Scrappers, Damage Numbers, Energy Melee

[Bojutsu]

Tonight I decided to look at the numbers for some Scrapper sets to see what the most powerful single target melee attack in the game is, as well as which set has the highest base damage numbers overall. 

 

Energy Melee is at the top of the list in both categories.

 

Combined base damage for all attacks in set - Energy Melee - 973

Strongest base damage single target melee attack - Energy Transfer - 293

 

But Energy Melee doesn't just have Energy Transfer, it also has Total Focus which has a base damage of 229.

 

Stone Melee's Seismic Smash base damage is 285. 

Psionic Melee's Greater Psi Blade is 276. 

These appear to be some of the highest damage single target melee attacks in the game. 

 

For total base damage numbers for all attacks in the set, the ones that added up to the highest were 

 

Battle Axe (855)

Psionic Melee (860)

War Mace (861)

 

Then there is Energy Melee at 973. 

 

 

Edited June 9, 2022 by Bojutsu

[Erratic1]

How large the damage numbers are for a power/set is not all that meaningful since you're not going to just use a power or the set of power from a set just one time. You are going to attack something until it is defeated, so how often you can make the attacks is important because a 1000 damage attack you can make only once make once minute is less effective at dealing damage than a 300 damage attack you could make every 15 seconds.

 

There are two factors which determine how often you can attack, how often the power recharges and how long it takes to animate. The power has to animate before you deal damage (hence why Kinetic Melee: Concentrated Strike is so strongly disliked with its nearly 3 seconds of waving your hand around--things can be killed while this happens by other team members, leaving you hitting nothing). The power then has to recharge before you use it again.

 

You may use Mid's to look at powers and powersets from this standpoint and get closer to meaningful comparisons of powersets. But even then, you are going to fall short of complete accuracy because the effort of defeating foes requires you to string attacks together and that means finding a sequence of attacks which combined yield the best damage over time. Also, recharge, both slotted in the power and applied via debuffs and global recharge, change how long it takes a power to recharge and so impacting what viable sequences can be constructed.

[Bill Z Bubba]

Interesting but does it mean anything in game? While playing we don't cycle through all of our single target attacks in a row and then start over. Most of us don't even take them all. Then we have to start considering global recharge and as that goes up, another lowbie attack often gets dropped. Then we have to calculate in the value of our build up/follow up/soul drain/etc powers. Don't get me wrong, I don't think I have anything that beats my nrg/bio scrapper on ST damage, but my mace/bio and claws/bio scrappers are awfully close.

[Outrider_01]

Throw in /Fire armor and Fiery Embrace, it adds a huge amount of fire damage as a damage component on top.  Kinetic Melee/Concentrated Strike did 233 fire damage, max damage cap it was 590 damage; plus the normal Smash/Energy damage.  Considering to reroll this toon as Energy Melee/Firey Aura; will hit hard as hell and can animate fast but the resists of a glass cannon.

[Bojutsu]

---

Damage per second may be more important than having the strongest attacks in the game. Efficiency is probably the most important factor, and I would say damage per second would be a more efficient combat style than hitting enemies really hard but not defeating them as fast overall.

These numbers don't represent DPS potential for each set, but I did it just for fun. 

 

3 hours ago, Outrider_01 said:

Throw in /Fire armor and Fiery Embrace, it adds a huge amount of fire damage as a damage component on top.  Kinetic Melee/Concentrated Strike did 233 fire damage, max damage cap it was 590 damage; plus the normal Smash/Energy damage.

 

I've been curious about Fiery Embrace and how it effects non-fire attacks. I haven't used it since I had a Fire Tanker at game launch. 

I've wondered how much sense it even makes to choose anything other than Fiery Melee with Fiery Aura because with Fiery Embrace you should be getting more damage out of your primary since Fiery Embrace adds more damage to fire attacks than non-fire attacks. I may try to find the numbers on this and see how significant the difference really is with Fiery Embrace, fire attacks and non-fire attacks.

[Sovera]

Energy Transfer gets even nuttier than that since it requires neither recharge nor endurance in a rotation where it always comes after Total Focus. Four damage procs and two Hamis do some serious boosting of what was already an incredibly strong attack when the lack of recharge boosts the chance of procs.

 

 

That said I'm pretty in love with Stone Melee and Seismic Smash, but hampered by the lack of early AoE. It has to go to Brutes and Fire Armor to at least have Burn at 28.

 

Unfortunately procced out Radiation Therapy does not cut it as an AoE though it is great as a boost to a primary's AoE.

