Kinetic Melee: Stalker or Scrapper?

[Lockpick]

Getting ready to start a new character and I am thinking I want to try a Kinetic Melee.  I may do SD as my secondary.  Any thoughts on which AT fits best with Kinetic Melee?  Also, any suggestion on a synergistic secondary?  I don't have to do SD.

[Machariel]

I've heard good things about Kinetic Melee on Stalkers.  Body Blow and Smashing Blow are both very fast and KM has the fastest Assassin's Strike at a mere 0.67 seconds.  Stalkers get Build Up instead of Power Siphon which I think is an improvement since you can reliably start double and maybe even triple stacking Build Ups with concentrated strike.  I thought Concentrated Strike would be kind of meh given the long animation and the inability to crit but its DPA is actually in line with Body & Smashing.  KM only gets one AoE attack, in Burst, which has a slow animation but at least it's a PBAoE which puts the set in the middle of the pack for Stalker AoE.  I would imagine that Burst with double Build Up is pretty good.  All of your attacks have some CC in them as well, either disorient or knockdown, which is kind of cool both for its own sake and because it increases the number of procs you can slot (although the Stun procs are very meh).

 

I'm now looking at pairing it with /Rad Armor, though Shield is as always an excellent choice.  When I was looking through the secondaries nothing jumped out at me as being particularly good or bad with KM.  Hope this helps 🙂

[Lockpick]

It does help!  Thanks for your insight.  I've been looking at Rad Armor for awhile, but all the builds I create do not look great.  I have the same challenge with Bio, which everyone says is great.

 

Oh well, now to find a name and a concept...

[Seigmoraig]

20 hours ago, Lockpick said:

I have the same challenge with Bio, which everyone says is great.

Bio is a late bloomer set. Once you get access to DNA Siphon it gets better but it really shines when you can just stay in Offensive Adaptation all the time with proper IOing

[flip]

Kin melee is by far at it's best on stalkers thanks to the extremely fast AS. Concentrated strike is a trap power. On stalkers, at least, it's a major DPS loss, and I would guess it's the same for scrappers. An optimal rotation skips focused burst as well, though focused burst is less egregiously bad than concentrated strike. With those two attacks out of the way, all the other ST attacks in the set animate extremely quickly with good DPA.

 

In addition to that, burst has a 100% crit rate out of hide, the only aoe in the game to boast such a feature. Despite its tiny aoe, this little feature can make burst extremely effective.

 

My kin melee stalker is easily my favorite melee character. I would highly recommend it over a KM scrapper.

Edited December 4, 2019 by flip

[Signalrunner]

For high recharge builds: AS-Smashing Blow-Quick Strike-Body Blow is a good chain. Add another Quick Strike after Body Blow if your recharge isn't quite there.

 

You can also throw a Snipe from the Mu or Soul Patron pools into the chain, although that increases endurance usage.

[FUBARczar]

Brute, Fury still works on CS

[Arkterusss]

On 11/24/2019 at 4:00 PM, Machariel said:

I've heard good things about Kinetic Melee on Stalkers.  Body Blow and Smashing Blow are both very fast and KM has the fastest Assassin's Strike at a mere 0.67 seconds.  Stalkers get Build Up instead of Power Siphon which I think is an improvement since you can reliably start double and maybe even triple stacking Build Ups with concentrated strike.  I thought Concentrated Strike would be kind of meh given the long animation and the inability to crit but its DPA is actually in line with Body & Smashing.  KM only gets one AoE attack, in Burst, which has a slow animation but at least it's a PBAoE which puts the set in the middle of the pack for Stalker AoE.  I would imagine that Burst with double Build Up is pretty good.  All of your attacks have some CC in them as well, either disorient or knockdown, which is kind of cool both for its own sake and because it increases the number of procs you can slot (although the Stun procs are very meh).

