Praetorian Missions and Stalkers

Pop a luck and man up?

You know what? I stand corrected. I must have the worst luck with caltrops, because apparently I've always been hit almost immediately when my targets became aware of my presence when I threw them.

Good call.

Well, I finally finished the Praetorian arcs and got let out of the Portal in Talos (Yeah, I'm a blue-sider stalker). This means I can look back on the path I chose and relate my experiences.

My path went: Loyalist - Resistance - Loyalist - Loyalist - Resistance

In all cases I kept to the Responsibility & Warden arcs. I'll refrain from being too specific as I don't want to give any spoilers to those who don't want it. But when it comes to missions as a Stalker, there were goods and bads.

Oddly I found the Loyalist missions the most friendly to stalkers. They were focused and very specific target based. You knew exactly what you were being sent to do, and very rarely did it change. Even more rare were the escorts. This isn't to say you didn't get a good share of ambushes tho, but it seemed less to me. Plus those "you have X amount of time before back-up comes" type missions are a breeze for stalkers, since they can stealth all the way to the mission goal, and get out before that timer is even close to run down.

The resistance mission sides I found myself saddled with far more escort missions. Also they didn't seem quite as focused goal wise, and tended to shift the mission objectives mid-mission at times. They were quite often very frustrating and infuriating, and seemed far more difficult then the loyalist sided missions.

Finally I found the late game arcs on BOTH sides to be hell for Stalkers. Specifically due to the proliferation of EBs scattered about. I found out the hard way that (at least at low level) stalkers can't handle an EB very well Solo. While when they fixed Seer 0001 she became far more easy to handle (You could hide and take a rest between phases of the fight if needs be), other EBs were an absolute terror to handle as a Stalker. I'll specifically note Devore (Ill/Emp controller with a bad habit of self healing herself AND her illusionary doubles. I had to call in help from a brute with some AOE to handle her effectively) and Noble Savage (I THINK an SS/Invuln tanker, but possibly a brute. Either way he'd constantly pop "dull pain" and take himself from half health to almost full again, and his damage output could flatten my stalker in 3-4 blows. I blew through an entire tray of 10 green insps trying to fight him, and still got taken down.).

So my overall opinion is this: Praetoria is fantastically made with wonderfully varied missions. More I was impressed how late NPCs picked up on your primary decision paths and would comment on it (They noted my tendency to the Loyalist Responsibility arcs). However, as a stalker, the missions were often like pulling teeth. Between insane waves of ambushes that come directed to YOU (often in waves far exceeding the traditional 3-5), the oversized spawns (averaging 4 minions a spawn, sometimes 3 minions and a Lt), and of course the dreaded escort missions, Praetoria is NOT very friendly to Stalkers at all. If anything, praetoria seemed to favor brute/scrapper archtypes, and possible Blaster/Corruptor types who had a means of keeping their distance (Like flight/hover. Very few Praetorian enemies seemed able to fly).

That's my take on things, anyway.

Seems to be intentional. Probably part of the 'pure experience' they wanted for Praetoria in the first while.

Got a great one. Mission goal: Kill some guy.

Setup:

The entire place is full of NON-ATTACKABLE mobs. You must talk to the target to start the fight. The fight starts immediately giving you the guy and his nearby friends and several other targets ALL AT ONCE. Because you had to break hide to talk.

It really feels like the devs have never even CONSIDERED the possibility that a stalker might want to play through Praetoria.

Aaaand another one. "Defend TPN from the Destroyer Horde". Because nothing says "fun" like giving a Stalker fast-spawning hordes of weak minions who are completely immune to stealth effects. I can't even conceive of a way to beat that one.

I came across at 3 missions like that first one you mentioned Seebs. Everything is unattackable until you reach the end, then everything goes suddenly hostile. I had one with a computer at the end I had to hack, another talking to a guy, and a third with a different guy. Don't wanna give the latter one away, but a totally empty mission, but when he's finished talking you have to handle 4 waves of enemies (All auto-aggro on YOU. Hiding doesn't work) followed by a "boss" (Thankfully not an EB).

I don't see how that's supposed to be "fun". It'd be like an entire map where every single creature, even minions, was immune to mez, or had 85% resistance to any possible melee damage source.

In Praetoria I found most Ambushes target you specifically. In one of the cases, you can avoid subsequent waves of the ambush by moving, but the first wave literally spawns around you and the guy you were talking to. Hell, they even get first strike because you have to click out of your dialog with the person in question before you can start attacking, the enemies are already attacking you during that process.

And I'm not sure being a Resistance Stalker will help you. They were far FAR worse about giving you escort & ambush missions then the Loyalist side was.