Gotta scrap fast!

[Aeroprism]

Hello beautiful people!

 

So my last scrapper (rad/rad) is coming along nicely, thanks to some good help I got here.  I like her a lot and she's very solid but she's an endurance hog and she feels... sluggish?

 

I'd like to make me a fast-paced scrapper to balance out and I was thinking about Staff/Fire.  I know that Claws and Katana are fast but I've already played those two to death in live. I know Fire is the least solid of the secondaries but it does provide a good faceplant recover. I checked the forum stats and Staff/Fire is deep, deep in the basement of less popular combos.  Is it that bad? 

 

Opinions and suggestions? 

[PainX]

staff/fire would be incredibly clunky 4 clicky powers in fire armor and forced weapon redraw on staff also fire is not all that great on a scrapper since burn has a fear effect and fire does not get a taunt aura as scrapper

Edited October 10, 2020 by PainX

[Aeroprism]

So, what other secondary goes well with Staff then?

[Aiax]

I was always a fan of savage/rad for speed.

 

You have some good + recharge, + recovery and I felt that the animations of savage feel fast and flow together well.

[Ruby Rocket]

If you want fast, try Savage/Electric.  You will never run out of endurance and just fire off attacks like Gangbusters...

 

Edited October 10, 2020 by Ruby Rocket

[Hew]

3 hours ago, Ruby Rocket said:

If you want fast, try Savage/Electric.  You will never run out of endurance and just fire off attacks like Gangbusters...

 

Yep, agree here. However, elec is a res armor; you would be better with energy armor I think.

 

Here is a thought! ice/rad (rad not for the res piece, but proc bombs in your two aoes, for lots of aoes). Your t9 in ice is AMAZING, has a VERY fast cast (just over 2 seconds), and is just awesome. 

 

In general, ice melee with the changes to t9 and a few other bits is actually pretty good, but is overlooked because once upon a time it was horribad.

 

[Ruby Rocket]

2 hours ago, Hew said:

Yep, agree here. However, elec is a res armor; you would be better with energy armor I think.

 

I guess it depends on how much work you feel like putting in...  I tried Energy Armor, and it's ok.  I kind of prefer the older sets for their simplicity.  Radiation, Energy, and Shield all feel kind of "Fiddley"; I'm holding off on actually trying Bio armor until you're able to kill the animations on it... "BARF".  IOs will let you pile on as much defense as you want in most cases anyway.  I kind of take "fast scrapping" as a "seat of the pants" feel.  It's hard to beat the movement speed and recharge boosts from Elec paired with the flurry of swipes from Savage Melee (and the teleport attacks are just cool).

Edited October 11, 2020 by Ruby Rocket

[Aeroprism]

Elec armor happens to be one I haven't touched yet and I want to try it.  Rad armor is indeed fun but I already have it on my main scrapper and I don't want to play the same road twice in a row.

 

So no staff?  Savage looks fun, easy to conceptualize a savage/electric character.  Hadn't thought about ice so far, looks fun too.

[ninja surprise]

7 hours ago, Aeroprism said:

So, what other secondary goes well with Staff then?

Staff / SR is great fun. You can use the Form of Whatever it is that reduces endurance to help get by until you're IO'd out and the KD helps while you're not soft-capped. And then when you're defense capped you just run around super fast hitting everyone on the head with your stick.

[Hew]

6 hours ago, Ruby Rocket said:

I tried Energy Armor, and it's ok.  I kind of prefer the older sets for their simplicity.  Radiation, Energy, and Shield all feel kind of "Fiddley"; 

I am curious about this statement. Could you explain please? Energy armor has exactly 2 clicks, one of which is permable with little effort and can be auto'd, (recommend not doing so though), the other can be auto'd with a bit more effort (120 rech, 30 sec duration). My ea is super casual with the two clicks, because they do not add significantly to defense, but do increase sturdiness when I pop them. Neither of them fall into a category of MUST ALWAYS PUSH!

 

So I am a little curious about what is fiddly. It would help me when I recommend things in the future to understand why it might not go over well with other people. 🙂

 

Below is my stupidly not-complicated build stats 🙂 I am sure someone else could hack at my build for more this or that, but this I could do without any hasten, get one of my 2 clickies perma, and just generally noob it up. Please note the _huge_ end discount I have from energize (59.6% end redux across the board, 44 sec rec. 30 sec duration, too lazy to try and perma 😄 ). This makes it an _amazing_ set to pair with things that cost a lot of end! It may not come with +rech, but it sure as hell frees slots up to dump into other spots! Energize is 2 slotted with level 50 rechs, and nothing else. Again, lazy slotting. 😄

 

Edited October 11, 2020 by Hew

[Sovera]

Rad Armor or Elec Armor. I'd suggest Dark Armor as well since it marries very well with Staff and is nearly a classic. None of these will really be 'fast' though, but Staff gives near 34% slash and melee defense all by itself (no uniques, no set bonuses, no Maneuvers. So at level 3 with both 3% defense uniques it can be at 40% slash and melee o_o; but it does require using Guarded Spin three times for this to happen) which goes very well with resistance sets who have no defense. Pairing Staff with defense sets is a bit of a miss in my opinion. Defense + defense is not adding much to a character.

