Kaika

Oh I didn't mean to imply it wasn't useful, sorry if it came off that way, more that I found the knock up more constantly useful, while the sleep tends to be more situational.

Like I said, it a issue with how the info is being displayed in game It's listing the controller critical damage, as the base damage

Well for one, less accuracy isn't really a big deal past the early level It's only takes 0.2 seconds longer to animate and it more then makes up for that in damage coming out to about 15% more DPS. They both have 6 second recharge, so I'm not sure where you are getting that from. And the 1ish endurance cost difference is fairly trivial. On top of that, levitate causes knock up, which is consistently reliable in most situations. While Mesmerize causes sleep, which falls off the moment you join a team or deal any AoE damage. The real issue here seems to be that that powers info is showing the controller "critical control" damage as always being a thing. This effects all controller powers and makes them deal double damage to enemies already controlled, this effects both levitate and mesmerize, but mesmerizer's info is listing it in it's overall damage numbers (even on dominator which does not get this), basically making them power look like it deals double the damage it actually deals. This is a fairly common issue among alot of sets, in reality mesmerize is dealing half the damage it shows in the info.

I hate to say this, but the fact you see that as a "flex" for the set is downright adorable, even on SOs, around that level just about any melee should be capable of that. To add to that, saying that tough and weave were never "intended" for scrappers to use is baffling considering they have been in the game since day one, and were even common back in the day. As someone who does not consider my character complete till they can comfortably solo most groups at 4x8, saying 95% is from outside their secondary is absolutely ridiculous, or else secondary choice would barely matter. For sure, they all can reach that 4x8 point, but they go about it in different ways and have different strengths and weaknesses, this wouldn't be the case if it was just IOs, and Barrier doing all the work. If that was even remotely the case wouldn't that make regen better then the rest, as it's "more powerful" without outside mitigation. Regen being considered bad isn't a new thing, it's been considered that ways since IH got nerfed effectively, long before IOs and incarnates. To say "a small vocal minority of players" are calling it bad is just incorrect, even most people who defend the set know it's a pretty unpopular opinion, and it has been for a fairly long time.

As someone who has played since "Issue 0" I can assure you that this game never "needed" a holy trinity on teams. Many players just thought they did. Early on players were understandably considerably worse at the game, there was nothing quite like CoH, and they didn't have nearly the info that we have today. In these early days players turned too emps in particular as it was very easy to understand compared to the other support sets and other games had taught them that "healing is needed". For sure players could understand that a force field bubble reduces damage, but not by how much or how it even did it. Comparatively Empathy was very easy to understand, you get a big green number and your HP goes up by that number. One of my oldest memory of this game was playing a FF/dark def, slotted for def and -to-hit. From the moment I would join teams they would simply stop taking damage, as nothing was even hitting them, this would almost inevitably lead to someone telling the emp on the team, who hasn't had anything to heal since I joined "GREAT HEALS!", and it was one of the most eye opening experiences I had in this game. I'm sure I'm not the only one with this experience, once I realized "healers" weren't really needed, I started running my own teams and experimenting with non "standard" team comps. No tank? No problem! 8 blasters? Everything is dead before they get a chance to hurt you. 8 Defenders? Literally the smoothest team in existence. Just about every comp I could think of worked, an over abundance of one strength could easily cover for the lack of another. Sure you would sometimes need to adjust play style, but you could make basically everything work and even well. My point is the perception that you needed the "Holy trinity" was not true, but was simply a popular misconception back in those days due to most players haveing little understanding how how the game functioned and sticking to what they understood. Some of the best teams I was ever on back in those days, lacked a tank and a healer. Keep in mind these were the days of a single fire tanker, herding entire maps into a dumpster and burning the whole map at one time, seriously if you think AE farms are bad, image that with no target/aggro cap. There was alot of broken stuff back then, it's one of the reasons why there were such massive waves of nerfs and they had to revamp the entire enhancement system. Look I'm not gonna pretend like the game hasn't gotten easier, because it has, but the game as it was on release wouldn't have lasted this long and become beloved enough that the player base still keeps it alive after it was shut down, without changes. Over the years the game started to lean more into it's unique aspects and power fantasy, and while it did lead to the game becoming a easier, I think it was a good choice, even if they over did it a bit. In just about any other game of it's a era, a healer, tank and DPS can crawl methodically through a dungeon, but CoH was the only game were you can throw a team of DPS at a army of enemies, with the strategy of "blow them up before they blow us up" and it would work, and it's a major part of the reason I love this game so much.

