Linea

I run Bots/FF when I just want to chill. "Minions, go do my bidding while I sit here with my feet propped up sipping Blood Wine"

Various Excerpts: "Teams are always easier than solo". That said, she's holding up really well in 7s, and spectacularly in 5s. And she's doing exactly what I wanted "Not overly influencing or skewing the teams". But at the same time if the shit hits the fan, she can off-tank in emergencies, not well, but a team could limp along using her as a crutch in a catastrophe if it had to. They'd definitely know they were limping, but it might beat a complete failure. On the down side, since I started running teams with the stalker: Not a single team has gotten past the door of 7, not even weekend teams. Twice as many tanks and brutes are quitting mid-mission leaving the team holding the bag with no armor. Worse, most of the quitters are rage-quitting logging out without quitting the team, leaving the team AE-BUGGED and not even able to recruit replacements. I always warn every team "WARNING AE BUG: YOU MUST QUIT THE TEAM BEFORE LOGGING OUT". And I'm ignored more often than not. Twice as many quitters, and probably three times as many rage-quitters. Maybe it's just been a bad week, a statistical anomaly. When you pull 1 group, you (almost) never get stacked overlapping debuffs, the AI won't do it. But two groups, each group uses the same rules, but in isolation, so now you have 2 x Ice Storms .... etc. 801.7 and up (vs the stalker) is very strictly 1 spawn max at a time only, and T9s only ... unless I'm teamed. The extra debuff of pulling more than one group pushes it over the edge. Even in 801.5 too many groups stacking debuffs can push it over the edge, but I can more or less handle 2 or 3 groups in 801.5. Two different examples. Teamwipe in 801.7, I live but fall back. Falling back reduces aggro to only one group. I tank that group, holding it at a corner to make a safe space behind me, ~5m until the team regroups and saves me and takes over just as the second T9 Crash approaches. The first crash I weathered with a combination of phasing and Demonic. The second crash was going to be fatal. But I managed to hold on and make a safe space just long enough for the team to res and regroup, I also managed to take out half a dozen or so EBs while I was doing it. Tank pulls a whole room, 3 spawns. Team wipes, they even get me. No matter what I try I can't even edge back into the group. The area around the tank just has too many location debuffs and too much aggro and alpha damage. If I hit even one target, I get a full 16 aggro, and it's aggro from a mixed group, not a single group, so I'm getting stacking debuffs AND having to deal with the already stacked location debuffs all around the tank. ... I should have sniped and pulled a group away from the tank and fought a separate battle instead of trying to 'help' the tank. I can handle 1 group. I can NOT handle two, nor can I handle the mixed stacking debuffs of two half groups. 1 Ice Storm is bad, 2 or more Ice Storms is fatal. ... Hindsight is 20/20. Next time I'll pull an leave the tank to die. --- CoH mobs in general are weak to: Confuse, Fear, and KD. This should give you some ideas on directions and strategies to investigate. Resist armor with defense buffs on the team is just stupid easy mode, perma T9 equivalent, but then what happens when you get that team with zero defense buffs. This lack of defense buffs happens way more frequently that I'd have ever expected. I've done RadA with Brute/Tank up to 7. I wasn't so sure how well it would balance with the lower resist cap. In heavy debuffs it gets tricky with the brute, so 2.5x additional incoming damage on a stalker is a real concern. Massive recharge, resist cap, and some AoE KD is a reasonable direction to investigate, but I'm not certain enough of the results to put time into it right now. Which primary has the best, most, and reliable KD? I can't answer that, but It's definitely a direction worth looking. Stuns would work well too, up to 6. However, 7 and up are all EBs so the stun route goes out the window. Stuns are very effective below 7. The AoE KD idea also makes Ice Armor a possible, but I've never liked IceA in the past. But it's definitely an idea that could be tested. -Damage does work, subject to level modifiers and +Damage dilution. Level modifier roughly halves it, and most of the mobs have +20% damage. When Lucy (SD/RadM Tank) alpha's a mob it's at the equivalent of ~93% pseudo-resist for the first 30 seconds due to stacking of Darkest Night and Void Radial T4. (It would be ~96% pseudo-resist vs +0s). Skylark does the same. 1 - (0.1 * 85 / 120) ~= 93% pseudo-resist.

