Katten

I just wonder why the heck rebirth doesn't include the rez power and barrier does. It seems like a clear accident, it just doesn't make any sense.

I'd say slot accuracy in shockwave if you want it as only a KB tool, damage instead of damage proc if you want a tiny bit of damage, or elude if you don't care all together. Elude is up for 3 minutes, works fine with one rech (since it's usually an emergency tool) which in the new incarnate content will put you well above the new softcap during periods you run out of the extra purple. (Also, yay unsuppressed movement during that time).

The regen+ You have in aidself only procs on click, so it's much better in an auto power where it will run constantly, Also, just a generic healing IO or heal/rech will raise your total health gain in the end anyway.

Incarnate powers? Rebirth Regeneration, t4 ASAP, that is a nearly full self heal, and a huge regen boost for those few hits that slip through. I don't even miss aid self anymore. While I usually believe each character has a lot of freedom, rebirth regen is just perfect for /SR's.

Interface, reactive radial tree, the DoT is an enormous boost to damage on single targets (since you attack so quickly) and great for killing runners you've tagged with focus.

Lore? Up to you. I found IDF a little disappointing though. Seers (for psychic damage, to your lethal resistant targets) or warworks (because victoria is a powerhouse) are probably your strongest choices. Clocks have the best and most reliable heal though.

I see you already managed fine, and with very little loss. but just also tossing out there, remember the Ageless t4 can be made perma, which will put you far ahead of your goals plenty of the time, and at them the rest. However, it's another power you need to click, and as an SR I'm sure you're probably going to want to go rebirth (am I right?).

This is how things stack up IMO (and I've raised them all to 50)

DP: Probably best, you're gonna be a lot closer to the enemies, but your powers don't feel clunky (buckshot, m30) or slow (flamethrower) or useless (ignite)

AR: Has it's pros, Full Auto is a sweet power, the activation (Click to damage) is instant and it's range is extremely long, also, it looks awesome. Burst is solid and the snipe is probably the most usable of all the snipes (and it's entirely possible that's purely for aesthetic reasons), I've never even looked at it's stats, because I don't care when it looks so right Ultimately Flamethrower ,ignite both make this set lag, coupled with the largely lethal (heavily resisted) damage. Archery easily has the damage to combat these resistances... AR, not so much. Flamethrower really should be the reason this set doesn't have Aim, it has such 'potential' but you will hardly ever see this do anywhere near the damage it should due to the slow tick long duration issues, ignite simply doesnt have the radius or the damage to be worthwhile.

As for /devices, it's a decent set but NOT WITH AR or DP. Lacking both Aim and Buildup will make you kick yourself in the end.

/NRG gives AR some incredible cone range, BU->FA combo, Boosted teleport (if you want it) and some sweet ST damage. This combo specifically makes AR competitive.
Many secondaries work well with DP, I'd suggest /fire, /mm, or /ice for extra melee range damage/survivability.

One last thing Soldiers of Arachnos get a far chunkier more refined Assault rifle experience, their burst/heavy burst feels sooo good, and all their defenses/debuffs and other powers work far better than your standard AR will. (with exception perhaps of AR/nrg).


*P.S. I am just adding emphasis to this, unless you are very dedicated to your concept, choosing /devices on either of these primaries will very likely end in regret.

1.) Alpha - The Level shift that applies to all content is in this power. You can also use it to completely shore up any one weakness you have enhancement wise, by itself.
2.) Destiny - (Most useful) it effects your whole team and then some, actually scales well all the way up to t4, and is definite awesomeness, another game changer.
3.) Judgment - (Favorite) This won't make a loser team steam roll, or a winning team move all that much faster (unless several have it) but it is awesome to have spawn crushing power no matter what AT you play.
4.) Interface - As long as it's not gravitic, these are pretty cool, with reactive (of course) being notable of all. It's nice to take our old powers up a notch.
5.) Lore - It's can be awesome for a soloist, but in real content (IE, non hard target soloing) it simply spends too long on the recharge timer for me to find myself caring about them. Also, it makes just about 0 thematic sense. Not only does it hardly ever sync up with your personal character, half the choices are robots, and all of the choices are praetoria related.

These are supposed to be the essences of those who've tried to tap the well, what about vanguard, what about nemesis, the midnighters, cimerorans etc. Why do robots even have essences, wth do ANY of these (considering the seers don't even have a will of their own) have to do with the well?

Firstly, I've never really played a stalker, but I want to, and I want them to perform their roll specifically better. So I may not have the issues down quite right ... but, in descending order (with 1 being the fix I think would work the best, thematically and generally speaking).

1.) Unresistable Assassination damage: This way stalkers aren't pushed quite so hard into non-lethal primaries, and they continue to be masters of taking down HARD targets (such as enemies under a t9 resist, or high resistance enemies). This would be applying D&D style rules, basically "you've had time to find an opponents weakness and capitalize on it".

2.) Scaling chance to 'triple-crit' upon entering hide state to a certain threshhold. This would work like the destiny incarnate powers, but for a special crit chance and it would rise instead of fall over two minutes. This maintains the stalker as a precise ambush fighter well, rewarding the use of stealth, but limiting also the frequency of useful applications thus reducing a chance to abuse the power.

