siolfir

"Negligible" isn't none - Targeting Drone costs 0.312 endurance per second. For comparison, Tactics is 0.39/sec and most armor toggles are either 0.208/sec or 0.26/sec, while the expensive toggles, such as debuff toggles or damage auras, tend to be 0.52/sec. If you look at the cost of Rage currently, it's 5.2 end up front and crashes 25 end at the end - assuming you keep it up permanently that's 30.2 end in 121.32 seconds (including animation arcanatime) for ~0.2489 end/sec, so you could try to argue for a 0.26/sec rather than TD's 0.312, but most of the current cost is a crash that can't be slotted for reduction so I'd lean more towards a higher cost, and either way both of those are more than free. And again, one of the reasons Fury works off of being attacked instead of being hit is because of the interaction with defense sets: if you aren't getting hit because your armor set is working, you won't get the damage bonus. This part of it needs to be addressed, especially with the current meta of building for defense whether you started with a defense set or not, because otherwise you aren't going to get much +damage out of it. If you wanted to turn it into a toggle representing "getting more desperate and no longer holding back" you could just roll the to-hit bonus from Invincibility and damage bonus from Against All Odds into the new toggle power, tweak the numbers a bit, and add a click buff (a la Fiery Embrace) for more on-demand +damage at a high endurance cost without worrying about current health or being hit.

My initial thoughts? This is already a no-go. +20% to-hit buff for free. It has to have an endurance cost to be providing that much to-hit, even with no +damage at all. Just take a look at Power Siphon in KM: it's a 5.2 endurance cost click that provides 7.5% to-hit for 20 seconds with a two minute base recharge rather than being free all the time, and is otherwise similar to this suggestion, except that you get +damage hitting things rather than by being hit. Given that the suggestion requires being hit to function, it isn't going to be effective beyond a to-hit bonus for defense sets. Also, a lot of the complaints about Rage being in Super Strength to begin with are based around "my character is not a berserker/rage-fueled maniac, they're really strong all the time," which means it wouldn't resolve those complaints, and a lot of mechanical solutions have been proposed to "fix" it - some brought up in this thread. I honestly think the +damage for taking damage isn't a horrible idea, but as an add-on to Power Siphon, which is pretty lackluster and needs something else to build and keep +dam stacks up, rather than a "fix" for Rage.

As @Omega-202 said it only triggers off of Focus. You can see this in City of Data here: The ASCrit tag takes you to this page, which shows that the only power affecting the tag is Assassin's Focus, and it has a 0% chance to fire without it. Compare this to something like Bone Smasher, which has tags for StealthCrit (if you're hidden or not) and ASTeamCrit (the scaling out-of-hide chance) for critical damage.

Is it needed? No. Will it break some magical precarious balance between the least-broken melee AT and the other, more broken ones? No. Do I think the devs will go for it? No. Did I say that the stacks should never fall off? No - it was actually supposed to be a reduced version of the OP's suggestion of refreshing all stacks on each hit by having them still trail off, but more slowly. As for "justifying Stalkers getting a free damage proc slot," well, I don't have to justify it, but hey, Blazing Aura on a Scrapper is 13.76 damage per tick (every 2 seconds) so needs roughly +45% damage to equal the 10 dps you're talking about, hits more than one target, and Stalkers don't get damage auras. And even then, as I've said, I'm not really pushing for it because I think that Stalkers are fine how they are now.

Have to echo @Greycat on this one (including the bit about interest in a leaderboard on the terminals). It's not a bad idea, but it's one that I don't see a lot of people using, let alone paying attention to once they get on a team, and since people can and will ignore it even if it shows up, those concerns would need to be addressed through means which already exist: chat, the kick button, or the quit button.

Eh, I think it's already over 50% of the time already (which would make it less of a buff than you're stating here) but even using your numbers, in the scale of 350-400 DPS* the extra 10 (which 600 damage per minute would be) is what I would consider small change. It's not a make-or-break number to me. Edit to add: and as I said before, it being less reliable was a conscious choice, which you are somewhat echoing the reasoning for in your reply - but I'm ambivalent about it either way, since as I said I tend to find that it's usually 3 and sometimes 2 stacks rather than being a half-and-half split. * - chosen for good, but somewhat modest numbers for an IO Stalker build, not because I think it's top-end performance for the AT - it's even less significant the more you push the build The bigger part of it was just fixing the damned target caps - which would help them far more than just bumping their damage modifier would IMO - and while it's not a "fix" there is nothing at all served for having a shorter range on the single target blasts for Sentinels than for every other AT that gets the blast sets. It's not a balance consideration once you get beyond the point of mobs getting to melee within your blast animation time, and they have armor sets to not care about that anyway. But that's really a discussion for another thread, and it wouldn't address everyone's hatred of the inherent. The point was, I feel that those small tweaks would pull them close enough that the ease of use on the low end would make up for the lower performance ceiling.

