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We've all seen a lot of back and forth in the PvP boards about Stalkers. We've seen complaints in the Stalker threads about needing improvement...I've noticed you seem very receptive to the idea that Stalkers might not be good enough. There's no point in debating about overpowered vs underpowered because it is largely a subjective discussion and offers little clarity.
One thing I think that has to be put on the table is that it would seem improbable for the devs to 100% nail the "balance" of the Stalker AT in PvP right out the gate nor would I expect them too. I realize there was internal testing and beta testing, but I do not believe the devs would contend that the data was conclusive or complete under those circumstances.
However, I am intereted in the devs providing the player base with a statement about how they perceive the risk vs reward for stalkers in PvP.
1) When the Arena first came out, Positron said he wasn't overly concerned with the 1v1 battles because it was too much of a rock/papers/scissors affair. How do we reconcile the dev philosophy that 1v1 can't be balanced and yet make sense of a toon that is designed for 1v1 combat? How does one side-step 1v1 balance on one hand and then appropriately balance an entire AT for it on another?
2) The Arena is a situation where neither toon can leave the battle. Players, blasters in particular, were using Phase Shift to effectively gank and escape and the devs put a stop to it. Clearly ganking was not to be tolerated. What is interesting is that the Stalker AT is predicated on ganking. Its speciality is the 1v1 battle with the escape. Why take that ability away from blasters in consensual battles but promote and endorse it in another AT in non-consensual battles?
3) I am unaware of any AT power that doesn't have some counter in another AT without resorting to power pools. Defender buffs are unresistable, but yet people can buff themseves beyond those debuffs a la Fort, Build-Up, etc. Blasters have some unresistable damage, but the majority of it is resistable. Every status power has some opposing power that resists it. Fear, Holds, Sleep, even Slows, have their counters within the players very powers themselves. Even Taunt in PvP is not 100%. And yet, nothing resists Placate. Yes, I understand you can knock someone out of it...provding you somehow manage to trigger an attack that launched before Placate takes affect and hits after (you can't honestly say this is an expected skill). Or, you can launch a PBAoE and hope to hit, provided you have one. But this isn't resistance to the statusing power like every other status power has. Are there plans to offer the other sets resistance to Placate e.g. Give Clear Mind, Integration, Practiced Brawler, Ind Will, etc?
(Btw, Assault offers no usable protection against Placate. Don't know if it is a bug, but I stood there and let one placate me...and I was not able to target them at all...and certainly not within the time for them to launch an AS after running around for a few seconds...and no...Assault wasn't detoggled).
3) It seems that the AT's in CoH have their foils in CoV. And vice versa. Who is the foil for a Stalker? Who can consistently solo defeat Stalkers who do not want to be defeated to the same extent that they can defeat any solo AT that doesn't want to be defeated? ...I'm reading that Stalkers can one-shot tanks in BB and Siren's with enough Rages. No solo AT can achieve the invisilibty of Stalkers, so should Stalkers be the only set that doesn't have to constantly be looking over its shoulder for fear of some hero?
Again, my question is not about is this too much or not enough, but how you and the devs perceive the balance and most importantly, how the off-setting weaknesses are actually substantive. What do I mean by that? Geko stated that one of the reasons that they turned IH back into a click is that they could not balance it as a toggle. They had meant for it to have a great healing benefit, and thought the huge endurance drain would compensate. But players proved they could avoid this penalty by six slotting QR and Stamina. So the penalty, though substantial...was not substantive. The same thing was said about Perma-Unstoppable. People were compensating for the crash, so there was not substantive penalty. It existed on paper, but was easily compensated for in-game. People talk about toons with damaging auras are proof against Hide...but I recall you explicity saying you were able to crit a Fire Brute...through BA and defeat him.
I think it would help a lot of the players if you explain how the devs perceive the AT is balanced in PvP and how that actually plays out in PvP...not how it plays out theoritically.
