GavinRuneblade

I'll back Leo. The end cost on a stalker /da is not very significant outside of the heal. Mine is missing murky (I warned you it's a crap build) but I have assault and I don't have end trouble unless I need to heal twice fast.

The theft of essence proc is a godsend. So is mixing pieces from both theft and touch sets to get maximum acc/end/rech/heal values in the remaining 5 slots.

With the heal under control, endurance is not an issue. I don't have miracle or numina's unique or the performance shifter proc. End is not an issue for me. Although I think I have a spare numina in my base so I might add it soon if I can get a heal cheap. Right now I have two from Triage in non-inherent fitness. Sigh.

And if you can pickup sleet somewhere (the domi can get it as an epic pool) and drop achilees heel proc, you'll really appreciate it. =)

On my plant domi I have achilees heel slotted into flytrap.

Love the -res.

for me the coolest part of the tips is that far more than 80% of them involve supers, not just random flunkies. The worst part of this game is going through not just missions, but whole story arcs without anything but a flunky to fight. Seriously needs more enemy supers. Generic bosses just aren't anywhere near as cool.

I guess that's why I love frostfire so much, back when I was starting and getting frustrated with beating on street thugs, he was the first real super villain and he's totally bad @**. the Rogues Gallery aren't so tough since they're all bosses at most, but back in the hollows, frostie rocked.

and I'm totally addicted to bank missions for the same reason.

I've tried and abandoned Ninja and dual blades. Took them into the 20s then said, "meh".

Claws was very fun through the 30s but it was on a friend's account and he stopped playing hehe. As stated quite scrappy, you hardly feel like a stalker. Just gogogo killkillkill. You need to get used to chewing through targets fast with single-target attacks, but once you have it down, it was fun.

Dark has been awesome to me. It is wonderful damage, very reliable, exemplar's beautifully, and at the high end keeps up with anyone around me. On incarnate trials I regularly out damage scrappers and brutes. And as I mention over and over, my dark/dark stalker rocks and is fine at +2/x6 with honestly the worst build I have ever seen. So bad if I posted it as is people would assume I was trolling and not serious. I just love how placate, buildup and midnight grasp can down a lieut reliably. Even the ones it doesn't kill a fast smite is enough to finish off. And that's anotehr thing, except for shadow maul, dark feels fast. It's actually only slightly above average (slower than nin, DB and claws for instance), but it feels fast.

Spines has been very bad to me. I still have my spines/nin stalker but I think he's sitting at 179 days since I logged into him. And that's with me knowing he has two purples uncrafted in his inventory. The damage is crap, and the attacks are slow and it has nothing to help you stay alive. I pretty often get killed by enemies who die after me just because the attack was so slow they got their attack in before mine dropped them. That, to me, spoils the whole experience of being a stalker. the combo of slow attacks and a dot-based damage system is where I lose interest in spines. I wish it was just claws with toxic damage.

I'm with Leo on Broadsword but for different reasons. Except for PvP, it is 100% inferior to Katana/Ninja blade in every category. Less damage, more endurance, slower attacks, even the parry is weaker because it rotates up slower so you can't stack it as easily. I have a BS scrapper who I love, but I tell everyone to avoid the set like the plague and I'll never make another unless it is massively buffed.

Haven't tried Kin past 14, but it was fun. Haven't tried MA because I think it looks pathetic. Haven't tried EM. I have an Electric Brute and knowing that it's even better on Stalkers I can say I really need to try one out, because Electric is very nice.

The +Regen won't be anything significant. Think about it in numbers. Say it pushes you up to 120hp/sec (which I don't think it does but I can't recall from the times I've had it on me) compared to your more normal 20-40hp/sec. net increase of 80-90/sec.

One hit can be worth 500 damage. In a big group you get hit a lot. Hell, against ACUs I've had DOT damage ticking off me in increments of 40s way more than 1 tick per second. No way is the +regen going to offset that. But the +Def will.

Especially against really nasty enemies.

Also, while it is not the season, these still do come up fairly often when halloween salvage is turned in, and I just got all the badges including the one for the GM at the end in April redside on virtue, so I know it's still possible to scrounge a team together and score the badges.

My elec/elec went ghost widow for gloom and darkest night. Plus, Dark obliteration is handy. I found that the single-target damage was very lacking and gloom did a lot to help that out on hard targets. Similarly, big fights the AoE -tohit from darkest night and dark oblit helped out quite a bit.

Now I made teh mistake of going melee def instead of s/l like you did so you're already significantly more survivable than mine is.

Hoods are in the game right from the get-go, just not attached to a cape.

Also, there are a few capes that will unlock permanently for your account after you become a veteran long enough. Not sure when that is though it's pretty fast as I recall.