Frosticus

Nah, I never got around to revisiting it after my initial pylon attempts. I'm not really a fan of pets and I don't play them very well. I have no doubt that someone more skilled and interested could take a demon/storm considerably further than I initially did. My build knowledge and approach was quite rudimentary.

Duration of debuff is not affected by level difference, just the potency. Getting your level shift in place is a large difference maker for debuffers running at max difficulty. It is the difference between your powers operating at half efficiency (48%) and 65%. That tends to impact debuffers a lot. For instance, there would be a LOT of pushback if +4's had double final tohit chance against defense. Like Coyote said, haunts don't taunt, the power details are just often misinterpreted. In truth, we probably wouldn't want them to taunt, just as blasters don't want gun drone to taunt. The pets are quite squishy.

I think there is some misinformation being pushed about Trick Arrow It is one of the only sets that can keep up on a fast team. Disruption Arrow gets out super fast and makes a tangible difference. Oil slick is a really great power. Wish it cycled even faster, but if I was designing my dream debuff set it would be my tier 8 choice along with sleet. Flash arrow appears weak, but it can help a lot on some maps. A team that thinks they need a healer is a bad fit for TA, but a team that is sort of doing ok and would like to start doing excellent, is a great fit for TA (and several other debuff sets). If you hear someone say something like "it's rarely the first choice of power set from the standpoint of effective mechanics" that is more than likely because the team is running poorly and they may not even realize that they want a healor. Disruption arrow, oil slick and acid arrow are some of the most effective mechanics you can add to a stable team. Trick arrow is far from perfect though. It suffers from devs that thought 2 sources of -res could easily be overpowered (they werent wrong), but as such disruption+acid arrow is only 40% -res. Freezing rain from storm is 35%. Hopefully after the TA buffs it is closer to poison in its ability to apply a quick -65% res. Regarding archery, the single target is fine. Snipe and blazing arrow are right up there with anything. The person that says they aren't probably isn't a good enough player to make use of any difference in the other sets anyway. No rain of arrows isn't as potent as other nukes, but it is up every spawn. You should be able to get out a disruption+rain of arrows every spawn (if that is your combo). I don't think that is a meaningless contribution, quite the opposite in fact.

When I build a "tough" melee character I look to the holes in the set and then how easily they can be patched. Holes include, but may not be limited to: resistance, defense, debuff resistance, mez protection, recovery, health and active mitigation Things like knockback protection (if lacking) and recovery tend to be a bit easier to patch up than say a lack of defense debuff resistance, or an entire damage type. While I'm not a big fan of the set I think a defensive spec bio with shadow meld, melee hybrid and barrier could survive just about anything. My own foray into /bio on a stalker had me pushing towards offense too much and it ended up being squishy. For my time investment I went with shield (savage/shield specifically). It's only real weaknesses are end drain, lack of a heal and no +perception. Most of which are very rarely a problem. I plugged them with ageless radial, melee hybrid and tactics. Ageless radial w/ shield also gives you SR levels of DDR, so that is nice. Depending on how you play, or more accurately - what you avoid, any armor set can be outstanding. For instance, Raluruu aren't a very good experience on my /shield. Devouring Earth gave me fits at +3/8 solo'ing the numina TF, but a no insp/temp/lore +4/8 ITF wasn't much of an issue for the same build.

For this task assuming no insp/temps/lore ill/cold has a much higher ceiling than ill/rad. it is faster and safer. ill/rad is definitely easier to level and exemps down much better. Some other comments vs ill/cold: ill/storm is faster in some situations, slower in others. Almost always slower vs GM's. Never safer. ill/traps is slower in most situations, but almost always safer. ill/ta is not faster or safer comments regarding illusion and containment: meh, it is a tiny portion of overall damage for illusion builds. the time spent attaining containment via mag 3 immobs is more or less offset by time spent not attacking. This is more prevalent vs 53/54 AV's as the duration of the immob is cut drastically. No point trying to immob GM's.

