Croax

I answered this in tell, but then i figured out people could use this info: I would say it depends on what you want to play in the long term. The Elec/Shield is a beast but needs a lot of the pieces until it really clicks. The Endurance is a Problem, so Ageless helps. Single Target is a Problem, so a Snipe helps, Having both nukes is the selling part of the set which means a loooong way until you can fully appreciate it which mean lvl 38 or higher. Leveling this combo is not as much fun as others, because Shields survivability kicks in pretty late, it has a click mez what is stupid when you want hasten (which one to put on auto cast?). Also the Single Target of Elec is okish after having Assassin Strike AND a snipe (lvl 41?). If you want to power level and then fully kit out the build going on every TaskForce or Trial you can find. Elec/Shield is the better of the two. I have not played staff because it was underperforming, when i tested the set a few years ago. But the animations and the Costume/Lore Options are dope. If you want to level the build over time and like to take your time picking up flowers left and rigth. If you don't care about peak performance but love to have a good time without thinking much. If you like to spam Attacks and have a cool concept for the unique staff/stone costume combos. If you leave a toon after hitting 50. If you have 3954 different alts all between lvl 1 and 40. If you can answer one or more of these questions with yes: ->Then you should play Staff/stone.

Good but Ugly.

Hi @BuiltDifferent5, if you want to play Staff then you should more consider what you expect of your gameplay then to min max any numbers, since you will not be doing crazy pylon times with this. If you want to just spam attacks, you can consider a more passive Secondary that don't interact much with you attacks like EnA, invul or Electric Armor. While invul will protect you better, elec offers Endurance. Here you can choose what fits your playstyle more. Ofc you can go with Energy Aura and have the best of both worlds. If you are ok, with managing your green an blue bar with clicks and are 'more aware' of your surrroundings then you can consider Bio or Rad Armor since they have AoE Powers that can be nice proc bombs. But will need you to use these Powers. This will increase your AoE potential even if Staff has some ok area attacks. Especially in groups and if you like to play with a high mob count f.e. +2/8 then these will do you a better job. This two Secondaries can be more tanky then you would expect. You can find all example builds for Stalkers in the tier list i made a while ago (link in the signature). Even if not everything is up to date, it should be a good suggestion where you can start yourt build. Please read the explanation of secondaries keeping you alive or making you unkillable that theory will allways aply even in other games. Cya! Croax

Yes, ageless is the answer. you can also use recovery serum and use blue inspirations in lower levels but that combo is very endurance hungry.

I am on holiday rigth now. i will look into it next week or so.

If you want to level it solo i would not recommend Elec/Shield. it shines very late game lvl 45+ and will be not that enjoyable while leveling. It is one of the strongest Stalker combos but only when you have access to all the needed tools. Energy Melee/Energy Aura as stated above is nice from start to finish. Beginner friendly Attack sets: Energy Melee, Ice Melee, Psionic Melee Beginner friendly Armor sets: Energy Aura, Invulnerability, Stone Armor You can find builds for any Stalker combination in my signature. Use them as you like or change them to something else. Have fun playing a Stalker!

The Cooldown of both skills are so long, that you can nor rely on them. they are more like a emergency heal. Ice and Invul are more known for their defenses and resists than healing. that is more or less what i was trying to explain.

Wow, i learned something new here. Thank you guys! I set mids to the afforementioned settings to 39%. In my Head it was allways base 40% and i did not know how to change mids to the rigth value. But i will still stay with my opinion and would suggest to 5 slot Apo with one Damage proc instead. The bonuses are also very good from the 5 pcs Apocalypse set. I understand that you want the 50 more damage and it is fine. Both ways work and are equaly valid. And i like Nemus Version of this combo as well. Having a self heal is solid and a big selling point! The endurance also looks much better and will not be as thursty as the other builds up here. I like the proc distribution in the attack powers. All resi debuffs, FF, KD in Slice and Ball Lightning. While still having 5 x 10% recharge bonuses, 5 x LotG and some other rare recharge bonuses. And the showcase of build for comfort, without Hasten but Practiced brawler on auto cast is a very elegant approach. After playing Shield, SR and Ninja i have come to the conclusion that i dislike the click mez powers mostly because of the problem what to put on auto. The build here is exactly avoiding that problem and supporting you with a heal! I think this shows how different a power combination can be build and still have top results in different categories. I also saw a build once where someone capitalized on the Quickness and stacked movement speed bonuses to be allways superfast and had no need for a travel power. Only Combat Reflexes and Sprint turned on/off.

Hmm... I was also talking in the context of your build. You have 3 LotG which give 27% Acc. Stalkers Guile 15%, Armageddon 15%, Sirocco 9%. Total Global Bonus 66%. Manticore set gives around 26% accuracy. So the total bonus of zapp should be enough to hit +4s reliable. As far as i know +4s just have a base of ~40% instead of the 75%. Or am i mistaken by the numbers?

Nice write up! While i agree on the 50 damage. i do not understand why you would hit less often? With the Accuracy from set bonuses it should be enough to hit +4s. And the real comparison would be: 12% regen buff 2,5% ranged def buff 3% damage to all 7,5 % global recharge versus: 50 more Damage (That is allready enough for a lot of people) 15% slow resi 6 % F/C resi Also note that procs can maximaly occure 90% of the time, but that is factored into the 50 damage in mids. It will be personal choice what of these two weighs more. I would like to point out that Zapp while beeing super, is only available in higher levels. The set bonuses with attuned IOs will serve you a little bit earlier before you have the power. And with my BS/Shield i had a complete single Target rotation without Zapp. But again, ymmv. I like how different you can approach builds and how complex it can grow.

