Bane or Dark Dark Stalker? DPS wise

[Snarky]

What are the advantages of a Bane vs a (specific) Dark Dark Stalker in terms of DPS.  I assume the Stalker is ahead ST?  But by how much.  And AoE?  At least the Bane has...some?

[Doc Spectre]

If you build a huntsman you will have quite a lot of AoE

[biostem]

4 hours ago, Snarky said:

What are the advantages of a Bane vs a (specific) Dark Dark Stalker

IMHO, it's more about the buff toggles and the ability to branch out into ranged attacks at an earlier level, that advantages banes over stalkers.  If you *only* want melee attacks, and dps is your main concern, I think the stalker would be a better option for you...

[Snarky]

45 minutes ago, Doc Spectre said:

If you build a huntsman you will have quite a lot of AoE

... i do not see a "huntsman" in mids

[Doc Spectre]

Btw if you haven’t done an all Arachnos team you should try it sometime. The week that VEATs dropped was probably the most adrenaline rush experience I ever had on CoH. Just don’t skip Team Training (special leadership toggles) 

[Snarky]

10 minutes ago, Doc Spectre said:

Btw if you haven’t done an all Arachnos team you should try it sometime. The week that VEATs dropped was probably the most adrenaline rush experience I ever had on CoH. Just don’t skip Team Training (special leadership toggles) 

you are killing me smalls.  i ask you "what is it" and you respond "you should try it"  

 

i am going to stop now.  a paragraph of Snark has built up in Q and it might shatter your poor ego

Edited December 3 by Snarky

[TygerDarkstorm]

45 minutes ago, Snarky said:

... i do not see a "huntsman" in mids

There was a thread about this on the forums a bit ago... A huntsman is a like a bane that takes the gun attacks? I think that's what it was.

 

Found the thread; it appears to be what I thought:

 

[tidge]

A "Huntsman" is a Bane that focuses on the Soldier attacks instead of the Bane attacks. A player will still have to mandatory respec the build the first time it hits level 24. Either way (Soldier or Bane) the character will be using a weapon (gun and/or mace) to make attacks.

 

While I echo the sentiment to try the Soldier at some point, I suspect that for DPS, as well as smoother attack progression as you level, a Stalker is most likely what you want. You won't have as many AoE options with the Stalker as with the Huntsman, and the Bane takes a different sort of build approach than Dark Armor to survival. One rather large difference between the two options is that the Stalker's Placate comes much earlier in the build, and with the Hide ATO the Stalker will probably feel more like a "from the shadows" attacker than the pew-pew-pew Hunstman (or "now Imma clobber" Bane).

 

 

 

 

 

[Snarky]

3 minutes ago, TygerDarkstorm said:

There was a thread about this on the forums a bit ago... A huntsman is a like a bane that takes the gun attacks? I think that's what it was.

 

Found the thread; it appears to be what I thought:

 

thanks.  but.... while a little more? aoe than a Bane it is nothing to write home about.

[biostem]

One thing that should be considered is that, if you went with a bane spider, you could then take the mace mastery attacks, and they fit perfectly with the other arachnos mace attacks you'd already have...

Edited December 3 by biostem

[Psyonico]

13 minutes ago, Snarky said:

thanks.  but.... while a little more? aoe than a Bane it is nothing to write home about.

Honestly, Huntsmen don't perform better than Banes, but it's more about feel than performance for a huntsman.

[Doc Spectre]

As others gave said a Huntsman is a player term for a Bane that focuses on gun attacks and team support over wack bonking with a mace. 
I guess the play style is similar to an AR/traps corrupter but you don’t need to place stuff on the ground all the time.

 

Between venom grenade, heavy burst and frag grenade you have an entirely AoE attack chain, throw in wide area web grenade for control.

 

Single target is not the greatest but you could easily do a second build as a bane. 

 

A stalker will only ever be a stalker.

[tidge]

4 hours ago, Doc Spectre said:

Single target is not the greatest but you could easily do a second build as a bane.

 

Just as an FYI, the mandatory respec is also required on the second (and third) builds.

 

If there is one big thing I don't like about the Bane's performance it is that it is slow against single hard targets, and it isn't particularly fast for clearing large spawns of elevated difficulty. A point of reference: On a PUG, my Bane (and Crab) builds are generally fine for surviving entire rooms if they run off solo on any given SF/TF (modulo cascading defense failures), but they stand little chance of clearing a room by themselves. This is different that almost any other AT I've played. The only other AT that comes close to being this slow (in this solo +4x8 sense) are my Kheldians, and I think maybe one of my Tankers... even Controllers and Defenders can usually clear rooms faster.

