Muon_Neutrino

My suggestion? If it isn't already, slot up RI for max tohit debuff, make it be the first rad toggle you hit, and cast spectral terror on the mob instead of next to you. Spectral terror carries a 15% tohit debuff, so that plus your RI should easily floor the tohit of even level foes. That way, they may all shoot at you, but they'll all miss. At that point you can cut loose with all the AoEs you want, they won't be able to do a thing about it. Basically, just a change of tactics. It is certainly true that with perma-pa your best abilities are with smaller numbers of tougher targets, but there's no reason you can't deal with crowds too.

Doing it this way, you don't even really need to use lingering rad since they can't hit anything anyway. Only time you'd need it is if they started running from you!

I would second the suggestion of guardian, I'd love to run my new shield/mace with a bunch of other tanks. Only question is, what time do these things usually start again? I'm on tuesday with the astronomy lab TAing this semester, so I'm usually tied up until 9:30-10ish. I hope I'm wrong, but I think I remember starting at 9 eastern. If that's the case, I'd be late (but I would still come).

The reason it puts a buff icon in your bar is defiance - the same as casting normal attacks gives you a slight damage buff for a few seconds, so does casting trip mine. Trip mine just gives a larger buff since its cast time is so long. This can actually be used in the same fashion as buildup, casting one at your feet just before you engage. The buff is much smaller than buildup, but it recharges quick and as a side effect the first guy to run up to you gets blown up.

As for slotting trip mine, it does do damage which can be enhanced, same as any normal power. It's just that since the power is a pseudo pet, the real numbers doesn't show the damage it deals. Regardless, it does do a *lot* of damage, and it's well worth slotting for that (it does about two and a half times as much damage as, say, fireball, in a 12 foot radius). With SOs/generic IOs I'd personally slot 1 acc, 3 dam, 2 rech. With set IOs the sky's the limit. I don't recall off the top of my head whether blaster trip mine takes TAoE or PBAoE sets though (I *think* it's TAoE), I remember there are some oddities about that between the various ATs which have it. Assuming it's TAoE I'd probably slot something like acc/dam x2, dam/rech x2, acc/dam/end, and rech/end from a KB set (with around level 30 IOs. If you use higher level ones, you won't need as much damage slotting) - basically, 50-60ish acc, max dam, a bit of end, and as much rech as you can fit.

As far as I understand things, it's a technical limitation, much the same as the one which stops the kinetics heal from actually healing if the target is defeated during the animation. Basically, both of those powers center their effect on the foe you target - the kinetics heal summons a pseudopet at the target which radiates the heal, demoralize actually grants the target a short-lived temporary power which causes them to radiate the debuff (which is how it gets around the purple patch). In both cases, if the central target is killed during the power (which includes being killed by the actual assassin strike), the enemy centered effect has no valid target and thus doesn't go off.

If I'm remembering correctly, when this was brought up back when everyone was testing the stalker buff Castle said he was aware of it but it would be a massive pain to fix. I personally don't see why, but then again I'm not a dev and don't know how the guts of the power system works.

Hmm, have to do it from memory as I can't log on to CoH right now. I've got enough that I'll probably forget some of the less played characters (or get their levels slightly wrong) - I've got a lot of them that haven't 'clicked' and so remain at low levels.

Victory server: this is where I started. Generally has older and less played characters, as I eventually shifted to guardian with some friends.

Storm/dark defender, level 32: Rather stereotypical elemental mage theme, robes and arcane designs, the works. Fun to play but neglected recently.

Ice/stone tank, level 4. Mountain golem theme, huge guy that looks like he's made out of ice covered rocks. The end result of experiments with ice/ice and will/stone tanks as I combined the sets I decided I liked. Never played, though, because I eventually decided that I would save stone melee (which I absolutely *love*) for an AT with better offensive capabilities.

Kat/will scrapper, level 5. Reroll of a kat/sr that I made as one of my first characters, as willpower fit better and was new at the time. Decided I didn't like the concept, though (or rather, that I was too embarrassed at my blatant ripoff of a certain sci-fi franchise).

