Frosticus

It is a "soft" crash. 50% of your bluebar, no impact on recovery.

FA lets you do more interesting things with your build and the debuff resistance is nice. CP can be pretty nice for some niche cases. Less applicable to WP, but it can help builds that experience t9 crashes. Or if you use a lot of endurance to the point of needing ageless it can let you switch to radial and get that sweet debuff protection.

/psi only needs to worry if they plan to face 1 tough target, or assume they never miss with drain psyche in that scenario. My earth/psi ended up needing cardiac, but in practice an ice dom is probably avoiding solo AVs/gms, so it likely doesn't matter. Or they just load up on temps/ insp.

Generally: low target caps on damage powers, low "burst" damage, limited access to tohit buffs, mobs that can be very resistant to controls, usually need to be directly in melee to deal good damage, very limited debuff resistance/protection, very limited team buffing ability, heavily reliant on others if any aggro is pulled. It's an uphill battle for them, but one certainly won't prevent success.

just an inf saving piece of info: the HO's in mind link and ice slick don't boost the recharge and slow respectively. If a power can't take a SO for the aspect you are trying to improve, then HO's will ignore it. Set IO's use different rules and will improve multiple aspects as long as it isn't flagged to ignore boosts and enhancements. You could probably still improve the -speed of ice slick via your alpha though if desired. ie. Intuition Radial or Spiritual Radial.

I dont worry about focus on my ice stalker. But I don't worry about it on any of them. Most sets suck you in to a trap of cycling low tier attacks that don't even generate 100% focus, while your AS sits unused. Ie icesword = 80% chance of focus If fast AS is up, I use it. It will be up ~4 seconds later and maybe I'll have more focus built by then.

Ya, it is even worse than just lower relative damage and no taunt. The cast times of all their attacks were lengthened, so they can't chain attacks nearly as quickly. They also prefer standing back and throwing water balloons, using melee much less than the troller version. That means less attacks completed when they trigger soulbound buildup, but also less frequent firing of it. There was a lot they could have done to PA, but they did it dirty imo. I think it warranted a different power name.

It gives up a lot of damage - no spec wounds, Dom PA does much less damage than Troller PA It gives up the complete small group control that troller PA offers through taunting PA and taunting Phant- Decoy It gains much better x8 control in gleam, which is a very good ranged stun. Overall your illusions - PA and phant - aren't very convincing compared to the troller versions, but gleam is very pretty.

Ya, as a damage debuffer, when an AV hits unstoppable it lives up to the name.

Hopped on test. *used auto enhance *emptied seismic and put Crit Strikes in *No scrappers strike slotted Seismic>Heavy Mallet> Stone Mallet

No dog in this race other than to say this should be an easy one to test. It should be apparent pretty quickly if that second mallet is being boosted.

Ya the 5% (and 50% vs naked) hit rate is only for even con minions and can be extremely disappointing when you start facing harder content. Most def sets have pretty low ddr, so that takes a hit due to + cons hitting more frequently, but it is also hampered by the debuff strength being higher due to the purple patch. But as you noted, that same + 4 boss hits pure resistance based builds 91% of the time rather than the 50% that gets thrown around often. All that said, resistance is nice in that it is predictable and allows ample time to play reactively. Defense is mechanically stronger and will often sail thru content that resistance struggles with, but by the same token you often faceplate in mere seconds and have a tiny window to prevent it.

Can't speak for all of them, but in the case of Stone it has a flat 20% crit chance on seismic, so that is notable. EM can gain double energy focus, which is pretty bonkers when it happens and both the heavy hitters have a slightly boosted base critical chance of 10% EM is quite popular, so it isn't holding it back imo. I'm not sure why stone isn't more popular. I'm not sure why I haven't played it yet. Seismic is a perfect spot for crit strikes, you can probably get heavy and regular mallet into the window and tremor offers good control, ffb proc and is a nice 15ft aoe. I think if anything it competes with buffed axe, but maybe doesn't win in that department, so you see more axe being played.

I have 3 power transfers and 1 pancea all in auto powers on my em/ea/body stalker. Reviewing video, most often 2 fire, but 3 is common and 4 is not rare. On that build it covers most of the chip damage that gets through leaving the heal power for when a bigger hit lands.

