GuyPerfect

I feel kinda The Discovery Channel for this post, but it's not meant to be a documentary. Please, by all means, post your own insights and let's have a discussion about the state of the Stalker and where it should head going forward.
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Stalker as an Archetype

The Stalker is a melee-oriented Archetype, originally introduced as a class option for City of Villains characters. They are most prominently characterized by their ability to Hide, which is superior stealth and most often results in double damage to enemies while hidden. Additionally, they have access to an Assassin Strike attack that is a hard-hitter on its own, but does a disproportionately large amount of damage while hidden. Along with Placate, the selection of key powers integrated into the Stalker design might make it the most specialized Archetype in the game. The counter-balance is that Stalkers have relatively low Hit Points, making them more vulnerable to attack than any other melee class, and they have a specific (if not aggravating) focus on single-target damage.

Stalker's origins most likely come from the Rogue class in Dungeons & Dragons, which is characterized by very similar traits, including the critical damage while hidden and lower Hit Points. In DnD, the Rogue's combat tactics are either hit-and-run during a frontal assault, or sneaking in from the back lines to deal with problem enemies like magic casters that are fairly easily dispatched with high damage. Given the interruptible nature of Hide and Assassin Strike, it can be reasoned that Stalker was designed to fill similar roles to the Rogue by specifically not being the foremost combatant in a battle.


Complementary Attributes

With the merging of all player Archetypes with the releases of Going Rogue and Freedom in the list of available classes for new characters, an original design consideration has been lost to time. While the five Hero Archetypes are pretty obviously designed to fill certain roles on teams, the five Villain Archetypes seem to be more balanced and can play on their own as well as team. What's lost to time is that despite the soloability of the Villain Archetypes, they were still designed to fill parallel roles in teams to the Hero Archetypes. Let's take a moment to consider the so-called functions of the Archetypes in order to get a better understanding of where Stalker is coming from. The pairings I'm about to present are not necessarily the most accurate analogies to one another, and in fact aren't the way I'd pair them up. These pairings are what the devs were working from when the Villain Archetypes were being designed.

Defender & Corruptor
These Archetypes have ranged damage and buff/debuff powers. The Defender was designed to be a ranged-support specialist to the point that the attacks are considered a secondary function to the buffs and debuffs. While the Defender's buffs are stronger than any other Archetype, their damage is among the lowest and the class has historically been comparatively difficult to solo. The Corruptor mirrors the role of the ranged support, but it puts a stronger emphasis on ranged damage; presumably because it's the only Villain Archetype dedicated to it.

Controller & Dominator
It should go without saying that both of these Archetypes were intended for use as crowd control. However, they play very differently because where the Controller's secondary powers are buff/debuff, the Dominator's are melee and ranged damage. With the adjustments to Dominators in Issue 17 and the unusually strong controls that Domination provides, the Dominator class functions more in an offensive capacity than a crowd-control one. Controllers are still kings of enemy management, though they're the template Dominators were originally intended to follow.

Scrappers & Brutes
The idea behind Scrapper was that when it comes down to punching each other in the face, you can't beat a Scrapper. Thus, when Brute was introduced, it was meant to be the same thing. The key difference is that while the Scrapper has intrinsically high damage output, the Brute's base damage actually ranks last among melee archetypes until Fury is established. With defensive capabilities more like those of the Tanker, the Brute was a versatile Archetype in City of Villains. When the classes were merged, that distinction was obscured and now the presence of both Scrapper and Brute is borderline redundant.

Tankers & Mastermind
This is an unlikely pairing because the two Archetypes have virtually nothing in common. One's an unkillable strongman; the other's a fragile pipsqueak who makes his minions do the work for him. One charges in fist-first, where the other stands in the back with support powers. However, the functional role--at least in theory--for both Archetypes is the same: aggro management. They were both designed to protect the team from enemies. The Tanker does this with an abundance of taunts and survivability, and the Mastermind does this by bringing upwards of six disposable targets for enemies to pick instead of teammates.

Which brings us to...


