Smiling_Joe

....aaaaaand that wouldn't be awesome because?

...I keed! I keed!

Okay. I'll bite. Once.

Forget for a moment that a stalker is second to none when it comes to carving 1000 hit points at a time out of hard targets. That's a small percentage of actual play and would be heavily resisted anyway.

Unlike a scrapper, a stalker is a master at manipulating combat conditions to his favor. Ninjitsu is strong only because it makes the most of this. Other secondaries do that, too. Name another archetype that can suppress its own toggles the way Dark Armor and Energy Aura for Stalkers can now. Now a /DA stalker can stealth into a group and not have to worry about landing an AS to fear the enemies around him. Not only that, if he's MA on top of that, he also can stun the majority of a mob. There's a teaming benefit right there that scrappers can't get.

What about repel? Used unwisely, it'll get ya booted. Used wisely, however, you could jump out of a fight that's going south, rehide and toggle repel. Go in and AS the biggest guy near the almost-dead tanker. When hide drops, all the baddies go flying. Drop the tanker a green and carry on. Can a scrapper do that?

Can a scrapper, in the middle of a fight, turn and placate a lieutenant that's just turned on a squishy and immediately thereafter bring that lieutenant from full health down to zero with a massive critical burst? No. The scrapper would have to take two or three hits, leaving his former target free to possibly target the same squishy. The stalker can turn back around after one hit and continue without so much as breaking stride.

A scrapper can't take out every sapper or operations engineer in a bank mission full of Malta without having to fight his way through every spawn. A stalker can take both problem mobs down across an entire map without a team even having to break pace.

See there? I don't believe stalkers are gimped on teams, after all, do I? Any stalker driver worth his or her salt can utilize the tools available to accomplish on a stalker things that just aren't possible with the more straightforward scrappers. My problem with stalkers is one of design more than performance. I want to be able to use all my tools more equally than I can now, and that means making AS/Placate less situational on a team. This is why I'm against changes like increasing our hit point cap and damage modifier.

If you play a stalker like a brute, you're gonna have a bad time. If you play a stalker like a scrapper, you're gonna have a bad time. If you french fry when you shoulda pizza'd, you're gonna have a bad time.

If you play a stalker as it's intended, however, you're going to have a blast, and you'll never need to worry about what a scrapper is doing.

That experience doesn't lend itself quite so well to teams currently, but I'm hoping that will change.

In the meantime, the scrapper forums are two forums up. Nothing wrong with giving in to the urge and rolling a scrapper. Got a few of those myself.

EDIT - I never did answer your specifics, did I? Oh okay. Here you go:

DM/Elec Stalker: Gets Lightning Reflexes sooner. Gets Build Up instead of Soul Drain (which some people for some reason like better), and gets it at level 8 instead of level 26. Can drain enemies of end with Power Sink and go back into hide for another guaranteed crit without worrying about enemies having enough end to knock him out of hide or interrupt AS.

DB/DA Stalker: Can suppress Oppressive Gloom and Cloak of Fear, dropping hide with an AS or other critical only when positioned for maximum effectiveness without having to worry about these toggles aggroing the spawn until he's ready. Gets Build Up instead of Blinding Feint (again - some people prefer a self-reliant damage buff). Gets a really sweet sweep combo with every Build Up/AS/Ablating Strike, giving him powerful group mitigation early on when it's needed most. Alternately, also gets the choice of the Empower combo simply by swapping Ablating Strike and Placate, giving you extra damage on the follow up crit. By contrast, a scrapper only gets Empower with Blinding Feint as a finishing move (thus giving no overlap to the damage buff and making the combo less likely to go off due to Blinding Feint being accuracy dependent and coming only at the end. The stalker version has a self buff at the beginning and an auto hit at the end.) and a scrapper only gets Sweep after 32.

Now give yourself some credit. Your post was plenty coherent. And I can agree with the idea that Stalkers have no problems performing like a melee damage dealer. I just think they should be able to have more flexibility with their burst damage tools when teamed.

To be clear, the main difference between a stalker and a scrapper is that a stalker can control the criticals. My problem with stalkers as currently designed is that control is significantly reduced when teaming.

I honestly think it was a mistake to remove the criticals on held/slept targets in favor of random crits, but nothing to do about that now.


On this we agree.

