Talen Lee

I think this is a bad way to think about things. Stalkers have shields, mez protection, self-heals and all of that - it seems to me to be pretty fanciful to give them tools that foist aggro on other teammates. There are squishier people than stalkers, and not every team has a scrapper, tank, or brute - and they shouldn't feel like they should.

What you were saying, basically, is 'think like this flavour of stalker for ways to expand the stalker.' I advise against that.

Honestly, this thread feels a bit like a spin in the wind. We're a long time from Castle being able to fix things, and if we're all sitting here without redname guidance on how close/far we are from 'reasonable' or 'possible' solutions, we're likely to get further and further off course.

Pulling down AS' animation time to one second sounds kinda sassy... but I also think I'd be very sad to lose some of the ASes. They do look cool...

Now, I think that the Stalker as a Scrapper With Tricks is a novel one, but it's better exampled by a set. Part of why I don't like scrappers getting Ninjutsu - it would be a bag-of-tricks set, and because of the loss of hide, on a scrapper, it'd get another trick.

Hmm, hmm, hmmm. This is part of the challenge, of course. Concepting mechanisms, components of ideas - not mechanics, concrete changes... that's tricky. Because to me, stalkers 'feel' like there should be two scales here; stalkers trend towards the 'single target' end on one, and 'damage' the end on another, while tankers trend towards the 'area effect' and 'survivability' ends of those same graphs.

Paradigms, wheels, wheels. Of course, the problem arises in that the brute, scrapper, and tanker are almost - almost - universal in their area coverage. Stalkers are worse... but well, yes. Anyway. This is all very rambly and I'm just trying to offer up a warning against pursuing any 'solution' too far. We all need to be careful in this thread, because brainstorming up ideas is one thing, but what starts as 'Castle said something that started a discussion on closed beta' becomes, through the grapevine, 'Castle is going to probably make this fix.' Which I'd like to avoid.

Not compared to CoX ATs. But compared to the stealth ATs of other games, the stalker is gonzo crazy-go-nuts. Its initial design, those fundamentals that we're running up against here, was to push the envelope of what like it had been created in other games.

Does that help you understand why the AT works the way it is?

As far as stalkers go in game, you probably want to avoid trying to impose a specific flavour on the game. You want to put things in that are interpretable in a variety of different ways. Limiting flavour is a bad idea, you know?

So's free pie. You're right, it'd be nice to have more variety within a set - but at this point, we're more or less cruising okay as it is.

The APPs coming late in a character's life is a problem, true, but for the most part, it's a problem that 'fixing' runs the risk of creating more problems.

Oh well - mebbe the devs will let us customize pools, and if that happens, a 'blast set' pool power might not be a terrible addition to ask for.

They're not.

Conserve Power was a power that gave you +end redux. Energize is a power that gives you +end redux and stuff.

Added to, not replaced. And calling it a replacement gives fodder to the people who think Energy Transfer might get replaced with Nova, or whatever piece of nonsense they want to court today.

Yep yep. The only alternative is making it ignore all recharge boosts, ala Force Of Will.

When I build a tanker, the high values on Weave make me inclined to try and see if I can score a mix. My Fire/Fire tanker is sitting at 30% s/l, 25% melee, which seemed good to me at the time. Of course, I'm not playing him much right now.

One thing I find on my Spines/Dark with his 32.5% S/L 30% melee is that I really feel the need for ranged defence on most maps. If enemies scatter or if walkers come past, I need to jump in force closure, quick. Perhaps less of a problem for the tanker with its taunt, though.

Energize was added to. It was not replaced with a different power.

Overall, I'm a forgiving kinda guy. But there are some arguments where you don't put in subtleties like 'they have only once replaced powers,' and this is one of them.

It doesn't happen. It has happened in the past, but it happened what, twice?

Power replacement does not happen. On the other hand, based on the structure of existant epics, you could probably get an epic which included, say, a +knockback self-buff and a handful of energy blasts.

Properly SO'd, you can tank those things. IOs just make it easier.

Your only failing in EM is, without taunt, it will be hard for you to gather aggro quickly from groups. Take taunt, no problem.

I would recommend prioritising enough defence to get to 32.5 in S/L/E/N; then +HP; then -Recharge; then enough defence to get to 45 S/L/E/N.

You're wrong.

8/10. Brilliant job.

No, that's Adam Warren. Joss Whedon is the man I'm not allowed to provide details about without violating my restrainnig order.

Hokey, real quick because I don't have reference material and it's been a looong day:

An Aspirational Item is a term used by wine sellers to refer to expensive wines that nobody buys. You put a $1500 bottle on the shelf, and suddenly, the $500 bottles next to it seem so much more reasonable. People will buy out of their league if the things they purchase are surrounded by even more expensive items. This principle holds to in a lot of places - habadashers will never sell you a $150 silk tie until after you've already bought a $15,000 suit. People do not buy things based on their value, because they are bad at perceiving value, and very bad at perceiving value consistantly. If you think back to a regular purchase where the price changes over time, you will find you probably track those changes based on the increases and decreases in price - my morning coffee cost a buck, then a buck twenty, then a buck fifteen, then a buck forty, etcetera. After a year or more of this you might be paying five dollars for a coffee, but because it never jumped one-to-four it doesn't seem so unreasonable.

This is the real quick version, again; basically, if you present someone with a large amount of information, they will often be paralysed by the choice. If you give someone a range of three jellies, all the same price, they will often contrast the one they like the most with the other two and buy it consistantly. If you give them just one jelly selection, they will buy less often. But if you dial it up and present them with a hundred jellies, they will go down in their jelly purchase, below the level of only being presented with one.

Too much information, too much choice, and our brains kinda shut down. We hide from that, because we know it confuses us. How often have you encountered someone who gave up listening to an explanation and said 'Just make it simple for me?'

Anyway, sorry if this seems off the topic.

You've refined the skills.

Are you familiar with the term 'aspirational item,' and the way that people handle a variety of prices for similar objects?

You have to consider effort loading. Some people are unsatisfied with the amount of effort they have to put in to our current market system to get what they see as a rewarding result. Those same people are not exactly about to clap for joy that a system gets put in place where they can put in even more effort for even more chance at reward.

The market is a skill-based reward scheme, and like Fury for brutes, it's something that some people just can't manage and find difficult, and some people manage so readily that they insist that there can't be anyone out there who'd find it difficult. Adding complexity is just going to reward the high-skilled players and punish the lower-skilled ones. Now, I'm all for a '**** the poor' attitude, but I don't think the developers have any real reason to give us more ridiculous piles of money.

Not especially.