Siolfir

Corruptors can Scourge with Blizzard just fine - there actually is a separate pet for them that has Scourge, and the damage per tick wasn't changed. The same thing happened with Rain of Fire and Ice Storm, and Rain of Fire even gets extra Scourge damage (the Scourge ticks are twice the damage of the base ticks, so it does triple damage while Scourging).

Controllers also get Containment on their Ice Storm, since it was also set up with the AT inherent in mind.

Nitpick time!

You still have to enter a PvP zone (3 of the 4, actually) for Born in Battle, you just don't have to remain in Siren's Call for 5 hours or figure out how to use an arena terminal. You also need to enter a PvP zone to get Megalomaniac and Marshal, all due to plaques and/or exploration badges.

So there are still "PvP requirements" for those accolades.

And if you don't count exploration badges as a requirement, then the only requirement prior to the changes was Lanista for Born in Battle, which requires a gladiator match win that could be had in the time it took to zone into the arena with a single gladiator selected while the opposing side had no gladiators set - and as such could be accomplished with no actual "combat", especially not with you using your character against someone else's. Getting Raider for many usually involved a much smaller time investment than the 10 million damage badge which used to be required, which was typically received in a safe spot while afk.

Nitpick: Stalkers have the same base hp and same hp cap as Blasters. They also share the same resistance cap (75%), +damage cap (+400%), and same melee damage modifier.

You may be thinking of another AT... Dominators have lower health, a lower ranged damage modifier, and fewer AoEs, but have a higher melee damage modifier than Blasters* and typically get their heavy hitters at melee range.



* - not that Defiance doesn't take care of the difference easily enough, and Dominators have a lower +damage cap

A: Someone other than an idiot, both on the team (because there are still idiots who think that Stalkers aren't good for anything) and playing the Stalker (because there are still idiots playing Stalkers who think that "scouting" or "AS and run" is the best way to play).

If you meet that criteria - that is, you're not an idiot and you're not teamed with idiots - then you'll never have trouble with your Stalker on a team.

And if your initial post hadn't come across as a "sour grapes" post with an ending line including a bass-ackwards request for a buff to Scrapper damage solely because Stalkers got a buff, I probably wouldn't have commented. But you felt that your opinion was important enough to express, so I felt the need to call you out on being completely unreasonable in said expression of your opinion.

Especially since the buff requested - that of giving scaling criticals to Scrappers as well, with no other logic or reasoning than "Stalkers got it" - would have even further removed the "uniqueness" of the not-very-unique "critical damage at some interval" and thoroughly undermined the stated purpose of your complaint.

Now wanting that "uniqueness" - despite being incorrect (see Arcanaville's post in the thread as to why... criticals are hardly "unique") - I can understand. It's why I wanted something different as opposed to "moar damage" for a Defender buff.

But even then, Scrappers still never gave anything up when Stalkers were buffed - certainly they didn't give up any "uniqueness", since they still are the only AT occupying that "medium" hp/survivability level (EATs have the same cap but lower base), and still offer the highest melee damage without any extra clauses such as needing to build Fury, external buffs, or having to critical more often to do similar or higher damage.

Honestly, regarding Scrappers and Brutes I think it's probably best to just sit down and be quiet - I don't think any changes to either of those ATs as a whole will be buffs (although intra-AT balance passes for certain sets may end up that way). Both are already ahead of the curve compared to the ATs that have been getting buffed...

Now you know that this isn't true - if Stalkers could land an automatic critical any time they wanted, why wouldn't they hit with nothing but? They had (and have) an automatic critical from hidden status on single target attack (with no more than a 50% chance to critical from hidden status with an AoE), and Placate to drop them into hidden status again. Hidden status drops if they're hit, if they miss with an attack other than Assassin's Strike, or if they click a glowie, and other than Placate they have only their defense to keep them from getting hit again after a mob has been aggroed, so you're certainly not "guaranteed" a critical "any time [you] want to."

They also had a 20% chance to critical on held or sleeping targets outside of hidden status, which still exists in PvP and was removed and replaced by the 10% scaling critical for PvE.

And more hit points, a higher hit point cap, higher base damage, higher self-damage buffs, the same defense modifiers, at least one more damage AoE in every primary except for Electric Melee, and a utility power in each secondary...

...when you give up some or all of those, you may have a point. I posit that you're overlooking all of the benefits that Scrappers have over Stalkers solely for the sake of trying to be annoyed, rather than paying any attention to inter-AT balance at all, where you'd probably find out that Scrappers are still way ahead of Stalkers in the "I can play like a complete idiot and still get away with it because the AT is that brainless" category. So, yes. Whiny. You want to have your cake and eat it, too.



...in order to improve their performance on teams, which was a common complaint since they tend to give up a little AoE damage, and were completely eclipsed by Brutes in the "melee damage" role on villain teams. The demoralize effect was also added as well.

And if they needed more than that, they probably would've gotten it by now.

Okay, let's say that you don't agree with my assessment of why I said the first post was whiny (the reasoning is listed in both my previous post, and drawn out more into this one - you're completely ignoring balance to complain about another AT getting a buff, and seem to be saying that "I need one too!"). So what's your justification for this post, then?

Yep, this is how the power works... like Lightning Rod, it simply acts as a teleport and pet summon to the selected spot on the screen.

The pet summoned, which varies by AT, deals the damage via an auto power. For Brutes, the base damage dealt is 133.46, to a 20' radius, at level 50. Tankers deal a base of 141.25 damage, and Scrappers get a base of 200.2 damage - at least, those are the numbers pending an upcoming nerf.

