Sancerre
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Posts posted by Sancerre
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By what metrics are you defining 'worst'? I feel like this topic is less subjective than people make it out to be. There are easily identifiable objectively bad performing armor sets that have terrible survival and offer little to no utility or offensive power to offset that. This comparison is all relative to what other, objectively better armor sets offer. The high bar is going to be bio armor for having the best offensive capability while still being sufficiently 'survivable'. The adjacent comparison is something like invulnerability or energy aura for just being able to literally survive the best, generally, while also offering some sideways utility and a taunt aura. Some armor sets are at least 'close' to these 3... others are light years below (hello /regen).
Fire armor is probably the one and only oddball in the mix because it does have substantial offensive power to offset its terrible survival, but not enough to warrant its use in SOLO play. The one and only buff Fire Armor needs for people to like it on scrapper is a passive taunt aura -- this one single change alone would instantly shuffle scrapper fire armor up to the top of the table next to bio armor. not advocating for scrappers to get even more taunt auras though... im personally in the camp that scrappers shouldnt even have taunt auras in the first place.
Also -- Dont need people coming out of the woodworks to claim that regen is actually sleeper OP top tier if you mail 10000 purple/orange inspirations to yourself and always party with a bubble defender. regen sucks. it does not perform anywhere near any of the other sets in terms of survival. it offers some of the absolute worst debuff protection. it offers no taunt aura. it offers no offensive utility at all. it is bad. if you want to say otherwise, you are wrong and delusional. if you still want to play /regen for theme, you do so fully understanding it is a meme or a challenge.
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city of data https://cod.uberguy.net/
not sure how accurate it is to homecoming anymore (when the last update happened) but it is generally the most accurate and detailed data available for everything.
there is an attack chain builder tool somewhere... i dont have a link to it.
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dark melee is bad for damage but it is still scrapper damage.
to the OP -- mids can sometimes be weird when comparing skills with critical strikes active... it may apply to the powerset you are building and NOT the ones you are comparing against. that may be what you were running into.
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17 minutes ago, tidge said:
Kick is an attack that can be made while the character's hands are holding something else, like a weapon or a shield.
I disagree about the "joke" of fighting... self-buffing of other powers is slightly different than synergy IMO (even though that is what it is called!). The fighting buffs certainly aren't OP, but very few other power pools offer anything like self-buffing among pool powers. The only other ones I can think of, and these are reaches IMO, are:
- Flight, if you take an additional toggle Evasive Maneuvers.
- Medicine, if you take an additional click Field Medic.
- Presence, if you take both attacks Intimidate and Invoke Panic, you can try to stack a higher magnitude Fear effect on a single target. This is more like synergy, but most of this pool's powers are practically anti-synergistic with each other.
I've lost track of what, if anything, stacks in Concealment. My apologies if my thinking is incomplete. I don't really consider stacking from Vengeance with a Leadership toggle as the same type of direct buffing of other powers in the same pool, even if it is obviously "synergistic".
regarding kick -- i thought all of these animation redraws were cleaned up and no longer matter (years ago at this point). i dont actively use boxing/kick to know because they are terrible but i wasnt aware this is even a consideration aside from a thematic style choice of wanting to literally kick someone at the cost of using one of the worst DPA attacks in the game. i will note that kick is technically better than boxing as a synergy buff to cross punch, presuming you never plan to actually kick anything.
regarding synergies or self buffs (or whatever semantics) -- they can be fun when designed well. it is fun to look at powers interacting with each other in a meaningful way and build around that. the joke is that these barely matter and the bigger problem is that even when fully collaborated, they dont even bring the powers up to an acceptable baseline.
