Sovera

Tested with no incarnate clickies used. - Fire Armor/Rad Tanker: 6:57 (no Atom Smasher). - Rad Melee/Stone Brute: 6:13. - Rad/ Fire Armor Brute: 5:55 (no Atom Smasher). - Savage/Stone Brute: 5:47. - Energy Melee/Fire Brute, my main: 4:57. (A) Both the Rad Melee with Fire Armor pairings were hurt by not having Atom Smasher which makes their performance less indicative of their power, but I had to pick between Atom Smasher and Devastating. Someone else running it with both Devastating and Atom Smasher will get better numbers. (B) The Rad Melee/Stone ignored mobs while its HP and endurance remained steady where the Fire Armors had to use their heal and endurance clickies. Near similar times only because of having Atom Smasher. (C) Savage/Stone is deceptively good despite what pylon times say (3:20) with the fast animations eliminating much of corpse blasting and Trapdoor melting fast anyway. Even the robots in the test melted at a good clip with the quadruple DoT-age (Savage's bleeds, Brimstone procs, Mud Pots, and Degenerative).

I had this talk with a friend insisting they've extensively played Elec Melee and that it is good AoE. 'Don't give me gut feelings,' I said, 'There is a test going on, try it, tell me how you did and we can compare'. This is how I walked into Trapdoor with my Fire Armor/Martial Arts expecting to dazzle until I had the numbers.

Nothing on a Tanker will make you close to damage on other ATs. Even a Brute is comfortably ahead. My best Brute Is an EM/Fire and does a 2:30 pylon without -res involved, my Fire/EM Tanker does it in 3:20 minutes without -res involved. I can lower the time to 2:30 by adding -res procs and Gloom, but I can also do that on the Brute and lower its time further. My Fire/Ice Melee Tanker does a pylon in 4:20, the Brute does it in 3:20. After a binge of Brute playing I see them safely ahead. A Tanker's damage is always mushy and even with Fire Armor propping it. After doing tests soloing TFs the fabled extra AoE size and more targets does little more than shorten the gap a bit but then gain is lost once hitting harder enemies which will slow the map clearing. While people talk about how Tankers were grossly overbuffed in terms of damage I just don't see it, It's certainly a lot better than it was, and it did a good job at narrowing the gap and making Tankers relevant for other than being HP walls, but Tankers are still last in all sorts of damage. On the other hand Brutes survive 'enough' (and more than enough if taking Stone Armor) for all content but the ASF, but even then it doesn't matter a lot since even the hardiest of Tankers die if they don't follow the mechanics. So yeah, play a Tanker to be the last to die, but don't expect records even when paired with Fire Armor. Take the Brute and be squishier but kill much faster until your build is in place with all the IOs and powers are taken, and then your survival will be 'enough'. Enough as in, you'll survive 95% of the content. There is nothing gained in surviving more if not tackling the last 5%. Stone Armor on a Brute in particular is... strong. Softcapped defenses, a weakness to E/N by only having 40-50% resistances, softcapped to psi, more HP than my regular Tanks (they have about 2.4-2.5, but the Stone Armor Brute has about 3k), Brimstone adds enough of a damage boost that my Energy Melee/Stone has the same pylon times than my EM/Fire while, of course, having weaker AoE. You can, of course, also run a Stone Armor tanker and I do have a silly Stone/Martial Arts build that boasts of 60% defenses and also 76% minimum to all with two stacks of the ATO, but I gave up because I was whittling mobs... so... slowly... even with Brimstone. Considering the Brute does not reach its resistance cap alone and that it only gets to about 60% to S/L and 40-50% to E/N using a Scrapper is valid to enjoy the above numbers, but Stone Armor has no agro grabbing for Scrappers. Which is fine if always teaming up since there ought to always be one Brute or Tanker in the team, but otherwise consider Stalker depending on the primary.

By far. Any single one of those is worth more than 0.16, and it's the loss of three.

