Sancerre

i agree ATOs could be an interesting way to approach making defender/corruptor more unique from each other, but that wont necessarily keep corruptors out of the 'mathematically irrelevant' jail. i otherwise agree with Tad Cooper's, more well thought out, statement about the pendulum swing of balance. in your mind, there will _ALWAYS_ be one AT that is 'mathematically superior' and the other will be 'mathematically irrelevant'. even if it is only a 1% difference. nobody wants nerfs, but you cant buff each other in rotations and keep the rest of the game exactly the same. So, you had already claimed that defenders do more damage than corruptors even in a team environment. So, by your words, vigilance could be entirely taken away and defenders would still be stronger. i would say if that is your stance, vigilance is not the problem. vigilance is then only compounding on the greater problem. so again, lets just take a very quick swing and buff corruptor base damage to offset the real problem in a more direct manner -- what do you think that 'mathematically irrelevant' number is and propose that as the change. or perhaps you think defenders are overpowered and should be nerfed? or, if damage proc IOs are the heart of all this... then why are we talking about corruptor vs defender specifically -- just to draw an example?

this is very much the same discussion that happens between tankers/brutes or scrappers/stalkers. one of them is always going to be considered _OBJECTIVELY_ less valuable than the other because they perform the same role with the same powersets and numbers are numbers. i personally see a lot of value in base damage, damage cap top end, and also the scourge crits. as i noted previously, this is especially apparent on a kinetics toon. kinetics defender will overcap damage very easily. i can agree that damage proc IOs are probably overtuned, but again this is not the thread for that -- if damage proc IOs are ruining your immersion of a corruptor doing more damage than a defender, then make a different topic for damage proc IOs. if the base damage is the problem here, then why are we suggesting convoluted solutions surrounding the scourge inherent (that you very clearly is just a '4fun mechanic')? just ask for 10% more (or whatever number you think is appropriate) base damage to corruptor powersets. any 'thematic' edge based around the scourge inherent is going to be less reliable than defender every time. if you think scourge damage is currently terrible cause stuff dies too fast anyways, then 'critical debuffs' will have the same exact problem. ultimately i think the reality is that corruptors and defenders both are generally insanely strong in a team environment and nobody should be turning down either in a party. never once has anybody turned down my corruptor and said 'sorry we need a defender instead'.

the complaint here is that corruptors feel like they do the same damage as defenders, but have less utility/defense. my view is that corruptors do, in fact, do more damage and _if anything_ the move would be to shore up some of their defenses via pool powers because they are generally less effective than powersets. i do feel like the separation of support/utility/defense VS offense needs to be maintained. i dont personally feel like corruptors need a buff though. if you buff corruptor... then doesnt defender become 'pointless'? just reversing the 'problem'. There seems to be a tendency in this thread here to get stuck on the wordage of 'corruptor' and the 'scourge' inherent... and what that COULD represent. so here is a copy-paste of the developer's intention: Corruptors twist the forces of the universe to do their bidding. As a Corruptor, you might strike your foes down with blasts of fire, entomb them in ice, infect them with radiation, or curse them with pure darkness. As your foes are weakened, your Scourge ability kicks in, increasing your damage to an enemy as their hit points drop. You can even impart a portion of your twisted power to your allies to protect them from harm, heal them, or increase the damage they deal. This wide array of abilities comes at a price. Your defenses aren't strong, and you can quickly attract the ire of your enemies if you aren't careful. you can interpret the 'corruptor' and 'scourge' any way you want, but the narrative written by the developer fits the bill. something else to consider is that the defender powersets are _intended_ to be supportive sets played with a team. if you play with a team, defender loses vigilance damage buff. this sums it up well. some defender powersets accomplish 'enough' even as a secondary and you can opt for the higher damage output of a corruptor.

