Savage Melee on a Brute?

[Shred Monkey]

I've never played Savage Melee, but I'm looking at it now and want to know how it works.  I see almost no posts in the Brute section about Savage melee.  Why is this? 

 

Does the bonus damage from Frenzy get boosted by fury and other +damage bonuses?  ...or is it just a +damage bonus itself?

 

Also, for those who play Savage melee... do you spend your stacks of Frenzy, or just run at 5 stacks and avoid the attacks that trigger exhaustion?  

 

In addition those specific questions, any other comments to convince me Savage melee on a brute is a good idea or bad idea are welcome.  Thanks.

 

[Mikewho]

I haven't tried it on a brute, but figured I could provide one useful datapoint from my experience on a stalker: The attacks actually give a small recharge bonus and endurance discount, NOT damage as they indicate in the text in some places. On a stalker I always avoid exhaustion, I do much more DPS if I use Hemo at 4 stacks and continue with my attack chain. Hemo is amazing on stalkers (it gets a bit extra bonus from crit for some reason).

[TheSpiritFox]

The only thing I really know about it is that it's 3rd or 4th best in the fire farming brute ratings. So it's got high sustained AOE damage and probably at least decent single target. 

[Erratic1]

11 hours ago, Kaylin said:

I haven't tried it on a brute, but figured I could provide one useful datapoint from my experience on a stalker: The attacks actually give a small recharge bonus and endurance discount, NOT damage as they indicate in the text in some places. On a stalker I always avoid exhaustion, I do much more DPS if I use Hemo at 4 stacks and continue with my attack chain. Hemo is amazing on stalkers (it gets a bit extra bonus from crit for some reason).

 

Darn it, I did not need a 41st character, but now you have me thinking of pairing Savage Melee with Energy Aura since Entropic Aura gives a recharge boost based on the number of nearby foes. IIRC, Blood Frenzy stacks to roughly 24% recharge. In the middle of a group with Entropic Aura you could add another 40% to be at 64% Recharge with no Recharge actually slotted!!!

 

Good thing Energy Aura comes with Energy Drain, as the build will need it.

 

Edit: Blood Frenzy will stack to 20% not 24%. As for Entropic Aura...

 

Edited November 13, 2019 by Erratic1

[SaintD]

It's basically Updated Claws. Very fast, very satisfying. If you've got a good concept for it, I would wholeheartedly recommend it.

I don't think it gets much conversation because it's a little conceptually restrictive, thanks to the forums people start foaming at the mouth when they see lethal damage, and ultimately it isn't exceptionally good or exceptionally bad. And that's what people like to talk about; debating the best single percentile or second difference between OP builds and declaring the greatest of all time, or bitching about how garbage something is. Savage just *works* so no-one talks about it.

[Seigmoraig]

What would be a good attack rotation to use for a Savage Melee / Fire farmer ?

[Sovera]

13 minutes ago, Seigmoraig said:

What would be a good attack rotation to use for a Savage Melee / Fire farmer ?

 

[Seigmoraig]

Ahh thanks I was looking for this thread in the brute forums, no wonder I couldn't find it !

[Sovera]

17 hours ago, Seigmoraig said:

Ahh thanks I was looking for this thread in the brute forums, no wonder I couldn't find it !

I'm actually making one, but made for all purpose and not just farming. I'm not sure if it will be all that, but heck, I never played FA or Savage Melee.

[Seigmoraig]

27 minutes ago, Sovera said:

I'm actually making one, but made for all purpose and not just farming. I'm not sure if it will be all that, but heck, I never played FA or Savage Melee.

I'm rolling it because I don't like to play Spines and I already have a Rad Melee, I just wanted to try something different and at the same time it seems to do well in farms !

[Leogunner]

From my experience, Savage is meh. I didn't have a good experience leveling it as a Sav/Elec as the end discount didn't help run the toggles and being all res early on meant I'd inevitably die since savage has no CC or mitigation at all. 

 

I might give the set another shake paired with something else but it's frustrating that the concept is difficult to run, even after getting the end drain and heal. 

