Deus_Otiosus

You are confused.

The reason for the rooting is because it's a part of the game engine.

You're not interested in a zippy ADD flashfest and yet that's nearly what the BM fight is.


Read further up the thread.

3 Runs back to back on 3 different ATs, 1 Death total on all 3 runs, 3 Mo Badges Earned - Total of 90 minutes.

It's not hard, it's a gimmick.

I suffered zero deaths in the 3 BM fights on all 3 of those ATs (Brute, Fort, Corr).

I only suffered 1 death on all 3 back to back MoApex runs when my Corr got got unlucky.

All three runs were done in times that would most likely be considered "fast".


Overcoming a wonky mechanic (rooted animations) gives me no feeling of success or "adapting" to new "challenges".

You have given up shield charge for...something?

Assault is largely pointless on a Brute, especially one that has other massive sources of +Damage.

Tough is underslotted.

Midnight grasp does not need 6 slots of Hecatomb.

You want people to accept that you have skipped shield charge, except shield charge is one of the major components that gives this combination synergy.

I know you wanted perma hasten, but 4 slots is 1 slot too many. Get the recharge elsewhere.


I highly suggest you reconsider some of your choices, and make sofcapping all 3 positions your first priority.

I'll be able to put up a reworked version of your build later tonight.

The thing missing from all of this is that there is no -To Hit build vs. Regen build debate necessary.

The goal is softcapped defense (or near Softcap adding -To Hit to cover the gap), and this can be achieved without slotting Dark Watcher in RttC - even on a Brute.

On top of this, you can still pack 120 HP/S regen, 2500+ HP and if you can fit it into your build, Darkest Night. This is a much better route for -To Hit, and also debuffs your enemies damage as well.

I'm not going to say it's impossible, but I don't believe those numbers are accurate.

With 2550 HP, 92% regeneration bonuses from sets (incidental), total regeneration with RttC fully saturated at 1155%, ED capped heal values for RttC, Fast Healing & Health - I'm at like 120~125 HP/s (not including the fluctuation s from procs).

The only thing I don't have is the Spiritual alpha slot, but I don't think that would add another 40 HP/s.

The 200 HP/s is a fluctuation due to the heal procs btw, that's not actually your regen, I don't even think WP tankers can get that high unbuffed.

How much flexibility is there in this build?

I ask because:

• Tactics is a waste of endurance if you already have Rage.
• Assault is not granting as much of a benefit as you might think due to +Damage bonus saturation from Fury & Rage.
• Handclap is a power I simply can't condone.

As Carnifax already mentioned, it's not just the activation time, 3.3s, it's also the low damage payoff in relation to that activation time.

It's not all negatives though, basically with Tremor you get a power with 14s rech (better than Footstomp, 20s) with as large of a radius (15', rare among PBAoEs for melee ATs), with an equivalent ability to KD (0.67, 80% Chance).

And it's in a set that has better PAoE softcontrols (Fault > Handclap) and better overall Single Target attacks.

And my point, is that this is not a meaningful choice.

If you have 3 slots available to get a total of 4 slotted Dark Watchers, then you could have most likely gotten to softcap by slotting other powers.

Anywhere from 3-4 Slots, with 3 Piece Numi + either a 4th numi piece or a Golgi.

Brutes and Scrappers can both forego any Taunt IOs as it's largely irrelevant for them (the brute will hold aggro anyway, through sheer damage dealing + threat component alone).

This is you, advocating - To Hit over +Healing in RttC:


A little bit of hp/s?

An additional 40 HP/s ON TOP OF 66 HP/s is not "a little".


A Tanker should be able to softcap to SM/L fairly easily as it is.

This is a good line of thinking to apply to the build as a whole when choosing global IO set bonuses, but you don't apply this line of thinking to the individual enhancement of RttC.

Not slotting RttC for healing is a mistake.


From Mids (Tanker):

• No other regen powers other than inherent fitness (not slotted) & RttC
• RttC 10 enemies in range
• 0 slotted with L50 healing IOs = 38 hp/s
• 3 slotted with L50 healing IOs = 65 hp/s

That's huge.

After Accos & Fully slotted HPT?

