Smiling_Joe

To answer the question of what would be the perfect primary set, I would want to see something that capitalized on a stalker's ability to leverage burst damage.

Strictly off the top of my head, I banged out an idea for a set that might do something like that. I call it:

Psionic Melee:

1 Psychic Fist - You wrap your fists in psychic energy and deliver a quick punch to your enemy. The attack deals minor damage, but the psychic residue makes your opponent think they're more damaged than they really are. The illusory damage goes a way after a few seconds, but if they are defeated beforehand the defeat is very real.

1 Neural Chop - You wrap your fist in psychic energy and use it to deal moderate damage to your opponent. In addition, your blow wreaks havoc with your opponent's central nervous system, temporarily shutting some bodily functions down for a few seconds. Your opponent will take a little longer to recover than when hit with Psychic Fist, but there's a small chance that the attack will leave your enemy disoriented for a short time.

4 Dream Daggers - You sweep your arm in front of you as though you're releasing a spread of venomous daggers. They are very real to your opponents, however, dealing moderate psionic damage in a wide cone in front of you. The damage is moderate, but as with the first two attacks feels worse than it is. Opponents think they are poisoned and suffering poison damage over time. The illusory damage fades after a few seconds, but is very real in the meantime.

6 Psionic Strike - standard AS, but all psionic damage

8 Build Up

12 Placate

18 Telekinetic Burst - You deliver a roundhouse blow with a fist of psychic energy, knocking your opponent into the air and sending them smashing to the ground with tremendous force. Because they think they've been knocked higher and fallen harder, the attack deals extra but temporary psionic damage in addition to the damage dealt by both the punch and the fall.

26 Waking Nightmare - This purely psionic attack deals devastating and real damage to an opponent's psyche, made even more terrifying because it happens from a distance. Your opponent is lost in a nightmare of your making, and in addition to the damage suffers from a high mag fear effect.

32 Mind Ripper - A devastating attack. You bring both fists down with full psychic force on your opponent, knocking them down and dealing extreme damage. The psychic shockwaves ripple out, invading the minds of your foe's allies and making them think they too have taken damage from the attack. Mind Ripper deals real superior damage to your target and moderate illusory damage to up to five foes within a fifteen foot radius. If any of these foes are defeated before the mental damage disappears, they too will fall.


Apologies for the stupid sounding names. I put like ten minutes' thought into this.

The premise of the set is similar to spectral wounds from the Illusion Control set. The idea is to reward a stalker's ability to exploit opportunities to do damage and bring foes down with burst damage spikes. The illusory damage would not be counted in criticals, and Psionic Strike and Waking Nightmare carry no illusory damage at all. Mind Ripper deals illusory damage only to those in the AOE. The actual damage of any attacks that also deal this illusory damage would obviously have to be scaled down to balance the extra illusory damage, but the illusory combined with the real damage should bring the set significantly above other single target sets in total damage potential due to the fading nature of the illusory damage.

It would require some heavy testing to determine the correct levels of damage and the duration of the illusory damage, and most attacks would do a combination of psionic and smashing damage.

Very nice guide, Bill! Got me thinking about a possible rework to my second build into a human form based on your advice!

Might want to mention a bit about binds, since Peacebringers rely on them even more than Warshades (IMHO) to pull off some of those epic combos.

Ordinarily I'm a dedicated Tri-Former with an emphasis on melee, with opportunistic blasting from nova thrown in when necessary or on melee-heavy teams.

Two powers that I think deserve consideration on your Tri-Form's optional powers list are photon seekers and dawn strike. Together with white dwarf flare, they make an awesome reset button for those times when your pocket tank is getting a wee bit overwhelmed.

In heavy spawns (like tanking the ITF) you can - while waiting on dwarf attacks to recharge - combine inspirations to make a break free and a blue, pop the BF and whatever oranges and purples you like, hit flare to knock everyone down, then drop to human and hit build-up, photon seekers and dawn strike. Dead spawn. Pop the blue and hit conserve power, then it's back to it. If you've got the +end proc in dwarf, you're back and rolling by the time you've mopped up the stragglers.