This is for AE 801(link), specifically 801.7, if you don't know what that is then follow the link, and run a few missions. In short it's much like playing somewhere between +5x8 and +8x8. If you can make any of these builds better, I welcome the feedback. It is my opinion that StJ/EnA might well be the best overall stalker you can build for official content. If it's not that, then it's StJ/Bio. I run a /Bio (scrapper) as my 'main tank' in most official content. However, my StJ/EnA tends to fail 801.7, barely, and I wanted to improve on that. The rebuilt EnM is probably the best ST focused stalker you can build, I've not tested the new rebuilt version so I can't swear to that, but it really looks good. It can even heal on focused crits. However, it can also still do damage, and I'm trying to increase durabilty, not decrease it. So while I'd love to give this route a try, I don't feel like this is the answer. ... If you build one and prove me wrong, please post it. If I were looking at standard content, where offense is more fairly measured as avg(ST,AoE,AoE), then I might well recommend ElA where Stalkers ST damage fills the gap that's present in all the other ATs version of ElA. Combine that with excellent AoE and this is another potential flavor for 'Best PvE Stalker'. But, I'm looking at 801.7 where the AoE splash is pretty much ignored by all the EBs. --- Even running perma def/res caps (barely), isn't enough due to debuffs and lack of healing. Inspirations (primarily large oranges) can deal with the debuffs if you are proactive and never blink. However, even then, I find myself having to use a green every minute or more. That's not sustainable. This applies to all the 75% resist cap ATs. You'll either need a bit better healing, and/or support. Or better yet Defense, Resist, and Healing support. As another example /Bio has great healing/regen. However, even std defense capped and resist capped it's not enough. I can eat purples to hit the defense i-cap, but that still doesn't help with DDR, or I have to eat an unsustainably large number of them. Same with resist. While I can resist cap (at 75%), that still leaves a 25% RDR gap and no real resist buffer vs debuffs. So while I can burst and off-tank using Medium or Large Dual Def/Res inspirations with /Bio Regeneration and Absorb Bursts ... eventually all that hits a valley and I *insta-splat*. So, back to more planning and testing on the test server. 801 RadM/Ena Stalker (link) So I tested a couple of different approaches. The Slow Defense method did not offer enough of a buffer vs DDR. It's very close, I totally run an almost identical build with a Brute to great effect. However, the brute has a much higher resist cap effectively taking only 40% of the damage vs the stalker. That difference in resist caps and damage makes a real difference. Couple that with the RDR effect of a lower resist cap, and not only am I fighting 2.5x more damage on the stalker, I'm fighting 2.5x more resist debuffs, and while the former is an issue, it's the latter that I really feel, and feel badly and to terminal effect. Resist caps matter, dangit. I ended up chosing the High Recharge T9 3m/4m build. It has excellent performance in 801.5 by just using Shadow Meld and supplementing as needed with (Rune/Hybrid/Rune/Demonic/Wedding Band), no T9 needed at all. In 801.7 I run synced T9s for 3m with 4m recharge. 3m up, just before it crashes (Phase/Heal +Endurance Discount/Recovery Serum), toggle back up (this takes 30 s), unphase, shadow meld and ease back into the edges of the fight until the T9s are ready again in 30s. You can also use Inspirations or Temps to get back into the fight sooner. The following builds are related to and influenced the '801 Stalker Project' but are not all stalker builds, nor are all of them complete or finished builds. There are also additional builds that influenced this build that are not included. RadM Ena ShadowMeld Stalker - 801 - Recharge-T9 ver 1c - [i25].mxd StJ Ena ShadowMeld Stalker - 801 - Recharge-T9 ver 1c - [i25].mxd EnM Ena ShadowMeld Stalker - 801 - Recharge-T9 ver 1c - [i25].mxd Stj Ena DN Brute - 801 SD 1c Pre-Alpha - [i25].mxd StJ Ena ShadowMeld Stalker - 801 - Slow Defense ver 1c - [i25].mxd Kat ENA Brute - Mu 1i - [i25].mxd StJ Ena WaterSpout Stalker - Alpha T3 - [i25].mxd FF DP Scorpion Def - STF SLE 1c - [i25].mxd Kat ENA Brute - Prototype 801 - DN 2i - [i25].mxd

