Synaesthetix

As a fellow Rob/Dark, I'd advise picking both up as a priority - FS is still an awesomely powerful crowd-control ability, and SF is especially useful to you - as it provides the Energy resistance that your bots will so desperately need (seeing as it's their main vulnerability). On the balane of things, I'd be tempted to grab FS first, then SF at the next level.

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If you were fighting a good blaster (take for example gatling) they wouldnt walk head on into battle with you so you could hit them with ur debuffs, they would be stealthy and by the time you knew where they were you would be dead in 2 hits.

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I'm sorry, is there some unwritten rule that states Corrupters cannot be equally stealthy? As much as Blasters can sneak up on Corruptors, Corruptors can sneak up on Blasters - you don't have to be waiting for someone to pop up in front of you in order to debuff them, you know. FYI, as Gatling is an Elec/Energy Blaster, he'd find his work much more difficult with Shadow Fall in front of him, as would any Energy Blaster - speaking as an Energy Blaster. Without detoggling, a fully slotted SF can be an enormous pain - and not every Blaster is minded for detoggling.

Without going into a complete breakdown of powerset vs powerset, I'll point out that any AT with the ability to heal itself (especially if said heal also acts as a debuff) is a serious threat in a PvP situation - even relatively-weak auto-heals.

I can think of two occasions where Defiance has been of any use at all in PvE, playing two mid/high-level Blasters - of all the inherents of the AT's I play, it's far and away the least used. PvP is a slightly different matter, but seeing as my main PvP Blaster (Energy/Energy) has relatively silly damage output anyway, I barely notice whether or not it saves me an extra attack to down an enemy.

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A thing every MM should learn:

Place your (stay) bots/undeads/ninjas/mercs around a bend, move to the mobs and pull them to you and wipe the floor with them, no more running into other mobs...

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A thing every MM should learn:

Place your henchmen behind the corner, then send a lone 1st Tier henchman in to aggro the mobs, before recalling him to you around the corner (and lay down a Tar Patch on said corner if you're /Dark).

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06) --> Spin==> Acc(6) Rechg(7) Dmg(7) Dmg(9) Dmg(9)

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I'd lose Spin, FWIW. I had it, I enjoyed the animation, I ditched it because of the crappy damage.

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12) --> Hasten==> Rechg(12) Rechg(34) Rechg(36)

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With Quickness, you already have some perfectly feasible attack chains already - Hasten isn't necessary, really.

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16) --> Hurdle==> Jump(16) Jump(43) Jump(43)

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I'd drop at least one of the extra slots into PB - stacking mez-protection is your friend and mine.

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41) --> Lucky==> DefBuf(41)

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... and I'd finish slotting up Lucky as well.

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44) --> Focused Accuracy==> EndRdx(44) EndRdx(45) EndRdx(45) TH_Buf(45) TH_Buf(46) TH_Buf(46)
47) --> Laser Beam Eyes==> Acc(47) Dmg(48) Dmg(48) Dmg(48)
49) --> Conserve Power==> Rechg(49) Rechg(50) Rechg(50)

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I don't see the Body Mastery Pool being wholly useful to Claws/SR - I went with Darkness, but I'd be tempted by Weapon Mastery as well - if only for variety!

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"Police Drones and Arbiter Drones can now see Stealthed entities and enemy players. "

There was already a drone inside the hospital when I was last there.

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Yes this will help a bit as last night in Sirens call after the event, was a few stalkers i seen actually in the Heroes hopital. I had just died and returned to hospital and came down the lift and i saw a stalker standng in the actuall hospital at the door.

The drone did not zap him but when i said i could see him in broadcast he ran away.

Not very sporting for stalkers/stealthed foes to be in the heroes base, they need to make these areas really secure and try to discourage base camping as much as possible.

Hope when this goes live that it has the desired effect of ridding base camping to a degree.

