Supernumiphone

Dark Blast is decent as far as damage goes, but not exceptional. It lacks a hard-hitting tier 3 for single-target, although the recent bump to Life Drain helps in that regard. Gloom gets a little bonus damage for being pure DoT, so it hits a bit harder than your usual tier 2 attack.

For AoEs DB is all about the cones. I'd never skip Night Fall. It does have a narrow cone, but it does more damage than TT. As was already said, you can choose to reposition between TT and NF, or just accept that NF will miss some on the sides. What I do is try to slot TT with as much +range as I can without sacrificing other things (which sometimes means I don't get a lot). That way you minimize the difference between the ranges. NF will still be narrower but you won't have to reposition as much and it will be easier to fight from further back allowing both cones to hit most of the group.

I wouldn't plan on using Trip Mine during fights much. Sure you can do it, but if you build for recharge you could probably spam both cones multiple times in the time it took you to set one mine. Still it's fun and sometimes I do it for that reason alone. Mostly though I set them up to cover possible ambush points and that sort of thing. For example on the last mission of the ITF I know there will be waves of reinforcements while the team is fighting Rommy. So I set up some mines (if the Nicti aren't constantly interrupting me) and Caltrops to greet them when they arrive. Good times.

For defense, the usual approach for a trapper is to get the Scorpion Shield. With that you can fairly easily softcap S/L/E, the three most common damage types in the game. If you prefer positionals you can do that instead, but it will require a more focused build.

One great synergy I love about the combo is the immobilize in TT. If you haven't noticed it yet, I'm sure you will that mobs run like crazy from the Acid Mortar. Caltrops helps but it just slows them, then they still scatter to the far reaches of the map you're on, catch a bus to the next city, then transfer to a train and keep right on going. Eventually they return but one shot from the AM and they run screaming like little girls all over again. The immobilize is so great there. I still have horrible memories of trying to fight war wolves on my trapper. I finally had to give up using my traps and just apply damage.

My usual formula for starting a fight is to summon Seeker Drones in the middle of a group of mobs to debuff them and soak the alpha. While they're distracted I jump in and start laying down traps. I don't tend to use PGT except for AVs or GMs these days. Since it was nerfed it's not good for much aside from the -regen (IMO). So for regular mobs it's just the Acid Mortar and possibly Caltrops depending on the situation, and they I start applying damage.

I think the only power that will actually interrupt AS is Oppressive Gloom, due to the self damage.

I don't agree with adding more end redux in the Leadership toggles. If you don't currently have end redux slotted in your attacks and/or controls, that's where you'll get the best return right now. The Leadership toggles do use a lot of endurance though. I wouldn't plan on running them full time until you have some IOs helping your recovery, or Drain Psyche near perma.

Aside from that, Arctic Air is a huge end hog. I'd either put off running it, as I said for the Leadership toggles above, or slot more end redux in it.

Basically what you're trying to do, run all those end heavy toggles, isn't practical unless you really maximize your build to allow it. Miracle and Numina's uniques would be a good idea IMO. After that if you build for +recharge and get Drain Psyche well slotted you should be able to manage between DP and the Domination refill.

If it was me, rather than have to worry about my end all the time I'd drop one or more of the Leadership toggles.

One trick that helps when you get locked out of the market is that adding something to the market can unlock the interface. If you try to do it too soon after being locked out you just get the message again, but if you wait 5-10 seconds and then drop something on the market, if it gets successfully added that will unlock the interface. It's much faster than waiting for it to unlock on its own.

As for the cause of the lockout triggering, I get it from clicking "Get all inf" usually but also from adding IOs to the market too quickly. If it's too many requests in too short a time that's the problem a change I'd like to see would be to have the "Get all inf" button send a "Get all inf" message to the server, rather than sending a deluge of individual inf claim requests.

I've had that happen to me before, so it is not new. If I remember correctly zoning would usually fix it.

You know I hadn't thought of that but yeah, I actually can't remember the last time I saw someone playing an EM toon. Wow. I would have figured it would be more popular than that. I guess it's become the Trick Arrow of melee sets.

The Tanker version has a Taunt effect, the Stalker version does not. So no, you won't be generating a lot of aggro with it.

As Jibikao said though, it does interfere with the use of Placate. More specifically, it breaks the Placate effect and allows mobs to attack you again, and can interfere with your ability to get a critical from your next attack unless you're fast enough or get lucky with the timing of the next tick of Chilling Embrace.

One trick some people use it to set up a bind/macro for activating Placate that detoggles Chilling Embrace at the same time. Of course then you have to re-activate CE again after every Placate/attack combo. So it's kind of up to you and your playstyle how big a negative that is and whether CE is worth it to you.

If I remember correctly it's actually near the top for single-target damage. I think the reason so many people look down on the set is that other sets that do similar or better single-target damage also do better AoE and don't damage the user. Then there's the glacial animations, which for some suck the fun out of the set.

