Hjarki

To necro this a bit: Acid Arrow can take an Energy and Fire proc, which gives it ~75% chance to ignite Oil Slick. While this may be unnecessary for certain builds, it's very necessary for others. Poison Gas Arrow is skippable on most builds. -50% damage is nice, but it's one-debuff-too-many. Normally you don't get a chance to lay in multiple AE debuffs in a battle and there are normally better ways to marginalize a spawn. I can imagine it might be useful on something like Electric/TA, where you could layer stacking sleeps. Flash Arrow can't realistically take procs unless you're willing to surrender it's use out of battle. 6-slot Cloud Senses would be great, but 4-slot is sufficient.

Cross Punch has basically the same dpa as Frozen Fists, although it is an AE with some supplemental benefits. It does not appear to receive arc/radius buffs from being a Tanker. So you're spending 2 powers (you have to take Boxing/Kick to access Tough/Weave anyway) to get what you already have for the most part. Gloom on the other hand, is an amazing single target attack than can dramatically boost single target dps.

Thoughts: Gale. This is a wasted power slot - it does nothing for you that Torrent doesn’t already do better. Freezing Rain. Procs in this power are normally ineffective. All it really needs is some recharge (or sets that come with recharge alongside their set bonuses). Moonbeam. The 6th Sting of the Manticore isn’t very useful. I’d get rid of it or replace it with a proc. Hover. You probably need LotG here. O2 Boost. Panacea 5-slot or Preventative 6-slot are solid choices here. Night Fall. I’d ditch this - it’s not a very good AE. Tornado. Soulbound Allegiance, Force Feedback and the single Overwhelming Force proc. Lightning Storm. Force Feedback and whatever else (ATOs or Apocalypse work well here). You don’t actually need 6 slots unless you’re getting nice set bonuses. Life Drain. This is not a nuke. It’s a nice place to mule Cloud Senses or you could potentially slot it for self-healing. Power Sink. Conserve Power tends to be more generally useful. Torrent. Slot for Sudden Acceleration, Force Feedback and as many procs as you can fit and still be able to hit things. Procs > damage for this power. Tenebrous Tentacles. This is a good place to dump Gravitational Anchor for more recharge. Storm/Dark without the AE Immobilize seems odd.

When you run an experiment, it's crucial to isolate the factors under test while holding the other factors constant. The problem with a 'realistic' test such as the repeatable mission is that it doesn't do this - it conflates being able to chase down a single mob with fighting an AV/GM with fighting a large spawn. Ultimately, the goal is to understand the various 'X factors' - not merely toss them all in a pile where you can't differentiate them.

While I appreciate the effort he's gone to, it's important to remember that observation is the first step in the scientific method, not the last. As such, I don't know that his results are particularly useful. They mostly just confirm what is already known about the various sets when outfitted with SOs. Moreover, the methdology precludes isolating the various features of the game in a way that could be used to extrapolate the different elements of performance. Consider the question I posed earlier about the effectiveness of Tanker arc/radius/target cap changes. Subjectively, I know that Ripper is mediocre on a Brute but amazing on a Tanker. But I don't have a decent consensus number for how much better it really is. That's the sort of question these kind of tests should be answering - not simply replicating rankings you could more easily and quickly discover by plugging the numbers into a spreadsheet.

This requires that you have a corner. It also assumes a playstyle that doesn't match how the game is generally played. Unless you're talking low levels teams with only at-level players, the standard method is to simply charge in rather than waste time 'pulling'.

