Best PvP (zone ganking) Powersets?

[mdarweesh]

Back on live, with Energy Transfer's quick cast time and the inherent stuns, Energy Melee was king. But ET has a long cast time now. Is it still king?

 

How about Dark Melee?

 

I'm running an EM/Nin, but it feels much slower with the ET nerf. Any suggestions?

 

-M

[M3z]

If you want to wreck in zones the three primaries are: psi melee (best), street justice, and rad melee

 

Greater psi blade can easily hit 900+ (squishies have 1606 HP capped for reference).

 

Optimal secondaries are /ea and /bio

Energy aura gives you repel resist and a self heal as well as allowing you to slot for damage.

Bio gives you some survivability via absorb and perma 20-30% damage buff.

 

Energy aura is probably best secondary though.

 

So in conclusion, psi/ea/soul is the best pvp stalker build atm.

[Solarverse]

If you want to wreck in zones the three primaries are: psi melee (best), street justice, and rad melee

 

Greater psi blade can easily hit 900+ (squishies have 1606 HP capped for reference).

 

Optimal secondaries are /ea and /bio

Energy aura gives you repel resist and a self heal as well as allowing you to slot for damage.

Bio gives you some survivability via absorb and perma 20-30% damage buff.

 

Energy aura is probably best secondary though.

 

So in conclusion, psi/ea/soul is the best pvp stalker build atm.

 

EA is a defensive set. I would never suggest somebody take a defensive set in to a PvP zone. With Tactics, Focused Accuracy and other methods of giving yourself +Accuracy, it pretty much kills Defensive sets. Personally I would think Elec would have a huge advantage over the other sets, since it is a pure resist set and you can Soft Cap your resist at 75%.

[M3z]

Consensus among top level stalkers in the game right now is /energy aura is the best set in the game.

 

-Defense let's you stay in hide (a good player will just keep you out of hide the entire time and chase you down on a resist based set)

-If someone with high acc engages you, t9, won't make you unhittable but should buy you time to go back in hide.

-Someone BU+aims you shouldn't be engaging them anyway, placate or evade

-Allows you to get massive +damage bonuses from IO set (I run around 50%+ damage not including musculature etc)

-Self heal

-Repel resist (can't be TK'd, can AS storm/bubblers etc)

 

Your job on stalker is to AS->follow up, not to scrap it out or anything like that, even in the bad state that defense is now it still outshines resistance for stalkers in pvp.

 

 

 

 

[Solarverse]

Consensus among top level stalkers in the game right now is /energy aura is the best set in the game.

 

-Defense let's you stay in hide (a good player will just keep you out of hide the entire time and chase you down on a resist based set)

-If someone with high acc engages you, t9, won't make you unhittable but should buy you time to go back in hide.

-Someone BU+aims you shouldn't be engaging them anyway, placate or evade

-Allows you to get massive +damage bonuses from IO set (I run around 50%+ damage not including musculature etc)

-Self heal

-Repel resist (can't be TK'd, can AS storm/bubblers etc)

 

Your job on stalker is to AS->follow up, not to scrap it out or anything like that, even in the bad state that defense is now it still outshines resistance for stalkers in pvp.

 

Okay, but let's keep in mind, most PvPers are not a huge fan of Arena, most PvPers prefer zone PvP. For Arena I have no argument, but there is no way in hell I would tell somebody to hit zone PvP with a defensive set. You can go in with /SR with Elude popped and still end up face planted. Defense simply does not pay off. There is a lot more "scrapping it out" in Zone PvP than there is Arena PvP. Also, Slows are huge in zone PvP as well. Slows such as Snow Storm, Lingering Radiation, Tar Patch, Glue Arrow and Infrigidate can be a nightmare for somebody running /EA, as can fears.

 

As I said before, Arena PvP is a monster all it's own. I would not even begin to try and put up an argument against Arena and what works there. However, as said before, they are two entirely different monsters with their own play styles.

[Banana Man]

EA works fine in zones. It also gets slow resist.

 

Snow storm: does basically nothing, except drop your FPS a little. Just run in a straight line or use a mez and it will get detoggled.

Tar patch: Just leave the tar patch

Glue arrow: You have tp resist, so if you get glue arrowed, it's probably somewhere you can just leave

Infrigidate: Shouldn't really do much on its own with EA's slow resist and defense debuff resists, also, not many people are running colds

 

The main difference between zones and arena is that zones are a much more forgiving, and slightly less predictable environment. I'm not saying something like /elec or /rad would be terrible. I'm not even necessarily saying EA is the outright best set in zones, but EA is definitely more than fine in a PvP zone, and I've yet to see any evidence that something else is significantly better, or better at all.

[Solarverse]

This will be a bit of a ramble here, but...

 

Yup, you're right.

 

I had to take a second glance, but it does get a resistance to Slow. The only thing that sets Elec apart from Energy in terms of resisting Slow, is that Elec has a +Speed mechanic. So pretty much, the only thing /Energy can really be hurt by is Fear, which can easily be negated with a Break Free.

 

I'm still not convinced (in Zone PvP) that Energy is better than /Elec in terms of survival, but I guess that would have to be put to the test one day and see what happens. It's just in my experience (on live) is that Defense in Zone PvP will get you killed due to the lack of the type of resists that you can get from /Elec. Defense when I last PvPed was close to useless...and it was real pathetic watching other stalkers try to make it work. It got to a point that I started running /Dark in Zone PvP, and surprising did well, even against Regen Scrappers. I didn't kill him (I have video) but I sure as hell made his life miserable. He couldn't kill me either. If /Elec had been a thing for Stalkers back then, with how the Stalker's mechanics are today, I would have ate the floors with him once his IH dropped, and I could have been able to take his beatings all day long.

 

However, I'll concede with the status resistance. I didn't realize /Energy had Slow resist...which honestly isa bit OP for /Energy to have resistance to all status' with the exception of Fear. No set in game has that type of status resist...not even Tank sets. That was actually very surprising.

 

You may be swaying my mind towards energy. What's funny, is when this game first went live, I created a Psi/Energy, I simply never got him very high beyond level 22. I may be picking him back up soon. However, if I do /Energy for a Stalker for zones, I don't think I will go with Psi/. Most likely it would be Elec/, Spines/ or maybe even Dark. I usually lean toward Spines/ for Zone PvP, due to it's ranged Immob. The set was much more preferable before the nerf to Ripper.

[FUBARczar]

I'll tell you that I have seen just about every set "work" in Zone PVP these past couple weeks.  For instance, I do great on my Shield Stalker which is my main PVE toon, and I just made a PVP build for fun, and it is tough. 

 

I have played against very tough scrappers, Regen, and ELA are most common, also Bio and SR sometimes.