 

I'm now looking at pairing it with /Rad Armor, though Shield is as always an excellent choice.  When I was looking through the secondaries nothing jumped out at me as being particularly good or bad with KM.  Hope this helps 🙂

The DPA comparison between ConStrike and the other powers is only fair if they are all able to crit, which they cannot, which is why Smashing blow outpaces ConStrike in that department.  Otherwise, Energy Melee would be an okay pick since Energy Transfer's DPA outstrips every other power in the set, except that it can't crit.  You'll get better DPA out of using a quick snipe from Hide, or an Auto-Crit Smashing Blow.

[Machariel]

11 hours ago, Arkterusss said:

The DPA comparison between ConStrike and the other powers is only fair if they are all able to crit, which they cannot, which is why Smashing blow outpaces ConStrike in that department.  Otherwise, Energy Melee would be an okay pick since Energy Transfer's DPA outstrips every other power in the set, except that it can't crit.  You'll get better DPA out of using a quick snipe from Hide, or an Auto-Crit Smashing Blow.

Whether a comparison is "fair" or not is really a matter of opinion.  It is certainly true that in a sustained DPS scenario, like attacking a pylon, concentrated strike is a net DPS loss, and it's not worth chaining build ups. 

 

However, most of the time you're not attacking pylons, and the degree to which you value sustained ST dps over an infinite time horizon is certainly a personal choice.

 

Maybe you want the stun, maybe you want to play with the build up on demand mechanic for fun, maybe you want it as just a regular hard hitting attack and don't plan to use it right after AS - it actually does pretty OK.

I like it when I'm soloing as it's an easy way to chunk down bosses and make 100% sure that build up is ALWAYS up for the next boss, and since when you're soloing you only have a 10% crit rate (out of hide), you're not losing very much for sustained damage.  In team settings where things are moving faster and your crit rate spikes up to 30%, you'll obviously feel the drawback of the slow animation a lot more.

 

Damage procs change the calculus a bit as well as they have a 47% chance, at best, of going off in Smashing Blow and a 90% chance of going off in Concentrated Strike and, of course, don't get doubled by critical hits.  Not enough to make it worthwhile as part of a sustained DPS chain, of course, but having 3 damage procs go off in CS adds nearly as much damage as the critical hit does, which takes some of the edge off.

 

CS isn't part of an optimal attack chain, thats for sure.  But it does do a lot of damage and if you weren't planning on critting for those 2.83 seconds anyway - which you probably weren't, because you used Burst, a Snipe, or Smashing Blow from Hide - then you haven't actually lost anything from using the power. 

[Erydanus]

On ‎11‎/‎24‎/‎2019 at 7:28 PM, Lockpick said:

It does help!  Thanks for your insight.  I've been looking at Rad Armor for awhile, but all the builds I create do not look great.  I have the same challenge with Bio, which everyone says is great.

 

Oh well, now to find a name and a concept...

I'm curious what you went with! Also, was there anything particular about rad armor that was throwing you? I'm doing a scrapper with it and it was just new enough to me I didn't realize what some of the powers did/how they worked until I got right into playing it. Looks like the taunt & debuff aura is what's cut for Hide so that's not a huge difference.

[Frosticus]

I couldn't do /rad because you lose the +rech. It may not matter in the long run but it nags at me.

 

/bio is actually unreal. It is a sum of all parts and I hear people skipping the t9 but I'm unsure why? It is God mode regen/recovery roughly 2/3rds of the time. I skipped it for a long time and then recently added it on my 50 sav/bio. It took the build to a whole different level of play. 

Edited December 5, 2019 by Frosticus

[Machariel]

I would like to amend my previous comments on Concentrated Strike.  While it is fun sometimes to deliberately chain build ups together to power up for a big burst, and once in a while it's useful to have an attack with big alpha, it definitely has no place in a sustained attack chain.  The key thing I was missing is that on top of the no crits, you could be building stacks of assassin's focus faster and having a chance to crit (and having 3 more chances to recharge build up), and a big part of KM (and I guess stalkers generally) is really hitting that AS as fast as possible.  Since ditching it for Quick Strike I've definitely been slamming that crit AS button a lot faster.  So now I would recommend that if you take the power at all it should probably be used to hold set bonuses.