Normalizing Stalker Primary Set Damage

[Mallex]

Although Assassin's Strike damage is currently normalized across all stalker primary powersets, dealing 250 unresisted damage and 139 resisted damage, the AT in PvP typically relies on a follow-up attack after successfully landing their Assassin's strike.

 

Stalkers currently have 17 available primary sets in PvP, with only 1-2 being used (Psionic Melee for GPB or Street Justice for Uppercut). If the damage of their follow-up attacks were normalized, then all 17 could be used effectively.

 

Crushing Uppercut, the most powerful follow-up stalker attack that isn't currently overtuned, from hide, has a 205 base (with Combo lvl 3) and a 165 crit, totalling 370 damage from hide.

 

Recommended changes to follow-up attacks:

 

Powerset	Follow-up Attack	Base Damage	Critical Damage	Notes
Broadsword	Head Splitter	185	185	Change to 100% crit rate from hide
Claws	Eviscerate	185	185
Dark Melee	Midnight Grasp	155	185	+30 as DoT (5 ticks of 6 dmg each)
Dual Blades	Vengeful Slice	45	185	+135 as DoT (3 ticks 45 dmg each)
Electrical Melee	Thunder Strike	185	185	Change to 100% crit rate from hide
Energy Melee	Total Focus	185	185
Fiery Melee	Greater Fire Sword	155	185	+50 as DoT (RNG 80% chance and cancels on miss, max 5 tick, of 10 dmg each)
Ice Melee	Freezing Touch	20	185	+160 as DoT (10 ticks of 16 dmg each)
Kinetic Melee	Concentrated Strike	185	185
Martial Arts	Eagles Claw	185	185
Ninja Blade	Golden Dragonfly	185	185
Psionic Melee	Greater Psi Blade	170	170	Potential for +100 from insight
Radiation Melee	Devastating Blow	185	185
Savage Melee	N/A			Unsure, it's all special damage
Spines	Ripper	185	185
Street Justice	Crushing Uppercut	205	165	205 base is from Combo level 3
Staff Melee	Sky Splitter	93	185	+93 as a single DoT tick

 

 

Let me know any thoughts or suggestions for number changes.

 

[America's Angel]

I like this very much. Makes them all equally viable, but keeps them different at the same time.

 

@Alouu @macskull - thoughts?

[M3z]

Maybe make the crits partial unresisted as well.

[macskull]

Yeah as far as I know, AS's crit damage (slow cast only) is the only unresisted damage left in the game right now. I don't know that I'd make other Stalker crits entirely unresisted. Maybe 25% or 50% or something. That would definitely need some tweaking, and should only apply to melee attack crits. Can probably make similar arguments for Scrapper crits as well, and make a smaller (10%?) portion of Tanker/Brute damage unresisted. I can't comment too much on individual power tweaks since most of my PvP Stalker experience was either on an Elec/WP in RV on Freedom on live, or a PvE-built Psi/SR on Excelsior here.

 

Exclusive of the table in the OP or my spitballing above, Greater Psi Blade is absolutely the best non-AS/non-snipe Stalker attack because it does about 33% more damage than the damage formula suggests it should (it's about 206 instead of 153) and it can occasionally gain another few hundred damage from Insight and it can take hold procs.

[M3z]

22 hours ago, macskull said:

Yeah as far as I know, AS's crit damage (slow cast only) is the only unresisted damage left in the game right now. I don't know that I'd make other Stalker crits entirely unresisted. Maybe 25% or 50% or something. That would definitely need some tweaking, and should only apply to melee attack crits. Can probably make similar arguments for Scrapper crits as well, and make a smaller (10%?) portion of Tanker/Brute damage unresisted. I can't comment too much on individual power tweaks since most of my PvP Stalker experience was either on an Elec/WP in RV on Freedom on live, or a PvE-built Psi/SR on Excelsior here.

 

Exclusive of the table in the OP or my spitballing above, Greater Psi Blade is absolutely the best non-AS/non-snipe Stalker attack because it does about 33% more damage than the damage formula suggests it should (it's about 206 instead of 153) and it can occasionally gain another few hundred damage from Insight and it can take hold procs.

The mechanics in this game such as damage formula, mez duration, squishies walking around with 40% res to all etc etc and any other mechanics and even the lack of unresisted damage was all balanced around (or at least in Castle's stupid vision) i13 movement suppression. So when you reference any design framework from Castle I think we just have to remember that we are working within the busted remnants of Castle's i13 which was balanced around parameters such as 0 movement(hence why there probably wasn't unresisted damage because engagements left both ranged/melee with an equal exchange of attacks).

 

I know you ended up agreeing with me anyways but my point is in this new high movement based meta we play in, as a stalker there is a good chance you won't get 2 attacks off, unless the target doesn't know what they're doing or they're distracted. AS leaves you a million miles away from your target usually (long cast time) so if you do manage to get your second hit off you should be rewarded and should be able to get a kill. Given how much resistance is in this game and also that I don't think 185 feels high enough (need to test this) I think the unresisted damage for stalker crits will allow them to get the 2 hit kills they used to have access to.

 

If they get it scrappers should too I think.