For all the Pro-Stalkers posters out there. I like Stalkers. I like the element that the AT brings to CoH. The joy in defeating them is almost as enjoyable as beating blasters. I also have defeated Stalkers with my Scrappers 1v1, so I'm not even protending that Stalkers are invincible. My lvl 33 has defeated a lvl 40 Stalker in Warburg...several times. But each and every defeat of a stalker was only a result:
1) they simply chose not to use enough Rages to one shot me.
2) They stuck around for the fight.
and usually,
3) I was playing a /regen
In absolutely none of those situations could I have defeated the Stalker if they had decided to check out early. And ...I was defeated far more times by Stalkers that stuck around than I defeated. So it wasn't like I sailed to victory. I'm not asking for any changes. I'm asking for an understanding from the devs for how this AT fits within the context of PvP from a substantive Risk vs Reward model.
I don't believe for a second that it is an easy task to balance this type of AT for PvP, so I'm certainly not recusing the devs even one bit, I am trying to understand it from their perspective.
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just from the tone of this post you obviously dont pvp a lot...
There are many powers out there that don't have foils in 1 v 1 in the arena. Stalkers arent the only one... As a katana scrapper how do u kill someone with hurricane in a 1 v 1 ? how do see a invis blaster witout tactics?
The way to deal with stalkers is to use iinsights you have a huge inspiration tray for a 10minute 1 v 1 that serves this purpose...the stalker will most likely not hold u...
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Believe me,your experiences to date are only because you must be new to PVP. ANyone who has been out there fighting has already nerfed the one trick pony that are stalkers....
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Sorry, but that can also be easily rewritten as:
You must be new to PvP in CoV. Everyone else who has experience has realized that to PvP you must design your characters so that they can fight Stalkers.
In my opinion, when one AT is forcing the other ATs to either set up their power choices so that they can handle the one AT, or else to avoid PvP, something is broken.
You say that there are methods to deal with Stalkers? Fine. I disagree with the contention that these methods are great, but certainly there are methods that make you a relatively difficult target.
My problem is that we have to redesign characters for these methods. We do not have to redesign to deal with Tanks, or Brutes, or Scrappers, or Dominators, or Controllers. But we do have to redesign to deal with Stalkers. And by "deal", I do mean "to not be an easy one-shot kill". Not necessarily to defeat. You can redesign all you want, if a Stalker wants to get away, they will get away. But at least you can redesign to survive.
That's broken. When Controllers were in a situation where other ATs would have had to redesign in order to avoid being perma-held until death, the problem was solved by the Devs.
...Break Frees
...Suppression
Where is the Dev solution to the Stalkers? There isn't one. The only solutions are player-made, and that means that in order to survive in PvP, you need to design your character and/or your teams so that you can survive Stalkers. Doing anything less is just invitation to being repeatedly one-shotted until you give in and either redesign, or give up PvP.
There is something broken in Denmark. And it's rotting.
The purpose, design, and goal of the AT is bad. The AT is designed around one-shotting opponents, around avoiding opponents when they want to avoid them. That design is completely broken in PvP. So either it's allowed to continue according to design (which is unfair to the other ATs), or it's prevented from continuing according to design, which is unfair to Stalkers. When a design is set up so that it's either unfair to the AT or to the other ATs, something was designed wrongly.
IMO, Stalkers need their concept re-examined. Invisible one-shotting character is not a concept that works in a PvP game.
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Wow, so you propose changing the whole game as well? Should stormies not have hurricane bubblers not have force bubble? why do u think certain archetypes took range attacks in the first place? this is the nature of pvp, use friggin insights to see a stalker instead of nerf calls
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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.
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Believe me,your experiences to date are only because you must be new to PVP. ANyone who has been out there fighting has already nerfed the one trick pony that are stalkers....
[/ QUOTE ]
Sorry, but that can also be easily rewritten as:
You must be new to PvP in CoV. Everyone else who has experience has realized that to PvP you must design your characters so that they can fight Stalkers.
In my opinion, when one AT is forcing the other ATs to either set up their power choices so that they can handle the one AT, or else to avoid PvP, something is broken.
