Frosticus

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.

I think tree spec was nerfed heavily at some point? I remember being on teams that failed it back in the cov days. literally couldn't clear vines fast enough. So when I took my solo sav/bio stalker in the other night on a lark I was getting ready to fail. Unbeknownst to me, a few short minutes later it was completed.

if you build a fire armor with decent defense and make sure to get close to 100% slow/ -rech resist there isnt much that can take you down. bio armor at a glance doesn't look as hardy but it is just a completely different approach. fire is reactive and bio is proactive. Once you get good at knowing when to use the bio tools the set is unbelievably tough. I've played both a lot. I think over time the extra offense of adaptation and the -res aura along with the damage aura add more damage than FE And the damage aura of fire. Although bu+FE is still fantastic.

mag 4. gets containment damage. yes all troller epic attacks were nerfed by about half back in the day. it still hits very hard and is excellent with procs.

you can have 66% rech slotting in buildup and gaussian will be at 90% fire rate. I go with a single +5 rech at 50. while leveling I still put 2 rech slots in + gaussian. even with the global buildup proc there are still times you want buildup to cycle a bit quicker in the event it doesnt fire I play perma hasten sav/bio so I have a lot of aoes and usually fire off DNA siphon on the dead bodies before the next group. that will usually trigger it but not always.

no. boulder is around 50 base damage and super slow. seismic is around 80 base damage and super fast. seismic is the hardest hitting burst damage attack trollers can access and can take 2 purple damage procs. I take earth epic for the other powers myself, but it is always satisfying to put out huge burst damage as a troller.

took me awhile to realize it as I run tactics, but savage - spot prey: I don't think it is granting +perception

no. it has no impact on ffg unfortunately.

yeppers. weaken+neuro+shiver would be an icecream cone of unpleasantness. weaken *should* allow you to greatly impact the movement of things that are even fairly resistant to it AA+venomous gas+ proc bomb trap should do well in melee.