Medical Stalkers

No, THIS.

I hadn't considered that, thanks for the tip.

See? He gets it.

Still working on the slotting, RL can be such a pain...

Damage dealing should always be top priority, but that doesn't mean you can't be team-friendly in other ways. Ninjitsu in particular can offer some minor control abilities with Caltrops and BP. Heck, just Caltrops can help you not only protect yourself, but protect your team. They are fantastic on the ITF with all the ambushes. Plop them down in front of one and the whole thing just piles into them like a train wreck, at which point anyone in the team with an AoE instantly loves you.

The patron hold is nice for those annoying minions and LTs you don't want to deal with immediately. I use it on things like Nulifiers, Surgeons, and Sappers and then go to town on something bigger. Or just use it to help stack hold mag with your team on bosses, EBs, and AVs.

Medicine Pool is not a terrible idea, but I think you'd get more constant use out of Leadership. Resuscitate only lets you pick one person up and often they don't need your help to self-rez. By contrast, Assault, Tactics, Maneuvers, and Vengeance help the whole team. The first three all the time and the last helping the rest of the team turn around a wipeout-in-progress. Pick three to replace your Medicine powers. Not to mention Tactics can come in handy for your own ability to hit high-defense enemies like tightly-packed Cimerorans using Phalanx Fighting.

Just some alternate ideas.

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Mission Architect Handyman

Now that's what I'm talking about. Not just to chime in w/ a "you're wrong", but to give a why and wherefore. Thanks Zem, you've given me food for thought, and an idea for another of my stalkers. Again, well done.

No, I think you and I are on the same page. I get bored playing toons "as the Dev's intended". I pride myself on the ability to think outside the box, and problem solve on the fly.

Also, i would reccommend the Martial Arts Booster to all stalkers. Ninja run, when backed by the fitness power pool, is awesome. It's not SS or SJ, but it's like having a light mix of the two, and it frees up 2 powerslots, which is, once again, why I even considered this endevour in the first place.

I'm not even sure you need Aid Self pending on your primary and secondary. You can get the rez by taking Aid Other + Stimulant since the 4th pool pick requires two previous powers but doesn't matter which two. Stim compliments the rez since it'll break them out of the stunned state allowing them to Rest/self heal so you can either heal another team mate or run off and gank something.

My Arcs
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Mission Architect Handyman

At least in my build it would only save me 1 power: SJ itself. And since I do not have any additional slots in SJ it doesn't free up any enhancement slots I could use on a replacement power or somewhere else. Whatever I replaced SJ with would have to work well with only the one enhancement slot or I'd have to pull slots from some other powers, weaking them and possibly losing me some set bonuses. I just can't live without CJ + Hurdle for unsupressed combat mobility. When your offense is primarily all melee range, being able to GET into melee is vitally important. Sprint+Swift+Hurdle is okay but it's not got a lot of aerial control. Ninja Run itself is no good in combat because it supresses like any other travel power when you attack.

If you take /Nin or /WP, you get a self heal, thereby rendering aid self relatively useless, IMO.

Less needed but hardly useless. Reconstruction and Sha are on 60s base recharge timers. You'd get plenty of use out of Aid Self on a Ninjitsu prior to being soft-capped. Even after soft-capping defense, topping-off health as often as possible has the distinct advantage of preventing you from being one-shot by NPCs.

If I was going to take *any* Medicine pool power it'd be Aid Self.

You'll note I said relatively useless.

I'm less concerned with healing myself, and more interested in making my MA/Nin stalker more team-friendly without losing what little edge I have.

I have begun the arduous task of slotting, and would like to ask what's the best set for AS? On my first build I slotted touch of death, but was considering mako's bite for my medic build. I, admittedly, haven't done the required legwork to contrast/compare simply because I haven't had the time between work and RL commitments. Any/all suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks!

Okay then relative to Stimulant, which would be your other choice, I'd say it is more useful. I tend to define useful by how often you will use a power as much as by its effect when you DO end up using it. I've taken Stimulant before on other characters and ended up not using it as much as I thought I would. By contrast there have been many times with my soft-capped Ninjitsu stalker with excellent Sha self-heal where I have had to pull away from a fight because there was a risk of being taken out by the next lucky shot and Sha was still recharging. Another self-heal would have put me immediately back into the fight.

Then take Provoke.

What set you choose for AS is more likely to depend on what set bonuses you are building for. Mako's will give you some ranged defense, if I remember right. T'Death will give you melee defense. Other than that just make sure whatever you choose is pushing the ED limit for damage.

So he can take that extreme, drop what he doesn't want to push it closer to "regular stalker" and find whatever balance he wants.

I did say I threw that together for the hell of it, and that it probably wouldn't be fun to play.

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Once again, you fail to disappoint. I hadn't considered that I might not use stimulant as much as aid self, as I've never taken the medicine pool for any of my toons.

Is drawing aggro to my stalker wise? Seems that might raise my mortality rate. Never used this power pool, either, so I have no point of reference on this.

So it's a personal preference then?

Well the point about using it after Resuscitate is probably a good one too, to be fair. And you might use it preemptively on someone who lacks mez protection before entering a fight with something like Rikti mesmerists. However this also might mean you are late getting to melee range. I typically want to be drawing a little 'x' on some hapless boss's left kidney by the time the brute rolls into aggro range. If you can juggle these activities and really don't care about the extra self heal, eh... maybe go for it after all. Depending on how many respecs you have available, experimenting might not be a big deal. There is only so much forum theorycrafting we can do here.

Neither have I. I was sort of kidding. Sort of. I've made a running joke with some of my friends and VG mates that I would take Taunt on my nin/nin stalker since she is well able to handle the aggro. That said, it would come at the expense of either Super Jump or Retsu and while I barely use Retsu anymore it does provide a storage compartment for one of my LOTG recharges at the very least. Still... I can just imagine the looks I'd get if someone saw a stalker taunt a whole group of mobs. Maybe *I* should work on a lower-cost alternate build for fun that includes it.

Yeah, I wouldn't say there is any one set that stands out as a must-have. Some people will Frankenslot by mixing and matching to get the best possible enhancement values for accuracy, damage, endurance, etc. I don't really think anything but decent accuracy and around 90ish% damage are actually must-have and you can accomplish that with either T'Death or Mako's. T'Death is slightly better on damage and Mako's is slightly better on accuracy. Similar set bonuses except for one being Melee and the other Ranged. On my nin/nin with Divine Avalanche for melee defense I pretty much just focused on Ranged defense soft-capping. I'd just play around a bit with slotting options in Mid's. It makes a good calculator for enhancements and set bonuses.

One thing I personally wouldn't do is slot Hecatomb at 50. Not just because purples are ridiculous to come by these days but because I just think it's better spent on whatever you consider your bread-and-butter normal attack. Probably a Tier 8 or 9 attack. AS, even on a soft-capped Stalker isn't a sure bet in the thick of melee on a full team so it's likely not something you will use even as often as it is up and available after the opening strike so I figure as long as it's set pretty well for damage... it's good.