Supernumiphone

For primaries it depends on what you want to do. If you primarily solo, a single-target focused powerset would suit you fine. If you primarily team, or arguably even if you team much at all, something with a bit more AoE might work better for you. Then again it might not. That's why it's hard to answer that sort of question, because not everyone will agree on what the "right" answer is.

Some people are happy to be single target specialists, even on teams. If that's you, then one of the sets with really good single-target DPS would probably qualify as "best". I'd say DM or MA, or possibly one of the sword sets if you don't mind having lethal damagae.

A lot of other people want to be able to contribute AoE damage on teams. If that's you, then your options are more limited. For AoE the leaders are probably Elec Melee and Spines, followed closely by Dual Blades, Street Justice, and possibly Kinetic Melee.

If you're looking for the best balance of single-target and AoE damage, I'm not sure of the rankings, but Spines definitely gets bumped down the list. Elec Melee is generally favored by people who want some of everything.

So which is best? Well what do you want to do?

For secondaries it's somewhat similar. Probably one of the bigger factors there is your budget. I agree with the generally accepted wisdom that resistance-based secondaries don't work well on Stalkers. The reason being that Stalkers don't have a big enough hit point pool to take even the reduced hits. That's on SOs though. Once you start IO'ing them for defense things change. Then you get some nice layered defense going on. You get hit less, and the hits that do get through are reduced. Still you'll generally only be able to build high defense to some damage types or positions, so with that type of build you'll still run into situations that can really screw over your build. That's the downside. The upside is that in other situations you're pretty tough.

I think for a lot of people the ideal Stalker set has high defense and a heal. The set that comes closest to that ideal is Ninjitsu. It doesn't have super high defense, but with IOs you can softcap it and have a nice heal on top. That's why Ninjitsu is one of the most popular Stalker secondaries. If you're looking for maximum survivability though, I think a heavily IO'ed Willpower Stalker is hard to beat. You can softcap to almost every damage type and get that nice heal, as well as some low to middling resistances to round out the package. It takes some doing to get there though.

On a budget SR is hard to beat. Fairly easy and cheap to softcap. If you don't mind the lack of AoE DM/SR is probably the best survivability you can get on a budget, while also providing very solid single-target DPS.

So again, which is best? Well, what do you want out of your character?

Wormy's behavior is unique in my experience. He doesn't tend to run back and forth though. What he does is follow you for a short distance, then stand still for a while, then start following again, repeat. My best guess as to why is that he is activating a rooting power with no visible animation, possibly something having to do with the body bag he is carrying. Maybe some kind of workaround to make that animation work. Regardless I don't think that's what's happening anywhere else.

I'm not disagreeing with you, but Sonic Resonance doesn't do any better at resistance debuffs than other sets with also do a number of other things. I suppose on SOs it may, but once you get into an IO build and can double-stack Tar Patch/Sleet/Freezing Rain, other sets are doing just as much -res along with everything else.

Add in outside recharge buffs and those sets can even triple-stack their debuffs, while Sonic Resonance doesn't benefit from recharge boosts in any way other than greater uptime the T9 and perhaps the ability to spread the Siphon to more targets.

I wouldn't say it required extreme circumstances at all. Before the change I was able to maintain higher Fury most of the time than I can now. Sure there were situations with fast moving teams and/or divided aggro where I'm better off now, but overall I was doing better before the change.

There's nothing about my playstyle that's "extreme". I've never soloed an AV or pylon. Just running around punching stuff I had more Fury than I can attain/maintain now.

Yeah DP is pretty but s-l-o-w. I'm sure some love it on Blasters but I sure wouldn't want to play it on an AT that is at least somewhat dependent on kill speed for survival. I'd say try a Corruptor. Something that provides good debuffs to allow you to do all your fancy gun-fu dances in safety.

We may be talking about different things, or at least different degrees. I don't tend to judge people based on misspellings or typos unless it's pretty egregious. It's mostly when they don't seem to be even making a baseline effort to get their meaning across effectively that I tend to avoid having anything to do with them.

