Strong ST w decent AoE?

[beradical]

What are some primaries with awesome ST dmg for AVs, but enough AoE for the mob cleanup duty?

 

**For context, I'm working on my swiss army knife collection of "toons I'll actually want to play" that add a significant contribution to end-game content. This list keeps shrinking as I retire my underperformers, including trollers, doms, widow, brutes and ST melee toons. No offense to lovers of these ATs, but I find there are more dynamic alternatives. My philosophy has changed and I now believe damage is the best mitigation, and a team of 8 fast & high damage toons will perform best. Any toon not contributing to massive speed and damage is missed potential; the team would have been better served with another AT-set.

 

So far there are 4 toons I actually play:

(1) Fire/Fire melee Blaster is probably the most fun and challenging, and the ST & AoE damage is awesome.

(2) Fire/Kin Corruptor is a lot of fun to play, very busy, and makes a noticeable contribution to the team.

(3) Rad/Son Defender is a great buffer/debuffer, with mediocre 300 st dps. It gets more play time than my Fire/Poison Defender because it's easier to debuff, Accelerate Metabolism is a great and has good heal, so I feel it adds more team value. But I'm beginning to suspect this is no longer a Tier 1 toon, and a top performing blaster or scrapper will probably add more value - but I'm still on the fence.

(4) Elec/Shield Stalker is my top performing AoE toon due to crits, AoE radius and rech, but the mediocre ST chain annoys me to no end. 2 best attacks are long-form AS and Zapp, so for ST kills I have to open with my 3rd best attack to break hide and enter combat, just so I can then use AS & Zapp. The Hide proc can only go in AS which means a much lower attack gets the crit, and long-form AS is sort of useless. So that got me thinking about Scrapper.

 

I thought maybe a Bio Scrapper with 2 builds, 1 for max damage, and 1 for off-tank w taunt. That would give me max dmg (blaster), max speed (kin corr), max de/buff (radfender) or dual-purpose scrapper, and I honestly think that's all you need anymore.

 

What Scrapper sets should I be looking at?

[Haijinx]

War Mace is one of the best ST sets,  One of the best AOE sets and its very straightforward to both build and play. 

[Mr. Vee]

I rather like my ice/bio scrapper.

[beradical]

War Mace certainly looks strong, and has piqued my interest.

 

Ice looks weak on AoE, can you proc out ice patch, or just frost and frozen aura for AoE?

[Max Firepower]

War Mace / Energy Aura was strong 1-50, and was strong on both counts.

 

Highly recommend it!

[Mr. Vee]

2 hours ago, beradical said:

War Mace certainly looks strong, and has piqued my interest.

 

Ice looks weak on AoE, can you proc out ice patch, or just frost and frozen aura for AoE?

My frozen aura recharges in about 5 seconds and i'm bio so i have the 2 auras helping it. That plus crits and I don't even really bother trying to line frost up for multiple targets. Ice patch won't take any procs (or any sets for that matter) but it's such a long animation I rarely use it anyway.

[Saikochoro]

War mace will probably fit your need the best. Great single target and AoE damage.  You may also look into savage melee and dual blades. Both of those also have great single target and AoE damage. 
 

Bio armor and shield are the go to offensive sets, though rad armor has some nice offensive boosts too.  I personally like energy aura the best though. It doesn’t have a +dam boost, but it does have +rech to help offensively. It also allows for pretty loose slotting so you can chase procs instead of set bonuses. Plus, it has built in heal and endurance management. 
 

Might want to try testing out energy melee on scrappers on beta.  It has insane single target damage. The AoE damage has also been improved, but isn’t top tier. 

[Saikochoro]

21 hours ago, beradical said:

(4) Elec/Shield Stalker is my top performing AoE toon due to crits, AoE radius and rech, but the mediocre ST chain annoys me to no end. 2 best attacks are long-form AS and Zapp, so for ST kills I have to open with my 3rd best attack to break hide and enter combat, just so I can then use AS & Zapp. The Hide proc can only go in AS which means a much lower attack gets the crit, and long-form AS is sort of useless. So that got me thinking about Scrapper.I

Have you considered doing savage melee/shield defense stalker? In my opinion it is basically an upgrade of electric melee/shield defense stalker. It has very good aoe damage. It also has probably the best single target damage of all sets outside of maybe street justice and the new energy melee on beta. 

[beradical]

29 minutes ago, Saikochoro said:

Have you considered doing savage melee/shield defense stalker?

