Machariel

George Floyd wasn't killed by "a moron," he was killed by a man with a history of excessive force complaints and by a system that lacked either the ability or the willpower to remove people who CLEARLY should not be in a position of power or authority over anyone. I feel like three cops don't stand around and let a fourth cop kneel on a dying man's neck for nine minutes because they were "idiots."

I've heard about all kinds of things. Appreciate the source and the response. Still don't agree, but keep on truckin. Hopefully you write your representatives vov

Please cite your sources for EMTs and fire fighters being targeting by "the overreacting populous." By the way, the word is "populace." Because I sure haven't seen anything and I'm pretty confident that with all the media spin and the general desire to blame the victims of police brutality for getting what they deserve, that if that were a credible trend it'd be all over the news. What I've seen instead is that the credible, documented cases of unprovoked violence are overwhelmingly on the side of police vs peaceful protesters and white supremacists (one of them was (peacefully!) arrested for burning down a church). Yeah, I guess it sucks if you have to wear a uniform as part of your job and people prejudge you and react accordingly without giving you a chance to react or explain yourself. Must be hard. Except that that's what the black experience is like one hundred percent of the time, except they can't take off the uniform, AND their 'uniform' isn't one that allows them to assume automatic authority/benefit of the doubt over a huge section of the the populace in the way that a police or military uniform does. Indeed it's the opposite.

What's your point?

Crucially, you at least you have the option to remove the uniform though 😅

I agree that sometimes I don't really want real world events to creep into my leisure time. But in terms of letting politics affect your life, on one hand you have... a supportive text message in a video game reminding you that the real world exists, and on the other hand, you have people being killed in the street. So even if it does make me uncomfortable (and I'll admit it does, because being confronted with privilege always is), it's like... whatever. If you don't want to see this stuff in games then let's solve the problem in real life.

I like the idea of making its Revive power have some offensive utility (damage bonus, make it a proc bomb, idk) and able to be used while the character is alive and also by dramatically reducing the cooldown of revive. This would give regen at least a unique niche - whereas every other powerset tries to keep you from dying in the first place (and some have self-revives in case it goes wrong), regen would be a powerset that treats 'defeat' as more of a status effect.

I don't like the effects of any of the prestige sprint powers so I throw the stealth proc into one of those and a runspeed IO into regular sprint, which is what I use most of the time.

I feel like if you have the perspective of "what do sets do at 50" and in most metrics of just how strong the powers are - how many targets, how much damage, at what attack speed, titan weapons is nuts, mechanically, and nobody can deny it. I saw a chart the other day of the DPA of titan weapons vs staff fighting and titan weapons was something crazy like 50% better. Doesn't sound that bad except that the TW numbers were without momentum. . . But, I think it's honestly balanced by the fact that a lot of people don't want to deal with the momentum mechanic or the endurance usage and on a day-to-day basis I don't see a lot of titan weapon characters running around, so I'm not really sure if there's a problem. On the other hand, the only reason I stopped playing my TW/Bio scrapper so much is that it was SO much stronger than the average character that I kind of felt bad bringing it to teams. I'd probably reduce both the damage and endurance cost by a bit but still leave it as a serious outlier for damage. After all, something has to be on top. But the set really is nuts. On top of the insane numbers it debuffs resistance (buffing its own damage and your whole team), can help buff your defense, has tons of easy knockdown mitigation (no kb to kd required), and one of its best ST attacks is also a great AoE.

It would be interesting to see your opinions and takeaways from the exercise, because they'd be based around mostly how the characters were to level and based on a wide range of level content, while I think a large part of the forum community is weighted on how characters perform at 50, and having a roughly uniform amount of time and effort spent on each character is the closest thing to a 'controlled experiment' we're ever likely to see. I say why not?

It sure does!

