EvilGeko

It's 134 actually. (1338 v. 1204) And I mean no disrespect, but your annoyance is neither my goal or my concern.

Less than half of the Scrapper sets (Will, Shield, Regen, Invul) have health buffs. So this is not an AT wide distinction until we get in teams. And even there, there are very few HP buffs.

I never said anything different. In fact, I've said that the base is 134 and the cap is about 400. But it's presented as if it is this chasm of difference and it's not.

To my knowledge, there is exactly ONE non-Incarnate ally buff and that's Frostwork. And Frostwork can't be kept up on the whole team. Having a 50 Cold Dom, I must tell you that I prioritize the non-tank melees exactly never when using this power and I doubt I'm the only one.

For simplicity let's take an even level minion with a 100 damage attack. No other defense powers for this example.

Chance of hitting the Scrapper = 50% for an expected health loss of 50
Chance of hitting the Stalker = 47.5% for an expected health loss of 47.5

That's 5 percent mitigation.

All Scrappers get a +Stealth power?

I never said Placate was better than other types of controls. I said that it has a significant effect on survivability if used properly.

What survivability tools do Scrappers have that Stalkers don't? What AoEs did Electric Melee, Kinetic Melee (Oh right Repulsing Torrent, LOL), Street Justice and soon to be Staff lose?

Kinda hard to call something a strawman when it's taken directly from a quote.

Scrappers and Brutes can have a 50% crit rate Fireball?

That might be what you meant. But that's not what you said.

Discussing these issues in turn:

1. Stalkers do not have lower survivability than Scrappers. I simply will no longer accept any argument based on 134 Health and completely ignoring Hide and Placate.

2. On average Stalkers have less AoE options than Scrappers. This is true. It is not a constant. It is not always true that if you take any Scrapper and put him up against any Stalker, the Scrapper wins in AoE. However, every single Stalker can have Fireball and that's better than some Blaster combos have access to, so Stalkers don't get much sympathy from me on this front anymore.

BONUS: Your castigation of Arcana and Leo is misplaced. You wrote a paragraph. The first sentence of which uses the word 'now'. The only reasonable interpretation is that you are discussing the state of Stalkers after the Issue 22 buffs. You then state in your second sentence that "they pay for that privilege," with the survivability and all that. You tied the two concepts together.

I disagree. You all keep talking about leveraging the most you can out of Fury and speaking as if we're talking about experience players. That's not the question presented. The question was what was a good archetype TO START WITH. I maintain that no newbie player needs to be an expert at using Fury to get excellent results. All the melee ATs are awesome and survivable. But Brutes, even if played the exact same way as a Scrapper will do more damage until the early 20s.

Likewise a new player may actually...you know...play the game and not run the sanctioned powerleveling trials.

At low levels before AT modifiers kick in at full strength, a Brute's Fury, even if completely ignored will provide more damage, more consistently than criticals. Newbie Brutes are thus much easier to start of with than the other melee ATs. The amount of free damage you get is staggering.

This. This combo is unique in that many, many noob mistakes will be covered by Fury, Claws' recharge and endurance discount, Willpower's Quick Recovery and fire and forget nature.

Just make sure your friend knows that other ATs and even other Brutes Combos can be weaker.

Your Inventions are doing that.

That's patently false. So much so that I won't even bother providing any of the dozen counter-examples. I'll stick with one: Stalkers.

No, but Geko and Statesman were able to pretend really hard!

That's more than the sub? Were you being serious?

Personally, I think all games which bill themselves as Free 2 Play need to have an ala carte option for everything. A temporary license could work, but a sub is a temporary license so it would have to be sensible.

This. I also have a store-bought fear proc in it and it's a very decent cone attack now.

I don't know. There must be at least one person at Paragon Studios who has mastered the art of writing cleanly. EDIT: And failing that, the devs should recognize that the players are trying, some fairly, some not to understand what they are trying to do. Observation doesn't give us insight into the devs thoughts. So if that's the primary means of communication between players and developers, then the developers have no right to complain that they are misunderstood. And they should recognize that and filter what the players are saying accordingly.

I agree with you about how Jack tended to communicate. It took me awhile to introduce my own filter into what he said.

I was actually talking about the lowbie game. The end game is supposed to be crazy. I actually find character power against the trials to be almost right on target. In that you can still fail and still die if you aren't paying attention.

I look at the low level game and I think your train analogy is apt.

