Siolfir

Hm... I'd suggest the dearth of redside content, but it's kindof old and there was a lot of love shown this past issue.

How about "when is Street Justice going live?" and whether or not it will have Rib Cracker to replace the tier 2 combo builder for Stalkers?

I didn't think it was ready to go live, but as has been pointed out in the thread - some things aren't going to happen exactly the same way on different loads, usage, and environments. But the beta server wasn't exactly stable either.

True. And Saturday afternoon is as much of a prime time as Friday night. That's why it should have been Saturday early morning.

As for the rest of it... I assume that you've never been any sort of work environment where the words "mission critical" mean "I don't care who you are or how long it takes"? It's standard operating procedure in many fields, and far from the "unconscionable" that you make it sound.

I would posit that any Controller who has trouble holding a boss is so grossly incompetent that they would have similar trouble while playing a /Time Corruptor. Using two powers on the same target to hold a boss is still two powers to hold a boss. If you're going to say the Corruptor has the advantage there, then you may as well talk about how much better Ice Blasters are than Controllers because they've been able do the same thing for years.

Corruptors are tied at dead last for the shortest duration for holds in the game, they have absolutely no advantage over Controllers in that regard that another AT wouldn't be able to do as well or better. And the Controller could take /Time and stack holds which would last longer - with or without Time Crawl.

My point was, they knew they were doing this and had the patch at 10p EDT. If it was so critical that it had to be done right away, they could have done it then - they did during 2xp weekend, after all!

However, they didn't. They pushed it off until later, and then chose a "later" time where a large number of people will be playing rather than a "later" time where few people would be - I very seriously doubt that there are fewer players on at noon on a Saturday than there are at, say, 4am on the same day.

I'm actually somewhat for the maintenance, because I want them to fix bugs. But it does wreck what I was going to do with my afternoon, and it didn't have to. That's the "discussion" part of this that I agree with - if it can wait for a better time, make it a time that's actually better.

If that were the case, they could have done it overnight or in the very early morning - the post announcing the downtime was just before 10p EDT.

It's great that they're willing to pay people to come in to work on it on Saturday* but if they were going to do it "as soon as it's ready" then it would've gone in overnight when the fewest players are on. At my last job anything critical enough to pull things down during a peak activity time happened as soon as they knew about it (ie, no announcement 14 hours in advance) and anything that could wait 14 hours could wait until 3am when the rest of the maintenance gets done.



* - which really probably means they're salaried and don't get overtime, my natural cynicism points out

*yoink*

On topic... I picked it up because I had points and not much better to do. I didn't play it much in beta and don't have any ideas in mind for one but I like ranged damage characters. And I don't like weapon sets.

I've felt that Melt Armor was underpowered ever since I first got it years ago due largely to the stupidly high recharge on it. So you're not alone in that individual regard. But as others have mentioned, there are a lot of powers that are superior to Melt Armor (two others right off the top of my head are Sleet and Freezing Rain) and the devs just don't look at it on a power-by-power instance.

But Time being overpowered? Nah, can't get on board with that.

It does not give a message saying it has been triggered. From the same thread, in a later post:

Yes, but you're assuming that the logic of telling people that it's been there for months will actually stop the claims of it ruining their PC. The response in most of those cases is usually "well, it just took this long to cause the problem!"

If they wanted a DOOOOM-free launch of this they just would've stealth added it, and when people filed bug reports about not getting xp/inf let customer service handle the fallout when people are told "it's an anti-exploit measure added [a while back]", which then allows them to remove any posts about it on the forums because that would be posting interactions with customer service the same way they removed every post about people getting hit the first round of character deletions/lockouts from AE.

Then there'd be no evidence of it happening that anyone could talk about, people would assume it's (yet another) bug that made it live, and most of the forum-going playerbase, which is already a relatively small fraction of the players, would never know it exists. Even if it does go public, they could quietly confirm and you're no worse off than the false launch, without explicitly lying to the players.

I'm not the one saying that it needs to be made worse than it is, and the post you quoted was me saying that the only reason Stalkers are even competitive in burst damage was due to " Assassin's Strike's extra damage", meaning the from-hidden critical.