I've pretty much reached the end of things to test outside of maybe trying Katana (I'd love to try Claws as well, but...). The 'best', in my opinion, remains the first option: Rad Melee. Good AoE with IG really pushing the envelope as low as Posi 1, with mediocre ST that can be faked as higher by cheating with -res procs in IG. Of this both the Contaminated Strike and the Devastating Blow are valid builds. Devastating helps with the mediocre ST but Contaminated is much more fluid and its rotation allows to heal at some nutty speeds, but not even the -res procs disguise the damage loss despite the math done somewhere in this thread. Which just goes to show why I always prefer to test instead of mathing it out.

It gives 5% base with one enemy in range, then 3.5% per enemy. Those are different variables but in game with one enemy in range both appear and it ends being 8.5%. Big spawns are where it shines but big spawns don't tend to stay big for long once AoEs start flying, even when solo.

The standard 8.5% recharge?

On the Pylon thread I had a few tests done using Energy Aura. All of the tests ended with times running into the 3 minutes despite being on a Scrapper (even when using Energy Melee it was only as low as 2:40). This ends disappointing me as the 'good damage' builds end up hinging on Scrapper/Stalker IOs, Bio, -res sources, and a snipe. Any building not involving these goes to the three minute mark.

While at it I tested the Savage build as well. The enduranced stayed at 90% even with Savage Leap so removing a few slots like from Crystal Armor should be okay. 3:20 without savage leap. 3:21 with Savage Leap replacing the T1.

Spun up an Ice/Stone. Stone is too tough to really need a defense primary but the extra recharge allowed it to to Freezing touch, Ice Sword, Frost. Repeat. That's one less Ice Sword than the usual rotation and with Brimstone helping I thought I'd see if it could make things happen. But it didn't. Both tries went over the 4 minute mark.

Ice melee in first? Energy Melee as B? Same as Dark Melee? Rad Melee first but just for farming? 😄 Okay.

Decided to try Elec Melee. I know, I know... But I have a secret to confess that I keep trying to make certain things work and see if I can find something that no one else did. So far it has the behavior expected from the 'AoE set' with a Yin cleared in 58 minutes, realizing I had slotted no damage procs in Chain Induction, starting over, and getting 53 minutes. Savage Melee got 42 minutes 🙂 There is some RNG involved from Freak Tanks healing, or not, and ressurecting, or not. But like Dark Melee it's just not keeping up. Now I do suspect Brimstone will play particularly well with Chain Induction (not backed by math) and I should find a short test in the level 35-ish range just for metrics since for level 50 metrics its usually the Trapdoor and pylon tests. Usual complaints apply (Thunderstrike not hitting hard enough for what it does, ST damage way too light, secondary effects as useless as Brute ATOs) but perhaps Brimstone can tip the balance a bit If Chain Induction proves to be a good carrier.

I've posted on a Savage/Stone before. Clears maps well, and the extra recharge from Stone makes for a 1, 2, 3 rotation. Stone is pretty tough too.

My simplest Rad rotation has been Devastating, Smash, Siphon, Smash. It's not hard to achieve. I've tried replacing Devastating by Contaminated (Siphon, Contaminated, Smash) and though the math seemed good when in an actual pylon test the damage was weaker than the Devastating rotation. But it still 'felt' better in leveleing and exemplaring, and even regular gameplay, by not leaning on Devastating's very slow animation and the healing output from Siphon doubling. But tests don't lie and the damage was pretty mediocre.

That's why I've replaced it with Combat Jumping in all my builds now. It loses 0.3%, I think, and CJ is almost free.

I'm not sure which. But if it has 50% to psi defense then yes.

You need to add 5% to Psi for Psi to be softcapped (so 50%) because Mids erroneously adds 5% to psi from Stone Skin. The Mids' devs know of this and it will be patched soon. Just like me you'll have to rework everything for those slots now 😄

I remember making this as a Tanker and having good fun with it, but it had Burn at 18 so the FF proc in Whirling Axe played very well together same as MA. With a Brute the starter will be slower though with it only having Whirling Axe and it being pretty poor damage. I'm tempted at trying it again now that I've licked the difficulty in fitting everything. It will have too many attacks though, but the recharges are lengthy and force it. Not Rad Melee this where a 1, 2, 3, 2 work. With this it's going to require Burn anyway, -and- four attacks. The rotation is going to be Burn, then spam everything with emphasis on the hardest hitters, but the way the recharges are the first skill used will be the first to recharge anyway. I tried removing Chop from the rotation but couldn't since nothing recharges fast enough to be re-used and make a working rotation. Truthfully it does not look like a hard hitting combo. None of the attacks get past 500 damage and the animations are slow. As much as we make noises about Devastating Blow it does over 250 more than the hardest attacks in Axe at the cost of 0.4 seconds more. I remember ultimately finding the damage too mushy on the Tanker despite the very good start but it's been long enough I do not mind giving it a go as a Brute. Also, funny enough despite being a bladed weapon and lethal damage, not one attack does -def.

