docbuzzard

All of the alignments have temporary powers for staying. They are all, IMO, rather underwhelming. I don't recall the details, but there were long timers on the lot.

The advantages to the 'gray' alignments is that you have the flexibility to play with anyone on their mission either side. You can do a TF and a SF in rapid succession if you like. This flexibility is quite a convenience. I will be doing that with my main alts.

However you do sacrifice the ability to collect hero/villain merits which can buy some very nice shinies. Thus I will be keeping some alts for the purpose of pursuing those.

Good thing I've got so damned many alts.

Umm, I don't like him because he's annoying. I haven't sat through one of his movies long enough to the part where he gets the girl.

Though to be honest, I don't attach enough importance to him to decide if I'm going to see the movie or not. The fact that I hear more and more the movie is centrally built on manga and console game tropes is turning me off however since I don't much care for either.

A lead star I have little use for doesn't help the cause.

That reminds me of a night when I was out drinking with buddies at a bar. We were going through Guinness, Bass, and other imports and microbrews by the pitcher. Then some joker bought a pitcerh of PBR. Good lord talk about a crash of quality. Ugh.

When I was done watching Inception my GF commented that there had been a noisy brat in the seat next to her who had been a pest throughout the movie. I hadn't even noticed. Rarely will a movie keep my attention that well.

Nah, I'm ribeye man, and my freezer is well stocked with em. I'll just take out one of them prime ribeyes and thaw it up for tomorrow.

That does sound like a fine idea. I've been getting over Bronchitis for a month now, and I'm due for some serious beer drinking, so Friday should be Expendables and then many a brewski.

Umm, what? Blasters are the boss killers? Where did you get that idea? Scrappers are the one with the crit rate which increases on bosses. There are more AOE focused blaster sets than scrapper sets on top of that. No, of the blueside ATs, I'd say scrappers deal with bosses (though again, it all varies by sets, an ice blaster is going to be better on a boss than a spines scrapper, while an AR blaster will leave the boss to the DM scrapper).

Stalkers are obviously meant for single target spike damage, but that's really not much of a talent given how the game works. They could, as you say, use a bit more oomph in that regard to clearly ensconce themselves in that niche.

The problem you have trouble comprehending is that burst damage is meaningless. They don't win the DPS race on single targets, and as a rule lack in AOEs. Overall they don't keep up in damage or survivability. The damage is close, of course, but for the trade off in survivability, they should be the melee damage kings.

I doubt that it took into account all options. Things like saturated soul drain is pretty important.

Ahh, so all people who like brutes or scrappers are simplistic button mashers. I'll be sure to pass that along to the number crunchers for you (odd that you don't like to do math, and they the people who do are simplistic, hmm).

Inferiority complex?!? What are you babbling about. I'm talking about AT balance. Your inability to grasp the issues at hand are pretty clear.

Have you ever even played DM on a scrapper or brute? I've got 50s in each, so I'd like to think I know the set pretty well (oh, and a stalker at 34). Your casual dismissal of Soul Drain indicated to me that you don't have the vaguest clue about DM. Then not grasping that an endurance recovery tool is also a nice thing to have really shows a level of ignorance that is appalling. Please don't argue with me if you are this clueless.

You lose the nice PBAOE full circle attack. That's an obvious loss no matter how you dismiss it.

I'm starting to feel like I'm arguing with a wall. The game plays in a certain way, and stalkers aren't terribly well suited to that way. You might not grasp it, but reality will not change to suit your perceptions.

Stalkers give up things to be strong at single target burst damage. That is an ability which doesn't help much. End of story. For what they give up, they should be single target damage kings in melee.

So because everyone else is overpowered, stalkers don't have to be balanced to them?

You would have a hard time finding a serious student of this game who doesn't recognize an imbalance across the melee ATs. Stalkers are the bottom rung right now.

Buffs and debuffs are the most powerful thing in this game.

As an aside, I do still find it odd what they did to EM. I mean honestly, sure ET was a kick butt power at its height. But let's be honest, it didn't really matter. Sure, it would help you take down a single target fast. BFD. It's like the stalker thing. Sure, ganking one target can be handy once in a while, but there's few enough instances in the game where it really matters.

It doesn't get you more XP. It doesn't get you more drops. Yes, it allows faster killing of AVs, but that's not time effective anyway, so again BFD. It was a nerf in search of a reason IMO.

But back to stalkers, yes that 30 range limitation seems too damned tight. Unless you are on an all melee team, it's not likely to hack it. I mean squishies would be out of their minds to get within 30 feet on an AV with any PBAOE potential, and most of them have a lot of that.

Yes, this is my point. The stalker has a neat trick, but the way the game works doesn't make enough use of it. Sure, ganking the sapper is handy, but you don't see that many sappers. While most factions have someone worthy of a quick gank, a mez will generally do the job just as well.

I don't think stalkers need any sort of huge boost to be fixed. I think they are quite close as is, to be honest. The big buffs a few issues back really put them back into the running pretty well. However, I still think that because they give up stuff in the way of AOEs and defense, they ought to gain something on offense.

I would suggest a couple minor tweaks:
60' range on the team crit buff.
100% build up instead of 80% build up.

I personally think that would be about enough to make it. Arguably a slightly better damage scalar might be a good idea (1.05 or 1.1 maybe).

Beyond that, you don't want to do too much since it would drastically change the feel of the AT, and I happen to like how they play now.

Learn to read. I mean really, just learn to read. I've said in pretty much every post that the stalkers don't lag that much in damage, and are certainly not a worthless AT. They are not gimped. They are not useless.

I'll repeat it a few hundred extra times if that is necessary to sink in.

If the only way you can argue is by setting up straw men to fight against, I'd recommended you find a better way to spend your time.

