Focused Feedback: Stone Armor - Revamp and Proliferation

[Booper]

9 hours ago, InvaderStych said:

Edit: Has anyone been able to determine in Brimstone's chance to Crit is affected by Scrapper ATOs?

It is

[Bionic_Flea]

13 hours ago, Booper said:

It is

!!!!

[Booper]

Build 2 - Stone Armor

There are no significant changes to other ATs, so omitting their sections for brevity.

 

Stone Armor - Stalkers

This powerset has been proliferated for Stalkers. This version of the set does not get access to Granite. Instead, it has a new power called Geode. Geode is similar to Hibernate, creating a protective structure where you can regenerate and recover endurance. The power has some big differences from Hibernate: While Geode is active, you accumulate Geothermal Power stacks that increase the damage inflicted by Brimstone's fire proc. Geode does not trigger NoPhase locks, nor is it blocked by them. Enemies can target and attempt to destroy the Geode structure, once destroyed, the toggle will drop. Any buff aura the player has will remain active and will continue to buff allies.

 

You can transform your skin into various forms of rock and stone. Stone Armor is one of the few Stalker Defensive Power Sets that offers defense to Psionics. 

•   Hide  Toggle: Self Stealth, +DEF(All but Psionics)

  • Hide makes you almost impossible to detect. When properly 'Hidden", a Stalker can pull off Critical hits with his attacks, and even land a massive 'Assassins Strike' with an Assassins power. When you attack or are damaged while using this power, you will be discovered. Even if discovered, you are hard to see and retain some bonus to Defense. Unlike most stealth powers, Hide can be used at the same time as other Concealment powers, giving you even greater stealth capability. No Endurance cost.

•   Rock Armor  Toggle: Self +DEF(Lethal, Smashing), Res(DeBuff DEF)

  • Your skin becomes stone while this power is active. Stone Armor protects you from Smashing and Lethal attacks. They are less likely to land and affect you. Stone Armor also grants you resistance to Defense DeBuffs.

•   Stone Skin  Auto: Self +Res(All but Psionics), +DEF(All but Psionics)
  • Your tough skin is naturally resistant to most types of damage. This power is always on and costs no Endurance.
•   Earth's Embrace  Self +HP, Res(Toxic)
  • You are so connected to the Earth, you can draw upon its power to add to your health. Activating this power increases your maximum Hit Points, and grants you resistance to Toxic Damage.
•   Rooted  Toggle: Self +Res(Knockback, Sleep, Disorient, Hold, End Drain, DeBuff DEF), +Regeneration

  • While this power is active, you merge with the Earth and draw forth its power to become resistant to Knockback, Sleep, Hold, Disorient and Endurance Drain effects, and increase your Hit Point Regeneration rate. Rooted also grants you resistance to Defense DeBuffs.

•   Crystal Armor  Toggle: Self +Recovery, +DEF(Energy, Negative), Res(DeBuff DEF)

  • While this power is active, your skin becomes encrusted in various quartz crystals. Crystal Armor makes Energy and Negative Energy attacks less likely to hit. This power also grants you an Endurance recovery buff and resistance to Defense DeBuffs.

  • Crystal Armor also adds an Elusivity defense bonus to Energy and Negative Energy Attacks in PVP zones.

•   Brimstone Armor  Toggle: Self +Res(Fire, Cold, Toxic), +Special
  • While this power is active, your skin becomes encrusted in cracked magma. Brimstone Armor makes you highly resistant to Fire, Cold and Toxic damage, and helps your attacks set enemies on fire, delivering damage over time.
  • Notes on the damage over time from Brimstone Proc:
    • The DoT damage uses AT modifiers: Ranged_Damage for attacks with base ranges > 20 ft and Melee_Damage otherwise.
    • The DoT damage is scaled based on the attack's cast time (scales between 0 and 3 seconds). This mostly ensures a constant DPS increase despite the speed of one's attacks.
    • The DoT effect has a chance to critical hit for Stalkers.
•   Minerals  Toggle: Self +Recharge, +DEF(Psionic), Res(Confuse), +Perception
  • Activating this power summons several rare earth rock Minerals to orbit around you. These Minerals can disperse thought patterns and make Psionic attacks less likely to hit. They also bring clarity of the mind increasing the recharge time of your powers, increasing your perception, and making you resistant to Confusion. 
•   Geode  Toggle: Self +Regeneration, +Recovery, Invulnerable; Self Hold

  • When you activate this power, you encase yourself in various protective mineral layers that can absorb incoming damage while you heal and recover endurance at an incredible rate. You can emerge at will by deactivating the power, but you cannot stay in this Geode for more than 30 seconds. If enemies inflict enough damage, they might break you out of this effect.

