Microcosm

PBs are actually in a fairly good place thanks to the changes toward the end of live and the change to the nuke. They definitely suffer from too much knockback, as others are pointing out. I like redlynne's knockup change for that. They also really need toggle suppression as a QoL improvement for multi-formers. After the tanker updates they fall a little behind the class that most directly mirrored them in single target damage and survivability, but they do better AoE than most tanks so it's almost ok.. could use a slight bump to damage scales. Some powers are still weird, glowing touch as mentioned, and the mez is garbage. I honestly think PBs are in a better spot than Warshades right now because of the latter's inability to keep its pets alive and poor single target damage. When Dark Melee was updated by the live devs to give front loaded damage buff to Soul Drain and improve Siphon Life, they didn't bother to apply the same to the Warshade powers that were a direct copy, leaving Warshades with really bad single target damage.

I thought they just didn't get extra stealth from those powers but did get the defense/res? Never tested it.

Appreciate what you're trying to say, but I think you're misreading me. I'm totally ok with losing the damage from the aura, as that's how Stalkers work. Other Stalker secondaries get some extra defense in addition to the ability to control crits from Hide. Dark Armor, however, does not. This is because Cloak of Darkness was also changed in the port over to Stalkers to become Shadow Dweller, losing a chunk of defense in the process. To contrast, Electric, Ice and Fire all have damage auras on other ATs which they also lose on Stalkers to pick up Hide and net greater defense numbers in the process (Fire has a completely different power changed, but that's another story). From that perspective, Dark appears to be singled out to lose an amount of defense on the Stalker version unlike any of its peer sets, just because. The fact that Shadow Dweller is auto and requires no endurance was thrown out as the reason it makes sense to lower the defense.

Oh I'm very aware of that. The issue for me was that normally when a set loses the damage aura it gains hide which has defense, so you're trading damage for defense. Dark, because of how they also redid the Cloak of Darkness power when porting to Stalkers, actually nets the same defense as the scrapper version while losing that damage. It has been pointed out, however, that the defense it does have, while equivalent to the scrapper level, comes at 0 endurance cost, which is for sure beneficial especially on an end-heavy secondary.

Hmm, I did /bio and /nin, and didn't have any problems with the former at all for endurance, whereas I had with other primaries, though I didn't proc out savage leap like you did at that point. Nin had problems without Ageless, but it was also another proc heavy build. I definitely felt /bio was just a bit too squishy for me as well without any mitigation from savage.

Fire is really a non-issue because most fire attacks come with a s/l component. It would be much worse if the hole was energy; there's a ton of pure energy attacks in game. As for psi, if you get enough recharge icy bastion and hoarfrost will cover you just fine. I've done the mother mayhem av mission on my ice/ice recently at +4/8 (it's entirely psi damage) and struggled a bunch until I remembered I had icy bastion... After I started using that it was fine. Sprinkle in some waterspout for extra mitigation. Ice and Electric are my two favorite armors; they both would do fine. Ice will be a little bit easier to level than elec, for what it's worth. Electric's big bonus is +rech and endurance forever, neither of which is exceptionally needed for savage though. If you want the resist side I'd consider rad in this case as well.

Shouldn't underestimate the value of the +recharge. Yes, you can use sets to get recharge on other builds, but you can also use sets to get +dam on that Sr. There are also power sets (hello, db) where it's really hard to get the requisite recharge without that extra 20%.

Also your right alt key will add them, just fyi.

Math's right on the 3:17 Getting above 300 used to be a huge deal, so I wouldn't say it's bad. 🙂

Yep, agreed on all counts. They also show how far an outlier TW is.

Not disagreeing. I just don't think it should be a top performer in AoE or anywhere near it, when it's a very high performer in ST and can heal and debuff tohit. If we follow the same logic, we've got to buff the high performing AoE sets to be high performing ST and mitigators too. You'll get to a point where everything is a differently colored titan weapons eventually. But Shadow Maul truly sucks and never should have, so full forward on that part.

Ya all of those are valid. But it's ahead of just about everything else (and we should just not even count TW honestly). Stalkers is a little different story, but Stj provides less mitigation and Savage provides 0 mitigation, so that's still ok. It is also behind DB for both, btw, which again provides less mitigation. I just want to buff what's needed (Shadow Maul, and giving any extra AoE on Stalkers) without jumping on the power creep train. If they want to decrease the recharge time of Dark Consumption to make it usable more often, with the reduction in damage and end recovery that would entail, that's fine; the additional damage is not a good idea for the health of the game.

It is still a top performer, it's just not the ridiculously pay to win that Titan Weapons was. It beats out most the rest of the sets while also having a consistent heal, -tohit and end recovery. It is a great set today, with the exception of Shadow Maul. We can go through and remove the weakness of every single set if that's what people want, but the game will suck after that.

