Frosticus

I'm not sure I'm following. a 14 sec recharge attack should be 2.6 scale should it not? As you indicated the base damage is scale 2.39. Does any other set have reduced damage in contradiction to the damage formula because they can leverage a combo system? I haven't looked that closely. Just as on test I'm of the opinion that the blood system isn't good enough to warrant any reductions to base damage from the damage formula, but here we are. Like you say, I guess they assumed players average out 3 stacks of blood during play. I've played a lot of savage on stalkers and I'm not sure that really applies to them. As I demonstrated in the savage guide they go from 0-5 really easily and consistently. However If you can ride 3-4 stacks somehow I guess it still performs pretty well if you are ok with dot damage, no mitigation and all lethal. Proc'd savage leap is reason enough to enjoy the set (imo). At least until that is revisited. That said, I think I'd lean toward a savage tank these days. Something like a rad/sav could put out a lot of aoe damage and they are in less of a hurry to drop enemies. Note* I'm not sure how rending flurry works on tankers - whether it was excluded from the aoe size increase because 5 blood stacks increase it's size already. If it is anything like on doms, I'd guess it is not in favor of savage.

I haven't tested it on live yet, but in the beta this new version is a massive nerf to hemo for stalkers. Warranted or otherwise. In the beta it was underperforming what it "should" be doing with blood stacks, but I don't think it was ever addressed. I'd be leary of rolling savage melee if you are hoping for strong st damage at this point, but the aoe is still extraordinary.

For me, my plant/poison was one of the most powerful and synergistic controllers I've ever played. The few weaknesses of plant are filled quite well by poison and the limitations of poison are all but erased by plant. My poison/fire defender is a different breed all together though. Much higher highs and much lower lows than the controller. Very fluid and snappy. Every encounter feels like I have the tools to handle it and it just comes down to my ability to execute and mind the battlefield. For me, no other build has given as much enjoyment. A group of like 5 white cons "could" kill me if I'm asleep at the switch, but at the same time I can handle some of the most difficult content in the game if I play well and leverage my powers. That is exactly what I desire when playing games. Two things to keep in mind: 1. Mez protection is highly recommended. Constantly re-toggling venomous gas is annoying at best, but will probably get you (and perhaps others) killed in the thick of it. 2. Don't worry so much about team mates. If I'm right in the middle of everything and I'm still standing then more than likely everyone else will be doing fine as well. This is because poison is best played very aggressively and excels in quickly turning the tide of the battle. The longer you draw the fight out by tending to teammates the greater the chance of the battle turning back to the favour of your enemies.

It was never far up the list unless you took the time to saturate souldrain. The shift in play has moved most people more into a "minimal prep time" style to the extent that people are even pushing to count the time a MM takes to summon pets, so herding up spawns for souldrain is questionable. It's still a good to great set regardless of how it fits into the pylon game.

This was an experiment in a different approach to building a debuffer and it turned out to be the most fun I've ever had playing the game. Have a read through my poison guide if you like.

It's a very different direction than I went, but it looks quite solid. -I think you won't use paralytic very much in actual play. -The 2 defender procs are a huge boon survival. I personally get them into blaze and blazing bolt, which are my main 1-2 attacks. That might be challenging for your build. Fireball is a fine spot for the absorb though for group play, but could be missed vs AV's and such. -If you are teaming a lot then I like your slotting of tactics. If you aren't then I'd flip tactics and aim. The on demand damage boost of aim+Gaussian is really nice. -You mentioned +5'ing most enhancements. Keep in mind this will greatly impact their ability to exemp down and retain bonuses (pvp and purples not included). If that is something that is important to you.

Defender ATOs are really good. Strong bonuses and the procs are a massive boon to survival. On my poison, traps, and cold defenders (all of which have limited to no self healing ability) the procs provide a huge amount of survivability when you play aggressively.

It's good, but almost unnecessary. Traps is quite robust and also diverts a lot of attention via caltrps, seekers and even mortar. The defender procs are more than ample at keeping you topped up even before the superior version.

I'm pretty sure the 3rd and 4th roll is set to auto fail in that it always rolls above 95 and misses. I talked about that aspect in my poison guide along with the issue of it not properly applying -recovery (if and when it does, it only lasts about 1 sec).

My most enjoyable solo defender is poison/fire. My most capable solo defender is traps/fire.

It only matters when people don't disclose things. Disclose that a build cycles rune and melee hybrid for high uptime on said protections, disclose that a build uses p2w buffs as a key element of the build. If you quickly /ah between missions and refill with med purples, that is fine, but it needs to be disclosed that you haven't found some secret source of +25% def and leave others wondering how you do it. No one has ever cared if someone has assault on/off for a pylon run, just that you note the status. There are very few undiscovered things in this game, so not disclosing is more akin to misleading imo. Well I guess the next inevitable question seeing as how the goalposts have moved. Rad w/ p2w buffs and a med purple vs Invuln w/ p2w buffs and a med purple

This is great work! water looks better than I would have imagined. I wonder if these would change at all for corruptors. Some sets seem to get a bit more mileage out scourge than others.

that gives me pause. Enough to consider some build revamps. I have a strong aversion to consumables in games (personal issue), but these are hitting me right in the grey area. Very interesting.

Serious question though, if i select "no temp powers" for a TF do the p2w buffs still work? I actually dont use p2w buffs, or any temps, but I always select that for solo TFs to remove temptation.

