Pairs well with Claws...

[Call Me Awesome]

I'm thinking about making a run with a Claws scrapper and am pondering a secondary for it.  I've tried a couple times back on Live and never made it very far, possibly due to lack of synergy or simply something that "clicked" with me at the time.  I'm tentatively ruling out Regen as I've done it 3 times already back on Live and while I know it's a shock to all I'm leaning against Invuln simply because I've done it so many times.  Lately I've had fun with several Shield characters but I believe it's not allowed with Claws so that's out.

 

I'm considering Fire (lots of IO work needed for durability), SR (never played one but it seems pretty vanilla) or Bio (no real clue about this set).  I'm looking for durability, damage output and sustainability (which lets Dark Armor out, also I dislike the look of the set).  Ideally something that matures relatively early and ends strong, my BS/Shield scrapper is fully capable of +4 x8 missions against a variety of enemies and I want that or similar durability in this character.  I'm very familiar with IO's and will likely be making a high end build so expensive IO's aren't an issue... after all we don't have anything going for 2 billion inf nowadays.

 

 

[Sakai]

Had a claws/SR on Live and got him to the point where he more or less died. Loves it till I got bored of it...granted that took a year. 

 

My last main was a Claws/Fire Brute which was stupid tough. Recreated as my first when we came home. People tell me he is a good farmer, might be but not my thing.  Have no issue running pretty much any content. You do need to plan it out for survivability but he is a little wrecking machine. 

[Nightmarer]

My personal favourites for Claws are Claws/Fire and Claws/Inv for scrappers. The all time favourite though is Claws/DA but that one has to be on a stalker. Claws/Fire is hard to handle at the start and you need to put a lot of sets to make it truly shine but, oh man, once things click in place, that is a truly awesome combo. Back in the day, Brute forums were quite active praising the excellences of claws/elec brutes so I guess a claws/elec scrapper could also be good.

[Bill Z Bubba]

Claws is just great and goes with everything. My personal preference is to go with the low/no click secondaries for a smooth blender experience. So SR and WP fit that well. But my farmer is claws/fa and she can plow through Brigg's 5 mish arc in 30 minutes.

Some added fun for claws:

DamRes debuff proc in Slash.

CFKD in Spin.

KB>KD in Shockwave.

I've been pondering a proc-monster build for some claws user (probably my claws/bio) because you can jam a ton of them in there. FU and Focus both can take a CFBuildUp. Shockwave can take another DamRes debuff. Just a a couple examples.

From my testing, the best possible ST attack chain is Followup, Focus, Eviscerate, repeat but I can't stand Eviscerate so I went with FU, Focus, Slash, repeat.

[Call Me Awesome]

On 1/1/2020 at 10:42 AM, Bill Z Bubba said:

Claws is just great and goes with everything. My personal preference is to go with the low/no click secondaries for a smooth blender experience. So SR and WP fit that well. But my farmer is claws/fa and she can plow through Brigg's 5 mish arc in 30 minutes.

Some added fun for claws:

DamRes debuff proc in Slash.

CFKD in Spin.

KB>KD in Shockwave.

I've been pondering a proc-monster build for some claws user (probably my claws/bio) because you can jam a ton of them in there. FU and Focus both can take a CFBuildUp. Shockwave can take another DamRes debuff. Just a a couple examples.

From my testing, the best possible ST attack chain is Followup, Focus, Eviscerate, repeat but I can't stand Eviscerate so I went with FU, Focus, Slash, repeat.

So how's that Claw/Bio work?  I admit I've never studied the powers and synergy of Bio.  SR while I haven't played it I'm reasonably familiar with it's strengths and weaknesses.  Am I missing something or is Quickness the only benefit outside of durability?  And is it enough of a benefit over other sets with Claws?

[Bill Z Bubba]

19 minutes ago, Call Me Awesome said:

So how's that Claw/Bio work?  I admit I've never studied the powers and synergy of Bio.  SR while I haven't played it I'm reasonably familiar with it's strengths and weaknesses.  Am I missing something or is Quickness the only benefit outside of durability?  And is it enough of a benefit over other sets with Claws?

