Jibikao

Well, Energy Melee is one problem why you feel your Stalker isn't contributing much on a team. EM has no aoe and I take it that since your stalker is old, he probably doesn't have aoe attack from patron right? Well, there you go. You only have single target damage in an TF that has hundreds of ambush towards the end. That's the problem.

I will try to respec him to get at least one aoe if you pve a lot and see how you like it. You don't have to always start with BU + Assassin Strike. Many stalkers are limiting themselves to that idea and feel that after the initial 10s (after AS, Total Focus and Energy Transfer), most of the mobs are already dead. If the team's setting is on +0 or +1, you can start with just BU + AoE because aoe attacks from patron have 50% critical chance.


And I've also seen Stalkers that insist on Assassin Striking a Boss when the team already has dominators holding them first. If a boss is held, he has no threat. You can use AS on a lieut like Night Widow or Longbow Lieut (their sonic grenade probably does more harm to the whole team than a single boss).

And try to fight WITH your teammates and not far away. You get 3% critical chance from your teammate within 30 radius. 30 radius isn't that big.

While I agree some Stalker sets just don't do well on a large team, Cuda SF is a rare situation where there is really no down time in the last fight. You basically either use your temp power to kill the ambushes (which many people don't care much for as they enjoy killing) or you try to fight the ambushes with limited aoe attacks.

I enjoyed my Spines Stalker last time I brought him to Cuda but I will not bring my MA Stalker to there when I hit 50. Even with one aoe from patron, my ST damage just won't fit my need in that situation.

And don't try to re-hide again if you don't have to. I sometimes re-hide *wait for 8s* because my endurance is low and I am saving that big hit on the left over bosses.

My thought on Elude is that while the +defense could be overkill, the +endurance part is very nice. I may respec it and spend less slots on it. I put 5 slots for Red Fortune +5% recharge. I may reduce it 3 with a mix of defense/+recovery/recharge.

Elude is great against big mobs of Longbows/Kheldians as their attacks can reduce so much of your defense.

If you don't have Cardiac alpha, Elude can be useful. You just have to remember to use it. I don't know how many times I forgot about this power. :P

Yup. This is why I say VEATs are so good because they cover a lot of weaknesses that other squishies have, mainly mez protection, extremely high defense (defense works much better on a squishy than resistance) and a mix of range/melee attacks. The buffs are darn good as well.

I view Night Widow as claw set. Those that don't like Shockwave's knockback should try full claw build in widow. It's just as damaging but without the hassle of aoe knockback.

Other ATs have one or two sets that are really good (or overpowered) but VEATs on average starts out really well and you rarely feel they are underpowered (unless you skip leaderships).

I didn't go through the whole thread but here are some very good points about this game:


1. Teaming: I've yet to play another online game that caters so much for teaming. We've got auto Side-Kick, Scaling, Teleport, Team Teleport and great Global Friend list so you can keep in contact with new people next time you log on. I've played WoW for 4 months, Allods for 2 months and Lotro for 2 months and WAR hammer online for 6 months and Champions for 5 months and I made ZERO good friend. The lack of side-kick system makes teaming very difficult especially in a game where you have 80 levels. People team and then say good bye. There is very little interaction unless you join a Guild/Super Group. I also think CoX has more mature players so it is easier to make friends.


2. Fast-pace and full of action! If you like explosions and lots of "graphic overloads", CoH is for you! When you on a full team and have people casting Rain of Fire, poison trap and energy blasts, the whole screen is just so colorful. Oh, did I mention that you can "color" your powers now? Champions allows you to color but the color choice doesn't even come close to CoX's potential IMO.

3. A lot LESS traveling time. This is good/bad. Some people like to travel so they feel the "gaming world" is huge. Well, I freaking hate it!!! I still remember I used to wait for like 5-10mins just to fly from one town to another town in WoW. Lotro takes a long time too. I don't have much time to play when I get home from work, so wasting time in traveling annoys me. However, some people like to take their time to "travel" and they enjoy it.


4. Simplicity: This game is not stupidly "simple". When I say simple, I mean we have invention system, enhancements and comparisons between each sets but all you need is to pick two sets Primary and Secondary and you can pretty much do most of the pve contents without much trouble. We don't have complicated Job system where you have to keep mining stuff to just make the component and then you need somebody else to make them. Our invention system is simple IMO. Only a few recipes can take a while to get but I think generally the time spent on getting them is less than what other online games require.

