guide More than just a Ninja - A Guide to Stalkers

[Croax]

Hi @Coyote,

thank you for your insight on the different possibilities with AoE on the Stalker secondaries.

 

I have come to the conclusion that a lot of people like you do like procs. While on ATs like Defenders with low damage multipliers it is a good way to boost your damage, it is not a good idea to go that far on a stalker. I do not wipe off every proc from the beginning, but don't go wild on them in a PVE build. 

 

You have forgotten Shield Defenses Shield Charge? It is the best AoE in the Stalker secondaries.

 

To the Powers that you postet, i would just agree on Ground Zero to be a good addition to your AoE damage. Every other skill has some sort of Damage added to it, but damage is not the main focus of that skill, it is just a nice damage icing on the cake of endurance/heal/debuff/whatever.

The number you are posting should be taken with a grain of salt, because the damage proc you put into these powers can only apply to one target. If you use these attacks you would want to hit a lot of targets with, for obvious reasons of course.

 

For example 220 Damage consume is composed of 3 damage procs for ~50 and base damage of 70? for a total of 220. If you hit everyone with ~70 damage and hit 3 of them with ~50 damage, i would not burst out in joyfull tears. And in a single target situation you would not want to hit consume, except you are desperately needing endurance and have no blue inspiration. Well maybe you would go and hit it anyway because you get the recover bonus and at least some endurance. But now i am loosing my focus on the topic:

 

Proc are godly on Defenders, tanks and other low dps ATs, but just a little addition on a stalker, if you know what you are doing.

 

To point out that these attacks also slot PBAoE sets goes into a deep theorycrafting zone that is worth his own guide. I didn't want to cover that here where i focus on the Stalker.

[Coyote]

Thanks, and you do have a point about whether the idea of damage from procs is warranted in a Stalker discussion. I do feel that it's warranted, since I used it to consider whether a Stalker with a particular secondary will have enough AoE, or be limited to mostly single-target damage. I think it will inform some players who may or may not have been considering some sets.

 

Shield Charge is great, and works great with procs. I didn't mention it, because the other powers are fundamentally changed from non-damaging to AoE damage powers, while Shield Charge doesn't have its fundamental use changed.

 

As for the damage numbers, those were the average numbers, per target, using the chance to proc for each IO based on the power's Recharge and AoE factor. So Consume would average 220 per target... which isn't bad for an AoE with good recharge, but rather poor for one with such a long recharge. It's actually why I really cared about the lifedrain heals that are on a 90 second timer or better, because those can be used every fight. Also, depending on the size of the spawns, slotting for more Heal may be irrelevant as you cap out the heals with just 3-4 targets for some of them, and so spare slots are available for adding damage.

[Croax]

2 hours ago, Coyote said:

Consume would average 220 per target.

I will test this out on the beta server some time.

 

What are the enhancements needed, 3-4 dam proc and rest acc/dam?

 

I would like to try out this on a bio and rad as well, because if it is like that, i may have missed out on some good AoE opportunitys.

[Croax]

Ok, i just had the time to test this out aaaaaaand.......

 

@Coyote is absolutely right. I used a PSI/Bio to test and slotted DNA siphon with 4 dam proc and 2 slots for Acc/Damm.

Every Target has his own chance of the procs so i would hit some targets with all 4 procs and some wit 1 or 2.

But the point of turning a utility power into a reasonable AoE is true!

 

The downside of this would be that you have to invest in a lot of slots, which makes it a bit harder to reach some other build goals like defense or resist caps. And since you go down the proc route you would like to use every global recharge you can get your hand on. So build wise this is for experts only or for copying someone elses build. It is definitly not for beginners.

[KelvinKole]

Agreed. I usually find it hard to sacrifice the set bonuses you could get from that many slots in one power, to accommodate the damage procs. To make the approach really worthwhile, you're targeting 3+ damage procs and then 3- supporting slots in that power, and trying to avoid recharge enhancement. That's a missed opportunity for a 6 piece set bonus, or 4+2, or whatever. It can work really well in the right place, there's just a definite give and take. 

