Lethal Damage ?

I have a dark/ninja stalker who is an absolute joy to play, so I decided to roll up a new stalker to play around with this AT. I started a spine/electric, and so far my experience has been a lot of fun, but I do have a concern.

I have noticed that with build up and assassin's impaler, I do only about 1/3 damage to a boss. I know that I am currently only using DOs, and that the damage will get better, but I am wondering how much of a roll lethal resistance plays in my ability to damage my victim... ah... targets....

Any advice from players who have higher level lethal damage dealers?

the main problem that all villian lethal sets face is the end game: most of what you will fight will be arachnos and longbow, and i think malta or rikti as a 3rd. most (if not all) of the mobs in those groups have high lethal resistance, so any lethal set will have problems.

then you factor in the stalker starting damage modifier (1.0 i think, now?), which is better than it used to be, surely. but lethal damage stalkers get hit hard by the heavy lethal resist later on because when mobs start resisting upwards of 50% of your built-up AS it gets kinda disheartening.

my first (and ex) main was a claws/nin stalker. i took him to 50. i IO'd him up, fairly hefty, two full purple sets and half a 3rd. i built him to do what stalkers do best: fast damage. i think towards the end i had about 80-90% global recharge and 20-30% global damage buffs, as well as assault from the leadership pool. the reason i mention this is because i tried to make the best and most out of my favorite character.

and failed miserably, end game, at what a stalker does best: kill things.

don't get me wrong, i was practically unkillable in PvE, and i could take out pretty much everything but true AV's. it just took forever. to kill anything. except carnies.

in the end, the character was a lot of fun to play, so that kept me going. but when i came back from a few months break, i didn't really bat an eye at rerolling from scratch since i knew what was waiting for lethal damage at the end game.

that's from a claws/ stalker perspective, so your spines/ may get you more milage with the toxic DoT's.

Thanks, that's kind of what I figured. I'll play him anywho and see how he does post SOs before I decide if I want to IO him.

don't get me wrong, i loved the set combination of claws/nin, and i loved the character, so it was a ton of fun to level and play at 50. but i also had to blunt and honest, lethal damage is meh on stalkers redside. just keep in mind that is coming from a claws/ point of view, which is the lowest damage lethal set for stalkers (fast yes, but still lots of low damage hits).

the times when lethal resistance at high levels really comes into play and is noticable:
-every time you AS about 90% of the mobs you fight.
-any time you're teamed (or solo w/settings) and you run into an AV, you realized that your 'scrapping damage' output is vastly underwhelming compared to sets like dark melee/ or energy/ simply because of your damage type.
-any fight with a +1 or higher boss, and someone help you if you find that boss to be a PPE or similar high lethal resistance.
-probably others but that's it off the top of my head.

at the extreme end, there is hope, if you want to put the work into IO'ing out and getting non-lethal damage procs, etc, which may actually help spines out due to the aoe-nature of the set.

in the end, play what is FUN for you, regardless of what others say sucks and doesn't suck. if it's really fun to play, you will make it not suck eventually, because passion is what drives people to excel.

I am currently leveling a DB/EA stalker, and I must say he is a blast to play. He is currently my highest level character at level 34, and no matter how much resistance the enemies have I still have a ton of fun playing him.

Right now, regardless of the Lethal resistance of enemies, my stalker can currently solo mission set for five players, and the resistance isn't too noticeable, but you will see that enemies are harder to kill. Right now, the groups that resist lethal damage off the top of my head are Devouring Earth (Boulders and Sentries), Longbow, Arachnos (Tarantulas and Crab Spiders), Rikti (Bosses and Armored gunmen) and pretty much every single robot/ghost enemy, namely Circle of Thorns and Malta. Now, that does look like a lot, but there are still neutral groups to fight like the Council and Nemesis (only Fake Nemesis bosses and the robot minions are resistant) and some groups are weak to lethal like the Carnival of Shadows. The PPD is present at the level 50 range with their Peacebringer units, but they are surprisingly easy to kill.

All in all, while you may be at a slight disadvantage with lethal damage, it isn't enough to make your character unplayable. Sure, you won't have the sheer manpower of sets like Energy Melee, but the added toxic damage for spines can make up for the lethal resistance in the higher levels, since very few enemies at all can resist toxic. (Only robots to my knowledge are resistant to toxic).

So my advice would be to just avoid groups with numerous robot enemies if you can, like Rikti and Arachnos. If you slot for damage though, you should get along just fine.

Ugh Ballistas.

well, in all fairness you won't really notice a problem with lethal resistance until about 35-40ish. after that it becomes heavily more noticable. i can say, though, a lethal damage stalker on a team is fine at any level. just uhh... look like you're doing the killing and slide the brute/corr a few hundred infamy. or find either that would be willing to rent themselves out on an hourly basis.

...and remember, also, stalkers are a high damage archtype. it's the mob groups you fight and their lethal resistance that makes that such a joke later on.

best advice i could give you: create a character concept and play it. if it ever becomes unfun, just make a new one and keep in mind what made the previous character unfun. i got tired of lethal resistant robots and drones so i rolled MA/ to crane kick those fuggers back to the drawing board.

Well I do have a high level brute that does all lethal damage (claws/wp), but because she is a brute she can stand toe to toe with just about anything for just about forever.

I was thinking that by virtue of being a stalker it would be more difficult, and that /ela doesn't appear to have any of the bag-o-tricks that ninjitsu has.

I'm still a lowly level 18, but having a hoot for now.