GavinRuneblade

I've been on many teams an never had the 30% crit rate. The range is just too short. Typically I have 2 people up near me and that's it. My spines does better because he can hang with the rangers or move up to the melee types. But spines has the lowest single target damage of them all so not like that's useful.

that works for the one attack. Unlike PC placate, the NPC version has allowed a bane spider to attack me three times without wearing off (two of those were hits if that matters). And I hit them all the time with a damage aura or AoE, and they still stay untargettable for a bit. Just like Malta's permanent gun drone pet that actually is capable of hitting thanks to a +25% accuracy bonus ours doesn't have, it is one of the powers I dearly wish my PCs had an exact copy of.

Weird. I've seen dominator/controller posts recommending putting miracle into spirit tree because it supposedly works.

Like I said, I've never tried it and won't even if it does work.

It means that you don't need to stop attacking to use it and done right it is a fun change to the usual head-hack-dis-hack so that every third rotation or something it's follow-head-hack-dis-hack.

But I have a personal loathing for click powers that aren't attacks. I want all of them to be toggles or auto. =) When I'm smashing things I don't like to have to stop even if what I'm doing means I get to smash even better.

Most poeple rank /invuln above will. With special note that dark melee/invuln is in some ways more survivable than granite with none of the drawbacks and it's even possible to build around the psi hole with the help of siphon life healing you. Unless I missed, dm/invuln has the record for most dev created AVs solo'd at once (12).

But I think that people are overrating it because of how common s/l are and that you might be right in a more well rounded sense.

Shield and elec are pretty far below the top 3.

And /sr was good, but currently is not. /sr is destroyed by auto damage and there is more than most people think. Take a /sr into the rescue Jocasta tip mission set for x5 or higher. I've had 14 caltrops stacked on me. That's well over 80 damage per second auto hit and unressistable (ticks of 1 don't get reduced) and enough slow that you're not getting out unless you fly. Or the DE with their quartzes That completely negate any defense value below 100. Or all the pets that come with +25% tohit built into their powers (turning a softcapped /SR's 5% chance to hit into a softcapped 30% chance to hit). Or all the +4s with bonus accuracy and bonus tohit on the incarnate trials.

/sr is one of the best on a budget and it rocks if you compare SOs vs SOs. but at the top end, it is not in the same league as the big three.

Why is this relevant to /dark and not /fire /regen /wp etc.?

If you're already at 40% defense a -2% tohit is extremely significant. It is reducing your incoming damage almost by half (5% would reduce it to 1/2).

Gambler is a global and it is NOT a proc at all so it won't.

numina and Miracle are procs. Both will hit anyone in a triage beacon or spirit tree, and thus I assume they will also hit anyone with an AoE heal. But I have never tested because I'm selfish and would rather have the bonus permanent for myself by sticking them in health =)

sadly, there are some whackjobs out there who won't invite people to a team if they don't have "enough" or "large enough" set bonuses in their profile. these morons also tend to think you need "healors" and very specific AT mixes for things like a non-master ITF run.

But they are out there. Luckily on most servers they are not the majority.

I've bumped into one yahoo on Virtue recruiting for a speed baf that would only accept +3s on the team and wanted to know AT and powersets before sending invites.

Other than the confuse set for the 5% ranged defense I can't think of any with a 6th slot bonus that's worth it.

If for any reason you need a third account, you only need T2 status (a $5 purchase one time gets you this) to join SGs permanently. But as stated only VIPs can pay rent.

Unless the buff was really high and short lived with a long cooldown so it was still bursty and not sustained.

=) I'm even worse in person. Sorry.

Shortened short version: I only disagreed with a few of your absolutes and I agree Regen isn't perfect and gave some examples.

Also, with stone as your primary, how do you fare vs PPD? You should be pretty solid on them and they obliterate kat/regen and bs/regen. Plus you should be ok vs Knives and Malta who often give /sr and /shield trouble thanks to autohit damage and tohit buffs.

I think Cims are just a bigger problem for your build than some other enemies no matter what. Everyone has some holes.

AS is not the only thing unique to stalkers. Don't forget placate. Placate is a melee stealth. In a steamroller, leverage the initial crit out of hide, placate, crit and move to the next spawn. With my dark/dark if I only had 4 seconds per spawn I would buildup MG, placate, tab, SL. and get moving to the next. Maybe toss out a smite if there was one straggler. I'm making two stealthed attacks instead of 1 stealthed attack, neither is AS and unlike a scrapper I will have a 100% crit rate while doing this.

If you really have more than 4 seconds, then you have enough time to AS if you want to.

Also Leo is fond of pointing out that AS is not just good for openers. Think about paragon protectors, Minotaurs, fake nemesis, and heros with T9 powers. Save the AS not as an opener, but to get them before they godmode to prevent it. Again, something that gives a stalker an advantage over many (not all) scrappers.

I find it hard to believe that Char is dealing more damage than incinerate with hecatomb. Is it that much faster or something?

that's part of it. You can also use category A damage to buff resistance instead of category b resist buff. Hence the slotting now popular among warshades for eclipse of dual nucleus getting you way over the ED cap on resistance in two slots.