In a theoretical sense, a Brute can't realistically compete against a Tanker based purely on a 10-target vs. 16-target AE. Brutes at the damage cap only do about 10% more damage than Tankers at the damage cap, but 16 targets is 60% more damage than 10 targets. In practice, it's hard to meaningfully reach the target cap. Even in an AE farm, you're going to spend large amounts of time fighting spawns smaller than that. In actual content, you'll face a lot of enemy groups that include ranged enemies that refuse to close with your Tanker/Brute - at best a few extra yards of radius may snag you an extra target or two. Not nearly enough to compensate for the higher baseline +damage from Fury in a situation where neither a Tanker nor a Brute is likely to be anywhere near the damage cap. Where the Tanker changes really pay off is with cones. Spines' Ripper on a Brute is a 2-3 target attack. It's nice enough and probably worth taking. On Tanker, you're probably hitting 6 - 8 targets due to increased arc/radius/target cap. On the other hand, there's a lot of AE that isn't impacted by the Tanker changes - most notably all those taunt auras. Your Spires/Fire Brute may have a crappy Ripper, but their Quills and Fiery Aura are hitting the same number of targets as the Tanker. One particular use case for Brutes where they're clearly superior is afk farming. If you just want to stick your character in a fire farm while you go do laundry and check back from time to time, Brute is definitely the way to go. Almost any such restrictions tend to yield 'artificial' results that can still be useful but aren't very good at fine distinctions because it omits the details of how a build reaches all of its various breakpoints. There is some not-easily-quantified benefit to superior Tanker defenses - the less effort you have to spend boosting your defenses, the more effort you can put into your offense. A 'pylon test' methodology where different players compete with specific builds is probably the best route. However, you would need a large number of players to get a good data set and most of the top end of that data set would involve 'teaching to the test' where players are optimizing for the specific scenario without concern for how well that scenario reflects the larger game. For example, we do have somewhat decent data on the best fire farm builds (albeit primarily confined to Brutes). But no one would suggest the top fire farm builds are decent general purpose characters. You're not going to go tank an Incarnate trial with your speed clear fire farm build. Indeed, I'd argue that a test platform of the sort you're talking about is worse than simply modeling the dps characteristics of the base sets. With modeling, you have explicit constraints you're optimizing against, so running a test bed is really only useful as a way of validating the model. I know that improved arc/radius/target cap is better. I know the limits of how much better it can be. But if I want to assign some value to 'better' that matches gameplay, I really need to take a character and run a lot of tests to see how close to the +60%/+100% targets I can realistically get.

Except you're not sacrificing efficiency. As I pointed out, ST damage performance between various Stalkers is very similar. Moreover, the key element of solo'ing such content isn't so much the build as the content knowledge - knowing precisely what you'll face and how to deal with it. The argument being posited - "I can do it without that stuff, so it's useless" - could be applied equally well to every build. It's just an assertion of ignorance - that there can be no judgements made because every situation is different. While that's true to some extent, it avoids answering the question rather than trying to provide any sort of framework for thinking about the question.

Which would constitute a qualitative advantage. The various Stalker primaries are virtually identical (with some outliers on the negative side) in terms of potential ST damage against an arbitrary target. None of the Stalker secondaries add appreciable amounts of ST damage to the equation. So the choices you need to make generally come down to issues like slotting efficiency and qualitative benefits, rather than dps metrics.

The Sentinel version of Bio doesn't get the damage/-resist aura, which is most of the reason to take the set in the first place (at least for melee AT; it's slightly less useful for fighting at range).

I frequently take the epic Hold. But I never really use it. Anything that's going to be substantially hindered by a Mag 3 Hold can probably be killed in about the same time as it takes to activate the Hold. It's just a place to dump Basilisk's Gaze, so it's various features aren't important. My main Soul vs. Mu criteria is actually whether I need Avalanche/Ragnarok or an extra Luck of the Gambler (i.e. defense vs. resist sets). Mace is basically the same as Mu, but it takes an extra slot to suppress the knockback (as long as I'm dumping 100M worth of enhancements into an AE power, I might as well use it) and the weapon visual normally doesn't go with my costume.

For any build, you need to start with "what do I want to play?". If your constraint is that you want to play Gravity Control, then you're probably better off with a Controller. If your constraint is that you want to play a Dominator, then Gravity Control is a strong choice in certain cases. But I wouldn't put Gravity Control amongst the list of 'top builds' in any iteration.