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16 hours ago, Rudra said:
If you look through the forums about this topic, you will see a trend. There are examples of requests that in order for Boxing and Kick to be worthwhile picks, they need to be as good as a Scrapper's or Tanker's mid-tier attacks. And that is as a stand alone power. However, pool powers are not meant to replace your primary or secondary abilities, simply augment them, so making these melee attacks as good as mid-tier melee AT attacks goes against the purpose of pools and their powers. The argument to justify that is that melee ATs already have better melee attacks, so the pool needs to give even better attacks to justify fitting them in. However, those melee ATs also already get their own armors, so Tough and Weave aren't adding anything they are missing, they are improving something they already have. So at least to me, picking up Boxing or Kick even on a melee AT makes sense because you are choosing to further bolster your strengths. And if those players refuse to take more than just 1 attack from the Fighting set, after the set has already been buffed, that is entirely their choice. However, from my experience, just looking at the numbers, if you take Boxing, Kick, and Cross Punch, they become better than the T1 or T2 attacks melee ATs get.
a perception to fix is that low tier powers are worse than high tier powers. in dark melee, smite is a T2 attack that outclasses every other button including the T9 midnight grasp (for damage). The ask is not that boxing/kick should be a mid-tier AT attack, but rather it should closer to a solid T1/T2 attack performance (boxing is not quite there, and kick is absolute trash currently). The other part of this is questioning why kick exists, adjacent to the superior boxing -- boxing/kick are largely viewed as gatekeepers (blocking access to tough/weave) but other than fulfilling a requirement for the fighting pool to literally have (2) tier 1 powers, what is the purpose of Kick?
i think the synergy system in the fighting pool is a joke. brawl is never going to be anything but a meme. even fully synergized, boxing and kick are not good. cross punch is only relevant because it allows access to force feedback recharge procs that builds otherwise might not be able to include... and supposing you do grab cross punch, you dont really care about the double synergy anyways (mathematically, you shouldnt).
all that said -- i would not advocate for any change here. i think there are creative directions that could possibly be taken here but the fighting power pool is currently desirable overall... and that is more than can be said compared to other power pools.
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On 5/16/2024 at 7:38 PM, Story Archer said:
I don't get it.
there is a stigma in this forum against spelling out the realities of powersets. so let me go ahead and get the PR statement out of the way -- play how you want and if it is fun to you then nobody can tell you that you shouldn't be having fun.
Reality -- Dark Melee is functional but low tier for damage. dark melee offers a ton of utility that other sets do not in the form of healing, endurance management, and hit chance reduction (inverted defense). it is very crucially missing knockdowns (fuels the absolutely busted force feedback recharge proc), -defense (that can fuel resistance reduction procs), and reliable AoE damage (shadow maul is fun but is objectively bad, touch of fear is 'good' but lacking in comparison to other sets). positive to note that smashing and negative energy damage are much better than lethal damage (that _MANY_ other powersets are stuck with), but that doesnt help the damage output enough.
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On 5/5/2024 at 5:10 PM, Sovera said:
You shouldn't be thinking of activations per minute but activations-when-needed. You need it when you need it, not when you're running to a mob, or finishing a minion.
It's run in, BU, Gaussian, drop all AoEs and all that burst does a tremendous amount of damage which indirectly helps defense since the most defeated things in the initial seconds the less are left to hit back.
this this this. the whole point of build up+Gaussian is to assure total
destructionarrest.you can play with the proc and 'maximize' how much recharge to put it the power while still achieving 90% proc rate...... but once you have enough global recharge in your build it actually doesnt do much to add a recharge IO into build-up anyways... shaves off like 2 seconds. this is especially true if you have FFeedback recharge procs in your attack string (you should if you can).
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relatively speaking, scrappers benefit less from damage procs than other ATs but it is still the last remaining way to eek out more damage.
if you are planning to run musculature incarnate (you should), then reaching an 'effective' enhanced damage cap is really easy (for the most part 3 enhancements with a damage component will do it). procs work best with minimal recharge in your power and maximum GLOBAL recharge (IO set bonuses, party buffs like chronoshift, self buffs like hasten). you want to try to maximize your global recharge so you can hit perma-hasten self buffed and then maxamize your enhance damage scale through IOs in the individual power first (again only takes about 3 enhancements typically). beyond that just weigh your set bonus options against more procs. there is a lot of flexibility and nuance here but most of it doesnt matter _too_ much for scrapper. it is mostly a decision on your end of if you want more defense/resistance to survive self buffed or do you want to rely on party buffs and/or inspirations more.
