Siolfir

The numbers assume the Stalker is solo, so a flat 10% critical rate, but no damage procs; as mentioned the assumption is that Build Up recharges every time CS lands. For more details on the chain you can check the thread - the post was in response to whether or not KM did more sustained damage than EM, thus the comments below and the footnote which was also quoted.

If nothing else it'll give you a basis to start until someone posts better numbers and shows the Scrapper blowing these numbers away.

Which implies team content, where AoE damage is almost always going to be a more significant contribution to the team; with a single notable exception, Stalkers sacrifice one of their AoE damage powers for an interruptible single-target power that really only shines when used from hidden status. On top of that, such situations are the ones where damage auras - which Stalkers have none of - add a significant contribution.

Beyond that, it's not what the Stalker does that allows them to exceed Scrapper DPS via a higher critical rate - it's what their team does, and that's not something that they can control.

I actually like Stalkers for soloing because most of the time it's not just button-mashing (that's what Brutes are for); but with the way the game is set up, on teams button-mashing is pretty much all you need. I just think that if the devs are going to try to force balance on melee ATs they should force it on all of them. I want some consistency.

Dark Miasma says 'hi'.

For the "best Psi choice", I'd recommend Fortunata as well. They get all of the AoEs and most of the useful single-target attacks, they're extremely easy to soft-cap, have debatably the best mez protection in the game since they get both Brute/Scrapper-level protection and high resistance to minimize stacking, scaling resistances that kick in faster and give higher values than SR's passives, to-hit debuff resistance and in-set leadership powers for minimal endurance costs, both single-target and AoE controls, and the melee attacks, modified Brute Patron Pools, and stealth are simply icing on the cake.

After that, I'd recommend pairing Psi with something else on whichever AT you choose. I was really frustrated with my Mind/Psi Dominator due to psi resistance all over the place late in redside PvE content and deleted her at level 42 before the Dominator revamp, but another primary would likely help with the annoyances I had. I also like my DP/MM Blaster, and Rad/MM Blasters are really fun for AoE as well - for Psi Blast specifically I'd wait on a Corruptor, assuming it's a straight port of the Defender version. I've thought of a Psi/Poison Corruptor for giggles, but want to see what happens with the sets in proliferation.

I didn't do the math, but...


I didn't bother with +damage powers - and said as much in my post. I merely wanted to show that ignoring all else and only accounting for the AT ranged damage modifier, the higher -resistance values leans the damage towards the supposedly-lower-damage Defender. Once you throw in the extra +damage it gets skewed even more, and Scourge has to kick in for the Corruptor to be competitive. There was a thread a while back that tried to calculate how much extra damage you get from Scourge when taking overkill shots into account but I forget the results - they changed based on comparative level, mob rank, and all sorts of things. If I remember right the highest listing had about 15%.

That said, the Corruptor does have a few more hit points.

The animations aren't slow, but the damage does come late in the animation - instead of like many other sets where it comes near the beginning of a slightly longer animation. For some people that makes the set feel slow because if, for example, you use Bone Smasher (1.5 sec/1.716 sec) while I use Smashing Blow (1.2/1.452 sec) at the same time, your damage hits first even though the animation for my power is shorter and I'll be able to activate another power a little under .3 seconds before you will.

The recharge on the powers - and thus the base damage - is the reason that KM isn't higher damage; the animations are fast but the DPA on everything but Concentrated Strike and Smashing Blow is average at best.

Currently, some Stalkers can out DPS some Scrappers. However, some Scrappers can put up some numbers that no Stalker can touch due to persistent damage buffs - of a higher magnitude, and to a higher base damage - along with additional damage sources in a few secondaries which Stalkers don't have access to.

I'd rather each AT retains some flavor as well - I argued against the higher damage for Defenders because of Corruptor damage being so close, and would prefer that proliferation be skipped on some sets that were designed with certain ATs in mind - but that doesn't appear to be a concern with many of the recent changes and damage buff is "easy", which means "has a possibility of actually happening". I started the "So... Stalkers" thread to kick ideas around, not to present "the way I think things should be". There were several good ideas brought up and debated there, none of which were implemented.

First, it wasn't a serious comment - although when I'm trying to go through a lot of minions I tend to use LR.

