Cannot build a good Stalker

Well, and here inexperience bites me in the ***. I haven't ever had a high-level Stalker, and when I've teamed with them, I've never really paid them any attention. Figured they were doing their own Stabbity Death! thing.

Huh. Well, I'd thought Stalkers got fixed up back in the day. Shame, or something, I guess.

I said that because it's mostly what I do now on my 50 stalker. But substitute any good sized spawn with a boss or two on a decent difficulty setting. Point being, that as you go up in levels, bosses gain several times the hit points of their surrounding minions. Graph the hit points of a spawn along the x-axis and what you have looks a bit like a mountain. Stalkers are there to shave off that peak. Anyone focused on ST damage could do the same, but the Stalker can generally do it faster from a standing start. Burst damage IS relevant when the target is only going to live for 10 seconds.

Maybe you're not arguing the same thing Jib is, but I hear him and others like Test_Rat going on about AoE all the time and I still have to ask what having AoE is going to accomplish in this same scenario where the boss you're trying to AS is losing 50-75% of his hit points before you can land the AS. He's not dying any faster by taking you out and replacing with someone who has more AoE. The team isn't done with the spawn until everything lies dead, including that boss with the inconveniently high hit points. So... who is doing that last 1000 or so hit points of damage to him faster than you are?

When he dies is totally relevant. I suspect what most people use as their measure of contribution to a team is total damage, at least on a damage-dealing AT. They want to see lots of orange numbers. While that sounds like sense, it's not necessarily what helps the team kill faster.

If a single enemy is the bottleneck to faster spawn defeats, the stalker is your corkscrew. Not someone with yet more AoE.

The fix was a step (or two) in the right direction but they were still a little too conservative. Perhaps not wanting to step on the toes of Scrapper players (by far a larger lobby) they didn't just give Stalkers what they rightly should have... which is unquestionably and unconditionally better damage than Scrappers in, at the very least, single target situations.

Setting aside the issue of AoE vs ST for a moment, I don't think the above can be argued with. What else do Stalkers have to compensate for generally less survivability than Scrappers BUT more damage? There is also the problem of overestimating the benefit of the scaling critical, which is often done even by forum mathy types. It's easy to say that a Stalker equals a Scrapper in ST damage when in range of 'n' teammates, but a lot harder to estimate how OFTEN he finds himself in range of that many teammates. Taken as an average over the course of an entire mission, mission arc, or task force, for example... what is the actual critical chance bonus?

Difficult to say. I'd guess that on a team of eight it's probably not more than 20% random crit chance as an average, meaning that on average you have three (and a third ) people in 30' range of you at any given time you use an attack outside of Hide. If you consider how spread out teams get between melee and ranged types, this doesn't seem unreasonable to me.

No they were definitely fixed. Playing a stalker before that was .... painful. Since then, however, a good bit of re-balancing has taken place. Archetypes that Stalkers team with have been changed, and even the kinds of archetypes a Stalker teams with have changed. Heavily IO'd builds have become more and more commonplace. Content - never difficult to begin with - has actually gotten a little challenging. All these are changes for the better. And that's a massive understatement.

All these changes haven't rendered stalkers obsolete; far from it. Stalkers can take advantage of IOs and can now be buffed and assisted by heroic archetypes. But today's game has brought out quirks in the stalker playstyle that yesterday's game overlooked.

Namely, it's virtually impossible to play a stalker on a team as a stalker, verses a generic melee archetype. Right now, there are three melee archetypes that can be compared, and those are tankers, brutes and scrappers. All can be burst damage dealers, all can be dps dealers, and (with the exception of a few powersets) most can be aoe damage powerhouses.

Stalkers fall somewhere in the grey area between scrappers and blasters. Is a stalker supposed to be a one shot-one kill glass cannon single target burst damage archetype or is it supposed to be a melee dps fighter with low hitpoints? Right now, that depends on whether you're solo or teamed.

I personally would prefer the former even when teamed, but wanting that and making that happen in today's game are pretty far apart.

Any number of suggestions could remedy the disparity, but with everything that stalkers already do with the combination of their inherent and the trifecta of AS/BU/Placate has come dangerously close to making them the gimmick kings. While I love some of the ideas that have been thrown around, I worry that we're asking for Castle to give us a Frankenstein archetype with a patchwork inherent.

That's why I think Jbikao is right on the money with his view of the three aforementioned powers. Using them as intended strings together some very long animations, meaning that the true talent of a stalker is wasted on a team, due to nothing more than the baddies having drastically fewer hit points than the damage your attack string is doing. In short, it's inefficiency of the highest order.

Shortening the animations would help, but I also (alternately) wouldn't say no to removing the interrupt from AS in PVE or giving it a little longer than melee range. (Maybe ten to twelve feet instead of seven).

Bosses gain several times the hit points, and players gain six or seven times the damage and debuffing potential. If we're talking later levels, minions generally die in the alpha, with Lt's following right after. The only reason any survive at all outside of bosses is damage/aggro caps. But above level 40 any archetype can pretty much pwn any minion and most Lt's in the game. So that leaves the bosses for the entire team to pay attention to. Now I'll grant that some of those bosses can be a real PIA. (looking at you, Master Illusionist and your "untouchable!" message that appears right after my AS) but when faced with the utter onslaught of six to ten heroes/rogues/villains/whathaveyou they nonetheless melt pretty quickly.

