Ice/ energy aura, ice, or stone?

[Azaelon]

Having a tough time choosing a secondary for a ice melee stalker. Also if anyone had a build of these they knew of that'd be lovely.

[aethereal]

My ice melee stalker -- who was quite a beast -- was ice/bio.  That's a not-obviously-thematic pairing, of course.  One source of synergy there is that bio has a sleep aura that stacks with frozen aura for potentially quite a bit of mitigation.

 

Honestly, of your options, I'm not sure I see a particular source of synergy of not.  They're all reputedly strong sets (I only have direct experience with Energy Aura).  Ice wants lots of recharge, since it doesn't have a third strong attack in its primary to go with frozen touch and assassin's ice sword, so Energy Aura's +20% recharge is welcome.  But I think ice is pretty forgiving, it goes well with whatever.

[Mezmera]

Energy Aura is a great armor, top tier for sure without IO's.  Like all power sets it gets even stronger building it with the right IO sets, it is a bit more forgiving armor with more plug and play appeal.  Ice Armor isn't as strong at first but built right it's a bit more tankier than EA in my opinion, Icy Bastion on its own is worth taking Ice Armor on Stalkers but it is a bit more busy armor you have to get used to, there's lots of gear shifting due to that great t9 and energy absorption.  

 

I like both sets but Ice Armor is a bit harder to play and a bit more rewarding if it's tailored right.  The other thing though is that thematically covering your character in blocks of ice might not be a look you care much for although being a Stalker you'll be hidden lots anyways so it may not matter much to you.  

Edited November 23, 2022 by Mezmera

[SeraphimKensai]

Stone armor is one of the best choices for a stalker secondary right after Shield.

[Frosticus]

I have a lowbie ice/stone. Minimal Crystal visuals look pretty good with the ice attacks.

Stone armor does everything pretty well with the only real hole being slow/recharge debuffs, which are easy enough to cover decently with a few partial winter sets. 

 

 

I've never gotten on the /ea train. Granted I've only ever really used it auto leveled on test server, but it never feels as robust as people praise it as being. I might gravitate towards different content that exposes the psi weakness more though. 

[DyingLegacy]

Ice armor synergies well with ice melee. Chilling embrace plus ice patch = enemies stay put, which is huge for a stalker, considering enemies run from stalkers.

 

ice armor also has the best tier 9.  It’s really got everything you need.  A self heal/dulll pain power, an aoe slow/-enemy damage, it has plus perception, a much better version of energy drain (energy absorption has a much quicker activation time) and good powers that don’t require slots that can be used as mules. The biggest difference between it an energy aura is that EA has plus recharge where as ice armor has minus recharge to the enemies.  You can become slow immune on ice armor quite easily tho, which sorta offsets the fact that you don’t get plus recharge.  Your recharge at least can’t be halted by enemies.

[DyingLegacy]

On 11/23/2022 at 5:33 PM, SeraphimKensai said:

Stone armor is one of the best choices for a stalker secondary right after Shield.

Stone armor is on par with ice and ea.  you can’t really go wrong with those 3.  
 

shield suffers from lack of utility.  Not having a self heal means you gotta get one elsewhere or just be able to kill everyone  before they can hit you.  I guess that’s the price of having a great aoe attack in its kit.

[aethereal]

I think the big holes in Ice are low DDR (like Ninjutsu, only 30ish percent) and this sort of awkward situation with fire and cold type damage.  You get embarrassing levels of overcap cold resistance, but pretty bad fire resistance, and no defense for either.  Building on your fire resistance has this thing that kinda bothered me where you're throwing away the child resistance that you get as well with set bonuses, but building defense (which would help versus cold as well) is hard because you're starting from zero.  Which probably isn't a big deal objectively, but it was surprisingly annoying to me.

 

The DDR is a big deal, though.

[StriderIV]

On 12/22/2022 at 5:23 AM, aethereal said:

I think the big holes in Ice are low DDR (like Ninjutsu, only 30ish percent) and this sort of awkward situation with fire and cold type damage.  You get embarrassing levels of overcap cold resistance, but pretty bad fire resistance, and no defense for either.  Building on your fire resistance has this thing that kinda bothered me where you're throwing away the child resistance that you get as well with set bonuses, but building defense (which would help versus cold as well) is hard because you're starting from zero.  Which probably isn't a big deal objectively, but it was surprisingly annoying to me.

 

The DDR is a big deal, though.

True about the DDR. I guess you’d have to lean on incarnates for that. At least it seems like you can get really solid resists with Ice Armor as well. Very layered.