Ma/sr scrapper, level 11ish. Started as the 'obligatory catgirl' joke character, but actually acquired itself a backstory and concept when I wasn't looking. I like the concept and the primary, but SR just doesn't cut it for me given my character budgets and the concept demands an evasive themed secondary. Will eventually be rerolled as a ma/nin when that gets ported to scrappers.

Ar/traps corr, level 15ish. My half of a duo with my brother that we decided we didn't like. If I ever need space, he'll get the axe.

Illusion/sonic controller, level 15ish. The new 'obligatory catgirl' joke character, backstory involves a mishap with quantum mechanics and a cat test subject (schrodinger's catgirl, anyone?). Fun and funny to play, but also neglected in favor of newer characters that grabbed my attention (and I'm having trouble coming up with a good costume).

Plant/storm controller, level 15ish. Nature spirit type concept, green and transparent. Fun, and I mean to get back to her someday, I swear.

Guardian server: I moved here with some friends when I discovered that the gaming community I was a part of had some who played CoH. Has most of my characters now. There's at least one more here that I'm forgetting, because I know the server is full.

FF/energy defender, level 50. Themed as a member of a tech-based support branch of longbow, with as close of a mimic costume as we could get. Part of a duo with my brother, whose character is represented as a member of a longbow sniper group (AR/energy blaster). Interesting story possibilities with these chars. Newer than most of my characters, but being part of an active duo he got much more playtime. Incredibly tough for a defender with his softcapped range defense + force bubble, and fun to play with all the knockback.

Electric/energy blaster, level 12ish. Originally created because I found the concept of sapping interesting, now abandoned since the power boost changes made PB+short circuit ineffective for draining. Would have been deleted except I'm using her to store level 30 pool C recipes my other characters have rolled.

Dark/psi defender, level 28. Same concept and theme as the storm/dark on victory (story-wise part of the same order of mages). Just as fun to play, just as good and strong sets, somewhat better at soloing thanks to /psi's good single target damage.

Earth/TA controller, level 28. Sand-toned tribal earth shaman type concept, uber-amazing lockdown potential mechanically. I decided I don't like the name, though, so been on the back burner. I will take advantage of the server transfers to rename her before they expire, but haven't gotten around to it yet (and also haven't decided on a new name).

Cold/ice defender, level 15ish. Remake of an ice/ice blaster, because cold/ looked interesting. Concept-wise a robot created by an evil organization, who developed sentience and escaped. The concept is interesting to me, but something never 'clicked' - possibly ice's anemic ST damage on defenders before level 28.

Shield/mace tank, level 16. Newest character, great fun so far. Backstory involves a prototype power armor suit, the brainwashing of its developer by arachnos, and the quest of his daughter to find him. The dad, if I ever made him, would probably be an energy blast/rad corruptor.

Elec/stone tank, level 14. Another attempt to use stone melee, may eventually be continued but at the moment I'm enjoying the shield/mace much more. Backstory is fun, though - miner who gained superpowers when he was caught in a cave-in when the electrically powered mining equipment exploded.

Triform warshade, level 32. Second-newest character, but leveled up quite fast because warshades are just that awesome. Well, that and having a backstory that I like - portal researcher in the 80s, caught in a portal malfunction when a rogue nictus accidentally disrupts their experiment, portal dumps them both in present-day paragon where they have to come to terms with what happened to them. Got a blue and grey costume theme going which I actually like a fair bit (costumes aren't usually my forte).

Fire/regen scrapper, level 15. Quite basic 'scientific experiment gone wrong' background, but decent, clean costume and fun powersets. Neglected for a long time but recently I've been back to him some, since power customization lets me make his regen powers orange.

Grav/storm controller, level 24. My oldest existing character, the second I ever made. Used to be on victory until the free character transfers came around. Has a fun 'absent-minded professor' theme going: 'I may forget your name, but I'll still kick your *** if you interrupt my research!'. Fun character, fun powersets, but hasn't ever gotten enough attention to really get up there in level.

