Smiling_Joe

And I'm saying it's entirely possible that AS - regardless of how much damage it does - has limited usefulness in pvp outside of killing non-pvpers who stand around and let it happen. Shortening the animation might lower the damage in pvp, but I'm not sure many pvp'ers would care much, given its limited use in pvp.

But you know what? I'm not going to make any claims to being a very good pvper, so I'll concede the point.


Don't bother picking that garbage apart - it wasn't intended to be a suggestion, or anything. Not worth debating.

Because archetypes that can leverage controls and sleeps are some of the more popular archetypes in the game (with the notable exception of dominators). I doubt any team you run these days would be short on control. Even mez resistant enemies can be held by a single controller with an overlapping mez effect.

And control archetypes aren't the only ones with holds and sleeps. Tankers, blasters, Kheldians, SoA's, Corruptors and Masterminds off the top of my head are some examples of archetypes that have holds and sleeps mixed in as secondary effects. And epics aren't the only place where stalkers can get holds and sleeps. Ninjitsu scrappers can also use Blinding Powder for short duration sleeps and holds. It would be nice if the other secondaries can say the same, but what are you going to do? One thing I forgot to mention is that I would have also liked to have seen that crit ability extend to stuns. That alone would make a huge difference in the utility of the feature.

Now having said that, the I12 changes were made in a very different gaming environment than we have today. There wasn't a tremendous amount of cooperative play, Going Rogue was still just a pipe dream so far as the playing populace was concerned, and Dominators were as unpopular as stalkers, so the chances for holds and sleeps were drastically lower than in today's game. So I understand why they went the route they did.

Hindsight is 20/20. No going back now, really, so there's not much point in discussing it any further except for my pointless rambling, at which I'm unfortunately somewhat gifted.

Because Stalkers aren't Scrappers? Seriously, you call them strings, and I call them opportunities. If I wanted what scrappers have with stealth on top, I'd just soft cap a scrapper, drop in a stealth IO in superspeed and run with it. But if I can have a situation where a controller or dominator can mass hold a spawn so I can wade in doing massive amounts of burst damage without having to worry about going into hide, well... I'd buy that for a dollar.

Bear in mind I'm not proposing that AS's activation time be stripped to nothing in conjunction with making it uninterruptible. I wouldn't want it to be made brain dead easy, either. And an AS with a 1 second animation would be overkill.

But I do think a balance can be reached that can make it less situational. Increasing the range to 10 feet and normalizing the animation to match and just exceed the interrupt of 2 seconds would go far enough for me, I think. Why? It gives me just a bit more flexibility with where I stop when running up to a mob, letting me start the animation a little bit before other melee types are in range, making the one second that would theoretically be shaved off feel like a bit more. Not sure if 10 feet would be enough for an effect to be felt, though. Maybe 12, but I can't reconcile that number too well in my mind, so I went with 10.

I also don't think I'd be out of line in asking for the demoralize to go off even if the target is killed. Then at least there'd be some benefit to assassinating a half dead target.

I'd also still like to see more damage from our criticals, but then we both agree on that point.

With regard to PVP, I don't think anything I said would gut any serious pvp'er's playstyle in the least, and it wasn't my intention to be selfish. Almost no one stands still long enough to be the victim of an AS, to the point that most experienced stalkers rarely use it as a main option. I have a feeling that if an AS were made easier to leverage - whether with a shorter animation time or a shorter interruptible time or some combination thereof - at the expense of its bonus damage in pvp that most pvp stalkers would happily adjust their game, or I would never have voiced the thought.

If I'm wrong, and even one pvp'er comes in to say differently, I'll happily retract the statement.

And thanks for being the one "still talking." We may have locked horns, but it's been a good experience for me. I never end a debate with exactly the same views I brought to it, and anyone who reads the whole of our exchange will notice that while I think what I said remained fairly consistent - my viewpoint has undergone some change. You've made some good points, and I'm glad for every opportunity to change my thinking even a little.

Too many subtleties get lost in text. Nature of the forums, and all.

No offense taken, although I am rather irked at myself for not getting the humor right off.

Sorry if I misread.

