Savage Assault: Why so Rare?

[SeraphimKensai]

I enjoy savage assault. I paired it with illusion control and ice mastery. my character concept is that of a vampiric demon that teleports in and out of combat and it feels pretty smooth. It's one of my fav dominators to be honest.

[Frosticus]

Hard to pick a set where some of the attacks show 0 damage and others are just flat out wrong.

 

Do you trust your eyes, or some forum putz (like me) telling you it is awesome?

 

 

[EnjoyTheJourney]

11 hours ago, Frosticus said:

Hard to pick a set where some of the attacks show 0 damage and others are just flat out wrong.

 

Do you trust your eyes, or some forum putz (like me) telling you it is awesome?

 

 

Previously looked at the damage numbers in Mids, the fact that feral charge only takes single target IOs, which implied that it probably did damage to just one target, and also considered the fuss and bother connected to maximizing the radius of rending flurry. Then I thought "nope" and looked at other doms instead for quite some time. Totally guilty of not previously digging deep enough to really understand the set. 

Still on the fence about the set, even after recently hearing good things about it. Really like the single target skills. Feral charge is a lot of fun. Also, really love the strength of the heal, with the caveat that the recharge even for an endgame build feels a bit too slow to set a high value on the heal. Don't love the cognitive load associated with monitoring the number of blood frenzy stacks to figure out when to begin repositioning to put rending flurry to its best use.

On that note, when experimenting with the set I found myself fairly often losing track of exactly how many blood frenzy stacks had accumulated, given all the other things to think about in combat. Thus, I often didn't know which attack(s) I could pick as the next attack to max out the number of blood frenzy stacks before using rending flurry. Also, the need to build up stacks to maximize rending flurry radius runs counter to how teams usually function. Usually teams alpha with AOEs and then clean up with single target damage. With savage assault you'll often want to build up charges with other attacks before using rending flurry. Thus, when on a team it was often no longer worth casting rending flurry by the time I had built up five stacks of blood frenzy. In the end, the need to build up five stacks to give rending flurry the same radius that other dom PbAOEs get by default, without any added bother, made the set less enjoyable to play. YMMV, FWIW. 

Maybe if blood frenzy only took three stacks to maximize it would be noticeably less bothersome. Or not, as even water blast's three stacks can be a bit of a pain to manage. At least for me, though, maxing blood frenzy stacks at three would probably have made it significantly easier to enjoy playing. 

Edited February 7, 2024 by EnjoyTheJourney

[Frosticus]

It is cumbersome to manage the blood system.

 

At the start if you feral charge from full range, then viscous, you will be at full blood for rending. After that I don't worry about it.

 

The plus side is that full blood rending does quite a bit more damage than the other pbaoes

 

For single target the lockout doesn't matter that much. 1@5 stack Hawk + 2@0 stack is within a few pts of damage as 3@4 stacks.

 

In a perfect world the blood  lockout would disappear, it isn't needed and spot prey would add stacks (and fix the perception boost)

[Kladyras]

On 2/6/2024 at 4:35 PM, SeraphimKensai said:

I enjoy savage assault. I paired it with illusion control and ice mastery. my character concept is that of a vampiric demon that teleports in and out of combat and it feels pretty smooth. It's one of my fav dominators to be honest.

Do you have a build for this? I'm building the same thing, but cant figure out how to slot it 😞

[SeraphimKensai]

31 minutes ago, Kladyras said:

Do you have a build for this? I'm building the same thing, but cant figure out how to slot it 😞

I don't publicly release my builds but I'm willing to help teach you how to make a build for it. Send me a message on the forums with your build goals (permadom, type of travel power, defense based (positional or typed), what kind of content you plan running with it, what difficulty, are you looking for advanced mode stuff or no, and if you are playing it organically or power leveling it?) and an attempt to make your own build aimed at your goals with mids.

