Powersets best on a Scrapper!

[Erratic1]

16 minutes ago, Rokkeb said:

I agree that it's all subjective, and my list is based on what I felt, not parsed numbers. For me savage sea of small numbers mixed with having to monitor blood stacks instead of just mindlessly using the combo system with orange circles like Staff or Street or now Energy Melee, along with if I mess it up and finish with 5 stacks I've just tanked my endurance for the next while, it was an unsatisfying way to play. I'm not saying its a bad set, I'm saying its not fun for me to play, and trying to explain why. 

 

As a suggestion, you don't have to monitor blood stacks. You only have to know what sequence of attacks is going to produce full stacks and/or pop Blood Thirst. If you notice in the video clip, I pop Blood Thirst heading in because I want maximum stacks for the Recharge bonus. Thereafter and throughout the clip until I use Rending Flurry I stay at max stacks. And of course if you're at max stacks you're going to have an orange ring around your spenders.

 

What I do not get is the notion that somehow being at max stacks hurts your endurance. Each stack is a savings on endurance cost (to offset higher recharge you get from the stacks). Spending the stacks locks you out of accumulating stacks for a period but you're no worse off than any other character at that point, you just do not get a savings to endurance and extra recharge. Look the clip at 2 seconds in. I keep the power monitor displaying on the upper right. With full Blood Frenzy stacks I am getting +20% Recharge and an Endurance discount of 23%. I grant the negative sign implies (to anyone who sanely uses the language) it is costing your extra endurance, but its a savings, not a cost. [I could rant for some time on how language has shifted since I was a child with such things as "three times smaller"--no, its one-third the size. The use of a negative sign muddies understanding, apparently meaning to indicate lower cost but being applied to the word Discount, implying a negative discount. *shudder*).

 

 

Edited February 22, 2021 by Erratic1

[Rokkeb]

2 minutes ago, Erratic1 said:

 

As a suggestion, you don't have to monitor blood stacks. You only have to know what sequence of attacks is going to produce full stacks and/or pop Blood Thirst. If you notice in the video clip, I pop Blood Thirst heading in because I want maximum stacks for the Recharge bonus. Thereafter and throughout the clip until I use Rending Flurry I stay at max stacks. And of course if you're at max stacks you're going to have an orange ring around your spenders.

 

What I do not get is the notion that somehow being at max stacks hurts your endurance. Each stack is a savings on endurance cost (to offset higher recharge you get from the stacks). Spending the stacks locks you out of accumulating stacks for a period but you're no worse off than any other character at that point, you just do not get a savings to endurance and extra recharge. Look the clip at 2 seconds in. I keep the power monitor displaying on the upper right. With full Blood Frenzy stacks I am getting +20% Recharge and an Endurance discount of 23%. I grant the negative sign implies (to anyone who sanely uses the language) it is costing your extra endurance, but its a savings, not a cost. [I could rant for some time on how language has shifted since I was a child with such things as "three times smaller"--no, its one-third the size. The use of a negative sign muddies understanding, apparently meaning to indicate lower cost but being applied to the word Discount, implying a negative discount. *shudder*).

 

 

Spending stacks loses your endurance discount, and locks you out of gaining endurance discount, so either you don't use spenders, or you use them at 4 stacks instead of 5, and I find savage melee to be an end hungry set especially at lower to mid levels when you don't have a bunch of set bonus, and IO procs sending endurance your way. So now the game is to never use spenders or monitor stacks, both of which makes for an unfun experience to me. 

 

Again the whole point of my set list is "which sets are fun and easy to use while leveling, with no IO sets" of course if I just went straight into building up endurance procs and recovery sets I wouldn't care about savage melee stacks I'd just burn them, but I don't want to drop 500mil on every alt I make anymore, I just want to roll up characters who are fun to play with base inventions to give acc/dam/recharge at 3-4 slots while leveling, and not buying 10million panaceas and and pvp uniques and all that. 

 

Some sets are very bad in that situation in my opinion. They are an endurance nightmare, or in the case of savage their mechanics don't work out as well as I think they should, when they are a fully fleshed out build, or they are very slow with massive gaps in attacking, all these things make for a not fun leveling experience in my opinion, and some sets stack these troubles on top of each other.  

 

I might concede on Energy secondary, I still feel like its on the weaker side until you start to really flesh it out, not as bad as the other 3 I point out, but I've not had as much luck with it as I have other sets. Of course people hate dark and I rank dark above it, so w/e again its all opinion. 

