Zem

Taking a foe "out of the fight" is fine for threat postponement but it doesn't end the fight. Until everything is dead, the team doesn't move on. So who can make a boss dead the fastest? This is something Stalkers are actually good at. Given enough time, a Scrapper can catch up and pass a Stalker in most sustained DPS situations, but the boss is likely dead before that happens and it can even be the case if there are enough allies around that the Scrapper *can't* out-DPS the Stalker against a single-target.

We can thank PvP for that, I am sure. It would be nice if some of the tech they've developed for Titan Weapons could be applied to making Assassin Strike quicker in PvE.

If you're really in a situation where a boss is being killed by AoE in under 4 seconds then it hardly matters if AS animates in 3 seconds or in 1 second, the damage you do with it will be just as irrelevant to the performance of the team. And for a boss to be killed that fast by AoE, by the way, the LTs around it are being three-times overkilled by the same AoE. The minions, up to six times overkilled (worse if the boss had higher resistance to that damage). In other words, the team is ridiculously overpowered as compared to the challenge. The problem there is not really Assassin Strike.

You're the one who asked why play a Stalker if some other AT does it better? Well, why play one build of Scrapper when some other build of Scrapper does it better? How does this not lead to "the best"? If you consider aesthetic and concept reasons to be superficial but yet you're not after the best possible performance then what ARE you after? Because if you're asking if a Stalker can participate in and contribute to the success of a team then the answer is yes, of course they can! But if you're concerned that they can only do so 5% less effectively than a comparable Scrapper then I have to say I'm not convinced you AREN'T after the min/max best performance, otherwise why care about a slight performance difference? Because honestly, it IS pretty slight (and often overstated tremendously on the forums).

No, but then "superficial" is a matter of opinion.

If your concern is absolute min/max performance then you won't be playing a Stalker. Then again, there are quite a lot of brute and scrapper powerset combos you won't be playing either. I'm sure there are plenty of DPS charts and what-not for Scrappers, for example, that will direct you to "the best" powerset so that you can ignore all others as "superficial".

You can thank lolPVP for this. Caltrops used to only affect people on the ground... until Issue 12.

Funny isn't it? I can go read about Brutes and Scrappers soloing Task Forces, AVs, Pylons, and whatever.... but we gotta make sure STALKERS aren't too powerful?

Successful so far!

Nope. Pretty sure you are visible just before Assassin Strike ends. Even if you weren't, Assassin Strike itself debuffs your stealth by 100% for 8 seconds following a strike. So this proc might put you in Hidden status for another critical after AS, but you won't be invisible.

All that aside, just attacking someone in the spawn is likely to alert others whether you can remain invisible or not.

An invisible target who is the only person on the map that CAN'T see my Hidden Stalker.

Except it doesn't even help hit-and-run either since dropping into stealth doesn't clear aggro.

And which Blaster of yours does as much knock-DOWN as Energy Blast's knock-BACK such that you would even know it's the knockback distance (vs. just knocking them down) that's saving your Energy Blaster's bacon? I'm not saying KB isn't providing damage mitigation. It does. But I think KD is very nearly the same mitigation value while vastly superior at keeping mobs together and thus enhancing all your other attacks.

Solo this is less of a big deal. On a team, keeping the mobs together is just better for everybody. Either way though I still stand by the statement that knockdown as an unreliable side-effect is better than knockback as an unreliable side-effect. Powers that knockback reliably by design are a whole different story. There the problem, if there is one, IS with the player and not the power. But there is no skill to making unrealiable AoE knockback a positive. There is only mitigating the potential negative.... something you don't have to do with powers that don't have unreliable KB side-effects.

I am almost never on steamrolling min/maxing teams. I hate that people are trying to pigeon-hole all KB opposition into being spreadsheet-bound min/maxers. I play primarily Stalkers if that tells you anything. Why do I have to be a min/maxer on a steamrolling team to be annoyed by some tard that blows half the mob away from me with Energy Torrent?

I'm in fact quite happy with AVERAGE performance. I not only play Stalkers most of the time, but I play them on random PuGs. Average is just peachy with me.

Excessive random AoE KB is BELOW average, in my experience. It makes the average team WORSE than average.