 

The Banes excel at being force multipliers... but I think you have to lean hard into concept to see just how good they can be. For example, not only are the team-buffing powers somewhat mandatory, but to be a great team asset, the AoE ranged attacks should probably be set up to each include the Annihilation %-Resistance piece (also slotted to give that piece a decent chance to trigger), Surveillance should be included, and the World Wide Web Grenade ought to be up as often as possible...possibly even supplemented with Web Cocoon.

 

The point above about the Soldier VEAT being a good force multiplier is also true for the Crab, with slightly different power options, which is what can make a "Crabbermind" pretty good... if the global bonuses are such that the pets can be 'perma', and some choices are made to toughen up the pets too. Crabberminds are a different sort of play of course.

[Uun]

Some stalker primaries have more AoE than others. It depends largely on what power was dropped for Assassin's Strike. In the case of Dark Melee, they dropped Dark Consumption for Assassin's Eclipse and Soul Drain for Build Up. While these are both long recharge powers, it leaves you with Shadow Maul and Touch of Fear as your only AoE (ToF benefits greatly from %dmg procs). Not as bad as Martial Arts, which has no AoE whatsoever, but not as good as Ice Melee, which keeps both Frost and Frozen Aura, or Fire Melee, which keeps both Breath of Fire and Fire Sword Circle.

Edited December 3 by Uun

[Octogoat]

1 hour ago, Uun said:

Some stalker primaries have more AoE than others. It depends largely on what power was dropped for Assassin's Strike. In the case of Dark Melee, they dropped Dark Consumption for Assassin's Eclipse and Soul Drain for Build Up. While these are both long recharge powers, it leaves you with Shadow Maul and Touch of Fear as your only AoE (ToF benefits greatly from %dmg procs). Not as bad as Martial Arts, which has no AoE whatsoever, but not as good as Ice Melee, which keeps both Frost and Frozen Aura, or Fire Melee, which keeps both Breath of Fire and Fire Sword Circle.

 

Fire/shield stalker is AOE bananas

[Hedgefund]

Snarky I've not paired Dark + Dark on a Stalker but I've played them paired with a different set on the AT, also recently played a Bane and also a Huntsman for one of our teams.

 

First off, I have a hunch traditional stalker play won't mesh well for you.  BU+ AS takes some patience.  You could work around that by using BU+ Midnight Grasp then AS (with hide p&%c).

 

As for not defeating hard targets, I've soloed Hero class characters with a Bane, also a hidden Crowd Control goes a long way to clearing a room.  This was a very specialized build that could produce massive amounts of -res via Venom Grenade, Shatter Armor and all the -res $r%cs (a Bane is able to slot all 3) so ymmv.

 

Re: aoes, both the Hunts and Bane had seamless AOE chains.  To get there of course takes some global recharge.

 

So, out of the box, I'm sure the Stalker will produce more ST damage.  AOE wise, either the Bane or Hunts is going to offer significantly more as, mentioned above, DM has 2 AOEs that are 7 foot cones.

 

I know that buffing ain't your thang but the VEATs at least give their buffs simply by standing there, there's nothing to do.

 

That said I'm not trying to sell VEATs, just answering your questions.

 

 

[Octogoat]

Bane is a lot more interesting than a stalker imo I need to play a huntsman.

[tidge]

4 hours ago, Octogoat said:

Bane is a lot more interesting than a stalker imo I need to play a huntsman.

 

I made one of my three builds a Huntsman (years ago) and enjoyed it... except I was stuck with the crab legs on my costume. I recently decided to make a no-crab Huntsman. I decided to try something slightly different: I intended to use ONLY the gun attacks, and use melee attacks from the Fighting pool. I have NOT stuck with this plan (while leveling up).

 

First: I was not going to skip Placate... and I wasn't going to leverage the Presence pool... and Placate uses a mace. Once I was locked into having to show a mace, I figured "why bother with the Fighting pool?" when the Bane has a pretty good melee single-target and melee cone attack that synergizes with Placate. I can also add those into the build a lot more naturally (and more easily) than with the Fighting pool. I just wish I had a low-tech (a la Baseball Bat) option to use for the Mace!

 

I may eventually decide to use the second build to make a (weaker) version of the same character but strictly leveraging power pools for the Mace stuff. The build would be somewhat clunky, but I've gone to similar lengths for other "concept" characters.

[Maelwys]

9 hours ago, tidge said:

If there is one big thing I don't like about the Bane's performance it is that it is slow against single hard targets, and it isn't particularly fast for clearing large spawns of elevated difficulty. 

