Croax

Sounds good!

Do not play MA on a Stalker, if you can avoid it. StJ is very strong and solid. So that is a very good option. But if you are looking for a Tsoo Themed toon, you could try out Kinetic Melee. It looks natural enough and has some ok tricks in its sleeves. Burst will allways crit out of Hide which is very satisfying to play around. And you skip the t9 and do not use the ranged attack. Instead you go for a very fast attack chain with the first 3 melee attacks + Assassin Strike. You got your attack chain running at lvl 8. For me it was a little bit boring overall but i liked to do Burst as a opener and again after the Assassin Strike Hide proc. You will need a bit of recharge and endurance can be a problem, so Energy Aura is a perfect fit. I can see some other Armor sets working well with it too but your Tsoo Theme could be limiting in that case. Because Stone, Bio, Ice, SR, Elec can all work well with KM but have unfitting visuals.

I think Stone Melee is B Tier and Stone Armor is maybe A or B Tier. I would like to do some builds and level one myself. But i am very busy lately.

I am Waiting for that mids update too Bopper. I will spend a few hours with all the new combinations.

So at very first thank you @ScarySai for posting your version of the Tier List! I like how we see some things same but still different. Let me explain you quick what i was thinking of the tiers: S Tier - Play only this A Tier - Good Stuff B Tier - OK Powers C Tier - Not so good D Tier - Do not play this A Good Example of a S Tier is the former Titan Weapon for Scrappers which was so overwhelmingly good that it exceled in Single Target and AoE while having Knockdown control over the enemys all the time. Going for sub 1 minute pylon times no other melee AT could reach. I think there is no such thing on Stalkers. Energy Melee has poor AoE Damage and reduced crits, Street Justice is carried by 3 combo point CU and for a lot of players the whole combo system is exhausting. Also StJ has bad AoE. Elec has bad Single Target without a snipe and Ice has a little bit of all the problems but is still good enough on all the fields. And all of them have really severe endurance issues....Ok all Primaries do have that problem... But my point is: In my book there is no single Primary powerset that shines above all others. And i have made a point allocation system with values for: Single Target Damage, Area Damage, Damage Type, Does it need a snipe, skipabale powers, utility and my obscure number for "build potential" which is more for IO builds optimization while on mids and looking for set bonuses. It sucks to have 5 melee powers and not a mixture of PBAoE, Target AoE, Ranged or whatever. That is how i created my list. And one very important point is Damage Type! A Lot of people ignore this because they go unga bunga on a pylon (20% resist to all damage types) and came back to tell how good they can devestate the immovable object, while doing it with half their toggles turned off to save endurance, use bad damage type which will be resisted a lot and use double -resist IOs while telling that the damage is only going to skyrocket in team situations. while Energy Melee reaches better times with superiour damage type and no -resist IO. There is a very good post from Galaxy Brain in his standard enviroment damage testing. where he explaines all that stuff. i will put a link down below but just to summerize it: Toxic, Smashing and Lethal are very bad and Negative, Fire, Energy and Cold is good. Psy is kind of great and bad at the same time. BUT if i was to ignore my definition of Tiers and simply see the category as best to worse, than we might see some similarities while i would have to admit i do not understand some of your choices. I will not talk about powers that rank one tier higher or lower because that is purely preferance. Let me ask about these Powers: Dark Melee - No love for our Dark Melee friends? I think you have forgotten something. Savage Melee - Hemorrage has been nerfed and is a shadow of its former self. Only the Jump attack procced out is carrying the set, which i do not like tbh. Also the damage type is lethal, which is bad as we know. I think it is ranked far too high. Fiery Melee - i think putting it on the same level as claws, spines and martial arts is not fair. Fiery Melee is not that bad. Shield - It is not nearly as good as energy aura. it has severe endurance issues, no heal, the inferiour click mez, which needs you to use it frequently, it is one of the hardest, if not the hardest defense set to cap, which costs a lot of set bonuses. it is still good but not that good. The other choices you made, i can understand that and liked to see how you rank the Powersets. i would love to see some more of this, even if there are enough people talking about "one single persons opinion". Oh and here is the Link to Galaxy brains post with the Damage Types it should be on the fifth page almost the last post. it is a good read. i still use his office maps when i want to try out new things:

And that from someone who said a few days ago, i should not try to skip my first attack and Hurl Boulder is not meant to be used in a melee attack chain. So Stalkers and Scrappers also deserve good attacks regardless if fighting in melee or range, because these are Damage ATs? I hear so many Blasters laughing their ass off right now... But i am glad that we can agree now that Hurl Boulder is bad and there is no reason why it should be bad.

