Sovera

This is some weird topic made out of statements of nonsensical fact. The Scrapper VS Brute comes up every other week. If anything pity the poor Brutes who seem relegated to AE farms while if wanting melee damage a Scrapper is the choice.

Tested the procced out build and it behaved well. Not much difference in endurance consumption. The slower Burn is noticeable but it comes out regular as a clock after FU and Slash. I did not notice a huge damage increase in Burn but it only went from 700 damage to 800 (though I don't think Mids takes in consideration Burn's pseudo-pet second chance at procs). The single target definitely felt the bump with both -res procs much more prevalent than they were. Considering the sloting took my previous average of 3:15 (peaking at 3:07) down to 2:45 (peaking at 2:30) this is understandable. I tested it exemplared and the lack of recharge was more noticeable with some gaps. It wasn't a big deal, but I feel like the more well rounded version would be changing Burn and Slash to their purple sets, and then +5 those (Focus too). While the gain is minimal at level 50 the +5-ing translates well when exemplared It's actually a minimal increase either way (tested at Positron part one level). For now I'll keep the procced out version and test some more. Speaking of testing and since I had the purples +5-ed I went for a quick and dirty test with the build all purpled out and +5-ed instead of procced. I removed the Eradication and kept the Fury as my second proc in Burn: 3:40. 'Nuff said.

The only 'downside' is that surviving well is good, but all tanker armors do that already. So we need to look at utility and what else other than surviving a given set brings to the table.

After all the testing done with my Fire/Claws (new record of 2:30, no clickies used!) I took a look at Dual Blades and thought it could adapt well. Basically all attacks could be procced thanks to the lengthier animations and the extra attack, and Attack Vitals would basically be free damage. There would be a spot for Fury of the Gladiator outside of Burn too. All T4 using Reactive and Cardiac (even with Cardiac it was touch and go and this with some toggles off: 3:54 Switched to Musculature and Degenerative: 3:30 I expected perhaps a bit too much. It does highlight my point about Cardiac when the Recovery Serum kept my bar near to full for the duration of the test and Cardiac saw it dip down to 15-20%. I had such high hopes for this too, and it was so much trouble (almost finished slotting everything when I had the sad idea of checking what 'auto enhance with IOs' did and it wiped all my slotting with random sets). The build could use some tweaking still (dat Rectified Reticule in Blinding Feint...)

One thing I see mentioned a lot is the desire to have good combat mobility and I feel that people sleep too much on Hover + P2W backpack. Moving at Fly speeds while fight a pack of enemies, to another pack, etc, was a big big change. All praise Bopper! I use these to alternate them. jetpack2.txtjetpack.txt Good show on the ITF! Also, good gracious, but that was a string of rotten luck that you had there. Three minutes on a Rad was pretty damn good though.

