Most survivable armor

I want to make a StJ stalker. but want the most survivable one. What are the recommendations and why?!?

I just want to make sure before people read everything that this is all my opinion...and that i think most armors are survivable...except for Regeneration...which seams the weakest to me.
And this is all by the way based on personal experience with the sets....and even getting them all up to incarnate levels with shifts.

Soooo....when it comes to most survivable....
(for me being something that you dont have to futz-about with to make it good)....
I would have to say Ninjutsu first becasue it has a self heal and it pretty much covers all defenses.
The second most survivable in my opinion would be willpower becasue it too has a heal and its combination of defenses and resistances make it possible to cover almost all possible damage types....plus it offers a very good healing rate and increase of health.
Third i would say is energy aura and now that it does have a self heal that is very nice....but also its defenses are for pretty much everything....except toxic...but go figure....just exactly how much toxic do you really run into aside from luska..this isnt to say it offers zero toxic defenses it just isnt high like the energy Aura's other statistics.

Then from there...not sure how i would rank things...as the armors like electric and dark for example rely on resistance mostly and stalkers dont really happen to be the most sturdy fighters...and mostly aside from superior reflexes which would cover all damage types but doesnt have a self heal the others dont have coverage to everything of balanced numbers....so like electric armor you will have tons of resistance to energy and such...but not much against fire or cold and worse against psionics and toxic just as an example.

And then i rate regeneration on the bottom for stalkers...unless you can run away alot...then i guess its not too bad.

Its funny but on a different part of the forums some people think that stalkers should have invulnerability...but for me from my experience on tanks and scrappers....i think of that set like the other armors that are like energy and dark....as in it gives resistance to smash lethal alot....about half of that to electric and cold and fire and with nothing for toxic and psionic....i only thought about invulnerability because people onthat thread kept trying to say how great it would make a stalker...but i just feel it would be another one you would have to futz-with too much armor type to make it actualy work ok.

Anywise thats my opinion...i gave reasons...hope that helps with your descision.

With the changes coming in i22, taking into account IOs, I'm guessing WP with the ability to get over 2k HP, softcapped defenses, a self heal, and resists.

I love Ninjitsu, but my softcapped Ninjitsu didn't seem all that when it's defense got shredded :/ I'm not expecting SR levels of DDR, but it felt like it really lacked in the DDR.

What about Ice vs Ninj? Debating on what I want to roll with Staff come i22. Ninj is probably easier to softcap but Ice Has Hoarfrost, Energy Absorption, and Icy Bastion. But the graphics on the armors are horrible -__-

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Low investment: nin. Just softcap defense and go to town with the heal and toys.

High investment: ice elec and dark. Softcap defense and diversify your other types of protection.

Having played several stalkers to 50, I have to say Ice Armor is hands down the most survivable secondary set as long as you are not fighting AVs with big psionic attack. Regular bosses with psionic is ok because you still have Maxhp and Chilling Embrace to debuff their damage and you can take them down pretty quick.

Ninjitsu is not even close. The thing I don't like about Ninjitsu and Dark Armor is their lack of knock back protection. I only want to put one -kb set. I do not want to run expensive toggle Acrobatics or put 2-3 more -kb sets. One -kb is not enough against certain attacks, and Pylon is one of them. Ugh!

Both Willpower and Energy Aura are decent. I would rank them as #2 on the list. Electricity Armor is also ok if you run tough/weave and good defensive set bonuses.


So far, Ice Armor with good recharge is hands down the best secondary I've tried.

If I want 20% recharge bonus, I'll choose either Energy Aura or Electricity Armor. I think Super Reflex is way too one-dimensional and it's not that good in Incarnate with that many auto damage.

I have paired my StJ with Ice and am absolutely not disappointed.

Will be better once HP cap is raised and Hoarfrost becomes more than a heal in most situations.

For just beating things up without having to pay a lot of attention as a Stalker, you want to soft-cap. So the answer is dependent on your budget, and then on how well you manage your click powers. For the most part I agree with Microcosm earlier, but I'll throw in a few other notes.

The cheapest and easiest to soft-cap is Super Reflexes plus it gives a passive recharge and speed increase, very high defense debuff resistance, and limited scaling resistances as your hit points disappear. But that's all it has going for it, really - it's great if you're on a limited budget but other sets can do a lot more.

