Yuuuuuge Stalker [Placate] Buff in Build 3

[nihilii]

Quote

• Placate (stalker, bane and widow versions) powers now grant hide for 5s that cant be broken by damage in addition to a 10s hide that cancels if damaged. Both of these durations run at once, so the max duration is always 10s.
• Stalker Guile proc now grant hide for 3s that cant be broken by damage in addition to a 10s hide that cancels if damaged. Both of these durations run at once, so the max duration is always 10s.

Possibly bigger than the previous round of Placate buffs.

How many times have you used Placate only to see the effect broken immediately, lose your crit and feel stupid? For me the answer is *all the time*. Which is why to this day I still avoided Placate in most of my builds, even since the buffs.

Even Stalker Guile is broken every now and then, even if you chain attacks immediately. Hello DoTs. Losing the "free" crit feels paaainful.
 

This update is going to be good.

[Frosticus]

Sweet baby jesus I'm coming for you Silver Mantis!

her dam caltrops always prevented me from getting double focus after placate.

 

also bane placate is the bees knees with that huge tohit buff it grants.

[InvaderStych]

I should give Placate a Second Look.

 

/catreadingnewspapermeme

[nihilii]

On 2/1/2024 at 10:29 PM, Frosticus said:

also bane placate is the bees knees with that huge tohit buff it grants.

Wow, yeah, this is wild. Coupled with the new 35s base cd, a +20% base tohit for 10s is essentially perma-Rage if you will it so. On an AT with passive ~+16% (slotted) through their native Leadership.

 

I had absolutely no awareness of this tohitbuff. Was this added recently? I see City of Data lists it, but even Mids 3.6 has no mention of it, and a quick search for "Placate" through patch notes all the way back to 2022 give me nothing.

 

edit: oh, looking at it more closely I gather this is +20% tohit until you attack / get attacked, so for one hit. Still pretty good on top of BU and Leadership.

Edited February 4 by nihilii

[Grimm2]

This is super cool. I keep on coming back to and bouncing off of stalkers as I like the way they do crits, but find the bulk, aoe, and stickiness of tanks/brutes more convenient. 

 

What would you suggest for a lazy fogey like me, in light of the upcoming buffs? I built out a spine/stone/soul (hard to make spines flow well) and tried ice/rad, en/en, en/stone in various states of completion. 

[Frosticus]

Sav stalkers have oodles of aoe and encourage the go, go, go nature of the brute if you ride the crimson wave (heh) of blood stacks.

 

Stalkers are the opposite of sticky though, but placate can halt a runner most of the time as it resets their ai.

[Ston]

Here’s some footage of me messing with it on beta. It feels incredible. Shout out to the devs for making sure Stalkers didn’t walk out of this update with a nerf.

 

Going into hide from ATO or Placate feels very reliable now when you’re trying to land follow-up crits.

 

https://youtu.be/ABOwEynfnQ4?si=_bMtdc2DBpMDL4nB

[nihilii]

1 hour ago, Grimm2 said:

I built out a spine/stone/soul (hard to make spines flow well)

I literally rerolled a spines/stone/soul this morning and I'm having a blast, going through the low levels on double XP (Indomitable). I see a lot of potential in this combo.

 

You're right, the animations are lengthy but I think we can turn that into a strength, sort of. For starters I am Hasten-less (for now, every power is so good there is no room until lvl 32) and I'm running a near seamless attack chain with no local or global recharge whatsoever, that's neat.

The AoEs are nice, slows and Impale help take care of runners. AS fills in for the traditional lack of damage of Spines. Like Frosticus says, Placate messes with AI brains pretty good. I love Placating my own target then have it (sometimes) do nothing for 2-3 seconds despite me attacking.

Higher level plans:

 

AS -> Impale -> Ripper -> Throw Spines as an attack chain, seeing as we need literally no recharge I plan for 4 damage procs in each attack and 2 Superior Winter sets to round up ACC/DAM and snatch slow resistance. Throw Spines does slightly lower ST damage than Lunge, but including TS in the ST chain lets me proc it for more AoE damage, and any AoE damage is "free", and TS has a bit of range. Range means no brain required, no brain required makes a happy nihilii.

 

I want to ignore Moonbeam completely despite the great DPA, so I can just cycle my 3 (non-AS) spines attacks and get max AS proc chance. Again, no brain.

 

Still grabbing Shadow Meld to shore up Stone defenses as needed.

 

Endurance? We've got room for an extra perf shifter in Crystal Armor, and then the Geode+Brimstone design more or less encourages you to "hibernate" every once in a while (unlike the actual Hibernate). I figure this ought to do the trick and should let me grab Barrier, which coupled with Shadow Meld and overall Stone goodness AND placate should really make for a sturdy character. So many panic buttons here, with 2K1 hp on demand.