So I decided to try a monstrosity of a procced out build. As usual I've cheated with the base empowerment buffs for KB protection and using Recovery Serum to not waste time using Consume. Purposefully upped the recharge in Follow-up despite it hurting the procs. FU is where my gap happens and I wanted it lower. Can't say I noticed much change either way. As it I have a 0.6-ish gap here. 3:07 - Not much change. 3:10 - Still not much change. Too many gaps in the rotation. 3:03 - Swapped from Reactive to Degenerative. As usual little difference between Reactive and Degenerative. 2:40 - Swapped from Barrier to Ageless. Now that fixed the gaps alright! But I'm not intending to play without Barrier. 2:05 - Ageless and Assault and Degenerative. 2:20 - Ageless and Assault and Reactive. 3:15 - Went back to the original slotting and just kept the procced out Burn. No appreciable difference. 2:56 - Swapped one of the damage procs in Burn for the Fury. It seems like a much better choice as I almost got the pylon at the 2:45 before it ticked. 3:05 - So... many... misses... 3:02 - Kinda frustrating to see the damn pylon tick at the last moment. 3:30 - Changed the Gaussian for a damage proc. 2:49 - Re-procced Slash on the fact that the gap came from Focus having a higher base recharge. Maybe a fluke. 2:46 - Maybe not a fluke. 3:05 - The 5% chance to miss can go die in a fire. It is near impossible to test small changes with whiffs at crucial moments. 2:46 - Horrid start and even so. Seems like this is the new average. 3:05 - Dontcha hate trying to beat times and hear the lack of sound meaning you're hitting something front of your nose but missed? 2:30 - Degenerative. Slight change in rotation is giving dividends. I've been using Focus second and Slash third. But often I'd use Burn after Focus which wastes the FF proc for the animation time of Burn. This is dumb. I'm dumb. Always using Burn after Slash from now on. 2:41 - Reactive. So small a difference it can be attributed to whiffing. 2:42 - Replaced the Fury in Burn by a Scirroco. This is burstier than the -res proc and the gain/loss seems minimal. 2:30 - Either Fury in Burn or Scirroco times are not dramatically apart. The change in rotation did more than the slotting. 2:46 - Decided to test the theory that the rotation did more than the slotting and returned to the original Burn. 3:37 - Tried to return to Slash's original slotting. Seems like this one does make a difference. 2:43 - Returned to procced out Burn and Slash. 2:47 - This is the new average. So, the summary is: - First of all testing something in this game is a nightmare. Missing a few hits can change everything. We have this in other games and can divert stats to reach a 100% hit chance but not in CoH. Here we get to sigh and 'enjoy' it. After I changed the rotation both 2:30 times is when I did not miss as much with the 2:45 as the regular amount of misses. - Second, Slash can and should be procced. It recharges fast enough and is low in endurance cost that neither stat is needed. - Third, Focus and Follow-Up ought to stay properly slotted since neither has the recharge to withstand the tight rotation. With infinite slots (and endurance, or not bothered with trying to build defense) Shockwave could be added. - Burn is six of one and half a dozen of another. All procced up it is trrrremendous burst. But then we throw fewer of them over a long fight. Properly slotted it only gains three seconds though, and the Fury of the Gladiator in Blazing Aura brings very little dividends where instead it sits much better in Burn. But Burn takes to damage procs pretty well with the double chance of them going off and this plays more with the short nature of fights in CoH. If someone has Fury and uses it ours now does nothing. So despite being near sacrilege, yeah, I'm thinking to just dump the Fury. Burn just seems to prefer damage procs and in Blazing Aura it has a pretty limited chance to go off to the point where testing with or without it there showed a difference (but it's difficult to test due to whiffs). - The best times came with having Fury in Burn and Degenerative. Basically Degenerative is sliiiightly better and gains a few seconds, and Fury in Burn sliiiightly edges ahead by a few seconds. Both combined are enough to beat a pylon before it gets an extra regen tick. This is almost build-for-pylon instead of regular play. For regular play I'd still go with Reactive since regular mobs don't have the HP pool of an AV for the -HP to make a difference, and a Scirroco since burst damage reigns in CoH. Though to be fair I think Fury is fine too. IF no one has it slotted then we are helping the whole team. - New rotation is Follow-up, Slash, Burn, Focus. Or Follow-up, Burn, Slash, Focus. But trying not to do Focus and then Burn as the animation of Burn wastes half the FF proc. This is going to be the new official build. Since I exemplar a lot to help friends with their alts and solo/duo TFs I'm keeping the Fury in Burn. I don't think there is a correct answer for this slotting.

I haven't strayed from Musculature 45%, Reactive 75% DoT, Assault 65%, Barrier 120, Pyronic DoT.

Does this look a bit mad? I tried this once on a Stalker and it reached 2:30 on a pylon so I doubt it would crush anything on a Tanker, buuuut... According to Mids Burn is comparable to AS (160 base AS versus 186 base Burn, at the cost of Burn animating slower (0.9 versus 2.25) and having a longer recharge (15 seconds versus 25 seconds). Alternating Power Siphon and FE should help with KM's short comings too. As always it's a damn shame we don't have that useless Torrent swapped with Burst.

A hundred plus DPS increase just for hitting skills in a row does seem worth it. The attack chain reliably applies the Achilles, Fury and Force Feedback proc too.

Since you're someone who is playing one at the moment, @nihilii, I'm trying to see the interest in Dual Blades. It has a clone of Follow up that animates slightly slower. It has a clone of Spin that does half the damage (same slotting Spin is at 343 and Typhoon's Edge is 160). Vengeful Slice takes the spot of Focus with both doing KD, but VS animates in 2.6 as opposed to 1.3 and does 50 damage less. Ablating Strike takes the place of Slash for the Achilles proc but does about 80 damage less. So the answer has to be the combos. What exactly does the whatchamacallit... Attack Vitals do? Could you tell me how much damage increase it brings and peculiarities it adds?

