Smiling_Joe

/signed. I also would like to know when Scrappers get pie.


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Back in the day when we were growing our warshades, my wife and I used to run full teams every night (before the days of the newly flexible difficulty) with our warshades on point. The other players generally ended up spectators.

She would teleport in in dwarf a split second before I teleported in in human form. She'd mire in dwarf and I'd mire in human. We'd both switch and I'd mire in dwarf while she mired in human (again, before the changes to dwarf mire made it shorter) and we'd just rock the house. Stygian/Essence on to the next spawn before the team had a chance to follow up the alpha.

Not a bad thought at all, those duoing warshades.

Just to reiterate for the O.P. SmokeFlash doesn't return you to hidden status, so you'll be picking off those tougher mobs without the benefit of a guaranteed critical. In fact, it breaks hide, so if you were to use it before the AS you would have wasted your critical.

Smoke Flash is designed to do little more than drop aggro to get you out of a tight spot. IMHO there are better powers to use if you want to stay and keep fighting.

I've found Caltrops to be a much better choice for the use you're describing. Thrown at your feet just after the AS, it works with your defenses to all but eliminate incoming damage. Slotted with two slows and damage procs, it can also take out minions for you while you work on those harder targets.

Can Smoke Flash do that?

This. I personally have a history of despising the power; for my playstyle its usefulness is limited, and when I found out it broke hide I promptly dropped it from my build.

Test Rat, if he reads this, will chime in and tell you it's great for mitigating ambushes, and he's got a good point. Me? I use waterspout for that. When I19 rolls in with inherent fitness, I *might* try it out again, but I don't expect my opinion to change.

But I'll always come down in favor of trying out a power and judging for yourself.

I've never understood this line of thought. It doesn't stack, but then it's also a very short duration debuff (5 seconds?) with a small chance of going off. So what if I have it slotted in both spec ops and mercenaries? The odds of both procing the debuff at the same time are slim to none, but isn't slotting it in both increasing the odds of it going off at all?

It's like slotting a Gaussian's chance for buildup in Tactics and being upset that it goes off in Wentworths - the fact that it procc'd at an inconvenient or less than optimal time doesn't reduce its odds of going off when you need it. Same goes for Achilles' Heel IMHO - slotting it into two powers doesn't necessarily mean that both will fire simultaneously, and it certainly doesn't decrease the odds that it will fire at all.

But it does increase the odds of getting a single buff.

I actually ended up dropping shadow maul on my DM/Regen, but with the Fitness Pool going inherent in I19 I might have to pick it up again. The optimal attack chain for DM is smite->MG->smite->Siphon Life, provided you have enough recharge. Your attack chain is nothing to sneeze at, though - looks a lot like mine.

On your respec you might look to getting six slots in each of your single target attacks so you can start working towards getting some positional defense IO set bonuses in there from Touch of Death and/or Mako's Bite. Shadow Maul, Dark Consumption and Soul Drain are perfect places to slot six Obliterations each for an extra 11.25 melee defense if you slot all three powers. Touch of Death will give you some ranged defense and you can slot your defense powers with Red Fortune for additional ranged defense.

Try to pick up combat jumping, tough and weave for extra toughness and defense, and aid self is also good if you can fit it in.

Basically, if you can use sets and extra defense powers to push your positional defenses to at least 45% then nothing will ever touch you, making the soul drain/shield charge combo ridiculously easy to pull off.

Check the guide in my signature for some really good siphon life slotting advice from some of the best names in scrapperdom. (Note that I'm not including myself in that)

Now, having said all that about getting six slots in your attacks and softcapped defenses, consider that a long-term goal.

You're probably going to be happier putting at least a couple slots in Shield Charge, because it's all that and a bag of whoopass. Plus, three complete sets of obliterations will likely take until you're fifty to complete, so there's no hurry there, either.

If you hang out on the scrapper forums long enough you'll see at least four or five threads with DM/Shield builds. Look in particular for threads started by Santorican - he's been getting advice on his DM/Shield recently. Any build of his would serve you well.

If he uses the respec bug to pre-slot dwarf and nova (and I recommend this heartily) this isn't necessarily true.

Yes, the point about Ninjitsu is a good one. However, remember that when hide is unsupressed your dark armor toggles are supressed, making you vulnerable once again to aoe attacks, as you earlier pointed out. (another good point)

Caltrops and blinding powder, on the other hand, would slow down the attacks considerably.

This is part of the reason I wondered if a balancing factor might be that attacks that "hit" wouldn't suppress hide. After all, if you miss, you suppress hide now, so being accurate would be rewarded.

Agreed. It would definitely need to be fleshed out a good deal more, but then I think it's a discussion that's worth having.