For Defense: Defender obviously has better group support and general tankiness (the support archetype is the primary -- obvious). But ALSO -- power pool stuff are bigger numbers too (includes tough, weave, combat jumping, leadership buffs, etc.) and it adds up -- this makes defender feel much tankier as a baseline. For Offense: The damage output will feel "similar" solo for most blasting sets, as vigilance passive will offset the lower base damage defender has in the blasting trees. ultimately however, the scourge procs will keep corruptor ahead.. even solo. The scourge procs are a bit undervalued IMO... typically you are dumping AoE and killing off minions/LTs which now leaves bosses in scourge range. That aside, the main difference for damage purposes is that defender is capped at +400% damage, but corrupter is capped at +500% damage. You might not think this matters much but it is incredibly easy to damage cap a kinetics defender, for example.... or if you are playing with a kinetics powerset, corruptor gets that leeway to bump up their damage much higher... ontop of the already higher base damage. i think corruptors are fine as is. if you HAD to buff corruptor somehow, i would look at giving them defender numbers on power pools. leadership example -- maneuvers for defender is 3.5% base and for corruptor is 2.63% base. **also a bigger 'problem' being brought up in here are IO damage procs. while it is part of the corruptor vs defender topic, it effects the entirety of the game... not just corruptor and defender. incidentally i believe that is the focus of the next round of balance changes..

yea the only downside with this kind of operation in practice is that there are going to be very small windows as you are switching over to your next resistance power. now with resistance specifically this is not _as big_ of a deal because it will still be a consistent stream of damage. but for example when i play my /time corruptor with clarion incarnate... every 2 minutes my farsight drops and i go from 50% defense to 25% defense... depending on what you got tagged and coinflips abound, it can be a stressful moment as i recast clarion + farsight.

this is my TW/Nin that i run with currently. im gonna end up making a few adjustments yet but its very powerful in terms of damage. no end concerns at all cause Sei Kyoko is up whenever the blue runs low. massive aoe damage, would highly recommend fireball. defense is great until you are fighting against critters with big +to hit buffs... even being 5% over 'soft cap' like i am just isnt enough. there is definitely survival concerns in many areas of the game though -- its fine for team play anyways but solo can be rough in dark astoria, for example. usually only able run solo on +2/8 cause +3 or +4 has too many coinflips going on and is not worthwhile....

this combination is fairly easy and powerful. the downside is that you give up other incarnate hybrid... notably the doublehits (or just the scaling damage if that is your flavor). it is definitely something you need to weigh out because most people would pick up shield defense for the +damage bonus and AoE attack in the first place. /radiation can do something similar with meltdown if you have enough global recharge to bring it down to 180 seconds CD (or lower). **wrote down the wrong number for some reason... you only need to get meltdown from 8 minutes to 3 minutes CD, which is actually pretty easy for any build with hasten in it (and /radiation has recharge built into beta decay... except for stalkers). that said, /radiation is not particularly difficult to hit very high resists on, but it could be an avenue away from the fighting pool (which boosts S/L only) to hit higher resistances.

So i had actually stepped away from this game for over a year before i picked it back up recently. Some of these changes over the time gone were exciting to see. I suppose I should have read up on the old topics debating energy melee changes first... before suggesting even more controversial sweeping changes. the idea of a 'combo' system in any form seems to be a hard line that people are generally unhappy with... among other adamant opinions... My personal look at the 'revised' powerset is that it appears under-cooked -- or just dipped the toes in the water. The biggest red herring to me is the Barrage interaction -- it just doesnt appear to have a meaningful interaction, especially comparing with the power disparity of using Energy Transfer instead. Beyond that, it appeared odd to me that the powerset had this unique mechanic but build-up was still... just standard build-up that didnt lean into Energy Focus at all. But it also doesnt really make sense to force Energy Focus into build-up (along with the power reduction compensation that is standard fare) just to tunnel it into Energy Transfer only. Regardless, it is still a very strong powerset that doesnt necessarily need to see any more changes. I am enjoying my energy melee toon as is. I still like my ideas, but i can accept that the current energy melee 'revision' was already a massive controversial leap.

