Stun master?

I have a fascination melee controls. Scrapper/Brute mindless DPS does not interest me and so I have developed a Tanker altism (Taunt is a kind of control). Looking for a primary/secondary combination that offers a lot of active controls instead of simply defense resist and heal, I started to think about DA/EM.

DA is one of the more interesting tank primaries. Hit required heal, damage aura and two control auras makes it more than just stacking defense and resists. EM is one of the rarest tank primaries that I see. Except for the activation time of the tier 9 power which completely ruins it (3.3 sec for a ST attack is a bit much), the rest I find completely acceptable (even the PBAoE). The unique part of this set is that practically all attacks have stun effects.

This got me thinking - what happens if I combine EM with DA's Oppressive Gloom? Minions are basically out of the way and Lieutenants/Boss mobs have a constant mag 2 stun on them waiting to be stacked with EM attacks. The first 3 attacks are quite fast and do 10,30,60% mag 2-3 stuns and the maligned PBAoE does 30% chance mag 2. Combined with the aura it means mag 4-5 on every stun that procs and the PBAoE can becomes valuable just for the mag 2 (+2=4) procs. And then there is the mag 3 guaranteed stun attack and energy transfer (mag 3 high probability + blaster snipe level damage) to take out bosses immediately out of the fight.

If not efficient, at least I'll turn the mob into a what looks like an alcohol saturated party just before dawn. Can this work? Any pointers how to make it work? Will it be fun?

It would work, although an argument could be made for DA/Stone instead of DA/EM. Fault can stun everything in range, including bosses with enough recharge to keep it stacked. Then you get the added control of KD, along with a single-target hold. You get more control that way, but it may not be to your liking. One thing of note about that build is that it is very endurance heavy. If you aren't willing to spend a fair bit on the build, it definitely wouldn't be the way to go.

I'd say either way you'd probably be happy with the result. It's just a matter of choosing which you think you would enjoy more.

The major problem with stun, the wandering off from mobs. True, with a troller or alike you can keep them at bay, but nothing is more annoying then stunned mobs wandering off outside your agro-aura and give addition problems to your team.

Stone indeed seems a solid runner up, with their hold combined with the epic hold power you lockout a boss pretty much instantly, but also /ice and /SS (slower animation) can do the same.

I would rather pick /ice in that line, icepatch for knockdown, cone slow, AoE sleep/dmg, stacked hold for anything that is very nasty. Ok, it has lesser synergy with dark/ stun, but in terms of overal 'control' seems to be on the stronger side.

My fire/EM is still there, but AoE control is minimal (stun makes mobs move out of burn) and TF became pretty much the most lousy power a tank can have.

But to fill up a dark/EM with stun-power, i gues you should focus on stun-duration slotting, the longer the duration, the more likely you can stack it up.

Having a Dark/Stone tank im gonna tell you Stone is a great pair with Dark hands down. You will have to manage your end issues but once you get to 50 get a Cardiac Alpha and that goes away...

Also, if you're just looking at control in general, and not necessarily just stuns, a Dark/Ice Tanker would have loads of enemies not hitting you because of all of the various effects on them. If you just used the fear/stun aura, and not the damage aura, anything around you would either be:

Afraid
Stunned
Constantly falling down
Asleep
Held

Combine with Earth Mastery, and you can get an additional:

Immob
Hold
Sleep
Stun
Slow

You may want to consider DA/MA. Martial arts has cobra strike to combine with oppressive gloom to do damage and lock down bosses. Storm kick does wonders for your survival with extra def. Dragons tail for some knockdown to combine with your stuns, and if you are worried about stunned mobs staggering away, you can go Mu Mastery for electric fences to keep them put.

I've got a DA/EM that I put together for the same reason that you are -stacking stuns.
It is very effective mitigation although can be end heavy as you're spamming attacks to maintain the stuns.
If I was starting again I'd go with DA/WM as War Mace is both stun heavy and has a good mix of AoE and ST damage.

How are stuns on KM?

Having recently slotted up Fault on a Stone Melee Tanker (after foolishly ignoring it for a long time) I can tell you it by itself is an amazing amount of control and, if supplemented by another area stun like Oppressive Gloom, ought to be amazing mitigation. With slotting, the stun will last longer than the recharge, allowing you to keep foes indefinitely stunned if you cycle it. Fault has a mag of 2, with a 50% chance of an additional magnitude, and hence stuns all minions and half of all LTs it hits. PLUS it does knockdown and taunt.

Stone Melee has some knockdown and stun in other powers too, and the awesomeness that is Seismic Smash, a quick-animating extreme damage mag 4 hold.

It's not the perfect set for all needs -- not an exotic damage type, endurance-heavy, and limited in its AoE -- but Stone Melee is very good if you like melee controlling.

Lastly, it has thunderous sound effects and screen shake (if you're into that sort of thing).

I'd rank stunning sets as such, in order of stunning ability:

Stone > Electric*/** > SS* > Energy > Warmace > MA** > Kinetic > StJ > Dark**

*: Too much knockback in the main stun power to be viable.