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13 hours ago, hakurr said:
reading the posts i need to get popcorn for all the excitement here lol .
but i would like to say the way the game has developed all Arch Types can be played and do just about any thing you want if you have the build knowledge and influence. i love this game and have since the day it first came out there are times i miss the early on game play when we use to look for the different arch types to make up our team because you could not bump up missions and then when you could you had to have a tank a healer some control ranged and then your melee dps to smoothly get threw a mission. but those day are gone now we go in to task forces with healers that can solo it if they want. that being said i posed the Question of Scrapper or Brute to find out what the OPINION of the mass was on witch would be better for the power sets i chose not witch arch type is better to play over all or why 1 arch type is worthless when it doesn't meet someone's expectations on game play.
there is a lot of nuance in the topic and that is why the conversation spiraled. the simplest answer to your original question is that both scrapper and brute are fine, so play what you want... and if you cant decide based on all this conversation, then flip a coin and you will still have fun. you really would never notice any substantial difference until you dump influence into a fully optimized build at or near level cap... and even at that point, people will tell you about all the workarounds you can do like stuffing your mailbox full of inspirations and buying temporary buffs to make bad builds functional!
**you cant ask 'which one is better' and then not expect people to talk about the META.
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1 minute ago, Erratic1 said:
You have literally just stated that it is fine for Brutes to have no reason to be on a team (whatever they provide being done better by other ATs) but that it would be wrong for other ATs to be in the same situation.
Seems...oh, I don't know...contradictory.
My point is actually that whoever is META will make the non-META AT(s) irrelevant however you balance it. The definition of META dictates this in the first place. There is never going to be a point in the game where all 4 (dont forget about stalkers) of the main melee ATs are all equally useful on every team. In order for there to be a winner, there has to be a loser. Frankly speaking, scrappers already dont really have a place in parties as it stands when blasters and corruptors exist. The META role for scrapper right now is to be the high damage tanker that survives because the game doesnt necessitate tanker-level defenses for most party content.
But if you wanted my opinion on how to 'better' balance the game to ATTEMPT having all of these extremely similar melee ATs somehow having carved out useful party roles in a game where party composition barely matters in the first place:
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scrapper taunt auras would be 100% removed from every armor set.
- tankers and brutes should be the only classes with the passive taunt auras
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bump brute's base damage scale
- reduce brute's max damage buff (compensation)
- goal of generally improving the baseline performance without effecting their peak damage
- brutes would have *real* ATOs that actually do something meaningful
- brutes would have corruptor-level values for power pool options (slight bump for things like tough/weave, combat jumping, and leadership buffs)
- damage and buff procs (especially FF recharge) would see a BIG overhaul
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scrapper taunt auras would be 100% removed from every armor set.
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brutes just offer an optional middle ground between scrappers and tankers. generally speaking, for teamplay brutes are not 'more useful' than having another scrapper or another tanker on the squad. brutes will do less damage than a scrapper but offer some better mobbing control with taunts and will feel more tanky with party buffs. for soloplay, brutes dont really feel any more 'tanky' than scrappers typically because armorsets run the same exact values as scrappers and it is very difficult to get above 75% resists without temporary and/or party buffs... and you just do less damage.
that said, brutes are perfectly fine where they are at. if brutes did the same damage as scrappers but were more tanky, we would be having the same conversation about scrappers being pointless. if brutes were just as tanky as tankers but did more damage, we would be having the same conversation about tankers being pointless. brutes are entirely functional/playable but the 'pure' classes are just better when optimized in the current patch.
funny enough, i made this same argument for sentinels in a different thread and got all kinds of unhappy responses. lets see if it happens again.........
