Villain101

Here is the deal, I have said it a million times:

Stalkers can possibly be considered unbalanced in SC. Level 30 does not provide for several of the most powerful skills for the sets. It also does not allow for you to pick up all the power pools you will eventually have, and surly not EPP.

Any stalker that is level 30 without a 6 slot AS is not worthy of talking about. Defences at level 30 are significantly lower than what they appear to be at warburg level.

I think that the only issue that would balance stalkers for SC it check the way AS accuracy scales, compared to the way defence scales as you level up.

As a ninja blade stalker I get a 5% acc bonus on my attacks, and I'm pretty sure this includes AS. I have 2 +3 SO accuracy enhancements in AS, and 1 +3 to hit bonus SO in buildup. So needless to say my AS is designed not to miss much.

In SC I miss maybe 5% of the time on a scrapper. In War, I think I'm lucky to hit 50% of the time.

I just want to know how many of you crying about stalkers have faced a level 50 stalker with a level 50 toon? What none of you?????????? It's not even possible yet... I assure you the damage output of spells inceases faster than our HP's increase as we level.

A group I could easily escape from in SC, now destroys me before I can even TP away in war...

If devs nerf the class now, at 50 stalkers will not even be worth playing.


A stalkers life does not get easier as we level. My character personally between level 30 and 40 will gain the following:

1) A new attack, very similar to my second attack now. I will not even need to use it currently vs most my squish targets.

2) AoE defence, this will help a ton to keep me hidden, and prevent AoE effects from breaking my hide, a very nice skill but not going to help me kill a ton more people than I can now.

3) A major + defence skill that will only aid me in running away. This one will help make me harder to kill but will not benefit my ability to kill.


I get nothing that helps me counter the clearly increasing defence of characters, I get nothing to help me hit more often and harder with my AS, which lets face it a stalker without AS is a weak scrapper.

I have no idea what skill I will gain 40-50 as I don't even know what is availible. I hope that the developers do not listen to the whiney [censored] on these boards when making descisions about nerfing a class that HAS NOT EVEN HAD THE CHANCE TO HIT LEVEL 50 yet.

The only valid suggestion I would offer for a 'nerf' that will not cripple the class, is to take a look at how the accuracy of AS works based on level, and maybe decrease the accuracy early on and make it a little more likley that at level 30 it misses.

Even at that I hardly think it's fair that with 2 SO accuracy, a skill that increases my accuracy with another SO + tohit buff, a 5% bonus to accuracy, that I miss my class defining skill 50% of the time, but that's the risk I take having such a powerful attack, that requires my paper thin [censored] to get right next to my enemy and stand still for several seconds.



I don't like the fact that a blaster with trip mines, can stand on a spot AFK and kill me... but it happens. And that does not require 5 minutes of stalking to accomplish.

I'm not a fan of the fact that I HAVE to pick up a pool power to augment my class defining skill in order for that skill to be even somewhat effective in PvP.


I'm not a fan of the fact that I am the melee class with the least amount of HP.


As a stalker I have done what I can to negate whatever RISKS I have in a PvP environment. That however does not make me a god in PvP. I see PLENTY of people talking about how they own stalkers, and plenty of people crying about how stalkers own them. You know what a tank with mudpots owns me, I avoid him, I run from him.


The only thing that makes stalkers 'unbalanced' in most people's eyes is they cannot avoid conflict with them like they can with other AT's they know can beat them. I have to have 2 toggles constantly running to achieve this effect, that is not hard for a small group to negate.

All it takes is one damn person in a group that can see thru my hide + stealth to make my life a living hell trying to kill any of them. I take a single point of damage while in AS position and I lose a ton of energy and get seen by all. Hell if I break wind while lining up an AS i get inturrupted.

I'm so sick and tired of people crying so much about stalkers, when they have not even seen how they play out endgame.

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I wouldn't say the majority of players have +perception, but probably at least a third of the ones I encounter have no problem seeing through Hide

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Then you aren't setup very well as a Stalker. I was running around SC last night with Targetting Drone AND IR Goggles yet only got quick glimses of the Stalkers and could not target them for any period of time

I was moving constantly or setting up caltrops whenever I stopped to attack, and was still getting dropped by Stalkers repeatedly.

Oh, did I meantion that I had my Cloaking Device running, yet somehow they still managed to track me without much trouble.

Trying to be reasonable, but that just blew. They can hide through 2 perception devices AND see people that are hidden? Balanced what?

Seriously, what does one person need to have running in order to see a well built stalker? Don't give me this "team up" line either, for every single toon there should be a single counter somewhere in the game that can defeat them... what is it for Stalkers? Not just "wont get killed by a stalker" like a Stormy or something, but a toon that can actually get a leg up on them and take a stalker out.


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You are either a liar, or you REALLY REALLY suck at PvP. It's as simple as that.

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Wasn't exactly sure where to post this question/comment so here we go.. i have read on more than one post from a stalker in their attempt to defend themselves say that stalkers can not one shot kill heroes without the use of inspirations along with BU and to go as far as calling victims and the perps as liars. Now it depends on what defense powers they have but i haven't meet a squishe i haven't killed in one hit except blasters. so just to put this out their for all stalkers and non stalkers

4 dmg So's 1 recharge DO and 1 Recharge DO equals frequent medical visits for defenders and controllers.
I do have a question i have noticed that even if the cont/defender has their big bubble on the same BU+AS kills them anyway...i thought it would add some defense anyone know?
Skorna
victory

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I think you are mixing up what defence does. Defence is only checked at the time of the attack to determine hit or miss (I believe, and I could very well be wrong), and I have noticed that defence seems to help a TON more as you advance into higher level PvP zones. The miss rate of MY AS on similar build characters increses substantially from SC to war. I'm sure that there are other factors like my actual level, that help to determine this, but even then I know I have a higher chance to miss the same exact toon in war, than I do in SC.