 

I find mine pretty decent at both actually, although they do heavily lean into Procs and utilize Patron Pool attacks to pad out their attack chain. The lack of any self healing (outside of Lore pets) and only 45%ish S/L damage resistance hampers their survivability a little bit; but their damage output has never been much of an issue for me. They're not quite as fast as soloing a Pylon as my Crabbermind, but they can take down either an AV or a roomful of mooks just fine.

 

Completely agree on the force multiplier thing though. The Leadership buffs plus multiple -res debuffs (all three procs plus Venom Grenade plus Surveillance!) just makes things melt. However I did draw the line at going Mace Mastery for Shatter Armor or Leviathan Mastery for Arctic Breath... it didn't test as well - all that vastly higher raw DPA from Soul is simply too useful!

 

 

Edited December 4 by Maelwys

[Doc Spectre]

I got to 70 smash resistance pretty easily, Bane armour gives 11 to all, shield wall another 5 to all, tough gets about 23.5 to s/l, Wolf armour 4.5 s/l and 18.75 s/l from 5 x 3.75 set bonuses for 5 parts LotG x3, 5 part call to arms and 5 part touch of death, 2.25 x2 from 3 parts of Bombardment.
Positional defences are at 53 and above. 
Can brain dead mode +4x8 most of the time.

[Maelwys]

11 hours ago, Doc Spectre said:

Positional defences are at 53 and above. 

Worth highlighting that since Banes use a "Stealth" power (Cloaking Device); turning on Suppression in Mids is a good idea to get accurate numbers for their Defense.




My more-or-less-fully-offensive-focussed Bane sits just at the Softcap without Barrier running; and the -ToHit from Soul Mastery powers gives them a bit of extra wiggle room.
(Passive regeneration in game is 18.57 HP/sec; although the Panacea and Power Transfer procs each kick in on average every 20s, bringing that up to ~24 HP/sec over time)

Also... a VEAT Soldier is one of the few toons where I always run Degenerative Interface Incarnate over Reactive (on other toons Reactive is better for everything except AVs and Pylons). This is because they can already inflict a lot of -res debuffs natively and Venom Grenade grants an additional -20% res to Toxic damage (which helps -Degen's DoT).

Optimal Lore selection is typically the usual Carnival/Seers Radial when soloing (+Damage and +ToHit / +Damage and +Defence) and Talons Radial when Teaming (AoE buffs plus a Boss pet which has an 18s Nuke that has a target cap high enough to hit every enemy on the map).
However if you can manage to survive without any additional spot healing... then Banished Pantheon Radial is probably the best all-rounder. Whilst its Support pet doesn't possess a clicky heal; it does have some AoE buffs and a little bit of AoE damage and more importantly the BP Boss pet inflicts substantial -res plus an additional debuff to Negative Energy resistance which can help your Soul Patron pool attacks.
All that -res stacks with your own -res and the -MaxHP from Degen Interface to utterly evaporate single tough targets like AVs.
e.g.

-20% (Surveillance)
-20% (Venom Grenade) [plus an additional -20% to Toxic]

-20% (Achilles' Heel in Poisonous Ray; @62.24% activation chance without any local recharge)
-20% (Fury of the Gladiator in Crowd Control; @71.53 activation chance without any local recharge)
-12.5% (Annihilation Proc in Venom Grenade; @32.43% activation chance with my slotting)

-30% (BP Boss Frigid Beam) [plus an additional -25% to Cold/Negative via Frigid Slam]
= a maximum of -122.5% res to all; and an mean/mode of -90%/-100% providing that the Lore Pet stays alive (face the AV away from them and don't use Placate!)
 

Edited December 4 by Maelwys

[Doc Spectre]

Good point from testing combat attributes in game my 52 def suppressed to 46 when I attacked someone 

[Doc Spectre]

Seems like cloaking device gets half suppressed in combat

[Snarky]

28 minutes ago, Doc Spectre said:

Seems like cloaking device gets half suppressed in combat

all stealth suppresses in combat  EXCEPT Illusion Dom/Trollers who have 175.  Although they can get agro, their stealth stays a solid 175.  

[Maelwys]

1 hour ago, Snarky said:

all stealth suppresses in combat  EXCEPT Illusion Dom/Trollers who have 175.  Although they can get agro, their stealth stays a solid 175.  

I think they were referring to the +Defense component; which does indeed get "half suppressed in combat" (like most Stealth abilities it has two separate effect lines that grant additional defense; one of these gets Suppressed/Canceled if you are Attacked or Damaged etc. and the other always applies unless you get mezzed)

But yes the +StealthRadius effect gets (fully, not half!) suppressed too.


 

Edited December 4 by Maelwys