Stalker HP Cap...

So, been lurking around and posting a bit, and I've realized something: Stalkers are screwed on HP.

Yes, it was really nice of Castle to bring Base HP up to Blaster level... but giving Stalkers the HP cap of Blaster's doesn't work with 3 (4) secondaries currently as designed.

Going off of SO's, Regen, Ice Armor, and Energy Aura all have a 40% +HP power. Which, unslotted, wastes 7% of the buff, since the Stalker HP cap is 133% of base. This problem is exacerbated by conventional slotting of Dull Pain (Regen) and Hoarfrost (Ice Armor), since they also have a heal component. Dropping 3 Heal SO's into the power modifies it into a 78% HP buff... or a 45% waste. (Granted, you still retain the 78% base HP heal.)
Overload (Energy Aura) is a little different, most don't slot it for Healing/HP, aside from the futility of it, since you'd rather buff the Recharge and Defense the power gives, and there is no heal attached.
High Pain Tolerance (Willpower) is a slightly odder animal, since it grants 20% +HP unslotted and ~29% slotted, and is permanent (which none of the others can attain with only SO's and no Incarnate). However, it brings awareness to another potential issue... Accolades.

There's 20% +HP between 3 different Accolades... all of which serve to further minimize a portion of the benefit gained from these powers.



So there's the complaining... now for solutions?

I'm not a numbers Guru, but an easy fix would be to raise Stalker HP cap to parity with Scrappers. There's a precedent for it, since Brutes and Tankers are the analogous AT's, and have identical caps defensively. This would potentially be the easiest to effect as well (is well aware of the Code nightmare it could cause to just change 1 number).

Alternately, the three powersets that over-buff could have those powers adjusted, tweaking the amount of +HP given to less, both unslotted and slotted, or lowered and make it unenhanceable. Obviously, if these powers are being lessened in their benefits, there would be a payback elsewhere, perhaps a lowered recharge time/possibility to Perma with 3 Rech SO's.
However, this solution would require MUCH more development time, and would leave the other 4 (5) Secondaries in the cold.

Obviously, with IO's and the plethora of +HP set bonuses and other slotting tricks that can be done, or the addition of Incarnate slots, these problems are exacerbated, and can even come to the fore for the other Secondaries. However, the continually stated position of the Developers is "balance around SO's", so I've only focused on that.

So, summation:

The devs really don't care about the stalker disparity.

This gets proven time and again during Ports to stalkers, primaries and secondaries.
There is no point to this, as its all been said before and it has been ignored before.

Honestly I am waiting for ninjitsu to be ported to scraps (and buffed) and calling it a day.

Yeah I posted this a lot of times. A PeaceBringer has 1017 base HP and a 2409 - with Dull Pain+Dwarf it can reach close to 2k, or more with accos (don't remember the numbers correctly). Crabs also have 1017 base hp and a 2409 cap, so that like the PB, he can make full use of his Dull Pain clone. Only Stalkers get screwed with powers that are from secondaries (blasters and trollers have access to dull pain like powers but they're in epics) and now they have more base HP than both these ATs, 1200ish with a 1606 cap.

But devs don't care, why the hell would they introduce a set that has a 100% crit AoE (KM), then revisit the set (to correct the insta-BU), still leave the AoE at 100% chance and then releasing StJ with a 50% AoE crit like the others? Either one or another would be consistent.

I'd rather they leave hp lower than scrappers, raise the damage so that they actually fit into the melee AT continuum, and change the +hp powers to not be wasted. If they raise hp to match scrappers, they would probably never raise damage, and we would end up with relative survival parity but lower damage. That would put us right back into the underperforming camp we are in now and let the devs believe they "fixed" our problems.

I look forward to the day the devs port Ninjitsu to scrappers and end this whole affair, at least for me.

Ninjitsu is pretty much the sole reason to bother with stalkers right now for me. The set is just THAT good.

What Stalkers are missing is damage not Hit Points.

WARNING: I bold names.

Don't worry about hp, its pointless. If it can 1 shot you now it can 1 shot you at brute hp. HP has never been an issue for me. In fact I was against any hp increase we got because this takes away from what the stalker AT is supposed to be about.

I agree with the general consensus. Stalkers really need more damage. To fit in with the Damage -> Survivability scale, they really should do more damage up front. Even with the added crit chance in a team, stalkers should have the same or higher base damage as scrappers. Right now, there really is no reason to make a stalker. Anything that a stalker can do, a scrapper can do better except AS... which has it's own problems.

Elsewhere arcannaville made an interesting point: Stalkers are not supposed to be on the Tank-brute-scrapper scale at all, they are supposed to be melee blasters. So comparing stalkers to scrappers (and she mentions the devs being guilty of this as well) is not so helpful as far as getting the right sorts of changes.

So I was thinking... what about melee nukes, and reducing some survivability in secondaries in exchange for all of them working like elec/fire/shield to give damage boosts?

If we're supposed to be melee blasters, why not?

If Stalkers are supposed to be Melee blasters why do the devs keep adding things that make it obvious to compare Stalkers with Scrappers?

Now granted when CoV launched Stalkers might have been designed to fit that role, however the game has changed a lot since then and Stalkers as melee Blasters seems less appropriate.

They are blasters in the sense that they are more fragile, but very much not blasters in the damage department. Even if that was the intent it was a failure.

Aaaaannd that's why I included the bit about arcana mentioning the devs are guilty of it too.

But the point remains that one way to get stalkers out of the current rut is to re-envision them. the game has changed, and there really isn't a place for what stalkers have been stuck as. Most attempts to fix them look at making them more of what they already are.

So why not look at doing what really needs to be done, and re-evaluate the AT?