[Frosticus]

Savage is actually really efficient even without blood stacks. You get quite a bit of bonus dot damage on many of the attacks.

Additionally, being locked out of gaining blood isn't a penalty to the set, you just don't get bonuses. But I guess that could just be semantics.

The boosted range on rending flurry at full stacks is no small matter.

 

That said, a few factors can make savage end up using a lot more endurance that you might think when just looking at the numbers.

- pretty fast animations

- fast recharge of powers (with or without blood) means you always have an attack ready from a very low level

- so much dot, you often activate another power (or two) when the dot would have finished the target off.

 

Hemorrhage is pretty subpar though for a spender. Should probably do a -max hp debuff based on how many stacks it uses.

 

[Erratic1]

27 minutes ago, Rokkeb said:

Spending stacks loses your endurance discount, and locks you out of gaining endurance discount, so either you don't use spenders, or you use them at 4 stacks instead of 5, and I find savage melee to be an end hungry set especially at lower to mid levels when you don't have a bunch of set bonus, and IO procs sending endurance your way. So now the game is to never use spenders or monitor

stacks, both of which makes for an unfun experience to me. 

You keep insisting the powerset is endurance hungry despite a video showing a series of attacks and ending with a mostly intact endurance bar. How do you reconcile visual proof with your claim?  [EDIT: And keep in mind, I have Energy Aura, so I get in more Recharge bonus when things are nearby. Look at the video clip a few seconds after I engage and you'll see the Recharge Bonus leap to 42.5%--the extra 22.5% is from Energy Aura, so ending with two-thirds of a bar left should suggest to you just how not endurance hungry the set is because I was roughly at the point of being able to make 3 attacks for when otherwise would have been able to make 2.]

 

The endurance discount is a bonus. Not having it is the default that everyone else on other powersets is working with. Moreover it exists mostly as an offset to getting to make more attacks while you have Frenzy stacks. Say you would make 5 attacks with no Frenzy bonus at a cost of 20 endurance over a period of time, N. With full stacks, over that same time N, you will instead make 1.2*5=6 attacks so you gained an extra attack. 5 attacks at a cost of 20 endurance is an average cost of 4 endurance per attack, so you would expect 6 attacks to cost you 24. But you got a discount. Per the video it was 23%. 24/1.23 = 19.5, or basically 20 endurance. So the benefit of the stacks was that you got an extra attack and it cost you nothing. Not having the endurance bonus isn't a loss to you because you will spend the same endurance per chunk of time as you otherwise would have spent when you had the bonus.

 

 

Quote

 

Again the whole point of my set list is "which sets are fun and easy to use while leveling, with no IO sets" of course if I just went straight into building up endurance procs and recovery sets I wouldn't care about savage melee stacks I'd just burn them, but I don't want to drop 500mil on every alt I make anymore, I just want to roll up characters who are fun to play with base inventions to give acc/dam/recharge at 3-4 slots while leveling, and not buying 10million panaceas and and pvp uniques and all that. 

 

The problem is that your fun and not fun is based on a misunderstanding of how a set works. You think you're losing something you in fact are not. That erroneous perception is causing you to come here and declare that you did not have fun but the fact of the matter is that while you may not have had fun it is not because the powerset you disparaged was in fact acting poorly. It was not.

 

I do not question the subjective aspect of liking some things in game and not liking others. But if you're going to say, "I don't like the ocean because the ocean is purple and purple is my least favorite color" it is not someone questioning your likes and dislikes for them to say, "Uh, the sea isn't purple." Same here. You talk about extra endurance cost on Savage melee when it in fact is the only powerset in the game that lets you attack faster at no cost. Lightning Reflexes in Super Reflexes and Electrical Armor? They let you attack faster too but they do nothing to save you endurance, Savage Melee does.

 

[EDIT: Energy Aura also allows you to attack faster and will allow you to regain endurance but those mechanisms come at different points in time.]

Edited February 22, 2021 by Erratic1

[Erratic1]

5 minutes ago, Frosticus said:

Hemorrhage is pretty subpar though for a spender. Should probably do a -max hp debuff based on how many stacks it uses.

 

Hemorrhage just plain should never be taken.

 

[Rokkeb]

13 minutes ago, Erratic1 said:

You keep insisting the powerset is endurance hungry despite a video showing a series of attacks and ending with a mostly intact endurance bar. How do you reconcile visual proof with your claim? 

I reconcile it beause every time I play the set I have endurance issues, again unless i'm putting in 20million or so IO's to fix endurance issues, which the whole point is finding sets that flow without spending any money while leveling. 

