So I'm thinking about trying me a stalker...

...but I know very little about them.

Based on the fact that it would be all new and shiny, and what little I've heard suggests it's a great set, I expect to take Ninjitsu as my secondary. I'd like some suggestions on a primary that would fit well for me.

I expect I would spend most of my time soloing. While a lot of my characters have a heavy AoE focus and crank up the virtual team size, I figured with a stalker I would focus much more on ST damage and raise the level for difficulty instead.

Because of other characters I have, I would rule out Ninja Blade and Elec Melee. Dark Melee is a possibility although I may prefer something else as I have a DM brute levelling.

Based on that are there any primaries that would be particularly suitable?

I'm also curious as to how mez effects and DoT powers interact with stalker mechanics, as I really don't know much about how they work.

Well, here's what I know:

-Hide costs no end, and the stealth is supressed when you're attacked or you attack, click a glowie, or if you're hit by any aoe dot.

-Placate is a staple for stalkers as you can make a mob disregard you for another assassin strike. Oh, definitley take your assassin whatever the name for the primary is, otherwise you'll have problems.

- For pvp, the only power from the concealment pool that meshes with your hide is stealth. that with a stealth proc on top and you're golden.

- I'm currently running a stalker with the new Broadsword, it's nice heavy damage and I took ninjitsu as well, good choice, Lots of tricks up your sleeve

- Elec melee is the most popular primary out there from what I hear/read. I love weapons myself, but unfortunately Dual Blades was a disappointment, but it looks flashy and cool.

- A good strategy in a 3 man mob is to assassin strike the first one, with build up prior it will most likely one-shot a yellow con, then scrap it out with the second one, placate the third, and assassin strike him too when he ignores you.

- The coolest part of stalking is that you can take all the steal this or defeat npc and guards, run right to the end and take him out. With a stalker, your main xp is gonna come from bosses and mission completion, not so much by trashing lots of minions like our blueside counterparts, try to refrain from scrapperlock cause stalkers are squishier.

- In teams, you can scout around the board, let your team know of anything dangerous around the corner, and go right for the boss or potential team hazard enemy when you get
to it. Some of the best stalker moments are when a brute is wailing on a boss then BAM! he's down from 305 hp to 1 from your sneaky a**, lol

Welcome to the world of Stalkers!

P.S- If you like unlocking alternate weapons, broadsword has the most. Happy Hunting!

EDIT: regarding mezzes, pretty sure a mezz will de-toggle your hide, but I could be wrong.

It's hard to go wrong with Ninjitsu. It goes with everything. The most obvious synergies are with NB/Broadwsord (for stacking defense with Divine Avalance/Parry) and DM (for tohit debuffs and the extra self heal), but really it works with anything. It is the Swiss Army Secondary of scrapperhood.

Not quite sure what you mean by mez effects and DoT. If you mean your powers, all mez powers you get access to will break the Hidden state, with the exception of Blinding Powder. If they do damage, they will critical (except for the PPP holds, which explicitly mention in their descriptions that they deal no critical damage). DoT powers that deal a fixed amount of damage will deal all their critical damage as a single lump sum. DoT that has only a chance of occuring (which really only applies to Spines) is not factored into critical damage.

If you mean enemy powers, generally mezzes that deal no damage will not break the Hidden state. DoT will as well, but it's a bit more complicated. If you get hit with a DoT effect, then Placate a target, you will very likely still be able to score a critical if you activate your next attack fast enough; there's a "grace window," so to speak, likely due to latency and the fact that the server resolves attacks as soon as they activate, no matter how long they take to actually animate in actual play.

(It may also be useful to understand a few things about Hide and Placate. Hide has two effects: the stealth effect and the Hidden status. Both suppress for 8 seconds, but they are entirely separate effects. Hidden is what matters for criticals; Assassination does not care whether you are visible or not, so long as you are Hidden. It's very Zen that way. Likewise, Placate (the power) has two effects: it inflicts the placate status effect, which prevents the target from targeting you, and it grants you the Hidden status, which enables criticals. It does *not* reactivate any stealth powers you have, and other abilities that inflict the placate status (Smoke Flash, the sleep IO proc) will not trigger the Hidden state.)

Finally, I don't want to dissuade you, but there are some things you should be aware of as a first-time stalker that often catch people used to other ATs off guard:

Most importantly, stalker builds are tight, especially early on. Really tight. Ludicriously tight. You get a lot of important stuff opening up early and will be scrambling to shove it all in until at least the mid-20s, possibly even later.

There are five powers in Ninjitsu you will want sooner rather than later: Hide (no choice there); Ninja Reflexes and Danger Sense, your defense toggles; Kujin-In Rin, your mez protection; and Kuji-In Sha, your Reconstruction clone. You'll probably also want the tier 9, but by that point the mad scramble should have abated some. As for the rest of the set, you can do some fun tricks with Caltrops, but your mileage may vary, and Blinding Powder has some useful properties (the debuff stacks with your defenses, it will take the Contagious Confusion proc, and notably, it does not break Hide). The only really dubious power in the set is Smoke Flash. There are ways to use it effectively, but they are likely more trouble than they are worth.

From your primary you will probably want to pick up two of the standard attacks early. Some people opt to struggle through the low levels with only one, but I can only assume these people are masochists or sculpt marble with toothpicks as a hobby. Also from your primary you have three Important Stalker Powers opening in rapid succession: AS, Build Up, and Placate at 6, 8, and 12. In most sets the level 18 attack is also quite desirable.

