Smiling_Joe

For the three AoE chain described last, you can hit inner light first, shift to form and do all three in JUUUUST at or under 10 seconds

I generally only take the smashing/lethal shield on my triform builds, and my shifting bind down from form looks like:

/bind [key] "powexec_name shining shield$$Goto_tray 1$$powexec_toggleoff white dwarf$$powexec_toggleoff bright nova"

If you've taken three shields, you can always use this and add the following bind:

/bind [key] "+down$$powexec_toggleon quantum shield$$powexec_toggleon thermal shield"

Because it's a toggle key, it will activate thermal shield on the downward press and - if you keep the key pressed long enough for the animation to start - will activate quantum shield on key release.

So that's form dropped and all three shields activated in two keystrokes.

But really, the binds for the double stomp are meant to be activated under combat circumstances where it's assumed you'll be back in dwarf or nova in a matter of seconds anyway. If you were to plan on staying in human form (ie- had all three shields) for the rest of the fight then it might not be a practical tactic. YMMV

What? Are you talking about the shifting animation? Because shifting from Dwarf to Human is instantaneous. I can't imagine trying to chain Solar Flare followed by Dwarf Flare.

No - the double stomp begins the dwarf flare. The macro looks like this:

/macro DS "powexec_name "powexec_name Solar Flare$$goto_tray 1$$powexec_toggleoff White Dwarf."

Start with your Dwarf Flare, then as the animation for that ends hit the macro - you'll drop to human form instantly and perform Solar Flare.

But that still carries the animation time of dwarf flare before you can get the Solar Flare off. Want something quicker?

/bind [key] "powexec_toggleoff White Dwarf$$goto_tray 1$$powexec_name White Dwarf Flare$$powexec_auto Solar Flare"

Because dropping to human form is instant, the white dwarf flare will animate in human form at the same time as solar flare, resulting in two back-to-back AOE hits. The only catch is that it puts Solar Flare on Auto. You can either hit the bound key a second time to turn the auto off, or change up your dwarf shift bind like so:

/bind [key] "powexec_toggleon White Dwarf$$goto_tray 8$$powexec_auto Solar Flare"

Note that the same bind toggles auto on and off.

For chaining three AoE's, you could always substitute a well-slotted Luminous Detonation for Solar Flare in the first macro like so:

/macro AoE "Powexec_name Luminous Detonation$$goto_tray 1$$powexec_toggleoff white dwarf"

Here you hit WDF, followed by this macro, where you'll drop to human and fire off LD at your nearest foe. It's fast animating, so you can still hit them with Solar Flare while they're in the air for a good 3 AoE combo.

Chaining AoE's with khelds is easy - you just have to A) start your first AoE in form, and B) experiment.

When did I argue that human form was lacking? It's bloody well the dominant form on a Peacebringer after the current changes went live. Or are you referring to the open beta forums for them, where I argued somewhat vehemently that the changes favored human form too much? I still feel that way, and the statement you quoted was bolded for sarcasm as much as for truth. It can compete with nova for damage (exceeding it in single target damage) and is more survivable than dwarf.

Non-synergistic mezzes and excessive knockback in its powers it might have, but in light of the changes made to its survival and damage it's unlikely that these will be fixed for fear of "overpowering" Peacebringers. Remember when Arbiter Hawk was going to look at the data and decide if knockback and pulsar needed fixing? I do believe it was I-21.5 - well, that's in the past now and I haven't seen any changes whatsoever.

I wonder if that means he's made his decision?

It's true. I'm a troll. Hairy toes and all. But just to clarify I wasn't accusing THB of trolling.

Oh, right. Clarifying who you called a troll is still trolling, isn't it?

...Oh, very well.

1. All three. Three builds, three times the fun. Different playstyles, and more variety=more fun.
2. What's wrong with them? Numerically speaking, nothing. Peacebringers are actually quite fine on paper. The buffs worked.

