Frosticus

One of invulns biggest draws for me is the constant tohit buff. It makes creating a build with minimal acc slotting a much easier task. Primaries: street is pretty well built to stack focus and combo points at the same time. It is a low management system that gives you a significant damage boost. Controlled crits on crushing blow are crazy good amd make the partial crit of total focus super jealous. savage gives up nothing and gains considerably in most respects. With no consideration given to the lack of mitigation and how the set is heavily dot based, hemo is probably overperforming though. Proc'd out savage leap is really good aoe damage. Ice and psi both excel on stalkers. Pretty much any set that doesnt give up any of their key attacks/features is arguably better on a stalker. You might not end up beating the /bio version of the same set on a scrapper in sustained dps, but that is largely because /bio for scraps is overturned offensively and the scrapper ATO is maybe even better than the stalker ATO in such scenarios.

I'm the opposite. I find myself asking if I should give up the huge utility, strong buffing and superior debuffing of /cold for tornado. While I think /storm is a lot of fun, but more often than not, I say - no.

Of those 3? /rad AM, EF, and LR sure people say AM isn't as good as chronoshift? ok, but you get AM at lvl 4 and it does a lot of things that matter to most players like +dam, +speed, in addition to recovery and recharge. It is still one of the better powers in the game. EF is just super reliable. Auto hit, recharges fast, big aoe and a quick cast time. There are better -res powers in some situations, but EF is still solid. LR...I'm not sure who wouldn't want LR? Fast cast, not too difficult to perma and even stack a bit. Huge aoe slow/-rech. IMO the best -regen power you can get once you factor in the speed and range. /dark is a great set, but it is soooooo slow. Everything casts at a snails pace. /ela is super solid, but dark doesn't really need that much mitigation. If it was my character I'd pair it with /cold, or if feeling adventurous - /poison. /cold is a ridiculously powerful set that solo's well and teams extremely well.

For a more melee centric dom: I like Mu because the armor is (imo) the best for the largest range of content. Powersink can resolve almost all endurance woes Ball lightning is an ok aoe, not the best Force of Nature is a great unslotted panic button Mu Guardian is a ranged pet that does a not so terrible job of healing

Love plant/poison/stone. Super thematic, tons of synergy. This was the build from the other thread that I used. It could do with a bit of updating as there is now bombardment proc available. Weaken is a great power, but for what I use this build for I rarely ever utilized it. Anyone that has desire to try poison should strongly consider plant as a pairing. plantpoison.mxd

I don't think pulling a tape measure out is necessary. I love sleet, one of the best powers in the game. Boost physical damage, boosts procs, boosts pets, teammates, basically everything under the sun. Offers a bit of control too. That said, it is only a 19.5% debuff to resistance vs +3's. The +dam of soul drain works as advertised. Additionally, if the content is difficult enough you probably won't want to open with sleet. Even a def capped squishy with decent resistances will drop fast against hard unmitigated AE spawns. Whereas the +tohit/dam buff of soul drain can carry you right into the next spawn ensuring all your crucial controls hit. Yes it is easy to hit +3's in normal pve, but lots of AE content has +def/tohit debuffs in spades. Obviously the terrible (absolutely terrible) uptime of soul drain is all that really holds it back for doms. They could really use the 120 version that defenders have access to. I think hoarfrost is mostly junk. Why do trollers get a 360 version (earths embrace), but doms have a 540 version? plus so much of the hp is wasted on the low AT cap. While I always gravitate towards ice app, I think mu is actually my favorite over all.

This would really explain things. It has always felt not quite as good as it should when speccing in to a final build (with more global rech) than the leveling version and not seeing quite the dps increase that was planned.

Pretty much. Run them toggles, skip slotting end reduction, use endurance intensive aoes against a single target, put procs where procs can go, go willy-nilly on recharge slotting with no concern for endurance burn. HL has your back.

Yes. Whether that makes burnout worthwhile is up to you. Even with a high end build you are looking at an 8 min recharge on burnout. Fun power to unleash your full potential though. You can double stack sleet quite easily with just a decent build.

