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

I'm not sure that it's hard to use, but certainly feels accidental. I can't figure out why it would be balanced that way--it's actually people who "game" the system and calculate exact attack chains who potentially come out way ahead. While that's sort of true of most attacks in general, in this particular case I'm not sure what balance point having attack powers whose combined animation time is evenly divisible by the Recharge time of Assassin Strike is supposed to be striking.

The reason Scrapper EC is the way it is is so it isn't easy to 'game' it. You get 1 extra attack with increased crit and no more...possibly none if you don't have an enemy set up to use with it. I could see them changing it so it's easier to use...like a 1-shot buff like placate that wears off with the next hit....but not sure how that may work...and again that may be too game-able when all they wanted to do was add a little 'bonus' to the set, not give it some overabundant advantage over other sets.

They could make a lot of things easier to use, including AF but then it also depends just how game-able they actually wanted the buff to be in the first place. The devs could have made AF like StJ combos, or made it so they don't expire as fast, or using AS at all even a miss erased all instances of AF but they didn't. Seems to me they wanted a certain level of usability to the mechanic itself.

Also, something I'm not sure of: When I was playing my Spines Stalker, since several of the animations are so long (and I was testing the changes out for the first time then) I would click the attack then look up at my buff bar to see if the attack got focus. Sure enough, I noticed that Impale and Spine Burst would grant Focus every time but only after a delay. Basically, it seemed not to count when the stack is created until the end of the animation. This should be considered when gaming AF as, if you know one of the stacks will expire, having it do so in the middle of a long animation attack can make such powers better for building focus in that, it will stagger expiration of focus stacks rather than several seeming to disappear at once.

Does anyone else experience when you get focus during an attack being held off to the end of the animations? I don't think I noticed it on Shadow Maul but I could be misremembering.

This is probably the best solution. It's simple to implement, it comes pretty close to what refreshing the oldest stack would be like, and the standard code rant doesn't apply to it.

So probably the most constructive thing to do is to campaign for it to stack up to 4.

The only reason for them not to do that is if it's indented to be finnicky and difficult to get a guaranteed crit from a full stack.

A single 33% chance to the next attack, any attack, isn't really all that great an advantage to worry about being gamable, especially in a set with one fairly minor AoE. Again, I get that it needs to be gated, but there's no harm in giving it a more manageable window of opportunity. Suppose the target you're attacking with Eagle's Claw dies when you hit it. You have fractions of a second to pick a new one and attack, and if the closest one happens to be just 8 feet away, you lose the buff. Again, it's still possible to use to its fullest potential, it's just very cumbersome.

How this could be done better is actually fairly simple and has much precedent in the game - combos. Street Justice combos, specifically. A Street Justice combo builder attack sets a state while a Street Justice combo finisher attack has an extra effect based on that state, then clears the state at the end of its execution. Giving the Eagle's Claw critical more headroom should be as simple as having Eagle's Claw set a state for the character that lasts, say, five seconds, and have every other attack in the set have its critical damage arranged around that state. If the state is not on, the regular critical is set to 5%. If that state is on, then the regular critical is set to 0% and a special critical replaces it for a value of old+33%. It's because the system is trying to ADD 33% chance procedurally that the problem occurs, and it really doesn't need to.

Or, hell, do it like Assassin's Strike does it and just have one temp power show up that adds a percentage value, with every Martial Arts attack cancelling the buff. It's really less a question of power and more a question of ease of use.

The more controllable and predictable you make the mechanic, the easier it is to balance because it's simply easier to predict how much of an impact a mechanic will have if you can expect how much use people will get out of it. Instead, Focus Criticals are hidden behind at least three layers of uncontrollable factors and thus ends up being annoying as often as it is useful. Again, it's the common Stalker problem all over again - they can do great things, but their basic programming conspires to make it a pain in the *** to pull off. Note I don't say "difficult." It's not that difficult to score a Focus critical. What it is is a "pain" because it's so easy to be put in a position where nothing you do matters unless you specifically game the system.

In general, I want to see AT mechanics which benefit players for more straight-forward play as opposed to for gaming the system. I get that some people will always game the system no matter how convenient it is, but I still want the system to reward players sufficiently for using it how it's designed to be used in spirit, as opposed to having to do research and capitalise on the numerous technicalities behind the scenes. If I'm given a mechanic which tells me that each attack I do has a chance to give me a stack of Assassin's Focus and three stacks guarantee a critical, that's what I want to use it based on - try to attack as continuously as possible and hope that I'll get a Focus highlight after a while. I don't want to have to be aware of the man behind the curtain to get any decent use out of a system, or otherwise play like it doesn't exist.

