If Ninjitsu was ported to Scappers....

I'm in agreement with this.

Personally, I think EVERY AT should get one powerset that is unique to it, and it alone.

It's not going to happen, because very few ATs have anything unique to them anymore, but that would be my preference.

Illusion Control, Ice Armor and Melee, Poison, and Ninjitsu are the only powersets I can think of that are completely unique to one AT. I think there should be more than that, but what's done is done.

Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately.

If you want to get picky, there's all the EAT sets and any Mastermind primary.

But... what sense does it make that the only people who can use illusions are controllers? Why is it that only tanks can defend themselves with ice? Why can't I make a poison corruptor or defender? It just doesn't make sense.

I used to be in agreement with this. Now however, I just can't.

For one reason, only a few ATs had a unique powerset to begin with. Broadsword was never unique imo, because it and Katana are pretty similar.

For another reason, to play those unqiue sets, you're stuck with an AT some may not care to play.

Ice Armor/Ice Melee, love the idea of it, but I don't want to be a Tanker.

/Ninjitsu, love the theme, hate the lack of damage I feel with a Stalker. :/

Illusion Control/, well Dominators are what I wish Trollers were to begin with.

The last reason? They'll never make a set unqiue to one AT. They are not going to spend the time on a new set and say "Only 1 AT is getting it" (outside of MM Primary...Blasters Secondary's tend to be a mishmash of power sets, same with Dominators Secondary).

And the unique powerset idea is only good, if every AT has it's own unique set. Imo anyways.

I don't know. I think giving stalkers an endurance power is simply unnecessary. They have fewer AoEs, which are the endurance intensive powers, and they don't lend themselves well to large sustained fights. A stalker's job is to kill things quickly. Much like a blaster, health will usually run out before endurance.

But my Scrappers kill hard targets quicker and safer.

I'd argue that unless that hard target is an EB or an AV, you're lying. A stalker can take out any boss faster than anything. They have the single most damaging attack out there, and can placate for a guaranteed crit with their next huge attack. This burst becomes much less useful against EB/AVs. Then again, if you count the interrupt time before the strike, maybe you've got a close competition. From engagement to defeat, you'd be hard pressed to find something faster than a stalker.

As to being safer, no, I can't argue that. I've often said that my stalker feels a lot like a blaster, except without all the defenses.

I was talking about the EBs/AVs.

That said, I'd say some Scrappers can deal with multiple bosses better than Stalkers, damage wise, and thusly defeat them faster.

Sure 1 boss at a time, the Stalker might remove it faster. But then, the STalker would have to keep waiting for Hide to reactive, to use AS or hope Placate and AS isn't interrupted if used mid fight.

I can't argue with any of this. The stalker excels at something completely irrelevant in City of Heroes/Villains.

Let's address this directly. Because I think this IS the problem. Behind every "no one would ever play Stalkers if Scrappers get Ninjitsu" is actually this argument, IMO. Scrappers don't get Fire, Ice, Invulnerability, Sheild or Stone Armors. And the devs have said in some cases, like Shield and Stone, that they will NEVER get it. Thus, Stalkers are being penalized because the devs hate Stalkers. The devs should penalize all the other melee ATs by making them unable to have Ninjitsu.

The problem with this logic is that while the other melee ATs have all of those sets, NONE of those ATs currently have ALL of them. The only other Defense Set that is currently unique is Ice Armor for Tankers. And that is not by choice, it's because the set was TRIED on Brutes and withdrawn because of issues. You might say, "Those issues aren't good enough," or even "those issues don't apply any more", but the fact is Ice Armor isn't unique because the devs insisted on it being for Tankers only. They had every INTENTION of giving it to Brutes until they tried it.

Scrappers don't get Stone Armor, Tankers don't get SR, and in fact there are sets Stalkers get that other individual ATs don't get, like Energy and Regen. There's actually nothing unusual about Stalkers not getting certain Defense Sets, because ALL the meleers currently lack one or the other Defense Set. With Proliferation, it is likely that the devs intend to eventually spread all Sets to all applicable ATs, but if there continues to be problems like with Ice Armor for Brutes, and nothing special is done to fix them (like making a completely unique version of Ice Armor that addresses the Brute issues) it's possible that there may be Sets that end up not being Proliferated to a given AT just to maintain the balance.

