Build suggestions or any improvement tips? EM/Fiery Aura Stalker

[Sipps2]

Looking for some suggestions/tips, mostly just threw this together. Part of me was looking into making a fire farm stalker as a challenge. taking any suggestions or improvement comments would help.

 

Note: I built this with a combination of combining EM/Fiery Aura from Croax Stalker tier/build list and EM/EA from Infinitum stalker.
basically tried to take best of both worlds and combined them.

 

This Villain build was built using Mids Reborn 3.4.6
https://github.com/LoadedCamel/MidsReborn

Click this DataLink to open the build!

Level 50 Magic Stalker
Primary Power Set: Energy Melee
Secondary Power Set: Fiery Aura
Power Pool: Leaping
Power Pool: Speed
Power Pool: Fighting
Power Pool: Leadership
Ancillary Pool: Body Mastery

Villain Profile:
Level 1: Energy Punch

• (A) Superior Assassin's Mark - Accuracy/Damage
• (3) Superior Assassin's Mark - Damage/RechargeTime
• (3) Superior Assassin's Mark - Accuracy/Damage/RechargeTime
• (5) Superior Assassin's Mark - Damage/Endurance/RechargeTime
• (5) Superior Assassin's Mark - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance/RechargeTime
• (7) Superior Assassin's Mark - RechargeTime/Rchg Build Up
  

Level 1: Hide

• (A) Reactive Defenses - Scaling Resist Damage
  

Level 2: Fire Shield

• (A) Unbreakable Guard - Resistance
• (7) Unbreakable Guard - Resistance/Endurance
• (9) Unbreakable Guard - Endurance/RechargeTime
• (9) Unbreakable Guard - RechargeTime/Resistance
• (11) Unbreakable Guard - Resistance/Endurance/RechargeTime
• (11) Unbreakable Guard - +Max HP
  

Level 4: Super Jump

• (A) Blessing of the Zephyr - Knockback Reduction (4 points)
  

Level 6: Healing Flames

• (A) Preventive Medicine - Heal
• (13) Preventive Medicine - Heal/Endurance
• (13) Preventive Medicine - Endurance/RechargeTime
• (15) Preventive Medicine - Heal/RechargeTime
• (15) Preventive Medicine - Heal/RechargeTime/Endurance
• (17) Preventive Medicine - Chance for +Absorb
  

Level 8: Assassin's Strike

• (A) Superior Stalker's Guile - Accuracy/Damage
• (17) Superior Stalker's Guile - Recharge/Chance to Hide
• (19) Superior Stalker's Guile - Accuracy/Damage/Recharge
• (19) Touch of Death - Chance of Damage(Negative)
• (21) Mako's Bite - Chance of Damage(Lethal)
• (21) Gladiator's Strike - Chance for Smashing Damage
  

Level 10: Temperature Protection

• (A) Unbreakable Guard - Resistance
• (23) Unbreakable Guard - Resistance/Endurance
  

Level 12: Combat Jumping

• (A) Shield Wall - Defense/Endurance
• (23) Shield Wall - Endurance/Recharge
• (25) Shield Wall - Defense
• (25) Shield Wall - Defense/Recharge
• (27) Shield Wall - Defense/Endurance/Recharge
  

Level 14: Hasten

• (A) Recharge Reduction IO
• (27) Recharge Reduction IO
  

Level 16: Plasma Shield

• (A) Unbreakable Guard - Resistance
• (29) Unbreakable Guard - Resistance/Endurance
• (29) Unbreakable Guard - Endurance/RechargeTime
• (31) Unbreakable Guard - RechargeTime/Resistance
• (31) Unbreakable Guard - Resistance/Endurance/RechargeTime
• (31) Impervium Armor - Psionic Resistance
  

Level 18: Build Up

• (A) Gaussian's Synchronized Fire-Control - To Hit Buff
• (33) Gaussian's Synchronized Fire-Control - To Hit Buff/Recharge
• (33) Gaussian's Synchronized Fire-Control - To Hit Buff/Recharge/Endurance
• (33) Gaussian's Synchronized Fire-Control - Recharge/Endurance
• (34) Gaussian's Synchronized Fire-Control - To Hit Buff/Endurance
• (34) Gaussian's Synchronized Fire-Control - Chance for Build Up
  

Level 20: Power Crash

• (A) Superior Avalanche - Accuracy/Damage
• (34) Superior Avalanche - Damage/Endurance
• (36) Superior Avalanche - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance
• (36) Superior Avalanche - Accuracy/Damage/Recharge
• (36) Superior Avalanche - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance/Recharge
• (37) Superior Avalanche - Recharge/Chance for Knockdown
  

Level 22: Boxing

• (A) Empty
  

Level 24: Tough

• (A) Gladiator's Armor - TP Protection +3% Def (All)
• (37) Steadfast Protection - Resistance/+Def 3%
• (37) Impervium Armor - Psionic Resistance
  

