What melee primaries are bad at what they are trying to accomplish?

[cprice]

I know I may get roasted for this kind of question as many people who seem to know a lot about these things think we all have the same wealth of knowledge. So, I'm having trouble trying to decide on a main because I don't want to go down a path where I am having fun with a primary, but in the end it is weak at what it is trying to accomplish. Like maybe there is a primary that is more AoE focused but doesn't to it right or single target damage is lacking at takes a lot of IOs to make viable for some harder end game stuff. Or maybe there is one that is more focused on weakening the mobs so they are easy for others or me to take out or something. Help? I've have a high-level DB/DA and KM/Regen. I just want to know if I want to tackle some high-level content be it solo or team, what primaries I should avoid.

[jack_nomind]

In terms of sets that have low (relative to other Scrapper sets) damage and little utility, it would be: Broadsword, Battle Axe, and probably Electric Melee.  In terms of sets that are good, but have some kind of problem that can make them difficult to work with: Dual Blades (end-guzzling, weird rotations), Psionic Melee (not all mobs resist Psi but the ones that do often resist it very hard), Kinetic Melee (really needs Siphon to be competitive, functionally can't perma it so weird rotations), and Savage Melee (mostly just needs more testing, and I'm lazy).

 

Every set, to some extent, has something you have to do or give up for it to work.  Dark Melee for example is an amazing ST-damage set and helps your survivability but offers vanishingly little AoE damage.  TW is as far as I can tell the highest damage primary in ST or AoE by a good margin, but guzzles endurance and needs lots of +rech to really hit that performance peak.  Staff and Spines offer great utility and pretty good AoE, but aren't really the tops for damage.  Etc.

[Shinobu]

 

Electric Melee is weak on single-target damage, but it has great AoE damage so I would hardly categorize it as "low damage".  Lightning Rod can do an insane amount of damage, it's a scrapper nuke.

[Centinull]

Electric Melee is definitely not bottom tier. As others have said it's the AOE set.

 

Lightning Rod, Thunderstrike, Chain Induction, Jacobs Ladder, and Lightning Clap are all AOEs

 

The only sub-par power is Lightning Clap since it does no damage and knocks foes away from you and out of the range of your other AOEs.

 

Even then, at lower the levels I liked Lightning Clap as it increased my survivability.

 

 

[jack_nomind]

Most of the powers listed there don't do equal damage to each target; they hit as single-target strikes (at lowish damage), and then jump or have a chance to jump to another target for less damage.  I agree that it's intended as an AoE set, but it can be outdamaged in AoE by other sets which also have better ST damage, like Dual Blades.  So it really kind of falls by the wayside at that point.

 

Two caveats: EM can be incredibly satisfying to play, since it can result in a lot of simultaneous defeats, and it regains some of its ground towards DB/Claws/etc at high +dmg values (where follow up/blinding feint/etc stop providing much bonus).  As noted, Lightning Rod also functions as a nuke that yields a lot of up-front damage and is very helpful at clearing minions.  _{(so that you can then try to st down the boss.  with one of the worst stdmg sets.)}

[Shinobu]

As for what sets do I think are weak or "bad at what they try to accomplish"... really most of them are pretty good.  I don't like Ice Melee, for example, but a friend has used it to hold Elite Bosses and even AVs while soloing them, so while I wish it had more AoE damage, I don't think I could say it's bad at what it's supposed to do.

 

Here's my rundown:

 

Battle Axe: I don't think this is necessarily low damage.  It's slow, and endurance-heavy, but hits like a truck.  I tend to compare it to War Mace, and I generally like War Mace more but both are viable sets.

Broad Sword:  I compare this one to Katana, particularly since both of them at one time had the same animations and the various attacks are still quite similar.  Parry is good to build defense but it always annoys me to have to use it in my attack chain.  Broad Sword is best at single target damage I think, it hits with a satisfying crunch, but the animations are some of the oldest in the game so it looks very basic.

Claws:  I love claws.  Spin is an awesome AoE.  I'm not a big fan of the weak-attack-as-buildup I guess, but otherwise a fun set.

Dual Blades:  As noted, the gimmick with Dual Blades where you can set up several attack chains by using certain powers in a row is... not an ideal way to play.  I tend to ignore it, or employ it only occasionally, it's difficult to plan all your attack chains around these combos.  When you manage to pull them off they're fun, but you can do an impressive amount of damage without ever relying on them.

Dark Melee:  The trick with Dark Melee is Soul Drain, which is a nice AoE that boosts your damage and to hit per enemy affected.  In a farm-like situation it's very impressive.  Otherwise the set is mostly single target, but combined with SD you can hit very hard.

Electrical Melee:  As noted, this is a mostly AoE set and includes one of the best melee nukes in the game.