Apologies, I never meant "you" specifically had a lot to learn. Just in general, the player base has not delved nearly as deep into what the debuff AT's are capable of, or considered different approaches to reach the same end goal. I've long been a proponent of debuffers and I'm still changing my views as I go deeper into the sets that I previously shrugged off. I recently did an analysis of -damage debuffing. I'm pretty confident that only a tiny portion of forum users and a microscopic portion of players have ever looked at how powerful it can be as a form of mitigation. Pairing it with a bit of absorption/resistance can provide a level of mitigation that makes softcapped def look greatly inferior for those that have that path available to them. It just comes down to sheer numbers. There are probably 1000x as many bio characters as cold domination, so if even 2% are min-maxers you end up with a way bigger pool of people pushing bio to the edge and back and a small handful saying "hey I did some cool stuff with my cold defender". It has gone so far that people have done near total breakdowns and comparisons of all the melee attack sets and that information can be applied fairly universally as there is far less hidden synergies to be found between the attack sets and the armor sets compared to the blast(control) sets and the debuff sets. I would definitely agree with you that the armored AT's provide a much more consistent experience, they rarely experience the same lows as a debuffer, but in doing so they are also cut off from some of the highs. They might be out there (bio and rad armor), but I can't recall any armored builds solo'ing GM's without temps/insp/(lore), but that is pretty common place for most of the debuff sets (cold, poison, traps, dark, rad, therm) as they have the tools at their disposal. GM's might not be a solo metric that many care about though. A few months ago I was poo-poo'ing poison because of forum knowledge, looking at mids, and my own biases. If I could go back in time I'd refrain from posting some things with incomplete information. After shaking off misinformation and my own shortsightedness I've come to learn how/why/when the set excels. It can (and has) solo'd just about everything and more compared to my savage/shield stalker, which is a phenom of a combo in and of itself. But I will freely admit that the stalker is easier to play and more consistent; doubly so while leveling. I don't blame past posters for the prevalence of the belief that we "need" softcapped def to excel (which the armored AT's generally reach with more ease and is a large aspect of why they solo "better"). I don't think they set out to close off views to other avenues when providing analysis of game mechanics. That has unfortunately been the result by and large across the forum knowledge base, but as time goes on I think (and hope) we will again see a branching out of approaches. Again, I apologize for directing it at you. I didn't intend to be rude, but rather was just nipping it in the bud.

Well I'd say people still have a lot learn in this game. I recently optimized a poison/fire that can out dps most melee builds st and massively in aoe. And of course it provides tons of force multiplication, something which is rare to the ATs you listed. Conventional wisdom says poison is an underperforming set. So I'd say the potential of the melee ATs has been well explored because they are pretty straightforward, but many of the "support" sets have barely had the surface scratched.

Fair enough, there a lots of people out there that spend time doing things and never excel at it. Nothing wrong with being part of that group. Sonic can put a 40% -res debuff on a single target in 3 seconds. If your team composition doesn't benefit from that then they don't benefit from much and you may as well just door sit with any debuff set. Conversely sonic can put a 20% -res debuff on most of the spawn (every spawn) in 2.5 seconds. If your team composition doesn't benefit from that they they don't benefit from much and you may as well just door sit with any debuff set.

Either spawn clearing doesn't matter, so the only thing that matters is hard targets Or spawn clearing does matter, so both the ability to clear minions and bosses+ is important. In either case sonic is still the best choice if you want to facilitate team kill speeds even with all the procs in the game. It is not the best choice if you yourself want to do personal direct damage at the expense of team efficiency. That would be fire for st and archery for aoe. That is ok and hopefully no one tells you that you are a bad person for choosing something different because there is an entire myriad of capabilities in between. Defenders are well worth looking at for their powerful debuffs attached to blasts like the -dam of chemical rounds, or the -tohit of dark. Sonic is not the fastest solo set, but it is hands down the set with the most control. So you pay a price for that level of control and that level of team force multiplication.

There is a chance you are the only one in the game that knows what they are talking about... I'm betting you've never sat down and crunched out sonic chains and then applied them in game because you said yourself you are just pulling the info from mids. Plus your info is inaccurate. So yes, there is a chance you are the only one that knows, or there is a chance you've never actually played sonic to any meaningful degree and are just spouting off nonsense.

In fairness you are facing a -1 so your debuffs are a bit stronger than they "should" be (10%). But yes, in general Hjarki is mistaken about how sonic works, or what it is capable of. Either that or he is using metrics that have no bearing on the game. In the actual game I find that shriek>scream>shriek>screech>dominate does just fine for damage and needs minimal recharge. Given how safe sonic can solo I feel it is ok. In a team I view sonic as a debuff+control set more than a blast set. Howl is a solid cone debuff, dreadful wail is the best nuke in the game and you still have your single target debuff chain. Sonic is fine, though I would love to see a full second trimmed off of shout and maybe have the cones sped up a bit too. Then sonic would be really fine. Sonic does have higher opportunity cost than other sets though. A pause to do something other than attack has tangible drawbacks beside just losing out on direct damage.

Nicely done! I have done this test on my sav/shield/mu stalker. I failed MO, but did successfully complete 4x8 no insp/temp/lore with 4 deaths. I detailed the experience a bit in my savage guide. it would have been impossible without melee hybrid and OWtS as well as ageless radial for the ddr (for me at least) i kited lots and jousted Romy the whole time in the end. That particular combo has incredible 2 hit damage and a fast snipe so never sitting still really helped. the extreme aoe of the build means you only have to face bosses.

world of confusion is not bad with the purple proc provided you are set up to be in melee all the time. It's not a game changer though, but it is definitely noticable.