Again, it's not a BAD system, it's just a hugely INCONVENIENT one. And really, I see nothing wrong with asking for greater convenience in gaming. A game can be challenging and skill-based without being inconvenient.

That hasn't been my experience, I'm afraid. Maybe this is powerset-dependent, but for my Dual Blades, I usually gain my Focus highlight right as attacks trigger before they even do their damage. This is especially evident on One Thousand Windmills, where Assassin's Strike will highlight as soon as my character squats to start windmilling. The trouble is that I've had MORE than one instance of Assassin's Strike highlighting at the start of this power, only to go out again before the animation is even over.

This is why I dislike having to maintain three separate stacks at the same time - you're almost always losing the first stack as soon as you gain the third. And while it may seem natural to just use the power with two stacks and chance a critical, the problem is I can only tell when the power has three stacks easily because it lights up. If it hasn't lit up, then I don't know if it has two stacks, one stack or no stacks. I can find out if I go looking for the Assassin's Focus icon, but my powers tray is busy and the window of opportunity is often measured in fractions of a second, so the time I spend looking for those two stacks is time in which those two stacks may disappear. Combine this with the fact that Assassin's Strike will light up for three Focus buffs with the same ring as it will light up after I use Build Up and it becomes really hard to tell when I can use it even IF I can get and maintain three stacks.

Again, I just find the system inconvenient. If it has to be chance-based, then let it be chance-based, but at least base it on just one layer of chance. Right now, I have to chance getting a stack at all, I have to chance that Assassin's Strike even hits, I have to chance if I get a Focus critical if I'm using fewer than three stacks, and I have to chance one of the stacks not going away because the power I thought would give me a stack fizzled when I thought it would help, or because I thought I had two stacks but I didn't have any at all.

As far as I'm concerned, Stalkers really need controllable criticals just because they fit their general AT design. Even if these are semi-controllable, luck-based criticals, I still want them to be semi-controllable and semi-predictable. Focus criticals, however, only give the illusion of predictability because they make me THINK I can build Focus up to a predictable conclusion, but the system is laiden with so many undocumented pitfalls that undermine the control I thought I had that it's still a complete stab in the dark that just feels like I have any input.

As I said before, my reactions to this game tend to fall into "want" and "reluctant," and the more experience I get with Focus criticals, the more reluctant I am to trust the system just because my experience is starting to override my logic and tell me that I don't have any sort of control over the situation. I now expect to lose Focus right before I trigger Assassin's Strike, or to lose focus in the middle of the attack which gives it to me, or to lose focus just as Assassin's Strike has recharged. I'm becoming more and more reluctant to use Assassin's Strike just because I can't bring myself to trust Focus even in the slightest.

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.

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.

Soloing on my new Stalker, I found that the 15-second base recharge of Assassin Strike is maddening. The two or three enemies in addition to the one I kill with my initial Assassin Strike die before it's recharged, and the orange circle disappears before it comes back.

I'm not really at a spot where I can take on larger spawns (only level 18), so the benefits of Assassin's Focus are few and far between. Once I get some Single-Origin recharges in that attack, though, it'll be a different story.

Can you explain to me again how it's inconvenient? I just don't understand what the problem is.

Considering I've done noting in this thread BUT explain how it's inconvenient, I really don't know how to interpret this question. If you could maybe ask a more specific question in regards to some of the things I've said, maybe I'd be able to answer.

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It occurs to me that this problem with wasting Focus buffs if I have "too many" has an unintended side effect that does a lot to put egg on my face. When I try to use Assassin's Strike as intended - that is to say, from Hide against unaware enemies - then getting Focus on Assassin's Strike as it comes up is proving difficult. The problem is that while it's fairly easy to get Focus in the next four or five attacks after I expend Assassin's Strike, the whole thing starts falling out of sync by the time Assassin's Strike has recharged, meaning that either I have to stop attacking when I see the power back up and THEN start building anew, or otherwise just stab and not worry about focus.

Where this puts egg on my face is Leo has a point - it's considerably easier to use Assassin's Focus if I DON'T start the fight with Assassin's Strike from hide, but rather something else. I'm fighting Rikti Drones right now, meaning I can't assassinate them from Hide or they'd interrupt me, and what is becoming abundantly clear is that if I break Hide and immediately shoot for Focus, it's a lot easier to achieve. This actually transcends simple convenience and ventures into the land of a genuine systemic problem, because it specifically makes using Assassin's Strike from Hide less appealing, because that means Focus will then be hard to achieve.

