Omega-202

There's nothing divisive about BLM. If you are against that message, you are on the wrong side of history.

Cool. Shoot me for discussing the pros and cons of Epic pool choices for Stalkers in a thread about Epic pool choices for Stalkers. You don't have to take every time someone diasgrees with you and interpret it as a personal attack.

There's a pretty huge difference between Judgement powers which are usable every few minutes and FB or BL which can be used every 10 seconds or so. And generally, although this is more a philosophical point, the idea isn't that taking AoEs makes you "play like a X". There is so much bleed over between ATs that the concept is meaningless to me. If you're looking at it from a purely efficiency min/max point of view, all ATs and builds have certain goals and benchmarks to aim for in the present meta, and a big one is "provide solid AoE damage". To me, any build worth its salt should be able to provide that.

This is just more proof that you don't know how to build your Blaster. I've built S/L/R softcapped Blasters that can nuke through +4/8 with the best of them. Hell, people have done deathless Master ITFs with a Blaster. The issue isn't Blasters being too squishy, its you. The game is already too easy for most people, to the point that there were threads just last week asking if something should be changed to make things harder. The fact that you think people use Afterburner for defense is laughable. Nobody with any sense has ever relied on it for that.

Agreed. And that's coming from someone who regularly plays 3 characters rocking electric sets of some sort. Other thematic sets need love first. The nearly complete lack of Earth/Nature sets is weird. Where's Rock Blast? Basically any Earth APPs, besides Controllers/Doms? Earth Affinity? Wind Blast? Wind Control? Water Control? Water Melee? Plant APPs?

They're not locked as red. You can change them at ICON. The only thing that's locked is the Mu Striker pet. I have my Mu PPP characters with recolored attacks that are blue, white, darker red etc. But to the topic at large: Sure, seems reasonable. But in light of the limited development resources, is this really something that should be prioritized when Mu exists? What about the lack of Ice or Radiation APP sets for Stalkers/Scrappers? Or the lack of Pistols/Gadgets APPs for melee? There's a lot of other holes that exist that have zero alternatives, while electric already has Mu.

Sorcery pool. Others have already suggested it in this thread. Have you taken a look at Rune of Protection?

Have you tried playing a MM who sits in his bubble all day? You contribute nothing when you're in the bubble and your pets get massacred in seconds. You should try playing the game more instead of theorycrafting on things you have no clue about.

Maybe it's because I rarely choose armor sets that are +def deficient, but I personally don't see the appeal to Shadow Meld. For Energy, Shield, SR, Invuln, Ninjitsu and Ice you should be beyond, at or very near the defense caps for most things when you add on Weave, CJ and IO bonuses. Not to mention that you can take Barrier. For the other armor sets...sure take Meld to fill the gap, but I think there is a larger debate about whether Stalker armor sets lacking any kind of +def are less effective due to how strong defense is compared to resistance and healing. For the endgame meta that we currently have, AoE damage is king and to me that means Stalkers should take something that helps them make up for their lack of AoE damage. And that means grabbing Mu or Blaze for Ball Lightning or Fireball. The amount of damage you can do with a Gaussian procced BU > BL or FB from hide on a full spawn is pretty ridiculous.

Did you make sure you made the comparison with the same combat status? Because to me, it looks like you took the Moonbeam screenshot when it was in "fast snipe" mode (hence the lower damage and lower crit chance) and the other two in "sniper mode" when you're out of combat/Hidden (higher damage, guaranteed critical sniper shot when Hidden).

That's exactly it. Yes, Support only has 50% up time, but I usually have it available when I need it. And you're ignoring teammates. I very often team with another Crab and we're able to spot each other an extra 21% so Support isn't really crucial. And if I'm not teaming with them, its also very common to have a Manuevers or two somewhere on the team to get my pets into the 40%+ range. Procs. The answer is Procc'ing out your attacks to the gills. Especially if you're able to squeeze in Achilles and Gladiator's Javelin to take as much advantage of Venom Grenade's debuffs as possible. But the truth is that Crabs will never be single target burst characters. That's their one flaw, if you had to assign them one. They're not sniper rifles, they're a combine harvester mowing through wide swaths of enemies. What you lack in single target, you make up for in AoE. And when it comes time for the AV fight, if you remembered to pack your unresistable Achilles and Anhilation procs (which Crabs can slot in damn near everything), you do perfectly fine damage.