[Sovera]

19 minutes ago, Bojutsu said:

---

I've been curious about Fiery Embrace and how it effects non-fire attacks. I haven't used it since I had a Fire Tanker at game launch. 

I've wondered how much sense it even makes to choose anything other than Fiery Melee with Fiery Aura because with Fiery Embrace you should be getting more damage out of your primary since Fiery Embrace adds more damage to fire attacks than non-fire attacks. I may try to find the numbers on this and see how significant the difference really is with Fiery Embrace, fire attacks and non-fire attacks.

 

 

The fire attack boosting tripped me up as well since I remembered it doing that -and- the tooltip makes reference to it. But this is no longer the case (except in PvP) and Fiery Embrace will only add a portion of the attack's power as a fire damage extra. Fire attacks or otherwise.

[Bojutsu]

15 minutes ago, Sovera said:

The fire attack boosting tripped me up as well since I remembered it doing that -and- the tooltip makes reference to it. But this is no longer the case (except in PvP) and Fiery Embrace will only add a portion of the attack's power as a fire damage extra. Fire attacks or otherwise.

 

So Fiery Embrace is a damage booster for all attacks, but fire attacks don't get a bigger boost than non-fire? All attack types get the same damage boost?

 

Wow...that's interesting...

 

Thanks for all the responses.

Edited June 9, 2022 by Bojutsu

[Sovera]

8 minutes ago, Bojutsu said:

 

So Fiery Embrace is a damage booster for all attacks, but fire attacks don't get a bigger boost than non-fire? All attack types get the same damage boost?

 

Wow...that's interesting...

 

Thanks for all the responses.

 

Yep. For 20 seconds. The heavier the attack the more the fire damage boost. So, yeah... Energy Melee...? Ow.

[Hjarki]

43 minutes ago, Sovera said:

Energy Transfer gets even nuttier than that since it requires neither recharge nor endurance in a rotation where it always comes after Total Focus. Four damage procs and two Hamis do some serious boosting of what was already an incredibly strong attack when the lack of recharge boosts the chance of procs.

Ideally you're using Energy Transfer twice as often as Total Focus.

 

The rotation I tend to use is EP, BS, EP, TF, ET, EP, BS, EP, ET. So you need 10 / (1.056 * 2 + 1.584) = 2.70 recharge reduction. This would require +170% recharge if you slotted none in the power. That's around perma-Hasten levels of recharge on a build that otherwise has no use for Hasten. Alternatively, you can simply skip Hasten and slot actual recharge into the power.

 

[Sovera]

Just now, Hjarki said:

Ideally you're using Energy Transfer twice as often as Total Focus.

 

The rotation I tend to use is EP, BS, EP, TF, ET, EP, BS, EP, ET. So you need 10 / (1.056 * 2 + 1.584) = 2.70 recharge reduction. This would require +170% recharge if you slotted none in the power. That's around perma-Hasten levels of recharge on a build that otherwise has no use for Hasten. Alternatively, you can simply skip Hasten and slot actual recharge into the power.

 

 

I vaguely recall Scrappers get twice the Energy Focus needed for a fast ET if they crit with ET, or was it TF? If so yeah, sure. I wouldn't use 2.9 second ET otherwise, but it's a personal opinion and not min maxed math.

[Bojutsu]

I am currently trying to put together some kind of build for a Energy Melee/Fiery Aura Scrapper with the pool powers 

 

- Weaken Resolve from Force of Will -or- Adrenal Booster from Experimentation

- Melt Armor from Blaze Mastery

 

Both Weaken Resolve and Melt Armor are -res debuffs which seems to be the same thing as a damage buff. Should add even more damage to the attacks. 

I'm very curious to see what numbers come up when I hit someone with a built up, fiery embraced Energy Transfer on a enemy affected by Weaken Resolve and Melt Armor.

Or I could choose Adrenal Booster and Melt Armor. I'm betting Adrenal Booster provides a bigger damage buff than Weaken Resolve would.

Imagining using Melt Armor on an enemy, hitting Fiery Embrace, Adrenal Booster and Build Up and hitting them with Energy Transfer and Total Focus. 

Anyone have any other ideas? It's just for fun to see some big damage numbers. Ideally the biggest possible for a melee attack without the use of inspirations.

Thanks.

 

 

Edited June 9, 2022 by Bojutsu

[ScarySai]

Probably lose more damage channeling weaken resolve than is worth the effort.

 

Energy has a lot of good attacks, but the fact it has high base dpa overall is meaningless by itself.

[Stormwalker]

1 hour ago, Sovera said:

 

I vaguely recall Scrappers get twice the Energy Focus needed for a fast ET if they crit with ET, or was it TF? If so yeah, sure. I wouldn't use 2.9 second ET otherwise, but it's a personal opinion and not min maxed math.