Why? PVP? I'm getting a little sick of changes in pve being affected by the ghost of what pvp used to be in this game. I'd rather they removed the extra crit damage (be it through removing the unresisted flag or whatever it took) in pvp and shortened the recharge/interrupt of AS to make it more useful to ninety percent of the populace.

Even among players who do pvp, it's not like AS is the single power that defines the set, either. In fact, it's widely known as little more than a noob killer.

And if it isn't pvp, then what is it? How would a recharge/interrupt on AS that actually makes it useful on teams overpower it in pve?

EDIT - Now that I think about it I think about it increasing the range of AS from 7 to 10 or 12 feet would actually help as well, making even a 1 second change in the animation time somewhat useful.

I personally would have preferred if they had increased that 20% to something closer to 60 or 80 percent in lieu of random scaling crits, but it is what it is. I agree that as it stands it's practically useless.

Yes, I was there. I remember. Pretty much everything anyone asked for was in the name of team play. My point was not regarding the reason it was given, it was that it isn't something stalkers do for free that's over and above anything anyone else can do. My wording was poor. Regardless of why it was given, its advantages were and are offset by its situational use because it is tied to an Assassin Strike that doesn't kill the target. One of your suggestions in the other thread was that we get more use out of Demoralize. Giving AS more utility on teams will do exactly that.

Sigh... at no point in any of this have I EVER said ANYTHING REMOTELY LIKE Stalkers get nothing on teams. ALL I HAVE SAID is that AS could use some love, and that Stalkers ought to be able to get more use out of it AS A MEANS of buffing their burst damage. I'm perfectly capable of revising my strategy, and in fact have agreed with nearly every one of your diatribes regarding people needing to do that more. But by the same token would it be possible for you to think outside your box a little and see an AS as something that can be used for more than just an Alpha or a Mini Nuke if it isn't at the expense of the rest of the set?

Why is it always one extreme or the other with you? When does asking for more ability to control crits equal asking for the ability to control crits all the time?

There were other ways to make them offensively stronger and retain the controlled aspect of their criticals IMHO. I still think giving them random criticals was a mistake that stepped on scrappers' toes just a little too much, and they would have been much better served by dramatically increasing the crit chance on held or slept targets.

But that's kind of a moot point now, and my opinion of random criticals is irrelevant to the discussion at hand, since I'm not advocating anything that would affect that aspect of our inherent one way or the other.

Whether I like it or not, we have random criticals, and before you get madder at me than you already are, I'm certainly not advocating rolling that change back.

I might be wrong here, but didn't it replace the chance to crit on held or slept targets? Red Tomax still lists it, but I could have sworn that was the case. Either way, I personally would have preferred something more thematic to Stalkers, but nothing I'm suggesting in any way takes anything from that random frickin' damage.

AS is currently the only power that gets an extra burst of damage on top of its critical, so while it does need Hide and/or Placate to capitalize on that damage, it is still the single best way for a stalker to access the burst damage they're famous for. And yes, I'm betting that shortening the animation will make it more appealing to use on teams, since it will essentially frontload that damage a little more. So yes, because its animation won't put as much of a dent in your dps attack strings, it can give you more burst damage by decreasing the penalty to access it and making players more willing to use it in a steamrolling environment.

Then stop lumping me in with people who aren't even participating in this discussion by generalizing my position based on what they've said. I'm not them. I don't ever want to see stalkers be one trick ponies that are tied to AS or any gimmick. I think they have too many gimmicks now as it is. All I'm trying to suggest is that they have incentive to use the tools they already have in a broader range of scenereos. AS is a tool, like any other. Burst damage is a tactic. It also happens to be the rationale behind a good portion of why the archetype is what it is. Increasing the usefulness of that tool and that tactic by a small amount is in no way going to change the way you play if you prefer dps fighting, and it is in no way suggesting that stalkers are gimped. Nor is it arguing for that as the exclusive change.

AS is situational at best on teams, and the arguments I've presented have been to that end and that end alone. You yourself said you agreed that a tweak on the animation time wouldn't be a bad thing, so stop shadow boxing with what has thus far in this discussion been a fairly silent crowd that longs for a return to the one trick pony days of pre-I12 stalking. Test Rat's bitterness notwithstanding, of course.