You misunderstood. I wasn't saying taking the alpha was dangerous for the stalker, I was saying it was dangerous for the team. In the examples I gave, the AS would likely not go off before the spawn aggroed onto your team - whether because of the interrupt on AS or because someone on your team followed you right into the spawn. A prematurely aggroed spawn is dangerous because it gives them the momentum and takes the initiative away. It lets the spawn get the alpha in before the team.

Demoralize only happens when an AS crits, and then only when the initial target doesn't die, so the usefulness of that debuff is only good so long as your team is fighting EB's and AV's and the rare boss that hasn't taken damage before the AS lands.

And using AS as an alpha strike is only effective if you get to the spawn three seconds and change ahead of the team. Maybe back in the days of herding tankers teams were willing to wait around for one member to do their special thing, but these days teams pretty much steamroll without pause. Your AS might land or it might not, and it will most likely kill your target (because your target has already taken damage) but there's an outside chance that the demoralize will go into effect and help the team.

It isn't a stalker's job to take the alpha. That's what tankers and brutes are for. Not saying that a stalker - or a scrapper, or any archetype well equipped - can't take the alpha. I'm just saying that the odds are in favor of the tanker or brute on the team running in and punchvoking before your AS can land. That happens, odds are good that you'll have to reposition to follow through with that AS, which means that odds are good that your target will have already suffered damage from the rest of the team. Your AS will likely kill them, meaning there's no demoralize.

Is this a bad thing? Enemies dying never are. The point I'm making is that - nine times out of ten - you're more efficient on a team if you just take on a role as a secondary scrapper.

And while a team might be better off to call on a scrapper - who will be much better equipped to scrap than a stalker is - I'm not even saying your average team will care about the difference.

All I'm saying is that the tools that make a stalker a stalker are often obviated by team play, and that a good improvement to stalkers would be something that makes those tools more relevant to team play.

Nothing wrong with adjusting tactics and scrapping when you have to, I'd just like that to not be the default behavior quite as often on a team. If anything is done for stalkers - and I'm betting that's a big if - I'd prefer it to be something along those lines.

Yes, I get it. Burst is a tactic. So is DPS. So is ranged. So is buffing and debuffing. Like it or not, however, most archetypes are designed to be specialists in only one of those tactics. They might have secondary uses for two or even three others, but the standard archetypes in this game are specialists. (not talking about Kheldians and SoA's, obviously)

Stalkers are specialists in the burst damage tactic. Can they use dps tactics? Yes. One of the sword stalkers can also slot their attacks for defense debuffs and use a debuffing strategy, but that doesn't make them a debuffer.

Okay, that's admittedly hyperbolic. There's a difference in modifiers that affects a stalker's effectiveness at debuffing and dps'ing. Switching to dps tactics is still using the same modifier as burst tactics. My point in that illustration is that just because an Archetype can fill another role doesn't mean that said role should be viewed with the same importance as their primary role. With a stalker, that role was designed to be single target burst damage.

In practice, however, that role becomes secondary on teams to dps - which is something they will never be better at than brutes and scrappers, mostly due to their low hit points.

You're generalizing far too much, here. If scrappers are generic damage dealers and everyone is one form of scrapper or another, just with a few different tricks, then I don't think you're being fair to scrappers. Why have different melee archetypes at all if that's the case? I couldn't disagree with you more here.

I do agree that stalkers weren't designed to rely solely on AS as a crutch. However, they have to make huge sacrifices in their builds just to make it effective as an attack, and I don't see anything wrong with giving stalkers a reason to use it more often. It's our major source of burst damage when it crits, and removing some of the recharge and/or interrupt from its cast time would go a long way towards expanding its usefulness.

You could even use it to scrap. The random crit outside of hide would give occasional bursts of damage that would let a scrapping stalker still be able to contribute burst damage.

I'm not saying AS is useless. I'm saying it could be more useful.


You're forgetting blasters. It keeps getting brought up that we're melee blasters - the glass cannons of the melee archetypes, and so it really isn't fair to leave them out of the comparison.

And yes, I did forget Ice damage (but I thought that was largely paired with smashing.)

And if fire melee is ported over to stalkers, I will gladly take back any remarks about other melee archetypes getting access to pure fire damage. Happily. But it hasn't happened yet.


First, let me just state for the record that I'm not saying a stalker is always obviated by his or her teammates' damage; I'm saying that the odds are tilted just a little too far in that direction. Not by much, but enough to be noticed.

Second, it's really not a good comparison to hold entire attack chains up to a stalker's single attack. But let's go with it.