You say that there are methods to deal with Stalkers? Fine. I disagree with the contention that these methods are great, but certainly there are methods that make you a relatively difficult target.
My problem is that we have to redesign characters for these methods. We do not have to redesign to deal with Tanks, or Brutes, or Scrappers, or Dominators, or Controllers. But we do have to redesign to deal with Stalkers. And by "deal", I do mean "to not be an easy one-shot kill". Not necessarily to defeat. You can redesign all you want, if a Stalker wants to get away, they will get away. But at least you can redesign to survive.
That's broken. When Controllers were in a situation where other ATs would have had to redesign in order to avoid being perma-held until death, the problem was solved by the Devs.
...Break Frees
...Suppression
Where is the Dev solution to the Stalkers? There isn't one. The only solutions are player-made, and that means that in order to survive in PvP, you need to design your character and/or your teams so that you can survive Stalkers. Doing anything less is just invitation to being repeatedly one-shotted until you give in and either redesign, or give up PvP.
There is something broken in Denmark. And it's rotting.
The purpose, design, and goal of the AT is bad. The AT is designed around one-shotting opponents, around avoiding opponents when they want to avoid them. That design is completely broken in PvP. So either it's allowed to continue according to design (which is unfair to the other ATs), or it's prevented from continuing according to design, which is unfair to Stalkers. When a design is set up so that it's either unfair to the AT or to the other ATs, something was designed wrongly.
IMO, Stalkers need their concept re-examined. Invisible one-shotting character is not a concept that works in a PvP game.
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You use suppresion and breakfrees as the answer the devs gave for stoping perma holds in PvP and that nothing has been done to answer the stalker.
have u not been reading the posts powers that some heroes have that can see threw Hide like preception powers, any AoE that is a toggle insights, lucks clear mind from defenders...etc
At lvl 24 if i have the AS 6 slotted to kill you in one hit chances are my defenses have been neglected...don't know another AT that can get pwnd by a solo controller.
-Skorna
victory
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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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Oh please, it's not the archtype, it's the inspirations. NERF INSPIRATIONS, NOT THE TOONS
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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.)
[/ QUOTE ]
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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.
[/ QUOTE ] Man this is GREAT. I have a lv 36 stalker at the moment. And i understand everything this person is trying to get across to you people who are asking the dev's to nerf us.
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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.
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I can understand your frustration and your threat, but please don't put me in that category where you believe I was asking for nerfs. I'm not. My whole argument was that I didn't want to incur debt due to PvP whether by accident or design. This doesn't apply to just a Stalker sneak ganking, but in any battle situation where some PvE elements are involved as well- like PvPing in hot spots. Debt can occur to anyone involved in that case, and all it takes is one lucky PvE critter to happen to get the "killing blow". I have posted a few times on the topic in other threads, and only saw this as another good time to point out that inequity in their PvP system when PvE elements are also involved, and agree that the 1% threshold is a bad idea for just that reason.
Actually, If they decide to make any changes, I think that Stalkers should be given some buffs or select power changes in order to be more versatile in combat options and tactics. Giving Placate earlier and AS a little later down the list would be one way. As far as my experience leads, Placate is in many ways a more valuable tool than AS to survivability in teams and especially solo. In addition to that, some possible boosts to a combination of their Hit Points, or to the Defense/Resistance of their armors, would be nice, and might encourage other tactics than "hit and run" (while fine for a ranged blaster, a "glass cannon" that only operates in melee range pretty much needs the one hit kill to not be constantly smeared on the pavement).
If the Dev's are fine with it the way it stands though, that's fine too. I just personally think they lack a bit of versatility, and they're being played exactly the way they were designed to be... they'd get creamed any other way.
As one who plays a Stalker, I'm not saying that to be insulting, but in honesty. No matter how much we may look like it superficially, we're not scrappers that have autostealth built in and a strategic way to guarantee our crits. Those are the survival tools needed to counter the built in weakness (pretty much everything else that isn't the one hit kill/placate tactic).
