What Changes are needed to make Stalkers an acceptable addition to a Team?

I think a lot of the problem actually is that Stalkers buff the team in a way that is hard to quantify and admittedly is not common enough. Sapper = dead helps a team but there's not enough situations where there's an individual problem enemy that needs to die immediately. Don't get me wrong, they could stand to be buffed but it seems like they'd be harder to pinpoint the exact hard numbers needed.

My Arcs
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Mission Architect Handyman

If I misremembered something someone else said as something you said, sorry about that. I disagree with you, and I don't think you and I are going to be able to reach any sort of consensus.

You dismissed my entire point of view as irrelevant just because it was different and were more than a little mocking about it, so yeah I'm gonna get a little irritated. You really shouldn't be surprised at the reaction. If you openly mock someone it's likely to provoke them. And then following up with "learn to read"? Wow.

I have found this entire thread irritating from start to finish. That probably means I should bow out now and just stop reading it before I really do fly off the handle.

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.

It's not too different from what I would say Energy Melee needs. If you want to have it be focused on ST damage, great. Then justify that with have it being the best at it. I would definitely agree with upping the range on the crit boost. It was a great idea for improving Stalkers to include that, so making it more easy to leverage (30 feet is not all that much when taking on just one spawn) would be a good idea.

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.

And melee ATs have better defenses, resistances, Hit Points, Mez Protection.

You're not really making a point here, because no one ever suggests to not take Melees onto a team on any regular basis.





They would still be less survivable, hold no aggro and overall be a relatively niche use AT.

In my opinion, it's not just Brutes and Scrappers that cause problems for Stalkers but VEATs like Night Widows and Bane's as well.



The entire issue neatly summarized.

The problem with that is that a lot of other characters can have basically the same impact by hitting the problem enemy with a single target mez (or if it's a boss two people mez it).

I'd say reread what I said again but then I'd just be blamed for 'lack of comprehension' or some crap.

What I meant said was:
"The point was, you bring up the melee ATs and DPS...acknowledge the advantage of stalker's burst and ST dmg and yet...DPS calculations are done with only one target in mind."

To clarify:
"The point was, you bring up melee ATs and DPS...acknowledge the advantage of stalker's burst damage AND single target damage..."

i.e. Stalkers have the advantage of burst (you can complain about needing to set it up but it's only a minor inconvenience since you're given absolute stealth at level one and a 'stop fighting me' auto-hit mez) and they are competitive in ST DPS.

I'm not a number cruncher so no, I don't. Much of the numbers came up when the devs were implementing the scaling crits. From those threads, without factoring in crits from hide/placate, a stalker *outpaced* a scrapper in ST DPS on large teams/with max crit rate bonus...only marginally but there you go.

Who said anything about conspiracies or even bias against stalkers? I simply said, people that want to SMASH don't want to hide. They'd rather press buttons and get their reward. If anything, I'm biased against stupidly simple playstyles and simple minded tactics. You won't hear me bad mouthing Dominators...and even though I don't like Masterminds, there's a since of respect for their complicated playstyle.

True, Stalkers give up things for burst, but your inferiority complex stems from comparing apples and oranges.

Elec melee is the lone exception? Okay, so it's the only primary that didn't loose damage. Great.

Now what about Dark Melee? What did it give up? A long recharging AoE that might as well not even be an attack at all? DM, compared across the melee ATs, it's tops when on Stalkers. It basically bolsters the set's burst damage (something the set naturally lags on) in exchange for decreasing its already abysmal AoE damage.

How about Dual Blades? It even drops a whole PBAoE attack! Well, the set still maintains *enough* AoE. You get 2 cones and a PBAoE dmg combo as well as focused DPS DoT combo and more burst (again, something said set falls behind on).


Really, it's like admitting there's something wrong with the game, rather than Stalkers. Because Stalkers aren't the only AT that uses ST or Burst damage. To say it gains little in comparison to other similar attributes is tells us "The AI needs to be fixed or something".

....

Eh, I'll leave it at that. I'm tired of quoting. Anyway, there's nothing *wrong* with Stalkers, inherently. They have powersets that focus on ST and powersets that expand into AoE just like every other melee AT. Just because they tend to narrow their focus a bit compared doesn't make it good or bad. It's up to the player to decide if that's a direction in which they want to go.

Their survivability is fine, as on teams, they're like Scrappers with anti-aggro auras. A Scrapper that isn't tanking doesn't need 100% of the mitigation they get anyway and solo, if using the proper settings, most of the enemies will simply fall over dead before they can scratch at you.

Could the AT use some tweeking? Yeah, sure. Lots of stuff could. But I don't think they need to give them *more* damage...because it's a never ending cycle. Then Scrappers will complain or the buff won't be enough 'cause my claws brute can still do blahblahblah DPS which is blah% blah than blah'.

Give stalkers more debuffs. Won't make them 133t but it'd be cool!

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.

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

Seen teams do it and also seen plenty brag about it on the forums. I see it to no end in anti-Tanker and anti-melee threads too, where people laud how their team completed this and that task force without one. It can be done and is done. Which is great, in my opinion. The game allows a lot of team combinations to work.

