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