Stalkers ??? Where??? R U Hiding?

The Entropy Legion has a fully kitted DB/EA stalker who at times has been the closest thing to a tank we have. I have a BS/SD scrap, a KM/SR scrap, and a SS/Inv brute blue side, and just now I dusted off my Nin/Nin and felt like I was having more fun with him. (It might've also helped that he was 30 and they're still getting there.) Its really all in what you want out of your stalker.

It's also what sets you play as well. My Nin/nin can tank but he's not always the best at killing things quickly.

Either boost Hide's surpressed def rate or give it a Foe -ToHit property. I mean, they should have some kind of pseudo-RTTC aspect about them.

I agree with you about the revamp...to be honest I doubt the Devs will try to fix The At a bit...On the other hand I would love to eat my own words.

I feel that my dark/dark holds its own on teams. I can 1-shot lieut's reliably when hidden, and 2-shot them out of hide. It's not hard to find a boss that's not currently the focus of everyone else's attention and rip them to shreds before the group piles on. And several times after team wipes my AoE mag 30 stun self-rez has let me give the team a chance to make a dramatic comeback.

I would dearly love a bit more survival and a better AoE than shadow maul, but overall I do think the proposals to make the full spectrum Stalker -> Scrapper -> Brute -> Tank in terms of damage -> Survivability makes the most sense and implementing it would be as simple as changing the damage scalar for stalkers and giving us the full value of buildup. But meh.

I still have fun so I'll keep playing and I guess that's why nothing changes. =)

I've come up to the conclusion that two of Stalker's biggest problems are:

1. Assassin Strike's activation time in pve. Too long, not enough damage, and interruption is annoying. They can keep the interruption but lower the activation time or up the damage.


2. The most serious problem is in the sets themselves. I think the newer ones like Electricity, Kinetic and even Dual Blade are "good". Not "great" but they have ways to let you forget about "Assassin Strike". If you focus on only using AS in every fight, you'll find yourself not contributing as much especially if the team is killing fast already. So in the situation where you don't need AS, what else do you have? Electricity as awesome Lightning Rod. Kinetic has 100% Burst. Dual Blade can open battle with 1K Cuts. (Spines has Throw Spine but its single dps is very low)

The old problem I am talking about is the older sets that don't have pbaoe. If they insert or even modify one of the powers to deal some aoe, then the complaint won't be as much.

I am talking about Energy Melee, Martial Arts and even Ninja Blade and Broadsword.

If your Stalker has survival issue, then it's because you are not killing as fast. For the same time frame, other ATs can hit 2-3 targets and you are only hitting one and what's worst is if you miss that important Assassin Strike in the beginning.

Stalker is very playable. I've made many to lvl 50 and still play them but their main problem has a lot to do with Assassin Strike. They took out a pbaoe for it so if you feel your performance is lacking, blame for it!

And also, Stalker needs to be the king of ST damage but it's not. This does bother me. I know my Soldier and Night Widow can easily out damage any of my Stalker while providing excellent team buffs and debuffs. I am sure there are many ATs that can solo AVs better than Stalkers.

i think you will find less stalkers because they as an archtype begin losing their primary ability at higher levels and also other archtypes else can achieve the same results if not better....i.e. the entire they hide and then assasin strike a target.

I mean seriously...which is the better scout...a stalker or an Illusion controller?

which does better damage from from being invisible...a stalker or a blaster?

The higher the level you go the farther behind the stalker falls

*by the way...i am not saying i dont play stalkers...i like playing i guess them becasue i guess i like the challenge of trying to oout do the other archtypes.....i will say though the most annoyign thing for me so far has been being on a team....and the defender healer out does me in kill counts...thats really annoying....stalker damage on too many things is really bad.

From my experience, a soft-capped, IO-ed, bane is far more useful than an equvalent stalker. A bane can stealth, crit from hide, re-hide via placate, and surprisingly survivable. On top of that, it buffs the team too with 2 sets of Leadership, bring up the damage potential and defence of everyone. (I have all there spider pets on my bane. They make a huge different in damage output. Their base damage are just average but with slotting and x2 Assaults, they do rather well.)

