Smoke Flash - Maligned, but why?

[TrashBasher]

I have read that Smoke Flash is maligned, just take the temp power kind of thing.  But Placate (M4) is ST and Smoke Flash is AoE (M3), so that kind of implies Placate is pointless as well.

 

Am I missing anything else?

[nihilii]

Placate is an arguable pick as well, these days. With the Chance to Hide ATO being so reliable, using ~2s of animation time for a critical (and hoping another enemy doesn't cancel your Hide status by hitting you during that animation) feels like a poor choice.

 

But at least Placate gives you a crit. Smoke Flash doesn't.

 

When it comes to the mitigation aspect of these powers, we are so spoiled for choice when it comes to passive mitigation many people consider active mitigation superfluous. Not necessarily useless, mind you, but situational enough players would rather spend the picks on something else.

[Omega-202]

37 minutes ago, TrashBasher said:

I have read that Smoke Flash is maligned, just take the temp power kind of thing.  But Placate (M4) is ST and Smoke Flash is AoE (M3), so that kind of implies Placate is pointless as well.

 

Am I missing anything else?

Placate is useless too.  

 

As Nihili said, the ATO lets you get the Hide effect of Placate in one of your attacks (preferably AS) 3-4 times per minute.  

 

By comparison, Placate has a ~1.5 s animation, a base 60s recharge and does no damage.  

 

As to the aggro-dump aspect of Placate and Smoke Flash, in the current IO metagame, most Stalkers have no use for it because its trivial to build in absurd levels of +Def and +Res from IOs.  It's pretty easy to get a lot of Stalker secondaries to the defense softcap and/or 50%+ resists, often with healing, absorb or other passive survival benefits.  Ninjitsu can be built to the defense softcap pretty easily, with some decent resists from Tough and IO bonuses, a fast recharging heal in K I-Sha and whatever active mitigation your primary provides.  That's not to mention Incarnates (Barrier, Rebirth, Melee etc.).  If things are going poor enough that you need to hit Smoke, you're probably better off just running and resetting the fight.  

[TrashBasher]

Thanks.  It appears that I wasn't really missing anything that makes it bad.  It was just an option for me and I will chose the T9 in Ninja which might help on occasion and it can be a mule for LoTG and Kismet +6 acc.

[Haijinx]

On 9/28/2020 at 1:32 PM, Omega-202 said:

Placate is useless too.  

 

+1