To Placate or not to Placate

[drgantz]

I thought that Placate was an "Oh Crap!" button which makes  you vanish so that you can escape a fight gone bad.

I've tried it a few times, but always got attacked and then killed.
Did I misunderstand what Placate is?  Should I ditch it when I respec?

[Mezmera]

Placate is good for allowing you to go back into hide in effect and strike for a critical out of hide.  But you'll only placate one person out of a group that you are in so odds are you're going to get hit again before you get to get that critical hit in.  It is better on defense based stalkers where their defenses are capped but yeah I'd drop placate.  The stalker ATO hide proc gets you about the same desired effect without wasting a power pick or animation time of placating.  

Edited October 14, 2020 by Mezmera

[Saikochoro]

Some may disagree, but placate is largely obsolete with the later game changes to assassins strike and the stalker ATOs.

[Nerio72]

It sounds familiar...🤔

[Tsuko]

1 minute ago, Saikochoro said:

Some may disagree, but placate is largely obsolete with the later game changes to assassins strike and the stalker ATOs.

for base dpa, yeah placate is crap 🙂

 

But if you love your stalkers to be as bursty as possible AKA more than 25% damage + Bio offensive, it's a must have 😄

 

You want to placate this type of stupid "marine canon" attacks :

 

 

[tidge]

I haven't taken Placate on Stalkers.  I had (what I assume to be) near equivalents on VEATs (and Pacify from the Presence pool). The only real utility I found was during leveling, if I was facing EB/AVs or +3/x0 content a Placate/Pacify on a lonely big bad would earn me some breathing time during long fights. You can of course use 'inefficient' powers while leveling up and respec out of them if you see the utility drop off.

 

I suppose it is possible that in an end-game build with a very specific attack chain using only a limited number of attacks that a play could take Placate for use in limited circumstances. From my PoV the main thing being sacrificed by doing this is not making a power choice that offers an opportunity for some global bonus from an IO piece or set.  If Placate could single-slot a useful Global IO bonus piece, my attitude would shift significantly.

[Saikochoro]

I know I said placate was obsolete, but I was mainly only thinking in terms of stalkers. 
 

I do have a pure night widow built out in mids that I intend on making soon. Since VEATs don’t have a hide proc ATO that does placates job, I do intend on taking placate on my night widow. That way I can get some nice controlled crits on slash 😁. 
 

[Darkir]

Placate is bad, smoke flash is good, but only ninjas get it.

Edited October 28, 2020 by Darkir

[Vanden]

I soloed the Dr. Quaterfield TF on a Stalker, which meant doing a ton of Rularuu hunts, and there’s no way I could’ve defeated so many large mobs with double Overseers without being able to Placate one while I killed the other.

[Darkir]

You can get the rogue power to placate too, a bit unnecessary, but it's an option.

[Machariel]

Placate to me is a great one-slot-wonder power.  The days of using it in-combat to guarantee a crit are pretty much over now with the assassin's focus mechanic and the stalker ATOs.  But, once in a while you might find yourself wanting to tell something big and nasty to leave you alone (edit: or indeed for the free crit in cases like Tsuko's above).  My anecdote is that I used it the other day soloing the ITF to help separate Romulus from his Nictus friends. 

 

I think Placate should grant two stacks of assassin's focus. 👀

Edited October 30, 2020 by Machariel
:)

[drbuzzard]

I never take placate. There's pretty much always something you can pick which will be more useful. Stalkers don't need it to crit anymore.

[carroto]

On 10/15/2020 at 12:57 PM, Saikochoro said:

I know I said placate was obsolete, but I was mainly only thinking in terms of stalkers. 
 

I do have a pure night widow built out in mids that I intend on making soon. Since VEATs don’t have a hide proc ATO that does placates job, I do intend on taking placate on my night widow. That way I can get some nice controlled crits on slash 😁. 
 

FYI I looked at this on Banes and it was clear that Placate was no good for damage there.  I'd expect it to be the same for widows and any AT with less than 100% crits.  If it's not worthwhile for a lot of Stalkers with their 100% crits, there's really no way that with 50% crits Placate will pay off.

