EM/EA, Scrapper or Stalker?

[zrgallardo]

I love the rework for energy melee, and I want to try energy aura as a secondary (I already have tried EM/bio Scrapper, EM/Shield stalker).... However I can't decide between whether stalker or scrapper is the better candidate for em/ea. The two main things I want is stealth so I can move through missions however I want, AND AV solo potential. Funny enough with energy cloak, em/ea scrapper can act like a stalker, but I just want to hear your opinions on the matter 😄

[Apparition]

Scrapper.  Energy Aura on Scrappers has a taunt aura so you don't have to face enemies running away nearly as often as on a Stalker.

[Bopper]

Stalker. You gain Assassins Strike and you get the 16s version of Power Crash (hits as hard as slow Arc of Destruction)

[Saikochoro]

My vote is to do EM/EA stalker and then also an EM/Bio scrapper!

[Thrax]

I just tried /ea out myself. I love the primary but /ea just sucks in my opinion. New ea primary is cool. I’d roll ea/sr. My /ea is sturdy enough but I just find myself wishing I’d made it /sr instead. I made an ea/inv and it is a lot of fun. 

[twozerofoxtrot]

Honestly, if your decision point is this refined, I strongly recommend you go to the beta server and test both out. See which you like better.

 

It seems like you have focused build goals and have thought about this a lot, so I'm assuming you have builds ready to test at 50. Take the several hours to fully kit them and run them through something. I personally like doing Mender Ramiel's arc at 54/8 to test how the Honoree/Captain Pantsface dual-AV fight goes on a new characters. The constant rikti ambushes are a nice touch.

 

Again, it's a few hours worth of time investment, but it could save you several days worth of playtime and then regretting the option you picked based of of feedback from the wretched masses (excluding Bopper).

[Bopper]

I wanted to throw in some more evidence for why I prefer stalker. Keep in mind, this is entirely because of how good EM is on a Stalker. Here is a breakdown of the best DPA attacks for Stalkers in the game. The first table are non-AS attacks. The second table are AS attacks. The third table are AoEs (I filtered out any AoE with an arc less than 45 degrees...which mostly just removed the 20 degree arc "cones")

 

 

Energy Melee has 3 of the top 15 non-crit DPA attacks. Energy Transfer fast is 1st while Energy Transfer slow would rank 3rd behind Freezing Touch and Max Combo Crushing Uppercut. Total Focus ranks 4th, behind ET, FT, and CU. Bone Smasher ranks 15th while Energy Punch would be 19th if I exclude epic snipes. Now...that is not evidence of choosing Stalker over Scrapper, it is only to highlight the single target dominance of Energy Melee before I provide additional evidence later to support Stalkers. I did want to highlight the fact that Energy Transfer and Total Focus do not have full critical hits, so I also analyzed the average non-hide critical hit damage for a solo Stalker. This is a 10% chance to crit for each attack, with the exception of Storm Kick which has 15%. This doesn't change much other than to show Total Focus falls from 4th to 6th in DPA and Bone Smasher goes from 15th to 14th (assuming no epic snipes).

 

The part where Stalkers shine over Scrappers is with their Assassin's Strike and Power Crash. Assassin's Strike replaces Whirling Hands, which is an average PBAoE attack. However, Energy Melee's Assassin's Strike is the 2nd best version you can get in the game. The only version better is Kinetic Melee with its 0.67s cast time. The reason why this is important, AS does a full crit and with Assassin's Focus you can practically guarantee that crit (or at the very least a 66.6% chance to crit with 2 AF stacks). That makes AS a fast version of ET, which as we saw in the table is already the best DPA attack in the game for Stalkers. So what sounds better...having Energy Transfer that is sometimes fast, or having two Energy Transfers, one that is sometimes fast and another that is always fast? Point goes to Stalker.

