Zem

BOTH of your paragraphs, even though you began by agreeing on the legal thing, were mainly complaining about "people" denigrating the protesters. Since it was a direct reply to me and quoting my post, it wasn't clear to me if I was being lumped in with those people so I was just clarifying. There was no need for the English lesson.

As for protest being the only recourse, that may be the case here but I wasn't limiting my comments to just THIS situation either because legislation would affect all MMOs. If offline mode is a feature valued by MMO customers then someone, eventually should want to include it in their gameplay offering. I would think it might enhance the value of cash shop items if we knew they had some permanence, but maybe there aren't enough people who agree to make it worth doing.

Then it's good I wasn't saying anything of the sort, isn't it? The only point I was making in my reply was that what we don't need is legislation that could do more harm than good when this is the sort of thing that can be handled by consumer actions, whether those are buying decisions or merely attempts to generate bad publicity. If there are enough upset people to tarnish the company's brand via protests then that brand deserves to be tarnished.

I wouldn't be against the idea of an offline mode but the relevant question is, "Why should they be forced to provide one?" In a competitive market like this, shouldn't this be something that is driven by consumer demand rather than legislation?

And what exactly would you do about in-game virtual goods once a game is closed? And mind you, it has to be something that doesn't prevent companies from wanting to do business at all. Therefore, you can't write laws that force them to keep games open forever or to refund all virtual purchases when the game closes. Or rather, you could, but then game companies simply wouldn't make these games in the first place. Not where these laws exist anyway.

You can't honestly say you had any reasonable expectation to "own" these items outside the game in which they exist nor that the game would exist forever. Who then is really to blame for the money you spent on them, knowing that they were temporary?

Thanks. I may just have to try that.

Well thank goodness the AoE-heavy folks are okay! I was worried! Poor things. Always so disadvantaged. Finally... their moment to shine!

Kindly stop using "we" as though there is some consensus here about what should be done to Stalkers. If you've read any of the big suggestion threads at all you'll see there's plenty of disagreement. There's no possible way they could do anything that would be accepted by everyone. Stalkers have been a Scrapper variant ever since they were created and I wouldn't still be playing them if I had such a big problem with that. People who want something radically different need to face the reality that no grand overhaul is coming. It's never been done to any AT. It's never going to be done.

If you want a buff/debuff stealth AT, VEATs are over that way.

This is the reason the problem exists. They created the concepts first and then assigned resistances based on the concept. They didn't ask themselves ahead of time if making so many armored, robotic, or otherwise tough-skinned enemies was going to be a problem for lethal damage dealers.

That coupled with the fact that mission arcs and task forces tend to be composed of primarily just one enemy type and you get people facing entire play sessions at a disadvantage instead of just the occasional enemy they have a tough time with.

This is more true NOW than it will be after the changes. After this change, you will at least be able to say you do better ST damage than that stealthy scrapper. And AS will still be worth using from Hide as an opener at least. Scale 7 damage and Demoralize is still a good deal and if used as the opener the interrupt (and even the animation time) isn't that much an issue. It won't be worth it to Placate+AS, sure, but that's never worked very well for all Stalkers anyway. I say good riddance to that. Placate will still be useful with an AoE or as a defensive option. People forget that it's not there solely to give you a critical. In fact its PRIMARY purpose is defensive. It's to make someone stop attacking you just as Confront is there to do the opposite for Scrappers.

A lot of things were proposed in those threads. All I am saying is that just because YOU didn't propose this specific change, it does not mean WE didn't ask for it. You can disagree with the change without attempting to de-legitimize it by pretending it's something the devs came up with entirely on their own.

I don't really get the angst over being Scrapper-like because I've always played my Stalker as a stealthy scrapper. I like the fact I am not as sturdy and am more focused on killing high-priority targets than some Elec/Shield scrapper who likes sweeping up the trash minions by the dozen. But I'd like something in return for being less sturdy and I'll take being the best boss-killer around as payment, thanks very much. Because despite what some of the self-proclaimed "experts" around here are saying, I play on pick-up teams all the time where the bosses DON'T die in a white-hot barrage of fulcrum-shifted AoE within 3 seconds so killing them is actually a job that needs doing. And surprise surprise, all those AoE fanatics out there are only looking for a dozen minions to crush first. That leaves me the bosses, which I am only too happy to murder for the team.

Congratulations. I've followed them for years and the idea to make Assassin Strike uninterruptible comes up all the time! Obviously though, it is just one of many ideas. The reason it hasn't happened until now is that the tech to do it wasn't available until the advent of Titan Weapons. They've known for a long time that getting interrupted was diminishing AS's effectiveness but haven't been willing to just get rid of the interrupt time, probably due to PvP concerns (believe it or not, they DO still have to worry about that).

Not in those exact words, but yes, they have. It's even a common criticism of many suggestions that they DO make Stalkers more like Scrappers. Which I think is funny because we are 80% similar to Scrappers to begin with.

That's what they are doing. They are making the marquee Stalker power actually useful more often than just at the beginning of a fight (or maybe once more later in the fight, if you're IO soft-capped... and lucky).

This WAS one of those suggestions! Bloody hell... the devs have got to be wondering what it takes to please some of you.

Stalkers are, and always have been, meant to be primarily single-target damage specialists. Don't value that? There's the door. It's time to stop hoping the entire AT will be torn down and rebuilt with a different focus. That's never been done and it never will be done. They would rather create a new AT... and they did: VEATs.

Keep in mind that Placate has a relatively longish recharge time, so improving its cast time a little isn't going to improve your overall DPS chain by a hell of a lot simply because it doesn't get USED as often in your attack chain as all your other attacks.

I'm not sure there is something to fix here because people are assuming Placate *should* always improve your DPS. Another way to look at it is that it doesn't *harm* your DPS as much as a typical single-target mez would. The primary purpose of Placate is to get something to stop attacking you, just as a Scrapper's Confront is for doing the opposite. If you don't value that, don't take the power.

eh... they need to make a decision on Stalker AoE crits, I think. I dislike not knowing if they'll ever nerf Burst or Fireball. But even at 50%, it's still worth using an AoE that can hit a lot of targets.

At this point I can't wait to see how this plays out as-is. Also can't wait for Staff Fighting. Hope they don't screw it up in the port to Stalkers.

Actually, it's possible it can be two completely different powers if I'm reading CoD right (which by the way is updated... yay!) There's a line item to "redirect" to a different power. It looks like it can have different everything.. not just animation time.

Which is good, because that's pretty much how they are designed.

No. Currently Assassin Strike is scale 7 WHILE hidden. That's scale 2.5 base damage plus scale 4.5 critical.

The 140 you're thinking of is the current normal base damage of Assassin Strike (scale 2.5). Also called the "Waylay" portion (if you read the combat log). For a level 50 Stalker, 1.0 melee damage scale = 55.61 damage.