Jibikao

Drawing aggro to yourself so the pets can live is really not my idea of "balance". If melee pets can't survive even 5s after going in, the problem is the pets, not the USERS! I hate to say it! People who tell me I should take Taunt so my pets can live is not my idea of Mastermind/Summoner. If I want to taunt and draw aggro to myself, I'll play Tanker. No offense.

I like Ninjas but Genin's squishiness (or pets in general) is really driving me nuts.

I have a lvl 46 Ninja/FF. Last week I was bored so I took him out (after shelving him for two years) and I did regular mish with just Jounins and Oni. I was curious to see what my performance is like if I only need to babysit 3 pets. Well, damage is definitely less but it is a bit more tolerable as I don't have to constantly Aid Other Genins.

On my Fortunata, my base damage in my attacks aren't that high (but fast!). I carry so many toggles (double assault, double maneuver, tough, hover, mez shield, tactics and darkest night on AVs) so I can survive well while providing constant dps. Endurance issue is more important for dps in the long run.

However, I can see both Bane and Night Widow using Musculature as they have attacks that may benefit more.


I am going to try Interface with Fort first. The only thing I really need is more ST damage.

I finally saw a 51+1 DM/Fiery Brute in action and I have to vote for Brute and only because Burn gets +damage from Fury and also the healing is going to be a bit better on Brute.

However, I don't think DM/Fiery Scrapper is that far off. Which AT do you prefer? If you've been playing on the blue side, then feel free to try Brute (and vice versa).

I took web envelop. You really don't need the two inferior blast attacks from patron but the envelop is good for grounding flyers.

My MA/Will finally hit 50 on the weekend!

Yes, on paper, MA has the highest Single Target DPS and it should be because the set has ZERO AoE attack. It is a bit ahead of EM and DM before critical damage considered. Once you add in critical damage, MA is ahead of EM quite a bit.

However!!!

MA is all smashing damage which can be a pain against certain type of enemies. Both EM and DM have dual-damage type and EM stacks stuns better, while DM has good utilities. (DM also has a small cone)

So if you only care about the highest dps on paper, then MA is the king for Stalker.

The word "optimal" suggests to me that there are other things to consider. Optimal is what I would consider utility + damage and I would probably put Dark Melee ahead of Martial Arts.

What MA allows me to do is to ignore Assassin Strike. I rarely use AS after I slotted Eagle Claw. Sometimes it is a better to start with BU + Eagle because it is a guaranteed mag 3 stun. An example would be fighting against Circle of Thorn Lieuts who heal themselves when health drop low. Well, an AS can't kill him in one hit (+2 or +3), so unless you follow up with a very quick hit like Crane Kick, he will heal up. However, if you start with BU + Eagle Claw, he won't have a chance to heal and die.

This also applies to any boss that has god-mode when health is low. It is better to try to stack enough holds with Eagle Claw and Cobra than trying to deliver Assassin Strike in the beginning which triggers god-mode.


PS: Oh, Carnie Strongman has a mode that gives him a lot of smashing resistance. I didn't know this until recently. So yeah, you definitely want to stun him before he casts that.

How good is Ninja Blade now?

Well, between Ninja and Broadsword, I would take Ninja because Ninja is much faster. I wish they could distinguish these two sets more besides just activation/damage ratio.

"Useless" is very harsh. There are some bosses that will take you 50% or longer to kill like Ritki bosses and Crey Tanker Boss.

I guess that's why Ninja Blade can take chance to reduce resistance proc. It helps eventually.

Besides Phantom Army, Singy is the only pet that rarely dies!

I use Singy as part of my control power. If I am on a team with no tanker/brute, I sometimes just toss it up front to take alpha (but not in between the mob to knockback them all back)

If we are getting too much aggro and there is a corner, I would toss is right at the turning point to block the path. The Circle of Thorn map is perfect for Singy! I toss it in front of me while I blast behind it. lol


Gravity/Fiery Perma Dominator is my new favorite. All ranged (Lift, Fire Blast and Blaze as my attack chain) so I can hide behind Singy if I want.