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I agree, i find stalkers in hero base distasteful and unsporting and before anyone says they see me in there, yes I occasionally do a dive from the skies to AS someone but they are my friends I certainly dont do it to new people or people I dont know

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It works both ways, though - after duoing with my gf's Empath yesterday in Sirens yesterday, we figured out that she was the bounty target for most of the stalkers. As she had to go afk anyway, I suggested she go to the hospital as a safe place, and followed her in... within about 20 seconds of her leaving the keyboard, in comes one stalker - giving me ample time to hit Aim, Build Up, then two-shot the stalker before the Arbiter in the hospital got a chance to disintegrate him.

Happily for us, he was our bounty target at the time too.

For my part, I know I've Invised and Hovered into the villains hospital from time to time... not so I can camp villains, but so I can /e drumdance in the corner and /e wave to the newly-resurrected villains as they step out of the chambers.

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Burn and hot feet, neither useful for a blaster.

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Hot Feet is useful as Stalker-defence in PvP; Burn is pretty much useless after they removed the -Immob from the Blaster version.

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If they removed -Immob then why does it say in the description frees you from immobilisation holds?

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Because the descriptions need to be rewritten, something Cryptic are notoriously crap at. I think it was a change made in I4 - States explicitly told us that Blasters weren't meant to have any status protection whatsoever, and away went the -Immob from Burn - to the chagrin of /Fire Blasters everywhere.

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Burn and hot feet, neither useful for a blaster.

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Hot Feet is useful as Stalker-defence in PvP; Burn is pretty much useless after they removed the -Immob from the Blaster version.

As I said elsewhere on this board...

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With as little offence as I can put it, but if an Empath - or Rad - starting spamming Heal Aura/Radiant Aura in my team, they'd be gone before you could say "Oooh, green light!" - or I'd leave - and have done so in the past. Spamming auto-hit auras is completely lazy and artless, not to mention annoying, in my eyes and the eyes of the players I team with. To each their own, but the best Empaths I've teamed with have been great spot-healers - and have never had occasion to spam heals, prior to or after ED.

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$.02

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Aim is always handy - as there is not point slotting for damage or endurance drain on lightning field, if you can spare the slots then 3acc 3 end redux + aim should be more than enough!

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You can probably drop an EndRed or two if you pick up Power Sink later on in the Elec Manip set... if you never exemp down, that is.

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Indeed. Although it needs to be fully slotted with 3 acc and 3 end redux to make it viable. It's a massive endurance hog and if those pesky stalkers stock up on defense then even with 2 acc you miss...alot.

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Keep moving about, and if you're doing nothing for extended periods - keep hitting Aim. It's not a great solution, but it works.

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Oh yes..... and yup Syn, Stamina comes in well handy now I've resorted to spamming my Healing aura during battle.
It's dead handy and I'd recommend it to all Empaths.
a) you don't need the perma click for Hasten anymore so use it somewhere useful
b) With stamina and a couple of End reds you don't notice the end drain at all.
c) It gives your team a safe haven to run to if they need a heal and you are busy.
d) It sometimes catches teammates you may not have spotted or just happen to be in range. Meaningyou can concentrate on the more problematic people.

Best thing I ever did!

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With as little offence as I can put it, but if an Empath - or Rad - starting spamming Heal Aura/Radiant Aura in my team, they'd be gone before you could say "Oooh, green light!" - or I'd leave - and have done so in the past. Spamming auto-hit auras is completely lazy and artless, not to mention annoying, in my eyes and the eyes of the players I team with. To each their own, but the best Empaths I've teamed with have been great spot-healers - and have never had occasion to spam heals, prior to or after ED.

Rant over.

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Hey, if she can keep me alive for long enough to reach 49, Stase MUST be Uber

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I think you have a deal going with the Necromancy fairie, myself... which explains the ghostly pallor!

Mystery solved!

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Yes, yes I do. However, does it allow/need duration slotting? Or is in an 'active as long as you keep the power running provided you have enough endurance' type?

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It's a toggle, and it could use three EndReds - but as long as you have the juice, you can keep it running. TKing a group into a corner and hitting Drain Psyche should work out nicely, though.

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Question for the other Mind/Psi's - is TK really worth getting? The end drain and aggro don't look all that appealing; does the hold make up for it?

