WeatherLord

I recognize the Dec 19th Beta patch notes are not the final version of this set, but am a bit bummed that nothing new or different was changed for Broadsword in the latest patch. The current set of changes just aren't enough to make BS relevant. As a comparison, I'm happy for fans of Electric Melee, where Lightning Clap was converted into an excellent Single Target attack that also gives solid crowd control. If implemented to Live, that would bring the set up in parity for Tanks/Brutes/Scrappers. For Stalkers, the set was already in the Top 5 for both ST and AoE, but I appreciate the Dev choice to allow either Thunder Strike or Lightning Clap to be selected. IMO, those proposed changes would make Elec Melee the "Gold Standard" - It's got everything now, amazing ST, super fast Assassin Strike, strong AoE, good crowd control options, and it's just fun to play. I'd like to see Broadsword reach that point too. Ninja Blade (aka Katana) is usually considered to be a "better" version of Broadsword since functionally they are the exact same powersets, just with different animations and damage numbers. I don't know if the Devs have a plan to differentiate the way both sets work, and honestly I don't mind either way. All I want is both sets to be competitive, and right now they just aren't, at least on a Stalker. Personally, I'd love to see: Slice increased to a 10ft range cone, which makes sense swinging around a sword (same for Flashing Steel in Ninja Blade). That would also make it easier for Stalkers to take advantage of the 10 target cap Fast Assassin's Slash (and Assassin's Blade in Ninja Blade) should be lowered from 1.67 cast time to 1.00 cast time. I don't want to be greedy, so I could learn to be happy with 1.17 cast time, but 1.67 is just far too long. All Stalkers have the same Build Up stats and the same Placate stats, so they should at least have very similar Assassin's Strike stats. The varying cast times between powersets are just artifacts of the old Stalker design, where those powers were only used from Hidden state. If it's too difficult to lower the cast times, then the power should do more damage to compensate. The Assassin power is the very core of the entire Archetype, it should be equally powerful across all powersets. For Disembowel and Headsplitter, the Standard Damage Formula is a good baseline to start with, but since it doesn't take into consideration the Cast Time of a power, it's really not fair to Broadsword, which was designed to be a set with slower animations. Either the animations need some trimming or the damage slightly increased Refinement of the "Glance!" mechanic. I think it's a cool idea. Perhaps it could apply to all powers, with a small percentage of hitting additional targets based on the power Tier. Whatever the case, it has a lot of potential to add some pseudo AoE to the set, which would be fun.

Dominators with Domination up get full mez protection. Some Defender/Corruptor/Controller Support sets only grant mez protection to other players, but the following also give protection to the caster: Faraday Cage from Elec Affinity gives hold, stun, sleep, immob, knockback, repel (but have to recast when moving to a new location) EMP Arrow from Trick Arrow gives hold, stun, sleep, immob, knockback, repel (but have to recast when moving to a new location and the power has long cooldown) Dispersion Bubble from Force Field gives hold, stun, immob while toggled on Sonic Dispersuon from Sonic Resonance gives hold, stun, immob while toggled on Force Field Generator from Traps gives hold, stun, immob while pet is summoned and follows you around Steamy Mist from Storm gives confuse protection while toggled on Shadow Fall from Dark Miasma gives terrorize protection while toggled on World of Pain from Pain Domination gives placate protection for a time after click Accelerate Metabolism from Radiation Emmission does NOT give protection, but lowers duration time of hold, stun, sleep, immob effects on you

