Smash_Zone

From a RP'ers perspective, other powers can have a chance to miss. somebody could avoid that blaster nuke, because the blaster isn't completely invisible, he's at a range, or in a PBAoE's case, he's right there, and they could dodge it. Snipes, again, could also miss, since you're at a farther range, and your accuracy isn't perfect. I explained before that regular melee attacks could be parried, dodged, or blocked if you look at it like that.

but the thing with Assassin's strike is that it isn't thematic with a good villain. A stalker isn't your simple "SMASH AND KILL!" type of villain. A Stalker is more refined, has a certain elegance and subtlety with their kills. Stalkers rely on planned out strikes, and though they can scrap is out if they get caught, their real strength in taking people out without anybody noticing.

Again, the ninja and the knife situation. If I'm right behind someone, and they're completely oblivious to my presence, I power up with Build up, crouch down to ready my attack, there really isn't a possible way for you to miss unless the guy walks away as you're about to strike. But here, they don't usually walk around much, and stabbing my swords into a guy, yet still getting the "MISS!" message, really kills the mood and breaks my immersion. I really like to get in character when I play solo, but having my attack animation totally hit somebody but still miss really kills the character.

My main argument isn't that it's annoying, even though it totally is, it's more of a thematic reason. From an ingame view-point, I should not have missed. This is a point-blank strike from the shadows. It reminds me of those old scooby-doo villains who would hide behind a corner, then just swing their arms trying to catch shaggy or someone as they turn the corner, but end up just swinging at the air as they walk away. Last time I checked, I wasn't some petty scooby-doo villain whose sole purpose was to scare people away while I forged museum paintings.

In return I ask "Why not change?" It's not like this attack is used in a regular attack chain, since it's got such a huge animation time and is interruptible.

Again, I don't see how this is game-breaking. If there's a specific requirement needed to make it auto-hit, like build up, hide, or a combination of the two, I don't see how that negates the balance.

I wasn't thinking of PvP. Obviously it shouldn't change there, as Stalkers would once again become the "be-all, end-all" of PvP AT's.

And I'm not terrible knowledgeable about coding, but it doesn't seem like it would be outrageously difficult to implement. Like an "If X, then Y" equation for build up, which would be "If Build up, then auto-hit AS." That's only ten seconds of auto-hit for one attack which is only useful if hidden, so again, I don't see any balance issues in PvE. And, we've seen that such tech is possible with Kinetic melee's "Power Siphon" which enables all attacks to increase your damage for 20 seconds. So attaching an auto-hit to Assassin's Strike via build up could definitely be possible.

I have this bad feeling that we're going to see half-a-million posts asking this same thing. Or maybe just posts going "Durr, how do i swich sidz? *Derp*"

Other than that though, most of the other questions were pretty informative.

That's weird... shouldn't it be the other way around?

Looking at Paragonwiki, every melee set for stalkers has had it's PBAoE attack swapped for the Assassin's Strike power, the only exception being spines; probably because Spine Burst is like a signature power for the set. Every stalker set has kept the cone power, however.

Minor oversight on the devs part, perhaps?