Shadow Stalker: Horribly Designed

[LordLokai]

So having fought new shadow stalker several times both with clan mates, and solo i can safely say unless you are packing prime gear, and corrupted mods, and specifically set yourself up to deal with him, you will not be beating this guy. So typically what you do when you go into a mission is set each weapon up to deal with enemies you will be facing, however now... if stalker shows up you actually cant win. 

He slowly becomes immune to each and every attack meaning that if you have a high rate of fire weapon he will become immune faster(least it seems that way) while having a slow heavy hitting weapon takes him longer to adapt. Which i believe is way this works. So ESSENTIALLY our fast paced, nimble stalker, would show up and instantly kill you before, with these fast paced moves made him somewhat hard to pin down, has changed into a massive tank, is slow moving, slow swining, and doesnt hit quite as hard... but... now becomes nigh unkillable.

Its like facing a Rhino that can reduce damage down to nothing... To me this feels poorly designed, its taking an aspect of the game, we are use to and turning that against us. Which wouldn't be so bad if it simply had a timer, " avoid him for X seconds then attack " but it doesn't once he goes immune to your damage type you literally can do no damage unless you SPECIFICALLY have a weapon does different damage types. You also have to hope your allies didn't use that elemental type already...

 

Basically this fight isn't fun... not about losing its about the feeling you get when fighting. When one of the syndicates pops in and i die because i wasnt paying attention i just kind of brush it off, because hey that was my fault. When stalker shows up now i either run away, or just let him kill me because i know is no chance of actually winning as i refuse to gimp my game play just because of 1 guy.

 

The immunity needs to go... or it needs changed because right now i just dont care enough about what the stalker drops to deal with his incredible amount of bull.

/rant off

[Arachne.]

im not one to usually say this, but git gud.

you can solo him perfectly fine without "corrupt mods" you are supposed to use your gun anyway. he nulls powers. or did you forget that.

 

 

he uses armor. so chorrosive and puncture are great. 

you dont need super max gear to take him on

[xRufus7x]

Get used to it. Once the sentients are introduced in force it is going to be everywhere.

[Troll_Logic]

im not one to usually say this, but git gud.

you can solo him perfectly fine without "corrupt mods" you are supposed to use your gun anyway. he nulls powers. or did you forget that.

 

 

he uses armor. so chorrosive and puncture are great. 

you dont need super max gear to take him on

 

I agree.  He's still a pushover.

[(XBOX)The Greedy Milk]

but-but-but thats a good thing. SS is powerful, and now hes gaining his fear factor back, and when you kill him you feel happy knowing you eliminated a major threat. but we dont have u18, so im probably talking nonsense

[Omega-Shadowblade]

Once you learn the right way to fight him, he seems quite easy. I've died to him once only cause I was levelling new gear.

[Kai_Shiba]

I agree.  He's still a pushover.

Pretty much this.

[seniledark]

I killed shadow stalker with galatine.... It was fun....

[BaneOfOrion]

i agree more with op, but there are caveats. First of all, adaptation should be based on damage dealt, not hits, as it encourages a few select weapons more than others.

Secondly, i feel like when a sentient enemy(including SS) gains a new resistance, they loose the old one. Several times on the moon i have been ground down to simply pouring ammo on a target that nothing hurts anymore

[Maicael]

There's something about him and the Sentients that seems to be inconsistent about taking damage. I encountered Stalker with Rakta Cernos and finished him in under 15 seconds before he became immune. Other times though if he (or the Sentients) has become immune to that damage type I'll switch weapons that have completely different damage types (Corrosive, Slash to Radiation, Puncture) he still takes very little damage. That's what bugs me about the new "immunity" stuff.

[LordLokai]

im not one to usually say this, but git gud.

you can solo him perfectly fine without "corrupt mods" you are supposed to use your gun anyway. he nulls powers. or did you forget that.

