earthaddy

That sounds like it would greatly favor some sets over other sets. On some sets the nuke is a pbaoe and others get a ranged nuke. Some secondaries have point blank attacks as well.

At work so I don't have it in front of me. But everything is softcapped. I think AOE is the lowest at barely over 45%. Melee at 50ish and ranged at like 47%. That may not be exactly accurate, but pretty close.

Thanks Nihilii. Appreciate the advice. Couple of questions. 1. Gaussian sounds like a great idea, can I get away with just the one slot? 2. Where to put the reactive defense scaling damage resistance? Should I get rid of the Kismet to-hit? I don't really have any experience with enhancement sets, so not sure how much accuracy I need, but I know I hate missing. 3. Take out the decimation, sounds good, assuming I just fill that with the last Thunderstrike? 4. The panacea proc, are you saying to replace the performance shifter with that or use both?

It never ceases to confuse me why topics like this never cease to confuse some people. As someone who hasn't played every set in the game, I appreciate hearing about sets other people like and why they like them. I like reading about the pros and cons. I like to read the discussion when one person doesn't like a particular set or AT, but someone else does. I don't take anyone's word as the only answer. But I get a lot out of discussions like these. Some threads like these inspire me to try a set or AT I haven't tried before.

Thanks a lot. I'll plug these builds in when I get home from work and take a look at the details. And as a bonus, I learned a new word today.

I don't know what splefty means, but it sounds fun. Thanks for posting the build. I've been back and forth on this the past day or two andI started a Claws/Rad last night and got to level 24. But also want to try electric, so started one of those as well, but only level 2 right now. I think I kinda like the "look" of electric a hair better, but I would rather make a decision based on how they perform. But I don't know how they perform. Good thing I have plenty of Character slots I guess.

I've read the powersets. I see the differences. What I'm wondering is what I'm not seeing. Does one of these have better synergy with claws. I like claws for the mix of single target, aoe and ranged attacks. Both of these secondaries add a little more aoe. Electric probably has better endurance recovery and more recharge. Rad seems to have the better secondary effect. -defense vs stamina drain, but I could be totally wrong about that. Anybody wanna weigh in with some insight, some other pros and cons and why you would pick one over the other?

I just started a water/electric based entirely on this thread.

Found the patch notes, What you said doesn't seem exactly right. Devices changes Changed Web Grenade to Toxic Web Grenade, now deals scale 1 toxic DoT and can be slotted for damage Taser: Recharge reduced from 20 to 10 seconds, duration reduced from scale 10 to scale 5, damage increased from 0.25 to 1.96 (same damage as Energy Punch) Time Bomb: Animation is now 2.77 seconds, interrupt time removed, countdown reduced to 5 seconds, defiance values reduced to match (this only applies to this set, not to the Traps support set versions.) Trip Mine: Interrupt removed. Cast time is now 2.77 seconds. Recharge increased to 30 seconds. Targeting Drone now gives your first attack from out of combat a Built-Up effect (80% damage) and continues to provide a 20% damage buff while in combat. That sounds like 80% to any attack from out of combat. Not just snipes. And 20% to everything, all the time. Next question. Does that just buff base damage or does that buff enhanced damage? And one more question. Why am I not seeing a ton of new devices builds? Cuz it kinda sounds pretty awesome.

Topic. I was around a couple months ago and knew they were testing stuff along with the snipe changes, but i can't find the final version notes. And I don't trust the tooltips.

Thanks much. I'm still stuck in the days of slotting SOs, and set bonuses kinda throw that whole mindset on slotting out the window. I appreciate it when someone talks me through why they did what they did. Often very helpful to me in ways that just linking a pines build can't.

A little off topic, but @oldskool, have you posted your pistols/ninja build somewhere that I can take a look at?

