Smiling_Joe
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Quote:If you're aggroing 12+ mobs when you AS a lt then you're running in to AS before the brute, tanker or MM (hereafter referred to as the "heavy"). If you're doing that, then you're doing it wrong, my friend. Running in first is just fine, but the proper time for an AS is NOT before the heavy grabs the aggro.Originally Posted by Thaumator
Let me know if this scenario sounds familiar to you...
1. stalker runs into middle of mob group and assassinates the lieutenant
2. stalker just aggro'd the remaining 12+ mobs within 15 feet of him, and dies within 3 seconds because he can only placate 1 of them
3. stalker asks team for a rez
An AoE placate in this scenario would put the aggro back on the Tanker/Brute/MM where it belongs, not on the "melee" guy with crap for hit points.
One of two things you can do:
1) If you open with your Tier 8/9 on a lt, you're then free to turn your attention to the boss - who should already be aggro'd onto the heavy - and placate/BU/AS for your second critical.
2) If you want to open with AS, then learn to time it so that the AS lands just after the heavy gets the aggro.
Note that in both of these situations the heavy already has the aggro, and the argument could be made that an AoE placate would do nothing that the heavy's taunt and punchvoke can't handle, but then you're limited to using placate only in situations where you're fighting next to the heavy.
Here, let me throw a circumstance right back into your court:
1) Squishie calls for help, and you notice a lieutenant is knocking him/her around.
2) You turn your back on the guy you're fighting and run over to kill the lt.
3) Placate is charged, so the most efficient way is to placate the offending lt and pwn him with a critical on your attack of choice, doing enough damage to - if not kill him outright - make him angry enough at you to save your teammate.
If placate were AoE, then your teammate would have had to suddenly deal with TWO lieutenants instead of one.
Placate as it is can be used in a wide variety of circumstances over the course of a single battle (provided it's charged, of course). You don't have to limit its use to AS's follow-up. You can control your burst damage, so why waste all the controlled burst opportunities during the alpha? If you're only placating one guy, you're more than capable of mitigating the loss of aggro immediately, provided you don't try to AS him, and you're free to use it whenever you see the best opportunity.
An AoE placate would be very limited in its uses. -
Quote:Most Dwarf attacks - like White Dwarf Flare, for example - do indeed have gauntlet.Originally Posted by Microcosm
With a max target count of 5 and no gauntlet it might as well be ST
In fact, here is where White Dwarf gets something Black Dwarf does not. White Dwarf Flare has a taunt component, while Black Dwarf Mire doesn't.
Of course, Black Dwarf Mire does, you know, buff damage and tohit.... -
Quote:Except Smoke Flash doesn't unsupress hide, isn't autohit, and isn't available to every powerset. Its recharge also prohibits using it every spawn.Originally Posted by Symar
If you want an AoE Placate, play /Ninjitsu and take Smoke Flash.
That partial stealth sounds great to me, as well as the increase to Build-up mentioned previously. And the critical radius, too.
A ninjitsu stalker who uses smoke flash in a mission puts the team at just as much risk as an aoe placate, but can be asked to not use the power without sacrificing the ability for a criticle. Placate in its current stake can dramatically improve a teaming stalker's damage output if used correctly. Making it aoe removes the ability to use it correctly. -
Quote:The dwarf taunt isn't single target, it's AoE, and has an accuracy of 1.5, which is more than enough to hit most of the mobs in the game with no accuracy slotting whatsoever. Making it autohit would be a minor buff, IMHO.Originally Posted by MaelwysAlts
But what I'd really, really like for Kheldians... More than anything else... is for the Dwarf "Antagonise" ST Taunt to be made Autohit in PvE.
Adding a mag to pulsar, however, would be something I would love to see. -
Quote:AMEN! I'd take this over extra hitpoints for survivability any day.Originally Posted by DarkMaster
I mean....my Brute, of all things...has this system attached to Energy Cloak....why shouldn't my Stalkers? Anyone who has played an EA Brute and used Enery Cloak knows what I'm talking about when I speak of unsupressed Stealth.
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Quote:Oh HELL no. I've seen this proposed before, and every time I do it makes me cringe.Originally Posted by Thaumator
Make Placate an AoE with a 15 foot radius (same radius as Foot Stomp).
If we're so worried about our performance on teams, then why ask for a change that would essentially be telling every mob in a 15 foot radius to go attack everyone else on the team?