I have an ever better better question: Will they ever fix this or will it be like the login/logout bug that persists forever and still exists today?

Edit, and to answer your question, at least one more since it hasn't been fixed yet. At least that is the way mob mentality thinks.

I said you were compltetely wrong on a few very specific points.

First, I did mention you were half right.
And when I said you were all wrong it was a specific paragraph with three statements (note I'm not ganging up on you here, just restating that I was responding to specific claims you made, not your whole post. these claims are wrong):
#1
Two problems here: first, unless it is psi you absolutely will be able to survive. second, 15 seconds is not "a few". Some builds crush whole spawns in that time and see #3 below.

#2
Total horse pucky. If you heal 170hp/sec and are taking 190/sec and you have 2100 hp, you can hold out for a long time. if you're taking 240/sec you can probably hang on at half health forever due to how fast reconstruction and dull pain recharge.

#3
Again false. First 15 seconds is not a few. Also you only need to reduce the incoming damage beneath your healing rate. You don't need to polish off the whole spawn. Often this means kill one boss or lieut and you're fine. When was the last time you ran a brute that can't do that before buildup wears off? Build up is only 10 seconds. you still have 5 more seconds before MOG is down and that's 2 or more attacks for most primaries on top of the 3-5 you got while buildup was running.

So you made three statements and even used the word "guaranteed". I said that was 100% wrong. and it was. and it still is.

Your experiences on the ITF are your experiences. they are not the guaranteed experiences of all players with a /regen. they are not the absolute truth. My experiences are my experiences and they are not the absolute truth. But the math shows that /regen is a powerful set that works well with the right strategy.

You also stated:
Again, wrong. /regens can tank. Scrappers have been doing it for years and /regen is significantly better on brutes than scrappers. Again, /regen scrappers have solo'd the ITF.

You also stated:
Again wrong. The IOs are only part of it. /regen is not a passive set. You have to use the powers right. Claws mentioned you gotta anticipate. I mentioned the difference between jumping into a spawn prepared and jumping in unprepared is instant death. Same IOs, different player response. With /regen the cause is almost always pebkac. the few times it is a build issue is when someone builds their /regen with all +regen IO bonuses and no recharge or defense. then they are screwed and not even a god can make that character work. =)

Now, with that out of the way, lets look at your experiences:

The resistance comes from a click power the bosses use. That "roar". Mog, buildup, charge, knockdown. they don't roar they don't get the mes resist. Dominators use similar tricks to ensure they don't resist controls.

I think that Stone Melee is going to be a bit rough with /regen as knock is not the top form of mitigation. parry protects you from all enemies at once. knock only protects you from the one who falls. And many attacks only have a chance for knock, while parry is guaranteed. Dark melee has -tohit and an awesome heal in siphon life. I think you're better off than say claws/regen, but overall I think you'll have to spend more time defending yourself than smashing faces in.

With the stone, you will likely outperform bs/ on small groups and underperform on big ones. Stone is higher damage than bs and it will give reliable mitigation against small spawns. Against melee and lethal enemies in particular BS has the edge in large numbers because hte self buff protects against every attack. on the other hand, I bet you can handle PPD just fine and bs and kat get ripped to shreds because those are ranged/energy/smashing with no lethal and very little melee. It might be the case that cims are just one of your character's weaknesses.

How do you fare on carnies? I find most regens can tear them up.

This gets at what claws was saying and I looked at in the strategy for the specific powers. Know when to anticipate. If you just click when you need them, you will die. You gotta use them ahead of time. You gotta know if you can get through this pack without IH then do it, so you have it for the harder one around the corner with three bosses instead of just one because it isn't up 100% of the time. Know when you need the +hp of dull pain to survive a boss's crits rather than saving it for a big heal. But also know when to save it for a big heal if there is no spike as a threat.

I agree 100%. Which is why I said this:

and I said:

Honestly, look at my history of posts about /regen. I don't recommend it often. I don't usually defend it. The set has issues. but the issues are not what you are saying they are. The issues are that you can have a godly build worth many billions of inf focused on all the "best" bonuses to maximize what /regen does, and still die so much you think you're a gimp. Because it needs help from the primary and from the player. /wp doesn't. /sr doesn't. /stone doesn't. /invuln doesn't. /shield doesn't. Only regen is like this. It is a unique set in that regard as far as I am aware.

I will often tell people that 99.99999% of the time what they want out of /regen they will get from /WP but more of it and it works better. And that is true. There is NO mechanical or mathematical advantage to /regen over /wp. It is inferior in every mechanic you can track. That said, /regen is still a very strong secondary it's just not in the top 3 and /wp is.

Not only fewer zones, but the story arcs and task forces mostly tried to stay in zone. Except ice mistral because she's a big meanie.

I still think it's more like pears vs apples vs apples. =)

Before we jump to that conclusion, @Maudy, you have a subscription if you're posting here, are you planning to keep your subscription or drop to premium? Because if you drop to premium you'll lose the benefits from any IOs but those Hammis still work.

Also, you have two builds you can swap between so if you think you might go premium, I'd say keep 1 hammi build and make a cheap IO build on your swap.