What if I get more than 3 Assassin's Focus stacks?

For as happy I was with the recent Stalker changes (I considered reviving that thread, but meh), there is one thing that keeps gnawing on me, and that's what happens if I have three stacks of Assassin's Focus already and I earn a fourth one. As far as I'm aware, there are only two reasonable possibilities.

1. Nothing happens. The fourth stack is never applied and that effect of the power fizzles.

2. The earliest stack of Asassin's Focus is cancelled and replaced with the latest one, effectively refreshing one stack.

Anecdotal experience suggests #1 is in play, and this concerns me greatly. The reason I suspect this is I've faced numerous instances where I'd lose Assassin's Focus immediately following the use of three powers with guaranteed Assassin's Focus effects. What I inferred was happening is the last one, say One Thousand Cuts, attempts to apply an Assassin's Focus buff on me, sees that three already exist and so does nothing. Then, two seconds later the oldest of my Assassin's Focus buffs expires and I effectively lose a buff eight seconds too early.

I say this is a concern because of what it does to my psychological state when playing. For me, the "emotional" feedback of playing this game comes in two versions and two versions only - whether I instinctively "want" to do something or whether I'm instinctively "reluctant" to use it. Knowing that, for instance, One Thousand Cuts guarantees one level of Assassin's Focus makes this a "want" power, in the sense that I'll want to use it as often as possible for the guaranteed buff. However, if I see Assassin's Focus light and I fear that using the power WILL NOT refresh one of my Assassin's Focus instances, then this turns it into a "reluctant" power, in the sense that I don't want to use it until AFTER Assassin's Strike stops glowing.

Now, I get that a 100% Focus critical should be hard to achieve, lest the whole AT becomes overpowered. I get this. I can even deal with my Focus "window" representing only the overlap between all three Focus buffs, which is usually shorter than two seconds. But if I have to worry about "wasting" focus buffs on guaranteed Focus powers, that's just a little bit too much.

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Of course, that's just my concern. I don't actually know how the power works. I asked around somewhat and got differing responses, so I wanted to expose this to the forums and hope someone knows the particulars behind the mechanic. Maybe Arcana will want to punch my face and then answer my question, who knows? And if it turns out I'm worrying over nothing, then all the better. But if it turns out there IS a reason to worry, then I'll need to do something about it. If not lobby for a change, then at least alter my playstyle accordingly so I stop wasting a buff that's hard to come by to begin with.

P.S. It seems all the big Stalker discussions are here in General Discussions, so I put this question here. If you feel it should be moved, feel free to report the thread, and I promise I won't hold it against you

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Mechanically, Assassin's Focus is a temp power that you're allowed to have 3 copies of, a lot like Build Snowbeast, but with a timer on it.

Unfortunately, that means that #1 is true. If your attack tries to grant you a copy of Assassin's Focus and you already have 3, it simply does nothing, even though one of those 3 is about to expire.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but at least I won't punch you in the face.

I think it's option 2.

I've kept attacking with my stalker while I had the little orange ring around my AS and it stayed there much longer than it would if you let it expire.

So I suspect it just refreshes the stack.

I can't prove it one way or the other, because I have not noticed a way to tell how many you have stacked anywhere. But my experience tells me it's probably #2.

See, this is why I wanted to ask as broad a player base as possible - I'm getting conflicting responses I don't mean to sound ungrateful, I apologise. I just want to see how the thread develops, because both variants sound like they could work.

*edit*
More specifically, we know the game has a mechanic for cancelling a temp power before its duration is up. At the very least, the Vanguard Curse Breaker does this by removing the Curse of Weariness before its five minute duration is up. So it's conceivable that a fourth version of Assassin's Focus would simply cancel the first (as identified by being first in the stack) and then activating itself instead of it, though I assume that might cause the yellow ring to "jitter" depending on how it's done.

At the same time, based on how temp powers work, the above is not very likely to be happening. If, for instance, I still have 10 of the 25 shots of my Stolen SMG and I earn a second one, I don't get a new power with 25 shots. Instead, I keep the old one with 10 shots and the new one goes down the drain.

