ZemX

Any of the "horse stance" attacks is way worse, in my opinion. There are Stalker primaries I can't play because this horrid thing is their Assassin Strike animation. Talk about having a bowel movement...

Punching the Ground. This one appears in several powers but is most impressive in Mighty Radial Final Judgement because it's accompanied by Mag 20 Knockup. Do this in a crowd of Scrapyarder minions in Sharkhead during a strike. Count the seconds until they all land. 🤪 I also like the one associated with Ground Zero in Radiation Armor. Again, probably appears in other "nuke" like powers but it's the one where you levitate just a little bit off the ground and then just flex as the explosion goes off. In Ground Zero, I pair this with an Avalanche Knockdown so up to 30 targets just all take a seat when the blast goes off... very satisfying.

I game on headphones, so I set speakers to stereo and the sound driver to 100% Surround. This gives it decent separation and I have no trouble finding glowies, but it's still a far cry from real 3D positional sound or even just discrete multi-channel surround. Point being, I don't ever recall being annoyed by sound effects in the old Live game and I think it's because I could play with actual surround sound. You didn't have the sounds all ganging up and getting shot into your left ear or something like that.

The big downgrade for me was when Surround Sound went away. This game is so old it uses DirectSound3D and that hasn't worked since Windows XP. There are some workarounds, such as Alchemy and IndirectSound that sometimes work with old games, but none of them has worked for me. The 3D Sound option stays stubbornly grayed out in the menu. I have to switch to stereo speaker mode when I run the Homecoming client now or the sound doesn't even have a left/right component.

Yeah, the ITF is a farm just about. But a fun them park farm! Started out a third of a bubble into 47 and dinged 50 on the last mission. I am still working on "Stupid Axe Cyclone Tricks" though. I've discovered combat jumping straight up the instant before keying it results in a sort of "fountain" effect that draws them in, up, and then flings them outward at the top. Fun... but largely counter-productive. I suppose I need to work on a few of my shelved tanks next. Rad/SS and Shield/Dark. Hmm... have I had enough Radiation? No... no I think not!

Ah projection... is there anything it can't tell us?

Same. I can tell myself there's on real difference in performance on my Rad/Staff tanker every time I redraw after using a click Rad power, but it's still aesthetically displeasing to laboriously redraw. It feels slower even when the stopwatch tells you different. And it's a bit janky when you properly queue powers to see those animation cancels happen after redraw. So looking forward to that being gone. Bonus points if it gets rid of some of the animation-not-p[laying problems.

Nah, it just suffers from long animations. Even though it was one of the later sets, it still didn't get balanced by animation time. The original design balanced only around factors like recharge time, AoE area, and other attack effects. The animation time was literally just whatever the animation ended up being and apparently no adjustments were made to either penalize short animation attacks or benefit long animation attacks. Staff could use some adjustments to bring up the damage of its slower animating attacks but then again... so could a lot of other powersets probably.