Burst damage only matters in those ten seconds you speak of if you can land it all in those ten seconds (and including buildup, AS, Placate, and whatever followup attack you're planning that can be difficult) and it isn't a heavily resisted damage type. Unfortunately, the vast majority of the damage stalkers do is the most heavily resisted damage in the game. That Radiation Blaster and that Psi Dominator don't have that to worry about. Neither does that Fire Scrapper.

You can hit buildup on your way to your intended victim to shave off 1.19 seconds (or if your KM 1.9 seconds), but then again you have to make darn sure you're completely stopped before you even begin to cue up your AS, or it interrupts. Heaven help you if you rubberband back or lag past your intended meatbag, or maybe they decide to finish firing their ranged attack and move just before you get the AS key mashed. Then you get to waste time repositioning, further burning off precious damage buff.


Not really arguing AoE verses ST so much as I am pointing out that most - if not all - the other archetypes are equally focused on AoE AND Single Target. Those Blasters tossing out aoe's are also slinging snipes and short range heavy damage attacks. With Buildup and Aim, blasters also have the potential to reach pretty massive levels of single target damage, and follow that up with an aoe that will wipe out a boss and his entire spawn.

For example, using a calculator and Red Tomax and a fuzzy concept of math, I can tell you that a Fire/EM Blaster can hit Buildup, Aim and Blazing Bolt for around 1011 points of pure fire damage (with 93% enhancement) and follow up with Fireball for an additional 434-ish points of mostly fire damage (enhanced as above) in around 8 seconds, with the second attack damaging the entire spawn within radius and cap.

An EM stalker will do 1351 points of similarly slotted damage that is split between smashing and energy from a built up AS, follow that with placate and Total Focus for an additional 490 points of damage in about as many seconds. On paper the AS is far and away the heavier hitter, but in practice it's heavier resisted than the Blazing Bolt and it's all to one target.

Now, since a level 50 Boss has 2500 Hit points on average, you can imagine that blaster's combo taking the boss down to 1000 hit points, which you easily strip him of with your AS, only to turn around and have no one to placate because the blaster also killed the minions, who have about 430 hit points each.

You could make the argument that that was just one boss in a spawn full of minions, but keep in mind that I'm only talking about one fire blaster on a team of two. Scrappers and Brutes that don't also make for the boss will one or two-shot the lt's and another blaster will likely do the same to a second boss.

Don't even get me started on the wasted damage potential from killing half-dead lt's.

The point is that while the problem isn't exactly dire, the perception is there that Stalkers - when played as stalkers - don't contribute as much to teams.


Most people are only watching the numbers they themselves generate, and assume that any other numbers that appear over a foe they're attacking are theirs unless that foe has an untimely death while their attack is still animating. What you're talking about above is player perception, and what I and others are talking about is actual damage contribution.

Unfortunately, there is rarely a situation in most teams where a single enemy is the bottleneck for faster spawn defeats. It's likely a more common situation in Task Forces, but for the vast majority of the content the minions and lt's are incidental casualties in very quick battles with minor bosses. The most common bottleneck mechanics in this game have to do with the environment of the mission and how to use it for better AoE leverage.

This is contradictory, IMO. For the case of bosses falling too quickly to get off an AS, then don't. While it's a signature move of the Stalker, the AT isn't built around *needing* to use it to fulfill its role effectively which is a *good* thing. AS is a great extra omph available with the sacrifice of an AoE and the time to invest setting it up but you have other options.

For the case of bosses falling too slowly is the real conflict of argument. If you're on a team where the bosses will be resisting damage heavily, then all those AoEs will practically do nothing to those hard targets since the damage is spread and such an AoE focused team will have to invest END and animation time using ST attacks to handle those foes. This means:
A. There will be other targets to take out if the team has to turn focus on a single target.
B. There will be a boss to fight if they turn their focus on everything else except that single target.
C. Single Target focused builds, no matter if their damage is resisted or not, have either better burst (EM) or extreme DPS (MA) so those hard resistant targets still go down faster than an AoE build focusing on the hard target.

If your issue is that AS doesn't remove those hard targets quickly enough because they resist your attacks, that's an issue with damage type and enemy resists, not the Stalker AT.

I don't know what kind of teams you play on, but where I frequent AS is rather useless.

Queue it up, mob is dead before it lands.

Thankfully I play spines and elec melee so I can open with an AoE and contribute.

*see case when foes drop too fast*

Look! There's another option!

Where are people getting that I'm talking about bosses dying off before the AS lands? What I'm saying is that a normal boss is heavily damaged, and AS - by the time you get it to land is overkill. I'm saying that the extra damage that exceeds your target's hit points is wasted, and thus a more efficient way to go is your other attacks.

And it's not just that you can't use AS in teams, it's that you're not able to use your powerset as it's intended - high burst killing of single targets - in most situations. You're relegated - as you state - to using your other attacks and scrapping it out. The problem with that is that you're now a sub-par scrapper.

And that's not a huge problem, IMHO, in the later levels when Stalkers are able to get more AoE out of their PPP/APP's.