Let's assume that Buildup is hit as the stalker travels to the boss, and let's give the benefit of the doubt and assume Aim is not up for any of the blasters. Next, let's add a SS brute to the mix for the sake of team makeup. I doubt very many teams would have just one melee type, and that it would be a stalker, to boot. Finally, let's assume 93% damage enhancement to all attacks. Give the brute half a bar of fury, which shouldn't be unusual if they've just come from a spawn. Assume rage is up.

So, going by first attacks:

The brute doesn't have to hit buildup and so his hurl boulder hits first. With rage and 50% fury you're looking at what? 800 damage? I might be off there, since I'm not sure how rage/fury affect enhanced damage.
Fistfull of arrows does around 220 points of damage to the boss and any minions and lts. (built up and damage enhanced)
Buckshot likewised odes 220 points of damage.
Torrent does 232 points.
Fireball does 217, not counting the dot - which, for the sake of this example, we won't.

Let's also assume that the boss is resistant to kb to keep things simple.

So in the opening volley that's 1,689 points of damage that land before the AS falls.

Now a boss at level 50 has 2,500 hit points. Any minions around him have around 430 each, and any lts have 857. Just the AoE portions of the attack have killed any minions in the immediate vicinity of the boss, and likely any lieutenants as well.

Now, because of the way AS interrupt works, you have to pause after running up before activating the power, or it will interrupt itself. So before you've even mashed the key the boss has less than a thousand hit points left.

What would be more efficient at that point? Going through with the AS for 1000 points of damage or hitting (for example) Soaring Dragon, which will nail him for 679 points in less than half the cast time?

Before you answer that, keep in mind that less than half the cast time of an AS has expired, and you know that at least one more salvo will land before your AS, which - if you're counting - will be mainly the blasters' second attacks (The brute's inevitable KO blow would land after) and total right around 600 more points of damage.

Smart money's on the Soaring Dragon. You can then move on to another target like one of the lt's or minions that wasn't affected by the AoE damage.

You're likely thinking that's not a problem. Adjust your tactics, hit Soaring Dragon and scrap it out with another mob. My point, however, is that - for that spawn - that was probably the most damage you could hope to have achieved. Scrapping it out after that will be far more dangerous with your lower hit points than it will be for the other melee members, and your damage won't be as much as they can dish out.

Now as I've said, the problem is a small one, but wouldn't it be better for stalkers to know that they could have landed the AS before that second salvo from the blasters and let them use that second blast to mop up everything else?


You might have seen this from one of my posts up-thread:

A built-up/Aim'd Blazing Bolt will do around 350 points less damage than an EM AS.

So, yeah. As it should be. I might point out, however, that a blaster doesn't have to be hidden to do that damage, and doesn't have to be in melee, where the animation can be interrupted.

Heh. Never said a stalker needs to out damage those other players combined. What I'm saying is that the burst damage a stalker does is too slow and too situational to contribute, and the dps damage meant to compensate for that could be more "bursty" and less "strictly dps" in nature, otherwise a stalker looses the benefits it gains from being a specialist archetype.

That's a perfect analogy for solo play. It doesn't fit the team scenario. Like I said, the days of teams waiting around for one member to set up for their special flavor went the way of the map-herding tanker.


Of what benefit is it to hop away at the end of an AS animation when the AS is so situational in the first place on teams? All of the quirks you list are valid and good tactics... to a solo stalker. Their use is limited on teams due to the problems with placate shedding aggro to the squishies and AS being as situational as it is. They are tactics befitting a slower playstyle that just isn't there on teams.

I'm not shortchanging the AT. I'm trying to strengthen the AT. Solo, my stalkers can do things that make my scrappers turn green with envy. Teamed, they play like weak scrappers. I would rather they played a little more like stalkers.

Two reasons: First, when you run up to a mob to hit AS, you have to stop for roughly a second for the server to recognize that you've stopped, or your AS will interrupt itself. Second, no matter how many times you tell people, someone will always assume you unintentionally aggroed the spawn and run in after you.

The first can be partially answered if I'd buy a real computer upon which to play the game. Workin' on that, but there will always be server lag of some sort, and so that will always be an issue to some degree. The second one would think could be remedied with a little communication. Yeah. I'm still workin' on that, too. In the meantime it's still an issue, and I'd bet I'm not the only one.

Far safer, IMO to forego the AS until the Alpha's past, but then we run into the problem of trying to fit into a role that the archetype wasn't really designed to fill: scrapping.