 

And it's not fun because to play optimally you either sacrifice your endurance and recharge bonus for a lock out, or you count stacks. I don't enjoy looking at the tiny stack number to play my character. 

 

Its fine that you like it, but I think other sets out perform it, and are easier to use while doing so. 

Edited February 22, 2021 by Rokkeb

[InvaderStych]

1 hour ago, Erratic1 said:

 

Hemorrhage just plain should never be taken.

 

 

This.

[Frosticus]

1 hour ago, Erratic1 said:

 

Hemorrhage just plain should never be taken.

 

And that's the sad part. It should be  a really good attack considering it is a slow dot and a consumer. Stalker version "was" really good (too good) and it is now skippable too.

 

But at least if you skip it you just plow along at full stacks until you decide to unleash the big version of rending flurry. 

[Marshal_General]

My savage melee scrapper is willpower. I never bother looking at my endurance.

I shred things faster than a politician.

[WindDemon21]

15 hours ago, Erratic1 said:

 

As a suggestion, you don't have to monitor blood stacks. You only have to know what sequence of attacks is going to produce full stacks and/or pop Blood Thirst. If you notice in the video clip, I pop Blood Thirst heading in because I want maximum stacks for the Recharge bonus. Thereafter and throughout the clip until I use Rending Flurry I stay at max stacks. And of course if you're at max stacks you're going to have an orange ring around your spenders.

 

What I do not get is the notion that somehow being at max stacks hurts your endurance. Each stack is a savings on endurance cost (to offset higher recharge you get from the stacks). Spending the stacks locks you out of accumulating stacks for a period but you're no worse off than any other character at that point, you just do not get a savings to endurance and extra recharge. Look the clip at 2 seconds in. I keep the power monitor displaying on the upper right. With full Blood Frenzy stacks I am getting +20% Recharge and an Endurance discount of 23%. I grant the negative sign implies (to anyone who sanely uses the language) it is costing your extra endurance, but its a savings, not a cost. [I could rant for some time on how language has shifted since I was a child with such things as "three times smaller"--no, its one-third the size. The use of a negative sign muddies understanding, apparently meaning to indicate lower cost but being applied to the word Discount, implying a negative discount. *shudder*).

 

 

The BIG dumb problem with savage blood stacks is that you get exhausted and locked out from building more until after the 15 seconds lockout, instead of just simply consuming the stacks. They REALLY need to get rid of that pointless lockout.

[WindDemon21]

14 hours ago, Erratic1 said:

 

Hemorrhage just plain should never be taken.

 

Yeah it REALLY does need looked at. However on my scrapper I did testing and with the crit proc, arcana time, and super high recharge, and for some dumb reason even though SS/maiming strike are under 2 seconds unlike other scrapper primaries when this occurs you can get a 3rd attack off with the extra crit chance, savage can't for some reason, so with ppm and the crit proc in hemorrhage, making a ST attack chain where hemorrhage always gets only 4 stacks actually yields better damage.

 

Savage strike may be fast early on, but it's dpa is actually pretty horrible.

 

Shred also really needs an activation time reduction to something more like 1.3 seconds as well.

Edited February 23, 2021 by WindDemon21

[InvaderStych]

2 hours ago, WindDemon21 said:

The BIG dumb problem with savage blood stacks is that you get exhausted and locked out from building more until after the 15 seconds lockout, instead of just simply consuming the stacks. They REALLY need to get rid of that pointless lockout.

 

Insight wholeheartedly supports this proposal.

 

At least with Savage you can bypass the lock-out by popping Blood Thirst.

 

With the kind of recharge you're describing above, seems like placing the crit proc in Leap, then using VS->MS->SS->(I think you can VS again by now) would be a better choice, even for ST.  Leap should be around 12-15s recharge at that point, irrc.

 

Shred should also be skipped completely.  Even before fully built anytime you'd use Shred you're better off using Rending Flurry.

Edited February 23, 2021 by InvaderStych

[Erratic1]

15 minutes ago, InvaderStych said:

 

Insight wholeheartedly supports this proposal.

 

At least with Savage you can bypass the lock-out by popping Blood Thirst.

 

With the kind of recharge you're describing above, seems like placing the crit proc in Leap, then using VS->MS->SS->(I think you can VS again by now) would be a better choice, even for ST.  Leap should be around 12-15s recharge at that point, irrc.

 

Shred should also be skipped completely.  Even before fully built anytime you'd use Shred you're better off using Rending Flurry.