I wasn't talking about situations where bosses resist EVERYONE's damage. Those are the exceptions. The bosses in the late game specifically resist the damage most dealt by Stalkers: Smashing and Lethal. Even sets like DM, EM and ElM do smashing components. By contrast, other Archetypes have access to pure fire, psionic, dark and energy damage.

Again, that's the exception. But even then other damage archetypes have more or less equal access to Single Target and AoE damage, both of which will be utilized. Those other targets you speak of will be incidental deaths due to the AoE.

You must have some amazing teams who will all coordinate specifically so that you alone can focus on a single target. Most teams I've seen go after the bosses and lt's - and if there's more than one they'll split their efforts among them. Most melee types want the glory of one kill all to themselves, no different than stalkers. The minions fall in the crossfire.

I'm not talking strictly AoE verses Single Target. Brutes have access to EM and both Brutes and Scrappers have access to MA. Scrappers will still do more damage and Brutes will do comparable damage and survive longer.

But that's not even the point. The point is that solo or teamed they're still able to function as the archetypes were intended.

Stalkers, by contrast, get to ignore the best tools in their archetype and imitate what the other melee archetypes do, but not as well.

Except that four out of eight powersets in the archetype are strictly heavily resisted damage (smashing/lethal) and of the remaining four three deal at least half smashing. EDIT - and Spines deals lethal with its toxic. Dagnabbit why do I always forget Spines? When heavy resists affect 75% percent of an archetype, then it is an archetype problem and not just a damage type problem.

But that's not my issue at all, really. I can't speak for others, but what's at issue with stalkers currently is a minor identity crisis that only shows up when teamed. If stalkers are intended to play as melee blasters, they are only doing that effectively when solo. If - as the current design implies - they are intended to switch roles on teams and be single target scrappers with low hit points then something needs to be done to make them better at it, because currently they're not (when compared to the other melee types they're forced to emulate) until they hit the 40's or are Ninjitsu, and mainly then because of the AoE controls that come with either that go to complement the damage that they do with attacks outside of AS and Placate.

This is the problem I am talking about. If you are not Spines/Elec (or maybe Claw/Dual Blade), your best attack from hidden is AS.

It shouldn't take Stalker this long to land an assassin strike especially in this type of game. I can imagine taking 5s to land a critical in a game like WoW or Lotro.


Some sets like Martial Arts and Energy Melee don't even have an AoE until patron. So yeah, in a way, Stalker IS defined by AS on a team. If Stalker doesn't want to perform AS, then what is the key point? A Dominator in Domination can "reduce threat" in one hold and can you imagine a Dominator who doesn't use Single Hold? I can't. Corr and MM can stack buffs/debuffs and Brute fits the team's "go go go" mentality better than Stalker. I play my Spine Stalker VERY aggressively. I never open with AS unless I solo or on a small team.


Yes, you don't always have to use Assassin Strike (to avoid overkill?) on Martial Arts but if you don't, you can't get back to Hidden status again until 8s second later (without being hit or attacking) or using Placate (and hopefully nobody else is targeting you as well). It's not like a Dominator wasted a hold on a target that is already held but his hold power is recharged right away after 8s (unslotted).


In a way, Stalker IS defined by Assassin Strike because of this power, Stalker is tied with Build Up and Placate. Most of the new melee sets get Build Up and no fancy stuff. I don't want Stalker to turn into another Scrapper. I just want to Assassinate quicker and more efficient that's all. If I want a target (not AV/Hero/Elite) die, I want it die under 3s or less. Period.


I can live with having less HP and dealing less damage than Scrapper/Blaster but my Burst damage gotta come quicker than 4s + 1s build up (longer for Kinetic) and whatever interruption that slows down my Assassination because I know after the initial Burst, my Stalker is going to be inferior.


In fact, has anyone looked at Dominator's damage potential with pet? I am not even so sure if Stalker does more damage than Dominator right now.... past lvl 38, a Dominator attack chain is very Blaster-like.

Hang on now. You're telling me AS is no good because the whole spawn is dead inside of 5 seconds but you want to tell me that a Dominator using a single target hold is useful? Honestly, how much is that going to matter in a fight that only lasts five seconds? Or those debuffs? Forget using Darkest Night or Radiation Infection. Just look at THOSE cast times! Nothing will live long enough to fight back and if they are all firing their first attacks at a beefy Tank or Brute... who cares anyway? Give him a single healz0r and be done with it right? We'll be lucky if we can even all get in range long enough for a Fulcrum Shift inside of those five seconds. And what good is my Dark Corr's Tar Patch if all the minions are dead in the opening salvo? At a rate of one spawn every ten seconds (figuring in a little travel time ya'know) I won't even be ABLE to use it every spawn! We've got all kinds of problems!

At least in the world of forum theory-crafting anyway.

At no time did Jbikao say the fight would only last five seconds. The only time he mentioned five seconds in relation to anything was the animation time of BU+AS. No real fight only lasts five seconds.

And your Dark Corr's Tar Patch is a good portion of the reason WHY all the minions die in the opening salvo.