I certainly wasn't saying that it makes it so much more useful during the middle of a fight, although with high defense it's actually the 3rd best DPA attack for several primaries (it's actually better than Havoc Punch, which I see some people being told to use in single-target chains).

Energy Melee is far worse off than Martial Arts in regards to animation times and also has zero AoEs for Stalkers. And it was deliberately changed to be that way when it had little-or-no AoE (based on AT using it) and just high single target damage going for it. So no, the devs aren't going to buy off on giving one set the end-all-be-all single target advantage just on a whim.

Or did you miss that every useful power in Martial Arts fits between the DPA of Energy Transfer - admittedly still the highest for Stalkers - and the next best attack for EM, which varies based on your critical rate between Bone Smasher and Total Focus, even without your proposed buff?

While I agree with the premise that if you have no AoE you should be able to make it up with high single target damage, you are in no way coming remotely close to balancing things - it should either be done for both sets, or not done at all and another alternative chosen.

My Ice/Rad Corruptor uses toggles for survivability, and RI has a long animation time. That said, once I got Power Sink in Mu Mastery I'd let off Blizzard pretty much as it recharged, even with SOs. It does insane damage, acts as a soft control, can be set off from outside of line of sight, and I could refill my endurance bar and either move on to the next spawn knowing that nothing was chasing me or throw up EF while watching things flop around and die.

My Cold/Ice Defender also uses Blizzard frequently, for the same reasons. While it does the same damage as the Blaster version of the power, it's not quite as damaging as the Corruptor version since it doesn't Scourge and sometimes things survive. But with Cold Domination, it's all clicks and Heat Loss when saturated can overcome the -recovery and you can still gain endurance even during the crash. Just use the clicks first!

So yeah. The thought process is something along the lines of:

• Do I have a blue inspiration and/or an endurance refill power?
• Do I need endurance when this is done?
• Do I just want to watch things go boom?

If I answer "yes" to any one of those and it's recharged, I'll probably use the nuke. They're never really a good option... but they're fun!

Just nitpicking on skipping Arcanatime after you posted before that you really should take it into account when it was brought up before, and disagreeing with your arbitrary 65-90 range and substituting my own completely arbitrary list.

As for the second part of the post... somehow I don't think that the devs are going to give one set 5 of the top 8 DPA attacks, and the top 4 that actually critical.

Fixed that for you. The only thing that makes Stalker single target damage comparable to a Scrapper in short-term burst is Assassin's Strike's extra damage - power by power they fall behind with each attack otherwise; it would be beyond retarded to take it away in exchange for hit points and call it remotely close to balanced.

They could straight up buff Stalker hit points without any other changes and it still would be debatable whether or not they're balanced compared to Scrappers because the value of burst vs dps is debatable. Since burst is really only useful if there's enough to kill whatever you're facing, hard encounters turn into dps situations, meaning that AoE burst is generally enough (ambush farms aside) while anything you want high single target damage to fight is not a burst situation and so you want higher dps.

Still ignoring Arcanatime?

Scale 7 for AS from hide (2.5 base + 4.5 crit) in 3.168 seconds (Arcanatime for 3 second animation) is damage scale 2.210/sec. To convert to level 50 damage, that's 122.876 damage/sec. For comparison, Blaze is scale 2.102/sec with average DoT ticks accounted for (damage/sec variable based on AT - for Blasters it's 131.49, for Corruptors 88.66 - that's why I normally use damage scale since it's just a straight power-to-power comparison).

And taking AS-from-hide out of the picture, using a 10% critical rate and 100% chance to hit (not capping at 95%) the powers that fall within 65-90 damage/sec are pretty slim - here's the list that's above 64 unenhanced, with over 65 highlighted:

1. Energy Transfer (87.32)
2. Storm Kick (76.46)
3. Midnight Grasp (75.24)
4. Sweeping Strike (71.62)
5. Golden Dragonfly (70.44)
6. Crippling Axe Kick (70.17)
7. Soaring Dragon (69.51)
8. Smite (67.97)
8. Ablating Strike (67.97)
8. Chain Induction (67.97)
11. Concentrated Strike (65.21)
12. Crane Kick (64.88)
12. Cobra Strike (64.88)
14. Eagle Claw (64.44)
15. Focus (64.41)

Note that pretty much all of Martial Arts is in the top 15 DPA attacks for Stalkers - Thunder Kick and Assassin's Blow are the only two missing.

