Stalkers won't be getting Titan Weapons will they?

Hear hear! I hope with the new team (the one that chose to make Fitness inherent), they'll come up with something. Stalkers are decent, but yeah, the fact that other ATs can do nearly everything they can do and better doesn't really bode well for them.

I am all about AT parity and think it's silly to reject a player because they chose a specific AT. That part is dumb. But the fact that they slightly underperfom compared to other ATs (also hotly debated), I would love to see them be given that definitive/desired niche in a team enviroment.

What you quoted is not what the actual issue is. It just shows how out of touch the developers are with stalker issues. No stalker I know or ever played has ever had aggro issues on a team. Stalkers do not have aggro problems. We suffer from suck *** damage syndrome when you compare it to brutes and scrappers.

It was the same garbage excuse that they used when they ported the watered down version of WP to stalkers. Now they have the technology to surpress toggles like with dark armor there is no reason why they could not get shields at this point.

Castles post just shows how out of touch they are with real game issues. Real stalker players know its a damage issue vs the other melee ATs. Its going to take someone actually going to one of those game con events and asking the devs in person to get stalkers really looked at.

It might happen, hell it took so many issues for them to finally see that AVs were capped to smash/lethal damage. If that got change there might be hope for stalkers, but again its just getting the real point and issues across to them thats the problem.

I personally like sets that don't require you to have foes around to function. When foes move/run, when you must move/run, when foes get knocked back or if the enemy is simply out of range, these are situations where requiring foes around you is a detriment. I suppose if all you do is farm, yeah, Stalker WP is crap...

But it's got more survival than Ninjutsu. So I guess Ninjutsu is garbage too.

And even with suppressing toggles, I wouldn't want Invincibility, RttC or AAO on a Stalker but a situationally independent equivalent. CoF and OG are completely different as they are control effects, not self buffs. Those buff auras *are* opposed to Stalker playstyle...because Stalkers must keep mobile, work with as little aggro as possible and most importantly, not need to worry about toggles removing their ability to use Placate effectively.

I disagree here. At this point in time there is no reason why a stalker can not stay and scrap during the fight. The whole hit and run play style is what got stalkers a bad rep in the first place. So aside from AVs 1 shotting we really have no survivability issues because we have a lower threat than scrappers/brutes. They could have just as easily removed the taunt aspect of those powers and said in the description how you must be near the mobs to get the benefit of it. CoF is crap due to the insane end costs for what it does and the lower accuracy, OG is ok but to really leverage it you need a set that stuns too otherwise its just minion protection.

Great, then you don't *need* a buff aura to get anything accomplished in a battle since we have no survival issues.

My point was not that being mobile = hit and run. It's simply that, I should have the freedom, as a Stalker, to move to any point on the battle field and not have to worry about proximity affecting my abilities be it needing to move away from certain attacks, moving to a certain target that *ISN'T* huddled around the taunter, targeting an objective, positioning yourself for greater effect of a power or if the situation is dire enough, run away.

If you can't *SEE* melee strategy beyond 'soak up mob aggro and scrap' or 'run like a b****', then there's your failing.

Well good luck leveraging those buff auras when nothing stays in them.

And I can leverage CoF perfectly fine with a bit of -ToHit slotting, some defense powers and Intimidate, thank you very much. It's not my fault you're stuck in min/max land, where Stalkers must one-shot the world and Scrappers and Brutes must bow before them and their undeniably higher damage.

It makes less sense for a Stalker to get this set than it does for them to have "Glow like a X-Mas Tree Armor" (i.e. Electric Armor).

I have not once paired OG with a set that stuns and in my opinion, OG is better for Stalkers than other ATs. My reasoning is that Stalkers can deal with non-minion threats much more easily than they can deal with a great number of minions. OG takes care of the only problem a Stalker has.

Leo, hyperbole is bad. I'm actually surprised to see you stoop to this.

Just take a step back and look at it this way: Stalkers have undeniably lower survivability than the other melee ATs. The flip side should be that they do undeniably higher damage. This ideology is backed by dev action in the Scrapper vs Brute discussions. Brutes were demonstrably on par or better than scrappers for damage and undeniably better at survival. Fury and damage caps were adjusted to fix this.

It is not unreasonable to expect Stalkers to follow this proportional survivability-damage pattern.

I fail to see how anything you said there is unique to a stalker. A scrapper could be played with that exact same desire for mobility options - or a brute for that matter.

I've always suspected the problem, at least ever since IOs were introduced, is that it's easier to get "enough" survivability than enough damage. Indeed there's no such thing as "enough damage" since one can always use more. Same is not true of survivability. So if they had given Stalkers truly superior damage to Scrappers perhaps they feared a backlash from the much more sizable Scrapper community?

Now that there is incarnate content, however, what WAS enough survivability... no longer is. So maybe the time is right to just turn the dial on the melee modifier, at the very least, while no one is looking?

IMHO stalkers are less mobile then the other sets.. they gotta stand still for assassin's strike. Heck, sometimes you fail AS because the target walks away to fast.

I see stalkers in general being a fun and unique concept that just never did play out right.

I agree, of all the melee ATs, Stalkers are the least mobile.

