Pyro_Beetle

Its not by such a wide margin to be more than barely noticeable, especially when you consider melee toons. It takes a fair amount of effort for a melee AoE-centric toon to be effective. While they are trying to gather their mob together to leverage their PBAoE powers and cones, you should have already put down several enemies with your strong single target powers, especially the bosses. So they are flashy, you are effective, and the team marches on.

I certainly do not whine about my effectiveness, either here on the boards or in the game. I am perfectly happy to be playing the toon that I am playing, or I do not play them. I see nothing but good things in the proposed buffs to Stalkers. Your whining here on the boards does not accomplish buffing, instead it merely points out that the game doesn't perform as you want it to. You want to have your cake (the stalker) and to eat it too (having the stalker be the best and most required toon, as based on your proposed changes to the entirety of the game). Try playing the toon you like and being happy with it. If you are not, rather than ******** about it, why not try changing toons.

Absolutely not. However, if you choose to play a toon that does not have the capabilities that you wish it does, do not blame the game in its entirety. You have made a thematic choice rather than a mechanical one. Enjoy your theme, but realize that almost always a thematic choice is going to be weaker in a game than a mechanical one. ElM/Nin, StJ/WP, KM/EA are all very effective toons that I have tried. Personally I try to pick effective toons and then fit a theme around them, but if you choose to take less effective sets for thematic reasons more power to you. You just shouldn't expect the entire game to change to suit your thematic choices.

Edit-please note that every AT in the game has powersets that are less effective than the rest. Some sets are awesome and some are less so, but for thematic reasons still get played. Tried playing a Battleaxe toon recently? How about a Psy blast, or electric blast set. How about a Trick Arrow. The fact is that some sets are going to be more powerful than others because of specific powers, and some combinations are going to be awesomely effective because of game mechanics. Purely thematic choices are never going to be as effective as min/maxed ones, and even if you change the game like you want to, that is not going to change that fact. People who play min/maxed toons will just change what they are playing to have the new min/max FotM.

Quite frankly you are wrong.

ST damage is quite viable in 95% of the game. The only part of the game that ST damage is not strong in is the top tier steamroller groups. This type of group represents roughly 5% of the game, at a maximum. A regular group throughout most of the game will value whatever contributions its members can and do make. Especially if they don't whine about their AT, how weak they are, how they are not contributing etc. and buckle down and do the damn job however they can.

This is not to say that stalkers are not an AoE capable class, because they are. My StJ/WP and KM/EA stalkers are both quite viable (and dare I say, even good) in an AoE environment. They both just happen to shine in a ST environment as well, and will do so even more if the dev proposed changes make it to live.

Not only that, but I would say that fully 90% of the possible builds in this game, across all ATs, function at least as poorly as a stalker in the 5% of the game that represents the top tier steamroller groups. Toons that are awesome to play, but slack in the steamroller game are common. And high end groups that will turn you down because you are a stalker are not that common, especially if you are a player that is known to contribute to the maximum of your ability, whatever that maximum might be.

Edit-Changing the entire game because you feel inadequate in the top 5% of the game is a bit ridiculous, and the changes that you do propose are completely out of line and overpowered, and would almost REQUIRE a team to take a stalker to be viable. That is going overboard, and reminds me of CoH in I3, when a team had to have a tank to survive and be viable. The modern game is about flexibility, and although a team might not be optimal, any combination of toons that are willing to work together can be effective, the stalker included.

Or people could play stalker sets that have AoE. As I have said multiple times, if you pick a set for thematic purposes, you are stuck with using that set, and shouldn't complain because the set is not as numerically superior as another set. Yes, there are multiple uses for placate and the hide mechanic, and AoE crits are a great part of it for me...

Personally I am really looking forward to the better ST chain, especially when it comes to leveling up a new stalker.

Let me guess, you are one of those people that peruse an entire newspaper just looking for typos and poor grammar, and then say "This is all crap" without even reading the content of any of the stories.

It is quite simple. There is only time to fix so much stuff before a patch has to go live. I have played on a game where the player community was much like you, and hounded the game mercilessly about every single bug that was in every patch. You know what happened. Patches slowed down, and eventually they stopped. The game died and went away, despite being a great and enjoyable game (Earth and Beyond for those of you that remember it).

As long as none of the bugs that exist are game breaking (and none of the ones that you have listed are, the game still functions just fine), and remain quality of life issues, then the vitriol and insanity that you spew is quite misguided. They fix the QoL issues as they can.

I was going to type a long diatribe, but then I read this...

Signed

edit: Please, please, please stop complaining about outlier powerset combos. The fact of the matter is that the entire stalker AT is like a thematic choice. If you want to play a theme character in CoX you are not going to be optimal from a min/max standpoint. The thing that makes CoX enjoyable and playable is that you can be suboptimal and still be successful, allowing one to create and play toons that are fun and different. Lets face it, unless you are a Fire ranged or a SS/Fire/Soul brute or Fire/SD scrapper you are going to be suboptimal and there is really no point of playing the game anymore if your goal is to min/max and you want to be something different.

I personally don't like to speak out of turn, which is the reason why I do not speak on any other sets other than KM or StJ as a primary. I have limited to no playing experience with any of the other sets. I would say from a general perspective though that using placate combined with a tier 9 (or 8 with ElM) attack mid-combat is going to probably be far more effective than using placate with AS mid-combat, even under that current model. I was merely pointing out that if you only wish to use placate in such a limited role, then it is you that are limiting its effectiveness, not that its effectiveness is limited.

