Leo_G

That name sounds familiar. I wonder if someone suggested such a set and what their theme and focus was on.

And would a moderate attack that doesn't crit or attract aggro or drop hide be too much? It seems thematic the enemy is just patrolling with his buddies and all of a sudden one of them starts screaming "AAAAAHH! SCORPIONS! GET 'EM OFF!!!" and goes off running leaving his friends scratching their heads...and then *pop* one of the others goes down revealing a stalker.

Maybe a Moderate psionic DoT that causes avoid and doesn't get aggro/drop hide in exchange for being a 100% heal back? I.e., all the damage will eventually vanish.

Well, I wouldn't say the intent of my thread was to suggest changes to existing sets...more trying to extrapolate the essense of what a Stalkers want from their sets. But I think that a Stalker with ST attacks is already pretty strong in removing targets quickly. The Spines character is limited in ST damage (basically just AS or Impale) and everything else is inefficient waste of END.

For parity, I'd just decrease the END cost of some of the high end ST attacks for Stalkers instead. Efficiency (and style) should account for something when it comes to how Stalkers handle targets.

Funny you mention that....

*tries to hide Psychic Shockwave*

If they're facing +2 foes with multiple bosses and not wiping, I wouldn't call that team weak.

[Re:] Joe, I was just putting out an idea. No clue if it even be useful or if your confuse/defense toggle wouldn't work either. But overall, whatever the tier 9 is, at least the rest of the set could be pretty solid if they choose to remove Ice Slick from Ice Melee for AS and stick it in the defense set instead

And I think the utility/control of the set could be brought up instead because that's the other thing the set is good at. As is, the damage is nice already. That it isn't AoE is only a hindrance if that's what you've come to expect for every set you play.

I'm honestly not sure. I've been playing a spines stalker lately (and before that, I was playing my brutes) and he doesn't always start with AS...definitely doesn't use placate with it...so can't quite remember exactly.

Not talking about passive vs active mitigation (or Taoist vs Rogue). Talking about passive mitigation and nothing more. Forget caltrops and oppressive gloom and repulse, just looking at what passive mitigation is offered in a set and how flexible that mitigation is.

That said, I still think that, overall, the defense in Ninjutsu is superior than other Rouge mitigation sets offer(well, I still think EA is pretty nice too, just not as good a utility heal in Energy Drain). But after playing with IOs on my my DA stalker, I'm starting to get why those sets aren't 'trash' like people think. If you actually choose powers that give defense (and build toward that with IOs), you're basically pushing the set into the realm of what I think is the perfect Stalker set: tools to distract, misdirect or subdue multiple foes while offering multiple varied layers of passive mitigation.

Sure, you can do the same with Ninjutsu and cap your defenses, but then you're at a roadblock. Powers in the set itself become less useful (Elude, Retsu, Overload) because you're basically capped the majority of the time, team +def buffs have a smaller effect on you and great powers such as Shadow meld are tools that don't do anything major for you (not to mention resistance is hard to come by). Those resist sets can put that stuff to work ontop of the resistances it gets.

Sets with only moderate defense or resists or regen or heals topped onto eachother have room to improve. I remember hearing every point of defense is more effective than the one before it, not sure if the same goes for resists or regen but yeah, that other stuff gives you room to improve and will be greatly noticable when you add even small buffs than if you had none to build off of at all.

Alright, just clarifying >_>


Actually, Icicles would probably be exchanged for Hide. I'm not so sure what Ice Armor could lose now that PBAoE toggles suppress with Hide so we'll most likely keep Chilling Embrace and it's slow/-dmg.

Perhaps roll Hoarfrost and Permafrost into a passive with +Max HP and Resistance like WP has then make up for the loss of the heal with the more often up Ice Slick.

As a heal, the 'Dull Pain clones' aren't that great anyway as they aren't up very often and much of the +HP is wasted on our cap. So losing the heal shouldn't be too big a loss. Opinions?

I dunno. That sounds more like something that'd go in a control set, not an armor set. Not really sure how to approach adding a new power because you don't want to improve the set's mitigation over the other ATs and this would probably push the set beyond the tanker's...not in raw survivability, mind you (Tankers will always beat out Stalkers there) but relatively.

Personally, I was thinking an Ice Statue clone power that'd freeze you in a block of Ice, like Hibernate but you kinda jump out the back of it, leaving a pet that taunts the foes, giving you your chance to escape. While frozen (and a duration after you break from it), you get a regen and recovery buff. So it'd be like Hibernate, but with less duration and a misdirection tool built in.

You misinterpret what I'm trying to say. Ninjutsu's passive mitigation is pretty much defense and a heal. My argument doesn't lie with the 'point' of the set but the flexibility of the set.

Consider Dark Armor, another Rogue set. It's passive mitigation? Resists and a heal sort of like Ninjutsu. But that's not all. You've got a power that can rez you when you die, stun everything around you up to Elite Bosses and give you 15 seconds of Untouchability.

Not so binary.


Again, you misunderstand what I'm trying to say.

I'm basically talking about a Rogue set that is varied in its passive mitigation like Willpower. Perhaps trading one of the tricks that come with certain similar type sets to accomplish the non-binary passive mitigation.

Ice Armor has some resists + damage debuffs as well as defense and endurance recovery. The heal I'd exchange for a passive +HP +regen buff and since we need to come up with a different tier9, something usable decently often without a crash (perhaps even limiting combat in some way like Hibernate would) and you've got some decent passive mitigation and some utility thrown in. The single trick in the set could be the Ice Slick. Bypassable, yes, but still extremely useful vs multiple targets.

