Siolfir

I think you missed the part where your posts on the subject are full of hypocritical tripe.

But hey, feel free to believe that you are the only "one, true judge" of what is and is not art. And while you're at it, all of those people that disagree with you must be wrong, because only those who agree with you are right, and so it's not you that's wrong - no, never that - it must be the rest of the planet.

I'll feel free to ignore you as either completely ignorant, stupid, or arrogant beyond belief.

This.

No, that was Going Rouge.

I've been pushing for that pretty much every time the topic has come up... it still makes no sense to me whatsoever why there's a limited area for a bolt of lightning, and yet a shield that barely covers someone's forearm can hit a 20' area.

Originally when I saw the Scrapper numbers (I didn't realize it was pulling the Scrapper numbers since I was on a Brute at the time) I thought that the increased damage for LRod was a means of addressing the discrepancy - the area outside of ground zero was doing slightly over what the full damage was, plus it still had the center tick. I thought that was cool that it would do more damage, since it's in an attack set instead of a defense set and all.

Then I noticed that it wasn't pulling the numbers for the power on the AT I was using, and poked around in the character creator. Then I went , then , and then made a post in the training room section that if they were going to change it just for Scrappers and Tankers (which was all that had been changed at the time) they should hit the Stalker version and Shield Charge - which later happened. What I hoped would happen would be they'd just use the Scrapper version for everybody and call it a "fix", since it'd have the extra damage and would do roughly the same as Shield Charge to the same 20' AoE. Basically, hoping that what I originally thought would be made true since they already created a new pet for it.

What I expected was that it would get set to the same pet that they already had used, because as it is now the Scrapper version does as roughly much damage as Thunderous Blast does for a Corruptor if all of the ticks hit (208.55 for TBlast, 200.2 for SC/LRod), only more often (90s rech vs 360s), for less endurance (13.52 vs 15.6), and with no endurance penalty; on average Scrapper Shield Charge will do nearly the same damage as any of the Corruptor nukes (average of 203.22 due to 75% tick and 50% tick) except for Inferno and Blizzard, just in a 20' AoE instead of 25'.

I'm just calling it how I see it - someone forgot to hand me blinders. Stalkers -can- be great on teams. They can also suck horribly. Just like every other AT, that's more dependant on the player than the character. But numerically, Stalkers can do better single-target DPS than Scrappers with a mid-large sized team while ignoring the guaranteed criticals and assuming the same attack chain (ie, no Assassin's Strike to get a huge boost out of the gate). As for AoE, now you're looking into powerset-by-powerset comparisons and specific builds, but generally speaking a Scrapper will do more AoE than a Stalker, and a Blaster will do more AoE than either (and often more than both put together).

I'm not disputing that Stalkers are a lot more fun; they are for me as well (I have 2 MMs currently, 7 Stalkers; any one of the Stalkers sees more playtime than both of the MMs combined). But for those who find it extremely fun to sit back and watch as their enemies melt before them, MMs will be more their style.

Thugs/Traps MM.

If the Trip Mines don't kill the ambush(es), the Poison Trap and Caltrops will slow it down while the Acid Mortar and your pets riddle them so full of holes that their grandchildren won't be able to stand swiss cheese because it will remind them of the funeral.

All while you stand back and laugh, since you had plenty of time to set everything up while they were coming at you.

Ehhh... maybe.

More AoE damage, generally yes (with some set-by-set exceptions). If you're just attacking a single target on a mid-sized or larger team that's not scattered to the four winds, a Stalker will give you more damage because of the extra criticals.

(A full sized team is a 31% critical chance on every attack if they're within range (not that hard to do), plus guaranteed criticals - more than double the Scrapper's best critical rate and typically triple what they're going to have against a hard target... that makes up for a LOT).

Yes, yes you are.


To answer the OP:

I play Stalkers because they're more fun than Scrappers or Brutes. There is a tradeoff in how tight the builds are, especially early, but the ability to control your criticals, the extra survivability of Demoralize on top of what your defenses already provide, and the fact that you don't need to dictate a constant must-go-must-go-must-SMASH pace in order to do damage are things that the other ATs you compare to don't get.

Scrappers to me just seem "meh". If I wanted to do damage on a team environment I'll just play a Blaster - or a Kinetic anything. The recent buff to Lightning Rod and Shield Charge makes an Electric/Shield Scrapper look appealing, but for the same IO investment to get decent survivability out of shields, my Ill/Rad Controller will just destroy anything and everything she runs into.

Brutes are fun, but at times the Fury minigame gets old. But if you're just minmaxing your entire way through, why are you even looking at melee classes?

Oh... well, in that case I had a poor weekend and only got on two teams the entire time - one of which I had to leave quickly due to classes.

There are still a few inconsistencies around - to be honest, when they ported Electric Melee over to Scrappers and Tankers I assumed that it'd be given the same treatment that it did for Stalkers: that is to say, it would be left alone and would be similar to how Shield Charge was treated at that time.

When there were new pseudopets made, I was rather annoyed that it was changed for Scrappers and Tankers and not for Stalkers - it seemed rather obnoxious to me, and I made a post saying that if they were going to bother making new pseudopets for Lightning Rod that they should finish the job and update the Stalker version, as well as Shield Charge since it was originally a copy of the power.