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Do you want to be able to push +2/3 bosses into a corner, all neatly bunched up for AoEs and general beatings?

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Renounce SR, and join the Claws/Invul club! There's me...and erm, me. It's a very small club--heaven knows why .

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I think it's because you hang around with that Weasel ne'erdowell type - otherwise everyone would be rolling Claws/Inv, in all its uberosity.

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Especially as an Empath. If you've ever played an empath in a high intensity battle (like those we have when my team is perhaps fighting at the Hotspots in Sirens) you'll know that often you may call out for everyone to "gather for RA", but often they don't all get to you in time.

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If I were an Empath in a PvP zone, I'd never shout for everyone to gather - it doesn't take long to cotton on to what's happening if 6 heroes all drop what they're doing to charge over to the guy hovering nervously at the back. Don't make yourself more of a target than you already are.

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Probably half the time I drop RA it's as an opportunistic "They are all in range and they are low on end and now's a good time" basis.

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This is the best way to go about it, really. If I felt I had to have everyone gather for whatever reason, I'd call for them to gather around a Tank, or under an FF Force Bubble, or any other player with some type of disruptive aura - once everyone's bunched, then you move in to set off your aura(s) and move out quickly afterwards.

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Point is most of an empaths powers, bar the Healing Aura are pretty much staionary powers, and in order to keep a big team healed you need to stand still for the majority of the time targetting and healing. It's hard to do that bouncing around.

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I know some Empaths use numpad keybinds for healing a specific party member (numpad1 heals member one, numpad2 heals member 2, etc.) - they could be useful in a PvP zone. Presumably, you could use the alt, ctrl, and shift trigger keys to apply different buffs - CM and Fort, for instance. I'm sure someone could knock up the relevant binds... or if no-one picks up the slack, I might be inclined to do so.

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An interesting thing to consider, for those who say that stalkers aren't overpowered. Why are stalkers more heavily represented in PvP zones than any other AT?
5 villain, 4 of them stalkers, and not the first time I've seen them be the majority AT. All very suggestive methinks *strokes beard thoughtfully*

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I advise less beard-stroking, more reading comprehension.

From my post 6 replies back:
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I think PvP needs a little more variety, to be honest - more Dominators at the very least, I can go days without seeing a purple icon next to an orange name. As the average villain level increases, though, I think we'll see that - some ATs need more slotting/levels to be effective than others (as stated above), whereas Stalkers are essentially fully operational from the get-go by the time PvP becomes an option.

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Stalkers cope better with little than the other ATs do. There may well be other factors to take into account too, such as: Stalkers can PvP well without a team, other ATs may not - the lack of people in the zone may persuade other ATs entering them to leave if they cannot team, where the same compulsion is not found in players with Stalker ATs.

If you're going to attempt to be patronising, you may want to actually have a point first.

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1) In my CURRENT opinion there IS a balance problem. Simply put these threads wouldn't exist if there wasn't.

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Human nature dictates (sadly) that in any scenario where there is a perceived difference in ability, the less rational mind will always presume that the difference is down to factors beyond his/her control - regardless of whether or not they exist.

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2) PvP/PvE etc. I will freely admit here that I'm a bit of a PvP noob. I will freely admit that I don't have a PvP specced toon...

So all that being true, why in PvP, regardless of what Character I bring online, do I only ever have problems with Stalkers ??

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1) You haven't PvP'd enough to know how to deal with Stalkers, maybe?
2) Possibly, the other ATs have slotting issues - either in physical lack of slots, with suboptimal slotting, or without the required inf to buy a full complement of sparkly SOs. As a result, they're functioning at a lower level than you should expect in future.

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While YES I still expect to lose out to a specifically set up PvP player, I can't believe that ALL the Stalkers in PvP and specced specifically for PvP?!? Aren't there any Stalkers who just pop in for some fun like we heroes do ??

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Yes - they're the ones without Stealth. Whenever I've seen PvE Stalkers in Sirens, I've noticed that they tend to drop pretty quickly, and often.