After playing around with the updates as a Stalker, my feedback largely echoes what others have stated. Slash being faster is neat. But it doesn't make me want to take it. Hack is far superior and I have plenty of other attacks to click, so it's just not competitive. Parry already fills the role of a low damage, quick recharging attack, but better because +defense. Slice improvements are a good start. Animation time reduction was really needed, and the -15% Resistance is cool. The "Rending Slice" mechanic is interesting, but if I'm using this power it's because I want to do AoE damage. Broad Sword already has a lot of attacks that are meant to do damage to a single target, so I'd rather this one focus exclusively on AoE damage. For Stalkers especially, this is their only AoE attack, so it needs to carry a lot of weight. The cap increase of 5 to 10 for Stalkers is cool, and clearly this was done to try and help the extremely limited AoE they have. However, because the power range is only 7ft in a 130 arc, it's very difficult to hit more than 4-5 targets. So while the cap increase is nice, it feels like a wash. Boomerang Slice has a really fun animation. I feel the Stalker cap increase to 10 a lot more here, since it extends 30ft out. I understand why it does less damage than Slice, but since it would be the only AoE attack for a Stalker, it's a little underwhelming. I need to play around with it more. Disembowel needs some help. I love the animation for it, but it's just not that great. Others have commented on why. Headsplitter doesn't feel like an "improvement" sadly. The previous 10ft with 20arc range did make hitting more than 1 target inconsistent, but not impossible. But now, instead of hitting 2 targets for 100% damage each (total of 200%), it's now 1 target for 100% and 2 for 33% (total of 166%). The problem every Stalker has with this power is only 50% crit out of hide. If the glance mechanic stays, it really should be 100% crit from hide. All in all, the power just doesn't do enough damage given the long animation time. Quick Assassin's Slash could use an animation reduction buff IMO. It's the worst AS power with the longest quick-AS animation, alongside the Ninja Blade version. I know it's not always fair to compare Stalker Melee sets directly, but it's frustrating that most sets have better Single Target, better AoE, and get the mouth-watering 1 second quick-AS (Such as Electrical Melee, Savage Melee, Staff Fighting, (buffed) Kinetic Melee, etc.) Every time I see discussions about this "balancing out" within the set, it's almost always because someone tested their attack chain against an even-con Pylon with both Achilles Heel and Fury of the Gladiator -Res procs. In real content against +3 or +4 enemies, those -Res procs are resisted and the damage difference is much more apparent. Lastly, I wanted to suggest increasing the attack range of all the Melee Sword powers to 9 or 10ft. Not only would this help Slice be more consistent, but it's always felt weird that a punch attack has the same range as a sword attack. Staff Fighting and Titan Weapon powers already have 9-10ft range, so there is some precedent to follow already. While I do understand that Broad Sword / Ninja Blade weapons are not as big as a Staff or Titan Weapon, the argument that a fist is not as big as a sword/katana can just as easily be made. Thanks for reading my feedback.

Specifically to Stalkers, the changes feel really nice! Reconstruction within Stalker Willpower looked neat on paper, but in practice was really lacking. I think Luminara's post above does a great job highlighting why the flat 200% Regen (almost 400% enhanced) is so good, so I won't repeat. Having the healing be passive (as opposed to clicking Reconstruction every 15s) allows you to be more active by doing other things too. Resurgence is amazing now. The heal is the same as Reconstruction was, but it also comes with some minor resistances which is neat. 90s recharge feels fine, especially since it can rez too. I really like the new Strength of Will too, agreeing with above comments that it would be sad to see it reverted! It actually gives some useful benefits now, and the +damage and +tohit for 30s is a fantastic addition. Up to the Challenge + Improved Resurgence + Strength of Will really changes the way Stalkers play this set, and I'm all for it. Now that Stalkers have another toggle, the lack of +Recovery is even more noticeable however. While I'm a fan of all the changes, the only other thing I'd ask is to add some form of +Recovery, such as to Fast Healing like the Stalker Regeneration powerset has. Great work on this Devs, thank you!

No dedicated Stalker Focused Feedback thread, so will ask here. What does the above mean? Higher base critical chance for Stalkers? I ran a few tests on a Practice Dummy with my Ninja Blade Stalker and didn't notice any differences with Crit Chances.

Yes, PoptartsNinja summarizes the answer well. Because Ice Armor was designed for Tanks and Brutes, the very high Cold Resist works well and the 90% Cap allows them to be very effective against Cold damage. For Scrappers, Sentinels, and Stalkers, the Cold Resist isn't enough due to the 75% Cap. My intention is not to start any arguments around the 75% Resist Cap being low or trying to prove why Defense is objectively better. I also don't think it's fair to compare Fire Armor with Ice Armor directly, since Fire is designed around giving offensive options at the cost of defensive capabilities. While I think the Homecoming Devs have done a really great job with improving Ice Armor already, all I'm asking is to give the set some +Cold Defense in one of the toggles so it can really shine against the 1 damage type it was originally designed to work best against.