Fiery Melee: Also a very good AoE set and does pretty good single target damage too, I think.  Probably the biggest complaint I've ever heard from this set is the mix of punches and swords of fire, some people would much rather have all one or all the other.

Ice Melee:  I kind of think it's weak in the damage department... certainly lacking in AoE damage.  But it's a melee control set, just like Ice Blast is a blaster control set.  the different is that Ice Blast also hits like a truck and I kind of wish Ice Melee would hit harder, but when you can hold EBs and kill them at your leisure, what's to complain about?

Katana:  Like with Broad Sword, I dislike having to use the parry (in this case Divine Avalanche) because it's a fairly weak attack, but the +15% melee/lethal defense for 10 seconds is worth it.

Kinetic Melee: Well, I'd say this is one of the more disappointing sets on a scrapper, just because the animations for most attacks are too long.  What transforms this set on a stalker is the instant-damage of assassin's strike, which scrappers and brutes don't get.  I also really don't like the sound effects for this set, a friend calls it "Nascar Melee".

Martial Arts:  I really like Martial Arts because of the way the animations flow from one into the other, but even so I can admit that it's merely average to above average at single-target damage, or at least good but like several melee sets is hurt by being smashing damage, and Dragon's Claw is not a great AoE.  But eh, I still like playing the set.

Psionic Melee:  I've played Psionic Melee, it's a good set, I just can't remember any specific impressions of it good or bad.  But I know some people like it quite a bit, I don't think it's lacking in damage.

Radiation Melee:  This is a good set as far as damage goes, I think -- it just suffers from really average-looking animations.  I think this set wasn't finished and the SCORE team completed it using existing animations from other sets, so that makes sense.  But it does good damage.

Savage Melee:  I know everyone wanted to love this set but to be honest, I think it fails in its current state.  At least that's my impression, it feels like it's one of the weaker damage sets.

Spines: Eh.  Big on AoE damage, that's why it's the current primary set of choice for a fire farmer.  I think it's much more tolerable now that you can pick from several different spine looks at the tailor.  Anyway, like Electric Melee it's weak on single target but does great AoE damage.

Staff Fighting:  Personally speaking I think Staff is not a great damage set but it just looks so danged cool, so I could care less.  Also the gimmick is the three forms for Staff Mastery which work similar to the three bullet types in Dual Pistols/Swap Ammo, or the three Adaptations in Bio Armor -- meaning you get three toggles to pick from, but can only run one at a time.

Street Justice:  Well, for some people this is what they always wanted out of Martial Arts or Kinetic Melee.  A great mix of single target and AoE, good animations and sound effects.  I don't have much bad to say about the set, it's fun to play and does not suck in any respect.  The AoE Spinning Strike is a Targeted AoE, which is unusual for melee.

Titan Weapons:  The slow-fast-fast Momentum mechanic can take some getting used to, but if you ask me at the high end this is the best-damage set for AoE and probably single target as well.

War Mace: Like Battle Axe this is slow, kind of endurance-heavy, but hits like a truck.  I don't usually like cones but Crowd Control cannot be denied.

[Rumors]

Savage definitely needs a little tweaking, and it definitely feels unfinished.  I think it's biggest failure is it doesn't quite sell the "Savage fantasy".  It has the constant stream of attacking and most of the animations are good, but it's lacking some good ripping, slashing audio and a few visuals to accompany it.  You'd also think of it as something where you'd jump in and start blinding ripping and tearing at enemies, but instead you need to be thoughtful on when and how you build and consume stacks of Blood Frenzy and when and how you use Blood Thirst.  Hemmorage, IMO, is also kind of disappointing since, as juicy as the DoT is, it's costly to execute since it puts you into Exhausted and most targets will drop to a team, or even just the Scrapper themself, before the DoT finishes.

 

It does seem excel at steady damage output without stopping.  I mean, you can have a (near) gapless very early (Savage > Maim > Savage > Vicious > Savage > Shred > repeat).  One thing both a friend and I noticed is that his Titan/Bio Scrapper can like... do massive alpha damage to a hard target and do like 60% to an Elite Boss' health in a blink of an eye by blowing everything, but kind of struggles towards the end with a combination of everything going on cooldown and blowing his endurance bar.  Meanwhile, my Savage/Regen Scrapper just steadily takes them down without any real struggle at any point and is pretty much immediately ready to jump at the next several groups without a break.

 

 

I think the only other one I'm aware of that's "bad at what it's trying to accomplish" might be Dual Blades.  It's a perfectly fine and servicable set, but its best chains make little to no use of the combo mechanics as far as I can recall.  So, as a first go at a combo set, it kind of flops at combos.

 

 

I wouldn't say any Scrapper primaries are bad in general, however.  Then again, Scrappers don't have Energy Melee.

[marcussmythe]

I wouldn't say any Scrapper primaries are bad in general, however.  Then again, Scrappers don't have Energy Melee.