 

I don't really like Bio on scrappers. Due to the lower HP scrappers get, bio's overall mitigation seems light. It does rock on tanks, though. What it gives claws (or any other primary) is a damage aura and MOAR DAMAGE!!! (when in offensive mode.)

 

SR... it's just the joy of rarely being hit and laughing at defense debuffs. Quickness is nice, sure, it helps tighten up attack chains and bumps your battle mobility. SR also makes it difficult to get the incoming damage badges.

 

Bio is far more clicky than SR so SR wins there as well for me.

 

The main thing about claws, for me, is that it feeds right into my "this is meditation for me" mindset with CoH. I log in, grab Bill, get into a mission and the carnage begins. It doesn't stop. SR helps feed that and WP might even be better because the only click it has is the T9 that you can probably live without if you build well enough. SR just has the mez protection click and I bind that to V so when Hasten recycles, I queue off that to fire off PB.

 

If you're ok with constantly watching your health and clicking through Bio's three health clicks or like the metagame of bouncing between Offensive, Defensive and Efficient modes and want the extra damage, go Bio.

 

If you want to put your brain into a state of pure and glorious scrapperlock, go SR or WP.

[Sovera]

50 minutes ago, Call Me Awesome said:

So how's that Claw/Bio work?  I admit I've never studied the powers and synergy of Bio.  SR while I haven't played it I'm reasonably familiar with it's strengths and weaknesses.  Am I missing something or is Quickness the only benefit outside of durability?  And is it enough of a benefit over other sets with Claws?

Works very well. I have a guide about it further down.

[Jaxman100]

As much as I loved Claws/SR back in the day, I'm loving my new Claws/Ice Armor Scrapper.  Slow Aura, Damage Aura, nice resistance Tier 9 instead of Hibernate, and Dull Pain for hit points. 

 

Using Energy Absorption for extra defense and to manage endurance isn't too bad for extra clicks.  I tend to jump to a spawn and hit EA or Shockwave first, jump in, then EA. 

 

I use my Incarnate powers to compensate for issues with Defense Debuff issues. 

[ScarySai]

20 hours ago, Call Me Awesome said:

So how's that Claw/Bio work?

Bio is great on scrappers. Offensive mode scales very well with the AT, and the -resist goes a long way.

 

Between the absorbs, heal, parasitic aura and defense, you'll be pretty hard to take down.

 

My second choice would be rad armor. Lots more survival, less damage than Bio.

 

Third: Dark armor, harder to kill than Rad armor, not as many damage boosts, but basically immortal.

[Seroster01]

I've yet to play Claws Scrapper, but /Bio seems to be getting a worse wrap than I think it deserves. If nothing else, it certainly seems to have the largest increase in damage potential for a Scrapper secondary (/shield is probably close overall & better with a lot of enemies nearby, but it won't be as consistent since /Bios bonuses are always at full effect so long as  your toggles are on). If your run Offensive Adaptation you'll end up with self buffs to the effect of ~30% damage bonus, +7.5% To-hit, & a bonus hit of Toxic damage on with every attack that's equal to around 25% of the power's base damage. Enemies in range of your auras will end up with -10%-ish damage debuff & -10%-ish resistance. I certainly won't claim it's the tankiest armor set out there, but with an appropriate build it's possibe to have soft capped S/L defense, solid defenses to the normal elements, & 50% or more S/L resistance. None of that is particularly amazing, but having layered defenses is always nice & /Bio also has good health recovery bonuses. Ablative Carapace is the largest one, giving a solid absorb shield & a solid regen bonus for 30s with 90s base recharge. With end-game building, the recharge can get under the duration. Throw on the damage debuffing + the overall increase in damage from the set & most of the time a /Bio character can kill a spawn faster than the enemy can eat through their HP with all the overlapping mitigation involved. 

 

/Bios biggest issue is that it has exactly 0% DDR in the set & doesn't usually end up with much of an "over-the-cap cushion" (if you can manage to get any at all). End result is that the set is extremely prone to ye old Cascading Defense Failure. You can get the destiny that has debuff resistance, but then you'll miss out on the destiny with the defense bonus, which can be a key piece of reaching the soft cap.

 

Claws/Bio is a character I've got moderate interest, in but it's behind a few others in my queue at the moment. Some day! (I hope...) 

[ninja surprise]

I've had fun with a Claws/Energy Aura Scrapper. 

