Frostweaver

I know this is rather late, but my 2 cents. At low levels neither defense nor resist is very important. Praetorian mobs make both into a joke until you are past Praetorian content, anyway. The ONLY mitigation that works consistently is mitigation through defeat. What you need is a primary that can scrap out all the bloody ambushes, allows you to resist mez early, and helps your healing and and endurance enough to deal with the sometimes constant fighting... barely enough defense to allow you to charge an ambush and do a quick crit before you get down to the serious business of attack-chained AS crits. IMO, BS/shield does these better than any other combination. And Parry is not only an attack chain filler, but when you start pushing it it actually cranks all of your defenses up to post-20 levels, breaking the debuffs and making it actually useful. initial Critical (ignoring AS) with heavy hitting attacks is the best in the bunch, and you can scrap it out with ANYTHING Praetoria has to offer with very little trouble. The damage buff from shield makes scrapping even more viable, and if you get the fast opener (which you respec out of when you get parry) you have very few gaps in even your early attack chain... They may have wonky damage types, but very little in early Praetoria resists lethal to a significant degree, and that beautiful Parry can help you ignore them ALL.

Clamor beat you 3 times? What's your level/sets? You might have to clear out adds before hand, but if you cannot rip her to pieces within the time of a purple, something in your build is really off.

Well, I don't know if you have notice, but burst has a weirdly large radius for a melee aoe. It's damage is not great, but I have it frankenslotted with procs/recharge/damage and it's just low enough to keep from pulling aggro off the melees while you set up to murder everyone. But yeah, thematically it's cooler than liquid Nitrogen. And how sick is it to INSTANTLY be way on the other side of the spawn, pummeling it, forcing all the stuff that the tank aggro capped to run through his aura again to get to you?

I tried smoke and mirrors 3 times last night. The problem is, my times suffered a lot because I kept falling asleep.

It's not particularly fun, but it's varied enough that it's not really boring either. What it is, is a milk run when you can grab an hour away from the kids...to get those merits we all desperately need in order to get the ATO's, Catalysts, and junk we need in order to have REAL fun with a tweaked-out character. I have supplied 2 other characters with full sets of ATO's doing this, and it's way less boring than opening gift packs and selling all their stuff again and again and again and again. Not to mention, it's an avenue to AFFORD buying gift packs and selling their stuff again and....ad infinatum. I will keep hunting through Ouroboros to look for a higher-level milk run, but so far I haven't found many that don't require a lot more tweaking to solo, or have a far lower time/merit ratio. If I find one I am certainly going to let you guys know, though. Remember though, that the 'gold standard' for fast merit runs is Katie TF... and while it's a bit faster, with better exp rewards, it's merit rewards are half of the time/merits this one is. and it is NOT soloable.

Ran it today, invited a team, let them know this was a merit run. After the first "Can we raise the difficulty?" questions to which I responded "No, this is a merit run, that means as fast as possible, +0/+0" We got through with minimal difficulties, no fatalities. 1 hour 20 minutes seems to be about average. Travel times seem to +- 10 minutes or so, a decently-balanced team speeds things up, and a stalker with assemble/TP friend speeds things up a LOT. So, it's a bit slower with a team, but still highly doable and speedy, and how else are those poor defenders and constantly-faceplanting corrupters gonna get any merits?

If it makes you feel better, the rest of the set's mechanics are a terrible fit for stalker and suck right up until the end game.

all damage and status effect toggles that can potentially aggro enemies are suppressed while you are in hide.

I mentioned it in the first paragraph, BS/Bio. level 45 now.

can't beat Romulus Augustus if you are taking a nap.

Quick note- duoing with a blaster or dominator speeds up the 'kill all' missions, but it slows down the 'kill boss' and 'click to win' missions unless they have stealth, it also turns Clamor into an AV, which makes her, with her rad debuffs, considerably more of a fight. In the end it evens out.