Burst is a tactic, but the archetype was designed around that as its intended role. If it's meant to fill a more dps role when teamed, then it needs to be a little better defined.

Well said, sir. And I heartily agree. I may be pointing out what I feel to be a slight disparity in the archetype, but don't think for a minute I don't do exactly as you describe when I play my stalkers.
I'm not saying Stalkers are sub-par or gimped, or that I even think they're that far out of line. But IMHO there is some room for improvement on a team.

Fair enough, although I might point out that - support archetypes aside - the damage dealers also have access to pure fire damage, pure psionic damage and pure energy damage.

The other guys aren't all spending their time on 3-4 second activation attacks. Who's generalizing now? The others are opening with what they feel is their best opener, which could have any length of animation.

And even if their time is divided, a three second snipe followed by a one second aoe happens in the same time as your buildup and as. You keep talking like there's only one aoe going off when you're readying your as. On some teams there could be two or three. Or four. One aoe isn't comparable damage to a single burst attack. Several combined is a good bit closer. Throw in a brute's alpha that lands before your as and you've got some wasted damage potential.

No, foes aren't magically within 15 ft of each other; they end up a lot closer immediately after they're aggroed. But I agree that an extremely coordinated team is a fiction best done away with. If everyone was single target damage you might have a point about chaotic teams opening up opportunities for a stalker, but that just isn't the case. AoE debuffs and AoE damage are far and away more used than single target attacks.

Yeah, I know. You don't think AoE can compare to the raw damage of single target attacks, and when comparing attack to attack you're right. As I said above, teams rarely have one aoe attack firing at one time, and when two or three are layered on top of some of the debuffs that are also likely being thrown out, then you have a force that can obviate a slow animating burst attack. Where are we left then? Right back as scrappers.

Where you're wrong is where you assume a stalker is rewarded for stopping to think/calculate. You just said in the same post that I should move faster. At what point will stopping to calculate synergize with that?

I'm not really projecting any role one way or the other; I'm pointing out that our role as an archetype is somewhat schizophrenic.

The problem with that tactical edge? You guessed it. BU/AS/Placate. Ten seconds of animation time for powers that - with the notable exception of Buildup - have marginal usefulness on teams. The debuff from AS is only good if the target survives, and as I've been saying a good portion of the time the target is already nearly dead from teammates' damage. Placate is actually detrimental unless used on mobs that are already aggroed to someone else, and in that case they're likely going to die anyway whether you critical or not.

Solo, stalkers are fine and that tactical edge is extremely powerful. Team performance is what I've been talking about, and that could at least use some clarification, if not a slight buff.

Because those other sets not only have access to sets stalkers don't get, they also are better balanced with different modifiers than stalkers. I

At no time did Jbikao say the fight would only last five seconds. The only time he mentioned five seconds in relation to anything was the animation time of BU+AS. No real fight only lasts five seconds.

And your Dark Corr's Tar Patch is a good portion of the reason WHY all the minions die in the opening salvo.

Where are people getting that I'm talking about bosses dying off before the AS lands? What I'm saying is that a normal boss is heavily damaged, and AS - by the time you get it to land is overkill. I'm saying that the extra damage that exceeds your target's hit points is wasted, and thus a more efficient way to go is your other attacks.

And it's not just that you can't use AS in teams, it's that you're not able to use your powerset as it's intended - high burst killing of single targets - in most situations. You're relegated - as you state - to using your other attacks and scrapping it out. The problem with that is that you're now a sub-par scrapper.

And that's not a huge problem, IMHO, in the later levels when Stalkers are able to get more AoE out of their PPP/APP's.

I wasn't talking about situations where bosses resist EVERYONE's damage. Those are the exceptions. The bosses in the late game specifically resist the damage most dealt by Stalkers: Smashing and Lethal. Even sets like DM, EM and ElM do smashing components. By contrast, other Archetypes have access to pure fire, psionic, dark and energy damage.

Again, that's the exception. But even then other damage archetypes have more or less equal access to Single Target and AoE damage, both of which will be utilized. Those other targets you speak of will be incidental deaths due to the AoE.

You must have some amazing teams who will all coordinate specifically so that you alone can focus on a single target. Most teams I've seen go after the bosses and lt's - and if there's more than one they'll split their efforts among them. Most melee types want the glory of one kill all to themselves, no different than stalkers. The minions fall in the crossfire.