Right now I'm on SOs with the essential IO uniques and at lvl 30ish this powers through +1/x8 missions in such an enjoyable way. Can see this growing to a well-rounded character, will never break AV soloing records or whatnot but should be sturdy, versatile and comfortable.

 

-

I mean, I'm ranting about my new love but maybe you have done Spines extensively and you know you don't want it. Either way /stone is pretty much the best Stalker secondary as is, isn't it? It's so well-rounded, covers just about everything in the sun and the natural Geode synergy, putting you back in hidden mode for a crit, cherry on cake. Obvious answer could be to come back to your EM/stone and finish this one. EM is hard to top and Placate buffs will make any Placate -> TF -> 2x Energy Focus strategies even more reliable than they were before.

Edited February 4 by nihilii

[StriderIV]

2 hours ago, Ston said:

Here’s some footage of me messing with it on beta. It feels incredible. Shout out to the devs for making sure Stalkers didn’t walk out of this update with a nerf.

 

Going into hide from ATO or Placate feels very reliable now when you’re trying to land follow-up crits.

 

https://youtu.be/ABOwEynfnQ4?si=_bMtdc2DBpMDL4nB

 Very nice! What is that new jump up and hit movie, kind of like Mighty Radial?

 

Edit: it could be Thunderstrike, but I don’t remember it having that large of a radius/KD effect.

Edited February 5 by StriderIV

[Grimm2]

6 hours ago, nihilii said:

Awesome thoughts about spines/stone/soul

It is a fun combo, isn't it?? I like spines, but on other ATs have dropped Impale in favor of Barb Swipe. Maybe that's an error to do so on a Stalker with controllable crits. Where are you putting the BU recharge set, Spine Burst?

 

I'm not a great attack chain math-er.I did include Moonbeam and Hasten, but am usually left without a good power to use when proc-hidden. Impale would solve that, just alternate between it and Moonbeam. I have no travel power, and it's ok.

 

Your 4-proc setup sounds amazing, and really helpful to counter the lethal damage type. I think I fit in 2 or 3 procs in most of mine. 

 

I also find Stone Armor to be really, halt good. The Hidden state changes would make Stone Armor's vulnerability to be hit with fire dots,  and dots in general, much less impaction on crit performance. 

 

 

[nihilii]

I put the BU recharge set (in full) in Lunge. I will just have to remember to use it once per zoning, I believe this is enough to trigger the effect for your other attacks.
 

Spine Burst is another 2 Winter Set + 4 procs.

I agree Impale is important on a Stalker. It is the only "high" damage native single target attack we have for a meaty crit, even if the damage is not THAT high. On the bright side, range makes it that much more likely for the crit to hit rather than fail.

[nihilii]

8 hours ago, StriderIV said:

Edit: it could be Thunderstrike, but I don’t remember it having that large of a radius/KD effect.

They did a good number of tweaks to TS in the beta:
 

Spoiler

• Thunder Strike consistency pass (All versions):
  • Recharge increased from 18s to 20s
  • Radius increased from 7' to 10'
  • Endurance cost increased from 10.192 to 18.512
  • Cast time reduced from 3.3s to 2.53s
  • Main target damage increased from scale 2.38 to scale 2.98
  • Secondary target damage set to scale 0.42
  • Epic versions of this power has 40s cooldown and 23.14 endurance cost

 

[Kaika]

This isn't a buff to placate, this is how it currently operates on live. This is in response to a bug fix right above it, which fixed the "Cancel on damage" Flag thats been broken on stalker for forever. Basically this change is just preserving the functionality of placate as it currently is, while fixing a bug that caused it to work like that. It's why on live atm if a bane placates you, even if you hit them, you still can't target them.

 

Quote

"Cancel On Damage" Flag

• Effects flagged to cancel when damaged will now properly cancel. This affects both player and critter powers, most notably:
  • Placate power's Hidden status and stealth effects
  • Perception debuff effects used by critters in PvE and by players in PvP (e.g. Smoke Grenade, Flash Arrow, etc).
• Related to this, various critter powers were missing Cancel on Damage flags.
  • Fixed Crey Eliminator Tear Gas Grenade, Immunes Engineer Tear Gas Grenade, and Doppelganger Ninja Training Blinding Powder missing their Cancel On Damage flag.
  • Placate (stalker, bane and widow versions) powers now grant hide for 5s that cant be broken by damage in addition to a 10s hide that cancels if damaged. Both of these durations run at once, so the max duration is always 10s.
  • Stalker Guile proc now grant hide for 3s that cant be broken by damage in addition to a 10s hide that cancels if damaged. Both of these durations run at once, so the max duration is always 10s.

That's why it just got added, as originally this bug fix was a nerf to both the ATO and placate. All this does is retain it's current functionality and makes it official as it was simply bugged before to work like this.

