Siolfir

And if min/maxing is a priority and you still want to go with a blade set, DB or NB that's proc'd out will be a high end performer in single-target as well, and DB will get you more AoE damage. I still haven't used points to unlock it but there's a lot of love for Staff Fighting - also thematic for a "paper D&D" type character - floating around in this area of the forums.

I just have a personal marked aversion to weapon sets and will take alternatives even if it hurts performance; in the case of Electric Melee and/or Street Justice, it just happens that I don't have to worry about the performance hit.

I <3 my SM/ElA Brute, too. She's fun.

But from a numerical standpoint, there's no doubt that my SS/FA Brute - even ignoring incarnate powers, since I never bothered getting them past alpha on either - will take out a x8 spawn much faster. Most times I play for fun, but sometimes I "work"* for something in game. When you're doing the latter, you use the more efficient tool. And if you're like me, you don't do it for very long before getting really, really bored and stopping (which is why my SM/ElA isn't better slotted).





* - see "farm".

1.13 seconds.

The mallet animation change was a pretty severe change in the set's DPS; it's still a top performer for single target despite that because of Seismic Smash.

And the main reason it fell off the map is because it has the dubious claim of being worse than Energy Melee for AoE damage due to Tremor's animation being longer than Whirling Hands. With the difficulty slider changes, sets with more AoE shot up in popularity.

That said, if you took and slotted Fault and manage to get yourself killed frequently, let me know how. It's better mitigation on its own than many entire secondaries and most control primaries.

Piercing Rounds in Dual Pistols is scale 2.11 at 80' range, although it's a cone instead of a t3 single target blast and so recharges slower and costs more endurance. Executioner's Shot is the 40' scale 2.12 attack, but animates slightly slower - I'm too lazy at the moment to do the Arcanatime calculation to see if they're the same number of ticks, though.

Although it doesn't really matter much: Water Jet's range is getting halved in a patch soon - Synapse posted some changes in the feedback thread and that was one of the things listed.

That said, it seems like a nice enough set just reading the descriptions and it looks great (at least in the character creator - the character I made on beta is only level 2). My only problem was trying to figure out what secondary I wanted to match it with.

I wish I could say it amazes me that combining two ATs with identical team roles (do damage, attract attention) is more offensive to you than getting rid of an AT entirely (Blasters), but it doesn't surprise me. The constant arguments about AT balance back and forth is exactly why I think they need to be combined because there simply isn't enough separation of the roles. Character build and slotting makes more of a difference than AT on any of the melee ATs, but I generally separated into "attracts attention even if they don't want to" and "just kills stuff, getting attention optional".

As for the Scrapper/Stalker hybrid doing less damage, that's my own fault in the post - the original proposal (which was in one of the Stalker feedback threads) used the Scrapper damage modifier, and included AS and Placate in the primary with AS locking out the AoE that it replaced and Placate locking out Confront. I deliberately ditched the second part of that as I was writing the post and changed it to the Assassin's Focus toggle and didn't proofread the lines above as well as I should have because I was thinking about how to integrate Stalkers better into a Scrapper AT. Note to self: just typing the word instead doesn't cut it.

Probably, because they're probably going to be the attacks that you use the most often. But if you tend to not use them (due to low enough DPA not making the proc rate worthwhile, a need to fill in gaps with controls, or whatever reason) then it's not the best spot.

TL;DR answer: yes.

One problem with Hand Clap and Lightning Clap is that they send things away from you when the ATs that can take Super Strength or Electric Melee are ones that generally want everything packed tightly around them - either for aggro control or to make it easier to smash them faster.

So does the KB work better for Blasters with Electricity Manipulation? Maybe, but the Blaster version of Lightning Clap has less than half of the KB of the melee AT versions and is the only version that doesn't have any guaranteed stun (it's 50% mag 2), so no matter what you want to use it for it's complete and utter garbage.

Also, since it was mentioned that "The ones I'm thinking of do nothing *but* knockback" a few posts up... Hand Clap and the Electric Melee version of Lightning Clap have a guaranteed mag 2 stun with 50% of a mag 3 - which is the same stun chance (and duration) that Fault has. But Fault costs less endurance (10.192 vs 13) and recharges faster (20s vs 30s) than Hand Clap or Lightning Clap. Fault also doesn't send things away from you plus it has a short range of its own, meaning you're far more likely to be able to chain it continually and permastun entire spawns even if the recharges were identical.

The "penalty" for Fault is that you have to be on the ground to use it, which usually isn't a problem at all.

It was addressed somewhat, but not outright explicitly stated, here:
If most of your damage is coming from procs in order to get kills and the procs are reduced enough, you no longer get kills unless the other person is afk or terminally stupid.

I'm not sure how much reduction would cause that but since the only way to determine a winner is based on defeating the other team, how many 0-0 ties would you want to participate in?

