What do most of you guys use for building/maintaining AoI stacks? Right now I'm using Advantaged Vicious Cyclone and it seems pretty "meh". It costs so dang much and is very unreliable. When luck is being lame it can take 2 or 3 maintains to get full stacks.

What do y'all recommend as a KB AoE? I want one thats reliable, cheap, and fast. I don't care if it does a lot of damage or how far it knocks.

I was thinking of using Force Eruption. If I pick it up with the advantage, i could open with a Defile tap, Eruption tap, and follow to a Venom Breath.

Thoughts or comments?

I use roomsweeper on my toxic toon (Blackout) and I love it! Especially with the advantage to stun them, which procs off the tap and doesn't have to be fully charged.

It's useful for two reasons, you can build both Enrage and AoI stacks. If you just want fast AoI stack, all you have to do is tap Roomsweeper, it's cheap and executes a lot faster than Vicious Cyclone. I was very disappointed with VC to be honest.

I'm almost 100% sure that Forcer eruption or any other force attack will not trigger the AoI stacks. What I usually do it tap defile to pull the group, block with Ebon Void (the advantage helps with survivability), RS tap or fully charged for Enraged to send them flying and just finish them off with Defile blasts or Venomous Breath. I particularly like to send them flying and use VB as they are flying hehehe

I figured all knockbacks worked with giving stacks because as you said Vicious Cyclone isn't reliable.
The infernal tree isn't about knockbacks, might or force is, AotI should be about infections and DoTs.

I'd say anytime you infect someone it adds a stack. The mechanic should work like this:

Give Aspect of the Infernal the ability to make all infernal attacks have a 33% chance to 'infect'
To be infected doesn't do any damage or increase damage, it is merely an indicator for receiving
stacks of AotI.

Just as an fyi I tried Pyre/Backdraft (intended as a poison blast with a lingering cloud). While it produced reliable knockback, it did not proc any stacks of the aspect at all, no matter how many times I tested it. I sent in a bug report and mentioned it on the forum. On the forum, I was told that some out-of-set powers produced stacks and some didn't. Further, I was told that AotI stacks only added ~1-2% damage per stack, so I have been doing without a knock since my concept does not include punches or chains.

p.s.: I just tested Force Eruption in the PHouse and it is apparently suffering the same bug as Pyre, as I saw no stacks added.

same with spark storm/toggle adv (did'nt try the vanilla sparkstorm)

and shadow embrace /adv

So basically it seems like only knocks from the Infernal Supernatural tree give stacks, and while the toggle is only for Toxic the stacks are all damage and Infection is a hold instead of a DOT. Am I the only one who sees this as odd?

No knock synergy with out of set knock powers, Infection debuff not doing as the name suggests (If they intended the set to have a lot of holds they should change the name of the debuff IMO), and the Aspect, while being nice for a multi set character because they give bonus to all damage, force anybody using the Aspect to have at least one Infernal knock.

Something is odd with the set.

Haymaker, Uppercut, Havoc Stomp and Inexorable Tides all reliably procced stacks in a test. Shockwave did not. Tides and Stomp are especially effective, being AoE and thus knocking multiple targets.

Unfortunately this didn't get addressed during the melee pass, when the set was revamped.

Good to know, not that it helps a Fire character picking this up because of the synergy with Toxic, but still good to know I guess. :)

I looked into this a while ago when i wanted to use TK wave and TK eruption it seems only the powers that were altered around the same time AotI were added work with it so pretty much might/MA/Bestial some one suggested at the time it could have something to do with knock protection.

I always meant to work my way thrugh all the knock causing powers in the game and see which do and don't but i never did.

I just use Vile Lariat since I needed a way to make enemies bleed for use with Devour Essence, anyway. One thing to note is that you can build stacks against inanimate objects with it so if you have the patience, you can wait for it to recharge each time and attack 5 crates to have it maxed out from the start of a mission. No idea if it works the same way for other powers or not.