Only time ever my PB made a fully-kitted scrapper stop and say "WTH was that?!"

Brightstorm went boom.

EDIT - that seems a bit covoluted, but the point is really that the mobs that are knocked back by Photon Seekers are generally still in range (even though they're in the air) of the Dawn Strike when it fires, and so finding a strategy that combines them could serve tri-formers well if used from a tanker form that can cluster the mobs together.

Would LOVE to have an alternate to the Incandescent Strike/Thunderstrike/Seismic smash/Total Focus animation where your toon jumps in the air in slow motion and brings both fists down.

Also would love an alternate to the Whirling hands and whirling axe that actually looks like you're dong more than jumping up and attacking the ground in a vicious circular fury. Don't mind it so much for the sword sets, given that the swords are - you know - long enough to reach the enemy when the attack animates.

EDIT - and +1 more vote for the fist animation for solar flare

EDIT(the sequel) - can I haz the chicken dance emote as an alternate for my mind/ controller's mass confusion?

Somebody clue me in: is the control-click on a power to make it auto fire broken in pvp? (or W.A.I?)

Now you're rockin' and rollin'! I liked the build quite a bit before these changes, but I've a feeling you're going to be very happy with this one.

I never did find my PB's Mids build. Meh. I've been meaning to respec him lately, anyway, and the discussions in this thread have got me thinking that I juuuust might have to break out Mid's in my spare time this afternoon!

If you like that suggestion by Leo, you'll love this:

You can put off stamina on a stalker, even a dark armor stalker. I'm currently growing a praetorian Kin/DA stalker and at 14 he's got both shields and shows no sign of slowing down. I'd probably switch Parry with Health, for starters. Then I'd take Obsidian Shield at 16, Super Jump at 20 and Stamina at 28.

You could swap out Disembowel and Dark Regen to get DR after stamina, but with the theft of essence proc you might not care so much about that.

Well, bear in mind that hitting build up before the AS will expend the KI counters, meaning that you have to choose whether to use them in build up or placate.

Basically, when AS'ing an enemy you can use build up , expend the three counters and get the bonus damage. You'll assassinate your target to get another counter, and (if you didn't kill your target with the assassination) get another counter when you kill him. Then you placate the next guy and get a critical on him and on the next guy. (possibly getting counters on both.)

Since the counters are timed to expire, I don't think three would be too out of whack given that a placate or a build up clears the count.

I do think we'd have to give something up to get this, though.

Yes. Set bonuses from inventions do carry over into the forms, regardless of which power they're slotted into.

Oh sorry - thought you got shot in his volley.

One thread up is Soul Storm's Tri-form Build, but it's very heavy on human and nova - so much so that I would recommend taking it for human/nova and just dropping dwarf form, freeing up four slots for whatever power you replace it with.

You're not going to be tanking very well with your dwarf form/dwarf form attacks slotted as they are, but I also don't think you're going to need to tank very often.

Let me just throw this out there - in most heavy mezzing situations you're likely to be in either light form or nova. Light form offers mez protection, and nova offers altitude and range. Get mezzed in nova, and you just sort of float there in relative safety from the heavier hitting melee attacks. If you've got mez resistance built in from IO's it'll carry over, and it's much easier to right-click your way into a breakfree in the air.

Have you considered just dropping dwarf? That would free up four slots, enabling to take, oh... Pulsar and five slot it with Absolute Amazements for 10% more recharge. Alternately, you could take provoke from the presence pool and use light form as your tank mode. I closed out Mids already, and so I don't know if you have 5 5% recharge bonuses already, but if not you could use the extra four slots to five slot Perfect Zinger for the 5% recharge and the 2.5% damage buff.

Alternately, throw in a couple of accuracy IO's, a recharge IO, the damage proc from Perfect Zinger, and the stun proc from Triumphant Insult.

But, really, those are just options. Keeping Dwarf isn't a bad thing, either. The best advice I could give you a this point is to try it out, because it's good to go pretty much as is.