How about a master Zip file of all the builds linked to the first post?

FF DP conversion ... FF DP Soul Sniper - Heavy Support 57-74 - Overwatch 1 - [i25].mxd

I'm using the FF/DP SLE build to lead teams in 801 up to 801.7. She's not immortal, but she outlives most of the the tanks. Hound is cheap. Overall I'd probably recommend Quarterback or Dark Beta. Tough enough for standard content, and extra offense to boot. PBU Build, incarnate cap the whole team. *rolls eyes* ... If you want a PBU build, I'll have to dig around for that, not sure I did a DP variant of the PBU build. FF Water Soul - Heavy Support 57-74 - Overwatch 1 - [i25].mxd FF Beam Soul Sniper - Heavy Support 57-74 - Overwatch 1 - [i25].mxd

I play my empath the least, but they can still perform quiet nicely. Emp Fire - Combat Medic Concept 4 - [i25].mxd Emp Fire - Harlequin Octagon 2 - [i26].mxd Emp Sonic - Harlequin Device 2 - [i26].mxd Emp Sonic - Strauss 5 - [i26].mxd Emp Sonic - Burke 6 - [i26].mxd and many more ... The only thing I have more variants of than Emp is Time.

FF makes a nice Sentinel, and potentially more durable, but less damage. I tend to prefer Huntsman in that role, but I have FF in the role as well. FF Water Dark - Soul Drain - Overwatch 1 - [i25].mxd FF Water - Budget Build 2 - [i26].mxd FF DP - Hound 9a - [i26].mxd FF DP Defender - Dark Beta 1b - [i25].mxd FF DP Scorpion Def - STF SLE 1c - [i25].mxd

Cost in this case means IOs, influence, temps, inspirations, player skill, attention, and ability to anticipate and be precognizant. Some builds you can AFK and talk all day while fighting, other builds 'You blink you die'. Most of my builds are some variation of very expensive combined with 'You blink you die'. SR/: I would say SR is the highest performance, but also at the highest cost by a very large margin. Only the top 0.5% of players are going to be able to drive it the effectively. This had the absolute best performance ... but also failed completely 11 of 12 runs with me at the wheel. Difficult to drive is an understatement. SD/: I consider the SD my top tank currently. It already has 2 builds, and I plan on a 3d Offensive Proc Build. Harder and more expensive than Inv, but better performance. I use this in 801.B and up. INV/: I run the Inv most of the time, simply because it's effectively auto-pilot 90% of the time. I use this up to 801.A. /ENA: I run this up to 801.9. I would absolutely love to see this on a tank and see how it compares. I'd probably put a tank version even with INV/, +/- a notch. Tank variant might be a notch better, but might also be a notch worse, as compared to INV/. We'll never know till it gets propagated to Tanks. Rad/: I run this up to 801.7 ... it could probably go up to 801.9, but there are better options. This is endemic of Resist sets in general. Give them external defense buffs and they're running around perma-T9. But with zero defense buffs, the DDR imbalance starts winning out at 801.7 and up. This is just a baked in game bias. WITH Buffs it's better, without it's worse. "Are you feeling buffed today, punk? Are you?" Note: It's rare for standard content to be more difficult than 801.2. It's also rare for the standard team not to have at least minimal defense buffs. Therefore in normal standard content, it should be rare for this to not perform substantially better than might be indicated here. The resist armor issue in 801 is similar to def/res issues of running standard content with random pugs. Joe always built i-cap with minimal resists, meanwhile, I took the same build and built more standard defenses with moderate to high resists while assuming there would be at least a pair of maneuvers on an 8 man incarnate team. 9 out of 10 teams, I'd live and Joe would die. 1 out of 10 teams, I'd die horribly and Joe would live and laugh maniacally. Aka: most incarnate teams have at least minimal defense buffs. However, in 801.7 and up 'minimal defense buffs' starts becoming insufficient. The higher you go in 801, the more defense (and resist) buffs you need. But in standard content, you never reach anything near this difficulty level.