 

 

Edited December 7, 2019 by KelvinKole

[00Troy00]

On 10/1/2019 at 10:12 AM, Croax said:

Secondaries

 

The Stalker Secondaries are all Powersets based on improving your survivability. All of them have Hide as the starting Power leaving you no big choice. Before we get startet with the various sets i wanted to make clear that survivability for a Stalker can be achieved on mainly three ways.

 

• Defense

• Resistance

• Healing

 

Defense

Defense determines if the enemy is going to hit you at all. Enemys have a chance of 50% to hit you. By increasing your Defense you can lower that chance to hit you. But no matter what you do, they will allways have a 5% chance to land a hit. Therefore you will need 45% Defense to get the maximum result. You will notice that the game is more complex but let's just say you would want 45% Defense.

 

All Attacks in this game are either melee, ranged or area . Also all damage dealing attacks have a damage type like Smashing, Lethal, Cold, Fire and so on. The game allways checks for the highest relevant damage type. Let's take a look at an example:

 

Some Enemy shoots you with his Energy Blast. This is a Ranged Attack that will deal smashing and energy damage. Now the game checks your Range, Smashing and Energy Defense. The highest one would be the one which is taken to see if the enemy has hit you.

 

Resistance

After you have been hit, you will take damage. Your Resiatances help you to reduce that damage. Every Energy Type is checked seperately. This means if you get hit by a attack that deals smashing and energy damage, the smashing part will be reduced by your smashing resistance while your energy resistance reduces the energy part of that attack.

Stalkers have a resistance cap of 75%, which means that no matter how much resistance of a single type you stack, you can not have more than 75% of it.

 

Healing

Now you have been hit, you took the damage and want to go back to full life. That is possible in quite a few ways, like having a great buff on regeneration or using a power which will restore some of your health. There are even Primaries which will give you health back on a successful attack.

 

 

Rating the Secondaries

After we have covered a basic understanding of survivability i will go over the various secondaries. This time i will rate it on the three aspects of survivability with a simple rating:

 

None: This Secondary does not cover this part of survivability.

Some: This Secondary covers some aspect of it, but has holes or the numbers are not high enough to make a difference.

Good: This Secondary is all about this aspect of Survivability.

 

But keep in Mind that every of these aspects can be patched with sufficient IO builds and Incarnares in Endgame settings. Also every Secondary has good enough mez protection even if you will have to use some unique IOs to cover very specific holes. You can not do anything terribly wrong with any of the secondaries.

 

Bio Armor:

Defense: Some

Resistance: Some

Healing: Good

Bio Armor is a hybrid Set with something from everything and very good selfheals. It comes with some bonus to damage and other offensive buffs if you are in the offensive adaption. It is a busy set that will want you to click its powers. But it is also one of the better Secondaries.

 

Dark Armor:

Defense: None

Resistance: Good

Healing: Some

Dark Armor has a lot of toggles and is very endurance hungry but makes up for it with good resistances and a selfheal that will keep you going in crowds but will let you down against single hard enemys like arch villains.

 

Electric Armor:

Defense: None

Resistance: Good

Healing: Some

Electric Armor is one of the very few Secondaries that gives you endurance in form of a hefty endurance discount that can be made permanent and a endurance 'steal' from enemys surounding you. Additionally you get a +recharge reduction which is allways nice. Electric Armor is actually in a good shape.

 

Energy Aura:

Defense: Good

Resistance: Some

Healing: Some

Energy Aura has the same endurance discount and recovery options like electric armor but trades in a lot of the resistances for defenses. Energy Aura does grant good defenses against a lot of damage types but not psionics. If you can ignore or patch this single hole, than you have got one of the best defense sets available for Stalkers. Also it gets recharge reduction, which helps to kill stuff faster.

