Frosticus

Sure thugs are probably more survivable. I can't say how often one would need to resummon as that largely depends on how good of a storm player you are and whether you lead or expect your pets to. My experiences with def based builds that have no DDR is not as glowing as many people portray. Whereas the layered mitigation of demons is pretty consistent against most factions. It's been awhile since I've run the character but the -res output eclipsed my storm/sonic defender with everything summoned. While my petless pylon runs showed personal damage north of 300dps, you get to add all your pet damage on top of that. Against real enemies a passive thug/storm would certainly be easier to play and could probably outperform a passive demon/storm. I dont see that happening once the mm itself gets into the action. At least not from a damage view especially once you look at exotic damage types.

trollers. containment+impact makes them feel like a blastroller. Doms dont need the attacks generally speaking. that said, Singy is pretty great and can let a dom just focus on attacking.

I think it is pretty skippable for non-stalkers (stalkers need this power as it is can do more than hidden AS). That said, depending on how you build it may be worth considering. It rolls procs very well. So depending on your build you may have more recharge than you need to run both low tier attacks, in which case hemo could work well. The dot is pretty slow on it though.

Feral charge is perhaps the most fun power in the game. Savage leap is perhaps the best aoe in the game. Savage leap is a big aoe, rolls procs exceptionally well and hits 10 targets. Feral charge is also a big aoe, but doesn't proc well at all, but hits 5? targets. *for clarity feral charge procs decently on the main target, but the aoe rolls super low probability. I wish very much that I could have both on my savage stalker. Very much. All the teleport attacks can behave strangely at times. Often my shield charge doesn't actually go anywhere if my target goes around a corner (I use the target enemy bind for it). Savage leap and feral charge will roll their procs even if you miss with the attack itself. Losing line of sight with the savage tp's causes the aoe portion to fail.

Sort of. Most people don't use AS from hide. It is too slow. But it allows you to open with thunderstrike for the aoe crit chance, which you could have just done after a fast AS+rehide too and probably have a tighter spawn, but that is what most do. I think the best thing about them is they allow hide to kick in even while you are dealing damage. So if you time it right as you move from spawn to spawn you can initiate a bit faster and still get off a hidden attack. I personally open with an epic aoe before shield charge. they are bigger than the melee aoe's and have a higher target cap. melee aoes tend to be pretty small, so it is better to wait until the spawn gathers around you a bit, Fast AS+rehide then melee aoe. Excepting of course the times that a spawn is already packed unusually tight.

I think most people have dismissed it for most AT's. I know I've been championing it hard for stalkers and dominators. Granted their versions are a bit different than the heavy melee AT's. A large part of the issue is the game doesn't even display a good number of the attacks. No casual person is likely to roll a savage melee when the two aoe attacks show no damage and the heavy hitter looks like it does less than a tier 1 attack. I'm not sure why the game can show the different damage levels of the combo system for street justice, but not for savage melee. They must be different enough. Who knows. The second is 99% of users don't seem to understand how savage leap works. Plus it is a pretty finicky power at times. I rolled savage melee on a stalker on a whim. Only to discover it is actually ridiculous. I think there was a sav/fire brute in one of the farming threads that was right up there in clear speeds.

If you do only one thing with savage melee - put as many procs as you can in savage leap. It is hands down the best power on my sav/shield stalker...and that is saying a lot without procs savage leap is more or less just a zippy gimmick and I'd way rather have feral charge for that purpose. With procs it is one of the best aoe powers in the game.

Ice (and a few others) is a primary that I'd say that agility is a solid contender. The set relies on 2 good single target attacks and the fast AS is the slower animation (shared by the swords). You can slot 64% rech in Assassins icicle and still proc 90% (hide proc+agility = 56.19%) You can slot 45% rech in freezing touch and still proc 90% (with the 2 purple damage procs). Frozen aura procs ok at base rech and not much worse with agility. In the case of /nin it would help bring up your heal , caltrops, and the confuse faster as well as give you a bit of a leg up on defense. Additionally it would help your endurance a bit (though probably more than offset by the faster cycling heavy hitters). Those are worth considering. You can't go wrong with hitting harder though, so musculature is a good choice too. That said, I'd personally don't slot sets in my 1-2 heavy hitter attacks. Instead heavily favoring procs and zeroing in on the right balance of rech for optimizing the attack. But ymmv.

Get yourself some +binds so you can use buildup before your main aoes, because like Naraganeun says, it procs assassin's mark very often.

4 stack chain may be optimal for hemo, but it doesn't necessarily translate to the best for AS because it generally means firing off AS with 2 stacks of focus. A chain of hemo, strike, slash, strike, AS will have much better chance of full focus for AS crit, but puts you at 5 stacks of blood...so exhaustion. It could well be more damage than a 4 stack chain that lowers assassins focus. I dunno. I've seen a st chain that used shred as well. I can't get behind that as I hate long animations, but it could work. I use hemo, slash, ring of fire, slash, AS. Sub char in for rof when up. Sub savage leap in for one of the slashes when up. There may be better chains, but for things that live long enough to need it to cycle the immob is actually pretty handy to stop them from running.