 

Finally, EM Stalkers get Power Crash which is arguably the 3rd best AoE available to Stalker Primaries. Savage Leap at max range is flat out broken, but given its 40s recharge it deserves its perch as the top AoE. Sweeping Strike has better DPA, however it has a smaller AoE and is limited to 5 targets whereas Power Crash has an avenue to hitting up to 10 targets with the use of Energy Focus. Others could argue Shockwave is superior given its much larger AoE and faster cast/recharge. In either case, Power Crash is no worse than the 4th best Stalker AoE while having some argument for 2nd best.

 

Scrappers don't get Stalker's version of Power Crash. Instead of a 16s recharge doing 1.9519 scale damage, it is a 9s recharge doing 1.2032 scale damage. It's decent, but a DPA of 38.0 as opposed to 54.8 just doesn't compete. Especially when you factor in Crits, the Stalker version has potential to one-shot LTs. It's fantastic.

 

There's not much else to say. I have nothing against Scrapper EMs. They will still be amazing given their ATO combined with TF, ET, and BS attack chains. Their AoE will be fine with a chaining of Whirling Hands, Power Crash and possibly an Epic AoE. However, a chain consisting of TF(hide) followed by two fast ETs and two fast ASs before needing to restart TF is *chef's kiss*. An AoE alpha strike of PC(hide) followed by a proc bombed Epic AoE and fast AS is *chef's kiss*.  There really is nothing Energy Melee is bad at...or average at... for Stalkers. It's top tier in Single Target and it's above average in AoE (for Stalkers). I really should stop singing the praises of Stalker Energy Melee...my voice has a tendency to get things nerfed (I actually advocated for Power Crash to be toned down in Beta, it used to be 18s and 2.166 scale damage which was insanity). But let's hope it doesn't and we can all enjoy the set as it currently is.

[zrgallardo]

3 hours ago, Bopper said:

I wanted to throw in some more evidence for why I prefer stalker. Keep in mind, this is entirely because of how good EM is on a Stalker. Here is a breakdown of the best DPA attacks for Stalkers in the game. The first table are non-AS attacks. The second table are AS attacks. The third table are AoEs (I filtered out any AoE with an arc less than 45 degrees...which mostly just removed the 20 degree arc "cones")

 

 

Energy Melee has 3 of the top 15 non-crit DPA attacks. Energy Transfer fast is 1st while Energy Transfer slow would rank 3rd behind Freezing Touch and Max Combo Crushing Uppercut. Total Focus ranks 4th, behind ET, FT, and CU. Bone Smasher ranks 15th while Energy Punch would be 19th if I exclude epic snipes. Now...that is not evidence of choosing Stalker over Scrapper, it is only to highlight the single target dominance of Energy Melee before I provide additional evidence later to support Stalkers. I did want to highlight the fact that Energy Transfer and Total Focus do not have full critical hits, so I also analyzed the average non-hide critical hit damage for a solo Stalker. This is a 10% chance to crit for each attack, with the exception of Storm Kick which has 15%. This doesn't change much other than to show Total Focus falls from 4th to 6th in DPA and Bone Smasher goes from 15th to 14th (assuming no epic snipes).

 

The part where Stalkers shine over Scrappers is with their Assassin's Strike and Power Crash. Assassin's Strike replaces Whirling Hands, which is an average PBAoE attack. However, Energy Melee's Assassin's Strike is the 2nd best version you can get in the game. The only version better is Kinetic Melee with its 0.67s cast time. The reason why this is important, AS does a full crit and with Assassin's Focus you can practically guarantee that crit (or at the very least a 66.6% chance to crit with 2 AF stacks). That makes AS a fast version of ET, which as we saw in the table is already the best DPA attack in the game for Stalkers. So what sounds better...having Energy Transfer that is sometimes fast, or having two Energy Transfers, one that is sometimes fast and another that is always fast? Point goes to Stalker.