This right here is a problem. Shadow Maul is a garbage power that truly needs the buff, but adding other AoE to DM is unbalanced as whole. DM is one of the higher performers in single target damage, and possibly the highest performer in utility/mitigation. It should be weaker than other sets in AoE unless you want to buff the hell out of Electric's single target damage and make Chain Induction heal and Lightning Rod refill your blue bar. I'm just picking electric since quoting Murc; it's not the only comparison to make here. Also, adding AoE to Dark Consumption only helps Scrappers/Tankers/Brutes, who, while having lower AoE than other sets at least have any AoE outside of Shadow Maul. Stalkers is where DM is actually hurting for AoE..

No actually, it is using a procced human form. The only AoE it has are Cross Punch, Orbiting Death, and whatever the pets dish out. It doesn't even have room for Sunless Mire (not good for single targets anyway). It is, however, super survivable even with just one Eclipse target. It's worth it to me as an alt build for AVs and such. It's not 100% repeatable though. The pets do sometimes still die, which crashes the dps fast. I'm trying to come up with ways to make them more survivable if possible, but running out of options. Really wish Glowing Touch was a Warshade power...

So I just raised the WS pylon to 300, because, and forgive the small brag, but I just brought one down in 3:17 for 322.5 dps...(!!!) I'm going to have to verify I can do i again of course, but 230 is way too low now that I know we can break 300. Caveat emptor: I am using a build exclusively designed for st damage and surviving. What got me over the threshold was getting the pets to survive. If I could get burnout in the build it could go higher as I'd have 1 more pet... Edit: ... added burnout, used one blue insp right after burnout which sort of breaks the rules but that thing costs almost half your blue bar. Had 4 pets survive most of the time, ended with two. Total time of 2:04 for 437 dps. This will now officially be my alt build. I will leave the bounty dps as what I raised it to earlier until someone else hits that, then raise it..

Teleport's animation is way too long to make it useful, and super speed would be so much better if it worked like dcuo's where you could run up objects, but otherwise the pools seem ok. There are a couple powers that really have no use (flurry, jump kick), but most everything else has its place.

Interesting thread. So I'm thinking dark would be a really good choice because it has extra pets to do damage against the AV for you while you are stacking confuse ( they should survive if the AV is perma mezzed...). Additionally, for non-AV class mobs you can pile on the -tohit and not have to really slot for defense. Anything I'm missing? I haven't done a Dom since live.

That can be true, but I think rad has fairly good slow resistance. Should be able to get to 100% fairly easily with winter IOs. The mez of course could be another story if it really stacks up.

Ya mine is nothing special, just minerals maneuvers and weave. Minerals gives an enormous defense bonus. I've learned from playing ice armor on stalkers that missing out on f/c defense is not a big deal if you have s/l and some resistance.

Revisiting a proc warshade, with a new build leveraging Weaken Resolve I hit 246. This is without the pets and without enemy fodder for sunless mire. I have been toying with getting enemy fodder like dm/sd scrappers used to do so I can actually use sunless mire (would be about 100% damage buff fully saturated accounting for misses). I have a hard time finding enough Chief Soldiers, and when I do find some I tend to also get Chief Mesmerists, which in turn means I have to use Clarion instead of Ageless which hurts my attack chain too much. I seem to always miss killing a Mesmerist when trying to clean the groups, and they'll sit at range hitting me with -rech in their psi attacks while I attack the pylon... If I try fodder that is not a 54 Chief Soldier, they die too quickly to mire and orbiting death. If I can figure that out though, I'm hoping to get somewhere closer to the 300 mark. Edit: I changed the build around a bit and forced in the pets with Barrier core and the two +def pet uniques. I also added burnout + one blue insp after burnout so I could summon one extra pet (warshade pets are recharge based and expire) when I summoned the last one before heading over to the pylon. With all the pets actually surviving now and benefiting from weaken resolve I hit 2:04 for 437 dps. For comparison, I also did one before that without the Burnout trick and got 322.5, which is still a massive increase from petless. In the regular game you could definitely do this for an AV, but if the AV survives much longer than the pylon your dps would start to drop back down to the 246 range as the pets die off. You would also need to use Break Frees if there was mez involved, since Barrier replaces Clarion. Incarnates for the final version are Barrier Core T4, Musc Core T4, Degen Core T4, Pyronic Core T4, Assault Core T4 (not toggled).

I sort of did as well, after seeing yours 🙂 On my second build, I still went with proccing for damage (I'm only pretending to be a tank), and just went for softcap to psi along with s/l/e/n and some resistances without Granite.

Psi is pretty rare, but when it exists there tends to be a lot of it. If it were me, I would rather keep what you had and maybe do a second build specifically for things that are primarily psi damage. Best of both worlds.

Quantum attacks were made resistable at one point during live. So while they still do extra damage to you, if you've got your E/N shield going and slotted it will help a bit. For the stun, might want to carry break frees. Dwarf is the triple threat here before light form as it gives you extra resistance, allows you to juggle as mentioned above, and grants stun protection.

Thanks. I was using Focused Burst to get the other purple proc and buildup proc in there, but I can reconsider that now that I'm using moonbeam.