Kioshi

Hasten will never be mandatory. I don't have it on my claws/sr, I see no need for it for example, nothing in SR except Elude which i skipped would benefit her much.

I mentioned it's especially sweet on /EA because Energize is quite on a long timer, and /Ea has such good base defense numbers it's probably the set that's easiest to softcap to s/l/e/f/c (and neg if you go a bit overboard) AND get crazy overall recharge after the changes, and Hasten helps that. I've seen comparisons among ice armor and /EA in the Stalker forums, it's way easier to build /EA for def and get more recharge compared to /IA (for example Kinetic Shield gives 16.5% s/l def on Stalkers, and Frozen Armor 12.75% - and scrappers/brutes still get Energy Cloak which gives 3.75% def to all unslotted, so /EA reaches the softcap with less IOs for that).

I'd love a non-fx option for Hasten tho... I spent the night playing my first /regen toon, and Hasten is almost mandatory on regen since your clicks are the main source of mitigation at least on SOs... I spent 40 minutes on her costume, even bought the vanguard katana just for the toon, and when I got hasten the glowing hands almost made me cry

I agree, but the funny part is that Doms were among the least popular ATs when someone (Arcana?) ran the numbers. I was the only dom on more teams than I can count pre-i12 (I left the game shortly after), leveled her the normal hard way. There were plenty of fire/psis for farming and mind/fires for pvp but Stalkers were also very popular in pvp, I believe they still are in what's left of it.

But the devs radically revamped doms, including making the Psi assault more balanced, which had the effect of gutting the fire/psi crowd who farmed, and now you see quite a few of them, usually at least one in each team. Maybe they just can't figure out what to do with Stalkers?

While a 70 radius debuff would be OPed and a bit absurd, it's actually weird because Mid's says it has a 70 feet range for some reason. It also says 15 feet radius, but it's understandable that you mistook it because if you pick other auras there's no 'range' value in Mids at least, for example Shadow Fall just lists the radius (40) as Time's Juncture (25), the 'range' field doesn't appear like in Venomous Gas (and wow, Time's Juncture, available at level 4, does a lil more -tohit than VG, also does more -dam and has a much bigger radius - it does slow instead of -res but otherwise they are quite alike since -def is not that useful by the time you get VG especially since Envenom already does massive -def, I don't wanna sound like 'Poison needs love' again but VG with a 25' radius like Time's Juncture would be nice).

That's good to know. On my dm/da scrapper I love OG, because it protects my scrapper AND the team since Shroud doesn't hold aggro, and it's not like I mind minions wandering because I only care about getting Soul Drain off, since DM doesn't have significant AoE. For a tanker it might be good to have even both, although OG might not make much difference.

On my claws/da and dm/da brutes I want to try CoF only because I want some attacks and that they stand still (especially the claws one), but at least it's good to know that if I 'suffer' too much with CoF, OG won't hinder me too much, no need to use it all the time anyway on a brute.

Well a 50 SS/Fire with investment is still faster than a CEBR, I enjoyed the CEBR form because it was lazier, and fast too unless I forgot to click hasten before entering. But I did it on two 'suboptimal' ATs to get to 25ish - a fire/fire tanker and a warshade. It was when the rezzed mobs gave xp, but the Tanker was very slow (even with combustion and blazing aura). OTOH the WS was kinda fast (sure, not as fast as any brute) - I got nova at 6, went to a level 1 ambush, and as long as I was softcapped I was mass murdering mobs using the AoEs, the mob ranged attacks were weak so he could survive the occasional hit, and after each time I used the two AoEs my insp tray would get a nice refill, it was way more entertaining than the Tanker which I deleted (hard for me to have fun with the AT, trying a SD/MA now who's 22 but while the damage isn't bad, I hate soloing her, too often I use my attack chain and there are mobs with like 1 health left and I have to 'waste' another attack, guess that's why I love damage auras so much on melee toons).

Yup the way he is now (haven't gotten kick like I posted, he has Tough so 7.5% less rech than the build above) he was very usable on some +2 Lady Grey and ITFs we did (leader bumped the diff because half the team was incarnated), one of the reasons is that Footstomp+Burn kills stuff very fast, that's why I'm able to taunt mobs.

Solo I did some missions at +2/x8 and he did fine (with heavy insp usage), but I had to lower the diff way down with arachnos, like 0/x4 (even carnies were ok, malta I didn't try at x8 because the malta missions were right after the Arachnos in my aligment missions so I didn't change the diff back) - I *think* it's because when you face too many arachnos solo, even if you are softcapped with lucks, there are many mobs shooting you from range with exotic damage so he got owned, my frankensloted 40 sm/elec is actually better against then because of Fault and Elec Armor's resists to end drain, psi, etc.

