New(ish) Player Seeking Power Set Advice

[randslefthand]

I know exactly the experience I'm looking for, but no clue which sets to choose or how to slot them out to achieve it. In no particular order:

 

1. Active play style. I like being busy.

2. Low down time. See above. Not a huge fan of having to rest after pretty much every fight.

3. No KM, Claws, WM, or Shields (only animations I just cannot stand)

 

I've played a katana/regen before, but it felt weak. Any and all tips would be much appreciated! Including pointing out what should seem obvious.

[Oysterhead]

I'd recommend Savage Melee if that isn't too close to Claws for you animation wise. Its a fast refreshing, low endurance cost set. Its mechanic stacks -end cost and +recharge so fits both active play and low down time. 

 

For secondary, perhaps Bio? Which thematically can go well with Savage, is an active set with a number of high impact click effects, and features very high regen and recovery. Between the two, you'll have more buttons to click in the shortest period of time and would have to really push things to ever run out of endurance. Bio is a top tier set as well, it will feel leaps and beyond more survivable out of the box than regen.

 

I played a Bio/Savage tanker and it was the most frenetic character I've played. Savage animations make you feel like you're doing more than you really are (in a good way, I'd push my attack buttons in times with its multi-attack animations just because it felt right), the teleport AE has you bouncing all over and spinning around and bio gives you a lot of active mitigation tools.

Edited November 29, 2022 by Oysterhead

[randslefthand]

Savage melee animations are great and I guess I missed the whole -end/+recharge aspect of it when I was looking at the different scrapper primaries. That sounds perfectly up my alley! Do you have any build advice? Nothing too in-depth, just like powers you feel are mandatory or are safe to skip?

[aethereal]

34 minutes ago, randslefthand said:

Savage melee animations are great and I guess I missed the whole -end/+recharge aspect of it when I was looking at the different scrapper primaries. That sounds perfectly up my alley! Do you have any build advice? Nothing too in-depth, just like powers you feel are mandatory or are safe to skip?

Personally, I'd play Savage Melee as a Brute, not a scrapper.

 

Hemorrhage is a very skippable power in Savage.  The cone attack, Shred, is a fine cone attack, but some people just don't like relatively long-animating melee cones and would skip it.  As is typical for most attack sets, while you'll want both the T1 and T2 early on, you'll probably eventually get to the point where you can drop one of them once your global recharge gets high enough.

 

EDIT:  As Oysterhead says below, Confront is always skippable.

Edited November 29, 2022 by aethereal

[Oysterhead]

10 minutes ago, randslefthand said:

Savage melee animations are great and I guess I missed the whole -end/+recharge aspect of it when I was looking at the different scrapper primaries. That sounds perfectly up my alley! Do you have any build advice? Nothing too in-depth, just like powers you feel are mandatory or are safe to skip?

First note on Savage is the blood frenzy stacks. You gain up to 5 of them, and they are what give you recharge and end cost reduction. Some skill use the stacks for enhanced effect, but if you use the skill at 5 stacks, you actually get a minor debuff (Exhausted) which prevents you from gaining stacks for a very short time. So there's an argument to be made for doing all you can to build to 4 and spend. In practice that gets tricky, so I tended not to worry about it. Also, the build up power, Blood Thirst, instant grants 5 so you can exhaust yourself, then hit that to get back as well, though you'll exhaust again after. Spending on the PBAoE will make it a larger radius which is great, spending on Shred the cone will make it do more damage.

Savage definitely has some skippable powers. You'll want one or the other of the t1/t2. T1 Maiming Slash is the harder hitting, slower animating one, and Savage Strike is faster to animate and refresh. Long term you'll probably want Maiming, but Savage might be smoother early on, so a respec option. If you have the scrapper ATOs, this is where I'd put the Critical Strikes ATO proc.

Of the rest, I'd say skip Hemorrhage and Confront and grab the rest. Hemorrhage is the single target frenzy spender, but shred (the melee cone) works there too. I think maybe this got buffed, but it was always the least impressive power. This will leave you with Vicious Slash + Savage/Maiming as your only single target attacks, and Shred will become part of your single rotation then, if you don't like that, try Hemorrhage out? But honestly with some recharge and hasten you can get to where your lowest tier attacks is nearly able to be an attack chain of 1.

