Frosticus

What do you guys open with?

1:40 is a little better than my widow testing. Mine was a little squishy to get that performance though and almost unplayable without ageless. I actually used the artic breath with 2 -res procs (up to 55% -res).. Super clunky though. I wouldnt recommend it. Widows are pretty fast. Arctic breath is not haha, especially with redraw. lot of -res though.

pick whatever primary you want. Maybe avoid em and martial arts though unless you really want them. all the others have varying utility, procs, aoe damage, or gimmicks. every stalker can do more or less the same single target damage without considering damage type. A couple pull ahead a bit, a couple lag behind, but all are excellent.

I like IOs, but I largely agree. I think set bonuses are the issue. They could all be cut in half and they'd still be extremely desirable. Just the ability to Franken slot that IOs gives matched or even exceeded hami slotting. I miss getting on a team and really feeling the impact of some buff/debuffs. They are all still welcome but far less tangible imo.

one of the corr atos could improve when scourge kicks in. say up to 60% hp or something akin to that. I agree that defs are close enough to corrs in terms of offense and they are much easier to build that I lean toward defenders.

I guess I agree. but still with savage leap on a 15ish sec cycle procing 3.5 rpms at 89% there is still good incentive to throw it into your st rotation if your endurance can support it. Which still leads me to think fury -res belongs in there. I'm contemplating a respec to use ring of fire on my sav/bio/mu even with the sizable gaps in my current chain once I resolved my endurance this evening , so I could use savage leap and did some more runs the build is consistently pulling 1:45-1:50 pylon runs without hybrid. (everything is t3) between ring of fire completing the chain of AS>hemo>maiming>ring>maiming with just tiny gaps and high uptime of melt armor, I'm thinking it could possibly....maybe... with the big bad /bio scrappers (not tw) while still retaining way better aoe than those combos. ring would also be useful in practical terms as AVs often run from me. long story short, savage is really good on stalkers.

Oh, well that isn't really the case either. But even if that were, hp is only one factor in handling survival. defense, tohit debuffing, damage debuffing, personal resistances, putting aggro on other targets and more are all examples of how a "low hp" AT can handle tough enemies. If you directly compare them to how a tank would fight then sure it seems like they shouldn't survive... I guess. But your example of ill/rad has: - damage debuffing, tohit debuffing, an army of invulnerable pets that taunt... and more.

definitely. I think part of the problem though with assault sets being a secondary is you have to wait so long for just about everything. People expect the later tier powers to be better than what came before. Just look at /fiery. It is pretty subpar until blazing bolt and blaze. And then it is unreal. That sucks for /fiery as it means not adding epic powers until lvl 41. If i'd build doms I'd have put their assault as primary and control as secondary. It makes sense to me. Their control modifiers are already weaker than trollers (despite them both being a primary) and their attack modifiers are set similar to most primary damage dealers.

imo, blood stacks are a bit like combo points. I wouldn't rely on them, or else you will always feel like you are coming up short. hidden hemo is more important than stacks hemo, but both is better than baseline. fury -res is so good in savage leap. I don't think I'd ever move it out of there. On a /shield where I would often follow savage leap with shield charge that is doubly so. I'm personally not a fan of shred. It's an ok power, pretty good even as far as melee cones go. It is just too slow for me and a big part of savage is that you can excel in aoe (and st) with minimal thought to positioning. If I really cared about a seamless st chain I'd probably use ring of fire (3 dam procs). That way I'd still have fireball to open up my aoe onslaught with. *I might actually look into that on my new sav/shield as /bio has so many clicks that the odd gap is less worrisome. I don't have a seamless st chain on my sav/bio. At least not one that optimizes stacks, assassin's focus, hidden and hemo. The person that solves that will have one heck of a build if they can still squeeze in crazy aoe and a bunch of damage procs. Against AV's I sometimes have to wait a bit to make sure hemo follows AS. It still pulls sub 2 min pylons so I'm ok with that as I've focused more on burst aoe and burst st. That suits my typical play experience more than running dps chains. I think savage (stalker version) still has a lot of untapped potential as there are so many moving parts. I've played it a lot and still don't feel I've mastered it

This is how I feel as well. I wouldn't mind if the +dam proc could go in a damage power. It doesn't make sense in aoe controls and I don't use my st control enough where it stacks up much because 1 application of st control is usually enough and then you stack attacking them with superior damage powers. It's a 6ppm proc so it would work pretty well in a spammed damage power like a mid tier blast. I don't even bother with the fiery orb one (or the troller version). It just doesn't do much imo. I'd vote for some changes to dom ATO's because I don't even bother with the procs. Like the OP said the stalker/scrapper ones are really good and compliment the AT's so well. Corr ones are good too.

