Don't grab Maneuvers to help your team. It just isn't going to be that much help. Grab it for yourself instead. If you only need 3ish% defense more to hit the soft cap, adding 3% defense to the team is just gravy.
Your character does not have capped defense. Depending on your AT the cap is between 175% - 225%. Your defense is not teal in the combat window, it can go higher. STOP SAYING IT IS CAPPED! The correct term is Soft Cap.
I enjoy playing in Mids. I specialize in Melee Characters, other AT's usually bore me.
Congratz on the MA/Nin Stalker. I rolled one to try out the Going Rogue content, and leveling him to 50 was the most fun I've ever had in an MMO.
I'm guessing that you're referring to the indoor mission from Dr. Seffard where you get ambushed by an obscene number of ghouls. The best way you personally with your powers can make the difference between life or death for you and your team is to drop Caltrops. You should get Caltrops the second it opens up at Level 10. It's amazing.
I tried out the entire Presence pool on my MA/Nin Stalker, fully slotted, for many of the same reasons, but I was underwhelmed. I don't recommend it. The Leadership pool, on the other hand, is the gift that keeps on giving.
Ghouls in general are a recipe for snowballing out of control into a team wipe. Any time you see 2-3 ghouls in a sewer map, you can bet there's another 1-2 hiding in the pipes above you. Ghouls unleash an aura when they die, much like Nemesis LTs, which heals, and seems to aggro, the other ghouls around them in a wide radius. And on top of all that, the ghoul LTs have an attack called "Marked For Death" that specifically increases your aggro. So if your team, or at least your squishies, occasionally drown in a deluge of cannibalistic mole-people, especially at the lower levels, don't blame yourself too much.
Wow... After coming back to this thread I realize you were asking about the presence pool, not Leadership. (I must not have read carefully)
Nothing in the presence pool is useful. Only a tanker-mind finds use for Provoke. The fear is mag 2, so it doesn't work on bosses. And the AoE fear lasts 8 seconds, recharges in 60, and costs a quarter of your endurance. The two taunts are not useful for a stalker, you have a power that every stalker gets just to SHED aggro, why get a power to add aggro.
The presence pool is overly un-useful.
Your character does not have capped defense. Depending on your AT the cap is between 175% - 225%. Your defense is not teal in the combat window, it can go higher. STOP SAYING IT IS CAPPED! The correct term is Soft Cap.
I enjoy playing in Mids. I specialize in Melee Characters, other AT's usually bore me.
I've been playing on teams a lot with my MA/Nin stalker lately. This turns out to be a lot more fun than it's made out to be, so I plan to be doing it more in the future.
During one mission vs. ghouls, we were ambushed by huge numbers of ghouls dropping from the ceiling. There were so many that the tanker and brute couldn't hold them all, and our defender and corruptor ended up in trouble, and we just barely avoided a wipe.
Thing is, I may not be able to take the pounding that a brute or even a scrapper can, but I'm tougher (and much less vital to the survival of the team in a near-wipe situation) than a defender or corruptor. But I could not get the stupid ghouls to attack me: the low stalker threat level, normally very useful, had turned into a handicap.
For more experienced stalker players: does this happen often enough to make it worth dipping into the presence pool to get a taunt power? Or is there something else you can do to draw aggro or otherwise prevent a wipe? (Other than just trying to kill the things that are attacking your support)