Proper use of placate in a teaming environment is the difference between a good stalker and a dead teammate. Use placate wrong, and your placated mob goes off and attacks someone else. If you're lucky, it's the brute or one of the Mastermind's minions. If you're not, you've got a dead squishie.
One rogue mob that you placated and couldn't kill in a battle is easily manageable. Every mob in a fifteen foot radius going rogue when your team thought they were aggroed to you is just asking for stalkers to become a solo archetype. -
::Blink! Blink!::
Do my eyes deceive me, or have I sighted the elusive Xenite? Welcome back, man! Long time no squid. -
Quote:Except it isn't very useful even in that scenerio. Not when there are controllers/corruptors/defenders who will be able to consistently debuff regeneration, defense and resistance at a higher level with more consistency. Adding the fear and tohit debuff was not originally intended to help teams - it was intended to help the stalker.Originally Posted by Beelzy
The -regen idea is necessary because the demoralize debuff is basically useless in the one situation that the -regen would cover. So, you have demoralize to cover groups, and -regen to cover AVs. It may be of limited use in terms of scenarios, but in the scenario it is useful for it is very useful. Which means it is a non-game-breaking mechanic that would be helpful but not too helpful.
Adding any further debuffs - no matter how useful they sound on paper - is just shoehorning in yet another gimmick that will never be as useful to a team as getting a real debuffer.
When teams are up against high defense hard targets, you never hear anyone say "We're not hitting - someone get a katanna scrapper." because even though swords and such debuff defense, they will never, ever be as good as a /rad controller's -def toggle.
Adding debuffs to stalkers would only be of real benefit if they were added to each power, and even then they wouldn't be desirable for teams for their own sake. Adding it to one slow recharging power like AS will do even less. -
Quote:This. The *only* time you're ever going to need a -regen debuff is against an AV, and there are debuffing archetypes who were created for that purpose who will always do it better. I don't care how much -regen you tack on to AS, when a team is up against a tough AV fight, no one would ever say "we need a stalker," because the consistent -regeneration debuff from a Kinetic, Radiation, or what-have-you debuffer will always be the better choice than the sporadic -regeneration gained from a periodic AS.Originally Posted by Leo_G
Not saying Stalkers are lacking or overshadowed but if you're going to improve it, you really need to consider how you come at it. I just find it interesting how many threads have complained about the various issues of Stalkers and yet everyone finalizes a -regen debuff which is an effect even more situational than the power you're attaching it to.
Never mind the fact that teams can now pick up envenomed daggers that do essentially the same thing proposed for around 1000 influence on the market.
Poof! Everyone on the team can debuff regeneration as well as what's been proposed. -
Quote:Heh. Add tough and 20-30% positional defense for an even more relaxing/boring fight. About the only thing my DM/Regen worries about is x8 spawns of carnies with bosses.Originally Posted by MaestroMavius
Dark Melee/Regen scrapper - This has to be one of the most boring combos. Only because for the 1st 40 levels you don't have any fear.
It's just click, click, click attacks with the random heal in between.
I jump on this guy whenever I wanna feel uber or I just wanna mindlessly
bash some heads in. Alternating between Instant Healing and MOG allows for amazing possibilities when solo.
Apart from that, I have a very relaxing time on my Mind/Kin controller. Get Blaze mastery for a fulcrum-shifted Fireball and have a heyday in COMPLETE and UTTER safety. -
What if Hide were a click instead of a toggle?
Now bear with me here. Give it a 45 second duration and a 60 second recharge. With slotting, it's easily perma. During those 45 seconds, it does everything Hide does now. When you attack, it's suppressed. It grants good aoe defense and minimal defense to everything else. After eight seconds of not getting hit and not attacking, you enter hidden state again.
Now ordinarily Hide is a fire and forget power. We use it to stealth into the group and assassinate the target. AAAnd that's pretty much it until the next group.
BUT when it's activated it would immediately grant hidden status just like it does now. So this way if you're still in a fight when Hide recharges, you could click hide for the chance for a critical on your next attack. The idea is to give stalkers the ability to have more control over their hidden state than just waiting eight seconds for hidden state to kick back in.
To be honest, however, that's not enough of a bonus to merit the change. It really wouldn't do that much. So let's take it a little further out of the box.
