After reading through the Great Terror thread, I will say I'm intrigued by the build though I have nowhere near enough PL's or resources to pull it off. It did get me thinking however of how well the elemental portion of the AA tree would work on a mechanic build. I also saw the idea of using 4 warlock levels in a repeater build to stack 3d6 light damage on every attack and the ranger can add even more than that for a similar AP cost.

I just finished up my 2nd life with a Pally/Rogue mechanic, 1st life was a Rogue 18/Arti 2 and now I'm interested in messing around with some Ranger in the mix. I'm thinking something like Rogue 12/Ranger 6/Arti 2. That gives me 3 bonus feats from ranger, 1 from arti(more if you count heavy repeater that I wouldn't get from Rogue) and the ability to use rune arms. The goal would be tier 5 mechanic as usual, but then taking up to tier 4 of AA to get all the extra die on elemental imbues. Obviously I'd miss out on the extra crit multiplier from core 5, a few SA dice and most of the assassin tree. I'm wondering if I can make up for at least some of that with imbues.

The force imbue adds 1d6 at rank 3 as well as 1d10 to 3d10 on crit(doesn't specify what multiplier is required to get the full 3d10) and it scales with spellpower. With the 3 die increases following the chain you would end up with 7d6 which isn't bad. So on top of your physical damage, you'd be getting 7d6 scaling damage and another 2d10 from the runearm(non scaling). As the bulid is int based, you'd get some decent synergy with spellcraft and the skill points to max it.

From my understanding, nothing in the game is resistant to force damage and there are no saves so it is more consistent damage than relying on SA and crits. On the other hand it can't reach the insane damage levels that the former can when you do get crit and SA damage.

So I guess what I'm asking is, can this be a viable build if one were to stack up force damage? With all the free feats it'd open up different possibilities (weapon focus, insightful reflexes, etc..) whereas normally you're extremely feat starved. I'm not saying I expect it to crush through EE, but wondering if it could handle at least EH.

I rolled a 1cleric/14rogue morninglord iconic and spend points on AA and Mechanic. The good part is switching to a bow for manyshot. (You have to switch to bow to get the imbues to work on the repeater anyway). The imbue adds good damage for that level but I am not sure if it is worth the investment in epics, had to test ist with level 20+ on Lamaland.

I've been working through some heroic PLs using 2arti/6ranger as a base with Repeaters.
22 AA for 7d8 electric imbue with the option for force imbues for things resistant to electric
15 Harper for intel to hit/damage and +2 intel

That 37AP alone is getting 100+ elemental damage per bolt at level 9  with trash +magnetic gear. Think I'm getting around 150 electric spell power, hitting mobs for 400 damage a click.

DukeOfQueens wrote on Mar 9^th, 2016 at 2:53pm:

Yeah, an elemental imbued repeater build is stupidly overpowered in heroics. 

The overpoweredness tapers off somewhat in epics though.   It's still respectable, it just doesn't scale quite as well as other things in higher epic content.

I'll agree with most of these folks.  My current alt is a shuriken build 9 monk/6 ranger/5 warlock.  The idea was exactly as you said, to discover if the imbues held up enough to make it worthwhile. 

At level 20, he's got 234 fire spellpower, with tier 4 fire-focused AA imbue (extra dice, didn't grab another element in that line), my imbues are hitting for about 150-ish fire.  As folks have said, in heroics that's quite enough.  I'm not so certain I'll be able to get an insane amount more of fire spellpower, but I'll find out as I dive into epics.  My gut says no, it's not going to hold up.  BUT, the volume of fire on a shuri build MIGHT bring it up to "okay."

I will say that I use Force imbue for when I'm fighting fire immune mobs.  It does indeed have d6 base, but it also has d10 crit...is that equal to d8?  I dunno.  I don't care.  I know that the damage is less when I'm not using fire, but it isn't omfg-I'm-doing-no-damage-at-all less.  With current force spellpower, my alternate dmg imbue (force) is doing maybe 120 average per shuriken.

The worst of all the imbues is by far the light.  Even on my lvl 30 main with 298 light spellpower, the tier 4 EnlSpirit light imbues on attacks are equalling about 50 light per hit...generously speaking.  For the amount of AP and levels I had to give up...this feels like a waste.  Is it more?  Certainly.  But, I dunno if it was worth it honestly.  Flavor-wise sure, but missing out on all the NICE things I could have grabbed from DWS instead if I'd remained monk/ranger instead of monk/ranger/warlock makes me feel that while doing this experiment was worth doing, the findings are so far disappointing.

So my understanding now is that force is generally only used as a backup as it's easier to pump elemental spell power to high levels. I was working off the assumption that you could probably attain a similar force power as elemental and that the extra crit damage would make up for the d6 vs d8 die size.

After seeing my damage as a level 20 using Mech I'm pretty sure the Imbues won't hold up as well in epics though the options that open up by getting the free ranger feats would allow some extra versatility. This would probably be great for burning out PL's but not as an "end game build".