I've been on a alt leveling spree trying to find something better.... No luck yet. And then I try to play something else... I shelved my Kat/Rad I was trying when I saw me whittle mobs whittle mobs and I was thinking, '...man, One FU, one Burn, one Spin, things would be dead now and the boss at half HP...' This Fire/StJ has been playing pretty well though. Currently at 36. Run across a pack of enemies and stand on the other side targeting something with a bit more HP. There is this period where mobs go 'what the heck!? How did they get here!?' and don't move so there is no point in opening with an AoE just yet, so I was doing Initial Strike, Rib Cracker, Initial Strike. By then they finally wake up and run in my direction. Sweeping Cross to expend the three combo points, use Combat Readiness, use Burn, use Sweeping Cross again since CR recharges the combo points. Enemies mostly dead and dying as the Burn patch ticked and I kept unloading Sweeping Crosses. Just keep moving a bit to not be in the middle of the enemies since Sweeping Cross is a cone so it's better to be outside the ball of enemies. At 28 I swapped to Spinning Strike and its anemic AoE radius is bolstered by the Tanker buff making it decent now. I'm not using my big hitters yet but everything seems to be dying quickly as expected when we unload a ton of damage and stand in a sea of flames. Fire Armor really complements pretty much any secondary. StJ suffers in the AoE and Burn makes up for it. StJ suffers from the disconnect the old devs had throwing powers without a sense of progression (Spinning Strike ought to be at 20, and Shin Breaker ought to be at 28. Leveling to 35 to finally get two strong(er) ST attacks in a row is an odd choice) and Burn (alternating Fiery embrace and Combat Readiness too) helps the ST not feel anemic until then. But, in the end, instead of faffing around with one spender from 1- 28, then using a different spender from 28 - 38, then switching to a third spender from 38-50, while also waiting until 35 and 38 to finalize the ST rotation (never forgetting if we exemp down we need to re-do our skill bar 😄) we can just pick Claws, by level 20 we have the full foundation, by 28 we replace one attack. Well, StJ should (probably) be stronger in ST and while even with three combo points Spinning Strike is still half-ish the damage of Spin it does use the FF proc so more Burns and Fiery Embraces.

That does seem more elegant, but depending on your CU recharge it's adding an extra attack past it being ready to be used again. It also 'forces' a FF proc into CU. Ok, this is what I decided to do: - Added FF to CU. This gives the ST rotation an accelerator. Pre-CU Spinning Strike is the combo spender and it too has the FF proc. The loss in accuracy will be taken up by Focused Accuracy to reach the +3 cap. I already always play with FA since my endurance can take it so nothing changes. - Changed Heavy Blow for Sweeping Cross. This gives an extra AoE boost for extreme exemplaring (Synapse and lower can be comfortably done with Initial Strike, Rib Cracker, Initial Strike, Sweeping Cross and Burn providing a healthy push) as well as providing a spender. Come Yin and above and Sweeping Cross is relegated to being a mule (for me anyway, since I'm not into narrow cones as even with the Tanker buff it's still only about 75% wide) and Spinning Strike is the new spender all the way to 38 and Crushing Uppercut. Hasten stays at 136, not great, but not terrible, with the FF procs having to take up the slack. 40% defenses, 75% slow resist. Only Initial Strike, Rib Cracker, Initial Strike all the way to level 35 would be sad but fortunately Burn is a tremendous equalizer serving for both ST and AoE. Taking the advice from Nihilli the new end game rotation will be: (Combat Readiness) Crushing Impact, Shin Breaker, Burn (CU 2.4 seconds + SB 1.6 = 4 seconds, so Burn still enjoys the Gaussian), Rib Cracker, Shin Breaker. This is a comfortable rotation without gaps all the way to Crushing Uppercut where it has a 0.7 second wait, but, between CU having a FF proc (52% chance of going off I used the spreadsheet correctly) half the time it won't be there and anyone in the team throwing Ageless, or SB, or AM, or whatever mini SB the Elec Therapy set has, will bridge that gap. Using an extra Rib Cracker is also acceptable.

I've been pondering an StJ. The AoE goes up to 9y in Spinning Strike with the Tanker buff, which isn't super duper amazing but since it's not a PbAoE and rather a tiny ranged fireball effect it ends hitting more. StJ has been touted as a strong ST contender missing only in the AoE department. ... Enter Fire Armor. What blocks me a bit is the convoluted rotation since we hinge on Crushing Uppercut and Burn both having 7+ seconds of recharge. I kind of go around it by including Spinning Strike in the ST rotation. It's a bit heretical to add AoE skills for ST but, it does about the same damage as the other skills (costing a bit less than an extra half second to animate) with some good perks enticing its use: we can dump the FF proc and another -res proc in it freeing one FF slot from Crushing Uppercut. The convoluted rotation would be: - Starting fresh: Combat Readiness (Build-up, Gaussian proc), Burn, Crushing Uppercut (make use of the 3 combos Combat Readiness afforded, two purple procs with 90% of going off), Spinning Strike (it consumes combo points so this is the only moment to use it, FF proc and -res proc), Rib Crusher (native -res baked into the power), Shin Breaker (-res proc). Repeat. The goal is reaching 7.50 seconds. Using the above starting at Crushing Uppercut would be: 2.4 - 2 - 1.6 - 1.6 = 7.6. Burn is up at 7.5 so the rotation starts over. The problem with this is reaching Crushing Uppercut with only two combo points. According to Mids CU with three combo points would do 676 and with two combo points would do 625. This is why I complained about being convoluted 😛 Basically we either remove Spinning Strike and add another Rib Crusher (and then lose the FF proc which will need to be re-added to CU while also losing the -res in a ST situation. Adding the FF proc would mean breaking the Hectacomb set and more than the recharge it is the 15% accuracy that is patching things for the build) or add another Rib Crusher to the initial rotation making it go from an optimal 7,6 to 9.2. Of course that we shouldn't get too attached to the combo system anyway. Any miss will rob of a combo and it is better to use CU on recharge to expel the maximum per minute than to try to backtrack (and manage to keep track of combo points with an elderly UI). Zher build:

