Siolfir

Wrong thread.

While I don't see that set of changes happening, a few points: Quills (and, for that matter, the damage auras) could presumably be triggered to work like Cloak of Fear and Oppressive Gloom, where the effect is suppressed while hidden so it wouldn't constantly break the status; as for Hide and AS being "given"... well, they're in the powersets, but you paid something to get them - the powers that they replaced. You can also skip AS entirely if you so choose (Hide has to be taken, since it's the first power in each secondary). What I believe EvilGeko was getting at was that they would be inherent powers, like the Kheld travel powers are, that you may choose to put slots into but don't cost you a power pick at all.

As for insta-recharge on Placate... meh. Typically it's already up a lot more often than I use it, because once you tack on its animation time to the attack you'd critical with, you don't work out much better on DPA (if you even do - it depends on the specific powerset here, though) than just not using it and saving it for when you actually need something to leave you alone.

As for Hide not suppressing when clicking glowies - it's before my time (I started a bit after i7 went live) so I'm going off of hearsay, but isn't that how it worked initially and was changed due to completely no-risk mission completes prior to issue 7 (as opposed to now, where you're usually not bothered and can often Placate the single mob that happens to be looking at the glowie anyway)? I don't see that change being rolled back.

First, the damage scale wouldn't need to be 9999. Just 9001. >.>

On a more serious note, there are additional things that differentiate Stalkers and Scrappers beyond just base hit points (which, admittedly, are closer by raw numbers to a Scrapper's base than a Scrapper is to a Brute - although the percentages are very close: Stalker base hp is 90.0% of base Scrapper hp, and Scrapper hp is 89.3% of base Brute hp).

With the exception of one primary set, they're giving up an AoE attack - in a game where team-based play is often a matter of AoE burst damage - so that the higher single-target damage would be their way of catching up in "total damage contributed" while on a team, or target kill speed when soloing since it's not all that often that only ONE thing needs to drop.

In addition to an AoE attack, most of the sets give up a utility power in their secondary (Quick Recovery, Death Shroud, Lightning Field, Dampening Field). Super Reflexes gave up some of the scaling resistances the set offers by losing Lucky, although the defense was tacked on to Evasion, Energy Aura didn't lose "Energy Cloak" as much as the defense it provides was rolled into the other toggles, and Ninjitsu was created for Stalkers, so had nothing to lose.

In exchange, they get a higher stealth cap (which means something in PvP, but that's also when the lower hp cap also really starts to come into play) and a melee-range snipe to help their single-target burst damage, but barring certain team composition/playstyles a lower overall single-target sustained damage, lower AoE damage, and lower overall survivability. I don't think it's out of line to state that their solo damage should be at the very least equal to a Scrapper's. Does the damage scale really need to be higher than that? Probably not, but that's when other things start to come into play - like, for instance, a higher hp cap (if you assume the 89/90% of base hp is intentional, a hp cap of 1807 for Stalkers would be the same percentage of the Scrapper max hp cap that it is of the Brute cap), and/or increasing the bonus critical radius.

One of the harder-to-balance but more interesting ways to boost their damage was brought up earlier, where the single-target attacks have a chance to drop you back into hidden status - but this is effectively just giving you yet another random chance to critical and/or possible downtime reduction (if you happen to wait before heading to the next spawn for Hidden status), barring quick hits coming in to knock you out of hidden status (and once again favoring defense sets over everything else available for a Stalker secondary in PvE). It seems to fit with your described idea as well, but the problems become plentiful when trying to decide what can and can't have this effect, what the chance should be, whether or not (as an example) Headsplitter or Golden Dragonfly count as "AoE" attacks despite the narrow cone and thus couldn't do it, and so on. If it had the kinks worked out of it, I actually like the idea - I just forsee a lot of problems trying to make it work.

Since you mentioned it, Assassin's Strike being made uninterruptible would possibly loosen a couple of builds up for people who only ever use it once a fight - since they could use it to fill gaps - but outside of Hide it's fairly low DPA for most of the primaries, finishing as high as 3rd for Dual Blades and Spines but no higher than 5th for any of the others. Also, since that's one of the aspects that can't be made separate for PvE and PvP I don't see it happening.