Yeah, I read Frosticus' guide and realized how much stronger it was, and was about to roll one, but then I got thinking about the never-ending struggle of figuring out exactly what a Stalkers' role is, and the frustration of the AS slow-form and hide mechanics. I want to love the Stalker, it was virtually all I played on live. But the changes to AS didn't fix it's fundamental flaws, to the point that we don't even bother take Placate or slow-AS anymore, and I'm convinced I would be better off w/o Hide. Which is basically just a Scrapper with shittier ATOs and less crits.

 

So then I ask myself, when would I want a Stalker? Thinking back to the best 8-person teams I have been on, usually 3-4 blasters, 2-3 corruptors (rad + kin) and a Scrapper or high damage brute. Taunt is super useful in the multiple AV fights, and I don't think Sav/Shld Stalker could tank Arachnos AVs or Freedom Phlanx, let alone hold aggro. But I know a Scrapper can, I've seen it many times (not sure if /Bio can though). This means I join LRSF and see a bunch of blasters, corrs, fenders and say, I'll grab my Scrapper. But when would I say I'll grab my stalker? If the teams need dps I'll grab the blaster, ranged is faster and more versatile than melee, unless you are explicitly trying to hold aggro. If teams needs buffs/debuffs then corr or fender.

 

I wish they'd change it, make Stalkers more like Blasters, very squishy and higher damage. This would make them more challenging, fun and valuable.

[Saikochoro]

2 minutes ago, beradical said:

Yeah, I read Frosticus' guide and realized how much stronger it was, and was about to roll one, but then I got thinking about the never-ending struggle of figuring out exactly what a Stalkers' role is, and the frustration of the AS slow-form and hide mechanics. I want to love the Stalker, it was virtually all I played on live. But the changes to AS didn't fix it's fundamental flaws, to the point that we don't even bother take Placate or slow-AS anymore, and I'm convinced I would be better off w/o Hide. Which is basically just a Scrapper with shittier ATOs and less crits.

 

So then I ask myself, when would I want a Stalker? Thinking back to the best 8-person teams I have been on, usually 3-4 blasters, 2-3 corruptors (rad + kin) and a Scrapper or high damage brute. Taunt is super useful in the multiple AV fights, and I don't think Sav/Shld Stalker could tank Arachnos AVs or Freedom Phlanx, let alone hold aggro. But I know a Scrapper can, I've seen it many times (not sure if /Bio can though). This means I join LRSF and see a bunch of blasters, corrs, fenders and say, I'll grab my Scrapper. But when would I say I'll grab my stalker? If the teams need dps I'll grab the blaster, ranged is faster and more versatile than melee, unless you are explicitly trying to hold aggro. If teams needs buffs/debuffs then corr or fender.

 

I wish they'd change it, make Stalkers more like Blasters, very squishy and higher damage. This would make them more challenging, fun and valuable.

I can understand just not liking changes to an archetype. Stalkers fill the same role as scrappers, and in my opinion, they honestly do it better.  It’s true that blasters do damage better than either stalkers or scrappers, but if you are just comparing melee, the stalker is better based on my experience. I understand our experiences can be different. 
 

I honestly skip placate on all stalkers and ignore slow form assassins strike.  In my opinion, stalker ATOs are probably the best out of all archetypes. Just place the stalkers guile set in assassins strike and don’t worry about using the slow form. Just build up the assassins focus stacks and then you get a nice fast hard hitting crit. More often then not it will also hide you enabling an auto crit for your highest damage single target power of choice.  The RNG crits that stalkers get are just the icing on top. The chance for build up recharge proc is global so you can put it anywhere and have high uptime on build up. 
 

Honestly, in terms of performance, I think scrappers only do better at AoE than stalkers, but on some of the newer sets the stalker AoE is still pretty darn good. And stalkers blow scrappers out of the water in terms of single target damage on most any set.  All that said, I enjoy scrappers more. I don’t really know why I do, because I honestly do feel stalkers are better overall, but scrappers just feel better to play for me. So I totally understand wanting to go with a scrapper. 

[Mr. Vee]

2 hours ago, beradical said:

 Which is basically just a Scrapper with shittier ATOs and less crits.

 

 

Sure you don't mean better ATOs and more crits? Seriously a stalker on a full team with the hide proc in AS is a crit machine. And with the other ATO most of those crits have one or more build ups buffing them too. It doesn't even cross my mind to take placate or use slow AS anymore, it's just not as fun to me as the mad target hopping crit machine style the changes made possible.