No, I am telling you that AS is no good if you choose NOT to use it in the initial burst damage because 1.) You need to wait for 8s (basically doing nothing) which hurts damage even more. 2.) You have to rely on Placate which takes another 1+ second and then another 4s or if you have build up, that's at least 7s just to RE-USE Assassin Strike at the highest potential again.

I brought up Dominator because if we want to define an AT by role on a team, Dominator's primary job is to "reduce threat" (elimination is to kill it) and even if they fail to control at first (whether it's wasted on a held foe or miss or simply choose to attack first), their control powers can be used again very soon. A Stalker's cannot get back to being an Assassin in that short amount of time. So if a Stalker is not using AS, it's like using an inferior Scrapper with limited AoE and a bit less health. And of course, a Stalker is still playable being an "inferior" Scrapper. Hell, we've been playing the inferior version for 6 years! Why do you think I made several lvl 50 Stalkers? :P But if the dev wonders why Stalker AT is not holding interest for a long time, it's because this AT doesn't live up to being a "good" Assassin.


So yeah, I do think Stalker AT is defined by Assassin Strike and that's why we get Hide, AS, Build Up and Placate in every primary/secondary.


In a fight where AS is not needed, I hardly feel a Stalker is needed on team. Maybe 'need' is too harsh of a word because no AT is really "needed", but Stalker's role is highly reduced when a team just kills too fast. (I do want to say that Spines/Electricity have less of this problem at higher level)

I think your problem lies in the definition of 'Burst Damage'. It's not solely a set feature. It's a tactic.

If you can't get your AS in before everything hits the fan, then Move. Faster. Why do you even have stealth at all if you're not going to use the situational awareness it can provide before a battle starts?

That said, just because you can burst doesn't mean that's all that matters. It's all a gamble, really. Putting all your eggs in one basket to hit the enemy hard before retaliation. Blasters do it with BU+Aim+nuke, (de)buffers do it by piling on the force multipliers before laying the smack down. All of it takes time and sacrifice. But you don't have to. A Blaster can stagger their BU and Aim use to keep more consistent damaging AoEs, and Stalkers can use their free crit on a quicker high-powered attack instead.

It's not about being sub-par, it's about dealing with the situation. It's your choice if you'd rather view holding off AS as relegating yourself as a weaker scrapper, I'll consider it a pocket nuke for when a target isn't/won't go down. But if my tactic focuses on abusing AS, I'll simply build the character and adjust the tactics to the situation to use it better.

I actually have 2 characters that do this: EM/EA stalker. In the mid lvl 30s, he's softcapped to smash/lethal/energy/neg/fire/cold (only some cheap stun IO sets and Rectified Reticle) with slotted Energy Drain to heal him. He's the 1st guy in a spawn and takes alphas.

My DM/WP isn't as sturdy but with his power make-up, if he's killed, he can self-rez and have BU lvl dmg buff for 90sec. Whatever he'll hit will feel it if it's AS or no. Hit BU and AS? Oh boy...

And the ATs we need to compare to share (and will share) the same offensive sets. So the argument is pretty moot considering those other ATs don't get armor like you do.


You're generalizing a lot. Like I said, even if they have equal acces to ST and AOE dmg, their time is still divided. Unless there are AoEs that have higher damage than a focused ST attack we have access to, there will always be a reason to use both AoE and ST but you cannot use both within the same activation time (perhaps exception being pet classes). So if the other guys are spending 3-4sec of activation to pop their high powered AoEs, how can you not have already started your AS on the sturdy target?

And no, having an extremely coordinated team would probably put a vice on the Stalker's role of taking out his targets (i.e. you have to do it faster). It's on uncoordinated teams where it's easier to do your thing. Foes aren't magically within 15ft of each other, people aren't focusing their fire on particularly annoying foes, everyone's not meta-game levels of power, etc. I'd say that's more likely to happen than your ultra-coordinated team.


Eh, I think you're starting to project a stereotype on the role of a Stalker, now. Does your view of how the AT should function line up with everyone else's? As is, all I see a Stalker as is a type of melee who is not punished for stopping to think/calculate but instead rewarded. By contrast, the other melees are probably punished for stopping to think or staying on the fringe of combat.

What you do with that is up to the player. You don't have to use every tool available to function properly or 'as intended', you don't have to strap yourself to a style or mechanic to win, you're flexible. Not as flexible as a Scrapper but close. In exchange for the survivability edge they have, you gain a tactical one.

Then explain why every melee set the Stalker has, every other melee has yet it not being their issue? If an issue covers multiple ATs, multiple sets and set types (could easily argue that since Energy Blast is all split between energy and smashing the same as Energy Melee, that the set suffer too, or Archery for that matter and Psi is often more heavily resisted than any of the other elemental sets), then it fails to be an AT problem and becomes a mechanics problem.

Test_Rat is the one that said the mob was dead before AS landed and Jib both quoted him and then agreed this was the problem. I'm assuming the stalker in this case is reasonably on the ball and gets there in time to BU and wind-up AS and he's selected a boss to nail with it. So I'm calling it five seconds. If that boss is dead, then so is everything else. Fight over.

