Zem

It's an "alternate" animation in the sense that it's not the same 3s+ animation that plays normally. It's likely just to be the same as before but with the hang-time frames in the middle removed to shorten the whole thing. By how much is currently up for speculation. The easiest way to normalize the DPA of this attack across all stalkers is to remove more of the wait time for the (currently) longer animating Assassin Strikes of Ninja Blade and Broadsword and less of the wait time for Kinetic Melee. e.g. You could chop 1s off of KM and get 1.67s out of Hide AS. Chop 2s off of NB's and get the same 1.67s.

It'll be a shame if Ninja Blade and Broadsword have to have a full extra second of animation time on the shortened out-of-hide AS vs. KM. That'd be a big difference in DPA.

We'll have to wait and see how the alternate animation works. Are they really going to cut out the interrupt time and leave you with a 1s cast 2.5 scale damage attack? That's crazy good. Still good for NB and BS which would be 1.67s, but not quite as good. Maybe they will normalize it just for the outside of Hide version and we'll all have 1.5s cast or something like that.

Either way, it looks like getting a Tier 9 ST attack at level 6. I may have to start a new stalker just to see how much less it sucks to be a newbie stalker after this goes in. Big question for Street Justice by the way: Is this STILL going to grant 2 combo points outside of Hide because if it does... oh man! I bet they change that to 1 combo point outside of Hide. 2 point inside Hide.

Crushing Uppercut does finally beg the question, doesn't it?

Not sure there's anything wrong with that though. It's a Blaster after all.

I think the closest you can get would be to use HeroStats to record how many crits you get, keeping in mind that that will include not just the variable random crit rate but also the controlled crits from Hide. Unfortunately, the training dummies in RWZ do not report criticals in the combat window so you can't just set up there and test it. You would have to do MANY trials to determine within a reasonable margin for error what the actual crit rate is.

Might be easier to pester the devs. And that's saying something.

And? The point of my post, to which you merely responded "Wrong!" is that there's nothing wrong with a villain stuffing a woman in a fridge to get at his male opponent. The ONLY thing that is wrong with it is how often it happens to female characters vs. male characters. The trope itself would not even be called "Women in Refrigerators" if it happened as often to men in comics.

It wasn't even clear what part of my post you thought was wrong. Do you think it IS the responsibility of every author in this genre to never again put a woman in a refrigerator? If so, why?

Because you say so?

The single target ranged blasts are not that bad. Dark Blast is scale 1 DPS, so it's kind of like a tier 1/2 attack with an 80ft range. Fire Blast is actually a bit more than scale 1 with the DoT figured in. Only thing is they have 50% longer base recharge than the Corr/Def version. In general, yes, the patron attacks have longer recharge than the native versions of the same powers. AoEs have double the recharge, I think. But if you don't already have much AoE, it makes sense to take one. Right now it makes ridiculously good sense to take Fireball, but that may change if they ever "fix" its critical to be 50% like it's supposed to be.

Before I switched to Blaze Mastery to take advantage of Fireball while it lasts, I used Soul Mastery Dark Blast and Soul Storm. Having a hold is nice when, for example, I want to dig into a Cimeroran boss and then I notice some annoying Surgeon standing 60ft away healing him. Quick target switch and hold, then back to beating up the boss without having to stop, run over to the surgeon to one/two-shot him, and then come back. Also paints a nice big target on the surgeon with Soul Storm's highly visible levitate-spin effect. Aside from that, I can contribute to stacking holds with the team on bosses.

And having a ranged blast at all is just nice for tagging runners or for drawing enemies away from extra-aggro situations. I'd rather have powers like these that give me more options than ones that merely give me another x% accuracy or endurance recovery. I can deal with those needs in other ways.

Good point. Two 30% debuffs ought to do the trick then. A couple tar patches, enervating fields, etc. Has to be non-damaging of course. Probably want a non-damaging mez to keep the level 1 from running while this is going on too. Build Up and some red insps and you're capped. Guess it wouldn't be that hard.

One problem, is that you may only see the high damage in the floating damage numbers above the target's head. I think the combat log will only show how much damage the target took, which is limited by its hit points. Not sure about that though.

Makes sense for Tar Patch but I'm not sure about Oil Slick. Might have to do +KB in that one.

Baloney. Attack powers of a given type are, in most cases, balanced by damage, recharge, and endurance cost. That's it. They didn't go in there and somehow decide exactly how much mag KB of what %-chance is equivalent to the extra burning damage done by Fire Blast's secondary effect. Nor did they adjust the damage done by an attack with KB secondary up or down because of the KB. It will have the same base damage as other attacks of the same type, recharge, and endurance cost.

Aside from maybe the one counter-example given earlier in the thread for PBs, you have only to look and compare primary attack powers in the various sets to see that their base characteristics are very similar and don't seem to have been altered according to how much or what type of knock they do as compared to powers that have non-knock side-effects.

The context I was responding to was "threat removal". AVs and Elite Bosses are a bit beyond the scope of threat removal in an ordinary spawn. Still, I WOULD be interested in testing Scrapper vs. Stalker against an AV. It always seems to be assumed the Stalker doesn't do well there, but in a team vs. single-AV or EB situation, the Stalker is almost guaranteed a 31% random critical rate... and that's not too shabby.

Yes, the scrapper is more resilient and might even serve to tank that AV, but the Stalker might just be outdamaging the Scrapper... which would be a fair trade there. If it's a much more chaotic situation though, no. Which is why I'd prefer they do something about the whole 30ft radius scaling critical thing. I'd love to see it just plain removed. Then I'd be at least outdamaging a Scrapper single-target (and some sets maybe even AoE) whenever I'm on a full team.