 

Fiery Aura

Defense: None

Resistance: Good

Healing: Some

Unfortunately you don't get the second build up like other ATs. And the damage toggle is now a bad healing toggle. Overall the set is still ok but is nothing to be impressed with. You will have to manage your health bar, endurance bar and still kill stuff. For a secondary that keeps you busy i didn't feel like getting a lot out of it.

 

Ice Armor:

Defense: Good

Resistance: Some

Healing: None

Ice Armor has some good Defenses to several types of damage and resistances to the ones it has low defenses. Like many other Secondaries you have nothing against psi and almost no healing powers. You get an increase in health which increases the survivability and regeneration in its own way and comes with some more debuffs to protect you. Also you have the T9 which will be up roughly half of the time, which is great. With Ice Armor you get a little bit of everything but have to click a little bit for it. It offers no offensive options.

 

Invulnerability:

Defense: Good

Resistance: Good

Healing: None

Beeing one of the best perceived secondaries across all ATs, invulnerability lives up to his name. With high defenses and very good resistances, you will find no Power skippable and the whole set is quite heavy on endurance. You can get good survivability with little investment out of this set. But be aware that you don't get much offensive out of invulnerability.

 

Ninjitsu:

Defense: Good

Resistance: None

Healing: Some

This is probably the most picked Secondary for Stalkers. Ninjitsu is one of the few Powersets that offer positional Defenses. It is quite easy to reach range, melee AND Aoe Defense caps. You will not get hit, and if you get hit you have a excellent fast recharging clickheal for half your health bar. Ninjitsu has a lot of utility powers that also add to your survivability and can be completely dropped in a endgame build if you want do dive into power pools or epics. You need only 5 powers out of this set and can skip up to 4 of the others. Ninjitsu is one of the best Stalker Secondaries.

 

Radiation Armor:

Defense: None

Resistance: Good

Healing: Good

Here we have one of the newer powersets. You get some endurance recovery, regeneration, heals, absorb, AoE Damage, Debuffs and a T9 without a horrible crash. All on top of some weardly distributed resistances across all damage types. I consider Radiation Armor to be one of the best Secondaries across all ATs. But as it is with Bio Armor, you will have to click a lot.

 

Regeneration:

Defense: None

Resistance: Some

Healing: Good

Regeneration is mostly based on the aspect of healing back to full life and it does very well with that. On Stalkers you get some small Resistance Bonus across all Damage Types and unfortunately no endurance bonus, which would really help. Since there are no offensive capabilitys in regeneration it is purely meant for survivability, with a lot of click powers. This powerset is not a bad choice but not great either.

 

Shield Defense:

Defense: Good

Resistance: Some

Healing: None

The second set on this List with positional defenses. Shield Defense not only allows you to easily cap melee, ranged and aoe defense, it comes with some resistances on top of it. If you get hit, it will not hurt that much. Also you get a direct bonus on Damage and a very good AoE teleport Attack similar to Electric Melees Lightning Rod. No wonder, these two Powersets are often picked together. I consider Shield defense to be one of the best Stalker Secondaries. Of course it has his downside too. You get no healing at all and the whole set is very endurance hungry.

 

Super Reflexes:

Defense: Good

Resistance: None

Healing: None

Super Reflexes is one of the older Powersets and is the third and last Secondarie that allows you to easily cap the positional defenses. Beside of that you get a bonus to recharge reduction and run speed but unfortunately nothing else. You also have to pick most of the powers, there is no easy skip option. The only thing speaking for Super Reflexes is that it comes with such big amounts of defense that you can cap defenses very cheap and beside of the click mez protection it is very low maintenance, so you can focus on your primary.

 

Willpower:

Defense: Some

Resistance: Some

Healing: Some

Willpower is another hybrid that offers something from every aspect of survivability. With a good T9 you can can easily achive different goals for survivability. It offers no offensive options and is quite heavy on endurance but still a very well rounded set.

 

 

 

For a simple overview i have made a visual comparison of all the secondaries. This is mostly to get a feeling for the different sets and does not cover everything to know. This is just to get a idea for it.