Understand, this is not MY scenario. I don't ever see this myself. I'm just poking holes in their idea that AS is useless because everything is dead that fast. If everything is dead that fast, I still maintain there is probably little you can do with ANYTHING to improve the situation. To "contribute" as it were. I am guessing that Jib thinks he's contributing if he instead brings yet more AoE but I fail to see how, if the mob is dying that fast, he's actually accomplishing anything but yet more overkill on minions. He damned sure isn't killing that boss faster with his AoE... so what really is he contributing?

And you can't tell me his AoE is what is the cause of the mob dying so fast. Because that's changing the conditions of this AoE vs. ST comparison. Either I am on a team that is ALREADY killing the boss and everything else that fast... or I am not. If I am not, then my AS isn't useless. If I am, then his AoE is ALSO useless for the very same reason. That is, neither of us is really able to improve the situation so his argument is not really a proof of AoE vs. ST Stalkerism.

But you told me the boss was half dead or more in the opening salvo. That's not just barely killing the minions. That's killing them two to three times over. My tar patch isn't accounting for THAT much extra damage and if it's not already down before that first salvo lands, it's not doing ANYTHING. BTW, you do know that Tar Patch takes nearly as long to animate as AS, right? Sure, I can cast it from range and if I'm good I can get there ahead of the team a little and get it started just as the Tank/Brute is getting there.

But then again... I can do that with my AS too.

Two reasons: First, when you run up to a mob to hit AS, you have to stop for roughly a second for the server to recognize that you've stopped, or your AS will interrupt itself. Second, no matter how many times you tell people, someone will always assume you unintentionally aggroed the spawn and run in after you.

The first can be partially answered if I'd buy a real computer upon which to play the game. Workin' on that, but there will always be server lag of some sort, and so that will always be an issue to some degree. The second one would think could be remedied with a little communication. Yeah. I'm still workin' on that, too. In the meantime it's still an issue, and I'd bet I'm not the only one.

Far safer, IMO to forego the AS until the Alpha's past, but then we run into the problem of trying to fit into a role that the archetype wasn't really designed to fill: scrapping.

Burst is a tactic, but the archetype was designed around that as its intended role. If it's meant to fill a more dps role when teamed, then it needs to be a little better defined.

Well said, sir. And I heartily agree. I may be pointing out what I feel to be a slight disparity in the archetype, but don't think for a minute I don't do exactly as you describe when I play my stalkers.
I'm not saying Stalkers are sub-par or gimped, or that I even think they're that far out of line. But IMHO there is some room for improvement on a team.

Fair enough, although I might point out that - support archetypes aside - the damage dealers also have access to pure fire damage, pure psionic damage and pure energy damage.

The other guys aren't all spending their time on 3-4 second activation attacks. Who's generalizing now? The others are opening with what they feel is their best opener, which could have any length of animation.

And even if their time is divided, a three second snipe followed by a one second aoe happens in the same time as your buildup and as. You keep talking like there's only one aoe going off when you're readying your as. On some teams there could be two or three. Or four. One aoe isn't comparable damage to a single burst attack. Several combined is a good bit closer. Throw in a brute's alpha that lands before your as and you've got some wasted damage potential.

No, foes aren't magically within 15 ft of each other; they end up a lot closer immediately after they're aggroed. But I agree that an extremely coordinated team is a fiction best done away with. If everyone was single target damage you might have a point about chaotic teams opening up opportunities for a stalker, but that just isn't the case. AoE debuffs and AoE damage are far and away more used than single target attacks.

Yeah, I know. You don't think AoE can compare to the raw damage of single target attacks, and when comparing attack to attack you're right. As I said above, teams rarely have one aoe attack firing at one time, and when two or three are layered on top of some of the debuffs that are also likely being thrown out, then you have a force that can obviate a slow animating burst attack. Where are we left then? Right back as scrappers.

Where you're wrong is where you assume a stalker is rewarded for stopping to think/calculate. You just said in the same post that I should move faster. At what point will stopping to calculate synergize with that?

I'm not really projecting any role one way or the other; I'm pointing out that our role as an archetype is somewhat schizophrenic.

The problem with that tactical edge? You guessed it. BU/AS/Placate. Ten seconds of animation time for powers that - with the notable exception of Buildup - have marginal usefulness on teams. The debuff from AS is only good if the target survives, and as I've been saying a good portion of the time the target is already nearly dead from teammates' damage. Placate is actually detrimental unless used on mobs that are already aggroed to someone else, and in that case they're likely going to die anyway whether you critical or not.

Solo, stalkers are fine and that tactical edge is extremely powerful. Team performance is what I've been talking about, and that could at least use some clarification, if not a slight buff.

Because those other sets not only have access to sets stalkers don't get, they also are better balanced with different modifiers than stalkers. I

The idea is, if the speed the enemies drop is too so fast then a Stalker 'taking the alpha' is pretty easy considering part of the group will be feared, they'll all have their ToHit debuffed and if you're a melee worth your salt on a team, you should have *something* (reconstruction, Dark Regeneration, Energize, good defense to stack with the -ToHit, etc) to at least give you enough time to retreat after the initial attack. Ideally, demoralize and your own mitigation should be enough to stave off the alpha and keep scrapping.

Now keep this in mind. Burst is a tactic. It comes with its own advantages and dangers. Just like a Blaster using Aim+BU then wailing on a boss will more likely than not peel off aggro from that tank, you can use your Stalker to AS to break the alpha to aid your team, get in your burst and take out the nasty targets faster.