Level 26: Total Focus

• (A) Superior Blistering Cold - Accuracy/Damage
• (39) Superior Blistering Cold - Damage/Endurance
• (39) Superior Blistering Cold - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance
• (39) Superior Blistering Cold - Accuracy/Damage/Recharge
• (40) Superior Blistering Cold - Damage/Endurance/Accuracy/RechargeTime
• (40) Superior Blistering Cold - Recharge/Chance for Hold
  

Level 28: Consume

• (A) Preemptive Optimization - EndMod/Endurance/Recharge
• (40) Performance Shifter - EndMod/Accuracy/Recharge
• (42) Obliteration - Chance for Smashing Damage
• (42) Scirocco's Dervish - Chance of Damage(Lethal)
  

Level 30: Weave

• (A) Luck of the Gambler - Defense/Endurance
• (43) Luck of the Gambler - Defense/Recharge
• (43) Luck of the Gambler - Endurance/Recharge
• (45) Luck of the Gambler - Defense/Endurance/Recharge
• (45) Luck of the Gambler - Defense
• (45) Luck of the Gambler - Defense/Increased Global Recharge Speed
  

Level 32: Energy Transfer

• (A) Hecatomb - Chance of Damage(Negative)
• (46) Hecatomb - Damage
• (46) Hecatomb - Damage/Recharge
• (46) Touch of Death - Chance of Damage(Negative)
• (48) Touch of Death - Damage/Recharge
• (48) Touch of Death - Damage/Endurance/Recharge
  

Level 35: Burn

• (A) Superior Stalker's Guile - Damage/Recharge
• (42) Superior Stalker's Guile - Damage/Endurance/Recharge
• (43) Superior Stalker's Guile - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance/Recharge
• (50) Armageddon - Chance for Fire Damage
• (50) Obliteration - Chance for Smashing Damage
• (50) Eradication - Chance for Energy Damage
  

Level 38: Maneuvers

• (A) Luck of the Gambler - Defense/Increased Global Recharge Speed
  

Level 41: Assault

• (A) Endurance Reduction IO
  

Level 44: Superior Conditioning

• (A) Performance Shifter - Chance for +End
  

Level 47: Physical Perfection

• (A) Performance Shifter - Chance for +End
  

Level 49: Cauterizing Blaze

• (A) Preventive Medicine - Heal
  

Level 1: Assassination 

Level 1: Brawl

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[Zect]

On 5/13/2023 at 2:23 PM, Sipps2 said:

Note: I built this with a combination of combining EM/Fiery Aura from Croax Stalker tier/build list and EM/EA from Infinitum stalker.
basically tried to take best of both worlds and combined them.

 

The minute I saw infinitum I knew it would be bad, and I was proven right once I scrolled down and saw nonsense like 3x hecatomb 3x tod in ET. What you've actually done is to screw up a perfectly serviceable build which has a defined focus with useless trash, and I'm about explain why.

 

On the left is your build. On the right is the Croax build.

 

 

When we look at the Croax build (right), we can see that it has a goal in sight and sets out to achieve it. Namely, softcap SL def and hardcap SL res. The other damtypes are not capped because this is a calculated tradeoff. Resist stalkers cannot muster enough def/res to get anywhere near to capping everything without taking major hits to their primary role which is dps. Therefore, mitigation is focused on the most common damtypes.

 

Your build fails to improve upon this concept. In fact, what you've done is trade away a bunch of resists and recharge, and un-softcapped yourself from SL to pursue a mediocre amount of FC def. Furthermore, your build has agility alpha which does little for your defenses (I'm going to assume it's from the infinitum EM/EA build). Stalkers should always try to take musculature if they can, as the Croax build does; my own EM/EA softcaps def to all except psi while also having permahaste and musculature core. It's not hard.

 

To be fair, you do say this:

 

On 5/13/2023 at 2:23 PM, Sipps2 said:

Part of me was looking into making a fire farm stalker as a challenge.

 

If you are serious about this, you need to softcap fire defense. That means taking epic blasts, such as zapp and ball lightning from mu, and slotting winter sets in them.

 

As you can see from the Croax build, a stalker gets 20% def to all roughly for free. Slotting 6x blistering cold/avalanche/winter's bite/frozen blast and at least 4x  assassin's mark is another 25% FC def, bringing us to 45%. There's your fire farming stalker. Do I recommend it? Only as a novelty or challenge build. For general use, go with something less specialized.

 

Moral of the story: just because someone has a bunch of builds, or a lot of experience making them, is no guarantee they are any good. A lot of people simply have never had anyone challenge them, or if they had, just dismissed it to protect their ego. Furthermore, even if the builds are good, you should understand the build goals, assumptions and intended use cases of each build before attempting to adopt elements from them. You tried to mash together a general-purpose fiery aura build with a build for a fundamentally different armor set to produce something for your oddball challenge. I'm morbidly curious how your shoulder devil convinced you this would work.

[Nemu]

Harsh words but there's truth in what @Zect is saying. It takes some awareness of your goals and what those goals mean to make out whether a build you see/copy aligns with your goals or not. Not everyone has the knowledge built up over years of playing the game to see synergies/holes/playstyles/other requirements to make a build work, and the mere existence of builds posted on the forums don't automatically make those builds "good" for YOU.

