I personally would like to see them figure out a stalker sniper rifle power similar to the PPD Ghost or the Longbow with stealth (sorry can't remember the name)
Would be fun to pull off an Assassin's Snipe
Just a thought
Cast in the name of god, ye not guilty!!
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True that tho |
Originally Posted by shadowwalker
I personally would like to see them figure out a stalker sniper rifle power similar to the PPD Ghost or the Longbow with stealth (sorry can't remember the name)
Would be fun to pull off an Assassin's Snipe Just a thought |
however I dare say that if you got such a power, you wouldn't solely be using that power and completely neglecting your other powers ;p
@Global: Difficult One
Playing on European Servers (Union, Defiant)
If a person turns down an idea, he turns down an opportunity to evolve himself
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Ghost Widow patron power pool has a sniper shot for you.|
Originally Posted by shadowwalker
I personally would like to see them figure out a stalker sniper rifle power similar to the PPD Ghost or the Longbow with stealth (sorry can't remember the name)
Would be fun to pull off an Assassin's Snipe Just a thought |
Though its not a sniper rifle...does critical out of hide though.
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You mean an assured un hidden critical? Or a chance?
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Originally Posted by PsychicKitty
Ghost Widow patron power pool has a sniper shot for you.
Though its not a sniper rifle...does critical out of hide though. |
@Global: Difficult One
Playing on European Servers (Union, Defiant)
If a person turns down an idea, he turns down an opportunity to evolve himself
It's 100% chance to crit from hide. Too bad it's a terrible power. The 7.3 second wind-up takes forever, and the damage just doesn't make up for it.
"the reason there are so many sarcastic pvpers is we already had a better version of pvp taken away from us to appease bad players. Back then we chuckled at how bad players came here and whined. If we knew that was the actual voice devs would listen to instead of informed, educated players we probably would have been bigger dicks back then." -ConFlict
Moonbeam (the Ghost Widow Pool Snipe) is *not* a terrible power ... for what it does. Everyone here likes to slag on it for its long animation time and then claim that the damage it does output isn't made up for ... as if Moonbeam were something you could just drop into your normal attack chain rotation and expect it to be the #1 Damage per Animation per Second per Game power (or something equally ridiculous). Stop thinking about it as "a regular attack" you use to scrap-it-out with and you'll start seeing Moonbeam in a different light.
Moonbeam is an excellent tool to use when you really wish you could perform an Assassin Strike from over 150 ft away. It's a "reach out and TOUCH YOU" power, rather than a Toe Bomb power (and anyone who tries to use it as a Toe Bomb needs to have their head(s) examined). There are plenty of situations where you just don't want to be right next to something in the middle of melee or PBAoE range, and Moonbeam gives you an excellent standoff range/distance for SNIPING targets (from Hide). 6-slot it with Extreme Measures (+Recovery, +HP, +Damage, +DEF (lots!)) or Sting of the Manticore (+Regen, +DEF, +Damage, +Recharge) and watch what happens to the Interrupt Time (nicely reduced) along with the (Negative!) damage throughput From Hide, which isn't all that heavily resisted too often (unlike S/L). And because Moonbeam is a "projectile" attack power that involves a travel time from you to target, at long ranges it is actually quite EASY to use Moonbeam for Corner Pulling where you fire off the power and duck behind a corner while the projectile carrying the damage is still in flight to the target. That means that when the damage "arrives" and alerts the mob that they've been hit, you will have already broken LoS and they'll have to Leave Their Position to come after you where you (and your team?) are lying in ambush, ready to Assassin Strike the first idiot to round the corner. You can even use Moonbeam ... from Hide ... against Rikti Drones and Nemesis Snipers ... to one shot them (or very nearly, depending on your settings), and break LoS to not be (immediately) vulnerable to return fire.
As soon as you STOP thinking about Moonbeam being used "just like any other attack power" you've got, and instead START thinking about the kinds of strategies and tactics you can achieve and perform with it that you can't accomplish with anything else ... THEN you'll start to see that for what it's good at there's really nothing else quite like Moonbeam for Stalkers. It's basically an "edge of visual range" Assassin Strike ... so of course you can't use it as part of a regular attack chain for mainline combat. Use it situationally and you'll have an extremely powerful tool at your disposal that works to your advantage.
And besides ... you've already got enough single target melee(ish) range powers in your Primary, don't you?
It's the end. But the moment has been prepared for ...
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Which would work, if it did as much as Assassin's Strike - which already doesn't kill many things. Plus, the snipes eat up almost the entire Build Up window on their own.|
Originally Posted by Redlynne
Moonbeam is an excellent tool to use when you really wish you could perform an Assassin Strike from over 150 ft away.
