Siolfir

The reason they don't critical is simply because they weren't ever ported correctly - the line items for Stalker criticals were added for Blaze Mastery only. For that matter, the Scrapper Patron Pools are also messed up; if you look at them they talk about being in hidden status. I have no idea why it's messed up for Stalkers since the plan for them was Scrapper all the way... Scrappers were originally getting Brute pools and since Stalkers have an out-of-hidden critical line item that doesn't check for AT (the Scrapper APP criticals are all flagged "if used by a Scrapper") the Scrapper powers can still crit - at a higher chance than they should, since it's the Stalker scaling percentage instead of the Scrapper 5-or-10% critical rate. In the meantime, it's been how many issues and Stalker APPs still haven't had the line items despite repeated reports?

Given the responses to any concerns I've brought up either publicly on the forums or via PM, I decided to have some fun with it and named my most recent Stalker Repressed. I was both amazed it wasn't already taken, and felt it was appropriate.

The 5-min recharge Mission Teleporter, maybe? After all, you get charges with vet reward time and can't you purchase charges of it as well?

Oh, I wasn't trying to say that it was going to be a Sonic Blast Corruptor by any means, just that if you're going to say Kinetic/Sonic Defender, a Sonic/Kinetic Corruptor is going to outdamage it (and yes, a Sonic Blaster is going to do even more). I also didn't calculate out any damage differences at all since you can assume identical attack chains - just using the respective AT modifiers at caps shows such a large advantage to Blaster over the Corruptor over the Defender (5.625 scalar for Blasters, 3.75 for Corruptors, 2.6 for Defenders) that I didn't bother to figure out the resistance differences because the values were simply too far apart to matter.

From my playing on beta, it does stack. But it's not exactly like Energy Absorption: there's less +def and more +end per target.

At the damage cap, the Corruptor is going to win out over a Defender - even with Sonic Blast giving the edge to Defenders, the 500% cap instead of 400% is too much for the resistance difference to overcome. It's why I recommend Corruptors and Controllers (where Containment bypasses their damage cap) for anyone wanting a Kinetic: it's one of the few sets that takes advantage of the higher cap for Corruptors.

You'll likely find that it's something with pets and resistance debuffs - like the Soldier mentioned earlier. But that's assuming the pets are focusing fire on the same target.

Funny, you clearly ignored the part where a Crushing Uppercut critical does more than Assassin's Strike at combo level 3 along with my disclaimer which you snipped out of your quote.

Next are you going to claim that Crushing Uppercut doesn't count as a single target attack, that it doesn't count because it has to be combo level 3, or that because Assassin's Strike's double critical damage edges it slightly that it counts instead?

Or, since you can only seem to read a few words at a time: Learn to read.

Even ignoring that the hardest hitting attacks are AoEs, the highlighted part is no longer true.

Damage-capped Blaster Inferno with average DoT included does more damage to each target hit than damage capped Assassin's Strike.
Then Corruptor Blizzard, because it can Scourge but has a 400% damage cap instead of 500% (if the whole thing Scourges it's well past Blaster Inferno, however).
Then the other Blizzards.
Then Crushing Uppercut on a critical at combo level 3 - it's higher scale than Assassin's Strike (7.155 vs 7.0) so the Scrapper version would be the highest damage but the Stalker version is still more than AS.
Then Assassin's Strike.

If you include double criticals on Stalkers, AS goes to scale 10.5 and Crushing Uppercut at combo level 3 goes to scale 10.335 - the double critical seems to go off at your normal critical rate after Placate.

Keeping in mind that my high-level post-change EA experience involves a copied-over level 50 DM/EA Brute with a pre-i20 softcapped build that I never even respec'd to take Energize, I'd say "better baseline with IOs that becomes worse when debuffs hit". Without Energize she was capable of running around on +3/x8 against Malta and Carnies but she was completely torn apart by Arachnos, who have more psi and toxic damage, which the positional defense in SR will help with, and more defense debuffs, which SR just ignores.

In contrast my SM/WP Brute was built for recharge, with little consideration for survivability beyond what popped up in set bonuses when building for recharge, accuracy, and endurance. She's still easier to keep alive than the DM/EA, even with S/L defense in the upper teens and f/c/e/n/psi in the upper 20s, and not having Darkest Night - really, unless you bottom out her recovery and/or regen, she doesn't worry about it.

