Savage Assault: Why so Rare?

[Mercurias]

 

I recently started up a Plant/Savage Dominator, and I'm kind of in love with it. I let public opinion push me away, initially, but I'm now pushing level 20 after only a couple hours of play and finding myself having a blast.

 

The Savage Melee/Assault powers have a mechanic called Blood Frenzy, which slightly buff your global recharge and endurance reduction. You can stack up to five Frenzies at once, and you can spend them to increase the damage of either your PBAoE attack or your most damaging ranged ST attack. Handy at lower levels, but mostly used to pump the damage to your frenzy-spending powers at higher levels in my experience.

 

For those of you who don't know, since the wiki doesn't have the set listed, the powers are: 

 

Call Swarm: A light damage lethal DoT that looks like a swarm of insects around an enemy. Not the strongest attack in the world.

 

Maiming Slash: ST melee clawing attack which does added minor lethal DoT

 

Vicious Slash: Heavier ST melee clawing attach which does added lethal DoT

 

Unkindness: A shorter-range (40 ft) Cone which deal lethal DoT, reduces defense, slows, and can ground flying enemies. It literally looks like you calling a swarm of crows to peck at people.

 

Spot Prey: 42.5% Damage/ToHit buff for ten seconds. Basically a Build-Up Power. Also instantly gives 5 stacks of Blood Frenzy.

 

Rending Flurry: A pretty big PBAoE attack which spends Blood Frenzy to increase its damage. At 5 stacks, its range is also increased. Also deals Lethal DoT. 

 

Blood Craze: A self-heal, half instant and the other half DoT over ten seconds. Good for popping early, but weaker than other self-heals.

 

Call Hawk: You literally sic a hawk on someone. Highest ranged ST damage in the set, with added Lethal DoT. It consumes your Blood Frenzy, and at 5 stacks is increases the power's Damage/DoT Duration further.

 

Feral Charge: An attack which teleports you into melee and deals lethal damage as well as Lethal DoT. The further away you use it, the more damage it deals and the more bloos stacks it can give you. By the time Hasten is perma, this power recharges in under 3 seconds, allowing you to spam it as a way to bounce into and out of melee. 

In terms of actual damage, it's probably middle of the pack due Lethal damage being heavily resisted. In terms of fun factor, I'm having a blast with its feral aesthetic and the piles and piles of tiny numbers floating around at all times from both Roots and my Savage Assault Powers. 

 

Does anyone else have opinions on this set? I don't see it mentioned much other than to pan it. 

[Moka]

I recall it, in the nicest way of saying this possible, needing some help. 

[SmalltalkJava]

it certainly has some good proc options.  couple spots for FF recharge.  

[Tachstar]

I got my plant/savage rogue dom up to level 27 yesterday.   I'm having a lot of fun with her, apart from when she gets overwhelmed by (what often feels like) hordes of +1 lieutenants that must surely bathe two or three times a day in Roundup.  I gotta say, though, I don't fully understand the thinking behind 'savage assault'.  The melee attacks are savage enough, sure, but I'm not sure how that correlates to the summoning of birds and (oh, no, not the) bees (ahh) like a mindless masterpet.  It's kinda odd.  Which, oddly enough, is why I went with it in the first place.  Also went with that new Force of Will pool, which is also kinda savage, in a forcefully willful way.

[Erratic1]

I have a Mind/Savage Dom I started recently. Fun, though I can see no end of influence consumption in his future.

[DocMidknight]

Got a dark/savage dom to 50. I enjoyed the ride but having a hard time with the right chain for attacks and such. Not the highest damage and slotting was a challenge to get where I wanted her to be......will probably respec again and experiment one more time with her build

[MrAxe]

Maybe it doesn't fit a lot of concepts. However it fits mine perfectly. Snakepit (Plant/Savage) was fire back on live, but Savage fits his beast like apperance a lot better.

[oedipus_tex]

I find it hard to play, but maybe that is just me.

[Siderous]

I enjoy playing savage.  I have a 50 dark/savage.  I tend to open with a posses on an annoying mob type or on a buffer, if we have a good tank I then crow followed by fear, immediately use the TP strike to get in middle hit flurry then stun.  Then either fly out of middle and crows again or just stay in the fray with the few mobs that are left.  My umbra beast usually meets me in the middle doing pretty decent damage on the way. 