Many people have been calling for stalkers to get more damage. Well, I once heard stalkers described as melee blasters. I don't completely agree with that description, but I'll run with it for now. One thing that makes some blasters powerful is the combination of Aim and Build Up. Stalkers get Build up in their primary, but what if Hide were a mini-aim?
Nothing big, mind you - but what if activating Hide also gave us around 35% toHit and a 20% damage boost (vise aim's 65%)?
Now obviously the damage/toHit boost would only last the first ten seconds, but your typical hide/buildup/AS gives a 100% boost to damage for a virtually guaranteed hit (Missing an AS that you've just spent three seconds lining up in MELEE range has irked the hell out of me for years), and criticals from hidden status on other attacks - for the first ten seconds - get a good bonus to toHit and slightly more than the equivalent of a small red inspiration.
It's also obvious that the click-hide would also have to cost endurance. (Say, 5.2? That's what Aim costs)
Okay, that might be worth it. I've been mulling it over for a couple days and I still cant decide whether I like it or not. Am I still in "nutty suggestion" territory? Probably. But let's look at what IO's do to it anyway:
High recharge builds could potentially get the recharge down to around 22 seconds, allowing players to stack it twice. While the damage/toHit buff wouldn't stack, allowing the stealth and defense to stack would be insanely broken, so flagging the power as non-stackable with itself would be necessary. Problem is, does that mean it won't stack with other stealth powers? I frankly don't know. If it did mean that, it would be a deal-breaker.
Alternately, the duration could be reduced to 30 seconds, allowing a ten second overlap at the expense of the ability to make the power perma. Not so fond of that, either, but if it's possible to keep it from stacking with just itself then there shouldn't be a problem there anyway.
Okay, so that's it. I should probably have waited for my second or third cup of coffee before posting anything at all, but it's done now. Thanks for reading my little excursion out of the box.
So should I just stay in the box from now on? -
Quote:Pretty much agree with everything you said, but I wanted to clarify something here. Photon Seekers aggro all on their own in my experience. I've summoned them, gone to Nova and started blasting on one spawn and had *one* of my seekers aggro to a completely different spawn that hadn't seen me. I've tested it out several times and had the same hold true; Photon Seekers are agressive and have a wide aggro radius.Originally Posted by Grey Pilgrim
However, it can be nice to summon them and go to Nova, and they'll go after whatever aggros on you.
Just last night I was in Atlas Park and summoned the Seekers just to see what they'd do - two of them aggroed to a spawn of level 2's and blasted them to kingdom come with me doing nothing more than standing - well outside a spawn's normal aggro radius, I might add - and the third one hovered right there at my shoulder like nothing happened.
Consequently, I usually use them only in conjunction with Dawn Strike. From dwarf I'll hit dwarf flare to knock the spawn on its collective backside, drop to human, hit buildup. Then I hit Photon Seekers and cue up Dawn Strike while summoning. Works great for multiple ambushes, as the photon seekers will frequently get a different target limit than the nuke.
Occasionally, though, I'll turn around afterword and still have a seeker who didn't explode.
::shrug::
I'm largely fine with the quirkiness (although their aggro radius could be reduced considerably). I just think the recharge is punitive for what they do.
EDIT: and each seeker does 91 points of damage. Here's the stats from Tomax's site. -
Quote:Originally Posted by Marsha_Mallow
I guess Im judging it to quickly probably due to Ive already have two characters with Super Reflexes (Scrapper & Stalker) and feel more comfortable with it.
So Im gonna give it some more time and see how it goes, plus I didnt think about putting Karma KB protection in Hide.
Glad to hear, and good luck!
Just remember:
Caltrops are good for more than corner pulling. Throw out your caltrops as soon as you can, and stay within melee range of the patch. Stand on it if you have to.
You can use blinding powder while hidden without breaking hide or aggroing any mobs. In fact, I recommend doing so more often than not, because it will mitigate the alpha.
Go for your heal when you're at half health.
Smoke bomb DOES break hide, so if you take it don't try to use it pre-emptively. -
It all comes down to playstyle. Are you a fire-and-forget it player who wants his secondary to just work all on its own, allowing you to focus solely on your primary, or are you a compulsive button-smasher who prefers more active mitigation and uses your secondary offensively alongside your primary?
If you're the former, you can join the proud ranks of stalkers with self-contained mitigation alongside Willpower and Electric Armor. Super Reflexes is for you. If you build correctly, you'll be operating from complete safety throughout most of the PVE experience.