BS and DB also have slow AS animations, and StJ is between the normal 3-second and the stupidly long 3.67-second animations.

I recommend softcapping for all Stalkers just due to the "squishy" hp and melee requirement for doing their job, but you can usually use AS just fine against solo targets (that aren't EBs) using Placate - which has enough magnitude to affect bosses (ie, AVs) but not EBs (my usual strategy with troublesome EBs consists of soft-capping defense and hard-capping damage, then just run them through hp before the insps wear off, and if I don't need the insps they aren't "troublesome"). You can also use it pretty reliably in team environments when things are going to be focused on someone else.

Yes, there are issues with DoT, autohit patches, and lots of other annoyances when using AS. But it's not a "DPS-killer" unless you're incapable of letting your character remain still for 3 seconds at a time.

Off the top of my head, Placate needs to apply the Placate effect at the beginning of the animation (which it does) and the +1 kMeter (hidden status) at the end of it. Theoretically that would allow you to get a queued attack off with hidden status for the critical without any attacks coming through to knock you out of hidden status during Placate's animation. Just a simple delayed effect (like they do with the sleeps that do damage) could resolve a lot of the issues. While the devs are doing that they could fix the magnitude so it actually works against EBs, too!

I also think that KM and ElM still have issues with their secondary effects breaking Placate, but I haven't tested that in months.

I was assuming a 3-second AS animation for most of the calculations - I did specifically check KM's shorter animation to see how it affected things - but being favorably comparable to Blaze is strictly from hidden status.

Throwing in Placate (1.716 sec Arcanatime animation) changes the total time to 4.884 seconds, giving it a total combined DPA of 1.484 ds/sec including a 10% chance for the double crit (ie, scale 7.25 vs scale 7.0), or 1.433 ds/sec without including the chance for double crit. That puts it just behind Energy Transfer (1.57) and Crushing Uppercut (1.472 at combo 0), but still better than, say, Storm Kick (1.375) which is 3rd in the "normal" DPA for Stalkers*.

Using Crushing Uppercut after Placate (scale 6.36 minimum in 4.092 sec = 1.554 ds/sec; 1.632 ds/sec with double crits accounted for at combo 0) is probably the best option, but for every other primary there's AS.



* - Note that all of the ds/sec numbers given were at a 10% critical rate, which doesn't affect ET but will affect all other numbers.

Nitpick: When accounting for Arcanatime, Bone Smasher is higher DPA than Energy Punch for everybody except Blasters (who have a different version of EP that does more damage with the same animation). The numbers are close, though, so you may get more proc value out of EP on a lower recharge. On an AT with criticals, due to the reduced damage critical of TF, both Bone Smasher and Energy Punch surpass Total Focus's DPA fairly quickly (1 teammate in range for BS, 2 for EP).

Energy Transfer, with the 1 second animation, did scale 3.838 damage per second of animation (for Stalkers, that's a base 213.5 dpa), and it did it on each and every hit.

Crushing Uppercut, at combo level 3 and on a critical, does scale 7.155 damage (more than Assassin's Strike's 7.0 scale) with an Arcanatime-modified 2.376 second animation, for a "max" of 3.011 scale/second (167.46 base dpa for Stalkers, 188.39 for Scrappers). As good as it is, Crushing Uppercut is no "old ET".

I haven't run the numbers for Street Justice, but prior to i21 from hidden status Assassin's Strike has the best DPA available to Stalkers at all - it's comparable to Blaze, and depending on which AS you're talking about, often favorably. Now, Crushing Uppercut does more damage in less time at combo level 3 (yes, it hits even harder than an AS crit), and even beats it on a crit at combo level 0. So only Street Justice has a better attack after Placate, out of any Stalker set. [edit: checked numbers for CU on beta server (where I had enough points for StJ)]

Outside of hidden status, its DPA is middle-of-the-pack for most sets, usually the 3rd-5th in ranking and usually very close to the powers around it - it's a better DPA attack than Havoc Punch, but not really noticably so. It's second in Spines, sixth in Claws, and last in Martial Arts. The effect on your DPS depends on what chain you're using and whether or not you get interrupted, but saying "it lowers your DPS" is a nice ignorant blanket statement that simply isn't true. Slash lowers your DPS more than Assassin's Slash does, and that's in a set with the 3.67s animation; for KM with the faster animation it's 0.02 scale DPA (1.1 base damage for Stalkers) lower than Body Blow, which is the 3rd best DPA in the set.