Of course they don't think they're doing that. But that's what they are doing. I can't agree that they are trying to mitigation the inflation, I would like to think that, but it's difficult to be honest.

I was just now playing with a lowbie Stalker (level 21). You know that painful level before SOs. I was just plain shocked at how powerful he was. The character had yellowed out DOs and was tearing through missions like there was no tomorrow. Then I hit 22, slotted SOs and...wow. This Stalker is a Kinetic Melee and has the same amount of AoE that my Kin/EA Scrapper has. And a crapload more ST damage besides.

I don't know, I'm probably wrong. I don't necessarily have the same level of investment in my arguments that some others have. But that's what I perceive. We are so far from where we were a few years ago, that I wonder what is the point of pretending that maintaining even a minor level of challenge is a goal.

I would say to that, that the devs should make their intentions known. For all his faults, Statesman would be pretty open about what he was thinking. And he had a thick enough skin to take it when we excoriated him on his reasoning.

I still remember the portable game anecdote. Players can only divine what the devs intend from their actions most times. And for me at least, I can't see a consistent balance target in their actions.

Just a note, while I give you crap, I don't think there's a person in any MMO I've ever played who considers the game holistically like you do. I tend to roll my eyes when people claim to have more knowledge than the devs about the game, but if anyone could credibly make that claim it's you.

Frankly, I don't claim to be anything other than an opinionated jerk, but at least I'm honest about it. I equally roll my eyes in threads like this when people use high-minded ideals of 'balance' when even defining that term is vexing.

As I said, I haven't really considered the issue, so I'll concede the point.

BUFF CONTROLLERS!

Honestly, I believe that's their position already. I can't reconcile their recent actions otherwise.

EDIT: Just so you know, while we disagree on this. I believe buffing the Stalker AT to the extent they did really makes me wonder what they consider "balance". I asked Arcana to explain it to me, but I don't buy her reasoning. Not because I think she's wrong, but because I don't think the devs have given balance as much thought as she has.

I can. At this point, we're so far above the environment, that I'm not sure it matters anymore. That sounds more controversial than I intend. But I think of it like this.

Let's say we upped the Controller melee damage mod to .65 to match the spread that dominators have between their ranged and melee modifiers. I wouldn't argue against that. I don't think it would do much, but it would be an unequivocal buff. Such a buff would have little to no effect on Controller's current power. So why not?

I don't know that I agree that represents a unique quality. Perhaps, to get to Arcana's point, if that combination led to a unique playstyle like Controllers I could see that. But as I said above, Scrappers don't really play any differently than other ATs, except in the sense that other ATs have other ways to play besides just killing things.

Critical controls.

And I'm not sure that Controllers are unique. The 'critical' mechanic is, as you say, present in other ATs. But really, considering that I spend the majority of my MMO time in another galaxy these days, I can only take on the fight of buffing one AT.

I think Blasters need a buff more than anything, but they have you and others to fight for it. Likewise, I haven't really given Controllers that much thought. Perhaps if someone suggested that they needed something, I might not disagree.

I think when discussing Regen, Placate becomes much more potent. As you know, Regen players cannot without significant outside boosts (IOs, Parry, etc.) survive long in a dogpile of NPCs. The burst damage overwhelms their clicks and regen very quickly. But a Regen is excellent against Single Targets, even ones with high burst abilities. In such a fight, the Stalker has another click to drop, when things are going south and the NPC is getting a little too lucky with their hits.

I don't disagree with this. But in the world of inherent Stamina, QR isn't the boon it once was.

• Self-Damage buffing mod: Shared with Blasters
• Self-To-hit buffs: Shared with Stalkers, Tankers, Defenders, Brutes and SoA
• Self-Defensive buffing mod: Shared with Brutes, Stalkers, Controllers, Corruptors & Kheldians
• Base damage modifier: Technically unique in the sense that it's the only melee one, but Blasters get the same in their primary
• Health modifier: Unique in the sense that they are the only one with that modifier, but there are two ATs (including another primary damage AT) that's higher.
• Crits: lol
• Unique powersets: lol (not that I'm complaining about that, I like proliferation)
• Confront: I guess this is unique, but like with Health and crits its unique in that another AT has a superior version of it.

What am I missing? (That's a real question by the way, I think I am missing something)

It's that, and the ability for taunt auras to make AoE damage more efficient. It's not that the power does more damage inherently, but it's easier to keep NPCs in range.

Hence, why my Spines/Fire Scrapper is parked at 40.