...unless you played a Peacebringer because of the variety in playstyles that comes with mixing up the forms. The buffs may have worked on paper, but they completely disregarded the unique qualities of the forms, giving human form all the best that the other two forms had to offer. Light Form lost its unique animation and all the goodness that went with it in favor of making it "eclipse with a crash and no psionic resistance." Inner Light might give a longer duration buff on par with Mire, but the majority of its buff goes to human form, which now competes with Nova for damage. Nova, on the other hand, was given nothing to compensate for this. Nova still has to drop to human to hit Inner Light, Heals or Hasten. Another point to human. Human is as tough as Dwarf and as damaging as Nova. Only a sentimental fool like me keeps the forms in the 50+ game.

To compete in that game you're better off sticking with human form, where your playstyle is more like that of a brute, madly mashing buttons and keeping your eyes more on your buff icons than what you're actually fighting. It's a playstyle I detest, frankly. That's why I don't play Brutes. Or PVP.

3. Absolutely frickin' nothing, IMHO. My Warshade still sports SO's, but is one of the toughest characters I play. I'm currently planning on IO'ing him up as my new main to replace my PB.

4. Heh. Nothing on the planet is wrong with PB human form. NOTHING. Come to think of it, I don't have any heartburn with Warshade's human form, either.

5. VEAT's are tankmages from level 24 on. They stomped on so many other archetypes' toes it's not funny. Playstyle-wise, VEAT's are the most versatile archetypes in the game. Themewise, they're the most restricting. They're sheer hell to get to 24.

EAT's, in comparison, are an easier out-of-the box archetype to play, and a much, MUCH harder archetype to master. A good VEAT player sees all the credit go to the archetype. A good Kheld driver is a diety to his or her teammates.

'Nut, I had been following this thread, but lost track of it over the last three or five days, so if your suggestion is there I missed it. Have you posted your idea yet?

Don't feed it. It's obviously a troll.

::Sprays MisterD with a can of Troll-B-Gone::

Shoo! Shoo! Get on out of here now! We gave at the office!

Oh don't get me wrong, Jib - I'm not angry by any stretch. I've just gotten... pretty much what I expected to get.

Disappointed? Sure. But I don't have it in me to continue another debate on another archetype that's in the end not going to gain me anything.

I still have my stalkers, and will still be able to utilize my preferred playstyle, I just won't be as effective as the new STrappers (tm) (Single Target scRAPPER, get it?)

And in the end, the stalker community will be quite happy with their characters.

Old school stalkers like me will never die - we'll just fade away.

Or so you'll think...

Any archetype can fill any given role in the game. Defenders can tank. Brutes and stalkers can scrap right along with scrappers. Hell, stalkers have access to holds, stuns immobilizes just like controllers and dominators. Does that make controllers any less controllers? Does that mean controllers weren't designed to use holds? Of course not. You know as well as I do that Stalkers don't get containment.

By the same token other archetypes aren't rewarded for using those powers they have in common to the extent that stalkers are. Controllers's holds and immobilizes let them benefit from the double damage of containment, and stalkers' mitigation powers give them the breathing room to better leverage the double damage from their inherent.

Brutes using stun arent' guaranteeing a full fury bar, and scrappers using cloak of fear aren't going to increase their chance of getting a critical. But a stalker using cloak of fear might just have time to get that placate/attack combo off.

And - again - speaking of which:

You're worried about dps on a burst damage archetype? No wonder we don't understand each other.

More to the point, you've indicated a problem with damage falling off by the use of placate, so why aren't you jumping up and down for them to reduce the cast time on placate? If there's a problem with placate being overshadowed by just using another attack then the answer isn't to go ahead and buff the tactic of just using other attacks - it's to buff placate.

Or so I would have thought. Apparently not.

Assassin Strike AGAIN?! Look, on a team you don't always have the time to use Assassin Strike, and that Sapper (insert annoying lieutenant to flavor) might not have died in the alpha, so there's a real chance you might not be hidden. Besides, why waste the enormous damage that assassin strike brings on one lieutenant? In the three second animation time that sapper might get off another hit on the tanker. And all that extra damage would be wasted anyway.


I get the impression that I'm wasting my breath (I'm reading aloud as I type, so it counts). I don't understand why stalker players keep insisting on changes that turn them into single target stealth scrappers, and I'm no closer to illumination now than when I started this thread.