Stalkers were not designed to rely on AS as a crutch. Never. They *are* 'Scrappers' meant for the dps role. And when I say 'Scrappers' I mean generalized melee damage dealer because that's all a Scrapper is...melee damage per second. Honestly, Brutes are in the same role...they just have a few tools to do tanking too.


Scrappers, Tankers or Brutes do not have psionic damage. They do (including Stalkers) get pure energy damage (Jacob's Ladder for example), and Stalkers will get Fire melee so it's a moot point bringing that up...What you didn't bring up is ice damage which is far less resisted than those other types and only Tankers get that.


Considering lots of AoEs don't have the fastest cast time (Fireball probably being the fastest at 1sec) and not counting Aim/BU (that's 2.3sec right there) a standard volley of AoEs from a single player is around:
-Archery = Fistful of Arrows(1.17sec) + Explosive Arrow(1.83sec) = 3sec
-Assault Rifle = Buckshot(0.9sec), M30(1.67sec), Flamethrower(2.33sec) = 2.57sec to 4.9sec
-Energy Blast = Torrent(1.07sec) + Explosive(1.67sec) = 2.74sec
-Fire Blast = Fireball(1sec), Fire Breath(2.67sec), Rain of Fire(2.03sec) = 3.67sec to 5.7sec

Basically, yeah, those AoE attacks are *not* instantaneous. Nor do they always connect with every target nor are all enemies always in range of them. This can require repositioning to get closer for cones, angling to get the most from the effect, etc.

And just to be clear, a snipe will not outdamage AS from hide. Not even a BU+snipe.

As it should be. Concentrated fire from 3-4 allies *should* outdamage the attack of *one* Stalker. This is in lighthearted jest when I say this but...what have you been smoking to think 1 stalker needs to do more damage than 2, 3 or even 4 other players *combined!?


I'm confused. Scrappers are melee damage dealers. Stalkers are melee damage dealers. Where we're right back to is where we're suppose to be.


Situational awareness. The enemies aren't auto-hoarded for quick slaughter nor do they always stay that way. Not to mention, since the enemy cannot see you, you can wade into a group, look what's there, figure out what needs to drop first then initiate combat on your terms with a target gone at the start.



Shall I explain the tactical edge Stalkers get? But the things listed (BU, Placate, AS and Hide) can be used in varying combinations depending the situation.

Then there are quirks and tricks you can learn through toying with the tools like how you can hop at the last part of the AS animation without interrupting the attack, that if you're not aggroed to anything while a foe is placated (because everything else is dead) the enemy still won't aggro, that you can time the activation of AS so that it connects just as hide unsuppresses, and other various set specific tricks...There's other stuff too but it can all be used to great effect solo or teamed.

Really, it's a lot more than I can say a Scrapper can get besides pressing buttons and using KB...



I can agree that Stalkers could get some advantage points raised here or there but honestly, I'm always going to argue against players that shortchange the AT just because it's not their cup of tea or making over generalized complaints like AS isn't useful because everything dies too fast.

You know, saying this over and over doesn't make it any more true.

You misunderstood. I wasn't saying taking the alpha was dangerous for the stalker, I was saying it was dangerous for the team. In the examples I gave, the AS would likely not go off before the spawn aggroed onto your team - whether because of the interrupt on AS or because someone on your team followed you right into the spawn. A prematurely aggroed spawn is dangerous because it gives them the momentum and takes the initiative away. It lets the spawn get the alpha in before the team.

Demoralize only happens when an AS crits, and then only when the initial target doesn't die, so the usefulness of that debuff is only good so long as your team is fighting EB's and AV's and the rare boss that hasn't taken damage before the AS lands.

And using AS as an alpha strike is only effective if you get to the spawn three seconds and change ahead of the team. Maybe back in the days of herding tankers teams were willing to wait around for one member to do their special thing, but these days teams pretty much steamroll without pause. Your AS might land or it might not, and it will most likely kill your target (because your target has already taken damage) but there's an outside chance that the demoralize will go into effect and help the team.

It isn't a stalker's job to take the alpha. That's what tankers and brutes are for. Not saying that a stalker - or a scrapper, or any archetype well equipped - can't take the alpha. I'm just saying that the odds are in favor of the tanker or brute on the team running in and punchvoking before your AS can land. That happens, odds are good that you'll have to reposition to follow through with that AS, which means that odds are good that your target will have already suffered damage from the rest of the team. Your AS will likely kill them, meaning there's no demoralize.

Is this a bad thing? Enemies dying never are. The point I'm making is that - nine times out of ten - you're more efficient on a team if you just take on a role as a secondary scrapper.

And while a team might be better off to call on a scrapper - who will be much better equipped to scrap than a stalker is - I'm not even saying your average team will care about the difference.

All I'm saying is that the tools that make a stalker a stalker are often obviated by team play, and that a good improvement to stalkers would be something that makes those tools more relevant to team play.

Nothing wrong with adjusting tactics and scrapping when you have to, I'd just like that to not be the default behavior quite as often on a team. If anything is done for stalkers - and I'm betting that's a big if - I'd prefer it to be something along those lines.

