SomeGuy

*reads thread title* Yes.

@R jobbus I assume I am going to say stuff @Ratch_ already said and covered. TW DEFINITELY needed to be toned down. It did so much ST and AOE damage it made the other melee sets feel pointless to play. It was THAT OP. I was getting low 50s and high 40s times without pets and outside buffs with it. It was dumb. Just stupid. Also, if you think it's a nightmare to level now? Hooo boy was it rough then. But once you got a full chain of attacks and some sets in it...holy crap. I personally didn't like the mechanic changes at first since I spent darn near a decade with the previous mechanics/rotation, but it makes a LOT of sense now and it's very rewarding. You could faceroll TW before and do really good. If you didn't faceroll and came at it with a semblance of knowledge...holy crap it was death incarnate. I thought the nerf "killed my boy" but I definitely give credit to Ratch reigniting my love for it. It's still a top-tier performer if you come at it correct. And it isn't OP any more. It's actually pretty fun to me. Anyone on the fence about trying TW...if you enjoyed playing a Death Knight from that one MMO I suspect you will like TW. The optimal rotation for TW and DK seem similar for some reason to me. Momentum and Rune management felt pretty similar. Not sure why. I work more with time in my head.

EA, Rad, or Bio. Top three. Be smart, Use insp when necessary. Run the **** away when needed. Don't even contemplate rolling regen or willpower for this.

I've got pretty extensive time with the set...and I have to agree. It needs some serious love. I enjoy the mechanics, but it needs some real tweaking to get it up to par with things. You REALLY have to know and manipulate the set just for the performance of it to be mediocre. Other then animation time and raw number tweaking, I got nothing for a solution. So....that isn't useful.

This is the current link I use. It does me well. As for the Attack Chain builder? Can't comment on that one. I know I've muddled with some before and zero of them have been accurate.

/thread

If there is anyone you should listen to regarding how to NOT DIE, it's this person.

Yup. KM can be good numerically, but holy crap it takes work and a pretty strong understanding how to manipulate the set. You've got to squeeze the hell out of it to get enough juice for it be on par with lower performance sets. It's still a fun set to me. Conc Strike is very satisfying to me when it lines up right. God, does it feel good. And I enjoy the sound of punching people with sport bikes. Look, the visual of sneaking up on a Longbow Spec Ops then winding up a very LOUD Conc Strike to one shot delete them is always hilarious. Mechanically I personally believe the set to be pretty fun and interesting, it just needs some # adjustments to it so it isn't OP but balanced. Like, it doesn't need the full BA treatment IMO (BA is a whole new set now to me). I'd like to see something similar to the Fire Melee passover done to it. Reduce animation time on Conc Strike for starters. It's arcana-time is OVER 3s. That's wild (and not in a good way). Power Siphon takes some understanding, but I personally feel like it works in a good way. Maybe change max stacks to 4x instead but with same total of DMG boost? Or modify one, or two, of the attacks to give 2x stack (or 1.5?)? Just throwing things out there.

It isn't a long list for melee sets that are numerically better then DB when it has a proper rotation. It's first on my data collection, actually. Better then Broadsword number wise? No. DM is dead last in DPS with 1x stack Soul Drain. Even with a 10x stack of SD it doesn't beat BS. @Sancerre is dead on, IMO. Play what's fun.

Yeah. My first 50 was a regen scrapper back in Issue 4. I learned how to joust, so to speak, because of that player. LOS and all that jazz. And planning before jumping in to mobs. GTFO of dodge isn't something I'm opposed to doing on any toon I play. With that said...I value killing something before it can kill me QUITE a lot. If it's dead it can't hit you. I want enough survivability, then I build to eek out damage after that. If I wanted to bore something to death I'd main a tanker and put brawl on auto.

Darn tootin'. Lot of people miss this part. Proc bomb ToF and have fun.

I'm really concerned at the pondering of a power with a 3s activation time being considered a panic button. Or ctrl-clicking it. Pop SM, go in, start whacking things. Either they're dead or flopping around due to all the KD that TW gives. Might have to fire off a heal if something gets through and gets an unfortunate 5% chance to-hit in. Granted, I am very much reading playstyles are way different then mine. I like to blow stuff up and move on to the next bags of XP and drops. For example, I don't slot DNA Siphon for healing. I proc bomb it for an early AOE that is VERY effective. SM, DNA, PA, start whacking. Collect rewards. Either way, be like batman. Plan ahead. Assume you are going to be taking all the alpha. When you are playing Bio, things go sideways FAST. If your HP bar starts moving in the wrong direction, it's normally already to late.

