In my mind, stalkers should be the single target DPS kings.
To that end, I still push my idea of the "snowball buff."
The longer a stalker attacks a target, the more damage he should do. Make it so every attack against a target grants that target a 30 second "vulnerability to critical hit" debuff. The debuff is minor, like defiance, but after these debuffs have accumulated for 30 seconds, the stalker begins to dish out criticals at an alarming rate. Imagine this concept wise as the stalker striking key points to cripple his target, becoming more familiar with his target, and learning the best spot to strike his foe as he fights.
It benefits the stalker very little to attack minions and LTs, which is the larger portion of the game, as they die too fast for the debuff to really accumulate. Bosses will see some accumulation, while EBs and AVs suffer the most.
Now the stalker serves a purpose on the team. He is the largest source of damage when it comes to fighting the AV.
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Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison
In my mind, stalkers should be the single target DPS kings.
To that end, I still push my idea of the "snowball buff." The longer a stalker attacks a target, the more damage he should do. Make it so every attack against a target grants that target a 30 second "vulnerability to critical hit" debuff. The debuff is minor, like defiance, but after these debuffs have accumulated for 30 seconds, the stalker begins to dish out criticals at an alarming rate. Imagine this concept wise as the stalker striking key points to cripple his target, becoming more familiar with his target, and learning the best spot to strike his foe as he fights. It benefits the stalker very little to attack minions and LTs, which is the larger portion of the game, as they die too fast for the debuff to really accumulate. Bosses will see some accumulation, while EBs and AVs suffer the most. Now the stalker serves a purpose on the team. He is the largest source of damage when it comes to fighting the AV. |
I once suggested for -regen in Assassin Strike because I am bothered by the fact that Stalker isn't even the best AT to solo an AV. I think for an AT that excels in ST damage, Stalker should be the one that can solo an AV the easiest. Maybe I am biased but we lose AoE Power for this so-called "massive" damage and in a lot of cases, it is not worth it.
I've been thinking.. the only time I feel Stalker solos better is if I just stealth to the objective. Other than that, I tend to set the setting higher and Stalker doesn't seem to perform that superior when I fight several targets (again, no Unsuppressed stealth). My Bane and Night Widow can solo big spawns way better than my Stalker. (I also haven't really IOed my Spine yet so my experience could be a bit off but in general, Stalker doesn't handle big groups well because I spend too much time picking off targets one by one)
What's left is to normalize all Assassin Strikes and improve Stalker's old sets (Claw, MA and EM)! You don't need to bring back the missing PbAoE attack. You just need to make the existing ones better! For example, make Slice a WIDER and LONGER cone.
What I find particularly odd about Castle's post is history. Just last issue they slightly nerfed the damage of brutes because they had slightly higher survivability than scrappers. It was determined that an AT should not have both more damage and more survivability, or even equal damage and more survivability.
Brutes had more HP, and higher resistance caps while mustering comparable if not superior damage. This was deemed unacceptable. OK I accepted that at the time because it was logical and reasonable.
So now we get this announcement. Somehow we're supposed to accept that stalkers which have both inferior survivability to scrappers and brutes as well as inferior sustained DPS are working just fine.
It does not add up. Either the brute nerf was justified and stalkers should be boosted in damage to be the king of melee damage or the devs are just throwing darts while blindfolded to achieve balance.
I am honestly extremely disapointed in this post because I expect better from Castle. I cannot understand such a claim as "stalkers are as about as strong as we want to make them". This is a tacit admission that stalkers are to be the weak sisters of the melee ATs. They excel at nothing. Not a bloody thing.
The other melee ATs fit into a spectrum where you have survivability at one end and damage output at the other. The brute nerf adjusted this spectrum to be consistent for the other three ATs.
Tanker------Brute-----Scrapper (survivability <--->damage)
Stalkers don't fit here. They have inferior damage and survivability to both scrappers and brutes. They just don't fit. You make plenty of tradeoffs in being a stalker. You sacrifice survivability and AOE potential (and AOEs after all are king) for ease of solo play. The return on that is not sufficient.