You don't need to take Jab these days. You can take Punch from level 1 instead. Also, Foot Stomp is available at level 30. Probably that version of Mid's doesn't have these updates. Other than that, in no particular order: Rage: Already mentioned, but I'll give an "Amen!" to that. Skip Rage? Skip SS. It's that stark, in my opinion. Rad is a great primary for SS mainly because it doesn't care too much about the crash. It has fantastic end recovery and it doesn't care about the defense debuff. Its main survival comes from Resist, Absorb, and Self-Heal. Defense is always nice, but with no Defense Debuff Resistance (DDR) that defense is gone when you most need it anyway. Build so that you don't EVER need it (except in Hard Modes where you're gonna need more defense than you can possibly build yourself anyway). On the Resist, Recharge, Heal theme.... Recharge is key and so is keeping it. You want to both build recharge and slow resist. I can't load up your build right at the moment, but if you don't have 80% or more slow resist, consider aiming for it. As long as you can keep that absorb shield up and your heal ready, you're invulnerable. Two-slot winter IOs give a nice slow resist bonus and Rad has some to begin with. The three-slot bonus in Perfect Zinger isn't worth spending the two additional slots there. Put one +5 recharge in Taunt and that's all you need. Some people like to put in the Perfect Zinger psi proc but it's not worth all that much, IMO. Low proc rate. Still needs a hit roll even though Taunt is autohit. Taunt only hits 5 anyway. Nah... skip it. You want Taunt ready whenever you need to rope in some aggro from range without leaving the group you're beating up on. Hand Clap without a KB/KD converter is... well, people will have "opinions" about that if you team. Unless you plan to never use it, but in that case, a power and five slots just to gain those set bonuses is iffy. Consider swapping one of those slots for a KB/KD IO. You still get five great set bonuses and now have a fun control power you can use anywhere and, like any AoE tanker attack, taunts everybody it hits. Ground Zero isn't a great place for Might of the Tanker. The recharge is too long. You want a decent chance to stack the +res proc twice (and it doesn't self-stack in a single power use). Take KO Blow and put it in there instead. GZ is a good place for two Avalanche winter IOs (I like one of them being the Knockdown proc. Try it and you'll see why) and the rest damage procs. Radiation Therapy is another good mini proc-bomb opportunity. One IO you definitely want in there is Theft of Essense:%end. In a crowd, Rad Therapy will then fill BOTH the green and the blue bars. Very wide area, though only 10 targets hit. Still... nice for grabbing attention and doing a bit of damage. Up often enough you can use it both offensively or as a health or end heal when needed. You don't need Physical Perfection on a Rad Armor Tanker. It already has great recovery and regen tools. Group Fly? Really? 🤪

Ice Melee on a Stalker. I mean, I like it quite a bit on a Tanker too, but on a Stalker it trades the mediocre Greater Ice Sword for the amazing Assassin Strike. Unlike most sets proliferated to Stalkers, it does NOT lose an AoE. This is how you do it! I like pairing it with Shield Defense and using the Elemental Ice shield choice colored to match the Swords. Makes it look like you are uniformly just Ice themed even though you aren't using Ice Armor. You use your super powers to form objects like swords and shields out of thin air and coat the ground with it to aid your defense. If only there was a way to have the shield form up and then disappear based on whether you were in Idle stance or not.

The suggestion was to autocomplete a mission while standing in Atlas park. Seems like it should work. I don't know if you can get a GM to spawn (unless a GM or seasonal event does it) in Atlas Park. Missions that spawn GMs like the one in Synapse TF (Babbage) and Crimson's Arc (Kronos Titan) should spawn that GM in the zone you exit the mission into, so you could hypothetically exit to Atlas park from inside the mission via LRT. But I've heard that doesn't work with some zones like Ouroboros and Atlas Park. Plus, the idea sounds like a TV show plot. Aspiring hero concocts ill-advised plan to make himself look like a superstar in front of admiring throngs in Atlas Park. It all goes sideways when the monster lured for the fight smashes buildings, topples the Atlas statue, and kills innocent bystanders. The show's actual heroes need to swoop in and save the day. @Shenanigunner ends up in the Zig. Credits roll.

It sounds like he wants to do it in front of Miss Liberty, Wait... that didn't sound right.

Isn't sapping an all-or-nothing tactic though? 78% sounds great but if you don't follow it up with other drains that drop them to zero, you haven't affected their damage output at all, have you? Or am I misinformed? Never actually tried such a thing myself.

ooo... now this thread has made me curious. Imagine if you will, how much Elec/Dark would suck. And I mean that in more ways than one. Energize - Suck health from your foes! (edit: Correction: It doesn't suck health from foes. It just sucks). Power Sink - Suck endurance from your foes! Siphon Life - Suck more health from your foes! Dark Consumption - Suck even MORE endurance from your foes! Soul Drain - Okay look.. just eat their souls now. It will make you stronger. The only thing that sucks as much as this is how much time most of these powers take to recharge. 🤪 But on the other hand, having so many of them would mean theoretically one of them is probably always ready to use and a couple can be fashioned into proc bombs, can they not? Might even find Power Sink to be unnecessary with all the endurance discount and recovery protection Elec Armor has. Then again, there's that sweet Staff Stance Selection that lets you decide to do more damage or get more recharge bonus. So maybe Elec/Staff? ... hmmm.