Any nerfs to that without some counter-compensation would be a horrible injustice to the AT. They're fine as they are IMHO.
"I play characters. I have to have a very strong visual appearance, backstory, name, etc. to get involved with a character, otherwise I simply won't play it very long. I'm not an RPer by any stretch of the imagination, but character concept is very important for me."- Back Alley Brawler
I couldn't agree more.
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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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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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.
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The devs have stated that there is a defense cap (as in a true maximum amount of defense you can have) that increases with level. Its entirely possible that the amount of defense PFF provides to a level 25 or 30 is substantially lower than the amount of defense PFF provides to a level 38, even slotted identically, because PFFs defense is being capped at level 25 or 30 to a much lower number than it is theoretically capable of providing.
Its interesting: when I tested defense in CoV during beta, I found there was almost nothing you could do to change the hit rate of minions in Breakout to anything other than 50/50 - almost as if the defense cap at level 1 was effectively zero. Hide should have been providing at least 5% defense when hidden, but even when hidden, villains hit about the same 50/50 (and I tested long enough to distinguish 50% and 45% hit rate).
It might have been just a Breakout-thing, but within a couple levels, however (say, level 6), all my stalker defenses appeared to be working just fine under test conditions.
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I actually expect them to go to the 1 HP limit in HOPES that you will die to a mob kill and debt.
remember, the last 5 major changes are intended primarily to slow down the speed at which you level, and making you take debt from PVP kills is a good way to increase the time you spend playing your character. call it machiavellian paranoia, but I expect the 1 HP cap to make it live so that there is no lashback about it being the 'dev's fault' anyone that plays in a PVP zone has massive debt from it.
okay, I am being paranoid but jeez I don't play a stalker and I want them to remain capable of 1 shotting me. I;'d rather be one shotted by a clever stalker than two shotted by a stalker and then a widow
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4 dmg So's 1 recharge DO and 1 Recharge DO equals frequent medical
visits for defenders and controllers.
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Once you get SO's as I, and many others alluded to earlier, here and in
other threads, 1-shot of squishies is possible then...
However, *try* it with only DO's...
Further, without Acc's in AS, you'll whiff a LOT against players with
defense powers and buffs.
My L20 Stalker has DO's (and blessed few of them, at that). I can
absolutely promise you that if I *was* assured of a 1-shot kill using just
BU + AS, I most definitely would NOT be spending infamy on
inspirations *every* kill (or missed opportunity - when the insps were
totally wasted) as I currently need to do now.
That said, I'm fine with that being the case -- I *know* how frustrating it
is to be 1-shotted, and I think the amount of time and resources it takes
to achieve it is fair, even if the 'victim' doesn't see, understand, or care
about that side of it... Not surprisingly, they only care about their death,
which, because it was *quick* also seems to equate to *easy* for us to
do, in their minds... Put simply, that is a mistaken (but understandable)
perception.
Regards,
4
I've been rich, and I've been poor. Rich is definitely better.
Light is faster than sound - that's why some people look smart until they speak.
For every seller who leaves the market dirty stinkin' rich,
there's a buyer who leaves the market dirty stinkin' IOed. - Obitus.
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Not surprisingly, they only care about their death,
which, because it was *quick* also seems to equate to *easy* for us to
do, in their minds... Put simply, that is a mistaken (but understandable)
perception.
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Isn't it..they don't understand that we've been chasing them sometimes for 5min or longer just waiting on them to settle just enough...I can't the number of times I've hit BU only to have them move just before I can hit AS..all because some corrupter is shooting at them.
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4 dmg So's 1 recharge DO and 1 Recharge DO equals frequent medical
visits for defenders and controllers.
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Once you get SO's as I, and many others alluded to earlier, here and in
other threads, 1-shot of squishies is possible then...
However, *try* it with only DO's...
Further, without Acc's in AS, you'll whiff a LOT against players with
defense powers and buffs.
