normalperson

DPS is for scrappers and brutes. A stalker is really more there to help the team's survival. That's my point: end the boss sooner and he deals less damage to your party and your tank, even if killing just that one guy means you did less total DPS than the blaster. The boss in most spawns poses more threat to the tank than all the minions combined. The less effort your tank is taking to keep their hp up, including less end burning on mitigations, the faster he/she moves between spawns, and possibly the more enemies he/she will be comfortable gathering in one place. Then your team does more DPS even if you as an individual did less.

I think when you play a stalker right, they're kind of the "unsung hero" of the team. You're waiting until the split second the tank has all the mob gathered and aggroed, and then assassinating the boss, which also puts all the other nearby minions in a state of fear. But the tank won't realize your strike is why the minions weren't dealing damage for the first few seconds of the fight (due to the fear effect) , and the boss was already dead, so it just looks like their armor/defense was very splendid. Just want all you stalkers to know I can see the difference. On teams with no stalker, I notice the boss living longer, and often the lack of a dead boss is what wipes a whole team out, on harder settings. As for the fear effect, I started noticing it when I gave one of my brutes "invoke panic" - makes a big difference. And stalkers have that effect built into their assassin strike.

Stalkers fight quick battles. Radiation melee is designed for longer battles. It's not terrible for a stalker, but your play style needs to balanced more toward seeing yourself as a "debuffer" for the rest of the team.

Maybe your team isn't setting the difficulty high enough?

Gotta remember one thing about being "overpowered" - This is a superhero game. Stalkers massively underperform on teams - but you know the player didn't choose the AT for that. They choose it because they think it is fun, and because their concept of "superhero/villain" is a ninja. They work way better in single player than a scrapper does, though. And they can be great on teams, if you realize that your role is "kill the boss" and just focus on achieving that. Damage comparisons will always "spread sheet" best for long, sustained fights Brutes have the best performance in a very long fight because of Fury. Scraps do ok both in long fights and short fights. Stalkers perform best in very very short fights. But, all three lengths of fight exist in the game.

The main advantage of leadership pool is the Confuse protection. My current Daemons/Sonic didn't take leadership. There are few things more frightening than seeing my own daemons turn around and try to attack me!!!!!! It was so frightening that I actually felt like it added to the fun, so I left it.

As good an idea as any I've heard so far. But one thing: spiders are not technically considered "insects". So the set would need to be called something more like "bugs" or "invertebrates".

I've always wanted to try taking all three of the "fighting pool" attack powers to see how high the damage gets when you have all three. I'm assuming the synergy boost is to their base damage.... so probably get amplified by rage pretty well??????? I cannot say this for sure. So if you need enough damage to take down a AV, and Rad melee isn't dealing enough of it, maybe try that?

I imagine maybe they changed it because hardly anyone was playing it. So I would be one of the few who disliked the change, and only because I had more or less mastered using it to good effect. I didn't really like the character, though, so its more of an excuse if I give up on her. If they really want more people to play /elec, then adding an alternate appearance for Lightning Field would probably do it. Having the lightning come up at a 45 degree angle from your feet is kind of awkward. Perhaps it could be more centered, and come out at a 90 degree angle the way Rune of Protection does it?

So listening to the advice given here, I decided my best bet is to shut down the sappers before they shut me down. But sometimes there are more than one, or I target them but they survive long enough to still hit me. So, I decided to try mezzing them. And also in my build I had taken the Presence Pool to get Unrelenting, and I made an amazing discovery. Invoke Panic is AMAZING for brutes!!!! It's only 7.56 seconds (more with enhances, of course), but for a brute that doesn't matter! If you're doing it right, half the spawn will be dead before that timer runs out. At this moment my toon is almost a tank. I can jump in the middle of x4 spawn or even x6, wait a second for Beta Decay to lower their defense, and then mezz the entire spawn for 8 seconds while I start killing them.

