Alteration to Stalkers

Increase their damage considerably. I'd suggest 1.15 or... dare i suggest? 1.2!

That's it. that's my suggestion. I want to see stalkers out-damage scrappers in most every way.

They lose combat-survivability in their secondary and do less damage than scrappers. Sure they get some nice crits in, but overall they underperform in comparison in most every situation. They generally lack AoE damage, which is the bread and butter of many builds, so give them great single-target damage, instead.

Turn around and give scrappers a +heal for their melee attacks. Similar to the damage per end scaling grant a tiny heal with every attack a scrapper makes with longer animating and higher endurance cost powers granting a slightly larger self heal.

Perhaps somewhere between a 1% and 8% self-heal per attack?

These changes should make scrappers even more survivable and attractive to players compared to Brutes without overshadowing them, and bring stalkers up toward "Equal" compared to the other melee ATs. All of this, however, hinges on my bet that with Going Rogue's launch we'll see further decline in the use of stalkers and, potentially, scrappers.

-Rachel-

I don't think Scrappers need more survivability. As to stalkers, they solo well (at least I didn't have too much trouble soloing), but they seem less useful in teams. Increasing the damage modifier might make them more useful in teams, but it would also improve soloing, and that's not strictly necessary.

There's been a lot of stalker-changing threads lately.

That's because people are worried about the AT with GR coming out.

Stalkers have been alright because realistically they're only competition was against Brutes.

Now with GR they'll be competing against Tankers and Scrappers.

As it is currently Stalkers just barely deal more damage than a Scrapper and that's only in the ideal situation where they have the full 33% chance to crit.

So they don't noticeably deal more damage than a Scrapper, but obviously are less survivable.

For Stalkers I would suggest 2 things

Increase Stalker Damage Mod to 1.125. This would have them doing the same base damage as a Scrapper, then with Stalker Crit properties and AS factored in Stalkers will clearly do more damage than a Scrapper. This shouldn't effect the attractiveness of a Scrapper though because of the survivability difference.

Second I would like to see Stalker Build up be increased from the 80% damage buff to a 100% damage buff (Same as Blaster's and Scrappers)

Strictly from my point of view, which is admittedly rather limited with stalkers, I only have the one, it's Energy/Regeneration, when I teamed, damage didn't seem to be the problem, and more damage wouldn't necessarily help.

The problem for me was:
1) if I waited for the rest of the group to attack before going in, it was hard to find a target to use the Strike on, and with everyone attacking chaotically, it's hard to know if there would be enough health on the target to make the attack worth it at the end of the animation.
2) if I didn't wait, I went in, picked a target and queued up my attacks, I'd have to time is really well or absorb the assassin's strike. Three recharge IOs in revive does not let me take the alpha strike in every spawn.

It's just that stalkers seem to take more tactics, and on a team, tactics aren't often that useful, they just take extra time. Sure, you could be careful and have fewer close calls, but you don't need to, and it can be fun to run ragged now and then.

More damage on the fast attacks could help in that situation.

if the tier 1-3 attacks animate fast and hit somewhat hard then you'll have plenty of time to eliminate a few enemies while the team plows in.

Generally in a team situation AS largely becomes insignificant because of the restrictions on it's use. Although depending on difficulty the boss(or higher) in a spawn becomes a good choice to use AS on.


Theoretically the Demoralize effect on AS should enable you to survive retaliation from the mob while the rest of the team moves in.

Sadly, I have to admit, with GR around the corner I will never make another Stalker again.

Yes, they can scrap...but not as good as a Scrapper. The one-shot-pow AS is a cute trick, but that's really all it is. Once I've popped the big one, I feel unbelievable useless. Never has AS been a differance-maker on a team, and never have I felt like I was even contributing.

As far as the lack of Quick Recovery, my first character was a /Regen Scrapper. I LOVE Quick Recovery. I will always be pissed that Stalkers miss out on what I personally considder one of the best powers in the whole damn game. Of course, I also always believed that a Brute with /Regen would be game-breakingly powerful, and it would never happen. Then they made /Regen better and gave it to Brutes, but for some silly reason they called it /Willpower.

So, basically, the class that is balanced by it's need to rest frequently no longer needs to rest frequently, thus becoming an ceaseless, angry steamroller of death. Meanwhile, Stalkers get boned. Nice.

I would like to drop in my own proposal to help stalkers here, if that's okay: Rather than boosting damage and or Armor values, I would like to propose the idea of giving them Corr/troller level team buffs, debuffs, and heal values as well Defender/Corr level control durations.
While this would not directly increase their offensive abilities, it would help with mitigation, like say with energy melee the ability to use one attack on each target and leaving them stunned long enough to return to a hide state without placate, as well as possibly help their teamwork.
The working logic of this is that while even if a stalker fails to kill you, their methods (such as poisons or whatever you'd like) will leave a painful, weakening mark against you that will leave you all the more vulnerable to the finishing blow.

Another possible suggestion is the make the formal AS provide a massive debuff against its target in all fields (-res, -def, -rech, -regen, -dam, -ToHit, -speed, -jump, -fly speed, -control duration, -heal values, -debuff values, -buff values, etc. etc. Let's just say I mean ALL), this would especially help them on teams for priority target elimination, even if you don't kill them, Reichsman is suddenly too busy reeling from that last hit so his best shot'll just make your squishiest teammate blink unamused.
The idea behind this just being that even if you survive such a powerful strike, you were hit by a carefully aimed and highly wound up attack that'll leave you on your knees if you somehow survived.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow City of Heroes is a game about freedom of expression and variety of experiences far more so than it is about representing any one theme, topic or genre.

Perhaps just give Stalkers "Containment"?

I know that will have little effect on solo play, but we're trying to boost their appeal to teams, right?

It was mentioned above, but a significant problem for stalkers is the inability of many teams to use any level of tactics. When I'm in a team with stalkers, especially if I'm one of them, my philosophy is to let them move in, start their animations, and then have the others join in immediately before the AS's hit. This balances the aggro more evenly without throwing off the stalkers' ability to take down their targets.

Many stalkers act like martyrs, doing exactly what I advocate above from their end, but without getting the buy-in of the other team members first, and ending up faceplanting from the alpha. They don't always complain about it afterwards, but you can tell they resent the other players for not picking up on their lead. This causes many good stalkers to not want to team with others, for fear of being left out to dry too often.

Other stalkers are a little too concerned about their own safety/debt, and refuse to get anywhere near the alpha, preferring to only pick-off foes and often avoid mixing it up at all. Because they're not there at the beginning, taking down a spotless foe, it's also not obvious how much they're helping the team. This causes many teams to not want any stalkers to team with them, for fear of getting a dud that won't pull their weight.

Unfortunately, again as stated earlier, the only solution for this is to establish a clear set of responsibilities for stalkers in teams, both for the stalker and the team, to ensure that each gets the best from the other. Used properly, stalkers can be devastating in teams, but they're not tanks, scrappers, or brutes, and shouldn't be confused, by anybody, as such.