Have we all just given up on stalkers and are settling for being scrapper wannabes just because we don't want to reroll as scrappers?

Fine. Have no fear, the changes everyone wants will be the changes that come. Heaven knows nothing I say about this or any other archetype ever seems to hold any water. I have what I came for (or as close as I can expect to get), and nothing productive is coming of this discussion. So close the thread - I'm done.

As I said before, I'm of the opinion that SR, Regen and Willpower are there because players that want to pvp might not find Cloak of Fear or Power Sink super-useful in that environment. They are self-contained straight up self-buffing sets that pvp'ers tend to go for.

Not to say you can't pvp on the other secondaries (especially Ninjitsu) any more than I'm saying that those sets aren't useful for pve - I'm just saying that the preference among pvp'ers seems to be for self-contained self-buffing sets, and that those three cater more to the pvp crowd than the pve.

To be expected on an archetype that gets so much pvp reputation (not to be confused with pvp rep as it is in the game)

See my post above this one with regard to Ninjitsu and the other secondaries. Just because you're not counting them doesn't mean they're not there.

And the primaries aren't just giving you demoralize. As I said in the post you're quoting, you've got some for of mitigation or aoe powers at 18 and 26 that often also do high damage to boot. Parry and Divine Avalanche deliver mitigation in spades, the range in impale and focus combines well with the immobilize/knockup to keep an enemy at range just long enough for you to land an attack on that boss. A well-placed stun will do wonders for stalker survivability, and might even just give you the opportunity to placate/AS his buddy, provided you're solo. Speaking of which:


That's the biggest load of nonsense I've heard all day. Doubling a power's damage potential isn't helping it out? Soaring Dragon - slotted up - can do nearly 400 points of damage if it criticals, and Placate guarantees that critical. You're saying it sucks to use it that way?

Or are you saying it sucks because you can't do the scale of damage with a tier 8 power that you can do with Assassin Strike? Because that's even more ridiculous. Assassin Strike is ONE power with ONE function (although it will soon be improved) - so why compare every other power's damage to that?

As it is, when I'm on a team I can use Placate to placate/two-shot that sapper that just beamed the tank for half his endurance. How's that suck?

Just saying something sucks doesn't mean it sucks. Placate has its uses. You just have to - you know - use it for that.


No, I read it. The question was rhetorical, and I'll happily withdraw it.

Not so. Dark Armor has two mez toggles, EA has a mez Toggle, a sapping power that also gives +defense, Ice Armor has a -damage/slow toggle and a sapping +defense click, and Electric Armor has... well it sort of has a mix with a heal, a +recharge and a Sapping power.

So you do have tools outside of Ninjitsu in your secondaries. Ninjitsu has the lion's share, to be sure. But other secondaries can be played in similar fashion - and ought to be IMHO. Those extra toys aren't just "skippable slots."

That's what they said about Light Form locking out the forms on Peacebringers. Didn't stop them from tearing up the cottage rule with that one, did it?

Consistency is probably too much to ask for.

Yes.

Your English is very good - no need to apologize.... what? Why are you looking at me like that? Because I said "yes" to passing inspirations while hidden? Yeah. I have a strange sense of humor and couldn't resist.

Anyway, to your point. Scrapping it out. First off, every archetype - from Defenders and Dominators to Brutes and Scrappers - is going to have scrap it out scrapper style at one point or another. In a game based on the unpredictability of combat I can accept that.

Apart from that, however, I see melee combat in this game as something very different, depending on the archetype I'm playing. With Brutes I see a spawn, run in ahead of the team and chew a path through the minions to build fury on my way to the boss. With a tanker I see a spawn, run in ahead of the brutes and taunt the boss, swinging my aoes at the minions to get their aggro (don't worry brutes, they'll still be there to build your fury).

With scrappers - and I've said this on multiple occasions - I point to the corner where I'm going to pile the bodies and start by hitting tab-follow. I don't stop until the red haze lifts. It's random, violent and indiscriminate.