I could probably dust off that toon and get the resistances up higher. I had smash/lethal/energy to 90 without tapping the Power Surge button. Probably around 70 for fire/cold Lucky to get anywhere near 50 on Dark or Tox though. The set has nothing for toxic, but with just a few set bonuses, Power Surge would cap it. But even if I got her power level back up to where I wanted it, she's just plain a different toon now. If I were truly attached, I suppose I would make it work somehow. These changes only really discourage us away from our moderate to least favorites. Unless there actually ends up being no work around. I'm worried someday they'll set Brute soft cap to 75 like it is for scrappers, and that will be the end of the era. As it is, with some strategy you can make a not-quote tanker that deals continuous damage. That's fun. If they actually make brutes unable to tank, and therefore unable to live long enough to deal damage - then it just becomes a non-class.

I understand why the OP is upset. I recently logged on to my Psi/Ele brute to discover "Power Surge" has been nerfed. It recharges a bit faster, but now it only gives you 18.75% boost to your resistances, and only for 30 seconds. I like that it doesn't fully sap your End to zero when it expires, but 18.75% is a whole different story from what it used to do. You were basically at 90% in everything for a couple of minutes, with decent enhancements. I can see why some people would consider that unfairly powerful for a non-tank, but it was only useable a couple of times per session. I reserved it for emergencies, like if the team's tank accidentally pulls 2 or 3 spawns at once, or I accidentally aggro a spawn myself. It was quite a power rush for the few minutes I had it, though. So I can see why the OP is upset. You build a character you're proud of. Situationally the best at something of anyone in the room, and then "Yoink!!!" it gets arbitrarily ripped away. I'll probably make an electric tank sometime soon, but I'm "once bitten" when it comes to brutes. The thing with Brutes is: They are ONLY fun if you come up with a strategy. It's not a class that you just throw into the fray and it plays well. Tanks are designed to be playable/survivable with little or no understanding of game mechanics. Scraps are the same for damage. Brute has neither survivability nor damage unless you figure out a way to last a few seconds of continuous fighting. Brutes and Stalkers require finesse. But you can't finesse anything if they keep changing the specs. Each strategy is going to be very very dialed in to exactly what strengths/weaknesses your power set faces.

/elec used to get really good in late levels, but recently Power Surge got nerfed. It was insane how powerful you were with that. For I think it was 2 minutes, if you had good enhances on it, you were basically at 90% full soft cap against all but psionics. A great emergency button. In early to mid levels it was pretty weak, except against clockwork. If you could find clockwork missions, you could just cruise through your leveling pretty quick. It's greatest ability is making you almost entirely immune to end drain. And of course getting your energy resistance to soft cap is naturally very easy, as with any resistance set that has a specialty. Super Reflexes is way more survivable all around. You have defense against all types of attack, so no particular weaknesses. Not being able to self heal with a specific power is the only real downside. Either have to get by with only regen, or take one of the few self healing power pools, or buy the temp self heal power a lot. It sounds tough, but it's actually easier to survive that way than you think.

Doing villain arc with a friend, the Tac Ops Sappers just turn my Martial Arts/ Rad brute into butter. One hit and I drop all toggles, get mezzed, and just plain die. Is there any strategy for that? I can't find any insps on the market that give you End resist, and by the time I can pop a blue, well......... there is no time to pop a blue. You're at zero before you can react.

Rune of Protection + /Rad is a special case. Being able to not drop your toggles during a fight covers /Rad's greatest weakness. Also since Demon Summoning gives you the Ember Shield Owner resistance boost in 5 areas, the resistance from Rune of Protection brings you closer to that 75% soft cap. I personally put two +Resistance IO's on Ember Daemon just to boost my own shielding.

Perhaps later on when I respec I can move Disruption Field earlier into the build, and put my flight powers toward the end instead, and just use a jet pack when I exemplar. If you don't think Enflame will get me much damage very often, then I guess that settles it! I didn't really want to take Arcane Bolt. At this point in the game, single target powers just don't feel like they speed things up very much, even when they're high damage. Crack Whip is pretty dope! Chance for Knockback plus more damage resist debuff. I guess it really was just between those two things. Either way I get an increase to AOE damage. Thanks for discussing with me. I feel better now.

