Honestly it feels like a trend, the class started off strong and has slowly regressed into a punching bag. I'm trying to understand the design of this class, yet failing to do so.

PvP - Poor Rating

The ability Tactical Strike should be one of the most damaging abilities in the game, yet it is low range, single target and does paltry damage for the requirements. Stealth cooldown is long, buggy and with everything AoE, only truly useful in PvE. Our DPS claw strikes are moderate damage but again low range and easy to avoid. The stay on target is outrageously difficult, if our CC gets deflected we're up shits creek. Our survivability pales to a Warrior or Engineer currently. Honestly Stalkers will spend most their time either chasing someone or running from someone.

PvE - Mediocre Rating

We require MoO and Backstabbing to do any respectable damage, until then it is slap slap slap.. slap slap slap.. slap slap slap. Sure we get more abilities but you would think a single target ideally behind the back ability be our most damaging. Tanking is a scary thought, medium armor vs heavy armor is just so significant and sure the Stalker is a deflect machine but honestly, when a hit gets thru its going to really suck.

Overall

If a new player picks the class up they'll usually be disappointed. Some will push past it and hope it will be one of those it gets better later success stories. Visually the class is unappealing and quite honestly boring to play. When I level up it tells me I'm a BADASS, yet I don't feel it. A Warrior is fighting a handful of mobs to the left of me leaping on them then blowing them up with whirlwinds and to my right an Engineer is lobbing bombs, aoes and sending in his robot minions. Later I run into an Esper calling down giant fists, launching birds and spinning blades of death while their Medic friend is throwing down countless grid thingies and green beams and other things that don't look healthy. Meanwhile I'm fighting my mobs doing pirouettes and eye pokes while taking much longer to accomplish victory. Only to have a Spellslinger lol at me as they kite 15 mobs to death.

Point is, classes shouldn't work into being viable or even fun, they should be that way from the beginning.

P.S. - NPC or Players should not be able to Deflect from behind, it just doesn't make sense.

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The ability Tactical Strike should be one of the most damaging abilities in the game, yet it is low range, single target and does paltry damage for the requirements.

What level are you that you're making this assumption? Do you have an entire list of abilities and the damage they do at max level compared to other classes assuming the same gear levels?

Stealth cooldown is long, buggy and with everything AoE, only truly useful in PvE.

The stealth cooldown is not that long. You shouldn't be allowed to pop in and out of stealth whenever you please. That's just silly. And the latter part of your comment is a bit overzealous. Does the fact that most of the telegraphs are AOEs deter you from running into the middle of the fray to attack someone? Heck ya. Does it make stealth negligible in PvP? Heck no. It forces you to be more strategic in the way that you move when you are stealthed. You want to be picking off people that have low health, sneaking up behind someone who is hanging outside the fight or helping to lock down an opposing player who is kiting one of your team members. These are some of the niche points of awesomeness you can fill as a Stalker... not all of them by any means. You are capable of going invisible, and thus capable of choosing your battles. That is not a benefit anyone else can claim.

Edit: See Aodz post on what they're planning for stealth - LINK REDACTED

Info is the next paste

Deflects? Ok I stunned a caster and he deflects my TS from behind.. what?

I do agree that deflects should not happen while an enemy is stunned.. but building strikethrough will help with deflects as well I believe.

Almost all of our abilities require suit energy, it is insane

Have you played any of the other classes, and believe they are much more resource efficient? If so what are they, and what is the time till exhausted on resources compared to Stalkers?

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The current version of Stealth isn't working quite how we'd like it to... We are going to be experimenting with the following before the next major patch:

· If used outside of combat, no cooldown is added

· If toggeled off, no cooldown is triggered

· If used in combat, a cooldown is triggered

· On exiting combat, the cooldown is removed

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I understand that it must be very difficult to balance a stealth class that can steal in and out of combat. I see a few issues with the current break down.

If used outside of combat, no cooldown is added.

I do not see a problem with this. As in PVE as you may choose to stealth to move past some creatures then want to re-stealth prior to attacking.

If toggeled off, no cooldown is triggered

The main problem i see with this is in PVP where skilled players will be able to toggle stealth to eat a hit then combat stealth right after.

If used in combat, a cooldown is triggered

No problem here.

