Hjarki

I think you're going to find some practical difficulties in using the Cone-based Sonic with the PBAoE-based Poison. There's just no good place to stand, especially given your limited ability to control how and where enemies move.

With even a cursory examination, I found that the numbers they're using are more likely to be incorrect than correct so any conclusions drawn from it are likewise likely to be incorrect.

Whatever you like. Time/Water and Storm/Water are both very powerful builds. Poison/Water is late-developing and a build trickier to manage, but can be decent in the right circumstances.

While I recognize the value of Time, I don't personally like to play it because of how 'clickie' it is. You have to keep clicking Hasten, Far Sight and Chrono Shift just to keep the build running rather than clicking powers to actually do somthing. Radiation is a set I don't see as aging particularly well. It doesn't do all that much that you can't get elsewhere in a more convenient fashion. From the standpoint of sheer power, I think almost any Radiation build does better as Time. Storm/Water is one of the 'power builds' in current CoH, but it's not very 'Defender-ish' in the sense that you're not so much helping your team as you're focusing on what you can personally bring to bear.

Time already has access to a PBAoE heal, so adding another self-heal will be mostly superfluous. Dehydrate also tends to complicate the rotation because you don't want to be inadvertently consuming your Tidal Power with it.

Unfortunately, the Sentinel is a bit squishy (40% Energy, 30% S/L Resist, no Defense). So even with your heals/absorbs/bubble it can be tricky to keep alive. In any case, the original question is about Electrical Blast. I'd argue the best thematic combination would be Storm Summoning (which also happens to be one of the most potent support sets in its own right). However, Electrical Blast on Blasters/Defenders/Corruptors isn't generally a very strong set. It's much better on Sentinels and there are a host of other Electric-based power sets in other AT that are very good. Kinetics is another decent option.

Blasters are a 1.125 damage scale while Sentinels are a 0.9 damage scale. While the sets aren't exactly analogous (Torrent on a Blaster isn't actually all that great an attack), Blasters deal ~25% more damage on average. However, that does not mean that adding +30% damage bridges this difference. First of all, your Blaster is going to get that +30% damage from Defiance anyway while Opportunity isn't nearly as useful in most cases. Second of all, you're not going to be running at base damage and you're not multiplying the attack by the +30% from those long recharge abilities but simply adding a bit more +damage. For all your effort, you're just going to end up at the same place - 1.125 scale vs. 0.9 scale. Now, you can't play Radiation Armor as a Blaster. But does it really matter? If we're speculating about some extraordinary Recharge build, our Blaster will be able to Build Up/Aim almost constantly anyway. Heck, you could play a */Dark Blaster and perma-Soul Drain for +100% continuous damage (assuming you had enough enemies and didn't die horribly Soul Drain'ing them). From my perspective, the problem with your approach isn't that Force Feedback isn't a good proc - it's good enough that it dramatically changes the value of power sets and is almost universally slotted into any power that can take it - but that what you're using it for is... unimpressive. A continuous +30% damage is nice, I suppose. But it's really not all that impressive for all the work you're putting in. There's also the reality that the recharge itself is more powerful than those long recharge powers are. You're probably getting +15% more Torrent dps - 15% of the entire dps, including +damage and procs - just from the Force Feedback proc.

