Croax

There is a reason why people pick Moonbeam or Zapp. In my Opinion Elec/ on Stalkers makes a snipe mandatory for a good single target attack chain.

I think both build you have posted are viable. Just for your information a lot of Stalkers stick with the initial slot on Build Up or 6 Slot Gauss set into it. Funny in your build you could take the 2 Def slots from Energy Absorption and one slot from Glacial armor, on slot from Frozen armor and put these 4 into the Build Up. Now you still need Energy Absorption to get where you have been but you have a better build up. lol. Anyway. I wanted to ask you if you would like to do low level content with that build? The build i posted above has enough defenses at as long as you have Frozen Auras set bonuses, which would be Def cap to important thing from lvl 27 and above. In your case it is a purely endgame build?

Oh, Bopper is right here. Enhancement seemingly can only be +2. Or i am doing something wrong. When i test in the beta server i created allways some with the lvl 53 option of freebies menu but they came out as lvl 50. i never bothered to look into it deeply, so it totally slipped my attention. Funny enough i did allways the 5 Heca+1 unb. combo on my toons because i personally love the set bonuses more then the tiny bit of damage it gives you. If we would start pushing pylon kill times every little bit helps. but for my generell pve builds i have mostly sticked to the set bonuses.

HO for Acc/Dam is not cheap. To +3 it you will need to do it the old combine method. 5 Heca+ 1Unb. Const. Is not much different from it. Both are good ways to go.

While the servers are down i made this build for a Vader Themed BS/EA Stalker: I got the Mu Mastery Because Lightning fits a Sith and also got the Electric Shackles as a Hold Power (i know it is not Force Grip.) Even if you don't plan on investing much into this toon, there may be a few hints you can use for leveling.

Thank you @Glubba for these kind words! Proccs can be a good source of bonus damage. In the build i just did it for fun. you can also go with 5 Hecatomb +1 unbr constr. proc. leaving out the heca damage IO. It should be roughly the same damage. There are some powers that benefit very well from procs like DNA Siphon, burn, consume and so on. they turn some utilitty powers into Area Damage that can keep themself up to a Shield Charge. But be aware that you do not rely on procs like a Defender for example.

Psi is a very nice Primary. Your Single Target Attack chain would be: Greater Psi Blade -> Assasin's Psi Blade -> Psi Blade -> Telekinetic Blow To get this chain going you would need recharge close to perma hasten. To get this easier secondarys like Super Reflexes, Elec or Energy Aura would be sufficient for the bonus 20% recharge they bring. Other secondaries however are also valid if you build for it. Hyperstrike has mentioned Invul. That is also a very tanky option on Stalkers. A SG mate of me has soloed quite a few Taskforces (ML, Posi 1+2, Manti or Cita, the one with crey boss) with this combo (Psi/Invul) here is the build he used: For Nin i have this build floating around. I have no idea how good it is. It was a Thematic build for another SG mate: And here is a Psi/Bio Version of my StJ/Bio. i like that DNA Siphon is a powerfull AoE in this build. I hope you find some usefull hints on how to make a Psi. These examples are what i would suggest. I hope you have fun with it!

I love this community.😆😆

What if i told you that you don't need chilling embrace and you can kill stuff instead of slowing them down. I never picked it on my /Ice and never missed it.

Ice is one of the best and strongest secondaries available to Stalkers.

I have made good experience with Ice, Shield and EA. I also had some surprise deaths with SR, Ninja abd Bio. Those deaths have mostly been my own fault. So maybe they are good too.

When i see the talk about Epic Pools, Slots, Procs and on some other occasions the Talk about Stalkers 'Loosing the Endurance fix in comparison to Scrappers' (Willpower, Regen, Ninja), i want to ask why people underestimate the Body Mastery? You can just get Supperior Conditioning and Physical Perfection, slot some Performance Shifter Proc into it and have no Endurance Problems anymore beginning at lvl 35. You can use all the slots on other Powers and still get good use out of it. With the new Power Transfer Proc you can also get solid passive healing out of this powers. Powersets like /Invul would love fixing endurance and getting some free heals. In some of this cases you even can free up the Destiny slot, because ypu would not need the Endurance or the Recharge anymore. I do Understand that having a snipe is a big deal for some Primaries like Elec/ or Spines/ but in my opinion a build should be allready planed at ~80% Then looking at the Epics. In most cases i would just need something very specific, For example looking for 5% E/N Defense. Then picking up a snipe with 5 slots of Winters Bite is a obvious choice. And i once did an extended testing of Zapp and Moonbeam and they ended up beeing pretty much the same. This is due a fix that Homecoming team applied last year to make all epic pools use the melee damage multiplier on Stalkers to bring the Epics more in line to each other. This change never made it to Mids.

