Koopak

The DPA of Slow AS is, with few exceptions, worse than Fast AS already, adding on the cast time of Placate does it no favors. Sure the burst damage 'feels' good, but its not actually good performance wise. You ultimately are trading a lot of dps for Demoralize, which is fine in personal gameplay choices.

This as well, i was omitting the proc since its been repeatedly argued that ATs should not be balanced around their AT procs, but id note that Placate slipped my mind because until its relatively recent buff it was worse than Confront in its usefulness. These tools however provide a strong argument that slow AS IS meant to be used in normal combat, which again leads us back to the DPA issue. When Placate + Slow AS, or hide proc + Slow AS is objectively worse than using any other power during hide, that is a problem. Particularly since the proc could trigger if its in any power other than AS unexpectedly and force you into slow AS. Most Stalker builds explicitly try to bypass this by putting the proc in AS.

This is not always the case, and is not a situation I would consider a problem. Usually I experience teams clear a pack, and in the time it take them to close, stalker included, hide will be up. Similarly Snipe will be half way through casting or more by the time the stalker reaches the target. Support ATs having powers that only effect teammates is in line with the AT's role. If you want to argue Stalker's role as an AT is solo play, particularly if you wish to claim it is slow solo play, then hell I have no debate for you beyond thinking that's kind of a bad design for an MMO. I get your point of trying to draw equivalence here but I don't believe there is an equivalence to be had. Solo play may be a big advantage CoX has and a guiding principle for much of its content, but I think you are going to have to work hard to prove that TFs, Trials, and Giant Monster spawns don't emphasize that team play is the core focuses of a Massivly Multiplayer Online game. I say this as an avid soloer. That is a potential fair argument, but its essentially an appeal to original intent. I disagree with the often held assumption that original is automatically good. More importantly however I feel that Fast AS ultimately invalidates Slow AS, and that's the problem. I feel like we should all be able to at least agree on the idea that Slow AS should be the best opener in most cases for Stalker. If we do not agree on that then we will have to agree to disagree because there is simply not much of an argument to be had anymore. I cannot speak for the OP obviously though I get the impression that, like a lot of people who pop into the suggestion forums they simply had an idea they wanted to suggest and thought would be an improvement and didn't come prepared to back it up like peer review of a research paper. This forum is very hostile at times, immediately attacking ideas or even dismissing them outright. As for myself I am in no way cherry picking or arguing in bad faith. Everything I have said has been with the intent of exploring a possible improvement to Stalker play experience, unrelated to actual mechanical performance. If it needs to be nerfed in some way to make playing the AT smoother, I would be fine with that. Every example and argument I have brought forward has been based on my own experience, knowledge, and research. Granted I cant make many definitive statements without spending a lot of time doing real honest to god experimental research, and thus some of my arguments should be taken with a grain of salt. However everything I have said has been based on an authentic attempt to convey and defend my opinion on the matter. If I have given you the impression of bad faith argument, I apologies, and am open to any criticisms you may have for how I can make these same arguments in a more positive and easily understood manner.

Yes, and there's a debate to be had as to weather or not that is a balance concern. However my argument has never been about giving Stalkers power, but instead about making the experience of playing one a bit smoother and removing what is largely a false choice. One could EASILY argue that Fast AS should be nerfed and Slow AS left alone, and id be open to that idea provided it succeeded in making the use of Slow AS as an opener a good decision in more gameplay situations.