Me too. Homecoming is ok with multiboxing, so I always have a speed boost and adrenal boost on me. It's how the game is. Cause in the words of the immortal Master P - I'm a no limit soldier

Not sure about you guys, but I always refill my warburg nukes and my shivians after each mission. I also spend about an hr at the start of each session emailing myself large inspirations, so I'm always def, res, tohit, and damage capped They are basically part of my base stats, hit me up for some builds :p

Fixed the build in the OP. It could use some updating for new sets/procs Envenom is great and a key power. weaken is also great, but I dont use it on this build as it reduces the potency of confused enemies against each other. Plant/poison has a lot of synergy, it is extremely effective and making mobs implode under confusion. More so than most other combos. plantpoison.mxd

Not really. I mean you get assassin's blaze instead of incinerate, but it isn't that great of a trade off as incinerate does a lot of damage (more than fast assassin strike, albeit as a dot). /rad is better on a scrapper by a bit. You'd lose beta decay, which is a really nice power and meltdown does more +dam for scrappers.

Triage isn't a bad power, but it would certainly be better with a shorter cooldown and a faster cast time. It definitely helps in long fights though. Smoke isn't a bad idea if you want to drag your seekers in and have them engage first. I personally use 'target_location enemy' for seekers so they summon right at the spawn and break the alpha. I think they are one of the best powers in traps. You are right about ageless and you'll certainly be tough enough without barrier to tackle many things. One option though might be to get enough of a handle on your endurance that ageless radial is an option. The debuff resistance of that branch is really good in some situations and would protect your defense numbers fairly well. Procs are valuable. But keep in mind that trollers actually do ok damage to contained enemies, so you may not want to completely forgo damage slotting (ie seismic smash). However, most troller attacks are dot, so the upfront proc damage is welcome. Most of the traps summons don't roll procs as well as one might hope, but poison trap is a solid spot for procs. Keep in mind though, the -regen is autohit, but the hold (and procs) roll a tohit. Speaking of which your overall tohit chance is on the low side as soon as you start to face +lvl enemies. A few more global acc bonuses would help you out as well as finding a spot for kismet proc. You are right, fire/traps is a rare build.

I think if you use: seekers>bonfire>seismic>fissure you are going to be about 50 endurance down even after recovery. It looks like if you play aggressively you will be around net -8 end/sec. I don't see that as being sustainable. I've never tried the health procs in triage beacon, so I can't say how well they will perform there, but I do think you need to be in the aura for them to affect you (excluding the absorb proc). I definitely agree that fire/traps has a lot of synergy. I think the build you have now precludes all but ageless and might be a challenge to play without it.

I enjoyed my nin/bio. I went with a post apoc look including the chainsaw blade for my sword. Pretty fun because golden dragonfly is one of my favorite attacks and divine avalanche really works well for /bio while leveling. However, divine avalanche doesn't get much use in the late game ime. The lack of aoe is only as annoying as you find it to be. After doing a couple savage stalkers to 50, I find it hard to give up the amount of aoe they bring while also dealing solid st damage. That set leans toward having your cake and eating it too. Another alternative if you want to do a sword based stalker would be dual blades. As fast as ninja blade is touted as being it has some strange hitches and pauses that bothered me. Dual blades flows really well, does ok aoe and is one of the higher st dps sets. One final thing to take note of is that the stalker ATO proc that instantly recharges build up tends to work much better if you are hitting things with aoes as opposed to single target oriented stalkers.

A blaster can kill 16 weak enemies faster. A scrapper can kill 5 tough enemies faster. Which is to say, blasters have much larger aoes with higher target caps. Scrappers tend to have more single target damage and small, but potent aoes. There are of course some exceptions.

Call hawk does almost as much damage as seismic smash, albeit as a fast dot. I can't imagine not using it.

Like I said, +0, but also x1. This is my 5th dom on the way 50 and I have 2 /sav assault doms at lvl 45+. I've also have 2 lvl 50 plant trollers, so I'm familiar with the sets in question and the AT itself. I don't PL much, so I've logged the hrs on those builds. Basically, my story highlights that I slipped up a bit, but in doing so I made things incredibly more difficult for myself as I had no way of rebuilding dom. Without domination, the 2 boss spawn was nearly insurmountable even with insp chugging. Basically being a de-tuned controller with low damage is a poor match for 2 superstrength wardens. The death penalty that ONLY doms have forced me to go street sweet until I could reenter the mission and attempt the bosses again with a different tactic. Would temporary powers help? absolutely. I was literally working on frenzy in this case. But shivian's would work well too. Better even. Prior to permadom I find I need to run (solo) settings at what I can handle as my weak form and only use domination for panic moments, or the end boss. If I turn the setting up so that domination is better suited, then I get crushed when domination drops. For me this takes away a lot of the satisfaction in mission structures where you are supposed to have a bit of a battle with the end encounter. Additionally, I can't really turn the team size up very much even though fodder is easy for plant to handle from lvl 6. If I miss more than 2 in the group, I'm leaving the fight quite damaged. All of this of course improves over the levels and eventually becomes a non-issue with an end game build (permadom). But it is much more pronounced on doms than any other AT ( I primarily play debuff squishies).

Ultimately whatever kills you and knocks you out of dom is going to be a lot harder to overcome as a 75% strength controller with no debuffs, mez protection, or kb protection. Maybe people dont encounter it often, but i was doing an alignment earlier on my new plant/sav (heavy IOd at lvl 23). The mission had 2 longbow wardens together (set at +0). Domination was up, but they might be confuse protected? At any rate they dropped me fast thru rune of protection, as admittedly I was a bit slow reacting as dom was active and rune was active. At any rate I couldnt progress the mission. Even with ample insp use from each hospital trip. I eventually had to street sweep to rebuild domination and head back in. That plus heavy insp use was enough to get thru. Death penalty can be tough on doms.