I like playing stalkers. I will continue to play stalkers. I do, however, also understand I'm not playing a top tier AT.
Too many alts to list.
I had athought about that though.
considering Castle's wording "At this point Stalker problems are Systemic in nature" it could be possible something got changed for Stalkers that Castle can't speak about openly.
Also if this is a repost from Beta it could be interpreted that a long discussion and some changes occurred throughout the Beta.
Also as I'm typing this it largely feels like grasping at straws.
It is kinda sad that the ONLY thing that is holding back on any buff for Assassin Strike (like Activation time or no Interruption) is PvP balance. This game's pvp is dying so can't we just make a PvE-friendly Stalker?
And I don't even think Stalker is the best in PvP. Stalker is only the best at ganking newbies like me. lol I pvp in other games but not in this game. I know when I see a buffed Blaster and Tanker, I stand almost no chance (my Trapper's defense doesn't matter when a Blaster comes to me with BU and Aim). And didn't somebody say Tanker won the best pvp matches? How is Stalker ranked? I have a feeling, not too high.
I really hope the dev can see that just because Stalker does "reasonably well" in PvP, it doesn't mean this AT has to suffer in PvE teaming. And seriously, even if it means the dev needs to nerf Spines. As I understand it, dev feels Spines is still a bit too powerful (well, I think so too). I just wish the dev could modify each set to make AoE a bit better. Make Headsplitter's arc larger for example.
What's left is to normalize all Assassin Strikes and improve Stalker's old sets (Claw, MA and EM)! You don't need to bring back the missing PbAoE attack. You just need to make the existing ones better! For example, make Slice a WIDER and LONGER cone.
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A portion of hide being "unsupressed", I think, is one of the best options right now...imho, and I think that's how it should have worked all along.
| Making Stalker Hide behave like Brute's Energy Cloak |
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I like the idea.|
Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison
In my mind, stalkers should be the single target DPS kings.
To that end, I still push my idea of the "snowball buff." The longer a stalker attacks a target, the more damage he should do. Make it so every attack against a target grants that target a 30 second "vulnerability to critical hit" debuff. The debuff is minor, like defiance, but after these debuffs have accumulated for 30 seconds, the stalker begins to dish out criticals at an alarming rate. Imagine this concept wise as the stalker striking key points to cripple his target, becoming more familiar with his target, and learning the best spot to strike his foe as he fights. It benefits the stalker very little to attack minions and LTs, which is the larger portion of the game, as they die too fast for the debuff to really accumulate. Bosses will see some accumulation, while EBs and AVs suffer the most. Now the stalker serves a purpose on the team. He is the largest source of damage when it comes to fighting the AV. |
Pity there's AFAIK no way for the game engine to support it at present.
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I second... er, third Dechs' idea. That's one of the most interesting thoughts on increasing a Stalker's performance that I've heard. (And given what I've been seeing floating around the boards in regards to proposed Stalker buffs, it's also nice to hear an idea from someone who actually understands the AT, and doesn't just want to make them Scrappers.)
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Originally Posted by Nethergoat
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It's not just sustained DPS... if you compare any power available in both a Scrapper and a Stalker set, the Scrapper one does more flat damage. If I recall correctly, the individual Stalker attacks only do between 70 and 80% of Scrapper damage.|
Originally Posted by docbuzzard
Somehow we're supposed to accept that stalkers which have both inferior survivability to scrappers and brutes as well as inferior sustained DPS are working just fine.
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There's little reason to argue about sustained DPS when a Scrapper can completely outclass a Stalker in a single pass of an attack chain.
My personal thought on fixing Stalkers has been to boost their single-target damage attacks to 5-10% above those of Scrappers while leaving the AoE attacks where they lie currently (aka, intentionally sub-par).
But as has been pointed out, if you ask 10 people their opinions on Stalkers, you'll get 20 different potential fixes...
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Originally Posted by Nethergoat
it's NEVER too late to pad your /ignore list!
