Staff/Willpower

[Vinxnotha]

Ok, I am a Blaster at heart. But I found Staff in melee and could not resist. However, I have NO CLUE how to build this. Please someone help me with this. As a total newb to melee, I can't figure out anything for builds. Any help would be appreciated.

 

First.. I never, ever, ever (did I say ever) want to run out of endurance.

I read somewhere about defense/resist cap. No idea how to achieve that.

My travel powers are Super speed and Super jump.

[Microcosm]

What is your intended budget, and did you pick will power specifically or just because of the endurance thing? I never played wp, but I did a lot with a staff/ice that was awesome; that requires significant investment.

 

The caps thing is 45% for defense (referred to as soft cap because you could get more but it won't do any good unless debuffed or against certain foes with extra tohit) and 75% for resistance (on stalkers and most other ats). If you reach one of these caps your survivability will be extremely high. People often chased the defense cap because it was easier to achieve with set bonuses, and technically better survival than the resist cap unless you're on a tank or brute. Defense was also considered better on most stalkers because if you try to placate a foe for an extra critical, other foes will still attack you and can remove your hidden status and therefore the critical. If those foes were missing, you wouldn't lose that hidden status.

 

You can achieve the defense cap in some sets early and cheaply, especially Sr, but you lose the benefit of layered protection. Choosing a resist based set and hitting the soft cap was difficult and expensive, but gave you much stronger survival assuming you didn't gimp yourself in so doing.

 

Edit: sorry, forgot to mention, on the defense caps you could either try to get the positional defense (melee, aoe, ranged), or the damage types defense. When an attack was thrown at you, whatever that attack was tagged with ( say melee/smashing) that you had the highest for would count. Because nearly every attack in the game had a smashing or lethal tag in it, most people tried to get smash/lethal defense to the cap and call it a day. That could occasionally leave you in a bad way against certain psi and toxic attacks, but it was pretty rare. Resistances were all calculated individually, so you needed resist to basically everything, but smash and lethal again we're usually most important.

[Vinxnotha]

Budget.... No worries on that. I Don't care how much it costs. I don't ever want to run out of endurance. If defense is the best way to go then that is the way I should go. As for placate, pardon me being absolutely dumb on this, I thought it was just a filler power HAHAHAHAHA. Like i said, I have never played melee. But seeing staff as on of them, it has put a fire under my backside. From my playing of the game, when it was live, and now. Psi and toxic are always the hardest to get.

 

Basically, I want to be able to withstand anything, while still killing.....errrr I mean arresting things.

 

As a total newb to melee, defenses, resists, treat me like that newborn baby. Your knowledge is what I will go on. Because me building something would be like that messed up cake, that has too much icing, egg shells in it, and is falling apart.  :P

 

Thank you for your time.

[Mr. Vee]

Placate became much less necessary after they fixed stalkers in ish 20something. I've basically stopped taking it.

Willpower you'd usually build for insane amounts of HP/regen and try to grab as much defense as possible. It's a weird set in that it's split between resistance and typed defense, letting the to hit debuff in the aura cover for some of the holes. I honestly have no idea how i'd go about building it for a stalker, though. The staff +defense attack being split melee/lethal would further complicate things.

[Vinxnotha]

http://www.cohplanner.com/mids/download.php?uc=1361&c=518&a=1036&f=HEX&dc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

 

This is what I think I want. Please if anyone can build something that is not squishy, But still does good damage, fill this in.

 

Thank You

 

Edit: Powers taken are not in order, this was just me putting the slots/powers in.