FWIW, my first suggestion back on page two of that thread was an overpowered and ill-thought suggestion to make criticals unresistable in pve. You see, like you I think our criticals should hurt more than on other archetypes. Whether that's done by making our criticals of a pure and less resisted damage type like toxic or by increasing the scale of our criticals to something over double damage, I'm behind any suggestion that accomplishes this, as it adds not only to our dps, but does it through burst damage. Perfect solution.

See? There you go again over the extreme edge. I'm not advocating sinking enough resources into AS to make it *the* trick pony of anything. I'm trying to demonstrate that - as a tactic - it could be more useful than it is currently. That's not to say it needs a huge amount of work or needs to be the only change or the only tactic.

But Jbikao makes a good point when he says that a large part of the design of every single primary has gone into the Assassin Strike and two other powers that enable us to maximize its potential, (to say nothing of Hide from every one of our secondaries, without which we would almost never be able to land a critical on our AS.) and we really haven't gotten enough payoff from it in return. All I'm saying - and I think all he's saying - is that we should be able to get more out of it than we do, and that - because the design is heavy on cost and low on payoff - it shouldn't come at the cost of our other tools.

Now if you see that as unreasonable, then you're entitled to your opinion and we can agree to disagree. But you're not going to see me accusing you of wanting to strip AS or Placate of any relevance or meaning to stalkers in their current state. I'd appreciate it if you could give me the same benefit of the doubt.

I've never argued so much with someone I largely agree with.

Good advice; just be aware that caltrops will invalidate any hidden status and prevent any automatic criticals. If you've got a purple or two, you'd be well advised to try using the purples first and trying to get a good attack that isn't AS off before they can hit you, because even though they can see you, you're still technically in hidden status and can critical if you can land an attack before you're hit.

If you don't have any purples or are up against foes with superior accuracy, sure. Caltrops away. And even if you do go for the critical with a purple or two; after the crit lands you can throw caltrops under your own feet and scrap while the mobs are trying to flee the caltrops.

If it's alright with you, I'd like to be able to discuss reasonable changes to an archetype with which I have at least some experience without being called an unskilled noob. Regardless of how much I've been trying to point out the flaws in the AS/Placate mechanic on teams, I am capable of setting that combination up.


Yes, it's possible to set up an AS before the rest of the team gets to the spawn. It's also possible that yet one more person on the team was scrapperlocked and followed you right into that spawn and prematurely aggroed it, robbing you of the initiative.

It's equally possible that - even though with practice anyone can set up a successful AS on a team - they might just decide that it's not necessary when they can scrap it out. It's also entirely possible that many of these same people will see that other archetypes can scrap it out longer and more effectively and give up on their stalkers in favor of that other archetype.

Dominators could still achieve domination and get high levels of damage before the changes to their archetype. Tankers could still achieve reasonably high levels of damage before bruising. Skilled Kheldians could still function in high mez situations without the ability to use Dwarf Form as a break free.

The fact that some people who played each of those archetypes thought it might be a good idea to make it a little easier to achieve these things didn't make them unskilled players, either.

Yeah. You know what else it would be like? It'd be like if Scrappers had only one AOE power and while it was a really really awesome AOE power, they have to be scrapperlocked for it to critical.

In all seriousness, Scrappers get two AoE powers in most of their primaries, and some even in their secondaries in the form of damage toggles. Shield scrappers get a mini-AoE nuke in the form of Shield Charge. Essentially, they don't get something like demoralize because they can utilize AOE damage all. the. frickin. time.

Demoralize isn't something Stalkers got that's extra that other melee archetypes don't get - it's something they got to balance the fact that their single best way to use their inherent and control their criticals comes through the use of AS and Placate.

Please. Who else would it be directed at if not for me? ... aaaaand maybe Test Rat. It's okay. It's a good rant.

I even agreed with it for the most part.

Yes, I believe everyone here is aware that there is more than just Assassin's Strike in the primary. Is it too damned much to ask that we leave the random damage to the frickin scrappers? And is it possible to ask for changes along the lines of controlled criticals and burst damage without being accused of only using one bloody power from our primary?!

