Nihilii

Well... To be honest, there are several things I'm not fond of in your build; but much of it could likely be summed up to different goals and playstyles.

One power I believe you should really consider is Energy Absorption. It gives a fantastic amount of endurance, it activates fast enough using it midfight doesn't feel like a hurdle, it saps end and it raises your defense slightly. In most of the new content, enemies have more powers and as a result drain their end faster. Throwing your own endurance drain into the mix can really take the heat off of you, slowing down their attacking. Definitely better than Superior Conditioning IMHO.

If you intend to run the AS CU SB HB AS SB HB SS attack chain, you're missing a small amount of recharge in Shin Breaker. Swapping the Crushing Impact Dam/End to a CI Dam/Rech could fix that. Another option would be to swap sets between Shin Breaker and Crushing Uppercut (and you'd put the CI Dam/Rech instead of the Dam/End as well). Even after I24 and the PPM changes, a purple proc in Shin Breaker will be more beneficial than in CU, considering you use SB twice for every CU.

Oh! And I just noticed you have the Heca proc in HB. I'd put it with the Heca set myself, and remove either the Dam/Rech or the Dam IO, based on what you need most. Even without the Damage IO, a heca set gives you about ~90% damage enhancement, which is close enough to 95% I wouldn't sweat the difference.

I think the 6th slots in Hoarfrost and Spinning Strike are overkill. Toxic/psi res isn't worth chasing, and 5 slots are enough to have optimal values in these powers.

More importantly for Spinning Strike, I believe the KD proc might stack with the KD from the power and turn it into knockback, which you definitely don't want. I could be wrong on that, though.

Glacial Armor could use an additional slot. Just throwing an extra lotg def/end would give you +1.6% defense to E/N.

Seeing as you're going with purple sets, I think you should stick a Gladiator's Armor +3 def somewhere. The crafted level 50 version costs about 350M. Along with an improved Glacial Armor slotting, this would get you to the E/N softcap.

By the way, you can go to Options -> Configuration -> Effects & Maths, and in the checkbox menu on the right, select "activate attack, attacked, hitbyfoe" (only one might be required, I just pick these three to be safe). This way, you'll be able to toggle Hide on and see the suppressed value.

I'd stick a Kismet +6tohit in Hide. Right now you lack any form of tohit, and while you have enough accuracy to maintain a 95% tohit chance against +4s once levelshifted, as soon as you run into defense buffs or tohit debuffs this might prove to be troublesome.

Icy Bastion gives great regen and in my opinion it's worth enhancing that part of the power as well. The argument could be made anything that can kill you through the resistances + base regen is going to annihilate you as soon as Icy Bastion goes down anyway, but I feel those thirty seconds are often enough to thin the opposition, take the alpha strike, wait for the brute/tanker to grab aggro back, etc., and having the regen as enhanced as possible can also make it more likely you recover fast before an eventual follow up to a first hit that might have taken you down to 1 hp (with the oneshot code) and prompted you to pop Icy Bastion - that's how I use it most of the time personally; but again, perhaps I'm overestimating how helpful the extra regen is, or underestimating how powerful the power is to start with. I have had close calls during Icy Bastion, close enough that I can say with absolute certainty not having it enhanced for regen would have resulted in my death, but I've seen many more situations in which my HP bar was consistently topped off, the extra regen being overkill. So, YMMV.

KB protection doesn't do anything for you as an Ice stalker - Wet Ice covers this. You could change the slot to a Winter's Gift 20% slow res to have capped slow res without EA, but ultimately I really hope you try and fit EA in somehow.

I hear you, Blue Centurion. I wish I could just play Super Strength with Street Justice animations (or at least have Foot Stomp like the Knives of Vengeance). Or play the Shield powerset without having to use alternate animations nor a shield.

People give so much flak to others for being "number-oriented munchkins". Yet a true minmaxer has no problem with the game, he can just pick and play the best thing. It's those of us who have to balance their want for certain themes with their want for certain gameplay standards who run into issues like the above.

Getting to choose how many AoEs, STs, snipes, etc. you want might be going a bit far, there's no way they could manage that and not normalize everything as sets are generally balanced as sets. I'd love for power customization to go further and allow for absolutely every animation (of the same length) and GFX effect to be used for any power.

Every once in a while, I'm curious as to why I have a particular poster on ignore and hit the "View Post" option that shows up on the top right part of their hidden post.

Four words, a mere four words and you manage to reestablish yourself as a waste of space. Bravo, Xzero45. A truly well done job.