Yes, i proposed changes to (mostly) everything to make Energy Focus feel like it was a _powerset_ interaction, not just a situational Energy Transfer DPA modifier... and i think i explained that much. i was looking to give each attack a unique identity when using Energy Focus with it. Perhaps a point that seems to have been misunderstood here by both folks that have replied so far. All of the suggestions are only intended to be buffs when consuming a stack of Energy Focus. And hopefully a modified build-up would allow flexibility to do something with Energy Focus aside from modify Energy Transfer DPA. if a number i suggested seems 'over the top', i think a discussion surrounding a 'better number' is more productive than 'your number is too high'. i also appreciate if folks just flat out disagree with the design change concept as whole, such as Siolfir. barrage -- your point on other pay2win powers exist and we shouldnt be balancing around them existing is fair. i can concede that. just having barrage do only -regen (and such a small value) seemed like i was removing power from it... so i suggested a bump in the -regen and other additions in place of me moving the stun elsewhere. energy punch -- you do need to acknowledge that my changes force you to use up Energy Focus and leave little room to 'save' it purely for energy transfer. if you use Energy Focus for energy punch, that is Energy Focus you are _not_ using on energy transfer, for example. the debuff duration doesnt need to last forever either, it can be a 4 second debuff. again numbers presented were suggestions to start a conversation. Bone Smasher -- yes i feel like the ability with a 60% stun chance would be the natural place to move the Energy Focus empowered stun to. im a bit mystified as to why you think this specifically is broken. it is fundamentally not much different than the current Live implementation on Barrage. The flip side is that Siolfir appears to be of the opinion that holds are not that valuable and could be "wasting" an Energy Focus charge with this suggested change. Build up -- I would say that you believe it is easy to get Energy Focus currently because you only care about using it with Energy Transfer. if your only goal was to continue using Energy Focus specifically for Energy Transfer, then yes i can understand where you see this is pointless and effectively a 'nerf'. that is not what i am presenting here, however. Also, i did suggest that all empowered attacks receive an additional damage modifier (10-15% base bump). this interaction does reduce damage of armor/epic/patron/power pool abilities though, yes. However, it is a balancing point that other powersets applying secondary effects via buildup cope with, such as radiation melee and contamination. i suggested a flat number of charges, but a possible alternative is 10 seconds of 'all abilities are empowered'... seemed a bit much though. Incidentally stalkers usually dont get a modified build-up, so i'm not sure how my suggestions would impact them differently than tanker/brute/scrapper. Whirling Hands -- it would still be 8 radius default. larger radius only under the empowering effects of Energy Focus... you cite whirling smash vs momentum limitations and i think that is a great comparison! thank you. i would point out that whirling smash also has a 1 second cast time and a knockup though. i actually thought asking only for 2 yards during empowerment would seem like too small of buff, so i suggested secondary effects (knockup/slow). Maybe that was greedy of me. Power Crash -- i do want to make a correction that this skill is already 10 range currently. i am not sure why but it really doesnt _feel_ like it. i play a titan weapon scrapper as well, but power crash doesnt feel like the same hitbox as arc of destruction... may just be personal problem and visual cues. that said, power crash is fine as it is. personally i feel like the the powerset is still very weak on AoE -- certainly nowhere near claws, for example. and that is fine because claws doesnt have energy transfer. the single target is extraordinary, but that is entirely resting on the shoulders of Total Focus and Energy Transfer. The other 3 single target abilities are very... solidly average otherwise. i believe that my suggestions in general play would still lean towards tunneling on doing Total Focus -> Energy Transfer. but.. during buildup use, you can choose to apply _other_ interactions.

ive seen people tend to avoid musculature for brutes across the board... under the guise of how brutes work generally (low base damage, fury bonus, etc). guess im not sure about that one. figured the recharge wouldnt damage any procs i care about too much anyways... and i think the +healing is better than +defense from agility, for /rad.

appreciate the advice! one thing i noticed sniffing around the numbers... ball lighting actually has a magnitude 4 taunt on it and hits 16 targets.... i may pick that up instead of taunt even if i dont slot it out. obviously duration and recharge are different, but i think it will be perfectly manageable.

Hi all, ive tried re-working my Energy/Rad build a few times, but im still not really happy with it. main goals for the build: fluid single target attack chain 45% melee defense as close to 85% resists (especially S/L) all around... psionic/cold is just unrealistic however. build up/ground zero combo closely aligned CD 'serviceable' AoE -- heavily eyeballing Ball Lightning here but thats 5 more slots i dont have room for... and some questions specifically for people have played /Rad and done any of the science behind slotting some of these things: beta decay -- achilles heel seems like a 1-slot wonder here, but does it actually proc often enough to be reliable or do i want it ALSO slotted in ground zero? gamma boost -- is it worth slotting this out for endurance/regen boost at all? given the way it operates (inversely scaling based on your current stats) it seems unreliable to bother outside of passive procs. Radiation Therapy -- is this a good 'proc monster' ability? i definitely want to keep gladiator res proc and essence thief end proc in here every time.. im not finding great success with power transfer heal proc (seems to operate differently than essence thief... not quite sure on the mechanics specifically). was considering fully slotting it out with other damage procs anyways. struggling to imagine where i would move slots around... i am leaning towards stealing them from maneuvers. Ground Zero -- was considering achilles heel -res proc in here, not sure if beta decay is sufficient for that... or if i should just consider obliteration smashing proc for more damage? Meltdown -- i imagine being able to rotate this with rune of protection previously was extremely strong. that is no longer a possibility... is it still worth it just for general utility and damage boost? build within spoiler below...