I'm not talking strictly AoE verses Single Target. Brutes have access to EM and both Brutes and Scrappers have access to MA. Scrappers will still do more damage and Brutes will do comparable damage and survive longer.

But that's not even the point. The point is that solo or teamed they're still able to function as the archetypes were intended.

Stalkers, by contrast, get to ignore the best tools in their archetype and imitate what the other melee archetypes do, but not as well.

Except that four out of eight powersets in the archetype are strictly heavily resisted damage (smashing/lethal) and of the remaining four three deal at least half smashing. EDIT - and Spines deals lethal with its toxic. Dagnabbit why do I always forget Spines? When heavy resists affect 75% percent of an archetype, then it is an archetype problem and not just a damage type problem.

But that's not my issue at all, really. I can't speak for others, but what's at issue with stalkers currently is a minor identity crisis that only shows up when teamed. If stalkers are intended to play as melee blasters, they are only doing that effectively when solo. If - as the current design implies - they are intended to switch roles on teams and be single target scrappers with low hit points then something needs to be done to make them better at it, because currently they're not (when compared to the other melee types they're forced to emulate) until they hit the 40's or are Ninjitsu, and mainly then because of the AoE controls that come with either that go to complement the damage that they do with attacks outside of AS and Placate.

Bosses gain several times the hit points, and players gain six or seven times the damage and debuffing potential. If we're talking later levels, minions generally die in the alpha, with Lt's following right after. The only reason any survive at all outside of bosses is damage/aggro caps. But above level 40 any archetype can pretty much pwn any minion and most Lt's in the game. So that leaves the bosses for the entire team to pay attention to. Now I'll grant that some of those bosses can be a real PIA. (looking at you, Master Illusionist and your "untouchable!" message that appears right after my AS) but when faced with the utter onslaught of six to ten heroes/rogues/villains/whathaveyou they nonetheless melt pretty quickly.

Burst damage only matters in those ten seconds you speak of if you can land it all in those ten seconds (and including buildup, AS, Placate, and whatever followup attack you're planning that can be difficult) and it isn't a heavily resisted damage type. Unfortunately, the vast majority of the damage stalkers do is the most heavily resisted damage in the game. That Radiation Blaster and that Psi Dominator don't have that to worry about. Neither does that Fire Scrapper.

You can hit buildup on your way to your intended victim to shave off 1.19 seconds (or if your KM 1.9 seconds), but then again you have to make darn sure you're completely stopped before you even begin to cue up your AS, or it interrupts. Heaven help you if you rubberband back or lag past your intended meatbag, or maybe they decide to finish firing their ranged attack and move just before you get the AS key mashed. Then you get to waste time repositioning, further burning off precious damage buff.


Not really arguing AoE verses ST so much as I am pointing out that most - if not all - the other archetypes are equally focused on AoE AND Single Target. Those Blasters tossing out aoe's are also slinging snipes and short range heavy damage attacks. With Buildup and Aim, blasters also have the potential to reach pretty massive levels of single target damage, and follow that up with an aoe that will wipe out a boss and his entire spawn.

For example, using a calculator and Red Tomax and a fuzzy concept of math, I can tell you that a Fire/EM Blaster can hit Buildup, Aim and Blazing Bolt for around 1011 points of pure fire damage (with 93% enhancement) and follow up with Fireball for an additional 434-ish points of mostly fire damage (enhanced as above) in around 8 seconds, with the second attack damaging the entire spawn within radius and cap.

An EM stalker will do 1351 points of similarly slotted damage that is split between smashing and energy from a built up AS, follow that with placate and Total Focus for an additional 490 points of damage in about as many seconds. On paper the AS is far and away the heavier hitter, but in practice it's heavier resisted than the Blazing Bolt and it's all to one target.

Now, since a level 50 Boss has 2500 Hit points on average, you can imagine that blaster's combo taking the boss down to 1000 hit points, which you easily strip him of with your AS, only to turn around and have no one to placate because the blaster also killed the minions, who have about 430 hit points each.

You could make the argument that that was just one boss in a spawn full of minions, but keep in mind that I'm only talking about one fire blaster on a team of two. Scrappers and Brutes that don't also make for the boss will one or two-shot the lt's and another blaster will likely do the same to a second boss.

Don't even get me started on the wasted damage potential from killing half-dead lt's.

The point is that while the problem isn't exactly dire, the perception is there that Stalkers - when played as stalkers - don't contribute as much to teams.


