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I haven't tried Martial Arts, but I reworked a StJ/Willpower Scrapper as a Stalker and I find the Stalker to be the better of the two builds for 99% of content I've tried. The 1% is due to escort missions in which I have to turn off Hide. This is not usually a big deal, but the auto-Hide Stalker ATO still comes into play. The main differences that I (non-scientifically) observe about StJ on Stalker as opposed to Scrapper: On the Stalker, I am very rarely thinking about combos (which I find to be a mixed bag)... so I don't sweat trying to have an optimized attack chain. The Stalker ATO seem to work much better at improving DPS.

It took me about a year of HC before I realized that folks teleporting directly to Positron from the penultimate mission is what was causing almost all of the "missing Babbage" spawns from the Synapse TF. I know most teams were blaming AE (or tram police drones), but I think this was the cause of most missing spawns.

I long ago accepted the particular misery of having 95% chance to hit with all of a character's AoE and still seeing more than one MISS! per spawn.... n almost every spawn... but I don't like it. I'm not entirely convinced that the AoE streakbreaker is really working against single spawns of many mobs... and since I usually have %proc in AoE, I half-wonder how those could be affecting it. The most annoying aspect is switching between ST and AoE, since the streakbreaker count is different. It's highly annoying to miss an enemy with an AOE and then miss with a ST. Almost all of my gripes are perception bias, but much of MY perception would be improved if I could see the actual attack roll in the combat monitor and not have to crawl the combat logs for them.

He'll be missed. I'm proud to say that the Heraclea (on Torchbearer) accompanied one of my toons on the mission to earn her "Mistress of Olympus" badge.

It has been MANY years, and many updates, since I ventured into PVP with my Inv/EM tank. At that time, it had no problem with survivability, and it was the STUN component that was ultimately the most valuable dealing with pests in PVP zones. It's not really like the Tank could do enough DPS to 'win' at PVP. There are a few slotting and pool choices that would probably make sense for a PvP-focused EM/Inv Brute that are sub-optimal for PvE play. I'm just guessing: make sure toggles never fall, increase perception/ToHit, if Stuns are a still a thing, lean into those, Dull Pain should be perma, multiple Power Transfer (because of base HP), etc. I'm not a Brute player, so I have no idea how Fury factors into PVP. I have a vague recollection that there was a time when EM Stalkers we considered to be a top-tier choice for PVP offense. If it is just worrying about surviving in a PVP zone, I would be surprised if ANY Brute or Tanker had issues in 1-on-1.

I wouldn't sweat downloading the build. This isn't the most difficult problem you will face as a Soldier of Arachnos (ehem, forced respec).

"Can I interest you in the exciting world of Day Jobs?"

I know that, it's just that there is precious little to explain it.

What you call "nowhere", others call @Yomo Kimyata's pockets.

This is precisely what I did with my Widow... I made one male, one female. I even played them through content as different characters while I was leveling them. I tend to stick with the Fortunata, but occasionally I will shift between them on TF/SF to see if anyone says anything.

In (new) Boomtown, at location [-1980.1 -16.0 5148.5] (near Phalanxer badge) it is possible to end up in a part of the map that doesn't have the geometry boundaries properly established. This is 'between' the trusses on the ground. This appears to only be an issue with the textures (not) applied to the geometry, as I have not been able to find any holes in the bounding box.

Without a Build Up, Invincibility is a solid place to put that %proc. My Invulnerability Tanker is Energy Melee, and for my play style, I prefer it in Build Up. I usually want the boost against single-targets at specific times more than I want the boost against a large spawn, YMMV, especially depending on the type of content you play. There is nothing quite like seeing a single Paragon Protector hit Moment of Glory and then immediately clobbering him after using Build Up.

