Zem

Preparing to run.. yes. Preparing to shop at the vendor? Not so much.

But I have it on a hotkey so I just toggle it when I'm standing.

Test_Rat is the one that said the mob was dead before AS landed and Jib both quoted him and then agreed this was the problem. I'm assuming the stalker in this case is reasonably on the ball and gets there in time to BU and wind-up AS and he's selected a boss to nail with it. So I'm calling it five seconds. If that boss is dead, then so is everything else. Fight over.

Understand, this is not MY scenario. I don't ever see this myself. I'm just poking holes in their idea that AS is useless because everything is dead that fast. If everything is dead that fast, I still maintain there is probably little you can do with ANYTHING to improve the situation. To "contribute" as it were. I am guessing that Jib thinks he's contributing if he instead brings yet more AoE but I fail to see how, if the mob is dying that fast, he's actually accomplishing anything but yet more overkill on minions. He damned sure isn't killing that boss faster with his AoE... so what really is he contributing?

And you can't tell me his AoE is what is the cause of the mob dying so fast. Because that's changing the conditions of this AoE vs. ST comparison. Either I am on a team that is ALREADY killing the boss and everything else that fast... or I am not. If I am not, then my AS isn't useless. If I am, then his AoE is ALSO useless for the very same reason. That is, neither of us is really able to improve the situation so his argument is not really a proof of AoE vs. ST Stalkerism.

But you told me the boss was half dead or more in the opening salvo. That's not just barely killing the minions. That's killing them two to three times over. My tar patch isn't accounting for THAT much extra damage and if it's not already down before that first salvo lands, it's not doing ANYTHING. BTW, you do know that Tar Patch takes nearly as long to animate as AS, right? Sure, I can cast it from range and if I'm good I can get there ahead of the team a little and get it started just as the Tank/Brute is getting there.

But then again... I can do that with my AS too.

Hang on now. You're telling me AS is no good because the whole spawn is dead inside of 5 seconds but you want to tell me that a Dominator using a single target hold is useful? Honestly, how much is that going to matter in a fight that only lasts five seconds? Or those debuffs? Forget using Darkest Night or Radiation Infection. Just look at THOSE cast times! Nothing will live long enough to fight back and if they are all firing their first attacks at a beefy Tank or Brute... who cares anyway? Give him a single healz0r and be done with it right? We'll be lucky if we can even all get in range long enough for a Fulcrum Shift inside of those five seconds. And what good is my Dark Corr's Tar Patch if all the minions are dead in the opening salvo? At a rate of one spawn every ten seconds (figuring in a little travel time ya'know) I won't even be ABLE to use it every spawn! We've got all kinds of problems!

At least in the world of forum theory-crafting anyway.

The fix was a step (or two) in the right direction but they were still a little too conservative. Perhaps not wanting to step on the toes of Scrapper players (by far a larger lobby) they didn't just give Stalkers what they rightly should have... which is unquestionably and unconditionally better damage than Scrappers in, at the very least, single target situations.

Setting aside the issue of AoE vs ST for a moment, I don't think the above can be argued with. What else do Stalkers have to compensate for generally less survivability than Scrappers BUT more damage? There is also the problem of overestimating the benefit of the scaling critical, which is often done even by forum mathy types. It's easy to say that a Stalker equals a Scrapper in ST damage when in range of 'n' teammates, but a lot harder to estimate how OFTEN he finds himself in range of that many teammates. Taken as an average over the course of an entire mission, mission arc, or task force, for example... what is the actual critical chance bonus?

Difficult to say. I'd guess that on a team of eight it's probably not more than 20% random crit chance as an average, meaning that on average you have three (and a third ) people in 30' range of you at any given time you use an attack outside of Hide. If you consider how spread out teams get between melee and ranged types, this doesn't seem unreasonable to me.

I said that because it's mostly what I do now on my 50 stalker. But substitute any good sized spawn with a boss or two on a decent difficulty setting. Point being, that as you go up in levels, bosses gain several times the hit points of their surrounding minions. Graph the hit points of a spawn along the x-axis and what you have looks a bit like a mountain. Stalkers are there to shave off that peak. Anyone focused on ST damage could do the same, but the Stalker can generally do it faster from a standing start. Burst damage IS relevant when the target is only going to live for 10 seconds.

Maybe you're not arguing the same thing Jib is, but I hear him and others like Test_Rat going on about AoE all the time and I still have to ask what having AoE is going to accomplish in this same scenario where the boss you're trying to AS is losing 50-75% of his hit points before you can land the AS. He's not dying any faster by taking you out and replacing with someone who has more AoE. The team isn't done with the spawn until everything lies dead, including that boss with the inconveniently high hit points. So... who is doing that last 1000 or so hit points of damage to him faster than you are?