Second, it's relevant since if someone's complaining that everything is dead before Assassin's Strike goes off, they probably did something else beforehand.

Third, get over yourself. You're not the sole voice on these forums and you're definitely the most inflammatory one in this thread.

*LOGICAL FALLACY ALARM!*

There's no power creep when you increase the power of the weakest to perform up to the average. By not changing Scrappers when Brutes were changed, the devs already set the bar for desired performance as far as damage-to-survivability. Tankers got buffed (higher hp cap, Bruising for more damage) and Brutes got (slightly) nerfed. Stalkers are clearly underperforming.

There's no reason that Assassin's Strike can't do different damage in PvP and PvE - almost every other attack power in the game does. Damage in PvP is never an excuse after issue 13 because power effects are separate.

Because Lightning Rod doesn't mess up the critical on Assassin's Shock.

I doubt you're going to have as much trouble because Energize is going to be your heal, and it still provides a global endurance discount. My EM/ElA Brute can run 8 toggles (the 3 toggle armors, Tough, Weave, Lightning Field, Maneuvers, and Sprint), has Power Sink frankenslotted with 4 slots, and can keep up just fine even against solo GMs. My SM/ElA, using just SOs, can keep up while running the 3 toggle armors, Tough, and Weave.

And my KM/EA Stalker - without Energize - uses Energy Drain more often to heal than for endurance. I'm not sure where the problem is coming from.

Unslotted, both provide the same +hp - and either will, unslotted, hit the +hp cap for Stalkers.

Both accept heal enhancements. But only half of Dull Pain's +hp is enhanceable, while all of Overload's +hp can be enhanced. Thus making Overload "fully enhanceable, unlike Dull Pain". Due to the hp cap, it actually matters on Brutes and will matter a lot more on Scrappers and eventually Tankers - since Energize's +regen will get a boost from the higher hp value than it does for, say, Electric Armor's Power Surge.

But the whole point of the post is that Stalkers have more than one +hp click power, despite how marginal the effectiveness of +hp is on an AT that can cap hp with 1 set bonus and accolades.

Overload says 'hi'.

Sure, the +hp part of any click power is pretty useless on a Stalker since my DM/Nin hit the hard cap on hp without any +hp powers and slotting in order to softcap... but Energy Aura also provides one - and one that's fully slottable for +hp, unlike Dull Pain.

That was mostly the point, but just saying that tends to make people more upset.

For what it's worth, not all of my Stalkers are /Nin (although just under half are) and I'm mildly happy EA is getting some love but it's caused me to shelve my KM/EA Stalker just because I want to see how much +def Energy Drain is going to add - if they're going to clone Energy Absorption they could just say that now.

For the non-Stalker versions, I'm almost disappointed that they're adding a taunt aura to Entropy Shield. I've only ever taken the set on a Brute when I wanted the Brute to be sneaky, and while it was annoying when trying to hold aggro I didn't play those Brutes when I was expected to hold aggro (and used Taunt the few times I had to anyway). I'd rather they just make the defense debuff resistance slottable, like it is for SR and Shields.

Ninjitsu provides AoE defense, and does so much earlier than Super Reflexes - it's rolled into the Ranged Defense toggle. Yes, SR has more defense debuff resistance but the tradeoff for that is the uninterruptible click heal, Blinding Powder, and Caltrops provides more mitigation than Smoke Flash due to how much it messes with mob AI.

Just using SOs, I've found that Ninjitsu is as effective - if not moreso - than Super Reflexes, and once you mix in some defensive set bonuses Ninjitsu only gets better. SR is great for softcapping easily, but that's all it has going for it - which is a far cry from "beating [Ninjitsu] in every regard". If you try to survive by turning on all of your toggles and wailing away on attack buttons until you either kill everything or run out of end, then sure - you might feel that Super Reflexes is better. But that's because you're trying to play Ninjitsu as a set that it's not meant to be - you're supposed to use the additional powers to help you out.

By the way, using Blinding Powder (slottable 7.5% -tohit, even ignoring the Confuse and/or Sleep) provides you more effective defense than the passive 5.63% in SR until you get to mobs +3 levels to you (it's 6% at +2). Just some food for thought before you try to make some silly claims about one set "beating the other in every regard".

