A change for Stalker Dark Melee.

[Nymoril]

Swap Touch of Fear for Dark Consumption in Stalker Dark Melee.

 

While anecdotal, to set this up there's one major thing I've noticed in play is that Dark Melee for Stalkers is usually then taken with Dark Armor as well, while Dark Armor can be taken apart from Dark Melee and is, this relationship is not equal in the vice-versa, I've personally never seen a player with Dark Melee and without Dark Armor.

 

As I have been playing Dark/Dark Stalker there is one significant issue that plagues the combined sets, and it's the endurance problems with it, Dark Armor is thirsty as hell, and Dark Melee isn't exactly endurance efficient either. Without some way of restoring endurance, my Dark/Dark Stalker can often be gassed by the end of a single high hp GM even with fully kitted out sets with as much end reduction as I can slot into my toggles, chance for +endurance added to multiple abilities, and other endurance gains like Zapp's endurance drain to try and help me. 

 

So then my solution is to then give Dark Consumption to Dark Melee Stalkers in exchange for Touch of Fear. I know it's not a perfect silver bullet, but it'd signficantly help these endurance problems so that it wasn't an inevitable drain to empty.

 

I'd also say that it also gets into the identity of Dark Melee, DM is aoe heavier than a lot of melee sets, 1 cone, 1 targeted melee aoe that might as well be a cone, and 2 PBAOEs, so I'd argue that denying Stalker DM a PBAOE is in fact denying them a significant chunk of the flavor of Dark Melee, trying to hew it into a more stringent Issue 7 Cryptic era mold of the ST and Cone Stalker that never really fit the set perfectly.

 

And for a Stalker set getting a PBAOE? Well Sonic Melee, Spines, and Staff Fighting have all crossed that rubicon I know, and we're not talking the world's most spammable PBAOE, with Dark Consumption we're talking a default cooldown of 180 second, and an 8 foot range PBAOE, it doesn't make Stalker into an aoe god, it does less damage per enemy than Shadow Maul with a default cd twice that of a tier 4 Judgement, and even at 270% haste we're talking a 66 second cd, this just isn't some grand movement of the AT's aoe needle.

 

Now flavor/identity is a dangerous argument, then isn't Touch of Fear's fear then a significant part of Dark Melee's identity? But what is it? It's a melee range targeted PBAOE fear effect with damage, but wait there's already a targeted PBAOE fear effect with damage built natively into the Stalker AT already, for Dark Melee it's Assassin's Eclipse. While not a 1:1 perfect equivalency, aoe vs single target, strong mez vs mez at chance, Touch of Fear is duplicating of part a key portion of Stalker AT identity, and thus is redundant for the set's identity within that context.

 

Moreover, ToF doesn't really work within Stalker's mechanics as well, like there's at least arguments for the other AT's Dark Melee having ToF as tanks or having a taunt at least then a CC forward ability is useful to them to control aggro as a trade off for damage, but never really Stalker, Stalker's CC is just killing the enemy, placating back to hidden, or dying, it's never expected to hold aggro like the other melee ATs are, and because of it's relative glass cannon nature, certainly not at the expense of damage.

 

I hope that I've addressed enough reasons for this change, and concerns that come with it that the Homecoming team will seriously consider swapping ToF for Dark Consumption, also that it will help improve build diversity within Stalker Dark Melee as a more desireable ability to the AT's Dark Melee than ToF making the player consider serious considered changes to their builds to include it.

[CoeruleumBlue]

I'm not going to downvote this because a change probably should be made, but I'd swap out Siphon Life. Touch of Fear is good if you build to use the mez effects at all (which also come with Dark Armor,) and Siphon Life is useless on Stalkers because you are squishy and die. Maybe they have to make a new power like Siphon Soul or something that siphons end instead of life because Dark Consumption is a much higher level power and PBAoE, but that's what I think they should do.