Thus, the concern.

If recent examples are any measure, there won't be a mez hole regardless of thematic appropriateness. Complaints during beta will plug them (see: Willpower) or they'll just deliberately plug them all to preempt the complaints (see: Shield).

That's why I find it so funny that there's all this discussion about what holes should or shouldn't be there - people will complain until the holes are plugged regardless, even though the same hasn't happened with the older sets.

*passes the popcorn*



Now, more nitpicky goodness, just so I can come back with another bag of popcorn later!

ra·di·a·tion/ˌrādēˈāSHən/
Noun:
1. The emission of energy as electromagnetic waves or as moving subatomic particles.
2. The energy transmitted in this way.

(not part of definition, but go look it up)
Radiation comes in many forms - alpha (essentially, a Helium-4 nucleus), beta (an electron), gamma (photons), and more (neutrinos, for example). I'm lumping X-rays into gamma radiation because it's all essentially EM waves/photons at different frequencies.


e·lec·tric·i·ty/ilekˈtrisitē/
Noun:
1. A form of energy resulting from the existence of charged particles (such as electrons or protons), either statically as an accumulation...
2. The supply of electric current to a house or other building for heating, lighting, or powering appliances.

Electricity is energy due to charged particles.
Radiation is the emission of them, or the energy transmitted from the emission.

So you see, Radiation is not Electricity. The sets are different.

(also, radiation can directly create electricity - that's how photocells work - and vice versa)

There are two problems with that; the first is that PPM procs (which the ATO procs are) have reduced effectiveness in AoEs, and the second is that Assassin's Strike is better for sustained damage over time outside of hidden for every primary plus you don't have to worry about turning it interruptible and increasing the cast time by 2 seconds in the middle of your chain.

Plus when you can SK->AS->CU with an Achilles' proc and a guaranteed critical on a combo level 3 Crushing Uppercut, you're doing more burst, too.

I admittedly used an extremist example to illustrate the point - simply put if you're a solo Stalker facing a solo Stalker and either one of you ends up getting killed, you either mutually agreed to stand there and not use any escape tactics and powers or else the one that got killed is terminally stupid.

But IF the reduction in proc chances actually breaks past a threshold as Sentry4 predicts - and I'm not convinced it does, although it's something to watch out for - then it does run a risk of turning what's already mostly "calculated damage spam" into "damage spam and pray you get lucky or they lose connection".

Yes and no; it will affect both sides of a match equally but if nobody gets any kills it turns it into a slightly more advanced version of tic-tac-toe where everything ends up 0-0 ties. Try watching a Stalker-vs-Stalker arena match sometime.

In that case, it may be "balanced" but it's not competitive.

It's precisely because it's make-believe that lets people try to present the challenge. From a logical perspective, once you make the assumption that direct mental attacks on other people are possible the only set that reasonably justifies any psionic protection at all is Willpower.

I just think that you'd end up doing less damage with your suggestion as listed than with the proc nerf, but if I'm missing something please let me know.

Off-topic to the PPM question, but relevant to the suggested solution - don't most arena matches leave DR on because the base resistances granted for the PvP environment end up causing you to do far less damage overall, even with a better chain and unresisted procs firing more often?

The settings I've seen almost universally disabled were heal decay and travel suppression, and the answer when I asked about DR was that "it made it almost impossible to get a kill against someone who was halfway competent" because there wasn't a way to disable the base resistances. While I admittedly am not an expert and haven't done any calculations to figure out how the effects would change, the reasoning behind your suggestion of disabling DR seems to be the same, and I don't see how the suggestion puts you in a better place.

Edit: posted this in the thread in the PvP section discussing the upcoming changes - replies on this tangent should probably go there.

Nah, if you took your mez protection as soon as it opened up, you get to keep it even if you do exemp - Scrappers and Brutes get their mez protection at either level 10 or 16 depending on powerset.

It's not like you said it's a DFB.

Admittedly I started in issue 7 instead of issue 6 (or CoV beta pre-i6), but as far as I know Stalkers never got crits on stunned targets. The 20% chance was for held or sleeping targets only for as long as I'm aware of.

I'm not disagreeing with any of the other points, and I am aware that some changes were made to Stalkers before I started (hide suppressing on clicking glowies being one). I just wanted to address this because I got to hear about how stuns help Stalkers get criticals for years - even after the revamp where the mez criticals only happened in PvP - as a reason for EM's stuns being reduced. Since it hasn't been that way for as long as I've had an account it's a convenient excuse based on misrepresentation rather than a logical reason.

I don't remember a dev saying it, but I know several players - myself included - who have speculated that exact thing. If someone can find a redname post on it (or if a redname happens to reply here ), I'd appreciate the ability to stop calling it speculation.