Dispari

The actual issue with Stalkers is that they don't excel at anything in particular. The only thing they can do really well is kill one (possibly two) enemies very fast. Then they have to scrap.

In order to be good at killing one or two enemies very fast, they lose AoE prowess. Of the four melees, they have less AoE potential than all of them. Some of the sets, like Energy Melee, have no AoEs at all.

They don't fit in the standard progression of the four melees. Specifically, Stalkers do too little damage for their defense. It's my belief that the more defense an AT has, the less damage it should do. That should be a logical progression, but instead it looks like this:

Most defense to least:
Tanker
Brute*
Scrapper
Stalker

* = Brutes have the same values as Scrappers, but have more HP. They also have higher caps. I have a Brute that can self-cap S/L resist with an accolade. Without it, she can still hit 82%. No Scrapper can do that.

Most damage to least:
Brute
Scrapper
Stalker
Tanker

Stalkers do 1.00 damage with 10% crit rate. Scrappers do 1.125 with 5% crit rate (more on various powers, but 5% basic). With those values, Scrappers do 118.125% damage and Stalkers do 110%. Stalkers DO get higher crit values while teaming, but in teams their value is lessened because they have less AoEs. Their BU also does less of a boost.

If Stalkers are supposed to be the single-target kings, their damage should reflect that. They should have at least a damage scale of 1.125. This would allow them to "scrap" for more damage than Scrappers, at the expense of less defense and less AoEs. Really, it just makes sense. They have less defense, so they should do more damage. Stalkers should be that step between Blaster and Scrapper. Instead, they're there defensively but nowhere near there offensively, except for that first burst. A +100% from BU instead of +80% might help, but between those two things, AS might need to be tweaked slightly.

Stalkers are still unpopular even after the buff. I doubt it's the reputation they carry. Doms were unpopular except for the high-end permadom builds. Now they're quite popular. Stalkers are unpopular because other ATs do everything they do better.

People were discussing a Stalker superteam a while back, and the easiest conclusion was that people could do RES/regen/heal builds and everyone take Maneuvers. 8 Scrappers running Maneuvers equates to nearly +30% DEF. The rest they can pick up with small bonuses, CJ, DEF already in their set, or a friendly Shield Scrapper.

WP would be capped in everything but S/L with the extra +30%. With CJ, Weave, and Steadfast, could be capped in S/L as well. And could have about 53% RES to S/L if Tough is taken. Very little would be stopping a team like that.

Pretty sure the current implementation means that +0 means AVs spawn at 50 even if they're supposed to be 53 or 54, which is still easier than it's supposed to be. -1 isn't the only problem.

No, there's a subtle trick here. 95% evasion means you only get hit 5% of the time, meaning incoming damage is reduced by 95%. But that's because all enemies only hit 50% of the time to start with. That's why you only need +45% to cap.

A character with 90% RES reduces all incoming damage by 90%. But also dodges half the time because of the base accuracy of enemies. So 90% only getting hit half the time is 95% mitigation.

Good to hear some dev confirmation on this. Thanks!

Sword + Pistol obviously, once dual pistols rolls out. Ranged attacks from pistol, melee from katana.

There are sets I like, on ATs I hate. I want to play Ninjitsu on a Scrapper. I don't like Stalkers.

Yeah, since if everyone could handle +4/x8, there would be no possible way to make content challenging for even 2-man teams, much less 8-man.

I had a big post with some analogies explaining why this concept is bad if you want to go look for it.

EDIT: Here you go, I found it for you. http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showp...3&postcount=34

*gags, dies*

That's not really the incentive I mean. Because inf/exp is easy to come by in all content. You can run +4 newspaper missions and get tons of inf/exp. But no merits.

The draw of TFs (and to lesser degree, story arcs) is that it's more challenging content for a bigger reward. The bigger reward is merits. However, you get the same number of merits whether you blast through extremely difficult +4 TFs or through yawntastic -1 TFs. You can get merits doing non-TF content (story arcs). But in those instances, you still get the same merits whether you do +4 or -1.

If all you care about is inf/exp, you can easily plow through +4 newspaper missions against Freaks and Council for easy winnings. But if you want merits, you have to do story arcs and TFs. TFs especially are balanced toward higher merit returns. However, as noted, you get the same merits whether you do easy or hard content. You're basically rewarded for doing the content as easily and quickly as possible.

In theory yes. Since if it becomes easier and easier to do TFs in a very short amount of time (like with -1 making EBs and AVs spawn at 49), the average time goes down. Merit rewards go down, forcing people to run on very low difficulties if they want to even come close to the supposed merits/hour ratio.

There really needs to be incentive to use higher difficulties as well, or people seeking merits will always run on the lowest difficulty as fast as possible, making doing anything but that pointless.

On the other side of the spectrum, I started my new stalker off at +1 as soon as I created her. Stalkers do great against higher level enemies, in small groups. With no bosses to overpower her at those low levels, she's breezing through all content.

Let me make it easy for you then. The AVs spawn at 49 instead of 53. All the hunts for EBs and ambushes and crystals go faster because everything spawns blue.

They're called task forces, but they don't give the same rewards, and the AVs will scale down.

For the record, Master Illusionists can hold my Scrappers.

Your bizarre stance seems to revolve around the concept that because you fight against the more popular idea that you're automatically correct. No matter what the actual argument is. And that all the people who share the opposite stance are ignorant sheep who just do what the majority dictates.

Yup. It also grants recharge debuff resist and defense debuff resist.

I think you actually made it sound more complicated than it actually is.

Works for me, and I use Firefox.