Praetorian Missions and Stalkers

Am I the only one having this problem? I'm running into a LOT of escort and missions with ambushes in them in the Praetorian arcs, both of which are making stealth completely useless. For the escorts, they loose sight of you when you go "hidden", and the ambushes come right to you and start attacking even if you're hidden.

Now these are old problems, but usually these quest types were far more spread out. But in Praetoria I'm getting them one after another and leading to multiple deaths for my KM/Nin stalker (The worst being a constant ambush wave of Ghouls in a hospital, which lead to so much rage you'd think I was a brute.). Before folks ask, I'm a very old player (pre-issue 1) that came back to try out GR. Unfortunately I never managed to get a Stalker very far in the past, as I found how squishy they were at lower levels an extremely difficult hurdle for me to overcome. GR is not helping matters any right now....

I've heard similar accounts. It's apparently A Challenge.

I am suspecting that as soon as I can find a level-adjusty-person, I will adjust level to -1/x1.

So turn off hide. Your escort will be able to follow.

Ambushes almost always say something when they spawn, so the minute you see those little speech bubbles in your grill toggle hide back on and wait with your escort. When the ambush shows they won't see you and will stand around like any other spawn. Treat them accordingly, turn hide off and head on out. Rinse and repeat for repeat ambushes.

...

Sometimes, however, they follow so close on each other that Hide might not be recharged in time. You have two options:

1. Don't lead your escort anywhere until the first ambush arrives. Finish them off as above and stay right there until all the ambushes are done. This has the advantage of maximizing the distance between you and the ambush's spawn point.

2. The Zag Method. Ambushes for escorts almost always default to the escort's starting location if they don't meet the escort enroute. They will go there and stand around even if the escort isn't there, so turn hide off and lead the escort down a side hallway until you see the escort pass and scoot on out.

Hope that helps. Be aware that some ambushes will see right through hide. As a rule, they haven't traditionally been escort ambushes, but that might have changed with new content. I don't remember off the top of my head if that's the case in Praetoria.

It's just you. They all are very easy to pull off if you took 2 minutes of your time before entering the mission to load your inspiration bars. Personally, i play with 0/2 without bosses and it's pretty good. If you think you won't make it, try with 0/1 and no bosses. You can take advantage of the new "leashed" spawns, because most of the times they are just following the escort. So, you can toggle on hide and run away while the spawn stays near the escort.

In the new missions, I'm noticing that after I die and return to the ambush spawn, they see through my hide.

This has been 20 levels of torture.

I am really not doing well here. After 3 escorts I got a mission that placed me against a constant spawning ambush (I think 8 or 10 waves, I lost count). It was enough the NPC group that was supposed to be helping me died and left me alone... I died at least 4 times during that.

Now I'm stuck on "Katie's Mom" and that quest-line. I have to escort a trigger-happy psychic blaster to an elite boss... To make it worse, the EB summons a LOT of help. 5 waves of ambushes came running at once, not to mention her "pet" summon. If this is supposed to make me want to come back to CoX, it's doing a piss-poor job of it.

And I'm only at level 12, and on the "default" difficulty.

they're are 2 types of ambushes. location targeted ambush and palyer targeted ambush.

A location targeted can be avoided by moving away from the trigger point. a player targeted can't be escaped.

Yeah that can be a bit annoying but I am more annoyed by those "fire bombs" they throw on the ground that does auto DoT damage. It breaks my hide! T_T I have to watch where I stand and where my teammate starts the aggro because if I spend that LONG 6s (build up + as), I need to make sure I land. Sometimes my teammate would aggro right before I start, and the fire on the ground breaks my hide.

I've been playing on large teams so there are more fire bombs.... T_T


I just need to really watch where the aggro starts.

Yeah low damage along with do´s and stalkers lack of aoe damage make some of these missions dull.