I am sure a lot of people know this, but I thought I'd share. I have run this with just about every AT, solo, duo, and big teams. By far the fastest was solo stalker, run at +1/+0 for merits. Thus this was written from a Stalker's point of view. I started this thing at level 25, and run it a few times each couple of levels, and (without help) managed to get both full sets of the ATO's by level 40. I am still doing it at 44 for fun and merits, of course. I am sure there are much better ways of getting merits with a full team, of course, but in the middle of the night, the teams are being picky and hating on stalkers, You don't feel like starting a team yourself or screwing around with idiot masterminds, and want to chill out soloing, it's perfect. I prefer superjump/oro portal/occasional SG portal for hopping around the zones...I imagine it might be faster with teleport or ss, or longer with fly or prestige ninja run. My most successful speed runs were done using my BS/Bio stalker and I never had to pop a single inspiration (although popping a couple at Clamor usually speeds things up and prevents dropping into regen mode) Sister Psyche's mission chain in Ouroboros. mission 1- clear all freaks in sewers-5-10 minutes. travel time to next mission. 3-5 minutes Mission 2- sneak in and kill boss- you have to free brent and then go upstairs, kill the boss, and everyuthing else in the room. 3-5 minutes. mission 3- take something to a contact. very fast, depending on travel power. I did it in less than a minute every time. mission 4- kill sonic device and the guys around it. Kill Boss and his team. Takes less than 5 minutes, depending on the map, plus 1 minute getting to the train mission 5- Like mission 4, except a different (harder) map. Maybe 6 minutes if you are pokey. It's on the monorail too, so no travel. Mission 6- clear map. This is probably the longest mission in the whole series, and it might take ten minutes because it has that big 'water storage pools' room, a cell room, and it's totally council map. Also, if it's in IP, there's likely significant travel time. 10 minutes. Beat up screamer and Archon Turner, don't waste your time on the cell doors. Stop off to make sushi. 45 minutes tops. Don't try to do it yourself, you aren't an ill/rad perma-Pa Troller. Mission 7- Talk to another faceless (and Very Fat!) contact back in Talos. If your last mission was outside of Talos, use ouroportal. the contact is like 300 feet away. Bear in mind the council will try to ambush you. The guy is standing next to the talos hospital. Mission 8- another defeat all, minor difficulty. some glowies, 5-10 minutes tops. Unless you screw around killing the archons, they can turn into nightwolves, which add a few seconds to your kill time. Go to the bathroom, get a glass of water, kiss your wife or put your kids to bed. mission 9- defeat all again. This is probably in skyway. another excuse to use an ouro portal, although the monorail works too. You have to save two office workers and a dude named pine who follows you around only when you are NOT hidden. unhide, drag him to the elevators, hie again, clear next level, go back and get him, repeat. maybe 10-15 minutes mission 10- Patrol talos island. depends on your speed. You get an ambush, but it's unlikely you will hang around at each spot waiting to meet it. 5-10 minutes. mission ll- Bust Freak leader and crew- it's in an-ugh- Cave, but you can find him and kill him in like 45 seconds. mission 12- disable a bomb barrel labeled 'sonic device'. The travel time is the hardest part. It's in the sewers, and I don't know about you but as a Stalker I LOVE sewers. take out pierece and his buddies, click barrel. I do it in about a minute and a half. YMMV mission 13- Travel time, disable second device. same story as before. Run in, 'arrest' freak tank by poking him in the back with sharp objects, click barrel. 45 seconds. mission 14- pop over and kick Clamor's butt. She can be quite hard if you fall asleep in between AS and the rest of your attack chain. (That actually happened to me once. she got me to half health before I snorted and realized she wasn't dead and had been beating on me for a few minutes). This mission may take as long as 15 minutes to complete... because the map is HUGE and there's a lot of hostages to find. But since it's sewers, and rather Linear, it should not challenge you very much and there's an extremely small chance of 'wandering looking for last clicky/hostage' going on. So far, the first couple of hostages are almost always up on ramps and walkways, the sonic device has always been sitting in the middle of a corridor, and Clamor herself is always up on a ramp... but I cannot guarantee that it will always spawn this way, of course... although after nearly 30 missions it seems like the way to bet. Clamor uses radiation defense debuffs, so if you get surrounded you might get scared... just kill her fast. Average run time- 51:26, at least according to ouroboros. shortest run time when I was really 'in the groove' was about 33 minutes. Longest time involved fighting Lusca in the middle, putting the kids to bed, having dinner, happy time with the wife for a while, and then playing the AH for a bit before finishing up.

Thank you very much for the extremely helpful advice. Considering it's Brutal pacing, lack of defense, and constant faceplanting, has kept him locked at 22 for almost 2 weeks, I think I will have to remake him... would mind be a decent alternatve, with a few more tools to stay alive? Or is it similarly painful with some of it's odd holds? Or perhaps Electric?

That was...not helpful. At all. And did not answer even one of my questions.

And that is exactly why AT Proliferation was such a bad idea. Now ALL teams have the same flow as CoV teams used to, and that flow sucks.

They actually do. my wife and I were testing this. The Magic Carpet actually flies about 15 percent faster at level 32 than the flight you purchase, and every flight enhancement you place in Fly, hover, OR swift increases it's speed, even though hover and flight enmhancements don't normally increase each other's speed. Also, afterburner works QUITE well on the magic carpet.

I kinda wish the old "Guide to Offending' were still around.

sorry, fool resistance is capped at 85%

The only problem with Huntsman builds is one of subtlety... all of your effects are very subtle. There's few gigantic explosions, your dps is solid and quickly mows down a spawn, but you don't insta-trash like a blaster nuke. your leadership is powerful and soft-caps most of your team, but no one notices until the dominator wanders too far and wonders why he died, Your brutal debuffs are only noticed because your team kills much much faster than usual without the fancy glows and circles. Your pets are there, but no one really pays attention to Pet dps because while it's enormous, per-shot it's so much lower than players, and people mostly grumble about them getting in the way, and you cannot jump into the middle of a spawn easily and tank it out until others get there to finish off the bosses. The only ones who even notice you are there are the ones stuck in the middle of melee who's speakers are filled with dozens of ratatatats while everything falls down. And they might not even notice if you have a blaster's booms and splashes. Often times you feel seriously undervalued on teams, Although you very, very seldom get kicked for not assisting...you also aren't the first on their list for valued comrades, despite your insane contributions. +15% to-hit, +20% damage, +30% defense, -20%-40% enemy resists, You will never hear "Good Buffs' or "Good heal" or "Nice job clearing that spawn" because YOUR buffs work nearly as well if you are doing absolutely nothing but following the leader and resummoning pets occasionally. The only team leaders desperate to get you are the ones that play hunstmen themselves, and REALLY understand what you bring subtley to the table. It can be a little disheartening because you cannot easily jump into a +4/+8 spawn by yourself and clear it before the team catches up, or put cute special effects on everyone else, or surround all the enemies with rings of fire. Sometimes that makes the huntsman a little hard to get into playing...