Or, the tl;dr version: it depends but usually doesn't hurt, and if you're going to use it don't get hit.

While this is true for Brutes, they said they went with a Scrapper.

I usually throw in some damage before I look for endurance reduction on my Scrappers, and by the time I'm ready to start slotting for EndRed across the board, the set would provide solutions with Energize (temporary solution) and Energy Drain (what are endurance issues?) or I'd simply look to IO sets. However, endurance reduction in the toggles is less effective than in the attacks - so if there are gasp-worthy endurance problems replacing a damage slot here or there with endurance reduction will help more than the toggles.

Two words: Energy Drain. Slotted and just running SOs it's a full endurance refill every 30 seconds with just 2 things around you, or 4 things every 60 seconds unslotted. The more you push your recharge, which is the major contributor of endurance issues with "final builds" on sets, the faster it comes back to refill your endurance.

You've also got Energize, which is mostly a heal now (the reason it was moved to 28 for Scrappers - someone convinced them "it's essential to the set's mitigation" despite the set originally not having any heals) but also carries a global endurance discount a la Conserve Power, which it replaced. On top of that, being a Scrapper you can actually get Conserve Power, which due to it being in Energy Aura Brutes and Stalkers weren't given in their APPs (not that they don't have better options anyway).

Energy Aura is second only to Electric Armor in endurance mitigation, and only second because Electric Armor has the best endurance drain/recovery debuff protection. Yes, the endurance help comes fairly late in those sets - the powers are available at tier 7 and tier 8 - but if you're having trouble with endurance at level 40 on it's nobody's fault but yours.

Highly debatable and usually based entirely on personal preference and willingness to budget for IOs.


If you find it so, then it is. Read the quote in my sig.

Personal preferences are all over the place.

For primaries, I like non-weapon sets (mostly because there's no redraw and it's not all lethal damage which is the most resisted in the game, effectively pre-nerfing your character). For general purpose Electric Melee and Kinetic Melee are very nice for varying size teams, and with a bit less AoE DM is exceptional at small team/solo play. Martial Arts can theoretically put out the most single-target damage but it's all smashing (surprisingly, NOT the second-most resisted - it just seems that way) and lacks any in-set AoE.

For secondaries, I prefer defense and EA just got a buff, but IMO it takes IOs to make it really shine (it just needs fewer of them now). SR is the best "budget" secondary IMO because it's just so easy to softcap, but Nin or DA are probably the most survivable when played to full potential because of the extra tricks. I haven't tried Ice but it should be a good secondary, although the offensive toggles in Ice, EA, and DA can mess up Placate for you.

No it wasn't.

Yep, I remember there being a redname post about it in the beta section of the boards, saying that they were pulling it and giving a date.


I agree with Claws here - AoE DPS is fairly meaningless for anything outside of not just solo farming, but solo ambush farming. For general gameplay and in situations where mobs aren't packing themselves into your AoEs (ie, ambush farming), I've found that what matters is AoE burst and single-target DPS. You kill all the little stuff fast, and whittle away the hit points and anything that survives the AoEs (possibly 1-2 bosses, with maybe an EB/AV/GM thrown in), then move on to the next spawn. That's why Judgment (sic) powers are so nice... they provide high AoE burst to everybody, so anyone on a team can clean up a spawn.

That's where I think StJ gets a low AoE vibe - while it has decent AoEs, especially at high combo levels, it doesn't feel like good AoE burst damage because you can't chain them together at the high combo levels and in order to maximize the burst you also need to enter a spawn with a combo level already built up (not actually that hard in my experience on beta... like I said, the combo levels stick around for a bit) or else build it up after you get there. Is it going to calculate out to be terrible AoE DPS? Probably not. But it's also not going to drop 10 mobs as soon as you enter a spawn, either, so there's this feeling of "subpar" performance when looking at the AoEs themselves they're fairly competitive.

You don't get to knee people to the groin!

Plus, it's -resistance and a combo builder. But really, it's all about the animations in that set: otherwise you'd go with Super Strength or Martial Arts.

It's to see if you're paying attention.