I don't know that I'd use Martial Arts as an example. Changing legacy powersets in any drastic way is not something they do lightly or often. Even when they have it's nothing like what you think is necessary for MA (replacing a ST attack with an AoE). I would take what they've done with newer powersets as more of the direction they are thinking for Stalkers these days and that indicates they are well aware of the AoE thing.

Then maybe the time is now to lobby them NOT to add a Build Up. I mean, if they're not worried about stiffing us with Titan Weapons, they should hardly worry about experimenting with a Stalker set that doesn't have BU. What have they got to lose?

I will die laughing if they also replace Smoke Flash with something actually good because an AoE placate isn't thematic for Scrappers.

I suggest NINJA CHARGE!

But seriously, the possibilities are interesting considering they'd have to replace Hide and Caltrops at the very least. Hide would likely become a Cloak of Darkness / Energy Cloak clone, meaning it would be unsuppressed stealth! Caltrops they already have in epics so the field is wide open to get another useful power here. The set could easily be OP on Scrappers.

This is a slightly different animal. Technically, the primary purpose of an AoE immob IS to prevent the mobs from moving. If the team doesn't need that, you shouldn't do it. But it's just as often true that the team doesn't need the knockdown mitigation from that Ice Patch and the controller SHOULD go ahead and immob precisely to allow KB users (whose KB as damage mitigation is also not needed) to just go nuts with their Knockback AoEs.

And while it is true a controller also derives containment and more damage from the AoE immob, they are usually just as interested as anyone in immobilizing the mobs as closely together as possible. It means more damage for the team AND for them usually. The same is not true of ordinary attack powers with a secondary KB effect. If you've got an attack ready to use and you're not using it because of the potential for unwanted KB, you're losing its DPS potential as compared to someone who can just fireball away.

Again, you're not understanding the key difference here. Those powers ONLY cage enemies. If you don't need to cage enemies, you don't use them. Similarly, powers that ONLY KB (or deal only trivial secondary damage) are primarily used for their KB. If you don't need the KB you don't use them and you don't LOSE anything for not using them. The only problem with KB is when it is attached as a sometimes undesirable side-effect to your attack powers and particularly when it is an unreliable side-effect at that. Percentage chance KBs, especially in AoE form, are the devil. They are NEVER better than KDs.

This of course all assumes you even care about performance. If you don't, then by all means knock everything all over the place.

Seriously... if they pass Stalkers up twice in a row for melee powersets it may be the first time in a long time I consider whether it's just time to hang it up finally. But I guess I can hope someone over there is reading and it gets through someone's consciousness that Stalker's don't NEED Build Up because they aren't all about the BU+AS from Hide.

Either that or I'll have to try to like Scrappers or Brutes, I guess. I dunno. I've tried before but they just don't have the same... style. They both feel to me like all they do is run around and smash things.

"Scrap" in this context simply means chaining attacks as fast as animation time will allow while remaining in melee. In that sense, all the melee ATs scrap and others besides. It doesn't make everybody Scrappers (with a big 'S'). I don't see how you change that without making hit-and-run more productive than scrapping it out. And if you do that, you make about half of the Stalker primary essentially irrelevant. Why have Tier 1/2/3 attacks (maybe even Tier 7/8) if I'm going to just use my big hitters from Hide and after Placate and then just wait to re-enter Hide again?

Stalkers are distinct in the way they produce damage via controlled and random scaling criticals and, though many do not value it, in their front-loaded burst damage capability. True, they are not that far from Scrappers as it is, but then neither are Brutes really, just in the other direction towards Tankers.

Your points about resistance-based Stalkers being disadvantaged are more easily addressed while at the same time even addressing some of the concerns Castle voiced in his last post on the subject (where he gave random aggro distribution as an example of a systemic problem Stalkers face). Simply make every stalker in Hide state soft-capped to all positions. Right now, Hide packs a lot of AoE defense while you're hidden, the idea being that this should help protect you from splash damage aimed at someone else. But this misses the case of random aggro distribution on teams where a teammate can aggro a spawn and member of that spawn can randomly target OTHER teammates. This does happen and it's why you're sometimes attacked directly while still hidden on a team before you even attack anything. Second, add the same soft-cap protection as a very short duration defense buff to Placate. This will make it easier to get that following controlled crit off successfully.