 

That said, you asked about scrappers which is why we mentioned war mace and ice - stalker doesn't have those and they're worth a go (someone would've said titan weapons too were it not for the beta changes coming and the general PITA-ness of the set when fighting mobs that move rather than pylons). I've not personally tried battle axe on scrap but that might be a possibility for the same reason.

[beradical]

All super fair points. I don't have experience with Scrappers, but think their ATOs look pretty great on paper. I thought their base chance for crit was really good?

[Mr. Vee]

Oh it is, and the ATO takes it up a notch. But stalkers get crits out of hide, fast AS crit chances buffed by their other attacks up to a guaranteed one, and increased crit chances depending on team size. it really adds up.

[Purrfekshawn]

Shield/Electric maybe from what We heard 2 Ranged Nukes are going to be Awesome, and TW/Bio, but that one is getting nerfed. Shield/Elec, however, is might get stealthily buffed by the fact of Fixing /poweexeclocation command if that is going to happen.

[Tsuko]

6 minutes ago, Purrfekshawn said:

TW/Bio, but that one is getting nerfed.

I wont call it a nerf : TW is now "only" Top tier, not "TW tier" 🙂

[Mr. Vee]

1 hour ago, Purrfekshawn said:

Shield/Electric maybe from what We heard 2 Ranged Nukes are going to be Awesome, and TW/Bio, but that one is getting nerfed. Shield/Elec, however, is might get stealthily buffed by the fact of Fixing /poweexeclocation command if that is going to happen.

Elec/shield is much better on stalker. My elec/shield scrapper is now my unslotted idler and renamed 'wishiwasastalker'.

[beradical]

I would like EM/Sd Stalker more if I could get more crits out of my AoEs. LR & SC don't break hide and crit, ball lightning and TS do. I tried putting the Hide proc in TS, so I could LR > SC > TS + crit > proc rehide > ball lightning + crit, but it never quite worked like I hoped. Sometimes only boss was left and then if I hit AS it's bio break time with slow-form. TS is so small radius you need to use it early for max mobs and effectiveness, but I tend to use the tp aspect of LR so never opened with TS. So eventually I just gave up and put the hide proc in AS, but I would really loved to have had an AoE crit machine. And Elec/Shld never worked out great for that. Obviously it's still great AoE damage, but I wasn't able to break it open.

 

Does Savage Leap break hide and crit? With stacks of  frenzy I know Rending Flurry's radius increases (making it superior to TS), does it crit from hide? Can you SC > SL for crit + frenzy > AS for rehide proc + frenzy > RF for large radius crit?

 

 

[Sovera]

Claws for great ST and great AoE. Can't go wrong with Claws/Bio. Shockwave does a lot to help with survival.

 

If I can tempt you to the side of Tankers then Fire/Claws is something I've waxed poetic about.

Edited November 10, 2020 by Sovera

[beradical]

12 minutes ago, Sovera said:

If I can tempt you to the side of Tankers then Fire/Claws is something I've waxed poetic about.

I'm definitely confused. Aren't tankers low damage? That's the reason I've never played one and kinda thinking they're a Tier3 AT at large. But you know your stuff, so I'll assume I'm misinformed.

[Saikochoro]

40 minutes ago, beradical said:

I'm definitely confused. Aren't tankers low damage? That's the reason I've never played one and kinda thinking they're a Tier3 AT at large. But you know your stuff, so I'll assume I'm misinformed.

Tankers won’t do as much damage as a scrapper or a stalker, but they aren’t as low damage as in the past. They have received significant buffs in the damage department. They are especially good at AoE damage with larger target caps, cones, and pbaoe area.  Their multiplier is only slightly less than a stalker. 
 

So while they don’t do quite as much damage as the dedicated damage dealers, they aren’t really lacking in damage. They are however a lot more sturdy than either scrappers or stalkers. So they can easily tank as their name suggests AND deal meaningful damage. 
 

There is actually a whole thread in the tanker forum for high damage tank builds. My own personal high damage tank builds include shield/energy melee and rad/super strength both of which can deal some pretty ludicrous damage. 

[ZorkNemesis]

I know there are changes to Dark Melee in the pipeline to aid with AoE, but even now my Dark/Bio is pretty beastly and not even 50 yet.  Dark has incredible ST damage and with Offensive Augment and Soul Drain most fodder enemies die in single hits from Life Drain or Twilight Grasp, or survive with enough health to die to the damage aura instead.  Even if they are slow cooldowns, Soul Drain and Dark Consumption still do solid damage and have the nice added benefits of boosting damage further or restoring endurance.  The change to Touch of Fear in the next patch should really help, less needing to hop around and position Shadow Maul.  Dark also sports a lot of -To Hit so you also get some extra survival capability on the nature of things being less likely to hit, especially if you're fighting 1v1 with an AV/GM.

