PRAF68_EU

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2. There are some TF where the AV summons large groups of minions. As far as I understand it, this is pretty much by design so that AoE specialists have a big role. The Catalyx AV and Lord Recluse / STF are the ones that spring to mind.

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In those missions a team of 7 stalkers and a brute to hold the aggro could kill the AV with 2 Assassin Strikes (around 7 secs, depending on how much recharge you have). That would be long before the spawned minions could arrive.

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Unless a stalker is going to be playing on heroic and avoiding any ELite Bosses, this is a buff for solo play

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Only if your idea of solo play is only do kill the boss newspaper missions. As I've said before, if you have 5 or fewer players bosses only spawn where the mission code specifically calls for it. That usually means only one per mission, so if you solo you spend most of the time fighting minions and lts, especially in kill all missions.

Yes, it will help against EBs, but I doubt it will make it any easier for stalkers than for brutes.

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Some folks in the US have crunched the numbers... See here

It looks like this is a nerf to stalker to damage against anything except EBs/AVs/GMs.

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Castle has already said he is going to change the numbers when he gets the data in. Expect this to spend a long time on Test and have several itterations before it goes live.

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only be useful to teams when going up against the very big stuff.

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Those are the only teams worth playing on.

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1. Sometimes people like to do "fast" TF for badge and recipe drop. For example, the "big 6" of needed for TFC accolade on CoX. In such cases, things go much much faster with AoE. Killing the AV acounts for less than 1% of total TF time, and generally isnt a huge challenge. Sure, a ST specialist makes it go faster, but its a drop in the ocean compared to total TF time. So if you are doing a TF with a veiw to doing it respectably fast (and some TF can be a drag some Im thinking of this in terms of "fun" not farming") you may well be inclined to "AoE teams".

2. There are some TF where the AV summons large groups of minions. As far as I understand it, this is pretty much by design so that AoE specialists have a big role. The Catalyx AV and Lord Recluse / STF are the ones that spring to mind.

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Other than replacing the stalkers primaries with ranged aoes, there is no change that would make stalkers able to compete with corruptors in this role, so it is better that any buff should focus on what stalkers can do. Then there will be at least some occasions when you would choose a stalker for your team instead of a corruptor.

What this buff does is give stalkers a role, which is something a simple damage buff can never do.

As I've said before, it isn't a buff for solo play at all, since you won't be fighting many bosses and AVs solo, and minions are made slightly harder.

Even with 100% crit against immob, assuming the dominator has a ST immob to use on the AV, you would still do much less damage against AVs than this enables.

I would argue that for a SF it's only the AVs that matter, ability to kill anything else is irrelevent.

Having a self rez is the same as haing an unlimited duration phase shift.

Increasing the crit chance would still leave stalkers behind all other ATs if all you are intrested in is how quickly you can slaughter minions, so would be a pointless change - There still would never be a situation where the team leader would say "we need a stalker".

Making stalkers more effective against bosses is a team buff: bosses don't appear in regular spawns unless you have 7-8 people on your team (or 6 if you play on level 2 or 4).

As for AVs, even with this buff I still don't see many stalkers soloing AVs, but they will be extreemly effective with a team to keep them alive.

And it will turn stalkers from a liability to an asset on SFs and trials, which all involve AV fights.

But there is no stalker buff that would ever alow them to compete with corruptors for aoe damage, so they need to have a different role in a team.


I have a hunch that these tweeks we are seeing now are connected to the data from joint teams from the RWZ. I.e. the are to preper the way for "Going Rogue" in issue 13 or 14. Thus the devs are keen to make stalkers more distinct from scrappers, not less.

If you are taking down a spawn in 8 seconds, you are farming, not playing. Playing requres their to be an element of challenge, at least a chance of defeat.


This buff is intended to make stalkers useful on challenging missions, not farming missions.

They should also be better at taking out bosses. After the AOEs have taken out all the minions (maybe 10 seconds), you are often left with a couple of bosses (maybe a further 20 secs for aoe orientated characters). This means that possibly 2/3 of the time you spend fighting bosses. Adding a couple of New Stalkers (TM) to the team and the bosses go down in 10 secs to, greatly reducing the time to defeat the whole spawn.

This is something farmers know well, they won't have more than 6 players on thier team, because that way bosses don't appear in standard spawns.

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Interesting. I wonder how this will change a stalkers role in a pve team and when they will actually implement it.

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It should make them the top EB/AV/hero killers.

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Will it mean we can still take out an LT in one hit with BU, or a minion without?

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With the current values, you can still take out the lt, but you won't be able to one-shot a minion higher than +2 without BU. They are likely to be tweeked though, according to Castle.