Hi @Khrystina, I have seen the changes to Dual Blades. It is good that the combo system is now better to use. But tbh the combo system was something that i completly ignored and just went from time to time like "hey that was a sweep combo, lol". The planed changes do not justify any reevaluation of the powerset in my ranking.

Thank you @SuperPlyx for that table. here you can see why i compared the set to ice all the time. Number wise you might get the feeling they are comparable but then again, it is cold instead of smashing AND the numbers for the AoE attacks are very bad (damage and radius, cone area). In direct comparison to energy one might get the feeling that energy is overtuned but due to the Energy Focus stack mechanic and reduced crits on 2 powers it is again balanced. Stone on the other hand is underperforming after the proliferation. At least compared to the top tier sets like Street Justice, Energy Melee, Ice Melee, or even Electric Melee.

Why can't we have another good set like claws? Why can Hurl Boulder not be a viable attack? Do we need to make it with a downside? And i certainly do not want a Blaster Nuke instead. Just a attack that i can include in my builds. Look at the great work the devs did with Energy Melee. I have the feeling that i need every power in that set. So i have to make a choice. That feels good and impactful. Hurl Boulder is a easy skip as it is right now. When you design powers you have formulas and 'power budget'. If you tax the power too high, because it is ranged, has knockback and -flight, it will end up bad. Maybe you can tweak around these stuff and get rid of the -flight or decrease the knockback, limit the range. Then it could be possible to increase the damage or decrease animation time without breaking the the game. I wanted to give feedback on a powerset that i want to be comparable to the good powersets in the game. And the more concerning point has not been addressed yet: Low overall damage because of the smashing damage type.

If you need a build for Stalkers, just check out my Tier List Post. The Link is in the signature. There is a build for every combination of primary and secondary powerset. After the patch hits live and the mids team includes Stone Melee and Stone Armor, i will Update the Post. I will keep my two threads up to date, as good as i can.

This seems like a good balanced set with something from everything. i like that. No real downside and Numbers seem to be reasonable. But with the Geode Power i think that there would be a better option. Let us make Geode turn us into the huge boulder and then crush into the enemys! No special hibernate healing thing but more like a telenuke! I know that tankers and brutes would prefer the Geode/Hibernate version. But Beeing a Big Stone and Crushing the enemys sounds like much fun to me!

Hi all, I had time to make a stone/EA stalker and would like to share my experience. The set delivers a good feeling and the sound and animations are nice. The uppercut Assassin Strike looks really cool. I used the 'no weapons' lava animations and was happy with the feel and gameplay the set delivers. I tried a 'normal' build where i simply used one of my templates and have 0-2 damage procs on the attacks. I then tried a proc heavy build with 3 damage procs. I finally landed on a build with some Force Feedback procs and 0-1 damage proc. The normal build had a problem with the attack chain and felt cluncky. I was at perma hasten levels of recharge but needed some more. The proc heavy build was a nightmare until i put FF procs into it and could get a better flow of attacks. After comparing the damage to the normal build, i had to utilise FF to get better results because i was missing a lot of set bonuses. I think the last sentences sound very confusing. That is why i will go on point by point now. Single Target Attacks As i suspected the attack chain is hard to get going. There are several options here and i had a hard time figuring out a proper one. Remember that the Stalker ATO is currently not working so the extra build ups are missing. Stone Mallet -> Hurl Boulder -> Assassin Smash -> Seismic Mallet The idea was 3 Attacks then AS followed allways by the heavy hitter. Turns out Hurl Boulder is bad. It takes forever to activate. The attack chain was rendered useless. Stone Mallet -> Zapp -> Assassin Smash -> Seismic Mallet This felt smooth was good enough without gaps but will be not availlable until late in the game. Stone Mallet -> Stone Fist -> Assassin Smash -> Seismic Mallet Again Ok but not overwhelming. At least it is available early on. Stone Mallet -> Assassin Smash -> Seismic Mallet Now we are getting there, but Seismic Mallet has a big cooldown so i was wondering what i can do. The answer was FF procs! I used one in Stone Mallet and one in Seismic Mallet. Now the gap was very small. I think when the Build Up procs are working this could be the best attack chain without a snipe. With my Ice Melee Stalker i used either a snipe or Frost to smoothen the attack chain. But unfortunately Fault is no contender here. It was very hard to hit multiple enemys with Fault. The Damage was underwhelming and sometimes i could only hit one enemy. Tremor was delivering very good results, and can be described as reasonable. But i still had a hard time in the ITF. Did the romans get some buffs? I was missing a lot of attacks and was thinking the Accuracy of my powers is too low. Overall the damge was not very good. I compared the powers with similar sets like Ice Melee and was disappointed. The Attacks of Stone Melee deal 5-8% more Damage but have only Smashing Damage. Ice Melee is dealing a lot of cold damage. In overall gameplay Stone Melee will underperform. There is no combo point, additional resource, stance or something else. This set needs at least 10-15% more damage to be competitive. Also Fault and Hurl Boulder need to be changed or reworked. Maybe Tombstone from the Seismic Blast could replace Hurl Boulder? Changing the Animation time is also a option. Dominators have a hurl boulder which was not that bad. And Fault shoul be easier to use. Well that was a lot. I hope this helps you.

