Resolve

For me, the big annoyance was always Perez Park. Low level, missions in the maze section, and if the map patch was around then I wasn't aware of it. A pity, because Perez is quite cool in some ways as well.

I was on my StJ/SR on a LGTF quick run, among the first in on the first mission, take off ninja style seeing the inf numbers start to pile up as the team starts clobbering Rikti. And I realize that noone else is coming along, and it's not a screwup. It's just that they trust me to get the job done.

I'm just thinking... are you sure FM/FA is what you want? MA/FA/Blaze might be truer to theme.

Just started a TW/EA so BAF won't be relevant for a while, but I expect I'll play the prisoner escape phase the way I play it on my StJ/SR main.

That is: pop Lore just before the prisoners spawn, actively point the pets at incoming prisoners, and engage lieutenants myself. On that toon I use drones but most picks should work fine.

Weep, Paragon. Weep for Killer-Queen, for he is fallen.

And then he got up. Still, he's had his first round of debt. I can't blame him for it though, he's as ridiculously strong in his environment as always.

Now, this is probably all messed up - playtime has been in fairly short bursts but thatdoes reflect the stalker experience to some extent.

I find that Killer-Queen really shines in doing arcs. He feels even faster than my usual scrappers. Of course he's pretty bad as soon as escorts enter the picture but going to kill-all then handling the hostages works. There are some really stalker-unfriendly tip missions with multiple nonpowered escorts but then most missions are hugely stalker friendly so I'll keep my whining to when I'm actually running around with Hide off so some lazy git can keep up.

I suspect this is a lot less horrible than having stealth suppressed, though.

A bunch of tips and radios took me to 33 and a Crushing Uppercut with an Acc and 3 Dam and the lovely feeling of regularly twoshotting bosses. And another round of tips brought me into conflict with the dastardly Doctor Quantum.

You know the guy. Likes to play games. Energy blaster. Big on deathtraps. There's a hero confirmation mission that's just full of them, and I hadn't had my morning coffee so I figured "I'm at 40% AoE or so so I'll just get hit by maybe one of those proximity bombs".

Autohit autohit autohit.

Can't blame the build for that.

And then the guy went on being a machine. Posi part 1 was a breeze but that was mostly due to the MMs. I do take credit for a whole lot of promptly eliminated Ruin Mages though. Freakshow War. Library of Souls. Assorted small stuff and the levels just kept coming in.

35, Superior Conditioning and a proc in that and finally feeling the end of the slot crunch. I'm actually thinking I may keep some redundant attacks for exemplaring and set bonuses like Touch of Death's Melee bonus. Having Sweeping Cross still in the leveling build was very nice on Posi. Keeping that stuff will keep me from getting the confuse and the t9/Burnout combo in a timely fashion, but the toon is just insanely fun as is and I'm happy.

@Grim Saint:

That sounds very nice indeed - I'll see what I'll shoot for in the end but yes, that setup seems very solid. I may end up with something similar; a good solid build with the option to light up the glowing fists of fury and gping to town with the T9 for six minutes.

Not wed to the Burnout concept but I do like the idea of being a supersonic man.

@Ail: Thanks!

This is weird. I'll get to why in a second.

I haven't had much time to play this week, but there were a couple of good sittings. First Ward - loving it. So far I've only done it on heroes but I'm not bored yet. Killer-Queen is looking forward to murdering Mother Mayhem so very much...

Starting at 27 I got some small stuff out of the way, popped an Experienced and soon came to worry I'd have to turn XP off or miss working with Vanessa de Vore. But in the end, there was no real problem and when I'd clobbered Selene I was well short of 30. At this time I was close to softcapping on a small purple and had 40+ mediums sitting in the AH, so barring RNG hate I was feeling fabulous even fighting EBs.

Then back to the little stuff - working tips, grabbing Combat Jumping at 30, (at 28 I'd finally gotten to Weave) and then on Saturday someone shouted about Sutter in Union global. So... Sutter. Well, you have to start working on your debt badges sometime, right. Hordes of bosses, a bit of ambushing...

With some nice support and in spite of my having some control issues, Killer-Queen kept diving into everything and not dying, and hit 31.

So again the little stuff - radios, Talos safeguard and then I see Citadel mentioned. It's getting late but in a fit of optimism I get on the team. Short story shorter; fascists in caves, fine support, ding-Crushing Uppercut!

Well, unslotted CU at least. Come 34 I figure I'll respec. Sweeping Cross will have to go for now and maybe one of the builders. Eventually I'll be going for permahasten and six minute godmode with Burnout but the levelling build presents a different set of choices...

Oh, the weirdness. Still haven't died. Not once, and usually I tend to get stupid or unlucky at least once before level 10.

@Auroxis, Grim Saint:

There you go, dangling high-performance builds in front of me like a carrot. There are some very nice wrinkles to StJ and a nice bit of complexity when you have to take both combos and AF into account.