Blaster & Stalker

Similar to Tanker and Mastermind, these two Archetypes don't really resemble each other, at least not at face value. But describe them in a sentence. Blaster's the king of ranged damage with powerful attacks and has an assortment of support powers like melee attacks, buffs/debuffs and controls. The Stalker's the king of melee damage with powerful attacks and has an assortment of support powers like self protection, buffs/debuffs and controls. The concept here is that Blasters and Stalkers alike are high spike damage with a grab bag of support powers. Stalkers were designed to be melee Blasters.

Which leaves us with two distinct design goals for the Archetype: 1) sneaky back-line guy, and 2) super-high spike damage guy. It's an attempt to blend Rogue with Blaster, and frankly, they did a pretty good job considering. Having said that, over time, a number of issues became apparent that show Stalker could have been done better, and some irrevocable decisions were made that complicate correcting problems that already exist.

Wow, it took me three sections to state a thesis. All you writing majors must be furious!


As a Rogue

Being the sneaky guy is very straightforward for a Stalker. You absolutely must take Hide, and very few enemies in the game will notice you standing next to them while it's on. It costs no Endurance and it offers a large amount of AoE Defense while invisible, so really, every accommodation was made to allow Stalkers to sneak up on enemies and using their Assassin Strike on them both in solo and team settings.

After the initial hit, though, things get fuzzy. The way aggro works in the game, once an enemy sees you, he won't un-see you unless he chases you for so long that he gets bored. While some enemies like Spectral Daemons and Ancestor Spirits can actually vanish and become untargetable to players, the same can't be said for NPCs. This is mitigated somewhat by Placate, but that only works on a single target and doesn't help to prevent things like ambushes. The fact of the matter is, the way the game works simply does not well favor a Rogue-like play style while solo. You can hit-and-run in many cases, but sometimes you simply can't. So if that's what Stalker's supposed to do, he's boned.

On teams, Stalker functions exactly as Rogue does, so the argument could be made that Stalkers are just one 'o them team-centric Archetypes. When I'm teaming on my Stalker, I'm constantly picking off bosses and mezzers while the team takes on the rest of the group, and we usually get done around the same time and head to the next group. I cannot stress this enough: Stalker functions absolutely beautifully on teams in a way no other Archetype can. The only thing they don't do well is tank; not because of their survivability, but because it only takes one ill-timed Placate to kill off all your friends.


As a Blaster

When it comes to damage, Stalker's functionality blurs a bit and isn't strictly apparent. The bottom line is that they're not enough stronger than Scrapper to make much of a difference.

On the one hand, Stalkers do slightly more average damage per target than Scrappers--that's a curious fact. Scrapper base damage is actually 12.5% higher than Stalker, which is not an insignificant amount. But a change was eventually implemented that gave Stalkers the ability to deal critical hits while not hidden; based on a random chance exactly the way Scrapper does. The difference is that Stalker's crit chance is lower than Scrappers while solo, but goes up for each of the first three teammates to the point that Stalkers actually have a higher average crit chance than Scrappers. Combine this with the already-existing criticals from Hide and Assassin Strike that can be triggered on demand with Placate and... well, you get the picture. Against the targets that Stalker attacks, he'll somewhat out-damage Scrapper.

In practice, Scrappers still deal out more total damage because they get AoE attacks where Stalkers don't. When a Scrapper can run in with Blazing Aura, pop Fiery Embrace and Build Up, then drop Burn, do a Spin and some Eviscerate and finish by jumping up to launch a Shockwave, everything that doesn't con orange or higher is going down. Stick a Stalker in the same situation, and he can defeat one, maybe two enemies in that amount of time. Maybe he'll get lucky with Slice or something. The opportunities that Scrappers get for affecting targets are incredibly skewed in their favor compared to Stalkers, who only get to fight one thing at a time.

It's worth noting that this seems to have been an issue with the original powers designers for City of Villains. Recently, Stalkers have been getting fairer treatment when it comes to offensive sets. Stalkers do get Burst. Stalkers do get Spinning Strike. But for all the older sets (tier-9s like Throw Spines and Lightning Rod notwithstanding), Stalkers seem to have universally lost their PBAoE attacks to make room for Placate (and Eviscerate is single-target, but that's another story). That said, you're still not going to see any damage auras in Stalker secondaries, quite simply because those draw aggro. Stalkers--by design--will forever deal less AoE damage than Scrappers, and their damage output per target currently isn't enough higher than Scrapper to compare in benchmark tests.