I played through the Loyalist Responsibility arcs in both Nova and Imperial, part of the Power arc in Nova, and part of the Warden arc in Imperial and while all the things people have mentioned have happened to me (player-targeted ambushes, escort missions), once I got wise to it, I would plan out an "escape route" and clear out the mobs along the way on the path back to the Mission Start. In fact, I just recently did an escort mish where I ran to where the NPC was being held, then ran backwards through the map the clear the path. I like to think this is an advantage of being a Stalker rather than a weakness.

As someone mentioned earlier, often times beating the mobs that surround the escort NPC will trigger a location-based ambush. Move a bit out of the way, and they'll stop short of where you were. Then if you've cleared the way, it should be smooth sailing out of Hide.

It can be frustrating if the NPC has attacks, but if you've planned ahead, the path back should be fine.

Hmmm...soloed most of the Resistance Warden Arc with my Stalker, and except for a couple missions, I didn't have much of a problem.

Escorts followed me on hide (except for one of them), I always carried Purple and Green Inspirations (about 70/30).

[POSSIBLE SPOILER]






Only mission I really remember have a problem with, was one were a bunch of ghouls ambushed the hell out of me! Took some hit and running after they killed me the first time.

Let me start off by saying the new content in Praetoria is definitely more difficult than any previous low level stuff. Personally, I like that but I can understand the frustration.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Polecat7 As I don't normally play stalkers (Love them to death, but never quite got the hang of them), I actually didn't think about this as a problem when I started the "Katie's Mom" mission. I ASed the lady, and got her to half health in a few shots... and suddenly got attacked by what seemed like 5 waves of ambush spawns. That comment makes me think that she was set to trigger the ambushes at relevant points, and by ASing and hitting her hard and fast, I clean blew through multiple triggers and they spawned at once... and proceeded to shred on me.

I ran this mission on my Brute and what you're presuming is correct. The ambushes are triggered based on how much health Seer 001 (The Elite Boss) has so if you AS her down to half health in one shot you're gonna trigger several waves simultaneously. That's a common problem for Stalkers when facing critters that call in help. This is compounded by the fact that she summons more Seers; all of which deal mostly Psionic damage, a type that almost no one has Defense against (Particularly in the early game). I survived by popping a few purples and killing her as quickly as possible. Letting Kate take some of the aggro helped too.

Overall the heavy use of location and player targeted ambushes can be problematic for any AT. It's not an insurmountable obstacle but it does require a change in tactics. Standing toe to toe and fighting until someone dies is not as effective as it is in either Paragon or the Isles. You've gotta play smart. AS, run and repeat is a viable method for bringing down such foes. Of course it's likely you'll run into another problem in the form of missions that require you to exit through the door but that's nothing new. Overall, you'll be much more reliant on inspirations and good strategy than most of us are used to employing.

I'm not sure which arc it was, probably the MCKnight Arc, but in this arc, you receive a very high damaging temporary attack power (minigun), giving you a high damage dot with built in extra accuracy. I don't know about you guys, but after i had this power, soloing Elite Bosses was never a hard part for me. Because BU worked with this power, usually going BU+AS+Minigun pretty much mopped all EBs. Even with Vanessa DeVore, first time i used the combo went down to ridiculous health levels, i just ran around till i drop aggro, then rinse and repeat, puff there she gone.

I realise this might not be an option for someone who does not want to do the arc for obvious thematic/rp/whatever reasons, but for the rest of you out there looking how to mop up the bosses, this is the best awesomesauce power combination with AS and BU. And it has a lot of uses left before it is depleted, around 30-40.

yeah i love chain gun.

looking back i kind of miss the missions as i have started working of lowbie arcs in paragon. some where dull but most of them had nice mechanics and **** i havent read as much in this game ever.
100 destroyers made me rage. also the seer which they seem to have combined the ai of lady jane and fusionette and proiceeded to run wild shooting psi darts and shockwaves everywhere.
i just wish they had made some post so content.