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Will our damage vs bosses/ebs/avs be HUUUUGE! and make us noticeble in a large team vs an AV?

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Yes (unless the AV has a high resistance to your damage type).

If you can overcome your fear of debt its good.

RWZ, vanguard crafting terminal, costs 200 vanguard merits.

Blaster FA could be useful with the chance of placate proc.

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You could also argue that a power with the same name should do the same thing, regardless of the AT using it

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Yes. -DMG for dominator CE please.

It looks a bit to strong a buff to me, particully with the short recharge.

Yeah, I guess that's right. The argument was having a sleep power on a tank was pretty pointless, so Castle is turning it into a damage power with a sleep side effect.

Whereas a Sleep on a blaster can be quite useful.

Regen is getting nerfed again.

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No, as that would eliminate it's ability to stack.

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Would someone care to explain this to me? I don't have either version of the power.

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Taunt - great power, nothing like mouthing off to a big mob, tossing my mace from hand to hand and letting them come get me. But how to people slot it for PvE? Taunt duration seems fairly long anyways, its up pretty fast, doesnt cost much endurance, doesnt need a to hit check in PvE, so is it best to just put range in it? Any help with this would be great.

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How you slot Taunt depends on your powersets and playstyle. As an Ice tank I tend to depend mostly on my auras for holding aggro, with Taunt as a back up, so it just has one taunt duration. If you are Stone, you should consider slotting it 3 recharge 3 taunt, because of the slow effect of GA. I don't see much point in slotting it for range.

It has also been recently revealed that taunt is more effective if you also do damage, so if you don't expect to be doing much damage you will want to slot more taunt duration.

P.S. If you PvP you will want to slot accuracy.

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Exactly so when playing around with Midas an wanting to figure out max-min efficency of a slotted power I use SOs.

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But if a power has more than 2 attributes to enhance it is impossible to achieve the maximum efficency with SOs.

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The first is that is that if you stick to Common IOs, quite often the extra % numbers will be wasted. Say you want 95-100% damage in a power (not unreasonable)... you could slot three Damage SOs, or any three Damage Common IOs above level 25. Level 50 common IOs would give more "oomph" compared to level 30 ones, but the extra power would get trimmed by ED.

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3 +3 SOs will also be trimmed by ED. It takes about two and a half level 45-50 IOs to hit the 95-100% soft cap. If you want to avoid the higher rate of ED tax 2 level 50 IOs are ideal.

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The final point is that there are still a lot of people- myself included- who level a character using "SO level enhancements" in the powers because that's what they're used to building a character around and PvE levelling play really doesn't require any more ommph that SOs have traditionally provided. In those cases, Common IOs simply become a cheaper alternative to buying new SOs every five levels.

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I tend not to plan my builds to the exact IO before level 50. I use the best that drops/is available cheeply. Then when I get to level 46 I start to collect what I need for my level 50 build.

When it comes to answering the original question though, the optimum slotting for RoA is what gives you 95%+ damage 95%+ recharge, and whatever +acc you can squeeze in between, and that can only be done if you are using IOs.

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Good luck finding a level 37 common IO

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Single attribute set IOs then.

The minimum level you can 6 slot RoA is 34, so you can use level 37 IOs.

A level 37 common IO gives +37.5%, which is a fraction under a +3 SO. However a dmg/recharge set IO gives +23.4%/23.4%, for a total bonus of 46.8%. The same for acc/dam and acc/recharge. An acc/dam/recharge SO would give you 18.8%/18.8%/18.8%, for a total of 56.25%.

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Calculate? Who calculates when we have Mids?

Anyway, the % you get from an SO changes as you level, but the IO is constant. I would say that makes them easier to calculate.

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You sure because I thought it was the opposite. After all if I slap 3 SOs at lvl 25 I get 94% from them and the same when they are 50s.

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The 3SOs that gave you +94% at level 25 will give you nothing at all at level 50.

Yeah, more than two actually, but they are a pain. They scatter all over the place. And don't even think about it if you are vunerable to psi damage or have no mez protection.

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Artic Air can be 6 slotted with procs...

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True...and then you'll run out of endurance faster than Okton can say "I'm a n00b!"

Dmg procs in PBAoEs really isnt that great. Looks good on paper but doesnt work too well in actual play. If you want agood dmg PBAoE...roll a fire controller.

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Whs said damage procs? try it with Chain Confusion. Yeah, in reality I wouldn't slot more than 4 procs.

I prefer Ice to Stone because with the stone hold graphics you can't see what's happening.

the stone pet is tougher, and will tank for you. the ice pet is more vicious and will kill for you.