Siolfir

Sadly, from my limited experience as the worst empath in a quickly-dead ladder on test, this is all true. And yes it's incredibly stupid and nonsensical that the hardest hitting attack in PvE for Ice Blast (BIB) is garbage damage in PvP, but they made changes to "ease the barrier of entry" and so now you have to learn a whole new set of rules and what your powers do and more specifically, don't do.

And I think it's 42 points of KB protection to prevent a slotted Force Bolt from knocking you.

Backwards... sentient but not really intelligent. It can make decisions, they just aren't very good ones and it doesn't learn from its mistakes very well.

But Shivan Cheerleader is already level 50!

Some numbers are the same, some are lower (heals, to-hit and damage debuffs, to name a few). And MMs have higher endurance costs in their secondaries for the same powers, even if they were using powers that have the same effectiveness.

It was reported later in the thread that after testing, it wasn't fixed. It works with dying mobs, not fading corpses.

Well... I did cure a friend of saying "bite me" all the time by doing so (and claiming I was just following directions).

I haven't figured out how to get it to work via the internet though, so I think the devs are safe.

It doesn't get Nut... er, Rib Cracker.

But mostly, it's because they kept all the finishers in and the combo builders (other than Rib Cracker, which carries a damage and resistance debuff on the target, which is why I want it more than the animation) are pretty much swappable. Given how Electric Melee and Kinetic Melee were ported, hopefully this is an indication of a new direction in Stalker powersets rather than an oversight on the part of the powers team.

Lies! Beta testing is only about word-of-mouth promotion and looking at new shinies early!

I noticed that all of the criticals were based on combo level 0 as well, but the fact that they get a "full damage" critical even at combo level 0 on all of the powers that can critical makes it a very nice set for both Scrappers and Stalkers.

Would it hurt to add in the extra lines for "only combo level x" and have different criticals? Probably not, but it's extra time that I'd rather they spend looking at overall AT issues rather than buff one set that's already going to be a top performer.

CR sets you to combo level 3, which increases the base damage and exceeds the difference in +damage quite easily on the next power from a dead start. It's probably a wash overall, given that other powers can raise the combo level and that it's likely you'll use a finisher immediately after CR that drops your combo level back to 0. For pure "peak" burst it's funny that Stalkers have to work for it with BU but have the better sustained BU window in this set.

And, since there's no NDA and anyone that can post can get to the section anyway, Street Justice's tier 9 Crushing Uppercut has a scale 3.18 base at no combo level with a full damage (scale 3.18) critical at 100% from hidden status. At combo level 3, it outdamages Assassin's Strike (scale 7.155 total) with a shorter animation, no interrupt, an 11 second mag 3 hold, and 100% knockup. Oh, and a 13' range.

Sadly, Stalkers lost the -resistance power for AS, and BU doesn't add combo levels... BU+AS+Shin Breaker+Placate+Crushing Uppercut would be a fun BU window, though.

A 200% damage "standard" critical would necessitate a revamp to Assassin's Strike: its critical damage (scale 4.5) is under 200% of the base damage (2.5), plus it has other criteria deliberately added to make it more difficult to use (interrupt). Then again, a 200% critical on everything else would mean that AS could simply be done away with and the removed AoE attack could be added back in, as any and every hard-hitting single target attack would essentially become an "Assassin's Strike" from hidden. So I'm really not seeing the extra critical damage on everything being something the devs will be willing to sign off on.

The following attacks would do more than Assassin's Strike's current scale 7.0 damage with the proposed 200% critical:

• Broadsword: Head Splitter
• Dark Melee: Midnight Grasp
• Dual Blades: One Thousand Cuts (in an AoE!)
• Energy Melee: Energy Transfer* (if allowed to critical)
• Energy Melee: Total Focus* (if allowed to critical)
• Kinetic Melee: Concentrated Strike* (if allowed to critical)
• Martial Arts: Eagle Claw

Of the ones that currently are allowed to critical, Eagle Claw would be the biggest winner on a single target at scale 8.76, or a base level 50 damage of 487.14, compared to AS's current 389.27, and Dual Blades would get an AoE dealing scale 7.083 in One Thousand Cuts.

Dropping back into hidden status after an out-of-hidden critical just ensures a back-to-back critical situation, and if you have it replace the critical and drop you into hidden instead it means you have a good chance of completely losing out due to incoming attacks on non-defense sets. A play on the insta-recharge mechanic allowing Placate to instantly recharge at a fixed percentage from single-target attacks could mimic the effect: yes, it will force you to go through the animation time, but will also allow you to cycle Placate more often, theoretically aiding survival (if you assume that the bugs in Placate will be fixed and you don't use a set that has DoT).

And the easiest and most server-calculation-friendly way of extending the team critical bonus radius is to eliminate the radius entirely and base it on team size alone. You have to have that count to determine what to check distances on, it's probably a simple variable lookup instead of actually counting (no guarantee here, though - it's not like I've seen the code), and it's not like it wasn't done for Dominators to accelerate Domination bar filling, so there's a precedent.