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On an AT that can sneak into the middle of the spawn and hit an attack that does significantly more damage (Moonbeam does scale 4.6 damage on a critical, AS does scale 7) which carries a tohit debuff and chance for fear to everything around, and then continue to deal more damage in less time and actually kill the thing you're fighting... the range really is a tiny concern at best.
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Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle
it has gone from unconscionable to downright appalling that we have no way of measuring our characters' wetness.
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Originally Posted by Brillig
It's hard to beat the entertainment value of Whackjob Wednesdays.
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Mace Beam and Zapp too, although Mace Beam is a particular favorite of mine on my Spines/DA stalker. I tend to start out a fight on the hard target, blast the **** off his feet and get the attention of his group who then run toward my location. By the time the boss gets back up to join his team, they're dead or decimated and easy pickings after that. I also just like to drop random minions with it from long range (same with Impale crit).|
Originally Posted by Redlynne
Moonbeam (the Ghost Widow Pool Snipe) is *not* a terrible power ... for what it does. Everyone here likes to slag on it for its long animation time and then claim that the damage it does output isn't made up for ... as if Moonbeam were something you could just drop into your normal attack chain rotation and expect it to be the #1 Damage per Animation per Second per Game power (or something equally ridiculous). Stop thinking about it as "a regular attack" you use to scrap-it-out with and you'll start seeing Moonbeam in a different light.
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Oh, and for style as a finisher, Impale > Mace Blast to knock the foe away. As they get up, I'm aiming my snipe at their head but they can't move (immobilized). Eventually they switch to range and throw something at me but it's too late (and I got ranged defense!) BOOM! HEADSHOT! just as their shot flies at me and misses.
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Originally Posted by Siolfir
Which would work, if it did as much as Assassin's Strike - which already doesn't kill many things. Plus, the snipes eat up almost the entire Build Up window on their own.
On an AT that can sneak into the middle of the spawn and hit an attack that does significantly more damage (Moonbeam does scale 4.6 damage on a critical, AS does scale 7) which carries a tohit debuff and chance for fear to everything around, and then continue to deal more damage in less time and actually kill the thing you're fighting... the range really is a tiny concern at best. |
And don't even bother b****ing about "Stalkers aren't hit-and-run". The principal is a Stalker doesn't *have* to hit-and-run not that they can't or shouldn't have the option to. Tools that are compatible with varying tactics aren't a terrible thing even if you're only concerned about min/maxing potential. You have close range powers for when you can go into close range and you have distance powers for when you'd rather not (or wish to exploit another tactic or a tactic of an ally).
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Uhm, to reiterate:|
Originally Posted by Leo_G
The range is the whole appeal since you can destroy objectives without even being near them (objects and explodables) or picking off targets from afar and move away to rehide.
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Originally Posted by Siolfir
On an AT that can sneak into the middle of the spawn and hit an attack that does significantly more damage (Moonbeam does scale 4.6 damage on a critical, AS does scale 7) which carries a tohit debuff and chance for fear to everything around, and then continue to deal more damage in less time and actually kill the thing you're fighting... the range really is a tiny concern at best.
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If I want a box to blow up safely, I can destroy it much faster and with fewer inspirations used by popping a couple of purples and running an attack chain on it from within the spawn. It's only of marginal use when there are mobs that ignore stealth - once again, you can use a lower number of purples to accomplish the same result faster. Or just use reds and purples to ensure that you only have to worry about it for a few seconds.
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Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle
it has gone from unconscionable to downright appalling that we have no way of measuring our characters' wetness.
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Originally Posted by Brillig
It's hard to beat the entertainment value of Whackjob Wednesdays.
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I can't believe some people are defending stalker snipes when even the blast set ones without the not-so-horrid activation time are considered subpar.
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And in addition to having a much shorter activation, the blast set snipes also are higher damage (scale 2.76 vs 2.3). The devs were ridiculously punitive when addressing Stalker snipes, especially when you look at how some other powers fared.
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Originally Posted by Kioshi
I can't believe some people are defending stalker snipes when even the blast set ones without the not-so-horrid activation time are considered subpar.
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Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle
it has gone from unconscionable to downright appalling that we have no way of measuring our characters' wetness.
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Originally Posted by Brillig
It's hard to beat the entertainment value of Whackjob Wednesdays.
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You tell that to some of the other more annoying repeatable missions, like that Lady Winter mission where you got objectives surrounded by snowmen you gotta destroy. Especially on speed-run farms that don't bother killing the spawn, I helped by just flying around and sniping the objectives and saving my inspirations for the fight.|
Originally Posted by Siolfir
Uhm, to reiterate:
[snip] If I want a box to blow up safely, I can destroy it much faster and with fewer inspirations used by popping a couple of purples and running an attack chain on it from within the spawn. It's only of marginal use when there are mobs that ignore stealth - once again, you can use a lower number of purples to accomplish the same result faster. Or just use reds and purples to ensure that you only have to worry about it for a few seconds. |
I can already tell you're speaking from the limited viewpoint of a soft-capped IO'ed character and not the general purpose character. Even on the character I use the snipe with who is IO'ed, and has just soft capped def to ranged/energy/neg energy and a moderate amount to smashing/lethal, I find the ability to *not* need to run into melee as the only viable solution to every plan of attack as very useful. If you do not care being limited that's your business, but range is where the appeal of the attack is.