The proposed changes allowing AS to be used mid-fight without having to use placate is a win for all powersets in the AT. It allows for a dramatically increased single target damage, the ability to use AS outside of hide which will make AS viable on teams as well. For those sets that do have AoE, it will allow them, in a team environment, to just open up with their AoE attacks like the rest and then AS a boss with full effect in the middle of the fight. This will allow them to function as well as a scrapper or a brute in a team (although without the damage aura from the secondary) while still enjoying the benefits of being a stalker on a team (increased crits, ability to crit from hide, the ability to ghost missions).

Where is the downside for any powerset in the AT? All that is required is a revision in how you use placate.

Okay, I hate to disagree again, but personally I do not use placate to add to effectiveness of AS on either of my stalkers.

Uses for placate:

1. Solo I will use placate from range before closing on a group of Rikti with a drone so that I can still open the fight on my terms.

2. On my Street Justice stalker placate is used before Crushing Uppercut, guaranteeing a critical hit. Please note that CU hits a bit harder than AS.

3. If there is not hard target with significant hit points left, placate is used prior to Spinning Strike for a 50% chance of critical hit.

4. I haven't been playing it as often (because of the failure on the devs part to give EA a min FX graphic) but on my KM/EA stalker placate is used either prior to burstto guarantee 100% AoE crit or prior to the Tier 9 (if I have used AS from hide to open) to reset Build Up.

None of these are marginal uses of the placate power. The first one may be purely a comfort thing, but the last three are significant increases to burst damage. While it may not be the mythical "taking out a boss with one blow" that will never happen, opening a fight with a AS, SB, Placate, CU ends things right quick against most +2 bosses and against +3 leaves a sliver of health that is taken out from my followup Spinning Strike after the minions have gathered into melee range.

Again, while the proposed changes may not be so great for all stalkers, I am seriously looking forward to them, because on my primary stalker (StJ/WP) I will see significant improvement from all of the proposed changes.

Again, in my feeling, we need to stop comparing an entire AT against outlier sets. Yes a Fire/SD scrapper is going to kill us on damage, both ST and AoE. It is an outlier set, it destroys other scrappers on damage too. Same thing on a SS/Fire brute. Ditto a Fire/Traps corruptor (or Fire/Dark). Anybody noticing a theme here? It is not so much a problem with the stalker AT, its that with the introduction of IOs in I12, the lack of secondary benefits in Fire (that being that Fires secondary benefit was more damage) became no hinderance at all. IOs completely made up for the lack of a KB, Slow, -def, -res or what have you.

Lol, yes and I am sure that people could tell that by the fact that my join date is almost a year ahead of yours. I post only sporadically, and for the most part spend my time in the game rather than on the boards.

Again, I do not think that the issue is an AT issue, so much as it is a powerset issue. Certain powersets just outperform all others (I am looking at you SS) because of a broken mechanic. A broken mechanic (I am looking at you Fury) makes some secondaries perform like monsters (I am looking at you Fire). If you are talking about AoE (and for that matter all around competitiveness) there is nobody going to be selected on a high end trial ahead of a well built SS/Fire Brute for the melee damage slots. The same thing can be said about anything Fire for the ranged slots.

If you stop comparing the entire AT to outlier sets Stalker damage as a whole seems decent, and these proposed changes seem only good.

Sorry, but several Stalker sets have AoE. This is a misconception. While it would be nice to have Spin on a claws stalker, if AoE is your goal, don't play claws, the same for Ninja Blade and Broadsword. Spines has AoE. Electric Melee has AoE. Street Justice has AoE. Kinetic Melee has a very awesome and viable AoE. It sounds to me more like a set choice issue than a lack of competitive AoE issue. Other ATs face these same issues. Lets face it, a dark scrapper or brute isn't exactly cranking out the AoE damage either. Primarily outside of the sets listed for Stalkers AoE, you have Fire and SS, and you have secondaries that add to that AoE as well, especially for brutes with the fury mechanic. Without changing the whole design of Stalkers you are not going to be able to address that, and if you change the whole design (i.e. make hide inherent and give us full scrapper secondaries, and the same thing with the primaries and AS and placate) you might as well just make a scrapper because they would be the same thing.

Personally I love the sound of these changes. Having AS on my Street Justice stalker available for use in mid-combat as a builder would be awesome. And personally I use placate to make my uppercut autocrit against a hard target, so at least on my stalker these changes are pure win.

My point exactly, these are all tankmages already, though the WS comes with a few too many button mashes to reach peak effectiveness for my tastes. And if you would read my posts, my objection is twofold.

1. The game design is such that most mobs fight in and do their best attacks in melee range. By giving a ranged class scrapper level defenses you would literally be going through the game fighting kittens. This can be shown by any of those tankmages you mentioned before, as well as any decent ranged capped blaster.

2. Giving the fury mechanic to the proposed class would obviate the limitation of reducing their damage levels. Remove that mechanic and the class becomes more balanced. If it were a straight trade-off of buff/debuff for defense, keeping damage at defender levels, go for it, but giving the fury mechanic would enable the class to reach blaster level damage in spite of the starting damage levels at defender levels. This is quite clear from the example of how brutes surpass scrappers in damage for a majority of the game (and if you exclude high-end SD scrappers from this, the effectiveness of brutes becomes even more magnified).

None of the posts in support of this new proposed class address either of these points.

The fact is that the limitations that you proposed in your original post are all obviated by what you want to give this new class. By proposing to give it the Fury mechanic you completely bypass the fact that you reduce its damage cap. If you built it so that you had a straight defender level damage, fine. However, by proposing the fury mechanic, you want your new class to go beyond that. As all people who have played the game know and understand, the fury mechanic is extremely powerful. Drop that from your proposal and I would agree that you are not trying to create a tankmage.

That is the point. The OP is not interested in putting in any effort and wants a tankmage right out of the box.