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On the one hand, this is a cool idea. On the other hand, not doing something because you COULD grief your team with it is silly. Anybody COULD grief the team by aggroing too many spawns, or slotting presence and screwing up aggro, or any number of other things.|
Originally Posted by SDragon
This risks Stalkers griefing teams by targeting the tank or off-tank and causing a team wipe. This might even happen accidentally. No other AT has access to such AT canceling powers. It would be like giving blasters the power to remove controls off people, wouldn't it?
You might try having it instead grant a temp-power when cast on players that holds different effects for different ATs. As an example, for blasters and corruptors it might be a single burst of anti-taunt. Where as for Tankers and Brutes, it strengthens the effect of their taunt powers temporarily. Sort of a "You should hit that guy, not me" effect. Stalkers are in a unique position of being able to leave or stay out of the fight if they want letting them consider their options(in theory). Maybe that should be leveraged? (of course if Castle don't see nozing wrong with the class. Talk is for naught.) |
On top of that, AT specific effects aren't always viable. Some blasters or MMS actually want aggro, some don't. Figuring up an across the board effect seems the best solution, and my thinking was that no tools really exist to anti-aggro effectively on teams, so it would be a perfect niche for stalker placate.
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Agreed.
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Originally Posted by DarkMaster
A portion of hide being "unsupressed", I think, is one of the best options right now...imho, and I think that's how it should have worked all along.
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I said sustained DPS because assassin's strike skews damage in short time scales. However, you are correct that once AS is out of the picture, the stalkers lag behind in damage quite clearly. While if you happen to be on a large team stocked with melee and are critting all the time, you might take the lead, that is an extreme outlier of a case.
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Originally Posted by Chad Gulzow-Man
It's not just sustained DPS... if you compare any power available in both a Scrapper and a Stalker set, the Scrapper one does more flat damage. If I recall correctly, the individual Stalker attacks only do between 70 and 80% of Scrapper damage.
There's little reason to argue about sustained DPS when a Scrapper can completely outclass a Stalker in a single pass of an attack chain. |
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It was implemented poorly and without a lot of thought put into it.|
Originally Posted by DMystic
That was actually tried before when Stalkers were first looked at.
It broke the game in ways it wasn't intended to. The same is true for unresistable damage. |
I don't really see what is wrong with it. People freaked out because people were bringing 5 stalkers into a fight and doing half a Hero level NPC's health in the first few seconds. Who cares? Bringing one radiation emission corruptor or defender turns Heroes into wet pieces of tissue paper. It's no different other than mechanically. If groups want to stack a bunch of stalkers and frontload ridiculous amounts of damage onto Hero/AV's, then maybe they should be rewarded for doing so similarly to bringing the right defbuffing classes or the right mix of tanks and DPS.
Assassins Strike is the signature ability of a stalker. It makes sense that if you are going to make stalkers better, then you should make assassin strike better.
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We care.|
Originally Posted by milks
It was implemented poorly and without a lot of thought put into it.
I don't really see what is wrong with it. People freaked out because people were bringing 5 stalkers into a fight and doing half a Hero level NPC's health in the first few seconds. Who cares? Bringing one radiation emission corruptor or defender turns Heroes into wet pieces of tissue paper. It's no different other than mechanically. If groups want to stack a bunch of stalkers and frontload ridiculous amounts of damage onto Hero/AV's, then maybe they should be rewarded for doing so similarly to bringing the right defbuffing classes or the right mix of tanks and DPS. Assassins Strike is the signature ability of a stalker. It makes sense that if you are going to make stalkers better, then you should make assassin strike better. |
The devs care.
People who see a problem with being able to take off hundreds of thousands of HPs off Reichsman in one blow but unable to take down a minion with the same attack care.
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Sure there is. Slight modification to Bruising from -res to +damage proc and allow it to stack.
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Originally Posted by SkarmoryThePG
I like the idea.
Pity there's AFAIK no way for the game engine to support it at present. |
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Originally Posted by GavinRuneblade
Sure there is. Slight modification to bruising from -res to +damage proc and allow it to stack.
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I actually find this thread so far hilarious. This is one point: that aggro isn't an issue.|
Originally Posted by EvilRyu
This thread is interesting in how the devs see things versus how things actually are or how we see things in regular play. I just find it odd that Castle would see that aggro is one of our problems when practically every thread about stalker issues since issue 6 has had something to do with either not enough aoe damage or other team contributions. Never had I seen aggro be an issues. We have had a few folks to complain about hit points but to me thats pointless to ask for.
