Siolfir

AM has +movement.

Besides, don't all /Stones take teleport anyway? C'mon, you know you want to see a big rock guy tele-viscerate someone!

Due to the marginal usefulness that is PvE Stealth, Stalkers really only contribute one thing: damage.

The problem with your argument is that you assume that they don't bring that, either.

Here's an often-ignored fact for you - on a full team that has any +damage (or even just a few +damage set bonuses on the Stalker), Stalkers have the highest potential per-attack damage of any AT. Let's go with a typical scenario - roughly 110% damage through slotting and/or extra buffs, which is used for all of these ATs, and roughly 160% added on to the Brute for Fury.

Scrapper: 1.125 (AT modifier) * 1.1 (critical rate) * (1 (base) + 1.1 (+dam)) = 2.59875
Stalker: 1.0 * 1.31 (full team critical rate) * (1 + 1.1) = 2.751
Brute: 0.75 * (1 + 1.1 + 1.6) = 2.775

In this case, the Stalker is doing more damage than the Scrapper, but lags slightly behind the Brute with an average of 80% Fury. But due to how the criticals interact with +damage, +114% in damage (including slotting, set bonuses, and any additional buffs) will put the Stalker even with the Brute and anything above that puts them ahead. Unlike Scrappers, Stalkers stay ahead of Brutes, even once they both hit the damage cap.

Scrapper: 1.125 * 1.1 * 5 (capped damage) = 6.1875
Brute: 0.75 * 8.5 = 6.375
Stalker: 1.0 * 1.31 * 5 = 6.55

Yes, this higher critical rate - which you conveniently ignored - is what makes Stalkers more viable than Scrappers. These numbers are also completely ignoring the guaranteed criticals out of hidden status.

As for survivability, I haven't noticed any particular issues, but I tend to play defense sets and those are the only ones that I have at high level. That also lets me get off mid-spawn Assassin's Strikes, which is something else you just handwaved off (although for some sets it's a low DPA attack, for most it's middle of the pack or slightly above average - also ignoring the critical, which makes it an outright silly DPA attack). I do have a Regen and a Willpower on Guardian that I haven't gotten up high enough to really have fully slotted on anything, but even those are doing fairly well. The demoralize aspect of Assassin's Strike really helps - and if you really just don't want to deal with anything look at Shadow Meld, which is available to any Stalker. The first-strike aspect also helps, and I find myself dying far less on Stalkers than on Scrappers simply because I can pick and choose which mob I don't want to have to deal with through use of Assassin's Strike and/or Placate. It's all anecdotal and based on playstyle, though; the numbers will only tell you that they have fewer hit points and thus are "less survivable" because you can't quantify the effects of their first strike capability combined with Placate.

What often gives the impression of "squishy Stalkers" are the noobs who take one with just Hide into a large crowd, Assassin's Strike something to kill it off (no demoralize), and then take the alpha from everything else. You never remember the Stalker that vaporizes the spawn in 6 seconds, but never forget the one that dies in 3...

Now before the Stalker buff, the case could be made (and often was, when talking about why they needed a buff) that they didn't do anything better than anyone else (except pick off complete noobs in PvP). Afterwards, though? Not so much. Brutes will still do more damage with a full Fury bar on small-mid-sized teams, and definately have the edge in survivability, but they're pace-dependent.

Wait... that last part is supposed to be different compared to how we played as kids?

Unfortunately, I have classes on Tuesday and Thursday nights and won't be able to make it, so I'll just cheer everybody on:

3 Dominators and 1 MM... I don't know that a Brute is needed, but you can certainly feel free to make one. Or just make what you want to play and let the mobs try to kill each other or some disposable pets when they're not just flopping on their backs or standing there doing statue impersonations.

As for buffing... gather for AM?

If you find Granite to be the only armor that's not "too squishy", I highly doubt your tanks can handle what my Stalkers can.

I'll have to see if I can find it, but there was some dev hype post about how it would provide new end-game challenges that surpass "anything that's in the game now", or some such. I'll edit in a link if/when I find it.

Okay, found it - but I needed to go to a secondhand source since TenTonHammer's page that had the full interview kept crashing on me.

From here.

Wait, the Stalker isn't aggro management? There's a /Rad on the team so Fallout and Mutation work well after the alpha!

As for playing whichever - with light RP at best it should be an issue, and wildly different attitudes between characters simply means that there can be some byplay between characters as they react differently. Or want to strangle each other. Or whatever.

As for me, I'm still waiting until there's a more definitive list, so I can come up with something that won't cause problems when I'm there, but won't be critical when I'm not.

Well, then, in the death throes of its existence, let me be the first to pester, "Bridge?"

Grats on your soon-to-be-50, and grats to everybody who took part in all of these runs.

In addition:
*Placating a single Rikti drone to get off an AS in that spawn (multiple drones are still a problem).
*Placating the mob watching the glowie if you don't feel like killing the spawn.
*Killing that annoying Sapper next to the Gunslinger boss, where you really want to get off that hidden AS again but really don't want the minion shooting.

It's not useless solo, just because the spawn sizes are generally so small that you're reducing the number of incoming attacks by anywhere from 25%-100%.

Especially on anything Willpower. With the regeneration you get from Rise to the Challenge and layered combination of middling levels of defense and resistance, any +def or +res buff is better than having a healer along. Who needs a heal when you're regenerating 110+ hp/sec?

I won't try to argue and convince you one way or the other because I don't know what experiences you're talking about, but I will just say that I personally have never noticed any particular survivability problems, either teamed or solo. There are a few mitigating factors, though: the build is much tighter and doesn't develop until later, which could lead to differences based on the context of the discussion (ie, what levels are you comparing?), and I don't play resistance sets on Stalkers (also, the resistance cap is identical for Scrappers and Stalkers at 75%).

In my mind they break roughly even, and if you only notice the issues while on a team then you're doing more damage than the Scrapper due to a higher critical rate, plus you have teammates which help you to stay alive through the higher amounts of aggro (and it's really easy to "scrape off" aggro by fighting near a Brute and letting damage/taunt auras and/or AoEs pull them off of you).

/signed

?

I signed up for the morning run since I wasn't sure what my evening was going to look like.

You can put me in as a possibility for the evening, though - I'll be bringing Scorching Hot, a (currently) level 41 Fire/Fire/Flame Blaster for the 930a run.

Here is the Paragonwiki link explaining how Perception and Stealth interact, and contains the levels of perception that you need for the various different mob types.

To view your current level of stealth, click on Powers on that tray, then Combat Attributes, and expand the Base section. Stealth Radius (PvE) and Stealth Radius (PvP) are the two attributes that you want to look at to view your current level of stealth.

A mob's Perception (base numbers shown in link) is reduced by your Stealth Radius (PvE). A player's Perception (base of 500, modified by additional powers) is reduced by your Stealth Radius (PvP). The (perception - stealth) is the distance that the mob or player can see you at. If this number is 0 or less, the mob will never see you until you attack.

Long story short, what to stack with Hide:
PvE: nothing, because it just doesn't matter - anything that can see you with it up will see you at the 300' PvE cap for Stalkers.

PvP: Hide + Stealth + Stealth IO will allow you to attack while at the stealth cap (1189' of PvP stealth, capped to 1143').

A boss has slightly over 3x the hp of a Lt, so if you're doing the same rate of damage, you'll kill the Lt farm faster, with less risk, for the same exp per unit time (although less per individual run).