Lockpick

The 4 day weekend is over and I did not (or did I) make my goal. My character has a little over 1200 merits, but I also played other characters and did multiple Hami raids, so if I transfer those merits to my stalker I will have easily made it. Now that I have the merits the question is do I pull the trigger. My character build is complete and I have a little over $100M influence, so I don't really need the merits for IOs or to make influence on the market. I'm just having a hard time buying 15 badges for 1500 merits. I have a few days to think it over, so will hold off for now.

Thanks for all the responses on Spring Attack. I decided to go Weaken Resolve and Laser Beam Eyes instead of Super Jump and Spring Attack as Spring Attack is apparently still bugged. Very fun build and extremely survivable. I have been doing some Ephram Sha missions at +4/8 to get some XP to boost veteran levels to level incarnates and no issues at all. SR is just awesome and the AoE damage is very nice. The endurance issues have mainly gone away due to heavy slotting in Body Mastery and Stamina and when I really need a boost I can pop Ageless. Thanks Frosticus for creating this guide. I doubt I would have ever tried Savage without you championing it. Final Savage / SR Build:

Nice build, not sure about the 3 slotting of ES and slotting SF for damage. I would probably rearrange the slotting on those two. Nice thoughts on Burnout, haven't used it, but 2 HoBs could be wicked. I made some adjustments for my play style. Looking forward to leveling it...

Thank you! I was wondering why the resists were so high and I couldn't figure it out.

Very impressive Magic! This is a really cool tool you are developing for the community and while I haven't used it yet but I am definitely keeping an eye on this thread.

I've been working on a Savage / SR stalker, so I feel your pain on the End issues. I went Body Mastery and took Superior Conditioning and Physical Perfection. I have Panacea, Miracle, 3 Performance Shifters + End, and Numina. It resolved a lot of my End issues, but I was still sucking wind in long fights. Going Ageless for the Destiny slot finally solved my End issues.

Great suggestions, thank you both! I had forgotten you could convert Emps to Merits, so will check that out.

My latest stalker (Savage / SR) recently hit 50. I ended up in Oroborous and looked at the conversion vendor to see what was there and saw that I could get the annual badges for 100 merits each. I knew you could get these badges in May, but had forgotten about it since I usually only go for the 4 passives. Anyway, I have a 4 day weekend, so I decided to give myself a challenge to get 1500 merits to buy these badges for years 1 through 15. My plan is to: Run the SSA arcs for 20 merits each Run Smoke and Mirrors a twice per day for 12 merits each time Try to hit the Hami raids for 80 merits per day (although I have never done it on a melee, so that should be interesting) Figure out what the WST is and run that Any other suggestions? BTW, I hate throwing away merits on badges, but I figured this one time I will do it just for the experience of doing this type of challenge.

I have to ask if you would share your build? I keep building a DP/SR and there are so many good powers that I am having issues slotting everything and hitting softcap.

Another thread is basically saying Weaken Resolve is crap. I just added it to my Stalker, so not sure how good it is going to be. Stating "it is the new Hasten" is quite bold. What makes it so great? It seems like just doing damage would be better.

Thanks for the feedback! I really like CJ, but it toggles off Beast Run which is what I am using for my travel power. I have been toggling CJ and Beast Run when I go in and out of combat, but my defense is now high enough that I often don't bother toggling CJ on, so that is why I was thinking to move out of it. I will likely keep it, but since it looks like Spring Attack isn't so great I can get rid of Spring Attack and Super Jump and see if I can find something better.

I am up to level 37 on my Savage / SR. I am sucking wind, so started building for Endurance for level 38+. I am using Beast Run and various 7.5% speed boosts for travel, so I am debating about getting rid of CJ, SJ, and Spring Attack. Also, I am not sure I need Hasten for this build. I have been running without it to see how it feels and I always have an attack I can use, so I made try a build without it, although it might be hard to find something as useful. Anyone used Spring Attack in combination with Savage Leap? It seems like it could add some AoE carnage.

That is interesting. I had Inner Will for a while during leveling, but I rarely used it because you have to hit a health threshold or be mezzed for it to be available. I would often just forget about it and use a break free or just attack with my T1 and T2 attacks while mezzed. I rarely get mezzed as it is and mez isn't as bad as it was back when it detoggled everything. That being said, moving out Hasten and making it Auto might make it more useful for me.