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Well duh, Castle isn't saying grabbing aggro is the issue. The issue is shared aggro suppressing hide (that is, a foe seeing you before you aggro and using a ST attack to knock off hide). People aren't complaining about that? Have you read those other stalker suggestion threads? Did I *not* have to go on through dozens of posts reasoning how to leverage AS when on a team with enemies attacking? Or getting the jump on using said attack?
There *are* people complaining they can't AS and one of the reasons they can't, which isn't something they can solve themselves (without building for capped defense), is that aggro. The other reason is 'the enemies die too fast' which is bollocks and can be solved by two words.
The reason you people are so pissed is because you're shortsighted and don't know the ramifications of anything you're suggesting. You only know what *you* want, not what the AT *needs*. You forego looking to base performance and just see what those capped massive recharge Brutes/Scrappers do and simply ignore the mass of deaths it took to get there. You glance over how weak Dark melee's and Martial Arts' AoE damage is and just see the AT itself as low AoE...yeah, forget Dual Blades, Spines, Electrical Melee, Kinetic Melee and all those other sets with good AoE attacks.
It was like I said, there's nothing wrong with Stalkers, they perform competitively and that's called balance. Those eager for more AoEs should be requesting that from proliferation. You'd sound a lot more reasonable and a lot less b****y.
Leo, everything you write comes off with this really nasty tone.
Listen, my stalkers are Spines and Elec melee with ninjitsu.
I don't lack aoe, My toons are soft capped and beyond permahasten, but they still pale in comparison to
a scrapper in terms of Single target DPS, AoE DPS, and Survival, and in most cases BURST damage.
If lagging behind a scrapper in all areas is competative and balanced, then something is wrong with the game.
A stalker does nothing teamed better than his collegue ATs, and that is just sad.
Now am I going to delete my Spines/Nin or Elec/nin? After some thoughts, no since I can't get Ninjitsu on scrappers yet. But the moment that becomes an option, the AT is dead to me.
When something good happens to me, I can never enjoy it....
I am always too busy looking for the inevitable punchline...
BEHOLD THE POWER OF CHEESE!
Then post your numbers showing your Elec/ or Spines/ stalker 'pales in comparison' to a similarly slotted Elec/ or Spines/ Brute/Scrap. Because, to my ears, you're just spouting hyperbole to strengthen your stance.
And if my tone comes off as nasty then too bad. I'm honestly sick and tired of hearing the biased whining and complaining. People are locked into the playstyle of Brute/Scrapper and expect it from every other AT or compensation if they can't. That isn't how balance works and maybe when people learn that, my tone will change.
I don't believe stalkers are balanced in terms of play style. Stalkers need to feel like a stalker, and when that option doesn't work optimally, it is only natural for people to ask the next logical point. That is, to make stalkers play a lot like scrappers/brutes.
I would love Stalkers Hide to work like Brutes /EA Cloak. It would be great if Placate bug was fixed. I would love to use AS more often. But without any of these things, the status quo isn't good enough.
More Damage/fear debuff isn't the answer, and Castle ruled it out. But he didn't rule out changes to making a stalker feel like a stalker.
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Reichsman has about 200k HP and huge resists. I'm not sure if you're being hyperbolic or are just clueless. Or both. Either way you sound really angry about it. If AS did 10% life to him before resists were factored in, it'd hit for about 1K. It's a lot of damage but probably fair considering that the Stalker probably did about 10-20% of the total damage on regular minion packs than a AoE specced Brute did.|
Originally Posted by SkarmoryThePG
We care.
The devs care. People who see a problem with being able to take off hundreds of thousands of HPs off Reichsman in one blow but unable to take down a minion with the same attack care. |
Besides there is little difference between bringing an AT to a fight that can debuff a Hero so monumentally that anyone can tank it and it practically takes double damage, vs. bringing an AT that can bring tons of damage. End result is the same.