Then again, I'm not aware of precedent in the game where multiple stacks of a temp power are a "thing." I do know powers like Invincibility and Against All Odds have some form of hard limit on the number of buff copies the power can produce, but I don't know if they use the same tech, what that tech is and whether their being so short-lived isn't causing them to work in a different way.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Based on my level 45-50+ play on my Stalker, option 1 is what happens. I don't have to think about it, I've experienced it.

Triumph: White Succubus: 50 Ill/Emp/PF Snow Globe: 50 Ice/FF/Ice Strobe: 50 PB Shi Otomi: 50 Ninja/Ninjistu/GW Stalker My other characters

Well, crap. So, essentially what this means is if Assassin's Focus is glowing, use it or lose it, and if I lose it, I have to start building focus all over again. This instantly makes the Stalker changes a lot less appealing just because managing this is revealed to be a CONSIDERABLY bigger headache, to the point where I wish they'd just up and used the same combo mechanic that exists for Street Justice. I don't know if that would make for easier or harder maintenance of Assassin's Focus, but it beats having to maintain three separate sources of Assassin's Focus, all three of which have to be up at the same time and none of which can be renewed.

I guess this bounces us back to the Titan Weapons style of gameplay where you have a window of opportunity for special conditions to apply, but at least with Titan Weapons, that window is far easier to control. With Assassin's Focus, it's basically a crapshoot. Sometimes I'll see the window linger for 5-6-7 seconds and sometimes no matter what I do, the best I'll be able to achieve is keep getting it up for half a second then down then back up like a rollercoaster.

See, the problem is that if Assassin's Critical buffs are not renewable, then I can theoretically fall "out of sync" with the buffs so it's impossible to get decent uptime (i.e. enough for my brain to register the power is available and for my fingers to press the button, to say nothing of picking the right target for it) without actually letting all three buffs expire and starting over. And considering I open with Assassin's Strike from Hide and proceed to scrap, my chances of having Focus fall out of sync by the time Assassin's Strike is back up are significant.

Let me explain. Say I land one instance of focus. Three seconds later I land another. Three seconds later I land another still. From this point on, I have one more second of focus, which is not enough, so Focus expires. I throw another attack, catch another stack of Focus, catch another second of uptime and I miss it again. No matter how fast I keep attacking, it is impossible to reduce the gaps between stacks because I can't add another stack until the previous one expires. It is then necessary to let all stacks expire and hope I get more of them closer together. Which, with powers offering only a chance for a stack, means I might get focus out of sync again.

I get that the mechanic needs to have limiting factors, but I feel this is treading dangerously close to balance by annoyance. Because it's frankly annoyingly hard to micromanage.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Or, you can just ignore the Assassin Focus, and smack something when Assassin Strike is recharged, knowing that even one stack of AF gets you a 33% crit chance, which is higher than your other attacks get.

Personally, I just use Assassin Strike when I planned to, even if I happen to only have 2 stacks. Delaying it in hopes of a third Focus seems counterproductive, even if it would definitely work, because AS is such a good attack already with 2 stacks.

It's definitely a finicky mechanic, and I wondered when I played it if it was working the way it was actually envisioned. I originally interpretted it as "make any attack chain with at least three attacks, get a for-sure critical when you use AS," but the way it works is actually much more meta-gamey (to me). One particular risk if you have too many powers with unusual animation times it can result in several stacks collapsing at once. I do personally think that it should be possible to have more than 3 stacks and those extra stacks just do nothing special (since you can't go over 100% chance to crit).

Especially annoying: getting hit with +Recharge (from say, a Kinetics teammate) can actually reduce your damage because it messes up the exact timing needed to score critical hits, or at least makes it more difficult to time.

Yeah, I've got a lowbie Stalker that has revealed some very nice things about Assassin's Focus:

1) The attack in and of itself is one of the stronger attacks, even without any Focus whatsoever.

2) The attack can be used in combat because it has no interrupt while un-hidden. <3 <3 <3

3) The critical either applies or it doesn't; you don't need 3 stacks to get the full damage. You only need 3 for a guaranteed crit.

I think the probability issue might make precise chains nigh impossible, though. Not every attack gives focus after all.

My problem with this is the truth makes the whole system a significantly greater hassle to use than I thought it was. And while I'm aware that simply ignoring the system and using Assassin's Strike as a basic attacks is an option... Doesn't that kind of defeat the purpose of having CONTROLLED criticals for Assassin's Strike to begin with?