The problem is that it's fairly easy to reach Focus status if I'm starting "clean," i.e. I have no Focus buffs on me to get in the way. But if I've fought for a while and fallen out of sync with my Focus buffs, then it's practically impossible to go back into sync and earn enough for a Focus critical unless I "purge" myself, i.e. let all Focus buffs expire and start over. The way Focus buffs are programmed, it actually makes having a Focus buff become a liability more so than a benefit if it lasts too long without adding more to it.

If, for instance, I have just one Focus buff and I lose, say, five seconds of it, then it becomes a liability because I can't stack two other buffs on top of it. Chances are that early stack will expire before I can make use of all three stacks, but I can't replace it until it expires, meaning I have to delay my newer Focus stacks, which in turn makes them into a liability. The longer I fight without stopping and letting enemies punch me without returning fire, the more out-of-sync my Focus status becomes and the harder it is to pull off a Focus critical. That, if I must put my finger on it, is what makes it inconvenient - that I can only really rely on it if I'm starting from scratch.

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.

You may want to be a little more careful before you present your opinion as an absolute fact. It's not "so smooth and effortless." It is to you because you don't care about getting three stacks and earning a guaranteed critical. Considering the they made Assassin's Strike light up when you get three stacks, that should tell you that some of us do. You don't have to want the same as other people, of course not, but please don't try to handwave others' concerns away with passive-aggressive feigning of ignorance.

Why am I reacting this way? Because you come off as wondering how anyone could possibly have any complaint about this clearly perfect system and that if I have any complaints, then of course that's because I obviously want too much and I shouldn't be complaining. I don't really mind when people disagree with me, but I do appreciate it when they tell me directly instead of looking for looking for superficially polite ways to imply it.

And I do notice how you ask me for an explanation, yet proceed to ignore every bit of the explanation I've given and discount my entire position by simply restating how wrong I am. I hope you'll forgive me for doubting you ever actually wanted an answer to your question, so much as you needed to bait me into saying something you can turn around and ridicule.

If you actually want to know what this "so called inconvenience" is, I suggest you dispense with your so called politeness and talk to me directly. Trust me, I have a thick enough skin so long as everyone's on the level. And I'll even explain it again if you're actually open to hearing my arguments this time around.

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.

I didn't. I only talked about how it feels for me.


I'm not against the ideas to make focus stack or allow a larger stack of focus so that it lasts longer.


I don't think it's a perfect system.


I re-read the thread again and I still don't understand the problem. I don't know if you have a problem with Assassin Strike itself, or with the power you are about to use when AF is fully charged, or what. It might be because I'm stupid and can't figure it out - other people seem to know what you mean. I just don't get it.


I have no reason or desire to ridicule you.


I thought I was talking to you directly all this time. My only reason for asking was so that I could understand the problem, in order to maybe provide a solution. Since I don't see how there can be an inconvenience about the way it works and I don't understand your description of the problem I just thought maybe you could explain it again in other words and maybe I would get it this time.

When I play my stalkers I tend to start a fight with a hidden AS, then when AS recharges I will usually have acquired enough focus to make an instant critical AS again, and again, until there isn't anything left to fight. If I haven't got 3 focus charges when AS is recharged I usually fight some more to get the 3 charges but if I see that the ring just turned off and I have a good opportunity I take the shot anyway: 66% crit chance is good enough for me.

My biggest problem with this change was that AS is really expensive endurance-wise, so I would burn through my end bar quite fast from doing so many AS attacks. I can't really complain about that though since I'm also killing so much faster.

The problem is with how Assassin's Focus buffs behave once you have three stacks available. More specifically, the problem is that if you have three stacks, any further stacks that would have otherwise triggered are discarded. This creates a situation where I'm wasting buffs that never get applied AND wasting buffs that have already been applied. In any situation where I achieve Assassin's Focus before I have Assassin's Strike available - which is essentially every fight past the power's first activation - then I'm put in a position where it's next to impossible to achieve three stacks unless I let all three expire and start over.

An Assassin's Focus buff cannot be refreshed. If I happen to earn three Focus buffs spaced a few seconds from each other, then the actual window of opportunity for a three-stack Assassin's Strike is slim to non - just a few seconds. Regardless of how fast I earn Assassin's Focus buffs thereafter, I can NEVER close those spaces because I can never "replace" a Focus buff. I have to let it expire, meaning I can only ever "renew" with the same gap as the previous one, or a larger one, meaning that my window of opportunity for a Focus critical can only get smaller or, best case scenario, remain the same.