If you're the latter, then it's Ninjitsu, and you're in for a fly-by-the seat of your pants kind of mitigation that can be exciting, effective and almost unkillable at times, provided you've got the reflexes and the computer to handle it. Just like Regeneration, Ninjitsu requires you to actually use your secondary actively to survive.
With Super Reflexes, you've got the same level of mitigation all the time, but when it's gone it's gone.
With Ninjitsu, you've got defense, but you've got other powers you can fall back on when the defense fails.
EDIT - and everything Zem and Microcosm said holds true, as well. -
One change I would like to see is with Photon Seekers: reduce their recharge to 120 seconds and flag them so that only three are allowed out at one time.
The sixty second duration and 300 second recharge limits their usefulness. Warshades' extracted essences, by contrast, are permable, and with slotting and minimal IO investment and hasten are stackable to three. Essences keep right on blasting instead of self destructing, and a warshade can switch to dwarf and tank for them.
Photon Seekers go bang. That's it for about another 120 seconds (with recharge slotting). Reducing their recharge to 120 seconds out of the box makes them a more permanent addition to the Peacebringer's arsenal, and expands their usefulness to more than just an offensive mini-nuke that's only most of the time reliable.
With the shorter recharge, I could cast them and go nova - using them as angry little shields to keep melee fliers at bay. They could protect my human form when mezzed. Or I could cast my nuke and have them mop up the stragglers to give me time to recover from the crash.
Or I could use them exactly as they are used now - that wouldn't change.
Point is, I can do all that now, but using them defensively now means that I'll have to wait so long before I can use them again that it becomes prohibitively inefficient to use them any other way than as a mini-nuke. With the shorter recharge I wouldn't worry about that because they would be back in a short while, anyway. It gives me more flexibility with the power. -
Quote:Originally Posted by Wavicle
While I know we agree on most of this, I just want to emphasize that it Does Not matter whether you target an enemy near the edge or not.
KB is Always away from the Caster. The graphics of LD may look radial but the effects are coming from You not your primary target.
You can target an enemy near the back (or where you should, in the center, to hit the most mobs) and they will still Always go Away from you (unless someone Else used a KB power while facing the other direction).
It is if you get too Close that the angle starts to get wide.
This is very easy to test.
No disagreement on how SF works, though. How hard can it be to hit it at the edge instead of in the middle unless there's -KB involved or everythings gonna die in the stomp?
Drat. I meant to edit one more time to clarify. Yes. When I was talking about the edge of the mob, I made the stupid mistake of assuming the near edge (Which is exactly what the target enemy near will get you) - I edited that post six ways from Sunday, and that clarification slipped through the cracks. Thanks for catching that. -
Quote:Whoa there, fellow Kheld. Who said anything about quitting the game?Originally Posted by Jot
Also we really need to not tell people to quit the game and not be so negative towards each other.
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Quote:How long does it take to find the EDIT for clarification: NEAR edge of a mob? We're not talking about the absolute min/maxed optimal target here, we're talking about selecting your initial target on the edge verses the middle. Are you saying you just hit tab and fire randomly? I find that hard to believe, given that it comes from an obviously experienced player such as yourself.Originally Posted by AlienOne
I don't know about you guys, but I play at such a fast pace (both solo and on teams), that strategies like that are just laughable--at least to me. By the time it takes a Kheld in Nova form on my team to fly around to a "good position", the rest of the team and myself have taken all but the bosses down--not to mention running back outside of the middle of a group to "position" yourself for a well-placed shot is a waste of time (in my mind)... You have to run in there for a Mire anyway (from a Warshade's standpoint)--regardless of whether or not you're human-only, bi-form, or tri-form--so, why all the running around when you could have the mob down in the same amount of time it takes you to "place" your shots?
I'm happy for you guys, though. To each his own. Whatever works! I've always been a huge proponent of individual playstyles...
"Alien"
And how hard is it to press w for a half second longer and end up in the air over the mob? If your team is steamrolling so fast that you need to fire off a shot as you enter the room or else risk not contributing to the overall damage then the only thing you're going to be knocking back is corpses, so knockback's not really an issue, is it?
With solar flare, you don't even need to stop moving forward to hit it. Just put a random target on follow and watch the screen as you run in. When you reach the EDIT: near edge of the mob, hit solar flare. The power will root you as it fires, and then you can continue to your target - which will likely be on his butt next to or just past the tanker - and continue. See? You've just controlled the knockback on one of those "uncontrollable" 360 degree knockback powers.
