Frosticus

Pretty much. Though, I personally did not use burnout, hybrid, or any other tricks on my demon/storm that was north of 900dps. I try not to use "gimmick" tactics for all of my characters. I strive for as repeatable and as close to "jump in and go" performance as possible. basically if it isnt a power I have perma or use in almost any situation, then it isn't part of a pylon run. At least imo.

The t8 in bio for any of the AT's isn't that amazing, but I'd take the damage aura version myself if it were possible. I dropped it very fast on my sav/bio. That build does too much aoe and dot for a sleep to be of much use. An 8ft low value -dam toggle wasn't a priority pick for that build. that said, ice/bio can get some synergy out of the stacking sleeps. Definitely worth giving it a try. Keep in mind it only pulses every 4 seconds so there is a chance your frozen aura will be breaking the sleep of genetic corruption just as easily as it may be stacking with it.

Disruption arrow is a nice big aoe and it gets out fast. Acid paints tough targets similar to envenom in poison. Oil slick is a great power. values could be a bit higher and I'm of the mindset that TA doesnt do other stuff well enough, but it can play pretty well on fast teams that are looking to play even faster.

Interesting. I've never noticed this on my sav/shield/mu. I ball lightning>sav leap>AS>rending flurry. So the dot from BL and leap are both still ticking. Rending flurry crits without issue if AS procs the hide. However, I have rending flurry qued up, so maybe that's why? I can definitively say that melee hybrid will break hide. The aura does not suppress. But as long as you play aggressively it will have little to no impact on getting crits if you attack quickly before it ticks. Chilling is more akin to Disrupt in /ea, AAO in /shield, Cloak in /dark, and Genetic Corruption in /bio. However, many of the stalker auras have a much slower tick rate, which may be less problematic. That said, I've had no issues with AAO on my shield and it as a 1 sec tick rate vs Chilling's 0.5 sec. Chilling is a good power though. Whether it fits ones playstyle, or synergizes well with some stalker primaries is a different matter.

Hide and the hide proc, should both suppress chilling embrace. They do for the bio aura and the shield aura. Can't speak to placate.

I rarely play 4/8 with this character unless teaming. While leveling I run at max +2 and post level shift at +3 (which is then +2 from a debuff perspective). As stated in the guide, I'm of the mindset that the purple patch hits debuffs too severely at +3 and higher. I rarely touch my insp tray though, so that impacts many of my choices. If you want to crank it higher you'll need defense just like every other build out there. But my intent wasn't to show what a high defense debuffer can do. We already know that answer. Rather I wanted to show that another path can produce great results while leaning more heavily on the attributes of poison and the synergy of damage debuffing combined with resistance. Mez is the biggest issue that poison has for two reasons. It interrupts your output of active mitigation (mez's and defender procs) and it toggle drops venomous gas which is a powerful layered defense/offense toggle. So you are well advised to pick up the power amplifier that grants mez protection until you sort out your own sources.

I think earth/poison is one of the strongest builds you can make that can take a pug from failing to thriving. as a bonus they will often have no idea "why" things became so easy.

My sav/shield stalker can do most things at 4/8, but I dont think it would do as well if the aoe damage wasnt as superb as it is. The combo only has to face bosses as everything else dies in the aoes almost instantly. I struggle if spawns are dispersed widely. shield is super sturdy but with no built in healing/regen/recovery when faced with enough foes they will wear you down. It isnt the best choice if you are going in to battles of attrition. Cycling melee hybrid with OWtS has allowed my /shield character to do many things that would otherwise require a heavy inspiration loadout.

The instant teleport is a great fit for poison. but I just cant get away from rune of protection is sorc.

Ya traps can feel pretty clunky in teams. I find the location binds to be pretty valuable to the set. Get out near the front and break each alpha with seeker drones while you dive in. Acid mortar isn't the best in teams that clear stuff quickly. I prefer to just get a proc'd poison trap down as it at least covers a large area. Seekers, PT and ffgen can offer a lot of mitigation and help the team roll even smoother. Traps has a lot of tools if the team starts to take on more than it can chew. But no, it doesn't excel in fast teams. Did you slot the kd proc into wormhole? if so why would anyone get mad at you unless you are pulling engaged mobs away from people. I usually try to grab a nearby spawn and plop it down on us while they engage the first one. 2 for the price of 1. Failing that just grabbing the current spawn and putting them right back where they are is great. If anything it just packs them tighter for the tiny melee aoes. I like my grav/traps, but it doesn't shine in super fast teams. Medium speed teams it is right at home though and slow teams it is one of the most potent things you can bring.

Dont underestimate shield. what sort of regrets? Shield is very easy to reach 32.5% def while leveling , which means a small insp from breezing thru most content. Once leveled it is easy to softcap to 45% even while exemplaring into the high 20s. you also have good/reliable ddr, +hp, solid resistances and tangible offensive tools. I actually think shield might be a tiny bit too good on stalkers as it aids removing adds so quickly and stalkers are so strong vs a small number of foes. It rarely gets overwhelmed.

Fast moving teams? Poison and kinetics and to a lesser extent, Storm and cold. Poison is the only one that is notably stronger as a defender though.

There are very compelling reasons to play poison/sonic. Unreal st debuffing being the main one both in -res and -damage. It is a competent aoe debuffer, with solid aoe control options. But I personally wouldnt pair poison with sonic if my intent was to spam howl. That isnt to say you cant make it work, just that it isnt a smooth experience.

This is nice. Stone/bio was something I tinkered with a bit, but eventually lost steam in the mid 40s due to interest in stalkers taking over. But I had a feeling it could be pretty good.

Honestly it has never bothered me on either of the two sav stalkers I've taken to 50. Once the attack is slotted up it stands head and shoulders above lightning rod in damage, speed and cycle time. As nice as it might be to leap and then hidden hemo, I also think that would be a little too good.

I strongly recommend the power amplifier that gives mez protection. At least until you solve your own mez protection issues via incarnates and/or powerpools. That aside, if poison isn't performing well for you then it is likely because you are taking the wrong approach. It plays far more like kinetics than it does any other debuff set. ie fast, in your face, and aggressive. The set definitely has some issues, but imo it surpasses just about everything in terms of performance in many scenarios. Just depends what kind of performance you seek. Take a look at the poison guide I wrote up it may be a value in gaining a different perspective. While it has some similarities to the other debuff sets like rad, or dark - it plays nothing like them.

I dunno, if you are talking builds that use burnout, then you may as well include lore pets in ones damage calculations. When I built my demon/storm I didn't do it including any temporary or low uptime powers. Everything in a dps build that I make is not situational and can be used in nearly every encounter. you'll be hard pressed to out dps a demon/storm for single target. Whether you can realize that damage in enough situations is debatable as it is a "house of cards" type of build. The synergy is purely oriented around stacking -res to incredible levels. Surpassing just about everything in the game in that area (aside from demon/cold) while also having the raw damage to make use of that ludicrous -res (pets and storm powers). The dps drops dramatically if any of your hellfire (debuffer) pets drop, or you get overwhelmed to the point that you can't contribute with your own -res attacks. But dramatically reducing dps doesn't mean the end of the world when you do so much to begin with. My petless demon/storm pulls over 300 dps vs a pylon sans gimmicks. If the question is raw damage output? demon/storm if you want to tack on other qualifiers like ease of use, or survivability, the answer will probably change quickly.

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.