There are several ideas on "ways to change things" - I think the higher damage modifier that keeps being thrown around is just one of the easiest ways to see the direct effect without extra variables thrown in to mess with things.

I answered you - in the post you quoted. You either didn't read, or completely ignored it. The changes to Brutes were to differentiate them from Scrappers because they were often in situations where they did marginally more damage with marginally more survivability - it wasn't all the time, but it was there more often than not. The exact same situation exists for Stalkers: Scrappers, more often than not, are doing marginally more damage while having much more survivability. So yes, based on the logic of making any changes to the melee ATs for Going Rogue at all, "Stalkers REALLY need fixing". Or else none of the melee ATs do.


Also:
This statement is false: pretty much everyone can sneak in, and a "surgical takedown" is just another way of saying "kill that thing fast" - something that Scrappers excel at.

No, it was a replacement. The primary function of the power changed, and the old primary function was drastically reduced in effectiveness - heck, it didn't even keep the same name. News flash: it's a heal, that happens to have kept an endurance discount because otherwise people wouldn't be able to post this sort of drivel about how "it wasn't replaced, it just had the name, recharge, endurance cost, and every single specific effect that it does changed*! That's not a replacement!"

A "non-replacement" would be like the Dominator damage scale changes on attacks in their secondaries (how many Energy Blast users would like Energy Assault's Power Push?). A good clue as to whether or not a power was replaced? If you have to specifically look for similarities because even the name changed, it probably was. Even if there are similarities.

And in any case, the post was meant sarcastically, as in: "Yes, they just changed one power in how many years? Surely they must concede and do whatever replacements we want, now!"




* - by this, I mean nothing about the power went untouched: even the only part retained other than the animation - the endurance discount - was cut in half

The same argument can be made with regards to Brutes and Scrappers - Brute Fury generation was tweaked regardless. Stalkers lag behind Scrappers in more ways and in more situations than Scrappers lag behind Brutes. If the idea is to finally look at the inter-AT balance issues, then they should be all looked at. Tankers got a slight buff from Bruising and a rarely-noticed tweak to their hp cap. Scrappers were left alone, with only intra-AT balancing changes occurring, and Brutes took a minor hit in damage by changing the Fury gain and decay so that the sustainable level is lower in general but more consistent. There wasn't time to touch Stalkers, so the idea is to get a thread out there to address the issues and offer a means to collectively voice an opinion on what people want to see changed.

I have two concerns with this - it does nothing for a solo Stalker compared to a solo Scrapper, for one. Once again, a "while teamed only" solution doesn't address the whole of the issue. The other concern is that AoEs critical as well - at the same rate, outside of hidden status. So it may be that having criticals more often is a more disproportionate increase to the AoE sets than a straight damage buff would be - at worst, it would be the same.

The unresisted damage in PvP has been gone for a while now, unless there was a lot i13 PvP change reversions in Going Rogue's beta that somehow missed any patch notes. In any case, unresisted damage in PvE has been stated in the past as being off the table, since prior to the first round of Stalker buffs. I certainly wouldn't be adverse to adding it back in - at least on AS - in PvP, but that's a separate can of worms.

While it's good to see discussion on alternatives, some of the ones that have already been flatly rejected in the past should probably be ignored in order to come up with a focused list of "this is what we (as Stalker players) would like to see".

To try to compile the suggestions somewhat, so far we have:

• Increased damage modifier (1.125 - 1.3 suggested)
• Increased radius on scaling critical chance (60' - 225')
• Increase melee damage buffs (ie, Build Up's +dam) to match Scrappers
• Increased damage cap (to 675%)
• Increased maxhp (to 1928)
• Increase chance for Demoralize mag 5 Fear based on teammate proximity
• Attach a defense, resistance, or regeneration debuff to Assassin's Strike
• Higher ranged defense, to-hit, and damage buff modifers (ie, the Leadership powers)
• Change scaling critical rate to 15% (up from 10%) + 5% (up from 3%) per teammate in range.
• Higher tohit debuff value on Demoralize effect, longer fear on same.
• +Acc while on teams.
• Placate capping recharge for 5 seconds.
• Shorter recharge on Placate.
• Placate as a small-area cone.
• Hidden status movement enhancement (and indirectly, corresponding movement) buff.
• Higher-tier single-target attacks offer chance to immediately drop back into Hidden status.
• Further reduction of Hidden status timer to 6 seconds.