Looks like a solid enough build. I went a bit different direction on my sm/shield in that I use fire app. Ring and char fill in my st chain and give me some more ranged options. They both do good/great damage with procs and char procs buildup often. I also use a lot of procs in all my attacks, so I need at least 1 more attack than some other builds. Endurance is of course an issue as a result, but cardiac has solved that and plays nicely with further boosting the spectrum of resistances and upping my range (and telenukes). Your aoe chain would probably best be Savage leap>AS boss>rending flurry (5 stacks means 15ft)) >shield charge. you could flip shield charge to right after savage leap if you wanted. Just depends when you want the mitigation of the knockdown. In my case I lead with fireball and after great deliberation I dropped rending flurry. Although I miss it sometimes. Single target just make sure you use hemo after AS. Exhaustion isn't a debuff, it just locks you out of the blood buffs. Semantics. Continuous 4 stack hemo is probably best, but crafting that chain isn't as easy as it sounds.

chilling should work the same as AAO and genetic corruption from shield and bio respectively. hide suppresses them. I havent had issue with either of those powers interacting with the hide proc so chilling should be the same. as for /ice itself if you can get past the fire and psi weaknesses it is a very good set. Immunity to slow/ -rech and unlimited endurance are valuable. I've only ever played it as a tank though so ymmv.

I want a stone melee stalker

No to aid self. Shield has pretty decent resistances and the +hp all work together to make you quite stable. If you really want to tackle hard late game content you can cycle melee hybrid and one with the shield for 6 out of every 8 minutes. Very robust. if you go stalker suppressed hide is 1.8% def (all). I personally wouldn't go savage scrapper. Nothing wrong with it as the aoe is still quite good and the critical strikes proc can get a bit crazy. However, blood thirst isn't as good as build up (instant 5 stacks is actually kind of annoying imo and the damage buff is tiny) and the st damage of the stalker version of savage is leaps and bounds better than scrapper. my sav/shield stalker just hit 47. It is quite good.

I'd do savage/shield. And then I'd unselect scrapper and pick stalker. I'd pick either mu or fire app. 2 teleports, more aoe than you can shake a stick at. Terrific single target. dodgy. you only fail to see your character when you choose. I dont wait for hide to kick in on mine, it has little impact on my ability to mow stuff down. It is nice for reaching g objectives though sometimes. in fact you could shut hide off and as long as you have the proc is AS I'd still highly recommend it.

were it me (I have a sav/shield, so not that different in the end). I'd consider fire epic. proc'd char is a great st attack and triggers decimation build up well. The small crit doesnt matter as freezing touch is your hidden st attack anyway. fireball is great, best epic aoe. even ring of fire is better than most think for st dps. Just a thought

I'd consider mu. lead with ball lightning > sc> AS boss > frozen aura. More targets, faster, more aoe.

Most post their assault off time in addition if they opt to use assault hybrid. PA is definitely melee, otherwise my demon/storm attacks from range too 🙂 edit: I think Nihili had a good fire/rad sentinel time posted with both ranged and melee variants.

I went ageless destiny on my plant/poison/stone. That allowed very aggressive slotting. Cardiac or vigor could probably work too. Victory rush is pretty good.

lethal can defintely struggle a bit at times. It also struggles against some commonly desirable enemy types that most teams seem to seek out. Like council with their robits. procs and epic attacks tend to resolve the issue for me, but that is generally late game stuff, so not a solution. I'd consider a small amount of vitality damage. ie -hp debuff. Say 2-3% per attack, 5-10 sec duration, capped at 10%

Or in this case to bring other sets up it would need to be power leap...

I like NB. I just run my chain. If hide procs that is great. If it doesn't, then so be it. The set does very high st damage once you add in the applicable procs and -res IOs. And a good chain that builds assassins focus well. And it has tremendous survivability. Enough that it could easily carry /fire so you can add burn for good aoe damage. Or proc out rad armor for larger aoes that hit pretty hard. A lot of stalkers aren't great at aoe. But epic aoes are good from hide. Shield, rad and fire can all add good aoe too. Not everyone gets everything. Elec stalkers have great aoe but their st is mediocre compared to other stalkers. savage melee can be both but the damage is long duration dots.

qft. gravity is a great example of a super fun set now. and it is getting another buff too with dingy now dishing out and using the impact mechanic.

hmm my proposal for wormhole is for the teleport foe to be auto hit and the stun to roll a tohit. I love the power so much, it is among the most powerful feeling choices in this game. However, when it leaves 2-4 enemies behind that isnt optimal. also should be able to port anything including AVs when the triangles are down up to +4

Indeed, that was one of my premier builds. I rebuilt it first on homecoming, but it didnt enthrall me quite as much as it once did.