That is the problem. A way to ensure an Assassin's Focus exists and it's actually very predictable and very easy. The problem is that it requires I first shed all three stacks of Assassin's Focus, which wastes time and slows combat down. And this problem is not a ballancing concern, it's an artefact of how the system is put together.

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I'll give you an example. Look at Mastermind -> Traps -> Detonator. If you check it out in-game, the power appears to do nothing. If you check it out on City of Data, you'll have some vague idea about what it does. But what you will NOT know is that slotting damage and accuracy in the power does nothing. The game tells you that the power accepts these enhancements, and it WILL accept them, but they will do nothing. Why? Well, you need to know the behind-the-scenes mechanics to understand it.

Detonator grants a power to one of your henchmen, and if your henchmen is unthinking, that power is a suicide plus a large explosion. The power then uses that henchman's damage and accuracy slotting and buffs, because it belongs to the henchman. But if your henchman is thinking, it's given a pseudopet power, instead. In that case, the pseudopet uses neither your power slotting nor the henchman's slotting and instead uses its own pseudopet modifiers.

In both cases, the game lets you waste three slots for damage and one or two for accuracy in Detonator and never tells you you're wasting those. Not only that, but to compensate, thinking henchmen get a CONSIDERABLY more powerful version of Detonator. And there's no way for you to know this unless someone actually tells you. And even then you may realise the power isn't nearly as awesome as when you saw your friends' Mastermind use it because he was using Mercenaries and you're using Robotics.

That's the kind of "inconvenience" I'm talking about. The system works, it just works in a very slapped-together fashion.

When you use terms like "this so called inconvenience" (which is dismissive in the extreme), handwave people's entire points away as insignificant and latch onto one aspect of a post (that's in the thread title: "What if I get more than 3 Assassin's Focus stacks?"), then you come off as terribly disingenuous and more than a little sarcastic whether you meant it or not. That's Golden Girl level of rhetoric that I'd advise you to avoid in the future if you really don't mean it.

This hasn't been my experience. The very reason I made this thread to begin with is I would open a fight with Assassin's Strike, then gain focus while Assassin's Strike is recharging, and then start losing Focus intermittently just as the power becomes available again. The longer Assassin's Strike takes to recharge, the less I am able to maintain three stacks of Focus because the Focus highlight keeps going on for a millisecond then back off for a second and so on. The reason for this is what I outlined before - because Focus buffs cannot be overridden, the gap between the buffs can only grow larger, thus making three stacks of focus much harder to achieve.

And my experience with two stacks of focus is also not like your own at all. You interpret that having your Focus highlight go out means you lost a single stack of Focus. After watching my actual Focus buffs in my buff bar, I noticed that a lot of the time, I will lose two stacks of Focus almost at the same time because I got two next to each other, but then delayed before I got a third, perhaps after using a long attack. Since there's no way for me to tell whether my Assassin's Strike is NOT glowing because I have 0, 1 or 2 stacks, it's not a good idea for me to chance it. And in trying to chance it, I've failed to score a critical more often than I've succeeded. Even Street Justice combos at least gave me a large, easy to track sign telling me my combo level, but this does not.

This is compounded by the fact that I very often want to swap targets before I toss an Assassin's Strike just so I don't waste it on one minion with 10% health, but the Focus window is so small when Focus buffs fall out of synch it's essentially a case of Eagle's Claw - hit whatever or waste the buff.

Again, it's still an improvement, but it's an improvement through a very serious kludge that I keep thinking can be done in a much better way.

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.

Lol I'm just hitting these out of the park then, huh?

But really, I think the deciding factor of what to start with is the opportunity costs. You can start off with AS with a slower activation for a hurt/dead foe or start off with a big hit for a less-hurt foe and 1 stack of focus. It really depends on how you view this new attack and how valuable you consider AF to be.

Personally, that one can get 100% chance of crit with AS in and of itself is way too strong (IMO) and always though it should still be a chance even with max focus (and that max focus should take more hits to accomplish). So even having AS with 2 stacks of focus for a 66% chance to crit is phenomenal to me. Not saying I don't try to get 3 stacks, but I feel the way the system works, if I end up murdering some guys with my other attacks and end up with 2 stacks of AF, I'll just pop a quick low tier attack then queue up AS...sometimes it will get me to 3 stacks sometimes it won't, sometimes I'll crit anyway with 2 stacks and sometimes I won't, sometimes I'll just plain miss AS...nothing is guaranteed so trying to make it guaranteed is working against nature.

I'll just say I don't find it necessary to make AF easier to maintain. That's my opinion.

I will, however, suggest they grant the stack at the end of long animations. I know it can be done since Spine Burst does it. If it's not already the case for similar cast time, I think it should.