Awesome oldskool. Thanks a lot. Couple of more specific questions. I don't want to be a hassle. On a stalker the clicky mez protection of SR was just about a deal breaker for me. But that was because of the animation, which while fairly fast, it annoyingly interrupted my attack flow. SR mez protection isn't clicky for sentinels, but does Ninjitsu's clicky mez stop you for an animation? I've heard invuln is an endurance hog, but don't have any actual experience with it precisely because I heard it was an end hog. Is it?

I appreciate the responses. Would kinda like to hear why. What does invuln give me that others don't and why does it pair well with dark. Same for ninjitsu or any other set.

I am liking the dark primary. Seems a pretty decent set balancing single target, aoe and a little control. Can't decide on secondary. I would like something that comes online fairly early and doesn't need a billion inf to make it work, but I don't want it to be completely outshined endgame either. I kinda like the idea of SR or Nin because defensive sets play well with sentinels, but it does seem it might be redundant with the - tohit of dark. SR has quickness for recharge speed, don't know how needed that is with dark, but sounds good. Regen maybe, I haven't tried that set on a sentinel at all, and I heard some good things, but wonder about debuffs with no defense. Willpower? I don't know, that's why I'm asking. Are there good synergies somewhere? Pros and cons when paired with dark? Hit me with the knowledge.

I don't see much talk about claws. Is it not good on a stalker? I played a claws scrapper on live as my main, before all the IO stuff came about. Stalker trades spin for assassins strike. I liked spin, I think I was one of the few, but that's a good trade. They trade taunt for placate, I skipped taunt on the scrapper, probably skip placate on stalker. Eviscerate went from a cone to single target. This seems ... excessive. There are plenty of stalker sets with more good aoe than claws. I love shockwave and focus. Ranged attacks are so nice. Anyway, what's the deal. Are claws good on stalkers? Are they just better on other ATs? Yeah, it's lethal damage, but so are a lot of other sets. Thinking about getting serious with a claws stalker, but don't want to be disappointed.

So, I have a dark/rad that's still in the low 20's and dark really helps with survivability. But being kinda disenchanted with Sentinel damage in general, I was thinking about rolling up a dark/bio and see how that goes. Part of that extra survivability comes in the form of umbral torrent. It's like bowling a strike and watching the pins fly, and it keeps those bad guys from hitting you. But everyone (almost everyone) hates knockback, but slotting kb to kd enhancers not only takes up an enhancement slot that shaves some off your damage and keeps you from getting a full set bonus, it also diminishes the extra survivability that knockback gives you. Which is more time that they aren't hitting you. So how do you guys deal with the knockback issue?

There are a ton of right ways to plays the game, and only a couple wrong ways. So if it works for you, roll with it. But I don't think the 60% damage jives with my experience. Something to consider is that I put almost every io and incarnate into offense on my Sentinel, whereas the Blasters have to devote considerably more resources to defense. This certainly closes the gap. But you have intrigued me, and it's on my to do list to incarnate an i25 blaster. I'll get back to you in a couple weeks. ;) I wasn't talking about billio-isk IO set incarnate min-max builds. I was talking about leveling up with generic IOs.

Thanks, that's a thought I will look into that oldskool mentioned earlier. I'm probably gonna stick with SR for a while and see how it goes. It truly does feel strong, and my defense isn't even slotted for crap yet. I'll see if I can manage the endurance a little better and see how it goes before I give up on it. One evening's worth of play isn't really giving it a fair shot. And most of that was grouped up and plowing through TFs. Soloing only for a few missions after I dropped in some enhancements. I put it on +0/+3 and I was wrecking stuff extremely fast, which at that level seems pretty strong, to me at least. I'd crank it higher, but the endurance seems to be the bottleneck. Once I get a few more slots in my defense, I'll crank it up more. I probably just gotta work on not throwing everything at every fight and being smarter about endurance. But looking at energy aura, it does look like it might lend itself to my antics. Thanks for the suggestion.

