MrLiberty

I'll be there at 9 EST, hopefully you guys are still going by then!

Welcome aboard new people, be sure to say Hi wherever you feel like on the GP forums. Once we see who has what I'm sure we can get some practices started and if we need cover some of the basics.

I'm pretty sure all Barrier was saying (in the nicest way possible no less!) Was that your build needs a lot of work to be brought up to par and that power selection and slotting reflect some degree of inexperience in a team arena setting. No one is going to expect you to run a 10 Billion influence blaster, but there are cheap alternatives and better ways to build, not just with IO's but in the power picks alone. Saying you do alright in zones is far from any metric for how you will perform in an 8 v 8 (Both with build and playstyle)

The league and the draft picks (as far as I know) are supposed to be there to get more people interested in team arena PvP by teaching them the ins and outs of it. With line ups, builds, and strategies.

And sadly, If even if you managed to get all those attacks within the Aim/BU/PB window (Which you can't) You'd deal 2445 points of assorted damage. Given your squishy gets 40% base res, that means you'd only deal 1467 points of damage to a 1606 HP blaster, and sadly there would be no doves involved.

120 if its blueside! I could toss this in a tank or something.

As far as a stalker goes, you pretty much need BU Placate AS, and one or two good follow up attacks. (Usually a heavy hitter + Sharks unless you are Spines, then impale + Shadowmeld)

Right now, Thunder strike is great because of the chance for a double crit from hide, that and you can easily slot 3 damage procs in it.

Imaple may not hit as hard, but it makes a great follow up with the range and again, you can get 3 damage procs in it.

Everything else pretty much falls below those two.

With BS, head splitter is doing less damage than TS. Parry there is a few problems with, first if you are out of hide long enough to stack this power up, you're doing something wrong. Second if you are worried about melee damage its likely you are doing something else wrong.

Ah my memory must be fuzzy with Dual Blades, here I was thinking you needed a pile of recharge to get a good ST attack chain off. Never really got around to rolling one myself so I might just run with that if you only need 30 ish % to pull it off. (The only thing I remember was Shred Monkey having a pile of recharge in his DB/SR)

I'll see if I can't tinker around with it a bit more, I was thinking of skipping 1k Cuts and switching some stuff around for Maneuvers and tactics but I'll have to see how fond of the attack they are and just how tanky they'd like to be.

So I am helping a friend build one of these and I'm kind of stuck on getting the defense/recharge/HP as high as I'd like.

I was shooting for 40% Def to all, 50% Rech and 20% HP but my numbers are falling a little short.

Anyone have any suggestions how to get closer?

I have to question the fact that you actually found 19 other stalkers who were willing to actually "duel" you. A stalker duel goes something like this. "........................................." Entering Sudden Death Mode ".................................."

Hide/Stealth IO/Stealth means that their stealth cap is higher than your perception. With a yellow I think you can see them when they get within 10 feet of you but as soon as they leave that near impossibly small radius you can't target them.

Build lacks any escape power (Phase/Hiber) Lacks travel powers (Ninja run so doesn't cut it no matter how many bad regens you see using it) Lacks KB protection, lacks procs in attacks. Lacks the concealment pool all together I just realized. Energize horribly underslotted. All that focus on defense when you could probably take Shadow Meld and get much more mileage out of your slotting.

I thought Vert was called because he runs around on characters with like 1005 HP and aid self instead of 1500 and phase? :P

Srsly though, locks fast and calls targets. Don't think I've ever been in a match where he was anywhere near the weakest link on a team. Cept maybe that one time with the Storm Corrupter, but that was kind of funny.

As someone who came from no real 8 v 8 experience, very Casual Arena/Zone player I can tell you a few things you can do to help get picked.

1. Don't bring a second rate build. When new people come around a lot of times on Vent people will ask about them, who they are, what they are on. A few things are checked for. Do they have Phase or Hiber? Do they have 1500+ HP on a squishy? Do they have the needed travel powers to get around/keep up. Are their power sets useful? If you can pull all of these off? You have a much better chance of getting picked as a Nobody.

2. Have a thick skin. Don't get all bent out of shape if someone calls you out for being bad.

3. Don't be bad. In that.... don't get farmed. As a new target you're likely to be called a bit more as people will be testing how easy you go down. Bring a pile of greens and learn to evade/break LOS.

4. Let people know what you have, and sometimes you can get a spot if you switch over. Be flexible especially if you are new. Find out what the match needs and hopefully? You have it. Recently there seems to be a shortage of blasters somehow for matches.

Beyond that, I really wouldn't call the matches being run recently as casual KB's. The people playing for the most part would like balanced teams. And really all it takes is one or two really bad people to have a match go from like a 5-2 outcome to a 20-2. So someone new is likely a liability. But less of one if they have are built correctly and bring a build that is useful/needed to make the matches balanced.

Really though, try for an early or late match if you can. Let a few people get to know you and what you can do. Little things like tabbing through targets and getting decently quick locks, actually using your buffs, and generally following instructions and listening to what others are telling you can go a long way.