Here is some Feedback without testing it on the Beta Server. I will make another post after killing some pylons and romans. I really appreciate the effort to juggle some powers and make the set viable for stalkers instead of just replacing one attack with Assassin Strike. As it is now, the set reminds me of Ice Melee which is a good starting point. What i like is the fact you arranged the powers to make the leveling and unlocking of powers smooth. Fault on t3 is a good choice. What i do not know yet is if Hurl Boulder is viable as a damage power. It used to have horrible cast times, which reduced the power to a set mule or utility power. Why do i bother? Well the Stalker works most of the time like this: Heavy Attack-> 2 other Attacks-> Assassin Strike -> repeat! Some Powersets do not have a good Heavy Attack and need to fill this gap with a snipe. Which is ok, but feels a little bit lackluster in lower level content when you not have a snipe yet. That was most likely the case with Ice Melee, where i filled the gap with Frost. That is one of the reasons i compared the two power sets. But is Fault as strong as Frost? That brings me to the next point. Damage Type and overall Damage of the powerset. Stalkers are a Damage AT. That is all they bring to the table. If we would bring debuffs, the damage on the powers used to be lower to compensate the 'power budget'. And all the knockbacks and knockdowns feel like some of the power budget went into control. Also this set deals exclusively smashing damage, whch is one of the most resisted damage types. It has no gimmicky mechanic (which i appreciate!) to allow this rule to be bend, like the combo system of street justice. The question now is if this proliferation will bring another A-Tier level Damage Powerset to the table or is it like Dark Melees overhaul which made a bad set just ok. Hopefully it is on track with the Energy Melee overhaul, which blew my mind. I will make at least 2 builds. A normal one and a proc heavy Force Feedback one. Lets see how it ends up in comparison with other powersets.

I have taken one of my template builds (link in my signature) and just replaced some of the powers with your choices (Jump and Teleport). I ended up with 2 spare power slots for which i could not find a use. You can get rid of Hasten and have another power pool? i like hasten that is why i have included it still. also i did not pick the debuff auras of dark armor, because stalkers play very different than a tanker/brute. you do not outlast the enemy and grind them down in a war of attrition. you just delete them as quick as possible. but you have the option to take them. i would skip placate, even after the impending changes.Dark armor is not good on Stalkers because it is one of the old powersets that have endurance problems, rely on a lower resist cap and worst of all: no knockback protection. Anyways have fun:

Good Job! I would like to see more videos like this. Good Editing, i liked it.

If i understand this correct, the changes to placate are nothing more than a part of the 'peaceful' control powers change. The change seems not to be made with only the Stalker AT in mind. But nontheless the change effects Stalkers without doing anything big. I will still skip it. It is now more comparable to taunt on a scrapper. The only way i could see a benefit could be Energy Melee getting out more fast Energy Transfers. But that would need testing if it is better than using a regular attack. My EM/EA Stalker has a little gap in the attack chain, probably this could be useful. Still Placate is a very niche Power.