Just to clarify a bit here, this isn't that big of a deal for the 1.67 AS sets. For sure it holds fire melee back a bit but the set makes up for it due to how good GFS and cremate are, and access to -def to slot for -res, on my main I can still get a plyon time of around 90 seconds and I'm built for generalist/AoE play, I would even say it's arguably top teir, though definitely arguably(the bottom of top at best). Two other sets have the same issue, Ice melee, which everyone will likely agree is in contention for best stalker set, and BS which is not really great, but for alot of reason, a bad AS only being one of them. For sure it's not good, but if either Ice or Fire had it, they would likely be the best stalker set in the game, and by a decent margin(ice more then fire), BS though really does not need it. I think this still speaks to the raw power of AS though, where even the worst ones are good enough to not really bring down the sets that much. A better example of how important AS is would be Kinetic Melee, which has the best AS in the game, at a lightning 0.67 seconds, which (along with 100% crit from hide in burst) elevates the set to a pretty solid level. For comparison on the other melee ATs Kin melee is almost unarguably the worst melee set, and by a decent margin. Stalker getting Build up does help here but the ridiculously fast AS is what puts this set on the map. To add to this as well, DPS wise Assassin's strike outside of hide > Assassin's strike in hide, and that's before we factor in crit chance via Assassin's focus procs. Basically this means that you would really only use AS from hide as a initiation burst option, or in order to use the AoE fear. For this reason, and since you are basically gonna be hitting this on CD due to it's High DPS, the hide proc is almost always placed here. I think the only attack in the game that realistically contest with AS is Fast Energy transfer, and that power is basically the entire reason Energy melee is so good.

Thanks for tallying it, glad to see my hunch was right about it using scrapper numbers, good call on checking it outside of hide, definitely something wrong with how its handling hide

So I popped on the test server to test out stalker stone melee and in particular to find out how the power "Fault" functions, since it's a a rather odd one and I noticed it's not getting a 50% crit chance out of hide. I spent about 20 mins running around PP and tossing it out on various groups of hellions and most uses out of hide did not even produce a single crit. Now mind you I'm aware that some powers do not crit at all but this is not one of them as I very rarely did get a crit on one or two enemys. While I can't say for sure, as I didn't tally up the hits vs crits to get a rough percentage, I suspect it may be using scrappers lower base crit chance as well, as it seemed quite a bit lower then what I'm use to seeing on stalker. Whats odd to me is that in the info it does show. "50.00% chance for 85.76 smashing damage on target Only if hidden or target placated" But this does not seem to be functioning at the moment.