3.) Take the time to apply truly interesting secondary effects to ALL powersets, this would put them into a semi-single target debuffer type roll. (which makes PERFECT sense, considering stalkers specialty is supposed to be precise fight control and no one else fills this roll).
specific suggestions...
-Ninja blade: Chance superior lethal DoT (Bleed damage)
-Broad Sword: 5% chance proc bonus lethal dam (hit something important)
-Martial Arts: -dam/-tohit (you redirect force and anticipate opponent movements)
-Dark: (leave as is)
-Kin (As is)
-Elec Small chance to jump attack on every attack (a la chain induction)
-Nrg -rech/slow movement. (It's harder and harder to move as you're pummeled by pure force).
-Spines: Increase Tox DoT to actually mean something.
-DB: very small +Def/-def (your dual attacks are difficult to read and relentless.
-Claws: Light lethal DoT/light +dam (Bloodfrenzy, the sight of your weakened opponent only urges you on).
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This is an attempt to step back on the right path of correction. The previous fix rewards scrapping in a team scenario, and it seems inherantly one of scrappers most powerful tools with the most recently added sets (/Elec, /Kin) are their abilities to do strong AoE.

Neither of these things really reward stalkers for doing, thematically, what they were built to do. Hide, ambush, and apply heavy, precise, burst damage.

I'm interested in which of these ideas may appeal to you, and which are totally off.

My first Scrapper was a claws/sr, going by the same name as my handle here around issue 2.

Since then I've lingered around these forms, mostly a lurker at first, I like to think I know how to build a character and how to use them... but I've never really pushed myself to optimize my build totally. I've never had an attack chain, I've never held perma hasten down, or picked up heal self to fill my need for that (because like BillZ once said (and I'm paraphrasing) "Screw the tricorder") and instead snagged some regen and dealt with the weakness that caused.

And while that playstyle was fun, I always did feel a bit like a poser or a hypocrite when I'd attempt to give advice to those that were soloing AV's (because I hadn't done it on my scrapper), I'd never taken down a pylon (I didn't have the survivability, and the dps was always right below the threshold). If went against the RWZ challenge set up a few lucky swords would end me almost inevitably.

But, even though it might seem a bit cheap now, thanks to I20 my namesake character finally makes me feel like my scrappers got value.

I've picked up -t3 reactive, t4 rebirth regen, t4 warworks, and t4 ion

Thanks primarily to reactive and rebirth I've finally

-Soloed mariahs whole arc of AV's minus siege w/o warworks (stupid self heal)
-Soloed a pylon without lore (slowly) and with lore (ridiculously quickly)
-Taken a Monster of monster island down by myself (I never thought I'd be able to pull that off on my scrapper)
-Taken the RWZ Challenge on and won
- Routinely taken all the turrets in the lambda down, alone, before the rest of the league finishes the spawns.

I don't care that I had to use incarnate powers to do that, or that those achievements might be reachable by so many more now.

I feel fast and agile, I feel powerful. I live where others die and can complete the objective with no one else to assist. No other character I've ever had can say that, not with in the new content at least.

It's invigorating.

For the first time in 7 years I think I truly know what it feels like to be a scrapper. Not a farmer. No, I can take any AT and make a successful farmer, but they require too many restrictions to be effective.

Not my scrapper.

I Kill. I survive. I'm totally free.



Long live the scrapper.

Just to tag on the last post, the seers are best for buffing (fortitude) and control as well.

The battle orb, in my experience doesn't toggle defenses, it uses it's field projector (a click forcefield) much in the same way the protector bots of the robots MM do. It is reasonably reliable if you don't surround it with alliest (to field instead of you) and can stack up one extra for brief periods of time.

I feel like the clockwork mender is the only pet that cares about healing me, but that may just be because the orbs heal is less noticeable without the ticking heal attached.

On my Claws/SR scrap last night I ran entirely 16 man BAF's and Lambdas, those times I got 5 rares, 2 uncommons and a common. This is incredibly unusual for me (and unfortunate actually, that character already had all but one t4 so I crafted them to a VR).

I think something about high movement rate, survivability, and rapid fire constant attacks fair well with the gods of participation. As that same character got 3 rares tonight previous the patch as well.

My Fire/Cold Corr on the other hand has received only common/uncommon, never a rare yet in about 20 runs.

I just found out on my only decently built Spines/Fire scrap, I kill everyone in a 50x8 mission... without attacking, about as fast as I could before with. That's just reactive and 2 damage auras. Barrier to keep everything clean.

Before Judgement. Without Pets.

Better go ask in the PvP forum, no one else has any idea how the hell anything functions over there.

I find 2 to be the magic number for procs in proc friendly powers.

Otherwise you're missing out the 100% chance for lethal damage proc, that is the power itself.

As an example though, I use two procs in every claws attack I have. Still has good enhance numbers, but often I see double or more damage pop up. Because in a power like strike (similar in high speed low damage like GC) the procs can do more than the power itself... but they don't fire every time, so they're not as good for reliability. With decent global numbers, I could see taking it up to 3 procs.

Well, if you have the fighting pool cardiac's not a bad choice, it would make it very easy for you to run it all the time (while decreasing needs for res slots).

If you don't, probably spiritual for the buffs to healing (rttc and hpt) and I'm sure whatever offensive set would like the recharge.

Not nerve though, a wp gets very little worthwhile out of that.

The common scrapper debate is musculature v spiritual, with cardiac being an aside for those who havent mastered their end recovery.