5. It's only $14.95 per month. I don't know why people think $14.95 is so expensive. If you divide 14.95 by 30 day.... that's how much you spend per day. How much is movie ticket these days?




Enjoy!

Ah interesting to know. I finally put Unbreakable proc in Dominate. I still need the purple proc from range set. It's so expensive!!

There is no specific answer that I want. I am just curious if the impression of "stalker" has changed after so many changes/buffs.

I actually would pick Stalker because:

1. If the setting is +0, then it really doesn't matter who AoE. Things will just melt.

2. If the setting is a lot higher like +3, then Stalker may have more time getting more of that Team critical chance as things take longer to kill.

3. Contrary to many of you, I find Scrapper pretty over-rated on a team. Things that are said about Stalkers can apply to Scrappers as well. Scrapper can't tank as well as Brute/Tanker. Scrappers don't offer enough buffs/debuffs. If both are on a full team, Stalker's Single target damage potential can be higher than Scrapper. Stalker has better aoe defense and if he is not being target, I find my Stalkers usually survive better (simply because Stalker just doesn't attract that much aggro).



It's just that when I advertise myself as Stalker, people tend to skip me unless there is absolutely no choice left. Of all the ATs I've tried, there's only two ATs that I feel people try to "avoid": Stalker and Peacebringer.

I really think Kinetic Melee is much better on Scrapper than on Brute. Siphon Power benefits Scrapper way more than Brute's low base damage and Kinetic Melee gives Scrapper first-ever "Total Focus" type of power in Concentrated Strike (20s recharge). Brute already has Energy Melee and Stone Melee. I can see why if you have tried other Brutes, Kin doesn't stand out as much with slow aoe attacks.

On Stalker, though, you get 100% critical damage from Burst which is quite nice. I like Kinetic on Stalker.

I disagree that Ninjitsu is the "best". I find willpower better but "best" is very subjective.

I actually have a lvl 50 alpha Kin/Dark. Kinetic is pretty good on stalker. The -damage debuff will help you in situations where you die in one hit or too fast for you to heal. It is not that hard to stack set bonuses to get Ninjitsu to god-mode like defense in the end, so the tohit debuff doesn't necessarily give you any more "defense" than you already have. Dark Melee is very good for ST damage with fear and heal and negative damage.

Sorry, I don't think AS works "well". I think it starts out "well" (when mobs can be eliminated easily and when other ATs don't have heavy attacks) but it drops its importance as you level up higher and higher. It is very slow and it has interruption.


Elimination doesn't just mean "big damage". You also need the damage to come out "fast". Assassin Strike only achieves the first goal. The second portion is hindered by 4s casting (or sometimes longer if you somehow move) and interruption.

Oh ok. I understand... he went to another game company or he got a totally different job?

Exactly. Dominator needs control first and then kill. Controller to some degree is similar but Fortunata doesn't rely on controls to "survive". Dominate is a mag 3 control but with higher base damage. Dominate itself is an attack plus decent control.

That's the philosophy behind how I build my Fortunata because without Domination, you can never perma hold an AV anyway so having more +hold duration doesn't make it any better. And if it's just a regular boss, I can stack mag 6 with ease and even if I can't hold the boss, it's not like the boss can kill me. That's the beauty of this "Tank-troller" Fort.

This is another reason I haven't really built a control-heavy Fortunta who takes all the control powers. I mostly skip Confuse, aoe hold and mag 4 stun. My first two builds did have mag 4 stun. It is very handy when you fight against two bosses. Stun one and attack another. After I got alpha and Tough, I feel like I don't use Scramble Thought much because it is too slow and I don't really need to rely on a mag 4 stun because most bosses can't kill me anyway.


VEAT buffs is most apparently when you team with lowbies. I've been working on a new Martial Arts Stalker and I've been teaming with my friend's alpha Fortunata when he does tip missions. His buffs make me so much more useful because he is doing +2 (which is +3 to me) and it's kinda hard for me to handle +3 at lvl 27. I don't have accuracy issue at all due to his Tactic buffs and my critical damage is awesome with his 30% damage buff and my survival is much better too with his Mind Link and double Maneuver.

The problem when you team up in apex/tin mage is that most people are already pretty IOed, the buffs from VEATs don't stand out as much. They are still very good though. :P

Others have answered question 1. VEAT only have access to Patron which is already good enough because HEAT doesn't even have access to Epic.

As for question 2, Dark Obliteration should do more "efficient" damage. When I say efficient, I mean that all the damage hits at once. Tentacle is DoT and it takes like 9-10s to complete all the damage, which of course means that a lot of times the targets are already dead before all the DoT kicks in. What Tenticle is good for is immb.