Obviously not all of these suggestions can happen, and some don't address any solo performance discrepancies at all. I'm leery about all of the Placate- or Assassin's Strike-dependent changes since it more or less forces you into build decisions to get anything out of the buff at all; much like stacking all of the old Dominator buffs into Domination leading to it being an all-or-nothing performance power, what happens if you don't have Placate (or don't want to use it, due to shunting aggro onto squishies), or can't get an Assassin's Strike off due to an autohit effect that interrupts it? I don't feel that they're bad suggestions, but I do feel that they should be taken as part of an answer, and not the whole of it.

Personally, I'm happy with my defense-based Stalkers' survivability, but I don't play the "pure" resistance sets: I have a couple of Willpower Stalkers, one Regen, I deleted the Dark Armor in the low 20s, and the rest are defense sets. A max hp boost wouldn't help the relatively weaker resistance sets much (since they don't have +maxhp anyway), but would allow sets like Willpower and Regen to get a little more breathing room for their heals.

On the buff/debuff side of things, adjusting their values for the Leadership buffs would make a small contribution to a team but thematically doesn't fit as well as it could - and if you're inviting a Stalker as a "buffer" you're doing it wrong in any case. A higher to-hit debuff would probably necessitate it being resistable, but I could see where turning Demoralize into a PBAoE version of Fearsome Stare - with corresponding debuff, magnitude, and duration - would be preferable. While it wouldn't fear bosses in one application, it would be reliable and last longer. The debuff would only be half-again as strong if it used the same base strength as Fearsome Stare due to a lower Stalker ranged to-hit debuff modifier (ie, Stalker mods make it -10.5% vs -15% for a Corruptor), though - I think leaving it at 7.5% and unresisted is almost preferable to the extra 3%.

Which goes back to the damage boosting suggestions - whether it's a straight damage modifier increase, change to how the scaling criticals work, or how much they buff themselves and how high they can do so.

So, what other suggestions do you have? Alternatively, of the suggestions presented so far, which stand out to you, and why?

I'm going to go with Soon™. Which can mean any time from now until Going Rogue's live release.

I'm reasonably certain that Castle posted a while back that there isn't going to be any unresisted damage in PvE due to how many things it breaks.

As for the deal with the AoE-centric nature of the game, that's not something I'm even trying to address with this thread - it's far beyond the scope of anything short of COH2. Instead, I was leaning towards making their single-target specialist nature of such an absurd degree that it stands out above the alternatives and provides rapid enough killing of those single targets that they can move on and get several in quick succession to simulate AoE damage.

As for stealthing and the post regarding raising the perception on mobs, I don't see it being likely to help, nor do I think that a backhanded nerf to "stealth" in general is the way to help Stalkers. Other ATs can stealth - via IOs, pool powers, or simply running past the mobs because you lose aggro before they can kill you. And Stalkers don't even get the "best stealth" - while Superior Invisibility has an endurance cost associated with it, it doesn't suppress when attacking, provides a higher level of PvE stealth (200' vs 150'), and would provide more PvP stealth if the Controller stealth cap was higher (1000' vs 500'). To quote someone playing their Ill/Rad redside on beta earlier tonight, "I'm like a Stalker, only useful". And honestly, since the Stealth IO stacks with itself, if you load fairly quickly you can just exit and re-enter for a 90' stealth radius on just the IO (ie, no other powers) for most mission lengths.

But it happened recently (Energize), so that makes up for it, right?

Insomnia sucks, and it makes me nitpick. >.>

Barrage deals more damage than Energy Punch. It's still inferior in every other metric used to gauge attacks against each other (slower animation, higher end cost, higher recharge, lower DPA - meaning lower DPS when used in a chain). If you're not a Tanker, I recommend skipping it - if you are a Tanker, you don't get the option.

Claiming that it's a better power is just plain wrong.

Since it was necro'd anyway, I just noticed this exchange.

Force Bolt (for Defenders) does mag 18.7 KB base; fully slotted with Kinetic Crash that's up to 51.2 pre-diminishing returns. iirc DR drops it down somewhat.

