Zem

That explains it. I'm usually not leading the PuGs I'm on so they are quite often a pretty random mix. Makes things interesting. I still find that people are decently competent most of the time even if they aren't slaughtering things wholesale very quickly.

I'm hoping i16 brings some more challenging difficulty settings that won't be seen as lowering XP earning the way people look at Relentless vs Ruthless now. Right now there isn't much you can do to challenge a team that does end up steamrolling spawns. Because they still mean IOs to be "optional" there has been no general increase in the challenge level of the game.

It's kind of a downer to do an LGTF on my nin/nin stalker honestly. That's where I notice it the most and is the main reason I've done so many more ITFs.

Black Scorpion.

He's the only one with a defense armor toggle, which goes nicely with Dark's Shadowfall and -tohit debuffs to make you VERY hard to hit with Smashing, Lethal, and Energy. Also, Web Envelope is nice for immobilizing a group for AoE destruction. Might not be that big a deal for Rain of Fire + Tar Patch, but it's great for my AR/Dark's Ignite.

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Nice...finally got to drop the underscore.

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I'd like to drop two, but the forum still won't allow three-letter handles.

I gotta say... I am tempted to make one just to have that tasty Nictus Broadsword from the ITF on a Stalker. Problem is I already have a purpled-out Ninja Blader and should probably work on leveling my DM/Nin instead.

Hmmm. I know! I'll wait for them to proliferate Shields!

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Unlike most of the sheep on here, I have to disagree, I thought being a Stalker was about speed, go in, step out.

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You can play that way, but it's not very effective. Not in PvE anyway. Stalkers are built to do high damage if they can just survive long enough to do it. On a team, that's easy. On a team, they also receive yet more critical hit ability by staying in the fight with everyone else. Defensive sets like Katana and Broadsword let you do that.

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They literally gave us a slow scrapper AT

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Again, you mean? How many is that now? Have you pulled out a stopwatch for Total Focus, Energy Transfer, or Thunderstrike lately? Powerset Proliferation is all about getting someone ELSE'S powersets. i.e. Not specifically designed for Stalkers. It's not about custom tailoring sets to match the new AT, except where strictly necessary. We might prefer such custom sets, but they are obviously more work and more risk of balance problems. There's not too much else to choose from in proliferation that wouldn't either be more work or more risk than Broadsword. I think they went with a safe choice.

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This doesn't bother me nearly as much as people posting "hey the Knives of Artemis have it!", trying to make it viable for us.

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That wasn't a viability argument. It was a concept argument for people who thought the Broadsword set wasn't "stalkery" enough. The Knives don't use a Broadsword model, but they use the powerset with a much slimmer and shorter blade, whcih the player can also do with Weapon Customization. Point being, it "looks" fine on a stalker, since Knives are fairly stalker-like in appearance and behavior even if they are really stealthy scrappers. A Stalker isn't much different, really.

That aside, BS will be a *very* viable Stalker set whether you want to hit and run or stay and scrap. It will burst better than Katana and still have the defense from Parry (if they don't get rid of it).

Actually the animation IS slowing you down. AR has had an animation time overhaul, like other sets, and the redraw time that was once "baked in" is now extra whenever it occurs so that while you have the rifle out, you can chain attacks faster.

That's the joke with AR/TA/Mace. Maximum redraw time waster.

I'd rather have the damage. I can handle hopping backwards quickly to catch my enemies at the end of the cone where it is widest. An FA that is merely wider than the current version would still be considerably weaker than RoA, even without RoA's Scourge advantage.

Compare it to Full Auto or any other Corruptor T9 except Blizzard. I think that's the point. Most of those you won't ever see Scourge, so if RoA Scourges once that IS an improvement. And since it already does more base damage than FA, this puts it even further ahead.

Personally, I'm hoping that particular comparison will convince them to look at Full Auto again. Not to make it Scourge more, but to bring its base damage at least in line with RoA, if not slightly better.

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OSA does knockdown and slow at all times, lit or not. You won't be able to skip Flash Arrow as a corr.

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You can, but you'd have to take both Snap Shot and Aimed Shot, if you're an Arch/TA corr and you want to skip Flash Arrow.

Unless I missed something and they are going to re-arrange TA so Flash Arrow becomes the Tier 1?

Stamina can be a contentious subject, but it really boils down to a very simple fact: It takes endurance to cause damage. If you're using less endurance than someone else, odds are decent you're doing less damage. This is the hint for AS-and-Hide Stalkers that they need to look at how effective they are really being vs. the "one big orange number" they occasionally see. They don't need a lot of endurance becuase, frankly, they aren't being very effective. They aren't doing nearly as much damage as they think they are. If they were, they'd find that they did need more recovery, however it's gotten (stamina, IOs, endrdx, etc.)

Or to put it another way: "There's no free lunch."

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It depends how they treat the set. If they go with the trend established recently for Claws, the narrow cone that is expected to hit just one foe may get turned into plain ST attacks making the set a bit distinct, not to mention that power always crit from hide.

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Except that they wouldn't really give Headsplitter the "Eviscerate Treatment", which was both the 100% crit AND more base damage. It would be the "Eagle's Claw" treatment. Same damage. Just the 100% crit.

Meh. I know there are those who would disagree. 1vs3 soloists (booring!) and PvPers would likely prefer the 100% crit even if it didn't come with more damage attached. I'd rather keep the cone. But that's just me.

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In theory, the difference is the crit chance - but most folks don't even know it's there, and it isn't that meaningful.

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Actually, no. That's part of it (or will be) when it's ported to Corruptors, but the real difference is just that RoA does about 25% more base damage at a cost of about 33% more endurance. That's how it looks on Blasters today, with no crit chances.

There won't be much you can do about the greater scourge capability of RoA when it goes to Corruptors. That's just how psaudo-pet attacks work, and I could live with that if Full Auto at least did the same damage, even if it had to have its endurance cost raised to match. If Full Auto worked like most cones did vs. sphere-AoEs, it would do MORE damage than RoA, not less. It has a smaller max target cap, as do most all cones.

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(And actually, I think Ignite is the replacement for a third ST blast - the trade-off is Aim for Flamethrower.)

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I think the two sets compare favorably all this considered. The one anomaly is actually Rain of Arrows. I still don't understand why it's allowed to be so much better than Full Auto when it seems otherwise obvious the two should be comparable powers.

I heard one argument that it makes up for the AoE lost not having Flamethrower, but as pointed out above, it gets something else for that: Burst damage and accuracy from Aim. So I don't get it. It seems they're aware of it, because they gave RoA a higher endurance cost (as if that means much), otherwise I'd have assumed it was a mistake.

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They're really attacking Hoboken, New Jersey.

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Everybody wins!

Why should the Rikti give up? Just look at all those determined purse-snatchers still working the streets of Paragon City after all this time. Sure, they live in a city filled with superheroes... but maybe the old lady has a few bucks and some nice jewelry in there, right?