If you've done the math at this point you've probably noticed there's not a lot of room left for things like, oh, pool powers. You should probably resign yourself to postponing Stamina, travel, or both for longer than you may like, and plan accordingly. You may even forgo one entirely and compensate with IOs for recovery or things like temp powers or slotted Hurdle for travel. You can also postpone one of the Big Three until things calm down: I've found it easiest to do this with Placate (though this is useful as mitigation as well as a damage boost) or AS (yes, yes, blasphemy, but for much of the early game it's really overkill for anything but bosses).

On the subject of AS: it produces big pretty orange numbers, but it is not the totality of your offence. It's easy to forget that, but don't. If you ever find yourself going out of your way for the sake of getting an AS off when you have other less finicky powers recharged, you're probably doing yourself a disservice. You have a bit less HP than a scrapper, but your defenses are just as sturdy, you do nearly as much base damage, and you have a better chance to critical even before factoring in Hide and Placate. Fear not to scrap.

Finally, remember that Ninjitsu has no inherent KB protection, so you will probably want to plan either for Acrobatics (tricky due to the aforementioned tightness) or make arrangements for IO solutions.

Thanks for the responses.

I should have been a little clearer with my last question. What I really mean is, does having mez effects on my attacks help in any unusual fashion with stalker tactics and mechanics, or is just providing mitigation in the same way it would on another melee character? As for DoT, is there any difficulty in using DoT effects along with placate?

In terms of build tightness, I routinely push a travel power back into the 20s or 30s anyway and use temps until then, so I should be able to swing it. I'll probably push Danger Sense back into the 20s. Toggles like that are usually the first thing for me to delay into SO levels on tight builds.

As for primary, I'm curious about a few things.

How does EM fair these days? Does it rely heavily on ET and TF or does it do reasonably well early on?

I'm interested in Claws also, but from what little I've heard it doesn't fair that well as a Stalker set as it's geared more towards DPS over long term rather than burst damage. Or rather, it should be, but without Follow Up it just ain't that great.

Spines is another possibility, but I wonder if it lacks a decent selection of ST powers early on.

Hmm. Making Claws look quite appealing. I hadn't noticed the shorter recharge on BU, and I must say I like that.

I figure I can squeeze two of Swipe, Strike and Slash into the build early on, though I'm not sure which one to drop.

I'm curious to know how quickly a character like this can set the difficulty for higher level and/or bosses, but I suppose the best way to find out is just to try. I'm levelling a crab right now but I think I may have found my next project. Thanks for the advice.

addressing random questions:

- Having mezzes in your attacks doesn't help you as a Stalker any more than it helps any other AT. Some of the secondary effects (read: -tohit in DM) are more useful for some secondary powersets (read: defense sets) than others, but in general the only thing that you ever need to worry about is the -recovery in Electric Melee or the extra DoT from certain other powers (MG, Spines) breaking Placate.

- Yes, Stalker builds are tight early on. If you have veteran attacks, you can get by with taking fewer primary attacks (I never would have played Spines without having both Sands of Mu and a Blackwand... in addition to letting me get rid of the fugly bananas). You'll still want to take Assassin's Strike at level 6, though.

- You asked about EM. It does "okay" - it's heavily reliant on ET and TF to remain at or near the top for single target damage, yes, but Bone Smasher and Energy Punch are still good DPA attacks early on, and you get ET at level 26. It's no worse many of the other sets through those levels... My EM/WP doesn't have any issues killing things, unless you count the time I killed myself with ET after a Tank Swiper caught me while it was animating.

- That said, I personally prefer DM, and Midnight's Grasp hits harder than ET or TF on a critical (ET doesn't critical, TF does ET-level damage, and MG hits for a full double damage critical). Siphon Life getting a damage boost also helps keep your hit points topped off, even if you don't bother slotting it for heal at all (I don't - ever since the buff it's an attack that happens to give me hp, not a heal that happens to do damage).

- Ninjitsu is actually one of the more forgiving secondaries as far as "essential" powers. Since your AoE and Ranged defense are on the same toggle, you can pick up 2 toggles to cover all 3 positions. The tricks (Caltrops, Smoke Flash, Blinding Powder, Retsu) are nice but not "essential" and building with some defense set bonuses in mind will get you soft-capped... if not easily, at least no more expensively than it is to softcap a Shield character.

- Speaking of soft-capping... take a look at Shadow Meld. You may decide that you don't need to be softcapped all the time if you can turn it on and off at will.

- If you're going Claws, skip Swipe. I'd make the same recommendation for a Scrapper, though - which has been my only experience with the set. Also keep in mind that later on lethal damage may frustrate, especially when running into robots where an AS critical won't even kill a minion.

- Since it was brought up earlier in the thread, being mezzed might suppress hide (I don't remember if it's non-damaging if it will or not) but, like other defensive toggles, it won't turn it off. Since it costs no endurance, that also means that it will stay on even if your endurance bottoms out. If you want it off, you either turn it off yourself or go get killed.

- Kidnap missions are evil. Player-targetted ambushes are annoying (since they're aggro on you immediately, they can attack even if you're in Hidden status). Sneaking around the map instead of staying with the team and fighting is bad. If you're with the team scrapping it out will work for you rather well.

- The Demoralize aspect of Assassin's Strike (ie, the unresistable -7.5% tohit and chance for mag 5 fear) works very well, especially on a defense secondary. But keep in mind that it only works if your target survives. There are many instances where not immediately killing one target will help you survive better than if they just disappeared immediately (especially if it's a fairly homogenous group like Council).

- Play the way you enjoy playing. No matter what AT it is, if you don't find anything fun about it, then it's going to suck. The best we can offer is advice, or maybe some number-crunching if you want to min-max, but you are the one that knows what you like - take everything said here with that in mind.

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