Well, in my 5th run somebody got sound loop bug again, so it's almost guaranteed that one of us gets sound loop bug in 2nd mission.

I don't know what it is in 2nd mission that causes sound loop bug so often.

I post here because I want to know if it's just our problems or it's quite common. Of the 8 people that play Tin Mage, 4 out of 8 get sound loop bug in second mission (which includes me). The other 4 haven't got any sound loop bug yet, so maybe the problem is on our end? Who knows.

But 30' feet radius is still not that large considering many squishies stand on the back or Stalker may go up front to eliminate something.

Guys, did you get a lot of sound bug while doing 2nd mish in Tin Mage SF? I've done 4 runs so far and in each one, somebody got a sound bug and eventually crashed. In the 4th run, it was my turn to get the sound bug.

That map seems to be too small to have that much going on with all those "BB Gun Shooting"... bew bew bew...bew bew. That's all I hear.

Is this common?

I didn't read the whole build (I rarely do that) but here are some tips:


1. Mako Set is probably the cheapest "good" melee set you can get. Buy them when you can. Use a AE farming mish to farm tickets to buy rare salvages if you don't have enough rares.

2. I would choose Muscular Alpha as the only thing Stalker is lacking is damage. I see you picked Cardiac. Cardiac is an AMAZING, BUILD-CHANGING alpha but as a Stalker I really think you need to get more damage. You can use sets to offset a lot of endurance problem and I see that you took Physical Perfection and Superior Conditioning. Cardiac will be overkill on endurance.

The thing with Musculature is that tier 1 sucks. You can barely notice any difference. Cardiac makes a HUGE difference with just tier 1 but Musculature needs higher tier to see the good benefit. To give you an example, my Kinetic Stalker with tier 3 gives me about +53 damage on Concentrated Strike and it's only getting better at tier 4. With Martial Arts having the highest number of high "base" damage attacks (Cobra, Crane, Axe and Eagle), Musculature should increase the damage a lot at tier 4.

3. I am assuming you team a lot with lvl 50 so you may want to get one of the Patron AoE. As good as MA's ST damage, having zero AoE is just painful on a large team. Having one aoe doesn't mean your ST damage sucks. It just means that you have the ability to do one decent aoe damage if the situation is right.

4. If you really want to take Weave, I would drop Maneuver for Assault. Unless your goal is to solo an AV/Pylon, you don't really need that much defense. What you need is DAMAGE, DAMAGE, DAMAGE. On a team, you are never going to steal aggro away from Brute/Tanker anyway and you already have Weave.


5. Crane Kick doesn't have the highest damage-per-activation. Storm is higher and so is Axe. However, Crane has style and it goes out "fast" (and then you get stuck in that animation). If you don't feel like chasing the knocked target, then Storm, Cobra, Axe and Eagle is good enough attack chain. I took Crane and only use Storm to finish off foes with little health left.

1. The -damage debuff portion is always on when you hit a target. You can test this by hitting a pylon. It makes a clear difference (but not enough during regular fights as things die too quick).

2. Concentrated Strike has 100% "critical chance" from hidden but instead of doing "critical damage", it gives Stalker a 20% chance to instantly recharge Build Up. Concentrated Strike can also critical outside of hidden and the team-member buff does apply to the critical chance. You just need to watch for your Build Up. It took me a while to get used to it because I normally don't use Build UP more than once in each mob.

3. I have a level shift Kin/Dark Stalker. Burst (the pbaoe attack) has 100% chance to critical from Hidden which is pretty decent. I think if you want to have a better experience with Kinetic, go with either Stalker or Scrapper because Stalker gets 100% critical Burst and Scrapper finally gets a true 20s Heavy Hitter.

After the pet AI change, Grave Knights don't seem to cycle their sword attacks as often because they use Gloom and Dark Blast a lot, which is not a bad thing (as sometimes it makes them stay away from melee).

I really really really hope they can add Accurate Tohit Debuff sets in Grave Knight (Lich has it) because each dark attack can trigger Negative damage. I think that's way better than AH Proc in Knights.