If you have no endurance issues then what HL would allow you to do is create endurance issues by dropping slots from health and/or slotting much more aggressively as well as perhaps even playing more aggressively. Usually what happens though (if you have been playing the character through the levels) is you tend to more or less solve your own endurance issues by the time you'd get HL. So the power doesn't seem as significant as one would hope. The auto hit recovery (that centres on you) is 2x as strong as stamina. Each foe hit also gives off a buff that is 2x as strong as stamina. Provided you are close enough to them to receive their buffs the impact on your recovery is quite strong.

I think the most important thing for poison is mez protection. How you get that is up to you. Easiest is P2W def amplifier, but if you don't want a temp power then I really like cycling rune of protection and melee hybrid. It gives you a solid 85%+ uptime for mez and boast solid resistances/regen. A huge boon for poison. The difference (for me) between solo no insp/temp/lore MoITF being very easy, or being borderline impossible. On that note I think poison gives up too much to chase down defense. Yes it is easy to softcap s/l with scorp, but then you give up either soul drain (omg) or dominate/char (very heavy hitter). If you can get the defender ATO's into good proc powers then they are quite impressive at covering chip damage, but less so in repairing big spikes. So they work pretty well on a resistance basis, especially paired with the solid -damage debuffs that poison puts out. So ime I found more success with ensuring i have good mez protection and a solid resistance base. That isn't to say you forgo defense, you should still hit around 20% incidentally.

There is some misinformation in this thread. 1. Put a kb>kd io in gale. Some people love it. If you goal is to stay at range this can help a lot. 2. Yes, steamy+stealth IO will put you at the stealth cap for corrs. Which is to say, invisible to everything that doesnt have perception or other means of detecting you. It will let you ghost just about all content. 3. Focus on recharge and getting the end cost of freezing rain under control. If you had a spare slot then achilies isnt the worst seeing as you have nowhere else go put it. 4. No one will expect you to heal them. You are usually better off actively helping. 5. I dunno, assault cost a fair amount and storm is a massive endurance consumer. Aim is really good with a gaussian proc in it. Very nice upfront damage boost. 6. Ranged def is better if you want to stay back. s/l def is easier to push high via scorp shield and is still quite good. If you become a hurricane user then mez protection is most important. 7. hurricane costs what is costs regardless of enemy count. The repel affects everything lower than an EB (though I think some EBs get pushed). The repel is not so strong (it was reduced quite a bit back in the day) that bosses will always be prevented from walking up to you and punching you in the face. Slows and the knockdown of freezing rain help prevent that as well.

A defender can much more easy reach def/res goals and then fill up on procs. From that stems the notion that defs > corrs and that defs get more from procs. A proc loaded corr can put targets into scourge range very rapidly. When corrs are in that range they do significantly more damage than a defender. In fact they do some of the highest damage in the game. I think we are over fixated on soft caps and are discounting how potent a proc'd corr can be as they lean far closer to a blaster than a defender in terms of damage over the course of many encounters. That is probably worth giving up soft cap for. That said, my latest two projects have been a poison/fire and a cold/fire. I specifically went with the cold def because I wanted more survivability (6 damage types capped with rune up, higher -dam on benumb, and the defender ATO procs are amazing for cold) vs the corr. But I'm tempted to roll it as the same build as a corr just to see the practical difference.

Were you using the power without direct line of sight at the time of execution? Like did/were some enemies move behind a container or similar?

Stalkers have a lot less armor auras, but all the ones they do have suppress while hidden. A notable exception, although it isn't a stalker power, is melee hybrid. If you pick that know that the aura does not suppress and will not only alert enemies, but will actually knock you out of hide if you wait too long.

No, it is suppressed while hidden. I don't really notice much of an impact from AAO on my sav/shield because the aoe damage is so high that you rarely get surrounded and saturated. Plus the telenukes are usually executed before they are buffed . I suspect elec/shield would have a similar experience. AAO is most famous on single target scrappers (ie dark/shield) because it has taunt and they want lot of fodder to fuel soul drain. But if you are willing to work on the boss for a bit while everything else surrounds you before you vaporize them with LR/SC you can see the impact of AAO a bit more.