Mercurial while leveling and Precise after you have more slots and global recharge. If you did decide to take OG in Dark Armor then Precise Strike's disorient would stack, for whatever that is worth. Otherwise neither secondary effect on the T1/T2 is worth worrying about more than the fact Precise is much better DPA in your attack chain. But DPA only matters once you can close the attack chain. Early in leveling I prefer the faster lighter attacks to standing around doing nothing. Not an issue if you intend to farm your way up, of course. Another decision might be Innocuous vs. Serpent and that one just depends on whether you want more AoE or better ST. On a Tanker, I tend to prefer more AoE. Having two 135 degree 9ft cones to alternate is not a bad thing.

Of those two, I'd pick... Rad Armor. 🤪 I am sort of being serious if you're willing to expand your choices a little. Whenever I've considered rolling up a Dark or Elec Armor Tanker, I keep coming back to Rad "doing it better" (IMO) than either. They are all primarily resist armors that aren't terribly difficult to get at or near the cap on most/all (excepting the occasional res hole). They all have a self heal. They all have good (or great) endurance drain resistance. Rad and Elec also have +endurance powers. The big thing Rad has over either of these is the absorb shield. This is sort of like another heal or +HP like power that's a third layer of protection on res and self-heal. It also has great end recovery. It is notably missing a damage aura, but instead has the odd Ground Zero power, which is both a minor team heal and a minor enemy damage power with a large radius and a huge 30 target cap. Great "proc nuke" potential thanks to the base 90 second recharge. The self heal can also be procced for damage and +endurance, so it doubles as a very effective endurance refiller as well. Not as huge a heal as Dark, but also doesn't need to be. As such it's a lot cheaper to use while still getting the job done. Tier9s are, as usual, skippable in all three of these armor sets, but here again, Rad's is at least something you can consider taking and using, if for no other reason, the +dmg. It's in the newer style of shorter recharge, less powerful, but also crash-less or crash-lite Tier9s. Dark's Rez is the least useful for a well-built Tanker, I'd think. Elec's surge is the more traditional "god mode with heavy crash at the end" Tier 9 which you might also rarely use. Both Meltdown and Power Surge can mule a +res(psi) Impervium or Aegis IO if nothing else. There's not a huge amount of synergy with any of these and your secondary picks though. Rad does a little -def debuff and Katana does more. Dark has some minor defense to add to Katana's Divine Avalanche +melee/lethal def. Street Justice has some stuns if you took Oppressive Gloom in Dark Armor (most people don't, I think). Savage Melee is pretty much just damage... and that goes with anything. Outside of your choices, Staff Fighting pairs a bit better with any Res armor set due to the nice +res(all) finisher in the damage stance and also has a +def in a cone attack to stack with any defense you already have. Dark Melee does -toHit and some fear to stack with Dark Armor. Elec Melee does end drain to stack with Elec Armor's. etc.

Red Ink Men and Swift Steel, it should be noted, do unresistable slow run/fly debuff with Siphon Speed. It's a rare case where high defense is better than 100% slow resist. Fortunately, they don't also do recharge time slow with it like Animus Arcana Dispel Magic does. In general, I'm starting to favor Teleport Pool on Tankers so that being slowed or glued to the ground never prevents me from getting to some mobs that I need to tank. Great for cutting through a crowd blocking a doorway too.

Weapon redraw does not detract from performance, provided you queue your next attack immediately after the first one that caused the redraw animation to play. The first attack's actual attack animation will be cut short in that case to compensate the time. The second attack in the chain will begin at the same time it would have regardless of whether there was weapon redraw or not. It has always been an aesthetic issue only. Unless this new implementation changes that. Guess that's something to check.