For a more prevalent threat, Power Thrust (for Blasters) is a base 16 KB, with the Kinetic Crash set it's at 43.8 pre-DR.

A high mag KB provides several seconds where you can't do anything - pop greens, run, try to activate powers, etc. - and being vulnerable like that will get you killed in a spike.

That's why people recommend high KB protection - 41-ish is a little higher than what a DR'd Power Thrust will do.

So what about the armor sets that only offer 10 points? They have 10,000% KB resistance, which drops any resistable KB effect (there are some in PvE that aren't resistable) to under 1 point, safely in the "harmless" category.

Electric Armor has higher mag protection in Grounded, but no resistance unless Power Surge is active (when you also end up with an extra 100 pts of protection anyway), so /ElA can still get knocked around fairly easily.

True, there is a big difference between focusing on something and only being able to do something, and there's also a huge disparity between 0 and 1.

So you're ignoring all but 3 primaries (because only MA, DM, and EM have "0 AoEs until 41") to discount an entire AT, and while most of the primaries gave up a single PBAoE, that doesn't mean that they have none, and one primary (Electric Melee) gives up zero AoE damage for Stalkers.

Maybe if you'd do a little looking into things you'd be able to come up with an argument, but everything you posted in here to back up your argument works much better against it because you couldn't be bothered to do more then regurgitate ignorant drivel into a post.

more hypocrisy plz, kthxbai

And, just to try to pretend to be on topic, droning has been acknowledged as a legal tactic in PvP. So it's not an "exploit" by the gaming definition (which often completely ignores the dictionary definition). That it's also lame, stupid, and boring are opinions that I happen to share, but there really isn't anything the devs are going to do about it.

The scaling AS based on enemy rank didn't work well due to not all ranks being consistent, so it was arranged to work based on maxhp for a while, with varying parts being enhanceable vs unenhanceable in a few tests (I think 4% fully enhanceable was the best overall percentage given).

This was problematic due to several reasons, not the least of which was Stalkers killing GMs solo with AS/Placate because a damage-capped Stalker could take away 20% of anything's hp in one hit before resistance was accounted for. It also made AS worse against anything smaller than an AV - although only marginally so against bosses - so for 99% of the game it was a nerf despite making them the go-to AT for GM soloing, being able to take out nearly anything in less than a minute.

Well, what makes a character enjoyable is different for each player, so what I may find enjoyable you may find intolerable and vice versa. I personally dislike weapon sets - not for the redraw, but for neanderthal animations when moving. However, Broadsword and Katana offer a great deal of help to any secondary via Parry/Divine Avalanche.

As for Stalkers having a stigma... there are idiots on each server. If you have trouble getting on pre-existing teams you can form your own, or just solo. I don't have trouble getting on teams with my Stalkers, but apparently someone in the "AT General" section felt the need to start a thread about how nobody likes teaming with them on Freedom. From my experience, if you stay with the rest of the team and don't just stand there leeching, you can get on a team and be a welcome addition.

If you like the look of Spines and want to try it, then go ahead. On a defensive secondary like Ninjitsu even if the Placate is messed up they still have to hit you to break the hidden status, so you have a better shot at getting the critical anyway. I have a Spines/Nin at level 30 (and a Spines/WP at 50), and they do reasonably well.

Personally, I like Electric Melee for Stalkers over Spines - the energy/smashing mix is less resisted than Spines' nearly-all lethal with some toxic DoT, you get a better AoE burst due to Lightning Rod (as well as it not dropping you out of hidden status so you get a critical on the next attack as well), and you'll get better single-target DPS because it tends to animate faster.

If you want to just tear down single-targets quickly, then DM is a great choice. EM works great as well, but I'll echo the caution about slow animations on teams and how often you'll waste damage, and then there's Martial Arts - which looks good and works for theme but it otherwise outdone numerically by both of those sets (I have a level 41 MA/Regen, too... I made a lot of Stalkers).

But really, a "fun" character is often one that just has a hook that means you don't want to stop playing it - it doesn't have to be the best performer unless that's the only way you have fun.