I'm a bit concerned with the high-performance chain, both the "cog-slipping" issue with missing an AS and the actual levels of recharge required, especially if the AS animation times get normalised. But that's a future issue.

And some people say Quickness doesn't contribute to damage...

As an aside, to whoever it may concern: Are you enjoying those criticals?

I know I am - that boss suddenly just dropping, oneshotting a minion, darn I wasted that crit on the guy who was almost down. And my first proper stalker is just coming up, but on a stalker the random criticals feel insignificant compared to the "generated" ones.

And I'm fine with stalkers out damaging scrappers. What's properly imbalanced in this game anyway? Übercrabs?

I trend to acknowledge the Well as part of my characters' backstory but might not think of them as having this formalised relationship with it. The Well's part of the way the CoX universe works, I don't need to RP it out any more than the physics engine making my toon fall down if they aren't flying.

So my current main (StJ/SR scrapper) has been getting power from the Well basically since level 6 and Combat Readiness, but she's only peripherally aware of the Well as such. As far as she knows it's just kung fu. Sixteen kinds of kung fu that go right into teleport kicks, healing people she likes with chi and punching people she doesn't like so hard they catch fire. Oh, and her brothers set her up with those nifty little drone thingies that zap people when the hacked Warworks attack robots didn't work out.

What do you do when you're 25 and you can only get a few hours in on odd hours, and you missed most of DXP weekend? Embrace the solo stalker experience!

For 25-27 Killer-Queen did Noble Savage's arc, then SSA 1-2, some tips, some radios when the tips dried up, and some more tips. No huge changes here - Shin Breaker with 3 slots is about as impressive as you'd think. It may get that storebought Crushing Impact set I've got lying around though come lv29, though, and that's probably the time to swap out Sweeping Cross for a bit.

So right now I'm just doing the surprisingly fun routine of sweeping and missioning. Post-25 I expect to start actually taskforcing if I can - with 15 inspiration slots I should be able to chomp enough purples to actually see me through serious fights.

Can't say anything about stalker KM, but I've been soloing a StJ/Nin stalker now and he's my newest Coolest Toon Ever. Both StJ and KM seem to very much be "love it or hate it" propositions so you may want to reroll if you happen to pick the wrong one. Ninja blade seriously hates some factions.

You'll always fade in when you attack, so I guess the "No FX" options are your friend. I'm a huge SR fan and will always recommend it, but Ninjutsu is the stalker specific secondary and I feel it's a good idea to try it at least once.

tl;dr try Ninjutsu with either StJ or KM and switch if you hate the primary.

Three costume slots and I'm struggling to use them. Ah well, Killer-Queen's first costume works for me so it's no big problem. And that's some of the solo stalker experience for me, it genuinely is no problem. At 25 with squishy hitpoints the guy has died no times.

I expect this post to jinx that. And there should be some can openers in the general First Ward weirdness.

The road to 24 was simple. Tips, sweeping, and the alignment mission, and I got another power I may very well end up not using: Tough. What I will be using is that shiny Steadfast Protection KB resist, though... and it does seem to be useful, after slotting it I haven't been knocked back even once.

So at 24 I went into First Ward and that was probably a mistake. 20-25 heroside is intense - the later Faultline contacts, Mercedes Sheldon, the clone business. Nadia (the first FW contact) turns out to be 20-29 but I misremembered and didn't want to miss out on the FW arcs. Ah well.

Working with Nadia and the Palatine was great fun. Did "pet" NPCs use to follow stealthy characters properly? I had only occasional problems with Noble Savage and the Carnival of War people, and leading a brute-type EB into combat with assorted Ghouls and Resistance types had me giggling.

Around there I dinged 25 and as I was about to log I ran into a proper, level shifted StJ/Nin. We had a nice conversation about builds and it's nice to see there are a whole bunch of ways to go about making a good StJ character.

So, what to do when at 21? Tips! I didn't really feel up to fighting myself in the clones arc, I'm just too wonderful for that... so I did some scouring and a couple of radios in Talos to pick up some tips. And when no tips dropped I saw I was close to 22, beat up some random people in the street and ding! SOs!

Being a magical and special snowflake I'd already had decent +Acc from Yin's market, but now I could slot my attacks End/Acc/2Dam (Acc/3Dam in HB) and grab some attuned LotGs from email. I'd messed up slightly at 21 so I couldn't get Pract... er, Kuji-in Rin perma right away. Still, good for situational use. And off to Striga.

Cue the beatings! SOs and the additional goodies made a huge difference, maybe even more so than the usual jump to SOs. Stephanie Peebles' arc went like a charm (ding-23, didn't bother to train because Striga) but then I'm still at +1x1 with bosses. The big hump I expected was Heracles, the Warrior EB with bonus resists.

