Spiritchaser

I'm inclined to think that Stalkers deserve to be widely regarded as single target melee king in almost all situations, with the possible exception of dedicated blappers, who sacrifice even more survival for their dps, and take significant risks to be in melee range.

I think changes should be made to create that situation

The advantage of a stalkers AS substantially evaporates on teams, but it's still a compelling advantage solo, so I'd suggest that the advantages that stalkers get should focus a little more on team play.

Increasing the damage modifier will do this more strongly than increasing the damage self buff modifier.

Increasing the critical buff range would do the same.

Given how different things are in PvP anyway, I assume that these changes could occur without intruding on the math on that side of the game.

Now: whatever route is chosen, it's still only half the fix

The other half is to refocus [edit] around 30% of game content to single target centred fights...

Large team spawns should have a chance to be able to be one single EB... and maybe a couple of minions

edited for a less unbalanced suggestion, but still, wouldn't it be good to hear a team say:

"Lets get another stalker or a MA scrapper and a psi blaster for more Single target damage"? I'd even settle for "MOAR ST NAU!"

I'm a little surprised that this hasn't really changed in the year I've been away.

As has been said by many before, the first thing is getting the devs to devote the time to the issue.

The best way to do this would be to assign a dedicated employee to PvP powers

I think the character name for said employee should be obvious... unless some other dev already took that one?

Given that I'm only rarely more than decent myself, km/wp should be a decent fit.

Thanks

looks like I've got my 2 characters to level in GR

Good to hear. I've never been sure exactly what about ele bugged me... the noises maybe.

Any thoughts about a non ele/ stalker?

and particularly, would kin/ be suicide?

So I'm back, I've stopped playing that other game with orcs, and that other other game, which also has super heros... I'd like to roll up... SOMETHING for GR.



And I'd like it to be something that'll work in whatever PvP has become in the past year. After reading a few posts, it doesn't look like it's changed much since reduction factors were applied and everything changed


So I'm making a new character... The thing is, I have serious reservations about certain power sets, I never liked the look and or feel, and I doubt I will now... Somewhere I'm hoping there's a PvP set I can live with.


Back in I... 12 I think... I used to love my fortunata. He could buff, he could kill, He was great in PvE, he worked very well indeed in the kind of PvP I actually did (Zone and arena duels, with some random group pickup games from time to time)



Importantly, he looked damn cool doing it.



I've done support with my rad/thermal. He was ok, but I wasn't the best at support... Probably because I'm just not that great... In any case if I wanted to play that way, I'd probably just resurrect him. I'm looking for something that can kill.


I'm thinking of rolling a Dom, but I'm not thrilled with the look and feel of /ele. Are there other good choices? I don't mind Mind/*

I'd enjoy trying another stalker, but I've no love at all for ele/ and I've done spines/* Would I be gimping myself to death by doing Kinetic Melee/WP?


I'm not thrilled with corruptors or controllers in general, but if he looked cool enough I guess I'd consider it. I hear cold is good, and I can deal with that... but do I have to take sonic?

Any thoughts are appreciated!

For most attack chains you won't have issues.

Take a look at the end cost of the Mako patron AoEs and imagine a nearly continuous chain thereof, with stomp in there for good measure.

That WILL cause WP issues unless you have an external end recovery buff

I submit that for a blast brute, EA is one of the best choices out there.

It's been a little while since I've been playing my EAs (been banging my head against ICC in another MMO, one with orcs...) but the one thing I've found that they do better, and I mean far better, than anything else, is work with builds that consume truly absurd quantities of endurance.

With IOs and accolades, a bunch of secondaries can be considered non-stop for single target work, maybe even all of them... But for AoE chaining with myriad toggles up, Patron blasts etc... EA can keep it all going.

Even IO'd WP isn't good enough for rage + hasten + high recharge constant Mako cones + Stomp without SB, but EA can get you there.

Fundamental shifts in the capability of fictional characters is certainly not unheard of, but it cannot happen at all often without getting very weird.

Still, I really don't see much opportunity for abuse, you could just impose a few basic rules:

No more than one per account per X months (award it as a vet reward if you want)

No more than once per character per Y months (some people will hoard Vet rewards)

No changing to a new powerset or a newly proliferated powerset for at least Z months after said set became available on live.

