Warshades

I did not factor splash damage in as that is very variable. I was only looking at the damage done to a single target. Even from the brief 2 days where I ran the stalker with TS, it was rare that splash damage would ever factor in. Mobs were often already down after LR + SC, or else would be immobilized from a troller/dom and wouldn't group up for the splash damage to be a big factor from Thunder Strike. I think that at lower levels, if you exemplar often, you might feel more use out of the splash damage as most ATs are missing their big hitting AoEs, but at lvl 50 I was mainly only getting the ST damage (and that's assuming the target didn't die before it hit). If anything, the knockdown from LR + SC actually makes it harder for any remaining enemies to group up together.

Nice, I really appreciate the number crunch. I ran a quick DPA comparison yesterday between CB and TS before respecing out of TS and saw that CB's DPA pulled way ahead of TS, but I didn't compare it to HP or JL. I'll also change up AS to run the 3 ATOs, 2 damage procs and probably replace the 3rd with the +5 dam Hecatomb as that should offer more damage consistency and give another small recovery bonus. I'll change the interface to degen as well. I've gotten used to running reactive on nearly everything, but you are right in that some of the benefit would be lost if -res isn't applied by the first nuke and that's not counting overstacking of reactive from other players. This will hopefully be the final version that I respec into now.

I suppose that's also why LR and SC don't break the hidden state with them being pseudopet summons? I am surprised that tankers are the only ones where it's different. To be honest, really feels like I'm in a bind. I had respec'd into the second build I posted to test it out and just finished running a 54 KM ITF not long ago. While this is a case specific scenario, with a kin on the team and FS buffs, enemies were dying insanely fast to the point where by the time a Thunder Strike would hit, the enemy would likely have been dead. I also found it helpful to not be stuck in a long animation and cycling quickly through Charged Brawl, Havoc Punch, and Chain Induction to build up focus for a hard hitting AS felt really nice and made a noticeable impact on the ST damage against the EBs/AVs. On the other hand, having a FotG -res proc would also help damage output a lot as well. Now it kinda feels like a choice between running a long animating TS or a combination of Jacob's Ladder, Chain Induction, and either Charged/Havoc Punch to build focus up quick and still be able to get the -res proc in. I'll probably stop respecing on live to try out all these changes and start doing so on the test server first. Considering Jacob's Ladder and Havoc Punch have similar animation times, and I can't believe I'm saying this, but I may go with Charged Brawl, Jacobs Ladder, and Chain Induction as my 3 quick focus building powers. I can then put a 5 piece Armageddon and FotG in JL and do the Winter Set in SC as you mentioned. I appreciate the build you put together, I'll give that a whirl on the test server with the slight attack power changes. Now that I think about it, the main reason I was even trying to put Kismet into the build was because I was originally trying to slot Shield Charge with the Armageddon dam/rech piece instead of acc/rech and it was a bit low on accuracy and I ended up going back to acc/rech but never removed Kismet lol. Overall, the build feels incredibly good so far, amazing AoE and ST damage output. Only managed to craft ageless core so far as I needed a quick endurance fix, but will get to musculature and reactive T3s tomorrow. Edit: speaking of the interface slot, do you find degen with -max HP to be more useful for stalkers?

Alright, so after testing it out, Kismet definitely does not work in Grant Cover. Made some changes to put Kismet into hide instead. I also swapped Thunder Strike for Charged Brawl. With hide on, the Red Fortunes in Deflection boosted to +5, and an extra reactive defense: def in Maneuvers, it does barely scrape to melee soft cap. I could also get there easier by doing a full ToD set in Havoc Punch, but I'm considering trying out either CotS +chance for heal or Fortunata Hypnosis +placate chance in Havoc Punch, has anyone tested and found either to be useful? I suppose that Jacob's Ladder would be a more useful power to put this in and if I can get over that very aesthetically boring and unfitting animation, I can maybe try it out there. Will at some point move the powers around so I get Charged Brawl earlier for whenever I do exemplar down. I'm also considering dropping Grant Cover for OwtS instead, but a little hesitant as it does drop my DDR by a solid amount. I suppose that with me being just barely over soft cap, any defense debuffs will result in cascading failure regardless if I have GC or not while soloing, and perhaps with teams I'll get enough additional defense buffs to not have worry about it. On the other hand, I also built in so much resist that it feels like I wouldn't really benefit much out of OwtS. Also added in the Hecatomb proc into AS, still keeping the 5 piece ATO for the global recharge. Build is still low on psi resist, but that's fine by me at this point. Feels like it would cost to many slots and resists in more useful damage categories to try and build that up. Updated build changes below. Stalker (Electrical Melee - Shield Defense)2.mbd

