best ST stalker

[Frosty15]

what would be best st stalker?

[Maelwys]

Last I checked Energy Melee, Fire Melee + Katana were all pretty much within a hair's breadth of each other (with MA hot on their Heels) in terms of raw damage output.
Katana's Lethal damage and Energy Melee's Smashing Damage Component are both resisted much more frequently + severely than Fire damage though.

[Frosty15]

ty

[Championess]

The 3 extreme damage attacks EM gets on stalkers is a bit hard for other ones to match imo.  Total Focus, fast ET, fast AS is a ruthless ST chain.  Honestly there's no stalkers with a non AS attack like fast critting ET.

 

My EM/Bio wrecks

[aethereal]

16 minutes ago, Championess said:

The 3 extreme damage attacks EM gets on stalkers is a bit hard for other ones to match imo.  Total Focus, fast ET, fast AS is a ruthless ST chain.  Honestly there's no stalkers with a non AS attack like fast critting ET.

 

Ice Melee has Freezing Touch.  Its base damage is lower than Energy Transfer (148 vs 232), but its crit is on-par, because it gets full crits and not partial crits like ET -- so 296 damage for a critting Freezing Touch vs 297 damage for a critting Energy Transfer (and both have a 1 second animation time).  Half of Freezing Touch's damage is DoT, which is worse than ET, but on the other hand FT is also a hold and thus can fit an additional purple proc and lots of additional normal damage procs.

 

What Ice Melee lacks is a decent third ST attack -- it has Assassin's Ice Sword, Frozen Touch, and then very mediocre attacks like Ice Sword, or you can use Frost as a ST attack to, again, mediocre effect.  If you have high recharge, you can mostly just use AS, FT, and an epic snipe, but when you do that your ability to build assassin's focus suffers.

Edited February 15 by aethereal

[Championess]

On 2/14/2025 at 4:09 PM, aethereal said:

 

Ice Melee has Freezing Touch.  Its base damage is lower than Energy Transfer (148 vs 232), but its crit is on-par, because it gets full crits and not partial crits like ET -- so 296 damage for a critting Freezing Touch vs 297 damage for a critting Energy Transfer (and both have a 1 second animation time).  Half of Freezing Touch's damage is DoT, which is worse than ET, but on the other hand FT is also a hold and thus can fit an additional purple proc and lots of additional normal damage procs.

 

What Ice Melee lacks is a decent third ST attack -- it has Assassin's Ice Sword, Frozen Touch, and then very mediocre attacks like Ice Sword, or you can use Frost as a ST attack to, again, mediocre effect.  If you have high recharge, you can mostly just use AS, FT, and an epic snipe, but when you do that your ability to build assassin's focus suffers.

 

I have an Ice Melee Scrapper.  Freezing Touch is fast ET on roids because it can be loaded with hold dmg procs as well.  When it crits yeah I give FT a slight nod over ET because of the procing.  I end up slotting ET with sets to get recharge so I can machinegun them out.  Which that likely evens it out.

 

All in all yeah its like you say and true for the other assaults, EM gets a 3rd beefy ST attack that others dont.

 

Ice gets Frozen Aura, thats quite a good pbaoe attack.  That and Freezing Touch are the reason to play the set.

Edited February 19 by Championess

[aethereal]

2 hours ago, Championess said:

Ice gets Frozen Aura, thats quite a good pbaoe attack.  That and Freezing Touch are the reason to play the set.

 

Frost is pretty good too!  High damage for an AoE, and the range is enhanceable so you can get it to be a pretty meaty size.

 

But man, Frozen Fists and Ice Sword are rough.

[Championess]

20 minutes ago, aethereal said:

 

Frost is pretty good too!  High damage for an AoE, and the range is enhanceable so you can get it to be a pretty meaty size.

 

But man, Frozen Fists and Ice Sword are rough.

 

Yeah Frost is a very above average attack especially for being a melee cone.  Although it gets weeded out for me once you can get fireball from the epic pools.  Not much around my scrapper is living after fireball, frozen footstomp and DNA siphon.