Willpower/stone tank, level 15. The aforementioned will/stone experiment, shelved when I decided I didn't want to deal with willpower's difficulties holding aggro. Going to move him to victory to free up room on guardian.

Infinity server: The 'villain server' for my gaming community. I don't have nearly as many villains as I do heroes, but that's more due to the fact that I have so many discarded low level hero concepts.

Ice/ice dominator, level 50. My first 50, and my fastest leveling character ever. I've always liked ice sets on a thematic level, and then this character allowed me to discover the fact that dominators are my favorite AT ever. The concept is nothing special ('bad girl' who goes out into the world and kills stuff for fun), but it works for me, and it's the AT and powersets that really make this one fun anyway. Not perma, in fact only has frankenslotting, but I never saw permadom as being necessary anyway (even before the dominator changes, now it's even less needed than ever).

Mind/elec dom, level 16ish. Fun sets, funny concept (mathematician who divided by zero and broke the universe and his own mind), but never really got into him properly, mostly because at about that time I realized how awesome illusion would be on doms and it sorta took the luster off of him. I still want to make an illusion/energy dom whenever they port that set.

Bots/traps mastermind, level 12. The villain counterpart to my cold/ice defender above. For their second attempt, the evil organization went to a distributed intelligence so that each part could keep an eye on the others and keep them evil. It worked so well that the bot took off on its own as an independent villain (needless to say some workers lost their heads ). I like the concept, but masterminds, mechanically speaking, are just to fiddly for my tastes. I got tired of my bonehead pets relatively quickly.

Stone/fire brute, level 10ish. Relatively basic earth demon concept, here to smash stuff because it's fun. Reroll of an elec/fire brute, when I discovered how awesomely fun stone melee is. Concept is basic, but I like the costume and powersets - only thing keeping me from playing him is how much I dislike the fury mechanic. I'll still probably play him eventually since I love stone melee so much, but ideally he'd be a villainous scrapper.

...wow, I don't usually think about how many I've actually got. Funny thing is that there are at least that many again that I've never actually gotten around to making, often because the powerset combo doesn't exist yet.

Assassin's strike doesn't take away a power in your regular attack chain. For most powersets, it replaces an AoE. Also, stalkers have the exact same defensive modifiers as scrappers and brutes, and not that much less HP than scrappers. Between placate, demoralize, and the minor defense offered by hide even when visible, I personally don't think that they're much of any worse off defensively than scrappers (aside from the ridiculously low HP cap, anyway).

In my opinion, stalkers are fine solo, especially once (like all ATs) they get into the 20s and their mitigation starts to mature. They have strong offensive and defensive alpha strike abilities, and enough damage and mitigation to scrap it out after the alpha. Sure, they do primarily single target damage - but if you're solo, you aren't *fighting* large spawns, and ST attacks are plenty enough to scrap down 3-5ish targets. (And if you're fighting more, why are you cranking up spawn sizes on a single target specialist? That's not the AT's fault.)

On teams, though, yeah I still think there's something missing. The scaling critical hit chance definitely helps, but I don't think it's enough given the big spawns teams bring. To really be noticable on teams, stalkers need something AoE. What I always thought was that stalkers should get some sort of effect that represented their ability to take advantage of the chaos of a large fight to sow confusion and disarray in the enemies. Basically, I would like to see stalkers get one or more of the following (or similar) abilities:

1) Faster recharge on placate, and/or hide coming back faster, and/or reduced interrupt time on AS, all scaling according to team size. In the confusion of pitched battle, enemies lose track of you much easier. In all cases it should be a pretty noticable reduction, at least halving the time on a full team. I don't know if any of them are technically possible in the game engine, but they would help stalkers more reliably deliver damage to critical targets on teams (and also the demoralize effect).

