Blasters and Stalkers

Been leveling up my stalker quite a bit during the double xp, and had the Crimson Revenant mission to kill Back Alley Brawler (at the time I was lvl 32 and he was conning as a 33 EB scaled down from an AV). After several failed attempts to solo him with different inspiration combinations, I finally beat him with 6 small def and 9 small dmg insps. It then occurred to me that in terms of playstyle, my Stalker is a lot like my Blaster.
What I mean to say is that both AT's are glass cannon's and basically use death as their strongest debuff. I find that when soloing, mobs are much easier for both my stalker and blaster if I ignore (or at least not focus as much on) controls and just focus on dmg and try to 1 or 2 shot everything.

Anyone else find thiss observation true for them?

I guess it depends on the sets you use and build with. In the situation you posted, I remember doing that mission with my Dark melee/Willpower stalker. At that lvl, his build was pretty bad too (had 3 leadership powers, no stamina and didn't have Mind over Body for the smashing/lethal resists). He managed to solo EB BackAlly Brawler (can't recall the lvl) but he used more endurance inspirations than anything. He stood and fought, using Touch of Fear to debuff ToHit as much as possible.

My Electric melee/Regen stalker would probably have done what you had did because he lacks all the resists to withstand BAB's attacks. He'd pretty much play as a blapper (a meleeing blaster), jumping in to put in a good crit or two then jump out to regen a bit or use a heal.

In essence, yes a Stalker can play like a Blaster if you build it that way. But they can also play like Scrappers (try Dual Blades for that). If built right, a Stalker is no more a glass cannon than a Scrapper would be.

Agreeing with other replies here. There's a lot of conceptual similarity, and at first a Stalker plays a lot like a (usually) melee-only Blaster. Your best defense is killing stuff fast.

However, that playstyle often holds true for a Blaster for their whole career, where a Stalker actually gets tools to make them a lot tougher for the same HP. A big way, of course, is that a Stalker rarely has much concern with being mezzed. Sure, a Blaster still has some ability to blast, but once they get their mez protection toggle, a Stalker can usually do whatever they want around Mezzers. Assassin's Strike allows one to frequently eliminate one foe before a fight really starts, and Placate allows you to partially eliminate one during the fight, usable a form of soft control. Those can be very powerful tactical tools when fighting things that you're worried about hitting too hard or too frequently, and they don't really have an equivalent in the Blaster's world.

The above may sound like an endoresement of Stalkers over Blasters, but it's not meant to be. A Blaster's focus on damage-dealing powers and access to AoE powersets means they can dish out carnage on scales most Stalkers can only dream wistfully of. Blasters are just safest doing that on a team where they can be buffed or at least covered by their teammates, while a Stalker's protections give them better ability to go it alone.

The comparison is a little similar, as both ATs want their targets dead fast. However, Stalkers are a lot more resilient in a drawn out fight, and are able to scrap things out. Blasters are balanced out with that by being able to do a lot more damage via AOEs, etc.

You can make drawn out fights less dangerous for you Blaster depending on your build, etc., but Stalkers should always be safer (though both are fun).

I think the original concept was that they would be very similar. If you look at the icon for a Stalker, it looks like the crosshairs of a sniper rifle. And I've compared the Assassin Strike to a Sniper attack before, it's really the same thing, only performed in melee. You NEED stealth because that's what allows you to perform the windup for such an interruptable attack at close range.

If you note also that Blasters are the only AT with two build up powers, that pretty much makes Blasters the kings of burst damage. They have other features as well, but the Stalker basically concentrates on that aspect. The problem is, it becomes too tedious, either you are running in and out of combat too often, so you can go back into Hide, or you're staying and scrapping, with all the risk that entails. The devs decided that Stalkers needed a little more HP and a little more damage to make that risk worth it.

So I would say currently Stalkers are like a hybrid between Blasters and Scrappers. They do high burst damage like a Blaster, but lack the Blaster's AoE damage. And they can stay in the melee a lot more like Scrappers, but lack their ability to tank in emergencies. Like a Blaster, a Stalker really has only one role on a team, damage dealing. He has no secondary role. On the other hand, he can't really do just massive damage, like a Blaster can. So he gets somewhat more resiliance.

If I had to pick which villain archetype was most Blaster-like it would either be Stalker (burst dps focused) or Dominator (melee/ranged mix, active defence required) - all 3 archetypes need good situational awareness, both for prioritising targets and for identifying threats that can kill them fast.

My first L50 Stalker was Energy/Energy and that was very squishy and played very blapper-like, but my second L50 Stalker was Elec/Nin and that was pretty solid and felt rather Scrapper/Brute-like for survivability, albeit with incredible area burst damage that felt quite Blaster-like.

I guess the two lessons to take from all of this is that:
a) No archetype is exactly like another archetype - even those that share the same powerset choices can differ a lot.
b) Often the powersets you choose can define your role and affect your survivability as much as (if not more than) the archetype you pick.