Naraka

Maybe I'm biased because I just like the concept character I made (a character that uses power orbs to attack and protect so FF/rad has quite a few balls to toss around) but I disagree. All in all, it might not be the most bursty set but Irradiate is a solid PBAoE, pretty fast activating, utility debuff, the snipe is unique with a nifty animation, I don't like the quick tier 1 or x-ray beam eyes but cosmic burst is solid too. The nuke synergies with Irradiate but the cone is rather a mess. The only real travesty is def debuffs along with a list of other utility effects don't get much traction thus are ignored. I'd personally want some adjustment made to +/-ToHit, +/-def to emphasize the penatrating nature of radiation which could go on to help other sets and ATs to fulfill a better game balance. But if damage needs to be added, why not the powers that underperform like the cone and tier 1/2 (and maybe neutron bomb). Irradiate and Cosmic Burst certainly don't need help.

I'm not disagreeing with the premise of the suggestion, but at the same time I'm rather in the camp that what you look like during combat is supposed to be en flux and you're not meant to have carte blanche control over that. Like if a foe hits you with a resistance debuff, you'll have an OOC floating orange shield with a downward animating arrow circling your character. Or if a player has a FF shield buff and apply it to you, their colored buff will appear around your character. These effects exist to que players of the various effects they currently have. That all being said, if a new option to disable effects is desired wouldn't affect me and I could see the positives of having said options.

I don't have too many rad blast characters but when I do play it, I don't want the - def values to change. Irradiate does some ridiculous amount of - def, I think it's like -27% on a Defender unenhanced. It can turn some of those annoying nemesis fights into just regular strolls through a warehouse. I think an equivalent set with high - def is Thorny assault/Plant manipulation which had Thorn Burst that also does a heap of - def. While both those sets also have toxic DoT, they also have some lengthy animations and lethal damage.

Didn't say anything about being correct or incorrect. People were posting ideas about lending utility to CC by giving mobs toggle powers that will otherwise disrupt standards tactics if not dropped and I am merely doing the same but specifically targeting to disrupt AoE. Another interesting caveat to this idea is that KB could be an effective tool against such mobs since you can literally just yeet the target that would eat up the AoE out of range so that the volley of AoEs can hit the rest. But I betcha a good few people don't even have a nice KB ability that would push a target far enough to put them out of range. It would be a nice tactic/utility role to those whom enjoy using KB strategically.

Again, it would hinge on if you're higher team number while solo. On normal, having a mob that counts as 5 targets while having 5 other targets still let's you nuke that spawn. It would only be a difference if there were 2 of 3 of said mob requiring a ST approach thus is likely more likely to occur on higher settings. But the overall point is to cause you to rethink your approach. Do you not see a means to change your tactics for that particular blaster?

Would depend if your running max team solo. On reg difficulty, that blaster would just snipe that target first.

Well the idea was more targeted at "take out that Lt first because it's going to absorb most of the AoEs". Again, it's more to mix things up rather than get the same result so long as you have enough team members spamming AoE powers.

Before its interjected with, I'll post the response: Those aren't actually toggles but rather temp clicks with a finite duration that can prematurely expire if mezzed. For all intents and purposes, tho, they behave nearly identical to toggles. I've heard such powerd don't turn off when their END drops to 0 but I want to say I've experienced the opposite. Needless to say, giving more mobs similar powers but maybe with AI that will automatically use these powers upon being spawned rather than upon being aggroed.

The caps and AoE size isn't really something the mobs can use to defend themselves or requires player consideration to overcome. The main reason I bring it up is to shake things up rather than the same overall tactic of hoard and nuke. That's the intent I was reading with giving mobs toggles to drop to make CC a more situationally important tool. I feel the same could be said for other less meta aspects such as ST compared to AoE. I feel this was part of the intent behind the night ward mobs(I'm blanking on the faction name... The ones with the dark control users summoning the haunts and dogs) to drown out some of the AoE as well as forcing some of the ST using taunt. These can break up how you approach a fight a bit although it can get pretty messy with all the extra pets. My thought process was more introducing mobs that use the MM damage distribute function or some other function to give certain mobs the ability to absorb attacks for multiple targets or as a target that counts as more than one target.

Is there any goal in fighting AoE meta? While I like seeing a bunch of effects and numbers float up from a crowd, it often feels unearned and with the right AoEs, you can still neutralize most encounters. Not saying to nerf AoEs or anything, but wondering if mobs can get something to defend against them.

