Leo_G

In those regards, I doubt *you* even know what you want or even why you want it. New innovations toward teaming? Like what? Power combo effects? I can't even think of anything they'd add that they already haven't that would appease the unquenchable need for *moar everything*.

Now I'm all for new mission types and dynamic choices objectives but we're talking about the *Art Department*. There's only so much you can do with drawing skills and rendering programs. Those responsible for story arcs and game missions were probably busy appeasing those crying for side switching to keep up with your ever ballooning need of game features you feel entitled to.

Is it so hard to just look at the options they're giving us and pick the ones you'll take and *not* moan about the other stuff you won't?

That he is.

I'd post a list of in-game related innuendo but I don't want to upstage SteelClaw

I suppose there would be suppression in the toggle phase, maybe not the 30sec(?) suppression but something like 15?

The phantom gate wouldn't cause suppression because it's a pet casting it on you. I'm not sure how the rules work in PvP but it'd work the same as if someone used detention field on you.

As for wasting attacks on phased/unphased targets, I guess if the graphics were visible indications of them being phased then it's on you if you're wasting attacks.

The reason I put it in is for those exact reasons. If an enemy is phased and a teammate wants to attack that phased target, you have a power to help them do that. And if they don't want to stay phased, they can simply move away from the gate.

Interesting alteration there, BrandX. Seems solid but I'm not sure how balanced it'd be phasing enemies and them not being able to do anything about it. It seems you could pretty much say phased forever and just pull the enemy 1-by-1 to you without retaliation from the others.

Kinda pushes it toward Energy Aura as typed defense too. And worse off, the concepts would begin to clash. EA is a stealthy defense set with some resists too and the FX are basically pulsing auras of energy.

So if I want people to pay attention to me, I should throw honey covered feces at them?

Kinda is. It makes you better with *any* phase including the ones in the set.

I can see that. Makes perfect sense too. We'll go with that.

Need more of a reason to change that other than "just do it", especially if you're replacing it with such a plain vanilla power. And I don't think being intangible means being light on your feet. Not in the same way SR and Elec armor would be, that's for sure.

When was that?

It might have been before alot of changes were made to the set/system. Now that powers can have different effects in PvP and PvE and some of the powers in EM have been touched up, I think they've set it up nicely for a clean(er) port to scrappers.

Honestly, a while back when Scrappers were pining for EM, I just considered them selfish min/maxers that wanted to destroy balance. Now? Meh, they probably just want tintable glowie hands.

And that's the thing:

Energy Transfer does not crit. Look at the only critical hitting Energy melee set (Stalker: Energy Melee) and you'll see that Energy Transfer's crit is in the form of nullifying the self damage. It adds no damage to the attack however.

Total Focus only *partially* crits. I don't recall how much exactly but rather than 2x dmg, it's something like 1.5x dmg.

How about 10? Or 100?

As for the set, you'd really need to broaden the idea.

Also, I'd narrow the theme/name down to simply "Puppets".

Conceptually, the set is about phasing through attacks instead of dodging them (or creating illusions to fool the foe and hinder their targeting). Although the concept can fit that of a ghost (and that's the direction I first came from when thinking of the set), that isn't the only concept this is for. Basically, like someone with Super Reflexes or Precognition can move out of the path of an attack, someone with Phantom Aura can do the same but simply phase momentarily so the attack harmlessly passes through them.

You might be right. I came in thinking "You're creating multiple 'shadows' of yourself that, even though they can be hit, it might not do its full damage to the 'main you'" or something.

Eh, might be a good idea to switch the resistance from Ghost Essence to Phantom Shadow and the HP from PS to GE.

The idea is that, you get a mini tier9 in the toggle Planar Shift. Similar to how an Ice Armor character is untouchable in a specific situation (that situation being when incased in Ice, hibernating and unable to act), a Phantom character is quite resilient in a specific situation (when self phased). The tier9 passive improves your mini tier9 to a less-mini tier9 by bolstering your regen ontop of your resists.