It's not a bad performer, it just doesn't excel at anything anymore, except possibly stuns. So there's not really any reason to take it other than perhaps concept.

Yeah Blasters get the best version of Rad Blast by far IMO. For other ATs the first two attacks are among the weakest single-target blasts in any blast set. No other blast set gets two of the weakest. The others are only saddled with one at worst.

That's not to say there's no reason to play it on a Corruptor or Defender. I have a Rad Blast Corruptor I quite enjoy. One approach you can take is to proc up whichever of the first two attacks you take to help out its damage. The attacks take the Achilles' Heel proc as well, which is nice.

With regard to endurance, I'd go ahead and slot up Stamina as early as convenient. Beyond that, unless you're playing Brute style running from spawn to spawn without re-hiding, endurance probably won't be an issue aside from perhaps EB battles, but you can use inspirations to cover those so I wouldn't worry about that while leveling.

Combat Jumping is too good to pass up IMO, especially on a defense-based build. If I skip a travel power and use Ninja Run I create a macro to smoothly toggle between the two. /macro Jump "powexecname Combat Jumping$$powexecname Ninja Run"

Recall Friend is nice to have on a Stalker, but I haven't run into people expecting me to have it on mine, even on Freedom. I fit it in if I have room, but if I don't I drop it without a second thought.

Procced Caltrops is an intriguing idea, but I don't think I'd put off other powers I'd want to get it early. That probably means I wouldn't end up taking it in time to make good use of the starter IOs. I don't know I hadn't thought of it but I'm really tempted to try it now. I'd have to play around in the builder to see if I could make room for it. Slotting all the starter IOs into it would probably be quite lulzy. Tough call there.

I don't think the build would benefit that greatly from Hasten, but that's a very personal decision. Getting Concentrated Strike up more quickly, and therefore getting more chances to refresh Build Up, would be nice. Again I'd have to put together a build and see if I ended up with room for it.

As for Tough/Weave, Weave at least would probably be good for a leveling build because presumably you won't be slotting IOs for defense, so any extra help you can get would be good. Steadfast Res/Def IOs are cheap enough, I'd pop one into Tough and just not run Tough, even on a leveling build. That extra 3% will really help. You could also slot the Res/Def IO in the heal, but that would be a slot you didn't have available to slot recharge and heal, so use the free slot in Tough if you take it, otherwise try to fit it into the heal.

The thing is, if you're running Weave, my guess is you'll be getting to the point where you'll have enough toggles running you'll start needing end redux in your attacks. So I'd put it off until late enough in the build that you think you'll be able to get your attacks slotted a bit.

With regards to which of the first three attacks to take, that's hard to say. For a final build I'd skip Quick Strike for sure. For a leveling build with little to no recharge reduction slotted, the other two attacks will leave significant gaps in your attack chain. So you'd probably want to either take the first two, which you said you did, or take all three. You said you haven't been able to stick with Stalker projects in the past. One thing that might be worth asking yourself is, would standing around with no attacks to use a lot of the time take too much of the fun out of leveling? If so, I'd say take the first three, regardless of what you have to do to make room for them. After all if you lose interest in this one, the rest won't matter.

As to how to make room...I tend to put off Build Up and/or Placate until later in my builds. I know for some that would be blasphemy, but having Build Up before SO level enhancements usually just means I have an icon on my tray recharging and unavailable to use most of the time. The same for Placate, except that while it does recharge faster, it is actually less useful (to me). If I was going to put just one off it would probably be Placate. There's only a narrow band of levels when a Build Up/AS will actually make a solid dent in a boss's HP bar, so you might as well enjoy it while you can. Once again, personal preference trumps all here. If Placate is iconic to the AT for you, you may not want to put it off.

If you're determined to "softcap or bust", I'd pick one of the easier secondaries to do that with. Those that don't provide significant +defense powers are harder to softcap without making significant sacrifices in other areas of the build. Enough that I'm personally not willing to do it. The one exception is if you're just looking to softcap smashing/lethal, in which case an epic/patron shield can get you a good part of the way.

The easiest secondary to softcap is /Traps. It's also a fairly potent secondary, though the playstyle is not for everyone.

The impression I've gotten from trying to read between the lines of dev comments is that they want to do it but it's a lot of work, and they haven't been able to devote the resources it would need yet. I'm not expecting it any time soon.

Has anyone tried using Self Destruct when this happens? Many location AoEs used by mobs are targeted on the player and I believe use the player as the "owner", so if you were defeated that might cause it to despawn. Then again it might not but it'd be worth a shot.

Yeah same here. I skipped Shadow Punch and took MG. I believe you do need a bit of global recharge to have a full attack chain that way, but I don't think you need a lot unless you want to run the best attack chain.

Looks like I'll be taking a break from the game. I hope this stuff gets fixed soon.

Your slotting makes me wonder...you do know that you keep bonuses from powers even if you exemp below the point that they are available, yes? For example you could get set bonuses from your level 49 power even exemped to level 20 as long as the IOs slotted in it were level 23 or below (or purple.)