It's hard to answer any of your questions in a nutshell. There's many parameters to consider, activation time, damage, recharge and even attack chain.

I look at it this way: determine the average boost I get from a proc, and from that look at each attack to see what is best.

A normal proc has a 20% chance to do 71 damage. That's an average of 14 damage per use.

A purple proc has a 33% chance to do 105 damage. That's an average of 35 damage per use.

So, a damage enhancement being 33% (if we work before values hit ED), a normal proc is going to be better than a damage enhancement as soon as an attack deals less than 14/0.33 = 42 base damage. A purple proc is going to be better than a damage enhancement as soon as an attack deals less than 35/0.33 = 105 base damage.

This is all going to change very soon with I24, getting more complicated if you want to minmax, but at the same time more smooth and intuitive for casual use, faster recharging and activating attacks not being the unequivocally best option anymore.

-res procs tend to shine in long fights against a single target. The more DPS you have, the bigger the boost you get from these becomes. Whether they're better or not than a damage proc will vary based on that, but generally speaking and in the specific scenarion of a tough ST fight, a -res proc is almost always better than a regular damage proc, and as your DPS gets to a certain point (think 150 or above), starts pulling ahead of a purple proc.

In AoEs, -res procs tend to be worse than damage procs, simply because minions and lieutenants die so fast you don't get to use much of the effect. Werner had posted an analysis about it at some point.

Regarding psy vs lethal, you'd have to consider average mob resistances (or perhaps more importantly but even harder to quantify, average mob resistances weighted for your own playstyle). It seems an awful lot of work for a minor difference so personally, I'm of the opinion it's not worth thinking about. I tend to pick psy over lethal given the choice, as lethal resistance is much more common in AVs than psy res, and AVs are the kind of target against which I care about procs being as efficient as possible.

AS is so nice on stalkers now you can do decent damage even with EM. The baseline for any stalker primary is about 200 DPS, before incarnates. Intuitively, I'd guess something like EP BS EP AS BS ET BS AS might do OK. I haven't checked the numbers or anything, just a gut feeling.

^ Hehe, that was my first thought when I copied my scrapper and noticed I had 89% S/L res.

As a "consolation" prize of sorts /inv scrappers get a free power pick. Tough isn't needed anymore.

Thanks! I suppose a ~0.1s to 0.2s difference won't change much overall, but it's always better to have the right values.

I don't think you really need to delve into the math too much, as these are independent events. Just multiplying the average damage for one use by the number of uses is good enough.

So I'm doing
2 * 105 * 0.6 = 126 average damage from purple proc in SB
105 * 0.9 = 94.5 average damage from purple proc in CU

You can get to the same result with your way, just takes longer.

Chance to get exactly 2 procs (210 damage): 0.6 * 0.6 = 0.36
Chance to get exactly 1 proc (105 damage): 0.6 * 0.4 + 0.4 * 0.6 = 0.48
Chance to get no proc (0 damage): 0.4 * 0.4 = 0.16

0.36 * 210 + 0.48 * 105 + 0.16 * 0 = 126

PPM sure seems like quite the boost... Especially for stuff like Achilles' Heel. Keeping -20% res perma doesn't seem so out of reach anymore.

Also going to make for some unintuitive build choices... For example, I just realised removing a second recharge slot in BU would make more sense in my planned build, as it'd raise the Gaussian proc chance and the extra 3 or 4 seconds of recharge I got from that recharge slot wouldn't allow me to use any more often with the particular chain I'm considering.

I believe you're looking at the minimum chance to proc.

According to Paragonwiki, the formula to proc at all should be:

( Enhanced Recharge + Cast ) * PPM / 60

So, for your Neutrino Bolt slotting

( 1.5 + 1.188 ) * 3.5 / 60 = 0.1568, 16% chance to proc

Still a nerf nonetheless. Not a big one, but I'd say it's not worth it compared to the returns you could get in X-Ray Beam or Cosmic Burst.

Based on this, the simplified formula for ST attacks is

Proc Chance = (Enhanced Recharge + Activation Time) * PPM / 60

So let's say I have a Street Justice scrapper running a CU SB RC HB SB RC chain.

CU recharges in 7.5s and animates in 2.376s.
SB recharges in 2.5s and animates in 1.584s.

A purple proc (4.5 PPM as of this writing on I24 beta) would have a

(7.5 + 2.376) * 4.5 / 60 = 0.7407, or 74% chance to proc in CU.
(2.5 + 1.584) * 4.5 / 60 = 0.297, or 29.7% chance to proc in SB.

