Croax

Let me redesign the build with moonbeam and i can post it here. If you think it is ok, i can try it with a proper moonbeam.

I think this thread is very interessting and has shown me some sides that i had not considered yet. I would like to tell you here my contact with PvP and how it was for me. I am not a helpless puppie who cries when people call you names and i am not an incompetent faceroller who is surprised by the fact that you need a dedicated PvP build. So before i entered PvP i read up on the forum and discord. There is a lot of information if you are willing to look for it. I knew what to expect and just used a build i could find. Since i like to play Stalkers i just typed 'Stalker' into the search function of the PvP Discord and found one from the player @M3z called 'Psi/Bio of Doom' without instructions, just the build really. Now fast forward PL Firefarm and equiping that toon. After this i stepped into RV ready to kick ass and chew bubble gum. But unfortunately i found no one. I relogged this toon severall times but no one was found. I did leave PvP there and did other stuff, until some poor souls would start a badge run in RV and LFM in LFG chat. I immediately logged onto my Stalker and started my Assaults on them. I did not say a single word and was the only villain against 4 Heroes..... it was glorious! i had not PvPed for a decade and would quickly kill these poor PVE players like nothing else in this game. And quickly the toxic levels rised in chat and tells. I did not write a single word and just killed them all again. After 30 Minutes they quit and i was again alone in RV. That is PvP on Reunion.... Time passed and i had not thought about PvP when @Poned made a Post on the Reunion Forums looking for PvPers. I give it a try and was surprised how nice, helpfull and friendly the people of this PvP community are. I was very excited again about PvP when a PvP event was announced that would take place at european friendly times. I immediately jumped on that opportunity and joined said event. I haven't had so much fun in this game for a long time. There was over 20 people so that it was a lot of teams going on and constantly changing the teams to make it enjoyable for everyone. I was a little bit of an oddball as the only melee AT in the whole bunch. But i had fun and i would love to play that again. I even got a tell if i would like to join a team for some test matches but it did not fit my game schedule since the US and EU are very different on the clock. it would have been in the middle of the night for me. i want to thank all the people and especially poned for showing me this cool side of the game. i now even have a Blaster and Empath ready for next time to be in line with the meta. unfortunately the regular teams and events are all on 2am in the morning for me. I just hope to see some more events or even more EU players in PvP. I loved what i saw and i would love to play it more. Just living on the wrong side of the globe. And this as how a curious gamer had contact with PvP on Homecoming.

As i said, we can agree to make these tests without any incarnates on. You can unslot incarnate powers, like it is done in PvP for fairness. Can you give me the build you used? then i could try it on the test server.

If you now look into the thread about StJ Attack chain you will not only find a build for generell pve content but also a rotation to kill the enemys really fast.

Ok i did that rotation and i used Build Up only right before AS not replacing any attack. I used the StJ/Bio Build up in this thread and the same conditions incarnates buffs and so on, since we did not agree on anything else. I used Zapp instead of Moonbeam and Zapp had only 5 pcs Manticore set. I think with another build you can squeeze a little bit more out of it. Just not so sure if it is worth the effort because the results are a little bit underwhelming: 94 109 101 88 90 100 101 99 106 105

This is so much Theorycrafting. could someone give me a attack chain and tell me which buffs to use not use? i would like to kill some more pylons.😜 Edit: You guys are also underselling SC because it is the only power that can slot the Fury of the Gladiator Debuff which adds to the overall dps!

I can test the pylon times without the hybrid toggled on. We should just make up our mind which requirements we want to use here. I like testing stuff so i have no problems to do it all again. Also i would like to say that Zapp and Moonbeam deal the exact same damage and have same activation and cooldown. Only difference is moonbeam having access to a forth damage procc. And the StJ/Bio Build i used is my generell PVE build for this toon it is not optimised for pylon kill times. The StJ/EA i used for the first run has 45+Def to s/l/f/c/e/n and 75% S/L resist. Just to put it in perspective. While doing the tests i regularly get hit by the dropship but survive it and just keep going. Endurance never runs out. And the StJ/Bio has great Area Damage with Spinning Strike, Ball Lightning and DNASiphon. I could totally change the builds to only kill the pylon faster but i don't think that it is our goal here. Maybe Dropwing can define some terms on which the tests should be conducted. I am open for all approachs.