I'll take anyone and everyone ahead of a MM that I don't know. It's not that they can't be really good on teams, but the number of PuG MMs that I've encountered that I'd want to team with again is rather small.

Backwards, actually - all pets (and pseudopets like Blizzard count) have the +300% (400% total) damage cap rather than the +400% cap for Blasters and Corruptors. It's also why Lightning Rod and Shield Charge don't work as well as they should for Brutes.

As for why the base damage is the same? Well, in general the pet powers use the same base damage scale for the same power because that's how the powers are set up for each AT as well - with a few deliberate exceptions, a power is a power is a power, affected only be AT modifiers (ie, Smite is Smite is Smite is Smite, whether it's a Scrapper, Brute, Tanker, or Stalker using it). Since pets all have the same melee damage modifier (-55.61, or "1.0"), the damage works out the same. An extra if check is added for Scourge, Containment, or other criticals, but they really don't have to play with the numbers as much as copy and paste them.

Are there some exceptions? Sure! Rain of Arrows, for example, was created with a seperate pet for Blasters and Defenders, and the scale of the damage was changed to account for AT modifiers. When it was ported to Corruptors, the scale they used was way off and the Corruptor version doesn't account for their modifier correctly, doing less than 1 point more damage per tick than the Defender version.

Shield Charge was originally set up using the same pet all the time as well - as was Stalker Lightning Rod - and those weren't changed until after Electric Melee was ported heroside, where two new pseudopets were created to account for the Tanker and Scrapper modifiers. Apparently, from a post from Castle in another thread, the changes that took place in accounting for the mods wasn't what he expected, so it's due to get nerfed "soon".

Due to the issues they've had with trying to make the powers fit AT mods, I think I'd just as soon let them take the lazy way with it and leave the damage alone at this point.

*points up at the "Stalker" heading for the forum section*

Stalkers can't take Rise to the Challenge (they get Reconstruction instead). Your hp will still tend to bounce around as Recon recharges, though the Demoralize debuff effectively giving an extra 5-7.5% defense (it's unresisted, but affected by the purple patch) really helps out.

It plays much like Regen, only without IH and with a touch of defense a moderate resistance, so you have a little more time to react to use your heal.

I love it too, but it wouldn't have time (or targets) to jump around late in that chain, and you want the crit on TS so you shouldn't do it before it.

edit: although subbing it in when LR isn't recharged, you can do okay with TS->CI->BL->JL.

Often when someone labels something as a nitpick, they already know that it's trivial (see: definition of nitpick.). But there was a point - correcting a minor error for anyone reading the thread that didn't know better. I get tired of hearing ignorant people in-game spout drivel that someone else who didn't know anything posted or said, so I try to head it off as I can.

Sortof true, although that has nothing to do with what you said - if you had commented that they were like Scrappers with fewer hit points and a lower base damage I wouldn't have blinked. For this correction, though, I'd classify Widows and mace Banes as primarily melee, and Stalkers have higher base hit points than either of those (but a lower cap, so it's "sortof" true), and the AT that I felt most resembled your "Blasters with melee attacks and lower hp" was already mentioned in my last post (Dominators).

And I was thinking that you meant another AT because otherwise you were just flat-out wrong - it's just as easy, and often can be easier depending on the secondary, to hp-cap a Stalker. I already mentioned why I put anything about Dominators in the post just above this quote, but you're right - I shouldn't put words in your mouth to offer a "maybe you were confused" out, I should've just told you flat out that you were full of it and left it at that.

I tend to count time investment as part of the cost, and by that comparison SOs are really cheap - I don't have to make sure I have the salvage, recipe, and a nearby table to get anything, just run off to the arbiter and buy it with inf. So if I'm levelling someone up, I'll tend to nab SOs and then rush right back to the group, and usually start looking for sets sometime in the 30s or going off of what drops I get - often with 50s.

It's not like it takes that long to make up 200k per slot if you have even one 50, and some of those "vendor trash" sets aren't there all that often specifically because they're vendor trash.

If you've been building up a stockpile of pre-built vendor trash so it doesn't take you any time, great. I'm maxed out on storage on my base, and don't feel like shuffling off the non-vendor-trash IOs (or even SHOs) that are waiting on people to level into them to make room for ones on characters that I haven't created yet.