If you're playing a Grav/* Controller, Lift under Containment is your highest single target dpa. If you're playing a Grav/Psi Dominator, Lift is your lowest single target dpa - it's the attack you use when your 'real' attacks are on cooldown. So the fact that your Controller does about 15% more dpa with this attack while using Containment isn't particularly relevant to the overall dps of the attack chain. Likewise, complaining about bad Dominator AE is odd given that Controller AE is even worse. More importantly, you're not really arguing that Gravity is bad for a Dominator so much as you're arguing that Dominators are bad. The only Control set that works better on a Dominator than a Controller is probably Mind - and that's only because it's marginally less useless for an AT that mainly uses the primary to mule set bonuses. Gravity certainly isn't the worst Control set for Dominators (looking at you Electric) and you can actually use the powers in a meaningful way on certain builds.

Remember that Defenders also receive attacks better than basic attacks, while Controllers don't. So that 66 damage Ring of Fire is better than a 36 damage Flares, but it doesn't keep pace with a 98 damage Blaze. Coupled with the fact that Controllers often have to work to establish/maintain Containment, the non-pet damage advantage is most illusionary. In terms of Gravity, I'd say it has a few features to recommend it: Singularity. While no Dominator pets are going to live forever if you ramp up the difficulty high enough, Singularity will last longer than virtually any other pets. Its inherent durability coupled with its control-centric nature makes it a better choice than other pets whose damage is mostly theoretical because they're dead on the ground long before they can deal it. The ranged nature of the pet also means it stays close to home and doesn't chase enemies to its inevitable doom. Wormhole. While everyone can get a version of this power with the Teleportation pool these days, this is still by far the superior. It also works better with Dominators due to the double mag Disorient. For a melee-centric Dominator, this is often all the protection you need against large spawns (dangerous single target enemies are another story, but no Dominator is particularly good there). Lift/Propel. There are a variety of Dominator sets that just don't have enough (decent) single target damage and these can help. While the slotting options can be limited with Gravity, I'd argue it's a strong choice for a melee-centric Dominator.

Just because you don't know how to use a power doesn't make it useless. I'd think the value of Confuse would be obvious. The value of AE Placate is quite a bit more subtle, but it allows you to separate spawns, provides a defensive cooldown and makes for a decent panic button. Blinding Powder is admittedly a weak power given its short range and cone nature - it's certainly not Smoke/Trick Arrow. With that in mind, you might consider focusing less on what powers do than how they can be slotted. IO sets are where you're going to get most of your defense and virtually all of your recharge, so it's important to keep slotting in mind when you're comparing the value of powers and power sets.

It really depends on what you mean by 'solo build'. Any Stalker can sneak around and complete missions. No Stalker is particularly good at AE damage. With relative small radii, low target caps, no taunt aura and limited AE options, Stalkers have the worst AE performance out of the 4 melee AT. They're also generally going to be worse than Defenders/Corruptors (presuming the Defenders/Corruptors are trying to do AE damage). The last issue is killing that final boss (who may be an AV/GM). While Stalkers excel at single target damage, they're defensively the weakest of the ATs with an actual armor set. Building a Stalker who can withstand an arbitrary selection of standard AV/GM at equal level is entirely possible. Custom-fitting your Stalker for a specific difficult Av/GM is certainly possible. But building a Stalker who can randomly pick a +4 Task Force and defeat the final AV/GM? That's pretty much impossible. Their defenses just have too many holes. If I had to pick, it would probably be Psi/Ninjitsu for qualitative reasons that have nothing to do with dps/mitigation - features like Boggle, Smoke Flash and Blinding Powder that allow you to do things you otherwise couldn't. However, it's not the kind of build you take into a fire farm to grind out levels.