Hi all, i want to preface that i fully understand that the energy melee powerset new Energy Focus passive does not 'need' a unique interaction with every single ability. Further, i understand scrappers and stalkers have the possibility of grabbing the double focus from a 'crit' and some folks might enjoy being able to still press specific buttons and 'store' that extra charge for a 2nd energy transfer... finally, the powerset is in a very strong spot now for single target. that said it seems like a lost opportunity to implement Energy Focus only half-way. my goal would be to make the powerset more synergistic, generally... instead of just only caring about buffing energy transfer and ignoring the entirety of Energy Focus otherwise. ultimately please keep in mind that even with my suggested changes here you will not be able to spam Energy Focus empowered attacks non-stop. they are still going to be limited use... and any stacks you have will get used up very quickly... so strategic use of the Energy Focus will allow you to adapt to the situation at hand. Change #1: Provide a raw 10-15% _base_ energy damage bonus (similar to fiery embrace) to any attack that is empowered with Energy Focus... with the caveat that Energy transfer is already amazing (maybe dont modify that one.. but i am suggesting a change to build up here, so maybe its OK?). Barrage: Bump the regen debuff to at least -250%... Replace the Stun with -recharge or -damage debuff. Hate to cite pay2win powers here but envenomed dagger is -250% and very cheap... the empowered attack should at least be able to compete with that. Energy Punch: -resistance(20%?)/-defense(10%?) proc. this one will probably be controversial... not sure how much would be 'too much'... just suggesting numbers as the 'offensive debuffer' power. Bone Smasher: place the 100% Mag 3 stun in here (complimenting bone smashers already high chance to stun). this one might be a little weak, but holds are very powerful. Build Up: lower the damage buff and give 2 or 3 Energy Focus on activation... also rename for flair (like other powersets that dont have standard build up). Power Crash: Yes the target cap is increased but it is still a 7 range cone. increase the range to 10 while under the effects of Energy Focus. As it is, it feels pointless to even mention that it increases the target cap because its already hard enough to hit 5 targets with it. Taunt/Confront/Placate -- no need to modify these powers specifically. Whirling Hands: increase the range of whirling hands to at least 10 under the effects of Energy Focus... also maybe add a knockup or slow. Total Focus -- i might suggest moving it to t7 at _latest_ for all of the melee. would feel bad if all of the synergy is just not available until so 'late'. also, to be clear with my proposed changes, total focus should absolutely _only_ be an Energy Focus BUILDER and _never_ a spender. Energy Transfer -- excellent concept here, nothing to change. **STALKER SPECIFIC** Assassin's Strike -- does not use Energy Focus, do not modify... as with any other stalker powerset. overall i think it would spice up the leveling process and also create a more engaging and flexible level 50 build once you have a ton of recharge to utilize the extra Energy Focus from proposed build-up more often. Again getting away from the tunnel vision of maximizing DPA on energy transfer (it would still be a great use of Energy Focus) Thank you for reading.

even if i discount the scrapper +50 crit proc ATO (which i will get to), between the inherent and the the other passive crit ATO, you have a 16% chance to crit anything above minion level. roughly 1/6 attacks. i cannot possibly believe you do not get crits throughout a mission unless you are just watching your teammates do everything and literally not pressing any buttons. **something to keep in mind because you mentioned you play energy melee... total focus and energy transfer CANNOT crit for bonus damage (they have other effects if they do 'crit')** as for the +50 crit proc ATO... you need to put that in the correct button. while i hesitate to frame it this way because i wouldnt want to see it nerfed, but the ATO is insanely overpowered... to the point where you asking to buff the thing absolutely makes no sense to me. Something to keep in mind... just like forcefeedback recharge proc... if you have it slotted in an AoE power, it only needs to proc on a SINGLE enemy to give you the buff. beyond that you need to keep in mind how procs work generally -- they are more 'reliable' in powers that are longer recharge and longer cast time... slotting in recharge reduces the proc rate, but global recharge (like hasten) does _not_ effect the proc rate. finally think about what your goal is going to be AFTER the proc fires -- that is what abilities would you WANT to crit and even more... how MANY can you fit in the very short window (i think either 3.5 or 3.75 seconds). i think for energy melee you should probably put the crit proc in total focus. you would likely find better success with the ATO. anyways a hard NO to the suggestion. scrapper crits are fine as is.

