Jibikao

Ugh!!!!!!!!!!!

I am so annoyed. Why don't they port Ice Melee as well? Scrapper/Brute get 3 new sets.

Come on man. I really want to try Ice Melee on Stalker.

If they are modifying Ice Armor, they should port Ice Melee as well to complete the theme. I don't want to level an Ice Armor and then months later (or a year later), they decide to port Ice Melee.

Wow, I didn't know about this:

As you can see NG debuffs across the board and it stacks with Envenom and Weaken. Go look again I'll wait. Now note there is a multiplier depending which tier pet you apply Noxious Gas. The numbers above are based on a tier 2 which has 1.00 multiplier. The tier 1 pets have a 0.75 multiplier. Your tier three bruiser has a 1.25 multiplier.

I haven't played my first lvl 50 villain Merc/Poison for so long.

I'll definitely try /poison again with either corr or troller.

I am a bit disappointed that stalker doesn't get Ice Melee. Both Scrapper/Brute get 3 new sets while Stalker just gets a secondary. blah


I was so hoping for Ice Melee on villain side.

Well, just a few things to throw out in case you haven't tried /Poison. I have a 50 Merc/Poison and quite frankly, it's my least favorite combo. /Poison in its current form offers very little aoe protection for 6 pets. Its debuffs, while potent, aren't good enough to protect the pets and the single healing is slow and costs 16 endurance. And the lvl 38 gas power doesn't work well on Commando since he isn't a melee-oriented pet.

From what I've read, they are going to add some "Splash" effects to both Weaken and Envenom. I think it should look like Acid Arrow. I don't know what the radius is going to be like. I am guessing 8' radius. Those that receive splash effects get "reduced" debuff values. We don't know the details yet.

Poison Trap in /Poison has 4s interrupt. Many people don't know this because quite frankly, nobody likes this power. Yes, it's very nice that they changed it Hold initially but the 4s interrupt + 5s casting time and the fact that /Poison has no stealth, may make it hard to set it off. I just don't understand why /Poison has a trap. I rather just puke a pile of !@#$ and put them to hold/sleep and whatnot.

If Venomous Gas is the same version of Noxious Gas, then it's going to be very good. This power looks weak on MM, but it is actually a great resistance debuff + puking power.

Basically from what I read:

1. AoE effect in Weaken and Envenom
2. Poison Trap causes Hold initially and it may have minor Toxic damage
3. Single heal is going to be better. We don't know the details yet.

I still think the activation time on Weaken is a bit long but we'll see.

The more I think about it, the more I think /Sonic is going to be pretty bad on MM. /sonic offers no healing and aid other has its limit.

With Mastermind's buff value, sonic shields' buff value is even less than Corruptor's. The only set that may work is with Demon or maybe Thug.


I rather get Cold Domination than /Sonic. I've tried /sonic on Corruptor and I almost deleted him at lvl 42. I am really not thrilled about a resistance-based set with weaker buff values and no aoe healing to back up. /Thermal makes sense but not /sonic.

Can we please improve some of the older sets too? I really think Dark Blast set needs a small buff. Looking at Blaster's version (the text), it has Aim which is a HUGE bonus for a set that has a true nuke at lvl 32. Blaster's version also has a single hold.

Is there any way Life Drain can be improved? It is a really poor power. It has 12 endurance cost, 15s recharge and the damage is only like a tier 1. Siphon Life has a much higher damage and only 10s recharge.

Can we find a happy middle-ground for Life Drain? I really want to like this power but its healing is pretty poor. The current version of Life Drain is not a good heal, not a good damage, not endurance-efficient, not fast activating and what's more, it has less range than other blasts. Can't we improve some aspects of it? Pretty please?

Glad they add some AoE component in Weaken and Envenom, or else it's going to be such a poor-child set in comparison to Radiation and Cold Domination.

They say the set is going to be "similar" to MM's version. Does this mean the debuff values stay the same? If so, the set is still going to be sub-par.