That was the idea. That they'd incorporate the phase-attack-phase feature in PvE.

That's a possibility. Really, that's not a bad issue, it just means the set has options and skippable powers. But I'd find at least 1 of the phase abilities would be adequate and a boon to have in PvE. In situations where a foe has a specific debuff, you can choose to phase that foe while you take care of the rest or do the opposite and single them out and take them out first (phasing it and then yourself).

Again, I can see a stupid amount of ways Phantom Gate could be used, it's almost broken. Like, for instance, your Corruptor died and is right next to the mob and you don't have recall. You can drop phantom gate down ontop of him, he uses an awake only to be instantly phased. The enemies turn and shoot in vain then charge. Either the corruptor waddles out of the gate as the foe runs in or at least gives the corr time to use a breakfree. All the while, you killed 3-4 guys.

The fact that only so many foes can fit in an 8ft space instantly nullifies any other foes outside that space. Really, it's such a broken power, I actually consider it more appropriate for a control primary.

But the set-up for this set is that it's a seek and destroy set. You target a foe and you kill it. It shouldn't specifically slow you down as, even though the foe you targeted is phased, you're still attacking it. It may be better in the hands of a Stalker than a Scrapper...but is that a bad thing?

Like I said before, I think Phantom Gate is actually broken in that it has so many possible applications if implemented like I'm thinking. I don't think adding a buff would be wise. That the power debuffs the enemy but leaves allies alone seems enough to me.

As for AVs resisting it, that's something I wasn't thinking of. What is their resistance to phase powers anyway?

Anyway, the way I see the power working is, you set down a pet that, every 2-3 seconds or so pulses an AoE that applies an auto-hit and self stacking mag of intangibility that would last like 8 seconds. This means if you step out of the circle, you'll stay phased for 8 seconds after that but if you stay inside you only receive the initial phase mag as any followup pulses cannot affect someone who's already phased. If the target has any kind of resistance to phase, the pulsing mez will eventually stack a few times. They may not stay phased while inside but they will phase in and out.

That's what I'm saying. Coming from the perspective of an EM/EA stalker, it's strong but it's weak at the same time. Sure, it hits like a truck but it's SLLOOOooOOOoooooooowww.......www

It also doesn't do very good AoE dmg (in the case of stalker, it does *no* AoE dmg), and if you're not a healing/regen secondary, your strongest attack slowly kills you. And if you're not a def/res secondary, you run the risk of dying in the middle of those long attacks.

On top of *that*, those strong heavy hitters don't benefit from your inherent fully. So while ET is a 4.5 dmg scale attack, that's all it can be while the other heavy hitters scrappers have can meet or exceed that *without* killing you.

I'm not saying EM on a scrapper wouldn't be strong but I doubt it'll be any more overpowered than on a Brute. And is EM even the top set for them? I'm pretty sure it was bumped down a step with the introduction of Claws.

For the good of your soul, please *PLEASE* go to Icon/Facemaker and change up your spines. Or start making a new character to take a peek at the options. Thorns, Rock, Metal, Crystal. And they all look great. You can even color them!

When I was making the set up, I was looking at Ninjutsu and having SR in mind. It really has no parallells to DA or Invuln though as those sets have soft/hard controls or scaling defense+a heal.

Basically, I was thinking the set would have defense between SR and Nin (not much room between but it doesn't need to) and equivalentish resistance to SR, when you're phased that is.

And this is where the discussion should lie. What are player's feelings on Phase powers? Do they consider them hard control? How much of an advantage would phasing enemies be over holding them/stunning them? Is it a disadvantage in that your allies can't affect them?

Depending what others think about phasing would probably determine how the def/res are balanced.

I'm with Technobot, I honestly don't see there being such an imbalance for Scrapper EM in PvE and in PvP, the damage can be a whole different value because its effect in PvP doesn't have to be what it is in PvE. There's no reason it shouldn't be ported.