Snipe has the benefit of range, it is very possible to target an enemy, and start a snipe, and finish it in the time it takes your team to close the distance. Thus its functional DPA is much higher than its raw numbers. AS does not have this benefit, as I outlined, because the Stalker must get into melee range, this means that, assuming the team is all moving at roughly the same speed, they will begin their up to 3.67 second cast time at the same time their teammates land their first hit. Thus the DPA is relevant, because the Stalker would be better served simply attacking with another power to start. AS may have perhaps been envisioned as a gank tool originally, but id argue that's kind of crap experientially, and it seems the devs agreed, choosing to make it a more active part of the Stalker playstyle. You can call this a change made because of player complaints if you want, but I'd like to give the Live dev team a little more credit than simply saying they changed it because people complained. Lastly I am not calling Solo niche, please do not misunderstand, or misrepresent my words. I am saying that Solo play, on a stalker, without caring about clear time, and without being annoyed by spending 3.67 seconds starting many if not every pack of enemies, is probably fairly uncommon. Especially when you consider that yes, the game is designed to be equally playable solo and on teams, so perhaps Slow AS, a part of a core powerset should have enough value in teams to be worth considering using. Not to be rude, but you are either very much misunderstanding or are intentionally ignoring my argument by placing it in a box you've predefined. At no point have I argued you shouldn't use Fast AS when Fast AS is superior to Slow AS. What I am saying is Slow AS is almost NEVER optimal. Yes, that is a problem, because at that point all Slow AS is, is an annoyance you have to play around. You seem to be laboring under the assumption that teams that move quick enough, quick enough defined as "the same speed as their melee dps AT" to make Slow AS as an opener an inefficient option, is an uncommon situation. I do not know how you can have this view, I would assume your experience with the average team must be very different to mine if that is the case. I say you must have this assumption because you repeatedly focus on the idea that situations in which Slow AS is a good option are common, at least common enough to make any discussion of improvements to its cast time either a negative, or at least without positive for the game as a whole. This is an assumption I do not share, if I did, I would not be having this debate with you right now. So allow me to be clear. The situations in which using Slow AS, as it stands today, is a good gameplay decision with positive incentives that are not outweighed by simply using a standard attack followed by Fast AS, are so uncommon as to be a problem. A problem because they relegate Slow AS to such a narrow range of use that if given the choice many, if not most players would disable Slow AS entirely. Before you counter with "so just don't use it" I would like to add that this argument, while usually quite valid, falls on its face when discussing AS due to the fact that its mere existence and method of function means that while one can choose not to use it, they cannot choose not to interact with it. It is a mechanic that all Stalkers must always interact with, even if that interaction is choosing to use a different opener from stealth. A player cannot simply walk up to a pack and play normally opening with their strongest hit, they must remain conscious of this mechanic and choose to bypass it. That is a very unpleasant QoL experience to force on people because you personally like it, or because of fears regarding insurance policies on cottages.

If a power is only useful in rare niche circumstances, or arguably, solo. And that power is a core power that holds the lion's share of the AT's mechanics, yeah I'm going to argue that's a problem. Now is it a big problem? No, Stalkers are in a good spot, no one is, or I hope they aren't, arguing Stalkers are in a bad spot. However that doesn't change that the experience of using slow AS is garbage and its hard to make a real case for using it ever beyond: "I'm playing solo and don't care about my clear speed in anyway or the time spent waiting for an attack to go off for my optimal start" or "I just like it." Which the latter one there? That's why I still use Slow AS on my stalker, because I like watching a boss drop dead in one smack, even if I could have killed him before he could attack back, by just chaining my strongest non-AS ST attack and then fast AS at no real cost. The incentives aren't there to make Slow AS worth using in the majority of the game, and AS is a core power central to an AT, that is just bad. To be clear I'm not arguing Slow AS needs a gap closer, though that would make it work more like snipe, or that it needs a damage buff. What I think would work best is first, standardizing all Slow ASs to the faster versions some Powersets have, and then MAYBE (note the caps) a small buff to Demoralize's duration, say from 8 to 10 or 12 seconds. That would make using AS as an opener in a team situation more palatable due to being consistent, and in many cases, up to a second faster, while sweetening the deal just a little with the buff to Demoralize. That would make it such that Slow AS is roughly equivalent to a little worse than Fast AS in DPA, but more importantly make the animation time as much as a second faster on some sets while giving more incentive to use it. In fact at that point, despite damage being effectively the same, and in no meaningful way impacting dps or even survival much, I would feel tempted not only to open with it if I get to the pack before my team, but maybe even sneak it in with placate for team survival, using fear as a small mitigation tool. As it is however, the power is simply to unwieldy to be used that way As it is, many, if not most, Slow ASs are just impractical to use in anything but solo.

