Praetorian stalker

[eknudson]

I've only run one character through gold side, and I don't currently have any stalkers so I may need a new alt. 

 

Would rather use a primary I haven't tried like kinetic, savage, staff, or dual blades and a secondary that's pretty strong early and which doesn't have any massive holes to energy or psychic since those are relatively common damage types in Praetoria.  Mostly solo through 20 since teams are rare gold side.

 

Any suggestions?

[Haijinx]

I did fine with staff, martial arts and street justice stalkers gold side 

 

The SJ one I ran through all 4 paths / every mission. 

 

Secondary was EA.  EA is my favorite stalker Secondary both because its fairly decent/not weaker on stalkers.  And because the energy glow makes it easier to see yourself when hidden.

 

 

Edited January 23, 2020 by Haijinx

[KaizenSoze]

I am not familiar with those primaries, so I do not have any comments.

 

As for secondaries, Ninja starts pretty strong.

• You get all your positional defense powers by 4
• Caltrops is great for keep mobs busy
• Downsides is that you get your status defense at 16 and it's a click

 

[KaizenSoze]

4 minutes ago, Haijinx said:

Secondary was EA.  EA is my favorite stalker Secondary both because its fairly decent/not weaker on stalkers.  And because the energy glow makes it easier to see yourself when hidden.

I guess the EA psi hole wasn't a problem?

[Haijinx]

1 minute ago, KaizenSoze said:

I guess the EA psi hole wasn't a problem?

You have to stay on your toes during the Seer stuff.  Other than that it has decent defense early.

 

It also works well with the kinetic barrier P2W power, letting you get really good S/L/E protection early. 

 

 

[eknudson]

48 minutes ago, Haijinx said:

I did fine with staff, martial arts and street justice stalkers gold side 

 

The SJ one I ran through all 4 paths / every mission. 

 

Secondary was EA.  EA is my favorite stalker Secondary both because its fairly decent/not weaker on stalkers.  And because the energy glow makes it easier to see yourself when hidden.

 

 

I already have a SJ/EA scrapper, unfortunately, and I try not to duplicate too much. I hear good things about staff for stalkers, though.  

[Haijinx]

1 minute ago, eknudson said:

I already have a SJ/EA scrapper, unfortunately, and I try not to duplicate too much. I hear good things about staff for stalkers, though.  

Staff does fine.

 

I have run KM up a little bit, but not Goldside.  The AS power is awesome on this set.  Its animation time is less than a second, so it basically feels like instacast.

 

 

[Redlynne]

6 hours ago, eknudson said:

Any suggestions?

Try Kinetic Melee/Ninjitsu and see how you fare.

 

Given the animations, you could call yourself "Kung Foodie" ... be a Not Skinny body type and have a habit of doing /em donut whenever you're idle.

 

[eknudson]

1 hour ago, Redlynne said:

Try Kinetic Melee/Ninjitsu and see how you fare.

 

 

I was looking at that-- I had a nin stalker on live but nothing on homecoming. Never tried kinetic melee but it looks like one of the complaints is that it gets all its good attacks early. Which isn't really a negative if part of the point is to be good before level 20. 

 

Anything in kin or nin to skip or delay?

[Redlynne]

7 hours ago, eknudson said:

Anything in kin or nin to skip or delay?

Kinetic Melee mandatory: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7

Kinetic Melee useful: 8

Kinetic Melee optional: 9

Kinetic Melee not necessary: 6

 

Ninjitsu mandatory: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

Ninjitsu useful: 8

Ninjitsu optional: 9

Ninjitsu not necessary: 7

 

You'll note that for both powersets I'm listing the Placate powers as being not necessary (and they aren't in the strictest possible sense) but you still might want to pick them up anyway and if you take both of them there is a bit of synergy on having 2 Placate powers instead of just 1, but that's more of a edge case than a use every time kind of thing.  Still, being able to "neutralize" most of a pack of Foes while you engage a single target using only your single target attack chain (so as to "defer aggro" until later from the rest) does have its strategies, even when in group contexts.

 

Both Concentrated Strike and Kuji-in Retsu qualify as optional powers that your build will be fine without having but which you may want to have anyway.

 

Focused Burst is useful, especially with slotting, since it's your "reach out and touch you" power that allows your Stalker to not be limited to JUST melee range damage (which is good for runners).  Focused Burst also makes it possible to corner pull in some situations, so it has tactical applications in a variety of environments.

 

Blinding Powder becomes ... dastardly ... when slotted with procs(!), and you have 2 options for how to slot it ... Non-notifying and Notify Enemies.

• For the Non-Notifying option, you can't put any damage or debuff procs into Blinding Powder.  This means that the only 2 procs you can "safely" put into the power are Coercive Persuasion: Contagious Confusion (a true force MULTIPLIER for this power!) and Siphon Insight: +ToHit since neither of those procs will Notify $Targets to attack you.
• For the Notifying option, you load up Blinding Powder with damage procs ... Coercive Persuasion: Contagious Confusion (still the best force MULTIPLIER for this power!), Cacophany: Energy Damage, Malaise's Illusions: Psionic Damage, Cloud Senses: Negative Energy Damage ... which leave you 2 slots remaining for Accuracy and Recharge enhancement, and if you go for a pair of 2-slot set bonuses you can use the Accuracy/Recharge IOs from Malaise's Illusion and Coercive Persuasion to get a +6.5% Recovery set bonus between the two of them, which is "not bad" all things considered.  Alternatively, if you drop one of the damage procs (or the Coercive Persuasion proc) you could 4-slot Cloud Senses and get the +6.25% global recharge AND +2.25% Max Endurance set bonuses along with either 2 or 3 (depending on if you keep the Coercive Persuasion proc or not) damage procs.  Given the LONG recharge time on Blinding Powder, your chance to proc those damage procs is going the be somewhere around 90% with almost any slotting you try, so turning Blinding Powder into a "proc nuke" damage power certainly has its appeal.

[Erydanus]

When I was talking to people for advice for a character to specifically solo through Praetoria the prime comment that's useful here that I got was that resistance sets typically develop early. From there, I narrowed it down to Electric Armor which quite notably does NOT have a psi hole though it gets that shield at level 10. (It also has slightly unreliable knockback protection so I did buy him a KB protection IO). Of course as it's a resist set you may wish to supplement it with procs for defense, tough, weave, etc. But I think for the 1-20 experience it's fine as it is. (My alt is a brute so of course slightly different playstyle).

 

The thing about ninjitsu which people are talking about in this thread is that I just don't think it's a very good choice for stalkers. It was an original stalker set and was developed before the archetype enhancements or the feature where stalkers build up autohit with assassin's strike. It feels like an outdated mix of powers to me because it's set up to support the obsolete hit & run stalker playstyle. If you want to enjoy Ninjitsu, play it on a scrapper. They have a significantly revised version of it which makes you feel like a powerful shadowy warrior.

 

 

Edited January 27, 2020 by Erydanus
defense? no resist, dur.

[Machariel]

Kinetic melee is a great choice for low level tough content. You get your main ST chain in your first 4 powers. Long fights help you get the most out of Bursts 100% crit from hide.  You can skip placate, focused burst, and concentrated strike.  
 

I love dual blades but waiting until lvl26 for sweeping strike is kind of rough for low level stuff.

[Mister Mass]

I ran a Dark/Ninjitsu Stalker as my first Praetorian on Homecoming, & it went smooth as silk - much easier than I expected.  The stalker's innate stealth from Hide, high damage, & decent defenses made me wonder why I thought goldside was so tough on Live. 😉