A few stalker improvement ideas...

I think some of the perceived problems for stalkers stem for imbalances in other ATs.
For instance...stalker hp at 1600 max is NOT that bad. When you compare it with a blaster, the most damaging AT in the game, ALSO with that same max hp...well, it makes me go wtf. Not to mention the fact blasters get their own mini fury, which makes no sense to me as a concept. They should have got the ability to fire when mezzed and kept the old defience. Comparing with blasters and scrappers again, stalker build up NEEDS to be 100%. They are meant to be redsides best damage AT, yet its only 80..while blueside gets two ATs at 100. Not just for balance..it makes sense they should be doing more burst damage.

As someone else said, the stalker placate really really needs to be finally fixed, and give a secondary effect similar to the bane spider one. Something like a small to hit and def, particularly aoe def, buff. It’s very annoying using placate, starting your AS and having the guy next to the target hit you instead.

This would also help address the fact that a defence set stalker is just all round better, because you don’t get tagged from hide as much. I notice this a great deal playing my regen stalker vs my nin. The regen has a much much harder time getting as off, especially when it’s just after a placate.

The fact that stalkers inherent is simply the AS doing more damage, and the team critical buff, is a bit weak. Not that the crit chance isn’t nice, but if the stalker is still lagging behind the scrapper in damage stakes, it doesn’t mean much to me. Not to mention the fact stalkers have to rely on AS for their big burst damage hits, especially with some sets.

Hide should be a part of stalkers inherent. It makes sense. Inherent hide, then every set gets another power to help survive. Why cant regen get quick recovery etc etc?

Since AS is the only single attack in the game that as well as being almost required for the AT to work, has a huge activation and interrupt time. Given this..I think that using AS should give a small defence buff, as you get down low into position and line up your victim. Makes sense right? Also, the act and int time for the power itself, should scale depending on the priority of your target.

For example..if your AS'ing a minion...well, that’s a weak target, you don’t need to speed hours getting sneaky behind a minion or putting all your power into the hit itself. So the animation should be faster. Likewise, if it’s a high value boss or eb, your going to take your time picking your spot, and hitting as hard as you can.

This could be similar to the scaling damage the devs tried before, but needs a hard minimum damage threshold, to stop the situation where the stalker can’t kill a +1 lt in one hit.

Further on the AS subject...smash and lethal damage sets are hit way way too hard by npc resists for their major attack. Things like trying to kill a malta boss with a lethal AS etc etc, it is damn annoying. Using AS should apply a damage resistance debuff on the target, from the stalker only. Something like - 10-20%, combined with a build up of 100% damage, would help address S/L damage. Just make the -res resistible, like bruising is. It make sense to..the stalker picking his spot for maximum damage.

Oh and my last idea has to do with pvp damage, mostly just to do with the utterly stupid situation of spirit sharks. If it is a melee AT, your melee attacks do normal damage, simple. If your ranged, your range stuff is normal. If you are a melee AT, with a range attack, it should do LESS damage. Common sense ftw?

I'd like to see placate restore hidden state, straight up. Not just the crit and invisibility, but also restore a hide like defense bonus. That would help solve a lot of grief around attempting to set up a crit after placate, also making mid-fight assassination's more practical.

If they fix placate, give it a debuff of its own as well. A special -def -res to the target. Essentially they've completely let their guard down. Not sure if it should be enhanceable for -def sets in that case. Procs could re-break the poor thing.

Assassination damage should be partly non-resistable by the target when used from hidden state. As in, the crit portion of assassination should be 'special' damage, so as to circumvent resistances. It seems to make sense that way. Only problem I can see is that it would render some T9 pops from NPCs completely null... whether that's a bad thing or simply adds a good niche ability is debatable I guess. Used on those high resistance foes, Assassination would be absurd. Too much so? Could always lower the un-resisted damage amount if it's too much.

Let stalker build up be a true 100%, thanks.

Finding a way to make assassination's damage scale to foe rank would be great as well. Similar to the way scrapper critical rates increase against higher rank foes.


These are all changes I'd like. Maybe all at once these would render a stalker rather OP if not careful, but well implemented I would love it.

Maybe make AS faster for team plays was thinking up the recharge from 15 to 20 secs it does extreme damage abit more than headsplitter around 175 base damage but make AS more like LR its a ranged teleport ST extreme damage attack from hide and placate its unresisted and outside its counts as normal damage type depends on the set with a short cast time. AS would be weaker in damage but faster in team plays teleports in and give x mob a major blow before its know what hit him.

And i vote for same damage scale as scrappers 1.125%

This pretty much put my one level 50 stalker in perma retirement and I deleted all my other stalkers.