I am perma dom and hasten, no purples yet and my defenses aren't capped yet, though I am working on it.  The play style is fun and fast.  I don't use the hard controls unless the  team gets into trouble.  YMMV.

[Tater Todd]

Savage Melee had a few issues going on with it for a while.  I think a power wasn't dealing any damage and MIDS displayed the wrong damage numbers.  I've seen far more /Savage Assault players than I ever had once the changes finally hit.  Hopefully the trend will continue :D.

[Spiderbit]

I've been having a ton of fun with my dark/savage. With permadom and softcap S/L I can stay in melee and crunch up mobs with repeated feral charges and rending flurries. The target cap for those two powers is pretty low, however.

 

Force Feedback procs often from Feral Charge and Vicious Slash has an excellent DPA. It shines on harder targets like EBs and AVs where your DoTs have time to tick down.

 

 

[Tonio]

On 11/3/2019 at 9:11 AM, Siderous said:

I enjoy playing savage.  I have a 50 dark/savage.  I tend to open with a posses on an annoying mob type or on a buffer, if we have a good tank I then crow followed by fear, immediately use the TP strike to get in middle hit flurry then stun.  Then either fly out of middle and crows again or just stay in the fray with the few mobs that are left.  My umbra beast usually meets me in the middle doing pretty decent damage on the way. 

I am perma dom and hasten, no purples yet and my defenses aren't capped yet, though I am working on it.  The play style is fun and fast.  I don't use the hard controls unless the  team gets into trouble.  YMMV.

Would you mind posting your build?

[Frosticus]

feral charge is a super fun attack. makes you feel like nightcrawler. Splash damage is pretty good with procs.

 

blood frenzy helps a bit with recharge for long cooldowns. 

 

For me I rank it 2nd behind /fiery. fiery because the damage is terrific by any metric, especially with fire epic. But savage assault (almost entirely due to feral charge) is the most fun. 

 

 

[Doomrider]

2 hours ago, Frosticus said:

feral charge is a super fun attack. makes you feel like nightcrawler. Splash damage is pretty good with procs.

 

blood frenzy helps a bit with recharge for long cooldowns. 

 

For me I rank it 2nd behind /fiery. fiery because the damage is terrific by any metric, especially with fire epic. But savage assault (almost entirely due to feral charge) is the most fun. 

 

 

Frosticus, did you take Flurry and/or Call Hawk on your savage?

I'm trying to figure out whether taking and using those 'spender' powers is ideal for DPS or if proccing out the other attacks and having 5 stacks of blood frenzy constantly for the end redux and recharge bonus would be better.

[Frosticus]

I don't rely on blood stacks to improve my main combat abilities, but it is nice for the long cool down powers (domination, aoe stuns, hasten, etc).

Call hawk is quite strong and if you like it can take a lot of damage procs giving it good burst potential to go along with the dot.

I don't love rending flurry, but I do have it on my fire/sav cause i'm in the mix most of the time. In truth I feral charge a lot around the fight, so I'm not often surrounded enough to make good use of rending flurry. 

I do love rending flurry on my sav stalker, but that is because savage leap+AS puts you at 5 stacks and usually rehides you, so rending flurry is 15ft of aoe crit action with the beauty of buildup backing it up. 

 

I try to actively avoid exhaustion on my fire/sav dom, but call hawk is a pretty strong attack.

 

Just leap back and feral charge the last enemy. That will keep you at 3 stacks while you move on to the next spawn, so you can always have a pretty good +rech bonus going. 

[Doomrider]

Call Hawk does a lot of dmg even before procs, with procs its really strong indeed. I think i'll keep it, Flurry i'm still on the fence about.

I'm really enjoying Unkindness w/ 5 piece posi blast and Ragnarok KD proc. Feels like it knocks the whole mob down consistently. It's really nice for soft control.

Feral charge is one of the most fun powers, it's almost pretty fun to put Kinetic combat KD proc in as well. 

[Frosticus]

unkindness is very solid. I like it because its root time is very short, so it has little impact on me moving around quickly.