Yes, I get it. Burst is a tactic. So is DPS. So is ranged. So is buffing and debuffing. Like it or not, however, most archetypes are designed to be specialists in only one of those tactics. They might have secondary uses for two or even three others, but the standard archetypes in this game are specialists. (not talking about Kheldians and SoA's, obviously)

Stalkers are specialists in the burst damage tactic. Can they use dps tactics? Yes. One of the sword stalkers can also slot their attacks for defense debuffs and use a debuffing strategy, but that doesn't make them a debuffer.

Okay, that's admittedly hyperbolic. There's a difference in modifiers that affects a stalker's effectiveness at debuffing and dps'ing. Switching to dps tactics is still using the same modifier as burst tactics. My point in that illustration is that just because an Archetype can fill another role doesn't mean that said role should be viewed with the same importance as their primary role. With a stalker, that role was designed to be single target burst damage.

In practice, however, that role becomes secondary on teams to dps - which is something they will never be better at than brutes and scrappers, mostly due to their low hit points.

You're generalizing far too much, here. If scrappers are generic damage dealers and everyone is one form of scrapper or another, just with a few different tricks, then I don't think you're being fair to scrappers. Why have different melee archetypes at all if that's the case? I couldn't disagree with you more here.

I do agree that stalkers weren't designed to rely solely on AS as a crutch. However, they have to make huge sacrifices in their builds just to make it effective as an attack, and I don't see anything wrong with giving stalkers a reason to use it more often. It's our major source of burst damage when it crits, and removing some of the recharge and/or interrupt from its cast time would go a long way towards expanding its usefulness.

You could even use it to scrap. The random crit outside of hide would give occasional bursts of damage that would let a scrapping stalker still be able to contribute burst damage.

I'm not saying AS is useless. I'm saying it could be more useful.


You're forgetting blasters. It keeps getting brought up that we're melee blasters - the glass cannons of the melee archetypes, and so it really isn't fair to leave them out of the comparison.

And yes, I did forget Ice damage (but I thought that was largely paired with smashing.)

And if fire melee is ported over to stalkers, I will gladly take back any remarks about other melee archetypes getting access to pure fire damage. Happily. But it hasn't happened yet.


First, let me just state for the record that I'm not saying a stalker is always obviated by his or her teammates' damage; I'm saying that the odds are tilted just a little too far in that direction. Not by much, but enough to be noticed.

Second, it's really not a good comparison to hold entire attack chains up to a stalker's single attack. But let's go with it.

Let's assume that Buildup is hit as the stalker travels to the boss, and let's give the benefit of the doubt and assume Aim is not up for any of the blasters. Next, let's add a SS brute to the mix for the sake of team makeup. I doubt very many teams would have just one melee type, and that it would be a stalker, to boot. Finally, let's assume 93% damage enhancement to all attacks. Give the brute half a bar of fury, which shouldn't be unusual if they've just come from a spawn. Assume rage is up.

So, going by first attacks:

The brute doesn't have to hit buildup and so his hurl boulder hits first. With rage and 50% fury you're looking at what? 800 damage? I might be off there, since I'm not sure how rage/fury affect enhanced damage.
Fistfull of arrows does around 220 points of damage to the boss and any minions and lts. (built up and damage enhanced)
Buckshot likewised odes 220 points of damage.
Torrent does 232 points.
Fireball does 217, not counting the dot - which, for the sake of this example, we won't.

Let's also assume that the boss is resistant to kb to keep things simple.

So in the opening volley that's 1,689 points of damage that land before the AS falls.

Now a boss at level 50 has 2,500 hit points. Any minions around him have around 430 each, and any lts have 857. Just the AoE portions of the attack have killed any minions in the immediate vicinity of the boss, and likely any lieutenants as well.

Now, because of the way AS interrupt works, you have to pause after running up before activating the power, or it will interrupt itself. So before you've even mashed the key the boss has less than a thousand hit points left.

What would be more efficient at that point? Going through with the AS for 1000 points of damage or hitting (for example) Soaring Dragon, which will nail him for 679 points in less than half the cast time?

Before you answer that, keep in mind that less than half the cast time of an AS has expired, and you know that at least one more salvo will land before your AS, which - if you're counting - will be mainly the blasters' second attacks (The brute's inevitable KO blow would land after) and total right around 600 more points of damage.

Smart money's on the Soaring Dragon. You can then move on to another target like one of the lt's or minions that wasn't affected by the AoE damage.

You're likely thinking that's not a problem. Adjust your tactics, hit Soaring Dragon and scrap it out with another mob. My point, however, is that - for that spawn - that was probably the most damage you could hope to have achieved. Scrapping it out after that will be far more dangerous with your lower hit points than it will be for the other melee members, and your damage won't be as much as they can dish out.

Now as I've said, the problem is a small one, but wouldn't it be better for stalkers to know that they could have landed the AS before that second salvo from the blasters and let them use that second blast to mop up everything else?


You might have seen this from one of my posts up-thread:

A built-up/Aim'd Blazing Bolt will do around 350 points less damage than an EM AS.

So, yeah. As it should be. I might point out, however, that a blaster doesn't have to be hidden to do that damage, and doesn't have to be in melee, where the animation can be interrupted.