Two things that immediately stick out: Mu pet over Phantasm. Neither is going to live particularly long, so they're largely just ExpRef mules. Given that one of these choices locks you into a weak Patron Pool, I'd argue that Phantasm is the better choice. Vengeance over Group Invisibility. Vengeance is almost never used as anything except a LotG mule. So why wouldn't you just take Group Invisibility for the mule and get another +1.88 Defense? I'd also argue that Psi Mastery is virtually mandatory for this build. The whole reason to play Poison is Venomous Gas, which means you need to stand in melee range. This also means that any control effect - no matter how momentary - will kill you since it will drop the protection Venomous Gas is providing. Given that you should be building for perma-PA, you should be able to perma-Indomitable Will as well. Psi gives you another LotG mule, a standard toggle and probably the best target AE available to Controllers. Some other notes: I'd just go with 4-slot Basilisk's Gaze in the various Holds. It's one of the best sets out there, nabbing you +7.5% recharge and +1.25% Ranged Def with a mere 3 slots. You've got 4 Holds that can take it and all 4 probably should. About the only one I'd be tempted to go another way with is Poison Trap - even then, it doesn't use procs all that efficiently and life gets busy enough that just depending on epic/patron AE will probably work. Alkaloid can mule 5-slot Panacea for another +7.5% recharge. It's not Basilisk's Gaze or Cloud Senses, but it's still a decent chunk of recharge. Elixir of Life can 6-slot Preemptive Optimizations for +3.75% Ranged Def and +3.75% recharge. With all that mind, every combination is a potentially good choice for thematic reasons but not every combination is a good choice from the standpoint of mechanics. I don't think Illusion is a particularly good pairing with Poison since there's no good reason for an Illusion Controller to enter melee range. In terms of endurance, the easiest way to manage endurance is to simply not spend it. In most circumstances, Spectral Wounds/Blind aren't really competitive with Phantom Army for single target dps so it's not a big deal to simply not use them. To a large extent, you can just stand around and watch the PA kill things while you throw a debuff from time-to-time and maybe an AE attack.

