Bright

You've been reading the "Stalker or Scrap?" thread, haven't you?

According to some of those guys, Stalkers are apparently utterly useless on teams. Total slackers. The most worthless piles of gimp in the entire history of gimpishness.

Why, you ask?

Because (*gasp*) they have lower cap HP than Scraps and don't do quite as much AoE DPS.

The shame...
The horror...

Oh, the HUMANITY!

Personally, I think that's a load of bull. My own stalkers do pretty well when I team with them, even if they're not quite as "good" as Scraps... But I like the sneaky little jerks, so maybe I'm blind to my own hopelessly-broken-AT suffering or something.

True... but it takes awhile to get them all to the center. At least, it has with the groups I've run with. Maybe we've just had attrocious luck (That's always a possibility-), but every time I've seen a pull-'em-all it's been an absolute scattery mad-house.

I don't mind that so much when I'm scrapping, blasting from low orbit or playing support, but as a tank it makes me grumble. I'm pretty old-school about that "Hey! Mobs!... You should all be lookin' at me!" tanker-thing, and the number of goons plus total chaos makes it harder for me to keep that kind of control. I don't like the idea of Rom or Requie blowing off my taunt and going after one of the squishies because I'm a handful of bots and Roman ambushers over my aggro cap, either.

That's pretty much the place I'm at, as well...

I run the Weekly twice, usually. I'm only going after the full Incarnate thing with my two mains (one red-side, one blue-). I don't feel any particular need to rush for the Partner badge, and I've decided to take a pretty low-key approach to the whole Shard gathering business. I'm not going to run TFs I hate over and over and over again in a grind. It's not worth it.

I have absolutely crap luck getting Shard drops, anyway, so it's less stressful just to accept that I'm not going to have the new toys any time soon, and then not worry about it.

Mine smash just fine... and usually get the job done as far as survival goes, too, honestly, for all the jokes I make about them being scraps-with-a-taunt... But running around trying to keep up with two AVs and all the bots at the same time? That's just a pain in the rump.

I do, since I have two.

Some of us play WP tanks, who are a little squishy for keeping the attention of two AVs plus a horde of seriously angry robots.

True, that...

I think I'm just going to throw in the towel on listing them all, though. By the time the current crop of lowbies-that-are-definitely-keepers is done, I'd probably still be pushing the limit.

I suspect I'll end up with a graphic of some sort before it's over. Or I'll just stick to listing Pally and Kestrel, since they're my blue and red side mains.

The Praetorian ambush situation on live now is definitely an improvement over the problems they had in beta, but there's still some weirdness going on with them. My own solo Mind/Psi dom had two distinct ambushs come in on her last night at exactly the same time, so Sam isn't imagining the bad-timing thing. (I actually saw both of the groups spawn, since they popped up in the same room, more or less right on top of Davi, the instant she engaged the end-boss/minion pair-)

That said, I've taken a trio of stalkers through Praetoria solo now, and I know the content *can* be handled with that AT in spite of the lingering bugs and actively hostile mission design... But it's not exactly what I'd call fun at times, or in any way easy, or even particularly "stalkery". It's mostly just a matter of seeing the ambush dialogue (If they have any. A fair few Praetorian ambushes don't give text cues-) and knowing that until they're handled, you're basicly stuck playing a squishy, not-terribly-dangerous scrap. o_0

They do exist... They're just a little less up front about it.

As I mentioned in my first post upthread, I've been asked in the past if I could bring some other toon along instead of my stalker. More often, though, it's just a matter of TFs or raid teams mysteriously filling up or deciding they "really need more debuff" as soon as I mention the toon's AT. That's never happened to my tanks, scraps or defenders.

Still, as I also noted, it is getting better. I've seen less of that as time has gone on. So... maybe there's hope in spite of that whole "LOL Stalker"-thing?

I actually read your guide right after I made her, Dechs.

Agreed. Between the members of my toon crew who are already 50 and the ones who are still "in progress" but definite keepers, I'm down to only two or three open slots on Liberty (my home-server).