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And why do we need to go to so much trouble, prep work, insp buying and ensuring we have the correct teammates around us and are functioning correctly just so we can take down one Stalker ??

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You don't need to - a big enough team should be able to look after itself. You don't need multiple people to take down a stalker, after all.

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would we need to do if 8 Stalkers all teamed up in one big hunting pack ?!? (actually as I'm currently building a Stalker I'd quite like to try that )

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Stalkers tend to work alone or in pairs, from all I've seen. If 8 stalkers teamed up and centred on a team in close formation, all you'd need is one AoE to hit them all and bring them out of hide - or one FF Force Bubble, presuming they're not /Energy. Or someone casting CM. Or Tactics. Or a couple of Whirlwind/Repel-ers running around. Or, or, or... are we getting the idea here?

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It's absolutley blindingly obvious to anyone.... a patient stalker willing to bide their time can get you all the time. NO MATTER THE PREP!!! The key word there is patient.

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So will a patient Blaster, or a patient Controller, or a patient Corruptor... as a Blaster, I've 'stalked' Stalkers/Brutes/Corruptors across the length and breadth of Bloody Bay/Sirens and back again. So long as you carefully choose your moment to strike, you'll get your target in the end - unless someone beats you to it.

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(Which is why the frankly ridiculous advice of "Keep Moving" annoys me so much. My blaster HAS to stand still when sniping. My Empath HAS to stand still while delivering RA. When my scrapper triggers Integration she stops and guess what...... stands still. Any interruptable power being activated is the patient stalkers opportunity. It's not inept gaming on the part of the player, it's simple game mechanics!!)

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But you choose when to activate those powers - if you use any rooting power in a PvP situation, you actively take the risk that you are an obvious target - for everyone. Even in the S4 competition, rooting usually = death, the first thing I noticed as an AR blaster with a number of powers that require excessive rooting animations. (You can slot your snipe for Interrupt Reductions, though.) If you choose to take these actions whilst in plain view and on an easily accessible surface, then you choose to suffer the consequences - in the good old fashioned risk/reward sense: you may get the kill (reward) at the price of being dropped yourself (risk). If you weigh up the options available to you and choose an outcome that results in a negative outcome, then you may just have made a bad decision for that scenario. It does not mean that Stalkers are "zomg overpowered", they just exploited your tactical weakness.

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5) I've read through these threads, lots of them and it always seems to boil down to the Stalkers posting how you can supposedly beat them and the Heroes posting how they think it's unfair. Either that or you get some cocky hero type who claims that he's unbelievably hard in PvP and Stalkers don't affect him at all.

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I've taken out every Stalker I've ever come across in PvP at least once; I have been taken out by most of them. Some of them have better kill/been killed ratios against me, a significant amount don't.

All that is far from cockiness - the above are plain statements of fact. I have also been dropped by MMs, Corruptors, Brutes, and Dominators - of them all, Stalkers included, I fear Corruptors the most. Not only can they take me out by themselves, but failing that they can make it incredibly simple for anyone else to put me on the hospital express. They can be in your face and hurting you, or off at a distance and causing you problems. Stalkers can hit me hard, and I can run away, or two/three-shot them if they miss... and that's about it. They're only a problem when they're in your face (or behind it ).

Point in case, only yesterday I witnessed a lone Corruptor being ganged up on by an En/? Blaster and a DM/DA Scrapper - not only did the Corruptor drop the Blaster, but she didn't get dropped by the Scrapper in the process - in fact, she flew away on full health. Would a Stalker have fared as well in a similar scenario, being blindsided by 2 heroes, staying to fight it out and pulling off a victory in the process? Doubtful.

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The other point I'd like to make here is that I really DON'T want Stalkers nerfed unduly. I understand the archetype and the reasons it is the way it is. Personally I feel that it is a very interesting archetype and the game needs more of them.

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I think PvP needs a little more variety, to be honest - more Dominators at the very least, I can go days without seeing a purple icon next to an orange name. As the average villain level increases, though, I think we'll see that - some ATs need more slotting/levels to be effective than others (as stated above), whereas Stalkers are essentially fully operational from the get-go by the time PvP becomes an option.

