I miss using my impale from spines from about a mile away 
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Heros
Max Powerz: Lv 50 Tanker
Villains
Max Khaos: Lv 50
Overlord of E.V.I.L.
My Brute - http://maxy-khaos.mybrute.com/
LF SG! Arc ID# 193083
Eviscerate is a Cone attack so it wont be as good in terms of damage/end/sec on a single target as Focus, however if you regularly line up one foe behind another and critical out of hide its not bad. You may say, well your always likely to AS first and so ya might. I am looking for situations where a shadow maul out of hide is better than AS on my DM stalker, perhaps if 3 are lined up, but then again shadow maul is better than eviscerate anyway.
He will honor his words; he will definitely carry out his actions. What he promises he will fulfill. He does not care about his bodily self, putting his life and death aside to come forward for another's troubled besiegement. He does not boast about his ability, or shamelessly extol his own virtues. - Sima Qian.
It took me a long time to learn how to use Shadow Maul as a cone attack. More often than not now, i still just use it as a single target attack. Now on my DM scrapper, I find my self using it more as it should be used, as a shallow cone. If Shadow Maul could do the damage it normally does with out the tics, it would be an awesome power, as it is, it just leave the oponent time to heal or whatver. Using cone attacks out of hide, personally i think is a waste. Ile often use smite or MG out of hide, as they will always get a nice heavy crit, and wont make me cry when they miss. Cone attacks suffer from a acc penalty usually, and also have their chance to crit from hide heavily reduced.
As to stalker ranting, well a few complaints. Most teams dont want more than one stalker on their team, esp for things like SFs. One stalker makes a fine scout and ghoster, but two, well thats just a slot that could be used for a brute or corr. Nevermind that two stalkers can take out a boss in seconds, especially usefull against Wardens and the like.
Also, as you say, we are considered the premier pvp class, the stealth class in any game usually is. However, cos of this, we are also the most hated, abused and ridiculed AT in the game. We have every right to play the toon we want same as the rest out there. Picking on us for choosing a toon that has quite a superior advantage is just like picking on superman for being froum krypton. And then when that advantage is taken away, they revel in the fact that they can kill us so easily. Umm well duh, no advantage means were just poor scrappers, and squishier too.
I'm sure I'le think of more, but for now /em rant end
My biggest problem with stalkers is that there are so many stalkers around who give them a bad name (in PvE):
- stalkers running ahead, clicking glowies (and possibly triggering ambushes) rather than helping the team by actually doing something useful
- stalkers using their AS and perhaps one or two follow-up attacks before running away from a fight to rehide... guys, being hidden is good, but not that good that you can pull your weight in a team by throwing AS + two attacks every 30 seconds...
- stalkers with the pressing urge to uncover the whole map ahead of the team... in a 'kill all' mission
- stalkers unwilling to participate in any tough fight unless their level 38 armour is running
- stalkers who always go for the boss and ignore enemies on the 'hate-list' (e.g. Malta sappers)
- stalkers who are not aware of their capabilities like the one who seriously tried to AS Valkyrie at level 46 while the larger part of the team took a short biobreak and who was surprised that she not only survived his attack but also seemed less than amused and proceeded to wipe the floor with the afk'ers
- stalkers who tell the corruptor that he should only be healing since they would do more damage anyway (HA! HA! Frickin' HA!) (although this is quite close to the previous point about being unaware of their own capabilities)
Each time I play my stalker I am almost ashamed about the mere possibility of being confused with someone like that. 
If it has eyes, you can blind it, if it has blood, you can make it bleed, if it has a mouth, you can make it scream.
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Eviscerate is a Cone attack so it wont be as good in terms of damage/end/sec on a single target as Focus, however if you regularly line up one foe behind another and critical out of hide its not bad. You may say, well your always likely to AS first and so ya might. I am looking for situations where a shadow maul out of hide is better than AS on my DM stalker, perhaps if 3 are lined up, but then again shadow maul is better than eviscerate anyway.
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If it would crit out of hide yes, but it doesn't. Also Focus is labeled as high damage, Eviscerate as superior and the difference is minimal. During the flip I can excecute focus twice :S And I can imagine you compare it to shadow maul, but is shadow maul the highest damage attack in Dark? or Midnight Grasp? thought so
I play stalkers because they are the #1 Archetype of zonal pvp. 
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Eviscerate is a Cone attack so it wont be as good in terms of damage/end/sec on a single target as Focus, however if you regularly line up one foe behind another and critical out of hide its not bad. You may say, well your always likely to AS first and so ya might. I am looking for situations where a shadow maul out of hide is better than AS on my DM stalker, perhaps if 3 are lined up, but then again shadow maul is better than eviscerate anyway.