I'm not outraged or anything but I do think it's a little bit sad that an unpredictable, impromptu, raid type of activity with a unique interface for starting it has been replaced... by a menu.

Didn't seem like there was a problem here that needed fixing is all. Most of the time, it WAS a big sloppy raid on the Winter realm with people shouting in global channels when the present popped up and people streaming into the zone from all over.

Good times.

The important thing is that now there are no suprirses because that's not what this holiday season is all about. It's about getting things done in an orderly, efficient, safe, and predictable manner.

There's only one ideal way to get back into Hide in the middle of combat and that is Placate. And every stalker has it. You should never actually try to get back into Hide by waiting. For one, even a soft-cap defense is no guarantee this will work. For another, even if it DID work every time you are doing less damage by waiting for Hide than by just attacking the whole time instead.

Where defense is important for Stalkers is not getting dropped out of Hide by random aggro or having a Placate spoiled before you get a chance to follow up with a crit. Defense also stacks, in a sense, with the unresistable AoE tohit debuff placed on enemies by a successful Assassin Strike.

No, that's not the point. The point is not to be seen UNTIL you do what really IS the point of being a Stalker: heavily front-loaded damage on an important target. Then you WILL get aggro unless someone else is managing it. That's to be expected and that's why you have a melee defensive secondary. Similarly, the point of those powers you listed is to mitigate damage from that aggro. You use them when you already have aggro. e.g. BU+AS+bit of scrapping while BU lasts... then Caltrops while you mop up.

Pulsing toggles are a problem as, I think has already been mentioned, because they can interfere with Placate. So that's worth worrying about. But I seriously hope no one skips Caltrops because they think it will hurt their chances to get back into Hide in the middle of combat. The good news there is that getting back into Hide by waiting in the middle of combat doing nothing is a BAD idea and something you shouldn't be trying to do. So 'trop away!

Smoke Flash isn't particularly a problem so much as just, well... all but worthless. It's a very short duration mez on a rather long recharge timer and the placate it delivers does NOT give you an immediate critical. Take it if you have a slot you just don't know what to do with. Otherwise skip it.

It comes down to accepting that on a team, "right" and "wrong" are defined by the team leader or by majority rule. Don't like it? There's the door and here's a brochure on how to use the /invite command to start your own bloody team.

This goes both ways too. A controller with -KB AoE Immobilization is just as wrong to use that if the team has decided it actually wants to knock stuff all over the place because it's "fun". It doesn't matter if it's better DPS for him to glue everything down in a nice tidy group. He doesn't like it? There's the door...etc...etc.

Easier said than done. The core issue is that knockback can interfere with AoE effects whether they be debuffs, damage, or control. And you can't just increase the radius of every AoE effect. It's up to the KB-user to make his own knockback useful or, at the very least, minimally detrimental (again, if the team cares).

It's not going to make things worse. I really don't believe there will be teams then who will kick you for not having -KB IOs who would not already be kicking you for having KB now. And again if you love KB, you don't want to be playing with these people anyway.

But as Macskull said... it's moot unless they can actually figure out how to implement -KB IOs.

If by that you mean the chance of being interrupted then yes, I am not counting interrupts. It is extremely rare that I am ever interrupted on an opening Assassin Strike which is about the only time I ever use it. If you're not interrupted, you will jump out to an early lead in an ST damage contest vs. a Scrapper that the Scrapper's higher base damage has to catch up to. All depends how long the boss lasts. Also depends how much of a crit boost the Stalker is getting as to how fast (or even if) the Scrapper can catch up.

I'm not saying it's a huge difference. Anyone can do damage. It's not a unique or special role to fill on a team. But it is a role you can fill. And practically speaking, I am usually not in a race with ANYONE to kill a boss because everyone else is usually in a race to see who can overkill the trash minions with their AoE first.

What kind of teams are you talking about here? Are they PuG mission/tip/task force teams or are they farms? Farms I could believe are more likely to be built for speed and, typically, fulcrum shift for the insane AoE. But at least with the PuGs I find on Virtue, I don't find it very common to be on a steamroller. Or at least people are willing to run at +1 or above and aren't really able to chew through a 2500 point (plus resistances) boss with just AoE in under 4 seconds. At any rate, I usually have plenty of time to get to a boss and put an AS into it. Then again, I tend to avoid team leaders advertising specific needs because I figure they are usually trying to BUILD a steamroller and to me... those are just boring.

I also keep a set of macro buttons on hand to target bosses from various enemy groups. Or I just edit one I have on my bar, attached to a hotkey. Something like "targetcustomnext Master $$ targetcustomnext Mistress" for Carnies. Gets me all the Master Illusionists and Ring Mistresses out of a big mess of a spawn with one touch of the key. Combat Jumping + Hurdle puts me in front of them with a quick hop. I would say most of the time I am just landing next to my target to begin the AS as the team is aggroing the spawn. So I am not that much ahead of the action.

Actually, since I just mentioned Carnies, that's one situation where I sometimes do exit a fight early to get to the next spawn. I do that to time the phasing of Master Illusionists. It's great to take one out before they can even summon pets. Wait for them to phase out. Count 1. Hit Build Up. Hit Assassin Strike. It'll hit them just after they phase in. Course that's risky timing if the rest of your team is delayed. Fortunately, Ninjitsu soft-capped is pretty safe from Carnies and their psi damage.