 

 

Here is also a Link to some more Details.

 

 

What's your recommendation for plugging the psionic hole in energy manipulation and invulnerability?

[KelvinKole]

4 hours ago, 00Troy00 said:

What's your recommendation for plugging the psionic hole in energy manipulation and invulnerability?

IO's are really the only way. You can slot:

 

(1) Aegis Psionic Resistance for 5%

(5) Impervium Armor Psionic Resistance for 6% each

(1) Shield Wall +Resistance All for 5%

(1) Reactive Defenses Scaling Damage Resistance for 3%-10% depending on health

anything else will have to come from set bonuses, I think, and there are lots of good sets that do provide Toxic/Psi resistance. 

 

Best case, that gives you 43% at full health, before set bonuses, and assuming you can fit it all. I'm not suggesting it as you could end up gimping the rest of your build to get there, but it's doable.

[Croax]

KelvinKole is right. IO's are the solution. While making your build you would want to look out for opportunities to use the mentioned unique IO's. Another way is to increase your positional defenses. You can get melee easy to 45% and the others to at least ~30%. You will feel a small improvement, but this is all endgame stuff. During the leveling phase psionic will be annoying. Especially on red side with all the fortunatas running around.

[Luigrein]

Since both sets have typed defenses I would personally advise picking up psionic resist/defense from IOs over shooting for positional defense.  It's not that you can't get positional defenses to a decent level with just IOs/incarnates, but against everything but psychic enemies it's not going to do much for you because they don't stack with your in powerset defenses, you just use whichever number is higher.  Yes aiming for high psionic defense/resist also limits your build choices some, but I think it's less of a limit than trying to build up positional defenses.  To be fair, I'm sure people have put together some great builds that have solid positional defenses, I'm honestly curious now and tempted to see what I can figure out in mids even as a more midrange builder compared to some of the other people around.

 

edit: So I messed around a little in mids and got a Kin/EA stalker (chosen because EA was one of the listed sets and...my stalker is Kin/EA lol) and got a build that is over the non-psi typed softcaps, 31.7% psychic defense, and 55.8% psychic resist.  These numbers are with no incarnate abilities, at full health, with 1 target in energy drain.  Could the build be improved upon? Almost definitely.  But it looks playable at a glance, sure some weird slotting can be found but nothing that kills core functionality.  Invuln could probably get higher psychic resist since it has more places to fit in Impervium pieces, for other primaries psychic defense may not be as high as I was able to leverage Kins ranged attack for a 5% defense set bonus.

Spoiler

 

Villain Plan by Mids' Reborn : Hero Designer 2.6.0.7
https://github.com/ImaginaryDevelopment/imaginary-hero-designer

Click this DataLink to open the build!

Level 50 Magic Stalker
Primary Power Set: Kinetic Melee
Secondary Power Set: Energy Aura
Power Pool: Speed
Power Pool: Fighting
Power Pool: Leadership
Power Pool: Leaping
Ancillary Pool: Leviathan Mastery