Look, stalkers lag the other melee damage ATs a bit. They don't match the sustained DPS, and they are slightly less survivable. This is just how it is.

It doesn't make them useless, it makes them unbalanced. They have one strength, and that's burst DPS. However the game doesn't have much use for burst DPS out side of PVP and very rare instances in the PVE game.

I know you want to get huffy and put words in my mouth, but what is, is. I play stalkers because I like the AT. I don't let my like for the AT get in the way of recognizing their limitations.

You're not breaking down my points because you don't know what you are talking about.

If you claim to know didly about this game, you would know that damage mitigation gets much better as you get closer to the caps. Say I have a fire tanker on my team. He's running shields which have him at around 50% resistance. With a thermal on the team, that goes to around 70%. With a sonic on the team, we can get him to his caps of 90%. That means he will only be taking 1/3 the damage.

Though I did admit that the thermal heals offset this, which you conveniently ignored.

Yes, because they is ALWAYS a conveniently placed wall. I have to imagine you are just being deliberately obtuse. Liquefy means they won't hit you. The magnitude of the -to hit debuff is such that you are effectively softcapped for the duration. On top of the sonic buffs, you are going to be taking on the order of 5% of potential incoming damage (without counting the holds or knockdown).

So you don't care about resistance debuffing? You are ignorant. Increased damage output is far more useful then knocking down foes which shouldn't be hitting anyway if it's a competent bubbler.

Sonic requires, at the bare minimum 3 in each of it's ressitance powers or else your not getting the maximum amount of mitigation.

Fortitude = +5 extra slots.
Sonic Barrier/Haven/Dispersion = +2 +2 +2 = 6 extra slots.
[/QUOTE]

Yes, six slots for better protection as well as status protection. Not to mention this is for a full team, not just part of it.

Try making a rational argument yourself for a change. The resistance powers offer more mitigation than fortitude and do it for a full team. Yes, it costs more powers, but it also does more, and requires a lot less maintenance by the buffer.

Yes, and generally those melee people who are outside the dispersion bubble have least need to be in it. However it's more of a valid comparison with bubblers, where the effects of the big bubbles are a wash. Empathy is a completely different style of damage mitigation.

I didn't say -recharge was useless, I said it wasn't as good as the alternatives. It can't be enhanced. It has built in diminishing returns that other buffs or debuffs don't feature. A power which does only -recharge is IMO, pretty weak considering what other powers can do.

Bollocks. Tell that to the brute, scrapper, tanker, blapper or stalker who has to chase down the target of knockback rather than just killing the held enemy next to them. You sure you're playing the same game as the rest of us?

Again, you are spouting nonsense. A clueless sonic doesn't actively hurt his team, even if he might not help at all. A clueless stormy or bubbler who is knockback happy will hamper team effectiveness to a marked degree. There is a reason why people in this game hate knockback heavy sets. It's not because they are ignorant. It's because there are potential downsides which can overwhelm the positive unless skillfully employed. Just because you like tossing people around and think yourself the god of knockback, doesn't make it the optimal way to play.

I'm left wondering if you are deliberately trying not to make sense, or do you really lack comprehension to that degree?

Burst damage is not the same thing as sustained DPS. Assassin's strike is amazing burst damage, but you cannot stand next to a target and sustain that kind of damage (against, say, an AV or GM). If you don't realize that difference, you really should give up on arguing because it is fundamental.

So to sum up, you don't have the actual numbers, and don't feel like calculating them yourself. The fact that others have run the numbers, and discarded stalkers as out of the running doesn't seem to impinge upon your awareness.

Yes, of course. The people who are calculating maximum DPS chains are out to get the poor little put upon stalkers. They are subjectively biased against the stalkers, and unwilling to even consider them.

Look, I hate to break it to you, but there is no anti-stalker conspiracy. The fact is they simply lag in performance. It's not by a huge margin offensively (except in AOEs generally), but it is the case.

You play a stalker and ask a question like the above? I really have to wonder about your lack of comprehension of basic issues.

Look, it's as simple as this- build up+assassin's strike from hide is a devastatingly effective combo. However if you are sitting adjacent to a target which can take a lot of damage (AV, GM, Hero) that burst only happens rarely since it requires a number of things to recharge (placate and build up at the least). Also since AS is interrupt-able it is hard to consider it a viable sustained DPS ability.

Stalkers give up things for their burst damage capability. In most cases (electric melee being the lone exception) this is AOE damage from the primary. Also stalkers have lower HP, and generally inferior defenses overall.

However since burst damage really doesn't gain one a heck of a lot outside of PVP, it's not a really good trade for the stalker. In truth stalkers ought to be the kings of single target damage. They sacrifice other things, and as such should be tops somewhere.

Who is on that ego trip? I'm merely explaining reality to you whether or not you like it. Stalkers are inferior to the other melee damage ATs. They give up too much and don't get back in return. This means they lack in balance. The difference isn't huge, and it doesn't make them unplayable. I still like playing them, but from a quantitative analysis stalkers lag.

As I said in another post, this isn't about being twink gods, and saying that an AT isn't fun. Those things are irrelevant. Either by the numbers stalkers are as good as scrappers and brutes or they are not. This is a demonstrable comparison. Stalkers neither match those ATs in sustained DPS nor in survivability. Burst DPS doesn't have enough utility to justify the imbalance. The only argument that could be made in favor of a stalker would be to find a way to claim that burst DPS was game deciding, but it simply isn't.

When the justification for the existence of an AT is to cover for bad teams, the AT has issues.

There are few enough places where the stalker raison d'etre is enough reason to be. Those places can generally be accomplished almost as easily by someone else. The game just doesn't work in a fashion such that the well placed assassin is key to success.