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If it would crit out of hide yes, but it doesn't. Also Focus is labeled as high damage, Eviscerate as superior and the difference is minimal. During the flip I can excecute focus twice :S And I can imagine you compare it to shadow maul, but is shadow maul the highest damage attack in Dark? or Midnight Grasp? thought so
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Its just the way power descriptions are bit borked. Eviscerate is still a good attack because its the only one of the set that can crit OUT of hide.
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Eviscerate is a Cone attack so it wont be as good in terms of damage/end/sec on a single target as Focus, however if you regularly line up one foe behind another and critical out of hide its not bad. You may say, well your always likely to AS first and so ya might. I am looking for situations where a shadow maul out of hide is better than AS on my DM stalker, perhaps if 3 are lined up, but then again shadow maul is better than eviscerate anyway.
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If it would crit out of hide yes, but it doesn't. Also Focus is labeled as high damage, Eviscerate as superior and the difference is minimal. During the flip I can excecute focus twice :S And I can imagine you compare it to shadow maul, but is shadow maul the highest damage attack in Dark? or Midnight Grasp? thought so
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Its just the way power descriptions are bit borked. Eviscerate is still a good attack because its the only one of the set that can crit OUT of hide.
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Everything has a chance to crit out of hide when you have a held foe, which makes it even more borked.
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Everything has a chance to crit out of hide when you have a held foe, which makes it even more borked.
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I wasnt talking about held opponents which Im sure you knew..
Midknight Grasp is an awesome attack. Its not a cone, is very fast, can immobilize, and while some of its damage is DoT that can often work in your favour, ie use MG, then let the tics finish them off whiel you turn to a new mob, or in PVP it can be very handy too. My usual attack chain is BU+AS (lt dead) placate+MG (minion dead) in a mob of three these leaves one mob standning scratching himself while his mates are both dead. MG along with BU out of hide will one hit all but red+ minions. Shadow Maul can take a mob for around half its hp out of hide, which while nice, aint quite MG.
And Sitriel, I agree with most of what you said. Ile now only ask if the leader wants the mish ghosted at the start of mish, or only do it if asked to, otherwise im in with the group. A lot of what you described does do damage to stalkers reputation, though usually i find those same players will do little for the rep of what ever AT they play, as often they are the true definition of the horrible word N00b.
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Everything has a chance to crit out of hide when you have a held foe, which makes it even more borked.
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I wasnt talking about held opponents which Im sure you knew..
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yes I know, I was just trying to point out why I think the power is still lame, allthough it can crit without hiding.
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My biggest problem with stalkers is that there are so many stalkers around who give them a bad name (in PvE):
- stalkers running ahead, clicking glowies (and possibly triggering ambushes) rather than helping the team by actually doing something useful
- stalkers using their AS and perhaps one or two follow-up attacks before running away from a fight to rehide... guys, being hidden is good, but not that good that you can pull your weight in a team by throwing AS + two attacks every 30 seconds...
- stalkers with the pressing urge to uncover the whole map ahead of the team... in a 'kill all' mission
- stalkers unwilling to participate in any tough fight unless their level 38 armour is running
- stalkers who always go for the boss and ignore enemies on the 'hate-list' (e.g. Malta sappers)
- stalkers who are not aware of their capabilities like the one who seriously tried to AS Valkyrie at level 46 while the larger part of the team took a short biobreak and who was surprised that she not only survived his attack but also seemed less than amused and proceeded to wipe the floor with the afk'ers
- stalkers who tell the corruptor that he should only be healing since they would do more damage anyway (HA! HA! Frickin' HA!) (although this is quite close to the previous point about being unaware of their own capabilities)
Each time I play my stalker I am almost ashamed about the mere possibility of being confused with someone like that.
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This reminded me of earlier today.
New pick up group, I was the stalker (Dark/SR).
First mob, BU+AS..Then I slaughtered three others in the mob(out of 8) and wounded two others(ah those cone attacks) while the team took out the rest (a team of 5).
Repeated for the next two mobs without incident, and we were going really quickly through the mission. Some of the people in the team were fairly new so I asked if maybe hey wanted me to ease up a little so they can get the hang of their powers.
Big mistake.
"You joking? You not even fighting properly, if you were using AS properly we would be going much faster..why arent you using hide more?"
And other comments...
The unimaginative way in which some people play stalkers is sad, though I dont think its that much worse than with other ATs.
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The unimaginative way in which some people play stalkers is sad, though I dont think its that much worse than with other ATs.
