Oh ye Invoke Panic

I know tankerminds use the Presence tree's taunts. Do any builds ever go beyond that? I was looking at Invoke Panic and thinking about creating a fear-based build. What I'm thinking about so far:

DM/DA Stalker.
Focused Accuracy epic, with IO slotting heavily emphasizing global accuracy. I'm not great with IOs, but it's my hopes that with enough global Acc, I can slot individual powers with less acc (excepting the horribly inaccurate Presence powers) and make up for deficiencies with those saved slots.

Assassin's Strike open has a high potential to fear a spawn, followed by Invoke Panic's PBaoe to stack with Cloak of Fear, using Touch of Fear (and even Intimidate) on bosses.

Is this fear overkill in so many situations that Invoke Panic is still worthless while having no effect on higher tier opponents (such as EBs/AVs)?

Is there a better way to go about this? A better AT? This is the concept phase for a character I haven't even created yet. I don't care about a character that adds as much damage as possible and is the very definition of efficiency. I want a mildly optimized character with a neat style of play that's not frustrating to play.

Additional weight that should be considered: such a build would probably be mostly for solo (where rains of fire and shield charges won't be making it all moot) and will take quite some time to come to fruition.

Thanks for your time, etc.

side note: i might have to make this character talk in a gruff voice and train in Tibet.

Okay, the first thing that you have to know about Invoke Panic is that you're going to need to put a lot of slots in it before it will become useful.

Even when you do that, you could probably have gotten a lot more mitigation out of the 3 power picks that you have to use up for this power.

Now, that being said, on a solo toon, with fears to stack with it, it will work okay. However, on a Stalker, you're going to run into the problem of this power using up a LOT of endurance. DM on a Brute, Scrapper, or Tanker will at least get Dark Consumption to regain you some endurance, but on a Stalker, you won't have that.


However, on a positive note, since you're a DM Stalker, your attack chain will be mostly single-target. With less AoEs to 'wake' the feared opponents, you'll actually be able to use this as decent mitigation from a lot of foes. When solo, using this tactic whenever it's available (IP has a decent recharge on it, so it's not going to be an 'every spawn' power) will make you able to stand there and swing away while your foes are helpless.

I would suggest you try this out, but have a second, team-friendly build as well, so that if you don't like it, you have something to fall back on.


Edit -> Just saw that you plan to have Focused Accuracy in your build to make this work. With CoF running, and Focused Accuracy, you're not going to have a lot of endurance to play around with. Using Invoke Panic will likely mean that you won't have a lot of endurance to actually attack anything, so keep that in mind.

I didn't expect such a well thought-out response to come so quickly. Thanks for that.

On my quick and sloppy Mids build, I'm actually skipping Shadow Maul and focusing on ST attacks, but I think actual play will show whether or not that'll be a bad idea.

I was thinking it'd be an end-heavy build, but I didn't even notice stalkers lack Dark Consumption. At least with an ST focus, and a gameplay style of methodical (and not exactly fast), I can expect each spawn to take the 30 seconds needed for Invoke Panic to ready itself again...

I do have another question to add to my already large list, though: do offensive toggles suppress while Hidden? Because Cloak of Fear may be very problematic if not. The activation time is horrendous.

Yes, offensive toggles do suppress while hidden, though this is a new development. It helps sets like Dark Armor for Stalkers a lot.

You may also want to consider aligning yourself as Vigilante for the PBAoE terrorize power.

I recently saw a post in which a End Draining Kin/Elec Defender had used Invoke Panic to keep foes busy while he used his non-attack powers to drain their End. It was supposedly quite successful.

My MA/SR Scrapper built his concept around the use of Fear, although had I been going for uberness I would have gone Dark. As a concept, though, it works, and now with the Vigilante version the two can stack, plus I have a -Acc on top of that. It's also been great for slotting Fear IOs, which are usually pretty cheap.

Aett_Thorn is absolutely right when he says that if you want performance out of it similar to other Fear powers you need to slot it. OTOH, I feel the same is true of the rest of Presense as well, if you wish to use Provoke to be a Scrapper or Mastermind tank, IMHO it needs to be six slotted to get similar results to Taunt. That's the price you pay for going to the Pool for a power that's so integral to your concept.

I'm planning on going the whole way on a Dominator in order to have what can only be described as Crazy Stupid AoE Control. It's a Plants/Ice specialising in ST damage and mass chaos through confusion, fear, knockdown (Ice Mastery.. Soon™) and Carrion Creepers. I likes me some AoE chaos. Without going into IOs, it's already a near permanant PBAoE fear in Mids (2 acc, 2 rech, 1 fear, 1 endred) and with IOs it's going to be spammed easily thanks to cheap fear sets with +rech.

Edit: Forgot to add, near permanant due to cycling between Domination and Power Boost on a regular basis.