Right. And I even said it was a nitpick - but there are enough people still confused about how Fury works that I wanted to clarify things somewhat.

Blasters have the same base hit points and hit point cap as Stalkers. They get armors in their APPs, but the resistance and defense AT modifiers are lower, so they get less resistance or defense for the same power.

Nitpick (again) - Brutes are a very bad example for this, because there are actually 4 inherent auto-powers rolled up in the AT's inherent Fury power that controls the normal Fury gain, decay, and +damage boost (the 0s in the links are 0 due to being calculated values without an input). The line item in each attack for Brutes is solely an old hack fix for building Fury against single targets that was left in and the rest of the inherent falls in the "AT inherent auto-power".

Good examples of an AT where the AT inherent is entirely within the primary, secondary, and pool powers and the inherent auto power does nothing would be Scrappers, Tankers, and Corruptors.

If you're jousting, the longer-animating attack that deals the same damage as two other attacks in the same amount of time is preferable. You're only suppressed once, and you can trick the rooting - and for some powers (like Total Focus) the PvE travel suppression time is less than the animation rooting time of the power, so you're not suppressed.

If you're standing there and attacking in melee, the faster-animating attacks that combine for the same DPS give you more flexibility - it allows you to swap actions for popping inspirations, heals, and so on instead of continuing to deal damage for that section of time. This may or may not be preferable due to team roles, but is usually more useful.

Generally speaking, the high DPA attacks are the ones that hit really hard and have higher recharges - powers like Seismic Smash, Energy Transfer, Knockout Blow, and Total Focus. That makes it easier to claim that they're better for burst damage, but really if all of your attacks have the same DPA it doesn't matter if you hit 1 power or 5 powers, you'll almost always deal the same damage in the same amount of time. And that's why using Arcanatime matters as well, since each activation adds in at least one server tick and if you don't account for it, more clicks is worse than less (where otherwise it's the same damage and better for flexibility).

This. More objectives would bring interest even without other changes, just because it would be something different.

Now, to the original point of the thread...

(TL;DR version of the rest of this post: yes, please.)

I hate heal decay, and hate travel suppression. I rarely PvP'd before i13, but would go in and play some and have a good time more often than not every now and then. I'd lose more often than I won, and did participate in a few "fite club" matches with melee vs melee (which taught me that suppression or no, if you manage to kill someone solo as a melee character, your opponent did something "wrong" - that's true both pre- and post-i13). After i13 I actively avoid zones.

I won't say that a lack of travel suppression made it a "faster pace" as much as it made it "not annoying as hell". Inspiration use, most (but not all!) buffs, heals, attacks, being hit... it seems like breathing gets suppressed post i13. And it's not like it helps at all, because as mentioned above if you attack someone they're suppressed, but so are you. All it does is penalize you for doing things to help yourself or your teammates, if you're teamed - spreading everyone out for no good reason whatsoever. This actually increases the value of range - and +range set bonuses/powers.

Throw in the other i13 changes of base resistances being added to everybody, diminishing returns, and heal decay and all PvP roles except damage and disruption are removed: you simply need to be able to see your target and keep enough damage on them - while they can't run away because you're both moving at the same rate thanks to the suppression changes - until they either phase/hibernate or die.

Issue 13 brought a lot of things that PvP players asked for - including dual builds, which players never had a chance to try the old system with before these changes were made - but did too much, too fast, without regard for the consequences or concerns presented about a slower, progressive approach to see what did and didn't work. Rolling back parts of it - such as heal decay and travel suppression, two options that are rarely if ever deliberately used in the arena where players can choose to have them or not - may find a happy medium that works with minimal tweaking.

Nitpick - it's a tier 8 (EMP Arrow is the tier 9).

The problem with comparisons like that is that there's a fairly wide range for each AT. If you look at peak performance for ATs then you find things like Banes and Dominators doing the "most damage", and if you look at averages then outliers are so far away to make it almost irrelevant.