My first two builds had Psionic Tornado because I feel it's very "Fortunata" like but after a while, I realize that I don't have any ways to stop mobs from running towards after I aoe them. I use my Fortunata to farm a lot and in the end, having AoE Immb is better because I can immb several mobs and safely blast at long range. Without immb, I had to keep running "backward" so my cone attacks can cover more mobs. I basically only use Scream for aoe damage.

1. Fortunata's damage is on the "low end" without Assault leaderships. It depends if you are using follow up or not (I don't) but I will highly take at least one Assault from secondary. I would also take Tactics because it is very helpful when you fight against Night Widow who throws smoke grenade and the extra +tohit is great against Ritki drones and things that have natural high defense. You don't have to run it all the time though if you can't afford the endurance cost.

I also take Maneuver and Assault from power tools because they stack nicely. Yes, the endurance cost will be very high and that's why you want set bonuses and unique.

Another thing that I just noticed recently is that Training: Leaderships have a much bigger radius than power tool leaderships. I don't know the radius number but it's at least 25% larger radius if not more.


2. As for sets, you want a mix of +positional defense and +recovery and some +recharge. I honestly don't think perma mind link is that big of a deal. Mine isn't perma but I also carry 9 other toggles (double maneuver, double assault, tough, mez shield, hover, tactic and darkest night against AVs).

Set bonuses make Fortunata very very good. I will also take Cardiac so you have almost no endurance problem in long fights.


3. Fortunata is my #1 most favorite character and while I don't dare to call myself an "expert", I've made a lot of builds to test things out. I will highly suggest you take Tough. There's only so much defense you can have but one heavy hit (for example from Battle Maiden), you are dead. After I made a new build for alpha, between Tough and 20% health from accolades, I can withstand decent lethal/smashing damage for me to get away (from her crossbow and all the swords and shots from Human ambushes). And you'll survive much better against Longbows, one of the harder enemy groups. Their rifle attacks can reduce a lot of your defense and Tough makes you survive so much better. And against Malta too.

I'll be really impressed if a non-Mind dominator solos LRSF. I know perma Mind dom has tricks that can confuse and sleep tough AVs but other than Mind doms, other controls will have a hard time soloing 8 heroes without other "tricks".

And to be honest, I think those "soloing LRSF" are more like "tricks" than how "awesome" the whole AT is. I've seen Defender soloing ITF with the help of buffing NPC.

I think the "awesomeness" we are talking about in VEAT forum is how all 4 branches are highly effective even without set bonuses (you can't get perma dom without set bonuses). All 4 branches start out great at lvl 24 and they have high defense, mez protection and great team buffs. It's really hard to play a bad VEAT (except the ones that skip leaderships).

I play a lot of Dominators (except Mind control ) and while they are very fun, they still have highs/lows and situations where controls don't help much.

I probably won't call VEAT the "best" because it depends which situation you are talking about but in general VEAT is very versatile and each branch is ABOVE AVERAGE kind of good. This is the kind of "awesomeness" I am talking about. Soloing a TF with tricks that other ATs don't have isn't what I call "awesome". It is impressive, though, that some people would spend a long time trying to solo a TF that is meant for team-play.

Mmmm, is that so? What if you use a single confuse power? Does it "jump" to nearby target? That's the part I am talking about. Technically, I think we have something similar in Chain Induction except I don't want the critical damage to "jump". I want it to happen as soon as a critical from Eagle Claw hits.

Oh well, I thought it would be cool to tie Critical with some aoe damage when it happens. Critical damage isn't a "debuff" or a "buff" on the target so it's hard to make it "Jump"?

And I don't really care about "what makes sense". I only care about if it's possible for not. This is a game and there are many things that don't make sense (fancy I say!). You know what doesn't make sense? You Assassin Strike a boss to death in one hit and the mobs are not feared.... that makes ZERO sense to me because the minions should FEAR YOU even more after you killed their boss in one hit! But like I say, I don't care what makes sense. I only care what's possible and what can/should be done to improve a set that has zero aoe and redundant ST attacks.


I kinda enjoy my Martial Artist so far but when I am on a larger team, the lack of aoe makes me feel small.

Epic aoe is lvl 44 or 47? Only fireball can critical of the 4 epic sets.

Yes, I know patron/epic have aoe but 1. it's not a very good aoe (long recharge, kinda low damage) 2. primary sets shouldn't be balanced with patron/epic.