Redlynne

What you desire is unreasonable, on multiple fronts.

I've had enough of your bomb throwing and resistance to dialogue.

As you've said, repeatedly ... you're wrong.

Actually ... take a look at the really well done FX you can see on the Malta Sapper's Gun. That combination of glowing blue smoke/plasma and electrical discharging seems like it is something that would lend itself well as a conceptual starting point for the building blocks of a Radiation FX Theme if you were starting from scratch. If you're looking for an inspiration for how to visually symbolize Radiation, you could do worse than look at the Malta Sapper Gun.

So long as the ending for it plays out like the conclusion to Gift of the M.A.G.I. then it's definitely something I'd want Black Pebble to see.

Of course, nowadays we'd be using Titan Weapons there at the end on Mr. Stars On Thars instead.

In case it wasn't obvious enough already, I'm all in favor of permitting pre-designed alternatives to the Pet Avatars we've got. Rather than giving us an AE Custom Critter interface to make the Alternate Pets with, instead we get a listing of the pre-designed choices when WE go to Facemaker/ICON/etc. to edit our own costumes and are looking at Power Animation Choices and looking at the Alternative Animations available to us. That certainly seems like the simplest and lowest risk option available for being able to implement Pet Variety.

Boomtown ... not TOONtown!

I'd say that Spiritual's effect on Healing is most important to Black Dwarf Drain ... but that's hardly relevant to a Human Only Guide now is it?

EVERY SINGLE STALKER PRIMARY APPLIES PERSISTENT DEBUFFS/CONTROLS

• Broadsword: Defense Debuff
• Claws: Defense Debuff (Slash only!)
• Dark Melee: To hit Debuff
• Dual Blades: Defense Debuff, Combo Debuffs/Controls
• Electric Melee: Recovery Debuff
• Energy Melee: Stun
• Kinetic Melee: Stun, Damage Debuff
• Martial Arts: Stun, Defense Debuff
• Ninja Blade: Defense Debuff
• Spines: Immobilize, Slow
• Street Justice: Stun, Knockback, Defense Debuff, Combo Debuffs/Controls

Of this list, only Claws is "sparing" in its application of persistent Debuffs (in that the Defense Debuff is confined to a single attack). Literally every other primary powerset for Stalkers is practically littered with Debuff effects which persist over time, and indeed most of them are build with this express purpose in mind ... to stack up Debuffs and maintain them. Since these Debuffs are all dealt via powers which are coded as Enemies Notice: ALWAYS, this means that every single Stalker Primary has built into it the means to foil Placate's core purpose ... of wiping you off (and keeping you off, until you DO something) an Aggroed Foe's Threat List. This means that the only way to outright PREVENT a hostile Foe from attacking you is to NOT DEBUFF your $Target ... and with a great many Stalker Primary powersets that simply isn't possible.

So how to "fix" that problem?



Well ... there's this wonderful bit of existing game tech/coding called ... Grant Power.



But how would recoding all Stalker Debuff Effects into being a Grant Power help Placate (and Stalkers more generally, even without helping Placate)?

Well ... Grant Power means that the affected $Target casts the Debuff effect on themselves ... rather than it being applied to the $Target by the Stalker. This means that the *attribution* of the Debuff cannot be "held against" the Stalker, which in turn means that the Debuff effect's persistence will not cause the "invalidation" of Placate's Aggro Wipe functionality. This also means that because the $Target is casting the Debuff effect upon themselves, they do not Resist the Debuff's effects in the same way they do when those effects are being cast on them by the Stalker. This has the "net effect" of making the Stalker's Debuffs "throughput" as if they were stronger/more effective against +1/+2/+3/+4 (and beyond) Foes because there is no Level Shifting involved in applying the Debuff to the $Target (since they're casting it on themselves at THEIR Level, not YOURS). Conversely, against weaker Foes, your Debuffs are "less effective" than they might otherwise have been, simply because you're not getting the benefit of Level Shifting when Debuffing Foes who are lower Level than you are.

And this goes without saying, but ... people only really "care" about their Debuffing strength against Foes which are higher level than themselves. Not too many people are worried about stacking up extreme Debuff values against Blues, Greens and Grays (mainly because $Targets who are -1 Level or worse against you tend to not survive long enough to prompt you to "worry" about stacking up Debuffs on them).



It is my opinion that reworking all of the Stalker Debuff and Control effects in their Primary powerset, with the exception of Placate itself, into using Grant Power to deliver their effects ... and *NOT* applying the Effect does not stack from same Caster limitation to them ... would not only go a long way towards resolving the (FIVE YEARS AND COUNTING!) outstanding issue with Placate being "too fragile" to Wipe Aggro reliably ... it would also make Stalker Debuffs and Controls *better* against Hard(er) $Targets, including situations where the Stalker is out-leveled by +1 to +5 Levels. It would give an "edge" to Stalker Debuffs and Controls (globally) which would be unique, and not shared by other Archetypes, lending them a distinct advantage that isn't easily replicated by Scrappers, Brutes and Tankers (ie. The Competition).

