Jibikao

I've been trashing Martial Arts a lot on stalker because it doesn't have any aoe at all. I think it's a pretty bad design but I figure I need to try it myself before I totally trash it. My MA/Will is now lvl 24 and so far, he is doing ok. His ST damage against mobs that don't have much smashing resistance is very good. It is typical to critical a minion to death with just Axe kick.

Anyway, I've been trying to come up ways that can add more AoE damage to a set that doesn't have any. I don't want to change the powers because that would break the cottage rule and mess with Melee Set VS AoE Set bonuses.

My friend has an IOed Ice Dominator and I've seen how Confuse proc works with his Arctic Air confuse, which makes me wonder if it is possible to add Critical Proc that does damage to the nearby mobs when Critical happens? It doesn't have to be in every critical damage. I would say Eagle Claw is a good one to have that Critical proc damage chance. Basically, when you deal critical damage, the nearby foes may take critical damage as well (just the critical part, not the whole damage). What do you think?

This way we don't need to mess with set bonuses and it only affects certain powers and it makes Placate and Stalker's Critical/Hidden system better because your Critical damage is more effective on a larger team. I am thinking only single target attack can have this ability.


I am guessing when a target is Confused, the game checks for a chance to Confuse nearby foes. Can this be done in Stalker's Critical damage as well? When a target receive Critical damage, the nearby foes may get/share critical damage as well?


What do you think? Or maybe this can be one of the unique Alpha abilities specific to Stalker?

lol WTF ... oh my. Love this abbreviation for Weekly Task Force.

I have one at lvl 32. I used to take him to Siren Call for pvp.

It's ok. I mostly rely on Team Teleport so my pets stay within FFG.

I haven't tried it but looks like Mace Beam Blast from patron has a bit higher base damage but recharges in 9s. 9s isn't bad considering every other attack takes 2s. lol

So the gimped range-bane will have: Mace Beam 1, Mace Beam 2 and Poisonous Ray as single target chain.

Widows are pretty terrible in PvP after they nerfed defense and control. I know my Fortunata was doing pretty bad damage in RV after the change.

I would say Spine/Fiery does better in pvp because Spines has good range damage and Fiery has decent resistance as long as you are not getting hit by psionic damage.

The only power under Pools that I don't understand is Whirlwind. I've seen it in action at Blackmarket when people are bored.

Can you use other powers while Whirlwind is on? It seems like you are stuck in that spinning animation? What is the point of Whirlwind?

I've thought about a gimp build with just Bane and Mace Beam attacks. It's going to be slow as hell with each attack taking 2s. Base damage is low and it has knockbacks. So it's like playing a gimped version of Energy Blast?

My only experience on Shadowmeld in on my old Elec/Will Stalker who starts the fight with BU + Lightning Rod which means I waste less time during Shadowmeld. Willpower doesn't have that high S/L defense so the +defense is really useful to take alpha for the team.

My old Nin/SR may have Shadowmeld too but I think that's overkill on defense.

I can see Shadowmeld being better on Scrappers because they don't waste time on setting on Assassin Strike. They can hit Shadow and just run in.

To OP, if your stalker wants range attack, Dark Blast is way superior.

You are more than welcome to try snipe on Stalker. I guarantee you that you will want to respec out. :P

I thought snipe with critical could do very impressive damage.. oh my, was I wrong. I think Stalker's Range damage modifier is pretty low? I think build up + critical impale does more damage than snipe? It's been at least 2 years since the last time I tried Stalker's snipe.

LOL I was going to create a thread about how sucky Stalker's Snipes are. It takes almost 8s to cast/interruption!!!! And the damage isn't even that good after critical. It is just terrible IMO.

Snipe in general is just poorly designed. You don't need a snipe to pull. Most range attacks can pull well as long as the attacks don't knockback because once it knockbacks, the whole mob is alerted (which makes Energy and Assault Rifle snipe one of the worst to pull).

I wish they could just get rid of interrupt or shorten casting time.

It really comes down to what you want to do more: damage or buffs/debuffs.

You actually don't need to wait for a long time to get the "good" powers in /Trap. Poison Trap is at lvl 20, FFG at 16 and Acid Mortar is at lvl 10. Seekers is 28. In this regard, I don't think Defender gets that much advantage.

Even if you get poison trap earlier, without good -recharge, you won't be able to use it that often. I would rather take more blasts first at low level.

So I finally level my Human PB to 32 last night. I just have to get Photon Seekers to see if human form is worth it. Somebody mention that the dev can reduce recharge on Seekers to bring more balance between PB and WS, which I totally agree.

Well, it only has one slot (damage) in it and looks like the damage from all 3 seekers is pretty good. The problem, however, is that in order to get the most aoe damage out of them, I have to use them while I am in the center of a mob. Much like Solar Flare, Photon Seekers also deal knockback so basically I have two "good damage" aoe powers that knock violently away from you which many teammates don't like.

I didn't even take Detonation. The amount of knockback from PB attacks is just too much IMO. At some point, knockback just hurts your performance more than it adds.

I now believe human PB is the king of Knockbacks. My pb may get stuck at 32 for a long long time.

I see a pretty sad design in Peacebringer because:

Human damage potential (expressed in dps): 111.51
Nova damage potential (expressed in dps): 109.9

Why would anyone wants to be in Nova form then? I've looked at the builds and while Nova starts off having better dps but you sacrifice healing (yourself and others) and other utilities. PB also has combat hover to allow aerial fights.

I think Black Hole can help. Just make sure you use it on the swords and not the 'Humans" after BM disappears. You need to kill human mobs to force BM out again.

Speaking about "phase", I've brought it up before but they somehow made this power worse than what it was. When I first tried Dimension Shift, the mobs would just stand there doing nothing (the graphic is hard to tell but at least they just stood there). Now I don't know what they did and why did it but phased out mobs will still attack you even though they deal no damage. It is very very confusing IMO. It's confusing enough to figure out which ones are phased.


I really wish they could make Blackhole and Dimension Shift better.

Apex is a very fun TF but it does make certain powers/sets a lot less appealing. I guess that's why they made Tin Mage more "traditional" Strike Force-like. I can see /Trap being pretty good in Tin Mage.