My L20 Stalker has DO's (and blessed few of them, at that). I can
absolutely promise you that if I *was* assured of a 1-shot kill using just
BU + AS, I most definitely would NOT be spending infamy on
inspirations *every* kill (or missed opportunity - when the insps were
totally wasted) as I currently need to do now.
That said, I'm fine with that being the case -- I *know* how frustrating it
is to be 1-shotted, and I think the amount of time and resources it takes
to achieve it is fair, even if the 'victim' doesn't see, understand, or care
about that side of it... Not surprisingly, they only care about their death,
which, because it was *quick* also seems to equate to *easy* for us to
do, in their minds... Put simply, that is a mistaken (but understandable)
perception.
Regards,
4
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correction i meant 4 dmg SO's and 1 recharge and 1 acc Do and just a view from the other side, i just got finished playing my regen scrapper and i could scream till my eyes popped out at just how powerful i am in that game compared to my stalker my kills drop to like 3 if i am lucky but how many times i die is up to me if i choose to fight till the last punch instead of retreating and healing i die...but that is my choice.
First off I have no idea what people are complaining about, but it looks to be something about stalkers being disadvantaged in pvp? Well personally I think that is untrue, sure the higher levels got x-ray vision as it were, but who cares, learn to pick your targets, wait for the perfect opertunity you're an ASSASSIN think like one. If you know someone can see you, then wait until they are engaged in combat and bam from behind, so long as you see hidden on your screen you deal the extra damage, just have to sometimes think with strategy and use your wits in conjunction with your stealth and powers. PvP requires you to use your brain. Oh and before you call me on not knowing what I'm talking about. I play a level 24 stalker named Incarcia.
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You use suppresion and breakfrees as the answer the devs gave for stoping perma holds in PvP and that nothing has been done to answer the stalker.
have u not been reading the posts powers that some heroes have that can see threw Hide like preception powers, any AoE that is a toggle insights, lucks clear mind from defenders...etc
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You are failing your reading comprehension. Allow me, please, to try to clarify my points:
- Break-Frees are available to everyone, as are Insights. Unlike Insights, they do not have to be used preventively, therefore they can last until needed. Insights, to count, have to be constantly used... what do you do, 10 minutes into Warburg, when you're out of Insights? No power choices needed for Break-Frees to give significant protection against mezzing.
- Suppression is automatic. Again, no power choices needed.
Point being, that what you're saying is that people can redesign to face Stalkers, and I'm saying that every character having to desig to face an AT is bad design.
Powers do NOT see through Hide/Stealth. That takes either stacked +Pcp powers (available to very few), or constant Insight usage (which puts you on a limited timer in a zone or the Arena... when you run out, you're left blind).
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At lvl 24 if i have the AS 6 slotted to kill you in one hit chances are my defenses have been neglected...don't know another AT that can get pwnd by a solo controller.
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My solo controller can pwn almost anyone. If you think that controllers are weak in PvP, you're completely mistaken. And I know of an even stronger build than Ill/Rad... Ill/Storm is just evil.
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Not surprisingly, they only care about their death,
which, because it was *quick* also seems to equate to *easy* for us to
do, in their minds... Put simply, that is a mistaken (but understandable)
perception.
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Isn't it..they don't understand that we've been chasing them sometimes for 5min or longer just waiting on them to settle just enough...I can't the number of times I've hit BU only to have them move just before I can hit AS..all because some corrupter is shooting at them.
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Oh, I understand that it's not easy to set up an AS on someone to kill them.
But you don't understand, that it doesn't matter. The Stalker spends 5 min, and kills the target. Sometimes. Meanwhile, the target is dead, and the Stalker goes on to another target. During those 5 mins, the Stalker was practically safe. 5 minutes of safety for a kill, seems wortwhile for the Stalker. And no, this isn't my opinion speaking, this is the counts of the Stalkers who are actually out there, spending 5 minutes to stalk and kill someone. Obviously it's worth it for enough Stalker players.