I appreciate all the replies. I'll take an unslotter and test if kismet is working in Grant Cover or not, didn't consider that it might not. Can make some changes if it doesn't, but I think it should hit soft cap (counting the none suppressed defense from hide) by just swapping with CJ. I kinda really hate the look of Jacob's Ladder animation, to the point that I will avoid it at all costs lol. I'll look into slotting damage procs in AS and not going for the full ATO set. May also go with Charged Brawl instead as I'll admit that I'm not the biggest fan of the long animation time of TS. Would probably end up with better DPA and faster focus gains to cycle AS more often. I'm one of those players that doesn't like using inspirations and I try to build without having to rely on them. I think I may go ahead and replace TS with Charged Brawl though. I've been finding that the long animation time kinda hurts and sometimes I'll lose a stack of focus as a result of being stuck in TS. The build actually is soft capped if you count the ~2.1% or so defense from hide that doesn't get suppressed when you attack and are broken out of hide (assuming mid's is correct about those numbers). I de-toggled it so it doesn't display the additional ~4.3% or so defense that does get suppressed when attacking or out of hidden state. I will take a look at the changes you made and try them out. I fully agree on taking that recharge slot out of BU as I found that the instant recharge proc goes off pretty often, no point in wasting the slot on it. I'm not as happy about the idea of dropping hasten though.

That's interesting, considering it's not even part of the armor set on sentinels and requires epic pool powers. I can only hazard a guess the clones have a pool of power sets and when it chooses electric armor, it does so from the standard electric armor set and not the ported over and changed sentinel version. Maybe worth a bug report, not sure if they still hand out the bug hunter badge or whatever it's called.

Both of these are good points. I was mainly aiming for high resists and including psi with that, but it is pretty rare to encounter for the most part and this is overkill. I normally mostly play lvl 50 content so definitely wasn't considering exemplaring, good call on kismet into Tough Hide as well!

You are correct, I was thinking of the old Rise of the Phoenix version of the power.

Finalizing my elec/shield build, would like a second set of eyes to see if I missed anything or can improve anything. This will mostly be for lvl 50 content and if I need to exemplar, I'll get serums to help with endurance. Stalker (Electrical Melee - Shield Defense).mbd

Doesn't actually prevent death, but does revive you from death. My opinion on self rez powers may be different from others, but this is how I see them. If you're trying to make a build to be survivable, then picking up a self rez power defeats the purpose/goal of the build. If you're willing to sacrifice survival and opt for offense, I could see having a self revive be useful as you would "expect" to die more often. I personally wouldn't skip Molten Embrace (damage buffs are always useful, great for offense and defense as dead enemies can't kill you). Consume is primarily useful for survivability. While it can help fix endurance issues, it also boosts max HP which is useful to have. Out of those 3, I would personally skip the self revive, but it's also a power skip that won't provide you with any additional slots to spend elsewhere as most builds don't slot self revive powers. Cauterizing Blaze I see as being more optional. It's nice as a passive heal and hardly costs any endurance, but with the lower HP cap of sentinels you also don't benefit that greatly from it. Healing Flames provides a significant heal on click and has a relatively quick recharge time. Imo, you could just stick with HF for heals and skip Cauterizing Blaze.

If you want to turtle up with ice, I would suggest going for resist bonuses. I wouldn't really play this as is, it chases for some specific powers/slotting for set bonuses (i.e. the /ice epic slotting), but it should be damn tough to bring down. Let energy absorption take care of stacking +def, it's what it's there for (other than fixing any endurance problems). This build essentially ignores building towards/considering offense to chase resists. Tanker (Ice Armor - Spines).mbd

This is a sample invuln/StJust build that I put together but never actually built. I will add that building to reach soft cap def with 1 foe in range of invincibility tends to get very costly with winter sets in attacks. Another thing to keep in mind when opening invuln builds, you may need to manually reset invincibility. There's a bug that if it's already on when the build is saved, you won't see the bonuses of it until you detoggle/set number of enemies to 0 and then put it back on and set number of enemies in range to 1. Tanker (Invulnerability - Street Justice).mbd