In my opinion, the Tank should be the most mobile in combat. Since the tank role is about controlling aggro, you have to be on your toes making sure you grab all the attention you can.

Yeah but how often? You only really use AS at the beginning of the fight and then maybe during with placate IF you decide to risk the interruption and IF you are facing an opponent worth assassinating in the first place.

I suppose technically that does make Stalkers "less" mobile than other melees but not by a heck of a lot. They spend more time standing still by choice than I am forced to by AS, from what I've seen.

Exactly! With the added profits from the subset of their playerbase which exclusively plays Stalkers they could..... buy an extra cup of coffee?

I would die laughing and i have a 3-1 scrapper vs stalker toons...however i love my stalkers just as much as my scrappers...the meltdown on the scrappers boards would be EPIC omg lol.

Good point! I know I'll buy.

I dont have a single non-tanker character that is softcapped to any defense. It is not necessary to play this game.

Why do you suppose stalkers get all of those other attacks in their "assassin strike" powerset? I wonder if the devs thought we might stick around and use more than just BU, AS, placate, run away? You really should try playing a stalker once. They aren't as awful as you make them sound.

Yes, whatever they do just DON'T tie any of the cool stuff with Assassin Strike because that attack sucks. I took it only because it feels cool to take it and I can use it for set bonus. I don't want to gain any Momentum after using Assassin Strike because Assassin Strike itself is the ULTIMATE MOMENTUM KILLER.

I almost never use it at high level. It only amazes newbies at lvl 6 thinking that they can AS a boss to death.

Too bad your ideology ignores balance in general.

Stalkers are a damage AT just like Scrappers, Doms and Blasters and just because Scrappers have more HP doesn't mean they get to be on the top of the heap. Do you think Blasters outdamage Scrappers? Heck, I bet, shot for shot, Blasters don't even outdo Dominators and doms get *MEZ PROTECTION*!

You can't just scale everything up and up and up because that's power creep. I don't care if you're a fanboi of the AT, bias or a hater, I'm not going to listen to whines for 'MOAR DMG PLZ@@11!'. Screw that.

Maybe it's my control set-up (I use only the keyboard with one hand dedicated to movement all the time), but the reason you need that mobility I was talking about is specifically for AS. So you can move to the target you need to hit, so you can anticipate the targets movements (*NOT* hard) and click that attack in a fashion that won't be interrupted by movement. Either I'm an expert player or you guys simply aren't *TRYING*, but it's elementary to hit a moving target with AS if they're an NPC. Players, on the other hand, may be unpredictable so that's more challenging.


I don't have the most Tanker experience (only have 2, a lvl 38 Kin/Inv and a lvl 45 DM/SD) but the mobility you're talking about is 'general'. As a Tank, you're a mobile choke point. You move in, draw the enemy in and *STAY THERE* until the foes are subdued. Yes, you want to move around when more threats or greater threats present themselves, but generally, you don't want to be jumping back toward the squishies, backing off to kill a straggler, and generally leaving a crowd behind because its dangerous for others. That isn't to say you automatically plant your feet and don't move an inch, but you don't need to do the things Blasters, Stalkers or Scrappers need to do when they fight.

I could go on and on about the possible scenarios, aggro caps, sets that use enemy numbers to buff you, sets that *impare* movement, etc. but I feel it'd fall on deaf ears here. It's like, what I'm saying is some sort of alien super-advanced gibber-gabber that only makes sense to me. I *know* you people play the game...

You see? You're not 'less' mobile because hide takes long to kick back in, you *need* to be mobile so that you draw less aggro and, when done killing your target(s), you can relax while you tab through the targets to pick out another juicy one. If you sit around in the middle of a group on a team, things will take pot-shots at you. If you fight on the fringes, only those in proximity of your attacks will bother noticing you. If you move around, things might look your way and shoot at you, but most foes will forget you're even there afterwards. Ducking behind something/someone while you stick it to your nearby target will *force* those that are looking at you to *run* to you. They'll probably forget you're there after running across a debuff patch or through someone's taunt aura. And that's if you're just playing defensively.

That said, I agree with your statement about treating your Stalker like a Scrapper. It's not rocket science, especially not Scrappers. All they do is run up and hit things. A stalker can *easily* do that. Oh, but a Scrapper is more survivable? Well no SH** Sherlock! That HP difference makes a huge difference when you spend millions to IO the toon out. With just SOs, the survival is probably 1 extra hit. The difference is that Scrappers have powers that draw attention to themselves while Stalkers have powers that drive attention away.

I think the 'theme' you're referring to is 'Shield's theme' which is 'a phalanx fighter' or 'a soldier part of a pod'. Stalkers are lone assassin's that take opportunistic strikes, they're not sitting ducks waiting to be shot at. That's basically what Shields is: huddle together, bunker down and tear up anything that gets near. That's not Stalker.

Now, I have suggested a modified version with 3 new powers added (one being a passive) so it's not like I think Stalkers shouldn't get Shields. I just don't think the current shields is made for them. If they just gave Stalkers Shields as a straight hand-me-down, I'd accept begrudgingly...but I think they could do better.

If Stalkers got shields, what makes you think they would of had Shield Charge in it?

Right, they should just get a non-TPing straight PBAoE attack that respects the AT's damage mods and can crit.