Omega-202

Fast Assassin's Strike powers don't have the standard crit built in to them. They only crit based on stacks of Focus.

Is it a massive improvement? No. But its about what you'd get from slotting an extra free damage proc. How can you justify Stalkers deserving the equivalent of a free damage proc slot when they're currently performing very solidly? I just can't see how you can justify power creep like that when they're already easily in the top half of the ATs.

Amazing analysis and post all around that sums up the issues with these proposals, but I have to quibble about this point above. To a lesser extent than what you noted for buffing slow AS to match the DPA of fast AS, the whole "stacks not dropping" proposal wouldn't be a "probably won't hurt anything" situation, it would actually be a pretty decent buff to single target DPS. Lets say you're cycling fast AS at a good clip, but mixing in patron snipes and BU, which don't generate stacks, so you're hitting at 3 stacks 50% of the time and 2 stacks the other 50% due to dropoffs. If the change makes it so you go from 50/50 to 100% of the time at 3 stacks, thats a ~0.46 scale DPA buff to fast AS. That's another ~600 damage per minute to an average attack chain. It's not a ton, but it's something and it's just further buffing the single target damage of one of the highest single target damaging ATs in the game. Do Stalkers really need that?

It's not split. The names that have been on the Stalker boards for years, who have provided detailed guides and builds and who know the AT are all in agreement that they're fine. You said it yourself two posts up: you are playing the AT wrong. Stalkers aren't ambush specialists, they're higher burst Scrappers. They haven't been ambush specialists in over a decade. You're caught up on what you think the AT should be instead of learning to play the AT as it is. If you took the time to know how to build and play a Stalker, you would find that they're fine to amazing depending on the powersets. Could some sets use help? Yes, MA, ninja blade, dual blades and some others all could use a hand. But sets like Electric outperform all other AT versions. But you really don't seem to care and have decided that you're objectively correct, so whatever.

Never called you a name. You just don't know what you're talking about.

Nope, Stalkers have a lower aggro modifier. It's way more to do with the fact that Scrappers literally genenerate 1.5x the threat of Stalkers. https://hcwiki.cityofheroes.dev/wiki/Threat You don't seem to know how the game works on a base level. Another reason I can't take this thread seriously.

I'm sure a lot of people disagree with you but don't care to argue the point because it's not worth our time. Me for one. Stalkers are in a really good place and I don't forsee them getting any buffs. Its really not worth discussing, especially when you have Sentinels and Kheldians in such bad shape. Just because a bunch of people don't pipe up to tell you that you're wrong doesn't mean you are right.

**Edit** I see that the meme may have been unclear in combination with the thread title in the link below. My build is in the thread below in the third post.

There's some good suggestions here from a damage perspective, but in my attempts to run farms on my Stalkers (Elec/Inv/Mu and Dark/Shield/Soul), they weren't all that effective because of runners. Without a taunt aura or punch-voke, some enemies were wandering off which cut into the kill times. Has anyone figure out a way around this?

I know people in this thread seem to be half jokingly saying "its all a Nemesis plot", but in all seriousness, isn't it? To answer OP's question, CoH already has a canon answer: all of the major plot threads legitimately lead back to Nemesis. Rikti invasion, Praetorian invasion, Oroboros, Shadow Shard... And whatever isn't Nemesis related seems to be tied back to the Circle of Thorns in some way. All storylines fall in a Venn diagram of like 5 circles with the Nemesis circle covering most of them. If anything Nemesis is more involved in the CoH lore than Stark tech is in the MCU.

Wow, if you're going to be a giant jerk, at least be correct. Electric blast's nuke has a higher base recharge than the PbAoE nukes (170s vs 145s). They specifically balanced the ranged nuke's higher safety with a longer recharge, completely intentionally. Grow up and apologize.

Glad to see others see the value of taking Mu Bolts as a "when you just can't melee" filler and as an exotic (for a Stalker) IO slotting location. Hitting a CJ hop>Mu Bolt as you close in on a target is better than just doing nothing and its better than chasing down a runner with a sliver of health or wasting your Zapp.

