Ston

So gathered a bunch of trapdoor times for comparisons yesterday. I wanted to compare Tanker vs. Brutes with identical powersets and how they perform based on proc usage. The sets I used were Bio Armor, Battle Axe, and Fiery Melee. I tested with Battle Axe and Fiery Melee to see how numbers would swing based on primary damage type. Fiery Melee might not have been the best choice though, since Tankers get Combustion and Brutes get Cremate. I'm hoping the exchange for ST and AoE damage would make them comparable enough. The builds were mostly identical. I only used one ATO set on each of them and it was placed in Genetic Contamination. I slotted the Tanker attacks with 2 acc/dam IOs and 4 procs. I slotted the Brute attacks with 1 acc/dam IO and 5 procs (since Brutes don't get as much from damage slotting) and used Vigor for more accuracy & end redux. (I tested with Musc and got around the same times as I did with Vigor). ** "Limited Procs" here means I only slotted 1 IO set per attack ** Tanker: Bio / Battle Axe (Heavy Proc Usage): 3:30 Bio / Battle Axe (Limited Procs): 4:50 Bio / Fiery Melee (Heavy Proc Usage): 3:37 Bio / Fiery Melee (Limited Procs): 4:22 Brute: Battle Axe / Bio (Heavy Proc Usage): 4:17 Battle Axe / Bio (Limited Procs): 4:56 Fiery Melee / Bio (Heavy Proc Usage): 4:20 Fiery Melee / Bio (Limited Procs): 4:50 What I found most interesting is that the gap between Tankers and Brutes is not that wide without heavy proc usage. I thought that Brutes depended on proc damage way more than tankers because of their base damage, but it seemed like the damage kept up pretty well. I think Tankers are always going to be clearing faster because of their target caps & radius buffs.. But if procs were to be nerfed, the gap between the ATs might be a little closer. Still though, the ceiling on Tanker performance seems way too high. I've gotten <4:00 times on Tankers with Bio Armor, Rad Armor, Fiery Aura, Shield, Savage Melee, Super Strength, Battle Axe, and Radiation Melee now. I didn't beat 4:00 on a scrapper until the Battle Axe update and still haven't on a Brute without amplifiers. EDIT: Realized I did the Tanker runs using Experimentation (Experimental Injection, SoS, Adrenal Booster) and the Brute runs with Leadership (Super Speed, Maneuvers, Tactics). I did a few tests with the Brute using the same Experimentation setup and got more or less the same results. I think the Brute really only benefits from the +recharge & +tohit from Adrenal Booster... where the Tank gets a good damage buff.

Great to see this combo didn't need the Burn nuke to melt things. Looks like you didn't miss a beat and the addition of Achilles & Fire Sword was a good trade! Do you think Combustion would be better than Rain of Fire with the animation buff?

Been doing a ton of trapdoor tests this week. Have a couple more to test the fiery melee updates: Bio/Fire Tanker @ 3:36 This time is pretty ridiculous, but most of that is because I didn't get any Warwolf bosses and got two lucky build up procs against Trapdoor. So while I would take the time with a grain of salt, fiery melee still melts stuff super fast on Tankers. Dark Oblit + FSC + Combustion is really good AoE. Was consistently getting 3:50-4:00 runs. Fire/Earth Brute @ 4:20 As usual with Brutes, AoE felt weaker but ST felt a little more consistent. Tried to throw in two epic AoE's to compete with the Tanker run. Could probably go with Soul for a better ST rotation, but FSC alone still feels pretty weak for AoE. Nontheless, it still feels better than before on Brutes! Cremate is a great power that isn't available on Tankers.. but Combustion would nice to have. I didn't even bother testing BoF.. Just doesn't seem worth the effort of positioning for cones like it is for powers like Shockwave or Throw Spines.

