Hybrid Melee/Ranged Crab?

[OmniscientQ]

How viable is it to make a Crab Soldier with both melee and ranged abilities? Any advice on how to not completely screw it up, or should I just focus on one or the other?

[Omega-202]

It is totally doable.  Arm Lash and Slice have solid DPA, better than Channelgun and Longfang at least, and I've also made a concept build that went all melee with the Fighting pool attacks.  My "Iron-Spider" tribute was very usable, very durable, but definitely not optimal from a pure damage perspective.  Even still, it was better than a lot of other builds in the game.

 

The things to consider/watch out for:

- Frag and Venom Grenade are still your best AoE attacks from a DPA perspective, beating out Frenzy, so you'll still want to take those, and you'll probably want to slot a KB>KD proc in Frag to cancel its scatter effect.

 

- Melee and Crabbermind don't blend that well together.  At range, the Spiderlings and Disruptors will mostly stay put, but if you're consistently in the middle of a spawn, they take a lot of crossfire and go down a lot quicker.  You can still take them, but trying to keep them alive will be harder.  

 

- You will want to find room for additional Melee Def bonuses in your IO sets.  Crab/Soldier Defensive training gives 7.5% defense to Ranged attacks only, so ranged Crabs are usually a bit safer.  It's still very possible (if not easy) to hit the melee and AoE softcaps, but it takes some more effort than softcapping range.  

 

- Procs are your friend.  Arm Lash and Slice can take the various -Def procs, including Achilles Heel -Res proc, and Arm Lash can take the Fury of the Gladiator -Res proc.  Those in combination with Venom Grenade make it so that you're going to chew through hard targets, boosting your damage and your whole team's damage.  

 

- If you want to take ranged attacks, your best single target options are either Mu Lightning or Gloom.  Yeah...the best Crab ranged attacks that don't cause weapon redraw are in the Patron Pools.  Both are great AND both pools also have targeted AoEs(Ball Lightning and Electrifying Fences in Mu and Dark Obliteration on Soul) that work great at point blank range.  That's not to say Channelgun and Longfang are garbage...but they're not the greatest.  

 

If you have a Mids build you're bandying around, feel free to post it up and I'm sure you'll get a lot of great feedback on how to fine tune it.

[Two Dollar Bill]

My "ranged" Crab Spider still has Slice and Arm Lash, and uses them to finish off the harder targets not removed by the AoEs. Single-target damage is still poor, but at least he looks cool doing it. Having some melee attacks also gives you access to IO sets that might be useful.