1.33 activation OR 1.36 activation = 1.584 sec Arcanatime; current Arcanatime is 1.848 sec, difference of 0.264 sec (2 server ticks).
2.33 activation = 2.508 sec Arcanatime; current Arcanatime is 2.772 sec, difference of 0.264 sec.

I'm too lazy to come up with attack chains using those activation times, but if you make an attack chain just add up all the damage it would do, then use those numbers for the time the attacks take in the denominator.

It would make the following changes to the list above, though - same situations:

1. Energy Transfer (87.32)
2. Crippling Axe Kick (81.87)
3. Storm Kick (76.46)
4. Crane Kick (75.69)
4. Cobra Strike (75.69)
6. Midnight Grasp (75.24)
7. Sweeping Strike (71.62)
8. Eagle Claw (71.22)
9. Golden Dragonfly (70.44)
10. Soaring Dragon (69.51)
11. Smite (67.97)
11. Ablating Strike (67.97)
11. Chain Induction (67.97)
14. Concentrated Strike (65.21)
15. Focus (64.41)

(This is why I use a spreadsheet to do all these calculations for me: just fill in new values, let it spit out results! I also let it handle the crit rate for me so I only have to change one number to see how things change around with the no-crit/reduced crit powers! )

Stalkers don't get it. Instead, they get a version that has a higher damage scale.

This gives it roughly the same DPA as Focus* once you account for Arcanatime - still less than Storm Kick, Crippling Axe Kick, Cobra Strike, and Crane Kick in Martial Arts, but a very respectable number on its own.





* - it's actually slightly higher

My complaints about EM and team contributions are due more to the speed of the set - it feels slow - and the total lack of AoE for Stalkers than about comparisons to how it was pre-nerf.

I never felt it was a great set for team play, even with the 1-second animation on Energy Transfer. At least back then it was undeniably great at single-target to make up for the lack of AoE - which made it great for soloing against hard targets - and I could go through most play sessions without a single attack that animated slower than 1.5 seconds (Bone Smasher) on my EM/Elec Brute.

It can still be fun, but if you're going to feel like you're not contributing much if your target dies during the animation of your best attacks and/or feel that Assassin's Strike's animation is too long to make it a useful power, you probably won't feel like you're contributing with EM. That's why I recommended the other sets.

If it's concept, and you know what you're getting into with EM (for example, due to having an Ice/EM Tanker) and still find it fun, then roll it and enjoy. I just didn't want to have a high expectation.

As for teaming with a Stalker, it's already been covered and was before my first post. You make troublesome mobs go away quickly, whether that's a boss that would live past the first round of AoE burst the team generates or whether it's picking off that Spectral/Sorcerer/Sapper/Surgeon/etc. (wow, look at all the troublesome S mobs!) that can make the rest of the fight a pain. I'd advise against hit-and-run because your team critical bonus can get you to generate a lot of extra damage with most sets, and AoEs have the same chance on those criticals as your single target attacks, unlike from hidden status.

If you love Energy Melee, great - roll your EM/Ice and enjoy it. If you're looking to contribute more to a team, you probably want a different primary, though. EM has no AoEs, reduced (or no) damage criticals on the hard hitters, and the hard hitters are also slow animating with damage coming at the end - this causes you to use a lot of animation time on corpses if teammates pick the same targets. It's not exactly the best set for team contributions.

For a pure single-target set, Martial Arts is nice and if you want an alternate damage type you can take Dark Melee and get at least a small cone. Kinetic Melee has no critical damage on Concentrated Strike but has a 100% chance to critical from hide on it's PBAoE, and has Build Up available on a whim once you hit level 32. Electric Melee is a rare Stalker set that didn't give up an AoE, so works well; Street Justice - as tested before it was yanked from beta - doesn't have the resistance and damage debuff for Stalkers but also doesn't lose an AoE and Crushing Uppercut can hit harder than Assassin's Strike with a shorter animation time, longer range, built-in hold and knockup, and no interrupt.