If this is what 6th place feels like... Energy TRANSFER! Then I'm ok with that

It's fine. I like it more for controllers because a lot of the set is tied up in fire imps contributing damage. They get the same imps and have tools to make them excel much more. That said, I enjoy my fire/fire/fire dom. It can do a lot of single target damage with +dam ATO in procd char and high uptime of fiery embrace. The aoe controls tend to be too slow for my liking, so I enjoy it on high con/low team size settings.

I think this video more clearly demonstrates how powerful placate is.

It also has a very fast cast time now. Extremely useful power.

Here's a little demonstration of placate. I'm mostly using it defensively here, but you do get a bit of me using it offensively for double energy focus. Basically I placate the group I don't want involved and then use the offensive boost against my target. This build is a bit different than what you generally see from a defensive perspective, but that is a different discussion. His webnade only checks ranged def, so I'm webnadded most of the fight. Crimson has quite a bit of defense. His cloaking device is 30% and he also has elude, so that is annoying. The fight is lvl 54 Agent Crimson + 4 Ballista EB allies No insp/amps/temps/lore First video is with no placate. I just attempt to "scrap". I actually survive quite a bit longer than I thought given their tohit floor is around 9-12% for various attacks. Could I "win" this encounter? doesn't look like it...not with this spec. Second video is using placate. As you can see it is about as easy as it gets

Ya most AVs recover ~26 end/sec and have a pool of 800 endurance. As mentioned earlier, sapping can still be very valuable against EBs and lower, even at lvl 54. But for AVs you should probably have some other tricks at your disposal.

This is with drain psyche slotted for 71.3% end mod = -856.65% recovery So the equivalent of about 4 heat exhaustions Most AV's have 2 x as much recovery as the pylon. A +3 (lvl 54) AV would decrease the debuff even more. 87% resistance instead of 85% and level scaling difference of 65% effectiveness. Takes a pylon from 13.34 end/sec down to 3.33 end/sec You'd need approx: 1150% -recovery to flatline the pylon 2300% -recovery to flatline an AV 3600% -recovery to flatline a lvl 54 AV

Psi mastery makes a lot of sense as it rounds out builds with 2 lotg spots, reliable ffb, more defense, outstanding psi protection and as I demonstrated in various vids - woc is really good for melee doms. It is a good overall package that leans more toward protection. Psi Assault is still standing tall. What it lost in the psw nerf it gained back in the quick snipe. Shifting its focus from aoe powerhouse to decent at everything. Psw still hits 16 targets and retains top spot for pbaoes as the others only hit 10...it is also a control power in and of itself. Subdue is one of the best ranged options for the +dam ATO and is an easy 2-3x stack Drain psyche remains the best sustain by a landslide, so if that is important to the player there is little else in contention. There are lots of good choices. I love /fiery for single target ranged as that is utility in and of itself. I lament the lack of ato slotting though as it restricts primary choice (for me) . It is very different from the tankiness of /psi, or the chain teleporting and aoe mayhem of savage.

I've always felt EA is overrated. I still feel that way in general as the holes are glaring. But Overload an amazing power. It should be called Overlord because it is a literal godmode. It plugs the holes and puts your stalker in the HP zone of a meaty well-built scrapper, but with stalker tools. With built in conserve power, power drain and placate at your disposal there is no reason not to spend as much time as possible in the t9. For late game ageless radial works really well for me. Bringing up the moderate debuff protections to excellent levels, cycling overload more often and it costs 0 end to activate, so seamlessly gets you through the crash. EA was an easy #1 pick for me.

Ya I think most people overlook several things. 1. EM's performance is raw damage. It isn't using self buffing things like follow up, or multiple -res powers. 2. EM responds better to buffing and debuffing. If a claws is pushing 2x followup and buffed by forge it will see less relative increase. Same goes for builds stacking a bunch of -res to get their numbers. 3. Some sets require a static enemy to get anywhere close to top performance. Not all scrappers have a taunt aura, or tools to keep mobs still. TW taking 2 steps to chase and having momentum drop is tedious. 4. Almost all scrapper sets can dish out great damage, so you should generally play what you like. 5. As nuts as EM is on scrappers, stalkers crank it up several notches. Consistent and predictable double focus, fast AS and buffed power crash.