While I appreciate the clarification here, I still don't see it being as worth it outside of specific builds. I usually play a AoE stalker at a break neck speed, playing well ahead of my team, and I don't tend to have the re-hide issues. Sure I can't punch something in the face from 60 Ft away, but I can throw a ball of lighting at them from farther. This is definitely a nuanced topic, and can vary depending on how/what you are building, which is why I think people tend to be in disagreement about it. But all this is kinda talking around the elephant in the room here when talking about placate from a damage perspective, the Stalker's Guile ATO. The stalker ATO basically makes assassin's strike(or whatever you decide to put it in) function as a better placate (from a DPS perspective), since now you have a power that deals damage and also functions as placate (though at about a 85% to 95% rate). This means that you can, without placate, already hit your most effective AoE from hide with decent consistency without need for placate itself, on a shorter cool-down even. I want to restate that I don't think placate is a bad power, but I think people either under or over rate it. One thing I do wanna say is that, on SOs, it is 100% a amazing power that everyone should take, but I think the waters in particular get very muddy when building out with IOs. I'm glad we seem to be on the same page with single target though. Now back to the Topic at hand, in particular I don't think placate is really an amazing pick for a Ele/Sr/Mu, due to it not really effecting any of the powers you would want to use it with. Lightning rod does not interact with hide as a mechanic, and Chain induction does not crit on anything besides the first hit. This leaves Thunder Strike, Ball lightning, and Jacobs ladder that meaningfully interact with placate, and I don't really see it being worth it with any of them. Ball Lightning is a quick, high DPS, power that has alot of value for the amount of damage it deals so quickly, but its raw damage isn't that high The power is only 0.2 slower then placate itself, making this not really a great candidate for using placate with. Jacobs Ladder is a tiny 50 degree arc cone, that you most likely are only gonna be hitting around 3 targets with if even, with a cap of 5. It's raw damage is better then ball lightning, but not by much, and it's hampered by its tiny cone and target cap. Thunder Strike is definitely the best candidate for placate here, but due to it's nature as a hybrid St/AoE power it does not hit particularly hard from either angle, the example you gave before in power crash deals twice the raw damage of thunderstrike's AoE component, making it half as good when looking at using it with placate. I want to reiterate, that when looking at these from a DPS perspective you can replace placate with Stalker's guile in Assassin's strike for roughly the same effect, diminishing it's use in the build even further. If you want to recommended it from a utility angle, by all means, it still has value there, but looking at it as a DPS tool, particularly if we are involving the ATOs, and in regards to their chosen powersets I personally can't recommend it beyond utility.

Nothing really to underestimate here, Ice melee is one of the best power sets stalker has available, arguably the best. As for chilling embrace it's suppressed when hidden, so it shouldn't interfere with the hide mechanic. Even if it did, Stalkers are very scrappy these days so it really wouldn't be a huge issue, but that shouldn't be the case.

I hate to say this, but on large teams is where placate is at it's worst. Stalker AoEs only have a 50% crit chance from hide, which sounds like a good trade off on paper, but you have to remember that stalkers crit outside of hide. Base crit chance raises with every member of your team, starting at 10% and gaining 3% for every team member, capping out at 31% on a full team. This means that in AoE placate is only offering you an extra 19% crit chance on a full team, not a 50% one which most people seem to presume. This does neatly translate into a average 19% more damage (assuming no procs). Placate also isn't free, it takes roughly 0.8 seconds to animate, which is time you could be spending just punching someone in the face for more damage then the place would give, even in AoE. I'm not sure stalkers even have any AoE that comes close to making it decent in terms of DPA. If you are really desperate for AoE it could maybe be worth it, but that is especially not the case for ele, which has plenty to choose from. It's not a bad power by any stretch, but more in terms of utility, with some extra bonus damage, being able to "turn off" enemies has plenty of uses.