Now, take the other player. He's in a zone, doing something for a while, then BAM... he's dead. Doesn't matter to him if the Stalker spent 1 minute or 10 setting it up. What matters to him is that he's dead, and never had the ability to do anything about it. So he gives up on PvP. Another player who could have been involved in PvP, who either makes a Stalker for it, or gives it up.
The time involved does not matter when we're looking from the point of the victim. The end result is the same whether the Stalker takes 10 minutes to kill me, or 1. I'm just as frustrated and angry, and just as likely to give up on PvP. That's the problem, and the time spent by Stalkers doesn't really matter to that problem.
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Wow, so you propose changing the whole game as well? Should stormies not have hurricane bubblers not have force bubble? why do u think certain archetypes took range attacks in the first place? this is the nature of pvp, use friggin insights to see a stalker instead of nerf calls
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I'm not calling for nerfs. Nor would I be calling for nerfs on Hurricane, though that's been up on the boards. There are tactics to dealing with Hurricane, and even if you have no access to them, you can still kill someone who has Hurricane on, without any special redesign.
I'm calling for a review of the Stalker AT's design concept. I don't want them made weaker. I want them redesigned so that they're not a one-trick pony designed around a 2-ton Clydesdale of a trick. That is just bad design. Either the trick is too strong, as I think it is now, or it's too weak, as may happen after nerfing. Either way, someone loses.
Right now, the non-Stalkers are losing, but nerfing Stalkers wouldn't solve the problem. Because we'd still be left with a bad design concept, and instead of a uber class that is breaking PvP for others, we'd have a broken class that's worthless in PvP. Either way, it's bad.
Stalkers need to be redefined, not nerfed. One-trick ponies in PvP do not work well. Either that trick is uber, or it's not. If it is uber, it breaks PvP for others. If it's not, that AT is broken in PvP.
Stormies are not one-trick pony, and that pony doesn't compare to assassination in terms of how dangerous it is. Completely different argument there. If a Stormy comes at you, and you feel that you cannot deal with it (and I've heard of Scrappers dealing with it by getting a critical and one-shotting the Stormy), you can just escape. Whereas you cannot escape having been assassinated. That's the major difference. A Stalker's one-trick kills you. A Stormy's one trick merely defends them. Comparing the two is senseless.
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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.
[/ QUOTE ] Man this is GREAT. I have a lv 36 stalker at the moment. And i understand everything this person is trying to get across to you people who are asking the dev's to nerf us.
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Ditto. It's way too early to be talking about nerfs to stalkers. The people asking for them aren't the ones playing them. All they see is a guy appear out of nowhere and hit them hard. They don't see how long I have to actually follow that person around waiting for him to make a mistake like isolating himself from his group or from friendly mobs and standing still long enough for me to spring my trap. Or how many times I miss with one of the several checks I need to succeed at to get that kill.
My scrapper can run around in Warburg without any thought of stealth, attacking any target at all, grouped or not. My stalker has to be very cautious and selective, and very, VERY patient. People who don't play stalkers don't get that.
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Oh, I understand that it's not easy to set up an AS on someone to kill them.
But you don't understand, that it doesn't matter. The Stalker spends 5 min, and kills the target. Sometimes. Meanwhile, the target is dead, and the Stalker goes on to another target. During those 5 mins, the Stalker was practically safe. 5 minutes of safety for a kill, seems wortwhile for the Stalker. And no, this isn't my opinion speaking, this is the counts of the Stalkers who are actually out there, spending 5 minutes to stalk and kill someone. Obviously it's worth it for enough Stalker players.
Now, take the other player. He's in a zone, doing something for a while, then BAM... he's dead. Doesn't matter to him if the Stalker spent 1 minute or 10 setting it up. What matters to him is that he's dead, and never had the ability to do anything about it. So he gives up on PvP. Another player who could have been involved in PvP, who either makes a Stalker for it, or gives it up.
The time involved does not matter when we're looking from the point of the victim. The end result is the same whether the Stalker takes 10 minutes to kill me, or 1. I'm just as frustrated and angry, and just as likely to give up on PvP. That's the problem, and the time spent by Stalkers doesn't really matter to that problem.