I think Martial Arts is a bit superfluous with Super Reflexes. An SR Tank can easily hit incarnate soft-cap on positionals without Storm Kick. Super Reflexes is also a good-until-it-isn't set. If an enemy is hitting you with massive damage, you don't get a chance for the scaling damage resistance to kick in. Likewise, the Toxic/Psi hole means that you'll face attacks against which you have no defenses at all or attacks that hit for full 5% of the time. Super Reflexes also doesn't scale well into Incarnate content due to the relative commonality of team defensive vs. team resistance buffs. A significant number of your allies will have Maneuvers. Probably half of the Defenders/Corruptors/Controllers/Masterminds you encounter will buff your defense in some fashion if they're anywhere near you. In contrast, buffs to your resists are far less common because most of the sets that buff crucial resists are rarely played. The difficulty with Dark Melee is that it's all single target attacks except for Shadow Maul. While Shadow Maul is considerably improved, you can't realistically debuff an entire spawn. That leaves you with single target -hit... which is likely to be heavily resisted by most single targets you'd be worried about. Siphon LIfe is nice, but I'm not sure you couldn't get a similar effect by just layering Call of the Sandman/Power Transfer in all of your Electric Melee powers. Siphon Life also only really makes sense if you're playing a set without decent healing. Kinetic does debuff damage, but if you're sitting at 90% resist the addition of -10% damage is equivalent to +1% more resist. It's just not very significant, especially given KM's weak damage. My personal vote for 'best damage sponge' would almost certainly start with Staff Mastery for the combination of enhanceable +15% M/L, unenhanceable +13% to all resists and soft control via knockdown. Stone is the classic answer for 'best tanking' due to Granite Armor. However, Granite Armor has a Psi hole. So if you're facing Psi, you need to switch to the rest of your powers. Which, unfortunately, means you're terrible against everything except Psi - and you're only 'good against Psi' in the sense that you've got defense against it. Your resistance would still be terrible. I'd agree Soul tends to be the go-to choice. Excluding Electric (which has abnormally hard-hitting single target attacks) and the combo-based sets, Gloom is almost always a strong choice for your basic single target rotation. Obliteration is also a decent enough AE nuke, especially given the minor -hit debuff. In terms of the primary, I think the resist-based sets tend to do the best job because they're the most absolute defense against damage. If you've got 90% resist to a damage form, you're not going to take much damage. In contrast, it's unusual for a non-Super Reflexes Tanker to have Incarnate-level Defenses and there are ways that even seemingly comprehensive defenses. For example, a lot of Toxic damage comes from puddles that don't require a hit roll. Having a split second to avoid death and being able to go grab a cup of coffee before casually strolling out of a puddle is the difference between the people a Tanker protects and the Tanker themselves. When I look at resists, I tend to separate them into 'important' (Smash, Lethal, Fire, Energy, Toxic) and 'unimportant' (Cold, Negative, Psi). The former are all primary (and common) damage types that you really want to heavily resist. The latter are less common and normally an attack is only half composed of the type (the other normally being smashing), so heavily resisting their damage is less important. On the other hand, when I look at defenses, I tend to be highly concerned about Lethal, Cold, Negative and Psi because those are the damage types that carry significant debuffs. Building to resist Lethal -defense debuffs is effectively impossible without a Defense-based set (which tends to preclude hitting the level of resists you want above). That's why sets like Staff are so incredible - you can easily reach Incarnate+ levels of Lethal Defense and simply soak -defense debuffs with raw defense regardless of what your primary is. Dealing with Cold/Psi slow is a bit more difficult. Only one set (Ice Armor) has enough Slow resist to really permit you to laugh it off (arguably Stone Armor is inherently 'slow resistant' because you're not planning to move or attack much anyway). The rest vary between 0% and 45%, with a 20% unique IO if you want it (most people don't). You've got -hit. Any Tanker can use Focused Accuracy to avoid this. However, that requires dedicating your epic/Patron pool to something you may not need. Otherwise, it tends to come down to an issue of how much you depend on hitting. Builds with heals/debuffs reliant on hitting the target can quickly fall apart when the shadow bolts start flying. With that in mind, I tend to view this as a low priority because the problem also exists with Force Field Generators or enemies with unusual defensive bonuses (Lord Recluse, for example). Since it is an infrequent enough problem, it's one that's more easily solved with Inspirations. In theory, status protection is also a concern. However, sets tend to only come into two types: those with comprehensive status resist vs. those without kb/immobilize status resist. Since the latter is trivially easy to acquire via pool/IO, it's not a meaningful distinction. The rate at which you heal/regen is the last layer of 'defense'. In general, you need stupendous amounts of regen to match even modest amounts of healing. A Fire/* Tanker can generally heal 50% of their health every 15 sec. To match this, you'd need ~800% regen. While regen is nice in that it doesn't require activation, it does mean that trying to out-Regenerate significant damage is normally a lost cause. Covering all of what I discussed above is impossible. Indeed, one particular element - Psi Defense - is nearly impossible to cover with any set. Unless you're making "Psi Defense guy" who inexplicably has multiple ranged attacks and a pet on top of a set that grants Psi Defense, you're not going to soft-capping Psi Defense. Likewise, you generally have to choose whether you have a Toxic hole or a Psi hole for resists. Again, you could potentially build a proof-of-concept Tanker who had 90% resist to both, but you'd have to make so many compromises elsewhere that it wouldn't be worth it. Given everything, I'd argue the best choice for a Tanker would normally be Radiation Armor. While it does have a Psi hole, it has generally solid resists across the board (including the critical S/L/E resists). But Fire, Electric and Dark also have a lot to recommend them.