I can't speak for this build specifically, but for solo DA content, I think that pushing for the Incarnate defense cap is a bit overkill. Even at +4/8, you're only facing the equivalent of "very tough" +1's due to the level shifts. I never really found anything in DA to be that bad solo, even with just softcapped defense because the level shifts make things way easier. +4/8 Shadow Shard has always been more threatening to me than +4/8 DA.

I am aware you are not OP, but you're just further illustrating the point. I am now walking away from this conversation.

I haven't seen a single instance of this in this thread. And therein lies the issue with the suggested policy. It is based off of arbitrary perceived slights when there was no intention of provoking anyone.

...Or, in my experience, these forums have been pretty well behaved and, in-game, 99% of people are fine and publicly addressing the fringe cases would just needlessly amplify their reach. I agree with the earlier posters: water off the duck. Not every asshole will be punished, and if they are, its not really any of your business. Why do you care to find out if they're punished and how? If you do care, it starts shifting from "justice" to "revenge", or at least "schadenfreude".

I am in no way goading anyone or trying to pick a fight in saying this: This suggestion is ridiculous. Any post with a contrary opinion that is less than perfectly polite would be at risk of facing punishment simply because someone else over reacts and lashes out? How would this not be instantly weaponized by people just lashing out at any opinion they dislike?

Depends on what content you're running. Are we talking standard PI radios at +4/8? Tin/Pex? Farms? Outdoor portal missions? For standard missions, I make sure I'm taking the alpha strike and just kill faster than the enemy can kill your pets. Lead with either (1) Omega Manuever > Venom > Frag > Suppression w/Ragnarok or (2) Venom > Ion Judgement > Frag > Suppression. In version (1), Omega bomb is taking the hits and knocking the enemies down when it blows, Venom is terrorizing them, and Frag and Suppression are also knocking them down. In version (2), all minions are dead after the judgement and all Lts are all basically dead by the end of the opening, so they can't hurt you. You have a bunch of mitigation built into the attacks. For higher end content, I don't stress on the pets. They're more of a bonus than a critical feature. Respawn them when needed and just try to keep them as alive as possible. They're not going to survive the Battle Maiden finale of Apex or the cyst mission in ITF, for example. It just isn't happening, so don't try. Pets also won't survive a standard Mission Architect farm. No way to deal with all of the extra aggro, so don't bother. Otherwise, use your Destiny power to keep them up. I use Rebirth to heal my pets being that they're already nearly defense capped without Barrier.

I would suggest just playing a Stalker. The APPs and PPPs give you some really amazing ranged damage options, and some of the primaries have options as well. You could go with Kinetic, Claws or Spines, slap on Sorcery, Force of Will or Experimentation's ranged pool attacks and add Mu or Blaze. I did some experimenting on my Electric/Inv/Mu Stalker at one point, building him out into a full "Blapper" build that took Mu Bolts, Zapp (with 3 procs), Electric Shackles (with 4 procs) and Ball Lightning. With the Prismatic Taser temp power from the P2W added on for fun, he had a full ranged, uninterupted attack chain, all of the Stalker stealth and defense benefits, and had Lightning Rod as a mini nuke, as well as a melee attack chain when he wanted to scrap out. His ranged damage was lower than his melee chain, but not by a ton. In the end, I specced him back to a more melee/AoE focused build that still keeps Zapp, Ball Lightning and Shackles, which lets me nuke down runners amd put out respectable damage when its dangerous to get into melee (Apex TF finale for example).

Run TFs for merits. Cash in merits for purples. Tin/pex + Yin can be speed run in about 1.5 hours for 100 merits. There's no excuse for not being able to afford purples, but even so, a build that runs all purps and winters isnt a good build.