 

Possibly Staff + Bio Armor to help Staff's low damage. Staff helps (tremendously) with Bio's lack of S/L defense and the lack of defense debuff resistance (by adding lots and lots of defense that needs to be shaved down by said debuffs). It will not help against defense debuffs that come from negative attacks though. Staff also adds resistances with Skysplitter at 3 combo which is something Bio struggles with as well. In exchange Bio brings a -res aura to increase the damage and +damage Adaptation for the same. This is needed since Staff damage is pretty mediocre. By leveraging Guarded Spin more procs can be added to attacks.

 

Staff + Dark Armor would pair well for the same reason. It will possibly survive better since Dark Regeneration is obscene (plus one of the staff Forms is all about endurance reduction which Dark Armor needs) and the defense hole is patched by Guarded Spin stacks. It also has substantial psi resists. But Dark brings nothing to help Staff middling damage so take that into consideration.

 

 

Since you're thinking Scrapper consider Stalker instead. Near same gameplay (Stalkers can and should be played as Scrappers) at the expense of an agro aura (which does allow enemies to run away once at low HP) but Assassin's Strike helps a -lot- by filling Staff's single target damage.

[Marshal_General]

I have found savage/WP to be far more resiliant than I expected. I run beast run at all times. I have almost as much regen as regeneration (which is a problem with regeneration).

I don't look at my HP or energy any more, though that came as a surprise when I ran into sappers again.

[hejtmane]

Fire/shield is fast paced

[Nemu]

If you are going to stick with staff/fire, try it on a stalker.  Build up makes a huge difference. And double build up burn crit... well that's something that scrappers can't do.

 

Savage/nin is a fast combo, in both senses. You move fast, and you scratch fast too.

[Saikochoro]

I’m going to throw my vote in for energy aura as the secondary. It is a fantastic secondary with defense, resistance, endurance management, healing, and recharge all covered to varying degrees. With proper build planning with set bonuses and pool powers it is one of, if not, the best secondary for scrappers. 
 

For a fast paced primary I’d suggest either dual blades or savage melee. I personally have a dual blades/EA scrapper that shreds everything in sight. I also have a savage/EA brute that is pretty awesome. One of my next scrappers will be savage /EA. 

Edited October 11, 2020 by Saikochoro

[Hew]

Savage/shield is, uh, fast. Two telenukes! Super fast cast attacks?! Whats not to love for scrapperlock!

[Sakai]

Vote for Staff/Dark as well. 

 

The one stance takes cares of your end issues till you figure it out. I build for +dmg slot/incarnate wise and it does smarten up the set. 

 

With Cloak of Fear nothing sees you and when they do Dark Regen is there to save the day.  

 

Great combo. 

[BrandX]

22 hours ago, Sakai said:

Vote for Staff/Dark as well. 

 

The one stance takes cares of your end issues till you figure it out. I build for +dmg slot/incarnate wise and it does smarten up the set. 

 

With Cloak of Fear nothing sees you and when they do Dark Regen is there to save the day.  

 

Great combo. 

 

^I vote for this.

 

On live, I made a Spines/Dark Armor who could attack with Spines best ST DPS and just group to group AOE, with Cloak of Fear, Death Shroad and Quills running, non-stop, all end issues taken care of and it was fun to use, so Staff/Dark should be able to do it as well.

 

Takes some IO use to do of course, but if you're looking for something different, try Dark Armor.

[Without_Pause]

Savage with /ea or /sr would be my picks for a faster scrapper since Claws isn't an option. /ea has a smoother curve for end issues. I would use more resist based builds for brutes and tanks. 

[Aeroprism]

So much awesome advice!!  Thank you!  I think I'm going to try quite a few of those.

 

Speaking of: is there a known bug with Rad/ scrapper? I played her a lot this week end and I never ever seen her crit, not even once.  My Warmace/ scrapper crits at least twice every pull.

[Sakai]

1 hour ago, Aeroprism said:

So much awesome advice!!  Thank you!  I think I'm going to try quite a few of those.

 

Speaking of: is there a known bug with Rad/ scrapper? I played her a lot this week end and I never ever seen her crit, not even once.  My Warmace/ scrapper crits at least twice every pull.

Crits seem to be weird and go in streaks like everything else. I've seen a similar thing but on the rare occasion I seem to be criting all the time. 

 

Don't know if thats helpful but that's what I see.

 

On a related note I haven't seen a purple on a 50 in months and months. 

 

All the same in my eyes. 

[Riverdusk]

11 hours ago, Aeroprism said:

So much awesome advice!!  Thank you!  I think I'm going to try quite a few of those.

 

Speaking of: is there a known bug with Rad/ scrapper? I played her a lot this week end and I never ever seen her crit, not even once.  My Warmace/ scrapper crits at least twice every pull.

Check the combat log as well, it may just be a display issue of the "crit" message not flashing on screen.  Ice melee stalker had the same issue until it was fixed recently.

[Aeroprism]

Thank you for the suggestion @Riverdusk

[Without_Pause]

I wonder if Rad's own secondary trigger is overwriting the crit text or adds to it so it might get lost in all of the text. Been ages since I played my Rad/shield so I can't recall.