Also, yeah Sam, you pretty much extrapolated EM's set-up. On a Stalker, AS is optional. You don't need it but it's another high burst attack that requires a set-up (hide, BU and no movement). But an EM Stalker can pull off an AS without that thanks to the high burst of Total Focus and Energy Transfer plus those attacks don't exactly crit for more burst thanks to hide.

So a Scrapper would be able to pull off what a Stalker can. Why is that an issue?

Like was said earlier, DPS is misleading and doesn't adequately portray *actual* damage output, just potential damage output.

How do you calculate starting every fight with a dead foe or a built up crit? It'll certainly look different than averaging in BU's +dmg and base crit chances into a linear dps stat.

Actually, SR was one of Stalker's Starting powersets, what they got out of the gate when CoV was released (along with ninjutsu, regen and energy aura).

A set that all of the melee's have is Willpower (and now Electric Armor). As a set, WP is almost *overpowered* in how easy yet effective it is. Even on a Stalker, it quite sturdy and when paired with the right set can rank up there with one of Stalker's best sets.

Again, tanky sets are nice to have but, on a Stalker or Scrapper who don't *need* extra aggro to function, it'd be nice to have more options to disable, hinder or distract foes. Even though it's a tanker set, I think Ice armor fits the bill here. For stalker, replace the dmg aura with Hide and maybe remove the slow aura for another controlly ice power and it would work great.

Well, there is Rise of the Phoenix which has an 'Untouchable' effect for a couple seconds after you use it.

...but yeah, no. That tier 9 sounds outrageous, especially in PvP. I don't mind the idea of phase type powers for the set though with a self phase thrown in. Now that we can attack phased foes if we're phased too, that can offer some mean mitigation by simply phasing who you want to kill. Everybody else will just have to wait their turn. Probably wouldn't work all that well for a Tanker style though..

They have slowed down quite a bit, but if you think about it, come i16, everyone got shiny new sets like Electric, Radiation and OMGCLAWS! but Stalkers just got Broadsword. It's not that Broadswords is bad, it's just boring cause we already have Katana.

Even though I love all my Stalkers to death, I'm playing a Claws Brute at the moment. Once Stalkers get some shiny, I'll be all over it.

But with controlled and more numerous crits.

My final advice to you is this: It's not how fast you take down the foe, it's how you do it. Stalkers have style and dropping a foe whose pants are down never gets old. Rather than min/maxing and worrying about DPS, I suggest just playing the game, experiment with the tools Stalkers have and have fun. You *can* min/max but well, that's just less attention you're paying to style.

You're graded on style as a stalker, just so you know.

Panikaze, that is a weakness of the set you choose. Similarly, an Elec/ brute has the same weakness: weak Single Target Damage. However an Elec/ stalker has at least 1 tool over Brute to remedy that: Assassin's Shock. Rolling an Elec/ brute won't be better in the ST department. Basically, you'll still be pounding on that boss and the team will finally finish it for you.

Elec/ strength is its AoE, its AoE burst to be precise. While as a stalker, you can focus on a single target, your focus should be splashing as many foes with crits as you can.

On a different note, my DM/WP stalker will take out EBs by the time the team finishes off the rest of the spawns. Basically, he can drop bosses very very fast...maybe not 'take out EB before spawn' fast but fast. If the team is wiping out spawns so fast you can't take out the bosses in time, then you're on a lolmelee team. It won't matter if you're a Brute or a Scrapper, you'll add little to the team.

They feel more satisfying than a Scrapper, honestly. After i16 came out, I made a Claws/EA brute and a Kat/Elec scrapper. The scrapper is capable and all but the brute does similar work and feels more fun. Stalkers are even more rewarding as they aren't so simple to play and the payoff is great. If done right, foes go down so fast they don't get the chance to fight back.

Also, picking your fights feels more intelligent than mindlessly running and smashing everything. It just so happens you get rewarded as a Stalker for this but punished as a Brute.