Ice Armor is a cool set (literally), and was recently given some helpful adjustments within the last few Pages. The ability to select between Rime (+Absorb and +Regen) and Hoarfrost (+Max HP) makes for some fun build choices. Rolling Hibernate and Icy Bastion into a single power is also great and gives more decision power to the player, which I'm always a fan of. The unique thing about Ice Armor is that it's a hybrid Defense / Resistance / Utility set, which is fine. But there is an oddity I have noticed while playing a few Ice Armor characters - For certain Archetypes, Ice Armor isn't that great against enemies that do Cold damage. That may seem to be a weird claim to make, and it's certainly impacted by what type of content and difficulty the character in question is facing, but first I want to establish what my understanding of Ice Armor's Strengths and Weaknesses are intended to be: Strengths: -Capped Cold Resistance -Immunity to Slow Debuffs (because these are often attached to Cold damage) -Good Smashing, Lethal, Energy, Neg Energy Defense -Very Good utility powers (Icy Bastion, Rime, Energy Absorption, Chilling Embrace) Weaknesses: -Little to no Fire Defense or Resistance -Little to no Psi Defense or Resistance -Little to no Cold Defense (?) -Little Resistance to other damage types -Mid Defense Debuff resistance, and no Endurance, Recovery, Regen, Tohit Debuff resistance So to me, Ice Armor seems to be a more polarized Strength vs Weakness set. You're good at what you're good at, but really bad at what you're bad at. And to be clear, I really really like this. I don't want my character to be OP to everything. Having Weaknesses is both healthy for the game and fun for storytelling purposes. But, considering Ice Armor has 2 pretty big holes (Fire and Psi), shouldn't it be better at Cold? Why doesn't it get more Cold Defense? Archetype Comparisons: The first thing I expect to hear is that Tanks and Brutes will easily cap 90% Cold Resistance with Ice Armor, which is true. At 90% Cold Resistance, they are pretty much immune to most cold damage, I won't argue against that. But Stalkers and Scrappers only cap at 75% Cold Resistance, which leads to this strange situation I described at the outset. My Ice Armor Stalker has 45% Def against Smash, Lethal, Energy, Neg Energy, but only ~15% against Cold Defense. This results in the character being more survivable against those damage types than Cold damage. Example math, assuming an enemy has 50% hit chance before defense is factored in: Smash/Lethal/Energy/Neg Energy at 45% Defense, 15% Resistance 1,000 input damage * 0.05 hit chance * 0.85 resistance = 42.5 damage taken Cold at 15% Defense, 75% Resistance 1,000 input damage * 0.35 hit chance * 0.25 resistance = 87.5 damage taken So that's about double the damage taken from Cold damage compared to the other 4 damage types. Back in the days when attacks had multiple damage types associated with them, this wasn't as big a deal. For example, an enemy using Ice Sword had both a Cold Def check and a Lethal Def check run against you. Since your Lethal Def was high, it would probably miss, and the low Cold Def didn't matter. But now that most enemy attacks only have 1 typed defense component, this becomes much more glaring. (It also stings from an RP perspective... My Ice Armor Stalk/Scrap is more likely to die from an enemy using Ice Sword than an enemy using a Katana ) My Proposal: Give Frozen Armor OR Glacial Armor +Cold Defense. Not a massive amount, perhaps just 12.75% total to align with the other damage types. While this would make Tanks and Brutes even better against Cold damage, I don't think it would imbalance the game or be overpowered, since they were already great against it anyways. But this would help Stalkers and Scrappers using Ice Armor actually specialize against the one damage type they are designed to be good against, while still retaining all their previous weaknesses. What do you all think, am I off base here?

That's fair and a good point. It's a reasonable approach and is certainly preferable to just removing IH outright. Still, I love what was done with Dark Armor's Dark Regeneration and Obscure Sustenance, which was also made to be mutually exclusive. They both fill a Healing role but accomplish the task in very different ways. Obscure got some nice buffs to make it more competitive, and I really like how this gives the player more options based on their playstyle and build goals. Both powers are great, it's a brilliant addition. I'd just like to see that with IH and RR as well. I don't want to offend anyone who likes IH currently, but honestly it feels more like a trap power now, where picking it instead of RR is just the wrong choice. Giving it some buffs would be nice.