Nice Approach to this Combination! I had time to test some chains for Energy Melee and am now convinved that i will love to take as much fast Energy Transfers as i can. That's why i would start with Total Focus out of Stealth, Now you got 2 Stacks of Energy Focus, going EF -> Moonbeam -> Something -> EF will erase a lot mobs very fast in a short time period. now you have hopefully a few stacks of Assassin Focus and can use fast AS followed by Total Focus, because you have not used Stalkers Guile proc so far in this figth. And now you start over again. This deletes enemys soooo fast. I really love that play style. And Looking at your build with 17% to hit all the time, you should really be using moonbeam in your rotation. Now to the build itself. it looks very solid and i would have gone some different direction with some of the things. You have Unleash potential, Shadow Meld and Barrier as "oh shit" buttons, it seems a little bit overkill for me but to know that you can allways click that button may give you some more security, i can unnderstand that. If i were to go for one of the cool new powerpools i would play with the superspeed one, it has another button that says "increase dps" instead of "another defense cooldown". If you find yourself not using "Shadow Meld" very often, you can just go with "Vengeance" and let the single LotG there, just in case you end up in a team and someone dies. It buffs your damage and to hit, which is nice. I end up looking for opportunities to increase my damage as much as i can on a Stalker, so we might have different views on this. I learned to like powercrash. It is better in game than it is on paper, maybe you can find another slot for it to give it more %Damage, it is a good cone attack. These are just minor things. Your build looks good as it is!

Hey honoroit, nice to see people having fun with pvp in this game. i know there is a very nice and funny community on indomitable. unfortunately they play at US times so i have only been in a few kickballs but not much more. Speaking of the pvp community, there is a active subfurum here on homecoming: https://forums.homecomingservers.com/forum/34-pvp-build-discussion/ i am sure you will get better feedback on that forum than here. But i can try. If i open your build in mids i have 2 slots to spare so it is possible that i have not the right version to give right feedback here. (Or you messed up with the version of mids?) Other than that i had the feeling that pvp consists of speed of sound (with jaunt macro) , and super jump active all the time and running/jumping around like squirrels on crack. All the while you are aiming at one specific person until someone counts down and then you use ranged attacks or any other kind of 2-3 button burst combo. Your build is missing these things, so i guess it is meant for a fight club style of play? I think people can just ignore you or get annoyed with the impale debuff. Anyway. I think you should get to some people that have first hand experience with the open pvp of recluse victory or fight clubs. There is a player named M3z i think, he plays a very good pvp stalker, you could ask him for advice. Also this game makes it so easy to have a second build. You can have a active pvp and inactive pve build and just change the builds when you want to do some pve stuff. when you enter pvp areas your cooldowns normaly all get reset, during the wind up phase before the match starts. so no worries not to use a second build. Edit: Oh boy, i realised that this is months old. why would you necro such a thread?

With the Assassins Mark IO it is true that you have to use the power at least once to make it work. if you exemplar down where you do not have that power you will loose the benefit of it.

Hey @I-Dirty, if i understand you correct you will be most of the time solo, so it really does not matter which primary you pick. Savage and Elec will make you feel strong. Be sure to pick up the first two attacks, the cone, the Assassin Strike and Build Up up until lvl 8 then you can get the armor powers. As a Solo Stalker your best defense is killing everything before it kills you. Btw. The easiest way to level the first 8 levels is to join a trial called Death From Below (DFB). There are groups forming in atlas park all the time. You can do it 2-3 times which will take you ~45 minutes? It should be faster usually. You can join at lvl 1. For the Secondary, if you do not want to put money into the Stalker early on, i would recommend to go with Super Reflexes. Without a good amount of IOs all Armor sets will make you feel squishy. And Super Reflexes will be the easiest to reach defense caps. I think i would do a respec at lvl 18 dropping one of the first attacks in favour of more defenses, now could be the right time for a travel power if you feel like it or combat jumping for more defense. Later on i would do another respec at lvl 35 to be more like the endgame build you are trying to achieve. After this respec, do one of the villain patron pool archs, to unlock them. You should have a good feeling for the Stalker by now. Now is the right time to dump money on the Stalker. Also now is the time for the roman task force in crim (ITF). You can get easy XP there. The old common lvl 50 task force is callen Miss Liberty Task Force (MLTF). You can join one at lvl 45-50. It was once the hardest TF out there. You can see the power level of your Stalker and the difference of the Primaries and Secondaries of every AT in such hard conditions. If you would Powerlevel up to 35 or higher go with Elec/Shield, that combo is a late bloomer and can feel bad in the beginning. Lastly i recommend you take a look at my guide. It can help you a lot. Especially the part about ATO Synergy. You need to buy certain IOs to play the Stalker to its full potential.