[QuiJon]

I think the thing with a few sets are that they have very limited things they pair well with. And savage and Stone both having a good supply of melee attacks do pair really well with Plant control. Plant control allows for spammable AOE control with Seeds of confusion, has a really nice "patch" with carion creepers, and a moderately useful pet. But it also has many skippable powers that leaves enough space to fit in the fighting pool, some leadership and with the right epic can not only get perma dom but soft cap smashing lethal defense. 

 

But if leveling up by the time you get to 30s you are gonna take a lot of damage if  you don't have some kind of AOE control available for ever mob. And if that AOE is a PBAOE like cinders from fire assault you are going to take a tone of damage before you even get a chance to control the mobs. Plant IMO is just a strong enough set to over come some inherent weak design in some of the assault sets. Savage being one of them. 

[oedipus_tex]

Savage stands out to me as being ideal paired with Dark, Fire, Ice, or Electric; sets that benefit greatly from being able to instantly close distance. Each of these sets is in this position for slightly different reasons:

 

• Ice Control generally wants to drop an Ice Slick from afar, then quickly close distance to surround enemies inside Arctic Air, with Glacier as backup
• Fire Control generally wants to stun with Flashfire, the close distance with Hot Feet with Cinders as a backup
• Electric Control generally wants to open with Synaptic Overload from afar, then during the fight stay close to enemies to continually drain them. This is especially critical if Power Sink is taken from the Mu pool for additional quick endurance drain
• Dark generally wants to open with Fearsome Stare (a cone that requires distance) and then attempt to stun mobs close up with Heart of Darkness

 

The fact that you can use Feral Charge while Hovering is huge. It means you can legitimately play any of these sets as an always-Hoverer. When the battle gets too hot, hit space bar to float upwards. It's fantastic synergy for these otherwise somewhat risky sets.

[VV]

Here is a bind tip you help you use Feral Charge. Personally, I find teleport a huge pain because you have to click the target location with your mouse. During combat, I can hardly find the mouse most of the time. So, I came up with this bind

Quote

/bind numpad0 "powexec_location target Feral Charge"

You select your target normally, probably already have it from previous attacks, the press the Number Pad 0 key and BAM, you should up next to him. I have tested this with Teleport and it works *most* (not all) of the time. If it does not activate, it may mean you are out of range. Or, it could just be something weird, in which case pressing it again usually works. Of course, you can substitute the key of your choice for the numpad0. Happy Hunting!

[oedipus_tex]

20 minutes ago, VV said:

Here is a bind tip you help you use Feral Charge. Personally, I find teleport a huge pain because you have to click the target location with your mouse. During combat, I can hardly find the mouse most of the time. So, I came up with this bind

You select your target normally, probably already have it from previous attacks, the press the Number Pad 0 key and BAM, you should up next to him. I have tested this with Teleport and it works *most* (not all) of the time. If it does not activate, it may mean you are out of range. Or, it could just be something weird, in which case pressing it again usually works. Of course, you can substitute the key of your choice for the numpad0. Happy Hunting!

 

Are you sure we're talking about the same power? You can Feral Charge just by clicking the power with an enemy selected. There are a few teleport powers similar to Feral Charge that do require targeting the ground though.

[Frosticus]

ya feral charge and savage leap only work if you have a target and they are extremely fast 

 

feral charge in particular due to its super short cool down can drastically change the way one plays the game if they so choose.  

 

While I wouldnt give up savage leap on my stalker because it vaporizes entire spawns, I wish the set also had feral charge because that character is strong enough to use it without regard for safety and the combat mobility it offers is very unique. 

[VV]

9 hours ago, oedipus_tex said:

 

Are you sure we're talking about the same power? You can Feral Charge just by clicking the power with an enemy selected. There are a few teleport powers similar to Feral Charge that do require targeting the ground though.

Oh you might be right. Maybe I'm thinking of that one from the Leaping Pool.

[Czar]

I have a 50 with it. its was a long slow slog though. I love the idea of the set but, the set has some issues for sure. Half the powers are melee and your a squishie, for one. The ranged attacks are medicore at best too. Damage and/or effect are too low and seem all over the place, some knockdown, some slow, some to hit debuff, some bleed.  I think they need to be more centralized and pared down a bit.

[serxiom]

Im testing a Arssonist/Savage dominator in Test Server, Is just too fun to play with, Cant wait for this new set to come out.