If both armors work for your roleplaying theme, invuln is the stronger/sturdier choice in the end as you said. This isn't to say that willpower won't work, any armor set can be built to have no problem in 99.9% of the content. What makes invuln so strong is that it can be built to reach hard cap resists (90%) to nearly everything along with reaching soft cap defense (45%), meaning few attacks will go through and those that do will hardly do a dent to your HP bar once you're fully IO'd out. For tanks, because they have the useful Superior Might of the Tanker proc which provides 6.7% resist per stack and can be stacked reliably 2 times, you really only need to build to reach ~77% resist and you can let the SMoT proc get you the rest of the way. Invuln doesn't actually have a lot of toggles that it needs to run, but willpower does have the additional recovery passive that helps with endurance early on. Willpower gets a bit of resist/defense, but mainly focuses on regeneration which scales with the number of enemies near you. You could potentially build it to regen 140+ hp/sec when surrounded by enemies. This works well in situations where Rise to the Challenge is fully saturated, but against some difficult ST enemies, such as tanking Lord Recluse in MLTF, it will prove to be a lot less effective compared to invuln. Consider slotting some endurance modification in Stamina and then further slotting some endurance reduction in your attacks. Endurance can be relatively easy to fix with IOs later on through set bonuses, incarnates (won't work if exemplared down below like lvl 45 iirc), and uniques (miracle +rec, numina +rec/regen, preventative med +hp/end, performance shifter +end, etc).

Appreciate the info. I'll at some point try to compare the difference between the two, but considering it's only up for the first 2 minutes when entering and popping lore, destiny, and hybrid, I don't know if it will make a major difference either way. I've already crafted the T4 radial but whenever I'm done with judgement, I'll work on crafting the core version to compare. I just respec'd into the final build I posted earlier and ran it on the asteroid farm (38973). It survives just fine at +4/8x with AS on auto (I do pop all the incarnates and EE at the start). This is also without any accolades to boost HP/end (really don't care to go through the trouble of getting them on a farmer and appears that I don't need to either). I'll make one final update as I realized that I was playing around with boosting some of the LotG pieces to +5 to see if there was a noticeable jump in defense, but the final build hits 45% even with all the LotG at lvl 50, so no need to boost those. You do occasionally see the HP go down as low as 60% or so, but there's basically no risk of dying in the first 5 minutes since you're getting the support from BP lore pet. In the last few minutes, the mobs are dwindled down enough that your own regen/heal procs will keep you alive. This build is clearing that asteroid map in ~7-8 minutes solo without any other buffs. Tanker (Stone Armor - Radiation Melee)farm5.mbd

This is the rework of the first stone/rad tank I posted. I decided to sacrifice the slots in EE to have room for a few more procs and end mod buffs. Reaches 45% def, has 3 power transfer chance for self heal procs for additional sustainability, and should fix endurance problems to be able to run with musculature core alpha (though I've not tested that yet and mids build has radial side). I will say again that this is a cheap-ish build, but that's also intentional. I found that the hybrid assault radial side provides a better boost for me, though that may be because I have more damage buffs from the 3 Armageddon pieces in Atom Smasher. Tanker (Stone Armor - Radiation Melee)farm4.mbd

I don't quite recall if that build has Musculature Core or Radial in mids, but definitely go with the Radial side to fix endurance. I will second what @Maelwys said about it being endurance heavy. It would progressively get lower on endurance so I went for the radial musculature and it fixed the endurance issue for me. After getting the alpha T4 though, it is able to sustain with AS on auto for me. I do plan on reworking that build a bit to get the fire def to 45% without running it with a second account to double stack maneuvers. You'll get better inf earnings by AFK farming the map solo. I will say that starting out, it was useful running 2x of that build together. Did it on +3/8x initially until I got the first lvl shift with T3 musculature and then bumped it to +4.

I kinda figured, which is why I didn't add more purple sets like Armageddon lol. I'd still say it's worth getting the Apocalypse/Unbreakable dmg procs for Tesla and maybe mixing in some acc/dam and acc/dam/end from sets to get the accuracy up. Doesn't really need to be winter sets, but they do offer some of the better bonuses for 2-3 pieces.

