SomeGuy

I lump -reg and -res as more DPS. And with enough DPS you can absolutely get past high HP encounters without -reg or -res. You just rarely see this due to the fact you still have people thinking regen is good and KM is bad (this is a great example of why this game is great...you can get stuff done with weird choices). But I've seen more than enough TFs and trials get stopped in their tracks because there wasn't enough DPS. This isn't WoW. The few fights in this game that aren't tank'n'spanks are implemented pretty poorly. And whenever someone does come from a game where kiting a boss, or something similar is the norm, and they do it here? It really only leads to heartache. Clearly DPS doesn't mean shart if they can't effect the regen of a thing. Hence why...MOAR DPS. -REG and -RES are why solo cold domination characters can achieve interesting things solo. -RES is a HUGE reason why x/bio scrappers are so sought after. -RES just makes the entire team hit harder. It's beautiful. easily my favorite debuff.

I freaking love TW, but I sadly have to agree with this. TW isn't something you do as a first time player. You can't go wrong with any primary really, you can really only go wrong with a secondary as a brute. I'm talking regen. Don't let him do regen. It's like letting your friend join the military as military police or something. You don't do that to them. Outrider is giving some solid advice for a new player. Notice how he doesn't mention regen.

I can totally help you get that time down if you want. My claws/bio averages 1:35 using the FU-Snipe-FOCUS-FU-SLASH-FOCUS repeat chain. Eviscerate would absolutely be a DPS loss, so no hair off your back thinking you'd have to do something you don't want to get the time lower. 😄 And I'm like you, I just stick with certain incarnate stuff across the board based off of AT. Keeps it easier this way when you're making a ton of characters. 🙂

Got T4 reactive. Brute EM/FA/Soul 1:52 Average I know Degen is better on pylons, but once stuff starts gearing up past standard AV HP it doesn't scale as well. So, I just do reactive.

Well this made me LOL. This guy is T3 agility, t3 reactive. and t4 ageless. Brute EM/FA/Soul 2:01 I had two runs under two minutes. And RNG isn't a thing that really hits a brute hard. So, with practice and a reactive upgrade I know that time is going to get noticeably lower.

Claws: Followup, Focus, Slash, and Spin are essential. Everything else is flavor. SR? Everything is a must have, except Elude. It's flavor.

This sounds soooo eerily similar to how I dealt with it. Fought tooth and nail to make it work. Slowly but surely stopped making regens. Still love scrappers though. I'll roll anything as long as it's fun. But you did remind me of something. I remember when WP and DB were introduced in the same issue (there are a LOT of abandoned db/wp scraps now). Over time, I would think how I would fix regen. And it became clear to me they just said "screw it" and made another set. Introducing, Willpower! It's a solid set. Set and forget like old-school regen. Layers of different types of survivability. It's a very good set at what it does. Like, Invincibility got nerfed HARD, but it got rebalanced REALLY well. Willpower seems to be made at the attempt to do a good rebalance to regen. Regen is the only legacy melee armor set that is just...bad. Like, if Willpower didn't exist, sure. Regen. But Willpower does exist. So, I really scratch my head at anyone that goes out of their way to roll Regen knowing Willpower exists.

Staff is a REALLY fun set play wise and style (if that's your thing). Sadly, Staff is numerically (DPS wise) the worst performing melee set in the game. If that isn't something you care about, you're gonna have a really good time. The set feels and looks fantastic. Luckily, Electric Armor is one of the best armor sets in the game. The ONLY downside (and this is personal opinion) about ElA on scrappers is a lack of taunt aura. Once again, if this doesn't concern you, good pick. And if you dig the aesthetics of it too? Hell yeah. And I have to wonder. If OMG MAX DPS isn't your main concern, Staff seems to go really well on a tanker due to one of it's stances. That an option? ElA/Staff tanker would be a serious meaty beast that would have a hard time dying. You would be able to max out SLFCE (and I think psi?) resists with minimal investment and hit SL defense soft cap fairly easy, if not other types of damage soft caps.

I have numerical and statistical data for all three of these sets. Staff is, sadly, numerically last. I'm actually wondering how KM got such a bad rep here. Granted, I TOTALLY get it's a set that takes some mental work to get the most out of. Then again, there seems to be a lot of love for regen. So, who knows.