 

 

he uses armor. so chorrosive and puncture are great. 

you dont need super max gear to take him on

 

i was using corrsive =3 he went immune to it, now it only deals 4 damage per spread on my shotgun, i couldnt even get his shields down. Not about getting " good " its about a poorly designed system. Once he adapts to your damage type you cant do any kind of significant damage. Even my Lex Prime was doing almost no damage to him, i believe it hit for 10 damage? Again its ONE specific mechanic has no counter, thats the issue aside from this he's not that hard to dodge but spending 45-60 mins trying to wittle his hp down, and running out of ammo seems silly...who wants to spend that long fighting one boss? 

The New stalker is thematically uninteresting and the new mechanic has zero counters, if you arent doing X DPS you will lose 100% of the time, or spend half your day fighting him.

Sorry guys i just dont care for the mechanic. 

[Omega-Shadowblade]

i was using corrsive =3 he went immune to it, now it only deals 4 damage per spread on my shotgun, i couldnt even get his shields down. Not about getting " good " its about a poorly designed system. Once he adapts to your damage type you cant do any kind of significant damage. Even my Lex Prime was doing almost no damage to him, i believe it hit for 10 damage? Again its ONE specific mechanic has no counter, thats the issue aside from this he's not that hard to dodge but spending 45-60 mins trying to wittle his hp down, and running out of ammo seems silly...who wants to spend that long fighting one boss? 

The New stalker is thematically uninteresting and the new mechanic has zero counters, if you arent doing X DPS you will lose 100% of the time, or spend half your day fighting him.

Sorry guys i just dont care for the mechanic. 

Use two weapons with different damage, you are just trying to power through with one single type of damage from the sound of it.

[RafaelFuchs]

I've only seen him once, but got lucky with a red crit headshot. It shaved off almost all of his health and I then I proceeded to remove the rest with the twin grakatas... I'm a bit ignorant to how hard he can be, but I still think he's a pushover. 

[LordLokai]

Use two weapons with different damage, you are just trying to power through with one single type of damage from the sound of it.

 

When i do void i typically run with corrosive since i do not have corrupted mods for dual elements yet, we are approaching that point we can farm those as a clan we aren't at very end game yet, but we are getting there. Was a key point in the original post i'm sure if i had all my frames, and weapons forma'd, had prime weapons/frames, and all corrupted mods and all my mods maxed he'd go down fairly easily. But why should someone need to have ABSOLUTE end game set ups, 4-5 forma'd weapons, and corrupted mods to stand a chance against a guy will continually dog you through out your time in warframes. 

Also Having dual weapon set ups wouldn't actually change the end result, he'd simply adapt to that damage type as well long before he ever got to low health. As a clan we have had 3 of us wailing on Stalker, with me as trinity spamming healing and refreshing power during the fight and we could not get his health to budge. Is no reason that any one enemy should be able to negate any and all damage done to him with no time limit or ability to remove that reduction what so ever. 

The new stalkers attacks, and combat style are fine, its the adaptation mechanic that i'm saying needs looked into because right now it feels absurdly unfair, to have to gimp one of my weapons in case the stalker shows up. I personally would rather die once, and revive then gimp myself vs the main objective's enemies. You are basically saying....

" HEY you know that guy randomly will attack you with out warning? one you cant predict will show up? one that appears at random with out warning? yea you should TOTALLY prepare for him to appear moment he appears by carrying twin elements and gimping one of your weapons damage JUST in case he appears! "

Personally i'd rather have a good set of weapons ready to deal with the objective then, gimp a single weapon toward the main objective in the off chance that this random boss will appear. 

Again, becoming immune to one type of damage wouldn't be bad since say he adapts to " corrosive " least that weapon would deal its physical damage component or having a secondary had radiation and corrosive could still deal radiation, but no he adapts to EVERYTHING,and they all stack its not like i can just swap to my side arm and deal damage... or wait out the Duration.

 

The adaptation needs reworked so that everyone has some semblance of a chance right now if you aren't packing best of the best you will lost end of story, or spend half your day fighting him.