2) Attacks having a chance to confuse enemies, again scaling according to team size. How many times in fiction have we seen stalker type characters cause so much confusion that the opponents accidentally hit each other? Mechanically this would work by granting an autopower to the target similar to the demoralize effect, that would have a chance to confuse enemies in a certain radius for a short duration. The chance to grant the effect would probably be about the same as the chance to critical, and the chance to confuse and AoE radius would both be pretty good. This would grant some pseudo-AoE mitigation and damage on an ongoing basis.

My philosophy when it comes to defender nukes is 'if it ends the fight, the crash is meaningless'. Many of the objections commonly leveled against defender nukes do have merit - the damage is much less than blaster nukes, the toggle-dropping can be bad, the overall damage over time is low, etc, etc.

What I think a lot of people miss about them is the tactical possibilities they bring. Blaster nukes can often do enough damage to both start and end the fight in a single kaboom. Defender nukes don't, but that doesn't make them useless. Blaster nukes are often alpha strikes, but defender nukes are *omega* strikes. They should not be used to start the fight, but to end it. If a fight is going south, a defender nuke can often be enough to turn the tide by defeating many of the minions and lieutenants and inflicting strong negative effects on the survivors. The crash doesn't mean anything if it's mostly spent walking to the next spawn after the rest of the team mops up.

Plus, as several have said, it's just *fun* to nuke stuff! I still laugh my head off everytime I jump into the middle of a spawn with PFF on, hit aim and PBU as they waste their alpha strike, and then blow them to the four corners of the earth with nova. Sure, it's not always the most effective option, but it's fun as hell. As long as you don't do stupid things that get your team killed (which is why I do that solo or when duoing with my brother), there's nothing wrong in goofing off with a nuke.

I believe it is because it won't do anything if you hit it afterward. The -special works almost like negative enhancement, and so it takes effect when the godmode is cast. If the godmode is already cast, since it's a click power its buff is set at the time of casting. Applying -special afterward won't change the strength of an existing buff anymore than deleting the enhancements out of a godmode while it's already running would.

For an ongoing effect like an autopower, a toggle, or a frequently cast click, it doesn't really matter when you apply -special. But for a long duration, long recharge click, you'll have to be careful to apply it before it's cast to actually do any good.

One of the things I might consider doing is to pick up life drain at some point. /Dark only has two 'regular' single target blasts, but life drain does do as much as dark blast, so it can help out a bit there. As well, life drain could possibly help a bit with the aggro problem, seeing as you're the one likely to be taking the most damage. That could easily soak up 6 slots.

As far as epics, I don't think dark is as good of an idea. The thing about soul drain and oppressive gloom (the signature powers of the set) is that they need you to be in melee - but not only is that not a very safe place to be, you also can't use your cones properly in there. I personally went power mastery for theme, but power build up is really the only important power there. Double power on two sets of small bubbles *is* wonderful, mind you (and it helps nuking too), but the rest of the pool isn't very special - although force of nature does look interesting. Electric and psi both look good. Psi has several nice control tricks, and the electric immob can even be used to help fill out your ST damage chain.

When it comes to extra slots, if all of your core powers really are slotted well already, it certainly can't hurt to go looking for set bonuses. I wouldn't go hunting damage bonuses specifically, however - in my opinion, defense bonuses (especially ranged defense) benefit force fielders the most. You've already got a good start on that with the thunderstrikes in your blasts - each provides 3.75% ranged defense. (If you get it, I would personally frankenslot life drain for both damage and healing, but it can take a set of thunderstrike as well if you like.) Red fortune is also good - at 6 slots it gives 2.5% ranged defense, as well as 5% recharge, 2% damage and a lot of end reduction in whatever you slot it in - putting it in maneuvers and dispersion is a good idea. Explosive strike is dirt cheap and gives 1.88% defense - 3 of them plus an acc/end/rech works well in force bolt.

Getting somewhat more expensive, your epic armor can take the steadfast protection 3% defense unique. Also, if you put 1 extra slot in hover and fly, you can put the blessing of the zephyr travel and travel/end in for 3.13% ranged defense each. These will be more expensive, but if you put in a bunch of lowball bids and wait, you still have a decent chance of getting them eventually (go for level 25 or below zephyers as they use less expensive salvage).