*reads thread title* It isn't. Not even close actually. And you aren't alone. I thought it should be a power house for DPS, but...it isn't. Even with fully saturated Soul Drain. I frickin' LOVE Dark Melee, but the set definitely underperforms if you look at it numerically.

Good write up. Except the bolded part. You want more HP, not more HP/s. More HP means more HP/s anyways, and you can't regen what is dead. If you have 100 HP with 1000hp/s, but get hit for 101, that HP/s doesn't matter cause you're dead. Have 102 HP with 10HP/s but get hit for 101, you are alive. Def>Resistance>HP>>>>>HP/s. Regen is priority LAST when it comes to survival.

I can't do more than one laugh emoji at a post. This disappoints me.

I'd use IOs.

That's cause it's basically 4 or 12. They do +12 KB. Or they are attacking you quick enough to stack the KB they have past 4. Obviously there are going to be exceptions, and whatever does more than 12 KB is VERY rare, but things either do less then 4 OR they do more then 8, but less then 12. Yeah, odd one to me too. But how it is.

It's either 4 or 12 that you want.

I've seen my times referenced a few times. I just do those as a control. That data is for me, but I obviously share it. Also why my times are AVERAGES. Some of the faster times shared by others are NOT averages. The DB/BIO time shared above? That is definitely not an average and I've gotten multiple runs that low and even lower. I actually toss those times out for my averages. Did I mention my times are averages? 😄 @Sanguinesun brings up some really good points. Example: Mynx is going to be an absolute joke and Diabolique is going to be extremely annoying (protip...don't chase. Just wait.) Dominatrix is only going to get tickled. Some sets are going to be a lot easier, some trickier, and some are flat out garbage. But you won't need an uber DPS primary. I solo-ed all the TFs in the game with a DM/BIO. Yea, not great DPS but it is a really fun set to me. And yes, it has some neat tools, I didn't have any of those in the build. I say this to highlight you won't need crazy DPS.

I really enjoy fisting things.

Stone Melee. Good question. Going to edit that for clarity. For scraps? I enjoy it a lot. It feels pretty darn chonky and has fun soft CC. It was the first primary I used to solo 1* Aeon. You can edit the power looks to not do the hammers if you want. I changed it so it's all fisting.

No taunt aura with this set. Yes, it does good damage. Really good actually, but if things are running you aren't doing damage to them. I have put a lot of time in to this set. I just can't do sets without taunt auras. If a lack of taunt aura isn't a bother, then yea. I'd absolutely go with this set. @Lazarus My personal opinion is Rad Melee is actually a very good melee set. I just wouldn't use it for AV hunting. It has OK single target DPS (better than Dark Melee...by a lot actually). Really good AOE. There really aren't a lot of sets (primaries or secondaries) I personally view as bad. Unless it's Staff or Regen. Then they're bad. Fire Melee got significantly buffed. It is easily top tier ST DPS now. If you enjoy the set then you are going to get a lot of performance out of it. If you go this route you will definitely not be holding yourself back performance wise. Basically, you can't go wrong with any of these primaries if you want. The difference is so slight that you won't care as long as you are enjoying it. And these personal #s can all go back-forth with each other with RNG or latency. *RoF is Ring of Fire and Char is...Char.

Do not do Rad Melee, Electrical, Ice, Kinetic, Dark, or Staff. Pick a secondary with a taunt aura. AVs will run. That's bad for DPS. Pretty much any other primary is good for this. I can't say anything good or negative about Psi since I haven't done a deep dive on it. Same with Savage. Fire Armor with it's added damage is a smart choice for deleting things, but it is SQUISHY as all get out and has no taunt aura. You will try to strategically res with an awaken, a lot, while your target is running around if you pick Fire Armor. I will insist that you choose a secondary with a taunt aura if you are solo AV hunting. Out of the armors that have a taunt aura and help do good damage, you are going to have Bio and Rad in that order for damage. Now Bio is not as tough as Rad, but if you allow yourself insp and temps, that won't matter much. Bio is going to do gobs of damage. Rad/Fire seems like a recipe to make a runner nightmare. It sounds amazing for AOE on paper, and I'm sure it is, but if something is out of your DPS range then you are doing zero DPS. And no taunt aura makes things run away from damage. Go see what I mean with Rommy in the ITF. If you attack him without a taunt aura he will do his Usain Bolt impression and run all over the map. Have fun re-doing all the damage you just lost because the runner AV regenned all it's lost HP when running all over the place.

*squints eyes* Yes. You pretty much picked one of the worst primaries to Scrap with. Only Staff is worse.

This is the combo I do for my Sith. So, I'm biased on my preference for this one 😛 @StriderIV and @SeraphimKensai seem to have good thinky things too.