aethereal

I'm not saying that Stalkers have the best version of energy melee or anything, just that the AoE deficit they have is mitigated by a better cone attack. I believe that to the extent that we think of pylon tests as having anything useful to say about ST damage, scrapper EM comes out slightly ahead of stalker EM (though to some extent that's surely due to scrapper bio armor as well). I think the big case for stalker EM is being able to predict exactly which attacks crit much more than scrappers can, given the unusual crit mechanics for TF and ET.

Note that their version of the cone attack is higher damage/longer recharge.

Envenomed dagger is a temp power you can buy from P2W that gives a substantial regen debuff. It's very useful in soloing AVs and GMs because it dramatically lowers the dps you need to stay ahead of their regen.

That's because it doesn't exist.

The meta right now seems to be more extensive use of Tactics (and Farsight) than was the case when I played on Live, which probably means that teams aren't really seeing much from this. Solo, it's probably more painful. Especially if your solo character either doesn't have a build-up/aim or has one that rolls to hit (such as Dual Blades/Claws/Dark Melee). But, you know, that's part of the deal if you're trying to solo TFs?

Well, if you take X dam/sec in the long run with a resist set, you take X dam/sec in the short run. With a defense set, sometimes you take less than X dam/sec and sometimes you take more. This is a significant problem! Like, for example, I was soloing Infernal with my Ninjutsu scrapper the other day. I was fine with the expected damage in. He'd hit me sometimes, and I'd heal, and that would be that. But about once per run at him, he'd do something where he'd hit and then get another lucky hit in again and my heal would be on cooldown and oh shit I need to run and sweat and worry until I could get back to good. That wouldn't have happened if I had had the same overall mitigation with a resist set. Now, don't get me wrong, I think defense sets are better for scrappers/stalkers than resist sets, mainly because you cap out at mitigating 90% of expected damage in with defense vs 75% of expected damage in with resist, but also of course the stuff you said about dodging debuffs and mezzes. Lower HP doesn't actually strike me as a good side of defense sets -- the weakness of defense is spike damage due to random variation, so having low HP would be better for resist sets, which take their damage steadily, not in spikes. But the cap is really dispositive if you're building for performance.

They don't! Invulnerability, for example, loses nothing to get hide. It does get a static, rather than scaling +to-hit/def toggle, but it's not in trade for hide -- it's just that Stalkers don't get scaling auras. Super reflexes, I believe, loses literally nothing on Stalkers. The lost auto power just gets folded into evasion.

With some exceptions, Stalkers usually lose an AoE for AS. The idea is you lose something you miss, not your worst attack.

It's probably better on Stalkers, all else being equal, though all else isn't. Bio is better on scrappers, for example, to such a degree that StJ/Bio is probably better overall on scrappers. StJ gives up Rib Cracker for assassin's strike. AS is much higher damage than Rib Cracker, and it builds two combo levels. StJ Stalkers face a somewhat awkward attack chain, but they do great damage. They lack a slotting opportunity for -res (which Rob Cracker gives), but I find @Sovera's contention that we have overemphasized -res due to the peculiarities of pylon mechanics convincing.

I wouldn't do a martial arts stalker, with literally no aoe in your primary. Street Justice is good on Stalkers, arguably its best iteration, for the usual reason: sets with one really good ST attack and a bunch of kind of mediocre stuff welcome assassin's strike. I think the most interesting thing about martial arts is the defense bonus that tankers and brutes get with it, making it possible to have very durable builds with resistance or hybrid armor sets. If you're pairing it with a defense armor set then it just seems like a kind of outdated melee set? Pretty, though. Like the animations.

It's not great right now, agreed. But it would be easy to tick it over into too good. Movement bonus, maybe a mild chaining thing on its attack (since right now it's not great in crowds where the untargeting thing really hurts), the "ignores recharge," all good bonuses. More st damage or reduced casting problems, probably not.

It does enormous damage! https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=pets.voltaicsentinel.electrical_bolt&at=minion_pets It does 44.4882 damage (unenhanced) with an arcanatime of 1.32 seconds and a CD of 2.5 seconds. It has a 60 second duration. So, if there are enemies within range, it should cast 15 times in its duration. 15 * 44.4882 = 698.77 damage! Unenahnced! It's way more than a nuke or a critting tier-3 Crushing Uppercut or anything. Now, like, I get it. It does that damage over a minute. It takes a long time to pay off its animation time. It is frustratingly untargeted. It follows you slowly. It is a pain in the ass in a variety of dimensions. But I think people don't get how easily this thing could tip over into "terribly overpowered."

A toggle would be a significant damage buff, since its cast time is significant.

I like the idea of making the power ignore recharge buffs. Seems like it is, strangely, a useful QoL improvement.

Pre the Energy Melee changes, Street Justice was at least arguably the top-tier single target stalker set.

It will act as though it has a recharge time of 10 seconds.

You can't just command-tab? That works for me, though when in full screen mode it also does something weird with the screen's alignment, that i can fix by going into windowed mode and out again.

Yeah, with my stalker, it was like, "a few purples because I was bio armor and wasn't quite softcapped to neg energy, then lots of reds (and I think Lore) and just hope." I didn't take 50 shots at her, but it feels like it would have been de facto impossible to do a pure no-insp, no-lore, no nothing run. Needless to say, if she did land a spin on me, it was game over, I had no ability to survive it solo. She's one of the more interesting AVs to fight.

Nice! Having almost 70% neg energy resist detoggled is probably the key.

Yeah, though of course your toggles are suppressed because you're held. I just thought that the damage from it was above any AT's max hp.

Huh, can tanks survive the spin? When I did her as my stalker (using insps), I just burned her down before she landed one on me. Figured tanks would have a problem with that.

Here's the question: has anyone soloed Ghost Widow as a Tanker.

Kismet, interestingly, is not a global. It only applies when the power it's in is on or has been clicked.

Or the stun-fire that you can shoot from your hands.

100 merits = 300 converters, let's say you sell them at 65k each, -10% market fee for AH = 17.5M inf. So I wouldn't say that 100 merits are worth "at least" 20M inf (though you can get 20M inf from 100 merits by doing more than "turning them to converters and selling the converters on the AH priced to sell immediately"), but Dazl's overall point that they're worth a lot more than the roughly 8M inf that it costs to buy ATOs is solid.