[Omega-Shadowblade]

When i do void i typically run with corrosive since i do not have corrupted mods for dual elements yet, we are approaching that point we can farm those as a clan we aren't at very end game yet, but we are getting there. Was a key point in the original post i'm sure if i had all my frames, and weapons forma'd, had prime weapons/frames, and all corrupted mods and all my mods maxed he'd go down fairly easily. But why should someone need to have ABSOLUTE end game set ups, 4-5 forma'd weapons, and corrupted mods to stand a chance against a guy will continually dog you through out your time in warframes. 

Also Having dual weapon set ups wouldn't actually change the end result, he'd simply adapt to that damage type as well long before he ever got to low health. As a clan we have had 3 of us wailing on Stalker, with me as trinity spamming healing and refreshing power during the fight and we could not get his health to budge. Is no reason that any one enemy should be able to negate any and all damage done to him with no time limit or ability to remove that reduction what so ever. 

The new stalkers attacks, and combat style are fine, its the adaptation mechanic that i'm saying needs looked into because right now it feels absurdly unfair, to have to gimp one of my weapons in case the stalker shows up. I personally would rather die once, and revive then gimp myself vs the main objective's enemies. You are basically saying....

" HEY you know that guy randomly will attack you with out warning? one you cant predict will show up? one that appears at random with out warning? yea you should TOTALLY prepare for him to appear moment he appears by carrying twin elements and gimping one of your weapons damage JUST in case he appears! "

Personally i'd rather have a good set of weapons ready to deal with the objective then, gimp a single weapon toward the main objective in the off chance that this random boss will appear. 

Again, becoming immune to one type of damage wouldn't be bad since say he adapts to " corrosive " least that weapon would deal its physical damage component or having a secondary had radiation and corrosive could still deal radiation, but no he adapts to EVERYTHING,and they all stack its not like i can just swap to my side arm and deal damage... or wait out the Duration.

 

The adaptation needs reworked so that everyone has some semblance of a chance right now if you aren't packing best of the best you will lost end of story, or spend half your day fighting him.

No idea what you mean by corrupted element mods there aren't any of those, but a primary with corrosive and a secondary with radiation or vice versa work pretty well in most situations in the void. I'm simply giving some advice you do not have to really listen to me.

[LordLokai]

No idea what you mean by corrupted element mods there aren't any of those, but a primary with corrosive and a secondary with radiation or vice versa work pretty well in most situations in the void. I'm simply giving some advice you do not have to really listen to me.

The Dual Mods that allow you to use basic elemental mod, on top of the dual mod, to create combos normally couldn't, such as corrosive and magnetic to deal with armor and shields. Right now only combos i can do are corrosive and say blast because i dont have enough of those dual mods to do the more interesting combinations. I'm still trying to get those case in point actually BETTER off vs stalker using a single element not dual because he'll just adapt to both elements and make any weapon has same element useless. 

I'm not a hardcore player, i'm still working my way up the ladder, but i use to be able to deal with the stalker as long as i noticed him showing up and prepared myself. Now it doesnt matter how prepared i am, once his adaptation triggers i might as well just take a vacation, because he doesnt take any damage. This mechanic doesn't promote skill at all no trick to getting around it. Either you " always " assume he's going to appear and carry a very specific set up into battle. Or you focus on the objective and end up losing vs the stalker when he does appear. Even IF you prepare your weapons vs the stalker, if you don't do a crazy amount of damage per hit he'll just adapt and make it impossible to hurt him.

My clan mate can nearly instantly kill most bosses we come across and is only really slowed down by 60+ enemies with his valkyr and he stated that when the stalker adapted to his hysteria mode, he could only deal 1-2 damage a hit, and all his other weapons seemed to do no damage either. He believes its bugged or not working as intended as his bow nor kunai would work against the stalker, we had him at 10% and couldnt budge his health during this encounter. 

See its one thing to make your boss " hard " by punishing players for mistakes, or building mechanics in that require some thought to bypass. The problem with this adaptation mechanic is that isn't any way around it. Once the stalker adapts he has that resistance for the rest of the fight, no way to reset it or wait it out. No way around the mechanic... either you always carry around 3 various elemental combos, assuming he will appear or you consign yourself to being unable top defeat him. 