**: Some attacks take an additional stun procs beyond the taunt proc - specifically,the immobilise and endurance modification sets.

Stone does have the best stuns, but I would hate to deal the the endurance issues on a DA/Stone build. Even with a ToE process in rark Regen, PS in stamina, a miracle and numina, and standard end slotting, it would be hard on the blue until cardiac.

If you want some other control options, DA/DM and DA/SJ can stack fears, or you can overslot power sink and take cardiac to dran a mob of end in a single power sink on an Elec armor.

Because of this thread, my next Tanker is going to be Dark/Stone/Mu. I've always wanted a Tanktroller and Fault + Oppressive Gloom + Electrifying Fences sounds very appealing. But to be honest, I may be too lazy to go villainside so I might have to settle for Dark/Stone/Earth instead. Fault + Stalagmites + Oppressive Gloom, and then Quicksand which will hopefully prevent too much wandering from the stunned mobs.

Thanks for the replies.
I love stone melee and have a SD/Stone tanker as my first tanker. Even on that one it is end heavy so DA/Stone seem almost impossible until very high levels.

I started a DA/EM for testing. Too low level to tell yet. One of the reasons I went with /EM is that I see so little of it. In the context of this idea, it does not seem to be a bad set and I can even afford to skip T9 power. I even have a fun concept for it. If I manage to level him quickly I'll report back on how it plays out.

It is now extremely tempting to fit in the Fear aura together with the fear from the power pool. The latter is lousy with very long recharge and high end cost though, but PBAoE mag 4 fear combo on top of all the stuns and -ToHit thrown in sounds sweet, even though not practical and costly: 3 power picks (AoE taunt, st fear, AoE fear). The taunt I can use, but the st fear will get no use.

Ugh. I hate Energy Melee since the nerf (way back when). HATE it. I would delete all my characters before I made another character with the current Energy Melee.

Best of luck tho. Some people still like it.

Lewis

If I take Provoke I'd use it, but squeezing in 3 power picks with the added end cost of yet another toggle is too much - especially for leveling. 50 respec I may reconsider just for the heck of it.

My hero is still low level, but so far I start to see some of the "issues" with EM. The first 3 attacks are quick, do good damage and I produce a lot of stuns. I ran the numbers and in a 1-2-3 chain I have an 84% chance to get some stun applied (mag >= 2).

True, that in itself is entirely unimpressive since MA for example has 75% for a mag 3 in a single T3 attack that is even longer in duration that the T3 Bone Smasher. Slower recharge of Cobra Strike is the only redeeming factor for EM's Bone Smasher.

The place where things get better for EM is mag stacking. I get about 23.4% chance to stack mag>3 on the first 1-2-3 attack cycle and stun a boss. It then increase rapidly an allows to maintain a stacked mag nearly 50% of the time. This is good initially, but again MA with a single attack will rack up similar percentages once Cobra Strike enjoys some +rech.

In the context of the stun master I am yet far from the main point of combining whirling hands 30% AoE stun with Opressive Gloom. Again, when comparing with MA this will look unimpressive as Dragon's Tail has 75% chance for KD, executes faster and does more damage (even though I can less about the damage). KD instead of stun is not what I want for a stun master, but the 75% vs. 30% is a huge difference, only partially compensated by a stun duration of 6s vs. shorter knock-down recovery (3 sec?).

I start to see the direction this is heading. As a tanker set, I don't think that damage is what will hold this set back - it is the weak secondary effects. As with Defender vs. Blaster, for the tanker vs. scrapper the secondary effects are more important than the damage of the attacks.

The powers are loaded with low-probability short-duration stuns as the only effect. Combining all of them will produce a nice up to very good single target chain/stack stuns - and that is all. MA set will get a result almost as good stacking stuns on a single target from just two fast recycling, high stun% attacks (T3 & T9).

Versus multiple targets, EM will proc a stun often as a result of many low stun% attacks. Other sets will put status effects and knocks on surrounding targets at still a higher rate simply due to higher % to proc.

I will still play this toon to its 30s to see how it plays out once I get the key powers (I just like his concept). I also have a Will/MA tanker only a little ahead of him so I can compare. Perhaps SO's will allow stuns to overlap and stack more and the DA/EM stun master will come ahead.

###### SUGGESTION #########

To me it stats to look like the way it "fix" this set (if it even needs fixing) is to improve its secondary effects - either by tweaking the numbers or by giving them added value. e.g.: this is energy melee, so why not some "siphon energy" effects? DM heals in "Siphon life". Elec siphons End. Kinetics siphons Dmg, Cold Siphons Rech

SO, how about this:

"Energy siphon" (overloaded on the T6 "stun" power, or the weak T2 "Energy Punch") could act like "power boost" that increase the secondary effects of your powers. This is a unique effects that already exists in the game in the Blaster energy manipulation set, so it fits perfectly with the theme!