As other have pointed out, the signature attack of stalker, AS, is far too fiddly to use. I have noticed that even if I am not moving, AS can still be interupted if other people or their pets push me just slightly. That probably the most annoying part for me. Oh, and the target runs off range is an other nuisance. That said, AS is still fine while soloing; but that is because you have all the time in the world to pace yourself and position for AS.

I have done a few ITF kill-all runs recently with my KM/Regen. I could hardly do an AS. Either it was interupted for whatever reasons or other killed the target before I could. Not that I was not contributing: I still scrap the romans to death but, to me, that underplayed the usefulness of hide and AS.

I agree that the design of AS is outdated: the activation time and interuptable period are just too long these days. I personally don't mind reducing the damage output of AS to just x3 or x2 crits but making the activation and interuptable time much shorter. Essentially, make AS easier to use so people can use it more frequently to bring up the damage output.

I think Bane and NW can easily outdamage a stalker with just hide-and-crit. Of course, they have a much higher HP cap too, which helps them to stay in the fight longer and thus do more damage. And again, they can stack 2 Assaults and +ToHit on themselve, which helps too. A scraper can easily outdamage a stalker too for their higher melee damage modifier and HP cap - and they crit as well.

As to stalker: AS is not so efficient to use, their HP is low, the damage modifier is not high enough. It seems that although those ATs might not be able to do a hide-AS-placate-crit run on a target, they can easily make that up with whatever they have, and offer more.

Stalker needs some buffs.


(Edit:

1. I do like the idea of an AoE placate. For me, it fits the concept of a stalker. It could be that the first target is Autohit-ed and the rest within the AoE area are Accuracy-checked. It would be like Placate and Smoke Bomb firing at once on a Target-AoE basis.

2. I have an Energy/Energy brute with a +Stealth IO and of course Energy Cloak. Although it cannot crit or AS anyone, it can effortlessly take out targets one by one from a mob, so long as they are not so tightly packed. With that brute, I feel more like a stalker than a brute. Based on that, I would agree with the suggestion of an unsupressed hide. But stalkers have a higher -preception value from hide (I think, can't remember the numbers). Could do with a 1/2 or 2/3 unsurpressed hide instead of a full unsurpressed hide.

3. By its very nature, stalker should not be visible or draw any argo to itself nearly all the time. With a shorter AS activation time, AoE placate, unsupressed hide and high damage modifier, I think stalker could do quite well alongside other damage orienated ATs.)

While we're wish-listing things that won't happen...

1. Make Placate a slottable inherent. In its place, add the power each set is missing from the Scrapper version of their primary. For most this will be a PBAoE attack.

2. Add to Hide the same small unsuppressed stealth radius that powers like Energy Cloak have.

3. Revisit AS damage scaling. Don't go overboard this time. Don't scale by a percentage of the target hit points. Just scale by the Stalker's level such that AS scales up at the same rate an equivalent level boss's hit points do. If I can hit a level 50 boss as hard as I used to hit a level 25 boss, that would do it. Make this scaling apply to the base damage as well as the crit so that AS now becomes worth risking *outside* of Hide in situations where you can avoid the interruption but are not in Hide and don't have Placate ready.

4. Normalize all AS activation/animation times to Kinetic Melee's 2.67s.

5. Increase the radius of Stalker sliding critical rate to all team members within 50ft (instead of just 30ft).

6. Assassin Strike summons a pony. A KILLER pony!

Okay okay... I'm willing to compromise on that last one.

Okay... I don't post as often here as I would like so forgive the post from the quiet guy. However, I have ZERO difficulties with my stalkers. They have no endurance issues at all, great damage, and they can usually one shot a lvl 54 on a trial. I don't play them like scrappers, and I tend to very carefully choose not only my fights, but the order in which I attack opponents on missions.