And how is asking for changes to improve AS going to take away from using the rest of your primary? You'll still be able to scrap it out all you want, so what is it that you're seeing that you'll have to give up if a second or two were shaved off of AS's animation or - if that's just not going to happen - some other suggestion along the lines of controlled burst damage were made?

I'm asking for changes to AS's activation for one reason: pragmatism. If a stalker's main source of controlled burst damage is meant to come from AS/Placate alone, then I'm content to try and make them more than situationally useful. I'm not trying to force anyone into the role of using AS as a crutch; I'm trying to open up the option of being able to relieably use AS more than once in a single battle.

Alright, so if you can see that the cast of placate and AS could be reduced by some reasonable amount, and agree that stalkers could use a little (key word: little) help then why in holy hell are you ranting?

DOUBLE HA!

Couldn't resist. I'm corny like that.

You're not the only one who's fed up. We're not even arguing the same thing.

I'm saying I'd like to see future changes focus not specifically on AS, but on burst damage, and I'm using AS's (admittedly not huge) shortcomings to illustrate the need. All you appear to be hearing is NERDRAGE!!!!11!!!!AS SUX I don't want to scrap I want to AS ALL THE FRAKKIN TIMEA!!!!!!1111!!!

Can we land somewhere in the middle, here? If you're willing to admit that stalkers could use some help, and you're willing to concede that AS and Placate are at least somewhat important to a stalker's inherent and role and are at least somewhat more situational in teams than is necessary, then what would you suggest? Anything?

Okay, I'd really like to bridge the gap between your views and mine, because it sounds like we're not that far apart in practice. If I'm under a misconception, then what is your concept of the function of the AT? Surely you don't mean to imply that the AT shares the same function as a Scrapper as generic melee damage dealers, because that's a massive oversimplification. Were that true, there'd be no reason to have different archetypes at all.

A scrapper doesn't get nothing. A scrapper gets a higher hit point cap, higher base hit points, better damage modifiers and better self-mitigation. I'm not quite sure why you think it's so important that a scrapper doesn't get a debuffing effect that comes from a power that isn't even in a scrapper's arsenal. A scrapper helps the team by doing dps damage, pure and simple. He doesn't need aoe debuffs, or even want them because he's got higher secondary self-mitigation.

I'm beginning to wonder which one of us has a horrible misconception of the function of the stalker archetype.

Look, the demoralize effect is a wonderful tool, and I'm not brushing it aside in any sense when I say I'd like to see more opportunities to use it on teams. You say it's wrapped up in a power that we're already trying to use, and I say good! My problem isn't that the debuff isn't valuable, it's that the power it's wrapped up in has situational usage on teams, and that's what limits its value.

Put simply, giving stalkers the ability to leverage AS on teams to greater effect than they currently can will increase the occurrence and value of what we both agree is an already valuable debuff.

Wait, what? You hate stalkers because they're not up to min/max standards of performance, but play stalkers nonetheless for concept reasons?

o.O

.....aaaalrighty, then!

Dude, just go play a scrapper and quit trolling. Scrappers are six shades of awesome. And they don't need Ninjitsu ported over for you to participate in that awesome. Go. Hunt. Kil skulz.

I'm not gonna sit here and tell you Scrappers ain't all that, because they are. They're all that and a bag of razor blades. So go on with your bad self and roll one up. I personally enjoy both playstyles, and have 50's in each.

You don't get Stalkers, and that's cool. Scrapper forums are two forums up, and as someone told you in that forum - don't be a Johnny Butane. Play what you enjoy and stop trying to shoehorn another archetype into your playstyle if it doesn't fit.

If that problem were the spawn dying before you could do max damage to it I would agree, but a Scrapper in that same example would continue scrapping on a different target. A sonic Blaster would just switch targets.

A stalker has to switch tactics from burst damage to something he's not designed to excel at. That's the problem I'm trying to illustrate.

If the target dies with the AS, demoralize doesn't go into effect. How is that underestimating it? If your answer to not being able to utilize AS on teams except in rare situations is to switch tactics and not use it, and demoralize only happens after a successful AS, then how is that underestimating demoralize?