I've done Staff/EnA stalker and ooooohhhh boy that was a LOT of fun to level up. The set just looks SOOO GOOD in action and it has a really fun flow. If you don't care about best DPS and stuff, staff is just amazing. If you do care about numbers and how it compares? Stay away, it really is dead last in numbers, and it is "best" on a stalker for numbers. And even then, number wise, it isn't good. But the set really does look and play great.

OK. Fine, I'll serious talk. Regen out of the box on just SOs is good when compared to other sets when built to the same standard. But The rest of the game exists. Regen scales so incredibly bad with sets that it is laughable. It slides to dead last incredibly fast when sets are involved. And once you go no-holds barred and influence is no factor? You don't consider regen. You want to. You get mad you considered it, but realistically can't. But you don't roll regen. The first character I did set bonuses was my claws/regen scrapper. My second was a DB/SR scrapper. After that a ELM/SD brute followed by a SS/FA brute. The ability to PLAY sr, sd, or fa was completely mind blowing compared to the "omg i'm dying click click click" style of x/regen. The set just doesn't give enough base defense or resistance to be worth anything, and everyone knows by now that HP/S is freaking useless for sustained survivabilty (if you disagree with this you're not pushing your character). Not to mention, the way regen survives? It has no protection from being debuffed in game. It doesn't even get that. Even then it would be horrible. HP/S is nice when you take a calculated risk that you can take that hit and be fine. It is NOT something you rely on to out-live your target/s. It has no layered ability to survive and it gives no extra boost to DPS. It has zero pros and only cons compered to other sets. WP has layered abilities to survive and is really the closest (if not THE closest) to old-school regen set-and-forget. Rad armor has great resistances and good HP/s and REALLY good stamina management. And it get's a +dmg when meltdown is active. Bio armor is squishy as hell, but it absolutely makes up for it in spades because of how much raw firepower it can bring. EVERY armor set except regen has a strong list of pros. Dark, invincibilty, energy aura, ice, you name it. The only thing you get out of regen is a strong example of your primary, and hopefully you enjoy playing it. Cause regen doesn't give you any benefit from it. I get regen is a legacy set we'd love to see get love. But Super Strength is a legacy set and it's pretty obvious it's not getting that nerf rectified either.

Dual Blades has Sweeping Strikes and it does crazy crap when it crits. And it is REALLY obvious when Midnight Grasp on Dark Melee when it crits. I legit would see Conc Strike on my KM/FA scrapper hit for over 1200 pretty routinely. That combo was pretty wild for for stuff like that. 5x Stack Power Sihpon and FE popped into a Conc Strike = oof ow haha.

I actually remember before issue 4 taking Air Superiority on my Claws scrapper. My DPS was crap, but whatever I was hitting was constantly flopping on to it's back.

Mmmmm Papi (Kanil) worked with me on my rad/bio/mb scrapper. Had some interesting results to say the least. Did some VERY different things then what I would normally do with a build, but it worked. Scrapper RM/BIO/MB 1:35 (post nerf) (proc build, has to use recovery serum) This build is an end hog amongst end hogs. OMG. It only has around 30% s/l def, but it can survive a pylon fine. I turn off maneuvers at the first ageless recovery dip, then turn off weave on the second recovery dip. So, a pretty dramatic drop in averages then what I was doing before. That's an understatement.

Problem is, whirlwind is useful in combat.

DB or Claws (paired with anything other than regen) is going to be your best mechanically. DB will put out more ST DPS, but claws will be really close ST DPS wise but do noticeably more AOE. Your best DPS wise for a secondary is Bio Armor in offensive (who plays bio in other modes other than staff melee). There might be better secondaries based on your preferences. Now, you can't pair DB or Claws with SD, so that is where EM and WM come back in to play. I can TOTALLY vouch for WM/SD being an amazing combo. Scrapper EM/BIO/MB 1:23 (post nerf) Scrapper DB/BIO/MB 1:25 (post nerf) 1:21 (pre-nerf) Scrapper WM/BIO/MB 1:31 (post nerf) Scrapper CLAWS/BIO/MB 1:32 (post nerf) 1:26 (pre-nerf) Those are my own personal ST Pylon times (those aren't best, those are averages). WM is freaking AWESOME but doesn't hold a candle to claws soft-cc in ST or AOE.