Ok i did some testing myself tonight. I just tested the Strikerfox Rotation and added it to my sheet with my first attempt of pylon tests. The first two runs have been with the first rotation and the third run is with the second rotation. While playing it i came to the conclusion that these two rotations are almost the same. Since i replace HB for BU procs the rotation is the same on such cycles. Also i think i got better with following a rotation and hitting buttons since the average kills of the Pylons have been all very close together. And i encountered a strange effect. The formula for calculating DPS is "smooth" while mob regen is not. The health ticks up and i could see myself hoping to get the kill before the next regen tick. So i think now that the rotation 1 and two are almost identical and do not differ very much. I posted it in the pylon thread a while ago, that i have done the tests with a fully incarnated T4 build using, Musculature Alpha, Degenerative Core, Ageless Core, Assault Core. I walked to the pylon and cast Hasten, Ageless and Toggled on Assault. Hit Build Up queued Assassin Strike and hit Start on the timer before AS could hit. I did this to ensure that AS into CU will get the stealth proc but sometime into the pylon kill attacks will miss and the Hide proc gets "out of sync". it does not matter much in my opinion, since after 30 kills the times are not really very much far from each other. Here is the build i used: And this are the times: I could use a build for testing the Moonbeam rotations. Also my Recharge is not so high, ageless fixes a lot of it. Would it be OK to try the Rotations with Zapp? i mean i just used it as a set mule i almost never use it. I took that Pool mostly because of Ball Lightning. Getting a snipe with a good setbonus was just a nice addition.

The build looks solid at first sight. I think i would drop initial strike and the concealment pool to pick up the leadership pool with Maneuver, Assault and Vengeance. Also using Red Fortune in Weave, Maneuver and maybe in Ninja Reflexes could help the ranged Defense. But if i see you skip the utility powers of Ninjitsu, you may consider rolling Super Reflexes, EnA or even Invul instead. Are you sold on Ninjitsu?

Nice writeup Dropwing, thank you for this work! I will try to test some of the other attack chains. Maybe we should talk about Build Up procs and when to use them. I allways use Build Up instead of HB in my Attack chain, even if i have it ready but just used HB. I even get another proc from time to time which disturbs my inner peace. Feels like a wasted opportunity. 🙃😮😟

I did try to keep Frosticus Damage Proc how he did it but could not manage to keep all the attacks how they were. Also i like to have a travelpower. I did not know which power you would push further away to get a travel power so i just selected it as one of the last powers. I hope it is something that goes into the direction you wanted. I want to state again, that i do not care about the psi whole as everyone is very afraid of that. i did find out that it is not such big of an issue.

I saw the axes in DB and made a Viking. Getting a snipe was not thematic. Also DB does not need a snipe to perform well. The flow and damage is good enough. Also the sweep combo is a little bit of area damage before 1k cuts. I never had the need of squeezing more damage out of that combo.

I would vote for DB/Invul. I even posted a build and comments to it a little whike ago.

I think you can play a Darkelf without using Dark Powerset. If i could make a suggestion, you should look into Invulnerability. There is a costume option to "Dark Invulnerability" making the whole set Dark and shady. On Stalkers Invul is just stupidly strong and will make you very durable. I bet some people will show up and will talk about Psi damage. I choose to ignore these voices. Dual Blades can be played very intuitive by ignoring that combos exist. Just go with 2-3 attacks followed by Assassin Strike. Or if you use my build here, you can use 2 combos and have some nice effects going on. I do not have the best pylon kill times with this but it is fun playing it. Since i skip almost allways the first attack and allways skip placate on a Stalker i can not use the Empower and Attack vitals combo. But Sweep and Weaken combos just work fine. I lined up my Bar with: Build Up -> Assassin Strike -> Ablating Strike -> Sweeping Strike -> Power Slice -> 1K Cuts And in encounters i just go with pushing buttons 1 to 6 and repeat. mindlessly but still effective. i got not the best pylon times and there are people that completely ignore Combos but anyway. Just a suggestion. Edit: This build is meant for following during the leveling process. Just buy Attuned Versions of the enhancements and you will get more Powerful with every level. The Purple Hecatomb can be replaced by crushing impact and Armageddon by Obliteration. Once you hit lvl 50 you can replace them and attune the winter and ATO sets.

Stalkers Guile in the Assassin Blaze. Avalanche, Armageddon or Obliteration in the Fire SwordCircle. In case of Avalanche and Armageddon consider only 5 pieces to use a proc as 6th slot. Fury of the Gladiator or Erradication are Valid options as Procs.