I dunno. a 22 sec recharge power that eats 1/5th of your end bar at lvl 10? I don't think most people would enjoy that.

weakest class? troller personal damage is low, but they are a pet class with force multiplication capabilities. Illusion exemplifies that. your blaster might not be able to solo AV's. Many people can. Nothing "requires" any specific number of players on homecoming with the exception of a few trials and whatnot. Most TF's and such can be started and completed by a single player now as multi clicks have been removed. You can make an argument that some things shouldn't be the way they are, but the current game allows (and even promotes) individuals tackling just about all content.

NW can definitely come I under 2 mins without hybrid or patron pets . melee fort I'm sure could too

for me savage is hands down the most fun melee set. It is fairly fast and savage leap is my favorite power in the game (along with feral charge). the combo would have considerably more aoe damage than psi/bio. but likely less st damage in actual gameplay scenarios. you've played bio so you know it can be quite hardy if you time your clicks well and watch for stacking debuffs. shield can be made ultra survivable too. Albeit with less care and attention required during battle. I personally feel that shield benefits a bit more from incarnates than bio but that is just my opinion. I love my sav/bio, I've done plenty of solo tfs amd most AVs go down easily. I'm also leveling a sav/shield.

definitely cold. I think it was Tex that pointed out in another thread that dominators get sleet at the same level as cold domination users. that hadn't dawned on me until that point. that should be changed.

honestly if psi resistance bothered you on a set that does a good amount of mixed damage, then a pure lethal set will probably disappoint as well. is sm/shield better than psi/bio? better at what?

savage is true to its name. I also run a sav/bio and often enemies die standing upright for me too haha!

102.26 to 84.58hp/sec the -regen of dna siphon isn't really "useful". I guess it could help a tiny bit during some godmode powers where your damage output is decreased a lot, but even then...

survivabity isnt really an issue on my demon/storm and it definitely does more damage. 4 digit dps is a very selective club.

I had ET on my dark/sav for a bit. Feral charge repositions you so quickly that I was at least able to use ET on teams before my target was killed by someone else. That said my hawk+viscous slash killed them about as fast so ET was superfluous on top of harming me. Specced out of it. There are better choices imo.

Yes, but not all procs are created equal in creepers because the power summons different pets that do different things. long and short: aoe procs, immob proc are good slow and kb procs not so good. creeprs is also worth slotting for damage and acc and recharge because recasting it has advantages too.

I only put the hide proc in AS. 3 damage procs 2 piece superior winter set - acc/dam, dam/end

of those two plant/sav. like coyote said, savage really does best when you are highly mobile. learn to move through unkindness. gets some procs in feral charge so it is still worthwhile from point blank. savage, really pushes you to fight. It is hard to describe but between the blood stacks, non-rooting unkindness and the insanity that is feral charge, the set just pushes you into combat mode more than others (melee ATs included). So savage pairs well with one shot wonder control sets. Plant and dark are probably best.

edit: this wasn't sitting right with me. So I went and revisited this in game. It is 100% build momentum that causes the root. However, if you already have your weapon out it will just do a little stagger step rather than stopping your dead with root. Drawing the TW in any other scenario does not cause the rooting. No other weapon sets (that I tested) have their build up cause root regardless of weather the weapon is out or not (tested with redraw version). It hits tw/fire annoyingly hard as I hit fe+build momentum on my way in. It can be circumvented by queing an attack prior to hitting BM. I appreciate the knowledge as that was a major detractor for me. I will say that tw does not have this disrupting redraw while under momentum and you can pretty seamlessly transition from burn to whirling sword, which is pretty devastating.

You prob dont want elec melee then. It has a pretty big load to blow but that's about it. Boss killing ability is very low. You want something with a damage aura or an aoe attack in the secondary. Aoe attacks can come from unsuspecting places like ground zero with procs. In my attempt to avoid tw/bio I went tw/fire for my aoe scrapper. Tough to say if I'd recommend it but critical strikes in burn ( highly recommend ) leads to all of your tw aoes criting. Fe+bu plus tw attacks is some unbelievable single target burst. tw despite its unreal performance isnt my cup of tea though. Build momentum roots you which really interrupts progress into the next spawn and tw while momentum is down is not a good experience. It can be frustrating sometimes on teams.