The issue isn't really aggro caps but target caps. It doesn't make any sense to pile 100 mobs in the same place when none of your attacks can hit more than 16 at once. The "herd the entire map" notion is long dead because it doesn't make any sense. In terms of the aggro cap, it's a bit flexible. While you can only hold aggro against 17 targets at one time, you can effectively hold a greater number of targets by shuffling enemies on and off your aggro list (which is an almost natural byproduct of certain abilities). There's also the reality that Tankers 'tanking' large crowds is a bit obsolete as well. Most fully built level 50s can take the alpha strike from a standard spawn. Where Tankers shine is against opponents with unusual attacks (Toxic, Psi) or extraordinarily strong abilities (Incarnate trials, some Task Force AVs).

It really depends on what the goals of the build are. Virtually all of my builds are going to have 5xLotG +recharge and 5xPurple +recharge. On a purely ranged build, I'll normally try to soft-cap Ranged Def and maybe AoE Def. On a build intended to operate in melee range, I'll tend to go for typed defenses - normally involving Winter sets. Your choice of Epic/Patron also matters a great deal, since it will shape how you deal damage - especially on an Electric Controller.

"AFK farming" is really just running the two auras and then setting an offensive power (normally Atom Smasher or Burn) on auto-fire. This allows you to walk away and do something else while you grind down the mobs. You need to stop back from time to time for re-positioning, but otherwise you don't need to pay much attention. It's normally more effective on cave maps than asteroid/city ones.

I actually don't like Heat Loss all that much. Due to the long recharge, it's really only useful in a boss fight. Due to the hit roll required, there is tremendous potential variance on its effects. If you miss with Heat Loss, that's like not having the power for half the fight. From my perspective, Heat Loss fits into the 'good in theory' category of powers that seem really great until you start trying to use them and realize they're a lot more limited than they initially appear. In contrast, Envenom/Weaken do the same basic job as Heat Loss and do it much, much better. They may have a narrow radius, but the radius on Heat Loss doesn't matter because you can't realistically use it on trash spawns due to the recharge. You can miss with Envenom/Weaken... at which point you just use them again because they're recharged by the time you notice the boss isn't debuffed. Venomous Gas is statistically weaker than Sleet, but it's hard to directly compare the two because they're used in such a different fashion. To a large extent, the challenge in using Poison is figuring out a way you can stand in the middle of everything and not die horribly. In contrast, the challenge with an effect like Sleet tends to revolve around preventing enemies from fleeing. However, the advantage of Venomous Gas is that you don't need to do anything before you unload on a spawn. All you need to do is walk into the middle and start blowing things up. This tends to prevent spawns from falling apart before you can get your licks in. Tar Patch is simply a weaker version of Sleet/Freezing Rain - it has a too-long duration/recharge. Radiation is generally weaker than the others. Toggle debuffs are nice for AV/GM - they can't run away from them and they can't miss - but less useful for trash spawns where you need to pick the right target rather than the right location. They also don't stack, so they're less potent than the field debuffs. Radiation has the best -regen of the sets you've mentioned, but as damage ramps up -regen becomes less important (and damage has ramped up a lot since the heyday of Ill/Rad). From my perspective, Poison look like so: Alkaloid. Half the reason you want to play Poison as a Defender is so that you never have to see the incredibly dopey animation on this power. Otherwise, I guess it fits nicely into the 'Ally heals people never use' category. Envenom/Weaken. The rapid recharge covers up any issues I might have with their single target/small radius nature. Neurotoxic Breath. My suspicion is that they were sitting around the office trying to make the worst possible power. "Non-damaging speed/recharge debuff?" "Yeah! And let's make it a Cone!" Elixir of Life. In general, rez powers are useless unless you can use them without dead allies to stun/-regen debuff. Antidote. On the plus side, you can mule Resists sets in it. On the minus side, I've never seen anyone use it on an Electric Armor Tanker so I'm guessing they're not taking the power. Paralytic Poison. You can mule Hold sets. No, piling Hold procs into an otherwise non-damaging power is not a substitute for a real single target nuke. Poison Trap/Venomous Gas. The reason you're forced to spend a billion influence on Winter sets.