I was thinking more about the pros/cons between Instant Healing and Reactive Regeneration and think IH could use some love, especially if the goal is to make it viable compared to RR. To be clear I love RR, but I'd like IH to be competitive too. First off, no -regen resistance in IH really hurts, when RR can easily cap it Additionally, because IH is a long cooldown click, death is incredibly punishing since you're also losing the Hasten recharge buff, which let’s be real IH desperately needs all the recharge it can get. RR being a toggle means death is not that big a deal IH also suffers tremendously from slows, while RR doesn't care Those differences alone make RR way more desirable, but even if we just compare the regen values to uptime between the two, IH just falls behind even more. At minimum, RR gives you 400% (enhanced) regen with 100% uptime, and in practice this goes up to around 550-600% average when in combat. Note this performance costs the player almost nothing, just turn on the toggle and go IH gives about 1000% (enhanced) regen, and with max local Recharge slotting goes from 650 second CD to ~325 seconds, which is only about 28% uptime Best case, a high recharge investment build can bring that to around 175, so about 50% uptime However, in addition to the high recharge needed to make IH usable, you also need to build for some amount of slow resistance, otherwise a minion's cold sneeze halts your momentum In summary, IH requires significantly more investment and IMO still falls short of what RR can do. In my Beta mission playtesting, RR was superior every time, even with a build that tried to leverage towards IH's strengths. IH could really use some additional debuff resistance while active at minimum, and ideally have it's recharge reduced a bit or given something to make it more viable.

Copied my T4'd Ninja Blade/Regen/Weapon Mastery Stalker to Beta and respec'd into Reactive Regeneration. My build already included all 9 Regen powers though I did shuffle a few slots around slightly. The overall build didn't need to change much though. This character is very heavy on theme, but I tried to squeeze as much efficiency into the character as possible (Perma Hasten, 42% Smash/Lethal Resists and 20ish other Resists, 90% Slow Resists, only 12% Def to all but Divine Avalanche easily softcaps Melee, good amount of Procs in single target attack chain) My Beta Experience: I played several missions ranging from +1/x3 to +4/x8 to experiment with the differences. I normally play Solo around +2 or +3 and keep the player count low, as Stalkers are naturally better at DPSing hard single targets vs groups. Ninja Blade specifically has pretty bad AoE sadly Playing at lower difficulties was mostly fine, Reactive Regen really helps keeps your health topped up. Regen has always felt like it rides a razor's edge between "unkillable" and "just plain dead". Sometimes a group of enemies could beat on me for eternity and my HP bar never moves. However, if you get too lax about it throughout the mission, your HP can plummet incredibly quickly and then you're dead. To really stress-test the build, the final mission I played was the Marauder one from Maria Jenkins at +4/x8 which is not normally a mission / difficulty level that I could do on Live. That mission has IDF and since they do -regen, I wanted to see how it would go. Jumping into a group to fight them head on works great for exactly 15 seconds, then MoG wears off and you're dead. So, I used lots of pull tactics. This is where the new Reactive Regen really shined, as I could definitely tell it was helping to both keep me healed up plus prevented a good amount of -regen debuffs from coming through. As long as I was very careful, took it slow, leveraged cooldowns properly, pulling the group around corners, it went OK. I died a few times, though I accepted Death as a natural (but temporary) part of the Regeneration Powerset a long time ago. The mission is still a slog, and clearly I'm not expecting Stalker Regeneration to breeze through this at +4/x8. Ultimately, it was a nice stress-test to get a feel for the Set's ceiling. The -regen resistances and the higher average regen thanks to RR is huge! When it came time to fight the AV, I had to Rez twice using Second Wind, but I was able to solo the AV without Lore pets or any Temp Powers, though I did use Barrier and Assault Hybrid. As a point of reference, I can solo him just fine on my Live build as well. It's a balance between going heavy DPS while cycling the big protection clicks (Instant Healing, Barrier, MoG) while heavily relying on Divine Avalanche while the big protection clicks are on cooldown. While IH does have superior Regen while it's up, having RR on constantly was definitely preferable. My Thoughts / Opinions: The changes are definitely an improvement. I particularly like Reactive Regen, a permanent ~400% Regen (enhanced) at minimum is really nice! I'm also a big fan of the added debuff resistances. Second Wind giving a heal is neat, and I'm fine with the instant rez pop-up on defeat. Glad to see a small amount of +recovery added to Fast Healing, since Stalkers always missed getting that benefit compared to the other archetypes. I didn't really notice the +Damage in MoG, but it's alright (would much rather have +recharge!). While I don't see myself using Instant Healing anymore, shouldn't it also get some -regen resistances? RR can cap -regen resist, but Instant Healing continues to just get neutered. As other posters have mentioned, the lower HP cap really hurts Stalkers (and by extension Sentinels) a lot here. While going from "fine" to "dead" is kinda part of Regeneration's DNA, it's always felt more extreme on a Stalker, as enemies can burn through their 2k HP much faster. Since increasing the HP cap is unrealistic, it would be really nice to have some kind of +Absorb, though at this stage that's probably a pipe dream. I can live without it. Please do consider giving +Recharge somewhere though. Especially if you want the Reconstruction + Ailment Resistance bigger heals combo to be an integral part of the set. With Reconstruction being a 60 second cooldown, it needs all the recharge it can get. Since regen has very little Damage Resistance / Defense, it eats through HP much quicker, which continues to be my experience on Live and when testing. In fact, for the longest time I never even had Reconstruction in my build. I always felt like I'd use it, then 5 seconds later I'm at half HP again, so I experimented with other defensive cooldown powers like Unleash Potential and Shadow Meld. Reconstruction just feels like it has a bit of an identity crisis at times. Either your regen is enough to keep you alive forever, or your about to be overwhelmed and need to do something about it. In those cases, popping Reconstruction will buy you a few more seconds at most, so either you need to have it ready again quickly or you need to have a Plan B. Regardless, I'm happy the set is finally getting some love, thank you Devs! I love the active playstyle of Regeneration and needing to manage incoming damage, but I always find myself reaching to use Reconstruction and MoG only to see them often still recharging on cooldown. If the set could get some +Recharge somewhere, it'd really help with leveraging those active cooldowns (and benefit the players that decide to stick with IH). Reconstruction comboing with Ailment is neat and clearly better than Live, but as a heal in the premier Healing Armor Set, I just wish it did more.