Thank you for the Feedback! I want to remind you that this Guide and also the extreme short descriptions of the Power Sets will not explain every bit of nuance of all the Stalker Power Sets. And most importantly it is written from a Stalker Point of View. Which means that a lot of the Information has in Mind that you are a very good Damage Dealer with low HP, very bursty Damage and excel at Single Target fights. SR is in its core a DEF based Set and the low HP of Stalkers do not profit from the scaling resist like a Tank. In my own experience you are either full health, red health or dead. even with high resists when you are almost defeated the HP is so low that you just die. In my Book that is No Resistance at all. Dark Armors bit of Defense is unenhanced 1,88%. We remeber that all Stalkers get Hide so an additional 1,88% Defense for every Set. This does not make Rad Armor or Elec Armor to Defense Sets. Defense on Dark is very minimal, this Armor Set is not about Defense at all. It has very good resists and a amazing Healing Power that has a minor condition to it, because it works best when you are swarmed with enemys. I also did not List Invul and Ice with Healing: Some, because the Healing has a very long cooldown and can be used as emergency heals, but not to compare to Dark Regenration which is up much more often. When it comes to controll and Debuff Powers like Chilling Embrace, Disrupt or the Dark Toggles, i choose to ignore these too. As i have stated. we are very bursty and deal excelent amounts of Damage. The ability to controll the enemys is usefull from time to time but straigth out killing the enemys is much more viable on a Stalker than it is for some other AT. Knowing which enemys are the real danger and deleting them from combat instantly will increase your chances of survivability more than any controll toggle which has to pulse, hit, debuff, stack enough mag aaaand... oh the enemy is dead allready? nvm ..... There are some exceptions like Ice Patch, which is really great but these are few. You can skip all the control powers from all Stalker Sets and still be powerfull, viable and unkillable.

I skip every t9 with a hard crash. The only exception is when i need it to mule some sets. I do not understand why SR or Ninjitsu need tons of Defense on top of Defense. Look at Bio or Ice these are meaningfull and good t9 Powers. Even WP has a better t9 than Elec or Invul. Funny that i consider Shadow Meld beeing a better t9 for resist sets than most of their own t9s. It just adds another layer of mitigation. I think of the t9 powers as defensive cooldowns. But in a fast paced game with everyone on Defense Cap, the classic defensive cooldown is not needed and thus skiped. To make t9 meaningfull again they could work like Buffs or debuffs fitting the theme. Or address something that bugs a lot of people, you could make short bursts of psi or toxic defense or resist. Some unique ways of encouraging the power pick.

There is no thing like a double crits. it just displays like there are two hits. And crit will deal double the damage of the attack (sometimes not even that is true lol) But for your concerns just pick all the attacks until you reach the ranged attack. Then you can respec out of swipe. Cool folk with lots of recharge use Slash, Assassin Claw, Focus, Shockwave and usually shy away from eviscarade, swipe and Strike. Use Annhilation resist debuff in shockwave and achilles heel resist debuff in slash.

Hey @IronJuke, i appreciate everyone that tries to make a Stalker from scratch. You have some build flaws that would jump right into your eye when you know them. For example Stalkers Guile proc belongs in Assassin Strike or picking up Placate. I highly recommend looking into my guide. Also i am not someone that plays with more than one travel power. Shadow Meld while beeing a good power should only be a last resort or opener power to use. as Electric Armor is a Resist base set, you can easily cap the important resists and be done with it. if you want to reach the high ground, cap S/L/M defenses and that should be enough. These layers of mitigation will protect you more than enough. I made one example build for you to point at some directions. i could not reach perma hasten, but that is my first shot at this power combination. I used your build and just removed and added some minor stuff to it. Splitting the Stalkers Guile set for example is in case of Savage a good idea. And i like to build my Stalkers with incarantes that only increase Damage, like Musculature. You could swap out barrier for destiny or incades or even rebirth. all other incarnates are the best option for more damage. if you have any question, just ask again. Here is the build:

Sweeping Cross is not great but also not wastefull. It has the Fury of the Gladiator resist debuff and its damage is increased by combo points. CU is so much great when it crits that we naturally want to use it on cooldown. But for a typical tank and spank situation you have time to apply achiles heel and fotg -resist debuffs to amplify all your attacks. If you are looking at a normal group that has some area damage going on, you will deal with lots of almost dead leutenants and half dead bosses, while the Blaster and Tank allready have moved on. No need to optimise here. Just oneshot these poor dead man walking. Use whatever comes up and between walking from one to the other you have recharged CU and use it again. No one needs debuffs from achilles heel or fotg in such situations. But for prolonged fights like AV or GM i would see SC as usefull addition and Combo Points well spend.

I would Vote for KM/Bio. You can tint the bio stuff brownish to look like a tree. That way you would have the strongest combination and be in theme with your concept. For Kinetic Melee on Stalkers i have some important information for you. These are 3 Topics: Attack Chain: You use the first 3 Attacks, then Assassin Strike. This is all you need and it is the highest dps Attack chain you can have on KM. Just make sure to use 1-2 Damage procs on each attack. AS Included. This Attack chain is very good and you will have it on very low levels, making the leveling a good experience. Burst has 100% chance to crit from Hide. No idea why it is like that, but abuse the fact! Build Up Burst from Hide using 3 Attacks and only using Assassin Strike when you are Sure to use Burst again. That way you have very reliable AoE for a Stalker. Focused Burst and Concentrated Strike are just for getting set Bonuses. These 2 Powers are not needed and can be completly skiped. The ATO does something similar, so Concentrated Strike is not needed, it does not crit and has very long animation time. Focused Burst is not that horrible but just cycling the first 3 attack powers and AS will be better Single Damage. Bio will give you lots of endurance and add damage in form of toxic procs, which is great with fast attack chains. I would use 4 Damage procs in DNA Siphon to have another Strong AoE Attack. With KM/Bio you will activate a lot of Powers all the Time. Expect to be very busy with this Combination.