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Originally Posted by Kioshi
I can't believe some people are defending stalker snipes when even the blast set ones without the not-so-horrid activation time are considered subpar.
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lol really.
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Originally Posted by Kioshi
I can't believe some people are defending stalker snipes when even the blast set ones without the not-so-horrid activation time are considered subpar.
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Looks like Tanker forum has a nice "consolidated buff Tanker idea" thread going on that caught Synapse's eye. http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=279524
I guess we Stalker fans don't come up enough ideas or our ideas are not consolidated enough. lol
When is the last time a dev comes here to post? Since Castle? That's like more than a year ago?
Or it's more because we used to have "consolidated threads" (I believe that thread has more than 1000 posts!) but Castle basically said there's nothing he could do so we basically gave up posting ideas? @_@
There are some good feedback in this thread. It would be nice if one of the devs can come here to comment on it.
(I feel like I am eating sour grapes... 
)
What's left is to normalize all Assassin Strikes and improve Stalker's old sets (Claw, MA and EM)! You don't need to bring back the missing PbAoE attack. You just need to make the existing ones better! For example, make Slice a WIDER and LONGER cone.
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The critical snipe damage isn't that impressive (it'll be dumb to waste your Build Up on a 7s snipe). There's really no need to nerf casting time to 7.3s. This is wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy over-nerf. |
Originally Posted by Reiraku
It's 100% chance to crit from hide. Too bad it's a terrible power. The 7.3 second wind-up takes forever, and the damage just doesn't make up for it.
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If people are using snipe at long range with no aggro, isn't that the same as a Hidden Stalker using at long range? Why adding even more casting time? It's really stupid if you ask me.
What's left is to normalize all Assassin Strikes and improve Stalker's old sets (Claw, MA and EM)! You don't need to bring back the missing PbAoE attack. You just need to make the existing ones better! For example, make Slice a WIDER and LONGER cone.
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*shrug* Or they've already announced the changes that they're going to make in another location and have been testing them internally to see how they work - didn't Zwil comment on a recent ustream that he forgot that the changes to Stalkers aren't live yet because he'd been testing the new trials on a Stalker?|
Originally Posted by Jibikao
Looks like Tanker forum has a nice "consolidated buff Tanker idea" thread going on that caught Synapse's eye. http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=279524
I guess we Stalker fans don't come up enough ideas or our ideas are not consolidated enough. lol When is the last time a dev comes here to post? Since Castle? That's like more than a year ago? Or it's more because we used to have "consolidated threads" (I believe that thread has more than 1000 posts!) but Castle basically said there's nothing he could do so we basically gave up posting ideas? @_@ There are some good feedback in this thread. It would be nice if one of the devs can come here to comment on it. (I feel like I am eating sour grapes... ) |
I would guess that thread was getting looked at for the powers team to work after Stalkers get their changes - and a couple of the suggestions from the "So... Stalkers" thread were rolled up and incorporated into the announced buffs including making Assassin's Strike a viable and uninterruptible out-of-hide power and increased hit point cap, and I think the Assassin's Focus was more or less a modification of one of Leo's suggestions.
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Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle
it has gone from unconscionable to downright appalling that we have no way of measuring our characters' wetness.
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Originally Posted by Brillig
It's hard to beat the entertainment value of Whackjob Wednesdays.
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It would still be nice to see a dev post here and say "we got the message and we'll be looking into them." like they did for Tankers or..for most hero ATs and Brute. |
Originally Posted by Siolfir
*shrug* Or they've already announced the changes that they're going to make in another location and have been testing them internally to see how they work - didn't Zwil comment on a recent ustream that he forgot that the changes to Stalkers aren't live yet because he'd been testing the new trials on a Stalker?
I would guess that thread was getting looked at for the powers team to work after Stalkers get their changes - and a couple of the suggestions from the "So... Stalkers" thread were rolled up and incorporated into the announced buffs including making Assassin's Strike a viable and uninterruptible out-of-hide power and increased hit point cap, and I think the Assassin's Focus was more or less a modification of one of Leo's suggestions. |
We were sort of kept in the dark for a while after Castle left. I really thought there wouldn't be any stalker change 'cause the dev kept it so "quiet".
If we knew the devs were going to look at Stalker again, we could have consolidated more ideas in one thread.
(and I was so waiting for the new beta patch to show Stalker's changes so we can start testing them....)