The guy lasted maybe 15 seconds. If stalkers had played like this before I would definitely have played them a lot. Maybe not as much as scrappers but they would definitely have been a strong contender for my playtime. Of course putting 2+ billion worth of enhancements into the toon helps...

Next some tips and when that's done the available SSAs, and then off to First Ward.

@Granite Agent:

Looks like I hadn't my thinking cap on, that's obviously a more proper chain.

@Grim Saint:

You definitely should give it a shot - I'll be doing the same at some point on my scrapper just to see what she can do to a pylon when uncompromisingly optimized for ST.

(As an aside, one thing I really like about that toon is both having decent AoE and ST and being able to do pylon runs with no real endurance issues. I barely get those spamming Spinning Strike and Spring Attack for all I'm worth in missions!)

I had a marvellous insight but my browser eated it.

@Dr_Fear: Thanks! Sure will, though may start editing installments in. Or I'll just shamelessly bump...

They (Grim Saint) posted it in my ramblings thread as an example endgame StJ/Nin.

And now, the continuing adventures of a killer queen.

Getting from 12.5 to 15 and Faultline went stupidly fast. I did some missions to get the Spelunker mish because old habits die hard, started in on the Midnighter arc, and put the boot in whenever I saw an appropriate boss or lieutenant spawn in Steel. I also started up some new contacts, again from habit... it turned out I was to outlevel them right away.

At 15 I headed to Faultline. Again, missions. Jim Temblor, Penelope Yin, radio and Skyway safeguard saw me close to 20, along with the usual boss/lieutenant street sweeping. The final effort was a quick street run in north Steel. At this point BU-AS is still incredible, but it seems that increasing boss hit points is starting to catch up. Ah well.

At 20 I headed to Talos and feeling the need for SOs and popped Experienced for the first time. Not really sure when doing so is optimal but I do know it's wasted if I haven't burned my charges when I ding 50 so hey. A radio netted me some tips and after a bit I'd done my 5 tips and an additional radio to refill. Open air bosses were scarce. Ding-21 and now all attacks are 4-slotted with 6 in AS for the ATO set.

Right now I'm feeling the slot crunch pretty badly, and I may respec sometime in the 20s to take out SC for now - at this stage SS I believe is indeed better, especially with the Force Feedback proc. Ah well, at 22 I'll go to SOs and put in some LotGs for 30ish recharge.

@Sir Hextor:

Thanks for the confirmation! Looks like I'll be doing some SSAs tomorrow night then...

@OmegaS:

Looking forward to hearing how it plays out. I likely won't be at ultimate level when I hit 50 on Killer-Queen, but pretty close to it. Well, I could be but I'd have to strip my main...

@Grim Saint:

Some nice twists there, I probably won't play it quite the same way but somewhat close. Specifically, I reckon I will go with Hasten and something like (BU-AS-CU)-SB-SC-HB-SB-AS-CU-(repeat) for ST and HB-SB-AS-SS for hordes. But we'll see. HB may well turn to IS, a procced-out, frankenslotted IS has very nice DPA.

Sweeping Cross does have some nice things going for it - it lets me put in a PBAoE purple set, and get another purple proc and the PvP -res proc in my chain. This may well fall under "stupid pylon tricks" though.

Caltrops will definitely end up in the build eventually, probably slotted with only procs, and with some attack trimming in a respec it may end up fairly early in the final build.

Not assassinating from hide is certainly an interestig ploy, I'll have to try it once I've got CU slotted.

And now, bit of a diary from someone who's effectively a stalker noob.

As I mentioned, I always wanted to like stalkers but they never really took off for me. Sure, I liked the Hide-BU-AS thing but that and cheap laughs with Placate was really all Stalkers offered for me. Not enough to pimp one for good defence and do TFs.

And even though I do like the cheap Placate laughs, when StJ dropped and I could do Stealth proc-CR-CU on my scrapper Stalkers were basically dead to me. Most of the laughs in a survivable package and 30 seconds later I could do it all over again. But then... i22. The promise of good fighting with Stalkers, and ST to beat my scrappers. And a good toon idea, so I hogged the name Killer-Queen on Union and waited. Lurked. Hid away.

And yesterday I actually logged on to the guy, refined the costume, twiddled the sliders, cursed the lack of that special mustache in the creator and walked out of the Atlas tailor.

Levels 1-4 I beat on Fallen by the Fort Trident entrance. I know, Death from Below, but I don't really like teaming at low levels. I feel like a leech I guess. Heavy Blow from Hide, Blackwand and Nemesis Staff. After this I almost had something like an attack chain, using some of the Praetorian enhancements and getting some slots in attacks. Alas poor Matthew Habashy, but I couldn't be bothered to check my voicemail.