Honestly, even Sentinels could be fine with minor tweaks - although people would still complain about their inherent, which bad as it is, is leaps and bounds ahead of the Widow/Soldier (lack of) inherent*. Put the blast sets back to their normal range, and fix the target caps. Some sets would still need balance passes against others, but that's true for every AT. As for the topic of this thread... meh. Personally I feel that Stalkers are the most balanced melee AT (which isn't saying much) and even more balanced for content than Blasters currently are, and don't need any buffs. Which is pretty unusual if you know my posting history on the old forums. I was one of the people pushing for Stalker buffs before, which led to PM discussions with Synapse on the old forums. Assassin's Focus doesn't trigger as often on some sets because it's based around the base recharge of the power with a 10 second base recharge being a guaranteed stack (it's a precursor to the PPM mechanics that procs turned into!) - which is why you'll see it's more reliable on Energy Melee (5, 6, 8, 10, and 20 second recharges) compared to Kinetic Melee (3, 5, 7, 8 and 20 second recharges). This was done deliberately to prevent people from just spamming the recharges-faster-than-it-animates powers to guarantee three stacks, and the high critical chance per stack was to compensate for it being less reliable if that's what you chose to do: as mentioned, 2 stacks is still a better chance to critical than not (66%), so you just relied on RNG to balance it out. Extending the duration of the stacks to fall off less often probably wouldn't hurt anything, but them being unreliable was a conscious design decision that if you find annoying... well, join the club. But know that it was done that way on purpose and so changing it should ideally indicate that it's a clear detriment rather than "hey, I don't like <thing>." As for boosting AS from Hide - it already has a great mitigation component with the Demoralize effect already. Boosting the damage to make the DPA the same between a fast critical (scale 5.52 in 1.188 sec) and from hide critical would involve boosting the base damage of AS from 389.2752 (scale 7.0 in 3.168 sec) to 818.5824 (scale 14.72); the "slow" base attack without a critical is scale 2.50 so that would be going from a 2.8x (not 3x) critical to a 5.888x critical. So your numbers are close, but the old slow AS did scale 7 damage (scale 1 base, +6 on the critical), it was providing a cap for melee damage for a long time (the only melee power that hits harder is Crushing Uppercut at combo 3 with a critical), and it was pretty clear that there wasn't any intent to raise the damage on it. So while you're welcome to ask the devs for this, it will likely come at the cost of something for the name of balance - which is where the objections are coming in - and reasons for it beyond "I would like this thing for an AT I'm not enjoying, so please change it for me" have not been provided (hint: there's some math in this paragraph you could try to use, but you'd still have to justify why desiring people to use slow AS is something that justifies the large increase in burst damage that they haven't wanted to move on in 16 years). * - yes, I know, it's increased recovery. And yet they still run out all the time and have to build for endurance just like every other AT, so it may as well not exist

@Starjammer05: As @Bopper stated, you're better off putting something other than a stealth IO there in nearly every situation. Here is the wiki article on stealth and perception if you wanted to look for more scenarios, but for the most part 55 feet of PvE stealth is enough to cover most everything you run into, and you need over 100 feet to get to the next tier (turrets and GMs). 85 feet will get you within regular ranged attack distance of a sniper before they start attacking, though the number of times that is actually really helpful are few and far between.

I'm not stating that this is your experience, but I will do this occasionally and my reasoning is that for any 45+ content, I assume for most that +1 is effectively +0 due to the alpha level shift, it's less boring, and if there are objectives involving clearing out crowds I didn't slot my SS Brute with KB->KD and don't really feel like chasing mobs every time I hit them. I "speedrun" Heather's arc in DA at +3 for the same reason - the incarnate shifts actually slow me down with lower level mobs because I have to chase between attacks.

Yeah, I mentioned that a few posts above this one. And to clarify my opinion on it, I wasn't suggesting it as a good idea, it was mostly a tongue-in-cheek response to the rest of the list (which I felt wouldn't really work, people already don't do WSTs redside) because it would be exactly like you say here: many people would simply look at it as a slog to get back to Paragon and wouldn't attempt anymore redside content than they had to. It was one step down from the next hyperbolic suggestion of "more people would play redside if all the tutorials except Breakout were disabled," which again, I am not advocating for (although it would, in conjunction with the other suggestions about disabling Null the Gull's instant alignment switch, would certainly boost the low-level villain population). To respond to some of the newer posts, I do think that getting rid of alignment restrictions on teaming and all non-PvP zones across the board is a good idea, as is having more villain/rogue content in Paragon, and more hero/vigilante content in the Rogue Isles, either by new contacts (a lot of work), or even relocating some existing contacts that might fit in a different location (which would likely cause a riot). But getting rid of the alignments themselves? Nah, and not just because Frenzy is the best alignment power (I never use it - I run rogues mostly or heroes because I play MMOs to team); it's because that is supposed to represent that character, malleable though it may be. I also think Praetorians should be able to keep their alignments even if they come through the portal for Paragon or the Rogue Isles, although that would probably be a mess with the alignment-related tips and morality missions.