I find Regen very fun but i mean that should be obvious since iv spent so much time optimizing it. I really agree with this buff take though and its refreshing to see someone else who seems to understand where Regen's weaknesses are rather than the repeated attempts to just slap more stats on it. When playing regeneration you have two core weaknesses you must maintain awareness of at all times, debuffs is the biggest one and the hardest to compensate for, its why i tell every regen player Ageless Radial is basically mandatory. The other one is effective health, due to low resist and defense numbers being just, part of Regen life when you don't have support, the set suffers from the lowest effective health of any armor, resulting in it taking an alpha and crumbling, or getting put down by a lucky hit or two from a high end AV. Numerically, if you could survive those damage spikes, regen actually is above average durability, with the potential to be the best when supported. Compensating for alpha is relatively easy, pop MoG, or Shadow Meld if you have it, before pulling, easy peasy. Compensating for AVs is a lot harder requiring understanding of their attacks, which ones are a threat, and mentally counting out their recharge so you can make sure you are full health and pop a survival before the blow lands. I enjoy these aspects as they make the set proactive vs reactive, it feels like im taking action to counter my opponent rather than letting the armor just do it for me because numbers. Compensating for Debuffs however? A pipe dream. Defense capping is difficult to impossible and without DDR, the second -defense is in the mix that cap will crumble and fast. As long as the debuffs aren't -def though you can use MoG and Shadow Meld to compensate. -End/-Recovery can be offset some with Quick Recovery which is otherwise skippable. -to-hit can be offset with Tactics, Accuracy slotting, and Focused Accuracy if you are paranoid. -Regen is hopeless since it is either so small it will only barely hurt you or so big it near shuts down Instant Healing, seriously the 25.95% -regen resistance in Fast Healing is pathetic vs the -1000% regen Malta titans spit out. Reconstruction spam and Unrelenting are your only counters since they are heals rather than regeneration -Recharge can be slotted for but its expensive and takes away from other slotting options All of the above is why Ageless is so damnd core to any regen build in my opinion.

Hard disagree on this claim. DPA matters in both due to the length of the animation time. I really want to like slow AS because i love demoralize but as a whole the length of cast, especially on the slower powersets, means that your hit wont come out until your team has gotten 1-2 attacks out usually. Snipe can be started early enough that most of it is spent while the rest of the party is closing and has the utility of extreme range for pulling, AS cant unless you are somehow reliably faster than your team. This means the engagement has started, the 'fight time' is ticking, and you've spent upwards of 2 seconds twiddling your thumbs. The only time this claim holds true in my opinion is when solo, and even then one can argue its just adding unnecessary down time. Back on Confront, I do prefer a debuff, a good one imo is -to-hit as that reinforces the idea of dueling and of saving teammates. Additionally the -to-hit would make it a decent value power for AV fighting which makes it juuuust useful enough for me to consider on some builds. I also think it needs duration of the taunt buffed to match Brute and Tanker taunts, since Scrapper will still struggle to pull off of them unintentionally due to AT scales on threat.

I'll just note, I'm not sold on a universal closing skill on Scrappers but it would fit as a dedicated melee AT. The issue I see is its a lot of powers that, to feel on brand would likely need new animation work which is a bottleneck. Regardless of the above, and the fact that both Scrappers and Stalkers are, generally speaking, in good places at the moment, ill admit the AS balance between slow and fast, and Confront's near uselessness are pretty bad. At least in the case of Confront replacing it with a closer would be an improvement, but so would most other things.

Thanks for clarification guys, iv passed this along to the Mids Reborn discord and edited my posts to avoid misinformation.

The name of the enhancement has always been like that, its dumb. And Mids auto update cannot handle larger back end changes currently, ALWAYS check mids discord for announced updated and then hit up their website if needed. I know they are wanting to move everything to the auto update but as a software dev, trust me, its a bitch with old code like Mids

That is incorrect, it doesn't have it in the 'set' bonuses, but it does have it on the standalone bonus enhancement in schedule F and is not unique in any way, you can stack 5 of this bad boy across 5 resist powers. EDIT: Mids at time of writing was incorrect.

You may wanna triple check that, i cant look in game at this moment but multiple Impervious Skin's do stack in Mids, note Regen in the totals page and the enhancements. EDIT: Mids at time of writing was incorrect.

Just gonna add some math to the discussion here. An Invulnerability Tanker with only dullpain and no other powers or enhancements gets 10.9hp/s from 100% regen, lets run this through an Effective Regeneration calculation assuming capped resist and defense, reasonable goals for this set. 10.9 / ( 1 - 0.9 ) = 109 109 / ( 1 - ( 0.5 + 0.45)) = 2,185 EHP/s Since a Tanker starts out the gate with 140% regen, an additional 100% regen is a ~70% increase in Effective Regeneration and thus overall durability over base. Generally I see most Invulns land around 300% regenerations, Health is often unslotted so we can roughly assume 160 of that is from sets. Lets try a modest 10% bump and compare. Control: 300% Regen 6,555 EHP/s 10% Buff: 316% Regen 6,904 EHP/s So that works out as a 5% durability buff to Invuln, that trend will be maintained, meaning doubling the set bonuses would be a 50% increase to the durability of an Invuln Tanker. I frankly do agree the regen set bonuses feel lack luster, but mathematically any changes to them needs to be very delicate.

