Stone Melee/Willpower

So, Ive had this charecter for probaby 5 to 6 months or so now. Shes spent 90% of that time at level 38 not getting played.

Recently I went back and decided to see what she could do, and was pleasently suprised to where Im now looking into IO possibilitys for her. Ive currently got a build in which I have soft cap to S/L damage, but I was wondering if its possible for Willpower to actually soft cap to everything?

My other question, is about Stone Melee. Im guessing the best possible attack chain, would be something like Seismic Smash - Stone Fist - Heavy Mallet -Stone Fist - Stone Mallet - Stone Fist . But this is all just guess work on my part. As while I understand the concepts the exact numbers of things like arcanatime tend to Elude. So any help is welcome.

Well. I think that with enough money and the right primary, Willpower can softcap to everything except maybe psionic. I'm not convinced Stone can do it under any reasonable budget, however. S/L is probably about as good as it gets, though with the right choices you can likely bring En/Neg up to softcap too if not just near it. Keep in mind things like Reactive Armor and Eradication. Zephyr is good too.

As for the attack chain, you've got it right, except I wouldn't open with seismic. Seismic is something you save for when you have more fury in most cases.

Also, I've seen you in action, don't take Tremor, take Fault. Stone is a fast activating, intensely satisfying smashy build, all Tremor will do for you is slow you down and probably make you lose fury. I know the complaint is you take it for AoE, but if you want AoE that bad, roll another set. Play to Stone's strengths, and that is ST carnage.

Just two cents from a friend.

Edit: It's also possible to skip stone fist altogether with the right amount of recharge. You can still have an excellent attack chain. Though, with softcapping being your focus, recharge is likely out of the equation.

Thanks for the advice there Perfi, but a few things.

I actually agree with you on Tremor now. The only reason I still have it is becuase of the Obliteration set. It covers quite a few nice bonuses including S/L defense. The fact that it gives me a little AoE is just fluff.

As for dropping Stone Fists, I was looking at numbers and its actually better DPA then Stone Mallet. So if I were to drop anything from the chain that would be it.

Also, I have fault, and use it religiously.

If you have a light enough build that you can take Tremor and six slot it and not have the rest of your slotting suffer, then by all means, take it. But I'm not convinced. I think there's far better things you could do with slots/powers, even considering that little bit of S/L defense that comes with Oblit.

And that makes sense, about Stone Fist. You were always more concerned about numbers than I was, but me, there's just no way I could give up the mallet. Same reason I can't give up firesword despite Scorch being better dpa, it's just too cool looking! But for min/maxing I suppose that's no excuse.

Good, I'm glad you do have fault. Considering fault though, and the religious use of it, softcapping is fluff. I don't know if you knew it, but I had a stone/wp at 50 too. Hardly any ios aside from frankenslotted attacks and stupefy+FF proc in Fault, and of course the steadfast +def. I rarely died, and even solo'd an easy AV or two. Fault kept everyone on their butts while RttC did its magic. Which leads me to my next point...

If I were you, I'd build for reasonable def (As in all types above 25%), a little recharge for flavor, and regeneration. There's some very easy bonuses to be had for regen, with two slotted numi and lotg. I'd bet you a billion inf (and you know I have it) that you'd rarely, if ever, die.

Something to consider!

I know you said Auri was a SM/WP with her first build, and normally I would go for what your saying and slot for a mixture of set bonuses.

But, I actually want to push this charecter for the most survival I possibly can while still having the DPS to down an AV.

Don't forget Gloom in your attack chain (and Dark Obliteration for AoE).

As for survivability, you probably could cap to S/L and either E/N or F/C, but I don't really think it'd be worthwhile. Just having Fault, Rise to the Challenge, Indomitable Will and enough recovery to maintain them is enough survival for 99.99% of the encounters in the game. If you're really worried, pick up Darkest Night since you'll be taking Gloom for DPS anyway.

My SM/WP has Tough and Weave, and a focus on recharge (roughly 152% global with at least 60% in every attack). With roughly 18% S/L defense, upper 20s for E/N/F/C, and without DN, I rarely ever even have to hit Strength of Will: usually it's more for endurance recovery than anything else. If your hit points drop to half, hit Fault and watch them shoot back up.

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Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle it has gone from unconscionable to downright appalling that we have no way of measuring our characters' wetness.

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Oh, I understand that this is going to be totally unnessacery.

This entire illconceived advetnure was inspired by some of Nihilii comments on her scrapper. Mostly I wanted to see how a high end WP build could compare to Invuln.