Kioshi

Maybe they hired a new base designer from the other side of the world.

When people used to take Patron Pets (before GR) the Mu pet for Doms (and now trollers) was widely regarded as the best since it healed you too.

I took it on my dom at the time and found it quite useless, low damage, low heal (and it was before the dom buffs, before I had permadom and purple sets so my dom was in need of extra damage when out of domination, even then I found it wasn't good), iirc the stalker/scrapper version is the same one but without the heal.

It's unique, meaning you can use only one of these on one toon.

That's why people buy the other +3 def enhancement (the pvp one which in practice is less useful since it gives only tp protection instead of the res from Steadfast, tp protection is not useful in PVE) for 3 billion since it's very rare.

The -KB one from the same Steadfast set can stack multiple times tho.

U were a n00b

I always liked Jacob's even seeing how many people saying how bad it was - but my second 50 was a DM/DA scrapper so by the time I completed 1 year of game time and got Sands of Mu, I was good at using it to hit 3 targets, so when I took an elec/stone Brute to 50 shortly after I enjoyed Jacob's the moment I got it - hated Stone Armor so shelved the toon not long after he hit 50, but I had to see what the deal about Granite was and I didn't want loltanker damage, not that I liked Elm with the recharge penalty on the Brute.

I played an Elec/Regen Stalker to 32, later rerolled into Elec/EA and waiting to be leveled past DOs now, but JL is a keeper for me who got used to melee cones since the start because of my DM scrapper. The damage is good even as part of a ST chain.

My guess for that would be:

1) Stalkers are a very attractive AT from the description, that's why you see quite a bit of them until the teens (usually new players), then most people give up on them, by level 30 they become a rarity. So... Better go fix some minor scrapper/tanker issue since those ATs get played to 50 way more and even the slightest imbalance among powersets is widely discussed. Even I have problems sticking with Stalkers, and when I do, I take way longer to get some to a high level than other combos. The only one I completely IO'ed is shelved due to the EM changes, and the last one I had fun was 32 (Elec/Regen) and I rerolled him into Elec/Ea because I was feeling how bad regen was for Stalkers, and in my case rerolling a toon means I'll probably get sidetracked with some corr or brute before going back to level the new Stalker.

2) They don't have a good plan on what to do to 'fix' the AT so they don't even try to iron out the obvious stuff like hp cap, some power sets with 100% AoE crit and others without, some epic doing 100% crit all the time and others never critting. They had a solid plan on what to do about doms (the least popular non-epic AT according to Arcanaville in her analysis sometime ago) and now Dom secondaries are quite well balanced and the AT is seem at all levels, unlike before when you saw them only at low levels and the fire/psis farming at 50.

Test_Rat is a bad Stalker builder, now Errant's one is hardcore!

I agree with CMA. My experience with EM is on a Stalker and I loved her - but I really started loving her because Stalkers get ET at 26, before that it was kinda boring - ok I never had whirling hands, but you'll certainly feel on a Tanker you'll have kinda 'meh' attacks until 35 (that's when Tankers get TF right?), and you'll feel powerful only at 39-40 with both TF and ET properly slotted.

My Stalker, even before the i12 buff to the AT, went from 'okay' to 'awesome' (for me, I like Stalkers) when I got ET and later TF.

Stunning bosses with TF was great, fast ET was awesome. After the changes... slow ET made me corpse blast, TF made me sad since I couldn't stun bosses anymore. I shelved my most beloved Stalker. People talk a lot about the ET nerf, but I also really miss the mag 4 stun from TF, my 'lolStalker' was very functional on a team stunning hard bosses with one TF. I liked EM so much I wrote a Stalker guide for it (and one issue later they changed the two powers which were the reason people loved EM on all ATs, go me).

I know I'm comparing different ATs, but my Stone/Elec Brute feels so much more powerful now - Stone Melee has a mag 4 hold which does great damage on a 1.5 (or around that) sec cast time, and even Tremor being kinda sucky, it beats Whirling hands both for mitigation and radius. And unlike my EM toon, the brute can still mez a boss with Seismic Smash, a power that is slightly slower to cast than old ET.

On an AT that has both Stone Melee and Energy Melee like Tankers I see no reason to go EM, since they are kinda alike - the difference is the greatness of Seismic Smash and that the mallets are good enough that you won't feel you have only low damaging attacks until you get your big hitter. Plus Fault will give you great mitigation early on - that's what allowed by frail Stone/Elec Brute (before Energize was brought to elec armor) to tank on her 20s.

Not that I'm trying to sell you on Stone Melee, but I find that it's the closest set to EM in numbers and it surpasses Energy on every scenario except that it's very end heavy - when I had to tank on my broot before power sink and spammed Fault (which I only did on some SFs, but Tankers will probably make use of it more often), I managed to run out of end with her with speed boost - and that with my attacks slotted for acc and endred only, relying on Fury for damage (this at SO level). But frankenslotting can help you a lot, so much that after I did that in my 40s (could have done it sooner) 70% of the time I used Power Sink I did it for draining because I wasn't in dire need of endurance. Of course being /elec I kinda skimped on recovery after PS, but I managed to do good even when I had only 1 rech IO slotted in it because of the frankenslotting (cheap sets, focusing on acc, damage, endred, some rech). So I'm sure Stone Melee can be done well on other armor sets without severe end issues (maybe not Dark Armor ).

tl;dr - like CMA, I find EM is very lackluster, and this coming from someone who loved his EM Stalker even when the AT had the crappy damage mod before i12. I'd never roll an EM Brute or Tanker with how EM is now, especially Tankers since you only get the so-called 'awesome' powers at 35 and 38 and they're far from awesome nowadays.

Dark/MM could solo at higher difficulties on SOs.

Self-heal+Drain Psyche+Cone chain of death - kill lots of ppl.

Fire/Mental too if you can survive with DP alone.

But if you're set on lower diffs, Fire/Fire, Fire/Elec, at x1 ice blast is a good option too imo.