No, because Barrier will not prevent you from eating -100%+ def which will blow through barrier, it also has less duration on its 'effective' range in which those bonuses will help against mass -def. You can and will get defense cascaded through the barrier. Ageless in contrast remains effective at keeping your defense loses manageable for significantly longer while alos being an effective counter to the other components. I actually recommend against hard pursuing slow resist in your build as its usually not worth the efficiency loss, unless your exempting and against heavy slow using enemies a lot, you just wont need it if you have Ageless. Granted, yes, getting 95% slow resist in your build means you don't need ageless for -recharge, but you still face -end, -regen, -to-hit and above all -def. You can try to use Barrier to plug the defense hole and it'll work in some situations but not all, as Cimerora Traitors and Silver Mantis as an AV will both show you.

Boggle's confuse, even with Contagious Confusion is just not worth it imo. Boggles core function is to apply 'Boggled' a status that is applied regardless of if the target is confused. Hitting a Boggled enemy has twice the probability of triggering Insight. At its core Boggle is meant to give you more control over a mechanic often called 'to random to bother with'. Fact of the matter is though it just doesn't do it well enough to be worth the investment. If you are just infatuated with a confuse tool, knock yourself out, but I'd say its a very difficult argument to make that its worth a power pick over just about anything else. -regen is honestly over focused on as a debuff for regen users. It isn't common, it comes in exactly two flavors, 90% of -regen is to weak to matter, and the other 10% blows through anything but 70%+ debuff resist. Additionally Reconstruction, Dull Pain, and Unrelenting bypass it. The real killers are -defense (negative defense exists and many fights can and will hit -100%+ defense) -endurance which quick recovery can only help so much against, and -recharge. Of these -defense is the real killer because the difficulty of getting to resist caps on Regen ensures that enough -def results in you getting 2-3 shot from big hits. With 3 times the 'resisted health' regen has access to you could simply shrug this off, but as it is, damage spikes are a death sentence and -def makes them much more likely to occur.

Never bother with boggle on anything other than maybe stalker. Optimally used with perfect, and I mean perfect rotation and with a damage proc it is another 4-5% dps increase. If you are even one rotation element off though it becomes a 5-10% dps loss. Revive will muel preventative medicine well and is often unfairly derided as only useful in a fail state. Admittedly many challenge TFs have a no death requirement but modern design is moving away from that. Outside that situation its better to think of revive as a 15 second invincibility buff. I cannot caution you enough against skipping ageless radial, it isn't for the end, you'd go core then, it's for the debuff resist. I run barrier radial in teams for the rezes and fight turning power, but solo or when tanking ageless is mandatory. Regen is very powerful when played well but it has no solution to nearly any debuff in the game and harder content makes extensive use of debuffs.

Last couple notes id make is you can afford to drop Quick Recovery all together, with this current setup with it you literally wont have your blue bar move, which while people often build for that, its just wasted potential. Ideally your end nearly runs out just as you have a tool to refit it come off cooldown or you end the fight. Other thing is, i highly recommend getting 1-2 recharge IOs in to Concentration, itll be more valuable than any procs you take the slots from.

Stacking more recharge on Regen is always good, but not to the point of neglecting other stats. You can never fully close the vulnerability window and you will get closer to achieving that with pool powers than recharge past perma dull pain