If you work at it, it is possible to get yourself up to 45% defense to at least ranged damage, and (depending on your budget) melee and AoE as well. My FF/nrg is only softcapped to ranged, but that coupled with force bubble and his resistance shield still makes him by far the toughest 'squishy' I've ever played. It's really quite silly how hard he is to kill.

I believe it's because hami's blasts and those of the greens have a stacking -regen -heal component to them, meaning that even in IH, a regen gets pretty dead, pretty fast. Hiber is nice because it's a phase, but straight up regen and healing doesn't work very well anymore.

Generally, you can take apart a laptop. It's a lot trickier than taking apart a desktop, but it can be done. Don't do it without step by step instructions, though, or you do have a pretty good chance of breaking something. What I'd do is look around on the internet and see if anyone is talking about taking apart whichever specific laptop it is. If it can be done, there are almost certainly instructions somewhere on how to do it.

It does sound to me like a dust/etc issue, if you can still hear the fans and it didn't run like this before. My dad took apart my mom's laptop a few months back and took a pad of dust a half-inch thick off the heat sink, and it solved the problems she'd been having with it. The other possibility is a problem with the heat sink, specifically the heat sink's thermal connection to whatever it's connected to. If there isn't any dust, you may want to investigate if it's possible to remove the heatsink and reapply the thermal paste on whatever chips are underneath.

I'm not sure why you seem to feel compelled to swap out for level 50 sets, Moonlighter. My defender, for example, has full sets of level 30 thunderstrikes in his single target blasts. That gives him 56.6% acc/end/rech and capped damage. Swapping out for level 50s would give 68.9% acc/end/rech and capped damage. I've already got accuracy out the wazoo, and the end and recharge would make differences of less than half a second and half a point of end even on the longest recharging and most costly of the attacks.

That's a specific case, but in general I just don't see the sort of boosts that would make a compelling case for going to the hassle and expense of completely rewriting your enhancements. The set bonuses are the same either way, and the enhancement number differences seem pretty small to me, in most cases. Given that I exemplar frequently and like to be able to start slotting my characters before 50, it seems more of a win/win to me than anything else.

I definitely approve of the idea of picking up maneuvers. For FF, maneuvers is the difference between providing 39% defense to your team and providing 44.5% defense. Thanks to the way defense works in this game, someone with 44.5% defense is literally *twice* as hard to kill as someone with 39%, so I personally would never even consider not taking maneuvers on a FF defender.

Plus, as you mention, more defense for yourself is never a bad thing either. With maneuvers, one application of TT+nightfall will put up to +1 opponents down to the 5% tohit floor against you, leave +2s with about 6.2% tohit, and +3s at about 9%. Without maneuvers, you can't even floor even cons (they are at about 8.5% tohit).

I would certainly also take PFF, simply because of how many different uses it has. Not only is it a panic button, it really allows you to manipulate mob behavior in neat ways. You can use it to take alphas, get safely into the middle of a spawn for a nuke or similar, draw aggro to yourself and then become invincible, and even ghost missions. The best part is that it needs no slotting - just toss a recharge in the base slot and go to town.

I would think that you don't need both repulsion field and force bubble in the long run. I would definitely take *one* of them, but not both. Of the two, I would actually pick force bubble - if something is aggroed on you, unless it's a boss it is more than likely immobilized and thus can't run up and smack you - and if it is a boss, force bolt works fine. On the other hand, force bubble's range ought to let you do some interesting pseudo-stormie 'herdicaning' with the immobilized foes - shoving them into corners and whatnot. Force bubble also costs less endurance than repulsion field (even *before* you actually start touching things...), which is good if you're thinking about running both maneuvers and assault as well as your other toggles. Just don't make the mistake of leaving force bubble on all the time - even more so than hurricane, poorly applied force bubble will leave teammates pounding on the walls in frustration. Either way, though, both of them are definitely less important than PFF and maneuvers at this point, so I completely approve of respeccing them out and putting whichever one you choose back in later.