Against individual tough targets like Giant Monsters and Arch-villains, Stalkers notably out-perform Scrappers as long as Placate is in play. But again, it's not so much more that people think, "Man, we could really use a Stalker."


As a Blaster cont'd.

The other way Stalkers were to be like Blasters is in their secondary Power Sets. Since Stalkers are about avoiding aggro and getting out of sticky situations (just like Blaster), their secondary sets are supposed to be support-based. Instead, at launch, they were almost entirely defensive. Somewhere along the line, some bonehead said Stalkers are "Melee/Defensive" and it went downhill from there. Please, anyone reading this, realize that the Stalker's class mechanics are not designed for strictly defensive secondary powers.

Fortunately, like the AoE attacks in the melee sets, it looks like the current powers designers are aware of what Stalker secondary sets are supposed to be like. Also like the melee sets, we're stuck with some problem specimens due to the cottage rule. However, new sets and revised sets seem to be addressing what Stalkers are supposed to be about.

There are currently 8 secondary Power Sets for Stalkers. The following 4 I consider Genuine Stalker:

* Dark Armor
* Energy Aura
* Ice Armor
* Ninjitsu

Which leaves the following 4 the problem specimens that are merely defensive sets smacked across Stalkers' collective faces:

* Electric Armor
* Regeneration
* Super Reflexes
* Willpower

So what's the transgression I'm griping about, exactly? Consider the latter list: they're entirely self-serving. Shields, mez protection, heals, a self rez here and there... Those sets function well enough as they are, but they're not support sets. They're protection sets. They do absolutely nothing to help you reclaim your hidden status or get out from between a rock and a hard place. They're just lazy ports of existing sets that spit in the face of the Stalker's very design specifications.

I think Dark Armor would have been that way too, except the powers ported work very well as a genuine Stalker secondary. Hey, a segue!

The thing that sets the first list apart from the second one is that it contains enemy debuffs and control powers. We're talking genuine keep-them-from-attacking toystuffs like Cloak of Fear, Disrupt, Energy Absorption and Blinding Powder. And in case that sounds like a one-of gimmick, I also remind you of Oppressive Gloom, Energy Drain, Chilling Embrace and Smoke Flash... And Soul Transfer and Caltrops. (-:

Power Sink is a step in the right direction, I admit, but that power alone wasn't enough for me to consider Electric Armor sufficiently Stalkery.

It's worth noting that Electric Armor, Regeneration and Willpower are especially poor-suited for the Hide mechanic. They won't prevent enemies from attacking, and more importantly, they won't keep you from getting interrupted. Those sets by their nature make the Stalker's chief characteristic useless at any point after the fight begins.


Adjustments

With the problems associated with Stalkers identified, I'd like to suggest some ideas that may be useful in tweaking Stalkers to correct the problems that they've encountered over the years. Before I do, I want to emphasize that recent Stalker sets like Kinetic Melee or Ice Armor are already done correctly, so this is mainly focused around fixing problems that were introduced at City of Villains's launch.

First and foremost, if every Stalker has to have Hide, it ought to be the Inherent Power for the Archetype. The one Stalker already gets, called Assassination, is nothing more than an icon that you can click on to get some advice for how to play your character. That's a humorously blunt explanation, but it really is all the "power" is good for. Consider all the other Archetypes:

Blaster -- Damage buff from all primary and secondary powers, and tier-1s can be used while mezzed
Controller -- Double damage to controlled targets, and a chance for +1 magnitude on control powers
Defender -- Scaling damage buff and Endurance discount depending on team dynamics
Scrapper -- All attacks have a chance for double damage
Tanker -- Any power that affects enemies will taunt the snot out of them
Brute -- SMASH
Corruptor -- Enemies with low HP are subjected to double damage from your attacks
Dominator -- A clickie that refills Endurance, grants mez protection and boosts control powers
Mastermind -- ToHit and Damage buff for all nearby Henchmen, and an opportunity for received damage distribution
Kheldians -- Miscellaneous buffs from teammates' archetypes
Arachnos -- Built-in higher Regeneration and Recovery rates

And then there's Stalker -- A note that tells you a certain power from your secondary makes powers in your primary do more damage.