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Not killing a Fake Nemesis 10 levels lower than my Stalker (9 for sure...I keep forgetting will have to test AGAIN tomorrow), with a BU + AS from hide, just seemed wrong to me, and needs fixed! |
Originally Posted by Leo_G
Then post your numbers showing your Elec/ or Spines/ stalker 'pales in comparison' to a similarly slotted Elec/ or Spines/ Brute/Scrap. Because, to my ears, you're just spouting hyperbole to strengthen your stance.
And if my tone comes off as nasty then too bad. I'm honestly sick and tired of hearing the biased whining and complaining. People are locked into the playstyle of Brute/Scrapper and expect it from every other AT or compensation if they can't. That isn't how balance works and maybe when people learn that, my tone will change. |
That said, I think I've figured out a few different ways to fix that issue!
Increase BU to a 100% damage buff. That may just be enough to do it.
Another thought, is to just rework AS's Damage and END cost!
Same recharge as it has now. But Increase it's Damage a bit, and lower it's END cost a bit, because it gets annoying to pay for that attack and then no AS actually goes off.
Right there, a simple tweak, increasing Stalkers ST DPS, while allowing them to more likely take out bigger targets with one hit.
I still don't see the lack of AOE as a factor. Scrappers & Brutes have access to ST heavy sets.
The interrupt reducer in AS would also be nice imo. Even at softcapped defenses, I've had AOE's during AV fights stop me from landing a placate + AS plenty of times. :/
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Not that doing that really matters...|
Originally Posted by BrandX
Not killing a Fake Nemesis 10 levels lower than my Stalker (9 for sure...I keep forgetting will have to test AGAIN tomorrow), with a BU + AS from hide, just seemed wrong to me, and needs fixed!
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A better metric is 'how fast' or 'in how many hits' does it take anyone to do the same. If a Scrapper, Brute or Blaster aren't destroying a -10 Fake Nemesis in 2 sec or in 1-3 shots, I wouldn't really be expecting Stalker to either.
But you want to know a viable and reasonable request to improve the AT? Proliferation.
Because it seems all the complaining about AoE damage or sub-par 'scrapping' is coming from the perspective of min/maxed characters. That their Elec/Nin Stalker can't out-do a FM/SD Brute or a Spines/Fire Scrapper. Well, considering you're comparing a utility/mitigation mix set vs a pure offense mix, it's to be expected in some situations...
You want more offensive/AoE focused Stalkers? Ask for offensive/AoE focused sets. Ask for Fire Melee, ask for Fiery Embrace and Super Strength.
There's a reason I'm always interested in new and impressive sets for Stalkers, for a revised version of Shield Defense and an aggressive version of Ice melee or discussing possible new sets that might work for the AT rather than squeezed in. Because those sets would *really* leverage the position Stalkers are in. You couldn't complain about AoE if you've got Elec, Fire, Ice, Spines and Dual Blades, or lower damage when you've got Fire Armor and a version Shields that meshes with the AT.
Definitely agreeing with Leo on this
I also don't understand how people can feel like the redheaded stepchild to scrappers and brutes
Stalkers, the way I see/play them are the mirror to blasters and brutes to scrappers
Yes, there are some problems, but I think first and foremost the placate mechanic needs to be looked at
Next, I would want something done about how resistance sets don't perform like defense- sure the new fix suppressing toggles is nice but you should be able to get another AS off mid battle... open with AS and then scrap (or flee)? c'mon stalkers aren't supposed to play like scrappers
Even caltrops just ruins it for me-I can't placate and execute something running from me in fear?
Other than those two, any suggestion slightly above marginal is going straight into the wastebin that sits under the suggestion box
2. For people who are complaining that Stalkers need to be able to take aggro from other players, Stalkers do have a power for this - it's called the Presence pool. With i19, you'll be able to free up some power options for it if you want to play your stalker that way.
My Spines has no problem drawing aggro because I always start alpha.
What's left is to normalize all Assassin Strikes and improve Stalker's old sets (Claw, MA and EM)! You don't need to bring back the missing PbAoE attack. You just need to make the existing ones better! For example, make Slice a WIDER and LONGER cone.