I haven't figured out how to use the build making tool, so all I can tell you is my pools so far are : Flight, Stealth, Presence, and Sorcery, with Scirocco as my patron I have my daemons at soft cap, 90% resistance in 5 of the 8 areas. Still weak to psionics, unfortunately, but I have all three resist procs on them. As I near the finish line, I'm facing a painful choice. Do I finish sorcery to get Enflame, by taking it and Arcane bolt? Or just forget about it, and take Invoke Panic from presence, and maybe Crack Whip? I really wanted to see what happens when I stack Enflame and Disruption field. The two powers seem like a match made in heaven (or hell in this case). Disruption will be my final power pick at L49, since it doesn't need to have a lot of slots. On the other hand, Invoke Panic would be such a useful mezz power. My deamons are nigh indestructible to everything except psionics, but they totally get massacred by those darn psionics. Having liquefy really helps, but it's not up all the time. Having two group mezz powers might enable me to scrape by when I'm facing psionics heavy enemies. Sadly I don't have enough room in my build to go both directions!!!!

Assault makes more sense than Maneuvers. The +def is just too small, but the faster you kill your enemies, the less def you need! Fighting would make a little bit of sense, but not enough. I can see why you might want to, considering the shield power for Dark doesn't give you any lethal/smashing resistance, but with decent set bonuses, and taking Rune of Protection from sorcery pool, you're going to hit the 75% soft cap anyway I think. At least you'll come close. Two powers, just for +11% smash/lethal seems kind of costly. Strangely, my recommendation for a 4th pool is TELEPORTATION!!!! If you're going to do Vengeance, and Fallout, you might as well add in the ability to bring your fallen comrade to right where you want them, so you can fire those off and turn the course of the battle!

So it's actually like the one perfect power for a tank/brute, then? Something to keep the Bots/ Mastermind behind you from knocking all the bad guys out of their cluster? Hmmmmm..... That changes things. I'm glad I asked this question.

I just barely got my brute through the patron arc for Scirroco. She's Psi/Ele, so I decided to go with his power set, but now I have to choose the first power. Choices are the mass immobilize AOE that makes all targets immune to knock, or single target lightning. As a general rule I much prefer AOE's if I can get them, but at the same time it's not in my best interests to immobilize anyone, because I want them to gather around me. Is there some tactical approach where Brutes benefit from mass immobilizing enemies?

Main thing I have learned with blasters is recharge times don't matter, just activation times and damage amounts. If you don't level 3/4 of the mob in your first round of attacks, you won't be alive long enough to care how long the recharges on those powers are. I spend most of my time killing the last 1/4 that still survived. I CAN spend that time, precisely because there is only 1/4 of them still shooting me.

Yeah. I recently discovered on a big Rikti raid, with multiple Defenders buffing us all - Blaster soft cap is 75%. Not the same as my brute that can go Temp Invuln and see everything spike to 90%. I'm leaning even stronger toward flame. I can still take that power set's persistent shield, which is only slightly weaker than temp invulnerable, and with lesser coverage for more damage types. Mainly that leaves the decision being Personal FF vs. Rise of the Phoenix. I recently discovered you can purchase a self resurrect power for a million inf from START vendors, making RotP's benefit mostly just its recharge time. I cringe to consider how often I would have to die in order for that to be beneficial. But once per hour I can use "Self Destruct" and not suffer xp debt.

So, it's not an official benefit, but one of the unofficial benefits of having Domination going is you see the word "Dominate" over the heads of all the enemies you hit with your power -- which makes it easy to see which ones your attacks actually hit, so you know which ones are still not going to be mezzed. And so they stand out better and you can easily count them. No specific function value there, but definitely convenient.

Should add that Psionics is one of those damage types that many opponents have no resistance to. But also with /Rad you can slot Achilles Heel : Chance for Resistance debuff onto pretty much all the powers in the set. And it has a heal (kind of). So either way.

It looks like you're focusing on defense rather than resistance, right? So the last two benefits from getting Luck of the Gambler up to a full 6 are +Resists. Might as well only build it up to 4, and assign the slots to something else. (Skip two of the /Rech ones, since you don't use it much on a persistent defense power.) And on tactics, Guassian's Fire Control will get you +2.5 directional defense , whereas Adjusted Targeting mostly gets you +Resist bonuses. Also because it is persistent, the Guassian proc will fire more often. That's just to do with my philosophy, though: better to go all in on defense, rather than just a little bit in on def and a little bit in on resist.