Don't get me wrong. I love demoralize. Hell, I'm the one who originally suggested it. I'm just saying that demoralize's uses on teams are limited by how often AS can be used without killing its target.

Not saying it never happens on teams, just saying it doesn't happen enough.

Really? Might want to look at Zem's remarks about the 2 and change second animation for the KM AS (apparently at the expense of that second being added to Buildup).

Could be a mistake. Time will tell.

Bear in mind that this example doesn't take into account the position or number of minions and lt's. I specifically said any minions around him because I didn't account for any lt's or minions that would be outside the radius and/or target cap. But that's not the point. The point was not to show that everything would be dead by the time the AS landed - it was to illustrate that it would be more efficient to use a lesser, faster animating power.

An AS that activated in just half the time would have saved those blasters from wasting their follow-up attacks on the boss and let them - through the joy of automatic targeting - target another mob in what's left of the spawn.

And to your point about Tar Patch: it can be cast from range, can't be interrupted and would affect more than just the boss and his surrounding minions. Those not destroyed in the initial round of AoE would likely still be in range of the tar pit and would be debuffed by (and be too busy to return fire due to trying to get out of) that same patch.


As I said above, an AS that lands in just half the time would have killed the boss and automatically redirected those attacks to more useful targets. People will notice an AS if it actually kills a target before their attacks have a chance to land on the same target. An AS that activates quicker will speed up kill time.

Alternately, an AS that can't be interrupted will also be more flexible, letting the stalker use it on the run like other attacks. I'd take that, too.

Now that is interesting. I'll have to check on my KM/Dark tonight, but it would explain why the Buildup is a second longer... Hmmm... would I take a shortened animation on AS in exchanged for a compensatory lengthening of Build up? Hellz yeah. You can activate Buildup on the run and it isn't interruptible. Gonna have to see how much use I can get from this. Thanks for the info!

Well, now I wouldn't be posting in this thread in the first place if I didn't agree with that on some level. AS and Placate could use some help to be made more effective on teams.

The bonuses I listed were specifically related to the toggle suppression that comes with hide; something Scrappers will never get. The ability to selectively drop hide and unsuppress those toggles is something that takes skill and finesse to capitalize on, but that doesn't mean it's not an advantage.

Okay. Just remember what I said about skill and finesse.

But Scrappers can't de-aggro nearby mobs and move on without combining that spawn with the next one. Although I'm not sure about how the new tethering would affect this.

The tools lost are of little use to stalkers. Do you really think a damage aura will help you kill faster? More likely it will attract more aggro and get you killed quicker. Do you really think you need end recovery tools outside of stamina? Do you really need stamina by 20?

Then you're doing it wrong.

"To be near the goal while the enemy is still far from it, to wait at ease while the enemy is toiling and struggling, to be well-fed while the enemy is famished - this is the art of husbanding one's strength."

---Sun Tzu

In other words, Stealthing in gets you to your intended target at full health. With a scrapper, you risk getting there at less than optimal health and endurance levels, and may have to struggle for the victory. The ability to start a fight when and where you choose is not to be underestimated.

Again, if you don't see the value, you're doing it wrong.

Well again - team performance is what I'm talking about improving, but by the same token you can't judge an entire archetype as pathetic simply because their solo performance doesn't translate well to teams. If you prefer teaming, then you might well like scrappers better. More power to ya.

I'm not talking about Energize, I'm talking about Power Sink, which does indeed do -recovery. Link.

And I'm not talking about waiting for the re-hide, either. You don't have to use placate right after the AS every single time ya know. In large spawns you might just be better off on an /elec to drain their end first and then be able to placate/crit without worrying about return fire knocking you out of hidden status.

Clearly you're doing this wrong, as well. The only combo that you don't get much use out of early on is the weaken combo, and really - how often do you need to bring down resistance in the early levels? Just because two of the four combos use the AS/Placate/BU synergy doesn't mean they're not useful. If anything, they make the AS even more potent. The fact that you can't use them as often on a team is reason to make those powers more useable on a team, not declare the entire set is gimped.