Heh. Never said a stalker needs to out damage those other players combined. What I'm saying is that the burst damage a stalker does is too slow and too situational to contribute, and the dps damage meant to compensate for that could be more "bursty" and less "strictly dps" in nature, otherwise a stalker looses the benefits it gains from being a specialist archetype.

That's a perfect analogy for solo play. It doesn't fit the team scenario. Like I said, the days of teams waiting around for one member to set up for their special flavor went the way of the map-herding tanker.


Of what benefit is it to hop away at the end of an AS animation when the AS is so situational in the first place on teams? All of the quirks you list are valid and good tactics... to a solo stalker. Their use is limited on teams due to the problems with placate shedding aggro to the squishies and AS being as situational as it is. They are tactics befitting a slower playstyle that just isn't there on teams.

I'm not shortchanging the AT. I'm trying to strengthen the AT. Solo, my stalkers can do things that make my scrappers turn green with envy. Teamed, they play like weak scrappers. I would rather they played a little more like stalkers.

Now give yourself some credit. Your post was plenty coherent. And I can agree with the idea that Stalkers have no problems performing like a melee damage dealer. I just think they should be able to have more flexibility with their burst damage tools when teamed.

To be clear, the main difference between a stalker and a scrapper is that a stalker can control the criticals. My problem with stalkers as currently designed is that control is significantly reduced when teaming.

I honestly think it was a mistake to remove the criticals on held/slept targets in favor of random crits, but nothing to do about that now.


On this we agree.

Okay. I'll bite. Once.

Forget for a moment that a stalker is second to none when it comes to carving 1000 hit points at a time out of hard targets. That's a small percentage of actual play and would be heavily resisted anyway.

Unlike a scrapper, a stalker is a master at manipulating combat conditions to his favor. Ninjitsu is strong only because it makes the most of this. Other secondaries do that, too. Name another archetype that can suppress its own toggles the way Dark Armor and Energy Aura for Stalkers can now. Now a /DA stalker can stealth into a group and not have to worry about landing an AS to fear the enemies around him. Not only that, if he's MA on top of that, he also can stun the majority of a mob. There's a teaming benefit right there that scrappers can't get.

What about repel? Used unwisely, it'll get ya booted. Used wisely, however, you could jump out of a fight that's going south, rehide and toggle repel. Go in and AS the biggest guy near the almost-dead tanker. When hide drops, all the baddies go flying. Drop the tanker a green and carry on. Can a scrapper do that?

Can a scrapper, in the middle of a fight, turn and placate a lieutenant that's just turned on a squishy and immediately thereafter bring that lieutenant from full health down to zero with a massive critical burst? No. The scrapper would have to take two or three hits, leaving his former target free to possibly target the same squishy. The stalker can turn back around after one hit and continue without so much as breaking stride.

A scrapper can't take out every sapper or operations engineer in a bank mission full of Malta without having to fight his way through every spawn. A stalker can take both problem mobs down across an entire map without a team even having to break pace.

See there? I don't believe stalkers are gimped on teams, after all, do I? Any stalker driver worth his or her salt can utilize the tools available to accomplish on a stalker things that just aren't possible with the more straightforward scrappers. My problem with stalkers is one of design more than performance. I want to be able to use all my tools more equally than I can now, and that means making AS/Placate less situational on a team. This is why I'm against changes like increasing our hit point cap and damage modifier.

If you play a stalker like a brute, you're gonna have a bad time. If you play a stalker like a scrapper, you're gonna have a bad time. If you french fry when you shoulda pizza'd, you're gonna have a bad time.

If you play a stalker as it's intended, however, you're going to have a blast, and you'll never need to worry about what a scrapper is doing.

That experience doesn't lend itself quite so well to teams currently, but I'm hoping that will change.

In the meantime, the scrapper forums are two forums up. Nothing wrong with giving in to the urge and rolling a scrapper. Got a few of those myself.

EDIT - I never did answer your specifics, did I? Oh okay. Here you go:

DM/Elec Stalker: Gets Lightning Reflexes sooner. Gets Build Up instead of Soul Drain (which some people for some reason like better), and gets it at level 8 instead of level 26. Can drain enemies of end with Power Sink and go back into hide for another guaranteed crit without worrying about enemies having enough end to knock him out of hide or interrupt AS.

DB/DA Stalker: Can suppress Oppressive Gloom and Cloak of Fear, dropping hide with an AS or other critical only when positioned for maximum effectiveness without having to worry about these toggles aggroing the spawn until he's ready. Gets Build Up instead of Blinding Feint (again - some people prefer a self-reliant damage buff). Gets a really sweet sweep combo with every Build Up/AS/Ablating Strike, giving him powerful group mitigation early on when it's needed most. Alternately, also gets the choice of the Empower combo simply by swapping Ablating Strike and Placate, giving you extra damage on the follow up crit. By contrast, a scrapper only gets Empower with Blinding Feint as a finishing move (thus giving no overlap to the damage buff and making the combo less likely to go off due to Blinding Feint being accuracy dependent and coming only at the end. The stalker version has a self buff at the beginning and an auto hit at the end.) and a scrapper only gets Sweep after 32.