I don't think he means being targeted - he means being attacked. Being targeted is different than being attacked. In other words, if they attack and miss, then hide supresses. Since a roll is made to determine whether you're hit or not, that could well be something that can be flagged.

How would it favor ninjitsu? If just being targeted drops hide, then the only factor is stealth. Or do you mean that if targeting can't be a factor then it would default to being hit?

I'd be against that too.

I was thinking specifically of wandering mobs, not mobs standing right next to each other. I've seen /EA brutes take out two or three mobs to a spawn without aggroing the boss and lt's. And the context was a team context. Ideally, you'd be better served to let the heavy grab the aggro and then work your way in from the edges because the spawn is taunted, whereas before a stalker (not me) might try to beat the heavy to the boss to get first strike.

This, right here, is what I'm on about. I do mean controlling damage. Turning it into an AoE doesn't increase that control. The reason originally stated for the change was survival - or, as you put it, controlling aggro - and you are quite right to say that it is an imperfect and clunky tool for that.

I'm not forgetting that it's cludged into an aggro-dropping power, I'm pointing that out.

About all the suggestion to make it an AoE power does is increase that kludginess by trying to shoehorn it into a role other than one for which it was best suited.

And I'm FOR the two-layered hide suggestion. Why? Because you're not picking up aggro in the first place. If you pick it up, your teammates could take cue from you and begin targeting their debuffs and blasts through you. Then if you drop it that aggro goes to someone who might not be aware that it's coming their way until too late.

So being targeted for attack breaks hide, vise getting hit, and attacking doesn't break hide at all....

...I like it, so far, but I'm gonna have to chew the cud on this one a bit before forming an opinion one way or the other.

Hide being up while you have no aggro means that on teams with heavy aggro management you would be sawing through minions like a chain saw. Yeah, I can see how reducing the crit damage might be necessary.

On the other hand, other limiting qualifiers might work just as well. For example, an attack could be required to hit its target for it not to break hide, meaning that if you miss, you're exposed.

I can see this completely changing the way stalkers play on teams. Instead of running in to take out the boss, a stalker might be better served to chew through the outskirts of a mob first. That could be ....interesting in the best of ways. (Council Adjutant: Hey Joe, what happened to Tom? He was there a minute ago. Joe? JOE?!)

One thing, though: how would stacking stealth work with this? If I combine a Stealth IO , Stealth from the Concealment Pool, and Super Speed, am I increasing my damage potential in game-breaking ways?

You know what, I like this. It's simple, it's tactical, it doesn't give a blanket damage buff or random bursts of dps, and it's thematic. It would need some careful balancing, but what suggestion wouldn't?

Okay, I'm sold!

And if a stalker's not going to keep that much aggro to begin with then what's the point of having placate be AoE? The original reason stated was survival, and I'm not seeing that as a problem. The downsides, regardless of how much they can be downplayed, still outweigh the small benefit you do gain.

That much is clear. Let me break my point of view down:

It's a pretty obvious point to make that an AoE power can affect a single target just as effectively as a Single Target power can affect the same target. So what? No one is saying that making Placate AoE will diminish its effectiveness on a single target. Not sure where you got that notion.

And a scalpel cuts nothing but what it is intended to cut. So yeah, placate as an aoe does in fact mean it's no longer being wielded as a scalpel.


Again, no one is saying that it won't be as effective on a single target if it's AoE. It's auto-hit, for crying out loud. What I've been saying is that it is counter-productive to the goal of making stalkers more appealing to teams for a stalker to have less aggro at the expense of other teammates.

And making it AoE doesn't really do anything to improve the power that much. I don't need to have every foe within a certain radius to be placated after the alpha - I have a whole secondary to mitigate that.

Never mind the fact that any hate you generate by assassin striking a boss or lt will land anyway because they will have been activated before you can get the placate off.

So the improvement would be minimal, and would come at the expense of creating more potential chaos for teamed stalkers and quite probably making them LESS desirable for teams that want everyone to take their share of the aggro.

Adding an autohit AoE aggro mitigator to a single target damage specialist would guarantee that everyone else on the team is going to take more aggro with a stalker on the team than without.

I guess that's my main problem with it: it's a largely unnecessary change with a small impact on survival that also carries risk for your teammates.

EDIT - and yes, I'll certainly concede that an AoE placate would be very powerful for solo stalkers. But then stalkers really don't need any help soloing.

You're really missing the point. Stalkers are about controlled damage. The ability to control your burst damage is what makes a stalker unique, but that ability goes hand in hand with being able to control your battles.

An AoE placate removes that control from one of your most essential tools, turning an artfully wielded scalpel into a ten pound sledge hammer.