Edited February 5 by Riot Siren

[Ston]

5 hours ago, Riot Siren said:

This isn't a buff to placate, this is how it currently operates on live. This is in response to a bug fix right above it, which fixed the "Cancel on damage" Flag thats been broken on stalker for forever. Basically this change is just preserving the functionality of placate as it currently is, while fixing a bug that caused it to work like that. It's why on live atm if a bane placates you, even if you hit them, you still can't target them.

 

That's why it just got added, as originally this bug fix was a nerf to both the ATO and placate. All this does is retain it's current functionality and makes it official as it was simply bugged before to work like this.

 

 

I think it’s a buff because it’s much more reliable now. On live, those windows could still get cancelled. Sometimes damage wouldn’t cancel them, but it was a toss up whether or not it would work how you wanted it to.

[Frosticus]

Placate's hidden status is easy to break on live right now. Stand in any kind of damage patch, it will be very unlikely you'll get a follow up crit.

[nihilii]

I admit I skipped Placate for so many years I spoke without knowing there was such a bug. But, I'm leveling a Stalker with Placate right now and it gets cancelled all the time by normal interactions soloing +1/x8 missions. Yes, I've noticed sometimes I keep the Hidden status through damage - when there's only 1 or 2 enemies hitting me, maybe. But 99% of the time I lose the effect.

In fact between the time I started writing this post and the time I reached this sentence, I went ahead and attacked a group of malta, AS, retreated behind a corner, used Placate on the lone Operation Engineer minion in range, and his attack cancelled my Hidden status instantly. Awkward!

Now I see, testing further and paying attention, that if I'm not taking any damage at all for a second or so as I use Placate, then further damage doesn't seem to cancel it. I guess this is a timing issue, if the attack is initiated before the Placate happens or something like that?

Either way, in practice this means I lose the Hidden status quite often, because realistically I'm almost always taking damage while using Placate.

In Ston's video I perceive it as significantly better, he activates Placate at 00:25 then takes damage at 00:26, visually this *feels* like the Hidden status would break on Live, and here it doesn't.

I'll take the placebo either way if I'm wrong. Turns out Stalkers are fun!

[Riverdusk]

Speaking of spines, another improvement in this page (to me anyway) is the alternate animation they added for ripper.  I will no longer have to do a backflip to use it. 😃

[nihilii]

Now that we're Live... Yum.

Since Riot Siren explained the previous bug, I can understand how a skilled player might manage his environment efficiently, and get very little added functionality from the Placate buff.

But I, as a keyboard smasher with slow reflexes?

Yuge gains.

It only took one mission to completely change my behavior. I now use Placate as soon as it's up, confident in the knowledge I am getting that guaranteed crit on my next attack no matter what.

My burst damage output feels significantly improved with all those extra crits.

[Carnifax]

Urrgh. I need to respec my Ice/Stone (bye bye Geode, you suck)

[Frosticus]

Hot take. People were not sufficiently challenging their build if they were not frequently having placate broken on them.

 

[StriderIV]

Need to respec. Placate a one slot wonder? How do you slot it?

[Thraxen]

On 2/4/2024 at 3:49 PM, Grimm2 said:

This is super cool. I keep on coming back to and bouncing off of stalkers as I like the way they do crits, but find the bulk, aoe, and stickiness of tanks/brutes more convenient. 

 

What would you suggest for a lazy fogey like me, in light of the upcoming buffs? I built out a spine/stone/soul (hard to make spines flow well) and tried ice/rad, en/en, en/stone in various states of completion. 

I’m loving electric. Buffed thunder strike. AS helps single target chain that I don’t like on other ATs. 

[tidge]

I haven't taken a Placate-ish power since before the previous rounds of changes (to the power, to the set options). I am now leveling up a Stalker with Placate and I like it!

 

14 hours ago, StriderIV said:

Need to respec. Placate a one slot wonder? How do you slot it?

 

With one slot? I'd probably just go Recharge. I want it available as often as possible. It looks like the stalker version doesn't take Accuracy, so usually this means it is an 'auto-hit' but I haven't done testing to see if it ever misses.... my character is too low level and doesn't have it slotted yet.

 

My current Stalker has a 5-piece slotting of Mocking Beratement planned (not using the pure Threat piece). I don't have the slots for the 6th piece bonus (from that set) and the effects of the extra global recharge would be somewhat minimal for this build. If it turns out that I don't "need" that set's extra Defensive boosts, I'll pull slots from Placate. I like the +MaxEnd from Mocking Beratement, so I'd probably keep 2 slots in the power.

[Frosticus]

It is auto-hit 0 end cost.

2 - 50+5 rech is good

 

Depending on your build some of the taunt sets have great bonuses. I went 6 pcs mocking on my em/ea.