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brutes and stalkers can feel pretty fun while leveling but tankers and scrappers end up being miles better at level cap with incarnates and a solid IO'd loadout. as others have said... the critical strikes proc ATO is what makes scrapper feel so much better. it is a complete game changer. also, yes elec melee is............... underwhelming.
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not the math nerd on DM particularly here, but as a baseline... smite is the best place for the crit proc to go for pure DPS. it is not necessarily the most reliable place though. midnight grasp would be the most reliable. i believe there was some oddity with the ArcanaTime of siphon life and/or midnight grasp as far as *WHEN* the crit proc happens (mid animation) such that you lose a substantial part of the buff duration.
that said, the biggest problem you have right now is that you have your crit proc button slotted to hell and back full of recharge. whatever button has crit strikes in it should have ZERO recharge (aside from the crit strikes proc itself...... unfortunately coming with recharge). the goal should _not_ be to just move the crit strikes set to another button. stop being bamboozled by set bonuses. check out procs-per-minute math threads if you need a better explanation.
**ArcanaTime is a real interesting thing to dive into if you wanted to read up on it but also just a whole lot of 'more-than-you-needed-to-know'.
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take everything except geode. geode is fine to take but very optional. overall stone armor is very much a 'set it and forget it' armor set. you do want to upkeep earths embrace though... and you probably want that to auto-renew... recommend you macro that (unless you skip hasten for some reason).
stone skin is a tougher power to slot due to being both defense and resist. the bonuses are meaningful on both defense and resist. would recommend splitting it even and not worrying _too_ much about IO set bonus there.
as an interesting piece for earth's embrace. scrapper HP (alongside standard accolade bonuses) actually caps out with a SINGLE healing enhancement in earths embrace. aside from IO set bonuses... it is quite wasteful to over-invest there. earth's embrace just gives that big of a bonus.
Rooted gives -substantial- regeneration, especially combined with earth's embrace massive HP cap buffer. do be sure to invest some healing IOs into rooted to enhance the regen further.
not sure there is much else to talk about stone armor. it is great all around.
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On 4/7/2024 at 11:29 AM, BuiltDifferent5 said:
This was kind of my thought as well. I know it only has about 1/3rd uptime, but seems pretty sweet. Maybe get something like RoP and alternate them.
That being said, how do you feel the set overall stacks up to Scrapper Stone Armor? Do you prefer one over the other?that is the strange part about ice armor _in comparison_ to other 'better' armor sets. you can find ways to 'fix' ice armor and it is certainly 'playable' but you could also just pick an armor set that works out of the box and doesnt need to be 'fixed'... or just enjoy the theme and supplement your weaknesses through party buffs.
On 4/7/2024 at 11:43 AM, BuiltDifferent5 said:Thanks for all this info. For stone, are there any primaries you feel go really good with it?
Claws/Stone seems cool since, well, you can’t do that combo on a Brute or Tanker 😂 Not sure if that means it’s an actually good combo though.
Katana might pair well. Looking at brimstone procs and the damage aura, seems like it’d bring some decent AOE to Katana.
Fiery Melee just seems strong overall as well.
claws and katana are great powersets fundamentally but are driven down by lethal damage type. so... great when the critters are not specifically overly resisting lethal damage. im not personally a fan of claw's follow-up in place of build up though. fiery melee is extremely strong.
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17 minutes ago, One IV All said:
Great call outs all around.