If it's 25% better than MM's version, then yeah, it can be good.

Venomous Gas is what I am looking for.

Looks like Blaster's Dark Blast is going to be very good. They added Aim at least!!!!

Not sure how well /Sonic would work on MM. I can see it works well with only two sets: Thug and Demon. Both boss pets are melee-oriented so you have a good anchor for Disruption. Both Grave Knights and Jounin are quite squishy for anchor even with the weaker Sonic Shields.

Hell, my old /Sonic Corruptor even had trouble surviving with better sonic values.

I don't know man. If I want resistance-based set, I think /Thermal is better. This of course doesn't include teaming. If you have a Brute friend, I can see /sonic being more user-friendly on MM.

Dark Blast looks the most exciting to me. I've wanted to make a more offensive-oriented Dark Blast user but the lack of a good 3rd-tier attack in Corr/Defender is just not really fitting. Looks like Blaster's version is going to be better.

The only thing I am not too sure is this: Torrent and Nightfall were merged into a single power

I rarely use Torrent because I am not a fan of strong aoe knock back to begin with, but I love Nightfall.

And Blaster's version actually has Aim!!!! Ugh... I really wish they could have improved Dark Blast when they improved Dark Melee. Life Drain needs a serious damage buff. Its damage scale is just so darn low. If they don't want to give it more damage, then at least they can reduce endurance cost and recharge so we can drain faster.

Blaster's version looks like a perfect mix of damage and controls with a single hold.

Energy Aura Revamp

The most exciting part of any powers work for me personally is making improvements to existing power sets. So, porting over Energy Aura to Scrappers gave us a really good opportunity to make some changes to the set. The changes we chose to make were intended to make thematic sense and build upon strengths instead of filling intended weak spots. I won’t list the lengthy patch notes here, but I will sum them up for you:

1. Resistance on the set’s auto powers were slightly increased and now include endurance drain protection and slow resistance.
2. Entropy Shield is now Entropic Aura for Scrappers and Brutes. This power is a taunt aura that grants the user a scaling recharge buff based on the number of foes surrounding the user. The Stalker version of the set doesn’t have a taunt aura, but it offers a small Recharge bonus.
3. Repulse for Stalkers has been replaced by Disrupt, a stun aura.
4. Energy Drain no longer has a healing component, instead it offers a small defense boost per target hit.
5. Conserve Energy was replaced by Energize, a self Heal that offers a moderate regeneration and endurance cost reduction boost for a short while. This power works identically to the Electric Armor version.


Just in case some of you don't follow the threads.


What's your thoughts? My only question is Disrupt. It doesn't say it have -health component which is good. I wasn't expecting a stun aura but hey, it's better than that repel aura for sure. Now you can stack stuns with other attacks.

Overall, it's a good buff.

Ice Armor for Stalkers

We chose Ice Armor this time around as it was a fun and thematically interesting power set and it was the only option that didn’t require substantial art time. Since our talented artists are working their rear ends off making content in Issue 21 shine, this round of Power Set Proliferation required that there would be no art time used. Ice Armor had to have some changes made to make it compatible with the Stalker play style. First we removed Icicles to make room for Hide and then we removed Hibernate and replaced it with Icy Bastion. This change was made because Stalkers already have access to Hibernate from their Leviathan Patron Pool. The new power Icy Bastion is a click power that provides a short, but significant, burst of Resistance, Regeneration and Recovery.


Ice Armor should be good on Stalker because it's a mix of defense and +HP and some resistance.

I still want Ice Melee more though.

The idea of adding more +defense with each Upgrade is great! This way you won't have Genins having 15% defense at lvl 1.

I think a big re-vamp of Ninja set is not going to happen. They already redesigned Genin's range attacks by getting rid of Archery.

I think the set just needs a few things:

1. Each upgrade give a small amount of +defense and +Defense Debuff Resistance. Ninjas really need defense debuff resistance. 7% on Genin is not going to cut it.