I guess if I were to go down the list of Stalker Primaries I'd say: Broad Sword - overall not a fan Pros: Lots of hard-hitting powers to use after your chance for hide if you're not interested in building an attack chain. Can lean on parry. can slot -def and kb procs Cons: Slow assassin's strike, some of the worst AoE, damage type, no really great attacks Claws - it works Pros: good ranged attack (Focus), good AoE (Shockwave). Cons: damage type, no Follow Up (best part of Claws) Dark Melee - better than i thought Pros: damage type, very strong ST attacks, proc slotting, includes a heal, shadow maul is actually good now Cons: no Soul Drain (best part of DM) Dual Blades - can be good but you gotta commit Pros: Free AoE stapled to your attack chain w/build up, looks cool, strong ST damage Cons: combos are weak and require taking bad powers, damage type Electrical Melee - popular on stalkers for good reason Pros: 3 good AoE powers, respectable ST Cons: not a ton of good options for proc slotting Energy Melee - dont it's like #1 now thanks homecoming devs ❤️ Fiery Melee - play it on a Scrapper Pros: damage type? Cons: surprisingly poor AoE, lose incinerate (great attack) for the slowest assassin's strike Ice Melee - actually good Pros: Freezing Touch gets it crit damage frontloaded and hits like a truck, 2 good AoEs, ice patch is 1-slot wonder for damage mitigation Cons: single target attacks outside of AS + freezing touch are kinda meh (opposite problem of Broad Sword) Kinetic Melee - i'm a fanboy Pros: 0.67 sec Assassin's Strike, entire attack chain by level 8, burst is a guaranteed crit unlike every other AoE (but still not great), Concentrated Strike free build ups are 'fun', utility ranged attack Cons: feels stronger than it actually is Martial Arts - other sets do it better Pros: most of its attacks hit hard for their animation times, can stack disorients Cons: literally zero AoE attacks Ninja Blade - the better broad sword Pros: It's better than broad sword Cons: It's not better than much else Psi Melee - the wildcard Pros: damage type? mass levitate is good AoE, confuse power is unique on stalkers. greater psi blade criticals sound good Cons: Insight mechanic is kinda weird and unreliable. i've heard the set does only OK damage without it and not that much more with it Radiation Melee - has anyone ever seen a rad melee stalker? Pros: unsure but devastating blow critical sounds good, rad has excellent proc slotting options, proton sweep is a good cone, has a heal Cons: seems like a worse dark melee Savage Melee - the better claws & the better spines Pros: hemo from hide, savage leap is great AoE, rending flurry is nutty at full stacks, shred is decent Cons: damage type, no mitigation + DoT damage = you might get attacked more Spines - the fiery aura of stalker primaries Pros: lots of AoE attacks Cons: AoE attacks aren't very good, no damage aura, no hard hitting single target attack to follow assassin's strike Staff Fighting - the 2nd best weapon set Pros: you get perfection of body for free, a parry-like power that's also an AoE (makes sense - if surrounded, get +def), and then a ranged attack and a second pbaoe Cons: slow attacks really hinder ST dps Street Justice - praise be to Saint Jay Pros: assassin's focus + combo points = guaranteed crushing uppercut crits. a few good AoE attacks. overall one of the strongset Cons: chasing the perfect chain might not be for you. i don't like playing the set without access to crushing uppercut

that's fair, i wasn't sure how new(TM) shadow maul stacked up. appreciate the clarification 👍

Maybe it's just late and I'm tired but I found a general answer surprisingly hard to come up with. IMO the majority of the Stalker primaries are pretty well balanced. A few high points among them: Street Justice - guaranteed Crushing Uppercut critical hits are pretty sweet Ice Melee - ditto freezing touch Savage Melee - ditto Hemorrhage Rending Flurry & Savage Leap Dual Blades - given a specific attack chain and lots of global recharge and a few low points: Broad Sword - slow assassin's strike Fire Melee - ditto Ninja Blade - sadly, ditto Spines - generally weak & no good attack to follow AS with The rest I would put broadly in the middle ground. Most of them are pretty good and they all have a few quirky pros and cons.