So the problem with treating Regen as a one trick pony set like super reflexes is that you quickly hit the issue of being unkillable or squishy. This is because the other armors are not playing the same game. All resist and even defense armors are build on the idea of reducing incoming damage enough to make your effective health high enough to survive periods of taking more damage than their effective regeneration. To put it simply they emphasise dying slowly enough for your to remove the threat. The health cap prevents regeneration from playing this same game to such a degree that attacks intended to significantly threaten other armors risks one shotting Regen. I don't know if it is possible for a power to bypass the HP cap, but if it did you run into issues with regen rates scaling with Max hp. Absorb could solve this but runs into the issue sentinels have where the absorb doesn't scale throwing off the whole synergy. The ideal solution would be an absorb barrier that scales its generation rate with regeneration while keeping the existing dull pain hp cap. This is where the idea of an over heal power that builds absorb with a cap controlled by the power and its enhancement value but that fills at a rate determined by your regeneration rate. This gives you the bigger effective health values needed to fit the systems made for other armors and thus gives you the room to then pursue a low resist low defense design. That said I don't know if this is even possible code wise. An alternative would be the ability to sacrifice health to make an absorb barrier, say 33% of your health for a 50% of your health absorb. This would allow you to heal that damage while the absorb takes the hits and raise your effective Max hp. WoW druids have done something similar before and it adds alot of potential skill expression while being within existing code limits.

Optimizing recharge is never silly on Regan. Every second saved is closing your vulnerability windows. The key to excellence on Regen is maximizing uptime on your survival tools. UP is, if I recall correctly from my calculator, the highest value pool power in terms of effective regeneration. Ill take a look at the newest build in the morning and see if I have any other suggestions

PBS not GSB If you don't wanna use FotG that's your call but i can assure you that at least in terms of numeric performance, even on smaller fights, its worth it. Its a 20% multiplicative damage boost to any and all damage done after the proc, so a damage proc needs to outperform that, which it wont most of the time. the proc loss for the recharge is not as bad a hit as its often assumed to be, but honestly there's a few options if you sort your accuracy without it. Just one of many little optimization choices that depend on your priorities.

Would need to be tweaked to do the damage over time our reduced since 60 seconds is enough time to accumulate the damage necessary to kill you several times over but I'm a fan

To be clear I'm not saying no theming, I'm saying loose theming. Avoid 'Viking Berserker' and stick to 'Berserker', 'Guardian' instead of 'Paladin'. Vague themes keep the concept malleable while giving direction.

You are on the right track with the idea of focusing on high power, long recharge T9 like abilities to keep yourself up and not working to hard on defense. Defense is FAR stronger than resistance per bonus generally but only on paper because yeah DDR will make you hate life. DDR makes you hate life so hard that a +4 Silver Mantis can and will body you no matter how hard you try to tell her no. Woman is bad with consent I guess. Your big worries are, still -Def because negative defense is a thing, -Recharge, and -Regen, in that order because you do have some Regen Debuff Resist in Fast Healing but its weak and -regen comes in two flavors, insignificant, and you don't get to play. For this reason Ageless Radial is a must, upside, between that, MoG, and other +recovery options you can often skip Quick Recovery on a lot of builds. I would consider picking up Unrelenting or Unleash Potential, UP is the better of the two for raw durability, but Unrelenting gives you another way around the -regen out there. Additionally Burnout is highly underrated on Regeneration, Quick Recovery or other end tools make the end issues easy to mitigate and having the ability to double you big heals is important. Talking about Psi, just a tip, the Insight mechanic IS worth engaging with, it yields about a 10% dps boost if used optimally, that being to do your optimal rotation until insight procs, then do everything EXCEPT GSB until the last possible moment in the 15 second window. As for the build itself, some notes. -Definitely get Fury of the Gladiator -resist in there, its a big overall damage bump. -PBS is only at a 90% chance to hit against +3 enemies here (+4 diff setting with an alpha slot) -Vigor is fine but if you can get Spiritual that's optimal for regen durability. -Some people prefer to use Dull Pain as a heal rather than a buff, in theory this CAN be optimal if you are very twitchy with it. Ideally Dull Pain should be up any time you are pressed, ESPECIALLY before pulling hard hitting AVs -Get your accolades asap, Max HP is life, not only does it raise your effective hp/s regeneration, it also is core to Regen's other big weakness, low EHP/Effective Health, you need that buffer to not get 1 shot and have a chance to regenerate. -Consider Power Transfer procs in Stamina and Quick Recovery, like panacea because these are heals they bypass -regen and equate to about ~3.7hp/s on a Brute -Don't worry about end to much, again Ageless Radial is core, if you can make your end bar reliable last between casts, then you have enough end, more is only good for resisting sapping which Ageless already helps with. I think that is everything. I'm moving to updating the calculator in my signature to include a Brute page soon, once I have it setup ill see if I can spot any Brute specific quirks i havent caught before.