One element of Red Side play that I find personally rewarding is that Villains (and Rogues) get to go through non-SF arcs where you face and take down members of the Freedom Phalanx. This is particularly satisfying if you play the first SSA1 arc, don't exit the first mission as they show up at +20 levels to you to wipe you off the map. As I was collecting a few KOs for some defeat badges in Peregrine Island, I remembered a long-ago few questions I had about the random spawns that appear there: Nemesis troops along the southern docks. They are clearly control of those areas, yet there is nothing (to my knowledge) like an arc or even Tip mission that explains their presence there. It always strikes me as a cross between "Mary Sue" and "Recycled Enemy" when Nemesis appears in the Shadow Shard, and the role in the Rikti war is revealed, so just having these chumps stand around on the docks strikes me as weird. If we are brainstorming reasons why they are hanging around: How about they are shipping things through the Vanguard portal on the sly? This might explain why they have their Sharpshooters stationed around Founders Falls. The Possessed Scientists near Portal Court. There are some late-game missions on the red side that do a better job rationalizing the inclusion of these mobs, but on the blue side I have not encountered any reason why they exist. Minimally, I would have expected a Tip mission to detail it. Are these guys just dumped out the back door of Portal Court from other worlds/Shadow Shard? IIRC Unai Kemen doesn't offer anything like an explanation for them, which would have seemed like a natural fit. The Cutlass Isles. (and to some extent, Monster Island and the Abyss... although the badges in those zones at least hint at a story). We get teased (small) Kaiju. We get teased Crey involvement (but nothing like what they are doing in the Nerva Archipelago). We witness Rikti Monkeys everywhere. The Janet Kellum mission I guess is as close as we get to an actual explanation about what Crey was doing with them, but it all strikes me as rather unsatisfactory.

I was PUGging with a SG, and it took them a while to realize this^. It is easy to "jump in" and not realize what you are actually up against. I've not tried to be a tank on the ASF yet, but I HAVE found myself "supporting" a tank in ways I can't be certain that the tank realized it needed help. As I wrote earlier: My Fortunata ended up leaning VERY heavy into controls and confuses, and my Stalker had to make sure to target very specific enemies. I'm not ashamed to admit that my other characters were less suited to switch up against specific targets in giant spawns, so in those circumstances I was making sure to pass Insps to teammates as I was trying not to get aggro myself.

Flashbacks can be their own flavor of misery... more times than I can recall I have started an Ouro arc with some sort of restriction or buff or debuff and too late realize that I have left the settings at something like +3/x8.

So why not dual box the "Master of..."?

Many MM primaries don't have recharge intensive pets, so instead of slotting the henchmen for other things, they have to burn henchmen slots. EDIT: I was trying to summon an echo from using a slot in a KB attack to making it KD.

While not precisely the same, somewhere a lonely old Mastermind whose primary doesn't include a recharge-intensive pet laments having to sacrifice precious henchmen slots sacrificed for the effects of global enhancements.

This is how I see it: These badges may now be the sort of thing that can't be achieve through rugged individualism; consider that there may actually be a different part of the game that has to be leveraged that a player doesn't have specific and precise control over in order to earn the badges going forward. I accept that there are players who deeply believe that if they can as an individual get something in the game then they should always be able to use those things to get more things individually. I accept that there are some players who feel like they are being held back when they can't use everything they could have. I don't believe there is some fundamental truth that makes the current mechanism for earning "Master of..." Badges inherently "unfair". Under the previous HC settings, there were plenty of characters that couldn't earn the "Master of..." badges solo, but many could still experience the content as a solo player. No players are going to earn the Mentor badges by playing solo characters.

I expect no less from an iBot.

Sorry, I'm not installing MIDS. That build uses mostly set bonuses, so it shouldn't be much effort to construct it. There may be some subtle choices withe respect to a couple of sets, but they aren't complicated (slot pets for recharge, purple sets probably skip the pure damage piece because of ED, toggles probably have a /end piece).

Now that I've PUGged a few more times on the ASF (still no badge runs) I still like this SF, but it definitely feels like there is too much different content. I love the maps and challenges... but I find myself wishing I could have divided these up. I'm reminded of the inter-locking patron arcs... it would be a slog to have to do all of them in a row.

I saw the thread title an immediately thought of the dialog in Theoden's SSA1 arc in Skyway. For the record: I don't mind challenges that deny players powers, or those that buff enemies.

TrooBloo was a blaster, he started playing solo But he knew it wouldn't last TrooBlue wanted TFs, so he joined some PUGgers he used all of his attacks... Knockback, Knockback Knockback slotted in attacks Knockback, Knockback Knockback Troobloo Sweet DiamaBurnTank thought he was a herder aggro was an aura thing All the other teammates never saw him taunting but they heard him cry and sing... Knockback, Knockback Knockback is spoiling all my fun Knockback, Knockback Walls? I never saw a farm map with one.