The new EMP Arrow is a beast of it's own kind. ... I noticed it when I added it to some new 801 Mobs 😜 TA after the revamp is really well worth second look if you haven't already. As for blast sets, I tend to recommend Fire, Ice, Water. Water being my overall favorite after Dual Pistols (I love DP but tend to not recommend it. DP is below average without a proc build, and proc builds are complicated).

Here are both mine. One is 801 SLE emphasis, the other is Psi-Tank emphasis. SD RadM Tank - Prototype 801 - Build i4 - [i26].mxd ... SD RadM Tank - PsiTank Beta r4 - [i25].mxd

Anchor a Boss or higher. Even if they die, the toggle stays on the corpse usually till the end of the fight. That won't help with KB happy team-mates. This is why most of use strongly dislike KB, and instead favor KD or the use of KB-to-KD IOs. Some of the strongest debuffs are Anchors. You have to compromise something when you pick other versions. Rad and Traps are the classic AV killers. If you're wanting easy-mode AV kills on TFs, those are the best choices. I'm not sure how the TA revamp does vs AVs. You want perma stackable -500 regen if not -1000 regen to take out the hardest +4 AVs. Time - doesn't have the -regen for AVs, but is a beast otherwise. Poison - has horrible radius, I don't recall how it stacks on on -regen either, you'd have to look it up. Traps - doesn't work well in fast moving teams. One of my personal favorites, just the same. TA - the new TA is nice, but doesn't have the -to-hit magnitude of Time, Dark, Rad, Nature For that playstyle, that's probably the choices.

I try to run after work EST, Everlasting(home), Excelsior(May/June). I might try Torch in June/July. Any other time is rare.

Additional 801 Team Recommendations Bring your best incarnate character. If you’re dead … you’re venge-bait. 2 or 3 tanks. 7 and up I recommend at least 2 tanks. Aggro can be insane, and more than one tank can handle alone. 2 or 3 control. Control is awesome, but the higher difficulty you go the harder it is for a single controller to do the job. 2 or 3 buff/debuff. The higher you go, the harder they hit, the more you need to protect the entire team. 2 or 3 damage. If you go high enough in difficulty, the EBs become almost as durable as AVs. Don’t neglect your damage capabilities. How you stuff 12 roles into 8 slots is up to you. 😜 I suggest using Caution, Strategy and Tactics. In the worst case, If you go in guns blazing you can end up facing 16 spawns from all directions. Under those circumstances buffs trump debuffs. Under more careful conditions the higher magnitude of debuffs can outweigh buffs. CoH enemies as a whole have a weakness to: Fear, Confuse, KD … this is no different. Control can, if employed precisely with care and coordination, eliminate 90% of the damage from 90% of the mobs. Control is extremely useful, but since 7 and up are EBs, matched coordinated or stacked controls get a greater emphasis. Control becomes even more difficult in 11 and up, you might need 3 controllers instead of 2. CoH incarnate enemies are primarily SLE damage, this is no different. Their To-Hit and Damage are both increased to at least Incarnate levels. They will hit you, and it will hurt. 801.A is (5k dps average, 10k spikes, 25k max spike) vs an aggro-capped unarmored target. Any and all Buffs/Debuffs will be useful.