What Warpact said, and linked.

Psi resist is a valid concern, though you do have softcapped defenses to it. If you have 140%+ defense without Kismet against +3 you'll have.. 200% against +1? No idea. You can see for yourself anyway. Change the options of Mids in Exemplaring&Math. 48% is to fight +3, 39% is to fight +4, 75% is to fight +0. What I mean with the Geode remark was the slotting of endurance in it though I realize you were aiming for the run speed unique as well. But since recovery is hardcapped it's smarter to slot health so time spent recovering in Geode is shorter, especially since it appears it gets broken easily.

Preventive Medecine is global, it will proc anywhere and does not require for a skill to be used for it to go off, and that change kills 8.5% recharge anyway. Shockwave not having a FF proc is sad 😛 Kimet's unique has no point. Every attack is already at 140% minimum to 170% chance of hitting +3. No Hasten, but taking Assault on a Scrapper, an endurance heavy build, is dubious. Geode hardcaps recovery so there is no point in slotting endurance there. Why slot Aegis with 7.5% movement speed and 3% defense against F/C when you can slot Titaniums with E/N resistance and HP? There are still improvements that can be made, but though the numbers are about the same with a bit more E/N the powers themselves are better slotted like this.

I can't help but feel that there is hyperbole to make things sound more dire than they are. I can't imagine a +4 Synapse (but +4 anything really) being so fast that no one gets a chance to hit. Even with a level 50 exemplared helping along. Lord knows I've done a +3 Manticore once where we took so long and people died so many times in the first mission we decided to start over with a lower difficulty. Level 50 TFs sure. Everyone is incarnated and IOed to some degree.

Ah, I thought you were talking about leveling since you spoke of Citadels and Synapses and Yins. ...you're seriously playing those at +4x8 and they melt so fast you're too slow to help?

From what others have tested Stone Melee is in the upper echelons of middle of the pack. Certainly good on its own but without battling for the first spot. This is ST alone. For AoE isn't not all that great with Fault having failed at becoming an AoE leaving only Tremor at 32. You're going to want -something- to help, or find some way to turning Fault useful (horrible accuracy, low damage, long recharge). For general gameplay it can be near Ice Melee in terms of safety once you get to a point where you can juggle mobs with Fault and Tremor. they keep bouncing while you keep killing. I'm thinking a Brute in particular can be made to shine as it keeps mobs bouncing on top of a Burn field (incidentally helping with the lack of AoE the set has). Now that said the game is easy enough that the gimmick of keeping mobs bouncing may not particular useful when we can just kill stuff, but, on the other hand, Fault does (a bit of) damage, Tremor does damage, Burn does damage, so keeping mobs locked is just part of the gameplay.

This complaint is a common one, but what you talk of is done at all levels. If content is ran at +0 or +1 it is literally the easiest possible. Content done at the easiest is... easy. Easy content is rushed. Trying to go slowly is something we force ourselves to do, not something that happens. Even when I solo the TFs I notice there is no challenge to it. I'm mostly immortal, so there is no sense of danger, there is only a long series of missions with a ton of flimsy enemies that need to be arrested. This is part of the whole 'but if I kill them without fear then why do I need buffs or a Controller?'. The answer to all of this is rising the difficulty level. There is no half way around it. If the content is too easy obviously people will just blitz it like a warm knife through butter. I'm not going to say you will find people willing to tackle difficult content while leveling but try advertising your TFs as +2, and if you find +2 too easy, then +3. But advertise the fact, don't spring it by surprise. Literally say you're aiming for more difficult missions so anyone who joins will do it knowingly.