For learning the game, I'd recommend staying away from "speed" Task Forces and sticking to "radio" teams until you have a better handle on things. These are teams doing repeatable missions for XP. As such, they tend to be a lot easier to follow since they are defeating what's in front of them as they go, not skipping around the map trying to speed complete objectives. If you play a Tanker or Brute, you might be asked to lead the team into each fight. So keep that in mind. A ranged character like a Defender, Corruptor, or Sentinel might be easiest. Sentinels are pretty safe thanks to the armor secondary. But mainly, range lets you shoot from the back of the team where you can get a better view of what everyone is doing and how they are playing. Good way to learn. You can also run Task Forces that are advertised as "casual" or "kill most/all" or something like that. Since they will operate in a similar fashion, moving steadily forward and defeating what is in front of them. Teams will still go like crazy travelling between missions, which is again where radio teams are easier. All missions will be in the same zone so it's just travelling door to door. Not figuring out how to get to some zone you've never been to. But definitely TELL people you're new and ask questions. I think the community is pretty good here and usually wants to help. You can ask questions, in game, in the /help channel too. Welcome!

I've been doing this and haven't run into any issues. To be perfectly safe, create a place-holder character on your home server, rename the character you are about to send to another server for TT (e.g. add a "1" to the end of the name or something), and then give the original name to the placeholder on the home server. Then transfer your tank. You can rename again at the destination or pick some alternate if the name is taken there. Make sure you're not leaving a SG consisting only of your tank or you will lose the SG base. If this is the case, FIRST invite your temporary place-holder toon to the SG with /altinvite before transferring your tank out.

Depends on the team and the mission. If you're on a team that's just steamrolling content, sure, it doesn't matter much. But that makes a lot more than just Stalkers feeling not very useful. If the team IS more well matched to the content, then the value of a Stalker is similar to a Scrapper. You are a boss killer. Bosses have 6x the hit points of minions, better resistances, and are more dangerous to squishies. Taking them down fast is valuable. And they aren't dying to an AoE barrage unless the team is just way overpowered compared to the difficulty. That said, if I'm answering the question I think is actually being asked, a Stalker I've played that has a lot of team utility outside of the primary damage dealing... is Ice/Shield. I play this one as off-tank (or if the team is really desperate... tank). I even have Provoke (which btw is useful even solo to help control runners). Keep an eye on the outskirts of the battle and intercept anything either running away or towards any of the squishier teammates. Block ambushes or choke-points with Ice Patch. Add a little hold mag to deadlier enemies with Freezing Touch. Attacks slow enemies a little bit, contributing to less incoming damage a little bit. Ice Patch is also great on lower level teams where the tank or brute can use a little help surviving. Really cuts down incoming damage.

It's just not that useful on most of the common maps. It's really only great when enemies are spread out all over the place and prefer ranged attacks, so they don't easily group up themselves. Ironically, it's also one of the few scenarios where it actually saves time to let someone try to herd to a corner or pillar or something like that. Think Praetorian sewer maps here. The advantage FS has here is that you don't need anyone else's cooperation (which you 99% of the time won't get for the herd tactic). But I can never justify taking it myself for only that one case. In most other situations, it just doesn't help enough to justify the heavy investment. And on top of that, I'd need a very high recharge build to make it something I can use every fight (or sometimes even every-other fight).

Shut it down, folks! We have fixed everything that ever needed fixing!

Wouldn't really work as there are all sorts of upper and lower body part options that aren't compatible with a prison uniform. Robot or beast arms and legs, for example. If you want to do this, best bet is creating your own custom prison uniform. Prior to level 10, you can change your costume for no charge, I think. So just create your super suit costume, save it, and then load it into each of your costume slots after leaving the Zig. A little extra work, but you can make the orange jumpsuit look right at least if your toon is not a standard human body.