I was planning on building a Fire / Rad Sentinel, but decided to look at a Fire / Atomic Blaster to see the difference. I must have pulled a build off the forums because this build was already in my Mids folder and it doesn't look like a build I would normally make (it looked much better). Thank you to whoever made the build! I made a few adjustments and this build seems extremely good. I must have moved stuff around for hours trying to figure out optimal slotting. I really wanted to figure out a way to get Rune of Protection, but those options seemed worse. I tried proccing Electron Shackles, but lost S/L resistance and range soft-cap without Alpha Incarnate. No Incarnates: With Agility Core Alpha: If Blessing of Tielekku (2.81% Defense to All) can be re-applied after the first time I could move the Alpha to something else. Anyway, the defense and resistance looks extremely good to me. I have never played Fire or Atomic before, so before I head off into the unknown I thought I would solicit some opinions. I'm looking for a build review and if I am missing something. Is my recharge okay? Is Endurance going to be okay? What is a good attack chain? Mids recommendation is: Fire Blast --> Electron Shackles --> Fire Blast --> Electron Shackles --> Fire Blast. Should I replace Fire Blast with Flares? Is Rain of Fire skippable? From reading the forums it doesn't seem like this power get a lot of love. Thank you for taking a look.

I guess this puts paid to the argument from the farmers in the other thread.

Amazing times everyone! Nice job, sounds like a blast...

Can you share your build?

I went with Beam/Devices, although I am sure I will eventually end up with a DP/Devices. I am always surprised how sturdy this character is. Soft-cap Ranged and S/L, and 59%+ resistance to all. I usually this build as a hover blaster and it works well because the sets I have add fly speed, so I'm not moving so sloooow.... Beam/Devices

I was logging in characters to get the May badge and Experienced power, so logged into my DP/EM character who is my namesake (Lockpick). I realized I hadn't played him in awhile and have been playing my DP/MC, DP/Ninjitsu or Beam/Devices characters when not leveling my current projects (BS/SD & Savage/SR stalkers). DP/EM was my first DP character on Live and I played it a lot. I was curious why I wasn't playing it more and then last night I saw a post that discussed getting Power Boost permanent. This made me think about whether i could improve my DP/EM character using Power Boost, so I decided to re-look at my DP/EM build to see if I could make improvements. Build Constraints Current (OG) Build Ranged: 45.6% Resistance: Over 75% to all Power Boost: 22.13 second recharge (15 second duration) Hasten: 144.2 second recharge (120 second duration) with FF +Recharge proc I expect this will be lower, but not sure how much Updated Build: Typed Defenses: Over 45% with Power Boost Resistance: Over 75% to F/C/T/P and over 68% to S/L/E/N Power Boost: 16.4 second recharge (15 second duration) Hasten: 123 second recharge (120 second duration) with FF +Recharge proc I expect this will go below 120s recharge Pros / Cons over original Build: Pros: This build has much better recharge on Hasten and Power Boost I think (am not sure) the defense is better since I soft-cap all types and am not dependent on only ranged defense Cons: This build relies on Power Boost for the defenses to be soft-capped The resistances are slightly lower on S/L/E/N Build is much more expensive than the OG build due to all the purple sets Other: I dropped Afterburner for Boost Range. If I keep Afterburner I can slot another LotG to reduce recharge for Hasten and Power Boost, but with Boost Range I have much better long distance damage. I'm not sure if this is a pro or a con. Ideally I would love both and I struggled with the decision in my OG build, but in the updated build I decided to go with the range. If you made it this far I am curious if there are other improvements I can make. Please feel free to comment or add suggestions!

Interesting, I did not know this...

I had it for most of my leveling and just didn't use it much. I have SS and a Stealth IO, so I am able to get into the middle of a spawn undetected for most baddies and Void, HoB, and then my other AoEs. I may have also had challenges getting to soft-cap Range with it in my build since PBAoE do not have a Ranged Defense set. I suppose I could move a Blaster set from EC or BR into it and then use one of the new IO sets in the old power. Actually, now that I think of it I could replace both Blaster sets with the new IO set and it might open up some options, but my build is pretty sturdy as is. I did experiment with toggling Reaction Time off and on while running missions. There seems to be a delay and eventually I just got tired of trying to manipulate it.

Always great points, Red. Going to respec to VR. Gotta go plan my next build!

True, I have never taken it but read one of the posts on it previously and it looks like it could solve the End issues. Maybe I'll move out of the Medicine pool and pick it up. I had thought Field Medic might solve the End issues as it allows Aid Self to provide an End boost, but not sure how much it really helps. The description states "+5.00%% endurance for 8.10s on self Ignores buffs and enhancements unresistable". My Aid Self recharges in less than 8 seconds, so in theory it is permanent, but the reality is I am attacking and only hit Aid Self when I take damage. Maybe I can try hitting more often for End management, but now that I have Cardiac and Ageless it is not an issue.

My build is slightly different, but I was sucking wind with the AoE chain until I got incarnates, so I took Cardiac and Ageless. YMMV.

I'll chime in to agree with more minimal FX options, especially for Dark Embrace. I like the musical notes suggestion for sonic as well as the medicine pool suggestion to have alternate options for magic folks. I'll add a few: Dual Pistols - Piercing Round: Not a fan of this animation and would prefer something a bit more normal. Blaster - Ninja Tools - Immobilizing Dart: It would be nice if there a Shuriken option here. An alternative to Ninja Run and Beast Run that is a more normal run / sprint FX. Hmm, thought I would have more, but this is all I can think of off top of my head.