Primary- Savage though this is more theoretical for me since I haven't actually played the set on stalker, the large amount of good AoE, gives it good mobbing tools along with easy access to build up reset via the ATO, along with solid single target options really looks like this one is currently being slept on. Though I feel like Ice, EM, Fire, and DB are all situationaly better, and could easily be argued for this spot. Honestly I feel like this is the hardest spot to pick a definite "best" awnser, as they tend to all excel in slightly differing situations. ---------------------------------------- Secondary- Rad I've been trying to make a case for rad being extremely underrated lately and I'll make it here again. I think people really seem to dismiss Rad due to it being a res set, but to do so is to ignore everything else it has to offer, as rad is arguably the best offensive set in the game for stalker IMO. Radiation therapy when procced out becomes a absolute nuke of a power, effortlessly hitting the target cap, while still offering sustainability in both end and HP. It does enough damage to be worth using in single target, let alone AoE, and provides another outlet to basically guarantee a build reset Via the ATO. Seriously I don't think alot of people realize just how silly you can get when having multiple large AoEs capable of all but guaranteeing Build up reset procs as, as long as it isn't a chain or pesudo pet (most teleport attacks), the chance seems to be ON HIT, not on use. On that note, rad also comes with a massive 30 TARGET CAP AoE, which can also be procc bombed if you like, and also is effectively a build up reset 95% of the time. Remember this is on top of any AoEs in you primary, it can lead to a Build up between every attack, and those stack. On my fire/rad its not only possible, but common I reach the damage when fighting x8 mobs SOLO, and even stay there for a while. "But stalker is a single target AT" you may say, and you will be glad to hear that Rad is ALSO good at that as well. While it may not be as good as Bio or Stone on that front, with their bonus damage proccs, it certainly does not fall behind. As mentioned earlier Radiation Therapy, when fully procced, hits hard enough to be used as a single target attack, but more importantly, also inflicts a decent bit of -regen, which is very valuable when dealing with AVs or GM. If that's not enough Meltdown provides 30% damage on a 50% uptime, which isn't massive but its still really nice to have. For sure I think it falls behind bio and stone here, but only by a small amount. "What worth is this if you're dead" I hear the theoretical representation of "you" ask, and I'm glad "you" asked. For one, rad is not really just a "Res" set, its more of a hybrid set, with it's Absorbs, regen, and self healing, while also being able to capp just about all resistances. It's lack of def can be made up via IOs, on my Fire/Rad I was able to cap all res but negative and psychic (both around the 40s) while also having my Smashing/lethal and melee def at 45%+ and most others at least in the 30% range, and this is without things like shadow meld, which I honestly avoid. For sure -def can still be a issue, but that is for most secondary and rad has many powerful tools to fall back on in that situation, and can snugly fit barrier into their incarnate line up to stop any -def build up in its tracks. Lets talk about end for a second, something that alot of stalkers struggle with due to very high overall cost and quick attacks. Rad is quite possibly the best secondary for end management, outside of Bio in hybrid adaptation (which is sub-optimal). You basically are running anywhere from 5-8 "Staminas" worth of +recovery at a time with Gamma Boost (worth 4-1) particle shielding (2 and effortlessly perma) and Meltdown (1 up 50% of the time), on top of Radiation Therapy giving at least 2.5 per hit. It can yoyo a bit with meltdown having a 50% end crash, but with active use of your tools, and some built in end drain res, this is rarely a real issue. This can help open up builds and incarnates quite a bit, as they are often used to cover for end issues I find. ---------------------- Epic: Mu Mu has two powers that are just hard to beat for both usage and accessibility: Zapp and Ball Lightning. Zapp is a snipe, which can be a extremely powerful and versatile tool in any stalkers line up, and can even turn around the single target of entire sets with just its presence. It's often used in high end builds as a main part of the attack chain, and sometimes the hide proc follow up due to its heavy damage. Even if you don't need it to fill out your attack chain it also has value just as a powerful ranged option or as a long range pulling/initiation tool. Ball lighting is honestly one of the best AoEs stalker has available, period. It's DPA rivals fire ball but is obtainable much easier and with lower power investment, as I mention when talking about Rad, this power also is VERY GOOD for resetting Build up and skyrocketing your +DMG to the moon. Now I would say fire and even weapons mastery are all just about as good, depending on the build. Fire can be better if the power investment isn't a issue and even comes with a -res, and weapons can be very good for those builds that can also stand the investment but could use more endurance management. Both of these also come with just as powerful AoEs in Fire Ball and Exploding Shurikan, but I think Mu wins out just due to the shear accessibility and power of both options most would take, making it a good option in almost any build.

I definitely second the Mu pick, it both fits thematically, and offers another solid single target option, which Ele melee can very much use, and an extremely powerful AoE in Ball Lightning. On top of amazing DPA, Ball lightning also really works well with the build up reset ATO, almost guaranteeing a reset if you hit the target cap, which is trivial with its large radius. Paired with Ele melee's already solid AoE line up, it can turn you into a AoE powerhouse that can make even blasters a bit jealous, while still having a stalkers single target mastery.

You're reading too much into it again, I was simply stating that your opinion is a "hot take" and that you would find alot of push back. I was not trying to deny your opinion just challenge it. You gave your opinion of " I have been against Stalkers having AoE since day one and believe AoE goes completely against the concept of Stalkers." and I was simply stating why I disagreed, explaining my reasoning and why a statement like that would lead to this kinda disagreement with most stalker players active right now. You have every right to have that opinion, but I also have every right to challenge it. Look I can take the blame for not letting that statement go and pressing on it. Anyways I do agree we should drop this, it's clearly going nowhere.