That is and has been my general point, the mechanic has no counter, it has no way around it, no real way to defeat it...either you have best mods/gear and kill him moment he appears or you spend an hour trying to wittle his hp down, and get one shot with a mistake. I'm not a fan of this mechanic, it doesn't promote skill it simply means any player who hasn't reached that gear thresh hold has to consign to dying vs the stalker... for new people or those have been away for awhile that is pretty damn frustrating since no way to shut him off or avoid him... and for those of us that DO like the stalker, he doesn't feel like he's same character anymore. He's just a tank has god mode, and i dont know about you folks but i dont find an enemy you cant damage fun to fight...

[gam3addict]

You see OP, you're running into the forum problem of "Stop complaining, do it my way and shut up with your criticism". You are 100% correct in saying, with the current system, one is discouraged from ever bringing a rapid fire weapon and from bringing damage types appropriate for the enemy you're fighting. Instead, if you have any chance of fighting the stalker you have to bring a burst damage weapon, possibly two if you dare to not have maxed damage mods yet, which many players seem to forget about, as well as needing different damage types on your two weapons, most likely not both useful for your currently targeted faction.

 

If the resistance cooled down over time, a player could play around and evade the stalker for more dynamic gameplay. If the resistance could only align to one or two damage types at a time, players could at least brute force it if necessary. As it is now, it's just damage per shot beats all, bye bye tactic-inducing gameplay.

[HunterFenrir]

WAIT CORROSIVE AND MAGNETIC?? I thought that wasn't possible. So you're saying you could do a corrosive radiation too? If so how would you order the mods?

[Gh0st.87]

It is impossible to have corrosive and magnetic in the same weapon unless that weapon already had magnetic damage as a base (e.g. Gammacor).

Corrosive and magnetic uses the same element. So I have no idea what the OP is talking about. Furthermore there are no corrupted element mods.

 

While I do agree that the Sentient/Stalker damage resistance are a little over the top, they are by no means impossible to defeat.

Edited December 15, 2015 by Gh0st.87

[DemonbaneSol]

The resistance isn't a case of it building against both elements from a dual-element combination, (like resisting both fire and cold due to using blast), which then carries over to resisting another type that uses one of those elements (such as radiation because it's fire + electricity), is it?

[HunterFenrir]

The resistance isn't a case of it building against both elements from a dual-element combination, (like resisting both fire and cold due to using blast), which then carries over to resisting another type that uses one of those elements (such as radiation because it's fire + electricity), is it?

Without a group willing to test this, we cannot tell for sure. I'll be experimenting with the sentient resistances soon once I get on, I'm tired of this and I need to know what makes them tick.

[Haxwell]

This is just straight up whining. "I can't beat him so he's designed poorly"

[DrFail]

OP has some good points. I can't comment much on the actual resistance mechanics and their inner workings because I haven't really dug into shadow stalker yet, but what he's saying about newer players and element issues does have some ground.

 

The Second Dream requires one to be mastery rank 3 to take. You can't really label the quest as end-game with that low bar. Maybe there needs to be more to trigger shadow stalker than simply having completed the quest so that players who don't have maxed out damage mods, or even possibly all of the elemental mods, don't have to face an enemy that is essentially a giant unfun bullet sponge unless one uses several elements and high damage weapons. Maybe Mastery Rank also needs to be accounted for before Shadow Stalker spawns on someone. Something like... players mastery rank 7 and under spawn Stalker, and players eight and higher who have completed the second dream spawn Shadow Stalker? 

[Maicael]

I feel like Stalker's combat is much simpler now too. I was hoping for some thematic changes to make him more terrifying, but once he's become immune to all 3 of your weapons (even when you have different damage types) it's just annoying. I thought it was much scarier when you'd be fighting him and then hear Smokebomb go off. Like "Where is he...where is he...bob and weave, bob and weave OH CRAP HE'S RIGHT NEXT TO ME!" Now it's just kinda jog around the area while he chases you with his giant War sword.

