Leo_G

Eh, Quills is a PBAoE aura that does tiny damage up-front and moderate dmg over the course of a longer fight. The general survival difference between Stalker and Scrapper on a team isn't that large because the Scraps usually have powers that will draw/keep aggro on them while a Stalk does not. Quills will just assure you die as fast as a Scrapper would before taking into account HP values.

I quite prefer a bigger, instantaneous effect that doesn't require me standing next to angry foes on a Stalker. Which brings up another choice factor: what if someone someone feels like playing a melee that doesn't have to be drowned in foes to be effective? Like, if I'm playing Willpower, that's going to mean I need to be surrounded all the time? Or anything with a dmg aura? Maybe I just want to hit things and stand where I want to?

[EDIT]Oh oh! or if a teammate has KB powers? Lol, can hear the prissy Inv and WP Scraps and Brutes already. On a Tanker, I generally don't care as I can force the foes to run right back with Taunt, and on a Stalker, I actually enjoy KB. Single separated foes means ST dmg is more valuable. If the KB keeps everything huddled? Well, that's just win win for everybody.

Fix'd.

Seriously, I I ever form teams and I find there's a dom come up on my window as not on a team, I'll ask em. More than one? You bet! But they seem to be rare, I'm not often on the same team as one with a dom.

They're just so fun to play and team with...the only one I kinda shake my head at is Gravity doms because they don't cause as much chaos-ownage as your standard dom.

I do.

If Stalkers had a SD equivalent, being able to launch 2 massive AoEs that don't break hide + another AoE that has a 50% chance to crit in AoE and a 100% chance to crit the target *is* better burst on average than the equivalent SD melee because a Stalker can make sure to use these powers in conjunction with Hide/placate/BU. The extra burst provided by the AT's inherent will make up for the slight variation in melee mods vs Scrapper while pushing beyond Brute when damage is capped.

Same goes for Fire Armor's Fiery Embrace working specifically *with* the burst abilities of a Stalker.

It's right there. Just transpose those sets to fit Stalker and you'll have your answer.

From the point I was reading, it wasn't 'which is better' but 'if you're 1-2 shotting things and surviving, what use is being 'better'?'. I could be wrong about what you're debating though, but it seems subjectively 'equal' to me as one leverages 'burst tactics' and the other leverages 'slightly superior stats'.

The slightly superior stats will always look 'better' when you disregard what the other is leveraging.

i.e. It'd doesn't matter if you defeat stuff and survive fine, Terror, because on paper, Scrappers are better! And elitists only need that for a reason!

So just drop it, Terror >_>

Uh, you did catch where I said 'Old Hollows' or 'Hollows back in the day', right?

That said, I have to admit I didn't really die a lot in the Hollows back then but I did learn a lot. Particularly, how I was able to jump up walls and surfaces, how fences can block LoS, how to zoom in/out my camera quickly for safer travel, how to use SJ/Teleport without dying, etc.

As you said, dying a lot isn't the problem. Not for new players or threatening their subscription.

Yeah, we should probably stop wasting time and have something like that put on the table.

The many times I see posted that Stalkers are bad at AoE just make me shake my head. Yeah, Stalkers are bad at AoE compared to ATs like Blasters, Controllers or Dominators. But vs Brutes or Scrappers?

I'd query that the ATs compared with like sets would show the disparity isn't big. Because Scraps and Brutes aren't really great at AoE either. And when comparing outliers like Fire melee, would really prove my point in that it's not the AT that's bad at AoE but just the sets currently available. If there were no such thing as proliferation, then I'd have no point to stand on.

I'd further imply that it's not the amount of AoE a character has but the quality of the AoEs. Yeah, it might be decent to great AoE DPS to cycle your 4-5 AoEs on paper, but on teams with members with 3-4 of their own AoEs, AoE DPS is pointless. Things will be dead before you get through your 3rd AoE. My point being, losing a PBAoE or some AoE might be a hit in AoE DPS, but if you can make up for it with AoE burst (the more important of the 2 types of AoEs), you're in the driving seat.

Example: a blaster with a crashless nuke. No one gives a flying flip about the Scrapper's Dragon's Tail or Whirling Sword when the Blaster just dropped a quarter+ of a spawn with BU+Aim+Rain of Arrows.

Really the same goes for an applicable example, Dual Blades. Yeah, Stalks loose out on the tasty DPS AoE combo of Blinding Feint + Typhoon Edge but gain the oh so tasty AoE burst combo of BU + 1kcuts from hide. Would the Stalker be better off for AoE if they still had Typhoon Edge? Yeah, for AoE DPS. But things'll already be dead before you even bother queueing it up. And that goes for any melee DBs.

Sooo dying even though you have a fighting chance is somehow more depressing than dying when you have 0 chance because the high level mobs will alpha-gank you before you can react?

Or are you implying these ambushes give you 0 chance of success?

Uh, who's comparing the difficulty of the old Hollows with Praetoria?

I was saying, dying a lot is not going to push away new players. A game that isn't fun will tho.

I think you sorely underestimate the tenacity of new players.

I know *I* didn't get discouraged when I died over and over in the Hollows way back when...and in my perspective, the Hollows was *mandatory* then too.

