SomeGuy

I was curious how much one -RES proc was contributing and I was getting times averaging 2:20. Yeah, that proc is going back in there. It wasn't huge, but obvious enough. And it definitely gives enough outside pylons that it's a no-brainer for me. It gives way to much in normal play. Doing AOE -RES is nice. But it is funny you mention bee-line. It's the first T4 I go for on characters that will need it. Literally what I'm doing right now on a EM/SD scrapper I made. I wanna see how it compares to EM/BIO. I go Ageless because it frees up a lot of slots I can use elsewhere for the build. I use Ageless for almost 99.9% of my melee characters. Not always for my others. My Crab is Barrier and Corruptor is Clarion for example. I do notice I don't have endurance issues exemping down with characters that use Ageless at that level. My biggest end hog is a DB/BIO who I exemp with perfectly fine. I just sometimes can't do SS in EVERY rotation on long fights (which is rare exemping). And recovery serums are a thing if I remember to get them. I'm so glad you looked at Support. I remember having a weird moment going "why does no one talk about this more?" when I first took a look at it. It was only Assault and Melee people talked about. God, this is a fun character. ❤️ Broots

oh hey I have one of these. I definitely play this brute like a scrapper, especially since I get x/bio scrapper pylon kill times with it. The AOE is a lot better though. If I want to go high damage and hard to kill I'll play my tw/elm brute. I'm leveling a EM/SD scrapper right now, and I highly suspect it will be a lot more survivable than this FA brute. I've been doing FA since issue 2. I play the armor set for what it is. It's a very high damage output armor set. On AVs with a LOT of adds (think final AV fight in ITF) I don't bother with Whirling Hands and Dark Obliteration. Burn is a part of my ST rotation, so everything is gonna die anyways. I HAVE tested the DPS difference of Gloom VS Bonesmasher and the difference really isn't much, so exemping down isn't painful at all. I do keep Recovery Serums with me for this, since I run Ageless at the end game. If I need the extra survivability I'll just chew some oranges/purples then go wade in. As for Hybrid? Why do more people not consider Support? It's a PASSIVE universal end discount, and when activated, gives you + to EVERYTHING and to your team. Four people on a team pop T4 support and the entire team just went god mode. I used to solo apex/tin mage with this one. It would give +12 to EVERYTHING for my pets, +6 to myself. So, pop lore then pop support. And I'd get -10% end to EVERYTHING. Clicks, toggles, it doesn't matter. If you're on a full team, or in a league, popping support is a massive team buff. I'm a big fan of building a hybrid that is going to be noticed outside of just a measured test. I am going to build Melee Defense for my TW/ELA. He's SLFCE resistance capped, but only SL defense soft capped. I do have a EM/ELA that is the same stat wise, but I have no need to play that guy.

@Without_Pause @InvaderStych then lol they must be really bad at the tanker thing in other things if they refuse to get it here.

I'm not convinced this isn't a troll post.

No, it is not skippable.

I've done high-level TW/RAD and it's a lot of fun. Really made me like Rad Armor. Yeah, it's better on Brutes, but still really good on scrappers. And meltdown, when active, gives a 60% dmg boost along with all the other perks. It's a really good T9.

Anyone who tries to argue that being able to solo a pylon doesn't translate to the rest of the combat in this game is wrong. Their opinion doesn't matter against fact. Getting good at knocking out a pylon absolutely increases your effieciency for the combat in general. But to me, you're absolutely right. They are yardsticks used to measure. That's all they are to me personally. If someone else has done the work and gotten the data, enjoy that. But there is a reason I have so much of my own. No one else has done it for the sets I'm interested in. There aren't many sets I can think of that CAN'T drop a pylon, but I'm sure they exist. That is not a burden I'm willing to bare. I'm just going to assume a Mind/Emp controller might not be able to do it without Lore pets. Can it? Maybe. Am I going to go out of my way to find out? Nope.

I can actually talk about this a lot. You're gonna have a very frustrating time doing ST DPS with ELM on a scrapper. It's not as rough a time as Staff though, and it takes some pretty smart work to make it decent on a stalker. I actually have done ELM/SD scrapper and ELM/SD stalker. Both high end. These are averages, not best runs. Scrapper ElM/SD 4:14 Stalker ElM/SD 2:29 Obviously, the best ST option for scrapper would be ELM/BIO/Snipe, but I wanted to make a direct comparison with those two. Regardless, you can do some respectable ST DPS with a ELM scrapper. You aren't gonna be bragging about it, but you're also gonna be Lightning Rodding big mobs while everyone else enjoys your spectacle. ELM is a blast. Pun intended and not intended. You pair it with SD and you get two big tele-booms. ELM is a freaking lot of fun. If you're really curious how that stacks up (those times above) I would pop in to the Pylon thread. @Kachooman has compiled a spreadsheet with times including their AT/Combo.

Bio Armor's defensive stance pairs really well for Staff on tankers. I can absolutely vouch for staff/ena being a really fun combo on a stalker.

Ohhhhh. Lol, Also, that swap to SUR in Whirling Hands is a pretty solid idea. If Oblit wasnt such a great set, it would be a no brainer. Doesn't mean I'm really not considering. My OCD is bugging me about dropping under 170 recharge though. I will absolutely see about making it work. *edit* I think I'll make that swap. It's a .06 recharge difference with TF. Just did a single run with EA off. I had a LOT of RNG in my favor. ET crits almost killed me. 95s run.

lol Yeah, the Brute definitely uses Gloom in the rotation. It's actually a very similar rotation to a SS/FA/Gloom Brute. TF-ET-Burn-Gloom Gloom doesn't get used every rotation. If Build Up gets used then Gloom is the attack not used in the rotation. I want to get back to using those big three ASAP. I haven't ran a Bone Smasher run, but I don't imagine it being to much slower. *edit* I just did a run with Bonesmasher instead of Gloom. The time was the same. So, I'm sure with averages it would be higher, but I'm not that concerned with it. Why the curiosity of a run without Evolving Armor?

