I love big orange numbers and I cannot lie.

[Randolk]

No, it's not about DPA. It's about that big BANG, YOU'RE DOWN.

My eyes are looking at you, WM, StJ and EM.

How big and orange are you?

 

Need an advice, folks. I am fascinated by the focus mechanic, but cannot ignore the grace of a shoryuken-ish crushing uppercut right in the teeth with max combo level or the pure sheer ignorance of clobbering away. Which path would you choose?

Edited September 10, 2021 by Randolk

[Pzn]

I prefer war mace.  No need to worry about managing extra mechanics, just raw massive damage numbers.  Every hit with WM feels crunchy while the other 2 sets have a bit of a rhythm to achieve those hits.

 

[Tsuko]

1 hour ago, Randolk said:

No, it's not about DPA. It's about that big BANG, YOU'RE DOWN.

My eyes are looking at you, WM, StJ and EM.

How big and orange are you?

 

Need an advice, folks. I am fascinated by the focus mechanic, but cannot ignore the grace of a shoryuken-ish crushing uppercut right in the teeth with max combo level or the pure sheer ignorance of clobbering away. Which path would you choose?

If you want to melt targets, NRJ is amazing.

[Randolk]

19 minutes ago, Tsuko said:

If you want to melt targets, NRJ is amazing.

Is NRJ like a crossover between STJ and NRG?

[Uun]

Not available to scrappers 😭 but Stone Melee puts out some really satisfying ST damage. 

[nihilii]

New EM is king of the orangey. ET has the highest damage scale and does full energy damage now, so it's one meaty 4 digits number that is hardly ever resisted.

 

Granted, a combo level 3 Crushing Uppercut critting is also a sight to behold. Watching a chunk of an archvillain's health bar evaporate into nothing.

I'd choose EM simply because you get two big hitters that will reliably hit big. + Whirling Hands is a decent AoE now.

StJ just has the one, and no AoE to speak of.

 

Both sets basically fill up the need for big bang well, so the performance boost for playing EM is high enough to make that choice appealing.

[Neiska]

My biggest hit is with an Energy Melee/Bio Armor Scrapper, with a crit for 1200. Not sure how that ranks up against others, (I usually play Masterminds and Tankers, she's actually my only scrapper.) but that's been my personal best so far.

[hejtmane]

You should so go Kinetic melee bahaha I jest I jest. I have not played EM yet but I do have a mace/wp and it is very crunchy  with big hits

Edited September 10, 2021 by hejtmane

[BrandX]

Energy Melee and StJ's Crushing Uppercut ❤️

[Triumphant]

The animation and knock-up effect on crushing uppercut makes it feel like one of the most punishing powers in the game (probably the main reason I like the set so much.  Spinning strike holds a similar place in my heart.  I know some people dislike the narrow aoe, but I love spinning around and watching the bad buys go flying).

[Doomguide2005]

     Call me old fashioned but watching Headsplitter crit on the Lt behind the minion in front of me (speaking of narrow AoE's) has rarely been surpassed.  "Krrrunch ... Ooooh!"

[Haijinx]

TW still has big Orange numbers

[SomeGuy]

Dual Blades has Sweeping Strikes and it does crazy crap when it crits. And it is REALLY obvious when Midnight Grasp on Dark Melee when it crits. I legit would see Conc Strike on my KM/FA scrapper hit for over 1200 pretty routinely. That combo was pretty wild for for stuff like that. 5x Stack Power Sihpon and FE popped into a Conc Strike = oof ow haha.

Edited September 12, 2021 by SomeGuy

[BrandX]

On 9/10/2021 at 3:13 PM, Triumphant said:

The animation and knock-up effect on crushing uppercut makes it feel like one of the most punishing powers in the game (probably the main reason I like the set so much.  Spinning strike holds a similar place in my heart.  I know some people dislike the narrow aoe, but I love spinning around and watching the bad buys go flying).

 

I love Spinning Strike!  The kick!  The backhand punch!  I will admit, I wish the AOE on it was a little more, so it tagged a few more, but the animation is so nice!

[Camel]

Energy Melee/Fiery Armor. My Tank can hit for over 1k on +4 bosses with only moderate buffs/debuffs and Fiery Embrace active. Energy Transfer and Total Focus have a great base damage and they synergize incredibly well with Fiery Embrace and the flat fire damage it adds as a proc. This also allows you to surpass the damage cap with Fiery Embrace active 😄

On a Scrapper this would be even more hilariously OP. Fiery Embrace is often under looked, but it's an incredibly powerful damage buff under the right conditions. It's effectiveness increases exponentially with damage buffs, -resistance debuffs, etc.. which means if you are at the damage cap, it increases your damage beyond that with the proc damage. 