However, it's a totally different thing to insist that SOME ATs should not get access to Ninjitsu because Stalkers do not have access to Shields, and to insist that ALL ATs should not get access to Ninjitsu. Neither Scrappers, Brutes nor Tankers have Sheilds unique to them. Tankers are the only ones that get a unique set, with Ice Armor, and personally, I see no reason why Ice couldn't be proliferated to Stalkers. It would be in theme, the transparency of ice would fit with Hide, and I see no issues with the powers interfering with Assassination, as it apparently did with Fury. The only major issue, Chilling Embrace drawing aggro, was eliminated when offensive toggles were made to suppress when in Hide.

In short, if you want to say Ninjitsu should stay limited to Stalkers and Scrappers, I think that's fair. But it's a little late to say it should be unique to Stalkers now, unless you want to add a unique Power Set to Scrappers and Brutes.

I will add, BTW, that IMHO Invulnerability and Shield Defense are not compatible conceptually with Stalkers because of the scaling offensive and defensive auras in Invincibility and Against All Odds. They would have to work against their play strategy to gather foes around them for their aura in melee. However, Willpower has such an aura on other meleers, and for Stalkers it has Reconstruction. A similar change could be put in place for Shields. The devs actually never said that Stalkers would NEVER have Shields, what they actually said was that designing a version of Shields specifically for Stalkers would have taken more time, and thus they did not do it AT THAT TIME. The possibility was left open for Stalkers to get their own unique version of Shields in the future.

Stone Armor is a bigger issue, because again, the concept of Granite Armor, slowing the Stalker down and causing him to lose damage, is opposed to his concept. In addition, Granite would likely be mutually exclusive with Hide since it is exclusive of all other armors. So again, this is an incompatibility issue, like Ice for Brutes, not because the devs hate Stalkers and don't want them to have anything good.

Ice, as I mentioned, I think is fine, and Fire, while it might be conceptually strange ("nothing says stealth like pouring gasoline on yourself and setting yourself on fire," to paraphrase a signature I've seen around here) would work if it was like clouds of soot and smoke instead of just fire. Besides, how in the heck does a Stalker surrounded in bright blue\\\\red sparks hide?

Electric Armor stalkers hide by the sheer power of their awesomeness. Normal brains can't handle it and just like a trauma from the past block it out.

I think it was Douglas Adams who referred to a similar effect as the SEP (somebody else's problem) field as a mechanic for invisibility.

Do you play stalkers at all, every set stalkers have is unique to them. They may have the same name, but the sets do not play exactly like a scrapper version.

I would call it herbalist for defenders, it could be the same set, but gets rid of the old poison is for villains only attitude the devs had.


I would like a nin scrapper, and it would be an easy port. Change hide to the basic cloak power scrapers can get. Then change caltrops to marble patch, a small knock down patch similar to ice patch without the slow. but targetable like caltrops.

Why does this sentence remind me of the sad fact that I'll never has a regen brute?

I keed, I keed. I vaguely remember there being a relatively unanimous "that would be OP out the box" way back when.

In these days of ludicrous regen/recovery via sets bonuses and procs, do we still think so?

Truthfully? If stalkers ever gets Shield defense I think AAO would be the first option to be replaced with Hide, hence removing the problem entirely.

Yes, because the only concepts possible with Shields are medieval knights.

Assassin's Strike: 389.28 damage at lv50, before enhancement, to a single target.
Inferno: 472.22 damage on average* at lv50, before enhancement, to up to 16 targets

* 167.24 of that averaged damage is a DoT over 8.1s.
The damage has a lower bound of 187.68 (0.375% chance)
The damage has an upper bound of 544.29 (37.125% chance)



And let's not even talk about things like Blowback.

What is the concept for a Ninjitsu Scrapper? "I want to play a sneaky assassin-type who kills through stealth and skill. I just don't want to play it on the AT whose entire schtick is a sneaky assassin-type who kills through stealth and skill, because I don't like that concept." Thus the use of the term "whine" in my first post.

If you want it for concept, play a Ninjitsu Stalker - it's not like you're forced redside with one anymore. If you don't like how Stalker mechanics work, then you don't like your own concept and you really just want a SR Scrapper with a self-heal and caltrops. You can also play a Stalker like a Scrapper if the issues are playstyle - nothing forces you into Assassin's Strike after all - but then you have to deal with lower hit points, lower base damage, a lower hit point cap, generally less AoE, and lower melee (ie, self) damage buff modifers.


I tried that already - big long thread, ended when Castle posted that they like Stalkers where they are now and that any issues are strictly with how stealth works in the game... despite all of the posts in the thread to the contrary.