What damage type is it? You know when you're testing a new AE Arc, in test-mode, there's a button "Kill Target" linked to the /architect_killtarget command? I gave that command to the MoBs. 😜 Why? Because PI Council Farms get boring. It started long long ago in a galaxy far far away, as a way for me to differentiate armors that were all effectively lumped into a giant pile of 'good armor'. Then various crazy people started asking for more and different versions, some easier, some harder ... and we ended up with a few. Then along comes Homecoming, and over time things evolve ... and then we have 6 or 7 versions. Then along comes @CU_Krow who says they are "all too easy" ... so then are 10 or 11 versions. Then Krow says, "that's still too easy" ... and now there's 15 versions. D (13) has been completed 3 or 4 times now, but most teams never make it past 7. Unfortunately, most teams implode on 7 .

Nightmare Shaman was also the one that asked about the empath. And in context, I did also recommend not only ANY tank, which IS my recommendation, but also recommended more specifically: If you want even more specific, 'there can be only one', then I'd say Inv/ ... it's practically auto-pilot and top tier durable. I said that somewhere recently as well, but perhaps not this thread. Personally if *I* could have only one, I'd pick SD and dual-build or tri-build (Non-Psi high def/res, Psi-Tank, Proc Monster) ... and that's exactly what I've done and/or am doing. But I've also built the other armors as well. One of my next projects is probably looking at a better SD/ProcMonster, preferably in RadM. I'm good at the high def/res builds, I'm not nearly as good at the Proc Monster builds.

Hold Aggro? *shrug* More of a scrapper in that regard. You can armor most ATs, and most builds, but not quite all, well enough to solo most official content short of +4 AVs and i-Trials (and even Apex and Tinmage with several builds, Lambda gets more problematic but not impossible, and BAF and above are probably too much for the 'squishies', but as soon as I say that someone will have probably done it with an all-squishie min-size team.). The tank version of that should be trivial, hence the 'play the tank you want' comment.

An armored empath can tank all the official game content except the i-trials, which have cheaty AV mechanics. Play what you want. I recommend: /EnA (Defense, Any AT), Rad (Resist-Cap, Brute and Tank), /Bio (Heal-Armor, Any AT) . . Defense Alternate for tanks: SD/ and Inv/ ... but really any armor will work for the official game content. Infinitum, Hyperstrike, Sovera, Myshkin, and many others all have great builds. The named ones are just the one's I've stolen from most recently. 😜

Note: all of the following assumes amps, dampenders, basebuffs, demonic, and/or wedding bed. In working on an 801 tank (see link in sig), SR failed 11 of 12 runs, and the 12'th run was a thing of beauty surpassing all other builds. AKA: it's hard as hell to pull off, but if you the player perform flawlessly, the the peak performance of SR can be fantastic, well beyond what most would ever suspect. At the same time, you should expect to fall short of that goal 11 out of 12 times. There's a reason I recommend Inv/ first, and SD/ second, and normally don't include SR. I've lost the charcter to test server wipes, so I can't promise this is exact, but it looks correct to my recollection: SR DM Tank - Prototype 801 - DN 2i - [i25].mxd

The teleport bug has been there for a while .... NOW that someone mentioned it, I remember it going back a fair ways ... I just thought it was my macros, binds, random maps, or related to the known powexeclocation bugs ... and since it always happened in neck deep in combat, I never investigated it, just shrugged it off and kept on fighting.