Most people are only watching the numbers they themselves generate, and assume that any other numbers that appear over a foe they're attacking are theirs unless that foe has an untimely death while their attack is still animating. What you're talking about above is player perception, and what I and others are talking about is actual damage contribution.

Unfortunately, there is rarely a situation in most teams where a single enemy is the bottleneck for faster spawn defeats. It's likely a more common situation in Task Forces, but for the vast majority of the content the minions and lt's are incidental casualties in very quick battles with minor bosses. The most common bottleneck mechanics in this game have to do with the environment of the mission and how to use it for better AoE leverage.

No they were definitely fixed. Playing a stalker before that was .... painful. Since then, however, a good bit of re-balancing has taken place. Archetypes that Stalkers team with have been changed, and even the kinds of archetypes a Stalker teams with have changed. Heavily IO'd builds have become more and more commonplace. Content - never difficult to begin with - has actually gotten a little challenging. All these are changes for the better. And that's a massive understatement.

All these changes haven't rendered stalkers obsolete; far from it. Stalkers can take advantage of IOs and can now be buffed and assisted by heroic archetypes. But today's game has brought out quirks in the stalker playstyle that yesterday's game overlooked.

Namely, it's virtually impossible to play a stalker on a team as a stalker, verses a generic melee archetype. Right now, there are three melee archetypes that can be compared, and those are tankers, brutes and scrappers. All can be burst damage dealers, all can be dps dealers, and (with the exception of a few powersets) most can be aoe damage powerhouses.

Stalkers fall somewhere in the grey area between scrappers and blasters. Is a stalker supposed to be a one shot-one kill glass cannon single target burst damage archetype or is it supposed to be a melee dps fighter with low hitpoints? Right now, that depends on whether you're solo or teamed.

I personally would prefer the former even when teamed, but wanting that and making that happen in today's game are pretty far apart.

Any number of suggestions could remedy the disparity, but with everything that stalkers already do with the combination of their inherent and the trifecta of AS/BU/Placate has come dangerously close to making them the gimmick kings. While I love some of the ideas that have been thrown around, I worry that we're asking for Castle to give us a Frankenstein archetype with a patchwork inherent.

That's why I think Jbikao is right on the money with his view of the three aforementioned powers. Using them as intended strings together some very long animations, meaning that the true talent of a stalker is wasted on a team, due to nothing more than the baddies having drastically fewer hit points than the damage your attack string is doing. In short, it's inefficiency of the highest order.

Shortening the animations would help, but I also (alternately) wouldn't say no to removing the interrupt from AS in PVE or giving it a little longer than melee range. (Maybe ten to twelve feet instead of seven).

Keep in mind we're talking team stalkers verses solo. Teams won't wait around for a stalker to prep for even three seconds, much less seven. (And I realize that you were just tossing out a number there. No one really needs seven seconds to prep, eh?)

My point is that in order to make stalkers more team friendly, they made them more like scrappers with the ability to crit out of hide on any target (early on it was just a chance to crit on held or slept targets) that scales with number of teammates in range. The more people on your team, the more like a scrapper you play. Your AS doesn't see nearly as much use during normal teaming as it does solo, and AS (combined with your tier 9) is close to half your damage potential.

What it boils down to is that - while teamed - a stalker plays like a weak scrapper unless your team is fighting AV's and hard targets, which are a small fraction of total teamable content.

And I'll be the last person to say scrappers are boring.

Task forces are what? Five percent of the game? You can't judge an archetype's performance based solely on how it performs in Task Forces.

And in any case, I'm not talking about bosses vaporizing (especially in the context of the longbow warden example I opened with) before you can damage them. I'm talking about a rather binary state of affairs where a boss is either tough enough that it won't be heavily damaged in three or four (or ten or fifteen) seconds due to high resists, or those minor bosses and lieutenants that are heavily damaged shortly after the alpha.

If it's the former, your damage is so heavily resisted (as are most of the stalker primaries) that archetypes with more exotic damage types are able to close the gap. In addition, the value of burst damage goes down somewhat in favor of debuffs (that make everything feel like major damage).

In the latter case - and the latter is far and away the more common case, I'm still not talking about the boss dying. The boss or lt may not be killed before your AS animates, but their health is reduced enough that the heavy damage from a built-up AS or Tier 9 is pure overkill by an exponential amount.