EDIT - Here's a handy bind that - provided you hit tab to select your target at the start of a battle - will always select a target at the edge of a mob:
/bind tab "target_custom_next alive quantum$$target_custom_next alive void$$target_custom_next alive cyst$$target_enemy_near"
It still targets voids, quantums and cysts like normal, so the point should be made that they could appear anywhere in a spawn. However, if one of those is in the spawn, you're going to be opening with a heavy-hitting single target attack like Incandescent Strike anyway, and your strategy will likely not involve any kb powers at all.
In spawns where there's no special baddies, however, this will select the target nearest you, which means - if you hit tab at the beginning of the fight, the mob you're targeting will be at the EDIT - near edge of the mob. The odds are pretty good that the next one you target will also be at the edge of the mob, given that you've knocked them back. If not, all you have to do is pay attention to where you are to determine whether or not to cycle that kb power. Fast enough?
When you're on your human form warshade, I know darned well you need to pick your target wisely for gravitic emanation, and you're style's not too fast for that, is it? Your guide talks about Gravitic Emanation thusly:
The bold emphasis is mine. What do you know? Even though you don't particularly like Gravitic Emanation (because of the knockback?), you offer up advice on how to use it effectively.Quote:Gravitic Emanation:
Although I don't particularly care for this power personally, it can definitely be a HUGE bonus to you while soloing, as the length of time you can keep larger mobs stunned is really good, while you're causing carnage in human form without fear of getting taken down. It's a good opening attack, as long as it doesn't scatter everyone too far apart from eachother for pulling off a "capped" Eclipse. Personally, if I were to use it in an attack sequence, I'd want to run in and pull off my Eclipse FIRST, hit Gravity Well on a minion, hit Sunless Mire, pop Unchain Essence (mass stun), raise a pet if I need to, backpedal and hit Gravitic Emination's cone attack, and run back in to finish everyone off. You won't be able to pull off an unchain essence on every mob, if you're running at the "speedster" pace I usually do, but you should be able to pull it off every other mob, if you've got the global recharge for it. That said, on the 2nd mob, you'd probably only need to open up with a Sunless Mire and/or Gravitic Emination, then fall back into your usual attack chain, depending on your playstyle, or as the situation warrants. I've worked this power in to several of my builds in this guide.
Out of curiosity, you seem to love Unchain Essence, which also does knockback. I didn't notice any particular advice for using it; do you just hit it at random? Doesn't that scatter the mob just as bad? Or is it all good because they're stunned? EDIT - Or dead. Duh, Joe.
In any case, watch this. If I insert Solar Flare in place of Gravitic Emanation in the bolded part above, I get the same advice:
I left the word cone in there, when Solar Flare's got a 360 degree radius, didn't I? Well, when used from the edge of a mob, radial attacks=cones. You just have to - you know - use it correctly.Quote:backpedal and hit Solar Flare's cone attack
I've got nothing against knockdown. I love knockdown. If they changed all knockback attacks to knockdown, I'd be just giddy. But since that doesn't seem to be in the cards at any point in the near or distant future, I'm content to learn how to use the mitigation tools that I'm stuck with to maximum effectiveness.
But spreading disinformation like
and blatantly sarcastic and condescending hyperbole likeQuote:You say that, but I don't believe you are referring to powers like Dark Nova Blast, Bright Nova Blast, Dark Detonation, and Luminous Detonation, which can't be "controlled."
You hit a foe with it, and it explodes, sending people everywhere in all directions.
isn't helping. Lobby for change all you want - gripe about knockback all you want. But for the love of calamari, give people the correct information and effective strategies (as you did in your guide) and dispense with the snark.Quote:They've already explained it thoroughly, didn't you see?
All 'ya gotta do is carefully position yourself and specifically choose which mob member you're going to hit in the midst of the mayhem that is the rest of your team, and hope he's not down by the time you fire that carefully placed shot.
See? Easy! -
Quote:If I remember correctly - and it's entirely possible that I don't - Castle acknowledged that this wasn't WAI. It's on the priority list, just above Kheldian sashes.Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha
Oh ye Gods this!
And make the damn thing uninteruptible! When I toggle Dwarf form on to break mez, I don't expect to fail thanks to a second mez hit, thank you very much!
