ZemX

It's been done. Domination.

Where do Stalkers get Hide from? Free power they start with in addition to the normal T1 secondary?

We're not off topic. I'm talking about Stalkers and Scrappers because they are relevant to Sentinel balance, as I made clear in my post. This is not a Scrapper vs Stalker discussion that needs to be taken anywhere else.

So for Scrappers vs. Stalkers it's both base modifiers and caps that are the same for resistance and defense. Slightly higher base hit points on Scrappers. Secondary-wise, most Stalker armor sets got rearranged so that they both had room for Hide but also kept most or all of the same defense/res values in powers. Some effects just got distributed to other powers. Hide gives a very good suppressible defense (particularly AoE) and a much smaller non-suppressible defense bonus. Nice place for defense IOs like Kismet, Shield Wall, and LotG:Recharge. Sentinels appear to have the same base and max Hit Points as Stalkers. But they have slightly lower defense and resistance modifiers (if City of Data is accurate). Same resistance caps (75%). On numbers alone, their survivability is very close to Stalkers (which is itself better than most people probably think). It's more difficult to quantify how much survivability you gain by being able to stay out of (or mostly out of) melee but it's not nothing and I imagine it can mean de-prioritizing melee defense bonuses in favor of ranged/AoE (or some other bonus) without being too big a compromise of overall survivability. It's interesting to me that Sentinels get compared so often to Blasters when their closer competition is Scrappers and Stalkers. Sentinels can't do Blaster damage for the same reason melee damage ATs can't do Blaster damage. Everybody should understand that. If they got anywhere close to Blaster damage output levels, they'd have obsoleted two other ATs entirely on the way.

Stalkers do not have weaker defense or resistance than Scrappers. They are the same. The only difference in regen is due to the slight (10-15%) difference in hit points. The secondary is changed slightly to accommodate Hide but overall values for defensive stats ends up the same. Other than that, they are extremely similar in terms of survivability. I imagine Sentinels are in the same ballpark, no? I've yet to play one.

Partly a phase and partly not. Early on, you don't have all your high DPA attacks and especially not your biggest non-AS hitter (usually). You're unlikely to outdamage Hidden AS because while it's only as good as Quick AS when Quick AS doesn't crit, it's still better than any other attack you have at that point. But even at 50, I still use it if I solo. There, I don't care much about waiting a few seconds at the start of a fight. I'm not racing any team members to attack my target. And the animation time of Hidden AS is "free" in the sense that it occurs before the fight starts when you're soloing. Plus if it misses, it doesn't break Hide. It's a very safe way to jump out to an early lead in any fight. Then it goes on cooldown while you get a 90% chance of a Hide crit on your next attack, thanks to the ATO, and proceed to build AF for the next time AS is ready to fire, this time as the Quick AS version. It's not just style. It's probably the better choice in most cases when solo. Even if you're playing on higher xTeam settings and prefer to AoE groups, it still makes sense to AS first a boss or LT (or other troublesome target), gain the benefit of the -tohit and chance to terrorize debuffs, get the 90% Hide chance from the ATO, and then fire the AoE than to do it the other way around. If you have a tele-nuke like Lightning Rod or Shield Charge (or both) , use them last. They don't break Hide but they don't benefit from it either, so use the stuff that DOES benefit from Hide first.

How? If you want to start there and play as a native Praetorian for however long you want. You still can. Allowing Primals to "infiltrate" Praetoria and run content there doesn't defeat anything. It gives you more people to team with. That's the point. Same goes for allowing bluesiders to run any content they want redside. Nobody's arm is being twisted to go there and do that. The entire purpose of that would just be making more people available, potentially, to team with, as well as giving characters, no matter where they start, access to more content. And like I said, I am not against other changes to improve Praetoria, but people need to be realistic about what it would accomplish based on the example we have of redside. And I think the devs, wondering where best to spend their limited volunteer time... would probably be thinking the same thing.

Pipe dream, sadly. Crack pipe dream. Look at redside. It has pretty much everything various folks in this thread are suggesting (and more) to be added to Goldside. More story arcs. More contacts. More zones. Bank missions. Strike Forces. Accolades. Access to co-op zones. And it's a ghost town on most servers. This is going to sound harsh maybe, but attempting to revitalize Goldside by essentially re-running the City of Villains experiment again is the definition of insanity. Don't get me wrong. I'd love to see all this and more happen to Goldside... it just wouldn't change much. People go where the most people are and thus the most activity. Blueside. For Goldside, I would only make the same suggestions I did for Redside and some have already made here. Let people run content whereever they want. It still won't balance the sides but that's not a realistic goal anyway at this very late date. First Ward and Night Ward aren't exactly hopping but you DO sometimes see mission teams running there. Why? Because anyone on any side can go there and start one. Make that happen EVERYWHERE in the game. Redside, Blueside, and Goldside.