So call it sour grapes if you want - I'll admit, a large chunk of it is - but Brutes doing more damage than Scrappers with more hit points led to a Brute nerf (even if you call the Fury changes a buff, which is debatable, the damage cap for Brutes dropped so that they cannot outdamage Scrappers when both are capped) that I felt wasn't needed. When I try to get Stalkers buffed - not Scrappers nerfed - to simply have the same AT damage modifier using the exact same justification, since the higher critical rate would allow for more single-target damage despite lacking in AoE, the reply is that "they're fine where they are". The developer reaction didn't seem to remain consistent in reasoning, likely due to the low popularity of the AT.

So, Ninjitsu is "fine where it is". Maybe if enough Scrappers play Stalkers and complain about not doing as much damage while being squishier, then things will no longer be "fine". Likely, they'll stop playing Stalkers and say "I want Ninjitsu Scrappers", though.

Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle it has gone from unconscionable to downright appalling that we have no way of measuring our characters' wetness.

Originally Posted by Brillig It's hard to beat the entertainment value of Whackjob Wednesdays.

I don't want to play a sneaky assassin type who attacks from stealth - that's not the only concept ninjitsu fits. Ninjitsu can, in many ways, also be thought of as the melee equivalent of devices/traps - it has actual toggle-based self protection as required from a melee armorset, but a third of the set is made up of gadget type powers. For the concept I have in mind, combining ninjitsu and weapon mastery to have caltrops, webnade, exploding shuriken, smoke flash, blinding powder, and whatever they replace caltrops with (assuming, as I do, that it'd be some sort of gadget to keep theme) is absolutely perfect.

I *could* make a nin/weapons stalker as well, but since I don't care for the stalker mechanics and the character concept isn't that of an assassin type, I don't want to. I don't want to take AS and placate and be saddled with powers and playstyle issues I don't care about in order to get the powerset my concept requires, and I don't want to skip AS and placate and get all of the disadvantages of a stalker with none of the advantages. Also, I don't want to take the character who's supposed to be a hero and start in the rogue isles or praetoria. And I think I'll decide for myself if I like my character's concept, thank you very much.

I actually agree with you that there are probably balance issues with stalkers that ought to be addressed. But I find it rather childish that because the devs for whatever reason don't agree with you, you want to take out your anger on scrappers. That hardly seems like a constructive solution to the problem.

It might be better for the developers to actually make a gadget-type defense set than port Ninjitsu.

Having recently played Ninjitsu as my primary Stalker, I must say that it a VERY well designed secondary for the Stalker AT. But Caltrops is integral to the set's overall function, as it lowers the rate of incoming attacks through the flee effect, and this lowered rate synergizes well with the mechanics of defense; fewer lucky attacks slip through because fewer attacks are being made, and proportionally fewer of these attacks are the hard-hitting melee type. Several players are calling for Caltrops to be removed for Scrappers, but having played Ninjitsu I would say that it is a cornerstone of the set, along with Kuji-In-Sha and Blinding Powder. Replacing Caltrops with an equally potent skill wouldn't work either, because it would arguably make Scrappers far superior to Stalkers once they take Caltrops from the APPs.

If the developers were forced to redesign 2-3 skills from the Ninjitsu set, replacing at least Hide and Caltrops (and potentially Smoke Flash), why wouldn't they just make an entirely new gadget-defense set from the ground up for multiple ATs?

Well first off, I can think of a lot of concepts I can pull off with Ninjitsu, without being the sneaky assassin type that the Stalker AT is. In fact, I've pulled it off with WP just fine, I however would prefere actual positional defense over typed defense, not for min/max reasons, as my /WP is at 40% F/C Defense and 45% S/L/E/N, but just that Positional defense feels more dodgey, compared to typed defenses (so it's all an image thing basically).

I've played stalkers to various levels, including one to lvl 50, IOed to the gills, and sadly, it was the damage that felt lacking :/ [Note: When I say damage I specifically mean DPS for EB or greater enemies]

And I can only guess they don't want to increase the damage modifier due to PvP, but it makes me wonder if they could have two different damage modifiers. One for PvP and one for PvE.

I actually didn't mind the less survival (though I still think a raise in the HP Cap by +100-200 would be justifiable), as to me, that just meant fights where a bit riskier, which I was okay with.

Though I will disagree with you on the matter of Brutes. They still have a higher damage cap, and assuming there's a KIN around who could keep a Scrapper and Brute at damage cap, the Brute remains tougher, and I believe some Brute combo's will still out damage a Scrapper equivalent.