You're reading too much into that line. I meant this forum is mostly populated by those who enjoy the AT in it current iteration, and you are walking in here with statements like "Now the class is beyond putting it right" to the people who currently enjoy it. You'll also have to forgive me if pulling the "I've been at this for so long" line doesn't really work on me, as I've been playing this game since release. Look while I don't know what you've been through, you don't know what I have, because I did the same stuff. I'm not denying your past experience, I just don't agree with your conclusion, and I think you'll find most here do not, and that was what I was saying with that statement. I'm not blowing your off, you just haven't convinced me, and you're talking as if this is already a agree upon conclusion, based on some vague former "play-style" that you haven't elaborated on. "Trust me I used to be really good and people complimented me all the time" Really isn't a convincing argument in my book, specially from someone who also used to get similar compliment about being "the only decent stalker" they've seen. You said "Devs do what Devs do and us players have to make sense of it all", but you know it isn't that hard to come to the conclusion of why the developers would give MASSIVE rework that changes the entire play-style of a class, and that pretty massively buffs them. It's because they felt it was under preforming, and didn't fit the game as it was played, and this was the best way they could find fix it given the current mechanics of the game. You don't make a change that drastic because the class was misunderstood, you do it because there was a fundamental problem with the design. A rework of that scale take alot of time, effort, and money and risks making things worse by alienating the players who enjoyed it old implementation, as you can attest too. Its not something you do lightly and without good research. While I don't have hard data, from my experience over my 19 years of playing this game, it was a good call, stalker seem more popular these days then they ever were and yes I might have said "Popularity isn't a sign of good design" but a change in popularity can be rather telling. Look I'm not upset either, honestly I rather enjoy having these kind of debates oddly enough, a trait not shared with others and a reason I haven't been extremely active on the forums over the years. I'm not trying to say you are wrong for enjoying stalkers old iteration, just that I don't agree with you that, to paraphrase "the class went down the wrong path". We are still the kings of single target, we can still delete bosses faster then any other AT in the game, we can also just do more beyond just single target burst, and aren't limited to basically just that anymore. Tanks can do more then just take damage, Blasters can do more then AoE, Defenders can do more then support, and now stalker can do more then just single target, but all these ATs are still the king in their specific fields. If you feel that your play style was lost and you don't enjoy the AT as much anymore then I genuinely feel for you, I just don't agree that it was a bad change.

While I'm not particularly experienced in ele melee, some general stalker tips. 1: you do not need to be hidden to use Assassin's Shock, infact the power is the strongest single target power you have access too even out of hide, and has a mechanic where each attack gives you a stack of Assassin's Focus which gives assassin's shock a 33% chance to crit with each stack, when there is a orange outline around it, it means it has 100% chance to crit, this is better then trying to placate into long activation Assassin's strike. 2: Starting the fight with Assassin's Shock on the biggest target is a very good idea though, as it gives a AoE Fear to all enemies around you, which can keep them off your back for a while and also can just delete the target. 3: Build up is your friend, before you use Assassin's Shock from hide, as Assassin's Shock from hide with BU can basically just delete the HP bar of even bosses, or at the very least bring them really close. otherwise though it should be used on cool-down in combat, or at least before you use a crit AS 2: While SR is a amazing set, its pretty weak at lower levels due to having massive holes in your defenses till you get most of the powers. It WILL get better 4: if you have the Money look into getting the Stalker ATO sets, or at least the procs from them. Once gives a chance to rehide to a attack, which fits nicely into Assassin's shock to guarantee the follow up crits. The other makes it so ALL attack powers have a chance to instantly recharge Build up, this chance is ON HIT rather then on power use and can cause your damage to snowball very fast. Unfortunately it does not play well with Electrics AoEs due to them being weird (A Pseudo pet and a Chain) but it's still very worth having if you can afford it. (though feel free to correct me if I'm wrong here, it still works just only like a single target power if I recall) As for the intricacies of Ele melee specifically I'll leave that for others with more experience with the set