My vote would be Radiation Armor. Here's why: Ninja Blade is a pretty middle-of-the road set for ST damage and below-average AoE (while definitely not the worst the ones below it are things like Dark Melee and Energy Melee - real stinkers). Its advantages are that you can spike your melee/lethal defense as high as you want on demand and that its attacks can take some good damage procs (-def & knockback = achilles heel -res, touch of lady grey +neg energy, force feedback). Radiation Armor is a resist based set with some very strong clickies to keep you going. Usually the resists and heals are sturdy enough on their own but if you get into trouble then you can lean on Divine Avalanche to buy time until the next Radiation Therapy or Particle Shielding. Rad Therapy and Ground Zero can both do tons of AoE damage if you stuff them with damage procs. Maybe Force Feedback in Soaring Dragon and Golden Dragonfly. I think this build idea is favorable to a budget build since you can frankenslot a lot of your attacks and don't need to chase defensive bonus sets as much.

Strengths of Kinetic Melee on Stalkers: 1) all the powers for your ST attack chain at level 8 2) fastest (highest DPA) assassin's strike in the game at 0.67 seconds 3) you get an AoE power relatively early (burst) which is the only AoE in the game that automatically crits from hide 4) utility ranged attack is useful and playing the stacking build up game with Concentrated Strike is fun [obv subjective] drawbacks: 1) No big attack to crit with to leverage the stalker ATO proc 2) overall middle of the road damage The first two points suggest that the strongest way to play KM is to not regularly use Concentrated Strike and focus on using your 1st 3 very fast attacks to build focus as fast as you can and then spend it on your nutty fast Assassin's Strike. Since Concentrated Strike can't crit and you can build more assassin's focus in the same time with your other attacks (which can crit), and your other stalker ATO means that you're casting build up an awful lot anyway, I think it's usually not worth playing the stacking buildup game. That said, I did take CS on my Kin/EA and it's a good place for damage procs and under most conditions it doesn't slow you down that much if at all, so take it if you want it. But when you're working down an AV or a pylon definitely stick to T1+T2+T3+assassin's strike. Overall I think KM is a strong middle of the road set with a lot of perks. It exemplars well and at high levels you can use moonbeam or zapp after your AS to leverage the Chance for Hide proc.

tl;dr

i like how the highest-quality versions of this image always have the little crease marks from the original folded map 😂

I kind of enjoy farming as a zen activity and a good way to kill time, get some inf, maybe a few recipe drops. I don't do it on the "fire farm" in AE in particular, but rather I run the battle maiden map on my plant/fire/fire dominator, but I don't think that's a very important distinction.

welcome home hero :')

clearly i have much to learn!

Solo Synapse - +0x1, not sure what the rules are 😅

If I had to pick one character that I would confidently throw at anything in the game I think I'd pick a Plant Control / Psionic Assault / Ice Mastery Dominator. Rationale: - You get a ludicrously strong AoE confuse power (Seeds of Confusion) at level 8. Seeds of Confusion trivializes pretty much any mob of any size and the more enemies you're fighting, and the more dangerous they are, the better it is. Very few things speed up regular fights at +4x8 as fast as making all the enemies attack each other. - Carrion Creepers does a ton of AoE damage while demanding 0% of your attention. It also scales up very nicely with the size of the mob. - You also get a standard AoE hold and AoE immobilize to manage regular enemies and you can even take Spore Burst to sleep AVs and pause the fight. - Psionic Assault isn't the most damaging dominator secondary but you get a key power that will help you solo tough targets: Drain Psyche, which is a massive -regen debuff and gives you some much needed sustainability for long fights. - Psionic damage is also useful for punching through powers like Unstoppable and other "tier 9s" that many enemies use at low health. - Ice Mastery gives you Sleet, a strong debuff that reduces enemies damage resistance. - Ice Mastery has 3 other powers that improve your sustainability - Hibernate, a power that turns you invulnerable but unable to attack and quickly regenerates health and endurance; Hoarfrost, a +self HP power, and Frozen Armor, which gives you smashing and lethal defense (very common damage types) It won't have the most single-target DPS but it'll have enough and the -regen of drain psyche means that just about any amount of DPS will get the job done eventually.

i could be wrong but I think the recharge timer starts once the animation finishes so you can't say, get the recharge time down to below the animation time and fire it continuously, if that's what you had in mind.

I'm having a hard time thinking of a time you'd want to include focused accuracy given that not everybody takes tactics 🤔