titan weapons is indeed end hungry, but that is mostly a consequence of how fast the animations are during momentum. you get to fire off a TON of abilities constantly. BUT if you were willing to power through it all... just about any build can solve end problems with ageless anyways... so i wouldnt base your secondary solely on that aspect. if you are just looking for a solid defensive secondary there are plenty of options (/energy, /nin, and /sr are reasonably easy to work with). if you are looking for something to enhance your offense i dont think you need to look any further than /bio. just keep in mind that /bio is not perfect.. it has more offense and it trades defense for that... you will need to be aware of your clicky buttons and cycle through inspirations when playing solo or in a team with limited support buffs. /bio has strong recovery, +damage, -resist, -regen, taunt aura.. there isnt really another secondary for scrappers that offers as much offensive utility... especially because shield defense is not useable with titan weapons.

im not sure what the exact value of the 'very high chance' crit is but just consider it a neat mechanic while leveling that will otherwise be forgotten about at some point. there is not often a good reason to wait around 8 seconds between packs of enemies especially given the power of the scrapper +50% crit chance ATO. on the off chance critters are far apart you get a free crit. its nothing to really plan around. as others have stated, yes it works for AoE, single target... and also power/epic/patron pools... notably snipes and blaster AoEs.

not a stab at you personally but i find it amusing that you are one of the few people to ADMIT this. everyone else hating on this topic probably has the same opinion here and doesnt want to acknowledge it. IF the team did end up buffing hidden strikes and placate to the point where it was 'mathematically superior', you would not want to continue your current stalker playstyle even if the (potential) changes fundamentally did not alter your current stalker playstyle. i made very vague/broad suggestions early into the topic but it doesnt need to be that hidden strike just does 'more damage'. it can provide a limited buff to all sorts of things (recharge, endurance recovery, to-hit, defense)... it can give a flat heal or endurance chunk... it can place a strong debuff on the enemy (-damage%, -regen, -to hit, -defense, -resistance)... if we want to go down the road of more damage though we can also just look at it differently than just pumping up the numbers directly. as a thought... what if it attached a 'bomb' debuff to the target that 'explodes' on death or after a certain amount of hits for a medium AoE nuke (probably via pseudo pets)... which could serve to shore up the limited AoE stalker has. Or some kind of scaling DoT that could cement stalker as the AV killer. hidden strike could also just be kinda boring and provide a buff bonus to damage or crit chance. and im sure others can think of more creative applications/possibilities to occur with hidden strikes. the key here though is that some of these things would not necessarily provide a benefit over the unhidden strike in all situations. you would need to balance the opportunity cost of casting the long hidden strike. there could still be plenty of opportunity to use unhidden strikes as well. the difference being that there could potentially be a good opportunity cost to actually USING hidden strike. the reality as it current stands is that it is never 'mathematically superior' to do the hidden strike because #1 it is a waste of time to wait for hidden and #2 it is a waste of time to CAST the hidden strike. and beyond that there is no unique benefits to use hidden strike either because it provides no alternate benefits. the only real purpose to hidden strike currently is for theme or because you havent used it in a while and you just feel like 'why the hell not'. we dont need to create the inverse situation here. unhidden strike does not need to become the 'mathematically inferior' version at the end of the day. if well designed/balanced, they can both be useful depending on the situation infront of you. i think there is opportunity to evolve stalker into something unique instead of just an alternate scrapper. it seems like this thought scares people more than it excites people however... and as a general statement to the topic at hand -- yes i understand this same conversation occurred with instant snipes, but sniping was never the center focus and iconic theme of the blasting powersets. you are given hide at level 1 and the AT passive has a nice paragraph about it... who else has hidden assassins strikes?? cause i see tons of archetypes have snipes (stalkers have snipes!)