Everything tries to run from all squishies, from my experience. The problem is that Stalkers are the only non-squishy with no aggro control that is also melee focused. Personally, I ignore the runners on my Stalkers and just keep hitting what's in reach. They come back eventually. And for stragglers, I pop them with Zapp/Moonbeam and whatever other ranged attacks I am carrying. The Ragnarok proc in Ball Lightning and the Avalanche proc in an pbaoe also helps. If they're on their backs, they're not running. For Romulus and other AVs...yeah, I got nothing. They just bolt.

As others have said, your primary and tertiary pools are the main issue. The only Stalker setups that are going to reliably chew through large spawns have to have some combination of Elec//, /SD/, and //Mu. Preferably, Elec/SD/Mu, but I like Elec/Invuln/Mu better. Everything else is going to be mainly single targetting whole spawns to death. If you want an AoE god, the problem isn't the AT, it's your powerset picks.

Panels outside of the elevator are not uncommon in large modern office buildings. The idea is that you press which floor you are going to on the outside and then it directs you (and anyone else going to that floor) to a particular elevator in the elevator bank. It helps efficiency by making sure you don't have 5 different people going to floor 25 get on 5 different elevators and you dont end up with someone headed to floor 50 stuck on the same elevator as a crowd headed to floors 10-18. It then makes it so you don't have to all scramble and shove to hit your button once you're in the elevator. It also works as a soft security check by making you swipe a card or use a key fob outside of the elevator before selecting the floor you're headed to, so people can't easily go to floors that they're not supposed to be on. Granted, that's more of a thing in modern setups in big cities, and not something I'd expect to see in an early 2000's office in a game.

You're completely missing the point. Melees need to use LOS on that fight whereas ranged characters don't. I'm not lamenting anything. I was just arguing against the point that "melees are not disadvantaged in the BM fight" that Shred Monkey was trying to argue. They objectively are disadvantaged becauae they need to use an extra mechanic that ranged attackers don't and even when used perfectly, a melee attacker still has lower DPS because there are periods where they can't attack whole BM moves to them. So Shred Monkey's comment was objectively incorrect. Please try to read comments in context instead of looking for an argument.

I have no idea what you're trying to say. Herding can be useful if it helps maximize AoE DPS. But needing to LOS pull a single AV in order to not get insta-dropped by the fire patches is totally a different situation. Yes, they're similar mechanics, but in one scenario it increases efficacy of a whole team and the other scenario it is basically required in order to not be dead weight.

The fact that you need to LOS pull her out of patches in order to land attacks as a melee means it is definitely more unfriendly to melee ATs than ranged ATs. One can basically ignore a whole mechanic and keep attacking and the other needs to stop attacking and hide until shes in the open. A melee's DPS is hampered much more on that fight than a ranged attacker, to the point that I specifically make sure I take my PPP/APP attacks on my melee toons so I can keep attacking when she can't be pulled from the fire.

The stacked Manuevers, Tactical Training: Manuevers, Mind Link, Shadowfall, Steamy Mist, Far Sight and Fade, along with all of the personal +Def they all carry would make the fight a complete whiff-fest. It would be a very boring and annoying fight that either would be unbeatable or would require a team with 8 sets of Tactics and a full tray of yellow insps. Napkin math says that with 8 of the worst offenders, I could get around 150% defense on some, and over 200% on others, full time.

It's more of a problem for some sets than others. Trick Arrow is mostly in the 1.6 s animation range, whereas Dark and Rad are mostly in the 2.17 to 3 s range. It really adds up. The whole problem is an artifact of the early days game balancing. Those debuffs used to be some of the most powerful abilities in the game, so the 2-3 second animations made sense. But in the games current state, there's no reason for them to take so long. If I had my druthers, I'd change all anchor toggle animations to a 0.8 s brawl animation and some of the other debuffs to the quick backhand sweep ("Energy Torrent") animation, even just as placeholders. It shouldn't happen because I'm sure a lot of people like the classic animations from a stylistic perspective, but something would need to be done.

