Siolfir

I picked up the perma-temp version. My Dominators (none of whom have Frenzy) like pelting their pets - or anyone handy - with snowballs to build up the Domination bar.

If it goes bad the nukes and shivans won't help - they'll be greyed out and unusable.

This seems reasonable. You don't have to like them, and you don't have to support them in any of their other products. You can even wish for their heads placed on pikes at the end of your driveway as a warning for other software publishers to not cancel your favorite titles*, but that sort of thing is probably best expressed privately rather than being directed at them: alienating them doesn't give them any reason to make them more likely to help you get what you want.





* - hypothetical example only for illustrative purposes; this poster does not condone trophy displays that would bring about the interest of local law enforcement and does not support this method of protest.

See, now this is why I said to show your work. Because you're wrong.

Some more numbers:
Damage for ET is scale 4.56, arcanatime animation is 2.904. That gives you a scale of 1.57024793... which I'm rounding to 1.57/sec.
Tanker damage mod at 50 is 44.488, which comes to 69.85719008...

So your numbers are off, even if you included Bruising (20% resistance debuff puts it at 83.8) which would work better for a set with a higher DPA Bruising attack.

The damage for Seismic Smash is 3.56 scale, arcanatime animation of 1.716; Stone Fist does scale 1 damage with arcanatime animation of 1.056. This gives you a total damage equivalent to Energy Transfer in 2.772 seconds. The last time I checked, 2.772 was lower than 2.904, so you're doing the same damage in less time. That's called higher damage per second, for those of you having trouble following along. And if you're a Tanker, you're not only doing more DPS than Energy Transfer even if it was your whole chain, you're also not wasting time with a low DPA attack like Barrage (although Stone Fist is low for Stone Melee) to get Bruising.

If you have to see the numbers, (scale 4.56) * (44.488 damage per scale) / (2.772 seconds) = 73.18372294372294.... Bruising makes this around 87.8, which is higher than ET's post-Bruising DPS even when we didn't include Barrage in the chain.

Seismic Smash recharges in the same time as Energy Transfer but due to the shorter animation will have a slightly shorter cycle time. Gloom and Burn are available to Stone Melee as well, so the chain of SF->SS->Gloom (repeat) will be higher than ET->Gloom (repeat) even assuming you can magically cause the chain to restart at the end of Gloom's animation despite the recharge cap not allowing it to recharge that quickly.

And Stone Fist isn't even the second best DPA in Stone Melee, that falls to Heavy Mallet; if you didn't want to get the Bruising bonus (and I wasn't deliberately using two powers that add to the same damage as ET) you could build a better chain in Stone Melee.

As for Stalker comparisons... Stalker DM doesn't have Soul Drain, it has Build Up. So it doesn't get a higher +damage for a longer period of time with more targets, which is how DM catches up and passes EM for every other AT that has both; EM also isn't a top performer when the team size increases because the best attack that has a full critical is Bone Smasher so an increased critical rate barely helps it.

You'll have to show your work on this one, because I flat out don't believe you that EM will beat DM, SM, or TW for single target DPS on a high recharge IO build (and this has been shown in other threads, where people did show the chains used, level or recharge, and their final results). The only time it's best for single target DPS is on SO and basic (non-set) IO builds with low global recharge, and that's only because it has ET - TF is the worst DPA of the "heavy hitting" scale 3.56 attacks by virtue of having the longest animation of any single target attack in a melee set.

Also, given that PvP damage was set to use animation time for its damage you wouldn't even have to have different animations to nerf ET for PvP, you could simply put the animation to 1 second and use the PvP formula to get the final damage and have it do the scale 4.56 in PvE.

Yes, that makes it an outlier power... but the changes to Assassin's Strike made every Stalker have a power that frequently exceeds the DPA of a 1-second ET, and it's in a set that has similar issues that people complained about the Stalker AT as a whole prior to the changes: not enough single target damage to make up for the weak AoE. Stalkers didn't get more AoE, they got better single target damage. I say just treat EM the same way.

