Siolfir

Unless they changed it (which may have happened, I haven't played Pain in months), the +recharge is stackable on Enforced Morale, but only if the target is already below 20% global recharge. It also doesn't provide any +movement if the target has Swift/Hurdle levels of +movement (which means when Fitness goes inherent you may as well ignore that part of the description).

Which means it doesn't provide any recharge benefit to someone using an IO build, that has Hasten running, has Quickness or Lightning Reflexes, that has been hit with Accelerate Metabolism... pretty much someone hit by any +recharge in the game that's not an individual IO set bonus.

The +perception and mez protection do stack, though.

Random notes, since I'm just catching back up to this thread:

If you don't have an AV that goes immune to Smashing/Lethal, Martial Arts is going to be the top DPS set, followed by EM and DM, which are close enough as to be almost identical (DM is slightly lower at a 10% critical rate but passes EM at pretty much anything higher - I did the numbers in another thread but forgot them and am too lazy to go find them again). Since DM also includes a self-heal to keep you topped off while fighting, I'd personally recommend DM, but going strictly by the numbers it's MA > EM > DM. Divine Avalanche/Parry is probably going to be the most useful powers to keep yourself alive, but I didn't look at attack chains that factor them in.

A defensive secondary will do better than Shadow Meld, which has a long animation and causes a fairly substantial hit to your sustained DPS (depending on recharge and frequency of use).

Caltrops, since AVs don't tend to run off of a single instance of them, are actually a nice little boost to your DPS while fighting. This, combined with the previous point, makes me tend towards stating /Nin is likely the best secondary - whether softcapped or not. Having a tray full of purples gives you ~10 mins of being softcapped, even if you're just using SOs, and you have Sha for the hits that get through.

So, yeah. MA/Nin for damage, with DM/, NB/, and BS/Nin for extra survivability.

My DM/Nin could, prior to my stripping IOs off in a [series of] respec[s]. She'd be hard-pressed to do it now with nothing slotted.

It's not as easily done as with some ATs or build combinations, but it's certainly possible.

Citizens in mayhem missions.

No matter how many times I attack them, no matter how many debuffs they run through, no matter what I do... I still haven't ever killed one. And those are just the grey cons.

Hey, Dark Mastery Soul Drain was already nerfed once - they added in the target cap (of 10, which is still higher than the 7 that the Soul Mastery version has for Corruptors). Originally it didn't have a target cap at all.

I threw one in Ball Lightning and Lightning Field on my EM/Elec for giggles, since the lost damage slotting was less than a half point of damage. It's as effective for AoE control as Whirling Hands is.

These are very old complaints that have existed (with requests for fixes) for years. It's possible, with more high level heroes being able to switch sides and get access to the Patron Pools, that they may finally be addressed. But since there was a stickied thread about just such issues back from just after i7, I don't know how they could NOT be aware of the discrepancies without willful ignorance.

For me it varies based on the character. A short, incomplete list of examples of the top of my head:

• Saveur du Mois has The Next Big Thing. (if you don't know why, go to a translator site)
• Hapless Schoolgirl (SM/WP Brute) uses Hammer Down.
• Tolerable, an ElM/Nin Stalker turned hero, uses Secret Admirer.
• Tewellyn Dowd, the Thugs/Traps MM who was created after a discussion about chest slider abuse, uses either Homewrecker or Luscious (as will Fanservice Girl, once I get her to RWZ).

If I had to only pick one badge, though, a lot of my characters moved to Poor Impulse Control as soon as it was added.

For starters, note that there is not -dam for Psi and Toxic damage in KM.

There is -5.625% damage to the affected damage types for the listed duration on each of the following:

• Quick Strike, 4 sec
• Body Blow, 5 sec
• Smashing Blow, 5 sec
• Focused Burst, 7 sec
• Concentrated Strike, 8 sec

There's also -11.25% damage for 7 seconds on Burst.

Yes, they stack - but the durations keep them from stacking a great deal.

Note that even if it's showing characters currently (which it is, using the link Kheldarn posted), the links to get to it on the forums, both on the main page and in the "how to access the training room" sticky, are still broken and timing out.

I haven't tried copying anything yet, so I'll just go with my sig for now.

It's 389.28, or a scale 7.0 attack, for an Assassin's Strike critical; with server ticks (aka Arcanatime) accounted for, and including the time of Placate as part of the activation of AS, you have a total activation time (on average) of 4.884 seconds: 3.168 for AS + 1.716 for Placate.

That's a DPA of scale 1.433 per second, ignoring the chance for a double critical entirely (which at a 10% rate would change it to scale 1.484). Gloom, which is highly used in Brute single target DPS chains due to being their 6th best DPA attack*, has a DPA of 1.333.

For comparison's sake, here are some other numbers (also ignoring criticals, unless Placate is specifically mentioned):

• Energy Transfer is the only attack that has a higher DPA at 1.57/sec, and does not critical.
• Eagle Claw after a Placate - the hardest critical a Stalker gets other than AS - is 1.301/sec. Without the Placate, it's 1.053.
• Even without a critical or Placate, it will vary by set:
  • Assassin's Blades (0.789) is better DPA than all but Sweeping Strike (1.171) and Ablating Strike (1.111) in Dual Blades.
  • Assassin's Shock is better than Havoc Punch (0.769) for Electric Melee.
  • The faster animating Assassin's Strike (0.861) in KM is better than Quick Strike (0.795) and Focused Burst (0.731).

So this:

To the OP: The "So... Stalkers" thread is essentially a rehash of ideas along the same vein as this thread, and was created to get Stalker player feedback in response to the melee-AT retuning/rebalancing and Castle's beta post about there not being enough time to address Stalkers.

I don't really feel that Stalkers are that far out of whack, but numerically could use some fine-tuning. In my opinion Scrapper AT mods for melee damage and self-damage buffs would be sufficient, leaving the survivability alone so that they still have less margin for error in survivability, but several people posted concerns about how this would make them closer to Scrappers (to me, the lower hp and hp cap would provide the main difference... a Scrapper would be harder to kill and have more AoE damage due to not losing an AoE).

Like every AT, your feel of its performance is going to depend in some part on your build and how much you put into it, and part of it is going to depend on how you play the character. I can survive nearly as many things on my Stalkers as my Scrappers or Brutes, but the margin for error is considerably lower - it's not that they don't have the tools to survive as much as they run a higher risk when the tools are negated or insufficient.