I'll care again when they decide to buff stalkers.

Quote:

Originally Posted by DMystic Here you go that was the last comment on Stalkers from the Devs. Specifically Castle who was the powers guy before he left the Dev team. It's a post responding to Stalker concerns as a change was made to Brute damage caps and Fury generation making sure that they never out damage Scrappers, presumably due to the Higher HP threshold Brutes have.

Instead of Unresistable Damage, have it deal additional unresistable damage versus each higher rank. There's really no reason to use AS on minions, but if you want to you'd get a small amount of extra damage added (enough to kill most minions, so the change between current version would be slim to none). The damage scales up with Rank, making AS fare better against higher ranked enemies and thus a very viable option for use against AVs or GMs. Considering the effort that goes in to ASing against these high-HP targets like GMs and AVs, the prep time of using Placate and inherent risk of using an interruptable, slow-animating attack, I believe it would be balanced for AS to deal more damage to AVs and GMs then it currently does. Trade-off being, it might deal a bit less to Lts, and about the same or a tiny bit less to Bosses. I wager a lot of Stalkers would actually prefer it doing a bit less to Lts, however, if only to leave them with a tiny bit of health so that the fear effect can be set off.

This also, in theory, allows you to bypass any problems that would be had involving killing civilians or Hamidon enemies, since they do not follow the traditional ranking structure. As such, the unresistable damage could be entirely limited to the standard Minion, Lt, Boss, EB, AV, Monster, GM ranks, and not apply at all to other ranks. As far as I'm aware, this addresses the primary issues with giving it unresistable damage. It would also make Stalkers very valuable on end game content like attempting to take down an enraged Marauder or Honoree in the LGTF once he pops Unstoppable.

I also support an increase in damage scale to at least 1.1 and an HP cap increase to at least 1800. Would also support adding to the Stalker inherent a "bleed" effect that applies to the Stalker's first two attacks, similar to Tanker bruising except it would deal very minor DoT.

What I would LIKE, but what I also acknowledge is just not going to happen, is something to make Stalkers' burst damage worth a damn in teams that doesn't make them ungodly powerful in solo, where they are already just fine. How I would specifically do that is to make Assassin's Strike hit a number of targets equal to the size of your team, via Chaining. So basically, if you're solo, you just stab the guy as normal. If you're on a team with one more, three more, or all eight, it jumps once, three times, or seven times. And THEN, because the jumps use pet tech, use a Doppelganger pet so you see yourself appearing momentarily behind every one of the jumps, because it's by far the most awesome and appropriate way to give a Stalker AoE by having them appear out of nowhere and kill every weak one in the whole group in a matter of seconds. It'd solve the problems of not overpowering thme for solo, since it only works on teams and as scaling, would avoid differentiability by making them burst AoE with setup instead of rolling AoE like others, avoids the Cottage Rule by keeping the attack the same but wider, and doesn't make them unreasonably good against AVs. And, most important of all, it would look unspeakably badass.

But, of course, it's way too tech-heavy to be made so. Pity. In the alternative, I guess the best thing to do would be unresistable percentiles on AS, specifically BECAUSE that would make them work against AVs. It gives them a unique and important role that steps on no toes, and doesn't add even more LOLAOE to the mix.

A Probability Stalker would be cool
Probability Stalker
1. Conceal (hide)
2. Drama (damage resistance)
3. Good Luck (defense)
4. Bad Luck (chaos aura)
5. Insight (small accuracy)
6. Fight or Flight (Endurance/recharge)
7. Freedom (break free)
8. Miracle (resurgence)
9. Extreme Luck (Moment of Glory)

Sounds good to me. I want to make a Stalker, but I have never really felt that they could lend much to the team. Idea number three sounds fantastic for that reason.

The first thing I'd do is to change Placate.

Make it a buff that for the duration, any sucessful attack used proc's an aoe Placate around the target, and adds a critical chance of placing the stalker back into Hidden status. This way, placate could be used prior to a first strike by a stalker, or the same way now except it'd take a second click to utilize an attack afterward.

I'd also give a guaranteed critical for every power successfully used from Hidden Status (barring certain powers like Lightening Rod which is a pet). Then provide the chance to crit that stalkers have on top of that. So at rare times, Stalkers may have: damage of power+critical+critical.

Once both of those are in place, do some serious testing and see how Stalkers perform, if they still seem to not be able to survive well enough, then I'd consider a change to max HP.

Would you use Assassin Strike outside of hidden more if it causes Fear?

If giving Stalker more damage isn't the option, then giving Stalker more controls. I may just use Assassin Strike more outside of hidden for the 25% mag 4 Fear effect.