Zem

The reason people say not to use it except when Hidden is that in almost all cases... they are right. Yeah, AS's "waylay" (the portion of damage it does outside of Hide) is scalar 2.5 damage. The highest normal attack Ninja Blade has is Golden Dragonfly at 2.28 scalar. But the problem is that even if you're NEVER interrupted while using AS, it still takes 3.67 seconds to land. That's twice as much time as it takes Golden Dragonfly to animate. You're always going to do more damage with an attack chain that does NOT include Assassin Strike. At least for Ninja Blade this is true and it is true for most other primaries as well. Might not be true for Spines or Elec Melee but I haven't really run the numbers.

Again, that's even if you're never interrupted. If you actually tracked how many times you got interrupted and averaged it out over time it would look even worse. Don't use AS outside of Hide. Seriously. Unless you just like how it looks or something. You're not doing yourself any favors on damage output.

It used to annoy me too but now I understand that when a min/maxer says "useless" you can just translate it in your head to "not the best". They don't literally mean useless.

I'd like to argue too that it isn't the Stalker's job to manage aggro, but ultimately it doesn't matter what logical argument you make. Siolfir's view is far more widespread as an opinion among the playerbase. You WILL catch some flak for dumping AoE aggro if it lands on another squishy teammate. Justified or not.

Sure, it'd be a great solo benefit. But Stalkers aren't really hurting in that dept. as much as they need things that make them more useful/desirable on teams.

The solution is not to design missions that have, literally, TEN ambushes in a row. Though this is a particular problem for Stalkers having their opening Assassin Strike nullified, it's not exactly a picnic for most other ATs either. Not at that low a level anyway. Matters are somewhat better since inherent Fitness, as a long string of ambushes was just an absolute drain for a lowbie, but it still sucks.

Right now, the only advice I'd give to anyone wanting to start a Stalker in Praetoria is... go Ninjitsu and pick up Caltrops at 12. Getting ambushed? Find a nice little choke point, drop trops, and laugh at your attackers.

But one or two ambushes should not be a problem for any Stalker. Take cover. Get in a normal crit on the first ambusher to show their face around the corner you're hiding behind and then go to town on them. Use Placate+AS when you're down to one or two enemies or if you manage to disable/stun/knockdown, etc. It's a good thing to learn how to do without AS.

Not really talking about a "bunch" of AoE. In most cases just the one 7ft melee PBAoE they lost from the Scrapper version of the same set. Martial Arts with Dragon's Tail given back to it will still have less AoE than Elec Melee or Spines. AoEs aren't a problem for Stalkers. We have some now and the sets that do are generally better regarded than the ones that don't.

Stalker Elec Melee proves that wrong in a big way. It's a fantastic set on Stalkers who want to deal AoE damage. Truth is that Stalkers have enough survivability to hang out in melee and scrap just fine. On a team they shouldn't be the focus of all the aggro anyway. They are not going to win aggro against Tanks and Brutes nor against Scrappers who have taunt auras. Anyway, I don't see this as "playing like a scrapper". EVERYBODY scraps, if by "scraps" we simply mean running your attack chain instead of... running away.

Not to stray too far off topic though. I suppose where this intersects the cottage rule is in how they go about getting more AoE. Do you replace a power? If I take away Thunder Kick and put in Dragon's Tail am I violating the Cottage Rule? I didn't change Thunder Kick but from the perspective of anyone who has that power, the power effectively did change from one thing into something entirely different.

Then again, it's amusing to think about how many people could possibly be upset when Stalkers are to begin with one of the smallest subsets of the playerbase in existence. Then the subset of those actually playing Martial Arts (perhaps one of the least favored primaries among Stalkers). Then the subset of those who actually took Thunder Kick in their build. We might be looking at an angry mob of... three people? I say pull the trigger.

It's what they seem to NOT want to do with Stalkers that is the problem. There should be no question that among all melee ATs, Stalkers ought to be the kings of damage. Else why be the least survivable among them? But for various reasons, no one looks to Stalkers first for damage dealing. AoE is a big part for most of them, but they've also been very cagey about boosting melee damage output to rival Scrappers. A Stalker surrounded by enough teammates and whose Assassin Strike is not interrupted *might* beat a Scrapper against a single target... but it's iffy. And it really shouldn't be, because there's no question who is tougher to kill. None at all.

And so do I but part of that fun is doing well on teams *despite* the AT's shortcomings. One thing that would go a long way to improving the AT is finding a way to add back that PBAoE attack that many of the legacy primary sets lost when ported from Scrapper to Stalker.

Because it's annoying to be on the receiving end of a randomly applied double-standard. See also: Shield Defense.

Also because if you just allow the powerset then the PLAYER can decide what looks good and what doesn't.

It was always a B.S. reason. A shield stalker doesn't hide behind his shield any more than a Regen stalker hides by... regenerating? That doesn't even make sense. Ironically, a few of the customizations for Shields do a better job explaining Hide that other Stalker secondaries do. Seen that dark energy shield? Or even a tech shield containing a cloaking device?

The Stalker random crit scaling mechanism would beg to differ. It REWARDS us for huddling together. So what exactly is "wrong" with Shields doing the same then?

So I have to wait till next year for them to really fix Stalkers?

/hides

Exactly! With the added profits from the subset of their playerbase which exclusively plays Stalkers they could..... buy an extra cup of coffee?

I'd say Shadow Fall and Steamy Mist are even better in most situations since they provide combat stealth in a PBAoE around the caster, not to mention other buffs. Sup Invis might be better stealth radius but I wager there are few things can see through Shadow Fall at 30 feet or more that can't also see through Sup Invis. Combat stealth is only good for preventing adds from nearby spawns and they generally aren't near enough (or have perception such that) the difference in stealth radii between these powers actually matters in practice.