Other notes:

• Since it's a pseudopet dealing the damage, it uses the pet damage cap (of +300%), instead of the AT cap (+750% for Brutes, +400% for Scrappers). So a Scrapper with Build Up and around 2 SOs worth of damage slotting will do as much as a Brute can possibly do, and Tankers that are capped on damage (SS w/stacked Rage + AAO + slotting, for example) will do more damage while using Shield Charge than a Brute as well.
• When it was first created, all ATs had the same (Brute) pseudopet. That was changed later, after Lightning Rod was changed when ported over to Scrappers and Tankers, apparently without Castle going over the changes completely (hence the upcoming nerf).
• Its original incarnation dealt damage like Lightning Rod, with 2 radii for the damage (one being 3', making it harder to leverage the full damage). This was changed during the beta for Shields - I remember reading the patch notes and asking for the same change to Lightning Rod. I'm reading into a couple of Castle's comments that it likely will be reverted to this, rather than my hoped-for buff of Lightning Rod.

Only from Hidden status - the random chance to critical from outside hidden status is the same regardless of whether the attack is an AoE or not. And Lightning Rod doesn't critical, but since it's a pet summon it doesn't break hidden status either.

That's your opinion. You're welcome to it.

Until the Scrapper hp cap is 1606hp and they have Blaster base hp, my opinion is that your opinion is whiny and has no grounds for complaint at all. Scrappers still have higher base damage and a higher AT modifier for damage buffs, get more AoEs, have more hit points, and a higher hp cap. If it bothers you that much, just delete every Scrapper you have and make them Stalkers instead when Going Rogue comes out in a month and a half - because after all, according to you, the Stalker does what a Scrapper does, only better, right?

Clarifying this... solo, the math will show Scrappers doing more damage than Stalkers while using the same attack chain (with the same defense/resistance modifiers, higher hp, and a higher hp cap - basically, all of the complaints that some Scrappers have about Brutes). This math is typically done only accounting in single-target chains, and ignores the guaranteed criticals which would push the numbers closer together.

On a team, with the increased chance of criticals for teammates within range (up to 31% on all attacks), the same math shows that Stalkers can pull ahead in single target damage with a few teammates in range, but Shields provides an exception to this with AAO adding to a higher base damage in the first place, and due to giving up damage auras and an AoE power for Hide and Assassin's Strike a Scrapper will generally do more AoE damage than a Stalker (inter-powerset comparison exceptions apply; a Spines or Electric Melee Stalker will do much more AoE damage than a Martial Arts Scrapper, for example).

Stalkers aren't as weak as they're commonly believed to be - and weren't even before they were buffed - but they don't also do "more damage than Scrappers" without putting some specific qualifiers on it. They're close enough that you'll probably never care, though.

Yes it is. That is one of 4 seperate parts of the Fury mechanic: one adds to your damage based on the current value, one decreases the current value based on time at a rate of 2 per second; one raises the current value by a calculated amount when you attack or are attacked; and this little part checks what's around you to see how much it should raise the amount by.

You're perfectly allowed to believe what you want. But don't spread ignorance, especially without ever bothering to do any looking at all into it.

Except that it's not. It's up there, but there are several other attacks with better DPA - Gloom isn't even in the top 5.

More specifically, Clobber, Energy Transfer, Knockout Blow, and Incinerate fill in the rest of the top 5 - Gloom is #6, meaning that it's probably going to be one of the best attacks you could fit in your chain, assuming you don't have redraw to worry about (in which case the redraw can hurt your chain more than Gloom helps).

This is the tl;dr version.


See? You already knew all the advice!



But if you like your concept, you can roll with it on a Stalker and make it work. So go with it and enjoy. Just keep in mind that you're paying for it by lowering your potential survivability in multiple ways, and account for it in your playstyle:

• Electric Armor is a resistance set, and the resistance cap is 75% for Stalkers (compared to 90% for Brutes and Tankers). This means that even against Energy - Electric Armor's strength - you'll be taking two and a half times what a Brute or Tanker will (and often Electric Armor is cited as the weakest armor set for Brutes - I personally disagree on that but will agree that it is one of the weakest in terms of what it can withstand).
• On top of taking that 2.5x more damage against the "best" damage type, you have fewer hit points than a Scrapper, and the defense from Hide, while suppressed, is the same as that of Combat Jumping. Yes, Energize is an improvement, but it's a slow-recharging heal that has some +regen to help keep you topped off, and the +regen is limited due to your lower hit points as well.
• Electric Armor also gets a survival boost by "sapping" - draining an enemy of endurance and keeping it low enough that they can only use their weaker attacks. As a Stalker, you give up Lightning Field (which helps since even without -recovery it also ticks endurance points away) so while you can drain them, you need another way to keep it down. Electric Melee can do this, as can the Mu Patron powers, though they aren't as "readily available" - by which I mean, toggle them on, run into the spawn and hit Power Sink while Lightning Field keeps ticking their endurance away as they regain it.
• Any pure-resistance set is going to hurt for a Stalker if you use the Demoralize effect (fear and tohit debuff from AS) to help you on anything past the alpha.

But as I said before - none of those issues make the character unplayable, and some can be built around while others just require a slight shift in how you would play compared to a different (ie, defense) set.

However if the concept is flexible enough, may I suggest a color-customized Energy Aura and call it the magnetic fields that the electricity from the primary is generating?

I'll admit, I've also used the complete mission just to get access to patron arcs. And that I often end up levelling up villains from 40-50 on ITFs or Strike Forces - which is sad, since some of the "general consensus" best arcs are in Grandville. But since I prefer teaming with others to soloing, I generally go with what other people want to do - I've run all of the 40-45 arcs and almost all of the 45-50 ones on various different characters, though, so I've done at least most of them at some point. I still should unlock Viridian one of these days, though...