*shrug*

KM Stalker with only the Gaussian's proc slotted in BU. Capped chance of going off, can be insta-recharged with Concentrated Strike critical (up to 31% chance or guaranteed from hidden status), mix in Stalker chance for hide ATO proc in AS and the 2nd Stalker ATO proc for even more BU goodness. You'll have double BU more often than you won't have any.

Aww, but it's so much fun to log on and go WTF? over broadcast. It's so often met with similar responses!

On a completely unrelated note, how do the rules apply to signatures?

Or, for that matter, deliberately out of context quotes?

This. Link.

City of Data is a great source for answering these sorts of questions.

I didn't even check, but it may have been nabbed for the bonus resistance rather than the endurance discount.

But with Electric Melee providing a chance for endurance payback in CB and HP, Energize adding a global endurance discount, and Power Sink refilling your bar - there's no reason to ever have endurance issues past level 35.

Since I don't have Mid's on this computer (hooray for posting at work!), just some general notes:

• I took Spiritual alpha for my EM/Elec. Recharge is your friend.
• Toss some endmod into Lightning Field - you have a chance for -recovery in every attack and this one of the few builds that can get away with using endurance drain effectively. Even with just Mu Lightning and Ball Lightning on my EM/Elec I drained Deathsurge's entire endurance bar.
• Related to the above - play offensively with Power Sink. Start a spawn with Lightning Rod and/or Ball Lightning, then Power Sink to drain their end. Lightning Field and -recovery will keep it away, and Energize will top you back off on hit points for what they do get off.
• From the primary, Havoc Punch is the second most skippable power after only Lightning Clap. If you insist on taking it, slot it as the set mule and put some damned slots in Chain Induction.

You don't have to be softcapped to survive. It's a radical new thought, I know, but you can make it work. I took CJ, Tough and Weave, got some incidental set bonuses and have around 15-19% defense on my EM/Elec/Mu - a pairing that can't leverage the -recovery as well and has practically no AoE mitigation - and she does just fine with that.

Immobilize is a flaky control type in general, and Subdual also deals its lower scale (1 vs 1.32) damage over a 9.2 second span while Subdue hits in one packet and costs less endurance.

Subdue is supposed to be used for damage, not to keep things in place - that's just a secondary effect that goes off more often than not. Subdual is supposed to keep things in place, and just happens to do a little bit of damage on top. If I had to choose only one, and there aren't any situations that place you in this other than AT selection which carries over into far more things than just these two powers, it would be the former.

Hooray big word usage!

What I don't get about these threads is why people seem to need to respond with complaints about "OP entitlement issues", thus bumping it and bringing it to more people's attention. But I got to use the "hooray big word usage" link, so it's all good.

It does well - especially with the recent hp cap increase allowing Overload to be more than just extra defense debuff resistance (although I still haven't bothered to respec into it on my KM/EA) and EA's ability to completely mitigate Overload's crash just by timing Energy Drain correctly. I haven't taken the stun aura, nor have I really needed to.

Numerically compared to the other sets, Ice is probably a little sturdier because of Icy Bastion throwing a lot of resistance behind the defenses you get but Energy Aura is easier to softcap (at least, to everything except Psi damage) than Ninjitsu because of the stacking defense buffs in Energy Drain. Just because it's prettier (IMO) than Ice Armor, I end up using it when I'm not using Ninjitsu.

Compared to Energy Aura from a Scrapper or Brute, you lose a little of the top end for +recharge but have 20% consistently (even with nobody around you) and don't have the taunt aura built in, the resistances are rolled into one power and slightly lower, and Energy Cloak's defenses are rolled into higher base defense numbers in the other toggles and Hide. Unlike Energy Cloak, Hide suppresses, so you'll generate more adds from an EA Stalker than you will with a Brute or Scrapper, but otherwise it plays about the same.

Yes and no.

A Thugs/TA/Mace petless MM would have fewer attacks, meaning that they likely would spend more time using their secondary and thus would have less redraw.