  • If Brimstone Armor is owned, this power will also grant Geothermal Power every 2 seconds, increasing the damage inflicted by Brimstone's Fire by 8% per stack. 

  • Note: The Geothermal Powers should last for 60s and can stack up to 15 times. This gives the Brimstone Proc damage a 2.2x boost at max strength.

[Psyonico]

I am very sad to see that Stalkers/Scrappers don't get Granite Armor (probably a dead horse by now)

[Riverdusk]

After testing I can see one other thing that is going to prevent me from running this set.  The noise of it.  Unlike most other toggles now a days, the sound effects of the stone armor toggles never seem to fade.  Running crystal armor, minerals, and brimstone all together is quite the cacophony.  Tested on both a scrapper and a brute and tested several different versions (normal, minimal, color tinted) and they are all noisy that eventually drives me crazy listening to it. 

 

Can we get the sound fx on the toggles to fade after a few seconds?

 

 

[Keleko]

Stalker Bug - Hide does not seem to accept Defense IOs.  I was unable to slot a Luck of the Gambler Defense/Global Recharge IO in Stone Armor Hide.

 

[drbuzzard]

12 hours ago, Keleko said:

Stalker Bug - Hide does not seem to accept Defense IOs.  I was unable to slot a Luck of the Gambler Defense/Global Recharge IO in Stone Armor Hide.

 

Yeah, I was about to mention this. 

 

Also, I suppose it is working as intended but I make a lot of characters for hovering while in combat since 3D mobility is useful. Geode will not go on when hovering. That got me killed a couple times playing tag with Cimerorans. 

Edited November 17, 2021 by drbuzzard

[Keleko]

Some stone powers require you to be on the ground.  Fault in stone melee and Geode in Stone Armor.  These are earth based sets, after all.

[Sovera]

1 hour ago, Keleko said:

Some stone powers require you to be on the ground.  Fault in stone melee and Geode in Stone Armor.  These are earth based sets, after all.

 

Roleplay is nice and all, but shouldn't be mixed in with gameplay. Two travel powers are negated with that, and we have other powers that 'need to touch the ground' and that work while we hover as low as we get.

 

I mean, I can certainly kludge keybinds with powtoggleoff for my attacks where Fault toggles off Hover and my normal attacks toggle Hover back on with powtoggleon, but that seems kinda much dumb when powers like Footstomp can stomp the ground as long as we are hovering on the ground.

 

Overall it's the same roleplay but it understands that a character goes beyond coding and can just, y'know, extend their feet and touch the floor even when flying.

 

Granted, the dev silence on this matter makes me think the keybinds will have to be the solution but hope springs eternal.

[Tiger Shadow]

I think it would be ideal if Geode could be activated in the air, but it drops you to the ground.

[drbuzzard]

7 minutes ago, Tiger Shadow said:

I think it would be ideal if Geode could be activated in the air, but it drops you to the ground.

Yeah, that wouldn't be bad. It's how granite works. 

[BZRKR]

Something I haven't seen mentioned that can easily be set aside for a future release:

 

Crystal armor's original power customization has glowing crystals, but the recolorable style does not glow. The non-glowing crystals look awesome with certain color combos, so I wouldn't want to see them go, but can a recolorable+glowing option be added?

 

Thanks!

[Croax]

This seems like a good balanced set with something from everything. i like that. No real downside and Numbers seem to be reasonable.

 

But with the Geode Power i think that there would be a better option. Let us make Geode turn us into the huge boulder and then crush into the enemys! No special hibernate healing thing but more like a telenuke! I know that tankers and brutes would prefer the Geode/Hibernate version. But Beeing a Big Stone and Crushing the enemys sounds like much fun to me!

