Roughshod

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Quick question:

Is Caltrops + (Trip Mine * 3) a "One Shot" or is it 4 attacks?

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Good job avoiding the issue, Castle. Blizzard asked me to tell you "Thanks!"

I said this would happen.

Once they removed drone debt, there was no longer any reason for anyone to fear camping the enemy spawn. Used to be only level 50s would consistantly risk hospital camping but now everyone does it.

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I'm sorry, but to me, that's an insane way to do it, and it just means good Healing Defenders will be able to exploit this in game for both PvP and PvE content.

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If you mean because they can outheal damage, then it's time for Stalkers to take their own advice:

Group.


PvP is not balanced for 1v1. If changes occur that allow a solo Defender to outheal you, then group up. Nobody can outheal a double assassinate.

Nobody (not even me) is proposing that people be completely immune from insta-death, but we ARE proposing that it at least require a group to do it. If you want to get 3 Stalkers to simultaniously attack a Tanker and kill him instantly, then more power to you.

The time of Stalker solo domination needs to end. Stalkers have been saying "you need to group" far too long while completely avoiding the need to group up themselves.

Take your own pill. Group up.

You're a brave man to post this question in the Stalker forum.


The real issue is one of damage over time.

In a 2 second fight, Stalkers outdamage Scrappers.
In a 5 minute fight, Scrappers outdamage Stalkers.

Stalker vs Scrapper is almost never fair, since PvP battles tend towards the 2 second range. The Scrapper's greater overall DPS doesn't pay off because there's no time.

So "one shotting" isn't the entire problem. The real problem is time based. If all fights last 2 seconds, Stalkers will always win. If all fights last 5 minutes, Scrappers will always win. Something needs to be adjusted so that battles last an amount of time that gives everyone a reasonable chance to participate. Even a Radiation Corruptor could do pretty good in PvP if fights lasted long enough for him to get in some heals. When an Ice/Energy Blaster melts him down in 2 shots, though, then his Radiation heals become useless.


In a world where fights last 2 seconds, Stalkers will always win.


If fixing this problem means we need to buff the Stalker in other ways then that's absolutely fine. If Stalkers require longer to kill people, then give them more resistances to compensate. Or more hit points. Whatever.

The point isn't to "nerf Stalkers", the point is to allow everyone to have fun in PvP and not just burst damage powersets.

Castle needs to represent other classes. We want to be grossly overpowered and unbalanced too, you know!

I think there's a line missing from the description, though:

Below, "A Mastermind without henchmen is easy prey" it should say, "And in PvP, a Mastermind with henchmen is still easy prey."


Just wanted to point that out. No charge.

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Not sure if this is too powerful but I can solo on relentless (Hardest difficulty) at a decent rate. I am a merc/traps Mastermind.

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I just don't see how that's possible, unless Mercs are vastly superior to Ninjas.

Hardest difficulty would give you purple bosses. An orange Freakshow boss will kill Genin in 1 hit. A purple Freakshow boss will kill Jounin in 1 hit. I can't take on those missions solo at that sort of difficulty setting, even if my minions had their damage output doubled!

I tested it some, actually. I had misread your original message and went to the test server thinking it was already patched.... and it was!

My post on the subject was here.


Disclaimer:
I only got to test Ninjas. Ninja upgrades tend to be slow cycling (e.g. Soaring Dragon) or fairly weak anyway (e.g. Poison Dart) so it's possible we were impacted less than other power sets. I can see where Mercenaries may have benefitted more, since all of their Equip powers come into play a lot more often.

*spews coffee*

WHAT?!

Reputation isn't supposed to decay or reset???

Everyone I know has this problem! I've killed approximately a billion people and my reputation was at 10 last night. I'll check when I log in tonight but I bet it's back to 0.

Right now, a level 30 and a level 50 pretty much bring in the same prestige. The level 30 has to kill stuff anyway, though, so telling him he needs to kill 15,000 minions is fine -- he was going to anyway.

The level 50 is getting nothing "extra" out of these kills, though. The main reward, XP, no longer matters, so it makes sense to me to translate that XP into greater prestige.

I can't think of a reason why the devs would want to "avoid" having level 50's generate extra prestige. It sounds like a perfect reward for maxing out your character, to me.


Exemplaring to generate extra infamy to covert to prestige isn't as good of a solution, IMO, because there's no such thing as "infamy debt". Using XP directly has a side benefit of bringing a meaningful death penalty to level 50's, who otherwise have no reason to care about dying.

I had a thought. Right now, you have no use for XP and don't care about debt when you're max level. This is a broken game mechanic because you really never want a case where people just don't care about dying. It encourages griefer-type behavior, like camping hospitals in PvP zones because you just don't care if the drones zap you.


So I thought, why not have XP convert to Prestige once you reach max level? Perhaps not 1 to 1, but some conversion so that a level 50 can go out and kill stuff and gain extra prestige for his guild, beyond what he was getting at level 49.


This has two benefits:

1) Gives level 50's something to do. Base improvements can be SUPER expensive, there's plenty to spend your prestige on, so an extra income wouldn't hurt.

2) Gives level 50's a reason to care about XP debt. Debt = less XP per kill = less prestige per kill, under this plan. Thus, if you want to help your guild by gaining prestige, it's not profitable to camp hospitals and incur a ton of debt.



Thoughts?