Either of those powers could be completely or partially rolled up into the others, which has been done for other Stalker secondaries. For example, the higher defense values in the toggles in Energy Aura to make up for the loss of Energy Cloak, and Evasion's higher AoE defense in Super Reflexes to make up for not having Lucky.

It's all based on AT modifiers - holds use the Ranged_Immobilize attribute for their duration, and the magnitude is fixed (Domination and Overpower simply add another hold on top of the original - longer duration for Domination, shorter duration and usually lower magnitude for Overpower).

At level 50, the AT modifiers for both Ranged_Immobilize and Ranged_Sleep are:
Controller: 1.863
Defender / Dominator: 1.470 (78.9% of Controller duration)
Corruptor: 1.192 (63.98% Controller duration, 81.1% Defender/Dominator duration)

From there, it's up to you. Note that the APP version of Mass Hypnosis is set to 20x the modifier instead of 12x which gives it a longer base duration, but has a lower target cap (10 vs 16) in addition to the higher recharge and endurance cost.

Here. It's all Moderator 07's fault.

You get 1.875% defense to all while Hide is suppressed, not 0.2%. When it's NOT suppressed, you get 3.75% defense to all except AoE, and 37.5% AoE defense on top of the 1.875% that's always there.

Also, the 149' of perception I mentioned earlier was because of snipers - normal perception radii in PvE range from 45' (minions) to 55' (bosses); stacking Hide with anything in PvE is fairly useless because the only thing that's going to see through 150' of stealth would see you at the PvE stealth cap of 300' as well.

So with whipped cream?

This - with the additional explanation that the blurb about being able to stack it with other forms of Stealth is due to it not being mutually exclusive with the other powers (like Stealth and Invisibility, for example).

In PvE, nothing that doesn't have a +perception buff (so basically anything outside of custom AE mobs) will have a higher perception than 149', and anything that sees through Hide by itself simply ignores any level of stealth radius.

Interruptible, with a relatively long animation time, that's only "the best single-target attack" conditionally - it's base damage and DPA are low and only the extra critical damage on it makes it worthwhile in most sets*. Those are the main complaints about it.

As for "expanding the radius for team criticals"... how about simply eliminating the radius and counting team size, period? It's faster to process, means that the Stalker's performance is still dependent on having teammates but not on what they're doing, and doesn't affect solo performance at all.





* - by DPA, assuming no interruption, it's ranked as follows: BS: 4th; Claws: 6th; DM: 5th; DB: 3rd; Elec: 5th; EM: 6th; KM: 4th; MA: 7th; Kat/NB: 6th; Spines: 3rd. KM's AS is the highest, and it's the 30th best DPA for Stalkers outside of hidden status.

Yay for embedded quotes!

Tankers: 0.8 (AT mod) * 2.0 (100% damage slotting) * 1.2 (Bruising) = 1.92

Now that I found that post, I really should go back and change the numbers I put in it, too. It still has the too-low Brute damage cap.

Yeah, well, that's why there are all these threads. And the critical chance pushes the number higher to increase the gap between Stalker and Tanker damage to make it a significant difference over time, but not every attack criticals at 100% damage and until you get into the higher end of the scale and on a full team they still do less damage than Brutes and Scrappers while using the same attack chain.

One of the reasons that I messed up the Brute damage cap was that I thought it was adjusted to make their capped damage low enough that not just Scrappers could pass it while using the same scale attack, but Stalkers could also.

At old, 850% cap:
Brute: 0.75 * 8.5 = 6.375
Scrapper: 1.125 * 5 * 1.1 (10% critical for Lt+) = 6.1875
Stalker: 1 * 5 * 1.1 (solo critical rate) = 5.5
Tanker: 0.8 * 4 * 1.2 (bruising) = 3.84

At 775%, Scrappers, Stalkers, and Tankers remain the same:
Brute: 0.75 * 7.75 = 5.8125

At 675% - where I incorrectly thought it was set to:
Brute: 0.75 * 6.75 = 5.0625

So when everything is at the cap, the only melee AT that Stalkers outdamage is Tankers when solo, but due to criticals and a higher damage cap it's pretty significant. They don't go past Scrappers until you get to 5-7 teammates within 30' of the Stalker, and require 3+ teammates within 30' to go past a Brute at the cap; this is also ignoring the effects of armor sets that Stalkers don't have access to which provide additional damage.

Meh, no big deal - I did it upthread with the new Brute damage cap that I thought was nerfed more than it actually was. I just wanted to point it out, like my mistake was pointed out, so that it's a learning experience.

From when I started in i7, Stalkers had a 0.9 modifier - but even back then Tankers were 0.8 and Brutes 0.75; they were buffed when VEATs were added and got the scaling critical chance and a 1.0 modifier.