I know it's relatively Minor pointers, but RFTL tends to CONSTANTLY recharge and ready insta-snipe, even at low levels, and after you port 3 times you have about an 8% damage boost. With a short-range aoe set like pistols this actually improves the st dps a bit more than it looks like on paper. hop-hop-hop dragontail nuke snipe as an opener almost always triggers RFTL and murders at least one boss even at +4. It's not aim-bu-nukefire to kill everything but a sliver on bosses, but what is left is trying to kill the team with a recharge of like 13 seconds per attack. And you also come out of it with full end. The interesting thing to note about the aura, is that after you go in and assassinate everything, you can turn it OFF. This gives you about an 8 second speed boost to get back to range, but it ALSO gives you an 8 second 40% boost to recharge.... which helps enormously on steamroll teams for getting that nuke back out every spawn, without the constant drain of hasten. Or you can easily perma hasten while you are fighting quickly. if you can happy click, MC gives you some amazing versatility on both Malta grinds and steamrolls... and steamrolls is where a lot of Blaster sets start to suffer from recharge fatigue.

I am interested in some feedback on this as well. I play a Water/Ice/cold and my build is substantially similar... but as I am 49 I am getting close to the point of making hard decisions. I found it terribly useful to stick a +perception in Tidal forces just to deal with Arachnos, and a +7.5% HP in tough... they are cheap and add a lot, and you can pull a slot out of patch (2x54 recharge IO's ed cap) and maybe stamina (do you run low of end with only 1 IO and a numbia proc?)

I am trying to create a Grav Martial Magneto build and I had some questions about the build/set, and requests for advice. Is trick shot capped at 5 targets? what kind of aoe/how does it choose it's bounce targets? is it worth it to get crush/crushing field? should I slot field as a poor man's aoe or an immob? Is dimension shift just a 'tick off the team" power? Is Perma-hasten perma-dom kind of a default for dominators? Is envenomed blades kind of like a build up? or is it something you can perma? Is explosive Shuriken a waste of a power? as a hoverer, should I try to get the fighting pool even though I will seldom be in melee range? should I invest heavily in the pools for acrobatics? (Knowing it will lower my primary picks) Are there any sets/procs I should strive for, or craft at the earliest opportunity? Power pools? epic pools? I have never played a dom before, and so far they feel like a fragile, low-damage blaster, so I really want this thing to work as I level up. right now I am level 22, and seem to spend half my life running back from the hospital. I keep hearing that it will 'get better', but did I just pick a loser build? I REALLY want it to work, since I love the theme.

Ice or Rad. stacking or overlapping.

I have been working on a Rad/stone. The thing is terrifyingly effective even at 25. Aggro holding is not as easy as it is with ice, but with a taunt in that aoe drain, most of the stuff is stuck fast... and it is SO hard to hurt. With a brute or scrapper to off-tank the stuff that resurrects itself or gets past you, we were blowing through 8 man +3 content pretty effectively. A couple of close scrapes, but rad definitely has the tools to deal with close scrapes.

/Ice, for a couple of reasons. #1 as has been mentioned before, very few things that resist lethal also strongly resist cold. ice sword seems to do very nice damage to almost EVERYTHING, without the gaps for certain enemy groups that, say, energy has. Ice patch is BRUTAL, locking down whole spawns while you take a step backwards and catch them with your cones. even things that are immune to slows will be sprawling and flopping all over the place. Frigid Protection is vastly more powerful than the tanker (Chilling Embrace) version, right out of the box... primarily due to it's greater radius. My /ice blaster is, in many ways, far tougher and more capable of dealing with tough/large spawns than my SCRAPPERS are. Not only does it slow their attacks by 20%, but it also reduces ALL damage within it's huge radius by the same amount. That's like having a 35% damage resistance to everything within short range (Not just melee range) that stacks with any other defense/resists you can plop in there.... not to mention that it tends to keep everything tightly clumped together for cones and aoe's. Not only that, but you know those guys with machine guns, poisons, and the like that do dot damage to you? well, guess what... FP's protection refreshes every second and a half... I have had a dozen council guys long-spraying me, and I take NO damage from it whatsoever... all those little 2 point hit? FP eats them for breakfast. Shiver stacks on more -recharge, and touch (of course) provides a full service hold... which, even if it doesn't stick as a hold, STILL provides debuffs. Archery/Ice ... the only think it lacks is +perception.