Oh oops that was an error I never fixed in the build! Replace the Touch of Death (or any) proc in Swoop with Crit Strikes 🙂 And lately I've been using Concealment instead of Fighting on some offense heavy builds. With Bio Armor I can usually survive a +4/x8 mob with just the absorb and DNA Siphon even if my resist/defense are pretty low. I start getting into trouble when the debuffs start to cascade (-tohit in particular on Trapdoor). With Phase Shift, I can use it as a panic button when this happens or proactively use it when running into a group to avoid their alpha debuffs (I use it at 2:30 in the axe/bio video). You can buff up and prepare a rotation while they can't touch you which is really nice. Tough/Weave still work fine, but I've been able to add more recharge and offense to my builds by skipping them and using Concealment, so I think I'll do that more often in the future. And I use the Experimentation pool just for the movement speed. I really like having either Speed of Sound or Combat Teleport on my builds to ignore travel suppression or get into good positions without having to move in between enemies/objects/etc. And Experimental Injection is just for the Prev Medicine proc. Could replace that with anything. This does mean I have to skip Tactics though which really hurts sometimes. The +6% tohit from Kismet helps a lot, but I've died on a lot of Trapdoor runs because of accuracy issues. But I skip leadership in order to get more recharge or movement speed. I try to minmax my trapdoor/pylon builds to the gills lol

I did think Swoop was the best spot for Crit Strikes. And yeah the main AoE chain was Swoop>Ball Lightning>Pendulum. I found that to be much better than Swoop>Ball Lightning>Axe Cyclone. I like using Axe Cyclone and DNA Siphon (w/ procs) in between for aggro/grouping management. The main ST chain is Swoop>Zapp>Cleave. There isn't much creativity in the slotting, I use my typical offensive Bio build (2 acc/dam + 4 procs). I do put an FF proc in 4 Axe attacks though, which I think helps push this set to do higher-than-average AoE damage. Scrapper - Axe - Bio Armor.mxd

Elec/Shield was actually the first trapdoor test I did, I posted it on my youtube channel about a year ago! I do think /Bio is way better for minmax’ing. Elec/Shield is still great and tons of fun, but it’s hard to beat the offense that /Bio provides. And right, damage procs don’t work well in pseudopet attacks. I did 5 armageddon (no proc) and Force Feedback +Recharge. Self-affecting procs do work very well in those attacks for some reason.

Well here's another surprise... Elec/Bio Scrapper @ 3:55 Don't take it to any Pylons, though.

I did do a fm/bio run recently but couldn’t get a crazy time like i did with axe. FM is still way better than it was though. GFS and GFS are way better to use and i was getting 4:15-4:30 runs pretty consistently. If BoF had a wider arc, i think it would be up there with the top times.

So Axe is pretty nuts now. Consistently getting 50-60s pylon kills (w/ hybrid) and now getting my fastest trapdoor time, beating my SS tank. Axe Cyclone is really something else.

Oh nice, this looks better than what I had. My AoE chain was Siphon Life (ATO2) > Fire Ball > Shadow Maul and I didn't proc DNA Siphon. I think I was used to playing DM on a Tanker and having SM hit everything in front of me. Looks like proc'd DNA Siphon and ToF would yield better results. Can't complain about ST though between SL, Smite, MG!

That’s funny, the most recent run I did was a dm/bio scrapper as well and I couldn’t break 5:00. The AoE is abysmal. Might try it again with ToF and Dark Consumption. I also tried rad/bio after spines and couldn’t beat it! I was getting 4:10-4:20. I think Quills + ATO2 is just really good at clearing trash. And Ripper is a good enough ATO2 power.

My fastest up until that was claws/rad at 4:07, which I thought was the best I'd get. I have a couple tanker runs under 4:00 but they're stupidly broken. I could try claws/bio and maybe get under 4:00. But honestly I think spines is just packing way more damage than I expected. I've tried a bunch /bio builds on trapdoor and usually end up in the 4:10-4:30 range.

Getting back into some Trapdoor tests with a couple surprising runs. Behold, my new fastest scrapper time: Spines/Bio @ 4:05 This thing shreds. I think all you really need is Ripper and two pool powers for an effective ST chain. You could throw in some AoEs in your ST chain too since they animate fast (Throw Spines, Ball Lightning, Fire Ball). This same build struggled against the Pylon (~2:00 average).. but it impressed my quite a bit on this test. Did a Sentinel run as well to test the changes. Rad/Rad Sentinel @ 5:12 Pretty happy with this one. I chose Rad Armor because I wanted to see how it would do without dodging all the debuffs. It held up pretty well. I did also try DP/Rad and couldn't even finish the test. I think Rad Blast is just particularly good on Sentinels. The updated damage mod is pretty noticeable too IMO & the new inherent is nice against bosses (even though I always forget to use it). I think this was 5 seconds slower than my Rad/SR because defense helps a lot with dodging the -tohit and -recharge from Trapdoor enemies.