Considering this set would have to be proliferated to the other melees eventually, this concept is utterly broken and should never be introduced to this game.

Attacks like garrotes probably wouldn't look good at all in this game since the scale and type of models we attack wouldn't allow proper use of it. Same with 'cut throat' attacks and such moves.

So a slight adjustment to your burst damage (because crits are apart of burst damage) shouldn't be too debilitating since that's the area we're strong, right?

It's one thing to lament a nerf that wasn't quite an obvious oversight but it's another to latch on to a bug that is plain as day. Single target attacks crit 100% from hide while AoEs crit 50%. That's how it always has been without exception.

Just be happy we have the 50%...we didn't even have that at the start and it's 5x greater than what Scrappers get...

It depends what sets you're using, really. The only stalker I have soft capped is my EM/EA stalker and it was pretty easy, cheap and he managed it by the mid-30s. Actually, I take that back, he still isn't soft-capped to negative energy...that's like 38% or so. And psi has to rely on the 20-ish% to AoE and Ranged he happens to have >_>.

But it really depends what sets and powers (and inf) you're working with. The stun sets helped mine a good deal as well as Kinetic Combat sets. Plus, running Weave (and Tough) isn't hard with Energy Drain on the side.

Those ranged powers already use melee modifiers so they don't really suck at all except that ranged attack scales are usually more mild in damage than a mid-tier melee attack.

Not sure what you're suggesting, but if you're just talking about improving a non-specialized attribute for an AT (like your Elec/Stone Tanker improving either debuffs for better END drains or controls to make the durations of his SM attacks better?), that might be a possibility.

But I'd say wait for the incarnate system, it might do something like that if it's like global enhance slots.

When was this ever said in the game? As far as I know, the Powers Division *was* a strict branch that ousted anyone that didn't get with the program but as the current state of Preatoria escalated, they're basically taking anyone that isn't jumping ship to the Resistance.

When I started the character, I read everything and nowhere does it say the group I joined are a bunch of murderers. Maybe some resistance nut shouted it at me while I was arresting him but you can't believe everything you hear from a bunch of terrorists.

But that's kind of how the law is, if you do a crime there is a consequence. Just like here, if someone murders a man and his wife by tying them to an anchor and throwing them in the ocean to drown to steal their money, they'll be arrested and given the death penalty (most likely).

The cop that went in and made the arrest doesn't have the criminal's blood on his hands even though he knows what possible punishment would come of the trial.

In Preatoria, if you do the crime you're taking the risk of doing the time if you're caught. It's just the punishments are more severe.

That.

My character is all for saving lives, but he's not out to fight a war, usurp the government and break down the system. He's simply tying to save as many lives with his fists as the system will allow.

Not an easy task but it's all he can do now that he's mixed up in all this mess.

Not to mention the silentest of assassins is Death himself. He ain't no Brute, that's for sure.

There are several problems with that line of thought.

-Is the stalker himself not the master of stealth? Can he not hide a cannon in a grade school if he wanted? It's not the weapon, it's the wielder that is perfect for stealth. Realistically, yeah a man is going to want a concealable weapon to make killings go unnoticed...but realistically, a man can't turn himself 100% invisible.
-Killing silently is definitely cool. But most of the foes in this game refuse to die in one clean silent stroke of a knife. Dangerous meta-humans with swaths of invulnerability and robotic prosthetics out the wahzoo being silenced by a humble knife is awesome...but killing whole-sale by splitting them in half with one clean strike with a humongous blade is another flavor of awesome.


Don't go there. We've already been down this road. Stalkers are, indeed, worth a damn. Yes, they could use some tweeks but that doesn't stop what they do from being great. Even the minor adjustments you say are on the table would only do [_____] this much to improve them.

That's the general premise, but more importantly being misplaced in such a general group due to misinterpretation.

It's hard to actually see through the snark of his post though. Not sure if his issue with my character's bio has to do with something else or the fact that he used to advocate non-violence before he was inducted into Powers Division. I can only presume it's misinterpretation as having a such a character does take into account at least the general state of affairs of the city.

You did catch the part where I said he *was* a non-violent monk.

Yeah, he's not so non-violent anymore.

You know, pop, as just another poster on the forums you're really starting to get on my nerves.

Well, with a new set, it'd most likely need a unique mechanic which would require extensive testing and coding whereas just adding the animations to a current set would just need to test if the animations played properly.

As for a unique flavor set with Stalkers in mind? Death Scythe.

If they're going to sink resources into a new unique set, I want something with a whole new flavor too. And when you need to split an 11ft tall demon in twain or rip a huge clockwork monolith in half, a pair of knives just won't do it

Seriously?

It's all well and good you've made suggestions, I never really argued about the changes themselves...

But you can't argue my reading comprehension is messed up when you're making quotes like that. Quote 2 happened before quote 1, quote 4 was in regard to quote 3 and acknowledged quote 1 as its source.

If you're going to blame my faulty reading comprehension, at least don't cheat.

I have. But I still fail to see the issue you're complaining about as a severe balance issue. Communication would go a long way in helping your specific issue (tell those squishies to not target through you, for one).

The particularly glaring issue I see is with the new revamped MA. I haven't played my MA/Shield yet or respected him into Cobra, but from what I can see (Cobra strike with the same duration stun, shorter recharge and higher damage but with only a 75% stun chance) I figure MA will probably beat out EM in stuns/mitigation thanks to faster/more reliable Dragon Tail in combo with the great stuns.