Something else you could consider is taking Soul Mastery, specifically, Shadow Meld. Its duration should be long enough to see you through a Retsu crash. Plus, that'd give you the quite good Dark Blast - however, it has no AoE.
Spirit Shark is... atrocious in PvE, I'm sorry to say. It has an animation time that is easilly three times what's sensible for the damage it deals. Conversely, Shuriken might deal low damage, but it has very fast recharge.
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PPD & Resistance Epic Archetypes
Yeah spirit shark looks neat but IMO its only good for slotting Posi blast or the purple set for the set bonuses. Especially for ninja blade since you also have redraw to contend with after the crazy long animation for it. Zapping the occasional runner with a homing shark is reasonably hilarious though.
I couldn't live without my water spout. It is so great now that it knocks down instead of back. It mitigates so much damage and recharges fast enough that its always there when I want it. Water spout does respectable damage on EB's and other things that it can stay on for a full duration too. It also looks baller as hell. It doesnt fit at all with my natural origin nin/nin stalker either but I got over it. I also think SSJaws is the best looking hold in the game and Hibernate is amazing for when Retsu crashes and Im not paying attention.
It is a tough choice because targetting drone is nice vs. defense based enemies. Although even if you slot it for end reduction, it slurps up endurance like crazy and is more expensive than your other 2 ninja toggles combined. Exploding shuriken is only okay. It's damage is enemic unless you are on a big team and hit a ton of dudes with it, and it has a painfully long recharge. If you're going to go weapon mastery, don't forget Web grenade is also a 40% recharge debuff, which is no joke.
With the respec required to claim 3 new powers after Fitness goes inherent I'm looking over my Nin/Nin/Leviathan Stalker. It's survivability is great, but when Retsu crashes I've made a habit of popping a blue and hitting Hibernate until my end is back at 100%. This is the first time I've considered changing his Epic since villains were given hero ancillaries, and Weapon Mastery's Shuriken powers fit the ninja concept way better than ice for me so I was thinking of switching to that.
I would be dropping Water Spout and Hibernate and taking Physical Perfection, Shuriken, Exploding Shuriken and possibly Targeting Drone.
Before I saw the Weapon Mastery I was going to remove Water Spout and take Spirit Shark and Spirit Shark Jaws. It looks like the damage from the shurikens totally fail in comparison to the sharks (looking at it the range is also 10 less for both weapon powers too), but the exploding shuriken is a more controllable and hence imo better AoE for a non-aoe based stalker than Water Spout.
For the only melee toon I have that's gotten it's tier9 with the endcrash do you think I would be satisfied dropping hibernate for physical perfection putting my endrecov somewhere between 3.01 and 3.16 to rebuild my end after a crash?
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