I've already shifted a trio of toons off to Virtue to establish sort-of an outpost there... but I'd much rather have more space on the server I'm most familiar with, and where most of my in-game friends play.

I suspect this is the best answer.

Although... with Hide on, you never know.
That stalker could be sneaking around in their pjs.

>_>

<_<

Is it wrong that I want to bribe Jay into making Surruna a pair of bunny slippers, now?

FCM and I regularly duo missions set at x4. By your reasoning, then, we should be able to get all the goodies in about twice the time it takes a full team, right? We are, after all, plowing through half-a-team's worth of mission.

Heh.

I'm lucky to see one shard drop every second mission we run, even when we completely clear maps. I'm sure as heck not seeing 88 shards an hour, which is what it would take to make our hour of play equal to some team's half-hour speed-run Khan or Barracuda. >_>

Then again, "small teams"... those of us who spend a lot of time running duo or trio... may as well not even exist in these discussions for all the notice that situation gets. Tilting the rewards system towards large teams screws small-teamers just as much as it screws pure soloists.

I've had that particular problem with Cardinal from the start... He's always been bad about getting in melee range. I can't even count the number of times he's been flattened by exploding Warhulks and other big AoEs because of that.

Typically, I summon as soon as I'm on the mission map. Kestrel moves fast, so I can usually get to groups pretty easily and set up on them before he's in range to aggro them. The first attack he throws out is usually from mid-range. After that first one, though, nine times out of ten the silly Mu'll close distance. It's annoying at times... but I've seen Mastermind's Merc henchmen and thugs do exactly the same thing, so I suspect it's just general AI silliness rather than a Mu-specific problem.

With some reservations, I'd actually have to say that, yes... in some ways it is.

Mostly because with this in place, no matter how out-of-balance the numbers really are (And for the record, I do think the shard requirements are pretty high on the "Are you guys NUTS?!"-scale, even though I don't disagree with the idea behind craftable Notices itself.), the devs and team-only enthusiasts can point at it and say "Here. You have your solo option. Now sit down and shut up." without giving solo and small-team Incarnate options much, if any, additional thought.

Re: the Adept staying "out of trouble" and at a distance... Don't bet on that. In spite of not having a single melee attack to their names, those boys are very prone to floating right up in the middle of things. Which, honestly, they're too fragile to have any business doing. If your toon has Shakles to throw at whatever's trying to eat his face, Grant Invis and Aid Other, that'll help a lot. But you won't be able to summon-and-forget an Adept. You have to keep an eye on him.

Don't get me wrong... They're still excellent pets to have, and I'm fond enough of my main stalker's own floating side-kick to have invested in a full Soulbound set for him, but as someone said upthread, they're for back-up and distraction. They're not heavy fighters.

The Nightwidow from GW's Soul pool is a little tougher and a little more dangerous than the Adept... but she has her own issues. The one my Mei'jin has is very aggressive. The AI is geared heavily towards "Kill ALL the things!" and keeping up with one when spawns are close together can be quite an adventure. o_0

If the Random Number Fairy really hates you, it's more like "Once in a blue moon, if all the stars are lined up just right and the groundhog hasn't seen his shadow in three years running".

Just a quick point... That's not always the case. The random number generator and luck still play a huge part in drop rates, even on Hami raids.

Using my own experience as an example of what happens when the RNG doesn't favor you... On the first Hami I took part in, my *only* shards were the four I picked as a success reward. (Many, many GMs and mitos were hit by my team and I. We were the yellow melee team, so it's not like we weren't killing things-) The second run, with the same MO and group? I got exactly one.

Hami was actually a worse time-investment from a shard-gathering point o view than just hopping into an ITF. (Not that all TFs have given me very good results either. I main-tanked a "kill everthing that moves" LGTF and came out with... 2. And joined another person's "kill most" with my DB scrap that was a complete bust. No shards at all. o_0)