2. Oni needs the most re-design but in reality, I would do:

A. Change Fire Blast to 6s attack and make sure the AI uses this often. Adding two 2s recharge so Oni doesn't need to decide between Ring of Fire and Fire Blast. It is better to leave a little recharge gap in between each attack. Oni will have a smooth attack chain of: Ring of Fire 4s, Fire Blast 6s and Char 8s with 16s Breath.

B. I can see the dev won't get rid of Fire Swords but I really think they need to get rid of one of the Fire Swords and make it a 10s attack so it hits hard when it matters. Don't keep the 3s and 6s low recharge because that will only interfer with Oni's Ring of Fire and Char. You want Oni to use Immb and Hold often. Just look at Demon Prince. All of his attacks are 8s or higher. This way he can only use what's available rather than letting him to decide which one to use. In this case, LESS IS MORE! LESS number of attacks but with MORE QUALITY attacks.


3. Change Genin's knockback to knockdown. This will greatly reduce the risk of them chasing a knocked back foe. Believe, they can really chase!


4. Reduce recharge on Rain of Fire from 60s to 45s. The reason is that the effects of these DoT usually doesn't last its full duration. And since a pet can't summon a pet that lasts for the full duration, I think it's only logical that you let them use it more often to make up for the shorter duration. The fear effect is something unique to Ninja's soft controls. Yes, it has pros/cons but it fits Ninja style and they are useful in PvP if you like pvping in this game (I don't). I know I've cast Rain of Fire on a Robot MM once and it totally ruined his formation 'cause the pets were running away from him.

(By the way, I am surprised to find out that Jounin's Caltrops' base damage is 45 at level 1 for the full duration and Stalker's Caltrops is only 22.50. And recharge is already at 30s. I thought Jounin's caltrop is the exact copy of other Caltrops. My mistake.)

I agree Stalker should have un-suppressed stealth as well as the highest stealth cap.

I have a Dark/EA Brute who I named "Stalkerish Brute". Sometimes you can literally kill the first few enemies at front and the ones on the back don't even notice you until later, and patrols can't see you until they are close. Isn't this VERY Assassin-like? You stealth into a group, take out a few enemies before the enemies even realize you are there!

This is what I think is going to happen....


A major Revamp of /Poison set and the dev ports it to Corr, Troller and Defender.

The whole /Poison set is a laughing matter. With the new change of aoe shield buffs, each SINGLE debuff of Weaken and Envenom costs 13 endurance. Freezing Rain costs 20 something endurance and it hits many targets, but if you debuff with Weaken and then Envenom, you already spent 26 endurance.

Poison Trap under /Poison is the most useless power in the game. It has zero synergy with the rest of the set.

My goal with my Elec/Earth Dom is to drain an AV dry and keep him/her dry but I failed. I took power boost and Mu mastery. I have to find a balance between survival (since I am all melee) and draining but I just can't find that balance yet. My build isn't perma-dom yet because I had to get all kinds of +defense.


For regular mobs, Electricity control itself is good enough to sapp and it works even faster if you put some +end recovery, but power boost works wonderful when you want to sapp a Boss dry in the first few seconds. I think with Power Boost and Energy Drain from Mu Mastery, you can drain an even boss dry in one go. If it's +2 level or higher, you can follow up with Jolting or single confuse.


The problem isn't draining to zero. The problem is KEEPING it zero. I could drain AVs pretty low but as long as there is any recovery, they can use an attack (which may kill you).


I think eventually, Elec/Elec is the best choice for AV-drainer because electricity attacks can proc for "no recovery" for several seconds. Between elec control powers and elec attacks, you can eventually stop endurance recovery for a long time and then eventually drain an AV dry and keep him dry.


Elec/Psionic actually sounds quite cool. I didn't think about Drained Psyche. I went with /Earth because of the aura and the fact that Earth has 3 melee, 1 pbaoe and 1 short target aoe. Everything is just so... melee.