 

From what I have read, the optimal scrapper EM damage rotation (which requires enormous amounts of recharge) is Long ET -> TF -> Short ET -> Bonesmasher -> <something to fill the gap, most people seem to take a Snipe from an epic pool here>. -> Repeat.  My experience with my own EM scrapper suggests this is accurate, though I do not yet have enough recharge yet to do this gapless (she's only level 37, after all).  I can get close when when there's lots of enemies around, though (she's Energy Aura).

[Bojutsu]

3 minutes ago, ScarySai said:

Probably lose more damage channeling weaken resolve than is worth the effort.

 

leaning toward Adrenal Booster instead

 

3 minutes ago, ScarySai said:

Energy has a lot of good attacks, but the fact it has high base dpa overall is meaningless by itself.

 

 

Yes, I said previously that DPS is probably a more efficient combat style that DPA, but it's just for fun.

[Hjarki]

54 minutes ago, Stormwalker said:

From what I have read, the optimal scrapper EM damage rotation (which requires enormous amounts of recharge) is Long ET -> TF -> Short ET -> Bonesmasher -> <something to fill the gap, most people seem to take a Snipe from an epic pool here>. -> Repeat.  My experience with my own EM scrapper suggests this is accurate, though I do not yet have enough recharge yet to do this gapless (she's only level 37, after all).  I can get close when when there's lots of enemies around, though (she's Energy Aura).

This would work at perma-Hasten levels except when criticals occurred and the rotation would fall apart.

[Bill Z Bubba]

2 hours ago, Hjarki said:

Ideally you're using Energy Transfer twice as often as Total Focus.

 

The rotation I tend to use is EP, BS, EP, TF, ET, EP, BS, EP, ET. So you need 10 / (1.056 * 2 + 1.584) = 2.70 recharge reduction. This would require +170% recharge if you slotted none in the power. That's around perma-Hasten levels of recharge on a build that otherwise has no use for Hasten. Alternatively, you can simply skip Hasten and slot actual recharge into the power.

 

 

That hurts my brain. What's wrong with ET-long, TF, ET-short, Moonbeam/Gloom, BS, repeat?

 

Edit: Ooops, Stormwalker covered it.

Edited June 10, 2022 by Bill Z Bubba

[Bill Z Bubba]

14 minutes ago, Hjarki said:

This would work at perma-Hasten levels except when criticals occurred and the rotation would fall apart.

 

It never falls apart. That's the chain I use for both my shield/nrg tank and nrg/bio scrapper.

[Hjarki]

4 hours ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

It never falls apart. That's the chain I use for both my shield/nrg tank and nrg/bio scrapper.

If you don't have any recharge slotted into your powers (which was the situation we were discussing), it'll fall apart.

[ScarySai]

I prefer bs>tf>et>>bs>snipe>et. Or something close to that depending on procs/misses/recharge.

 

Not taking advantage of the crit ato on a set like this is a waste of potential.

 

 

Edited June 10, 2022 by ScarySai

[Bojutsu]

I don't know if I would have ever created an Energy/Fire Scrapper if it weren't for this thread. 

Rolled one tonight on Excelsior by the name of "Highpower". It wasn't my first choice for a name, but with so many names taken, it can be difficult at times to settle on a name. 

 

When I get Highpower to a high level and enhanced, I will come back to this thread and post about my experience with the character and powers.

 

Thanks.

 

Global handle Bojutsu

[Bill Z Bubba]

7 hours ago, Hjarki said:

If you don't have any recharge slotted into your powers (which was the situation we were discussing), it'll fall apart.

 

Ahh, gotcha. I blame beer.

[Pzn]

18 hours ago, Bojutsu said:

Anyone have any other ideas? It's just for fun to see some big damage numbers. Ideally the biggest possible for a melee attack without the use of inspirations.

Thanks.

you should experiment with the ATO crit proc in burn.  I've been running the chance to hide proc on my EM/fire stalker in burn and since it's recharge is similar to TF it works out nice to get double focus consistently.  Not sure if it would work out better with the scrapper version though.

[ScarySai]

It would proc pretty much every time, but I still think bonesmasher would be better.

[Sovera]

I luck out since I play EM/Fire Brute (AKA mobs don't run away from me :p). Burn fills up the gap in the rotation allowing for something like TF , ET, Burn, Energy Punch, Bone Smasher, Energy Punch, and repeat.

 

Or was it TF, ET, Bone smasher, Burn, EP, BS? Been a while.