Caltrops

I don't play stalkers very often, like the majority of the playerbase - can someone explain to me the use of caltrops as a stalker?

When would you use this on a team? Why bother using it solo? etc.

I'm probably not the best person to answer this because I've only just entered the world of Stalkers myself a few days ago with my MA/Ninj and hes only level 15.

Personally I use caltrops as kind of a damage-mitigation system. If I'm getting a touch overwhelmed or even if I am waiting for other powers to recharge I throw down a bunch of caltrops and stand on them. The result is that when mobs close in for a melee attack they are usually scattered by the caltrops and it buys me a bit of time to wait for a power to recharge or use an inspiration or even make a mad dash for it.

I would like to repeat that I am only level 15 and I have yet to pick up Hasten. I suspect once I get it and get it to a decent recharge then the need for caltrops in the way I have described would probably less useful. However at low levels they certainly help.

Basically what Ace said. At 50, I throw them down when fighting a mob...they scatter and I can keep wailing on the selected target. Im sure there are a host of creative ways to use them, but thats basically how I deploy them.

I havent ventured that deep into the mechanics of it, but the power takes procs also.

You can toss in the chance for Knockdown proc to make them a little more effective mitigation. I tried them, but ultimately respecced out of them.

In addition to the above (which I use when soloing all the time and of course has merit in groups) you can through them down as area denial, such as in front of the squishy healer when playing in a group so that things can't get to them of anyone else who needs to operate at range.

Heck, in a group I sometimes toss them down in hallways and don't even bother to go into the spawn and fight when I think the group can suitably kill the spawn at range.

You can put three damage procs into caltrops if I recall correctly, and this combined with the fact that in "ideal circumstances" they proc five times over their lifetime makes them a very cheap way to deliver a large amount of area damage. Potentially. I tried this once via scrapper weapon mastery and while it basically does do what it says on the tin, in actual play you tend to want your fights to be over in under forty seconds, and when they are that long it is unusual for most of the enemies to remain clustered up in the same area. The obvious exception there is farming, but seeing as this is the stalker forum that's probably less of an issue.

So, in short, they can do good damage in certain cases but you still might not find them worthwhile.

What I don't like to do is to throw caltrops in the middle of the crowd and cause them to "scatter" too much.

I usually throw caltrops when I need breathing room or I throw them a bit behind the enemy group (so when they run, they get "feared" back) or throw it behind us if there are some stupid runners or we have squishies that can benefit from the fear effect.

For me, Caltrops has been a godsend and I blame myself for not taking it earlier on my signature StrJus/Nin Stalker. It really does work wonders as damage mitigration since at least the Ninjitsu version of Caltrops has a mag 50 fear effect. Everything except purple triangles and GMs will step on the patch and slowly run away from me, giving me breathing room and the chance to temporarily go one-on-one with groups.

I usually do this:

Target boss > Use [Build Up] if ready > Charge [Assassin's Strike] and then queue [Caltrops] to catch as many people as possible > AS hits, a brief moment as the mob notices and attacks me and Caltrops starts making the lot of them crawl away.

If my target's still alive I beat on him until they're down and work on the rest of the group.

Besides the mitigation aspect (which can be much greater than often realized), it's actually solid dpa against a high HP target if you can keep them on the patch.

Especially if you have it proc'd out and have enough recharge to stack it two or three times. Combine that with Waterspout from Mako's and you've got a one-two I Win combo.

I too, love my trops

They're great for ambushes and pulls. Drop 'em at a corner, get out of LoS,
and pick off mobs once they're trying to get out of them.

They are also a thing of beauty when combined with TP Foe.

I like to use them to either gank a specific mob pulled from a group, or put a problem
mob into them out of LoS while I gank a different one, it can work in either variant
of divide and conquer.

If you end up with too much aggro, or a situation starts going south, chuck out
trops, and a lot more mobs are running rather than shooting.

They've also helped me net quite a few PvP kills over the years (especially in lower lvl
zones like BBay and Siren's, where builds may be less able to deal with them).

I don't think they're the best power in /nin (it's tough to beat DA, for instance),
but I personally consider them a "must have" on my /nin toons - along with tp foe.


Regards,
4

PS> I don't team on most of my stalkers, so these are primarily solo tactics.

Yeah I don't get the mitigation aspect either - it doesn't prevent enemies from attacking you at all, it doesn't make them do less damage or attack less often - you might get attacked less by melee and that's it. (true, melee typically hits harder I realize)

If you want to use another scenario, basically you are using a poor man's Scapper Burn.

Taking it at level 49 myself, purely for concept...along with Shuriken (concept and set mule)...^_^

Caltrops provide a lot of mitigation, I suppose you never used them. It's very good on my fire/traps corr especially with the slow and using Rain of Fire together, the avoid helps a lot in surviving too.

On my EM/Nin I never found much use for it but when I respec her (old build) I'll get it again, it'll be useful on iTrials where even at 50+3 and with 70% defense to all you can get downed pretty quickly, especially since I found a new 'life' for her in the harder content (bosses take long to kill so I don't corpse blast like a speed itf, plus EM's mitigation is ST only so Caltrops will help keeping the mobs away while I kill a nasty boss)

Interesting - it would be cool to know what level of mitigation we are talking about here, since caltrops do not slow recharge on powers at all, it only slows movement speed. Enemies should be attacking you as often as they always did, unless you are calculating melee attacks in their rotation or something.

On my /Nin I mostly use Caltrops when things get too ugly. If I'm taking damage too fast, or my defense is debuffed, I throw down Caltrops and almost without fail that brings the level of incoming damage down to a level that I can manage. There's no doubt that the power provides great mitigation.

I also like that it has so many other potential uses, like the examples others have given. It's a somewhat situational power, but there are a wide range of situations where it can be useful in one way or another. It allows for more creative problem solving than the standard "apply damage." One of these days I need to put together a build with a fully procced 'trops just so I can see what that's like.