Isn't toxic damage far more resisted by mobs than energy?

I'm sure I read a suggestion on this forum about giving powers to mobs as a means of prioritizing strategies.

Is not a contradiction to simply state someone else's viewpoint. I can acknowledge that what is meta is often times more effective but not something I align with. It wouldn't be meta if it wasn't effective and yet I don't usually find myself in meta teams using a meta build. To clarify the above, it's not because meta teams are rare or I screen my teams or play with static teams, I merely just don't play a slew of high end content very often.

From the viewpoint of the meta, those AoE holds don't provide much AoE control when you calculate the uptime, the amount of slotting to make accurate and effective vs other more readily avaliable soft control to mix with the hard control that is available more often especially when you take into consideration the trash mobs won't live long enough to need them fully held. From my viewpoint, having that trick in my back pocket to neutralize an ambush spawn for nearly half a min while also juggling 2 other spawns with the rest of my AoE controls and engaging a 4th is just too much of a thrill to pass up. Does it happen often? No, but I still want to be able to regardless of if I have a perma-hasten def cap premium build.

I mean, they could have certainly made the incarnate system be more "customizing your character" kind of a deal by making you choose only some of the powers. Like if you only had 3 incarnate levels and the Alpha slot took up one, Judgements and Interface took up 1.5, Hybrid 1.75 and Destiny/Lore took up 2. Then you'd have to choose which of the power's were more fitting for the character and maybe even unlocking all during incarnate trials.

Sweet. Do you have your CoV Stalker Bachelors Degee then? FYI, listing your credentials means about as much to me as me listing my credentials means to you. Then perhaps there's your blind spot. I was one of those peasants that played mostly Pugs and ran with RP groups in pocket D. How I and some players actively played their character is a whole different story from how people advised or utilized others or their characters. As for being good at AoE by showing off Electric melee, that was quite a while after the damage was done. The strict teaming setups would often drop Stalkers pretty quick even after getting the Elec Melee set due to bad reputation. Dual Blades was another alright AoE set earlier on but the deserved reputation for low AoE was a particular sticking point in why people downplayed the AT, kicked them from teams and recommended Brute/Scrapper. There's no reason to be coy, Stalkers were pretty bad and Scrappers were mostly better with the only thing in the ATs favor being their burst damage pushing them ahead thanks to AS... And then being lapped by Scraps if the fight drug on too long. This was all demonstrated again and again on the forums which is why so many different changes were pushed out over time. I think the point of contention is your pointing to a specific period which has nothing to do with what I initially was even talking about. I know how strong the AT is, I know certain builds can stack the AoEs and I know how defensively solid one can be built but none of that is relevant to early Stalker which is what I'm talking about. So check the context because you are(continuously) wasting my time. Scrappers are DPS. Since their crits are unreliable and as much as you feel hyping them to make your argument or whatever meta-build you made to solo the entire game, that's all irrelevant to what the AT was made to be and how it is balanced among the other ATs. Blasters are burst and DPS because they didn't have self defense. Scrappers are DPS and off-tank. And I keep saying you're mincing words because the whole reason I said "AS could be compared to a ST nuke *OR* a melee snipe" is for [expletives] who would bitch at someone else's opinion about their view of a power so preemptively put up an alternative. And this is the main reason why I say you're mincing words. You tell me a power in the game that is an actual ST nuke. You can't because one doesn't exist. The point of combining the terms is to create the idea which it obviously did because you must have an idea of what one would be in your opinion. The hilarious thing is you feel my description is unwarranted but you haven't bothered to put forth a definition of what even a nuke is because it would instantly invalidate your complaints. You mince words but you're bad at it.

Sounds like there's your endgame problem right there.

I could see them speeding up some of the animations for both controls and some of their attacks. It would also assist Controllers with damage a bit. Touching up some of the Blasters melee attacks to be a bit more bursty (looking at the katana attacks particularly) but longer rech. In turn, they likely could nerf some of blaster AoE mez.

I actually agree with this. Since coming to HC, my focus has been on MM since I was never big into them on live and wanted to give them a shot. I haven't taken any into incarnate content but my main issue with the AT was anything that had mission objectives that needing quick travel to and that definition exists in incarnate content. Them getting stuck or taken out is just a part of the problem. The near necessity of the pet IO uniques is another. I think there are quite a few things that would turn out bad in high end content for MMs that should be addressed.