The activation period is 10s, so you shouldn't be getting more than 50% uptime. The DoT are part of the effect of the power, so I'm not sure why you're calling them out in this fashion. While this can be somewhat useful (such as with Fury of the Gladiator procs) and somewhat of a hindrance (such as with Scourge), it's not generally all that significant a difference from the upfront damage. However, the key flaw I see in your argument is not recognizing that activation time doesn't really matter. Activation time is critical when you're creating a rotation because it's the limiting factor on activating those powers. But when you're talking about AE powers from a blast set, activation time isn't any sort of limitation. You'll have long gaps where all of your attack powers are waiting to recharge. This makes recharge the limiting factor and you really need to be looking at damage/recharge. Even with just Water Burst/Geyser vs. Fireball/Inferno, Water is going to be roughly equivalent to Fire due to the increased uptime on Force Feedback (you might also be looking at the Water numbers without Tidal Power rather than with Tidal Power). I think you're also not recognizing the value of hovering over the mobs rather than standing in the middle of them (which Repel requires): It provides some potential defensive benefits since you do not need to emphasize M/S/L defense. Given the difficulty of obtaining those with primarily ranged attacks and none from ATOs, it makes your build much easier to manage. It eliminates the 'excluded middle' problem. The center of the circle where you're doing your damage is excluded because you're standing in it. This also happens to be the place which would ordinarily have the highest density of mobs, meaning you lose more potential targets than you'd otherwise expect just from the lost area. It's easier for you to team up because you're not interfering with your partner (who is almost certainly standing in that 'excluded middle'). It permits you to use the high damage Cone attacks without constantly shifting around. At most you simply drift up and down in hover. I don't think I've ever seen a Kinetics Corruptor in a fire farm. I have seen Fire/Kin Controllers, but that's a different kettle of fish. I've seen multiple Water/* Blasters in fire farms - and they all tend to use the Hover technique (they could theoretically take Whirlwind in place of Repel). I can't recall ever seeing a Fire/* Blaster doing a fire farm, but my sample size isn't all that large - it's pretty easy to accidentally end up with a Storm/Water Defender who can chew through a fire map in short order but you really have to design a Blaster from the ground up for fire farms if you don't want them to die horribly. There is one key advantage that Fire has over Water: a sniper attack. It is almost always faster to toss a stray attack in the middle of what you're doing and let the new gang wander to you than it is to chase them down. With conventional attacks, range can be a problem. With sniper attacks, you can normally tag anything you need (in a cave or city farm, you'll still need to move around).

What's 'tiresome' is your insistence on posting such zero-contribution nonsense. Fine: you can't do it. But please don't pretend you've 'tested' something that other people have and found useful.

Darkness isn't a particular good set AoE-wise. The easiest way to get a rough impression of the non-Cone AoE capabilities of sets is to set your Mid's to 'dps' and start looking at AoE: Dark (Engulfing Darkness) = 3.74 Earth (Tremor = 2.96) + (Fissure = 2.86) = 5.82; also receives Mud Pots (3.98) that doesn't receive benefits from recharge. Note that KB AE (these and Thunder Strike) are unusually potent due to their ability to slot Force Feedback procs. Electricity (Thunder Strike = 9.54) Energy (Whirling Hands = 2.84) Fire (Combustion = 3.76) Ice (Ice Sword Circle = 2.93) Martial (Dragon's Tail = 3.11) + (Caltrops = 2.9) = 5.01; also receives Trick Shot (4.34) which has a smaller target cap. Psionic (Psychic Shockwave = 3.2) Radiation (Atom Smasher = 3.6) Savage (Rending Flurry = 5.43); in practice, this will be much larger due to Feral mechanics. Thorny (Thorn Burst = 3.43) + (Thorntrops = 2.73) = 6.16; Location AE fields can cause scatter (same as Caltrops) So while Dark isn't the worst AE set, it isn't particularly good either. In terms of Epic/Patron pools, Soul is... ok, I guess. Soul Drain isn't nearly as good for Dominators as it is for Defenders/Corruptors or melee because it has double the recharge. So instead of getting +100% over time like a Tanker would, you're getting more like +30% over time. More importantly, Soul Mastery offers a resist rather than a defense toggle - which makes building respectable defenses much, much more difficult. Contrast with Ice Mastery: Hibernate. This isn't all that great on other AT. On a Dominator, you can lock down a spawn and then solve all your endurance/health problems. Sleet. This is a perma-able -30% resist field, which is the biggest damage multiplier a Dominator can get (it also multiplies damage from other players). Hoarfrost. More maximum hit points and toxic resist. Frozen Armor. Smash/Lethal Resist and a bit of Cold/Fire Resist. Ice Storm. Not as good as it is on other AT, it's still one of the highest dps AE in any of the Epic/Patron pools. In terms of Electric Control, I think it gets a lot of hate it doesn't deserve. From my perspective, it's the most powerful pure control set in the game. Static Field is the 'only Sleep that matters' because it's got all the advantages of Sleep and removes (most of) the disadvantages due to its pulsing nature. Synaptic Overload has less of an immediate thrill than Seeds or Mass Confusion, but it has a lower cooldown and doesn't cause threat. Couple this with Electric's ability to zero out end bars - and keep them zero'd - and it's tough to see any set competing with it for sheer shutdown potential. That being said, it doesn't have any particularly exceptional damage potential. You can play some games with procs in Jolting Chain, but damage is why you have an Assault set. Electric also has another advantage most people don't consider: self-healing. Electric can slot both Power Transfer and Call of the Sandman (this is also true of Electric Assault).