[Sovera]

I'm just 21 but I'm not super amazed yet either. The endurance discount isn't doing much atm but once at 22 and having bought the usual IOs it may change. Flurry being a measly 8y radius AoE was a unwelcome surprise too and not wanting to use a fully charged finisher also adds another layer.

 

Yet that link I posted seems to point it works well in actual use. I've no interest in farming but there's no reason it should not translate well for regular play.

[Erratic1]

41 minutes ago, Leogunner said:

From my experience, Savage is meh. I didn't have a good experience leveling it as a Sav/Elec as the end discount didn't help run the toggles and being all res early on meant I'd inevitably die since savage has no CC or mitigation at all. 

 

I might give the set another shake paired with something else but it's frustrating that the concept is difficult to run, even after getting the end drain and heal. 

 

I suspect you may have been a victim of +Recharge as goes endurance, not toggle cost (well, Lightning Field...). Blood Frenzy increases how often you can attack and Lightning Reflexes also increases how often you can attack. Blood Frenzy's endurance discount helps offset how much faster it makes you attack but that leaves Lightning Reflexes not being accounted for.  The play experience would be running low on endurance and detoggling. If you were running Lightning Field as well, I am not surprised at there being endurance woes.

 

I think the idea is that you pump out higher dps because you are attacking more, but your overall endurance cost is the same. Your survival consideration is higher dps means foes die quicker and have less time to damage you. Still, Resistance setss can take a bit of time in comparison to Defense sets to come into their own.

[Erratic1]

I am not sure if this should go in a thread of it's own or not, but I am wondering about the notion of not using the Frenzy spenders and instead maintaining the endurance/recharge buffs from Frenzy stacks. 

 

You lose two attack options--one single target, one aoe--both of which do extra damage based on Frenzy stacks. But your non-spenders would cycle faster. I doubt the single target attacks are going to bring enough to the table. But Shred...

 

I think I am going to have to read up on procs and see if when all is said and done slotting Shred with damage procs can pay off.

[Sovera]

2 minutes ago, Erratic1 said:

I am not sure if this should go in a thread of it's own or not, but I am wondering about the notion of not using the Frenzy spenders and instead maintaining the endurance/recharge buffs from Frenzy stacks. 

 

You lose two attack options--one single target, one aoe--both of which do extra damage based on Frenzy stacks. But your non-spenders would cycle faster. I doubt the single target attacks are going to bring enough to the table. But Shred...

 

I think I am going to have to read up on procs and see if when all is said and done slotting Shred with damage procs can pay off.

That's the general consensus. In fact, even Hemorrhage is skipped. The link I posted has some detail about it.

[Erratic1]

30 minutes ago, Sovera said:

That's the general consensus. In fact, even Hemorrhage is skipped. The link I posted has some detail about it.

Thx!

[Leogunner]

31 minutes ago, Erratic1 said:

 

I suspect you may have been a victim of +Recharge as goes endurance, not toggle cost (well, Lightning Field...). Blood Frenzy increases how often you can attack and Lightning Reflexes also increases how often you can attack. Blood Frenzy's endurance discount helps offset how much faster it makes you attack but that leaves Lightning Reflexes not being accounted for.  The play experience would be running low on endurance and detoggling. If you were running Lightning Field as well, I am not surprised at there being endurance woes.

 

I think the idea is that you pump out higher dps because you are attacking more, but your overall endurance cost is the same. Your survival consideration is higher dps means foes die quicker and have less time to damage you. Still, Resistance setss can take a bit of time in comparison to Defense sets to come into their own.

When you're talking about resist sets, the stopgate isn't particularly the endurance, it's time vs incoming damage and from previous experience, the outgoing damage didn't balance the incoming damage. The problem with endurance just meant I couldn't keep stocked up on purples and greens, I had to keep blue insp too or vs debuff, yellow too. 

 

The issue was the set had nothing to shut off CoT ghost LT -ToHit aura, it couldn't kill fast enough to take out minions quickly before losing a chunk of HP,  or occupy hard targets with debuffs or CC to live long enough to take advantage of fury. Even if I had infinite endurance, it's still a hard time limit of how much HP gets taken off by every attack. 