A) You're wrong on the first paragraph. That's not how the Alphas work at all. They act identically to enhancements, whether you already have that attribute slotted for or not. I highly recommend you don't give advice on things you aren't knowledgeable about. B) The lack of softcapping is a failing of the build and why I don't endorse it for endgame play. But I don't believe these builds aren meant for endgame and are more leveling builds, hence the thread title.

That's a very narrow view and most top tier builds are definitely not taking Agility. Agility will increase your recharge but it will also neuter your proc chances because it factors into the adjusted recharge value (whereas global recharge bonuses from IOs and Hasten don't). Also, if you build correctly, you can easily defense cap without it and can reach a point of perpetual endurance recovery. Agility is a crutch to patch up a bad build. A well built Soldier should be looking at Musculature, hands down.

Not sure whats going on here, but I'm not the OP. I didn't come in asking for advice. I think you're pretty confused. Either way, to some of your other points, you're missing a lot of nuance that the Mids numbers aren't going to be telling you. For example, as Gulb pointed out, the Terrorize effect is at least twice as valuable as a knockdown as it is potentially cancelling 5 whole seconds of enemy agency. Venom Grenade turns into a really devastating control power with the Dominion proc, way better than any KD proc. That's not to discount the value of an extra Posi's for damage, but I've never felt that I needed any more AoE damage capability on my Crab. Few things survive a single AoE attack chain as it is, so what's an extra Posi's doing for me in an AoE when I could reshuffle to bolster my anemic single target chain. And you are severely undervaluing the Javelin proc in Longfang by ~30 points when it hits after a Venom Grenade that has dropped Toxic resist by 60%. And regarding -res in Suppression making the proc less valuable in Longfang somehow: How often are you using Suppression on AV fights vs Longfang? And how long do you think the -res duration is? Because in +3 content, even with an impossible 100% proc rate, you can't keep the debuff up permanently with Suppression alone because it expires before Suppression can recharge. The -res procs on the AoEs should have no bearing on putting them in single target attacks. You do you though. Any Crab is going to run circles around 90% of the other builds in the game.

Some stuff in your post I agree with (eg if youre taking super jump, do something with it), and A LOT I disagree with, which I hope to come back to later, but the quoted part above is something I HARD disagree with. That slotting in Longfang is what I run and it is perfect as is. I don't know where the idea of "sloppy" comes into it when it comes to procs, but Longfang is a great candidate for procing. The base 8 second recharge and ~2 s animation gives Longfang more than a 50% chance of proccing the 3.5 ppm damage procs. Nearly every time you fire, ome of them is going off and Crabs need the single target damage help.

It's due to the way discounts and reductions are calculated. A 100% enhancement value in rcharge or endurance reduction doesn't eliminate the cost or recharge, it halves it, otherwise the whole enhancement system would breakdown. Reductions are calculated as 100 ÷ (100 + enhancement %), not as 100 - enhancement %. So in your 3.75% example, its calculated as 100 /(103.75) = 96.386 and not 100 - 3.75 = 96.25. In effect, it turns into a diminishing return, where 100% reduction is half, 200% is a third, 300% is a quarter etc.

Mu has Electric Shackles, which does slightly less base damage (which really doesn't matter because the damage will be from procs) and costs less end but is otherwise identical to Soul Storm. And it takes the same procs. I use it as a single target nuke with quad procs. I recommend you do some research. It seems you're not aware of what each set has. As I said, the difference comes down to Ball Lightning vs Shadow Meld. If you're already capping defense (which you can do with a lot of sets) then Meld is a waste, especially if you take Barrier Incarnate or run in teams with stacking Manuevers. Plus, BL gives you a giant AoE to use your Hide Crit on, which Electric melee doesn't have. LRod doesn't crit from Hide, so your best option otherwise is Thunderstrike, which will hit 2-4 enemies at best. LR and BL can hit a whole spawn, and with a Gaussian's procced BU, you'll be decimating most of the trash in a spawn just with those two, and will still have Thunderstrike for the followup AoE.