For end game, -res is probably the most useful debuff, sets like Poison, Sonic, and Cold are all excellent at this. Regen debuffs don't make as big of an impact except for GM fights where the enemy has massive HP values. Similarly for end game, things like -tohit don't have as much of an impact when everyone's builds are finished and incarnates are considered. You will get more value out of it at lower levels so it depends on if you exemplar often or not. Once again, with a few exceptions of where mobs have defense buffs, -def debuffs aren't very impactful since you should aim to have 95% acc on your powers to +3 enemies. How survivable those sets are is a different discussion. I'm not as big of a fan of radiation because of the time it takes to cast and reapply the toggled debuffs. Not an issue for longer fights like AVs and GMs, but not useful/fun if you're in a team that's steamrolling through mobs. Darkness affinity on controllers is a good pick if you want to make a really survivable build with high resists and soft capped def. It's not as great at debuffing as the other options, but does offer good defense, resist, regen, and recovery support for allies. Can easily be built for soft cap positional defenses with fairly high resists accross the board. For MMs, I would probably go with a demon/marine combo. They just pair extremely well together, demons can add more -res, and the set combos quite well and you can even solo at +4/8x with little difficulty for when you're not teaming. Again, marine wouldn't be the best debuffer, but the combo is near unkillable with a high recharge build. If you're not specifically focused on debuffing and taking down single tough targets like AVs/GMs, there's a strong argument to be made that kinetics is the best debuffer through buffing. Fulcrum Shift is just OP in the +dmg that it provides. What's the point in trying to debuff enemies when you can buff yourself/allies and kill them quicker than debuffing them would allow? Speed boost is always appreciated by everyone. Don't know much about some sets like Nature, Traps, and Trick Arrow, just never liked playing them personally so maybe others can chime in.

I made some small changes to the build, though it does increase the cost a bit. Changed Sentinel's Ward set to Zapping Bolt and made it superior (the cost IIRC is the same regardless if you buy the superior version or not). Gave BoL the Ragnarok set instead (the knockdown proc is useful here and can be a nice opener as you enter to do Short Circuit and Power Sink) and did a 2 piece Superior Opportunity in Charged Bolts instead to get the 10% range boost. As @Black_Assassin stated, the accuracy in Havoc and Tesla are below 95% at +3. Switched out 2 procs to get the acc/dam and acc/dam/end winter set IOs here. Did a 3 piece winter set in the nuke with 3 damage procs, does bump the average damage. Moved a slot from Power Sink to Charge Up for a recharge IO to get the recharge more in line with the nuke. 1 end mod/rech HO is plenty for Power Sink, you could leave it at lvl 50 initially and bump it to 53 later when you have more inf. IIRC I got them for 12 mil a piece when IO'd my Sentinel 2 days ago. Overall this bumps the accuracy on Tesla and Havoc to reach 95%, gives you pretty good recharge debuff resist at 90%, ups your fire/cold resist, and you get a slightly higher melee/s/l defense from using the superior version of Sentinel's Ward set. Sentinel (Electrical Blast - Electric Armor - Electric Mastery) pre50 v1.5.mbd

I can take a look later when I'm off from work, but after fully IOing my elec/energy/elec and testing a bit, I would strongly suggest considering the AoE immobilize (chain fences iirc?). Once you sap a mobs end, they will start running all over the place. Should not be an issue in a team environment as the minions/lts will die to quickly for them to run away far, but if you plan to solo then I would recommend it. If you primarily play in teams, you can go for Havoc Punch to get another high dmg ST attack which really packs a punch when proced out. I think I personally prefer defensive sets for Sentinels, they just don't have a lot of HP to take many hits on a resist armor set, but I'm sure electric armor will be equally effective as energy. Once enemies are drained of their endurance, you won't have many attacks coming your way.

You could consider making a version without Granite, although I can also take a look at putting one together tomorrow. While Granite makes you nearly unkillable, there are a lot of negatives associated with it. You can achieve similar lvls of survival without Granite and not have to suffer all those penalties (recharge/dmg debuff, travel restriction, unable to see costume, etc). I think a lot players tend to build stone without Granite since the changes to stone armor on homecoming. Rooted also doesn't slow you down anymore and has no travel power restrictions. While you can build stone melee to be a pseudo controller with stuns/holds, there's also no reason to ignore it's ST dmg capability, something that you can take advantage of by avoiding Granite. There are a lot of benefits to running Brimstone for the dmg boost and Minerals for the recharge boost. It's also worth noting that not all dmg types are equally common. Ice barely exists outside of winter event and a few rare enemies/AVs. Fire also isn't extremely common. Even if you do face these, being near/at resist cap with Brimstone is plenty to survive those encounters without going for Granite to try and hit hard cap resist and soft cap def. You can also still hit near/at hard cap s/l/e/n (the most common damage types) resists and soft cap defenses without Granite. Edit: also worth adding that Stalagmites only has a 10% chance of inflicting stun.

