, so it will not give you the option to convert by set type. If you are converting with attuned sets, even though there is no visible level, there is an internal level. I'm not entirely clear on how the internal level changes, but it can reset randomly to any level in the range of the set.

I'd think it would be two very different experiences, so run both! Both Staff and Electric in my opinion, are their best selves in Stalker form. @BuiltDifferent5's post got me to pull out my Staff/Bio and damn that's a good build. Staff/Stone would be interesting, especially if you stayed in full stone costume! Yes, Brimstone will help with damage. My only issues with this build might be that Earth's Embrace is more of a +hp power than a heal, and that Geode gets broken down a lot more quickly than I might like when you are going all out. I do like staff a lot though, and Guarded Spin helps a bit (although Stone is typed and Guarded is mostly useful in positional). This might be a case though where you might miss Form of Soul or whichever one cuts endurance -- Stone Armor is a harsh endurance mistress until you get your build right. Electric/Shield is a fan favorite, but I think that's mostly due to double telenukes. Historically, I don't love them, but nowadays I use macros to set up a telenuke on me, a telenuke on my target, or go traditional location. It speeds things up a lot. Not breaking Hide feels cheaty to me! I love Chain Induction (use Kinetic Combat knockdown!) I wish you could pick Staff/Shield! Although Electric/Stone...

As per your request in your message, here is my current build for my Staff/Bio stalker. It's probably overbuilt, to be honest: https://www.midsreborn.com/builds/download.php?uc=1724&c=757&a=1514&f=HEX&dc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

I love making themed SGs. I probably would have gone different directions in defining War, Pestilence, etc., but +1 for the work! I assume you mean "Death by endurance drain"!

@AboveTheChemistwrites the textbook.

Between better knowledge of the mechanics of the game (all hail Uberguy) and the continuous tools given to us by the HC devs, I, for one, tend to take care of myself. I carry wakies and breakies and if I screw up on a team I find it hard to believe anyone else would even notice.

I'm quite sure they work the same as non-superior. Try it and report back!

I've played a lot of different powers in HC, but I tend to draw the line at playing things I don't enjoy the look or feel of. Flipping animations, for example, or fire/ice swords. I also have a bit of an issue with secondaries that make you translucent/invisible, because I generally try to make a costume that I like the look and feel of. So as a result, I've done things like make Ice Melee characters without swords (very doable for a scrapper). The other day, I was playing a spines/electric brute and decided to pick up Ripper to see if I hated it as much as I remembered. I did, but I also realized that when I was fighting big mobs, I really couldn't see my character anyway, so why get uptight about the animation. And that got me thinking. Don't like fire swords? Great, use a secondary where you won't have to look at them. So I've decided to work on a Fire/Energy scrapper, killing two birds with one stone as I will maneuver an indistinct blob through the game. The problem, or course, is that I know very little about the Fire primary. Enlighten me!

Narc

@macskull, thanks for putting this together. It corroborates some of my observations. I strongly suspect that the number of active users is less than that, since there still are a bunch of dual/triple boxers out there, but my estimation of 1-2k consistent active users feels pretty solid. It's a village, and I think a high percentage of that village uses these forums. And we all know Excelsior is too crowded; no one goes there anymore!