This is an appeal to authority. The idea is that the suggestion is more "correct" because it matches the original design of Stalkers. Yet the original design of Stalkers was changed by those very same Live devs to be something more scrappy on teams. The truth is that both are just opinions on how someone would like the AT to play. Dressing one up as more deserving than the other because it adheres to a concept even the original devs abandoned isn't convincing.

We can call that one "Medi-porter Technician."

So I was doing a respec on my Staff/Nin Stalker to improve defenses and resistance and... I thought of this thread. So I figured what the heck and spec'd into Combat TP. I already had the pool open for Tele Target anyway and like I said before, Ninjitsu can be kinda loose in the build, so I had room. I still have Superjump for travel so I didn't go with Teleport and I kept CJ for normal combat movement. Gotta have my super-ninja-jump on this ninja-themed character. CT is nice, but there is one thing that may convince me to spec back out of it and it's particular to Staff. CT causes redraw and staff has no no-redraw option. Bummer! So I BAMF into a crowd and then.... hang on while I draw this weapon again and THEN beat you with it! I can definitely see this being cooler with something that has a smashy/flashy non-weapon PBAoE like Ice, Rad, or Fire. I might even consider it for my Ice/SD for those moments when Shield Charge is on cooldown and I want a low-rent alternative to satisfy by zoom and boom craving: CT + Frozen Aura from Hide... hmmmm. But what to trade for it? That's gonna be a much harder decision.

If City of Data is anything to go by the Activate Period for AAO is 1 second. But to that I'd add a half second for latency. You can see that last bit in a lot of places in the game. If you run up to a glowy and click it immediately, it will often interrupt because the server doesn't know you've stopped moving yet. You have to wait just a hair and then click. Same goes for running or leaping into a pack and hitting a PBAoE. If you're too quick, it doesn't hit everyone. So if I was going to bother with this on Shield Charge, for instance, I'd leap in, count out "one and two AND..." and key on the last "and" to be sure AAO had boosted my damage. But zipping in and knocking everyone down is cool too, so.... 🤪 Maybe. I wasn't tempted by Elec/SD for this reason. I went Ice/SD because Ice has two very nice normal AoEs on relatively good timers, so the Shield Charge just seems like a little extra bit of fun.

You said I didn't give a reason when I did. That I just said "no". That's not a no-comment. That's a lie. And I'm done with you. It's obvious you were never interested in a good faith discussion but just people agreeing with you.

I did and you just totally ignored it. I said your changes DO impact everyone. I explained why. I don't want that. That's all I NEED to say. We don't actually have to agree and I don't have to change your mind. I'm good actually.

This is overly melodramatic. When you propose changes to an AT that people think are unnecessary, they will tell you so. To say you can propose changes and we can't object is ludicrous, because... ...this is not true. If you greatly increase the damage AS does from Hide, saying I don't have to use it is like saying I don't have to run around with my armor toggles turned on. It's technically true. It's also absurd. And you're ignoring who else might complain about buffing Stalkers. I don't know about you, but I have the scars from round 1 of this "buff stalkers" war back on Live and if you weren't there or just didn't frequent those forums much, you might not believe the uproar it caused even hinting Stalkers should do more damage than Scrappers, let alone Blasters. In the end, I think we got more ST damage than Scrappers, but not by much. And Scrappers generally do better AoE (but again probably by less than people think). The play style you're talking about is still relevant solo, but I AM going to give you my opinion that it's ridiculous to play a sneaky assassin on the edge of the tornado of destruction that is your typical CoH team. That's not me telling you you're "incorrect" just that I don't think your way of playing should dictate how the AT works for everybody else. I think that's fair as it's just my opinion against yours.

Hostage missions annoy me on any AT. On a Stalker, I've learned to deal with them. I clear to the hostage first, then watch chat for ambushers calling out. Hide. Wait to ambush THEM. Then unhide and move on. The really annoying thing about hostages is their total ineptitude navigating the map. I mean, explain how ambushes targeting the player NEVER have a problem quickly pathing to you for a beatdown. Never get hung up on geometry or inside walls. Never get confused going up or down stairs. Yet this happens ALL the freakin' time to escorted NPCs. It's like they intentionally chose a less-capable version of their AI pathing algorithm just to piss us off.