On exiting combat, the cooldown is removed

This could become extremely scary where a player could jump from low health target to low health target with minimal un-stealthed time.

With the current risk reward system that wild star is rocking, I would think that the following would make the most sense:

Out of Combat -> Combat (undetected and not hit) = 3-5 seconds cool down. In PVE and PVP this will keep a stalker from being able to instantly dump a double buffed strike,

Out of Combat -> Combat(detected and hit)= 6-10 second cool down. This will create a risk reward situation for a stalker having to think twice before sneaking into a hot situation.

Combat Stealth Used= Normal cool down applied

On exiting of combat.. Im not sure the best option would be for this. Maybe another minor cool down 1-2 seconds.

Just my thoughts.

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Alright it is called Stealth yet the stealth function is near useless, so why not just have called it uh power 9000? It is great they are paying attention to it, however saying you don't need stealth to be.. well stealthy defeats the purpose. Also picking your battles? Maybe in the open world and rarely in an instance one.

As for TS being the most damaging? Its requirements and restrictions are the hardest to achieve at the least in a PvP setting, sure another class may do their more powerful shot at 10-20% less damage but they don't have to pray to the gods for it to land.

I'm familiar with how the classes work, everything reliant on suit energy and 1 sure way to get it back is bad gameplay.

However I feel about the game is how I feel and thus I give feedback, if you want to add something then please do so. That said, coming into the thread and being snide isn't appreciated.

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Stealth functions just fine as stealth as is right now, The main thing is you no longer need to engage in battle from the start with stealth for the damage bonus you can walk right up to the mobs hit stealth and hit your attack right away for the crit and it does the exact same damage as sneaking up behind them now. This makes the flow of combat a lot faster that it was before when you felt like you had to stealth behind every mob to open combat so combat was a lot slower. The TS requirements are not hard at all, you have to be Behind OR be stealthed, thats the only requirements. its easy enough to get behind someone stealthed in pvp and in pve you just have to wait for them to start casting and go behind them and everytime stealth is off cooldown you just pop it and TS right away for the free crit. The changes actually made the stalker gameplay feel much more fluid to me especially if you plan on tanking because before it made tanking as a stalker a bit wonky, these changes make it way more fluid.

The main issue I see is a lack of CC and gap closers but its not really an issue if your playing stealthy in pvp it just means catching running players might be difficult because they will try to escape after your initial burst before you can finish them off.

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Alright, let me give you a rundown of the class as I have been playing it. We are a solid force in both PvE and PvE. That is not to say we don't have a few issues, which I will cover in this post. I am currently level 22 and able to solo content 1-2 levels higher than me with very little difficulty. Almost no downtime in between mob pulls and even when accidentally pulling 2-3 groups, I still do fine. This class is very different from most stealth classes you come across in games. You have to be a little more creative with the way you use you abilites.

PvE: Getting started in PvP is all about Tac Strike (TS) and your auto attacks. One mistake I made was not taking advantage of Overload (OL) earlier, as it gives surprising good AOE damage before you get your main AOE ability: Neutralize (NZ). So early on, make sure you are using the offensive stealth stance and Analyze Weakness (AW) and then TS out of stealth, OL, auto attack, stun when they cast, get behind them, TS again. Pretty simple rotation. It does suck at times that Tac Strike is not a real cone, but I feel like they would need to tone the damage down if it were. Once you get up in levels, you get access to False Retreat (FR), NZ, and OL. All fantastic AOE abilities. NZ is actually better against single targets for the first two-three casts depending on how you did your tier points. I'd have to log back in and do some math to show exactly how much. At that point, the best rotation for multiple targets is: Stealth, AW, NZ, OL, NZ, auto attacks, stun to interrupt casts, then NZ/AW. You can finish off single targets with TS if you want. Against single targets, I usually go: Stealth, AW, TS, OL, NZ, NZ, auto attack. At that point, if they are a high health mob, you should stun/get beind them and TS. You can also choose to NZ if your stacks are gone. My favorite tactic against some mobs is to save my stealth until they start to cast, stun them, AW, stealth, and TS them for a ton of damage. One thing I will somewhat agree with you on is we can feel somewhat resource starved at times. It take very careful management at times if you are in a big fight. However, it is possible a slight buff to regen or slight decrease in spell cost would help.