CU remaining a better choice than SB even with 2 SB uses for a single CU, in this particular example.

Am I doing this correctly?

Edit: guess I'm not, as it's supposed to be just the enhanced recharge.

...This is why thinking outloud is good, even if it makes you look like a fool. Likely, I would have considered it correct without looking at it anymore and moved on if I just kept to myself.

So looking at it again, it'd be

+59% rech (Heca set without the dam/rech)

CU: (25 / 1.59 + 2,376) * 4.5 / 60 = 1.3572, or 90%, as it is apparently the cap according to patch notes.
SB: (8 / 1.59 + 1.584) * 4.5 / 60 = 0.5975, or 60%.

Making SB the better choice, given 2 SB uses for every CU.

Right?

...Wow. Procs are becoming really, really strong, aren't they? Unless I'm missing something again. I hope I'm not.

AFAIK they're just removing the interrupt part, aren't they? So Moonbeam should be 1.33s (which is... 1.452s or something with server ticks).

I mean, that is how it worked for AS, so I assume they'd go the same route with snipes. Perhaps I'm reaching, though. Haven't bothered to time anything on Beta yet.

I'm not very fond of Agility on a Widow as building for defense is easy enough. I prefer going for Cardiac + Rebirth for survivability, or(/and) Musculature + Ageless for damage.

Obviously, I'm in support of the idea.

Few things regarding your build:

You need AS to recharge in 3.828s or less for the SB BB QS AS chain to be gapless. Currently, yours recharge in 4.32. This half of a second gap would drop your DPS significantly.

What you can do if you don't want to change your build significantly is to put the Hecatomb proc in SB instead, and run SB BB QS SB AS as your attack chain. With the much greater chance to get an AS crit (almost guaranteed, compared to the mere 75% with SB BB QS AS) the DPS drop shouldn't too significant, about 7 points (going from 247 to 240, without including Musculature or Assault).

Now for misc comments regarding the rest of the build.

I'd throw a Kismet +6tohit in there. Does a lot more for your accuracy than a 4th LoTG set bonus.

The regen tissue in Physical Perfection could be in Health instead, this way you keep the bonus all the way down while exemplaring.

Slotting on QS, BB and SB could be tweaked slightly to reach better enhancement values and set bonuses while keeping the same amount of procs. I'd suggest 4 Makos + a mix in each power. Specifically:
- in QS, Mako Acc/Dam, Mako Dam/End, Mako Acc/Dam/End/Rech, Mako Proc, Crushing Impact Acc/Dam/End, Explosive Strike Proc (QS can take this knockback set, and the proc has a slightly higher chance of going off than ToD).
- in BB, Mako Acc/Dam, Mako Dam/End, Mako Acc/Dam/End/Rech, Mako Proc, Crushing Impact Acc/Dam/End, Touch of Death proc
- in SB, one Acc/Dam HO, Mako Dam/End, Mako Acc/Dam/End/Rech, Mako Proc, Mako Dam/Rech, Hecatomb Proc

Overall between the damage enhancement % on powers and the set bonuses this should bump your total damage % by about 13 or 14.

There's probably several routes to take with your final picks. If it were me, I would either keep Overload and add Burnout instead of Placate there, so I could have 6 minutes of godmoding before a crash (I'm assuming you can do that based on what I know of either power, i.e. activating the second Overload as the first starts blinking; haven't tried it personally), which could be quite useful for AV soloing purposes - not only for the extra mitigation, but for the extra end recovery which would let you attack more freely; or, second option, seeing as you've already got good defenses all around drop Overload and Placate, grab Tactics for better tohit and confuse/fear protection, swap to Body epic and pick Superior Conditioning on top of Performance Shifter for an extra end proc and slightly better recovery.

Example build to illustrate the above suggestions:

Another attempt on StJ/Ice, still using SB HB AS CU SB HB AS SC.

05:48 => 238 DPS

Changes since last time: mostly completed the IO part of the build, although I still lack a Panacea set (using DW instead for now), the catalysed ATO set (so I don't always get hidden procs), a Fury of the Gladiator -res, and Mako procs are replaced with endred IOs as I don't have my endurance accolades yet.

Still running into endurance issues despite that, I had to stop at the 04:30 mark for 10 seconds or so waiting for Icy Bastion to come back up. Admittedly, it could be poor EA management.