And the entire concept of not being able to survive the alpha after an AS on a team without it dismisses the entire concept of a secondary. Remember, this power is in the primary sets. It can be used for mitigation - but its primary use is to enable you to get another critical on a target of your choosing. Making it aoe doesn't improve its offensive capabilities one bit, unless you're counting the ability for some sets to suddenly have a fifty percent chance to critical on multiple targets a good improvement. Since it comes at the expense of potentially losing their aggro to a failed accuracy check on the part of your aoe attack, I don't.

And if you're responsibility in a shared aggro tactic is to soak up your share of the aggro, an AoE placate sort of works counter to that philosophy, don't you think? If you're placating every mob that's aggroed to you in order to get a guaranteed critical on a single mob, then aren't you acting irresponsibly?

And yes, the argument could be made that an aoe placate could be followed up with an aoe attack, but (1)not every stalker primary set has AoE capability, while an AoE placate would affect every set, and (2) let's remember why this was first asked for in this thread:

and
So - in an ongoing discussion across several threads over stalkers' performance on teams and desirability for teams - what's being ostensibly asked for is the ability to save your own skin at the expense of your team's.

Not true. The argument that "whatever you're fighting you're aggroing too" assumes that aggro is a 1:1 ratio. It isn't that simple, and damaging attacks aren't the aggro trump card. According to Castle (info courtesy of paragonwiki), the threat equation runs thusly:

Threat = Damage * Debuff Mod * AT Mod * AI Mod * Range Mod * (TauntDurationRemaining * 1,000)

Damage is only the first component in the equation, and while it would be downright silly to try and predict who's going to get what aggro, it's not insignificant that Debuff mod is in there as a separate factor.

Why? Because it means that a defender, corruptor or controller who can toss out an aoe debuff WILL attract aggro even if that debuff isn't damaging the spawn. In the quote above you seem to say that - in the absence of a taunt effect - mobs will simply engage whoever attacks them. A melee type will generally have a better chance at attracting that aggro due to higher damage, a shorter range mod and a higher archetype mod, but suddenly dropping that aggro doesn't mean they're going to jump to whomever is in the closest range doing the most damage. They're going to go after whatever is affecting them at that time, and nine times out of ten it will be a debuff from one of your squishier teammates.

In other words, another archetype doing damage to nearby mobs isn't enough in and of itself to pull that aggro without some kind of lingering taunt effect, and even a stray aoe from another melee type might not be enough if the debuff is strong enough and affected the mobs first.

Maybe on higher population servers like Freedom or Virtue all teams are full teams of eight with every role covered, but for the rest of us there's more often than not no guarantee that there will be someone to tank. Not saying every team on other servers is a small team, mind - just that teams asking you to share aggro are more common than you appear to be implying.

And I wasn't saying that placate would reset aggro on everyone, I said exactly what you just said - namely, that it resets mobs aggroed to you (Should have been quite clear from the context, specifically where I talked about placating mobs already aggro'd to someone else). If you're in a situation where you do have to share aggro - and this is a bit more common than you're implying - then you've got more than one mob aggroed to you. Being able to selectively placate is very important in this situation, because there's more to the aggro list than damage. Mobs seem to have a special hatred for buffers and debuffers, and an AoE placate is removing your control over the situation by de-aggroing mobs you may not know are aggroed to you.


Let's not get TOO specific. When I said "run over" it could just as easily have meant turning around. And the problem isn't the offending lt after the squishy. The problem is the lt you were formerly fighting. With a single target placate you can placate the lt attacking the squishy and still have the other lt's aggro on you. With an aoe placate they would both de-aggro from you and latch onto the squishy.

And in any case the point is that an aoe placate removes control you would otherwise have had.

I can guarantee the safety of my teammate before anything all that dire happens to me, because I have a self-mitigating secondary. My teammate in the scenereo doesn't. That second or two I spend killing the guy that's on me is also enough time for my teammate to splat.


That is a dream change, and it's not one I would say no to.

Not intending to imply that at all. That's why I said If you are doing that. Sorry for any misunderstanding.

Sometimes that happens. As a melee archetype with a self-mitigating secondary, I'm generally pretty safe. Same can't be said for the squishy in that example.

You're missing the point. I would survive, but the guy I had been fighting would turn from me to the squishie while I was taking care of the squishie's guy.

Sorry, not in my experience. If I've used AS correctly, I never have had the problem of everyone around the guy I just AS'd turning and killing me.

Just saw this - so you're proposing a change to an entire archetype just to accommodate a situation that is only sought after by a tiny slice of the playing population?

Just buy an envenomed dagger recipe and have done with it.