[BazookaTwo]

On 4/1/2024 at 7:21 PM, SeraphimKensai said:

I don't publicly release my builds but I'm willing to help teach you how to make a build for it. Send me a message on the forums with your build goals (permadom, type of travel power, defense based (positional or typed), what kind of content you plan running with it, what difficulty, are you looking for advanced mode stuff or no, and if you are playing it organically or power leveling it?) and an attempt to make your own build aimed at your goals with mids.

 

I really applaud this. I think building is a fun thing to discuss and help each other understand, and just throwing a successful build into the forums sort of leaves me with a "ok now what?" feeling. 

 

You never know if a build fits your play style or not. 

[Without_Pause]

9 hours ago, BazookaTwo said:

 

I really applaud this. I think building is a fun thing to discuss and help each other understand, and just throwing a successful build into the forums sort of leaves me with a "ok now what?" feeling. 

 

You never know if a build fits your play style or not. 

Builds can be tried out in Beta so you can get a feel of what the build is like at 50. You can simply import the build from Mids, auto level to 50, gain the needed enhancements, and go from there. I'm likely at the point to where I will do a Beta run with a build before I even roll it live. 

[Crysis]

Couple years old now, but I still pull out my Illusion/Savage/Ice Dominator quite frequently.  Very “Nightcrawler-esque” with Combat Teleport added into the mix, particularly to get max damage out of the build.  Haven’t really needed to update her since she hit 50, final build posted in the thread.

 

 

[PyroBeetle]

21 minutes ago, Crysis said:

Couple years old now, but I still pull out my Illusion/Savage/Ice Dominator quite frequently. 

I do the same with my Ice/Savage/Ice Dom, good for chuckles and laughs, basically unkillable in most content and runs through things like a cold wind filled with icicle razors.

[Lusiphur Malache]

I'm having a hard time finding my way with my pyro/savage dom. I believe these two sets just don't get along with each other. I'm at level 27,my hope is to have a clue to what I'm doing by 30

[EnjoyTheJourney]

In my view feral charge is the set defining power. Proc it up and use it as a substitute for maiming slash when you can. Also, feral charge happens to pair up quite well with incendiary aura for reasons that will probably become clear a little further down. So, consider giving the set a bit more time before reaching a final verdict about how much you might enjoy playing it.  

Feral charge offers very similar DPA to maiming slash, when proc'd up. But, feral charge hits up to five targets, instead of just one target. When looking across all the different AOE powers to which dominators get access, feral charge offers excellent DPA on a quick recharge, in exchange for being limited to five targets. Also, feral charge does knockdown and can take a force feedback +recharge IO; it recharges in a little less than 4 seconds with good global recharge and no local recharge. So, when you use it a lot recharge noticeably improves for many powers. Finally, feral charge's teleport-to-target-and-immediately-attack ability gives serious Nightcrawler vibes, making it sooo much fun to use (at least for me, YMMV of course). Feral charge from maximum range, followed by vicious slash, can maximize all blood fury stacks, allowing for "rending flurry" cast immediately afterward to have a noticeably larger radius. This combo provides a good alpha strike option for new spawns^. 

^ Credit goes to Frosticus for pointing this out. 

 

At the end of the day, savage assault doesn't boost defense totals the way several assault sets can with their variously named "boost" power that functions kind of like "power boost" and a "damage boost" power all rolled into one (ice assault has such a power, as one example). Plus, single target DPA while fighting a single hard target is middle of the pack, when compared to other assault sets. But, savage assault has a noticeable heal to potentially help to offset its lack of a defense boosting ability and it has sneaky good AOE damage because feral charge has excellent DPA and you can use it so often. 

To see how you might IO up a savage assault character, you can check out the build offered here. Click on the RHS of feral charge to see how much damage it does, on average. Click it off afterward, though, as otherwise global recharge values will be out of whack and you won't be able to see what the default recharge times would be for any power, once the build has been fully put together. Also note the presence of unleash potential, which helps to ease endurance problems with a strong recovery boost when active. Unleash potential also offers higher defense totals; it can help for absorbing alphas and at other times when incoming aggro is higher than usual. 
 

 

 

Dominator (Ice Control - Savage Assault - Dark Mastery),v2.mbd

Edited 20 hours ago by EnjoyTheJourney