EvilRyu

The key to WP is to play the set like old school invulnerability. Your survival is dependent on the number of critters around you just like your fury building is easier when you got more mobs attempting to attack you. What I focus on with WP is HP buffs which will make the regeneration better. Set bonus and accolades are key to this. Then I focus on melee defense once I get as much HP as I can since you get almost no smash/lethal defense. Pretty much all the powers are useful in some way. Strength of will makes it where you dont need tough and weave but with the issue 19 changes you can easily squeeze it in without having to sacrifice much. Personally I would hold off on respecing till then unless you got a respec in the bank already.

I am gonna have to say I like electric control alot better once you get to the higher levels. You get tons of end drain which means fewer hits come in if at all. You get the best sleep in the game for 95% of all the content in the game and then an aoe confuse that doesnt have a hella long recharge. Being able to sleep a group and have them go back to sleep once hit with aoes is a good thing. It makes the battle so much easier to manage. Having a confuse without a hella long recharge puts it on the same level as plant. Right now mind only has 2 things going for it and thats the single target confuse and 1 shot sleep on a boss/av with mezmerize. Outside of those 2 things its really lagging behind. I hope at some point they cut mass confuses recharge down by alot. Everyone always uses that because it doesnt aggro excuse. Well thats kind of pointless if they get aggroed if they are all or mostly confused. They might get a shot off or 2 if it did aggro. Also having pets to distract is a bit nice too. Not having to worry about stacking confuse and keeping stuff controlled all the time. You can actually relax when playing the set.

Thermals was a blessing to the Ninjas thats for sure. They were way too squishie for the damage that they did. With Thermals they can now live long enough to do the damage they were always meant to do, finally putting them on par with the other pets that get inherrent resistance where as ninjas got paper thin defense. Forge seems to help really nicely on the jounin. Gonna have to spec into a recharge build to make sure its up longer for all the pets. I have tried ninjas with every secondary and thermals was the easiest by far to level up with. Pets only died when in praetoria but thats mostly due to all those insane ambushes you get.

I would never roll SR on a stalker. Mostly due to that one passive being gone. It makes a huge difference if you ever get to low health. For me its been pretty much */nin. I cant stomach the other secondaries because it takes too long for them to bloom or be useful until you get IOs. Nin can do almost everything that SR can do except the scaling resists and defense debuff resists but you have a heal and caltrops to make up for that. Soft capping is easier than ever since the alignment system so thats definately something to shoot for in the future. The only other secondary I would touch at the moment is WP but thats only with alot of IOs spec towards melee defense and recharge. I think the other secondaries might get easier once we get inherrent stamina and I have more build space to squeeze in tough and weave to make them more survivable. For primaries only pick the ones with 2 or more aoes or 1 that has a gimmick to it. On my ninja blade stalker I have the pbaoe sets that are for recharge and I get alot of GD and FS during the fights. If only stalkers got lotus drops I would have the perfect toon. I can see possibly working martial arts in now because you get one of the highest damaging attacks that can crit now. The only problem is the insane recharges. You pretty much have to spec for recharge if you want to leverage that some what.

Most definately you can sapp, if anything thats like the best possible setup combination for it. I have gotten better results keeping critters end floored with electric control than I have with kin/elec defenders with alot less work.

What I wanted to ask have any of you had any results using the end mod stun proc in the aura power? I was hoping to stun them till they are sapped, the minions at least. And how are you guys slotting the aoe sleep power. Since it pulses I was wondering would duration even matter past a certain level?

What I think needs to happen to be viable is for us to have hour single target damage be comparable to aoe. So whats got to happen is our tier 2 attacks and higher need to be able to 1 shot +4 minions. If we are taking minions out fast its similar to aoe damage that we are missing. Outside of that they would have to do a revamp and put back all the missing powers and create a few for the sets that didnt have them to begin with. I would love lotus drops on my ninja blade stalker. 50% crit chance from hide, you would literally melt spawns. This is all I ever wanted from my stalker. I would give up divine avalanche for lotus drops in a heartbeat.

Thanks

I tried registering for the badge hunter site but nothing happened. Still waiting on the email. Does anyone know of an alternate website that is hosting this?

I dont know about this stamina thing. Something tells me we are going to pay for this in some way. Whether its powers costing more endurance or the implimentation of more critters who end drain but at lower levels. Think about fighting that crazy electric chick boss that shows up in the tip missions but at like level 5. No one would be able to beat that even with stamina. If Castle can promise us that there is not going to be some penalty for it in some way (more expensive power costs or more end drain critters), then I can get behind the idea of this.

Here is my opinion of all of this. Well the changes are nice but dont really help the teaming issue at all. The set suffers from no aoe, just like many other stalker sets. Until Castle buffs stalkers again MA isnt really going to shine at all to me. In all honesty what needs to happen is the single target damage needs to be so good it simulates aoe damage, meaning we need attacks that can easily 1 shot +3 minions once you have SOs slotted. One thing I hear alot on these forums is the talk about dps. Outside of av/gm/pylons when does dps even matter? Like almost never. So instead of worrying about DPS we should be asking to have sets that can kill stuff in the fewest power activations as possible.

What I really think that hurts stalkers overall is that damn damage/recharge/endurance formula they use. They need to step back and look at how stalkers function on teams and see that keeping things as they aren just isnt going to work in making them team viable. Essentially what needs to happen is they throw the baby out with the bath water here and make the majority of the hardest hitting attacks not follow that formula and have their recharge halved while having their damage increased by alot. I understand that they want to have some form of balance by having this formula but its what killing stalkers that dont have much if any aoe. Allow an AT exemption of the formula and we might have something here.

One more bug Castle if your still reading is the following. If you free a hostage and the hostage is being guarded by someone who summons a suedo-pet or a decoy phantasm, the hostage will not leave once freed unless the suedo pet despawns. In some cases this is bad because the hostage takes damage from the suedo pet until it despawns. Some hostages or helper npcs barely have hp to begin with but if they are sitting in caltrops for like 5 minutes they have almost none by the time it despawns allowing them to become free to follow you even though they been freed 5 minutes ago.