Again, I'm not expecting a Focus critical any time anywhere all the time, obviously. I get that strict control of these criticals is necessary. I even get that I need to pay close attention to the situation in order to capitalise on it. But the problem here is that no matter how much attention I pay, sometimes I simply won't have the opportunity to use the power and sometimes I will based entirely on circumstances outside of my control. I would honestly accept the difficulty of pulling off a Focus critical being made even higher if it meant I had a more direct control over when it happened, thus allowing me to budget he power as opposed to constantly blowing it for nothing.

To this end, allowing us to stack an infinite number of Focus buffs, but only counting three sounds like a good solution. It still requires me to strike it lucky with chance powers and it still requires me to build up at least three at a time, but it doesn't force me to waste the rest if I happen to get more. Sure, more stacks won't make the chance for a critical hit higher than 100%, but it'll make the Focus window a little less likely to drop on me just as I'm queuing up the power.

Another solution - and I like this one even more, personally - is to turn this into a Combo mechanic of sorts that builds up if we attack quickly, but where each "stack" times out faster. So, rather than having to stack three attacks within 10 seconds of each other, I have to perform an attack, say, every five seconds or lose all three stacks. Yes, it means I'm much more likely to lose all three stacks at once, but it also means I'm less likely to be locked in a no-win scenario vicious circle where it's impossible to reduce the interval between Focus buffs unless I let them all expire. I dare say the latter is worse.

I don't exactly dislike Stalkers now that I know this, not by a longshot. But my initial enthusiasm is greatly curbed. Originally, I thought these updates were a way to circumvent Stalkers' broken unwieldy mechanics like having my Placate broken by the target I just Placated before the Placate animation is even finished or how Placated people will "remember" me if they're affected by any lingering effect from me, like the now-consistent Demoralise effect. The realisation that this is just another unwieldy kludge of a system that's as likely to turn around and bite me in the *** even if I'm doing my darnest to use it effectively and that I'm best off just ignoring and playing like it doesn't exist is... Disheartening.

I get that that's a question of technical limitations. Standard Code Rant obviously applies. But I still wish for a better solution that doesn't rely this much on random luck of the draw. Either that, or a solution that relies ENTIRELY on luck of the draw, I can live with that, too. But this kind of solution which tricks me into thinking I have control over it when I really don't is just frustrating.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

The presence of the orange ring, so far as I can tell, has had no influence on whether or not I have the 99% chance to crit. Sometimes the assassination won't be up, so I'll keep attacking with other attacks, which seems to keep my stacks of Assassin's Focus at 3, then once the assassination comes up, I use it and get a critical hit.

Maybe I am misunderstanding, or I am just getting lucky?

I think you should just be happy with what you got. Do you not realize how ridiculous AS is now? The only real downside is, as mentioned, Focus doesn't 'refresh' so you can't formulate a special attack chain for it and AS itself cost a considerable amount of endurance to use.

That's about it. AS even without AF still makes DBs, Spines and Elec into something more of an outlier compared to their melee counterparts as none get a ST power that strong or fast while maintaining the majority of their AoE...then you get stuff like StJ which loses *no* AoE but trades a medium attack for a heavy one. I can only imagine how strong sets like Fire melee, Ice melee, Battle Axe and Titan Weapons will eventually be on Stalkers...

But that's rather beside the point. I don't believe AF is there to game for max effect...because if you did you'll end up less effective anyway(how often do you grit your teeth when you build up 3 stacks of focus then use AS...only for it to miss?). You're basically suppose to use AS whenever and AF is just a bonus. You'll get more opportunities and therefore more crits and better DPS that way.

Now, you *can* game AF if you want, but again, you'd have to settle for being less effective in the long run. Not trying to be a hardcase or saying I told you so, just that from playing with it, that's how I feel it is.

I wish I could stand behind Sam and see how he plays his stalker because I can't understand the description of his problem. I also can't understand how anyone can consider this change anything but an enormous benefit to a previously near-unplayable AT.

The circle only glows when it has 3 charges. Even if it just has 2 or even 1 charge it's still worth using it.