Villain Profile:
Level 1: Body Blow -- Hct-Dmg(A), Hct-Dmg/Rchg(3), Hct-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(3), Hct-Acc/Rchg(5), Hct-Dmg/EndRdx(5), Hct-Dam%(7)
Level 1: Hide -- LucoftheG-Def/Rchg+(A)
Level 2: Kinetic Shield -- Rct-Def(A), Rct-Def/EndRdx(13), Rct-ResDam%(36)
Level 4: Power Shield -- Rct-Def(A), Rct-Def/EndRdx(13), LucoftheG-Def/Rchg+(15), ShlWal-ResDam/Re TP(37)
Level 6: Assassin's Strike -- Mk'Bit-Dmg/EndRdx(A), Mk'Bit-Dmg/Rchg(7), FcsSmt-Acc/Dmg(9), FcsSmt-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(9), FcsSmt-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(11), SprStlGl-Rchg/Hide%(11)
Level 8: Build Up -- RechRdx-I(A)
Level 10: Entropy Shield -- EndRdx-I(A)
Level 12: Super Speed -- Qck-EndRdx/RunSpd(A)
Level 14: Hasten -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(15), RechRdx-I(50)
Level 16: Kinetic Dampening -- GldArm-3defTpProc(A), StdPrt-ResDam/Def+(17), ImpArm-ResPsi(17), ImpArm-ResDam(45), ImpArm-ResDam/Rchg(46), Ags-Psi/Status(46)
Level 18: Burst -- ScrDrv-Acc/Dmg(A), ScrDrv-Dmg/EndRdx(19), ScrDrv-Dmg/Rchg(19), ScrDrv-Acc/Rchg(21), ScrDrv-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(21), ScrDrv-Dam%(27)
Level 20: Kick -- FcsSmt-Acc/Dmg(A), FcsSmt-Dmg/EndRdx(45), FcsSmt-Dmg/Rchg(46)
Level 22: Tough -- ImpArm-ResDam/EndRdx(A), ImpArm-ResDam/Rchg(23), ImpArm-EndRdx/Rchg(23), ImpArm-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(33), ImpArm-ResDam(34), ImpArm-ResPsi(34)
Level 24: Weave -- LucoftheG-Def/EndRdx(A), LucoftheG-Def/Rchg(25), LucoftheG-EndRdx/Rchg(25), LucoftheG-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(31), LucoftheG-Def(33), LucoftheG-Def/Rchg+(33)
Level 26: Focused Burst -- Apc-Dmg(A), Apc-Dmg/Rchg(27), Apc-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(29), Apc-Acc/Rchg(29), Apc-Dmg/EndRdx(31), Apc-Dam%(31)
Level 28: Energy Drain -- PreOptmz-Acc/Rech(A), PreOptmz-EndMod/Rech(34), PreOptmz-EndMod/Acc/Rech(36), PreOptmz-EndMod/End/Rech(36)
Level 30: Smashing Blow -- Mk'Bit-Dmg/EndRdx(A), Mk'Bit-Dmg/Rchg(40), FcsSmt-Acc/Dmg(40), FcsSmt-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(40), FcsSmt-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(42), SprAssMar-Rchg/Rchg Build Up(42)
Level 32: Concentrated Strike -- CrsImp-Acc/Dmg(A), CrsImp-Dmg/EndRdx(42), CrsImp-Dmg/Rchg(43), CrsImp-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(43), CrsImp-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(43), CrsImp-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(45)
Level 35: Energize -- Mrc-Heal/EndRdx(A), Mrc-EndRdx/Rchg(37), Mrc-Heal/Rchg(37), Mrc-Heal(39), Mrc-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(39), Mrc-Rcvry+(39)
Level 38: Overload -- LucoftheG-Def/Rchg+(A)
Level 41: Water Spout -- RechRdx-I(A)
Level 44: Hibernate -- RechRdx-I(A)
Level 47: Maneuvers -- LucoftheG-Def/EndRdx(A), LucoftheG-Def/Rchg(48), LucoftheG-EndRdx/Rchg(48), LucoftheG-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(48), LucoftheG-Def(50), LucoftheG-Def/Rchg+(50)
Level 49: Combat Jumping -- DefBuff-I(A)
Level 1: Assassination 
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Quick Form 
Level 1: Prestige Power Dash -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Prestige Power Slide -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Prestige Power Quick -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Prestige Power Rush -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Prestige Power Surge -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 4: Ninja Run 
Level 2: Swift -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Health -- NmnCnv-Regen/Rcvry+(A)
Level 2: Hurdle -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Stamina -- EndMod-I(A)
------------

 

 

Edited April 23, 2020 by Luigrein
added build + typo

[Croax]

Wow look at this psionic reists! I would say it is a playable build and maybe the best version of this powersets to conter psi without incarnates or other team members.