I keep the crit  proc in Savage Leap and do follow that with VS. At that point you should be at full stacks. 

[WindDemon21]

34 minutes ago, InvaderStych said:

 

Insight wholeheartedly supports this proposal.

 

At least with Savage you can bypass the lock-out by popping Blood Thirst.

 

With the kind of recharge you're describing above, seems like placing the crit proc in Leap, then using VS->MS->SS->(I think you can VS again by now) would be a better choice, even for ST.  Leap should be around 12-15s recharge at that point, irrc.

 

Shred should also be skipped completely.  Even before fully built anytime you'd use Shred you're better off using Rending Flurry.

Crit proc in hemorrhage. The 14s rech and 2s cast time give it really good proc chances, is usable in the ST chain, and build up plus the build up proc, hemorrhage, crit proc goes off, savage leap, then rending flurry for max aoe damage.

 

In the ST chain, hemorrhage, crit proc goes off, maiming slash, then VS, then maiming slash, then you have 4 stacks of blood, hemorrhage, rinse and repeat.

 

Unlike the ss/ms/vs chain, instead of only critting on ss and ms, you crit on Ms and vs which is much more st damage, ss is worse dpa than ss/ms/hemm, and the crit proc goes off more in hemorrhage than in vs.

 

FYI, the crit proc goes off 50% more in hemorrhage than it does in vs.

Edited February 23, 2021 by WindDemon21

[InvaderStych]

8 hours ago, WindDemon21 said:

Crit proc in hemorrhage. The 14s rech and 2s cast time give it really good proc chances, is usable in the ST chain, and build up plus the build up proc, hemorrhage, crit proc goes off, savage leap, then rending flurry for max aoe damage.

 

Interesting approach; maxing the sets strength (AoE) by ensuring the proc is up when Leap is used as opposed to shoring its weakness (ST) by trading that for the 90% fire chance by placing it in Leap - pulling crits on VS-MS-RF (consumes stacks).

 

I can see how that's smoother, but not sold on taking Hem to get there. 😄

 

8 hours ago, WindDemon21 said:

FYI, the crit proc goes off 50% more in hemorrhage than it does in vs.

 

I might not have been clear; never considered the crit proc in VS.  FF +rech went in there on my svg/wp brute, and when I started svg on a scrapper I did the same.  In scrapper world I don't think I've tried the ATO 50% proc anywhere but Leap.

 

I am torn though; svg/sr is great and all, but the mechanics of BT are leading me towards re-rolling svg/invul so that Gaussian's can drop into Invincibility and BT can be used as the stack replenisher it's meant to be. (The +dmg isn't that much compared to traditional BU powers).

 

OTOH  - I'm also curious to try svg with either /rad or /dark, so wtf do I know, lol. 😄

Edited February 24, 2021 by InvaderStych
see next post for correct info

[WindDemon21]

21 minutes ago, InvaderStych said:

Interesting approach; maxing the sets strength (AoE) by ensuring the proc is up when Leap is used as opposed to shoring its weakness (ST) by trading that for the 90% fire chance by placing it in Leap - pulling crits on VS-MS-RF (consumes stacks).

The crit proc won't go through vs ms AND rf though, only 2 of them. However, since savage leap CAN crit, popping it in either hemm, or vs, means it can fire for both savage leap and rf.

 

Putting it in vs, or hemm is best so it can be used for both aoe, and st, which is where savage really feels to fall behind on scrappers. Using hemorrhage instead of SS with a high rech build yields more st, and aoe damage.

[Hew]

On 2/21/2021 at 1:41 PM, Grindingsucks said:

...  The only powersets I've really had a lot of trouble with is Bioarmor, which is widely regarded as one of the best armor sets in the game.  I think I just have trouble wrapping my brain around how the various modes work and when to activate them, keeping track of all the click powers, and figuring out how to slot. 

Grinding, open up MRB, set it to offensive mode, and go from there. Build exclusively around offensive mode, because frankly, in end game content that is almost definitely where you will be all the time. The +tohit, damage, damage, and yet moar damage from offensive mode is crazytalk. The benefits from defensive and efficiency modes can just be slotted around. The pure damage of offensive there is no real way to compensate not using w/ set ios.

 

Also, offensive gets you mad damage ups on fast snipes if you go that route, since fast snipe damage takes into account current tohit. With kismet and offensive, you are pretty close to slow speed snipe damage on a near instant cast snipe...