Ahhh not looking into the forum for a time and almost missed such a lovely thread. The two builds in this thread are very nice and i have to say i like the approaches, even if i do not understand some random powers like Spirit Ward, i guess you were chasing the 2,25% S/L resi bonus. And i never liked fligth powers on my melees, but some people love it. Or the knockback protection in mystic fligth, SR has one of the best status protections out there, no need to waste a IO for this effect. These are just small things generell speaking the builds are fine. You got the Stalkers IO and Gauss IOs rigth so the rest is stacking bonuses. I have played a BS/Shield Stalker and a Claws/SR Scrapper so my experience with BS/SR is a mix of these two. BS is very endurance hungry and if you add a Force Feedback proc into the mix with some good recharge (~perma hasten) then you will be running into blue bar issues. SR does not help with endurance at all, so when you are throwing one attack after the other, you can run into some problems. You can mitigate these by using adrenalin serum, ageless or blue inspirations. I choose to mitigate these kind of things with the body mastery but then you would miss Ball Lightning which is a very good AoE for BS, which has almost nothing in that department. And looking into the attack powers i would like to give a little advice. Usually if you use procs you increase the damage of your attacks. but do not go too far with it, because if you loose set bonuses you are hurting your overall build more than you gain with the increase in power of that one attack. My go to experience is to use a 5 pcs set with a proc. If the 5pcs has a proc itself even better. For example i would slot Zapp with 5pcs Manti and the Apo damage proc or 5pcs Apo with the manti damage proc. For my Claws/SR build i used the template provided by one of the best Claws/SR players in this forum. He had a lot of passive regeneration stacked on his build which i liked and copied. For a set without healing this helped to get the chip damage taken care of. And generell speaking SR is a very sturdy build which is even better in game than it is on mids. you have a big resist bonus when your hit points go down. Dodge and Agile provide these bonuses. You can play around in mids with the bar in the Info screen to mess with it. You may not need so much resist bonuses as you think. If you need a build for any Stalker combination, including BS/SR, just take a look into my Tier List Thread. i posted a build for every Stalker combination out there. Copy and share it as you wish. A lot of peolple told me they use it and modify it for their preferences (like fly as a travel power).

I can say a few things about Psi Melee. The damage type feels very binary in usual gameplay. If it is resisted it is heavily resisted and if the enemy is vulnerable they are very vulnerable. For Stalkers and Scrappers it is even more relevant than for brutes and tanks, because the crit part of the damage is pure psi damage while the attack powers normaly are part psi part smashing. The damage type will even out and be in the middle. The Single Target Damage of Psi Melee is good. Once you ignore that insight exists and just acknowledge it every now amd then, you will be fine. On Stalkers you have Assassin Strike into Great Psi Blade which is devastating for the enemy. You then have the opportunity to slot a FF +recharge proc in telekinetic blow and the small psi blade. This is a good attack chain and needs no snipe. Unfortunately you can not include -resist procs into it and the secondary effect is negligible, except the knockdown that is usefull. I like GPB because you can have 2 purple damage procs in it. Purple procs deal a lot more damage and have higher ppm which makes it easy to get 90% proc chance and still have decend recharge speed on the power. This is one of the reason why powers like GPB, Crushing Uppercut and Freezing Touch are well performing. The AoE Damage of Psi is only a baby footstomp on Stalkers which is nice but not enough. So you lack in that department and need either a secondary with a proc bomb or a attack and some epic Ball Lightning or Fire Ball, which comes very late and is taxed by at least one power pick that you ultimately do not need (Zapp) but here you can mule another purple set or Sting of Manticore, that makes the power pick not totally wasted. At least you can slot a FF +recharge into Mass Levitate which will go off allmost allways. There is also a elephant in the room called Boggle. I skip it and never miss it, since i ignore the insight mechanic. If you are really into it you can pick it and attack the boggled enemy to highly increase the chance for insight. But since it is a slow cast power that deals absolutely no damage, it is just bad. Even more in teams. But on the mid build side of things Boggle has access to the purple confusion set which has very solid bonuses. On the MoG side of things, there is my personal experience that there are a lot of MoGs in the game that cover psi as a damage type or you simply miss while the MoG is active which results in the same disappointed minutes that you have to wait for the MoG to end. Sorry, but the cake is a lie. To answer Striders question: On a Scrapper Psi/Stone will be meh Single Target and ok AoE Damage. On a Stalker it will be ok Single Target Damage and meh Single Target Damage. Both 'meh' can be turned into Ok with Epic Pool powers.

Going for Mu Epic and skipping Ball Lightining or 3 slotting Hasten are choices that i would not make. Here is the build that i have currently posted in my Tier List Thread. It is the latest version of my Elec/Shield which i have not played for a very long time:

Hey @CaptainFantastic, Cutter was rigth about the slots and power choices. But i would just add that Hover is inferior to Combat Jumping for a Stalker because you have way worse movement and need some slots to compensate it. Also the endurance consumption is much worse. But if you really like that playstyle here is the very limited changes made to that build:

The build goal for the EA was as i remember having 45% defense on negative with a saturated Energy Drain. Then recharge and sometimes 75% s/l resists depending on the primary. You should check the active buffs and incarnates. maybe i had sometimes choosen barrier over ageless, but i should have allways ageless normaly. But i can just say try to check the buffs and active powers maybe something is odd there. Beeing something over the 45% is not that bad either because of cascading defense debuffs, so beeing fiftyish should be enough normaly.