Looking at your build, there are a couple of slotting suggestions I'd make. First, I'd suggest frankenslotting TT and nightfall even more. Dark's biggest strength is its very good spammable AoEs, so I would definitely make them as strong as possible.

For nightfall, I would replace the two damage IOs and the accuracy IO with an acc/dam, dam/rech, and acc/dam/end. Assuming your IOs are about level 30ish, this should still leave you with capped damage, while slightly improving your accuracy and giving you some free end reduction and recharge.

For tenebrous tentacles, if you want range slotting I would go with acc/rech (from an immobilize set), acc/dam/end, dam/rech, dam/range, dam/range, range. Compared to your current slotting this gives slightly better accuracy and range, some recharge, some endredux, and more damage (there's no point in slotting for immobilize as the duration is already twice as long as the recharge). Two of the three available damage/range recipes do require rare salvage, but you can always get the one piece you need from AE tickets.

I would also slot repulsion bomb differently. The stun is only a 40% chance for mag 2, but it does do about as much damage as your other AoEs, so I would slot it for damage. A slotting similar to nightfall would definitely work.

I generally use set bonuses to try and gauge this, because I figure that odds are, if you're a min-maxer, you're probably using IOs of some sort. I find that the vast majority of people I meet don't have any, and of the rest, a good chunk just have one or two (usually a unique of some sort or something useless like immob resist). It's really not that common at all.

Fire, I respect your opinions on mids, IOs, builds, and whatnot, but you don't really need to bring them out in every thread you post in when it doesn't really have anything to do with the thread topic. Everyone has their pet peeves and things that annoy them, but we ought to keep them on a leash most of the time if we don't want all the threads to devolve into arguments.

Another place to get a bit of minimal ranged defense is by sticking 3 explosive strike in force bolt. It's already quite accurate and fast recharging, so it doesn't need much enhancement (toss in an acc/end/rech from a ranged set if you want to round stuff out). That's anther 1.88%. Grab that second set of BoTZ and you're softcapped even without actually running hover, which might be better from some points of view (I personally don't especially like fighting from hover, it's not very fast and I tend to get stuck on things). I got a steadfast, too, for a bit of a buffer against debuffs.

The other nice thing about FF nowadays is that it comes with a nice AoE attack. You might not have much to buff your damage or debuff enemy resistances with, but aim -> repulsion bomb -> explosive blast -> energy torrent isn't *that* bad for AoE. In my experience, as long as you're near the max range of energy torrent the explosive blast projectile spends enough time in the air that energy torrent should still hit most of the foes explosive blast knocks back - plus, opening with repulsion bomb severely retards the alpha.

As far an endurance goes, I've only got 11% bonus recovery from sets and that, plus a performance shifter proc, is enough to keep me going pretty well. I can still run myself dry, but I have to work at it. Before the performance shifter, though, it was touch and go occasionally. I don't think you need any of the really expensive healing uniques, though. The nice thing about red fortune and thunderstrike is that they both have good endredux in them - plus thunderstrike has recovery, too.

I've got the ranged softcap on my FF/nrg, and it is indeed as awesome as you're thinking. If you're on the ball, it's very rare for anything to get close enough to smack you. I can often go through entire missions and only get a couple times with dinky ranged attacks. You'll want maneuvers to softcap the rest of your team, but aside from that you shouldn't need stuff like weave to hit the softcap, although it might be hard to do before you get to 44 and can take an epic armor for the 3%.

I would consider hover/fly for a travel power if you don't have any other strong preference, because 1) it gives you 2 places to put 2x BoTZ, and 2) hover lets you stay out of reach of things you can't KB/repel very well, like some EB/AVs. Although if you would rather not fight in hover, CJ/SJ can slot the BoTZ too and you can actually leave CJ on for defense - you just lose the EB/AV trick. Personally I took hover/fly and just got enough defense that I didn't need to actually use hover for that.