[beradical]

No snark intended, you all have been so kind with advice, I'm just trying to understand -- why would you sacrifice damage for survivability? Wouldn't a brute still do more damage, and short of hami, tank anything? Glad to hear tank damage got buffed, but it still sounds like a relatively low value AT. Wouldn't you still rather have a high dmg scrapper on your TF most of the time? What I'd be interested in is a tanker that has rad/poison defender level aoe buffs/debuffs, so he can march in, taunt and hold aggro, and then debuff the AV or group to hell. Does that exist?

[InvaderStych]

2 hours ago, beradical said:

 Does that exist?

 

Not exactly, no.  Bodyguard mode MM's can off-tank and debuff, but they lack the taunt control of a Tank.

 

A tank with debuffs as a secondary effect from their primary and secondary (Dark/Rad, for example) could do some "support" via those debuffs, but they wouldn't be very strong and would be limited in stacks and duration - rendering them somewhat moot against hard targets (AVs/GMs). For example, Radiation Therapy has a minor -regen debuff baked in, but it is minor enough (at least on my Scrapper) that it's not worth calculating into tactics when soling AVs.

 

Nothing is going to come close to Defender debuff numbers though.  IIRC even Controllers can't match them from their respective secondaries, although Ill/Rad is a classic off-tank/debuff monster, so YMMV.

 

As to the question of "why a Scrapper instead of a Tank/Brute," my personal answer is because I find it more fun/engaging, and when one of my Scrappers is the Only Toon Standing during an otherwise team-wipe, that's just awesome sauce smothered over a bowl of awesome.

Edited November 10, 2020 by InvaderStych

[Sovera]

3 hours ago, beradical said:

I'm definitely confused. Aren't tankers low damage? That's the reason I've never played one and kinda thinking they're a Tier3 AT at large. But you know your stuff, so I'll assume I'm misinformed.

They are less damage than a Scrapper for sure. Using a pylon for a metric a 'normal' min-max scrapper takes it down in 1:30-2 minutes depending. My best is 2:45. The new Energy Melee might replace it for me, though not having Build-up until 28 is a bummer.

 

Now, we need to just think if 3 minutes is really bad or what. I've seen Scrappers do pylon challenges and taking 5-7 minutes for example.

 

I mentioned recently in another post how CoH is composed by easy and harder content. A Scrapper can survive easy content (basically any faction that does not debuff or hit the weakness in their secondary) but folds against hard content (most Scrappers in an ITF for example). Absolutely yes that a full team with buffs and debuffs does fix this but it does assume there will be the correct buffs and debuffs present (forcefield buffs on a Super Reflex character will do precious little).

 

I am just in love with the character because it will rock from Positron 1 to incarnate content where the heavy hitters (TW, double Rage) deal really badly with exemplaring. And as I said the damage is there. There is lots of burst involved when we kill 4-5 minions just by dropping a procced out Burn.

 

 

As for your last question Brutes do about 10% more damage, but Tankers got a 50% buff to the size of their AoEs which means they hit more enemies more easily, while also being far sturdier than Brutes (who receive no bonuses to their defenses (exact same slotting in Scrapper, Brute and Tanker has Scrapper and Brute with same numbers while the tank gets higher numbers) with much better ATOs (crappy +fury and even crappier 10% regen/recovery opposed to 20% to all res and an absorb shield that Tankers get).

[beradical]

Fascinating.

 

In my personal opinion, every toon needs a decent amount of AoE considering most of the game is mob cleanup duty. And collectively, when everyone has decent to great AoE, even tough AV fights are improved, since AVs are rarely alone. These days it's pretty common to see all the AVs drop around the same time in a LRSF/MLTF, so much so it can be hard to ensure Rom drops before the Nictus, or Diab without accidentally killing the 2 heroes. And that's a good thing imo.

 

IOs and incarnates radically changed the game, allowing any toon to build for damage, toughness, etc, even old slow sets can become proc monsters. But there are certain things you cannot change, where ATs (and thus ATOs) factor in. So things like base crit chance & larger AoE radius are quite significant. Nothing worse than a high damage AoE with a 7 or 8 radius...It's like having a cigarette and no lighter - far worse than just being out of smokes.