yes, you are on the right mark for efficiency of maximizing damage output. not sure how often AAO updates but i usually have all 3 positional defenses and damage bonus monitor'd on all my characters... sometimes the damage bonus would not tick up for a few seconds. im guessing the game engine just runs an area check every 2 seconds or so. lighting rod and shield charge use pseudo pets, so they dont actually break hide.. they do not benefit from the crit chance either though. so this is not some amazingly busted interaction... in fact i would argue that if it DID use your hide and provide nothing in return, that would be a _bug_. it is working as intended... and ultimately just gives off a little bit of feelsbadman knowing that your 2 iconic powers within the powersets cannot crit. i only ever got my elec/SD stalker up to 40 before i decided it wasnt a solid direction for me. as fun as it was having the 2 tele-nukes, the downtime was hefty and thunder strike felt absolutely awful to use. maybe the gameplay feels better with some epic/patron powers...

looks like you forgot about gladiator 3% defense IO (resist set). regarding force feedback recharge IO... i dont know how good it is on shield charge because of the (relatively) longer cooldown. i would say i have INCREDIBLE gains on it with my titan weapons scrapper because i can spam whirling smash every 2-3 seconds and it will have near 100% uptime in a pack of 4+ enemies. big thing to keep in mind there is that it only needs to proc on a single enemy to buff you. while it wouldnt see as much value as i just described in your build, it might still be valuable enough... i dont have the right answer for you there.

i would tend to doubt someone who flaunts an OP build, but shrouds the build in secrecy... apparently i would need to dig through your post history or find your secret hangout forum goings to learn how to properly win with stalkers. everybody likes to have a power fantasy of their favorite character being amazing but your accounts in the last bit are absolutely ridiculous. By level 12 you were at +2 carrying a team??? i dont care what AT and powersets you are playing. you have no powers of any significant value and no enhancements at level 12. How exactly could you possibly expect to carry *anything* better than anybody else with nothing of significance available. Rhetorical by the way, i dont need some recount of you clearing frostfire all the while believing you were carrying your half AFK teammates trying to level up a new alt. anyways this thread has been spinning in circles a lot. stalkers are not very good at AoE (minus spines and electric) and that is OK. they arent designed or intended to be great at AoE. the goal should not be looking to buff their weakness of AoE, but rather enhance their strength of single target... and in the process bring back the feel good of acting like a stalker. hidden assassins strike is a strong identity of what a stalker was supposed to be but nobody wants to use it because it is absolutely terrible trash. there are a ton of options that could make hidden assassins strike (and also placate in the process) actually valuable and worth using that would not change the current stalker playstyle (if you wanted to continue ignoring hidden and placate). also im not sure exactly where the general consensus came about of 'stalkers are OP'... the general consensus i see in game is that melee in general are not preferred aside from a few brutes/tanks... and not specifically for them to deal damage, just to run ahead of the team and herd critters. if your goal is to blow through the content as fast as possible, you want as many team buffs and massive AoE nukes as possible. that would make stalker, objectively, the _least_ desired class. that said, aside from people making specific class comp parties for the challenge of it, i rarely find anybody with an elitist attitude about this kind of thing in game.

damage is substantially lower but it is very good for teamplay (double leadership) and is reasonably durable. bane has a lot more AoE available than most stalker sets though.

i suppose im surprised you were ultimately influenced to dump power crash. im not the biggest fan of cone attacks in this game but power crash is definitely solid as far as range and radius. i do wish the damage were a bit higher than whirling hands though... or maybe even just the total focus version was buffed by some percentage. i think a very obvious big question mark there is tactics. you could very easily slot kismet somewhere in your build for 6% to hit... instead of 8% hit with a constant endurance drain. i guess if you are getting it for perception/confuse/fear stuff though that is a different choice... or just to have the team buff?? i see you are also spending slots on grant cover that has very little tangible benefit to you individually. something else a lot of people overlook is the travel power IO set zephyr. provides a little bump to ranged & aoe defense as a 3 slot. im guessing you 6 slotted red fortune in weave specifically for the 2% ranged defense.. i would imagine zephyr is a better choice for example. last bit -- regenerative tissue unique IO is honestly pretty worthless. i suppose your worry is that you dont have a heal at all... i would just say that 25% regen probably isnt going to solve or even remotely close the gap on that issue. the preventative medicine unique IO is 100% better (and missing from your build otherwise)

take a look at the actual damage of arcane bolt in game (mids needs to be updated on cast time and damage both)... its huge. especially when you proc arcane power, it does more damage than blazing bolt (instant version). so it arcane bolt is actually useful, unlike boxing/kick from fighting pool. rune of protection definitely is a shadow of its former self in high recharge builds, but still useful. personally i really enjoy having fly/mystic flight but the fly pool is a dead end otherwise, so there are some useful options to pick up within the same power pool in sorcery side...