Assassin Strike needs a look too. Shorten the animation time AND the interrupt interval. It's really TOO vulnerable to interrupt for the amount of damage it does. Anyone who tries to use it for anything BUT the first strike from Hide, even defense-based Stalkers, would probably find that if they took data over a long period of time, they'd average less damage per AS than if they just used their top-tier attack following Placate instead, just because of the interrupts that inevitably happen trying to use AS in combat.

You know Leo, it's entirely possible to read something and not really get it the first time. You'll notice I've seen that thread before. What I wasn't getting is that the perfection levels don't JUST apply to the finishers. I thought the additional damage per point you were talking about was like the additional damage per point you get with StJ. I get it now.

Still, I don't see the values for those per-hit buffs and like I said even if we did it's not final. This isn't offically released info. It may even be pre-internal testing. Frankly, it looks like it's going to be hell to predict how well this set will work. They may not know they've got it balanced well until long after it's released by looking at all the collected data.

But if this works for Scrappers, I don't see why it shouldn't work for Stalkers. Build Up or no Build Up. Like I said, break the mold and see what happens.

Whatever is out there to find so far is not final anyway, so why bother? Like I said, IF the effects brought about by the various forms are enough to offset the lack of BU, great, but if the only difference between this and Street Justice's combo levels is that you get different (but not necessarily better) effects for the different forms then I wouldn't say it will offset the lack of BU.

Despite the apparent similarity of DP's ammo swap feature to Staff's form switching, I think the better comparison is still melee to melee. If Staff is essentially Street Justice with Combat Readiness replaced by Form switching then.... well, it really depends on exactly what form switching does. If it's like DP, then no that's not going to be balanced. Staff will lag behind StJ on damage. If on the other hand the forms are more dramatically different than just changing damage types then it's possible it would be balanced.

If it really is the case that there's no BU or CR-like ability, then I hope the devs allow Stalkers to just have the set as-is. Forget BU. Call it an experiment. Why not? It's not like they have many Stalker customers to lose. It may actually turn out to be the best thing ever.

What he actually said was, "not entirely unlikely" that TW would show up on Stalkers.

I wouldn't hold my breath. They are using the same language they did when they denied us Shield Defense and that was THREE YEARS ago.

Out of curiosity, has information actually been released that states Staff won't have Build Up? This form change power would have to be a good deal more impressive than DP's ammo to replace Build Up.

If it really does lack BU then I sincerely hope the devs take this opportunity to break the mold with Stalkers. SO WHAT if it lacks BU? If they actually make Assassin Strike modifiable by the form change power instead then they'd have something interesting even if it didn't do the same damage as another set's BU+AS.

With spin like that you should work for cable TV news.

KB is unlike most other abilities precisely because it CAN have a downside. Not as a primary effect. That's never the problem. The problem is when it's a side-effect added on to, say, a damage-dealing attack. What downside is there to using an AoE damage attack that does RES debuff as its secondary effect? -tohit? -dmg?

About the only other one I can come up with that can have a serious downside is the mob AI "afraid" status caused by such powers as Rain of Fire. Without some additional means of slowing or immobilizing mobs in the area of effect, the scatter can do more harm than good on top of just preventing the power from dealing all the damage it could.

There are still other powers that can cause trouble but they are primary effects like Foe-Intangible found only in powers whose PURPOSE is that effect. Don't want it? Don't use it. You don't have that luxury when KB is riding piggyback on all of your attack powers. You have to deal with it and "dealing with it" can mean not using it when you want to or spending extra time to re-position (which isn't even always possible) to avoid unwanted KB. Meanwhile anyone else can just keep blissfully punching the attack button whenever they want and from whatever angle. You might find that less challenging, but you can't call it less effective.

I think if they had meant endurance they would have said endurance. I'm afraid this probably means temporary power charges. So having, say, a Day Trader temp casting interrupted won't consume a charge.

Meh.

Hope you're right though. This would be a very nice benefit for Assassin Strike.