SomeGuy

Well this is interesting and I'll explain why it is, to me anyways, in a sec. No lores/temps/hybrid used. Average of 10+ runs. Scrapper EM/SD 1:51 (111s) Degen/Zapp Why is this interesting to me? Cause of this: Brute EM/FA 1:50 (110s) Degen/Gloom My EM/FA Brute is more ST and AOE then the EM/SD/Zapp scrapper I have. A thing I REALLY liked about the Brute is the times didn't have weird inconsistencies in the positive or negative direction. I had a run with the scrapper that was 2:04 and another that was 1:34. The Brute stayed +-10s of it's average. The Brute is definitely squishier though, but the scrapper is way more likely to kill itself with ET crits. The hp/s element is pretty important.

Well, this was just a lotta bit conflicting 😛

Oh. I'm just looking for reasoning for it over other sets.

My thing is, tankers hit the survival numbers I'd like and go WELL BEYOND so easy, that it's hard for me not to want to start emphasizing DPS. I see SD tankers easily hitting 65% DEF to melee/ranged/aoe, getting really good res, and good hp and hp/s.

OK, I gotta hear the reasoning for this one. I've done Staff on a scrapper and stalker and everything about the set, performance wise, was abysmal. Why is it different on Tankers?

Oh, I never believed it was great for personal/solo DPS. It does give a flat DMG % boost when active, but that is across your team. Whereas the dmg pumps from assault are for you only and a lot stronger.

That tanker time is actually really good. I honestly can't build a tanker cause well, they are freaking tanks. They aren't meant to be DPS juggernauts to me. Just, unkillable. So every time I go to start building one I start DPSing it, and it just doesn't feel right. I kind of lump tankers in to a role they are EXCEPTIONAL at, and I'm just not wired that way. So, hats off. The ill/dark/mace time makes me fist bump the air. But I totally get the frustration you talked about with the pois/ice/psy defender. I'd say that's still a pretty good time considering the AT and the combo. Granted, poison is a really good debuffer and ice is definitely no slouch for single or AOE. The bots/cold mm time is really interesting. I have wondered how low a thugs/cold MM with burnout could go.

What @Bill Z Bubba said. With that said, getting good at dropping a pylon absolutely does make you more efficient at the game in general. Everyone builds for their playstyle/goals. I just know that I personally only do pylon runs with the build as solo-unbuffed as possible. It is neat seeing how much an effect buffs and temps can affect a run after you've collected pure-build times. My ice/cold corruptor? Goes from almost 2 minutes to less than 40s if I go at it with Lore. Stuff like that. That character absolutely is a team multiplier of destruction. Whereas Dark Melee REALLY needs some love to get it in line with the other melee sets. It absolutely does not do ST DPS as well as most of the other sets, and you need a full 10x Soul Drain to reach those numbers. And we know how "great" it is at AOE. I was wondering if just doubling the amount of +DMG each mob gives for the first five, then just keeping the last 5 give the original amount. And make Soul Drain an autohit, or a guaranteed buff for at least 1x stack. Cause wowwwww when it misses on one mob it really hurts. But you have to get 150% more damage with DM to get to the same numbers as the other sets. @Kachooman put together a spreadsheet with all the times he collected. It's pretty useful info. I think the link is in his signature of his posts? Not sure. I know I copied it, and I'm just using it slightly edited for myself now (the notes section of it, really).

I went back and found this cause OMG everything about it is wrong. WM and Kat are damn near identical in terms of sustained DPS performance, and the AOE for both is good. Holy crap this post is dumb. Wow. Shaking my head at how wrong this all is. Katana good. Katana look cool.

wtf i did a triple take to see if I wrote this. edit: Spines is absolutely not best AOE. Claws and Rad are better by a noticeable bit. And Electrical Melee is a very AOE heavy set. Is ElM better at the AOE game? Not sure. But you get a teleport boom.

A few rules have been broken since November 2011. A lot of people weren't there when SS got nerfed. Rage needs to be un-nerfed and re-tooled, regardless if it gets ported to scrappers. SS is actually pretty bad, performance wise, without Rage. Think nerf Energy Melee level of performance if you don't take Rage.

lol I was thinking about you just yesterday and how you're the reason why snipe builds have dominated DPS times.

Claws/Fire will be a crazy AOE choice. And you can build claws/x/ball lightning on any character for AOE. Basically, Claws primary. My claws/bio/mu scrapper does pretty wild AOE. I'll farm with that toon when bored. Claws also has the added benefit of being able to switch to REALLY fantastic single target DPS on the fly and it doesn't have the tendency do overkill stuff. My DM/BIO/MU actually does AOE surprisingly well. Soul Drain, End Drain, and DNA siphon tend to drop entire mobs (all these slotted for damage). Toss in a Ball Lightning and you're good to go. And rad/bio/mu will do really well. I had to do a weird proc build for that, and it is CRAZY end hungry.

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.