Dunno if it will be much better against those when I finally get to make a 'really decent' PvE primary build (plan is to have good s/l, but he's not very rich atm because I bought lots of miracles and numinas for some 20s toons that were making me nervous with end issues )

Damn you're good, I had to click f1-f5 with Spin/Typhoon on auto on the lowbie farms so I couldn't do it AFK, I'd die without all the insp eating

Well if you take my 'omg' farmer (a 50+3 ss/fire broot) he caps tickets in 1.5 ambush so he won't feel it as much. But that's an IOed out incarnated toon and in a normal farm the difference would be that he'd have to move more.

But for the lowbie self-pling farms, where you can take a brute to 30 in 4 hours (and to 50 in ten according to some) it might be significant since in those you're not fighting +4 mobs and you rely on more ambushes to cap tickets - you one shot mobs with some fury, while my 50 doesn't one-shot the pink lts and bosses (they give more inf/tickets/prestige/xp tho), so while in the lowbie farms you can cap tickets quite fast too with an unslotted toon, you depend on defeating more mobs, so more ambushes.

Endreds in your attacks is more important, one endred in each toggle is good enough (40%ish, more for death shroud and if you pick it, Cloak of Fear).

Get 3 -KB IOs or at least one instead of Acro, /DA is heavy on the blue bar enough without it, especially since you'll want Tough and if you go for defense IOing, Weave too.

Well like I said I don't think my 50 ss/fire will even feel this, if I go thru 2 lvl 54 ambushes with him I cap tickets before the glowie. But on both my claws/ (elec and fire) who do level 3 farms I usually kill at least 3 ambushes to cap. It's sad because I prefer to farm with the clawgirls when I'm too lazy to click on all the SS/Fire powers

The problem is the Stj sounds when you HIT. It doesn't feel like you landed a hard punch like when you hit with Smite from Dark Melee, which has a very punchy sfx.

If you're talking about my build (it has 27.8% fire def) yeah sure you can replace it for Spring Attack. I always have an AoE up so I don't care much (I went for spiritual). A better idea for a farm build (talking about mine) would be to get consume instead of taunt, slotting it with the same 6 mocking beratements since you're always at the target cap and will always gain the max end - or maybe 6 efficacy adaptors, you'll lose a bit of recharge and fire def tho. Endurancfe is not an issue for me because Ageless always seems to recharge when my end starts to burn, I rarely eat a blue even at +4/8/bosses.

I kept RoTP+Taunt because I run the occasional TF with him while the primary build which will be a decent all rounder isn't done (too much altitis) since he is good enough to off-tank (I actually have tough instead of kick in the farming build for now).

Anyway since insps rain and the farm is over quickly I actually don't even run maneuvers and weave on them (only the FA shields and CJ), so I go with about 20% fire def and use 1-2 purples at a time, 54 bosses usually drop big insps so I'm good as long as I have 40%+ fire def. The rest I convert to reds. And even when I'm too lazy I just mash f1-f5 and I always have enough def and damage to go through the farm since when you're at +4/x8/bosses you don't need more than 1.5 ambush + click glowie to cap tickets.

Before getting Mu I had Fire Mastery (he started as a villain but I got him to 50 without the Patron arc), Mu mastery is a bit faster but nothing staggering imo. What made more difference was getting T3 incarnate stuff (Spiritual, Ageless, Reactive - I got Pyronic for judgement and I hear Ion is better but I only get to use it once per mission before I cap tickets so not worth the hassle to go after t3 Ion now for me). Since at those levels of recharge I have AoEs up faster than I can click them (and I'm not exactly at maximum concentration when farming, even with binds I sometimes click Rage/FE five seconds later than I should), maybe I wouldn't even feel a difference if I still had Fire Mastery, anyway Spring Attack should be a good choice if you don't wanna go Mu and don't need RoTP which I use for TFs and used in iTrials (not that I needed it so bad I couldn't have used wakies, I like self rezzes especially this one that's so flashy), the last time I died on a farm I was like 50+1 with the alpha unslotted I think, when I had just upped from +2/x8 to +4/x8 with bosses so it took some time to adjust, plus I was barely IOed.