Now, don't get me wrong, I don't number crunch so I don't know the figures and averages, but I don't approach this game from that standpoint either. I tend to focus on playing with what I am given. And honestly, I have no problem with my stalkers or how they play. What I DO see is people playing as if they were scrappers and THAT WILL give you problems and get you taken out quickly. I can solo the Alpha mission where you take on the Honoree and the other character whose name escapes me at the moment. I find that with stalkers, more than any other AT, your tactics and strategies are vitally important. And that is how it SHOULD be...

a stalker is a lone operative that survives on his own and cannot just wade into mobs like a tank or scrapper cuz he aint one. Sorry, don't mean to sound preachy, but the main problem I encounter with people complaining about their stalkers is that they just wont play them like they should or could, and them complain that stalkers don't play the way they want them to play.

Sorry, just my opinion from my own experiences.

In hindsight, Assassin Strike should have been an inherent power that doesn't "replace" an existing attack in the powerset. This makes balancing/creating new sets for each melee AT difficult and in some cases boring as they have to take out a good attack for it.

Assassin Strike also shouldn't cost that much endurance and require slottings.

If Stalker is designed to choose to open the battle with AS or not, then Assassin Strike doesn't really have an 'advantage'. Stalker sacrifices for less health, less base damage than Scrapper and less pbaoe for this Attack.


The good thing is the dev knows that Assassin Strike + Build Up + Placate is too restricted and they made a great improvement on Kinetic Melee by giving it "build up recharge" feature.

I just wish they had more time to go back to the older sets and add something "features" to them because I really think some of the sets are missing out on very important pbaoe. AoE is the KING in this game.

The key problem to me is still Assassin Strike. It is too slow with too much restriction/cost/slotting.

Why all this talk about Assassin Strike?

It is best used as a set mule (level 15 Kinetic combat ftw).
The only reason I keep it on my powertray in my KM/EA unlimited budget build is because its a Hadoken.

Of course its not useless.

But imo its the worst attack in most of the melee sets.

Definately not the optimal thing to open with on Kinetic melee when you min max it. I Don't ever use it unless I am mentally saying: SHINKU-HADOKEN.

But its really great for level 15 kinetic combat!

20-40 I think...

I meant to say 20s I just jammed the proc, and whatever 3 other kinetic combat's I could find to get the Smash/Lethal defense bonus.

AS isn't even on my main 3 power trays.

I don't think i can find a situation where my KM would do more damage over time including AS in the attack chain. Now if you are playing Elec melee or spines, I am sure you could just barely find a boost (if you aren't interruped).

Looking at some of the "features" in Electricity Melee (Lightning Rod doesn't reveal. Not really an intended feature but it is a feature nevertheless) and Kinetic Melee's 100% Burst + Build Up refresh, maybe all they need to do is to add some features to old sets. They don't need to take a power out for a pbaoe.

Some ideas I have:

Claw
Revert Eviscerate back to pbaoe, keep the same damage and make it 50% critical. Even with the current Single Target damage, it is still LOWER than Scrapper's pbaoe version. I think this is quite sad. I was going to suggest 100% critical but then I realized that they already increased its base damage a bit. This should reduce the need for Spin, which is one of the better pbaoe in the game.

Dual Blades
With melee range increasing from 5' to 7', the current 1K Cuts' 10' range doesn't seem that big of a deal. Don't get me wrong. It is nice but Typhoon Edge is nice too and Stalker doesn't have it. I would suggest making 1K Cuts 12' range.

Ninja Blade
Golden Dragonfly's cone arc from 20' to 40'. This will ensure you can easily cover 2 targets. The current version is quite narrow and sometimes you lose dps just by trying to align yourself.

Broadsword
Head Splitter's cone arc from 20' to 40'.

Dark Melee
Shadow Maul's reach from 7' to 12'. Keep the same arc.


I am not too sure how we can improve Energy Melee and Martial Arts more but these two do need some aoe, or some interesting features.