[ivanhedgehog]

Granite still needs at least some of the disadvantages removed. If it is just to be a mule, its doesnt deserve such disadvantages.

[Wavicle]

1 minute ago, ivanhedgehog said:

Granite still needs at least some of the disadvantages removed. If it is just to be a mule, its doesnt deserve such disadvantages.

 

It's an emergency button with no crash and no time limit. Absolutely it needs disadvantages.

[ivanhedgehog]

3 hours ago, Wavicle said:

 

It's an emergency button with no crash and no time limit. Absolutely it needs disadvantages.

you can get cap protection from other armors that doesnt have the disadvantages. do they need the same downsides?

[Wavicle]

37 minutes ago, ivanhedgehog said:

you can get cap protection from other armors that doesnt have the disadvantages. do they need the same downsides?

which set lets you cap all def and res except psi using only SOs with no crash or time limit?

[BrandX]

50 minutes ago, Wavicle said:

which set lets you cap all def and res except psi using only SOs with no crash or time limit?

 

I'm curious what your build looks like to have capped def and res.  I couldn't do it on my Scrapper with IOs.

[Wavicle]

Just now, BrandX said:

 

I'm curious what your build looks like to have capped def and res.  I couldn't do it on my Scrapper with IOs.

We’re talking about Granite Armor.

[Glacier Peak]

8 hours ago, BrandX said:

 

I'm curious what your build looks like to have capped def and res.  I couldn't do it on my Scrapper with IOs.

Three defense and three resistance SOs at 53 slotted in to Granite Armor. 

[arcane]

13 hours ago, ivanhedgehog said:

Granite still needs at least some of the disadvantages removed. If it is just to be a mule, its doesnt deserve such disadvantages.

Yeah no Granite definitely has to have the downsides.

[drbuzzard]

Granite is good enough on its own to deserve the downsides. 

 

 

[ivanhedgehog]

10 hours ago, drbuzzard said:

Granite is good enough on its own to deserve the downsides. 

 

 

how much of that good is being transferred to stone skin, making granite not worth taking. making you use some of those slots on other powers to keep the same levels. I havent built one, but what will be the cost in slots, will granite be not worth taking? Lots of people are looking at scrappers with stone, how will it effect the people using stone tanks?

 

edit: 3 def / 3 res will not cap anything on granite except for smashing/lethal on live it puts you at 31% def on half of the categories. the other half are zero

I built one on test and it will be worth it to not slot granite other than as mule slots and use IOs to toughen up your non granite build. waste of a t9.

Edited November 20, 2021 by ivanhedgehog

[Pzn]

11 hours ago, ivanhedgehog said:

how much of that good is being transferred to stone skin, making granite not worth taking. making you use some of those slots on other powers to keep the same levels. I havent built one, but what will be the cost in slots, will granite be not worth taking? Lots of people are looking at scrappers with stone, how will it effect the people using stone tanks?

 

edit: 3 def / 3 res will not cap anything on granite except for smashing/lethal on live it puts you at 31% def on half of the categories. the other half are zero

I built one on test and it will be worth it to not slot granite other than as mule slots and use IOs to toughen up your non granite build. waste of a t9.

I don't understand how the stone skin/granite changes make a difference.  You still take stone skin either way on a granite build and end up with the same stats.

[Glacier Peak]

12 hours ago, ivanhedgehog said:

waste of a t9.

Granite is not a waste of a T9. Your feedback is clearly just your opinion and not based on play testing.

 

The transfer of resists and defs to Stone Skin from Granite literally makes no difference to Tankers because it's an auto pick, and it is an easy decision for Brutes and now Scrappers to take over Rock Armor. The ability to toggle a power indefinitely that prevents a player from dying except in extreme circumstances absolutely needs downsides to balance out its usage. The fact that there are IOs and set bonuses in this game means a player can definitely slot Granite Armor however they prefer. Whether as a set mule that can slot resist and def IOs or as a power that can literally survive 99% of content in this game without dying.