When he dies is totally relevant. I suspect what most people use as their measure of contribution to a team is total damage, at least on a damage-dealing AT. They want to see lots of orange numbers. While that sounds like sense, it's not necessarily what helps the team kill faster.

If a single enemy is the bottleneck to faster spawn defeats, the stalker is your corkscrew. Not someone with yet more AoE.

I just don't see this on the TFs I usually take my Stalker into. I don't see bosses vaporizing in front of me in a mere 3 seconds (which is all it takes AS to animate and deliver its damage according to my chat logs). Build Up happens on my way TO the target, so I don't count it. Maybe all of you are talking about farm teams or something? Nice, orderly packed spawns? I find plenty of bosses running around in TFs that I can dig my blade into without having some "AoE is everything" zealot nuke them away first.

I've said this before and I'll say it again. If there's enough AoE on the team to kill a boss in three seconds then it hardly matters whether your Stalker has good AoE or not. The team is so overpowered you might as well go AFK for a smoke while they kill everything. They probably won't notice.

Nothing looks more silly right now than half the people crowding around the trainer or vendor in Nova all in the Ninja "power crouch" idle animation. I hate the idle animation. The running and flipping around is not so bad.

Regardless, most people use this power for the run/jump speed not because they like how it looks. People who hate how it looks still use this power probably. It's THAT much better than sprinting, especially at low levels.

The problem comparing with Doms is that a Dom is a Dom, pretty much. Pick any powersets and you can still rely on having control to keep you alive and damage to finish the fight. And they all can have some mez protection when Domination is up.

There just isn't that kind of consistency with Corruptors simply because the secondaries are each fairly unique. They all bring something a little different to the table and that might work well for early soloing... or terribly.

I don't think that's a problem with Corruptors. I LIKE that they can be so different from one another. Unfortunately it does mean that you need to do a little homework before choosing to pick the one that is right for what you want to do. Although... anything /Dark or /Rad will do well on both teams and solo pretty much so you could just go with that if you want a safe pick.

In a few weeks, it won't matter. With Going Rogue you'll be able to switch to whichever side you prefer to be on regardless of where you started.

As for the Rogue Isles being dead, at least on Virtue where I play, at any given time there are roughly twice as many heroes online as villains. And it's pretty much always been that way. The idea behind this thread is the notion that of those that currently play redside, mostly they play there because of the ATs and not for any other reason. Thus all these people will wholesale abandon redside in favor of Paragon City where the grass is allegedly greener.

I don't know about the grass, but certainly the beaches are cleanear. I mean, go take a look at Grandville's coastline sometime. What a dump!

Yeah, until you face more/tougher enemies you can usually get by soloing.

You have to pick either Sting of the Wasp or Gambler's Cut at level 1 and Gambler's is the slightly better choice, I think. A bit better DPA and faster activating. More easily fits into any gap in your attack chain and is nearly always available. If you can slot the Achilles in there it's more chances for that to proc on tougher opponents as you cycle your attack chain and keep that -res applied.

These days I tend to push out the travel power. I get Hurdle, Health, and Stamina by the early 20s. Hurdle + temp Zero-G Pack is really good travel speed for a temp and you can make it last easily to 30 by being careful not to leave it on when you aren't actually travelling. Still Caltrops tends to get pushed out at least to the late 20s due to building an attack chain, getting Build Up, AS, Placate, defenses, status protection, self-heal, fitness etc. It's a lot to fit in.

I don't know. I've done some pretty crazy stuff with Caltrops, like preventing most of the ambushers in the last fight of the ITF from reaching Romulus. Caltrops are fantastic vs. any line of ambushers because they tend to follow almost exactly the same path and pile into your 'trops like a train wreck, then spend time trying to get around. Needs a bit of slow enhancement and is obviously not the best idea against enemies that resist slow like a pack of Warwolves. Wouldn't really bother too much with damage on them. You might do a bit with procs, but the main value of caltrops is the mag 50 "afraid" plus slow, which cuts down on incoming damage vs. nearly any enemy in the game short of GMs/AVs... at *any* level.

Blinding Powder is admittedly much less impressive until level 50 when you can slot the Contagious Confusion proc. Decent prep for a spawn you intend to aggro though. A bit of extra -tohit with no aggro that stacks with your defense and the -tohit debuff from Assassin Strike's Demoralize. Long recharge time though.

Never have taken Smoke Flash. I was amused to see it's now on offer as a temp recipe.

Even if it was, nin/nin is fine. Very scrappy and survivable and ninjitsu's caltrops and blinding powder allow you to do a bit of control to help a team. Have to take some of what you hear on these forums with a grain of salt. Even on teams with Fulcrum Shift and plenty of AoE, my nin/nin has enough time to dig into a boss and contribute. AoEs kill bosses last. Having someone who attacks them first complements the team nicely even if you aren't racking up the same damage total. What matters is defeating the ENTIRE spawn, not who is ahead in the damage numbers. Sure, the person going after bosses doesn't have to be a Stalker, but in my experience anyone with decent AoEs is going to use them first, not go ST on a boss. So while anyone CAN do ST, a Stalker does and that means they contribute.