[Erratic1]

2 minutes ago, Leogunner said:

When you're talking about resist sets, the stopgate isn't particularly the endurance, it's time vs incoming damage and from previous experience, the outgoing damage didn't balance the incoming damage. The problem with endurance just meant I couldn't keep stocked up on purples and greens, I had to keep blue insp too or vs debuff, yellow too. 

 

The issue was the set had nothing to shut off CoT ghost LT -ToHit aura, it couldn't kill fast enough to take out minions quickly before losing a chunk of HP,  or occupy hard targets with debuffs or CC to live long enough to take advantage of fury. Even if I had infinite endurance, it's still a hard time limit of how much HP gets taken off by every attack. 

 

If the issue is one faction or a single member of a faction, I am not sure I can see that as a set issue. Plenty of sets and powerset combos have issues with a given faction or faction unit. What is Dark Melee or War Mace going to do when -Acc makes it start whiffing? Why is the problem Savage Melee and not the armor setvit was paired with? In a radio mission group this past weekend the options were CoT, BP, and Tsoo. Its telling that everyone groaned. Some factions are broadly annoying.

 

As for outgoing damage...I do wonder if SM scores smaller hits because it is intended to be attacking faster. If at full Frenzy stacks you are attacking 20% more often then to keep pace with other sets in theory you should be dealing 83% of the damage per hit. I see something similar on my Katana scrapper where the attacks come quickly but for smaller amounts than say my Radiation Melee scrapper, whose attacks come slowly but land like boulders. If that is the case (a) we should be looking more towards the number of damage numbers thrown up than their magnitude though (b) the benefit of faster attacks is diminished.

[Leogunner]

49 minutes ago, Erratic1 said:

 

If the issue is one faction or a single member of a faction, I am not sure I can see that as a set issue. Plenty of sets and powerset combos have issues with a given faction or faction unit. What is Dark Melee or War Mace going to do when -Acc makes it start whiffing? Why is the problem Savage Melee and not the armor setvit was paired with? In a radio mission group this past weekend the options were CoT, BP, and Tsoo. Its telling that everyone groaned. Some factions are broadly annoying.

Is not a single faction or mob, those are just examples. And I didn't even say it was a set issue, I just said the set is meh. At best, it's damage is just not bad but for that, you get lack of adaptability and flexibility. 

 

As for what warmace can do against the -ToHit auras? Stun them to turn it off. Dark melee? Probably not the best options since the ghosts specifically resist immob, but you can still fear them and move away. Claws/DB? They get inherent +ToHit to help offset it but they also have KD.  Savage?  Pray. 

 

As for why it isn't too blame on the armor? Because I've played elec armor before.

 

58 minutes ago, Erratic1 said:

 

As for outgoing damage...I do wonder if SM scores smaller hits because it is intended to be attacking faster. If at full Frenzy stacks you are attacking 20% more often then to keep pace with other sets in theory you should be dealing 83% of the damage per hit. I see something similar on my Katana scrapper where the attacks come quickly but for smaller amounts than say my Radiation Melee scrapper, whose attacks come slowly but land like boulders. If that is the case (a) we should be looking more towards the number of damage numbers thrown up than their magnitude though (b) the benefit of faster attacks is diminished.

There's also activation times to consider. It's the set really actually that fast to activate that is pushing the attacks out faster to take advantage of the rech? 

 

I will say the blood thist power is pretty bad... 

[Erratic1]

Every attack makes things bleed. So that is damage that is being done, but not immediately. 

 

It should count for something but since you have no way to know the bleed on a target will kill it you are most likely going to expend more endurance for immediate damage. That becomes less wasteful however the more health you have to claw your way through since only the final hit stands to have its bleed portion do nothing.

 

 

 

[Frosticus]

The set requires a good understanding of how long fights will last.

Basically there is nothing wrong with being exhausted while you are on your way to the next spawn.

5 stacks turns rending flurry into a 15ft pbaoe which should still proc rate as though it were an 8ft. 

 

The tele nuke is just about everything one could hope for. The recharge time is basically perfect for procs and the damage is just a bit lower than lightning rod. If I get heavily debuffed I just leap away and telenuke back in. it cycles fast enough that you don't need to hesitate to use it compared to other telenukes like shieldcharge or lightning rod.

