Fire/Shield: stalker or scrapper?

[leeowensoas]

Hey all! I was gonna recreate my fire/SD scrapper from live, I hear stalkers are the bees knees now. It looks like Fire loses it's best attack for AS, but shield doesn't lose anything important. Any recommendations one way or the other?

[Hjarki]

Fire is better as a Scrapper than a Stalker. Losing Incinerate (one of the best Scrapper single target attacks) for Assassin's Blaze (one of the worst Stalker Assassinate abilities) is not a good trade.

 

Shield Defense is probably slightly better as a Stalker than a Scrapper. Losing Phalanx Fighting for Hide is a sidegrade defensively, but having Stalker-level Hide without having to invest a pool in it can be quite handy.

[KelvinKole]

Fire Melee does fine on a Stalker. Even though its fast Assassin Strike is a little slower than other sets, AS is still an upgrade over Incinerate in my book. Reliable crits from Fire Sword Circle are excellent. I don't like GFS at all, regardless of archetype. I have a couple fire melee Stalkers and only take scorch, fire sword, cremate, AS, and FSS so you have plenty of other power picks to use.  I'd call it a wash between Stalker and Scrapper.

 

Shield is very good on Stalkers because Shield Charge doesn't break hide, so you can chain together multiple AoEs as an opener and still benefit from the increased critical hit chance from hide on the second one. 

 

If you want to be slightly sturdier, play it as as a Scrapper. If you want to delete bosses, play it as a Stalker.

[snerp]

On 5/6/2020 at 11:27 AM, Hjarki said:

...(one of the worst Stalker Assassinate abilities) ...

oh?! I didn't realize there was any difference! Which set has the best AS?

[Hjarki]

39 minutes ago, snerp said:

oh?! I didn't realize there was any difference! Which set has the best AS?

All Assassinate abilities deal the same damage with the same recharge. The only way they vary is in terms of the type of damage and the activation time.

 

To simplify what would otherwise be a very long debate, players tend to ignore damage type when they're discussing the relative value of attacks. While technically some damage types are 'better' than others, this is highly dependent on the specific enemies you're fighting.

 

So it boils down to activation time, which comes in four variants:

• Kinetic Melee has a 0.67s activation time.
• Standard. Most sets have a 1.0s activation time.
• Street Justice has a 1.17s activation time.
• Slow. Some sets have a 1.67s activation time (Broadsword, Fire, Ice, Ninja Blade).

Because you're normally using Assassinate in a rotation, you tend to want a faster activation.

[snerp]

Ah interesting! It seems like I've been playing sets with slower AS (stj, ice, swords). Time to try out a Kin!

 

Thanks!!

[Without_Pause]

The rest of Kin feels slow to me though. I prefer StJ even if it's AS attack isn't standard.