There's no good reason against it so it's probably because, "they just didn't think of it". Seems like a no-brainer to add to the AT that's supposed to specialize in stealth. +35 unsuppressed stealth is hardly a game-breaker.

Yeah but how often? You only really use AS at the beginning of the fight and then maybe during with placate IF you decide to risk the interruption and IF you are facing an opponent worth assassinating in the first place.

I suppose technically that does make Stalkers "less" mobile than other melees but not by a heck of a lot. They spend more time standing still by choice than I am forced to by AS, from what I've seen.

I've always suspected the problem, at least ever since IOs were introduced, is that it's easier to get "enough" survivability than enough damage. Indeed there's no such thing as "enough damage" since one can always use more. Same is not true of survivability. So if they had given Stalkers truly superior damage to Scrappers perhaps they feared a backlash from the much more sizable Scrapper community?

Now that there is incarnate content, however, what WAS enough survivability... no longer is. So maybe the time is right to just turn the dial on the melee modifier, at the very least, while no one is looking?

Heh, yeah. Small matter of getting all the way to 50. That's one reason I am less geeked about Blinding Powder than I am about Caltrops. BP is a rather weak control with a longish base recharge and is best used to prep a spawn with -tohit before initiating hostilities. If you are not yet at the defense soft-cap then it can help. But aside from that... meh. Caltrops on the other hand are fantastic right out of the box and only get better from there. Get yourself a choke-point and some caltrops and you can hold off an army.

You're thinking of Smoke Flash. Blinding Powder has several effects: Mag 2 sleep. 50% Mag 2 Confuse. 7.5% tohit debuff. Perception debuff. The Contagious Confusion proc in the purple set is really good here because every affected enemy has a chance to proc a small area confuse around it, meaning you can get many overlapping confuses and turn BP from a power that can only confuse minions to one that can sometimes get LTs and bosses. In general, it makes the confuse effect much more likely to land even on just the minions.

The set also packs a hefty 5% range defense bonus among other things.

Nice thing about Parry/DA is you can just let those melee foes surround you and get the most from your short range cones with packed enemies. You can also forget about IOing for melee defense. Just slot DA well and you'll be over the soft cap easily. Which is also nice when you're up against defense debuffs. Extra defense over the soft-cap acts as a buffer against the dreaded cascade defense failure (for those not playing SR).

I don't think it's the damage that reveals you. I think any attack that hits you will suppress stealth. Falling damage isn't an attack. That area power that Eagles use to decide when to run away may actually be coded in such a way that it qualifies as an attack even though that isn't really its purpose. Red crystals definitely are an attack. I had always assumed they were autohit since I can't recall ever running through them with my Stalker and NOT being revealed. And I've done that quite a bit dashing to the thorn tree on respecs.

Since you capitalized Stealth, I assumed you were talking about the pool power vs. Hide. Makes more sense now, thanks.

Drones, Knives, and Overseers WILL see a Stalker in Hide.

This is likely the crit "Meter" attribute, which is what determines whether you are set up for a guaranteed crit on your next attack.

No, that can happen to anybody. If you happen to be hit while placating and the timing is just right (wrong) it can occur just after you attain hidden status, which is then immediately canceled because you took damage. Sucks, but it can happen. One of the reasons defense-based stalkers have an advantage over resistance based stalkers. Happens less often if you get hit less often.

There really aren't THAT many enemies that have enough perception to see Stalkers. I certainly have never noticed Ruin Mages doing so. Are you sure you haven't aggroed them first? Once aggroed, no amount of stealth matters. Enemies don't rely on perception once they have aggro on you. i.e. They don't have to "see" you to attack you.

In my opinion, at least, it really isn't. Blinding Powder is a base 120s recharge and gives a 12s mag2 sleep and 50% chance of 24s mag 2 confuse. For control that's pretty weak. Its main benefit for a stalker near the softcap is the -7.5% tohit debuff on a power that doesn't aggro the spawn or cancel Hide. So it's great for prepping them prior to your attack. Or at least those that are close enough to fit within the short range cone. And yeah, it'll take some of the minions out of the fight with the mag 2 controls but they weren't much of a threat to you to begin with. It gets better at 50 with the Contagious Confusion proc causing overlapping confuses that might then affect LTs and bosses (rarely).

By contrast Caltrops is a mag 50 "afraid". It affects anything not specifically immune which means you'll even have many EBs dancing on your 'trops only attacking you half the time. Put a single slow enhancer in it and most stuff not immune to slow will have difficulty getting off the 'trops patch, which means they won't really scatter all that quickly if that's what you're worried about. Thrown in front of an ambush it does the opposite, in fact. Takes a whole strung-out line of ambushers and piles them into each other for AoE devastation. It's also perma... out of the box. Any recharge, enhancement or global, will allow you some overlap so you can stack or spread a couple patches.

In the past I've single-handedly kept entire team-sized ambushes away from the rest of the group at "inconvenient" times just by keeping a few caltrops patches out. And they say Stalkers aren't team friendly?

Smoke is autohit, but that's a property of the power. Many -tohit debuffs are attached to powers that must hit their target before the debuff is applied. Even if a power is autohit, the effect can be reduced by the target's resistance to that kind of debuff.

One other thing to note about -tohit debuff is that it affects all forms of attack coming from the affected target, so long as they require a tohit check at all. There is no such thing as a "-tohit with lethal attacks" debuff, whereas you can have a defense buff that only applies to a subset of attack and/or damage types.