Not even sure which part of my post you're disagreeing with here. I said I don't believe you can wipe out an entire spawn before someone else can "wind up" an AoE. If you want to claim you can, nobody has to see that. You just have to describe the spawn, it's level relative to yours (including incarnate shifts), and which one or two attacks you executed that wiped them all out, because that's all the time you have before someone lands an AoE. i.e. Less than 3 seconds. Because I wasn't disagreeing that you can do the other stuff. AVs? GMs? Sure. But my point is: So can a lot of other ATs with a full IO/Incarnate build. It tells you nothing about AT balance. If you really want to see where you stack up against others that know how to min/max, just post your results in the Pylon or Trapdoor or AE801 threads.

People might take you more seriously if you avoided obvious exaggeration like saying you can murder whole spawns before anyone else can "wind up an AoE". Maybe you've seen this on a team where you ran ahead or something but it takes a few seconds to land a nuke and a common AoE is even faster. And a team should be bringing multiple AoEs landing simultaneously compared to whatever you're doing. Come on, man. Ease up on the propaganda a little. I'm sure the build is impressive, but DB/EA is not THAT much an outlier. Everybody should know you can build just about anything into a monster with the right IO build and incarnate powers. That doesn't really mean the AT is "fine". You can build a Sentinel into something that solos +4/x8 ITFs. Doesn't mean the AT is fine compared to other ATs. But someone always does try to say that, it seems. Don't get me wrong. I also think Stalkers are mostly fine, but they are not gods among other melee ATs either. You can build just as insane, or better, on a Scrapper or Brute. They will survive more than you can certainly no matter what you've done in your build. Sorry, that's just the math of it. If you see your Stalker wildly outperforming others on pick up teams, it's because your build is better. Not your AT. I see this all the time and I wouldn't even say my Stalker builds are entirely as optimized as I'd like yet. Next time you're on a team just have a look around. You might be surprised how few set bonuses you see on about half the team on average in the mid to upper levels.

Welcome to the history of CoH. People need to stop looking at the original concept of Stalkers like it SHOULD make sense on a team. Using Placate NEVER made sense, even from the very beginning. It was never strike-and-fade. It was always strike-and-scrap. The only use Placate had back then (and the only use it has now) is defensive. It's not a "do more damage" button and never was. The mistake the original devs made with Hidden AS and Placate was the same original mistake they made across all ATs and powersets. They just never considered the performance impact of animation time in their original design until players SHOWED it to them. They considered DPS to be a function of damage and recharge time only and didn't get that DPA was king from the get-go. So please everyone stop appealing to the original design of Stalkers like you're quoting scripture or something. That style of sneaky assassin gameplay works in one situation only: Soloing. Hidden AS is FINE for the soloist. Okay maybe two if we count helping a team stealth missions. Anybody can solo and anybody can stealth objectives of course, but I mean just the concept of it meshes particularly well with the theme of a sneaky assassin. On teams though in most other cases? Forget about it. There is boils down to more basics like who does better damage (ST or AoE), who survives better, who has control, buff, debuff, capability, etc. It's about what you can do in the spawn-to-spawn fighting that is a typical mission. And there we really are just stealthy scrappers and always have been. Deal with it. People who want to be sneaky assassins should solo. You can get your fill of that there. On a team, AS is just a melee-range snipe and even ranged snipes got the quick treatment when nobody used them on teams.

"Okay folks! Remember to stick together and NOBODY go near the steps to City Hall until we're all ready. Got that?"

If the people saying good things about Rad Melee were ALSO Brutes (or tankers) then it's worth remembering Stalkers don't get Irradiated Ground so we probably get less Contamination coverage than other melee ATs who use the set. Meaning you're getting a bit less healing out of Rad Siphon too. Atom Smasher will be the primary way to Contaminate large groups and even that will only do about a third of those hit on average. Proton Sweep is your only other AoE and has a decent 75deg arc, but disappointing 7ft radius. Unless stuff is really packed together, you're usually only hitting two or three with it and contaminating each target only 21% of the time. Irradiated Ground has only a 10% chance to contaminate but that's on every target in an 8ft radius patch, every 2 seconds. I can imagine the set shines on Brutes and Tankers in large-crowds that can (a) Be packed in and kept together by taunt/punch-voke/threat, and then (b) Contaminated more often with the help of Irradiated Ground (not to mention the added damage and spread of damage due to contamination). I haven't given up yet on my Rad/Rad Stalker, but not playing a whole lot either. Just got Atom Smasher and just got it slotted a bit at 33. So we'll see.