 

True though the first attacks are bleh.  I take the sword because it looks cool and I set mule it.

Edited February 19 by Championess

[Nostromo21]

I might have to give an EM stalker a go now I think! 🙂 What would be the best secondary for solo levelling and survivability...?

[Groovy_Ghoul]

@Nostromo21Stone Armor or Psionic Armor 

[Without_Pause]

EA is in the conversation. 

[Frosticus]

Stone since geode buff is a notch above. No real holes outside mid ddr, which can be fixed by ageless radial. Also boosts rech and adds proc damage.

 

 

 

[kelika2]

kinetic/bio

[Nostromo21]

22 hours ago, Groovy_Ghoul said:

@Nostromo21Stone Armor or Psionic Armor 

Cheers, what does Psi bring to the table that Stone can't - Psi resists...?

 

I'd also like to know if the Stealth pool power is worth taking on top of Hide. I'd like to make a theme stalker that only takes out the bosses to complete all levelling missions as quickly as possible. I plan to pair it with Mystic Flight, as I don't love SS or SJ or pure Fly-ing for indoor missions. The translocate from MF is such a great addition to the basic flight, I take it on almost all my toons now, I just add 1 flight SO/IO and 1 end red. I can backstab a boss/lieutenant and just TP back up out of range into a hover, with just one keybind, if I want to. 🙂

[Uun]

13 hours ago, Nostromo21 said:

Cheers, what does Psi bring to the table that Stone can't - Psi resists...?

Stone gets psi defense in Minerals. I've got an Ice/Stone stalker that's soft capped to S/L/E/N/P and is virtually unkillable. Psi is a layered resist armor, with regen/recovery buffs in Devour Psyche and absorb/hp buffs in Psychokinetic Barrier.

 

13 hours ago, Nostromo21 said:

I'd also like to know if the Stealth pool power is worth taking on top of Hide.

Nope. The stuff that can see you through Hide will still see you if you also have Stealth.

[Groovy_Ghoul]

17 hours ago, Nostromo21 said:

Cheers, what does Psi bring to the table that Stone can't - Psi resists...?

Agree with @Frosticus and @Uun regarding Stone and Psi armors. Well said.

[JediDave]

Psi is an odd one to bring up. The concept for OP was best ST damage. Psi has no damage buffing abilities. As an armor set I think it's great, but it isn't going to help the ST damage any. Stone and Bio are the best options there. I'll let someone with more number crunching skills say which of the two would be better, but  my guess would be stone. 

[Lockpick]

Why is Katana in the running?  I find Katana to be weak for Scrappers and Stalkers, so curious if I am doing something wrong.

[Championess]

I have 5 variations of EM stalkers with different armors.  My EM/Bio hits stupid hard above the others and has real good survivability.  I don't have a Stone armor but I hear its good offensively too.  Understand that Bio is on deck to get some toning down so you may be better off with Stone. 

 

All the mentioned armors are good in their way but if its offense you're looking for Bio or Stone will be the ones you want.

Edited 8 hours ago by Championess

[Championess]

4 minutes ago, Lockpick said:

Why is Katana in the running?  I find Katana to be weak for Scrappers and Stalkers, so curious if I am doing something wrong.

 

It's the ability to slot the achilles and gladiator fury -res procs easily in their attacks.

[Frosticus]

6 hours ago, Lockpick said:

Why is Katana in the running?  I find Katana to be weak for Scrappers and Stalkers, so curious if I am doing something wrong.

In most game play it isn't in the running. But it leverages 2 -res procs well which skews its performance against even cons that live long enough to cycle a lot of attacks while under said -res. 

[Groovy_Ghoul]

On 10/29/2025 at 8:49 PM, Nostromo21 said:

I might have to give an EM stalker a go now I think! 🙂 What would be the best secondary for solo levelling and survivability...?

For solo leveling and survivabilty, I have had great success with Stone Armor and Psionic Armor for reasons mentioned above. The OP did not specify the secondary provide added damage. If so, I would also recommend Shield Defense.