UnknownBlade

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The only thing that bugs me about this chart is that about a year ago, there was an argument about the streak breaker on the Scrapper forum and someone claimed to have logged over 100 consecutive misses. I can not confirm the actual count nor can I confirm that there were no uncontrolled variables involved in the test itself (eg, maybe the mob attacked someone else, too, and hit?), but certainly since then, the prevailing argument has been that the streakbreaker never really comes into play significantly enough to negatively affect defensive sets. Certainly, the numbers from this chart show otherwise.

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The 100 miss string your referencing was coming from a floored mobs attacks against a SR scrapper.

As you can see from the chart above, if the mobs accuracy was floored (5%), then the SR scrapper could go up to 100 attacks without being hit.

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This morning, I had PMs in my box saying the Accuracy of Dark Melee, Energy Melee and Claws seem to be wrong. I've gotten similar PMs about Ninja Blade as well.

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Once again spines and MA is left out, ... why cant they have bad accuracy as well ? sheesh.

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So energy transfer wont crit, even if you are stealthed? Is there any other stalker atks that work like this?
Thats kinda like ET not workin with fury, doesnt make much sense to me.

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ET will not get a crit bonus from stealth. (instead the HP reduction is removed)

TF gets a partial bonus (bringing it to ET lvl damage)

Cones/AoEs have Various % chance of critting, (generaly around 50%)

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Or does your -valueless- post indicate acceptance with everything aforementioned, excepting of course that most trivial sentence?

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Not really, i just didnt think it was worth commenting on because Castle has already stated that they are changing the coding in game so that any PvP attack that would kill a player in one hit will instead leave them with 1hp. With that in mind almost the entirety of your post was better off ignored.

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HOWEVER, you do get much more defence, than sets that don't have defence at all.

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This is among the stupidest statements i have read on these boards.

In other news ... water is wet !

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heh overload is fine, well everything about it about the animation..it's just very very..very dull and dissapointing for an lvl 38 power, my team can't notice if i use it, looks like a basic shield and doesn't stand out, and i'm hoping for a change..besides i am a brute and see no good things coming brutes EA just yet

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So your saying your PVP opponents cant tell when overload is on and they are wasting their end, or when it has worn off and you are vulnerable?

some might see that as a good thing.

Mieux - Kinda bad form to say that Stalkers are unbalanced because of OD'ing on inspirations.
Civilians could be considered to be unbalanced if they could take 30 inspirations.

Its also a bit out of wack as saying they only lost because they did not run away. Could that not be said of Every AT in CoX ?



In alot of ways i see any character that can trump a stalkers stealth as the Rock to the Stalkers Scissors.

That perception is most readily available to Scrappers, who also have the staying power and damage to easily destroy the low HP Stalker who cannot run away.



Stalkers have two strengths. Stealth and Surprise.

Nullify the Stealth and you can easily avoid the surprise. Any character can do this to a degree through powers or inspirations, or more likely a combination of both, and i am not sure it would be all that much fun to play a AT whose main 'ability' is that they have good perception.

In all i would suggest that Stalkers are in and of themselves the counter to stalkers, much like submarines are in Naval battles.

dont breakfree's also have some effect on placate/taunt ?

then theres the Cones, PBAoE and LAoEs which can hit your placater. nullifying the effect.

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Two other sets got Teleport protection. Only EA got Repel protection.

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I think Castle might be saying that some of the other Stalker sets got -repel resistence but that they are missing from the patch notes.

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Is that defense versus repel-like effects, or from one specific power?

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It stops the repel attribute.

the actual power "Repel" is in fact a knockback power (which you already have resistence to), and has no repel attribute.



And yes, */EA are now stalking death to the hurricane plague.

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Based on my experience with the game, I describe what happens like this. The placated mob remains "marked" as aggro'd, but the placate prevents this.

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Thats also how i preceive the system to work. but according to Castles statement, Placate works by flat out removing you from their hate list, not suppressing it for the duration of placate.


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Condition C is the normal case. You are within aggro range or have refreshed aggro on the mob by killing his buddy (as we all know this sometimes aggros "same group" mobs and sometimes doesn't). He comes looking for you.

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each of these examples happens with at least tripple normal agro range between myself and mob 2. mob 3s death 'should not' be refreshing the aggro over that kind of range.