 

Admittedly, I think the set shines much better on a stalker, which is what my experiences come from. They retain all of the aoe and have drastically superior st damage due to AS and hidden hemo. But at least savage leap will let a brute stay ahead on fast teams to get the aggro they need to perform. 

[Shred Monkey]

I see people saying improved recharge time makes you do more damage.  Either blood thirst reduces activation time (I don't think that's right) or the people saying this don't understand how to calculate and utilize attack chain mechanics.

 

I started digging into Savage because it seemed very endurance friendly, which would allow me to run a lot of toggles.  I was trying to figure out something to pair with /Dark running a bunch of toggles to make a damage dealer with  more survivability than my stalkers and blaster.  I thought Brute would be better than a scrapper because I could see that bleeds where getting increased by fury, but not by critical hits (I'm 90% sure of the critical thing, my sample size was small, but it the log was clearly not adding bleed damage to the critical part).  Bleeds appear to be right at 40% of the damage from a given attack, so that difference should be pretty significant.  

 

I played up to about level 20, and got very underwhelmed.  I've come to the conclusion that I don't like brutes.  They're great for low levels when nobody has enhancements, but once you start comparing it to an enhanced scrapper, blaster, or stalker build on a fast moving team where fury is hard to build, brutes make me feel like "participant trophy" guy.  I don't AE farm.  I'm sure it plays differently there.

 

I understand Stalker mechanics are different for the critical hit calculation, so that may be my answer, but the endurance burn is higher which takes away the advantage I was trying to leverage.

 

 

 

[Frosticus]

On 11/18/2019 at 9:14 AM, Shred Monkey said:

I see people saying improved recharge time makes you do more damage.  Either blood thirst reduces activation time (I don't think that's right) or the people saying this don't understand how to calculate and utilize attack chain mechanics.

 

I started digging into Savage because it seemed very endurance friendly, which would allow me to run a lot of toggles.  I was trying to figure out something to pair with /Dark running a bunch of toggles to make a damage dealer with  more survivability than my stalkers and blaster.  I thought Brute would be better than a scrapper because I could see that bleeds where getting increased by fury, but not by critical hits (I'm 90% sure of the critical thing, my sample size was small, but it the log was clearly not adding bleed damage to the critical part).  Bleeds appear to be right at 40% of the damage from a given attack, so that difference should be pretty significant.  

 

I played up to about level 20, and got very underwhelmed.  I've come to the conclusion that I don't like brutes.  They're great for low levels when nobody has enhancements, but once you start comparing it to an enhanced scrapper, blaster, or stalker build on a fast moving team where fury is hard to build, brutes make me feel like "participant trophy" guy.  I don't AE farm.  I'm sure it plays differently there.

 

I understand Stalker mechanics are different for the critical hit calculation, so that may be my answer, but the endurance burn is higher which takes away the advantage I was trying to leverage.

 

 

 

I feel the same as you about brutes. And I've tried so many of them now. Maybe build up should boost fury if it is below 50pts or something. I dunno.

 

I don't rely on blood thirst to optimize my attack chain, but it does help for long cool down powers. For my stalker it knocks about 8 seconds off of my hasten recharge and moves me right up to perma/very close to it. I use my blood stacks though as I outline below. Someone that just rides the crimson wave (hahah) could probably benefit from the rech more. 

 

At any rate, take a closer look at stalker savage. It is an entirely different animal. It retains all of the aoe and more and has vastly superior st damage compared to other savage meleers. 

 

For me - I buildup, launch ball lightning from hide, savage leap in, fast AS something meaty which puts me at 5 stacks and usually rehides. Then rendering flurry w/ 15ft aoe and crit chance. 

That will usually kill off +3's. I then scrap down the few left standing. So exhaustion doesn't matter as it is reset by the time I'm ready to port into the next spawn. with all the aoe attacks build up is almost always instantly recharged for the next group.

unlike say electric melee for stalkers (the aoe king?) I'm ready to do that again on the next spawn even when moving quickly. 

 

It definitely lives up the the title of savage and if you enjoy moving quickly through spawns with a bit of tactical options available, it is pretty great.