 

[aethereal]

5 minutes ago, Camel said:

Energy Melee/Fiery Armor. My Tank can hit for over 1k on +4 bosses with only moderate buffs/debuffs and Fiery Embrace active. Energy Transfer and Total Focus have a great base damage and they synergize incredibly well with Fiery Embrace and the flat fire damage it adds as a proc.

 

Fiery Embrace damage is not added as a proc.  It's a conditional effect on every power in melee primaries.  Things like Interface or Hybrid Assault or Sentinel Opportunity are added as procs.

[Camel]

2 minutes ago, aethereal said:

 

Fiery Embrace damage is not added as a proc.  It's a conditional effect on every power in melee primaries.  Things like Interface or Hybrid Assault or Sentinel Opportunity are added as procs.

I just refer to it as a proc since it adds an entirely separate damage number to most of your attacks.

[aethereal]

Just now, Camel said:

I just refer to it as a proc since it adds an entirely separate damage number to most of your attacks.

 

It works differently from the actual procs, though!  Importantly, it is affected by damage enhancement of the attack power, and by global damage bonuses/penalties.  It also "knows" what the power is that activates it, so they applied a Fiery Embrace number that makes sense to each power, rather than a deal like Hybrid Doublehit where the proc guesses the damage it should apply based on the cooldown time.

[brasilgringo]

3 hours ago, aethereal said:

 

Fiery Embrace damage is not added as a proc.  It's a conditional effect on every power in melee primaries.  Things like Interface or Hybrid Assault or Sentinel Opportunity are added as procs.

I thought it only boosted the damage of fire-based attacks for some number of seconds ... am I out of date?

[aethereal]

9 minutes ago, brasilgringo said:

I thought it only boosted the damage of fire-based attacks for some number of seconds ... am I out of date?

 

Fiery Embrace does three things.  Here's the CoD link (for scrappers):  https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=scrapper_defense.fiery_aura.fiery_embrace&at=scrapper

 

It gives +125% damage for fire-component damage for 20 seconds.

It gives +100% damage for non-fire-component damage for 10 seconds.

It gives you the fiery embrace tag for 10 seconds.

 

Melee damage powersets will have each damaging power have a special effect they do only while the fiery embrace tag is active.  Here's the Claws T1 as an example:  https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=scrapper_melee.claws.swipe&at=scrapper

 

So it does 21 fire damage, plus another 8.4 fire damage 0.5 seconds later, if you have the fiery embrace tag (it's the last entry in effects on that page).

 

This works kind of like a scrapper crit -- it's an additional damage number that's affected by enhancement and strength to damage.

 

I've never actually played fiery aura to a high enough level to get Fiery Embrace, but how I believe it works would be, if you attacked with an unslotted Swipe as a level 50, with Fiery Embrace having been activated less than 10 seconds ago, you'd do this:

 

47.5 normal lethal damage is affected by +100% damage, so 95 lethal damage

21.4 fire damage is affected by +125% fire damage, so 48.15 fire damage

8.4 fire damage also affected by +125% fire damage, so 18.9 fire damage after 0.5 seconds

 

If you attacked with Swipe 12 seconds after you activated fiery embrace, you'd get nothing.  Because the bonus to damage for non-fire components have worn off, and the tag has worn off so you won't do the special fire damage.  But if you made a fire attack, you'd get the +125% damage.

Edited September 14, 2021 by aethereal

[ZorkNemesis]

46 minutes ago, brasilgringo said:

I thought it only boosted the damage of fire-based attacks for some number of seconds ... am I out of date?

 

It used to.  The original implementation of Fiery Embrace was a significant bonus that only applied to fire damage.  This sort of caused Fiery Aura to require taking Fiery Melee if you wanted that power to be of any use but it was such a strong bonus that skipping it was a major impact on damage output.  At some point this was changed though and it was done by baking extra fire damage into every damaging power that only hits while FE is up.  I believe those changes were made before Scrappers were given access to Fire powers.

 

Dominators still have a power adapted from Fiery Embrace.  Their version buffs all damage, but the fire damage boost is more significant and lasts longer.

[brasilgringo]

12 hours ago, ZorkNemesis said:

 

It used to.  The original implementation of Fiery Embrace was a significant bonus that only applied to fire damage.  This sort of caused Fiery Aura to require taking Fiery Melee if you wanted that power to be of any use but it was such a strong bonus that skipping it was a major impact on damage output.  At some point this was changed though and it was done by baking extra fire damage into every damaging power that only hits while FE is up.  I believe those changes were made before Scrappers were given access to Fire powers.

 

Dominators still have a power adapted from Fiery Embrace.  Their version buffs all damage, but the fire damage boost is more significant and lasts longer.

Thanks. The MIDS description seems out of date then, this one from tanker fire armor

[Without_Pause]

On 9/10/2021 at 1:13 PM, nihilii said:

StJ just has the one, and no AoE to speak of.

O.o. Mine has two AoEs.

 

Granted on a stalker, SJ is just really a smooth set. It is giving Claws a run as my favorite melee set.