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You have previously mentioned that placate removes you completely from a mobs hate list. for how long? will you build hate back up by being too close before you run away?

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I have never had the mob re-acquire me as a target while the placate icon was in my effects list. That is, unless I attacked it.

Is there some bug here I have simply never enccountered?

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scenario plays out like this.

Stalker vs Three mobs

Stalker sneaks then AS one mob killing it --> Stalker starts running away, placating the 2nd mob while doing so --> 2nd mob is placated stops running, 3rd mob keeps running --> stalker breaks LOS with 2nd mob, turns and scraps against 3rd mob killing it --> stalker rehides then approaches 2nd mob.

this is where it gets interesting ...

a) sometimes --> stalker approaches remiaining hidden then AS's killing the 2nd mob

b) sometimes --> when the hidden stalker gains LOS with 2nd mob, then mob agros and launches attacks that break hide

c) sometimes --> the placated mob is passified for a while, wanders around, then decides to run after the the out of LOS stalker and attack him.


I beleive a) is the correct AI and that b) and C) are bugs that need to be fixed, but who knows.

yeah thats an error, i will move that into spines.

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One of my favorite tactics, actually. Nice to see other folks using it.

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And why is this not considered as jousting?

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jousting is combining (travel powers + melee attacks + activation lag) to make ghetto-range attacks.

Jousting is still possible, just alot harder to do it more then once.

going to update this tonight.

Any issues you would like added in the new version ?

Castle:

Placate-
Has the bug with Placate been resolved ?

Can you detail the current mechanics of placate, and the intended mechanics of this power (if its still bugged). you have explained smoke flash as being a (PBAoE placate) - (the hide attribute). however this tells us very little without knowing what placate really is.

You have previously mentioned that placate removes you completely from a mobs hate list. for how long? will you build hate back up by being too close before you run away?

The hide 'attribute' from placate, is there any plans to do something to stop mobs using a quick attack after you start to placate and nullifying the effect. (stalker placates mob -> mob attacks stalker -> placate effect hits mob, mob is now passive, stalker is now hidden -> mobs attack hits stalker, stalker is now unhidden, mob is now agroed)

Is it intended that placates (+hide) is near worthless when facing 2-3+ targets ?
Because of the way agroed targets can autosee through 'hide' placating one mob does nothing to stop any additional mobs from striking you and removing the hide/crit bonus before you can use it. is this 'working as intended' or will this be looked at?
possibly add a AoE -acc debuff to placate, so you have a chance of keeping you hide/crit effect long enough to use it. this would also give us something to slot in addition to recharge with ED.

Smoke Flash -
Is there any chance of drasicaly reducing the animation time of this power. As a "Oh Noes" power it is near useless with its 4 sec animation time. if you are in trouble and surrounded by mobs you want to escape, not have a low 7.5% - 37.5% 'chance' (75% to-hit / 2-10 mobs) to make a clean getaway in 4 seconds time.

Shouldn't this power be better (secondary > powerpool) then the emergency power Phase shift which for a similar delay has a guaranteed 'cannot be killed by anything' effect.

AS -
Are there any plans to do something to stop mobs using a quick attack after you start to AS and interupting the AS, or just outright killing you before the AS lands. (stalker is hidden, approaches mob -> stalker begins AS of mob -> stalker is now 'unhidden' -> mob and all his friends now react and attack stalker -> some quick attacks from mobs are quick enough to ht during the interupt portion of the AS -> mobs kill you before the AS lands).
Making attacks not remove the Hide effect until a animation ends (instead of starts) would solve this problem.
This would also give stalkers some precious moments for other team mates to generate alpha agro, or to plan a escape.

Can something be done about how often AS interupts because of momentum/server lag.
It sucks having to stop moving for about 2 secs before hitting As because you know the server needs that much time to decides that you are stationary. Alot of stalkers i know have decided to just accept that they need to 'eat' up to 3x the endurance cost of AS becuase of this, as it is better to tripple tap the key to garentee that you will AS as opposed to waiting 4 secs as the opportunity passed by and you realise that it interupted and the did not see the warning.
This could be solved by 'Rooting' stalkers for the interuptable portion of the AS, or by adding the End cost to the 'end' of the interuptable portion not the start.