THAT is what I refer to as "scrapping it out." Regardless of what special mechanic I'm given to increase damage, combat is a random mess of orange numbers and falling bodies. It goes by in a blur and I come out in one of two places: at the top of a heap of bodies or at the bottom, combining inspirations to make a wakie and continue. Odds are heavily in favor of the former, but I don't shrink from the latter. These are the only two proper places for a scrapper to be, IMHO.

NOW for Stalkers:

As I said upthread, a stalker engages an unwitting or helpless opponent. This is not to say that the stalker is a coward. A stalker is a trickster, creating those circumstances that lead to unwitting or helpless oponents in the midst of battle. Dare I say it? They lay ambushes.

Every stalker primary has either a mitigation, ranged mitigation/damage, or aoe damage power at 18. At 26 stalkers get some sort of heavy damage/mitigation/aoe combination.

Stalker secondaries tend to come in two flavors - self-contained and rogueish. The self-contained ones (Regen, Willpower, Super Reflexes) are far outnumbered by the rogueish ones, and IMHO are generally most popular for PVP (to the point that I wonder that they weren't added for that very purpose).

The rest are what I refer to as "Rogueish," in that they contain - in addition to the passive mitigation of shields - active mitigation that is used on your enemies.

Take your active mitigation powers from both your primary and secondary! Use them! This is what I tell new stalkers all the time.

When I see a spawn on a stalker, I WAIT for the brutes/tanks to run in, let the battlefield get set, and THEN I pick the biggest opponent and stealth in. I may AS the boss if the conditions are right, or I may have to hit follow - jump the caltrops and hit a fast animating attack before I land. THE NEXT THING I DO is throw out some active mitigation. It might be caltrops, blinding powder, cloak of fear, disrupt or water spout. IF YOU PLACATE ANYTHING DURING TEAM PLAY, MAKE DAMNED SURE THAT TARGET IS AGGRO'D ONTO ANOTHER PLAYER, AND FOLLOW THAT UP WITH YOUR QUICKEST, HEAVIEST HITTING ATTACK THAT ISN'T ASSASSIN STRIKE. Not sure why everyone keeps insisting on using placate as a defensive power. It has NEVER been a defensive power only. It is and always should have been used as an offensive power with defensive capability.

But that's just my take. Others might have different (read that as: Better) tactics.

THE POINT is, when a stalker is in melee, he's diverting the attention of his foes directly with the many active mitigation tools and toggles at his disposal. Properly done, a stalker can keep an entire spawn distracted, mezzed, or otherwise occupied with other things for an entire battle. A scrapper punches you in the face repeatedly and randomly. A stalker points and says "look over there!" and downs you with a punch to the chin.

THAT's the difference between a scrapper and a stalker in melee. It requires practice, thought, and foresight to do it well, and I detest anything that dumbs that process down.

And the assassin's focus that is being planned does exactly that. Three hits and a critical. Regardless of what control it might actually give, what it does more than that is encourage players to stop thinking and mash buttons.

Can I still play a thinking-man's stalker with these changes? Sure. But forgive me if I'd rather see changes come to the archetype that don't encourage players to actively ignore the flavor of what makes stalkers who and what they are.

Are you constantly using Assassin Strike and Placate as a combo? Why? Of course it's unreliable!! Assassin Strike wasn't meant to be used in EVERY. SINGLE. COMBAT. SITUATION. It would be nice if it had more flexibility, but it was never intended to be the crutch that you're describing. There are ideal circumstances for using Assassin Strike, and nine times out of ten it will NOT come after Placate.

Look, just because you can't use Assassin Strike in every situation doesn't mean that Stalkers have to be scrappers in every other situation. You do have other tools and other options besides the standard fight club response.

And there is NO EXTRA STEP when you gain criticals by dropping into hide. Saying that there's an extra step implies that some time passes or that the player needs to do something extra. NEITHER is true. If a game mechanic can guarantee a critical, it will take exactly ZERO extra seconds and ZERO extra effort on the part of the player if hide is also induced. This extra step you keep talking about is nothing more than semantics.