Yep. Worth it? maybe not worth chasing but no harm if it is low hanging fruit. +dam is of course more valuable for ATs with criticals (scourge) as that doubles you raw damage.

I can relate to the OP. When I picked it up on my fire dom I had extremely high hopes for the power based on the hype it gets. I was initially disappointed in the performance, but eventually embraced it as another layer of control rather than a control in and of itself. In that role it is a nice big aoe that is up all the time and even does a decent amount of damage.

It's ok, but there are usually better things you can be doing with your time. I've played a lot of demon/storm and would sometimes get sucked into the trap of keeping their health up during fights. Far better would be for me to join the fight and actively help them. I found much more success removing the power from the build. the dog will recharge fast enough if it gets killed. I mean if you plan to have o2 anyway it isn't the worst thing to use between spawns, but mid fight perhaps less so.

I have a young grav/sav and i've played it on test at 50 quite a bit. Teleporting enemies and teleporting yourself just doesn't get old. Lifting an enemy and nailing it mid air with feral charge just doesn't get old. Lift gives /sav another nice ranged attack, so you end up being very good melee and solid from range. I think the secret to playing grav is getting comfortable with quickly toggling dim shift on and off to absorb the alpha. But it can be problematic in teams at times. Ultimately dim shift has too long of an activate period though imo. You can't play nifty games jumping in and out of it. I believe it is a 2 sec activate period, but 0.5 would be much better.

An alternative would be to build for resistance. Cycling rune of protection, melee hybrid, and regen aura would feel super solid and consistent in pretty much any scenario. Healing aura can handle chip damage with ease. Statistically a high def build may have higher survivability, but 2 big hits can drop a defense based squishy. And while a resistance approach may not be invulnerable, every failure is predictable and grants opportunity to react. Plus everyone and their dog brings defense buffs to teams, whereas resistance buffs are a bit more rare. So in a team you are likely to have well layered protection. it's the route I've gone one my last couple squishy builds and it has worked out well. They still solo fine and often feel stronger in teams than a pure def approach.

All things being equal you can get a ton of healing and absorb out of the defender procs in blaze and blazing bolt and entomb in dominate. Either build for defense, or layer up resistance with -damage for a very robust character. The lack of a self heal isnt as big of a deal as it once was. I love my poison/fire/psi and I also think rad blast synergizes well with poison for a variety of reasons. I've solo'd a lot of gms with no insp/temp/lore on my poison/fire and some of them would be very difficult with a different blast set due to fire being such a good dps set. Lusca took considerable time as an example.

-damage is a debuff, so as such it is affected by the purple patch -damage is multiplicative with resistance. The -damage cap is 90% the resistance cap (for mm's) is 75% -damage is multiplied by -resistance, just the way the game works -damage is resisted by resistance, so watch out for godmode powers. No enemies (that come to mind) have any special resistance to -damage beyond what I listed above. -damage and resistance are not mutually exclusive. In fact they work together in synergy just like damage and -resistance debuffing, which we all know and love.

Can't speak for how hemo works on scrappers, but I gave a lot of insight on how the power works for stalkers in my savage guide. Ultimately, you have tons of overkill on most enemies as a result of the critical dot being such a long duration. You have to get comfortable walking away from bosses and just letting them die to the dot. I like the way it is set up because it is unique and it works more or less correctly with the blood stacking mechanic in terms of final damage (a bit too much at 0-4 stacks, but pretty much right on for 5 stacks) and the dot nature suits savage. That said, it probably kills slower up to EB's because you will often launch another unnecessary attack (or two) before the dot finishes. I'd fairly happily trade hemo for upfront damage provided it still scaled (reasonably well) with blood stacks, which we don't see happening with combo points for better or worse.

I think it would feel like a nerf for a lot of powers. I can say from my experiences with savage melee stalkers that the amount of wasted damage from hemorrhage crits is no small matter. The dot is pretty slow. I really like the power, but it is also heavily compensated with increased damage.