Let people make their own stories as to how this happened, maybe some will enshrine it in the architect, or just change it for the heck of it.

The system doesn't do a lot of bad things:

It doesn't allow people power they wouldn't otherwise have
It doesn't unbalance reward systems more than they are
It doesn't add incentive to exploit the system more than is currently possible

It does reduce the amount of play time in the low/middle levels That's not necessarily a good thing, but if you limit how often it can happen? no big deal.

The largest problem I see is how to deal with enhancements, and there's currently no easy solution I see as particularly fair.

On the other hand, I wouldn't make a priority out of all this either. In my opinion, the game needs some fresh new, interesting environments, innovative play mechanics, increased interaction with a richer world and then an overhaul to combat system on one hand and more viable non-combat challenges on the other to keep it fresh, interesting and modern. Solve a meaningful part of that and the idea of going through 50 levels yet again will sound like an opportunity, not a grind...

I'm very hopeful that Rogue will hit on at least some of the above.

There actually is a strength to typed defences.

It might be worth noting that /WP actually makes good use of this strength and that it does so in a way that /EA can also do, albeit somewhat less well.

The strength that multityped attacks can be defended against in ways that are unavailable to other types of protection.

A smashing/energy attack against a WP character will first be defended against by that set's significant energy defence which will effectively protect the character from the smashing portion of the attack as well as the energy portion of the attack. Ditto fire/lethal, neg/smashing etc.

Only pure smashing and lethal attacks against a WP character will attack that sets more minimal s/l defence. Sure there are a significant number of these, but it's hardly all of them. WP, of course, also gets it's significant s/l resistances to shore it'self up against these attacks, it gets it's scaling regen, and, if all else fails, it's got those extra HP too.

Basically, WP is a lot stronger against a significant share of SL damage than it's base stats would suggest, just due to the overlap.

EA is less able to use this, but some builds can get some benefit, or at least they can for part of the character's career. Fire/cold and Energy def on base EA builds, and on many IO'd builds, are likely to be higher than straight SL def. This is still going to help out with your S/L survival against those mixed attacks. OK you don't have those resistances to fall back on, you don't have those extra HP (out of overload) and your heal is generally not the equal of RTTC, but you can't get away from the fact that until you actually hit the softcap for s/l, an EA brute is probably going to be better protected from an energy/smashing attack than and equivalent positional set (if there actually was such a thing) would be protected from a melee attack.

Once you hit the softcap this doesn't mean much, but between levels 28 and 38 or so, when you're not at the cap for SL, but when you might be for energy/cold/fire, it'll make a difference.

Does this compensate for the toxic Hole? there's very little pure toxic out there, so I'm going to go out on a limb and say why not?

Does it compensate for the psi hole? I think the most honest answer is simply a no, not in my experience. There's way too much pure psi out there, especially red side. Worse, there are some very nasty pure psi def(all) debuffs, which are going to hit, and then they're going to tear the rest of your protection to flinders. There are also some dammed nasty pure negative attacks and debuffs that aren't exactly easy for EA to deal with either.

Now, EA isn't without other strengths, IOs are game changers, and late game EA is plenty strong, but in the discussion about how to buff EA in the early game (something I still think it needs) the possibility of punching energy def through the roof shouldn't be omitted. It'd save you from a lot more attacks than you'd think, and it would do so using the one strength typed defences have over their positional counterparts.

I think in the early game it's still rather softer than SR.

with IOs in the late game... it's plenty tough "enough" for most things... but again, still softer than SR... even if those SR builds were breathed on somewhat less heavily by the IO gods.

Now... sure you get end management with EA... but where you get protection from IOs, they get end management from IOs... potentially a lot of it.

Where I see EA as having a role is in builds that require such obscene quantities of endurance that even IOs don't quite fit the bill, and even WP is marginal. /EA or /Ele will still get you there.

SS/EA/Mako cone chaining, AoE spamming blast brutes come first to mind... though if we ever get physical perfection, wp with 3X performance shifters could probably pull it off too. [edit: provided it comes in a set that has enough AoE to make it worthwhile!]

I think I might do a mind cold once I get the right colors figured out... blue green I think...