Gotta agree with the Claws melee sentiment. It gets everything it needs really early, feels great 1-50, and shines super bright with incarnates.

This is a reason why I went just a tap over 40%. I let perma barrier carry that last 5%. Even at it's weakest buff duration, it's 5%. I didn't have to sacrifice a ton to get that last 5%. Allowed a LOT of wiggle room. The incarnates for that build are: Muscle, Reactive, Barrier, and Support. No clue what I get for judge/lore. They aren't always there so I don't really care.

This happened on Excelsior. I wasn't allowed on a team because they needed a healer. First, what? This person also marks the adds each pull? Then today I had a stone tanker freaking out in a TF that no one was healing him. The team needs more damage. Not heals.

GiS-FT-MB-GiS-FT-IS I couldn't make FA work like the OP could, and he averaged 1:36. That could, and most likely, is just because of RNG. So I definitely wish I could have made FA work, but holy cow I was going OOM with that chain so fast. If I cheesed it and used a Recovery Serum before each run, yeah I'm sure it would work. ATO2 proc in GiS.

Auroxis? The same dude that was active in the original pylon thread?

Scrapper Rad/BIO/MB 2:14 Chain: DB-RSi-MB-DB-RSi-RSm I was under the idea it would be better than this. Not sure where I am messing up. On the bright side, it's incredibly consistent.

Funny timing. I just got done doing some runs with mine tonight.

This build is a good example of how to hit 45% sl def and resistance cap slfce on a electrical armor brute. I've got a TW/ELA brute that does the same thing. | Copy & Paste this data into Mids Reborn : Hero Designer to view the build | |-------------------------------------------------------------------| |MxDz;1371;669;1338;HEX;| |78DA4D93DB6F125110C6CFB28B2D944B690BF406086D8172D9426D7D356A5B1F6C9| |32AC65742E8919220908526F6D1FFC05BE28355AB6DD5C6C4BFCB5BD578AFD1ACC3| |7E2342B2FC76BF997366F63BB36B37965CAF2EDC3C239481F3B552AB553C676CB5A| |5F38A2C6FD61BB546655B15F4EBA36BD48A14D7644D4A7DB92E8DCA361E26115892| |D764BD45A19A2CB78D6AB978D6B8DE30846BBDD1A8E9ABB2D4ACD62B4EEBA1D0947| |2C36DDDAE542B9B6D0A78FF656D48A3B5596D06979BD5B28E8D0B8DAD5A71ADD46A| |4B637B941A89761A52E8AF73095313EB849826462F312F83E3053051242634B127B| |A6B54B14837794D0CE6987930B000F62B9C2A4CBBE2D32CCDE662BA41A707747999| |83E03EAD5251C7AE1EA896A6ED329F80FD4F997BA0731F74D03A3BEAAAF6439BA59| |DD8210E131F80B93485F30EE15470301D0FFA76517B7C078C3F04138F988FC16794| |ED406F8A23AC58BE7862E001A903DCF7C031FA497D657E0333DF41FD0738F7130C5| |0236EDED7ED87879E8B883D27D58B98F006E926445E117C5CCB97C67B0E256CD67B| |0D25C19159660A0CF039BE200CF37EC35961AD8D517D3F6B7EF647212DC85E06794| |6B23C23599E119D6744A5DC319E8D31F623C3FE642260360A1E52D604CFC6C411DE| |71F235F30D187E0B46DF81D3EFF9FCA94E88EB84D8A7F0B1B03C09FF06E7FE801E0| |A47D8A3C83D9CDFC95BCCDBCC3B60F42E933D2A53B918F718CBC3DFA91C7C9CCA32| |75707A8E99418F3EEA7106756D33DC63FC3362F12FA0242479F692F3583F7B8AB9C| |05C0453A7F95C69DF349F513A8A331A214DC73E42E75A2FE929C75A6E1EF556B4EE| |B76B4E6A827F66E7D134C56AAFC213B1AE75BF60A15859474E52B8BEC2591F7AB52| |4B48FFF354589F29C5F456F9F7AF3EFC3D78354B7BAF92B4012F7F91710C5BD96| |-------------------------------------------------------------------|