I think you'd actually be better off with Archery or Water. Inferno is very impressive, but it's actually quite low in the dps department due to the long recharge. Sets like Archery and Water have lower recharges on their ultimates (and higher dps even with lower damage/activation). More importantly, they have significantly more reliable use of Force Feedback - in Repel, you're spending a ton of endurance to get the equivalent of 7.5% recharge over time. In sets like Archery or Water, you'd be getting closer to the theoretical maximum of +100% recharge. You also have to be a bit careful with Rains, since they scatter spawns. Something like Water/Dark/Fire Blaster can also fit into this mold (albeit without buffing teammates, just themselves) on a considerably higher damage scale. I'm also not a particularly big fan of Kinetics for fire farm applications because they really just replicate what you're getting from inspirations anyway. Consider instead a Time Defender. Between Temporal Selection and Chrono Shift, you're increasing your Brute's recharge by 80% (only useful for click powers) and multiplying all their damage by 30% (via Slowed Response). So it doesn't matter how many red Inspirations they chow down, they're still dealing a lot more damage. Of course, Slowed Response isn't the best way to do this since you can only use it once every 90 sec (prior to recharge reductions). So most of the time, you'll be fighting enemies that aren't debuffed. Poison (-25%) and Sonic (-30%) both have continuous -resist fields you can use. And, of course, our old friend Storm Summoning can multi-stack Freezing Rain if you can manage the scatter issue. Brutes aren't uniquely fast at clearing so much as uniquely convenient. With a Brute, you can level up into your teens and then park yourself in a fire farm for the remainder of the character's life. You can take 5 seconds, position your Brute in the middle of a pack, walk away to cook dinner and just stop back every few minutes to re-position. It may take you 50 minutes instead of 25 minutes to clear a cave, but since you're only playing for 2 of those minutes, it's a win from the standpoint of time efficiency. This puts them firmly into the "if it ain't broke..." territory. Consider for the moment that a Scrapper can take all the same primary/secondary powers, they'll do more damage with them at the +damage cap and they can critical on top of that. While Brutes can take two additional AE from Mu Mastery vs. one for Scrapper from Blaze Mastery, this isn't enough to bridge the discrepancy (if you're going for 'fastest possible asteroid clearing', you'd probably take the AE damage hit to get the 'can reach entire asteroid' sniper attack from Mu Mastery). So even without getting very deep into analysis, we know that Brutes aren't the 'best' farmers if you're actively playing. Note: Scrappers being directly superior to Brutes at the damage cap is a direct result of the January changes. Tankers are a bit of a different story. They have a lower maximum damage than Brutes by ~10%, but have better target caps/arcs/radius. Consider the classic Spines/Fire Brute. I'd argue that in the current game, this should be rolled as a Fire/Spines Tanker. Not only do you potentially hit more targets with Spine Burst, but Ripper goes from an "I'll just skip this" ability to probably your best AE ability (a 10-target wide arc, large radius KB AE). However, I'd argue the real virtue of Tankers is that you can build a 'fire farm character' that's also good in the outside world. My Fire/Staff/Pyre Tanker can tear through an AE fire farm pretty quickly. But it's also an actual Tanker with S/L/F/E/N/T hard capped and L/F/C/E/N/M soft capped while being trivial to solo level from the mid-teens in fire farms. Certainly, it would be possible to shift priorities and make it a pure fire farmer. But you're not going to get all that much more damage by doing so and you lose the ability to take the character out into the world.