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Totally agree, Hide and AS are not your only ways of playing. Stand there and fight. If there is a PvE team wipe, my Stalker is more often than not going to be the last one to faceplant or be the only one left standing at the finish up.
Stalkers.... Not as squishy as you think.
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Stalkers.... Not as squishy as you think.
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That is very true, my nrg/sr can hold his own even when most of the team are down. I hate the infamous repuation that stalkers have of 'only' using AS as their main attack. Most of the time I only use AS once per mob - twice if there is a 2nd boss etc. ET, TF and BS keep me going and with elude theres no stopping me.
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The unimaginative way in which some people play stalkers is sad, though I dont think its that much worse than with other ATs.
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Totally agree, Hide and AS are not your only ways of playing. Stand there and fight. If there is a PvE team wipe, my Stalker is more often than not going to be the last one to faceplant or be the only one left standing at the finish up.
Stalkers.... Not as squishy as you think.
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Who rolls stalkers for PvE anymore?
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Who rolls stalkers for PvE anymore?
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I always have 
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Who rolls stalkers for PvE anymore?
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I always have
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Ew.
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The unimaginative way in which some people play stalkers is sad, though I dont think its that much worse than with other ATs.
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Totally agree, Hide and AS are not your only ways of playing. Stand there and fight. If there is a PvE team wipe, my Stalker is more often than not going to be the last one to faceplant or be the only one left standing at the finish up.
Stalkers.... Not as squishy as you think.
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I was once in a lvl 40ish PvE team. The MM managed to aggro more than one mob spawn and team bit the dirt pretty quick. My stalker was the one remaining upright and managed to kill all the aggroed mobs by the time the others had ran back from the hospital. This with my PvP stalker.
/slight rant
Stalkers seem to be one of the easiest ATs to play very badly. It also seems a lot of bad players pick stalkers.
It irritates me no end to see players only using AS and then moving away waiting for hide to recharge (at higher levels too!), especially when playing in a bigger team they become completely surplus to requirements.
I was running a team this morning with my Stalker (usually the only way I can get a good team is to start my own). After having a very successful run of missions with team of 5, I hesitantly invited two other Stalkers into the team (both similar names and the same DM/SR build). It wasn't long before I started to get tells from other team-members that they weren't pulling their weight. Sure enough they were doing the occasional AS but then moving away and waiting for hide to recharge. They were not even using AS on reasonable targets - just minions with half a bar left and such. Their builds were very specific too, only one attack and AS - Obviously one-trick PvP builds.
The final straw was when we started suffering a few deaths in the group (due to the increase in mob sizes) and I look round to see they are both standing around afk in the middle of the fight with hide on.
The hardest job as a Team Leader is kicking people (I don't usually do so unless I feel people are purposely trouble)
I didn't waste any time in booting them though. It's people like this that make me reluctant to invite ANY stalker into a team, as it's such and easy AT to abuse. 
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The hardest job as a Team Leader is kicking people (I don't usually do so unless I feel people are purposely trouble)
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I agree, I hate to do it so I try to be bit picky about who I invite in the first place.
Stalkers are like ninjas. They disapper only to return with a killing bow. I don't mind if my attack doesn't do much damage, unless a Dom will freeze, immob etc where they are most vunrable. Then I can use some easy moves on em. When they come out, I will finish them off with the last killing blows.
You are a Stalker, yes, but great teammates can help you win. Well, Stalkers can solo I suppose.
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Stalkers are like ninjas. They disapper only to return with a killing bow. I don't mind if my attack doesn't do much damage, unless a Dom will freeze, immob etc where they are most vunrable. Then I can use some easy moves on em. When they come out, I will finish them off with the last killing blows.
You are a Stalker, yes, but great teammates can help you win. Well, Stalkers can solo I suppose.
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Ryu Hayabusa is a ninja, although he never dissapear I'd rather say stalkers are assassins, than ninjas.
Erm which hayabusa are we talking about.. I think I know a few and all of them disappear ^^
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Erm which hayabusa are we talking about.. I think I know a few and all of them disappear ^^
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Ryu Hayabusa, ninja gaiden. Jeez. He dissapears after he kills his targets... At least that what he did the last i played the game and watched the movie
Looking at other posts with questions on builds and stuff, I see stalkers happily jump in and express their frustrations. I love the AT and consider it the most fun and interesting. But also have my problems with how it has been designed. And while scrolling these boards I notice people are having this supressed anger going on, but don't express it, since we are looked at as the premier PvP class. So get it of your chest, I'll go first.
I play claws and don't mind being lethal damage. But my supposed to be amazing damage attack Eviscerate does a few more ticks then Focus, my ranged high damage. It doesn't make sense and left it out. Shockwave is just funny.