In PvP, I will agree that stealth can be wonky. I also agree that ranged have one major strong point: Their kiting ability. We have very few ways to ranged daze if they get a little too far away and start to sprint. It is hard to catch up. Whereas, if you were to try and run from, say a spellslinger, they could daze you very easily WHILE they chased you down. This could potentially be fized with either a low damage, spammable ranged attack, or a "daze" resistance for melee. Just make it so that we can only be dazed once or twice in a row, and then are immune. Similar to CC immunity. I would like to say that I feel like I do quite a bit of damage. I never open up from in stealth. I save it for escapes and for bursting due to the auto crit. Open up on someone, stun them, stealth, and crit for big damage with TS. It has some good applications. There are so many AOEs in PvP it does make it somewhat hard to be a stealther. I also feel like quite a few of our problems in low level PvP will be fixed inthe later levels. What with thether mines, collapse (which not only have a great range, but can also be tiered into a root), and false retreat knockdown. The game should definitely not be balanced around low level PvP, which some classes definitely have the advantage for.

Hope this helps.

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Ok so the complaints seem to be focused on hitting things in PvP and the loss of utility rather than the design of damage dealing abilities and combat flow? I guess I can get behind that, 'Stalkers' in general is a broad topic so I can't say I disagree with the OP entirely. I love the changes to damage dealing skills and the shift towards SP being more important, but lets talk utility instead..

The snare on Cripple is a farce, and we are rather lacking in alternatives for reliable snares. Tether is still ok but a 45 second cooldown means it isn't really a core method of staying in melee range while in PvP, and the loss of disarm makes it far less potent. Obviously we don't want to overdo the CC because WS seems to be all about freedom of movement, but for comparison SS gets a short cooldown 50% snare that lasts 6-7 seconds. I think the design of Cripple is clearly the right way to offer a snare to the Stalker - A short duration snare that needs to be regularly re-applied so that ranged classes can potentially escape if they manage to dash/blink out of range and stay clear of you for a couple of seconds. It's just that the effect of Cripple right now is far too weak and takes too long to build up. If it offered a more potent snare immediately, and that snare only lasted say 2-3 seconds, where each 'stack' or use of the ability increased and refreshed the duration instead of boosting the snare %, then the ability would feel much more usable and would offer a solution to people having trouble sticking to a target.

If you went that route with Cripple, then maintaining the snare would obviously mean using cripple every couple of abilities, so your damage output would be lowered in return for having an easier time sticking to your target. I think that's perfectly fair.

Otherwise as far as gap closing goes, Pounce would probably feel far more useful if it actually worked.. It just flat out doesn't hit anything, the range detection on it causes the attack to trigger too early or too late, and as you have no control over it as a player there is no way to compensate. Since the upgrade gives us 2 charges of this, I think it'll be a competant gap closer late game if that whole Snare/Root on hit mechanic was actually capable of connecting. I know my conditions aren't perfect (150+ms), but i'm sure it was more reliable last build, I know it was changed to allow it to be used in the air, perhaps that created some issue?

Something else that's changed since last build and is a pretty big deal is the jump back point for False Retreat. False Retreat used to be a very strong, fast knockdown that could be used to interupt skills and would hit players in PvP who weren't too far ahead of you. Now when jumping back to the beacon, the Stalker lands a few meters behind the point you started from, which means if you're standing directly infront of something and jump back and forth, the knockdown doesn't hit. It's still technically possible to use it by flipping your camera 180 and jumping towards the target then teleporting back ontop of it, but i'm fairly certain this is not the intended use and it's a very clumsy way of trying to interupt a telegraph or CC a player. Using it when facing towards your target will only allow you to knockdown something that is actually running towards you.

If this was intentional, and Carbine wanted the skill to be more of a movement orientated escape ability that could dodge telegraphs and was focused towards tanking Stalker, then I guess that's cool and I kind of like the idea of the tank getting an ability like that, but if that is the primary use then the SP cost and cooldown are way off. I can't justify the cost for a backwards dodge and return, with SP now being relevant and the ability losing some of its functionality then I can't see the reason for it to be that expensive. If it's meant to be more of a dodge, how about adding a significant delay before the Stalker can jump back, returning the original range, and dropping the cost and cooldown significantly?