This was brought up in the beta thread.

You forgot #4: roll back the ability to start Brutes, Corruptors, Stalkers, Masterminds, and Dominators in Paragon City, so if you want to play one of those ATs you have to play through Praetoria or the Rogue Isles to level 20. Although that'd just push even more people to make Tankers over Brutes and Defenders over Corruptors.

No, I'm perfectly aware that Gang War gets you more pets all at once, but the little hellfire imps are much cuter even though they trickle in more slowly. Plus you get a whip.

Yes there is a single contact where a level 50 could select and run any/all of them. But it requires an unlock (Hero Slayer badge), which is why I said find someone that has him.

Or hop redside, find someone who has the contact unlocked, and just blitz through Invader in about 20 minutes including travel and mission reset time.

Just go with summoning/summoning, so you can do Thugs/Demons and have Gang War and Hell on Earth, both doubled with Burnout. Then, because that's not silly enough, make one petless.

While I don't object to the suggestion of alternate paths for some of the accolades, I object to a couple of the specific examples you mention - mostly because some of the badges mentioned (paragon protectors and sorcerers) apply to other accolades, so you'd be doubling up. And hey, look on the bright side with the villain accolades: it's no longer 2 million debt for High Pain Threshold and 10 million damage for Born in Battle!

Also, @Daag, if City of Data is showing a formula it means that an AT wasn't selected, so it shows the scale of the power along with the modifier used - something that I personally appreciate, since you can tell immediately if it says "melee_ones" or "ranged_ones" that it doesn't matter what AT is selected, or you can see if powers are set for melee or ranged modifiers for ATs that have differing ones, etc. If you pick an AT at the top, it'll show the numbers as they apply for that AT at the selected level: I did that in my link to Barrier in my last post so it would just show the numbers.

They both creep down over time with the same percentages of each, it looks like the in-game numbers aren't showing all of the lines of the power. You can also look up the numbers in City of Data, which pulls the information from the pigg files.

Okay, that's fair - I reversed the numbers in my head reading the patch notes on Sentinels, thinking it was going from 1% to 1.25% for PvP instead of the other way around, that's on me for not skimming over that section and skipping the summary since I thought I had seen the numbers under the Stalker listing - but that doesn't explain why Stalkers get the short end of the stick. That one really should be 1.5% for both PvE and PvP to match the same scaling resistances. Given that it's practically useless in PvE and apparently broken in PvP, I would tend to agree if it's a consensus from the PvP crowd. But something has to go in that spot.

Honestly, not sure why it's 1.25% resistance per 3% health per power instead of 1.5% for Stalkers and Sentinels (which would at least give them the 3% total that the other ATs get). They already have a lower hit point pool to start with, so let's double-penalize them by having lower scaling resistance while they're losing their lower hit points, too?

All true, @Razor Cure and I even thought about including how you usually know exactly where you're going most of the time anyway for any "defeat boss" missions but decided it wasn't relevant and just hinted at the possibility of memorizing spawn points. I was simply providing the alternative viewpoint, since if these forums have shown me anything it's that someone will find a way to complain about anything - optional or not.

As someone who would use this - mostly because I don't have all of the hostage spawn points memorized on every map, and those are the easiest ones to overlook - I still say that if it goes in, it should only show current objectives, so that hidden objectives that appear conditionally through the map aren't displayed right away. It would amount to something like the tutorial, where you have a map marker for each step along the way, and I'm fine with that. But the consequence of it going in is that people are going to be more prone to just rushing to the objectives and only doing those parts. There are already threads of people complaining about this behavior and how they hate "fast paced" teams, and this will simply increase the average pace of the game. Even people who are playing "kill to objective" will now have a much better idea of where the objective is and so go that much faster. So it's something to think about for more than just "people who don't like it must be masochists," because apparently some people don't want to just rush through every mission.

Rule of five is for stacking by name, not by value; the LotG +recharge bonus has its own name which is separate from the regular set bonus.

Television has a farming arc, starting with Freaks and DE, then Nemesis and Family, then Nemesis on the Dreck map. As for the pillars in Von Grun's arc or Mole Machines in Black Scorpion's, the rewards were removed from those because the OG devs didn't like that people were farming them and resetting the mission since the pillars and mole machines didn't have attacks; it's the same logic that removed the xp from summoning (and Rikti) portals. Those same missions also have "large open maps filled with lots of mobs to take down," though it's not quite fall-asleep-on-the-keyboard-and-still-complete-the-mission level of mobs like Council or 5th, and the spawn density is lower because the maps are larger. I doubt a lack of farms is causing the issue.