My experience has been, unless I get mezzed, I put out enough damage on the blaster that stuff just dies, and I take less damage than I do on a sentinel, slogging it out. The level 20 blaster powers are no joke defensively, either. I quite literally play both my blasters one difficulty level higher than my sentinels. With the Beam/devices I can go even higher because I don't miss, no matter how purple they are, but it does get a little sketchy at times. Granted, they are at levels where the defense isn't fully slotted on the sentinels. But those levels are part of the game. I'm not trading damage for safety on the sentinels, I'm just losing damage.

I don't know what the right numbers are, but I do know that I have a beam/rad sentinel and a beam/devices blaster, both around level 30ish, I have a 44 pistols/wp sent and a 35 pistols,atomic blaster. And the blasters can solo on higher difficulty than the Sentinels. That doesn't sound like trading safety for damage to me. I feel safer on the blaster, unless I get mezzed. But unless there are multiple mezzing mobs in the group it's a non-issue. It is worth noting that mez is a much bigger deal at the higher levels. There are groups a Blaster will die *much* more frequently to than a Sentinel, strictly due to mez. Blaster have (almost) always fallen behind the power curve at the highest levels. Well, I'm also sure that as the defensive powers get slotted out better, survivability will go up as well. But everything can't be balanced around billion-isk end game builds either. And blasters can hit the defense caps at end game, too. So we're basically talking about mez protection. Mez protection is quite nice. But is it worth doing about 60% of the damage of a blaster. Ancient Alien theorists say that's a bit of a hard pill to swallow.

Well, my expectations probably are a little high after playing a few blasters with basically endless endurance. And my understanding is that Stalkers may be a little bit more endurance heavy in general. But typically I expect to have endurance problems until I slot stamina with generic IOs and put generic IO end reducers in my toggles and attacks. Which I've done. If I have to wait until I can drop a billion isk on a build before it plays fast and furious, I'm not sure I'll stick with it. Accuracy hasn't been too much of an issue so far. I do have an accuracy IO in each attack, but that's it. Hopefully mobs with debuffs will wiff.

I don't know what the right numbers are, but I do know that I have a beam/rad sentinel and a beam/devices blaster, both around level 30ish, I have a 44 pistols/wp sent and a 35 pistols,atomic blaster. And the blasters can solo on higher difficulty than the Sentinels. That doesn't sound like trading safety for damage to me. I feel safer on the blaster, unless I get mezzed. But unless there are multiple mezzing mobs in the group it's a non-issue.

So I ended up starting a staff/SR guy last night, and with a few DFBs followed by a run through Positron 1 and 2, I hit level 25. And while it does feel strong, endurance is a pretty big issue even after slotting up with IOs. I have end reducers in the toggles, I 3-slotted stamina and have end reductions in all but the first 2 attacks, and lack of slots is the only reason those don't have end reducers. I'm kinda thinking maybe I should have gone with a defensive set with an endurance power. Anybody have any suggestions for more endurance? If not, I might reroll it to Ninjitsu. It might be partially that I've been playing a lot of blasters and Sentinels, and they both have end powers in all the secondaries. I kinda play like a brute, no matter what AT I'm on. I like to keep pushing to the next group, not stopping to wait after a 2 or 3 fights. It is feeling very strong though. Which is nice.

Yeah, I wasn't judging the brute badly based on the endurance. In fact, I quite like the staff brute so far. I'm an idiot and unfamiliar with the new stuff, but I have enough experience from playing back in the day to know that the endurance problems were temporary. I just noticed it did seem like a pretty endurance heavy primary, regardless. But that may have been compounded by chasing rage. Ninjitsu also looks like fun. But unless it's different on the stalker version, I'm not too fond of clicky mez protection, but if it's easy to get perma on autofire, it might be worth a look. I've never tried a defensive set, despite a bunch of brutes and scrappers played to various levels, and would kind of like to give it a go. SR might be the thing, less clicking on defensive stuff, more staff twirling. Plus 20% recharge.