rsclark

Yup. i know that, because I said it. And as I also said, most other ATs aren't forced to give up AoE - they can simple focus slightly less on it. Stalkers are unique in having powersets that require completely giving up any AoE at all.
None of mine do. I'd gladly "bring the AoE" with my stalkers if the game gave me that option.

Name any combination of other ATs, from a single char to a 7 man team, where adding a stalker is the best thing you can add to complement the group - where you will complete harder content in the same time or the same content faster with a ST stalker than with any other character.

But then in that situation ST damage is worthless, so stalker are again at the bottom of the heap. The only time ST damage is worthwhile is doing an AV or a pylon. In both of those cases, any burst damage is going to lose ground quickly to sustained DPS. No, sustained ST DPS isn't that incredibly important, but any time it is useful, it will dwarf burst damage in usefulness.

It's a pretty basic video game - so it's arithmetic, not calculus.

But plenty of AoE scrappers can put out 90-95% of that same single target damage, while at the same time contributing the more commonly needed AoE damage.

You never specifically need single target damage, because single target is already a subset of AoE. You can't do AoE damage without also contributing single target damage.

You have to look at what situations each are important. Leveling? AoE is better. Raids? AoE better. Farming Purples? AoE better. Farming tickets? AoE better.

Single target is good on 2-3 individual battles of very specific TFs and maybe killing Protean. Stalkers are good on speed runs - assuming they can summon allies (and even then they would be better if they could also contribute AoE damage.)

So, at the end of the day

95% of the game - AoE better
5% of the game - single target better - but only by about 10-15%

We aren't talking about anything even vaguely resembling equality here.

And since they are selected from the same pool of choices as those primary and secondary powers, this was a poor design choice. Bad idea then, still bad idea now. The fact that it's intentional does not mean it is good.

I've said several times I'm not talking about Elect and Spines. Maybe you should read better before responding. But that doesn't change the fact that we're still talking about (at a minimum) 3 out of 8 powersets that are gimped for stalkers. That is not an insignificant percentage. That is not something you can just brush away when talking about the AT as a whole.

It's not so "much good on stalkers" as it is "only a reasonable choice on stalkers and not on anyone else". Stalkers and EM both play to the same nearly useless strength. EM is good on a stalker compared to how well it works on any other AT, but that still doesn't make it good in an overall sense.

There is a difference between focusing on something and ONLY being able to do something. Stalker is the only AT where you can make your powerset choices and then know you will have zero AoE until 41 and only then if you pick one specific PPP for a AoE that does virtually non-existant damage.

If you're steamrolling, you really only need one AoE and for it to be up usually for every group. Anything you do beyond that is gravy.

There's is a huge disparity between zero and 1.

And people do know that Energy Melee is the worst melee set.

If the team is capable of chugging along fine rthen why are they inviting the stalker in the first place. The purpose of getting more people on the team is to do things faster or at a higher difficulty than you were able to do before.

If my emp adds a AoE scrapper, then I can change my normal 0/1 to 0/8 without blinking. If it were a stalker instead, then maybe we would be able to take the default 0/2, but that's no net increase. Adding people and barely holding steady isn't an improvement. With the exception of speed running TFs and very little other select content, stalkers are a warm body in the group. A net zero gain.

I can't think of any combo of characters from solo to 7 man where adding a stalker would drastically change the game. Every other character will make someone's day by enhancing them with some great synergistic effect, but the stalker is meh - just someone to fill the team.

That 33% is only if everyone is standing on top of you. If you have actual ranged characters in the group - you know, like half of the ATs - then that number is much smaller. And they don't do more damage than scrappers. They do slightly more damage in the one situation in which the specialize and vastly less damage in all other situations.

No, many stalkers do not have the option to take them at all before patron powers. If there was one damaging area power in a scrapper set, then without even looking at the other powers, I bet I can tell you which one got dropped for Assassin Strike when they converted the set. EM loses its one crappy AoE. MA loses its one good AoE. Dark loses 2 PBAoEs and only gets to keep one cone because it had so many area attacks to begin with.