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BlackSly totally has the permission to speak for me on this subject from now on.
I've pretty much just given up, the stalkers think it's hard for them cause they have to chase someone around for awhile. I'm almost willing to bet that the time it takes for you to find your target, it takes me about the same amount of time for a target to get me.
Very few people come up and engage me the only ones that do are stalkers and there is no counter for them, unless they attack me in the middle of a group of 7 heroes. Those of you that think stalkers are a one trick pony don't use your sets fully. Even Ninjitsu has a good amount of defense, atleast enough to keep me from hitting them with any proficiency. All my attacks have 2 accuracy SOs and I have tactics running.
I was told last night that most of my problem was just that I'm a invuln, so maybe I just need to go beg for buffs there. Either that or reroll a regen scrapper.
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Very few people come up and engage me the only ones that do are stalkers
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I think this has a lot more to do with the stalker 'problem' than actual stalker issues. When I'm stalking in Bloody Bay, I don't have to look for targets. I just follow some poor Mastermind doing the meteor run and wait for some heroes to pile on him.
It's a rare few villains who seem to be able to hold their own against heroes, so most never try unless there's one of those mass battles going on.
@Mindshadow
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Oh, I understand that it's not easy to set up an AS on someone to kill them.
But you don't understand, that it doesn't matter. The Stalker spends 5 min, and kills the target. Sometimes. Meanwhile, the target is dead, and the Stalker goes on to another target. During those 5 mins, the Stalker was practically safe. 5 minutes of safety for a kill, seems wortwhile for the Stalker. And no, this isn't my opinion speaking, this is the counts of the Stalkers who are actually out there, spending 5 minutes to stalk and kill someone. Obviously it's worth it for enough Stalker players.
Now, take the other player. He's in a zone, doing something for a while, then BAM... he's dead. Doesn't matter to him if the Stalker spent 1 minute or 10 setting it up. What matters to him is that he's dead, and never had the ability to do anything about it. So he gives up on PvP. Another player who could have been involved in PvP, who either makes a Stalker for it, or gives it up.
The time involved does not matter when we're looking from the point of the victim. The end result is the same whether the Stalker takes 10 minutes to kill me, or 1. I'm just as frustrated and angry, and just as likely to give up on PvP. That's the problem, and the time spent by Stalkers doesn't really matter to that problem.
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BlackSly totally has the permission to speak for me on this subject from now on.
I've pretty much just given up, the stalkers think it's hard for them cause they have to chase someone around for awhile. I'm almost willing to bet that the time it takes for you to find your target, it takes me about the same amount of time for a target to get me.
Very few people come up and engage me the only ones that do are stalkers and there is no counter for them, unless they attack me in the middle of a group of 7 heroes. Those of you that think stalkers are a one trick pony don't use your sets fully. Even Ninjitsu has a good amount of defense, atleast enough to keep me from hitting them with any proficiency. All my attacks have 2 accuracy SOs and I have tactics running.
I was told last night that most of my problem was just that I'm a invuln, so maybe I just need to go beg for buffs there. Either that or reroll a regen scrapper.
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If changes were made to appease the "victims" of stalkers, changes would have to be made to reduce the risk of stalking. It rarely takes five minutes to follow someone before finding an opportune moment to strike, and the stalker is anything BUT "safe" in that time. 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, and when they see a stalker trying to hide it's like waving a red flag in front of a bull. I spend more time running from these people than I do stalking my prey, and five or ten or thirty minutes of perfectly good stalking can be shot all to hell in the process.
I get that it doesn't matter to the victim of an AS how much work went into that kill, and I'm willing to concede that everyone should feel they had a shot in most situations, but you have to consider BOTH perspectives in making any sort of change to stalkers. Reduce their frontloaded damage, and you'll have to give them something else to compensate.
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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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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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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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damnt the games fine we've been dealing with one shot kills since coh if a stalkers gonna do that ill deal wit it and kill him too...stop changing the game