Frosticus

I wonder if they data mined the current sets with stances what they would find? I play a lot of bio armor and i bet 97% of my playtime is spent in offensive mode. I only change stances if something defeats me and I feel that more durability would have kept me in the running vs killing them faster, which isnt often as killing them faster is usually the best solution.

1 stack at most

If I were to say one thing to any savage user it is that forgoing set bonuses in favour of procs for savage leap should be top priority.

Tex do you find that sleet has any negative interaction with the fear of fearsome stare? ie allowing them to retaliate a bit more? or is it of little consequence given how great sleet is? Ice is always my go to epic and i have it on my fire/sav but haven't gone that route yet on my dark/sav.

On my dark/sav unkindness is the little spoon to the big spoon that is fearsome stare. Unkindness can take 2 -res procs and they fire about 50% of the time each. The power also doesn't root you so that is interesting for re-positioning (ie backing up a bit for long range feral charge). Fearsome stare is often enough mitigation, but if more is warranted you can use heart of darkness after porting in. Heart of darkness can also take a -res proc and will fire at 90% rate with up to about 60% rech slotting in the power. I'm still batting around epic sets myself. I've done a few respecs now. I think ball lightning is a good choice to think about if you take mu. You can alternate surge of power and melee core hybrid for late game content. That promotes almost full time scrapperlock :) I can't personally get behind hover on /sav. I prefer the rapid combat movement of bunny hopping cj+hurdle as it makes me play more aggressively.

I can't say I have seen it double proc on my main target, but I'll watch this evening. it can crit, though it is unrelated to hidden status. I can't say for certain the crit chance is boosted in a team either as stuff happens pretty fast. Probably easiest to test the scrapper version with their ato on that aspect. Assuming the scrapper version can crit as well. It is a funny power with regard to line of sight. The straight forward part is that you need to be able to see your target upon activation. But if you can't see the enemies beside your target it won't hit them. It doesn't miss them, it just doesn't even check against them. You'll see this if you use it while falling (ie off a building). Even if you lose sight of your main target it will still hit him, but his buddies won't be affected. More commonly, if some enemies are behind an obstacle it won't roll against them. I feel it has a strange interaction with regard to the adaptation toxic proc that bio adds on occasion. I'll watch that more closely going forward as well. Finally, like feral charge, it rolls its procs regardless of whether you hit or not with the attack (definitely vs your main target, can't say for the surrounding area). The power has an auto hit portion (the teleport to enemy I guess) and an aoe attack (damage) portion.

when you toggle on focused acc you have close to 30% tohit buff and 90% global acc. plus your lowest acc slotting in an attack is like 60%. in all that is a lot more than is needed. You only need about 20% tohit bonus and 45% acc (global or slotted doesnt matter) to hit +3s at 95% rate.

Feral charge - dominators Not quite the beast that savage leap is. If someone else could test this power that might be beneficial. From what I see it rolls procs like a st melee attack ONLY against your target (65% for 3.5ppm). Procs do occur on the surrounding targets (5 cap), but with much lower frequency. I'm guessing the procs on the surrounding targets roll with aoe probability, which considering it is a 15ft aoe with 10 sec base rech...it isn't great probability. That said, the aoe factor of the power is more of a bonus that anything and feral charge remains one of the most enjoyable powers for me at least.

Savage leap is essentially a 40 sec rech aoe that takes you along for the ride. So a proc dream. sav/bio stalker I have 5 procs in mine: 4 damage procs, 1 -res proc I use +5 Armageddon damage IO and musculature vs Lvl 50 death mage Savage Leap from point blank Savage Leap from max range - doubles base damage and doubles bleed dot

Sleep would need a chance of "deep sleep" and a chance of "induced coma" to start being useful imo. deep sleep would give enemies a damage threshold before they wake up. Say 40% of their hp in damage dealt before they wake. induced coma would be a damage threshold plus time duration before they wake. Say 75% of their hp and/or 15 sec of dealing damage before they wake. that way they result in staggering damage output of the spawn for layered mitigation on top of other controls. I can't see any scenario as sleeps are currently implemented (including they way elec's is) where I'd use it on my plant/poison. Creepers is up most of the time even with SO's and they directly counteract sleeps in that they do dot damages over a large area.

you have enough tohit+accuracy to hit +7s at 95%. is that intended? I personally strive for enough to hit +3s on a lvl 50 build as you will likely have a level shift.

interesting. I'd suggest that consuming stacks shouldnt matter (outside of causing lockout) because they just improve rech and end discount. neither of which should be leaned upon for an attack rotation, but are nice for long cooldowns. I'd imagine the chain of maiming>viscious>maiming>hemo Is what I'd be looking at. that would be a continual cycle of 4 stack hemo with no lockout. I guess blood thist kinda hoops you though as it sets you to 5? is hemo with no stacks a worse attack than all the others? what about with procs cause it is a great proc power? perhaps not using blood thirst is better as it is a low damage buff. might not be worth the animation time?