Your chance is (depending on recharge) in the 10% - 15% range on a single target and hitting multiple enemies with a 50 arc/7 range Cone is optimistic. However, even the single target option is still quite good. If you're using Cross Punch every 5 secs, then you're getting a 10% chance of +100% recharge until your next Cross Punch. This translates into +10% recharge over time.

Or you could be sensible and just Teleport everywhere. 🙂

You might consider building a Stalker rather than a Scrapper. Stalkers lose the narrow arc/short radius Cone in favor of an Assassin attack that's (significantly) higher dpa than anything the set ordinarily has. They can also more reliably crit on the one strong AE in the set. I can't speak to theme - that's up to the individual. I tend to view Scrappers (or Stalkers) as primarily about damage rather than mini-Tankers. That means selecting secondary sets based on how they augment the primary rather than their potential to make you as unkillable as possible. So I tend to choose sets that either augment recharge (Electric, Energy, Super Reflexes) or damage (Bio, Fire, Shield).

Dark Armor has two major flaws: Energy hole. Energy is the third most common type of damage. The fourth most common is "I don't know because everything is Smashing, Lethal or Energy". This makes Dark problematic on a non-Tanker (Tankers receive a global resist bonus from Might of the Tanker and can split ATO for +12% Energy Resist). No endurance management. You can roughly put armor sets into two piles. One are sets that are primarily about themselves - making you as tough as possible. The other are sets primarily about your melee set - they may have gaping holes in them, but at least they ensure you can attack like a fiend. Dark Armor is firmly in the former camp. It does nothing but protect you, and it does so at a fairly high endurance cost. So while I think Dark Armor has a lot to offer a Tanker, I don't think it makes the cut for a Scrapper. Bio Armor is one of the favorites for Scrappers. Scrappers can split ATO to help cover the S/L defense hole. They can benefit greatly from the additional +damage/+hit. It's not a comprehensive set of defenses, but it's good enough and helps them pump out more damage.

Your build is probably fine. While the asteroid is a useful sanity check for your build, it's actually more about luck and skill than minor variations in build. Basically, you want to be able to stand in the middle of the asteroid, never moving, while everything comes to you. Having to chase down more mobs means you're losing a lot of ticks of damage because you aren't surrounded by enough enemies. I went through my files and grabbed what I think is my farming Brute build so you can look through it. However, be aware that it's a different sort of build approach than you're using (Hasten-based rather than Musculature-based).