*cough* Trick Arrow *cough*

I actually had a different take on TA/Dark, with a best-defense-is-a-good-offense approach: Unlike most builds I do, I don't bother to soft-cap defenses and simply rely on debuffs. Due to the unresistable nature of Flash Arrow, this makes it a lot more reliable of a strategy than with conventional -hit buffs (but still somewhat limited given ambushes and the like). Trick Arrow Glue Arrow (skipped). I don't find these sorts of location AE slow fields all that useful. Poison Gas Arrow (skipped). In general, I find I only have time for a single AE debuff on most spawns (Flash Arrow, useable before the battle, doesn't really count here) and that debuff is already going to be Disruption Arrow. There's also a diminishing returns of layering these sorts of debuffs on enemies that are just going to die quickly anyway. Entangling Arrow. I'm not all that big a fan of this power. Putting the -resist here forces me to take it for AV/GM fights, but the Immobilize is nearly useless. I think it would have been better to shift all the Ice Arrow debuffs onto Entangling Arrow as well and ditch Ice Arrow in favor of some sort of power boost (like Tactical Arrow). Ice Arrow. Probably 90% of the reason I bother with Ice Arrow is for Basilisk's Gaze. I'm rarely ever going to use it outside of an AV/GM fight for debuffing... and likely not even then unless I'm solo. Disruption Arrow. On of the big selling points of the set. There aren't any particularly good slotting options here since the power doesn't need any enhancements and the only sets it can take are endurance mod sets (when you don't care about the end mod portion of the power). Flash Arrow. I wish I could 6-slot this with Cloud Senses, but the damage proc interferes. Still it's a central power to the playstyle, allowing you to reliably reduce opponent's hit chance. Acid Arrow. This basic power is incredibly unimpressive, so I'm not surprised people skip it. I can't remember all of the things it does, but pretty much none of them are things I care about. However, what I do care about is that I can slot 6 procs into this power and they have about a 50% chance to go off on the initial hit with a much lower chance to go off on subsequent hits. This makes it a fairly reliable mechanism for igniting Oil Slicks, does a lot of damage and has enemies flopping every so often. Oil Slick Arrow. Another core feature of the set, this is basically another ultimate nuke. Igniting it is a bit tricky on a Dark Blast build, but I can use procs to accomplish the task. EMP Arrow. Another power I dislike from the set. It's a grab bag of unrelated powers that don't really make any sense together. However, it's where -regen is located, so I pretty much have to take it and reduce the recharge as much as possible to make it useful. The bubble part of the power is questionable since normally I don't want to be near where my EMP Arrow is landing. Dark Blast Dark Pit, Tenebrous Tentacles, Nightfall (skipped). While these can be muled in various ways, none of them are particularly worthwhile powers on their own. Since I don't really need additional AE damage, I skip these. Dark Blast/Gloom/Moonbeam. These are the core single target rotation. Nothing particularly special here - I balance between set bonuses and procs without committing fully to either. Life Drain. I wanted another Cloud Senses set and this is where I stuck it since I'm fairly more likely to need the additional functionality of Life Drain than the AE/debuffing of Tentacles/Nightfall. Torrent. While the base damage of this power is nothing special, its ability to be usefully proc'd out is amazing. It can accept Force Feedback to power up the build's recharge and it stretches to the same range as single target nukes. I don't bother with improving the damage, using procs instead. Due to the Energy/Fire procs, it has about a 50% chance to ignite an Oil Slick. Blackstar. The ultimate nuke. I'm not usually a big fan of PBAoE ultimates in otherwise entirely ranged builds, but Flash Arrow can cover the approach. With a single Energy proc, it has a capped chance to ignite Oil Slick. Pools I need to get invisibility (Super Speed + Celerity), 5 Defense powers for LotG and Tactics to permit me to run accuracy-less 6-proc powers. I skipped Fighting because I didn't want to waste the power on a useless melee attack and I was willing to compromise on resist/defense. Epic Pool Since there's almost no room for additional powers/slots once all of the above is handled and none of the offensive epic powers are particularly useful, I wanted to get an armor toggle and potentially something else useful with minimal investment. S/L/E resist and Conserve Power fits the bill.

I'm not a big fan of Empathy, but I'd probably go with something like: The build doesn't include any purple sets, so it's reasonably new-player-friendly (inasmuch as any IO set build can be). Soft-capped Ranged Def, hard-capped S/L Resist. Hasten isn't quite perma- (no purples, remember) but it's close enough that against large spawns the Force Feedback in Torrent will easily put it over. On the Empathy side, I took what I viewed as useful (albeit mostly from the standpoint of self-buffing and which powers could accept useful sets). It should well exceed any reasonable healing/recovery demands. On the Dark Blast side: Single Target Rotation: Dark Blast, Gloom, Dark Blast, Moonbeam AE: Torrent, Blackstar The rest of the offense: Power Boost'd Nightfall will drop your opponent's hit by ~25%, which just so happens to be the difference between your worst defense and soft-cap. Life Drain is almost purely a mule. It's doubtful you'll ever need it with 66% uptime on ~1000% Regen. Summon Mistress is about as impressive as epic pool summons get... which isn't very good. Still, nice set bonuses. For travel powers, it's a combination of Super Speed and Combat Jumping. If you run across tall buildings, buy a jetpack.