Oh, nice to see so many people react here on the thread of Ice/. No The Damage is still the same, that is the reason a lot of low Damage AT like Defenders love procs. For Stalkers they are a reasonable damage increase, but not the only real source. See my testing results below. What i said about snipes and AF stacks only applys to the forementioned sets in a single target situation. Using /Bio area leech buff as a proc mule is a very good idea. it is unbelievably strong. And having a snipe on a Elec/ Stalker is mandatory for having a hard hitter after AS. Do not take the Info out of context please. For Area Damage Water Sprout, Fireball and Bal Lightning would be my choices, because i hate Cones. The build opportunity would more or less be Body mastery to get 2 powers that will fix your endurance problems on a /Inv for example, you can have 2 Powers with no more slots invested to get all the endurance you like and have more slots for all the other powers. But YMMV. I found my old spreadsheet for ice/. Just a copy from it i don't remember a lot of the testing so precicely: The Damage with completely relying on proc is bigger if all of them go off. But it is a small increase, and if only one of them does not proc, it is not that big of a difference anymore. Not having the great bonuses of purple sets was a big deal on most of my builds. so the most reasonable decision was to only use the high damage purple procs that deal 85 instead of 57 damage and get all the bonuses i can.

I have a little bit different build approach than Sovera but the important things seems to be the same. Have fun:

To jump ob the disussion here, i would like to add 2 things. 1. Moonbeam and Zapp are the same except damaget type and sets to use in. 2. I spend a lot of time on the test server figuring out which Stalker primary would have the best Single Target Attack chain. I tested all of them and the finallists were Savage, Street Justice, Ice and Psi. Using a rotation to get 3 Stacks of Assassin Focus was crucial to the dps. Also i would utilize the hardest hitting ability after AS. The hard hitter would crit allmost every time. Now what the 4 set have in common is that their Hard hitters all have a Hold option, so slotting Unbreakable Constrain Proc was possible. The purple procs deal a significant amount of damage to the target. After testing out optimal attack chains with the 4 sets i started varying the procs and slots. The highest Damage was with 5 Hecatomb using the purple proc and 1 proc unbreakable constrain. The reason is that the Powers would all crit, dealing double damage. Procs do not crit. After +5 all the enhancements the damage would go up slightly but not so remarkable that i would generally recommend it for everyone. Using Procs is a good way to maximize Damage, but do not go too far with it, because Stalkers are the best Crit dealers in the game. I used Musculature Incarnate and left out the pure Damage Hecatomb IO. My optimal Attack chain for Ice was:FT->IS->Frost->AS repeat. Not using the snipe, because of the AF stacks was generally a dps increase. In some cases it was roughly the same, but in that cases like Ice i would not use the snipe, because it would open up build opportunities. TLDR: Use 5 Hecatomb + 1Unb. Const. Proc in Freezing touch, because crits and all snipes are kind of cool. (Pun intended)

I did make an example build for a low budget build for Nin/Nin in my guide. I think you could look there for a generell idea how to make a viable build with that power combination. I think a lot of that build can be transfered to a /Super Reflex Stalker. So looking at you budget and high perfamnce viability i would suggest /Nin or /SR because they are cheap to build. And i think that generell speaking ALL Secondaries are viable.

So after having slept over the suggestions. Here is my newest take. It feels a little bit weaker on the survivability but has some of the suggestions wweaved in. Maybe it is more damage?

@TMurph i really appreciate helpfull comments, but i could not get much help from you or i just did not understand the hints you give. To tell someone "you are doing it wrong." is something else than "i would do it this way." I still have no idea how you would get to some levels of survivability. For example what temp power are you refering to? Using Inspirations all the time? Or do you build the defenses only so far that a small purple would keep you at the cap?. You leave a lot of emty room after you say what you don't like. I would love to keep this constructive because i really want to make a awesome blaster. BTW. Fly/Hover combo. Why would it limit the /Fire? I had no problems with it. Troy and Ivan have some good points here. I have seen a lot of blasters that faceplant constantly, which would make me look at my vengeance cooldown and look out for said blaster if the buff would drop. 😁 And a very interesting thing to use Bonfire with KB->KD in this way you could drop bonfire and make better use of Burn/Hotfeet. Force Mastery with all the survivability seemed to be such an easy choice i totally forget about the Fire Mastery. RotP would be slot mule tough. I don't plan to die 😎