My personal stance on -res procs is that they are nice to have and to understand how they work. I dont really count them as part of my abilities though because if I put down Achilles and you put down achilies who should be attributed with it? I've never made the claim that poison can stack the most -res. But it can stack a lot very quickly. With the current speed of the game it can keep up and contribute pretty well. Poison can pretty reliably trigger achilies between envenom and venomous gas. It can also fairly reliably trigger gladiators fury -res. I discuss those aspects in the guide but I dont use them in any of the calculations.

Agreed. All of which are sizable tradeoffs, which earlier in the thread it was asserted that storm is amazing and can be tacked on to any set with little to no consideration given. I love storm, but I dont share that mindset. It has holes you you can drive a bus thru before it excels. But if you do patch them up it is great.

It should. Elec fence spam is going to hurt its dps in real encounters, but the potential is there. Storm "should" be the damage king though. It takes full damage from enemies that resist its debuffs. Those enemies also happen to be the most dangerous (AVs). What people don't realize is that you can stand next to a pylon with just SO's (and knockback protection) on a poison for a long time. A storm gets 2 shot. Cold is the bees-knees. I tend to look passed proc -res because they are less meaningful in teams,, but infrigidate has certainly benefited tremendously from procs. Cold and poison are probably my two favorite debuff sets. There isn't much that they can't shut down. Storm is my favorite damage set as I don't feel it does all that much "debuffing"

Trollers have a unique relationship with storm. It is similar, but different to the unique relationship that trollers have with poison. Namely these sets have some glaring holes that trollers can fairly easily patch up. Storm - really benefits from immobs (or taunts) in protracted encounters. Has limited survivability, so controls boost that as well as make hurricane easier to use. My demon/storm ended up having to take taunt for two reasons. - to keep excessively dangerous foes away from my pets as storm is only so-so at keeping them standing - to keep protracted encounters from fleeing *I tried using web envelop but it is so slow and last such a short time against +lvl enemies. My storm/son/power causes everything and anything to flee. Many AV fights become slog-fests of chasing them all over the map meaning I have to clear the whole map, or be prepared to be swarmed when the AV runs through the mobs. Options include taunt, or epic immob. Elec fence is ok and the app is decent enough, but you end up having to spam the heck out of fence (mag 3). Or I can refrain from whipping out LS/nado, but why even play storm at that point? I can tell you my demon/storm puts out incredible damage in some situations. It is the epitome of internal synergy and self force multiplication. Like Nihilii said though, I don't like relying on pets for damage. The numbers it produces vs a pylon do not translate to how it does in the vast majority of encounters. It is still quite good though. Multi target scenarios do a number on dps because I have to switch to bodyguard mode, just as troller pets spread their damage in multi target situations. This is even a little bit more emphasized for illusion as they experience additional heal-back when they are unable to focus fire. A good example would be arbiter sands. He frequently summons a pack of drones and if you don't clear the surrounding areas you end up with lots of add ons joining. My poison/fire breezed through the encounter because I can focus fire on him and nuke the adds. Pet generated dps may struggle in a similar scenario. fire/poison troller has been mentioned a lot of times in this thread. I can tell you what will happen if it goes up against a pylon. The aoe will render the imps useless/dead because you have to stand right by them. But that isn't representative of what the combo will experience in many game scenarios, but certainly gives you something to be aware of.

- that immobilize means giving up something else for corrs/defs. You ever use an epic immobilize to try to contain a 53/54 AV? How'd that go for you? Did you have to give up a lot of damage to attain that goal? -vs a lvl 50 AV yes. How bout a lvl 53 or 54? -resists do not affect tohit debuffs. What do you mean? - Plyons are NOT AV's or GM's. pylons represent exactly nothing in terms of how actual fights go against AV's and GM's found it task forces and such. -your fire/poison likely isn't in the same real at farming as a farming build, but like my plant/poison it is probably adequate at it. Otherwise go post it up in the farm fresh builds thread. They will be interested. -ya I'm pretty unfamiliar with storm I guess... 50 fire/storm troller, 50 storm/son def, 50 demon/storm MM (4th post down) -You are kidding right?