Unless you think this would kill the bosses just as fast (which it won't) then you're missing why I even said it. Basically, the situation where it makes sense to switch from AoE focus to ST focus as a Stalker is the one where you notice the team is always hanging around mopping up bosses last. It means the team has plenty of AoE to wipe out the trash and could benefit instead from someone focusing damage on those big bags of hitpoints. You can still forgo the hidden AS and rely only on the quick-AS later in the chain if you want, but all you have to do is leave the last spawn two seconds early to make hidden AS worth it. You get scale 7 damage as the first attack and an almost guaranteed follow-up crit from your next best attack. You can at that point even just switch targets and the team's AoEs will likely finish it off for you while you go lay into another boss in the spawn. The goal of this is to knock off enough boss HP that the AoEs finish them along with the rest instead of the whole team having to focus the bosses last.

One thing I wonder on my Ice/Shield is this... should I really be using Shield Charge from range? It's fun to zoom in and knock em all down of course, but wouldn't it be better to hop (or CTP) into the pack first, wait a beat, then Shield Charge zero distance? This would give AAO a tick to boost your damage before you Shield Charge. And SC doesn't seem to have any mechanic to boost damage from range like Savage Leap does, for example. As far as that goes, the oft mentioned "it doesn't break Hide" thing doesn't seem to be a big deal to me. Seems you're better off doing your Hide crit first than chancing someone breaks Hide on you after a Shield Charge / Lightning Rod, no? So... hop into the middle of a spawn. Build Up. Fire your Hide critical attack, whatever it is, then your Tele-attacks. Wouldn't that make the most of AAO? Tricky. It probably does a little better than just using an EndRdx but probably not a whole lot. But you'd have to do all the annoying math to find out, which for the AoEs is even more annoying. I just ran through it quick for Charged Brawl and assumed you had already slotted it for 33% EndRdx and 33% Recharge with some IO set (I didn't actually try a specific set so this could be way off). But for the sake of argument, this worked out to about a 15% proc rate. Perf Shift gives you 10% end. So assuming you've not increased your Endurance, that's 10 end times 15% or 1.5 end on average each time you activate the power. That's more than the ~1 end a second SO EndRdx would give you. But again, not by a whole lot, and it goes down the more recharge you have in whatever set you've slotted in those powers. And down again if you plan to use an alpha that enhances recharge. Whereas slotting an EndRdx there is both cheaper and saves you the same endurance amount every time you activate the power no matter how much recharge enhancement it has (note: global recharge doesn't hurt the proc chance either though). tl;dr It's a lot of annoying math to figure this out for all the AoEs in particular. I generally just go with the procs in Health and Stamina and let the endrdx in IO sets do the rest. If I'm hurting for End at endgame, I'll get some help from the alpha slot.

On Live my favorite was a Nin/Nin (Ninja Blade / Ninjitsu) Stalker. I figure that counts. But my first 50 was a Rad/Rad Corruptor. Also great. On HC now I've tried reincarnating that Corruptor as a Rad/Rad Stalker and... meh. Not liking Rad Melee. At least not yet. Maybe a Rad/Rad Sentinel instead? My fav here is a Ice/Shield Stalker which is KIND of in the spirit of themed x/x because the Shield is made of Ice. 😛

Not at all true. The thing about AoE is that it hits everything the same. That means it kills minions first, LTs second, and bosses dead last. By a lot. Bosses have several times the HP and more damage resistance. If the team has AoE covered, most Stalkers should switch to ST mode and go after bosses first. That complements the team. And the slow AS can still be used here if you run just 3 seconds ahead of the team. Tankers already know to do this when they want to begin bunching up the next spawn for the nukers. Just go with them and assassinate a boss. Animation time doesn't mean diddly if it happens before the fight starts. If you've done it right, the team is arriving to drop their bombs just as or after your AS is landing. ST chain some bosses, then leave for the next. It works. But that said... good grief is it boring. When people on forums tell me "every" team is like this, my only thought is... why? Find different teams folks! Exemplar. Do weird stuff. Don't you get bored of just +4/x8ing radio teams or ITFs all the time? At some point that ceases to be playing and just becomes Progress Quest: The Search for Rewards. Maybe it's me, but I have to break that up with oddball mission teams at lower levels. Weird pick-up team composition? That's a feature, not a bug! Or take a break soloing/badging which Stalkers are also fantastic at. I've tried to play Scrappers and they're great too, but just not as interesting to me.