Energy Aura has a Psi and Toxic hole, but it's also fairly easy to softcap to everything else - especially with Energy Drain stacking +defense - and has some basic passive resistances, a recharge boost, a stun PBAoE toggle, great endurance management, a self-heal that provides +regen as well, and Overload has +hp as well with an easy-to-avoid (endurance-only) crash.

Ninjitsu isn't too bad to soft-cap and has a lot of extra tools including a self-heal, cone sleep/confuse/-tohit that takes the Contagious Confusion proc to turn it into a weaker version of Seeds of Confusion, and Caltrops to provide area denial, some extra damage, and an afraid effect that causes most mobs to spend more time switching AI states than actually acting. It has some limited susceptibility to defense cascade failure, but if you use those extra tools there shouldn't be many cases at all where you don't have at least one answer to the problem. The biggest issue is high to-hit buffs, since you don't have any resistance for when you do get hit.

Which leads to Ice Armor, which I haven't personally played because I didn't want to reroll someone just to play it and haven't made any new Stalkers since it came out, and the resistance sets which - if softcapped - are better than the defense sets because let's face it, softcapped defense + capped resistance (Elec running Power Surge) is better than softcapped defense + good resistance (Dark, Elec), which is better than softcapped defense + decent resistance (Willpower, Ice with Icy Bastion*), which is better than softcapped defense + extra "panic buttons" (Ninjitsu), which is about equal to softcapped defense + token resistance (Energy Aura, Ice without Icy Bastion**), which is better than softcapped defense alone (Super Reflexes), which is better than anything which isn't softcapped***.

It's up to you to decide if the extra cost associated with softcapping the resistance sets is worth the survival difference; for me it's not and I tend to not bother and select defense sets. Alternatively you could play whatever set you think looks the best, use Barrier Destiny to cover any survival holes, and avoid exemplaring.


* - it's good resistance but not with a 100% uptime and it uses animation time, so I'm calling it "decent"
** - the -damage aura is effectively resistance but only to melee-range threats and the high cold resistance is mostly useless due to lack mobs using cold damage
** - debatable, but I'm lazy and it's mostly true

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It's always better to have a mix of high defense and some resistance or +Maxhp because with Stalker's lower HP, you don't want to get one-shotted by AV or some bosses.


Ice Armor excels:

1. Icy Bastion! Yes, it only lasts 30s but during that 30s, you get great 200% recovery (use it when you low on endurance) and an amazing base 400% +regeneration (which acts like healing). You can enhance the +regen part with sets. Oh and Icy Bastion has no "endurance crash" or anything. Strength of Will has -50% end.

I use Icy Bastion when my endurance is low. I don't always use it just because I am in trouble. Casting time of Icy Bastion is only 1.17s, which is shorter than Strength of Will.

Strength of Will lasts longer but it only has 30% +recovery and no +regen and the +resistance values are much lower than Icy Bastion. On my 50+1 MA/Will, I can run out of endurance during a long fight. I won't have that problem with /Ice.


2. Chilling Embrace: Yes, it is melee-oriented but it has 10' radius! You are not just reducing one target. You are reducing all the enemies around you and making them run much slower. With Stalkers not having any taunt, some mobs will run away when their health is low. I find CE an excellent way to keep mobs run away slower so I can finish them off. CE has 15% damage debuff (less against higher level mobs of course). Kinetic / Ice should be the best -damage debuff in the game.


3. Energy Absorption: When you are fighting a huge mob, Energy Absorption acts as another way to boost your type defense (minus Psionic) and it gives you more endurance. Mids shows that both Energy Absorption and Permafrost have 20% Res(Multi). Does this mean they give 40% resistance to slow debuffs?


When I think of the term "Survival", I don't just look at the Defensive end. By having better Offense, you kill more efficiently and takes less damage. Ice Armor delivers that by slowing down the mobs so they don't run away that fast, and having two ways to give you +endurance during long fight. You can have the highest defense but without ways to get endurance, you will die eventually. Willpower lacks the +endurance part. Other than that, Willpower is very good too.

I like Nin, my Favorite secondary in the AT to play. Plp who can't survive with it, probably shouldn't be playing stalkers to begin with.

i quite like the idea of certain ATs having exclusive sets, its what makes the AT unique, if all ATs had the same sets, there really wouldnt be any need for any of the ATs and instead if that happens why not create a singular aspect of character creation like the other mmo.

not all sets should get ported, but would be interesting to see how they faired compared to other ATs.

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