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Are you including Shadow Maul in this fix?, as although it's not a cone power, it does have the ability to effect more than one mob, and is behaving in the exact same way. If the target moves, even slightly, the attack will virtually always miss!

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Shadow Maul is in fact a cone power.

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i wasnt even aware shadow maul was a stalker power.
*;Glares at the Scrappers*

Step away from the Stalker AT Rep, this is one AT you do not want a war with

oh and Castle, Please stop posting so i can update the current issues thread! (what a problem to be having)

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So... placate can be overcome by a quick jab at the right moment. Is this the idea? Whether it's in PvP or PvE? If I'm fighting a foe, and I go to placate him/her, if the foe starts an attack after my placate animation starts but before my placate animation ends, I'm screwed? Do I not have any protection from this?

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yeah, this seems a little dodgy.

the equivalent in CoH would be Tanks taunt not working if the mobs were already hitting their teammates.

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have you guys seen the Blood widows with the modified spine graphics and sounds? They have metal spikes on their wrists and a giant blade for Lunge. The attacks sound like Claws since they are metal.

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Yeah i was wondering how people would feel about Stalker/Spines graphics being changed to black/white/grey metal.

No change to the animations just a cosmetic 'touch-up' ?

Personaly i would love it, but i wanted to know how others would feel.

I wanna put my vote in for a more generic expansion that does the following;

1) Advances the storyline... alot. resolution to the Ritki.

2) (with the ritki issue settled) Switch off the war walls between zones, huge effort here to mesh the zones. but keep an outer wall because of the bad guys in cov.

3) Bring back the 5th (just becasue they are cool)

4) In crease the height of zones and add winged EpicAT and flying content, like dirridgibles and such.

5) Introduce proper water/underwater content, and crrolax EpicAT, and underwater bases, subs. and such.




So thats alot of content, 2 new Epic ATs. To round this out they should add some new sets, with a focus of getting at least 10 new powerpools into the game.

meh, thats what i think anyway.

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I think that the ninja defenses(ninja reflexes, ninja perception, etc..) should be auto-powers. As it is a stalker goes through a lot of endurance very quickly and does not have many HP. By making these powers auto we could avoid having to replace 3 or more toggles if we are stunned and we would save some endurance enabling us to make quick, hard attacks as the AT is supposed to do.
Also, reflexes and perception are things that once trained, do not ever turn off. Someone who trains their reflexes over a great deal of time doesn't need to consciously use them, in fact concentrating on a reaction slows them down.

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They have a strict formula for calculating the costs of powers. Moving those toggles into 'auto' would mean they would cut the defence value by 60% (eg SR).

Do you really want that?

of course ";Kanchoureact" would be priceless.

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Just shout "Kanchou!" when you do that attack. [ QUOTE ]


Now THAT is funny.

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Castle: Could you ask for a ";Kanchou" emote to be added to the game, using the MA AS animation ?

/Theres finaly something to fear in the SafeZones.
//As a nice side bonus this would also make the game a best seller in Japan (from what i read)
///Slashies

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Bug: Claws/slash has a short pause after the animation ends during which the stalker cannot launch an attack but can move - ViciousCabaret, 1/10/05

Balance: Claws has draw-weapon animations but does not get the 5% accuracy that other drawn-weapon sets do. - Stupid_Fanboy, 1/10/05
Positron: "all 'draw a weapon' power sets get 5% accuracy bonus to compensate"[/i]

Balance: Claws/Eviscerate is claimed to be a 'wide' cone but is about 90 degrees, far less than Slice's 120 degrees. - Stupid_Fanboy, 1/10/05

Balance: Claws/Eviscerate is supposed to do 'superior' damage but at level 50 with 5 +2 level damage SOs, does only 10 points more with it than Focus, a 'heavy' damage attack - Veldrane, 24/09/05

Wishlist: Claws/focus and Claws/shockwave could do energy or smashing damage in addition to or in place of lethal, since they're described as "a burst of energy". - Stupid_Fanboy, 1/10/05


Balance: Spines has draw-weapon animations but does not get the 5% accuracy that other drawn-weapon sets do. - Stupid_Fanboy, 1/10/05
Positron: "all 'draw a weapon' power sets get 5% accuracy bonus to compensate"[/i]
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altered format (and changed reference to scrappers) and ready to go into the next version. (removed the claws swipe and claws overall balance, cause there already there.)