How To Fix Placate ...

EVERY SINGLE STALKER PRIMARY APPLIES PERSISTENT DEBUFFS/CONTROLS

• Broadsword: Defense Debuff
• Claws: Defense Debuff (Slash only!)
• Dark Melee: To hit Debuff
• Dual Blades: Defense Debuff, Combo Debuffs/Controls
• Electric Melee: Recovery Debuff
• Energy Melee: Stun
• Kinetic Melee: Stun, Damage Debuff
• Martial Arts: Stun, Defense Debuff
• Ninja Blade: Defense Debuff
• Spines: Immobilize, Slow
• Street Justice: Stun, Knockback, Defense Debuff, Combo Debuffs/Controls

Of this list, only Claws is "sparing" in its application of persistent Debuffs (in that the Defense Debuff is confined to a single attack). Literally every other primary powerset for Stalkers is practically littered with Debuff effects which persist over time, and indeed most of them are build with this express purpose in mind ... to stack up Debuffs and maintain them. Since these Debuffs are all dealt via powers which are coded as Enemies Notice: ALWAYS, this means that every single Stalker Primary has built into it the means to foil Placate's core purpose ... of wiping you off (and keeping you off, until you DO something) an Aggroed Foe's Threat List. This means that the only way to outright PREVENT a hostile Foe from attacking you is to NOT DEBUFF your $Target ... and with a great many Stalker Primary powersets that simply isn't possible.

So how to "fix" that problem?



Well ... there's this wonderful bit of existing game tech/coding called ... Grant Power.



But how would recoding all Stalker Debuff Effects into being a Grant Power help Placate (and Stalkers more generally, even without helping Placate)?

Well ... Grant Power means that the affected $Target casts the Debuff effect on themselves ... rather than it being applied to the $Target by the Stalker. This means that the *attribution* of the Debuff cannot be "held against" the Stalker, which in turn means that the Debuff effect's persistence will not cause the "invalidation" of Placate's Aggro Wipe functionality. This also means that because the $Target is casting the Debuff effect upon themselves, they do not Resist the Debuff's effects in the same way they do when those effects are being cast on them by the Stalker. This has the "net effect" of making the Stalker's Debuffs "throughput" as if they were stronger/more effective against +1/+2/+3/+4 (and beyond) Foes because there is no Level Shifting involved in applying the Debuff to the $Target (since they're casting it on themselves at THEIR Level, not YOURS). Conversely, against weaker Foes, your Debuffs are "less effective" than they might otherwise have been, simply because you're not getting the benefit of Level Shifting when Debuffing Foes who are lower Level than you are.

And this goes without saying, but ... people only really "care" about their Debuffing strength against Foes which are higher level than themselves. Not too many people are worried about stacking up extreme Debuff values against Blues, Greens and Grays (mainly because $Targets who are -1 Level or worse against you tend to not survive long enough to prompt you to "worry" about stacking up Debuffs on them).



It is my opinion that reworking all of the Stalker Debuff and Control effects in their Primary powerset, with the exception of Placate itself, into using Grant Power to deliver their effects ... and *NOT* applying the Effect does not stack from same Caster limitation to them ... would not only go a long way towards resolving the (FIVE YEARS AND COUNTING!) outstanding issue with Placate being "too fragile" to Wipe Aggro reliably ... it would also make Stalker Debuffs and Controls *better* against Hard(er) $Targets, including situations where the Stalker is out-leveled by +1 to +5 Levels. It would give an "edge" to Stalker Debuffs and Controls (globally) which would be unique, and not shared by other Archetypes, lending them a distinct advantage that isn't easily replicated by Scrappers, Brutes and Tankers (ie. The Competition).

Would this sort of change "take effort" from The Powers Team to implement? Yes, it would ... but perhaps not as much as it might at first appear. There is a very substantial amount of "overlap" between the Mag(s) and Duration(s) of a LOT of the Stalker Debuffs and Controls, such that there is a fairly good potential for Re-usable Coding of any sort of Grant Power effect by multiple powers in the Stalker Primaries. The nice thing about such a change would be that it would all be "under the hood" of the existing game mechanics, in such a way as to require no new animations or UI elements ... meaning that it's all just an exercise in rearranging database info in spreadsheets (and then testing it using QA to validate it's working "properly" at the game mechanical level). Basically, someone like Second Measure would need to "sign off" on this as a project and put it on the schedule ... and only the Powers Team and QA would need to allocate resources to it in order to implement (and proof) it.

Unfortunately, the Powers Team is already "booked solid" for the next year ... so any efforts in this direction would not be Coming Soon™ ...

It's the end. But the moment has been prepared for ...