Jibikao

I thought the problems are gone but I had one nasty "out of memory" bug again and the game was shut down. I never had that problem before until recently.

Whatever they've done, it is definitely improving on my end, but I didn't have this kind of crashes before. So is it really improvement or just bringing back to what it was before?


I just wish they could fix that display bug on the names when you are on a Team. Many times it doesn't show the person in the same zone until later and I would wait and wait...

What Assassin Strike means to me?

1. You can't miss! I don't know how many times it messes up my survival if I miss BU + AS. I wasted 4s doing nothing. If a target can't see me, it shouldn't miss. Yes, I know even Blaster's Aim + BU can miss but the targets can see you after the first hit.


2. You gotta hit Fast and Hard. The current AS has pretty long interruption time, activation time and the damage does not scale up high enough at high level content. In fact, if you do Placate + AS during your normal attack chain, you actually lower your dps.


3. In other games I've played, Assassin Strike usually delivers BOTH very heavy damage please very nasty Debuff. The debuff includes like target can't heal himself or heal much less, debuff on running speed so the target can't run away from you. Or Assassin Strike hits so hard that you are stun-locked for a while.


4. As far as animation goes, only Weapon-based sets look what I imagine (Ninja Blade, Dual Blade and Claw for example).


I really wish each Assassin Strike provides different effects but that will be too hard to balance.

If it's end-game content you are going to focus on, then I would say Dark/Thermal as well, simply because people are usually packed with +defense but not with resistance.

Dark Blast is also going to be a lot better with Life Drain's improvement.

Dual Pistol has weapon draw. Do you plan on using dual pistol attacks most of the time?

If so, go with Blaster.

Blaster's base damage + defiance has way higher damage than Corruptor. People think Corr's blast is only "a bit behind" Blaster. Blaster's raw damage is miles ahead of Corr's.

Corr's damage potential comes from your secondary. So if you plan on shooting pistols most of the time, I would suggest Blaster.

And I think Defiance adds more damage than Scourge because Defiance's damage boost is usually not wasted. Scourge, on the other hand, has a lot of overkill.

By the way, this could be a good thing for Stalker sets that have zero aoe. They change when you can start taking Patron/Epic sets now.

Starting at lvl 35, you can choose tier 1-2
At lvl 41, you can take tier 3-4
At lvl 44, you can take tier 5


So you can have 100% critical fireball at lvl 44 or have Ball of Lightning at lvl 41.

If Nuke is designed to be a "panic button", then it's gotta come out fast. Fortunata's nuke is what I consider the best nuke in the game. It has no crash and its damage is pretty high. The best thing about Fort's nuke is the stacking Stuns and the fact that it comes out so quick. Total activation time is still about 3s but it comes out first and then you are stuck in that animation. It is better than jumping in and waiting for 3s for the nuke to come out.

I think:

Stalker: Energy Melee / Regen (I give MA an edge over EM for the team critical buff). Regen is just not good on Stalker because Stalker's HP Cap is so low and both EM and MA have no aoe attack all, in a game where aoe shines, you have two negatives going for you.

Peacebringer: The current form of PB is just frustrating.


Controller: Mind/something. Mind control just doesn't work as well on controller as it does for Dominator. Mind lacks aoe immb for containment and it doesn't have domination to make it an excellent control set. It's very good but other primaries have controls and good damage potential with containment.


Mastermind: Petlless MM isn't what I consider a logical build that just sucks. If you want to use the pets, then Merc is the weakest because Merc doesn't excel in anything. Controls? I would vote Ninja, Necro and even Demon having more good controls than Merc. Merc has the worst ST damage, lack of aoe potential with narrow cones, weak resistance with only S/L and a minion Medic that I don't want talk about. If he heals you in time, or put anti-mez on you, consider yourself lucky. The weakest secondary on MM is definitely /Poison. Funny, my first villain ever is 50 Merc/Posion! lol /Poison lacks aoe protection for your pets. If you get any kind of aoe damage, you can't heal the pets in time with that slow moving Green Ball.


These are the ones that are noticeably weak IMO. Those powers should be improved for the AT's need's.

Well, so far with the exception of Rib Cracker power and Build Up/Combat Readiness, Stalker's version of SJ is the same as the others. They didn't take out any of the aoe power and the combo system works the same way (unlike Dual Blade).

I never understand why there should be "chances" involved in a panic button. Why don't they get rid of 75% and 50% chance and give Blaster the full value to begin with?

I played more tonight and I am lvl 10.

One thing I just realized that when you critical with Finisher moves, the critical damage is only based on Combo 0 (which is no combo) and not based on Combo 3.

This means for an AT that excels in critical damage, you are not going to get that much from Finishers. At least this is how I view. I don't know the actual math but if you want me to guess, SJ fits Brute a bit more than Scrapper/Stalker (while Kinetic fits Stalker/Scrapper more).

By the way, people in beta forum report that Demoralize works even on an "instant dead" target because they changed how the debuff/buff works after the target is dead.

I haven't tried it yet.

This means your AS should still cause aoe fear if you kill a minion in one hit. Other powers like Chain Induction should still jump if the main target is dead.

In case you don't know, Dark Blast's Life Drain is going to be better. It will have 1.67 damage scale (like a typical tier 2 attack), with 8s recharge (instead of 15s!) and endurance cost is reduced to 8ish. With good -recharge, you can leech health pretty often!

I want to make true Vampire build and so far, I am leaning towards Dark/Storm. Dark/dark is too typical. I'll have two stun powers and good cones.

Hopefully I get a level bump soon so I can test the whole build.

I usually hate testing new sets because I like to be surprised when they go live but this time I am determined to find out if Stalker's SJ is gimped.

So far, SJ is quite fun at lvl 3. :P

The two combo points in AS is not really "extra". It takes more than 3s and chance to get interrupted to build two points. You can build two points under 2s with just the first two attacks. So don't think of it as an "extra". It is not. In fact, if AS doesn't give any combo points, then it's truly gimped because the whole set revolves around Builder and Finisher so if one of the attacks doesn't give combo points, then it's gimped for the design. And nobody in their right mind would use AS in attack chain just for the two points.

(Ice Armor's numbers look pretty good. Chilling Embrace debuffs 15% damage. Nice)

Looks like MM's /sonic is very similar to Corr's. That's a good thing. :P

22.5% resist debuff from first power and disruption.

15% shield and 11.25% dispersion.