• On Mission Architect maps, using multiple Ambushes will result in reduced rewards for Ambushes past the first. The first spawned Ambush will give full rewards, the second will give 75% rewards, the third will give 56.25% rewards (75% of 75%), and continuing to diminish to the cap.

(patch notes for beta)

I'm not very concerned with numbers, I just threw some around for Poison Trap to show it's still a great power.

I like Beam Rifle a lot, and I think it can go well with most secondaries, it's just that the nature of Poison specifically drove me crazy, as you'll be using your secondary very often even at TO level, like a low level emp uses her heals a lot, and at later levels use her buffs whenever they're up.

Actually looking at the secondaries, and since speed boost is AoE now, I think maybe only /time would bother me almost like /poison on a weapon set because I'd be using time crawl quite often, since I'm not usually bothered by redraw and even /Rad is not that bothersome since in the post 30 game you won't be healing often and your anchors won't melt in 5 seconds because you'll likely learn when and who to use as anchors by then and not need to activate them more than once per mob. Even soloing at say, x1/+3 you will likely want to use envenom+weaken once in each boss, so that's 4 times if there are two, and at least the sensation of urgency to keep Disintegration going kinda gets in the way for me.

Envenom and Weaken have awesome numbers (Weaken alone has double the -res of Enervating Field, and a bit more than double from Acid Mortar, which is fair since those two are fire and forget, especially mortar), and no doubt /Poison is a good AV soloing set, but even in this scenario I'd like the -regen to be stronger (like Benumb) since it's the only debuff that stacks on a target, you'll still want to use it every time it's up on an AV because the base value is low, if it were strong like other sets you'd only use it once or twice until it expires on an AV/GM, solo or teaming. But the -regen is the same as Transfusion from kin, I recall not being able to kill a GM on a team (I was a tanker, there was only a real damage dealer iirc) and we were only able to do it after I asked the two /kin trollers to spam transfusion like no tomorrow to help with the -regen.

I'll still level another poison but since the other factor that 'killed' my BR/Poison was the fact that I was never in need to be in melee and the t9 is a melee aura, I'm making a controller with a PbAoE aura, probably elec since I have played fire and ice control to death and my lowbie elec/thorns dom isn't impressing me except for being able to drain mobs so fast even before SOs

I also stack hasten with lightning reflexes so I was able to skip stone fists and only use the mallets and S.Smash. I do use boxing occasionally tho, because she is level 40 and frankenslotted, so no real set bonuses. Boxing is a bit worse in raw damage than Stone fist but it may be a good substitute without elec's rech bonus since you're getting it anyways.

Anyway I never missed AS because the occasional KD from the mallets, the hold from SS and Fault provides more than enough mitigation for me since level 20, she could tank for a team since then if I used Fault a lot (but when I had to tank, since there was no Energize and elec armor was very fragile, I had no Fury, that's less of a problem now that it decays slower even using fault and tremor a lot).

/Fire is a good combo because Burn helps AoE a ton and has a low end cost, but in that case I'd look for the health uniques and 4-slotting stamina (PF proc) and consume (mix of acc/end/rech from the 2 sets can max end and rech), I didn't do that on my stone/elec and suffered a lot with the blue bar until level 35 when Power Sink changed the toon completely.

This thread has been quite active, time to post ponies!

There were some minor buffs before but the biggest one was in december/2008 (Acemace posted this in some 2009 thread):

This made Clobber the hardest hitting attack in WM, and still does a 100% mag 3 stun, and increased the set's AoE since Crowd Control has a 180 degree arc and Shatter only 45, that's why they switched the target cap for those.

You get Clobber at level 8 on a Brute/Scrapper, and for comparison, it has a 2.92 damage scale while Midnight Grasp, a 32 power, has 2.76. The other heavy hitters (KO Blow, Seismic Smash, Total Focus, Concentrated Strike) have a 3.56 dmg scale but take longer to recharge (20 secs, except 25 for KO Blow, Clobber 16s, MG 15s). Of those, only KO Blow you get also at 8, but before SOs KO Blow take quite a bit to recharge since it has the longest rech of all those attacks.

Besides those, only Energy Transfer (8.01 dmg scale) and Greater Fire Sword (3.15) do more damage than Clobber. I forgot if Brutes got Broadword now (I know they have Katana, so I guess BS too), just saw that Headsplitter is a bit higher than clobber, 2.99, it recharges in less time (14s) but has no stun and it's lethal damage (although it's a narrow cone).

And /EA got buffed twice since this thread began. Hence the snarky responses to the first post like veteran melee players saying 'wait wm/ea is anything but strong'. They were right at the time.