If you're electric or spines (and DB to a lesser degree), then we're not really talking about you. It's not that the stalker concept sucks, it's that having no significant AoE capacity sucks when all you get in return is a slight benefit in single target damage. And if you want to make them more acceptable in groups without actually giving them more AoE, then make them "OH HOLY CRAP!!!" better than scrappers and brutes at single target damage instead of "I guess I notice a difference, but I'd need to run herostats to be sure" different, since that's the scale of the difference in their AoE potential - put the same weight on both sides of that balance scale and make them totally dominate in their one niche since that's all they get.

Other than "I can do everything" characters that don't fit in a character balance, team-based game or characters with such arbitrary and distinctive combinations of powers that would get them sued if they did make a set for them, would you care to name a character that can't be done?

You're just not going to get a Green Lantern powerset no matter what and that has exactly nothing to do with the fact that they added dual pistols and kinetic melee.

I did Borea missions at X8 from 45 (at +2) to 50 (at+0) and got 1 purple the entire time.

On the other hand, my emp got a purple at 26 and 32 while sidekicked and those were the only two times i got SKed to 50.

Random numbers are random.

Of the last 6000 tickets (almost double what I can reasonably get in that half hour) I've turned in on 10-15 bronzes, I've not gotten anything worth over 100,000 inf. I've done a bit of AE farming with a aoe machine (fire/shield), and I don't expect more than 10 million for a half hour's farming. Maybe I could get down to the point of capping tickets on a map in 10 minutes, but even at that rate, your 200-500 seems overly optimistic (by an order of magnitude) unless you're getting really lucky.

So, 3 seconds longer than the blaster nuke or the bu+shield charge from 60 feet away before you even manage to run over there?

A 25% def, 80% resist tank takes half the damage of a 0% def 80% resist tank.

A 60% def tank takes one third of the damage of a 35% def tank.

Given the same difference in def between the two, the defense build benefits more.

Overestimating Fort at 25% to make the math a little easier, you need to have a 40% def or higher on a defense build for a resist/zero def build to benefit more than the def build.

Really, the people who benefit most are mixed builds - def and res. They are getting the most benefit from +def - not enough to waste over cap and not starting from zero where def is weakest. And invul really turns invul with a good fort.

See, I'm reading this very differently than most people. I don't see him saying that whatever power you get with alpha 1 is not powerful, just not useful. And then there is another paragraph explaining why it's not useful - because it doesn't exemplar down.

Maybe the problem is there is a new form of content - incarnate content - which is the equivalent of level 51+. So, if you're running an incarnate mission (whatever that would be), you have your alpha slot power. But since GR only had the very beginning of incarnate content, by the time you get the slot, you've already run all that content. You could go oro LGTF, but since that is only 50 content, you'd be effectively exemplared down out of incarnate content and not have access to your new power.

The power could be there and really useful, but not have any meaningful content in which it can be used - repeating the same incarnate 1 content over and over or the occasional zone event, but no TF or AE or normal missions.

Do a villain respec trial with an all MM team with no -regen or -res.

8 team members hitting the guy all at once with concentrated fire because all the trash minions and lts are already dead will kill him much faster than a stalker.

Those are parenthesis and the words in them are parenthetical expressions (not new sentences as you imply). Learn English.

No, lazy would have been bidding 1111. That way you don't have to move your finger to a different button. That's what I would have done.

It's not stupid, it's what you enjoy and what you don't enjoy. For me, it's a conflict between something I absolutely despise and my skinflint nature, and for me, being a cheap ******* wins out. But if the market was completely eliminated tomorrow and replaced with fixed price in-game stores, I would not shed a tear. Trying to get something cheap isn't about being smart, it's about choosing between bad and worse.

Until this post, I had only ever seen "ebil" used before "marketeering", so I assumed it was short for "e-billing" or something similar and was a reference I did not get. Now I realize it's ignorant haxxor speak that I did not get. Thank you for your enlightenment.

A million times this. Last night my roommate was doing a level 47 respec to get a final 50 IO build. He didn't have enough cash for everything, but I could not talk him into bidding what he had on him for one expensive recipe.

He said he would rather wait until the price came down or he had more money. Even though he's in the middle of putting together his final, unfinished build, he ended the night with zero bids on the market.

I highly doubt a bigger pool of cash would make him "play" the market.