Hang on, I'll see if I can dig up a quote.
EDIT - just in case anyone took the part about the sashes seriously, I was being hyperbolic. But the issue was indeed pretty low on the list (if I'm remembering correctly)
EDIT (The Sequel) - Bah. I think that entire thread was purged. That, or my search-fu is weak. That, or my memory is wrong. Take your pick. -
Quote:Well, first off, only the Detonation has any kind of consistent "all directions" knockback, and that is easily controlled. Just like you don't jump in next to the tank and hit solar flare, you don't send your blasts to the guys next to the tank, either. You work from the outside of the spawn in. Instead of positioning yourself for optimal effect, you're choosing your targets for optimal effect.Originally Posted by AlienOne
You say that, but I don't believe you are referring to powers like Dark Nova Blast, Bright Nova Blast, Dark Detonation, and Luminous Detonation, which can't be "controlled."
You hit a foe with it, and it explodes, sending people everywhere in all directions.
OR you could just not use Detonation. The only other KB blast in Nova is Bright Nova Blast, and even that only carries a 10% chance of knockback. In addition, it's a single target blast, so the knockback is very uni-directional on the rare occasion that it does happen.
So no, you're not forced into any kind of uncontrollable knockback situations when you're in nova. -
A fully slotted Light Form can get you to around 83% resistance, while an unslotted Light Form and marginally slotted shields can cap your resistance at 85%.
What if you just took and fully slotted Light Form? Foregoing the shields frees up three power picks and - depending on how much you slot them - around six slots, three of which would go into Light Form.
So if you're going to spend most of your time in Nova or Dwarf and drop to human for extended periods only when Light Form is up, then the shields would be strictly optional, no? -
Quote:I have to say this sums up my feelings about pvp and IO's pretty well. Back in the day before IO's and Wentworth's were created to "be an influence sink" (and ended up being pretty much the opposite) I used to enjoy more than a few zone rumbles with full teams of heroes and villains. Since then? Meh. The I-13 changes to PVP didn't really affect me one way or the other because I'd already long since checked out.Originally Posted by Shadestorm
On PvP:
Believe it or not, PvP was actually fun in pretty much all zones (and occupied) Before IOs. As it stands, PvP has degenerated in to a sickening "fight club at the atlas statue" mentality where only those few who've managed to farm their ***** in to eighty billion set bonuses are even really competing.
See, back in those days, people yelled about stalkers for a month or so, then blueside figured out perception stacking, then redside figured out stealth stacking, then blueside figured out just a little more perception stacking, and all was once again right in the universe.
IOs were a FUN addition to PvE, however their set bonus inclusion in PvP ruined any semblance of accessibility and fun those zones ever had. The fact that the zones auto-exemped originally reinforced the idea that PvP was acessible as soon as you could pop in the zone. You'd get there, and you were on fairly even footing with anyone else who showed up that had levelled/specced a toon for PvP. Once the fifty million set bonus crowd hit the scene, most people could no longer afford the entry fee, and PvP became a ghost town.
And don't even get me started on the still unending "hiatus" of base raids. You know, the whole system player bases were designed around in the first place? I'm sure after twenty thousand incarnation system patches, twelve more issues of "go farm more this" and another expansion we might actually *think* about reintroducing structured PvP in a game about... the struggle of good *versus* evil.
The reinforcement of IOs with the "PvP Sets" was deliberate pandering to the current "Farm my way to PvP greatness." crowd that operates "arenas" in what were once fun open PvP zones. Never mind the actual arenas, which have been around for much longer and were DESIGNED for the purpose. -
Quote:It depends on how they did it. If they simply smoothed out the animation by removing the "hang time" when the weapon/fist is drawn back I'm unsure how much work it would be vise making new animations - but I'm suspecting not nearly as much. This was done recently with one of the melee sets - I believe it was Martial Arts? - so that's nine powers they had to "smooth." There are what? 11 powers that would need this treatment (One AS per powerset and the extra in MA), so it's not out something that's so far beyond the norm that it won't happen.Originally Posted by Zem
That would be only one reason. The other is that they'd have to rework all the animations. And it's also probably true that they don't think a power that can do scale 7 damage (from Hide) *should* be fast, PvP or no.