I think there's definitely an issue with deciding on a limiting principle. In terms of Achilles' Heel, my suspicion is that if you did try it, it wouldn't significantly alter your results. AH is primarily of use on long, ST fights (AV/GM), so it's not going to substantially alter the speed you can do mixed AE/ST content like your tests. Damage procs are also probably outside of your concern. While 'proc monsters' are common with Defenders and other low damage AT, they just don't have the payoff over straight slotting for Blasters due to the relatively high base damage. If you look at the best Blaster builds, you'd be hard-pressed to find the kind of ridiculous franken-slotting you see with Defender builds. Given this, it's reasonable to argue that Radiation being able to slot 2 more procs/power than Fire isn't a meaningful distinction since they'll be both be straight-slotting those powers and just getting whatever procs naturally come with that approach. The cost of being a 'proc monster' as a Blaster is simply too high, so we can ignore the complexities it might bring to your analysis. But Knockback is different. As you noticed, powers like Energy Torrent are wildly different in character from their native versions and the knockback-suppressed versions. Likewise, Force Feedback is a core justification for many sets because it doesn't just make one power better but has an impact across your entire build. Consider Fireball vs. Explosive Arrow. They're virtually the same power, except that Fireball does 35% more damage and Explosive Arrow does KB (that needs to be suppressed to make it useable). But on a perma-Hasten build, simply having Explosive Arrow in your arsenal with SA/FF means your entire build is running 25% faster (if you can find enough targets to regularly blow up). Ask yourself this question: "Which does better AE damage - Fire Blast or Archery?". If you just look at the base numbers or SO builds, the answer is easy: Fire. I don't even need to go through a blizzard of math to convince you Fire is better AE than Archery because you already know it - and you probably knew it long before you ran your tests. But if I ask the same question in the context of FF/SA, the answer is probably reversed. The massive recharge bonus doesn't just make Explosive Arrow better, it makes the entire rotation better as well as lowering the recharge on abilities like Aim/Build Up. Almost no one chooses Radiation Blast due to Achilles' Heel and the +2 procs/power. But the FF/SA possibilities are central to why players choose certain sets.

I'm not sure if you included it, but you might include Force Feedback in your KB adjustments. On single target attacks, it's nice enough - but on AE attacks, it dramatically increases the cyclic rate.

I'm not sure I entirely agree. While you can theoretically stack multiple Sleet, this tends not to work out all that often in practice unless the AV/GM's own mechanics preclude it from moving. Likewise, Heat Loss 'stacks', but the long recharge:duration on the -res means that you're only getting a fraction of the stacking benefit. In contrast, the two stacking -res on Trick Arrow stack in a very reliable fashion. Even if the AV/GM moves (which it would not be natively inclined to do and which you can prevent much of the time anyway), you can easily lay down another Disruption Arrow. However, Cold has more reliable -regen than TA due to the long recharge on TA. I'm also not sure Benumb is really better than what TA delivers in the same department since Benumb is resistible while TA's debuffs generally aren't (or are only partially unresistible). On the other hand, I don't think TA is appreciably better than Cold for AE. While TA has AE, it's just not very good. Acid Arrow can take a lot of procs but at the end of the day it's basically the same as trying to transform Sleet into an AE. Oil Slick Arrow is a bit like a Fireball with the recharge of an Inferno and a clunky activation condition. Realistically, Trick Arrow is better than Cold Domination at x8 less because it blows things up than because the combination of Superior Invisibility + Flash Arrow means it doesn't have to. I haven't run around solo'ing AV/GM much (mainly because I find it somewhat boring), but my own experience with the revamped TA is that the 'sexy' powers like EMP Arrow and Oil Slick Arrow are actually a lot less important than the 'boring' powers like Entangling/Flash/Ice/Poison Gas.

Yes and no. Caltrops can be proc'd out to create a 'good on paper' power that will do a significant amount of damage for the activation time. With that in mind, that significant amount of damage occurs over 45 sec to targets that remain in the field. From a practical standpoint, this will almost never be of much use since most of your enemies will be dead long before the duration is over.

As players level up, they increasingly address problems like recharge, healing, defense, etc. As a result, it's fairly common for your buffs to be superfluous when used on high level players. They may not be at some 'cap', but they are effectively at the limits of what they can use. This means that the majority of a Defender's buffs are really just self-buffs - you design your character around them in a way other players cannot.