What's left is to normalize all Assassin Strikes and improve Stalker's old sets (Claw, MA and EM)! You don't need to bring back the missing PbAoE attack. You just need to make the existing ones better! For example, make Slice a WIDER and LONGER cone.
Well considering that this thread was a direct result of Synapse talking about Stalker changes for I22, I think they got the message.
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That's not the same thing I was talking about.... but whatever, Stalker is going to get buffed. |
Originally Posted by DMystic
Well considering that this thread was a direct result of Synapse talking about Stalker changes for I22, I think they got the message.
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My feeling is if they would have let us know in advance that they were going to look at Stalker again (after Castle said no more) like they did for Tanker fans, then we might have better communication and ideas and feedback and consolidated thread for them to read.
Or maybe they already read all those ideas a year ago..... it's just that being kept in the dark is not the same.
And again, I just feel salty after knowing the dev has a nice little conversation with tanker fans that's all.
What's left is to normalize all Assassin Strikes and improve Stalker's old sets (Claw, MA and EM)! You don't need to bring back the missing PbAoE attack. You just need to make the existing ones better! For example, make Slice a WIDER and LONGER cone.
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Yeah they could have the same cast time and damage scale as the blast sets. This would make them actually useful especially from Hide, I don't find them must have powers on the blast/assault sets that's why I called them 'subpar' but I got very good mileage of Psi Lance on my ice/psi dom pulling AVs and in pre-i13 zone pvp.|
Originally Posted by Leo_G
Well I never said I was happy with the snipes, just that they can be used to your advantage. I'd love the snipes to be refitted to the same activation as normal snipes (at least) and their damage set to the same as well. Heck, I'd even advocated for various changes like Assassin's Focus affect snipes in some way as well.
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I think I had more success with psi lance than the others in the av pulling thing because of travel time tho since I could be very far away when it hit, but the cast time of the blast ones wouldn't be bad critting from hidden on a Stalker to hit the sapper, surgeon or whatever.
I may be the only person, but I don't think anything needs to be done with Stalkers. I wonder if this change is only being implemented due to people not making as many Stalkers as other ATs?
Granted being able to use AS with no interupt and have superior damage does sound wonderful, but if that happens then what about the damage for AS while in hide? Will it get a buff then because what would be the point of using hide and AS when you can just do superior damage while unhidden and still have a chance to critical due to AF?
"People love to talk, but hate to listen." Alice Duer Miller, American Author (1874-1942)
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Interesting, Now let me ask you this...why do you think stalkers are fine the way they are?
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Originally Posted by Novella
I may be the only person, but I don't think anything needs to be done with Stalkers. I wonder if this change is only being implemented due to people not making as many Stalkers as other ATs?
Granted being able to use AS with no interupt and have superior damage does sound wonderful, but if that happens then what about the damage for AS while in hide? Will it get a buff then because what would be the point of using hide and AS when you can just do superior damage while unhidden and still have a chance to critical due to AF? |
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There will be a difference between the two: in the normal attack chain AS will have a 1 sec cast and deal damage just short of Eagles Claw, where from hide it will maintain its longer (interruptable) cast time and do 2.5 times that damage. Also, an AS from hide will be the only way to apply the fear and -tohit debuffs.|
Originally Posted by Novella
Granted being able to use AS with no interupt and have superior damage does sound wonderful, but if that happens then what about the damage for AS while in hide? Will it get a buff then because what would be the point of using hide and AS when you can just do superior damage while unhidden and still have a chance to critical due to AF?
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As for stalkers "not needing a buff", every other melee AT outshines them. They are listed as a "10" in the damage department, yet my night widow who is listed as a mere "7" kills faster + is more survivable. This inc buff is long overdue IMO.
After that... just waiting on the TW port. TW/Ice will be a killer combo methinks.
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Heck, I have controllers, dominators and defenders that can out damage my stalker sadly. People forget the relatively you can only do your AS from hide once per mob.
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Originally Posted by Person34
There will be a difference between the two: in the normal attack chain AS will have a 1 sec cast and deal damage just short of Eagles Claw, where from hide it will maintain its longer (interruptable) cast time and do 2.5 times that damage. Also, an AS from hide will be the only way to apply the fear and -tohit debuffs.
As for stalkers "not needing a buff", every other melee AT outshines them. They are listed as a "10" in the damage department, yet my night widow who is listed as a mere "7" kills faster + is more survivable. This inc buff is long overdue IMO. After that... just waiting on the TW port. TW/Ice will be a killer combo methinks. |
one change i would like to see rolled back is as I access a glowie,to not surpress my hide.
and DB stalkers do have a small cone attack,not t a true aoe but it is something.
@Global: Difficult One
Playing on European Servers (Union, Defiant)
If a person turns down an idea, he turns down an opportunity to evolve himself