There doesn't seem to be much of a middle ground between the two. Either you're damage is resisted enough to make single target burst damage all but irrelevant, or the mob's resistances are low enough that the majority of your damage is overkill. Hell, on teams anyone can take down a boss in 3-5 seconds, so who needs stalkers to do it for them?

You won't find many people arguing with that statement. But there again, at no point was I talking about killing a boss in three seconds. I'm talking about either having a stalker's largely smashing/lethal damage obviated by a boss's resists or having your having your high burst damage obviated against weaker mobs by the long activation times when competing with AOE and DPS archetypes.

Whether the boss dies in three seconds or an hour is irrelevant. It's whether or not Stalkers can equally contribute to that death in a team environment that's at stake.

Seconded. And with hurricane and gale you can knock the spawns back whenever your soldiers run into melee range (or, in the case of kb resistant bosses and EB's you can run in and debuff their tohit with hurricane )

Nothing compliments the chaos of /storm like the mercs' range attacks. Steamy mist gives you a bit of group stealth, some resists and defense as well for your guys. Mix that with Maneuvers and you've got some... okay... defense.

Wait until you hit the 40's and your built-up AS barely takes a quarter of a longbow warden's health.

AS does great damage, but the resists in the late game are far and away disproportionate to the level increase in your damage scale. Since the vast majority of Stalker primaries do smashing/lethal (and those that aren't pure lethal are at least half smashing on most of their attacks) then the ST damage in the upper levels isn't quite as noticeable.

Especially when it's the upper levels where other archetypes are beginning to come into their own, AoE-wise. I agree with Jbikao - so much of the stalker damage is based on three powers (BU, AS and Placate), which being so slow to animate that most of their damage is wasted on half to mostly dead targets when teamed, that the damage numbers on the spread sheets are obviated by their implementation in a teaming dynamic.

This I agree with, as well as the sentiment of your post. It does seem that Buildup/AS/Placate seem to have way too much sway over primary powerset design. Your suggestion of tying different effects to AS that are unique to each primary is one I would heartily get behind.

(Although I would point out that the sweep combo on stalkers deals out some very nice mitigation for the chaos right after the AS. - Still get your point about DB, though).

If you'd been around the stalker forums as long as Jbikao has you might have noticed the contributions this veteran stalker has made to the community.

Nonetheless, your post amounts to lol lrn2ply noob and that's just weak. If you'd actually read what he'd written you might actually have seen the useful suggestion in there. At no time did Jbikao declare Stalkers a lost cause, and his statement calling them "unimpressive" was in the context of their perception, not the reality of how they play.

Reading comprehension ftw, I guess.

In order for an AS to actually help out a team it actually has to (a) land before someone else on the team kills your target (which with a 4 second animation is difficult, to put it mildly), and (b) not kill the target. If the target dies from the AS then poof! No debuff.

And all that presupposes that the damage and the debuff are actually noticed in the chaos of an 8 person team. Single target damage spikes are virtually invisible when everyone is looking at their own immediate target. That's kind of why the game centers so much on AoE damage. Nothing less is seen as a contribution. That's not a problem with stalkers so much as it is with player perception, but it's a problem still the same.

In the land of AoE's, single target damage isn't going to be noticed no matter how much you do, and the argument could be made that the AS damage being boosted actually works against that AOE debuff you mentioned.

Again, single target damage is not going to be a noticeable factor on teams. It just isn't. What WILL be noticed is that you just placated a lieutenant that went and two-shotted the dominator who was holding everyone else. It might not be fair, but that's human nature. Sending aggro to your teammates with placate is NOT a fair tradeoff for your increased critical rate in their eyes, and I'd be willing to bet any team that heard you say that to them after getting them killed will be looking for another brute very soon after.

Pardon my ignorance.... but you're running around at how much fury?

'Cause I thought the bar thingie filled up at 100%

Let's see...

Knocks nearly all foes around repeatedly... check.

High mag stun... check.

Fair to good damage... check.

Up almost every spawn with minimal IO investment... check.

Yeah. Water Spout's the one I can't wait to get. You want to talk about one power making you immortal, talk about Water Spout. Entire spawns staggering around half dead ftw. Hell, toss out one aoe afterwords and move on.

Oh cool! I'll edit the front page accordingly!

I believe this is being fixed or has been fixed for I18 or shortly thereafter, is it not? Stalker toggles like the two in dark armor and repel from energy aura will NOT effect enemies until hide is broken, if I recall correctly.

I've never played the set, tbh, but I thought Energize was a heal?