Love the look of the new Rapier for broadsword!

Would love to hear your guys' feedback on these tier lists. Been doing pylon, trapdoor, and general scrapper gameplay for a long time now and put these together based on spreadsheet and anecdotal data. I think a supported tier list is a great tool to point players to who may need a new idea for a character. Primaries: Secondaries:

Gotta love watching fire/fire melt everything in its path. If I'm not wrong, this is the fastest run we've seen 👏 Pretty impressed with Oppressive Aura and the end recovery on your build. Makes a huge difference when you can run clarion instead of ageless!

Gonna be hard to beat this controller time! Awesome run! Cool to see /dark clearing this fast considering it doesn’t have any damage on its own like /storm. Procs in Dark Servant I guess? Also yes, can confirm I saw you have bosses on lol

That would be great since you get a marker for the last glowie. But I would recommend looking in between buildings on the edges of the map. There's a fixed number of spots that glowies and hostages can spawn. Here are the spawn points for objectives on that map:

There's already been tests comparing powersets with just SOs. This thread is a showcase for extreme levels of min/max'ing DPS. The "raw skill" here is mostly in making calculations for your build and attack chain. IOs do make a big difference but there's a huge variety in how they're slotted across different ATs and powersets. There's many different challenges in this game. This one in this thread is how much damage can you possibly do against a stationary target. The Trapdoor challenge (another thread in the forums) requires skill in more aspects of the game in case that's what you're looking for. EDIT: Also, no. The most expensive build is not guaranteed to be the most optimal. In fact, you can slot all your powers full of Purple and Winter IO's, spend over a billion influence, and not come close to what a cheaper build can do.

Yeah this build is ST focused. Though you could make some easy changes to keep high ST damage and bring in some AoE: - Swap Thunder Kick for Dragon's Tail - Swap Moobeam for Zapp and Soul Storm for Ball Lightning The chains I alternated were: Cross Punch>Crippling Axe Kick>Moonbeam>Storm Kick Cross Punch>Crippling Axe Kick>Thunder Kick>Storm Kick Here's the build: This Hero build was built using Mids Reborn 3.2.17 https://github.com/LoadedCamel/MidsReborn Click this DataLink to open the build!

Lots of tests this week, here's a surprising one: STJ/FA Stalker - 1:02 Stalker Burn is so good against a pylon.. Shame it makes enemies run in regular content. Also got under 1:10 with MA/FA and EM/FA

Here's a couple more tests. I've been leaving hybrid on recently because I think it's interesting how different sets benefit from core vs. radial. MA/BIO - 1:06 * I'm a HUGE fan of Eagle's Claw. Though I ditched it here for something faster in animation times. I might try another test soon with EC equipped. SPINES/BIO - 1:28 * It took a ton of tinkering in mids to get a decent time with Spines. The redraw is absolutely brutal. I got the most success with using Weaken Resolve as a filler.

So I ended up trying a run with an SS/FA Brute and was able to get 3:55 with a defensive amplifier. I died several times and I think this is the main concern with tankers. I didn't even come close to dying on the tanker version, the ATO in Blazing Aura kept my resists very high most of the run. Damage seemed to be about the same between the two ATs with very similar builds. The Brute either needs outside buffs, less proc slotting, or to slow down in order to regain HP. @Sovera Here's the build I was using for the tanker (couldn't find the fire/sav one but this one is pretty similar): This Hero build was built using Mids Reborn 3.2.17 https://github.com/LoadedCamel/MidsReborn Click this DataLink to open the build! And the Brute version: This Villain build was built using Mids Reborn 3.2.17 https://github.com/LoadedCamel/MidsReborn Click this DataLink to open the build!

I’ll post it when I’m back on later today. But it’s a proc build, lots of procs. And I’m with @Bill Z Bubba on this one. I’ve been able to get Brutes into the 4:30ish area, but I think only tankers are getting <4:00 reliably. To be fair I haven’t tried an SS/FA Brute yet, but I’d imagine it wouldn’t survive if I slot it the same as the tanker. Tanker is basically all offense.