Hi all, I know self advertisement is shameless but i think i have the question of the OP covered in my Stalker Guide. It is written from a Stalker point of view but still helpfull for all armor sets. I have made a visual comparison of the various armor sets under 'Secondaries'. Just check it out:

I like this discussion it helps to get insight on how people play and what they priorize over something else. To answer the OP directly: Savage or Elec? -> Go for Elec What goes best with Elec between Nin, SR and SD? Definetly SD! It is fun to double nuke. If you have never done it, try it out! But normaly i would not recommend so fast what to pick, because we need some more information. Do you play Solo a lot? Do you plan to duo with a tank or kinetic or whatever? Will you powerlevel that toon and spend a lot of time on lvl 50? Do you want to play in groups from DFB to MLTF? Do you plan on spending a lot of influence while leveling or will it be at the end? You need to know that a lot of the powersets perform very different in the situations i mentioned above. While a group or even one other player can cover some of your bases, you will experience the game totally different. With IOs and incarnates, the game is also totally different. And the truth is that the difference between Elec/SD or Elec/EA is not important if you solo speedrun missions on -1/1. If you go for ITFs Solo on hardcore Mode EA might be better, but you can not stop at 45% defenses there, you need to go higher. There are pros and cons for both sides, but you can only decide yourself what the best is for you. TLDR: Elec/SD if you have never played the combo. Everyone plays different, EA is better than SD overall.

You exactly repeated, what i wrote in the beginning/disclaimer but when you say it that sounds so negative. I am not offended in any way but i do not understand your post. Anyway have fun playinig the BS/Shield, i liked mine too. That was one of the first Stalkers i played on HC. Really like the style of sword and board, even though it is not the most powerful combination.

If there are more than 3 enemys i usually open with: Build Up -> Ball Lightning from Hide -> DNA Siphon Now i target a Boss or Leut. In the middle and go: Heavy Blow-> Shin Breaker -> Assassin Strike -> Spinning Strike Sometimes i use Crushing Uppercut on another Boss instead of Spinning Strike because everything else is dead allready. My fingers are so used to this, that i will CU more often than SS. Also everyone else in this game spams AoE, so after the initial Ball Lightning, DNA Siphon there is not much to take care of.

Hi @txdragoon912, i am happy to see that this thread helps players! StJ/Inv is a nice combo but will be very endurance hungry, especially with such high recharge values. If you drop the Body Mastry to get Mu, you will be very sad whenever you don't have ageless or any other means of endurance buff, be it from other party members or temp powers like the adrenalin serum. Other thing is that if you pick up the Mu Mastery i guess you would be using Ball Lightning and Zapp. You could use all the slotting from Laser Beam Eyes (just a set mule in the original build) to use it on Zapp but for Ball Lightning you need some more slots. You can get these slots by taking away the procs of your attacks, lowering you damage. You can get these slots breaking up set bonuses, loosing recharge or other bonuses, lowering your damage and/or survivability. At this point i would suggest making the whole build new and setting up some goals to reach. knowing that you can not reach all of them. StJ does not need any other attack on stalkers to function properly. No need for epic snipes or Cross Punch shenanigans. Ball Lightning can be handy for Area damage but you have to be aware that StJ/Inv has some restrictions, that other combos do not have. Maybe /Bio or /Ice could be something for you? These two builds manage to reach a lot of goals but struggle on other fields. I guess you could take the build StJ/Inv build to the homecoming discord and ask for other peoples advice and opinion. Maybe i am just too much caught up in my ways...