I dont use it. the IH regen comes from saturated parasitic aura. sandman proc is lame, not sure why people keep promoting it.

I imagine hemo is fine to use at 4 or less stacks. you just want to avoid exhaustion. It's one of the hardest hitting attacks in the game for stalkers from hide. Not sure how it turns out for scrappers.

ya hurricane and hot feet aren't the best synergy, but it isn't terrible either. You can't sit in the middle of the spawn like the fire/rad example, but hotfeet has a pretty big range so as you skirt the spawn and pack them tighter it still hits a lot of them. cages are good to go now and keep everyone in position while making popcorn.

rains dont roll procs very well. So keep expectations low for freezing rain. hurricane will still repel with the kb>kd io. I like skirting around and pushing things tight. It helps those that have small aoes. I've never seen bonfire + freezing rain + hurricane convert back to knockback if appropriately io'd. It might happen but I dont think it is common. (demon/storm/fire that has all those powers)

I wouldn't call thunderstrike a large aoe, but yes the tele nukes (savage has the best one of all) mixed in with an epic aoe put stalkers on an aoe level with some of the best in the game.

I'd go sav/ela broot, or sav/ela stalker. Sav is monstrous on stalkers, so if you are sacrificing the survivability bonus of the brute you may as well go all in for the vastly superior damage the stalker version offers. I'd skip sav/ela scrapper. I'd go fire/rad brute as well. /rad should be able to cap many types of damage with meltdown on a brute. Meltdown can be up quite often.

I've now played a few sentinels into the 40's. At which point I lose interest. They just aren't that fun (for me). You sit back and blast stuff while being nearly invulnerable. The risk to reward is off on them imo. the low target caps mean you often don't pull much aggro in a team. Nowhere near enough to overwhelm your defenses. My sents are usually the last one standing during team wipes, but I feel I have little ability to prevent the team wipe either.

I found spring attack to be super lame when I tried it. even with procs. but that was on a troller so maybe the stalker version is better? dna siphon is a decent option. I use that at the end of fights personally as a sustain+ assassins mark trigger but it can be turned into a big aoe attack as coyote points out. consider how much you use shadow meld? because ball lightning is a good aoe and you still get a fast snipe. I have the same as you on my sav/bio but I find I rarely use shadow meld. but sav does have unparalleled aoe alpha strikes so I dont face as much incoming as I thought. I plan to switch back to mu.

if you aren't married to fire though, consider savage. It is very similar, but imo improved in every way other than damage type.

the set is a bit slow animating relative to some other sets. Its fast AS is a bit slower, Greater fire sword is a bit slow for how hard it hits, pbaoe attack has a long cast time. That said, the criticals are pure fire damage, which can be a significant bonus in some cases. Every stalker can do great single target damage. A few can do great + a bit more :) Not every stalker can do great aoe damage. Fire is ok in this department. Fire melee tends to not be the damage king that is probably should be across the melee AT's. Not like fire blast is at any rate. But it is a perfectly servicable set. If you want to play fire melee you aren't gimping yourself.

Feral charge actually uses melee sets rather than pbaoe sets in game. Additionally I'd put procs in it because it acts like a single target attack, but can hit 5 targets. Plus it makes it still do decent damage even if used from point blank range.

it really is. My issue with the set though is that it is pushing me to try out an epic set other than fire and ice. Namely power mastery and mu mastery. power because feral charge gives you the mobility to actually use ET effectively even in a team setting. Usually by the time you get to a target they are dead by the time ET finishes animating. But feral charge lets you close the gap instantly to unload ET before the scrapper/stalker can chunk them down. Mu mastery for surge of power because I just want to port around fighting without concern of whether everything is locked down before I jump in.

I couldn't do /rad because you lose the +rech. It may not matter in the long run but it nags at me. /bio is actually unreal. It is a sum of all parts and I hear people skipping the t9 but I'm unsure why? It is God mode regen/recovery roughly 2/3rds of the time. I skipped it for a long time and then recently added it on my 50 sav/bio. It took the build to a whole different level of play.