It sounds like you came in after a lot of Stalker changes. It's obvious because it took a heck of a lot of convincing to get people to stick around after the initial AS. Convincing people that "hit and run" wasn't the mainstay of the AT. Of course if you're dismissing that period (completely dropping the context ball, so to speak) to move the talking point toward current trends (like I said you would) then yes, Stalker had basically become a better Scrapper. But the talking point was (and I swear if you do not get this, then you are obviously being dense on purpose) what other AT aspects were blended with Scrappers to form the premise of Stalker and the answer is Blaster. Not about role (even if it were, the role of Blaster is burst damage and little else, same As Stalker) or powerset make up, but overall aspects that take into account all or any of the above. And you are mincing words otherwise you wouldn't omit things. I didn't compare AS to a nuke, I labled it a SINGLE TARGET nuke, which technically it is, a very large controllable burst of damage. The controllable portion is important as it was often SOP for blasters to combine Aim and BU with their nuke to assure complete destruction which is similar to a Stalker combining Hide and BU with AS. As for what you belive went down back in the day: you're either wrong, wilfully omitting things or unknowingly using hindsight. I am a long time fan of Stalkers and have been around for the many many lows of the AT and remember where the AT started out at and where it's been since.

Bruh, this line of discussion is more about the history of the AT and implementation. The roles of villain ATs don't have as concrete a connection to heroes because they are all solo oriented. And technically, a Stalker didn't play much like a Scrapper either unless the ubiquitous scrapperlock was never actually a thing and the only thing needed to be a Scrapper was melee attacks that crit. I also said a "melee snipe" if you're one of those types that just have to mince words without bothering to see where someone else is coming from and prefer to just balk in disbelief and waste people's time. There was a time where a good chunk of a Stalker's alpha relied on that big first crit. And before you pivot back to "but they play like this now" that was not the context of the initial post that started this line of dialogue so please go read that first.

Did you even read your own post? You said "Stalkers are harder to correlate to anything other than a Scrapper since they are so similar and always have been" If that is still in the context of the rest of the paragraph you yourself wrote that began with " And no one is saying they aren't a blend of a few particular AT's." then it's assumed to be more a blend of Scrapper and Blaster, not either or. One could also make the argument that Assassin's Strike is similar to a ST nuke or a melee snipe, either are traits one could attribute to the burst oriented tactics of Blaster.

Now do it on an /Elec Stalker. Or /DA stalker. Not saying a special build can't just that there will be a difference because of the difference in their HP cap (AND Base HP). Like I said, whether you directed your insult at me or not (because, frankly, anyone can claim plausible deniability when challenged) it's pretty rich you shift to playing the elitist role even after being corrected of your own misunderstanding. Why you have done this is beyond me as it's a waste of my time. All in all, it's common advise for a long while that resist sets aren't as good on Stalkers and to a lesser extent Scrappers. As for bringing up soloing LR, it's merely a move of the goal post as once someone manages to do it on a blaster, the argument is moot or shifted to not using certain powers or buffs. And overall, it's a ridiculous strawman since no one is arguing Stalker is AS fragile as a Blaster. That I'm even having to defend the FACT that Stalker is more fragile than a Scrapper feels like a waste of space and time.

I said "non-def" armor. Sure they get the same amount of numerical resistance, but that is effectively less resistance if your HP cap is lower. Your scaling resistance is also less effective because it kicks in at a %of your max HP which will be lower. It's similar to capping a Blaster on def, it's a lot more likely you will get unluckily 2-shot. Also, not having def (ie a resistance set) means you have a higher chance of getting clipped out of hide either initially or during a "re-hide" period, flubbing your extra crits. Also also, blurting out something you can solo with a specialized build hardly proves anything. And I'm not sure why you're resorting to name calling. Not my fault you decided not to understand what I typed.

You also have to consider that most of the standard Stalker armor sets don't scale by spawn size. Coupled with their lower HP/cap limiting the raw effectiveness of anything non-def and you end up with something you need to tread with carefully... Similar to a Blaster needing to plan out their attack pattern to optimize damage buffs and their lack of mez protection. Or are you making the argument that a standard Stalker can be just as reckless and boisterous as a Scrapper? Sure, you can now, but it wasn't always like that. And of course, the trade off from the blaster's AoE was mez protection and stealth. This was more of an advantage for PvP but that was a mode introduced with the villain ATs too.