[Saikochoro]

23 minutes ago, carroto said:

FYI I looked at this on Banes and it was clear that Placate was no good for damage there.  I'd expect it to be the same for widows and any AT with less than 100% crits.  If it's not worthwhile for a lot of Stalkers with their 100% crits, there's really no way that with 50% crits Placate will pay off.

I actually didn’t know that placate was only 50% crit chance for the VEATS. Guess I need to look closer at my builds haha. 

[carroto]

6 hours ago, Saikochoro said:

I actually didn’t know that placate was only 50% crit chance for the VEATS. Guess I need to look closer at my builds haha. 

It's not that it's a 50% chance.  Placate works just fine 100% of the time.  The problem is that you only get an extra 50% damage from your crit.  So if a Stalker uses an attack that does 100 points of damage from hide, the crit does an extra 100 points.  If a VEAT does the same, they only get a bonus 50 points of damage.  So Placate for VEATs just doesn't add much damage, and so it's hard to justify the animation time.  It tends to lower DPS.

 

However it's still useful in other ways, so it's not a completely wasted power pick.  It just depends on how much your value that utility.  I don't bother with it personally but I'd certainly understand and wouldn't blame anyone who did.

 

Actually now that I think of it, I think I did take it as a level 49 pick on one of my Stalkers, just because I didn't have anything else worthwhile to pick that would be useful without adding any slots.

[Haijinx]

On 10/14/2020 at 8:12 PM, Saikochoro said:

Some may disagree, but placate is largely obsolete with the later game changes to assassins strike and the stalker ATOs.

yep 

 

though I'd go with Completely obsolete

 

Between the ATO, AS change, and other IOs making Stalkers very sturdy. 

[Troo]

On 10/14/2020 at 2:41 PM, drgantz said:

I thought that Placate was an "Oh Crap!" button which makes  you vanish so that you can escape a fight gone bad.

I've tried it a few times, but always got attacked and then killed.
Did I misunderstand what Placate is?  Should I ditch it when I respec?

This is how it SHOULD work on a single target.

 

I believe the current version is broken. No way a proc should be more useful than a power pick.

[Saikochoro]

38 minutes ago, carroto said:

It's not that it's a 50% chance.  Placate works just fine 100% of the time.  The problem is that you only get an extra 50% damage from your crit.  So if a Stalker uses an attack that does 100 points of damage from hide, the crit does an extra 100 points.  If a VEAT does the same, they only get a bonus 50 points of damage.  So Placate for VEATs just doesn't add much damage, and so it's hard to justify the animation time.  It tends to lower DPS.

 

However it's still useful in other ways, so it's not a completely wasted power pick.  It just depends on how much your value that utility.  I don't bother with it personally but I'd certainly understand and wouldn't blame anyone who did.

 

Actually now that I think of it, I think I did take it as a level 49 pick on one of my Stalkers, just because I didn't have anything else worthwhile to pick that would be useful without adding any slots.

Thank you for clarifying that. That is pretty disappointing though. I wonder why they only get 50% damage crits. 

[Killum]

I don't use placate on any of my stalkers anymore, I've always found more usable things to take instead. But, that's just me.

[Grindingsucks]

I use it to set up another assassin strike on tough foes.  I imagine players that are more build efficient than myself, don't need it for that purpose, but I enjoy it.  YMMV, of course.

[Haijinx]

5 hours ago, Grindingsucks said:

I use it to set up another assassin strike on tough foes.  I imagine players that are more build efficient than myself, don't need it for that purpose, but I enjoy it.  YMMV, of course.

Only ever do fast assassin strikes to the point I sometimes forget there is a slow version 

[Shred Monkey]

I will take it sometimes while leveling up.  I don't use it to drop out of combat.  I use it as a control power.  Especially, when solo, if you placate something and then change targets to hit something else, that placated target just sits out of combat until the placate wears off, or it gets hit.  It basically works like a single target sleep.

 

For endgame and teaming, this is pretty useless (also like sleep).

 

 

[Xenosone]

Use it to pvp your teammates. Like a controllers aoe immobilize on auto.