I do also judge people negatively who use a lot of chat speak. Confirmation bias perhaps, but experience has shown that they tend to be immature children. No doubt you are an exception, but as I said before I'll gladly play the odds and miss out on that one very nice player if it means I can avoid another 9 tools.

I used the info in the "How to silence specific game sounds" thread to change out the sounds I couldn't stand for other, more (IMO) appropriate ones. It only affects my client and doesn't help anyone teaming with me, but that's beyond my control. It's enough to make the set playable for me.

I do think that Sonic Resonance is a bit weak compared to other buff/debuff sets, but it's decent. I'm willing to accept that because I get mez protection.

You can also make them pretty tough. Some low resists to all but psi is a nice base to build on. Add Tough and an epic shield, build for defense to get some layered protection, and you're hard to take down.

I'd say a lot of people don't appreciate having sonics on the team, but it's clear some do. When I'm playing one of mine I occasionally get comments along the line of "Yay sonic buffs!" As others have said, resistance shields really shore up an area of builds you can't make up with IOs. Not only that, but you really don't see many people playing sonics or thermals.

Does Numina not cast Clear Mind in addition to Fortitude?

It seems like taking granted powers further might be worth exploring. Although the Achilles' Heel proc doesn't stack, as a grant power it should have full effect.

I'm also wondering about chain powers. Those work through grant powers, no? If so how do damage procs slotted in those powers work with regards to level differences? Jolting Chain from Electric Control can take three damage procs. Chain Induction from Electrical Melee can take five (on Brutes).

I'm the same way but I don't feel petty about it. I'm sure there are any number of potential perfectly valid reasons why a person would choose to type that way, but the odds favor the person being some combination of ignorant, lazy, or stupid. I'll go with those odds and avoid such a person.

Ditto here. I did when I first started chatting online way back when, but I was almost always the only person doing so. I stopped because I was concerned it made me appear elitist.

Mostly this. The lower level game has certainly been improved enough that it's not really unpleasant anymore. It still feels like a different character than the one I end up with though.

I IO my characters and I tend to have a build planned out either before I roll up a character, or at some point early in the leveling process. The way a character plays after being IOed tends to be so different than before, that it's like it's not the same character at all. I start to IO in the early 30s, so it tends to be at that point that the character becomes "real".

Sometimes it's a fun journey, others the character doesn't really work properly without their full build so it's almost like I'm having to level up a different character just to unlock the one I want.

If the tines on that mace were razor sharp you might have a point. As it is it's still a bludgeoning instrument.

What about Energy Mel...oh who am I kidding.

The game has changed since then, so I won't rule it out until I see a definitive dev statement that it will never happen.

With regard to Soothing Aura, I prefer the small heals over +regen. The low HP cap squishies get means you won't really be able to take much advantage of a change over to regen. Then there's vastly more -regen debuff in the game than -heal, so it would overall be more of a nerf than benefit. Also you don't get healing badge credit for granting allies +regen.

Still happens to me occasionally when I log in.

Edit: Sorry misread that. What I was referring to was all posts being marked read, not unread.

I just want to clarify this. Aside from the long-standing random logout bug, which we've been told is outside of NCSoft's control, there is a new problem that every time I close my browser, the next time I come to the boards I have to log back in again. This one is not random, it happens every time. Basically the checkbox next to the login that says "Remember me" doesn't work. At all. This is new, as of the last couple of weeks or so. Given that it has worked for the entire time I've used the boards up until very recently, I have to believe that is under NCSoft's direct control and can be fixed by them. I haven't seen confirmation that they're even aware of that one and are working on it.

You're welcome.

This.

I do share others concerns about the lack of a cross-server recruiting forum. It's been a long time but back when I used to join super teams often times the specific server was up to a majority vote. It wasn't known at the time of the event posting.

I'm sure other more general areas can be used for the same purpose. Without a specific area for event posting though, I suspect recruitment will become more difficult with events getting pushed down the list by other posts. It's less ideal than what we have now. I'm sure we'll all manage though.