So really, we could do to put Hide as the Inherent Power along with a note of its associated benefits. This has a side-effect that it frees up one power in all the secondary sets that can be used to restore dropped functionality as well as introduce new Genuine Stalker powers for the sets that lack them.

Just as a suggestion:

Inherent - Hide - Toggle - Self +Stealth +Special
Dark Armor - Traumatize - Click PBAoE - Foe Placate
Electric Armor - Static Field - Click PBAoE - Summon sleep patch at current location
Energy Aura - Interference - Click PBAoE - Foe -Speed -Recharge
Ice Armor - Ice Patch - Click PBAoE - Summon knock down patch at current location
Ninjitsu - Ninja Leaping - Auto - Self +Res(Endurance Drain, Slow) +Perception
Regeneration - Invincibility - Toggle PBAoE - Self +ToHit +Def
Super Reflexes - Astonish - Click PBAoE - Foe -ToHit -Perception Confuse
Willpower - Bull Rush - Ranged AoE - Self Teleport, Foe Knock Up

Additionally, the melee sets that need them could acquire PBAoE attacks in place of single-target or cone attacks of similar damage, sort of like an upgrade:

Broad Sword - Replace Slice with Whirling Sword; swap places with Parry
Claws - Make Eviscerate a cone; may not need Spin due to Shockwave
Martial Arts - Replace Crippling Axe Kick with Dragon's Tail; swap with Crane Kick
Ninja Blade - Replace Flashing Steel with The Lotus Drops; swap with Divine Avalanche

I think it was 2007 when the Halloween event lasted the entire month of October. Not a sun in the sky.

If you're the superleader, you're demoted and someone else gets to be superleader. Make sure you pass the grand star to someone trustworthy.

For those nay-sayers who insist all the components have a fixed drop rate, feel free to explain this abundance of "uncommon" being more common than "common"

A customer service representative has informed me that the Loves A Challenge Badge (during the Keyes Isle Reactor Incarnate Trial, defeat Anti-Matter without anyone being defeated or destroying any Drawdown Terminals) is implemented incorrectly. If any member of the League is in the "defeated" state after the final fight begins, the Badge will not be awarded.

This is a distinct scenario from someone being defeated during the final fight, as anyone not standing on his feet when the final phase starts will cause the Badge to fail.


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Even Romulus Augustus fights with a spear.

The short version is: I can't wrap my head around how people in the Keyes Island Reactor trial, on an attempt to earn the Avoids the Green Stuff Badge, still get hit by the Obliteration Beam. So I'm posting this thread to solicit some perspectives of people who have been hit by it so I can better understand how to prepare people for Badge attempts.

Some people don't know how the final battle goes. That's fine, you gotta see something to understand it. Not knowing what the green stuff is makes it hard to avoid, right?

Sometimes, the time freeze happens JUST as you're about to run away from the green stuff. That sucks, for sure. I get that sometimes it can't be avoided.

And sure, sometimes people aren't expecting it and, while moving in reverse such that they don't see it coming up, might inadvertently step in it or whatever...

But on a Badge attempt, where everybody knows what it is and how to avoid it... with a timer ever-present on the screen telling them when it will appear, and text that flashes in front of the action saying "It's here! Move away"... and a big green circle on the ground basically saying "Warning: Do not stand here"... and still get hit by it? It just doesn't add up, and I'd really like to make sense of it.

For those who have gotten hit by the Obliteration Beam despite all the warnings, could you share your insights on why it happened? I've personally never been caught by it, but I suppose I might be missing something and I'd like to be better equipped to help people prepare for it.

Okay, it's back up for now. We had runaway swap usage, so it's definitely looking like a memory issue.

Activity logs from the host's provider show high levels of swap I/O that result in bringing site services to a standstill. It seems to start and stop on half-hours, but can last for several times that. We're not sure what's causing it, which means we're not sure what we can do about it. Hopefully it's not someone else's site running on the same VM server that's causing the problem. I would think they'd have throttles in place for that, and the swapping would surely be characteristic of that site rather than ours. But if it's us, then available system memory is getting low, and that could get sticky.

I unfortunately can't present an estimated time for the problem to be corrected, so for the next couple of days we may have to deal with periods of unexpected downtime. Titan Network appreciates your patience while we scratch our heads, mumbling "What the heck?" to ourselves under our breaths.