To use the "comparative bars" it's more like (totally non-scientific and subjective):
Single Target Damage over time (solo)
..|-------Blaster-------|
..|-------Scrapper-------|
.......|------Stalker-----|

AoE Damage over time (solo)
.......|------Blaster------|
...........|-----Scrapper-------|
.......................|-----Stalker----|

Survivability
....|-----Scrapper-------|
.................|-----Stalker----|
.......................................|---Blaster---|

So if there were some sort of spectrum, Stalkers wouldn't fall between Blasters and Scrappers for damage - they'd be behind both. Things like lacking damage auras, lower damage modifiers, lower damage buff modifiers, and no sets providing persistent damage buffs (KM is debatable with CS's "critical" fixed) reduce even the peak single-target values so that on average, a Scrapper is going to do more.

The issue with Blasters is that they're "squishies" and usually get compared to other squishies - where their survivability numbers are lower but not that much lower then Controllers, Corruptors, Defenders, and Dominators - instead of the melee ATs, where their survivability is very low despite having more base hit points than any of those.

So sure, bump the melee damage modifier on both Blasters and Stalkers. *shrug*

The answer is in the posts above, but this part that's quoted is important to consider.

Your DPS is by definition based on how much damage your attack chain does compared to how long it is - if there are gaps, they hurt your DPS and if you fill it with long-animating, low-damage powers to avoid gaps it still may be worse than pausing slightly for a bigger return on a high DPA power. Damage per activation (ie, damage per click - the term I use for it to avoid confusion with damage per second of activation time) is nice, but if the power animates slower it could still be worse for your damage per second than a lower-damage, faster-animating power. One example that comes to mind here is Barrage vs Energy Punch - barring Bruising's effect Barrage does more damage per click while Energy Punch has a higher damage per second of activation and is better for your DPS.

Total Focus has the 2nd highest damage per activation and 2nd highest damage per second of activation in (non-Stalker) Energy Melee. It has a horribly long animation and deals the damage near the end of it, and has a habit of hitting corpses on teams because of that - but it's second only to Energy Transfer when crunching numbers for a Tanker attack chain. (for Stalkers it can be different due to criticals, check the energy melee thread and my last post has a link with the DPA shown for no criticals and a couple of teammates in range for 16%).

The Blaster melee damage modifier is already the same as a Stalkers - scale 1.0 - the modifier is higher for ranged damage, where they have the same modifier that Scrappers have for melee (1.125) and get Defiance to provide a fairly persistent +damage. Of course, generally speaking ranged attacks have a lower damage scale than melee attacks...

I'd still be content with a 1.125 base modifier and the same melee damage buff modifier that Scrappers and Blasters get. If Blasters want more damage because of that, fine. They can get the same 1.125 for melee, and then they won't have a lower melee modifier than Dominators (1.05).

Besides, according to the devs more damage fixes everything. Just look at the changes made on Tankers (Bruising: -res = +dam) and Defenders (straight +dam).

It varies based on slotting - and for Stalkers, team size, since Bone Smasher and Energy Punch have full criticals while Total Focus doesn't. Here is a post I did a while back showing damage scale/sec for the powers and includes a "solo" chain for Stalkers. The post talks about damage scale, which works great when you just want to compare powers without worrying about silly things like varying +dam in slotting and AT modifiers. It can be converted to a real damage number via the extra step of multiplying by (1 + damage-buffs-and-slotting-as-a-percentage) * ("AT melee damage @ whatever level you care to calculate at" - which can be found here).

Energy Punch and Bone Smasher are very close on damage per second of activation (DPA) with Bone Smasher having a slight edge; adding procs to Energy Punch changes that since it animates quicker and the procs do a set amount of damage.

Gloom is better than either one - it's actually better DPA than Total Focus - but is only available to Brutes and Tankers so using it as filler between Energy Transfer and Total Focus doesn't work for Stalkers.

Edit: Yes, I am aware that this is in the general section. I mentioned Stalker numbers specifically because they fluctuate while Brute and Tankers don't, they don't get Gloom, and there were several posts about the best Brute EM chain in the old, now-defunct DPS comparison threads started by BillZBubba. While the overall DPS numbers may have changed, the powers themselves haven't and the chain would be the same.

It's the lowest damaging attack, but it's better damage per activation time than Barrage is and is almost always up - for anyone that's not a Tanker, I'd skip Barrage instead. I have it double-proc'd on my EM/Elec Brute with Hecatomb and Perfect Zinger and just use it as filler between ET, TF, Ball Lightning, and Energize.