Alpha_Zulu

/Nin,/WP, or /SR are good secondaries. Hell I'd venture to say go /regen before /EA.

The heal is garbage and the endurance powers you don't actually need on a stalker.

Merge the bloody markets already.

ELF TALKER should try reading posts carefully before responding.

Let's say for sake of argument if 90% of the registered players in this ladder brought a thermal, that'd be pretty stupid and lame. No point in having a ladder if that's what it's gonna be.

I just came from a Metal concert. I saw Dethklok, Mastodon, High on Fire, and Converge.

Metal is the ****.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZX62imOapU

As much of a flaming doosh everyone thinks I am.

I'm quite open to any questions/comments/suggestions anyone may have in regards to PvP (and yes PvE) as well.

If you need/want help with builds, tactics, etc. Feel free to send me a tell in game

@Alpha-Zulu or send me a PM on the forums.

lolPoN
lolHoJ
lolStryke Force

Ya'll are talking about builds and what not a lot, which is all cool and all that but as someone posted earlier. Knowing is half the battle.

Nine times out of ten someone gets wrecked repeatedly it's cause they're doing something wrong or the opposing side knows how to handle the situation best to tip the scales in their favor. If I see the opposing side bringing out just a bunch of scrappers and tanks, what should I do? Grab the corruptors and dominators to debuff them and make them base run. If they're bringing emps and blasters? Bring out the stalkers and dominators to hold/AS spike them.

Example : /Elec scrapper comes into zone thinking he'll do mad damage and can't die. So what do I as a stalker do? I wait for him to do Thunderstrike or jump in the air. Why? Cause the /elec power Grounded only works when you're on the ground. So what happens when he's in the air? He gets a crane kick to the face which knocks him on his ***, and then he gets placated and AS'd by myself and my fellow stalker teammate which results in him getting wrecked/annoyed very quickly.

Builds are great and all that, but what it really comes down to is experience, knowing how to react to what's happening around you, and being able to read the situation accurately to see what's going on. Maybe that's repeating myself, but that's just the way I look at PvP when I go into zones/arena. None of my toons are like super duper ultra mega deluxe purpled out to the gills. All of my PvP toons are i12 builds, I refuse to change to I15 builds, why? No need to. Just from pvping enough I can already see that experience always has and always will trump builds/IOs. If you've got 5 purple sets and PvP IOs in your build but you can't even set up an AS spike, you're pretty much useless. The opposite is true, if you've got lolSOs in your build but you know what the hell you're doing, you're pretty much a force that should be taken seriously.

Period.

All stalker team with a bunch of people that like never play stalkers. That's cool. How many ASes did you guys set up?

My initial reaction would be the player. But when I think about it, it's a combination of both.

Do I want Stray kitten playing thermal or Silas? And is also depends on the context, are we PvPing? Or are we pveing? Is it a Master of LRSF? Or is it a lolITF?

My more often than not, I'll say the player rather than the toon.

This receives the

"Oz Stamp of Approval" for total awesomeness. If you don't know how to play a thermal, you should now after reading this. The guide is what I like to call "Dead on Balls Accurate" (DOBA), when it comes to informing/educating others about how to play a particular role.

Silas pretty much hit the nail on the head with just about every major aspect that comes with having to play a thermal.

A good portion of corruptor players don't know how to play a thermal or they treat it like playing a blaster. Which of course not true. Thermals, buff/debuff first, then attack stuff if you have tiem. One thing I want to stress. Under no circumstances, should you EVER, put Warmth on auto and put yourself on follow. Anyone who does this, doesn't really know how to play the bloody set and it just saying "hey I'm a clueless noob that doesn't how to do stuff". The only exception to this rule would be for stuff like hami raids/rikti raids. I wouldn't get all up in someone's face about it, but I myself don't ever put warmth on auto. I'd much rather leave Hasten on auto, that's just me.



Slotting Recommendations

Melt armor - I went with 2 recharges, 1 end redux, 2 Lysosome HOs, and one achilles heal proc. (This power can use a metric @ss ton of endurance)

Fire/Plasma Shield - I would suggest 3 titanium coatings and 2 impervium armors. As Silas mentioned, thermal can be VERY end heavy. You need as much recovery as possible. (If you're able to afford it, picking up a miracle+recovery and numina++ and putting them in health will GREATLY help with endurance recovery issues you'll encounter when playing a thermal)


Power Recommendations

Silas is 100% correct when he says that mobility is key. I would suggest that one should take up hurdle and combat jumping. Slot those up respectively with at least one jump IO. When you're doing something such as fighting Romulus on the last mission of the ITF, a good chunk of the team is huddled around Romulus smashing his face in. Combat Jumping + hurdle allows you to keep moving relatively quickly and staying out of harms way. In case you didn't know, Combat Jumping + hurdle doesn't suppress your movement if you attack. So you can jump around like an idiot on crack and blast stuff but still keep close to the team without getting movement suppression.


Playstyle recommendations

The only other advice I can add to this is that when you play a thermal, you must be able to pay attention to detail. If you're not good at keeping tabs up on people or just paying attention in general and you'd prefer to just smash stuff, reroll and play something else. Preferably a brute. But when you play a thermal, you should be able to keep an eye on the team window, monitor their HP/buffs, as well as your own.

If you're doing something such as a Master of Lord Recluse Strike Force, I would HIGHLY recommend you tell the team leader to invite you to the team last. Why? You're going to be the last person on the team and everyone else's name is stacked on top of yours. That way it makes your life a hell of a lot easier when it comes to buffing people. You start at the top of the list and work your way down.

One thing that always plagued me when I used to play my thermal was I would see someone was dying but I couldn't find them fast enough to heal them. So what's the solution?

Bind Follow to a quickly accessible key on your keyboard. If you see someone getting into the read, click on their name in the team window, hit Follow and start spamming Cauterize so you can heal them ASAP. This will GREATLY help if you're in an environment where people are jumping around and it's hard to keep track. (The first mission of the LRSF where everyone has to kill Chasers and get the bombs is a good example of the team running around)

I've got around 36.25% recharge on my build. With that in mind, there's no reason you shouldn't be able to keep Forge up on 3 people at any given moment. If Forge is up, cast it on the appropriate person.

Thaw - CAST THIS ON SQUISHIES. I've been on countless teams where the thermal didn't cast Thaw on those that needed it. Silas mentioned it, I'm mentioning it again because it's bloody important.

If you want to go real hardcore on binding stuff. What you can do is bind certain inspiration types to your F keys. For example, F1 on my keyboard will always activate either a Tier 1,2, or 3 break free in my tray. That way when I'm stunned I don't need to spend timing looking for the bloody inspiration or clicking for it. Just hit F1 and we're back in business. I'm not talking about "organizing" your inspiration tray so that the BFs line up to be where F1 would be. What this does is that F1 will always "pop" a BF regardless of what's in my tray. If I have a BF in my tray, no matter where it is in the tray, F1 will pop it.

Drops are ****** up.

If DXP was going on this weekend, I'm pretty sure there'd be a thread in the announcement section of the boards.

The current AS animation is broken.