Would this sort of change "take effort" from The Powers Team to implement? Yes, it would ... but perhaps not as much as it might at first appear. There is a very substantial amount of "overlap" between the Mag(s) and Duration(s) of a LOT of the Stalker Debuffs and Controls, such that there is a fairly good potential for Re-usable Coding of any sort of Grant Power effect by multiple powers in the Stalker Primaries. The nice thing about such a change would be that it would all be "under the hood" of the existing game mechanics, in such a way as to require no new animations or UI elements ... meaning that it's all just an exercise in rearranging database info in spreadsheets (and then testing it using QA to validate it's working "properly" at the game mechanical level). Basically, someone like Second Measure would need to "sign off" on this as a project and put it on the schedule ... and only the Powers Team and QA would need to allocate resources to it in order to implement (and proof) it.

Unfortunately, the Powers Team is already "booked solid" for the next year ... so any efforts in this direction would not be Coming Soon™ ...

In which case, Angry_Citizen, you need to start campaigning to have all Damage Enhancements for Cone, PBAoE and Target AoE powers shifted from Schedule A to Schedule B ... because that seems to be the only option to achieve what YOU want, which is a Global AoE Damage NERF.

Have fun with that.

That's merely one way of many possible choices ... and is not something which is mutually exclusive with other options. It's also certainly something that would allow Stalkers to meaningfully and *obviously* contribute to AV battles.

Help meeeee .......



... must ... breathe ... AIR ...!

Simple ... yes ... and for the simple minded. It's a shortcut that is only being contemplated because the rest of the Archetype's primary powersets aren't "up to snuff" for doing what they're supposed to do. It's a band-aid, not a solution. It promotes Muscle Memory Button Mashing at the expense of Situational Awareness and the all-important (to me, anyway) aspect of Player Skill. It "dumbs things down" so as to make them "work" for people who don't want to have to work for it.

It IS simple ... and unsatisfying.

There were (and are!) other means to achieve the same objectives, many of which would be "true-r" to the heart and soul of what makes the Stalker Archetype something more than just a Scrapper who can Sneak Around.

Except that Radiation *does* have a real world visual effect associated with it which everyone should recognize ... Cherenkov Radiation.
Everyone knows the phrase, "Nuke 'em till they glow, then shoot 'em in the dark." If "Darkness" is all about Dark color palettes, then "Radiation" (by the same token) ought to be all about Bright color palettes ... since the two are essentially polar opposites to each other.

I never have understood though why the original art team went with GREEN rather than a Soft Diffuse Blue/White color for Radiation. Only thing I can think of is that "radiation" was always "green" in the context of The Incredible Hulk (among others).

For me, this runs the gamut. Everything from the Flares power, which looks a bit like bottle rocket fireworks, to Flamethrower and Ignite in Assault Rifle's as well as Fire Breath's "FWOOSH!" of burning fire, to Archery's Fire Arrow and Explosive Arrow, on out to things like Trip Mine and Time Bomb's "BA-KOOM!" of explosives. I guess the "easy way" to break these things apart, thematically is, as mentioned, whether the damage is being caused by either combustion or detonation. In some cases, such as Flares, it's being caused by both (given the way the power animates and sounds). So this isn't as simple as it sounds (at first glance). But it does make for a good rule of thumb as to whether damage is being caused (primarily) by Burn or Boom as far as how the "Fire" FX ought to be working.

Conveniently enough, most of the "Boom" type of Fire Damage powers involve some sort of Smash/Lethal component to them, which makes differentiating these types of FX easier in terms of concept (although there are exceptions, of course, like Flares).

On this, I personally think that Sonic Blast "better fits" my conception of Sonics better than Sonic Resonance does. That's because I envision "Sonics" as being something which distorts the air it is passing through ... which means it is transparent (mostly), but can be seen by the different refraction index of the light passing through the air in that space. The primary effect for Sonics should be (of course) Sound FX, rather than Visual FX. You run into a problem though when dealing with persistent effects, especially bubbles around your character, where a constant rippling refraction can cause a most unwelcome DISTORTION of what you're seeing around you (at all times). In this respect, I personally see the bubble of FX around the new Giant Hamidon Monster in First Ward to be more like my personal expectation for Sound Bubbles than the legacy FX used by Sonic Resonance. A very slow, "drippy" bubble like that, done up as a CLEAR effect which simply distorts the light passing through it makes a better fit with my personal concept for how to do "bubbles with sound" in this case.

Two words ...

SO DOOMED™ ...



In his defense, I did turn to him during the Powers panel (when you were all revved up about being able to swear!) and privately asked him, "Did you REALLY marry this woman?!?"

The guilty (yet unreservedly proud!) look on his face was SOOO worth it!
Total Kodak Moment right there.

Fixed it for you.

You also haven't seen me soloing and holding the aggro of FIVE RIKTI MAGUS simultaneously for MINUTES (plural!) at a time before the Cavalry can arrive to help my MA/SR Scrapper defeat the dogpile. The challenge of course is to Not Faceplant while doing that, since those Rikti Magus aren't exactly "gentle" with their attacks.

The fun part was doing that *twice* in one run on Virtue ... to the shock and amazement of the other members of the Rim Assault Groups. And then I did it *again* on the next mothership raid right after that run. For quite some time after that, I had quite the reputation ...