Besides, I've only met two kinds of team leaders anyway: Those that will invite Stalkers... and those that won't. I've never been asked what KIND of Stalker I am when I am responding to an LFT request. I either get invited or ignored.

The most significant downside of ninja blade is its lethal damage type so you may want to keep an eye out for IO damage bonuses and non-lethal procs to help offset that. Another popular choice seems to be the Achilles Heel -res debuff proc, which fits in most of the ninja blade attacks that deal -def debuff.

Which is why I said, "without adding new code." All I'm really saying there is that if something is going on here, it's probably a bug. They have no reason to make AS miss or have no effect "on purpose".

I'm not surprised there are issues with the goofy way Demoralize is implemented. i.e. as a grantable temp power which the target automatically uses. I seem to recall another instance in a certain story arc where when I AS'd a particular kind of opponent (custom to that arc, I believe) it would briefly disappear and reappear causing me to lose my target selection. AS still hit and damaged the target however. Just the minor annoyance of re-acquiring the target.

I suppose it's possible in this case with the portal that if the portal has an error of some kind using the Demoralize power granted by AS that maybe it causes the other effects of AS (notably the damage) not to be applied correctly. But you'd still see a "Hit!" notification in the combat log probably.

The only other thing I can think of that would cause AS to animate but not hit (that is, aside from a missed attack roll), is lack of line-of-sight at the end of the AS cast time. Though I am not sure how that would apply to a stationary portal. You normally see this with a moving enemy that moves around a corner or something after you activate AS but before it lands. You still go through the motion of the attack, but it has no effect.

On this subject?

Don't bet on it.

I almost never see this though, which is why I tend to believe it is more of a sterotype/bias than reality, probably even less a reality than the mythical "pure healer" who does nothing but heal (including not ever buffing, according to legend). I figure it comes mostly from the Stalker's PvP reputation rather than actual team play. I am willing to bet if you kept a list of all the clueless players you run across, Stalkers would probably account for around 5% of them. In other words, about their population's share of idiots... same as anyone.

I probably have, but nothing like Test_Rat's "nearly 100% of the time". Sorry Test, but I just don't see that. I play on Virtue too and can get my Stalker on multiple PuG TF's every day if I want. That doesn't mean Stalkers are as balanced as they should be but it does mean they are "acceptable".

I don't think it's really necessary. I use: "Got room for a (insert-level-here) stalker?" Any team I have to justify my presence on is one I don't want to BE on.

Not saying it's a bad idea, just that this is another one of those things I almost never see actually in game: People fretting over builds/IOs when inviting people. They care about levels and ATs first (if at all) and then probably powersets if they are looking for a Kin or a Rad or a Stoner or something like that.

Besides, it's fun to surprise them.

In any spawn with a boss, single-target damage is useful because it means long-recharge AoEs aren't being wasted inefficiently overkilling the minions just to down the boss. And the fact is, people with big AoEs tend to want to use them first even if they also have decent ST. Someone going after the boss FIRST instead means that boss falls with the rest of the trash and the team can quickly move on, because it's not about how much damage you personally are doing. It's about when the last enemy falls. That is the bottleneck in team killing-speed.

Now, if it's a steamroller, fulcrum-shifted team vaporizing spawns by breathing on them... at that point it hardly matters WHAT the eighth person on your team is doing. Send them out for coffee or something. You won't notice the difference.

It's 10% across the board. Does not vary by attack or enemy rank as it does for Scrappers.

Not quite. It's every team member that is within 30 feet of the Stalker when the attack is made.

10-31% independent of attack. If you consider how many allies are within your 30 foot radius at any given time during a mission or TF, the average number is probably around half of your available teammates and even that may be optimistic. It's a difficult thing to measure or model since it is based on the behavior of up to seven other individuals.

I'd guess the Stalker's actual average crit rate is in 20-25% range on a full team of eight over the course of a mission or series of missions. That's not bad, but it's not necessarily enough to exceed Scrapper damage given the lower base attack modifier and lesser Build Up buff.

Good enough. I'd prefer a larger radius for the crit bonus and a 100% Build Up in PvE to more properly compete with Scrappers but... take what I can get I suppose.

Well the Stalker damage increase and what not has helped there. I leveled my Nin/Nin up to 50 before that all came along and it often did feel like I was wielding a cardboard tube against at least the boss-rank (and higher) enemies with lethal resist. Warwolves, Robots, Malta, Rikti and perhaps worst of all... Longbow Ballistae. Ugh!

Those enemies still suck, but it's not as bad as it once was especially if I've got a team around me boosting my crit rate.