And that's why I hug Focused Accuracy. But hey, if your fully purpled out Brute can't handle it lemme know and I'll come save ya! *flees!*

Pretty much. I'm shelving the Katana/Rad (though I did not give it a fair trial either since I was just putzing around soloing Synapse). It's just too slow compared to the Fire/Claws (or even the Claws/Bio Scrapper). And since I've shelved the Fire/Kat since DA does not stack for Tankers I think my altitis is over for now.

So, basically, without a secondary to push things? 😛

Ugh. I haven't played Rad Armor in so long I forgot the basics. There I was testing the build by leveling it and I kept scratching my head at why Radiation Therapy did not fill my endurance. I had vague memories of my end bar filling up, so what was miss-... THEFT OF ESSENCE! Sacrificed the 5th LotG muled in Divine Avalanche (sacrificing the Touch of Death there is kinda valid as well since it only seems to have a 17% chance of going off). This puts Hasten at 130 seconds, but meh, between the FF proc and Beta Decay it should get close to perma. I've edited the previous post with the build.

Improved on the Kat/Rad a bit. Better slotting and Sting of the Wasp is a better choice than Gambler's Cut for exemplaring purposes. Decreased Hasten from 129 to 127 seconds and improved Slow resistance from 61% to 96%. Lost on EPS down from 4.15 to 3.77. It's because I've been harping on Fire Armor for weeks now 😄

I was talking about the Katana/Rad though, and there is no particular reason for it to be -that- much over a Katana/Dark Brute. I'm just being lazy as "#$% since I could spend two hours in the test server building it but I'm not that invested. I wouldn't do a /Fire Scrapper with mobs running away without an agro aura and then fleeing from Burn.

I'm just not sure if the damage won't be too low without a secondary to push things. If it does 3 minute times then that's a Tanker's time.

This is spectacular, Claire, thanks for sharing with us!

Want to try a Katana/Rad, Bill? After my disappointment at Divine Avalanche not stacking for Tankers I tried my hand at making a build for a Scrapper. In theory it would work for /Bio but DA will not cover the E/N hole in the resistances nor add defense to it either. Rad Armor isn't very offensive oriented for me though you can proc out Radiation Therapy for some extra oomph. It ended with some decent numbers if I may tout my own horn: - 70% to Smash, Lethal, Negative, Energy and Toxic. Only 28% for Psi. Built on purpose to use Barrier for the last 5%. It's not a Tanker's 90%, but Radiation Therapy every 20 seconds is Dark Regen's little cousin and Particle Shielding every 37 seconds. - 47% defense to Lethal and 45% to Melee with one tap of DA. 82% Lethal and 80% to Melee with three stacks of DA. Not accounting for Barrier adding another 5%. - 129 seconds Hasten, with a FF proc and Beta Decay to further help it. - A better way to apply the -res procs instead of relying on a toggle. - 4.15 EPS not accounting for both Performance Shifters and the Panaceia. Not that it matters much with RT. - Only 61% slow resistance. Slotting could be shuffled a bit. One slot in Stamina and use three Synapses. Use two Avalanche in Flashing Steel, etc. - 455% regen? Not a huge deal, but hey, 28 HP per tick.

Mmyeah, kinda puts a dampener on things. Though I guess 15% -does- free up a ton of slots otherwise dedicated to defense. I have my Hasten down to 126 which is a far cry from the usual. ...but yeah, without the overcapping some of the luster wore off.

I've been mislead. I thought Divine Avalanche stacked three times and it actually only grants the one 15% defense. Edit: Ah, it's on Scrappers that it stacks.

An hour and a half on T3! With an Invuln! With buffed enemies!