Sovera

Color me impressed. You've proc bombed Radiation Therapy then?

Spines is just exceptionally weak. It's not even that good for farming with cones being inferior to PbAoEs. Savage or Rad paired with Fire will throw three PbAoEs without the need to reposition. Farms just don't get as much about ST. It's not like we need to finish clearing a spawn before moving on, a farmer will just drag the bosses to the next group until at some point there are 6-7 bosses being whittled by the AoEs. Now the interesting thing with tests is how it ends showing on random PbAoE + Burn is as effective as two PbAoEs + Burn. I figure it as being something like, two Burns will usually kill a spawn. If the person is smart (or, y'know, has HP bars enabled for all mobs) they will be doing their ST attacks on the mobs with more HP. Doing more PbAoEs in the interim has no value when the second Burn achieves the purpose. But this is for regular gameplay. Melt the minions, focus on the boss. Burn is part of the ST rotation so ignore the lieutenants and they passively die. In the above example when having 6-7 bosses more AoE will speed things up. At least its' what I extract from Spin + Burn or Whirling Hands + Burn having the same Trapdoor clearing times as Irradiated Ground + Atom Smasher + Burn, or Flurry + Savage Leap + Burn. Damn man, share your Devastating Blow slotting. It usually takes a bit less than half a lieut's HP for me, or 1/5th HP of a boss, depending if IG had a chance or not to slip one or two -res to spice things up, and that's with five Hectacomb + ToD damage proc.

But then runners gonna run. ...stop remind me I want a Claws/Stone...

I keep on trying to better the Rad/Stone Brute but every try is actually worse ranging from 6:40 to 7 minutes. The ST is partly the culprit as it relies on the -res procs to make it acceptable but where a pylon will take several minutes of hitting a single target the fast moving nature of the Trapdoor test does not give time for the -res to come into play and the slow whittling of bosses is noticeable compared to other sets.

*dusts the thread* Been horsing around a lot with Stone Armor lately. It's very very nice for survival even as low as Posi 1. But I'm too damage oriented to stick around for long in my fortress of invulnerability. So back to Fire Armor. Claws/Fire. My first damage character that felt sturdy. I had only done this combo on a Tanker but since I had not pulled it on a Brute here it is. Spin at level 6 is pretty nuts. Reach level 6, pushed the difficulty to x6 as well. Reached level 8, pushed to x8 as well and went into Posi 1. For once I ignored my usual thing of focusing on my attacks and instead slotted my shields. On Fire Armor I usually only do this by late 30s and survive on inspirations, but since early slotting on Stone Armor had paid good dividends I decided to try, but, I really noticed no difference in survival. Super squishy regardless of having three or four slots in my shields and I was still surviving on inspirations. This was something I had noticed in the past with the Tanker and it was the same on the Brute. When I reached Yin I did the 'challenge' but was not nearly as invulnerable as Stone Armor who could and did it with different combos without touching inspirations. With Fire Armor I had to eat greens here and there and even blues on top of spamming Recovery Serums. To be honest it did not feel very nice at all. First Yin run I had my shields four slotted, Kinetic Combats, split Brute ATO, and still pretty squishy. After finishing it and actually failing the time limit of one hour by ten seconds I got a couple levels due to it being the WST and poured slots to finish slotting the attacks that had been neglected in favor of the shields. This proved to be the tipping point when I re-did Yin shaving a monumental 22 minutes off the previous run and placing Claws/Fire as the current Yin 'challenge' winner holding the crown at 38 minutes. Previous record holder was Rad/Fire and Rad/Stone at 40 minutes (yeah, I don't get it either. RNG?). The extra killing speed also fixed the squishyness with stuff dying faster than it could hurt me. Also a few more levels finally placed slots into the heal which cannot be understated as very necessary. Though it's not that far ahead of Rad/Stone who was much more impervious and did Yin in 40 minutes the end-game build with the Trapdoor testing over the Scrapper forums does put Claws/Fire ahead of Rad/Stone as it finishes at least one minute ahead at the best of times.