Both Kinetic Melee and Ninjitsu work well for Stalkers. I'm not sure I'd combine them, though. Ninjitsu is one of the best positional defense sets. It manages to accomplish in relatively few powers - all acquired early - what other sets require all of their powers to manage. However, as with any positional set, there's a strong bias towards melee sets with defensive attacks like Night Blade or Staff. Typed defense sets like Energy tend to be easier to build towards due to the existence of Winter sets and the split ATO trick on melee sets without the defensive attacks. Kinetic Melee Quick Strike. You have to take one of the first two attacks and I prefer this one, despite the lower dpa, because it gives me a default attack with an exceptionally low activation that is always available to fill in the attack chain. Body Blow. As noted, it's either Quick Strike or this. Smashing Blow. I find this attack superfluous. It's not bad, but it doesn't provide much you can't already get elsewhere. Assassin's Strike. It's worth noting that this is the highest dpa single target melee attack in the game with its uniquely fast activation time. Almost universally, you slot Stalker's Guile: Chance to Hide in the Assassinate attack. Build Up. Mandatory for a Stalker. You'll almost universally slot Gaussian's chance for build up here. For Positional sets, taking 6-slot Gaussian's is often a wise idea. Placate. I rarely take Placate on a Stalker since the ATO does the same thing without having to waste time. Burst. This is a relatively small radius, so you can't alpha strike with it very effectively. However, it's a knockdown AE, which means you can Force Feedback it. Focused Burst. This isn't a particular strong attack and it occupies the slot you'd normally give to Moonbeam/Zapp. Coordinated Strike. This is a massive attack that can't crit. However, when it would crit, it refreshes Build Up. This tends to mean that you can be under near-constant Build Up if you choose. Your basic rotations are: ST: Build Up -> Assassin's Strike -> Coordinated Strike -> other stuff AE: Build Up -> Assassin's Strike -> Burst -> other stuff Remember the basic Stalker methodology of AE tends to be different than other ATs. Instead of piling up as many AE powers as they can, it's normally better to have one really good AE and use it from Hide to double its effect. This is especially true with Kinetic Melee, where Assassin's Strike deals about the same dpa as a power like Ball Lightning does on 4 targets. Ninjitsu Hide, Ninja Reflexes, Danger Sense, Kuji-In Rin and Kuji-in Sha are all mandatory powers. Of the rest: Caltrops. Stalkers are notoriously short on AE, so having another AE power can be handy. Unfortunately, this isn't that power. You need enemies clustered tightly, not running out of your ground effect field. Unlike a power such as Burn, Caltrops can't crit. While other ATs can make good use of Caltrops in some situations, it just doesn't gel very well with how a Stalker plays. Simply using Burst from Hide repeatedly is going to generate a lot more dps than Caltrops will. Smoke Flash. The ATOs make this power superfluous. Blinding Powder. You're already really, really invisible. The range is also sufficiently small that anything that sees through Hide will also see you when you're trying to use this power. Kuji-In Retsu. Crash powers like this are always a bit sketchy. This particular power is really sketchy because the only thing it really gives you is something you already have: massive amounts of defense. Pools Mu and Soul tend to be the best choice for epic/patron pools since they provide the sniper attacks. I'd go with Soul here for a few reasons: Cloud Senses is one of the best non-purple sets around, giving +3.75% Ranged and +6.25% Recharge. However, it is a 6-slot commitment to a power you'll probably never use. Shadow Meld is a great way to ensure that nothing can touch you when you engage. -hit is a better debuff than -end on a build that otherwise does nothing with -end. Mu does add a bit more AE damage, though. With that in mind, you've already got Caltrops available for muling and Ball Lightning only tends to tickle in comparison to Hide/Burst. Note that on either pool, you'd probably want Sting of the Manticore 3-slot in the sniper attack. For conventional pools: Teleportation. This is my go-to movement power on Stalkers (other than Sprint/Combat Jumping) because a lot of the value of Stalkers is they can simply run to the end. Teleport is how you end up being 'that guy'. Blessing of the Zephyr is also useful on a Positional set. However, these are 'dead' slots in the sense that they're not going to help you fight and you can easily find places to dump BotZ. Fighting. x/Tough/Weave is almost universal and I see no reason not to take it here. Cross Punch isn't completely unreasonable as the recharge/hit it provides can compensate for the relatively low damage. Leaping. Combat Jumping is a common way to get a bit of additional universal defense. Leadership. A bit more defense and Tactics to augment the damage on your sniper attack. Sorcery. If you're willing to burn some power picks on otherwise useless powers (Mystic Flight isn't completely useless, but it's not a power you'd actively seek), you can get Rune of Protection. While you've already got status resist, getting an additional burst of resist can be very useful. I generally wouldn't take Hasten on this sort of build due to the fact that there aren't really the sort of long recharge powers than benefit from it. Instead, I'd probably go with Agility for the Defense/Recharge bonuses - just keep in mind you want to have about 100% internal recharge in Assassinate to hit the 90% proc chance point.

As of March 31, a Corruptor's Tar Patch is -22.5% while a Defender's is -30%. A Corruptors Soul Drain is +68% while a Defenders is +80%.

If I'm remembering the 5 sec correctly, then you'd need +267% recharge to (barely) get two Whirling Smashes in the same momentum window. This is certain achievable. But you'd need to pack more than just a Follow Through between the first and second Whirling Smash.

I tend to put both procs into the Assassin's Strike. The Superior Assassin's Mark set is nothing special and you can split Superior Stalker's Guile across two different powers to get the +5% S/L Defense twice. This also means that your powers will be better as powers since you're not stuck with whatever random benefits complete sets give you. And, of course, it makes your build cheaper since you're using 7 ATO rather than 12.