Having said that - there are obvious problems with just using hide to gain critical states - my position isn't to simply do that - it's to START with hide and see what's possible from there (vise just tacking on free regular criticals)

I agree with you on this. Whole-heartedly. My haste in communicating my thoughts led me to oversimplify and describe only one means to the end. But yes. Ambush is an apt description. Stealth is just one way to go about it. You can also "ambush" a held target or a sleeping target.

The key is that you're benefiting from attacking an unwitting opponent. Sowing mayhem and confusion among his allies to leverage another ambush even in the middle of combat. Assassin's Focus - as proposed - does nothing like that. It's pretty much the dumbing down of the archetype.

Yes, I remember that. I played stalkers back then, too. The effect was the same as stealth: attacking an enemy who - by dint of not seeing you or not being able to move - could not attack back. It's the difference between assassination and combat. The stalker inherent is called assassination because stalkers in this game are/were assassins.

Now quite a bit of criticism can be leveled at the notion of putting assassins in what is essentially a dps combat game. Nonetheless the playstyle was - and is - appealing to an apparently shrinking minority.

Being an assassin doesn't have to be a one-shot-one-kill all or nothing deal, however. But changes to the archetype ought to keep the assassin theme of avoiding combat as much as realistically possible in favor of stealth, diversion and confusion.

The proliferation of combos/fury/build up tokens is getting ridiculous.

Which I was against then, and am against now. My suggestion was an AoE Fear and tohit debuff that would accompany a successful AS. In retrospect, I think Angry Citizen was right at the time when he said it was too gimicky. Castle pretty much just went through and gave EVERYBODY everything we asked for without giving much thought to how well it meshed with our designed role.

I beg to differ. Scrapper crits have a flat %, but I'd argue that the key difference between what should be a scrapper crit and what is a stalker crit is - or ought to be - in whether or not that opponent can meet you on equal ground.

But that's just me, and maybe one or two others. You're right. Like it or not, we already have scrapper-style crits. I just think it would be nice if we could stem the tide.

That control you're talking about doesn't give nearly the control that you're letting on. In the post right above yours Leo G hits it right on the head: What happens if you get your Assassin's Focus after the heavy damage portion of your attack chain? You crit with a tier one attack or - if you're right and there's no decay - take a hit to your dps while you wait on one of those larger attacks to recharge. Where's the control in that? You're just getting a guaranteed critical every three hits. You're not in control of anything more than who you're hitting, unless you really want to micromanage your attack chain.

Then fix the current mechanisms. Adding new ones is just adding new gimmicks. What happens when the game out-grows those new gimmicks? What new toys will we add then?


It also doesn't add to what we have now. It gives us a more generic way to fight that will be more effective than anything the traditional mechanics give. Why have them at all, then?

This is exactly what happened to Peacebringers. Once on a time a Peacebringer was equally effective in any form - it was just underperforming.

After the changes made Light Form more like Eclipse and Build Up more like Sunless Mire, shapeshifting on a shapeshifter suddenly became a sub-optimal way to play the high end game. The forms were just there to crutch your way through the lower levels with no noticeable boost to performance until you got Light Form and made it perma.

Now, a truly effective Peacebringer is a sight to behold, and that sight looks (and plays) a good bit like a brute with ranged powers.

I see something very similar coming for stalkers.

See, that's what I'm saying, though. For all the effort they're putting into making us more like scrappers, they could be fine-tuning our existing mechanics - like hide - to better fit with the current game.

Assassin's Focus isn't being pasted - it's being created. But its creation is based on scrapper criticals in that they happen outside of hide. Stalkers are supposed to be the "stealth" archetype, or so I thought. The one archetype with true stealth (outside of illusion controllers) that can only be seen by things that bypass that stealth. (which I still don't think is fair.)

But maybe that's just me. Maybe the new direction for stalkers is more like surgical scrappers, with controlled criticals and single target damage.

Except that single target damage is never going to be anything that a scrapper that throws indiscriminate criticals and splash damage around is ever going to envy. Or a brute, for that matter.

What made us stalkers IMHO was the ability to choose our targets and our battlefields, and that's something the current changes are ignoring. But it is what it is. It'll never change because of anything I say, so I'll just leave it at that and bow out.