Popularity isn't a sign of good design, specially not in a game like this. From my experience most players pick power set based on their character concept first and how the set plays second. Folk come to stalker usually because they want to make a "Ninja" of some sort, as it's the most popular trope for a stealth character, Ninja blade being the obvious choice. There is a reason the guide pinned to the top of this forum is called "More then a Ninja". It's also not a particularly awful set, just not great, there are plenty worse like MA which lacks any AoE at all. Anyways while it's a rather bold choice talking about how wrong the path this class has taken in the forum populated by people who are dedicated to it, I'll just agree to disagree on this one and take the blame for starting this, we are wildly off topic at this point.

Not sure what you're getting at here as wanting stalkers to focus solely on single target damage literally makes them a one trick pony. Sure deleting a high prio boss is nice, but this is something scrapper and blaster could already do almost as well and even better on more maneuverable targets or super beefy ones, all while being able to do much MUCH more. I played stalker back in those days, I never focused on hit and run, and never had any issue with survivability, for sure I agree with you that most people played it rather poorly, and honestly most still do. No matter what I did back then I found them much less effective then a scrapper, for sure stalkers single target burst was higher, but scrapper could deal as much, if not more over longer periods of time, control aggro, and deal solid AoE. I find it odd, how you're OK with Ele having AoE, but not the more modern sets for some reason, not sure why that's a exception for you. I'm not sure why you're opposed to the AT having more AoE when the example you are giving of a class good in AoE, also Excels rather well in single target damage, especially in burst even.

Yeah that was likely the case, back in the "Pack everyone in the dumpster and burn" days of CoH

If stalkers didn't have AoE they would be by far the worst AT in the game... and they kinda were back in the day. Even back before IO's and incarnates stalkers just kinda didn't realistically work on most larger teams. There is a reason this AT used to be the least played non EAT in the game. Scrappers, blaster, Corrs and even brutes can dish out some serious single target damage, even enough to keep fairly close with stalker in this day and age, and back then scrappers were flat out better. While Having a AT that only really deals in single target sounds great on paper, it does not really work in a game where there is about 16 enemies in most groups, without adding a EB or a AV to most spawns, and even then you would need to nerf the single target of every other AT to give them real value.

As someone who's first 50 was a Katana scrapper back in like Issue 2 or something, I can confirm that, no, it did not, it's always had a absolutely tiny cone and range. As other have pointed out it is really nice as a way to proc -res from Gladiators Fury, and can fairly consistently land on 2 targets solo. I don't think the power itself needs a buff as its a VERY good power, I feel the issue comes more from Ninja blades lack of Lotus Drops, making its only AoE a admittedly nice cone, that's very held back by its target cap. Like alot of the early stalker sets, it drops a AoE, which really holds it back in today CoH. Considering how long this set has been in the game, I don't think bring Lotus drops back is a viable option though. Honestly I think a better way to go about this would be to give Flashing steal the Power Crash treatment that EM stalkers get, increasing its target cap, and maybe range slightly, to give the set a bit better AoE presence. No need to mess with Golden Dragonfly

While the amount of data you have gathered here is stagger I'm not entirely sure about all the rotations listed here. For example a optimal Dual blades stalker shouldn't have vengeful Slice in their build as the DPA is atrocious, the Rotation in general goes BU(when up)>AB>AS>SS>AS This not only skips any powers with poor DPA but also lets you utilize the sweeping strikes combo, and make sure you have good uptime on achilies heel. You could probably place Zapp right before AS as it does not break the combo but I never felt the need for it myself as it delays AS, which has a extremely high DPA even without criting. With how you are doing thing here you might not be able to meet this requirement for this rotation as you aren't slotting the powers for any recharge. I suppose this may have been done in the sake of keeping everything somewhat standard but in this case it's likely hampering the performance of the set. Sorry I'm aware you mentioned you aren't a expert on all the rotations and I don't wanna be hard on you for that but I felt it needed to be said as people are already linking and quoting this