Hi Folks, thank you for the feedback! To optimize my build i just had generell survivability in mind. so reaching melee and ranged def cap was a goal and everything else just went with the flow. To fully understand and be able to use your suggestions i would like to ask or clarify some things. Consume is just a set mule and i have no endurance issues, this would be a possible candidate for Burn or Hot Feet. But why is Cauterizing Aura completely slotted wrong? What would be a better way to slot it? What are better ways of getting res/def? I would really like to get an example. Maybe you think of Inspiration? I tend to totally forget to use them. For example i had played a Fire/Time corruptor a bit and found it a hassle to remember clarion+buffs every 2 minutes. What is the way a blaster can achieve these goals? The unique IO is in Force of Nature, because it fills up a slot which is better used for Endurance or Resist. And since i am deep into Diminishing Return with Resist i choosed the Endurance one. @Elmyder you are right about hot feet. in normal grps i would never use consume so hot feet is probably the better choice. Since it will not mess me up build wise they are both PBAoE. I will think about it. I tested Burn and Hot Feet on the test server with reproducable results. It seems like Hot Feet is there and deals his damage but compared to fireball and sword circle it was not feeling so powerful. since in normal gameplay there are boss, leut. and minions. I would target a boss and singel target him while using fireball and sword circle on cooldown. with hot feet and melee range that all added up in a good way. I def. consider replacing consume for hot feet. I also tried out burn. But it has such a small area that even in the S/L farm when i was swarmed up with mobs it would only hit 5 or 6 targets with the proccs. These targets did take a big amount of damage that is true. I am a little bit slot starved in this build so using burn would probably lead to me loosing something for it. I really don't know what to do with burn. I have played a lot of melee and these powerfull small range AoE are more common in melee builds. maybe i will leave it to melee ATs in my grp to do that job.

Shadow Meld is a great Power but it has 3 seconds activation time and is not allways needed. With Bio you have allready 3 clicks and hasten and shadowmeld. Maybe just click on some attacks in the meantime? Also i try to make my builds without incarnates first. If it is not possible then i start looking at them. Here is my take on SM/Bio:

Hi Blaster friends, i wanted to make myself a new Blaster and since i had no Fire/Fire, i just want to roll one. I have not much experience with Blasters so if you find anything wrong in my build feel free to tell me. I would like to play that toon mostly in groups and will not attempt to solo much. Maybe i have made it too tanky for a blaster. I skiped Hot Feet for example, is it good or bad? Some feedback would be nice!

A very good way to play solo and still get good inf is the sister psyche story arch in ouroboros. You can set it to super easy mode and get up to 50 merits per hour. There is a whole guide about it. I did not reach the 50 merits but also i use jetpacks for travel in lower levels. So that might be the reason. Looking at your two Stalkers i would rank the StJ/SR higher but it is a late bloomer, because you need all the powers. The other Stalker could turn out to be easier while leveling, because you get a good selfheal. Just remember to buy any kind of knockback protection IO.

Always put the Hide proc into Assassin's Strike. Also try Option->Configuration->Effects and Math-> Check "Attacked" This way you will see the real numbers in a fight.

This is one of the best things i have seen in a while! I am totally in for it but i do not have a group for it. Does someone need another player?

There is another Adaption than Offensive? (Just kidding) If you use DNA Siphon and Parasitic Aura on Cooldown, you will have no Problems with Endurance. A lot of /Bio users never change from offensive. I did see your build and took it as a challenge to get you some "Tough as Nails" results with the same powers that you choose. I could not resist to switch Mu Bolts to Zapp and make it usable and also i droped Assault for Haste. Everything else even the levels when you pick the powers are left the same as your post. Just changed slots and sets. The Incarnates are just a suggestion but i would like to point out that the Ageless radial has DDR which is nonexistent in Bio and therefore somewhat usefull. If you want to stay in Eff Adaption no matter what you will be at S/L resist cap. So i would call it tough. Here are some facts: 45% def to S/L/F/C/E/N 44% to melee. 69% S/L resist in offensive adaption. DNA Siphon/Ablative Carpace and Hasten are at near perma levels. perma with ageless.