Well, imagine my chagrin when they actually did it. I'm happy about the change to Lightning Rod for Stalkers, but really was surprised to see Shield Charge change. There are other pets than just Blizzard for the non-Blasters that are somewhat problematic that I'd just as soon they left alone as well; I'd rather those powers - in sets that I'm far more likely to use - be left alone than to see the corresponding buff to Corruptor Rain of Arrows, which was nerfed only for their version of it (it does less than 3 points of base damage [49.49 / tick] more than the Defender version [48.77 / tick] - less than a 1.5% difference in base damage, when the correct values to the .75/.65 modifier (15.3%) difference would be 56.27 / tick).

I suppose I should keep my mouth shut about pseudopets entirely now since most of the rest of the changes I can think of would be straight-up nerfs... but I'm still unhappy with the comparison between Lightning Rod and Shield Charge and would like to see the AoE expanded to cover the entire radius for the longer-animating, attack set version of the power. A buff to Corruptor Rain of Arrows (and Oil Slick Arrow, but that's never going to happen) would be nice, too - but not at the cost of Blizzard, Rain of Fire, Ice Storm, and Ignite.

She wasn't an Elite Boss for you? She was for me every time I've run the arc, solo or teamed.

I knew it, the game's trying to kill my Dominator!

I was thinking "locally" meant "in a function that's off on its own instead of where the most of the other structs were declared/initialized" as opposed to server vs client. I could be wrong, though.

I was originally hoping that this patch note meant that it was different than what's on live... but no dice. It's still showing as only an additional mag 1 hold under Domination, instead of mag 3.

Either there's an issue with how the numbers are being sent to the players, there was an oversight in setting the magnitude of the Domination buff, or there was a compelling reason which has yet to be explained as to why this one power must be different.

I'd rather have no Domination boost and a straight mag 4 hold than have to hit Domination, only to have it wear off on anything after the initial duration expires anyway because you'd need to stack another hold to even get a minion.

Just got back to this thread, so missed this before. Edit: Stalker Lightning Rod was apparently fixed in the most recent patch to test, but at rollout was using the same pet. Tanker Lightning Rod is a bit low (its roughly 0.79 vs 0.8) and the Scrapper version works out to a 1.125 modifier if you use the Brute version as 0.75. So yes, Stalkers are getting shafted in the deal (surprise surprise). When they announced the port initially I assumed that it would be like Shield Charge, and that all ATs would have the same pet summoned; when I saw the higher numbers on test just using the chat window I was hoping that they decided to buff Lightning Rod - a tier 9 in an attack set - so that it wasn't outclassed in every possible way except graphics by Shield Charge - a tier 8 in an armor set; the Scrapper version does slightly more damage than Shield Charge does to the full AoE, plus the 3rd tick on the small radius.


Responses color-coordinated:

My elec/elec/mu Brute uses IOs, and Lightning Rod is down to a relatively small recharge (just under 30 secs - I didn't bother for extremely high recharge on her, she just got what I had laying around). Every time I use it, it's damage capped due to Build Up.

However, consider this: using Super Strength, Foot Stomp is on a 20 second base recharge, and does its damage to the full AoE. The damage done by Lightning Rod to the full AoE is 94.54, compared to 59.23 for Foot Stomp. Due to the pet damage cap, Lightning Rod will do at most 378.16 to the whole AoE approximately once every 30 seconds; Foot Stomp will do that much at +538% damage approximately every 10, and at the damage cap will do 125.28 more. Yes, the AoE size is smaller (15' vs 20'), but Electric Melee has a small radius for the other AoEs. A single Kinetic will get you to those +damage numbers. And you'll still have your heavy single-target attack.

It's not close to the top in AoE damage in an externally-buffed situation, and it's barely close in a non-buffed situation. It has meager single target damage, as the only "good" DPA attack that can really be used in a chain is Chain Induction - which has a long recharge for what it actually does. It's a theme set, it's relatively endurance friendly (the two early single target attacks have a discount due to giving endurance back occasionally), and it does a damage type other than Smashing and Lethal, but if you're strictly comparing its numbers to other sets there's no reason whatsoever to take it, and any reason you may have had pre-Shields was certainly done away with since any set can have Shield Charge without giving up their single target damage to do so. And that's how it stacks up.

As for the lack of a big hitter, your best bet is to go with Gloom from Soul Mastery. It has a better DPA than anything available in Electric Melee, and only Lightning Rod and Thunder Strike (to the primary target) hit harder from ElM. If you like the electric look, Mu Lightning is better DPA than all of Electric Melee except for Lightning Rod and Chain Induction. Another thing to consider is that Jacob's Ladder is slightly better single target DPA than Havoc Punch, too - in addition to being a cone.

Or whining about how Brutes do more damage with better survivability - although admittedly those threads are several months old. It's not like the Scrapper forum is immune to the "grass is greener" mentality.

tl;dr version of the OP: zomg! There are idiots and false statements on the internet!

Fact: If you are the one taking the alpha from a spawn at level 35+ on a Traps character, you're doing it wrong. Maybe, just maybe, that's true with Devices, but I can think of 3 other powers in Traps, all available earlier than Trip Mine, which take care of the alpha for you and allow you to toebomb in near-complete safety.