Edit: another run in which I was much more proactive with EA, which makes sense anyway seeing as I lack the catalyzed ATO proc, inserting an additional click makes sure I get that crit on CU. Kind of got a little screw up at the end, missing an AS and not willing to swap CU for SC as I thought I was just about to win, ending up with two more wrong cycles after that.

05:24 => 246 DPS

Do you have icons set to blink when the power is about to expire? If you do, you can see when Overload is about to drop, and right at the last second the icon freezes - this is the exact point at which you want to trigger Energy Drain (or Ageless I guess, but frankly, Ageless on an Overload-using EA? Rebirth's huge regen is sooo tasty with 3000hp I find it too hard to pass up ) to avoid a toggle drop.

The timing is certainly tricky to manage. Personally, in the heat of the fight I can't do it reliably. Some people claim they can.

It's not so much an individual power comparison as it is a global one, to me. Minimizing the amount of time I use low DPA attacks, be it Swipe or Dart, makes sure I use better moves (i.e Lunge or Slash) much more often.

Regardless, Swipe does better DPS and DPA than Poison Dart.

Musc should advantage the chain lacking CS more because it operates a lower damage buff level. Plugging Musc into my spreadsheet, I get:

- 284 DPS for BU AS CS SB BB AS SB BB (+26 from 258, or +10%)
- 300 DPS for SB BB QS AS (+36 from 264, or +14%)

With SB BB QS AS CS BU SB BB QS AS, I'm only getting 240 DPS (no Musc). While the extra QS guarantees an AS crit, it seems the extra animation time spent on low DPA hurts the chain as a whole.

Removing the second QS, (so, using SB BB QS AS CS BU SB BB AS), I'm getting either 248 DPS if CS doesn't get the BU buff, or 260 DPS if it does. Not sure if it would - SB BB AS SB BB QS AS add up to 8.448s, and BU is 10 - 1.32 = 8.68s.

Edit: admittedly I'm not including the actual chances to get an AS stack per power and that's probably making my numbers fairly inaccurate for the degree of precision needed to compare these different chains. Boo. I thought I could be lazy on that but that's proving to be way off the mark. Likely the best chains involving CS would pull ahead in non-incarnate play due to the 100% chance to get a stack.


Edit 2:

So, I'm getting the following average crit chances for AS:
- 74.25% with SB BB QS
- 85.8% with SB BB CS
- 52.8% with SB BB
- 93.6% with CS SB BB QS

With that mind, recalculating the following chains (no musc) gives me:

- 247 DPS for SB BB QS AS
- 249 DPS for SB BB AS CS BU SB BB AS
- 230 DPS for SB BB QS AS CS BU SB BB QS AS
- 247 DPS for SB BB QS AS CS BU SB BB AS if CS is affected by build up; 235 DPS if it isn't

I've been assuming one damage proc in every attack except AS, plus one purple proc in SB, by the way.

With that setup, SB BB AS CS BU SB BB AS seems to be the clear winner for non-incarnate play. Highest damage and constant +tohit. *If* CS crits all the time with that chain (11.748s). I'm assuming it would because of your experience with shorter Street Justice chains still managing reliable hide procs, ricohdah.

SB BB QS AS CS BU SB BB AS could come close if the BU buff includes CS.

Adding Musculature:

- 278 DPS for SB BB QS AS
- 276 DPS for SB BB AS CS BU SB BB AS
- 255 DPS for SB BB QS AS CS BU SB BB QS AS
- 272 DPS for SB BB QS AS CS BU SB BB AS if CS is affected by build up; 260 DPS if it isn't

Not sure how to factor Hybrid or Reactive but it seems pretty clear the shorter chain is going to get more out of these. Question is whether the difference is significant enough to warrant losing on BU's +tohit. My guess is no, but who knows. This is highly subjective anyway. It could have the advantage of avoiding wavy hands for those who dislike CS animation... It could also still be interesting to make a regular build with CS and just swap to the SB BB QS AS chain in situations where tohit isn't needed.


Edit 3: call me stupid but I never noticed you could build up to 4 stacks, which results in keeping 1 after AS is used. So that makes the SB BB QS AS CS BU SB BB QS AS chain slightly better than the above numbers, by about 3 DPS. Still lags a bit behind the rest of the pack, though.

Ha!

(Widow) [Indomitable Will] still doesn't suppress with /suppressclosefx 1 and /suppressclosefxdist 255.

I remember bugging this at least a year ago... :|