With the whole 'if -res or damage procs don't matter either way for clearing' I shuffled the EM/Fire slotting around to squeeze in a Fury of the Gladiator into Burn. Trapdoor: 5:06. 4:38 Within variance of the previous 4:47 in my opinion. Pylon: - 2:16 - 2:21. ...so many misses. - 2:17 Not a large improvement over the previous 2:30 but hard to say thanks to whiffing.

Yeah, nothing gives 8%. Trust me, I'm a defense seeking hound. It gives as much as Maneuvers/Hover, etc with only minor scaling.

EM/Stone. Without Fire Armor to muddy the waters the lack of AoE finally showed itself: 7 minutes. 6:28 Whirling Hands alone is no big shakes to clear groups, though the ST remains comparable to EM/Fire with both having 2:30 just in raw power, no -res shenanigans involved. I'll have to agree that the tunnels don't let the builds be exploited to their potential. With EM and with all mobs having their HP bar on display I'm picking my targets that have more HP while animations are running which lets TF and ET be used to their full potential instead of being used against whatever is closest.

Savage/Fire Brute. Three fast cycling PbAoEs makes the build feel real good. The operative word might just be 'fun'. The ST doesn't feel bad either thanks to Burn subbing in as a heavy hitter. Despite being a Brute and 'squishy' Fire Armor I did not need to heal or even use Consume (which makes sense since the burst is big and half the spawn is dead in the first seconds). 5:33. 5:17 Looking back Savage/Stone is not that far behind (5:47) so Burn did not help all that much. But, heck, this combo feels really nice to play with an initial cycle of Rending Flurry, Savage Leap, Burn, Rending Flurry before having to resort to ST moves. AoE when we need it because we are surrounded by enemies is much nicer than being surrounded and having to use single target moves. Took it to the pylons and got 3:41. Same time as Claws without -res involved Did another test without Burn just for comparing with Savage/Stone: 4:16. The damage boost from Brimstone is not to be discounted when it catches up to Fiery Embrace and Burn for a 3:20 (though also because it can fit in more procs since it reaches caps more easily). Considering it is just slightly behind in AoE clear and actually slightly ahead in ST, while also being a heck more impervious. I'd still call the Savage/Fire more fun when that initial clear just decimates. But. Back to the elephant in the room. 'Weak' AoE Energy Melee still finishes ahead in pylons (2:30) and Trapdoor (4:57) with this particular combo. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

/optionset ShowVillainName 1 /optionset ShowVillainBars 1

Removed the -res procs to test the Claws/Fire. Pylon was the usual once -res are removed with the times plummeting to 3:45 Trapdoor testing just didn't care with 5:12. Overall since the game doesn't care for normal gameplay then keep the -res for tougher enemies. Caveat: if someone else has the -res procs slotted it goes to waste, but, clearing maps doesn't care either way, so... Fire Armor skews things a lot. The 'AoE' sets like Claws and Rad Melee get the same time as Energy Melee with the 'weak AoE'. It's a case of saying 'welp, if they all clear a map at just about the same speed then go for the one with stronger ST and less resisted damage type'. Even Rad Melee with Atom Smasher -and- IG is pretty much in line with EM since I suppose the extra ST applied to the tougher mobs makes up for the AoE lagging behind.

Darnnit, I picked the one power to test which behaves weirdly then. Well, this is why I urged more testing. Thanks for rising to the occasion, Striker.

Heh, we're going on three years now, plus all the years while it was live. Not losing sleep over it.

It's so confusing to me when I see you guys play without all the mobs showing their HP bar. How do you know when to swap and hit one who has more HP and leave the rest to AoE action?

