Frosticus

/drain psyche will put such a significant dent in the GM's regen that any primary should eventually get the job done. ice and fire get it done much more quickly than others. Dark blast much more safely due to the heal. Water blast has a heal as well, but i personally find the st chain to be clunky, so I don't enjoy it, but you might. I wouldn't vote for sonic blast myself unless you have pets to leverage, or teammates as the damage comes up a bit short vs other blast sets. beam should work fine. Keep in mind that when I say things like "comfortably" i mean that you have enough mitigation and enough output to drop more or less any GM that you encounter as well as all the adds it might pick up while it wanders. As such, being able to do it very quickly is my preferred approach. The longer a fight continues the more chances increase of a bad run that has you downing insp/temps to see the fight through.

Words like probably, likely, comfortably... those aren't absolutes so stop treating them as such. grats on your blaster build. The new blaster secondaries likely never got a final balance pass. They are a mess for slotting sets. If someone wants to hunt GM's the strongest -regen debuff they have access to is drain psyche. It is over twice as strong as the next closest. -regen makes solo'ing huge bags of hp a lot easier. Feel free to do as you want though.

Do they though?

This pretty much precludes all but /mental drain psyche is hands down the best -regen power available to blasters and probably the only one strong enough to comfortably allow blasters to take on a variety of GM's solo. Probably pair it with fire, ice, or dark myself. dark/mental would be what I lean toward. Not as high damage as fire or ice, but pretty decent with procs added and drain life will add a lot of survivability. If you take out the GM requirement then I'd vote for fire/atomic. You get fire blast's unreal damage with the extra bonus of achilies -res from negatron slam (or fist if you prefer) and +rech of accel metab+beta decay. Plus fire/atomic is one of the best choices for getting you to the AV/GM as it plows through spawns at an unbelievable rate.

Perhaps, but if you put the contagious confusion proc in seeds then controllers as well are typically 1 shot confusing boss spawns. Granted the proc doesnt last nearly as long as domination seeds, but you rarely need it to ime. I think what it boils down to is plant is great for either.

alternatively, you could look at a different focus and strive to max out dom damage. And just go with "enough" mitigation. ie. fire/earth, plant/fire or similar. Conversely, defensive focused trollers can make a weaker team capable of tackling content that is out of their league. ie earth/cold, or ice/rad I personally lean towards high damage combos for both as mitigation is easier to make up for either Insp and io's

I take it a step further and strive for 5 damage procs, maybe even 6 if the AT has a low damage scalar. I havent played a build that doesnt accept a lot of procs in awhile, so no sets like fire melee for instance. I use either nerve, or if I can get enough tohit and set bonuses then I use musculature. Ageless tends to be important not only for the endurance but also for the 20% ish global rech buff it offers over the life to help hasten because set bonuses take a major hit. If your ideal chain used 3 attacks you probably need 4 on a proc build. Some sets have similar dpa across multiple attacks so that is ok. Those that dont may need to consider if it is worthwhile. for example my stone/bio brute has 5 damage procs in most attacks, often 6 procs total. The damage is roughly the same as if I slotted more traditionally and maximized recharge, but in the event that I'm ever damage capped then my damage is way ahead of where it would be. plus it is a fun experiment.

- End discount makes you more efficient + Endurance makes you more effective do you want to be efficient or effective?

transfer me $2 billion inf and I'll give you a build. That expensive enough for you? 🙂

you gotta look at several different factors. DPA of your attack chain - keep in mind many dpa are listed incorrectly such as rad melee and some attacks have special mechanics that can alter dpa significantly such as rad melee radioactive smash and sti combos Ability to build assassins focus quickly so AS crits as soon as it is recharged - a set like ice melee would lean heavily on fire epic because outside of freezing touch the st attacks are not very good. That means you largely forgo stacking focus Proc capability - some sets can get extra purple procs into their chain, extra regular procs beyond the 3 melee ones and even extra -res procs. Before I state my pick you also gotta consider that there are 3 offensive secondaries. IMO both fire and bio give up too much compared to the scrapper version. Although bio is still quite strong for the +tohit and small added +dam and toxic. So I think in practice shield is the most offensive. So weighing all the above that means: nin/bio, stj/bio and stj/shield bio for the +tohit so we can build with no acc and still have musculature. nin and stj both get the pbaoe sets in their chain and Achilles. Nin procs them a bit better. Both have a good dpa chain that builds assassins focus well. Both can take a lot more than the standard 3 melee damage procs so you can get 4-5 procs in each attack. stj has the ultimate AS to crushing uppercut. It is an unbelievable 2 hit combo when AS rehides you. But everyone can AS to moonbeam. Fire epic might add more longterm dps though.

plus sets like bio armor and fire armor, which are very offensively based are even more offensive on scrappers. bio offers a damage aura and -resistance fire offers a damage aura and fiery embrace even if stalkers drop the damage aura for hide which is a fair trade, the other damage boosting powers are lost and they make a big difference.

imo they are pretty interchangeable from a damage standpoint. some do more for corrs like rain powers and some do more for defenders like poison debuffs and soul drain. for me the decision more often comes down to throw away powers and forced picks from the secondary. All things being equal I'll end up selecting the defender because they are much easier to build to softcap def values which leaves more room for fun stuff.