In regards to Nin’s T9 and Unleash Potential, is the idea to cycle both those powers and use Nin’s heal/end recover to try and offset the crashes?
nin is not uniquely the only armor set with a t9 that can do this but it does uniquely have the endurance clicky. t9 has a 3 minute duration. The goal is to get the t9 to a 4 minute cooldown with a TON of recharge. what you are covering from there is a 1 minute gap... which is the exact duration of Unleash Potential. Final step -- you just also need Unleash Potential to have a 4 minute cooldown... which is a lot easier.
having the endurance clicky power baked into the kit allows you to 'bypass' the crash if you time it right... alongside ageless radial (which you will want for debuff resistance and recharge anyways). the neat thing about the combination is that the t9 and Unleash Potential both give a ridiculous amount of endurance recovery so the blue bar (outside of the crash every 4 minutes) is essentially infinite.
practically speaking though, it is overkill for party content where you get tons of group buffs anyways and can be annoying to play around.
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it is being talked about a lot... ninjutsu is great to an extent but it is basically jack of all trades master of none. it has fatal flaws nested everywhere even if it looks great surface level. also no taunt aura.
main thing i wanted to highlight though is the shinobi-ri crit opener. you have to literally wait to be stealthed to get that crit -- it will never happen mid fight and you typically need to physically stop what you would otherwise be doing for a few seconds between packs of enemies... if you like RPing here, all well and good... but even for casual play... probably something you will quickly ignore.
will give a shoutout to building around nin's t9, alongside Unleash Potential. that combination is extremely powerful but requires very deliberate power cycling that is probably more effort than most people are willing to deal with.
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4 hours ago, One IV All said:
You know, I guess kind of both 😂
if you care about tier lists on scrapper then the only armor set to care about is called bio armor... incidentally missing from your list there......... away from bio armor, and of the 3 you have listed there, shield = stone >> ice. i would personally give the edge to shield because missing taunt aura really blows and mud pots slow doesnt cut it. if you team mostly though, not much to worry about there. the biggest reason for scrapper taunt is so that critters stand and fight (not run away).
should also note that shield charge on scrapper is really not that great and honestly skippable (it is quite good on tanker).
thematically, i feel like doing 'earthbender' without stone melee just feels off. the shield concept is cool but maybe generic. the subzero adjacent concept sounds fun (would probably want to run ice epic pool with it to sling ice bolts).
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MA is very versatile. good options for focus feedback recharge. smashing damage type is solid. option for achilles heel proc on axe kick. generally speaking, not heavy on endurance. MA does not really -demand- any fixing from a secondary armor set like some other primaries might. if MA has any 'weakness' -- it is a little bit lacking on aoe damage but if you are picking up ball lightning or fireball from patron, that doesnt matter too much. so overall, MA will work with whatever you want. not much not need to worry about synergy problems.
are you looking for theme affirmation or tier list kinda stuff?
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On 3/29/2024 at 6:26 PM, Sovera said:
And on that note this is the first time I entered a draw with Moonfire's AV. She hit half life at a good clip and then simply stalled with, what I presume, to be healing. But even on Tankers I always whittled her down without a second thought and this time we really just brawled face to face until I ate some reds.
The subject of ST doesn't seem to be, like, super hot. Katana has a decent rep but where do we see it? Pylon tests. Where two -res can be slotted.
forgot to touch on the damage portion. the crit strikes proc is a BIG BIG portion of scrapper. i would say, alongside stalker, the class proc really warps how strong the class feels with and without it. Very counter to tanker or brute where you just kinda set them in a power and let them work passively. scrapper and stalker really need to lean into their procs to feel strong. Getting the level 50 version with increased proc rate is massive (double chance)... as well as picking the 'correct power' and limiting recharge reduction slotting in that power as much as possible -- so that it procs as consistently as possible. scrapper is very much about playing the lotto with the crit strikes proc. beyond the crit strikes proc, franken-slotting towards damage procs is otherwise the big way to push the damage even higher... usually at the cost of defense along the way.
aside from that zapp and ball lightning are often hallmarks for scrapper, especially combo-ing the crit strikes proc with ball lightning. i know you are a big fan of focused accuracy but it really is a lot to give up on scrapper to not have ball lightning (or fireball if you opt for blaze instead). a crit ball lightning ends up a feeling a lot like a corruptor t9 nuke (not quite blaster level).
ground zero was a big letdown on scrapper when i tried it out because it cannot crit... and takes so damn long to cast on top of it. that said -- i think it is 'fine' if you leverage ground zero as proc bomb towards utility instead because they are mostly guaranteed to proc on everything. both achilles heel and fury of the gladiator -res procs. also a good spot for avalanche knockdown proc to have the CC utility.