I could AS a PFF all day and never hit in war. I have 1 shot many controllers standing around thinking they where god in SC.

My post was not directed at anyone in particular, but currently there is SOOO much crying on these boards about a few things:

1) AS 1 shots squishies, NERF IT.
- Without a substantially AT crippling change, the best you are going to do is make you now a 2 shot... which is not going to give you but a fraction of a second to attempt to save your [censored].

2) Stalkers run so much, and I cannot stop them... NERF IT.
- From birth (well level 6 on) it is not practical for a stalker to stand and try to melee a mob, our normal attacks do 2x the damage from hide. AS is useless when not used from Hide. Our HP are equivelent to a controller I believe, by far the lowest HP of any melee based character. The entire AT is based on hit and run tactics. Without a complete overhual of the AT this is probably not going to change, and if it does such a huge nerf to a class does not keep people playing this game.

There is a general impression that stalkers kill too easily. Which is NOT the case at all. To get a kill I generally have to STALK my pray for a while, and WAIT for an oportune moment to attack. This does not benefit teams in PvP as much as a class that does not require such circumstances to kill. A blaster can do Aim, BU, Snipe from range which does not require them to be within melee range, and crouched hoping not to be seen for several seconds. Stalkers do not posses alot of crowd control abilities, some do with certain melee attacks, and some secondary's include stuff like blinding powder, but if there is a tank attacking my corruptor my ability to save him is VERY limited, and I have to get pretty lucky to get off an AS on a tank chasing a corruptor around. Then I have to hope it hits, and hope any AOE aura he has doesnt inturupt it, TAKING a ton of endurance.


The time required to set up a nice stalker kill is not very useful on teams, and the fact that it does not really take a whole lot to stop our primary source of damage from going off makes it even more frustrating.


Stalkers are by no means gods of PvP, they are a class that if you play to your strengths is very strong, and very good at what they do, those strengths however are also our weaknesses when it comes to group PvP. Let's face it as more Villains hit 40, and evetually 50 the PvP zones will start to fill up more, and then we can take a look at how effective a stalker is when people start PvPing in groups of 8 all the time.

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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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Correction here. The 1hp threshhold is only one of the ideas being considered. We've still not determined exactly how we are going to deal with 'One Shot Kills' (and the final decision will almost certainly apply to both PVE and PVP -- so no more AV insta-kills.)

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Okay.. question.

I'm not going to argue the merits or drawbacks of playing a stalker, all in all, I feel they're quite balanced for what they're designed to do. If anything, their weakness lay in their lack of versatility strategically, but are massively good at the "thing they do".

Now, on more than one occasion in PvP, I have been in the middle of a PvE combat in a PvP zone and get ganked by a Stalker. I get that it's all in fair play and fun- after all, that's what they do best. If I'm distracted by a mob of PvE opponents, that's a great time to sneak in and whack me, strategically speaking.

The downside is that if they don't kill me right off, then there's a big chance (and it's happened more than once now) that the damage is so extreme that the next hit from any one of the PvE opponenets I'm in combat with smacks me, takes me out, and I get debt.

I don't care that the Stalker "ganks" me when I'm at a disadvantage like that (I would gladly do the same thing if I were playing my Stalker-that's how they work best) but I really don't like the idea of getting debt because, in essence, the Stalker didn't finish me off first.

If that 1hp threshold comes to pass, then this will be an even more frequent complaint, and while some Stalkers will cause debt unwittingly, I can imagine some would do it just for "griefing" purposes (I have already ran across one that was doing it purposely for just that reason- and a few others that "may" have been, but am willing to count them as "accidents")


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I will be that stalker. If AS takes you down to 1% life it's not going to save you from dying, 1 more strike (which is probably not going to miss due to the fact that you just lost a ton of health, 2 toggles, and I have buildup on) is going to drop you. However this gives me a new griefing tactic... I can take you to 1%, and tp you into a group of mobs... I fully plan on abusing this ability to cause as much debt as possible if they make this change.

I hate to break it to you, but I am pretty sure I am not alone in this. So you morons keep asking for nerfs without fully understanding the patience it takes, and downsides of showing yourself as a stalker in PvP.

90% of you goofs have yet to face stalkers in war, where I went the other day and missed 50% of my AS, in SC I miss maybe 5%. So you havent even seen 50 stalkers vs 50 others and already you are calling for a nerf.

Also in War, my HP don't seem to scale up nearly as much as the damage output of myself and others, making me even MORE vulnerable to dying before I can escape.


My character is not 50 yet, as that is not even an option, so I don't have the extra bonuses in PvP most heros do. I don't have millions of inf saved up, rarely are temp powers even availible to me in SC.

Life as a Stalker is alot harder than you seem to think, and I am pretty sure it's just going to get harder and harder as we enter higher and higher PvP zones.

Missing 50% of my AS using buildup, in war is insane. With the extremly low HP I have showing myself in MELEE range of an enemy and missing my main source of damage is a really RISKY situation for me.


Lets stop crying for nerfs before we even have a single level 50 stalker. It's so stupid that the few classes that we are the papper to thier rock for are crying about us.