@DreadShinobi gave some great advice. Generally, your follow-up from the AS Hide proc should be one of: a snipe, Thunderstrike or Ball Lightning if in an AoE situation, or Chain Induction as a backup. Chain Induction, Charged Brawl and Havoc Punch (or just one of HP and CB if you only have one) are usually your stack builders. AS>Snipe>CB>CI>CB has a 36% chance of having you back at 3 stacks (guaranteed AS crit) and an 84% chance of at least 2 stacks for a 66% chance of your next AS critting. AS>TS>CB>CI>CB has an 84% chance of having you back at 3 stacks for the next AS. If you sprinkle in Lightning Rod for another guaranteed stack builder, or use HP (higher stack chance, 80% vs 60%, but worse DPA than CB), it's pretty easy to always have at least 2 stacks of Focus for every AS, even if you use patron attacks sprinkled about. Regarding Shadow Meld vs Ball Lightning, can't go wrong with either. Up to you whether you want more offense of more defense, and then choosing the appropriate PPP.

That's not what the AS effect does. It applies a Fear (https://archive.paragonwiki.com/wiki/Fear) status which makes the target cower. It DOES NOT make the target run away. Fear has not done that since Issue 3. Runners are a whole separate AI mechanism unrelated to the Fear effect. Stalkers experience a high frequency of runners due to the low threat modifier (threat modifer x2), as compared to Tanks and Brutes (threat mod ×4) and Scrappers (threat modifier x3), and because they lack a taunt aura of any kind. However, all of this has NOTHING to do with Fear or AS. Overall, there is a ton of misinformation in this thread, which is very dissappointing. @siolfir and @Lightslinger are the only people who are actually sharing accurate information. In sum, once you get a solid attack chain down with both AT's ATOs slotted, a Stalker will usually put out more single target DPS than a Scrapper when in a full team due to the 31% crit chance (10% base + 3% per teammate, compared to the 5-10% for Scrappers; THANKS to Siolfr for catching my typo), nearly perma BU due to the Assassin's Mark ATO and guaranteed double crits from Guile ATO when using AS with 3-stacks of Assassin's Focus (100% crit chance) >ATO Hide proc> heavy hitter (100% crit from Hide). A Stalker can reliably have 30-40% of their attack chain as crits off of scale 1.0 damage versus ~10% crits for a Scrapper off of scale 1.125, which usually puts them ahead.

The fact that they can be perma'd is more than good enough. On the characters I take them on, they are or are nearly perma. To the OP: They are fine as is. You can perma them and they are plenty strong if you play right. My Crab and Ill/Storm/Soul keep their patron pets up 99% of the time and they contribute a lot in non-I-trial content.

Need, no, but I highly recommend it. Without Tough (or heavy IO bonus investment), Crab S/L resists are prettt mediocre. Weave gives a very solid amount of defense to help you overcap, which is crucial when facing defense debuffs because Crabs have no built in debuff resistance. Weave is also a great LotG spot. You don't need them to do well, but with Tough and Weave you can stand in the middle of +4/8 spawns solo without much of an issue. Without Tough, good luck tanking any S/L based 54 enemies for very long. Regarding everyone else's comments on "not having enough power picks", I am honestly confused. Crabs don't need a lot of powers to work well. If you build for recharge bonuses, 5-6 total attacks will give you an uninterrupted single target and AoE chain. And the whole "Crabbermind vs Attacker" dichotomy is bunk, in my opinion. You can build to do both very easily. There's nothing stopping you from having 6 perma pets, a full effective attack chain, Tough, Weave and Perma-Serum.

Yes and no. The clamp is still coming into effect because the to-hit base is still clamped at 5%, which is then buffed by their accuracy to the final to-hit chance. So in that regard, the 5% clamp is still relevant, it's just rarely the final value. The 9% is still "running into the floor clamp", but its modified after the fact.