Maybe on -1 settings. My stalker can't even consistently 2 shot +3 bosses. Come on, please stop making things up. Pylons aren't AV/gms are they? Storm on its own is actually terrible vs AV's because it causes them to flee across the map. Hurricane is almost useless and they have no other protection. You CAN make a storm that is good, like a said (twice now), but storm on its own is not a good AV/GM set. Have you played it? You clearly haven't played storm or cold. Cold will rip through a GM way faster than storm and safer too. Storm can kill some AV's faster, if you can plant them in place. But some others not faster. Do you understand why that is? Have you played these sets? You can never rely on -tohit vs AV/GM. That is not unique to poison. The set also doesn't try to rely on -tohit vs AV/GM's. so That works out pretty well. No it does't provide any extras. Did someone say it does? do you need it to? Slotting on poison is pretty easy because you don't need a lot of slots for it to do what it does pretty well. I personally think that is an advantage, albeit not as on the nose as a set offering token def/res/rech like you are talking about. I wrote an entire guide on poison detailing everything you are talking about. Venomous gas debuffs resistance, tohit, defense and damage. They are all very important if you understand how poison functions in game as opposed to in mids. Have you tried farming with poison? I have. My plant/poison/stone is a passable s/l farmer, but not even in the same realm as actual farmers. Storm doesn't need a specific type of build to thrive? you sure about that? Storm is grossly overrated in terms of performance. Massively high ceiling that is very rarely realized in actual gameplay. But it is one of the most enjoyable sets. The peaks and valleys are something I personally welcome. You are right, time can be paired with anything. No one denies that farsight is a solid crutch that can carry just about any build. Time sure can't debuff a boss as well as poison though, isn't that what you were talking about most recently? Or has the goal post been moved again? You can think I'm fanboying poison if you want. I mean this is a thread linking to a guide I wrote on poison and the virtues of the set. I've also played and excelled with most of the other debuff sets. I think I gave a pretty honest critique of poison in the guide. Do you not feel it is accurate? I welcome feedback as I'm always striving to expand my game knowledge. If I say something, it is because it is objectively true from both play experience and mathematically. I don't make a lot of definitive comments on things until I've play tested them pretty extensively because mids and knowledge found in the forums only tells a bit of the story. I avoid napkin math like you posted earlier in the thread because as you admitted it is pretty useless in all aspects.

of course it is worth it. 1.5 seconds for -40% res is worth it for anything that you cant 1 shot without it. it's about 15+ ,seconds before storm/cold can recast their rain. that's a big headstart. what kind of fights are you talking about? Solo I can blow thru a +3 boss before a storm would get a second rain down. AVs? storm is actually junky vs AVs. You can make a storm combo that is good, but storm is objectively bad on it's own vs AVs. Cold is great, imo the best AV killer. Way slower than poison for everything else. Traps? nope TA? - no but double disruption+ acid is undoubtedly great Dark? nope what's left?

my poison def hits a boss with 65% res debuff in 1.5 seconds. No reliance on procs. Most fights are over before the sets that can stack -res powers are in a position to stack them.

Wouldn't a defender that is chasing st damage pick up dominate/char just as a troller picks up seismic? Also, as much as I love seismic on my plant/poison/stone that I wrote a small guide for several months ago, it is pretty hard to fit a 28sec rech, 18.5 endurance, attack into any normal chain. your numbers are questionable at best. -Why does the troller have the same +dam as a defender when defenders have vigilance? -You say fireblast has gaps in its chain and then proceed to cite a 8, 8, 28 sec powers for the troller -You've listed proc damages, but do you fill the void in these attack chains with brawl? At least it would be contained for the troller... That said, built it. I don't think anyone doubts that a fire/poison troller can do good damage. You'll likely discover the same thing my fire/storm troller discovered. You can't count on imps. I actually built my poison/fire def because I could see the potential enough to follow it through, tweak it, rebuild it, and ultimately end up with a character that can tackle just about anything you throw its way. I did it largely to demonstrate that poison is quite capable, which is something my previous plant/poison/stone was unable to demonstrate clearly as plant and /stone can obscure things. Remember to see whose is bigger - your seismic smash, or crimson prototypes energy transfer :)

Is the assertion that controllers can survive in melee range better? Or is the assertion that controllers have more potent melee range abilities to leverage? If the former, that is a given. They have an entire suite of controls that enable you to mitigate entire spawns. If the latter I'd say that is debatable. Perma soul drain and pbaoe nukes are a pretty good incentive to get comfortable hanging around in melee range. Sure you can hope to just pop in to use them, but if you aren't strong enough, or comfortable enough playing in melee range, you will probably die often.

Sounds good. The build I linked in the OP has 14kb protection specifically for pylons haha, they do 8-12kb. If I didnt find them fun I'd drop it down to 4pts as that is generally good enough

I did leave one post slot open for some updates as I do want to go into more depth on some of the blast set synergies. I also want to discuss some controller synergies. I'll try to update for the weekend.