[aethereal]

9 hours ago, StriderIV said:

True about the DDR. I guess you’d have to lean on incarnates for that. At least it seems like you can get really solid resists with Ice Armor as well. Very layered.

I mean, there's the T9 of course, but outside of that, I wouldn't call Ice Armor much of a layering of resists and defenses.  S/L/E/N get a grand total of 3.75% damage resistance (unenhanced).  F/C get the defense that all Stalkers get in hide, plus a totally nominal 0.75% Wet Ice, and a somewhat more meaningful amount in Energy Absorption.

 

Note also big toxic and psi holes in Ice Armor.

 

Icy Bastion is a really nice resistance bump, and will, with Tough, probably take you to capped S/L and not-capped-but-meaningful E/N resists, but it's not all the time.

[DyingLegacy]

On 12/22/2022 at 8:23 AM, aethereal said:

I think the big holes in Ice are low DDR (like Ninjutsu, only 30ish percent) and this sort of awkward situation with fire and cold type damage.  You get embarrassing levels of overcap cold resistance, but pretty bad fire resistance, and no defense for either.  Building on your fire resistance has this thing that kinda bothered me where you're throwing away the child resistance that you get as well with set bonuses, but building defense (which would help versus cold as well) is hard because you're starting from zero.  Which probably isn't a big deal objectively, but it was surprisingly annoying to me.

 

The DDR is a big deal, though.

It’s really a non issue at high levels of play.  I mean that seriously.  ice patch and chilling embrace together are just so good.  If you’re up against enemies that like to set back and range you, just line of sight them to get them to come to you, then they get stuck in ice patch and proceed to die.

 

I dont have issue with anything, even enemies that do only fire, or enemies with high defense debuff.   I put zero effort into getting fire defense or fire resist higher because I didn’t want to waste time on it and because of how strong ice patch and chilling are together.

 

If I do ever have trouble, there’s always that delicious t9 that I can activate.  If you slot it for regen, you’re basically immortal. It’ll cap most of your resistance on a stalker (since their cap is only 75%) even without slotting it for resist, so regen is the way to go.  Slotted for regen it gives around 700% regen with just that power alone.

Edited December 26, 2022 by DyingLegacy

[aethereal]

1 hour ago, DyingLegacy said:

It’s really a non issue at high levels of play.  I mean that seriously.  ice patch and chilling embrace together are just so good.  If you’re up against enemies that like to set back and range you, just line of sight them to get them to come to you, then they get stuck in ice patch and proceed to die.

 

Ice patch is in Ice Melee, not Ice Armor.  It's also max targets 5, and obviously it doesn't mitigate enemies with KB protection.

[DyingLegacy]

12 hours ago, aethereal said:

 

Ice patch is in Ice Melee, not Ice Armor.  It's also max targets 5, and obviously it doesn't mitigate enemies with KB protection.

Op said ice was his primary which is why i mentioned it.  
 

I exclusively play +4 x8 in all content.  Incarnate, regular… doesn’t matter.  Zero issues on my ice/ice stalker.  I know how to build characters tho, and I don’t use mids.  I think it’s clunky and I just don’t need it.

 

the 5 targets max is another non issue.  Enemies die so fast that there’s hardly more than 5 up at once anyway.

 

ice armor is good.  One of the top ones for stalker imo.  You can argue there’s better, but I never said ice was the best anyway so there’s no argument for that to be had.  I do believe that ice melee and ice armor pair very well on a stalker, tho.

[aethereal]

Do you solo +4/x8 or play on a team?  I don't have high level play experience with ice armor, so genuine question, but for example I have played a lot of /ninj high level solo at +4/x8, which has similar levels of DDR, and my experience is that it's a very noticeable problem.  Not, mind you, an impossible problem -- you can, and I do, handle it, but I certainly notice it strongly when I'm dealing with def debuffing enemies.

Edited December 27, 2022 by aethereal

[DyingLegacy]

13 hours ago, aethereal said:

Do you solo +4/x8 or play on a team?  I don't have high level play experience with ice armor, so genuine question, but for example I have played a lot of /ninj high level solo at +4/x8, which has similar levels of DDR, and my experience is that it's a very noticeable problem.  Not, mind you, an impossible problem -- you can, and I do, handle it, but I certainly notice it strongly when I'm dealing with def debuffing enemies.

Solo, I never team.  Well… that’s not true.  I run three accounts.  However, my other two accounts just set at the door and collect money/loot.