Well since this post has been bumped I want to make a argument about something that has been bugging me for a while about this tier list, I have some small gripes about the positioning of some power sets but one has been bugging me quite a bit. Rad Armor should be A tier It seems to get put into C teir just due to the fact that "It's a resistance based set" but I don't think that's fair to this set at all. First of all Stalker is a DPS focused class, and while dead DPS deal no damage, it should really not be your first priority when judging a secondary, Rad has MASSIVE offensive benefits that really are not being accounted for in this tier list, which seems more important to me for a AT specializing in damage. Even ignoring that, Rad is a VERY survivable set on stalker, its not JUST resistance, it's also alot of Absorb, and regen, and you can reach S/L def caps with IOs giving it EXTREMELY high survivability. But too be more direct to the point of why I think Rad armor is a A tier set is how much AoE damage it can add to character, and how that AoE can allow the BU reset proc to shoot you to the damage cap while solo. Radiation therapy, if proced out, hits hard enough to be a DPS gain on single target, let alone at it's target cap, which is VERY easy to hit due to it's massive 15 yard range. Ground Zero Just adds to this, and while it's DPA isn't anything to write home about it's massive 30 target cap IS. Which brings us to what I think truly makes this set shine, "Assassin's Mark: Chance for build up", while I don't entirely know how the math works, the chance for it too proc is magnified with the amount of targets hit, meaning AoEs like ground zero and radiation therapy proc it almost everytime they are used in larger groups. This can legitimately and fairly regularly bring you to DPS cap in normal content solo. That's not even going to the utility of things like meltdown, which normally caps your Resistance to everything 50% of the time, or the fact that rad is one of the few stalker sets with a massive amount of +recovery in things like gamma boost and particle shielding, making it one of the only stalker sets that has little to no endurance issues. Oh and it also has a decent bit of -regen in Radiation therapy just in-case you needed more reason. While I find most of the other residence of the secondary C tier belong there, in my experience radiation armor is up there with Bio and often better in most average missions just due to it's AoE presence.

I'm talking "Meta" in terms of organized speed run groups, your normally don't see them recruiting outside their own groups, but it does happen on occasion. The ones who generally recruit publicly are usually more balanced in team comps since you have a bigger variety in skill levels, whats available and what people want to bring. Due to the absurd amount of buffs/debuffs/heals meta groups bring (usually 7 corruptors) you really don't need a tanks survivability, and a skilled scrappers can mange aggro very well, though with this setup they hardly need too since everyone is capped in just about every survival stat, it's usually more to manage positioning and for the harder hitting AVs. Taking a step back from optimal speed run play and things open up alot, if someone else for example is handling aggro and the team is a bit more spread out in terms of roles stalker becomes quite a bit better since it can manage its damage and survivabilty very well on its' own, not to mention having some of the best single target in the game. In terms of what sets to use, I have to agree with everyone saying ice, particularly for Aeon since I think they are weak too it, though just about any other good set like energy could do really well. Honestly as long as you avoid the weaker sets and probably bring something with at least a OK AoE you should be fine with most primarys. Secondary I would say Bio, Shield, rad, SR, or stone would be your best bet. Bio is one of the best offensive sets in the game, adding alot of extra damage in the form of procs, which work well with a Kin and has a abundance of absorbs and Regen which work nicely with the barrier spam just about every 4* group is running. Shield is good for grant cover giving Def debuff protection, and more def, shield charge and the +DMG is also very nice. SR is basically immune to Def debuff which can be VERY handy, and comes with some nice recharge. Rad comes with two powerful AoEs which can both reset BU if you don't have a kin or missed FS, and Absorbs and regen like Bio. Stone, like Bio has 100% procs that can add alot of damage, on top of capped HP and good regen. Again though, most sets would work fine, but in terms of 4*, but if building for it I would focus on sets with good offensive benefits, as your group will likely cap you on most defensive stats through barriers and buffs.

I feel like MMs comes in two flavors "Set pets to aggressive, put someone on follow and watch a movie" or " So much micro that your APM leaves top Starcraft players in the dust" and there is like no in between.