I was the Dominator Puzzlepox on the Synapse, and I agree, it was a lot of fun! When a team capped at 17 has good coordination and manages to steamroll lvl 21s, it's always a great time. Whlie we didn't have too many defeats on the Synapse, some of my favorite memories from Live were those missions with the in-map Prisons. It would really create some intense situations, like if half the team wipes and some are trying to work together to break out while the others are trying to fight their way over to make a rescue. I wish more missions nowadays had them, though not everyone likes it. After all, its classic comic book storytelling for a team to get beaten down, only to have them overcome the odds and make a comeback. When those scenarios happen organically with CoH, it's the best!

I understand the above are formula standardizations / bug fixes for Spines, but these three powers were already kinda underperforming within the set IMO. The lower End Cost for Impale and slightly faster Recharge for Stalker Spine Burst made them more appealing to actually use on a Spines Stalker. For Impale and Spine Burst, the damage done compared to the animation cast time is really low. Impale Activation Time is 2.43 seconds while Spine Burst is a massive 3.00 seconds. If the End Cost and Recharge are going to be standardized, OK fine, but could the cast times at least be lowered a bit please? As a comparison: Blaster Plant Manipulation Thorn Burst is only 2.00 Activation Time (compared to 3.00 Spine Burst) for similar damage Dominator Thorns Impale is only 1.43 Activation Time (compared to 2.43 Spines Impale) for similar damage. The Thorns version does have more End Cost/Recharge but also gets more Range and def debuff As another comparison specific to Stalkers only, Electric Melee was already considered one of the best Stalker sets, and the Thunder Strike consistency change (which was definitely needed, thank you Devs!) has buffed an already top set to be even better. There's also a lot of inconsistencies between the Spines/Thorns powers as well, and the Melee versions have the short end of the stick. To be clear, I'm not asking for huge buffs to the Spines set, but if the powers are going to be tweaked to fit the standard formulas, I think the context of the powerset also needs to be considered. I admit my bias as Spines is one of my favorite melee sets, I'd just like to see a little love to avoid it being unintentional nerfs for an already middling set (especially to Stalkers). Lowering the cast time of Impale and Spine Burst a bit would help a lot.