[Rokkeb]

2 hours ago, Hew said:

Grinding, open up MRB, set it to offensive mode, and go from there. Build exclusively around offensive mode, because frankly, in end game content that is almost definitely where you will be all the time. The +tohit, damage, damage, and yet moar damage from offensive mode is crazytalk. The benefits from defensive and efficiency modes can just be slotted around. The pure damage of offensive there is no real way to compensate not using w/ set ios.

 

Also, offensive gets you mad damage ups on fast snipes if you go that route, since fast snipe damage takes into account current tohit. With kismet and offensive, you are pretty close to slow speed snipe damage on a near instant cast snipe...

Yeah I use effeciency mode at lower and mid levels if I need help with endurance, but other than that it's all dmg all the time.

[Sovera]

On 2/10/2021 at 7:43 PM, Hjarki said:

Combat Teleport provides a +hit bonus and I'd call it nearly essential for any melee build.

 

In terms of sustained +damage, the question becomes: at what cost? Most sets that offer more than just standard Build Up don't do as much damage, or require you include low damage attacks in your rotation. So you really need to map out the entire rotation to see whether it's beneficial. You also need to take into account the situational nature of some of those damage boosts - for example, Dark Melee is great against large spawns, but almost pointless against a single tough target.

 

The real benefit of these damage bonuses is when your primary isn't the whole story. Consider Fire/Dark for a Tanker. If you're only concerned with AE damage, you'll be running at a high +damage almost constantly and applying those bonuses to your Aura/Burn in primary.

Calling Soul Drain near useless is a bit much.  Regular BU is 100% damage. SD with one mob is 60%. It does require having at least 4 mobs in range to give as much as regular BU but if hitting more than four then it's a benefit.

 

... that said it's clunky. 10y radius isn't much and it is not realistic to hit ten mobs with it, teams will kill the enemies before SD can go off, and 2.5 seconds is way too long.

On 2/11/2021 at 8:56 AM, Rokkeb said:

 

Lately I've been skipping Build Up on my high end scrapper builds, its a nuisance that gets in the way of a fluid attack chain. Yeah ok popping build up right before I jump in to attack is fine, but I find myself just never using it cause I just jump from pack to pack and want to keep the dmg rolling nonstop. Stopping to cast a little buff that lasts a couple seconds is no fun. So I've been specing out of it on some builds and just plain not taking it on others. 

 

I know it's optimal, but I hate taking snipes on my scrappers. 

People can of course do what they want to do. But skipping a 1.2 animation that gives 100% damage (180% with Gaussian) and makes for a perfect opener coupled with one or two AoEs to mow down half a spawn, is a tough logic to follow.

 

On 2/23/2021 at 1:33 PM, WindDemon21 said:

The BIG dumb problem with savage blood stacks is that you get exhausted and locked out from building more until after the 15 seconds lockout, instead of just simply consuming the stacks. They REALLY need to get rid of that pointless lockout.

I'd worry more about it if the stacks were particularly useful. 20% endurance reduction is nice, sure, but what does it really add in a world that has insps and Recovery Serums, plus whatever endurance recovery a secondary brings? 25% recharge is nice as well, but, with the fast attacks SM is not exactly having to wait out gaps. The rotation is supposed to be something like Savage Strike, Vicious Slash, Savage Strike, and then Maiming Slash, or even avoid it having another attack from a pool or secondary. Even in the very low levels this is not onerous. Furthermore when engaged in pure ST the stacks are not spent at all since Hemorrhage is not taken.

 

Thanks to early mistakes we thought Blood Frenzy gave a damage buff and then yes, for 25% extra damage we'd contort to avoid spending the stacks. But as long as there are no gaps and endurance does not reach zero Blood Frenzy as is can be there or not be there and none will be the wiser.

[InvaderStych]

On 2/23/2021 at 5:33 AM, WindDemon21 said:

The BIG dumb problem with savage blood stacks is that you get exhausted and locked out from building more until after the 15 seconds lockout, instead of just simply consuming the stacks. They REALLY need to get rid of that pointless lockout.

 

Blood Thirst cancels Exhausted and grants 5 stacks every time it is used.  That's it's purpose.  It's only a 41.6/33% dmg buff; so it's not really worth wasting at the start of a melee as one would with BU.

 

SL (from range, 1-3 stacks) -> RF (spends) -> BT (5 stacks)-> <attack chain>

 

Insight Lockout (Psi Melee) is a true lockout - Concentration should behave like Blood Thirst and cancel the Lockout but it doesn't.

Edited March 12, 2021 by InvaderStych