biostem

It would be an interesting twist if this new "Found" faction was being assisted by a Rikti, who successfully transformed back to a human form themselves - would put a spin on things, as they *were* actually being assisted by an alien...

Stalker dark melee loses both dark consumption and soul drain, which is a huge drop in performance, IMHO. Stalker energy aura has higher base values than the other ATs, IIRC, but gets only a flat +recharge buff in its status protection power, instead of the stacking one per nearby enemy, that brutes & scrappers get.

So I've read @Croax's guide on Stalkers, and while I understand the points brought up, what I'm trying to figure out is which combination best captures the "essence" of the AT, and which provide the best and/or most consistent performance in higher level play. I have unlocked Incarnates on tankers, controllers, defenders, blasters, and sentinels, so I'm familiar with those ATs, but I want to work on a stalker as well. Thank you for any advice you can provide! *Note - I'm not really big into playing the IO set bonus meta-game, so please keep that in mind when offering up your suggestions. Thanks again!

But the concept of a character going into a berserker rage, followed by a subsequent recoup time afterward, is pretty "baseline" as well...

I mean, even if a power had less than a second recharge time, you'd still have to wait for the animation to play out, so what we're really talking about, in practical terms, is "as close to perma as possible"...

Then you seem to have found a solution that works for you. Congrats! Aren't you being a little hyperbolic, here. I mean, if you're playing a video game anyway, then you probably don't have "real issues" that need your attention, (or at least, I hope that's the case). Have you considered taunting the enemies and just waiting the additional 8-seconds or so, or filled that time with some of the prestige attacks or perhaps other powers at your disposal?

I mean, neutrino bolt for defenders, (haven't checked on corruptors), has like only a 2 second recharge and animates pretty quickly. If you wanted to max out its recharge, you could get that down to about 1 second. I'm not sure on its exact animation time, but it's pretty quick. Permitting 2 attacks would seem like a better option, IMO...

Nu-uh! brawl -> origin power -> shadow maul -> nemesis staff -> undead slaying axe -> rest

There has to be some overhand chop animation that could be used, here. I'm not at a computer w/ CoH to check, ATM, though...

There are many factors to consider, but I can provide an anecdotal one that may shed some light on things: I have a 50 kin/son defender. My main attacks are basically shriek and shout, (each 6-slotted with the Defender AT sets). Between the set bonuses and siphon speed, I can pretty much cycle between those 2 attacks nonstop. I will use howl and siren's song if I need a bit of AoE punch or control, but otherwise it's just those 2 attacks...

I hope that you wouldn't have these homeless as the enemies you fight. As @Thrones intimated, it's unfortunate that you basically strip The Lost of their power in the name of "saving" them. It would be cool if you wrote an arc centered around a group that was trying to rehabilitate some member of The Lost, and finding a way to reverse the physical changes while retaining the power-granting ones, perhaps with an eye toward community outreach and possible hero work. It'd also be interesting if the usual actors, (Crey, perhaps Arachnos, and maybe even some corrupt PPD or Freedom Corps members), were trying to weasel their way into this program and hog the results to themselves...

Darkness is nice because poison lacks a self heal, and life drain is simpler to use than dehydrate. You also benefit from a greater tohit debuff as a defender, and the immobilize is useful to keep enemies at range, (and clustered together for poison's small AoEs).

How you you apply a damage cap that only affects 1 power? Isn't "damage" a global cap for each character, based upon their AT? I suppose you could add a check that says "is this character already affected by rage, and if so, do not apply the +dmg component to any subsequent applications of the power"...

It would be interesting if we had to go inside of DJ Zero's or maybe AE's computers to eliminate the various glitches and other corrupted entities from the Mapserver Event...

"Sonic" damage is represented in-game as a combination of smashing and energy damage, so I'd be fine with that. I wonder if rage could be rebuilt into a power that initially applies a self damage debuff, and requires you to actually engage in combat a bit, then it starts to tic up, (though then it may bee too much like a brute's fury). Is there a way to simply remove the crash but either not allow the rage power to stack or not allow it to benefit from recharge reduction effects at all?

That's great to hear! Yeah - it's not about running the tunnel farm all the way to 50 - just to a point where you can afford some enhancements that won't expire, so you have a baseline level of functionality for the rest of your character's progression...

You really need to avoid using absolute statements like "its not a debate", (we are clearly doing so right now), or "no body cares", (at least some folks obviously do), or "farming was always the endgame" - it isn't.

I mean, if a stone melee stalker can do it, then I can suspend disbelief that an axe stalker could as well...

No doubt. I'm trying to think off the top of my head if there's an animation where you swing a weapon from over your head, where you could hold it there for a brief moment for the slow assassin strike...

Well, they lose whirling sword for their version of broadsword, so I was just following suit...

Simple suggestion: I really like battle axe on my melee characters, and would love to see it made available to stalkers. It should be a simple enough conversion to make, (replace taunt/confront and whirling axe with assassin's axe and placate). Bonus points if we could also get a scythe weapon model added as well!

There are very few buff powers that can provide the kind of constant benefit that rage can. It'd need some kind of tradeoff - would you be in favor of it not being able to be made perma, or working similar to a build-up power, (short effect duration, longish recharge)? As for handclap, it seems thematic for it to do knockback, not knock-up; That's foot stomp's schtick. I could see it doing some damage, though. You could always slot it for knockback->knockdown...

I wonder how difficult it would be to code in something that simply opened a FAQ post on the forums, (only in-game), that was curated by the mods, (but users could submit topics, pending approval of course).

The problem is, as I understand it, that the game still has to actually spawn your character into the game world to complete the character creation process, meaning that there'd still have to be a loading screen and such...

It's kind of a vague concept, as far as how it'd translate into game mechanics. Maybe something like a mind control/time manipulation controller. Perhaps you could do gravity/storm to represent the various mechanisms at his disposal to assure the "Return to Sender" letters reach him?