Stalker is simply not fun or challenging

[Xarteros]

As it stands, Stalker is disruptive to the fun of the game, and provides nothing but 'artificial challenge' to the game. That is, to say, there's nothing skill based about defeating him, it's basically entirely down to luck and circumstance. In a group with mates, rolling with ultra-OP gear? You're set. Running a Nightmare mission by yourself with an ability-based loadout? RIP buddy.

How to fix it:

Damage:

1. Make damage To and From Stalker be based on percentages. This prevents crazy one-shots from both sides of the board
2. To balance the percentage damage, take the weapon's un-modded average damage per hit, and divide it by the fire rate/attack speed (and maybe factor in limited ammo pools?). That way, it doesn't matter what you have equipped: you just need to be skilled enough to use it properly

Nullification: 

1. No longer instantly nullify abilities. So much of the game is dependent on the abilities. It's called Warframe, after all, making your Warframe useless is a bad idea
2. Instead, give Stalker a charge-up attack that releases an AoE blast, wave, beam, or homing projectile of some form, that nullifies Warframes hit by it. That way, skill and speed can keep you safe
3. Allow skills to damage Stalker, but simply give him a max damage cap per skill cast or per tick of effect. You could make the effect function the same as the weapons, and operate based on the un-modded values

Attack Behaviour:

Give Stalker some different attack patterns, instead of just barrelling in next to you and wailing on you until someone dies. You could make the attack patterns random, to keep people on their toes and prevent the fight from becoming trivial.

1. Stalking: He equips Dread and attacks you from long range, using teleports to stay in a relevant tile. In this phase, he'd take more damage than usual, and would flee after a short delay if you move close to him (allowing a quick player time to get a few melee hits in, without just standing about)
2. Ambushing: He equips Despair, and fights at mid-range, trying to keep his distance without moving far enough away to make the Despair hard to hit with. He could start hitting you with some skills here too, dashing in with a power and falling back to Despair
3. Assaulting: He equips War/Hate and engages the target in melee, utilising his dodge-able nullify skill and his other powers

The idea behind these attack patterns is that after a certain number of attacks, or after taking a certain amount of damage, Stalker would change his pattern to the next random one, until you defeat him in his third and final attack pattern. You could also let him keep changing between the patterns multiple times, but I'm not sure if that would be more fun or less fun.

Crowd Control:

1. Instead of just being immune to everything, give Stalker a limited potential to be knocked down and/or staggered, but on limited cooldowns and/or with diminishing durations. This lets players utilise CC abilities to keep him staggered long enough to engage from range, or to cancel an ability, but without allowing any perma-stun setups. Give him a buff/debuff symbol for his health bar to show when he's resisting CC (bosses should really use this system too)

This is just a few ideas. There could be a lot more ways, or a lot better ways, but I feel like any or all of these would make Stalker inherently better than he is at the moment.

Working with percentages is probably the best way to balance damage from his attacks/powers, and from player attacks, so the fights are never just completely one sided. Working with un-modded values means there's no way to just completely exploit weaknesses, but also prevents niche builds from being useless.

Keep comments constructive please, I'm keen on developing the ideas further, and making sure that the idea is sound and still fun/fair.

Edited October 10, 2017 by Xarteros

[Entharias]

I would rather see DE work on Zanuka and G3, cause oneshotting them on spawn is getting... boring.
Oh btw, Stalker is meant to be disruptive, and he still throws a punch time to time.

[Kyryo]

Oh don't worry, soon the stalker will be player-controlled. 

 

Then you will come back crying wanting the old braindead stalker back.

 

Also, once you finish the second dream , the stalker loses all his range attacks and becomes the shadow stalker, which is even easier as all you have to do is bulletjump around.

Edited October 10, 2017 by Kyryo

[Irmdall]

Something that would fit him even better is, if he blacks out the room, so it would be much harder to see/hit him ^^

[xXDeadsinxX]

Stalker/shadow is currently fine the way he is. The only thing that I would like to see is that he should deal more damage to the players, since you know, most players aren't afraid of him since he's weak.

Edited October 10, 2017 by Yaerion
Obsolete moderated content removed.

[MystMan]

2 hours ago, xXDeadsinxX said:

 The only thing that I would like to see is that he should deal more damage to the players, since you know, most players aren't afraid of him since he's weak.

That is highly dependant on what frame you happen to be using. For example the squishy likes of Loki will get killed in 1-2 hits while a tanky frame like Valkyr can take several more hits. If you're packing multi-forma'd OP weapons, his damage output becomes irrelevant since you will kill him in under 5 seconds, provided you have the time and opportunity to aim well.

Like OP said, it's all really about luck and circumstance. Ever get a Shadow Stalker on you while you're in the middle of a cramped spy room?  I have. That fight was intense and the alarm was not tripped.   If it had been regular Stalker and he initiated his Absorb attack, that would've likely killed me since I had really little room to move in. 
Or if you get Stalker attacking you while surrounded by infested.  If an Ancient infested pops up behind you from around the corner and hooks you, you are pretty much dead since there is nothing you can do against Stalker's attack while being dragged. And he's harder to see in that dark red Infested tile set.
 

[Xarteros]

11 hours ago, Nakrast said:

I would rather see DE work on Zanuka and G3, cause oneshotting them on spawn is getting... boring.
Oh btw, Stalker is meant to be disruptive, and he still throws a punch time to time.

They could add similar changes to Grustrag 3 and Zanuka, or any other 'assassins' that they make in the future. It should be about skill, not what you have equipped at the time.