With regards to attack sets: Energy: great for ST damage, average at AoE. Fire: near the top for both ST and AoE, great overall choice. Electric: fairly good AoE, bad ST damage unless you choose to run it on a stalker (assassin's strike + patron/epic snipe help a lot with ST damage). Elec/shield stalker is an excellent combo if you want to use electric melee. Axe: great ST and AoE damage, also a great overall choice. SS: revolves around rage, but easy to proc bomb. Excellent AoE nuker when paired with rad armor. I'd go with rad/ss tank for this combo (nuking mobs quickly actually hurts building/keeping up fury on a brute). Stone: great ST damage, okay AoE but not top tier imo. Claw: another good overall set, but a bit below fire and axe imo. Those are the main contenders to consider. For armor sets: Stone: great survival with a good damage boost, no need to even run/pick up granite to max out survival. Shield: great survival, higher damage boost than Stone (AAO + shield charge). No heal and lacks the regen boost that rooted provides to stone armor. Bio: higher offensive boost than stone/shield imo, still very survivable but relies on cycling between your absorbs and regen click powers. Fire: arguably the highest offensive boost, but also the lowest survivability compared to the 3 above. Radiation: another strong damage boost (2 procable AoEs, meltdown crash is easily manageable and can be picked up for it's offensive boost). Good survivability, but not quite at the level of stone or shield imo. Also worth considering if you want to exemplar well, some sets can be very late bloomers like SS not getting foot stomp until lvl 30 on tanks.

You had sprint toggled on in the tanker build, which accounts for a decent chunk. Different slotting in Maneuvers accounts for another ~0.1 end/sec drain. If you detoggle Sprint and slot Maneuvers the same as you had in the brute build, the end drain should be identical.

Yes, if you plan on running a brute, you will want to actively play. This does depend on the situation when dual boxing though. If you have a better dmg dealer then you can just have your spine/fire brute on follow with a power like Spine Burst or Burn on auto. The main point is that a Brute is no longer able to really afk farm. Asteroid map is small with walking patrols. When referring to afk farming it's normally to this Asteroid map and setting your farmer in the middle of the map with a aoe on auto (rad melee is best here since Atom Smasher has higher DPA, you get bonus contamination dmg, and you also get a dmg aura similar to spine). A brute would likely die in this situation where a tanker can survive being afk. These maps usually have a 10min timer so it kicks you out of the map and makes it easy to reset. You can (and should) summon the BP lore pets as it's on a 10 min timer and the unkillable one will provide some dmg and res debuffs. Similarly you can fire off Ageless and toggle hybrid at start. For lvling my own alts, I'll normally run xtomic carnival map (has EBs as well) on +4/8x with my spine/fire brute. While actively playing, you won't have issues staying alive even without another support/box account as long as you're at 45% fire def. You can either do so with a cheap build or do a more expensive one (these normally prioritize the normal purple sets that have 10% recharge bonuses to maximize recharge/dmg). You can also craft temp power def boost to make up lower fire def, though I prefer the cheaper version with built in 45% def. I only use the farmer when I need to lvl up an alt, I don't actually farm for fun. Afk farming can be nice for passive inf earning. You can play the game with your mains, do TFs and such and only need to check back and reset the farm every 10 mins. You could technically lvl alts that way also by taking super speed at lvl 4/stealth at 6 and slotting a celerity stealth IO so you don't incur debt with the patrols. Can't compare atm as I'm at work, but can do so later. I will say that you should have no end issues after Ageless core destiny. You also get consume that you can use towards the last 30 seconds of Ageless when the rec buff is lower until it Ageless is back up.

I will say that if you don't care about speed in particular, then aiming for +dmg bonuses isn't really that necessary. But do as you like there. In terms of survival, you don't need to focus on max HP for active farming, getting to 45% fire def and actively farming will keep you alive. For AFK farming, you really want to use a tank which have higher base HP pools and can more easily survive. Since the changes that @Meknomancer mentioned, I don't think Brutes are able to survive AFK farms well, at least at +4/8. There was a recent topic on the Tanker side of AFK farming (stone armor is actually best for this as Rooted adds regen and Brimstone boosts dmg). Perhaps I'm missing something, but why would a Tank version have end problem where the Brute version would not? Regardless though, Ageless core destiny will fix any end issues and you want it for the +recharge boost it provides. Make sure you're running the most updated version. Other than that, if you have procs turned (force feedback +rech in particular) and/or Ageless on (first few seconds give a big rech boost but it degrades over time), it can end up showing you at recharge cap which would make it appear that any more recharge enhancements don't do anything.