Stalled out at 30 though because I have so many alts.

[Bill Z Bubba]

On 1/3/2020 at 2:58 PM, Seroster01 said:

Claws/Bio is a character I've got moderate interest, in but it's behind a few others in my queue at the moment. Some day! (I hope...) 

 

I've got one T3ed and T4ed. He does ludicrous damage but isn't very sturdy.

[Haijinx]

23 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

I've got one T3ed and T4ed. He does ludicrous damage but isn't very sturdy.

I find this interesting, since many feel its sturdier than SR.

 

I find SR to be very good survival wise.  

 

 

[Bill Z Bubba]

13 hours ago, Haijinx said:

I find this interesting, since many feel its sturdier than SR.

 

I find SR to be very good survival wise.  

 

 

 

I have no doubt that my long running bias towards SR can often cloud my judgement, but those people are crazy... my claws/bio faceplants a LOT more often than my claws/sr(s) ever do.

 

And aid self is for chumps. Just to throw that in for fun. 🙂

[Sovera]

1 hour ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

I have no doubt that my long running bias towards SR can often cloud my judgement, but those people are crazy... my claws/bio faceplants a LOT more often than my claws/sr(s) ever do.

 

And aid self is for chumps. Just to throw that in for fun. 🙂

ITF is the achille's heel on any /Bio of mine 😄

Edited January 10, 2020 by Sovera

[Erydanus]

I've got a Claws/Ninjitsu scrapper who is very fun.

 

Scrapper Ninjitsu is wildly different from the stalker version. It's great, it's definitely Ninjitsu 2.0. It's still primarily a defense set but I feel it has more flavor than classic super reflexes which I think you have an issue with as well by your comment that SR seems very vanilla. I agree! The set's nothing but defense type after defense type, it has no flair. In comparison with scrapper Ninjitsu you get all the positional defenses and you get them really early, plus there's some damage resistance and direct heal; it even has a knockback protection power, something Stalker Ninjitsu is without. The upshot of it is that it feels to me like scrapper ninjitsu is to super reflexes like willpower is to regeneration: a second take and one that incorporates some layering to the set.

 

In my case I went with punch daggers as the claw type so the character actually seems like a dual-dagger ninja a lot of the time, so the whole concept just worked for me.

[Heraclea]

If you have enjoyed Invuln and Regen, Willpower is the obvious contender. 

[Call Me Awesome]

I hadn't considered Ninjitsu, I'll have to look it over.  As to Willpower I did consider it; back on Live I had a 50 Fire/WP brute that was ok but nothing special so that's likely coloring my opinion of WP.  Well, that and the fact that it flat out sucks as a Tanker set trying to hold aggro.

[Rokkeb]

Claws was my favorite set on live and I ran claws willpower, claws dark armor, claws regen, and claws martial arts.

 

Currently on excelsior I have a 50 claws energy aura. Hes pretty beast, I have decent io sets but I'm not incarnated out I just have lvl 1 in agility so far. And even with that I can easily run comic con fore farm solo. 

 

Next up for me is claws electric armor. I hear its beastmode on brutes, but I prefer scrappers so that's what om going to try. 

 

I've also got a claws fire armor, but its stalled out, since I found out my energy aura scrapper can solo fire farm just fine. 

 

Claws is great though, pick one and enjoy.

[biostem]

22 hours ago, Call Me Awesome said:

I hadn't considered Ninjitsu, I'll have to look it over.

Ninjitsu is quite fun on scrappers.  Give it a try!

[Bill Z Bubba]

Crap... now I want to try claws/nin... isn't 50 alts enough, damnit?!?!?!

[Call Me Awesome]

7 hours ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

Crap... now I want to try claws/nin... isn't 50 alts enough, damnit?!?!?!

Bill, at shutdown I had close to 50 alts that WERE level 50... I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing though.  I've no idea how many I had in total but it got out of hand when we got all the extra character slots.

[Erydanus]

21 hours ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

Crap... now I want to try claws/nin... isn't 50 alts enough, damnit?!?!?!

Let me consult the Magic 8-Ball

 

*shakes the Magic 8-Ball*

 

"Signs point to No."

 

Sorry, you have to roll a claws/ninjitsu scrapper now.