 

Bio is very much a grab everything set. There's not a bad power! For Bio, you can optionally 'proc bomb' some powers, turning them into offensive tools as well. DNA Siphon and Parasitic Aura will both accept a ton of 'Chance for Damage' IOs from a variety of sets, so at the cost of a bit less survivability, you can put those in. DNA Siphon with 5 damage procs can do nearly 400 base damage in an area as a.... heal. You'll mostly want to run in Offensive Stance, but can flip to Efficient if you're a bit low on endurance, or Defensive if you need to tank for a bit, very flexible. Because bio is a layered set (defense+resist+regen+absorbs) it benefits from having tough and weave greatly.

 

[aethereal]

4 minutes ago, Oysterhead said:

Spending on the PBAoE will make it a larger radius which is great, spending on Shred the cone will make it do more damage.

 

Shred is a builder, not a spender.  Savage only has two spenders: hemorrhage and rending flurry.

[randslefthand]

4 minutes ago, aethereal said:

Personally, I'd play Savage Melee as a Brute, not a scrapper.

Any particular reason for that? I ask because I'm not particularly comfortable tanking in group settings and I kind of want the option to do group content when I have the time to do so.

[aethereal]

Just now, randslefthand said:

Any particular reason for that? I ask because I'm not particularly comfortable tanking in group settings and I kind of want the option to do group content when I have the time to do so.

 

Brute Fury enhances Savage's DoTs, Scrapper crits do not.  As a result, Brute damage is ahead of Scrapper damage in Savage until like highly late-game 50, at which point they're mostly at parity (Scrapper can probably pull mildly ahead with a really good build).

 

I don't really worry about building Brutes as tanks, personally.

[Oysterhead]

7 minutes ago, aethereal said:

 

Shred is a builder, not a spender.  Savage only has two spenders: hemorrhage and rending flurry.

 

Hmm... that's not what Mid's say currently. Did something change or is Mid's wrong? 

 

Shred: Melee (Cone), Moderate DMG(Letahl), Foe Minor DoT(Lethal), -Def(All), Self -Blood Frenzy +Special
You rapidly slash at your foes several times causing a moderate amount of damage to all enemies in front of you and reduce their defenses. Shred also causes minor lethal damage over time. This power consumes all stacks of Blood Frenzy and will deal slightly more damage per stack. Additionally, Shred has a 20% chance to immediately recharge itself for each stack of Blood Frenzy. Using this power with 5 stacks of Blood Frenzy causes you to become Exhausted. 

 

edit: Looks to be a builder on Tanker, spender on Brute, Scrapper and Stalker.
 

Edited November 29, 2022 by Oysterhead

[randslefthand]

2 minutes ago, aethereal said:

I don't really worry about building Brutes as tanks, personally.

Lol, I guess I didn't realize that brutes weren't expected to be tanks. Though I guess this comes from maybe my experience in other games. Thanks!

[aethereal]

3 minutes ago, Oysterhead said:

 

Hmm... that's not what Mid's say currently. Did something change or is Mid's wrong? 

 

I don't have Mids (I'm on a Mac), but as far as I know it's always been a builder on every AT.  That's what City of Data says, and it's also what my experience was on a Brute sav melee that I was playing a couple of weeks ago.

[randslefthand]

Thank you both for all of the information! I can't wait to get home so I can start tinkering with this 😁

[Oysterhead]

1 minute ago, aethereal said:

 

I don't have Mids (I'm on a Mac), but as far as I know it's always been a builder on every AT.  That's what City of Data says, and it's also what my experience was on a Brute sav melee that I was playing a couple of weeks ago.

 

Yea looks to be a bug in Mids. Just checked in game it is indeed a builder on all 4 ATs. That's too bad, that instant refreshing Shred sounds pretty nice 😃

[StriderIV]

1 hour ago, aethereal said:

 

Brute Fury enhances Savage's DoTs, Scrapper crits do not.  As a result, Brute damage is ahead of Scrapper damage in Savage until like highly late-game 50, at which point they're mostly at parity (Scrapper can probably pull mildly ahead with a really good build).

 

I don't really worry about building Brutes as tanks, personally.

I'm going to +1 Savage on a Brute, especially if you pair it with Bio Armor. Both Savage and Bio's DOT damage are ramped up by Brute's Fury. Very synergistic.