 

Finally, EM Stalkers get Power Crash which is arguably the 3rd best AoE available to Stalker Primaries. Savage Leap at max range is flat out broken, but given its 40s recharge it deserves its perch as the top AoE. Sweeping Strike has better DPA, however it has a smaller AoE and is limited to 5 targets whereas Power Crash has an avenue to hitting up to 10 targets with the use of Energy Focus. Others could argue Shockwave is superior given its much larger AoE and faster cast/recharge. In either case, Power Crash is no worse than the 4th best Stalker AoE while having some argument for 2nd best.

 

Scrappers don't get Stalker's version of Power Crash. Instead of a 16s recharge doing 1.9519 scale damage, it is a 9s recharge doing 1.2032 scale damage. It's decent, but a DPA of 38.0 as opposed to 54.8 just doesn't compete. Especially when you factor in Crits, the Stalker version has potential to one-shot LTs. It's fantastic.

 

There's not much else to say. I have nothing against Scrapper EMs. They will still be amazing given their ATO combined with TF, ET, and BS attack chains. Their AoE will be fine with a chaining of Whirling Hands, Power Crash and possibly an Epic AoE. However, a chain consisting of TF(hide) followed by two fast ETs and two fast ASs before needing to restart TF is *chef's kiss*. An AoE alpha strike of PC(hide) followed by a proc bombed Epic AoE and fast AS is *chef's kiss*.  There really is nothing Energy Melee is bad at...or average at... for Stalkers. It's top tier in Single Target and it's above average in AoE (for Stalkers). I really should stop singing the praises of Stalker Energy Melee...my voice has a tendency to get things nerfed (I actually advocated for Power Crash to be toned down in Beta, it used to be 18s and 2.166 scale damage which was insanity). But let's hope it doesn't and we can all enjoy the set as it currently is.

Wow, thank you.

 

I would LOVE to see a build you'd recommend for em/ea stalker 

[Riverdusk]

On 3/1/2021 at 6:55 AM, Apparition said:

Scrapper.  Energy Aura on Scrappers has a taunt aura so you don't have to face enemies running away nearly as often as on a Stalker.

I'd look at it with this in mind.  Go scrapper if you want that taunt aura.  To cut down on runners, but also was surprised how often I ended up on a random team without a tank or a brute and found myself in the "alpha absorber" and "tank" roles on my wm/ea scrapper (and seemed to do fine at it).   

 

Go stalker if you just want the absolute best dps.

[BZRKR]

*snipped excellent post*

On 3/2/2021 at 4:25 AM, Bopper said:

There's not much else to say.

And all of those numbers are before say, adding Bio Armor's Offensive Adaptation, right? Man oh man.

[Bopper]

55 minutes ago, BZRKR said:

*snipped excellent post*

And all of those numbers are before say, adding Bio Armor's Offensive Adaptation, right? Man oh man.

Correct. Shield might also be a popular pick, as you can Shield Charge, not break hide, then use Power Crash out of hide. I haven't played Shield on a stalker though, so I don't know if you use procs in SC if that might break hide. I'd ask someone else about that.

[Bopper]

On 3/2/2021 at 5:51 AM, zrgallardo said:

Wow, thank you.

 

I would LOVE to see a build you'd recommend for em/ea stalker 

This is my current build. There are some similar builds posted in the comments as well 

 

[Infinitum]

On 3/1/2021 at 9:55 AM, Apparition said:

Scrapper.  Energy Aura on Scrappers has a taunt aura so you don't have to face enemies running away nearly as often as on a Stalker.

Stalker, they won't run.... Because they will be dea.... Er "arrested"

 

Still really really good on a scrapper but better on the stalker - perfect synergy.

 

I just made both.  lol

And a EM Shield stalker

And a EM Nin scrapper

 

They are all my first choices for sheer fun and giggles.

Edited March 5, 2021 by Infinitum

[Rejolt]

Every time I see Fire Melee in any data charts I'm stunned how far down the list it is considering it's a damage only set with no secondary effect besides more damage.

 

I'm not saying the numbers are wrong but that the set needs some rethinking.