At first sight this looks like a good build and you will have fun with it. it is very powerfull. If you depend on Barrier so much to cap defenses it will be an endgame build only i guess? If you only intend to play incarnated content you are done and do not need to polish the build. BUT if you want to exemplar down to play something like a Manticore, Yin or whatever you will have a bad time. For an overall build it is too far "streched". The recharge is too low which means Hasten is not perma. Your attack chain will have gaps. Using the Rad clickys will fill these gaps but it is not allways required to click them. In the endgame scenario you can fill these gaps with dark blast and moonbeam, but these are not ideal damage choices, because of Assassin Focus stacks. Also if you plan on endgame content only you have invested so much into defenses that will be debuffed very fast (No DDR), which means you will rely on your resists and healing powers only. From a build philosophy point of view i would try to reach S/L/M defense caps without barrier and try to reach more Resist caps while maxing damage. Splitting the Stalkers Guile sets and filling up with procs is a good direction. Also a very important thing for exemplaring down is that Assassin Mark proc will need to be "active" which means you should slot it in a lower level power so that you get the Build Up procs in lower level content. You have it in Ground Zero, that makes content lower than lvl 30 a pain. Looking more and more at this build i believe that you would be more happy with such playstyle on a Scrapper and not a Stalker. Stalkers are more about solid attack chains utilising Assassin Focus Stacks and melting enemys very fast. Before you iterate your build or we try to optimize together. You should try to answer these questions: Will you ever Play lower level content? Mostly Solo or also Groups? Is Damage important to you? Is the Epic Power Pool Set to Soul Mastery? Do you want to go the full proc route? And just a generell tipp: In Mids go to "Option" -> "Configuration" -> "Effects&Math" -> Check Attacked Now you can toggle on Hide and have the real values shown. No need for calculations.

When i make new toons on the test server, i go out and kill a rikti pylon, solo an ITF and try and solo an LRSF. From these 3 things only the last one is not possible on some AT. You should be fine with any combination. But you are standing in your own way by not telling the primary or even the AT. That just makes no sense at all. I am sure people here could give you better tipps if you would provide better information.

I would go with something like that: I choose to ignore that there are some rare psi enemys that could be a problem. Attack chain would be GPB->TB->PB->AS repeat. Laserbeam eyes is just for the set bonus and the least needed power. Hasten is on perma with a single proc of FF in TB.

Hey @Lockpick This is what i came up with, a while ago. I did try it out on test server and did not create it on the regular server, because it had no Travel power (the only reason for me really). Also i ignored that Psi is so dangerous and just use some purples or oranges when psi comes across my way. Also hasten is not on perma: So why would you play this Build? it has some selling points like beeing very durable, no problems with endurance and having not to worry about any buffs to keep youself alive. You can just put Hasten on Auto cast and focus totally on the Street Justice Attacks. You will be safe, you can punch and the cozy toggles will keep you rolling. It has 3 performance shifter procs and even one Power transfer so your blue bar will not go down until you kill your 3rd pylon i a row without pause. and power transfer, panacea and the regular regeneration will keep your green bar up if you would ever get hit by something. Little bit of chip damage is no problem for you. Oh My! You encounter a big baddie, the stars aligned and you DID take a big hit? Just use Dull Pain, you silly. It will heal you for tremendous amounts of health and push you to 2039 Health for the next two minutes. That is just 49 Health away from the MAXIMUM health cap. Now you can just pretend to be a tank and hit the baddies some more with your Justice from the Street. Did i mention that you have the important -Resist procs in your regular Attack chain? oh by the way your regular attack chain would be: Crushing Uppercut -> Shin Breaker -> Heavy Blow -> Assassin Strike -> Sweeping Cross -> Shin Breaker -> Heavy Blow -> Assassin Strike -> REPEAT! It is a spicy attack chain believe me, there are several threads in this forum where people go over the beauty of it. I did plan some Incarnates for you. Funny thing, the Destiny is totally free to pick. Use Incandes to port some noobs into the Freedom Phalanx in LRSF? Use Barrier and wwrite in LFG: "Tank Stalker LFG", get Ageless and reach perma Hasten???, Use Rebirth, and scream lol nerf REGEN!? And finally why would you play this build? It has a never to be used but silly and funny mule power : LASER BEAM EYES! Who does not want to shoot lasers from the eyes? Ok, i changed my mind. totally going to make one of these now on the regular server. Cya round, gtg, gl hf!