• 0 slotted with L50 healing IOs = 66.27 hp/s
• 3 slotted with L50 healing IOs = 106.94 hp/s

@ The OP: Slot RttC with 3 Pieces from Numina's set (Healing, Healing/Endurance, Healing/Endurance/Recharge) + 1 L50 Golgi if you can afford the slots.

Depending on primary, and if you use taunt liberally, you might want to add 1 or 2 L50 Taunt IOs.

With an AoE heavy Primary, Taunt, potential APP/PPP TAoE powers and an aggressive playstyle, you can probably skip the taunt IOs.

Stone is not in the running for strongest AoE potential.

However it does have some of the absolute best soft mitigation available, along with a collection of really hard hitting ST attacks.


However I don't think your pylon results are indicative of what Stone Melee can truly do.

Are you running this attack chain?

Seismic Smash/Stone Fist/Gloom/Stone Fist/Heavy Mallet

This is the attack chain you should most likely be running and IIRC - you should have better ST DPS than an equivalent SS build.

I'm not positive of the recharge requirements, but if you are capable of running that chain you should be doing a pylon in under 18 minutes.

If you would be interested in improving your pylon time, make a separate thread.

Fair is subjective in a game like this.

Not all ATs and powersets benefit equally from inspirations.


An MM's pets, as long as they are alive, deal damage basically "for free" in terms of your endurance usage - so you'll need to excuse most people if they aren't feeling bad that MMs don't get the same benefit from damage inspirations (this is also a part of why it would be massively overpowered).

Compared to FA, Ela has several advantages; better overall resistances to all damage types, top end endurance drain resistance, better end recovery tools and a T9 "godmode" instead of a self res.

It also has native KD protection in grounded (only works when your feet are touching the ground.

Disadvantage vs. FA? FA trumps it in offense capabilities by a very solid margin - the new FE & Burn are enough alone to cement that.

I've long wanted to grab 7 other people who would all huddle around a stalker, providing no other support, and allow a high end PvE focused build to see what kind of ST DPS is possible against a pylon.

This would go a long way to improving the Stalker's image on the forums, if you could actually see them breaking the barriers set by the top pylon soloing builds.

Is surrounding the character with 7 friends cheating? Who cares.

It's no less false than surrounding yourself with a pack of L54 bosses for perma-soul drain and fully saturated AAO.

Hell, let a tanker or brute taunt the pylon. I just want to see the time a ST Focused top end stalker would be capable of.



You don't need to immediately eliminate the threat, you just need to keep it's attention off the controller - and several ATs and builds are totally capable of this. Brute, Tanker, Scrapper, Dom, VEAT? Hell my Fire/Rad Corr could do this.

This is the point.

It's not that it isn't cute that the stalker can kill or remove that threat a few seconds faster* under the absolute best conditions where teammates are all huddled around, and somehow all of them ignore that boss while the Stalker uses BU > AS - it's that even if you could get all of this to happen regularly the Stalker is competing against a long list of other ATs who can either eliminate the threat, taunt the threat, lock it down or debuff it to hell and back - many of which have a list of useful attributes to a team that completely trounce and trivialize the ability to be hidden and/or placate (neither of which are exclusive to Stalkers btw).

*Can the stalker actually make use of BU > AS to make quicker work of a Boss? Across all Stalker primaries, isn't that like a 5s of just casting time alone?

High end builds across a variety of ATs are easily capable of putting out 1k or more damage over 5s time.

Exactly.


That is the exact definition of "No meaningful advantages" over a Scrapper.


When put into comparison vs. a Scrapper they do in fact have nothing but disadvantages.

I'm willing to listen to what you think their advantages over a Scrapper are and why a team would be better off with one as opposed to a Scrapper.


Hypothetical Situation:

Let's pretend that the AT you choose, Scrapper or Stalker will not be played by an actual player whose feelings you will hurt.

It will be played by a highly intelligent AI that has no feelings, has the ability to match primary and secondary powersets as closely as possible and the AI gives you the choice of which AT (Scrapper or Stalker) it will join your team with.

Which do you choose?

qft.

It's not equal, FA outdamages SD.

I never run anything less than 0x8 on any of my Brutes, and fully saturated AAO + SC does not compare to FE + Burn + Blazing Aura.

The rest of your post I agree with for the most part.