Ah, well if it's just opinion then alright, cool.

I'll just say I don't agree, primarily because many characters are just built with holes.

An AR blast/corr might rip through Carnival at +1/x4 even bosses because their lethal blasts do lots of damage but toss the same character at Longbow and you might have to turn down your difficulty.

Or that Electric Armor Brute might be completely invincible vs Rikti but get turned inside out by Arachnos.

You can't say you should be able to play all content at x difficulty on the exact premise on *why* you altered your difficulty in the first place. If mission b was too easy for you and you upped the difficulty from y to z so it wasn't as boring, you should expect mission c to transpose that difficulty if it was only mildly challenging back at difficulty y.

Lol where's that rule from?

Now you're just making **** up...

I think that's where knowledge comes into play. Besides knowing more about the map, knowing about the enemy is good too. Taking out the right mob quickly will help.

But as far as timed ambushes, I haven encountered some but never 20 mobs...you can't even keep aggro from 20. The cap is only 16 so I'd have to see it to believe it. Never encountered such a thing except in whacked out AE missions.

Notice that emphasized part. It's a good tactic to use *as* you run, not before. I'd rather not go into the complexities of line-of-sight, what affects Hide's suppression timer and the no-alert-target status of Placate and just comment that, if you want to run through a map without being shot by the non-aggroed foes, you can.

Also note that npcs occasionally get caught up on obstacles or each other. It's highly unlikely they'll *stay* in a clump by the time they reach you. Many times, you've got literal seconds to take out the first mob in sight. You can draw out the chase to buy you time or simply use the terrain to disperse their return fire.

Just for clarity, Stalkers actually have a higher base crit chance that increases with teammates:
Scrappers = 5% vs minions and 10% vs Lts/Bosses/etc.
Stalkers = 10% vs all and +3.something% for every ally within 30ft of you.

Their defensive values are indeed the same but their buff mods are different. Self dmg buffs are higher on a Scrapper. Stalkers do get additional crit chances thanks to Hide/Placate as well as the opportunity for a double crit on attacks after placate.

I was asked, since ambushes can negate your AS, why bother with the AT at all. I answered that. AS isn't the only thing Stalkers can do and just because ambushes can make its use a hassle, doesn't take away from its usefulness in other situations.



Placate doesn't hide you from one mob. It hides you period, because it grants you stealth just like hide grants you stealth when it isn't suppressed. That is, you have 10 seconds to keep out of sight while Hide unsuppresses which takes 8.

If you run, the other spawns you run by won't see you. Of course, if you want to have an AoE placate, you can craft one.


How long does rest take to bring your HP back up? I don't recall it as very long the times I actually used it in time sensative situations.

Well, it's pointless for anyone that will be seen, yes. If you're about to die, and can manage to escape their fire for long enough, no one else will kill you. Buying time to recover and regenerate and for powers to recharge is not pointless. And that they will follow you just means their path is predictable, giving you the chance to drop a critical hit before they turn the corner and take it out quickly (if your inherent allows it).

Is it pointless? Or just a tactic you're unwilling to exploit? I admit running out of an instance is pretty cheap and I try not to resort to it. It's usually the last option right next to dying and using an inspiration to come back to get them off my back. Somewhere else on that list is 'placate Lt/boss and run to a far side to kill the minions' and 'placate minion then run a circle on the map to catch it by itself'.

Why play a Stalker over a Scrapper? There's lots of reasons but the situation with ambushes can be one. In the higher levels, I suppose it can be a problem for a Stalker of certain builds, but in the low levels? At least the Stalker has options. You may *feel* like you're not losing out on anything as a Scrap but you really had nothing to gain either.

Well, as a Stalker, you have placate. Placate *will* hide you when you use it. For a full 10 sec no matter if the enemy got a shot in on you. This may not stop the ambush from shooting at you, but it will stop the *other* spawns from noticing you while you run. Cut a corner, go up an elevator, through a tight corridor, find a safe area, rest if you have the time or just buy time. What can the Scrapper or Brute do?

...

Well, their options are bleak here.. It's either fight or die for most power combos. Some have tricks like stealth but that's a lvl 20+ power...


I don't think the Fitness pool was somehow a legacy vision of Jack's. Really, it's just the evolving expectations of the players who happened to whine enough to get what they wanted. Or perhaps it was in foresight of the new Praetoria content putting a crunch on your downtime. Personally, I find it interesting that the notion of using Rest when it's recharged somehow means you're weak. Or that slow automatically means bad. It's that idea of a gogogo style that seems to have dominated over all others. Because of it, volume is more important than all and has broken other aspect of the game that require time or planning.

I don't reprimand those that enjoy the gogogo style but that they seemed to have shoehorned this into what is 'baseline' and then turn to reprimand anything that doesn't fit does get on my nerves. But then we're getting off topic. This isn't about inherent stamina or the balance of Controllers. We're talking ambushes...

Well, you're really stunting the potential if you don't use the stealthing as a means of additional options. You get to choose who you want to fight with a Stalker. Run into missions vs enemies you don't like? Skip em'. That spawns got a boss that is resistant to your damage? Skip em'. The mission is timed but long? Skip em'. Running low on endurance? Skip a few spawns.