Alpha Muscle. Destiny Ageless Recovery. Interface Reactive or Degen. Hybrid Assault or Support Whatever for Lore and Judgement.

Kinetic Melee sucks. Regen is awesome All my times are an average unless otherwise noted. This is not a best run. Scrapper KM/BIO/ZAPP 95s (1:35) I made this out of spite because of the amount of people proclaiming KM is bad here. And I turn around and see people saying regen is great. Either way, I haven't figured out how to maximize this combo. Power Siphon is weird and awesome at the same time. I originally made a KM/FA scrapper when Going Rogue went live. The damage was pretty wild. I just abandoned the set due to runners. I remember solo-ing AVs in the Maria Jenkins arc with the dude without inspiration spamming. CS-Zapp-SB-QS-BB-SB for the chain.

I slap my ATO2 in ET and do pretty well. Decided on this going back and forth between TF and ET (and discussion with Kanil). My numbers don't lie. I was getting better results in ET. I DEFINITELY didn't want to even attempt BS for it. I might use BS in my rotation a 1/3 of the time. Try both. Not like Unslotters aren't dirt cheap. See what works best for you and your playstyle. I'm definitely gonna agree that putting it in an AOE is just silly. EM is not the set for that. TF. Build Up. ET crits and procs. Zapp crit. ET. TF. ET crits and procs. BS crits. Zapp crits. ET procs. TF crits. ET. It does this. A lot.

I used to play a sonic/cold defender a LOT. And my rotation was shout/scream/shout/screech repeat. Sonic doesn't get enough cred, especially on teams.

So, Degen definitely wasn't a DPS bump on the pylon for my Rad/Bio proc build. I did practice enough that I got a new and improved average when I swapped back to reactive. But holy god, doing a proc-build for rad/bio is a super end drain. I was having to use T4 Ageless, a recovery serum, and popping a +50 blue at the last 1/5 of the pylon HP bar. The new average was 90 seconds (1:30) but man that comes with a lot of asterisks. Also, @Pzn. Whoah. Wasn't expecting a good Sentinel time. *tips fedora*. If you keep at it after you get T4 Muscle, that time with hybrid off/on is gonna drop pretty noticeably. Thought about taking Scream to fill that gap and get some more -RES?

Man, I coulda swore it was different on a Brute. I had a claws/ele brute (before it was cool, yo!).

I imagine it would just be swapping Slash every other chain with it if so? I haven't done a Claws brute in forever. I never knew why the animation time for Follow-Up was increased so much for it.

OMG. I totally forgot about this. This is absolutely a gulf size difference between the two. I love both. And sometimes corpse blasting THAT hard with EM feels soooooo good, but it is definitely a big big thing. Like, with Claws, I can do a FU to finish off a thing and immediately focus at ranged to something. With EM, the only way for me not to corpse blast astronomically is to bone smasher spam. Cause Zapp, TF, and ET hit like a dump truck full of smaller dump trucks.

I'm biased towards Claws AND EM. Claws was my first 50 hero and EM was my first 50 villain. It was honestly the EM changes that brought me back. The thing is, as easily as EM can transition to ST DPS in gameplay away from pylons, so can Claws (might be easier, I just stop using Spin and go to Slash). And Claws probably has the best AOE of any scrapper primary. I've been tempted to do the Trapdoor run with the claws/bio AND em/bio, but I really am not motivated to learn to get efficient with that. EM's AOE has definitely been improved, but I suspect not enough to compete with Claws in that run. Claws would get two good damage ranged DPS ST attacks (Zapp and Focus) where EM would only get one (Zapp). That's pretty big for runners. I've done SL farms with both, and even though it wasn't numerically measured, I definitely could tell Claws was a lot faster. My claws/bio uses both -RES procs. Achilles in slash and fury in GC. The em/bio only has the fury in GC. If bone smasher, or TF, could take achilles that would be pretty ridiculous... What I'm trying to say is, just play what you like. EM is chonky with it's fist. Claws is fast stab stab stab.

I didn't even share them with him 😛 ...I think. To be fair, since you've already done the data entry, I am going to just copy your spreadsheet for the pylon thread. MOAR DATA

lol this sounds familiar

I finally ran a test I've been putting off a while. So, I simulated having a full stack of Soul Drain (x10) would be like DPS wise. Basically, would eat three 50% DMG (total of 150%) then punch a pylon. Scrapper DM/BIO 1:29 (10x Soul Drain/Degen/Zapp) 1:35 (10x Soul Drain/Reactive/Zapp) I'd get the time and add 7 seconds (to compensate for not having to cast soul drain). What I learned? You need to maximize Soul Drain (full 10x stack every time) to get the ST DPS performance of a lot of different sets with DM. This isn't even accounting for it's very poor AOE performance. Soul Drain definitely needs to be Auto-Hit, and give a minimum of 1x Stack if your target dies right before it goes off.

EM/FA Brute better DPS than EM/ElA brute. EM/ElA brute sturdy. EM/FA brute squishy. Sorry, I have ADHD and tend to brain vomit.

Maybe I wrote that wrong. I've never seen any kind of evidence (my own or someone else's) that gives Electric Armor the DPS edge over Fire Armor. Fiery Embrace and Burn are that good. Electric Armor is a freaking beast at staying alive though, and doing really good DPS. Might be my fav armor in terms of blending the two. It's not the best at either, but I don't know of a better balance. Hell, you can look at the time difference between my EM/FA and EM/ElM. It's almost a minute. Not to mention the FA does crazy AOE.