After dinging 4 I went streetsweeping, and at 5 I got me a shiny police radio. Some missions, AS, and getting those pesky lowlevel accuracy issues. And not really enough of an attack chain to leverage Assassin's Focus with the long recharge on AS. Still getting there. Did the Atlas safeguard, dinged 7 in it, streetsweeped to 8 and headed off to the Hollows.

At 8 I went into the Hollows arc and hello Mr. Bone Daddy BU-AS-HB-SC JEBUS! I'd forgotten just how fun that one trick actually was and now the pony knows more tricks. Blah blah Outcasts, punching out bosses for bonus XP, off to hang with Flux and presently I ding 10. At this point I've got 5 slots in AS and in go the ATOs except the Acc/Dam.

And then I finish off Flux. (with some sweeping along the way) Things get iffy with Frostfire but with some purples and reds and greens I beat him down and ding 11. Maybe I should have actually toggled up Ninja Reflexes? It seems purples are better than brains. In my defense this was in the morning and I hadn't gotten through my first cup of coffee yet.

So, 11 and that means new police contact and at one point I can't avoid doing hostage rescue. Yep, still horrible on Stalkers but at least my stealth drops immediately when I turn off Hide, unlike the stealth proc. Some Outcast bosses, some police missions, and I'm 12. DOs, some sweeping and a final police mission and I'm at 12.5 with the King's Row safeguard selected. Off to Pocket D to rack up the hours on Clubber.

Overall... this was fun. Maybe not quite as fast as scrapping or especially bruting, but the toon's showing promise. There may be some issues with having two sources of Orange Circles but I'll just have to hit the keys to make them go away. I had a hard think about Placate but so far I've been able to solve things just by punching faces and with the Hide proc in AS I can take down the primary target good and quick.

I was a bit more hesitant leaving Caltrops out, but I'm pretty sure I'll get more mileage out of Hasten. They look like a late 40s power pick, with all the procs I can put in.

Tonight it's KR safeguard, 2xSSA1 and then we'll see. (EDIT: Or not, I'm not sure I can get hero merits yet without running some tips)

@BrandX:

Thanks! That's really all I needed to know - I'm confident I can get close to the goal and in doing so accumulate most of what I need to do so, but the conflicting defense/recharge needs may yet prove a bit daunting.

Still, I've got the ATO set, some other goodies, a Hecatomb set and the Glad Armor lined up, and I'm pretty close to grabbing the PvP -res proc as well. Or I may get the Panacea bit for +end and wait for the -res, I reckon it's mostly for EBs and up.

Still, will not be cheap!

@ShadowMoka:

So far he has been unstoppable though I expect the RNG to catch up soon, if nothing else in Faultline.

And he was always the star of the show! :-)

So I like Street Justice. Really like it. Made a StJ/SR scrapper shortly after the set dropped and basically haven't played anything else since. This is part lack of available time, part the toon being insanely fun. Massive ST, surprisingly decent AoE with SS and Spring Attack and loads of recharge, quite survivable, subtle as a sack of hammers to the face.

...OK, she does have a stealth proc in Sprint.

Anyway, I really like Street Justice, and I really like the concept of a stalker, but until now I've really felt my stalkers have been boring in practice. So I figured I'd try to make a StJ/Nin. I really want to like Ninjutsu as well, it does say Stalker a lot more than the other sets and I suppose this is for obvious reasons.

And as with the scrapper, I want the toon to eventually be a bit of a monster.

Anyways, for Basic Average Girl (the scrapper) I went with a natural idea. Ninja Run, Body Mastery, a nice ST chain backed with Spinning Strike. Musculature and Vorpal.

Killer-Queen will be a whole different beast if I can pull it off. Sweeping Cross in the ST chain, SC and SS the only AoE, SS+CJ for travel. Burnout for 4 minute godmode against incarnate content. Will want Musculature and Vorpal here as well. Much more a boss-buzzsaw for teams though. So...

Is it in the opinion of you Stalker vets doable to make a reasonably End stable, perma hastened, (normal) softcapped StJ/Nin?

Well, my Claws/SR can do the yellows and blues solo on a good day. I strongly suspect a pair of StJ/(probably WP)/(Blaze or Darkness) scrappers can get the job done. Maybe even one, with 4*Basilisk+2*Dmg in Crushing Uppercut and well slotted Char/Petrifying Gaze.

Not 100% sure of course.

That was what I suspected - thank you very much for making it clear.

One thing I'm not grokking is what will happen to set bonuses as I upgrade the enhancements. If someone could explain it would be lovely.

I like my Archery/Energy blaster a lot. Fairly cheap IO'd build with recharge enough to do Snap/Blazing/Snap/Aimed and a bit of ranged defense. Flight, no Hasten, all the Leadership toggles. Power Thrust slotted with six Kinetic Crash on auto. Surveillance and Cryo Ray, I should probably take out the snipe and put in LRM some day for multinuke goodness.