[Frosticus]

5 stacks is well worthwhile to consume on rending flurry. It gains decent base damage and expands the aoe to 15ft (up from 8ft) 

5 stacks is not really worthwhile to consume on hemo. I'd probably skip hemo if you can. The dot is very slow and it really doesn't do enough damage to warrant being a consumer. You need 3 stacks (iirc) for it to even do the correct base damage for a 14 sec attack.

 

Exhaustion isn't a debuff, it just blocks you from gaining the buff of frenzy. Semantics I suppose. 

[SomeGuy]

Play any primary you want that is fun, all the primaries are "good" now. Stay away from Regen. It has a lot of down time (dead is down time).

[Erratic1]

18 hours ago, StriderIV said:

I'm going to +1 Savage on a Brute, especially if you pair it with Bio Armor. Both Savage and Bio's DOT damage are ramped up by Brute's Fury. Very synergistic.

 

I went Savage/Electric with a Brute on my most recent Savage outing and it is indeed a very active playstyle as you add the +Recharge from Lightning Reflexes to the +Recharge from Blood Frenzy stacks. And like Bio you get a DoT. 

 

Edited November 30, 2022 by Erratic1

[StriderIV]

4 hours ago, Erratic1 said:

 

I went Savage/Electric with a Brute on my most recent Savage outing and it is indeed a very active playstyle as you add the +Recharge from Lightning Reflexes to the +Recharge from Blood Frenzy stacks. And like Bio you get a DoT. 

 

That was the other pairing I was thinking of as well! So many cool character concepts with that combo as well.

[biostem]

On 11/29/2022 at 11:36 AM, randslefthand said:

Savage melee animations are great and I guess I missed the whole -end/+recharge aspect of it when I was looking at the different scrapper primaries. That sounds perfectly up my alley!

I really like my rad/savage & bio/savage tankers.  I also have a savage/radiation scrapper that does quite well.

[Blackjoy]

On 11/29/2022 at 7:59 AM, randslefthand said:

1. Active play style. I like being busy.

2. Low down time. See above. Not a huge fan of having to rest after pretty much every fight.

3. No KM, Claws, WM, or Shields (only animations I just cannot stand)

 

I've played a katana/regen before, but it felt weak. Any and all tips would be much appreciated! Including pointing out what should seem obvious.

If you like being busy, I would recommend Staff/Regen.   Through about lvl 42, /Regen has the least amount of down time of any set (on straight IOs).  Through about lvl 40, it's one of the most survivable assuming running straight IOs if you can handle the overhead i.e. constant attention and timely clicking.  /Regen starts to fall-off in the mid-40's when you can start fighting +3's and +4s.  At that point, you're getting hit with accuracy debuffs that are strong enough to neuter you offensively, and recharge debuffs that can lower your mitigation.

 

I would point you to Staff because it has a lot of AoE's require movement and positioning i.e. you'll be busy.  Staff also has a set of configuration, like Bio that you can alter based on what debuffs/buffs you want.  The downside of Staff/Regen is that Staff works better with a secondary that uses auras.   This allows you to leverage Staff's AoE's.  /Regen isn't so good against large groups.

 

Bio, ime, is less busy than /Regen and has more downtime.  But, it does have more flexibility and is way better if you have to tank.  /Rad has better playability than both imo, and probably just as active as Bio with maybe equal uptime. 

My lvl 47 SM/Regen has almost zero set bonuses and does not use and power pool mitigation or inspirations.  I can handle +3 with little to no trouble.  But +3 EB's that debuff are sometimes nearly unkillable . For example, regardless of Inspirations and occasional use of Shadowmeld, I could not kill Nosferatu at +3 as an EB.  He would hit me twice and essentially floor my accuracy.

 

I also find SM rather underwhelming.  It lacks utility and the bleed damage doesn't make up for that, ime.   SM does help regen with the +recharge boost form stacks.  And because SM's thing is "bleed" damage, it keeps the bad guys upright for longer meaning you take more damage, or waste endurance on extra attacks to quickly kill stuff that would eventually bleed out.

 

 

As an FYI, I've been leveling up an SM/Regen (now lvl 47 or so),  KM/Regen (low 40s?), and Staff/WP (50).  I've also played BIo and Shield and SR and Rad.

 

 

Edited December 1, 2022 by Blackjoy