Staff: Brute, Scrapper, or Stalker?

Thoughts? Who does the set really shine for?

Tanker.

I tend to lean Stalker for Staff. Scrappers/Brutes use Staff Mastery to more finely tune what happens to their powers when they have stacks of "Perfection of Whatever". Stalker cannot pick this power, and defaults to Perfection of Body, which I generally consider the "best" of the three options available to Scrapper/Brute anyway.

The Stalker trades away Staff Mastery for Assassin's Strike, but doesn't really "lose" much as he can still utilize Perfection of Body without needing to take Staff Mastery as he simply gets it innately. Ultimately the Stalker winds up getting "more" from the arrangement.

Stalker also trades Innocuous Strikes, a cone attack available to Scrappers/Brutes which can help to complete your AOE chain, for Build Up. Again, I feel like the Stalker gets the better deal here as it still has Guarded Spin, a cone attack, and Eye of the Storm, a PbAOE to round out its' AOE capabilities. Build-Up on top of those two attacks should help to close the gap in AOE damage out-put while giving Stalker an advantage in single target damage as well.

Warkupo makes a fine case for staff stalkers, but while we're at it I shall attempt to convince you of the converse: staff is better on non-stalkers due to staff mastery and innocuous strikes. The latter is a very good cone that lets you have a gapless aoe attack chain with sufficient recharge. That is, as they say, pretty dang cool. It makes more sense to me to go all in on aoe since staff is either a decent single target set with good aoe in stalker form or a mediocre single target set with fantastic aoe for everyone else.

The other thing stalkers give up on is a large part of staff's incomparable survivability. Form of the soul gives you essentially unlimited endurance when coupled with good slotting, but using sky splitter with three stacks of soul gives you a significant boost to both recovery and regen. You have this on top of your defense from guarded spin, on top of your various knockdown, and on top of your ability to run as many toggles as you want.

Do you want to give much of that up for assassin's strike? It's a great attack but I don't think it's the definitive way to play a staff character, more like the DVD-only alternate ending.

A tanker doesn't really appeal to me; I already have a Brute that can't die unless I die IRL at the keyboard. Doing that same thing with lower damage isn't really my aim.

Let me rephrase: I am considering a staff/bio scrapper. How is staff on scrappers compared to brutes and stalkers?

You know - if it comes down to a scrapper or a brute (assuming you haven't already picked stalkers) the epic pools available might just go a long way towards helping you making the decision (I still think staff is best for DA/ tankers) between brute and scrapper. Brutes have superior end mitigation in the body pool, but beyond that I don't know much about them.

Scrappers, on the other hand, have access to the stalker PPP's which are filled with awesome. Mako's got waterspout and freakin' sharks, and Night Widow has the almighty shadow meld.

So depending on what you look for in epic pools you might find some answers there.

Looking at it from the other side: It looks like the resists for Bio won't get you to the Brute cap without some really crazy slotting and the only difference left between the two would be your numbers achieved from asorb, since the cap on that is base HP of your AT. I would think that there is not that marked of a difference between the defensive set on each AT that you would be hard pressed to notice the increased survivability of a Brute.

So if you don't mind giving up the ST strength of a Stalker, I can't see a strong argument to choose Brute over Scrapper since for me that is a question of survivability and, knowing you, it often is as well (you know, the whole reason you suggested I make my Electric/Invuln character a Brute when I was starting).

Staff is good on all the AT's that can get it (including Tanker), and mixes well with various mitigation sets.

I personally like Stalker the best; it's a beast. I have a lot of fun with my Staff/Ninjitsu.

Stalker if you care about doing (the most) damage.

Stalker builds can be surprising survivable, especially ELA / EA / Ice Armor.

I have a Staff/Elec stalker and he is amazingly survivable and doing low 3-minute pylon times.