So essentially meta gaming/cheesing the shit out of them
I think you need to come up with an actual definition of "cheese" at this point, because I'm getting the impression that it means "everything that I don't like or refuse to incorporate into my build for no rational reason whatsoever".
or have very specific builds or items.
Yes, specific builds need to use specific items and abilities to deal with specific enemies. This is nothing new, it's what you are doing the whole game. Metal armor builds can laugh in the face of death stalkers while also having to come up with ways to deal with enemies that give them more trouble. You seem to lack perspective.
You can meet them before level 10, essentially right after Depot A.
This is not exclusive to Death Stalkers and isn't a bad thing at all. You can encounter pretty much anything outside of Deep Caverns as soon as you hand the drill parts in. There's nothing stopping anyone from going into the Lunatic Mall, progressing all the way to Carnifex in the Arena, etc. at level 10 and getting destroyed. Some builds could even take on Death Stalkers or Carnifex at level 10, anyways. Different builds can tackle different enemies at different levels. You seem lack perspective, again.
Also fake news about constitution 3.
He says, followed by
When playing my PSI Sniper with 3 con
If you are lightly armored with a tactical vest
I can only conclude you are playing a 3 CON psi build, which is the lowest HP build you could possibly make, while also wearing a tactical vest which is completly unsuited for dealing with melee enemies such as Death Stalkers. There is nothing stopping your build from wearing a sturdy riot gear with a hybrid panel, which provides decently high DR against melee and a much needed HP bonus. You are not even making an attempt at actually trying to find a way to protect yourself, just expecting the game bo be molded around what you're personally playing. It doesn't work that way, especially not on DOMINATING which is inteded for very optimized builds. You can either adapt to enemies that give you trouble or keep dying, your choice. Or play on a lower difficulty, since Death Stalkers are not nearly as common on Hard.
Flares, and molotov cocktails, also need you to initiate combat which is not always possible without cheating/cheesing, see going down vents in Warehouse, yeah you can cheese by initiating combat before going down, but your character should neither expect nor know that they are down there since there is 0 indication for it. Irongut is pretty much the same, requires reload or pre existing knowledge that Death Stalkers will be present.
You get the information that there are Death Stalkers nearby as soon as you stinged, at which point all of those become viable means of active protection without needing any meta knowledge. If you can't survive getting stinged once, your build is just too squishy and lacks passive protection. It doesn't have to be that way. The stings deal around 100 damage on average. Substract 20 or so from a double low freq shield, that's 80. Multiply by 0,65 (given that even the weakest riot gear will give at least 35% DR vs. melee) , that's 52. A quality 70 sturdy vest will give you 53 HP. Congratulations, the sting did no damage just by wearing a decent shield and a 20% armor penalty armor, which in no way cripples your stealth, movement points or dodge/evasion.
Hell, let's assume the worst case scenario. The worst critcal stings I've seen were around 200. 180 after shield, 117 after the riot armor, 64 after the aforementioned vest. Let's even assume that you have no way to either get rid of the crawler poison stun (you do though, because you should have Locus of Control as soon as possible, which is at level 14) and you have to suck up the 78 bio damage from taking antidote. That's 142 damage. 3 con psi builds have 149 HP at level 12, at level 9 with the 30 HP from vigorous belt. Or invest 1 or 2 more points in CON, if you want that HP even sooner.
As someone with extensive stealth build experience the picture with Paranoia, motion tracking goggles, perception and stealth makes me laugh to no end. You effectively need well over 600 combined points in detection and stealth
Funny, my character with 280 detection and 166 stealth disagrees. Maybe your experience isn't as extensive as you think it is. It's not too hard to get comparable numbers around level 15 or sooner, assuming you have high PER, decent AGI, Paranoia, motion tracking goggles and relatively light suit of armor with black cloth.
https://webm.red/sMIC.webm
The only non-meta thing mentioned there is Force Field, no idea how exactly it is supposed to work with Stasis since I have no play tested the expansion and do not know its exact mechanics. I could mention that he forgot Locus of Control which breaks stun and provideds stun immunity.
They don't work together, they are both ways to keep the stalkers at bay once you know you are there. Especially useful when you got stung, since both provide a way to wait out the stun without taking bio damage.
My best guess is that they ignore around 80% of the shield absorb. It helps, but not a lot.
Neither crawlers nor death stalkers ignore shields to any degree whatsoever. There's no guessing involved, all you have to do is to compare the blocked damage to your shield's threshold. Their impact speed is very low, just like almost if not all melee weapons in the game.
Bear in mind it still doesn't work that well. If you use two 100 quality low emitters you only absorb 20 damage vs very low. Even if you somehow manage to find two 160 quality ones you only have 30 absorption. And, I mean, that's good, but it's not like it's going to make you immune to them. Especially if they just keep spamming the sting and then hiding again.
20-30 damage less from every attack is helpful when dealing with the sting and invalueable when they decide to stick around after stinging and bite you 4 times instead of vanishing away, which happens from time to time.
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