[Frostweaver]

On 4/21/2020 at 9:08 AM, 00Troy00 said:

What's your recommendation for plugging the psionic hole in energy manipulation and invulnerability?

Dude, you quoted Half the darned guide just to ask a single one line question?

Edited April 26, 2020 by Frostweaver

[00Troy00]

On 4/26/2020 at 11:32 AM, Frostweaver said:

Dude, you quoted Half the darned guide just to ask a single one line question?

And you took it upon yourself to bring that up about a post I made nearly a week ago. Obviously you have a lot more time on your hands than I do, so you'll have to find it in your heart to forgive my cardinal son. That or block me. I'm ok with either.

[Croax]

@00Troy00 and @Frostweaver, did you guys know that a lot of people still pick epic pool powers like focussed accuracy and then slot the gauss proc into it? That is really funny because FA is just a big endurance hog and the proc is best used in Build Up. It will proc a lot more than in FA. And why would you pick it if you can just slot one kismet and still get a lot of Acc from set bonuses.

 

Don't you guys think that FA is not only overrated, it is nearly useless. Or am I wrong?

[Redlynne]

7 hours ago, Croax said:

Don't you guys think that FA is not only overrated, it is nearly useless. Or am I wrong?

Depends on the context, really.  For some builds it's not a mistake to take it, but for a lot of them it is.

[Croax]

I can not think of any build for Stalkers that would need it. What contex do you have in mind?

[Machariel]

I'm having a hard time thinking of a time you'd want to include focused accuracy given that not everybody takes tactics 🤔

Edited June 17, 2020 by Machariel

[Gulbasaur]

Late to the party, but a few minor corrections (to what is otherwise a really great guide):

On 10/1/2019 at 6:12 PM, Croax said:

Super Reflexes:

Defense: Good

Resistance: None

Healing: None

Super Reflexes is one of the older Powersets and is the third and last Secondarie that allows you to easily cap the positional defenses. Beside of that you get a bonus to recharge reduction and run speed but unfortunately nothing else. You also have to pick most of the powers, there is no easy skip option. The only thing speaking for Super Reflexes is that it comes with such big amounts of defense that you can cap defenses very cheap and beside of the click mez protection it is very low maintenance, so you can focus on your primary.

 

Agile and Dodge both provide scaling damage resistance. The scale is:

minmax(60 - source.kHitPoints%, 0, 100) / 60 * 0.25 Res(Smashing, Lethal, Fire, Cold, Energy, Negative) for 0.75s

Which means that you get 1% damage resistance for every 4% health you are below 60%. I mean, it's not great but it's not None. Interestingly, Arachnos Widows get a similar mechanic but theirs starts at 75% making them a bit sturdier out of the box. A lot of the Widows' Teamwork power set looks like it was modified directly from Super Reflexes and, frankly, improved a bit in the process. Widows are kind of control-stealth-support-scrappers that can crit from stealth, rather like pre-rework stalkers but with mezzing ability. .

On 10/1/2019 at 6:12 PM, Croax said:

Dark Armor:

Defense: None

Resistance: Good

Healing: Some

Dark Armor has a lot of toggles and is very endurance hungry but makes up for it with good resistances and a selfheal that will keep you going in crowds but will let you down against single hard enemys like arch villains

Dark Armour provides a bit of defence, although it's not much. It also has a boatload of damage mitigation in its two control toggles - enemies that aren't even trying to hit you aren't rolling to hit. It's a much stronger set in practice than it is on paper. It does hammer your endurance, though. It switches into a control set for two powers and that makes is really, really good - controllers were the backup tanks in the pre-CoV days.

[Croax]

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.

[Gulbasaur]

@Croax please don't take it as me being negative - I think this guide is amazing and I've referred back to it a few times and I totally agree that one of the best survival strategies is violence... but I also think you're underselling SR a bit and maybe underselling dark, which is an absurdly sturdy set in practice but sort of middling on paper. 