I can understand not wanting to skip things because of how you perceive it as a waste. But it really is just perception. You're not really missing much if you're having to turn xp off several missions at a time anyway.

And just like skipping things is a perceived problem, so is not being able to lean on AS. Yes, it is one advantage of being a Stalker, but it isn't the only advantage nor is it a waste of a power/AT just because there are points that reduce your chances.


Noted.

But I'm not handwaving anything away, just not rubbing and aggravating the points and making them swell up with exaggerations and hyperbole. Again, I agreed that the stuff was hard and that something should be done. But by the way you speak of the issue, don't be surprised if the devs suddenly replace all Prae mobs with little carebear underling mobs using fairy wands that do 1 smashing damage with a +regen additional effect.

With Controllers, I just hate (playing as) them. I'll team with all controllers or whatever, but they just make no sense. I've had several make it to the upper teens but ended up deleting them. They aren't particularly defensive (you hit them and they die) and yet they offer no decent means of frontal attack. Conceptually, it made no sense that my Ice/TA controller could manifest cold and ice storms with arrows yet couldn't simply form an arrowhead of ice and *shoot* someone.

There are a few ATs I don't play often but only the one that I won't ever play. Yeah, they can burn. But even saying that, it doesn't sound like they need any help if you look and read through their boards. They're doing just fine.

Well, Controllers with their non-attack-having non-mez-resist-having selves can burn. But for Doms, I *have* taken one through some of the content and you *can* defeat things that are *not* held, last I played. Oh, and you can do it *before* they kill you. I've done it and I don't consider myself a good player by any stretch of the imagination. You just have to realize how long you have to live and try to get something done before that.

And for Stalkers, you *KNOW* you're lying or else you'd be complaining about Scrappers too. By lvl 19, the difference between their HP is around 50 points which amounts to probably 1 extra attack and lower levels will have an even smaller difference.

My point is, you more than make up for that small difference with burst damage and even without it, you should still have way more options to cope thanks to Placate and Hide allowing you to *run away*.



It obviously wasn't a waste if so many people wanted it. And I liked the choices as they were. The issue came with power-gaming. If the issue was the baseline, the devs could have simply altered that some, but power gamers would still be sheep and flock to stamina, resulting in a looping whine that'd get louder and louder because the idea of a baseline keeps changing.

From years of playing Sega, Nintendo, SNES, Atari and various retro games, i and the world has already come to the realization that *THE COMPUTER CHEATS!*. Duh, that's what they do. They *have* to cheat because our technology is too limited for the computer to simply out smart our brains. If the computer didn't cheat, we'd be able to predict what they'd do every time and even when they cheat, we can *still* predict what or how it will.

The only other option is to make the input complex for the user (think fighting games and combos) to prove any type of challenge but then we'll have a whole other game here.

The way I see it, Prae isn't some 'upward sliding scale of difficulty', just a couple of rough spots you have to put everything down to make it past. If you don't have enough to put down, go to an inpsiration vendor and get more to put down. Thankfully, the content isn't mandatory. There's plenty of missions that have you squashing unknowing spawns on a big council map with lots of corners and walls to hide behind.


Because they didn't? Well, technically, they did but have since left that design in the past for new additions.

Lol because if you could stealth everything, then why are you even in Praetoria? Why not go red side and just stealth radio missions back to back? The missions would be far too easy if you could just stealth through everything. That isn't to say I don't feel the ambushes aren't harsh, they just aren't the roadblock you make them out to be.

Have you tried the Ethereal Shift power or the Smoke Flash temp or the Kinetic Dampener? They can really throw the odds in situations you feel you can't normally handle.

Well, I'm sorry Sam, but the way you answer an argument isn't satisfactory.

Just because I say something to the contrary doesn't somehow mean 'I'm not helping'. Maybe not helping *you* but I *am* trying to express a legitimate viewpoint here. There are others that can enjoy some content, there are some that get flustered by it but can eek by and there are others that see the challenge and instantly seek people to help them.

Just know that, even if you have a side of the story, it's not the only side of the story.

Thank you!

Granted, I haven't had the chance to run all the Prae content because I've only had 1 guy that was a Loyalist while the others were Resistance, but for Stalkers in particular, I *know* it can be done despite all that is said here.

It makes me laugh and yet sad as I read the posts in this thread of players trying to force a square peg into a round hole...

omg, these guys are mez resistant! I can't hold them!!
-Then stop wasting your holds on them and just defeat them.

oy, these ambushes can see through my stealth. *pouts*
-Then just walk up and *hit* them. You know, the damage difference between Scraps and Stalks is practically not there in the 1-20 range yet by 12 you get 2 controlled crits ontop.

I know that the content is hard, and totally support the idea to add more options to the difficulty slider to smooth out some of these issues but you can at least *admit* there are ways around these issues you encounter and strats to deal with them straight.

But hey, this could be another case of 'Inherent Stamina'. Apparently if enough want it enough, just hand it to them. No effort required. I *hate* that but I'll cope...it seems to be what I do best.