LinaInverse

Thanks for info; I ended up going Levitation for a variety of reasons (personal likes, useful for dealing w/ flyers, etc), and it would slot a LotG +RechargeIO when the time comes. The drawback is that it costs around 50-80mil at the CS, which realistically means having to farm Merit Rewards for a while more.

My build at this point is going to have +35% global recharge at this point once I put in LotG (will have 2 of them), which doesn't quite get me to "always on Hasten", but it should be reasonably close.

Yes, I have Inventions (I'm a Tier 8 Premium); I think I've blown through 50 million Infamy and 800-something Reward Merits getting myself loaded up for 50 That said, the idea of a "mule" power has 2 issues: 1) the final power is only going to have 4 slots at the very most, and likely, it will only have 2, if even that and 2) I'd be hard-pressed to find any IO set that was so outstanding that the power itself was essentially irrelevant, which unfortunately most of the Power Pool ones essentially are at this point.

I already have "Assemble the Team" as an inherent power for stealthing past mobs to the final boss, but the TFs/SFs I've been on, everyone's in such a rush to annihilate everything that moves, that abilities seems almost superfluous. If anything, people are all crossing their fingers for that rare purple drop, so I think racking up body counts is more important to most players than finishing missions efficiently.

The issue w/ Spring Attk is the game's undrawing/redrawing my main weapon actually slows my attack sequence down. Yes, it'd be kind of visually cool to off-hand smack the enemy while holding the sword in my other hand as a surprise maneuver (ie, like some fighters in the movies and comics do), but unfortunately the game's graphics engine doesn't seem that flexible.

The other power that I grudgingly thought about was "Target Drone" (Weapon Mastery) because of its boost to ACC and resisting debuffing my To-Hit. That said, the visual (and conceptual) is such a slap in the face of my char concept (sneaky, mystic ninja), I'm really dreading having to go that route, and was really hoping for something more appropriate that wasn't a total waste of a pick.

My stalker has reached 49, which means I get 1 more power. I'm blanking on what would be a good choice for the last one.

Currently, I am a Nin/Nin Stalker, with all powers on the Secondary, and all but 2 (Wasp, Flashing) of the Primary. My secondaries are Jumping (CJ, SL, Acro), Weapon Mastery (PhysPerfc/Shiriken/ExplShir), and SuperSpeed (Hasten).

I'm not interested in PvP, so I've been told Stealth is useless (already have hide).

I don't really need another attack; even w/o Hasten going, I can attack almost non-stop and using another attack would actually slow me down by forcing the game to redraw the Katana again. This basically rules of Fighting/Airstrike/Flurry/etc.

Don't really need SuperSpeed running; even w/ 1 slot, SJ/NinjaRun is more than fast enough.

Don't think Hover or Flight would be useful; there are very few places that SJ can't reach. The only times I've ever had an issue was a hovering NPC, and those are also pretty rare.

While solo levelling, I did find use of TPort Enemy to help break up larger groups (ie, when 2 groups were close enough to essentially for 1 double-sized group), but the few TF/SFs I've been on have basically proven that ability useless, so I've spec'ed out of it.

Any other abilities I've not thought of that people find useful at the end-game content?

OK, back with different questions (yes, I did finally join some hero teams, so that question was resolved):

My stalker just hit 47, so I'm setting up powers/enhances for the final push to 50. I'll probably do 1 last respec to get rid of a couple powers that were more for solo levelling (ie, Tport Enemy) and less for teams. I'm mostly following a build I found on the Stalker forum, dated I12, but had some questions (and I can't post to the Stalker forum to ask them).

1) It's recommended to get Stealth in addition to Hide if one plans to PvP, due to increased Perception. What if you don't plan to PvP? Does Stealth help any against NPCs that can see through base Hide (ie, Rikti Drones, Sniper-class NPCs, etc)? If not, is it basically useless for PvE? I understand there are Stealth and Perception caps, but don't know the specifics.

2) The guide I have admits the Patron Power Pools are of questionable help. Nonetheless, they grudgingly chose "Leviathan Mastery", which I felt was really breaking my char concept (I think this was before PPP diversification, so maybe the choices were different as well). I choose "Weapon Mastery" ("Physical Perfection", "Shiriken", and maybe the exploding one too), as much for concept than really researching. Was this a bad call I should respec out of? What PPPs are good for melee-based characters?

Yes, I'm aware of the auto-complete once per 3 days. I've used it exactly once as a villain (the EB who summoned bosses), and once as a hero (Proton EB I think). I don't like doing so because it feels like a cheat, but have done so as a last resort.

Didn't actually know the radio was a summon power. Not sure if 1 measly summon would beat some of the EB's I've seen though. Also didn't know about Shivans because I generally don't care for PVP so haven't been to Booty Bay.

I'm a Tier 8 premium, so I knew about Tier 9 summons, but since I'm not rolling in tokens, I didn't know if those Tier 9 summons were worth using or not.

After the first couple rude surprises, my Stalker can solo EBs, depending on level. Typically takes several inspires, and a long time, but I eventually got the hang of it. The only one I couldn't was one who summoned "Boss-level" minions in addition to himself (don't remember who) and even after killing the bosses, he would resummon more, which I eventually had to give up on.

My Controller (hero-side) has been basically useless against EBs, due to PToD. Everything else in quest-missions, she can coast though with ease, but the EBs I have to recruit help or abandon. That said, hero-side, I only saw 2 EBs, even going from 40-50. Villain, I think my rogue has had to defeat 30-40 or so EBs or downgraded Heroes/AVs and she's not even 50 yet. And no; not always just 1 at the end of an arc; I've had some where there were 3-4 EBs in a single mission.

Thanks to all for the replies so far.

Yup, I know about paragonwiki; I check it regularly so I know when I'm about to face yet another EB.

I've tried to have a hero friend invite my rogue to his team (no, not SG; just a mission group) and he still got the "can't invite an enemy". Nothing to do w/ SG as far as I know.

I'm on Justice; I recently enabled Broadcast, Help and other channels but don't see much happening. The "Justice for all" thread on the Justice sub-forum seems to be defunct.

I have tried to have a hero-group invite my rogue and I get the message "can't invite an enemy", so I can't do any trials/task forces that aren't villain side, which unfortunately seem much harder to find than hero-side.

I know about merit-rewards and have gotten into playing the Consignment House, but with the inflation of the economy since I last left, it may be a while before I can buy any IOs worthwhile (50 mil doesn't really buy much it seems).

Just returned after long hiatus and had a couple questions.

I took my previous hero from 40-50, mostly through soloing w/ occasional teams/TFs, and outside of the TFs, encountered maybe 1-2 EBs during that entire time.

I took (and still taking) my previous villain (now rogue) from 25-42 and see typically 2-4 EBs per mission arc (not total; per arc). I think I've seen maybe upwards of 20-30 (or more) EBs just trying to solo missions (some were "Heroes" I tuned down to EBs). I was w/ a friend in game and his mission had 4 EBs in a single mission, plus the Coral AV.

Was there an intentional designer choice to make the CoV question that much harsher than CoH? If so, was there a given reason? I'm guessing this is one of the reasons CoV has such a sparser population than CoH (and harder to find TFs)?

Also, once you hit 50, is there anything left to do in the game? I tried to look into Incarnates as I understood that was the "post-50" content, but that's apparently VIP only (currently Premium). Since "gear" really isn't something you get and IO recipe drops aren't really something you can "shoot for" like other games, are you basically stuck?