You could say the same of the stalker I mentioned, which probably has even more procs than the tanker build being highlighted. Plus bio/ss probably isn't even the highest damage tank build, whereas that nin/bio stalker is (for single target, although my stj/bio stalker is right behind it), has no aoe and is about as tough as tissue paper.

This is right up there with the best stalker times. I think my nin/bio is the current fastest stalker and is likely using a similarly twisted build* to maximize output just barely edges out these times. And that build is pretty squishy to get there *4-5 procs in each attack, musculature, no acc/end slotting but enough tohit and bonuses to hit +3 not sure anyone should feel great about tanks being this this strong offensively and defensively. Even if we dismiss this as a single target outlier build the aoe potential is still unbelievable too. I will def be remaking my old fire/ss tank if all this goes live. I think FEs flat damage bonus should let you cruise thru rage crash while still doing solid damage in addition to procs like you.

scrappers are in a pretty good spot with regard to their ato procs. unless you need something that only the brute offers then a scrap is probably the right choice. depending how much of the tanker changes end up making it live they might be a better choice for a lot of brute combos than a brute as well imo.

What's interesting is that if you look at TW every power deals approx 10% or more base damage than it *should* given their recharge ie. 8 sec crushing blow = 112.9 vs 8 sec hack = 102.6 16 sec rend = 200.9 vs 16 sec clobber = 182.7 I imagine if you took away that bonus damage (not sure why it is on every power) then TW would likely be a median set on SO's (and still a superstar on IO's).

Chasing TW is getting frustrating. I just redid my nin/bio stalker on test server to finish the build off before I take the time to incarnate it on live. Proc'd to hell and back and jumped through proverbial hoops to avoid acc slotting and end reduction while still having 95% tohit chance vs +3s. Consistently pulling times in the 1:50 to 2:00 minute mark. Hit 1:30 a few times with assault core hybrid active Fun character, but considering virtually no aoe and relative squishiness as it is a very offensively minded build, I think I might just bench it. Additionally, it feels like assassin's focus wasn't building as well as it should from the chain of golden dragon (100%), soaring (95%), sting(75%). Also assassin's mark proc that recharges buildup was a bit disappointing. Maybe it works better in aoes? I might try out a version that uses blaze mastery over moonbeam. I can get some extra -res from melt armor and fireball and char would proc decimation buildup well.

I think the genie is out of the bottle, so I'm not really in favor of nerfing anyone whether it is the right choice or otherwise. I'd probably just crank everyone's damage cap up to 600% and call it a day because if tanks weren't' benefiting from team buffs enough then the same argument can be made for all the 400% cap AT's.

You could. melee hybrid offers a taunt aura with the right hand branch. I'm not saying there is an aoe crit monster stalker dropping burn patches everywhere. but there *could* be.

For brutes procs add more damage than a lvl 50 dam IO up till about 40% rech slotting. A proc'd out brute w/ fury deals significantly more damage than just a brute with fury. I strongly suggest finding a way to slot at least 4 damage procs in your main attacks. My stone/bio is pushing toward 6 procs in most attacks othe than seismic as that needs rech slotting (ie dam/rech). Obviously the build has to jump through hurdles to accommodate that :)

when i opened your build it had maneuvers unselected. With that enabled it shows you at 46% s/l

try this one

there are times I feel like a bad teammate because I wont bother helping with the last slivers while the poor fender/troller slowly drops them. normally I'd hop over and use a lower tier attack to quickly drop them but with TW that isnt an option.

It's frustratingly good to play with weird hitches and pauses at inopportune times. My tw/rad scrap (lvl 30) is something I don't look forward to playing when I log in, but once I complete a mission or two I have a hard time logging off. It is almost comical how fast the set is under momentum, like katana fast. build momentum can be used to extend the momentum time for a smoother experience. I suspect that with a lot of recharge and good timing, you can live a lot of the time in the state of momentum.

Sounds about right. Maybe even shorter duration? I can't recall as I havent played a poison mm since the good old days. I remember it scales based on which tier pet you put it on though which is why the bruiser is a good pairing.