And if they did that, then the pvp damage of the AS would come down due to the effect shorter animations now have on damage in pvp, so the only real issue there is how much the stalker community would hate having their AS damage reduced in pvp (but then how many skilled stalkers use AS in pvp? ::shrug:: I don't know).
Then again, lengthening the recharge time could bring the damage back up slightly, due to the damage bonus given to long recharging powers in pvp.
So it's not so binary as "they won't change the animation because it would bork pvp." It's a matter of shifting the numbers in the balance equation. The only thing that would really benefit stalkers should something like this happen would be this: decreasing the animation decreases the interrupt time.
Personally, I'm not completely convinced that it would be a big enough change to make the effort worth it, but there are options. -
Quote:If I'm not mistaken, isn't there also a new formula for damage in pvp that bases a power's activation time... wait, lemme check the 'Wiki...Originally Posted by Zem
The only new tech I am aware of is the ability to tag power effects as "only PvP" or "only PvE". So they can change the effect of a power *after* it hits, but I don't think any of the other properties of a power can be different between the two. Animation time. Attack type. Interrupt duration. etc. At least I don't know of any powers where these kinds of things ARE different between the two environments.
And PvP isn't irrelevant as long as the devs care about it and refuse to make PvE changes that would break PvP. Whatever anyone else may think.
Here, from Paragon Wiki:
So there's at least one other difference between pvp and pve. For example, if they reduced the activation time on AS (using an example from previous posts) then the new formula would dictate that AS's damage would indeed be lower in pvp by a proportional amount.Quote:Damage
In PvP, attack powers follow new guidelines regarding the relative amounts of damage done between different attacks within a power set, between different power sets for the same AT, and between different ATs. From Castle:
Powers now calculate damage based on their activation time, instead of their recharge. (This difference is sometimes striking. Attacks with unusually long activation times, like Flurry and Propel, deal two to three times their PvE damage, or more, when used against other players. AoE powers generally do far less damage than single-target ones.)
Lower activation time powers get a slight bonus to damage, due to chaining low damage powers being difficult in PvP.
Longer recharge time powers also get a slight damage bonus, so higher level powers with long recharge times deal extra damage.
Damage has been adjusted for all ATs, reducing the damage gap between each AT.
In fact, if you want to know what doesn't change between pvp and pve, that is also on that page in the link:
Quote:Effects that Don't Change
Some power characteristics cannot be varied by the devs. You can safely expect these characteristics to stay the same between PvP and PvE:
Endurance Cost (although crashes and ongoing per-target losses can vary, since they are not costs)
Activation Time
Recharge Time
Interrupt Time
Inherent Accuracy Multiplier (although effects can have individual ToHit modifiers, or be autohit in PvE but not in PvP)
Attack Type Tags
Range
AoE type and size
max # of AoE targets -
Quote:Always glad to help!Originally Posted by Leo_G
Thanks for the help, Joe.
I do tend to go overboard on ranged defense. The main reason for that is that caltrops provide so much melee range mitigation that capping ranged first tends to be enough of a priority for me. Now, I left caltrops out of that build I put up, and so the point is somewhat invalid, but I also tried to slot Touch of Deaths where possible because they tend to enhance damage a bit more than Mako's. Also, I forgot to take some of them out when I dropped caltrops. The Red fortunes were also slotted for recharge bonuses and damage bonuses.Quote:-Is there a reason you went so overboard with ranged defense? I know /Nin doesn't have a whole lot of -def resistance but I'd rather get better mileage out of my powers at the cost of that buffer.
You could probably do without some of those Touch of Deaths.
'Cause I forgot about Thunder Strike...Quote:-Why in the world did you slot Explosive Strike in Spirit Shark when you could get nearly the same ranged defense with Thunder Strike? 
Yeah. It should go in Health. Actually, I was assuming that one went in health anyway but couldn't show it if I was assuming it was inherent. I just saw the empty slot in Hibernate and thought, "What the heck?"Quote:-Is there something good that happens from putting a Miracle unique in Hibernate? I've only had Hibernate on a Blaster and never got a chance to do anything special with it so I dunno. Otherwise, I'd just slot a rech IO in it and put the +recovery proc in Health.
Nice build! I might have to steal some ideas from it.Quote:Here's your build reworked a bit
Yeah - I started from an old build that happened to have that IO in stealth and forgot to take it out. Did that in several posts.Quote:And is there a reason you put a stealth IO in sprint? Wouldn't really do much in PvE would it?