Why is the stalker community non existant on the VIP beta?

I made another post in beta forum after I posted that.

Yes, it is true that Finisher doesn't include Combo's extra damage but the raw damage alone is very high.

I did a comparison between Stalker's Eagle Claw and Crushing Uppercut. Crushing Uppercut at combo 0 does the most critical damage than any other ST attack. I can see why they are not including extra combo damage in critical because that will simply be too high.

Of course there are down sides. Crushing Uppercut recharge 25s but hast much longer reach at 13.5 and it activates faster than Concentrated Strike/Total Focus.

Total Focus in its current form is the worst tier 9 ST attack for Stalker. It criticals way less and activates the longest.


Edited: Do those extra combo damage benefit from Fury? If so, SJ's base damage is really high.

Isn't energy transfer the T9 on enery melee?

Oh doh, I get them confused all the time. I guess. lol I just know Total Focus's critical damage is too low.

Actually, no - Total Focus is.

Stalkers get those two powers in the order that Tankers do, so Energy Transfer is the tier 8 and Total Focus is the tier 9. The only AT Energy Transfer is the tier 9 on is Brutes.

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.

Ignore Gemini's posts, all I see is he posting wrong stuff about EA and still calling it garbage on Stalkers with the changes.

EA Brutes for now are going to give you this:

Why? Because if you are, say, a /DA Brute, you can turn off three aggro auras (Death Shroud, O. Gloom, Cloak of Fear - ok of course you probably won't pick all three) and turn on cloak of darkness to stealth.

Now /EA... In the current state in beta it's way more dangerous to go stealthing, because the taunt aura is tied to Entropy Shield, your MEZ protection. So if you wanna stealth you have to turn off your mez, unlike a /DA where you can keep Obsidian Shield on.

I never knew that. Holy cow.
Shows you how much I ever looked at Energy Melee since they destroyed it.

Actually it shows you never looked at EM for Stalkers at all

I leveled my EM/Nin to 50 before the i12 and EM changes and I remember I posted a 'woohoo got to 26 now I'm killing stuff fast' because that's when you get ET... And well it was such a fast and great attack. I saw two or three other people post about how wonderful their EM/ Stalkers got at level 26, even tho at the time we had the lousy damage modifier, less hp, well, you know, before the buffs.

And I remember complaining about the EM nerf on a team with you (yes, you, on some SF a long time ago before my almost 2-yr break - not that I've been finding time to play in the last 2 months) and you said 'it had to be done because it was too powerful'. I'm not criticizing you, most people said the same btw, all I know is that at the time the change made me very sad with my fav villain and I barely played her after (I did play her quite a bit but after some time with the ET and TF changes I just gave up on her - she's still there with all her IOs, purps and with Stealth, Stealth IO + a single KB IO, at the time it was possible to have a single build for PVP and PVE at least on Stalkers)

Anyway, maybe EM was an outlier set at least on ST damage with ET activating in like 1 second and TF's mag 4 stun, but I guess after the changes to the arguably 'broken' set (there was no ELM so everyone was playing EM and to a lesser extent DM, I remember you had a claws/nin but it was rare to find anything other than EM, even in Freedom), it just exposed the sad state Stalkers are, especially after ITF and the content that came after which benefited AoE-centric toons so much more.

I don't think I have ever seen one psy/ blaster since I returned... Which means I have never seen one because I never went to pvp after i13 (where I hear psy blasters are useful) and I was absent when the set was released.

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Mission Architect Handyman

Just curious, do Scrappers get critical from ancillary pools? I know Controller does 'cause I just took Jab..

Hmm.. haven't checked the beta on this, but on Live currently the only APP that crits for Stalkers is Blaze Mastery, which crits for full on every power including the hold and immob. It's either a mistake... or an experiment.

According to City of Data, Scrappers crit from the APPs but not the PPPs.

Oh...I am confused by the terms again. Are we talking about the regular attacks from Power Pools like Jab, Air Superiority?

Or are we talking about Patron and Epic sets? Somebody told me Scrapper can critical with Patron attacks?

You said "ancillary pools" which is what the hero epics are called. Ancillary Power Pools = APP. Villain epics are Patron Power Pools (PPP). The ordinary power pools are just... "power pools". The ordinary pool attacks like Air Sup and Boxing should crit for either Stalkers or Scrappers. When they ported the APPs from Scrappers to Stalkers and the PPPs from Stalkers to Scrappers, it seems they did not add criticals for the AT they were being ported to. Hence, Scrappers only crit from the hero APPs and Stalkers only crit from the villain PPPs. Again, that's what CoD says. I haven't tested them all personally or seen if there are any changes on beta.

The one exception that I know of is Stalker Blaze Mastery, which has full crits on every power that does damage in the set, even the hold/immob (which is something even the villain PPPs don't do)

It's possible City of Data is wrong. It's also possible that Scrappers are getting the Stalker scaling random critical since that is coded into the power itself (not the AT) and is not qualified by "if used by Stalker" the way the APPs have "if used by Scrapper" in the critical effect line. Would be interesting to see if that's the case.

If all they did was copy the Stalker PPPs directly over to Scrappers, that could very well be happening.

^This

While two of my three level 50s are stalker, I have given up as well for a year now from having them improved at all. For something that has so little HP and have to go into melee they would be the hugest DPR in the game.

I've never joined any Beta test until recently.

This is the first time for me. I was curious to see what a Beta looks like. I was determined to find out if Stalker's Street Justice is a watered down version just because Stalker fans are not voicing their concerns.

I have to say the dev do pay attention to beta testing, but I also want to say if you don't voice your concerns HARD AND LOUD, they may not know what's not working or what's really pissing people off.

We tend to think dev knows everything but from my recent experiences, they actually don't. You need to constantly REMIND them and keep bringing up the issues. You may be surprised by how useful that one Private Message to a dev can do! Believe me. :P

Stalker's SJ may get something due to the lack of Rib Cracker.

Yes, very glad I listened to you about the Kin melee issue.

Its still missing its BUILD UP! Float text but the functionality has returned.

Hasn't helped PvP get fixed yet. =)

We haven't gotten any new base options in a LOOOOOONNNNNNGGGG time. Plus many bugs still around.

And last I heard the devs feel that stalkers are about as strong as they want them to be, and the problems are systemic and related to aggro.

So while it may help in some areas, I would love to be surprised to see it help here.

To be fair, if you are talking to them on the beta forums about stuff that is being tested in the beta then you probably have a good chance of being heard. So you can talk about SJ or Energy Aura's revamp or Ice Armor for Stalkers. But yeah... good luck talking about overall Stalker balance issues. That's not what they are spending their time on now.

Whaaaa...Badgers are one of the very groups the devs DO cater to. How in the world did they get included in that list?

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Mission Architect Handyman