There can be some endurance issues if you try to run force bubble, dispersion bubble, maneuvers, and an epic armor all at once and still attack (and heaven forbid you try and run repulsion field too, that thing costs a ton). I got a performance shifter proc for stamina and that helped a lot, but I would still make sure you get decent endurance reduction enhancement and see if you can get any other recovery bonuses. Luckily thunderstrike has nice end redux in it.

This is the toughest feeling 'squishy' I've ever played. With solid S/L resistance on top of 45% ranged/25% melee/aoe defense, I feel darn near invincible most of the time - as long as I'm paying attention, anyway. Since I still have to be careful to not let anything run up and hit me, it makes it more interesting than 'toggle up, be invincible'. Damage output is not *huge*, but it's more than acceptable in my opinion given how hard of a time anything has actually hurting me.

Yeah, that's one of the things I think is often underappreciated about the huntsman build. With double maneuvers/assault, TT:L, venom grenade, surveillance, WAWG, and bots, you're passing around 21% defense, 30% damage, 15% tohit, landing -20% resistance to entire spawns and -40% on bosses, slowing and immobilizing stuff, and summoning pets to distract the enemy and hand out their own damage and mitigation to the enemy. That's probably at least the equivalent of a corruptor's or masterminds' support set - sure, no healing, but pretty darn good offensive and defensive stuff. Not to mention you're a lot less likely to end up mezzed and ineffective than said corruptor or mastermind.

I still think the patron pools can have something to offer, though. Especially if you don't have the cash to get large amounts of global recharge, picking up an extra pair of attacks could really help round out your ST and AoE chains (well, if you pick mu or soul for fast animations, anyway). I certainly wouldn't pick them over the extra leadership stuff if I had to choose, but you can probably fit both.

I'm in the same boat as synthozoic, in a way, as I don't really *know* what makes a character 'come alive' for me. For a character to even get made, I've got to be able to come up with a powerset/AT combo I want to play, a mid's build that works, and a costume/concept that I like. Sometimes one of these (the concept especially) may be a bit nebulous at creation, but all three have to be there in at least a rudimentary fashion.

However, that doesn't necessarily provide that extra spark to make the leap from 'a collection of powers with a name and costume' to 'elemental force that pulls me along for the ride and spits me out at 3 AM, shaken and wondering what the heck just happened and where the last 8 or 9 hours went'. Sometimes that doesn't happen at all, sometimes it happens at some point, sometimes it even happens more than once. Often, for me, it happens once for a concept and costume, and a second time for ingame power and effectiveness.

For example, my warshade came alive for me before I even created her, when I wrote a several thousand word backstory for her all at once on the afternoon that her concept suddenly came to me. She entered the game as a fully realized character with a definite story, which doesn't usually happen for my characters immediately. Powers-wise, she came alive again at level 6 when I got nova and again at level 22 when I had stygan circle and dwarf and first truly experienced the addiction that is a warshade. But I don't know *what* it was about her backstory that grabbed me so. It just 'clicked'.

Aside: Nova Knight, one thing you might try is dark armor. I never actually made the character, but I found that, colored with shades of foam green and pale blues, it really looks appropriate for an aquatic theme.

Yes, this is the demoralize effect, and it does come from your assassin strike. It's something that all the sets do, and it was part of the stalker revamp a few issues back. Basically the idea is that suddenly a stalker jumps out of nowhere and eviscerates some poor sap, and all the baddies recoil in fear. It's very thematic and (imo) quite satisfying.

I wouldn't bother, the job of a stalker is to make big nasty baddies suddenly grow pointy bits of metal in uncomfortable places. Stalker builds are generally tight enough as it is without adding three whole powers from the medicine pool. If you want to help rez people, I'd just carry a couple extra wakies. Inspirations are cheap, power picks are priceless.

edit: If you really want a rez power, look into the day job badges. If you get the professor badge (the university) and the pain specialist badge (hospitals), that gives you the Physician accolade badge. The associated power is an ally rez, which gains charges by being logged out in either the university or a hospital. If you only occasionally need it on taskforces and the like, that seems to me to be a far more economical way to get a rez.