 

Defining goals is the first step, and the more specific you are about your goal the better - that includes playstyle preferences, travel preferences, pet powers, etc... Anything other than "I want to be unkillable." or "I want to max out" (WTF does max out mean? you've given your audience nothing to work with with that statement) There are a lot of people that will sacrifice a lot of offense to make "unkillable" builds. The last time I checked you don't get xp/loot from being unkillable, you get those from being able to kill stuff too. And you can't do that if you hit like a kitten.

 

Joke - Don't let tanker players build offensive ATs, they'll try to cram every resist and def bonus into that AT. Even seen a tank player build a blaster? That's comedy.

 

I wish more people took a more analytical approach to making builds by asking the following questions:

What can I expect with this combo?

How does it play?

This is my budget, what can I get out of this?

Are there any synergies I can take advantage of?

Are there any holes I really need to address?

What am I potentially giving up to reach my goals?

 

Any of those questions are magnitudes better than "is this build good?" because the former list anchor the questions to be about YOU, and you get less chances of some rando chiming in about how their build xyz is ubercakes and can solo LRSF with a mids link with no other context.

 

Watch for posters/builders that explain what they do and more importantly why. Those are the ones with enough emotional intelligence to understand that posting in build help is not about flexing their build but to help the requester understand the build. Your chances of getting a build specific to your own goals and needs is much higher with those folks.

 

Onto your build:

 

1 - Fire Armor needs recharge first and foremost. Healing flames is a cornerstone of fire armor survival. You gave up a lot of recharge focusing on defense and your build doesn't have knockback/knock down powers to take advantage of Force Feedback procs to offset that lack of global recharge bonuses. Your defenses will fail you, your primary doesn't have enough reliable mitigation(specifically AoE mitigation, you can stun a single target but it's that target's buddies that are going to kill you), and at that point healing flames is the only constant that can carry you through a fight.

2 - Fire armor also need a good deal of slow resistance, again, because of healing flames. If you can't spam it and your defenses are stripped and your recharge is neutered by slows, you are dead.

3 - EM is a bit too single target to operate fire farms efficiently regardless of how you supplement it with weak APP AoEs, you are better off just running regular KM ITFs/craft/convert if you want to make inf.

4 - Inefficient slotting:

      The 6th slot in Fire Shield does nothing for you since you already have capped fire resist.

      6 slotting build up gets you less S/L defense than 2 slotting it with rectified reticle.

      I don't understand the rationale behind energy transfer. It doesn't cost end, it's also not autohit and you skipped ACC slotting in the power

      5th slot in combat jumping gives you very little benefit. 2% damage bonus is negligible. Speaking of hitting stuff, it's a good place to put a kismet unique

      Sprinkling in various psi resistance IOs -see my joke about tankers. Your psi resistance is STILL pitiful, and you'll be better off dedicating those slots to more recharge/offense.

      In general I see a lot of wasted slots in 6 slotting powers with sets that don't give you fire/cold defense if fire farms is your goal.

      If general content is your goal there is additional wasted slotting in all the 6 piece winter sets that contribute to Fire/Cold defense, that 6th slot is not needed,

      You could use more LOTG 7.5 in your defense powers, hide for example. Recharge is good for fire armor and also speeds up total focus recharge to let you build focus.

5 - Assault doesn't do as much as you think it does, I'd rather get tactics or focused accuracy to deal with blinds and in case of the latter, ACC debuffs.

6 - Drop body mastery if you want to do more damage and get more meaningful set bonuses from the slots you potentially save.

7 - Agility does little for you defense wise, the defense boost from pool defense powers enhanced over ED is tiny.

 

The primary reason people choose fire armor is more damage via burn, I would lean into doing damage more as the overall build direction and see this combo more like a melee blaster with mez protection. Dance and weave in and out of combat and kill stuff before they kill you, because dead things don't fight back.

[Sipps2]

To answer your questions @Zect, my

On 5/15/2023 at 1:22 PM, Zect said:

oddball challenge.

 

And  my

 

On 5/15/2023 at 1:22 PM, Zect said:

shoulder devil

said try something and see what happens, god forbid that happens 😱😱. Didn't realize @ZectOverlord of Builds and No Creativity Commander was so close by. Also I don't think I once stated it would work or wouldn't work but based on this comment you're convinced that's all I thought.

 

On 5/15/2023 at 1:22 PM, Zect said:

convinced you this would work.

as a matter of fact, in the original post it says 

 

On 5/13/2023 at 1:23 AM, Sipps2 said:

mostly just threw this together. 

however I will assume your day wasn't going as planned and your "Shoulder Devil" told you to take it out in a simple forums post in a condescending manner but I digress. I appreciate your knowledge and information you have laid out I will look to improve on the fundamentals of character building and avoid  

On 5/15/2023 at 1:22 PM, Zect said:

 useless trash

as a first time mids user and character builder.