I consider my Fire/Regen a pretty LOL Build, mainly because most of the time I spend tossing webnades and running the first time someone hits me in zones. Every so often I'll bust out GFS and Build up to try and KS someone though.

Could be a lot better in a lot of cases, but throwing webs and watching people rage over getting picked off through damage spam/suppression in the zones is entertaining.

I think this one would end up pretty cheap in the end, no purples or pvp IO's but capped HP, decent recovery, 25% Dmg 27% acc mag 48 KB protection

The only thing that'll end up really costing you is the Numina/Miracle and the KB IO's but I imagine you can toss it together for maybe 500 - 800 million depending on how patient you are.

Damage - Psi/Em Sonic/Em

Support - Ill/Emp Sonic/Pain or Emp/Sonic. While Emp defenders have stronger heal mods, controllers can use power boost twice as often.

Disruption Fire/SS/Mace Elec/SS/Mace brutes, Grav/TA Ice/Cold Grav/Kin Grav/FF Controllers.

VEAT's play a specialized role in disrupting stalkers.

If you want to try and stalk. Elec/ WP, Regen or Nin can work.

I think Rad/Son/Psi can still be used decently well to set up a spike and defender TK is nice.

Sonic/Therm corr to me is one of the better hybrid toons in that Thaw is a great buff when dealing with a cold, the ST heal can help out if an emp calls out they happened to be caged during a spike. Melt Armor can aid in a spike as well as being on target to launch a few quick attacks, and HE can cause some disruption in some cases.

Congrats!

Can I be in the club too? Even if the monocle is made from a broken pair of glasses and the tea is made with hose water and a discarded teabag?

Beware any pvp build that tells you to take school of sharks over spirit shark jaws and slots the highest damage ranged proc in a snipe rather than the attack you can spam the most, just sayin.

What kind of controller would probably help. And Ill/emp is going to be played much different than a Grav/TA which will be much different than a Ice/Cold which will be much different than a Grav/Kin etc etc etc.

You might not be able to shark Regen's but most of them have low enough HP that two AS'es will take them down.

Zone pvp has gotten a lot worse over the past month though. When I first started out (About a month and a half ago) it was cool to see such a variety of characters. Vill side still pretty much has it, therms, pains, doms, stalks, brutes, veat's etc etc... Heroes, not so much.

The big reason I think you don't see a lot of squishies hero side is almost no one runs support there. You catch an emp there every now and again, but half the time they are just a base buffer.

On top of that, I'm starting to think most would rather just sit still at a base and camped/be camped rather than actually go out. Mainly because you almost never see any kind of attempt to even the sides out, if anything I always crack up sitting there... outnumbered 6 to 15.. when 3 to 5 new players show up for the side that already has the numbers.

In conclusion. Zones are bad.

Like I originally said... 8 sharks, even 4 or 5 sharks is pretty stupid damage for as simple as it is to get off. And the benefit of it will be you might end up with more stalkers learning to land AS'es. That part, especially for a league aimed at teaching is a good thing.

My issue more so with the ban is.... what if the team is already countering your say... 2 stalkers with a VEAT? Poison dart spam is up there with acid arrow for screwing over stalker damage. Even between placate and phase there is a decent chance you'll be screwed for much of the match.

Any time I've been stuck opposite a VEAT while stalking, I'll usually just switch to sharks rather than try for the AS, because in the limited time you can be in hide, standing still trying to land an interruptable attack makes you a waste to the team when you end up putting out no damage or a shark from out of hide which suddenly looks pretty weak.

To be fair with respect to sharks... couldn't a team of half decent stalkers just have one take the Soul Storm hold... which punches through any and all KB/KU protection, sends your toon flat on their face, then makes you get up through a slow animation. Even if the stalkers were bad enough to not land an AS, you could get 3 or 4 to just Thunder Strike them with the massive crits, and pull the same tactic of coasting through.

Even more simple than that... couldn't 8 stalkers just pull about the same with Impale? Yes it'd take more than 3 to instantly down a squishy. BU Impale crit is 762 lethal damage. You can usually get 3 procs in it as well for another 216 - 251 unresisted damage.

What if 8 stalkers did the same with Zapp which I think has has a base damage of 300+ after enhancing and build up and procs you are stuck with a similar problem. Doesn't the stalker even stay hidden if the target breaks LOS before it goes off? The problem seems less about sharks and more about teams being unprepared for all stalker line ups. Though I will agree that 8 sharks really does suck.

Global : @mrliberty
Freedom Characters : Psy/Em Fire/Regin Cold/Dark (PvE) Ill/Emp Elec/EA (Stalk) Mind/Rad
Characters I can maybe port in the next week : Rad/Psi Kin/Rad Cold/Sonic Inv/SS Fire/Pain
Respec? - Dual Builds FTW
Roll a new Character : Most likely
PvP Experience : Infinity some zones and Arena when people still played there. KS'ed my way to 400 rep on a bunch of toons. Can be found at the nightly KB's on freedom trying not to be too terrible.