Accuracy and Defense interact, but are not the same, so ... yes. Yes, a +4 AV will hit you more than a +4 minion. Can't swear your numbers are 100% accurate without digging up an ancient spreadsheet I have somewhere. This is why defense-cap builds balance roughly with resist-cap builds ... assuming 50+1 vs 54 content, in the standard game, and max dps levels of official content. Resist builds typically have more HP/S (regen or healing), and cap at 90% (10% incoming damage) .. while defense has less HP/S and cap at a rough average of 8%. Now, if you don't resist-cap this doesn't work, if you're running +0 there is also an imbalance, and if you're debuffed below -35% defense vs +4s there is also another imbalance. But in the end, the parity of resist-cap (tank brute) vs defense-cap is actually much closer than most people realize, despite the baked in imbalances in the game. (Roughly, Conceptually Speaking)

Gaint Congratulations and Many Many Thanks to the first team to complete 801.C and 801.D. 801.C (Excelsior): Brandis, Fubar-Licious, Jezebel Delias, Krazy Kilowatt, MidnightBloom, Miss Super Anarchy, Micro Atomic 801.D (Excelsior): Brandis, Jezebel Delias, Fubar the Hunter, R3d H3rring, Charmed to Meet You, Heat Loss, Celestial Shot You were all Awesome!

@Jacke This is intentional. The faster you move through the maps the more resistance you'll catch. The fact that 7 and up actually kick you out the front door, I find that is unintentionally working as intended. Each tier of 801 has 3 missions of increasing difficulty. Each successive tier has more difficult mobs. If you are a small weak squishy team without buffs, you may want to skip up the ladder 0, 3, 7 sticking to the easiest mission per tier, these can probably be run safely by 3-man teams. Avoid A and up entirely, they don't play by any rules. Charging in and nuking rooms will trigger ambushes, and potentially lots of them, as well as aggroing up to four or five mobs that are already in the room to start with. Ambushes mean the team has to figure out what to do when the tank is overwhelmed. If the team as a whole is too weak or too small, then stick to the easiest mission of each tier (0,3,7). The hardest mission of each tier is intended for a stronger team of incarnates, it's intended that the team have some way to deal with multiple groups of enemies. Team-wide Buffs are strongly encouraged, as is Control. The one EB per mission that can cage a tank, means the team has to figure out what to do when the tank is taken out, even if for only 30 seconds. To expand on the missions in each tier: I use simplier easier maps on the first, and the most complex difficult maps on the last. As to Ambushes: The first mission has zero or one ambush, the second mission has a one-trigger and a two-trigger, the third has a pair of three-triggers. I have considered spreading the last out into a one trigger, two trigger, three trigger, but that really won't help much if you charge in and nuke the room with judgements. Also spawn points and geometry are limited, it's really hard to design that room if I have to give up yet another spawn point just to spread out the ambushes. Charging in Leroy Style and Nuking one of those rooms is just asking for a team-wipe even without the ambushes. PS: Published D, E, and F. Don't even attempt them.

The following should be AFK-able in both SL and Fire farms. Std def with 1 target, i-cap defense saturated ... I kept as much Energy resist as I could, but supplement with Kinetic Dampeners if needed. WEAK TO PSIONIC. I stripped most of the psionic to seal up def/res in SLFC (I had already stripped psionic in favor of SLE). You can likely improve it even further. Inv RadM Tank - SL Fire Farm 4 - [i26].mxd

For an SL specific build, I'd say Inv/. I parked Skylark AFK in 709 and Briggs S&L ... she could have stood there for hours taking no damage. ... Then I toggled off everything except 'Temp Invul' .... and they still couldn't kill her. She did ok in Briggs regular Fire Farm as well, but you can't AFK. You can Alternate Hybrid Core T4 to seal up Fire resists, with Dull Pain 60s (halfway) into the gap between hybrids. You could Rebuild for more Fire Resist, she's built for 801. You could put Rebirth on you or your wife to cover when he goes afk too long. I'd probably recommend rebuilding for SL/Fire farms. Shouldn't be too hard to manage, then he can just AFK no matter what, take a nap, come back and still be alive. 8-p Sorry I don't have a rebuild like that atm, but it should be possible, famous last words. PS: You might want to test any build on the test server, with the missions you normally run .... that might save you some frustration. Inv RadM Tank - Prototype 801 - Build i3 - [i26].mxd