 

I find the scaling resistance quite useful, particularly when soloing difficult targets (as well as synergy with the reactive defences scaling resist IO). There's something very, very nice about watching your damage resistance rise through a battle when you're out of inspirations. With IO bonuses, it pushes it up from the twenty-somethings to the sixty-somethings when you really need it, which is quite respectable and has a tangible impact in-game. 

 

Control effects like recharge slow and fear allow you to take on more dangerous situations earlier by lowing the attack rate, which is effectively what defence does (it alters how many go though, fear and slows alter how often they occur). 

 

Anyway, thanks for the excellent guide and thanks for your response!

[skoryy]

On 10/1/2019 at 1:12 PM, Croax said:

Electric Armor:

Defense: None

Resistance: Good

Healing: Some

Electric Armor is one of the very few Secondaries that gives you endurance in form of a hefty endurance discount that can be made permanent and a endurance 'steal' from enemys surounding you. Additionally you get a +recharge reduction which is allways nice. Electric Armor is actually in a good shape.

One thing I'll add from experience with my Elec/Elec sneakyboy: Power Sink not only tops off your blue bar, but its also great as mitigation.  A target with an empty blue bar is a target that's left with nothing but love taps to hit you with.  Properly slotted, you can get a lot of empty blue bars.

 

Of course, it also helps when your primaries are also draining endurance... 😉

[Cidri]

Hi Croax, Cidri here from Love & War.

 

Lovely guide and a lot of good pointers. I do have some additional notes I'd like to mention about specific sets.

 

* Parry etc - all the attacks that grant a bonus to melee defense also grant a bonus to lethal defense. This matters for secondaries like Willpower and Invulnerability that use defense against specific damage types. [Titan weapons grant smashing defense instead, but stalkers don't have titan weapons.]

 

* Defense Debuff Resistance: All secondaries that give defense also gives defense debuff resistance. This is good because there are lots and lots and lots of attacks that debuff defense, and often for huge amounts - radiation attacks especially. The most important note about this is that Super Reflexes offers huge amounts of defense debuff resistance. This is vital, as the set has no other way to mitigate damage. This makes Super Reflexes better than it looks on paper, tough less so on a stalker than a scrapper. Also note that if you are missed, you are not debuffed - this applies to all side effects of attacks.

 

* Psionic Melee has a a reliable single-target confuse, and like most confuse powers, this does not break stealth. This is good in solo play; move up to a group of mobs in stealth, confuse one, assassin strike another, and then scrap it out at considerably better odds.

Edited November 24, 2020 by Cidri
proofreading

[SwitchFade]

@Croax

 

Great guide, very helpful!

 

DB description may need a refresh. For good info on DB, you may want to read the thread here about dual blades and EA... I have posted there about DB and it's damage potential. It is one of the highest DPS for min/maxers ignoring all but 1 combo and not using placate. On top of that it has AoE as well. It does require very high recharge, 165%+, so you may want to indicate DB shines when ignoring combo generally, ignoring placate and needs high recharge but once you have it, DPS is 470+

[Infinitum]

On 10/1/2019 at 1:12 PM, Croax said:

Invulnerability:

Defense: Good

Resistance: Good

Healing: None

What about Dull Pain?

On 10/1/2019 at 1:12 PM, Croax said:

Ice Armor:

Defense: Good

Resistance: Some

Healing: None

And Hoarfrost?

 

Not intending to nit pick at all - was just curious what the thought process was behind these entries.

 

Thanks!

[Croax]

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

[Infinitum]

11 hours ago, Croax said:

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

I thought that is what your thinking was behind that also - I see your point, but both do meet your guidelines of the healing tab and with higher recharge can be up in ~90 seconds.  I know that is splitting hairs but to not notate either of these as a heal might not give all the information needed for the initial description for someone to delve further into either of those if they are looking for any kind of healing available to either set.

 

Again, please don't take this as an argument against your fantastic guide - I may be the only person on the planet that views these in this way.  This really is a great guide.