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On 4/2/2024 at 2:58 AM, StriderIV said:
True, it just ended up working out that way as I finished the set. Maybe I’ll drop a piece and fit in a proc instead!
if you can squeeze out more defense at no or little cost to your overall build, it is worth it -- especially melee defense. incarnate story arcs have a higher hit rate for example where 59% is the cap instead. i will note that building for 59% away from team buffs is unreasonable but 45% is not the end of the line. also helps against defense reduction... even with 70%+ resistance, it still happens and it hedges against cascading failure.
aside from that... the 'optimal' place to do crit strikes proc is on smite for pure dps or midnights grasp for consistency... siphon life is probably a fine middle ground but wherever you put crit strikes proc you should definitely NOT be slotting up recharge in the same power.
your s/l resist cap is fake because you have one wit the shield active. consider slotting true grit differently (4 unbreakable 2 prev medicine, to get a nice big chunk of E/N/F/C/T resists.
shadow maul is an odd button... in theory it is solid if you are hitting 2+ targets but................ 7 foot melee cones just suck.
i would recommend fury of gladiator -res proc in soul drain for a couple reasons -- the proc rate is virtually guaranteed on every critter every time... also it becomes the button that buffs and debuffs in one go for you...
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you can run from it, but i think axe/bio is really the pinnacle of scrapper right now. i guess more to the point -- /bio is such a strong outlier for scrapper armor sets. axe is not necessarily the 'best' but it does a lot of things very well and the knockdowns help cover some defensive gaps in /bio in addition to facilitating force feedback recharge procs for /bio's defensive clickies. mind you there are other strong primaries sets that are in league with axe... but axe cyclone is realllllly nice.
i have a feeling you are trying to find the hidden gem of scrapper like you did with tankers (fire/ma tanker really is quite amazing)... and for that effort -- carry on... i appreciate your findings all the same.
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i think it is important to really highlight that last bit of info in your post -- with this suggestion, tankers would still uniquely have a larger target cap on most buttons.
big support for this. the 7-8 foot melee cones available are absolutely awful in multiplayer -- you are LUCKY to consistently hit more than 2 targets. for pbaoe attacks, i might give some pause towards standardizing all of them at 12-15 foot radius but... as a baseline... any pbaoe button smaller than 10 foot feels awful.
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choking cloud has a super low chance to proc on each critter. that said, procs that activate if it procs on _any_ critter are valuable here -- and that is specifically the winter set's chance for absorb proc. in a pack of critters you are getting the absorb shield proc'd off at least _one_ of the critters very often.
procs do not scourge, and scourge only works on the primary powerset, not the secondary (or epic/patron for that matter).
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What are the WORST Armor sets?
in Scrapper
Posted
armor sets, on a role that is geared towards damage just need to be viewed from a different lens than durability alone. scrapper is not about surviving to infinity. scrapper is about killing them before they kill you. and the 'better' armor sets will allow you to take on more foes, stronger foes, and with less downtime.
to touch on fire armor -- fire armor has the highest potential damage but bio offers SIMILAR damage output with better durability AND a taunt aura. if fire armor had taunt aura and the consideration was strictly durability (and theme), fire armor would absolutely be considered strong. fire armor is more durable than people give it credit for (especially with the buffs in the last year) but it currently has too many flaws and there are better alternatives. the comparisons are always relative to what you can be using instead -- what is this powerset offering that the other powerset is not?