Oh, and that study the enemy thing that Assassins do in your example? It's currently being done by Bane Spiders.

You don't get the critical on placate sometimes because (a) placate is bugged. It's been proven, admitted and stickied. Just not fixed. OR you don't get a critical on placate due to being unable to attack during Placate's long animation in combination with enemy attacks that cue and land before you can capitalize on it.

You can't complain about being knocked out of hide based on how it relates to placate.

If, on the other hand, you attack right after achieving hidden status, your attack will critical EVEN IF YOU GET KNOCKED OUT OF HIDE before it lands, because you were hidden when the attack was initiated.

If assassin's focus were geared to give you an instant hidden state, then the latter of the two situations above would be the result. So long as you're following up an attack with an attack, an instant hidden state will result in a critical.

If I need to escape the battle Hidden state could give me just enough defense to do that - especially if I've positioned myself correctly at the fight's initiation.

But that's not the point, either. There are admittedly a number of problems with just allowing assassin's focus to just put you in hide.

The POINT I was making is that any new mechanics to the stalker archetype ought to START with stalker mechanics already in the game, NOT with what works for some other archetype.



So fix the "hidden" mechanic. How hard is it to write a one second delay into the code for dropping hidden? Even a half second delay would enable us to get our critical. If something on stalkers is broken, then by damn FIX IT. Don't slap on a band-aid from another archetype because so many stalker players seem to suffer scrapper envy.

This is a good point, and you are quite correct in that once suppressed, the defense from Hide doesn't come back for eight seconds.

So why not give assassin's focus the ability to grant an eight second defense buff by the same numbers?

I'm not talking about using Hide *as it currently is,* I'm talking about using hide *as a basis* for a new mechanic, verses scrapper criticals.

But what torques me is that the developers are ALL ABOUT THEME when it comes to designing and proliferating sets. Stalkers CAN'T HAVE Titan Weapons because it's not "thematic" and we nerdrage to the high heavens about it.

But when it comes to the problems stalkers currently have, they'll throw theme to the winds and paste any old mechanic from our nearest cousins on there and we as the community will RAVE about it.

I don't get it. I don't get "us."

But I shouldn't be surprised. They did the same thing to Peacebringers, most recently. Everybody loves Peaceshades, now.

Unfair ambush mechanics aside, here's what I don't get:

Why do players have such an aversion to using hide to get criticals? I think it was Jibikao who mentioned up-thread about not having to go through the extra step of going into hide to get a critical, and several have made the point about auto-hit effects knocking you out of hide.

But if you're just scrapping it out anyway there IS no extra step - the hidden status comes on and your next attack is a critical. As far as you're concerned there is no functional offensive difference between the two. And if you're scrapping it out in an auto-hit situation, then the odds are better than good that your next attack will be initiated before the autohit's damage tick can register so again virtually no offensive difference.

However, if assassin's focus achieved criticals through a hidden state, then maybe I might use that to a defensive advantage. Remember, when you're hidden you have fantastic AoE defense, and even something like 5% ranged and melee defense. Throw in combat jumping and/or a purple and you're likely to avoid some of that aggro while you escape. Hell, even if you are scrapping it out against impossible odds you've got a little extra defense to help you get a green down.

And just dropping you to hidden status might not be the best answer. My point is this: shouldn't developer thinking at least start with stalker mechanics instead of looking immediately to what is clearly a scrapper mechanic to fix stalkers? And why are we as players so averse to that thinking? Do we really all want to play scrappers and brutes?

Lately it seems that Hawk and Synapse have insisted on fixing the archetypes they're looking at by applying what seems to be working on other archetypes, and players by and large have been happy with that; so long as their melee scrapper-like or brute-like can be called something else at character selection we seem quite content to pretend that the gameplay isn't just like scrappers or brutes.

The result has been predictably generic.

Assuming you mean the iTrials, because I can't think of a situation where my stalker in the normal high end game has been knocked out of hide by anything short of KoV Caltrops or CoT Crystals.

Eh, there could be more. But now I'm amused/annoyed by the philosophy "fixing" autohit powers knocking stalkers out of hide by making hide one step closer to irrelevant.