And if you're still worried about it, grab one melee person to take the alpha, and let the rest be all ranged. The buffs, debuffs, control, and damage will be more than the poor saps in melee can do, anyway.

Discussing it is missing the point, anyway. You can make any combo of ATs work in the game, so pretending that any AT is somehow below an arbitrary bar some players want to throw in there is silly. Which is why threads like this always mystify me: it's from certain players perceptions, rather than the reality of the game itself.

To you, clearly. It's hilarious how you repeat posting this no matter how much people quibble the point. Go ahead and have fun playing Scrappers and Brutes (because that's fine, we should all play what we want), but don't put your head in the sand and pretend that Stalkers aren't worth playing or inviting. Then you're moving beyond your own preferences and demanding other people follow those preferences.

No thanks on that.

You know, even though I've seen people who've said they've done it I'm still somewhat dubious about the concept of all-blaster TFs. Every time I think about it I just imagine lots of faceplants.

Now, add in something like one FF or other support character and it seems more doable to me. Actually, a TF with one FF, one kin and the rest blasters sounds absurdly fun to me come to think of it.

At 30 s and 0% Global Damage Buffs Stalker damage is 89% of Scrapper damage. With 25% Global Damage Buffs Stalker Damage is 91% of Scrapper damage.

A different attack chain (i.e., buzz saw) and a different set might give slightly different results as well, but I'm not willing to spend the time to check right now. A quick glance at the numbers suggests that Stalkers might be better avoiding the second AS since it lacks BU, but I'm not sure.

Edited to add:

These are level 50 comparisons.
Not sure what the effective HP (including regen) a level 50ish AV has. This will of course depend on the debuffs it has on it.

*discards the rest because it's just insulting drivel*

Who honestly believes that? Especially when considering some steamroller teams where a mob is dropped in seconds. How important is sustained DPS vs burst when you've got a blaster hopped up on buffs flying at your heels or a SD Brute ready to drop SC at the drop of a hat?

If you're only counting 'burst damage' as AS and discarding the whole 'giving yourself 100%ST/50%AOE crits on command that you can combine with BU at will' part, then maybe. But Stalkers get AoEs. Stalkers can crit a lot of enemies with those AoEs and they can make sure those crits are backed by BU. That's something scrappers can't do and they have better burst damage than brutes.

You're lobbying for changes across the entire AT while discarding attributes the devs obviously considered advantages of the AT...when your real issue isn't even the AT but individual aspects of powersets. Taking a note from Angry_Citizen when he was here (one of the main guys that spoke out for the buffs Stalkers have now), the problem you want fixed is some kind of inferiority issue with the inherent concept of the AT compared to others yet you want to solve it with minor changes that will do little to nothing to solve anything...it'll just make you feel better. It's asking for change just because.

And no, Stalkers shouldn't be the 'kings of melee damage'. Merely competitive. You shouldn't have to pick a stealth assassin/ninja style if you want to do great melee damage.

LEO: Due to scrappers having superior self buffing they have nearly all of stalker ability for burst damage, while having higher DPS, Better AOE and Better survivability.

THERE IS NO COMPELLING REASON TO TEAM WITH A STALKER.

Stalker Negatives outweigh Stalker Strengths. ITS JUST THAT SIMPLE.

Actually I play stalkers since I can't get Ninjitsu anywhere else.

And you can stick you fingers in your ears and imagine that teams just pick up anyone and run, but in reality stalkers very often are excluded from consideration because there is no compelling reason to take one over a scrapper, brute, tank.

Tank is a meat shield, Brutes and scrapper provide more or less better DPS than a stalker while providing most of the burst.

I have seen it time and again where a SF leader recruits and passes up Maxed out stalker builds to wait for a brute or scrapper.

It does happen, and it happens often.

That's why I said all-ranged. With a few Defenders and Controllers backing up some Blasters, you can get it done. I know all Defender teams can have an even easier time of it depending on their makeup.

But like I said, it's not really worth worrying about. People can do most anything in this game with any combo. I merely bring up the point to show how silly the min/max talk can get.

My point exactly. If everything is the same, why have different ATs? Same thing for different powersets. MA is technically a weaker powerset for Scrappers, but you can still do good damage solo and teaming with it. You don't have to be the most powerful set to play the game well and have fun.

And as people have continually pointed out to you, the only people doing that are those like you that pretend that they need to hold out for some other imaginary level of performance they've put in their head.

I don't know anyone that excludes anyone like that on Victory or Champion, and I play with a lot of people. Thank goodness for that. I lead a team most nights I play, and I never worry about what team combination I have: they all have a way of working somehow. Not sure how given some of the supposed "truths" tossed around in this thread.

But if you want to continue saying that Stalkers are weak and should not be chosen, way to keep exacerbating the problem. That's a great plan. Ugh.

My Arcs
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Mission Architect Handyman

My Arcs
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Mission Architect Handyman

I'm betting they put a hard cap on it at 30%

Seriously, those reactions are enough to make me feel like puking! Have people seriously reacted like that when you log on as your stalker?!

IMO, stalkers should be very wanted on TFs indeed, as they all have the potential to be strong alpha strikers, and in your case, a mentionable AoE'er.

I think what makes some people despise the stalker is bad experiences; people do fear and dislike what they don't feel good about!