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But I'd just like for me to be able to take my toons into a PvP zone and have a fair fisticuff type fight with a Stalker the same way I can with all the other archetypes.

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The thing with Stalkers is - at least with the good ones - they're rarely going to let you get into a position where you can have a "fair fisticuff" fight with them.

It's refreshing to see that you're willing to challenge your opinion, though. For what it's worth, I had a Stalker - but I just didn't get into it; I deleted him last night, as it happens. Stalking isn't for everyone.

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Electricity Blaster - Lightning Field.

Do I look like a scrapper or tank? Why on earth would I want an aggro inducing, sound sfx scraping down wall thing, that only causes minimal damage with no other beneficial effects, such as disorientate, slow, or whatever?

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Stalker-defence in PvP zones.

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Your question was bringing down another AT in pairs in 3 seconds not with two attacks.

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No my question stemmed from the fact that two assassins strikes are enough to bring down just about everything except a tanker (and maybe a brute, I don't know). 3 seconds is enough time to launch a SINGLE attack. Which other AT can do this? Is that clearer.

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(Power Boost + Aim + Build Up +) Total Focus*2 (Energy Manip)would be the best two Blappers could manage in a single attack. Thunder Strike (Elec Manip) might do the trick too. The disorient effect might even punch through status protection, and let's not even begin to wonder what would happen if Defiance were in effect.

But, in the same amount of time it takes to fire off TF, you can activate Energy Punch and Bonesmasher (and then another attack on top, but let's move on) - which will also bring down a minimum of 4 toggles if they connect, coming from a pair of Energy Blasters. As it is, A+BU+EP+BS from a lone Blapper will down a Stalker.

Needless to say, none of the above examples can be interrupted, unlike AS.

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My original question was accurate, maybe you just didnt understand.

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I'd say you were the one not understanding - if you mean "single attack", say "single attack"; if you mean "three seconds" say "three seconds", it's pretty simple. As it is, it's pretty obvious you're not here for a discussion - you're here to whine, and nothing anyone says will convince you.

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As with everything it depends on the player, Lady Fuyas brute is a monster to take down even with a team

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So I've heard; sadly, I'm on the wrong server to do anything about it. What powerset is she?

When I'm playing with Doctor Gonzo (En/En), I tend to have a slightly different way of viewing the battle - I'll either ask for a CM or equivalent, or use a BF, and head for: Brute/Stalker/Dominator-Corrupter-MM.

Brutes go down first because they're not pretty when they're angry - best to drop them quick, and get them out of the way.
Stalkers go next, because of the obvious risk of AS.
As for the last three... it depends largely on the situation and powerset/player. I tend to get rid of known threats first, then unknown quantities, and then the less-skilled players.

Of them all, Stalkers tend to be the trickiest to drop for now - they have no qualms about running, and I rarely follow until everything else has dropped, or I have. I'll wait until the Brutes have full SOs and slots to make my final call on that, though.

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If you take that trick away from them, then Stalkers become melee Blasters (not Scrappers). Melee Blasters haven't got a huge life expectancy.

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The difference being that melee Blasters have the potential to vastly outdamage an unhidden Stalker. Blappers are also surprisingly resilient.

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Stamina: Not a problem. Still a valid power to have, essential even. Not once during that 8 man team skirmish did I ever get close to burning all my End.

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You still find Stamina essential? Even before ED I never used it, and while running through the 4th Shards TF the other day I never ran out of endurance...and I was actually attacking!

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Agreed, I see no compelling reason for an Empath to require Stamina now - unless...

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Heal Aura: Dropped from 441 healing points to 279. Significant droppage. I still find it a valuable power. Now I don't have Perma Hasten, I have a tendency to Ctrl-Click this and spam it in battle situations. Teammates can always run into range if they need a quick heal safe in the knowledge it'll go of in a few secs. This leave me free to concentrate on buffs and Heal Other....

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