 

He doesn't seem to hit very hard either. I was playing as Loki and after he had died I got hit with 2 of the Exalted Blade-type energy waves he'd cast right before. I only lost 65 Health from the combined hits (shields too, but didn't have Redirection or anything).

 

As far as combat goes I think the difficulty Stalker should have would be much better addressed through his AI. For instance, if he took advantage of Parkour 2.0 with bullet jumps/aim glide/wall latching. Imagine the Stalker using Smokebomb, and then suddenly he's shooting at you from above while latching onto a wall. Being able to "Mark" him should be removed too since that makes it almost too easy to know where he's at anytime he's not invisible.

 

If you're still interested in my feedback/ideas, then here's a thematic concept that I think could be applied to the Stalker to make him more terrifying and emphasize him targeting one player.

You're fighting in the midst of tons of enemies all around you. You here the shouts and alarms of the map going off all around you. Suddenly as the lights flicker it becomes dead silent. All the enemies you had just been brawling with are completely still and frozen in place around you. You try to get away, but all the doors are locked with no way to open them. You happened to be with a fellow Tenno, but the 2 others in your squad have no way to reach you. Then, the Stalker appears before you.

My thought would be that the enemies are affected by a "Rhino Stomp" type occurrence, but is in place for the entire duration the Stalker is present. I find enemy movement clutter to be the most annoying thing when trying to specifically find the Stalker. The sudden, inexplicable change from a noisy battle environment to a completely silent hunting zone would be terrifying, especially for players that didn't know what was going on. Also, the Stalker "targets" just one individual, so I think that if you're separated and not in the same room as 1 or more squadmates, then you're just out of luck. I know he currently "locks down" the map when he appears, but I'm talking about locking down a single room with no way of hacking your way in....or out...

Edited December 15, 2015 by Maicael

[TimFlint]

This is just straight up whining. "I can't beat him so he's designed poorly"

 

No, the issue lies with how his mechanics are designed, not player skill.

 

First: what did the new Stalker actually achieve?

The reason for giving him and the sentients damage resistance was to make him less susceptible to being burst down in 1 second and to make players switch up damage types and bring several different types to a mission. Did that happen?

* If you have the proper gear of whatever damage type you'll still kill him in a second. He spawned for my Ember once who was wielding a somewhat forma'd Hek, corrosive damage. Two blasts to the face and he was dead before he could be a problem.

* If you do NOT have any high alpha gear he's impossible solo, he'll adapt to whatever you could possibly bring before you can do enough damage.

 

So well-geared players will still kill him easily, especially when running in groups. Not so well geared players that do NOT manage to get above the magical "deal X damage or get resistances" line find him impossible to deal with.

 

Second: he's far easier if you get him in a tileset with open rooms.

His attacks cover large areas and many attacks can kill you in 2 hits. Or even 1. His fake-prism does both, cover some area with high damage. Not a problem if you can get him to a somewhat open room, then you can dodge him endlessly. But if, by pure bad luck, your tileset doesn't have any open spaces, but only narrow corridors or bridges or simply many small obstacles? Yeah, he suddenly becomes a hundred times harder.

If you cannot kill him as soon as he spawns but are only dealing the much reduced, resisted damage... you'll probably lose the battle of attrition on such a tile.

 

Third: he has a low chance of spawning.

You cannot prepare for him unless you're ALWAYS prepared. Unlike Sentients, where you KNOW you're going to fight Sentients, you probably don't know you're going to fight Stalker. So preparing for him with a specific loadout is silly - I'm not going to bring a Hek and two other weapons with different elements, all maxed out, to every goddamn mission. And when you're not prepared if he spawns the game may as well tell you "oh, I'll just kill you at random, kthxbye".

 

I've said this in another thread about him already: he wouldn't be a bad boss if he was just a regular starchart boss, with his own arena tailored to his powers and the way you fight him; where the players could prepare adequately.

But as he is right now it's just poor design. You roll a die and if you're lucky you faceroll him, if you aren't he's impossible. There's almost no middle ground, chances of him being a fun and challenging fight are almost zero.

Edited December 15, 2015 by TimFlint