Bio/??? Looking for recommendations

[SemanticAntics]

I have never tried Bio Armor before and I'm looking for a good secondary to go with it. I have a concept that lends itself to physical attacks (as opposed to elemental/energy/psychic) so I'm trying to decide between the following:

 

• Any of the weapon sets (except Dual Blades)
• Martial Arts (I'm disinclined to pick this set, personally)
• Savage Melee
• Spines (this is a pretty good fit for my concept)
• Stone Melee (this is a little bit of a stretch but, colored appropriately, can fit my concept)
• Street Justice

 

I'd prefer average-or-better damage. With the coming changes, I'd prefer something with some good AoE powers. 

 

I would appreciate any recommendations and the reasons behind them. 

[Call Me Awesome]

4 minutes ago, SemanticAntics said:

I have never tried Bio Armor before and I'm looking for a good secondary to go with it. I have a concept that lends itself to physical attacks (as opposed to elemental/energy/psychic) so I'm trying to decide between the following:

 

• Any of the weapon sets (except Dual Blades)
• Martial Arts (I'm disinclined to pick this set, personally)
• Savage Melee
• Spines (this is a pretty good fit for my concept)
• Stone Melee (this is a little bit of a stretch but, colored appropriately, can fit my concept)
• Street Justice

 

I'd prefer average-or-better damage. With the coming changes, I'd prefer something with some good AoE powers. 

 

I would appreciate any recommendations and the reasons behind them. 

I don't know Bio at all, but Street Justice is a good single target set that's a lot of fun.  Stone is the hardest feeling set available and has lots of soft control with knockdowns and offers really good AOE aggro control.  It IS endurance heavy so be aware you'll need to address that.  Spines is pretty much the AOE king but a bit weak on single target.  Broadsword/Katana are fairly interchangeable and offer Parry to buff your melee defense and do good damage.  I've only played Broadsword on a Scrapper but it's a good, but end heavy, set.

[Kruunch]

I suggest Spines out of the ones you've listed. Lots of AOE and pair really well with Bio. I have a Spines/BIO Scrapper version of this and is still one of my favorite toons played to date.

[Heraclea]

Having taken Bio/Spines to 50+. I can recommend it highly,  Bio is the recovery oriented armor.  Gives you what you need to keep Quills up.  Bio is a resist set that relies on a number of click powers for survivability.  Spines is not much cursed by animation lag: one of your biggest attacks just needs to be toggled on. With a damage aura in the primary and one in the secondary, all you need to do is to show up and mobs die.  As Catrina says, ca tamalli ("it's the tamales.")

[Mortal prey]

I have a bio/titan weapon that is super fun to play.  He's a beast, with both good ST and AoE damage.  Not on your list, but my brother has been playing a bio/ss that is wicked. With the damage toggle on from bio and rage from SS he's putting out some great damage numbers.  

[SemanticAntics]

Thanks for the input. I'm certainly leaning toward Bio/Spines now. After a quick search, I note that many of the builds I've seen skip Spine Burst. Is there a particular reason for that? Does it not translate well to a Tanker? Is it just because it's slow?

[Heraclea]

I took it and use it frequently as my alpha strike.  It's also available at levels before you get Quills.  You want all the PBAoEs. 

[Seigmoraig]

22 hours ago, SemanticAntics said:

Any of the weapon sets (except Dual Blades)

Titan Weapon is where it's at. It is a super endurance heavy set that pairs really well Bio's top notch recovery tools.

TW is the king of AoE, Titan Sweep, Arc of Destruction and Whirling Smash are the bread and butter. Also every power in this rotation has a Knockdown component for extra damage mitigation.

TW also has a 3 power single target rotation for when you are fighting big baddies

Edited November 22, 2019 by Seigmoraig