this is a big problem with the game, generally.... not limited to melee powersets. often times it might sound fun to build out a certain theme of a superhero... but... the realization sets in quick if you have played some of the 'better' powersets... that you just feel like a lame duck. i think titan weapons (pre adjustment) was a big offender of this (and is arguably still overbearingly strong) -- back then, you could look at any other melee power set, compare it to titan weapons and ask yourself WHY you would objectively want to play anything else. the only reasonable answer was theme. you are certainly allowed to enjoy powersets that offer the fantasy of playing a certain theme, but it would be nice if the balance was more closely aligned. all that said, we need to be careful about advocating for powersets to all follow some homogeneous formula. each powerset should feel unique and have its own flavor... otherwise i could just take fire blast power set, color it white-ish blue... and suddenly i am ice blast??. color it green and i am atomic blast! i think a successful example of powerset unique style is titan weapons momentum mechanics, or the energy melee focus proc. even if these 2 sets ended up having the same baseline buttons (yes i realize they dont) of 3 single target attacks, a cone attack, a PBAoE attack, 1 taunt... etc etc... the unique mechanics would provide different feel and unique flavor to each. i dont think each powerset needs its own unique proc that changes the flow of how you press buttons necessarily however (as i just referenced)... dark melee, for example, proceeds to be unique by offering its own take on a build-up activation via soul drain (dark melee has its own... challenges... present anyways).

i think the biggest problem generally is what you have mentioned -- how powerful AoE is in the game... and the fact that melee, outside of specific damage auras, are just overall generally lacking in that department. stalker ends up going even deeper into the limited AoE functionality than other melee which makes the problem even more apparent. your argument, as i understand it -- IF it is a clear design choice for stalkers to be terrible at AoE, THEN stalkers *SHOULD* be the king of single target deletion... and honestly its hard to say that that is in fact the case. ranged classes can become very durable and dont need to worry about maintaining melee range with critters running away constantly. the single target damage of a blaster or corrupter doesnt feel 'lacking' either when compared to a stalker. it does seem really odd that the focused/channeled assassins strike is entirely ignored and unwanted even though it is a hallmark piece of the class... that should probably be reviewed. Perhaps consider some of the following: reduce channel time on assassin strike, remove interrupt from cast time on assassin strike, add a debuff to the enemy struck by assassin strike, add a buff to the stalker after performing a successful hidden assassin strike. there are a lot of interesting possibilities here but nobody has a desire to use the mechanic because it is just not worth the time investment currently. also, as someone else mentioned, the stalker ATOs are, by far, the best in the game and the only thing that comes close is the scrapper crit proc... none of the other ATOs are remotely close to the power these offer. that said, it takes these overpowered ATOs to make stalkers *feel competitive*... not overpowered. thats where the oddities of a thin margin for balance comes into play... because of how strongly these ATO procs can scale out other power creep. ultimately i think it boils down to design decisions of deciding WHO should be the 'king of damage'? the squishy ranged blaster? or the melee assassin? and we can look back at the quick snipe changes to see that the design team was favoring the squishy ranged blaster (ironically also helped stalkers and scrappers, despite being intended to help blaster powersets). that leaves the melee assassin somewhat homeless in terms of effective functionality. obviously thematic character design is a different topic (play what you want, blah blah blah). my opinion -- i think tankers are very obviously a slow-go chunky boy. scrappers and brutes hit the mark of being the more 'dps focused' melee and have clear distinctions between each other. stalkers are most similar to scrappers, but dont really seem like they have a clear identity that makes them 'better' as an alternative than scrappers... aside from having a 'free' stealth button baseline. it often comes down to some scrapper power sets are simply designed better on the stalker side (elec melee being a good example)