I'm (usually) the same, but since I'm forced to split the Brute ATO to reach 40% S/L I found I could make Burn work with three slots which leaves three slots free. Despite the target cap being five Burn actually is able to kill more than five thanks to the pseudo pet. It's common to decimate half a spawn depending on procs since Burn hits, procs go off, pseudo pet activates after a split second, and procs go off again. But in practice the clock didn't seem to care either way too much about this. Testing is really a good way to get assumptions and gut feelings out of the way.

I am sure of nothing but taxes. Like it the IG test I urge people to give testing a try for more data. The only thing I am (semi) sure of is the order of procs. It all three went off then it was 6, 5, 4. If only two went off they still respected the order, be it 6, 4, or 5, 4.

Not me. I just ignore mobs and go talk with Mender. It's usually done before I even get attacked by the mob guarding him.

And IG too, lets not forget that one.

Another test with the Claws/Fire Brute. Shuffled things around so I could triple proc Burn in order to squeeze one of those as a -res. No appreciable difference at 5:12. It's interesting that if I went with 'feels' then everything melts. Even bosses are ailing by the time I've stopped spamming Burns and Spin and just need to mop up. But the clock doesn't lie and no particular improvement is noticed. For the heck of it I brought the build to a Pylon and tested it with the extra -res now incorporated: 2:45 2:24 Even with everything toggled on including FA the endurance bar lasted for the whole test.

Tested using Burn. Put it in auto and checked the procs. They always followed the same order of last as the first to go off. This is just a small detail unimportant but for one case: -res procs. They boost a proc's damage so -res ought to always be the last to be slotted so it is the first to go off and boost the damage of procs. This is tested and works as advertized though it's not a huge boost (57 damage from an Obliteration proc turned into 68), but why squander? Edit: read the thread. I picked one of the very few powers where this happens. It may, possibly, boost the damage of the attack itself though testing on this was all over the damage with Burn's initial initial fluctuating between 110 to 125 damage. We don't have RNG in the damage so it should always hit for the same numbers, but the 125 didn't even have -res going off. Edit: god, I'm dumb as bricks. Of course the damage changed, I'M ON A BRUTE WITH FURY! Dunno, but regardless important procs last seems to be the way to go.

Last time I used it was when I got that, twice, in a row. What are the odds?

It does. Only Ablative still makes a carapace.

Tested the venerable Claws/Fire, Brute version: - 5:18. - 5:06 Felt good playing it, and that it exemplars better than 90% of the sets is not to be discounted when I'm going around looking for something that plays well at all levels of the game. Tested on a pylon while at it: - 3:04. - 3:10 Though it does have a -res slotted in. Build used:

A good post, @Linea. A bit like the pylons an offense oriented build tackles down easier content faster since it does not worry about danger, where a build that spends its budget in defense will be able to tackle harder content but be slower in easier content. It is my Brunker philosophy and why I feel that Fire Armor is 'enough' survival for 95% of the game. For someone like you who tackles the hardest content of the game as breakfast the flimsy builds going around must look worrying. But it does make sense to tailor builds to the content. It's also why I've pushed for Tankers not to focus so much on defense since they already had the ability to take the damage and survive without needing to go look for more survival. That said I still dislike being fragile so my builds need to be sturdy. You're just on another level above.

Done another test this time with the damage being included. No accuracy slotted in, but FA on. 9 hits. 17 misses. What I looked at was: IG only uses the procs when the cloud lands every 5 seconds. I looked at all the misses and not one proc happened between the time there was a miss until another roll happened. When three misses in a row happened no procs happened either and the only damage that happened is the DoT from the clouds that had already landed. When IG does hit procs happen. Perhaps not -every- time, but it's when they happen. One more with the accuracy slotted in: 12 hits. 11 misses. There are three rolls missing for some reason but a % can still be obtained. 52% hit chance in this test and 34% for the test above. RNG and small sample does not make this definitive though, but it's not important for this particular sample since it repeats what happened above: no procs happen after a miss until the next roll, where if it misses no procs happen again. If the roll hits procs happen.