 

May I sig you, Sir?

[MunkiLord]

Most of the powers listed there don't do equal damage to each target; they hit as single-target strikes (at lowish damage), and then jump or have a chance to jump to another target for less damage.

 

Only Chain Induction does that.

 

edit: Thunderstrike has something similar, but it not a significant factor in anything in my experience.

[jack_nomind]

I think the only other one I'm aware of that's "bad at what it's trying to accomplish" might be Dual Blades.  It's a perfectly fine and servicable set, but its best chains make little to no use of the combo mechanics as far as I can recall.  So, as a first go at a combo set, it kind of flops at combos.

 

That's mostly due to the behavior of Blinding Feint.  In terms of the damage of the combos themselves, Attack Vitals is the best damage-per-interval for both single target and AoE thanks to the cone proc at the end.  BF stacking throws all that under the bus -- triple-stacked BF is just so much better than anything else -- but with e.g. a capped Fulcrum Shift you'd do better going back to AV.

 

(The easiest fix would be nerfing the heck out of BF and putting the difference into Empower, but I think there'd be a small riot.)

[Rumors]

May I sig you, Sir?

 

Ha ha, go for it.

 

_{At least until the day they change Energy Melee.}

[marcussmythe]

I am not hopeless on that topic, as they are apparently looking at both Tanks and at ‘Certain Melee Sets’, and their willingness to do radical things to snipe fills me with hope.  Currently leveling an EM Brute for nostalgia - major changes to either or both may result in more EM characters.

[Gobbledygook]

 

Fiery Melee: Also a very good AoE set and does pretty good single target damage too, I think.  Probably the biggest complaint I've ever heard from this set is the mix of punches and swords of fire, some people would much rather have all one or all the other.

 

 

Yes, it does great ST damage, in my opinion. My main is a FM/Inv brute. I use him for everything, including soloing AV's and farming. Fire melee is awesome.

[City_of_Jedi]

This may be worth examining:

 

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19VuZ9zJ_8eKN11JytgaK9mt9Fy-8pjANopb-FGh68Uw/htmlview#

 

If you read the first page, it does make some assumptions that are not regular occurrences during average gameplay.  (Translation: it makes some sets seem better than they actually are).  I did not make it so I cannot speak to the accuracy of the numbers.  But it's at least presented in an objective way.  I hope it helps you.

[jack_nomind]

If you read the first page, it does make some assumptions that are not regular occurrences during average gameplay.  (Translation: it makes some sets seem better than they actually are).  I did not make it so I cannot speak to the accuracy of the numbers.  But it's at least presented in an objective way.  I hope it helps you.

 

Kezeal's spreadsheet -- yeah, I know someone who's working on an update with some more realistic assumptions (e.g., 100% haste or permahasten vs "max haste", and looking at sets at different +dmg levels), but they're not quite ready to put it up for public engagement yet.  My statements about comparative damage are based on what they've shared with me.  Their rankings put TW, MA, WM, Ice and Fire at the top for DPS (still evaluating Dark) and Broadsword firmly at the bottom with KM, Staff, and Electric Melee just above that.  For what it's worth, I'm questioning some of their assumptions about Staff and Kinetic Melee -- I don't think their system is accounting for combos or Siphon very well right now -- but that's the knowledge-base I'm coming from.

 

As far as Kezeal's sheet, he makes some assumptions about rotations  and secondary effects that aren't quite right and in some cases significantly shift the rankings.  Despite the list, Katana does not offer the best AoE in the game for Scrappers even at high recharge, nor are Dark Melee and Martial Arts the worst-DPS primaries. 

[Marshal_General]

Wouldn't a more balanced form of dps comparison be if all powers were slotted with level 50 SOs? IOs sets are too dependant on too many factors.

[jack_nomind]

Wouldn't a more balanced form of dps comparison be if all powers were slotted with level 50 SOs?

 

No.

 

Being the best at solo i8 damage doesn't meaningfully inform anyone in an i25 world. 

[hejtmane]

My personal experience dual blades is one of my all around favorite sets for both ST and AOE in missions and paired with Energy Aura is down right fun

[Murcielago]

The only melee primary that I've ever tried that wasn't great was Ice Melee. Too low damage.

 

War Mace was too endurance heavy but if you pair it with Energy it becomes very strong and pretty.

[StarseedWarrior]

Lots of the melee sets need help really.

[BrandX]

Dual Blades only needs to worry about one combo, Attack Vitals, and that combo is AWESOME!  It can be made non stop easily.

 

I managed to solo the ITF with just DB/WP, no incarnate abilities, back when CoH was live, with just that combo.

 

I also had the PBAOE attack as an additional AOE, but never used it's combo.  Wasn't really needed.

 

Some could say that ruins the point of the set, but Attack Vitals was good enough ST DPS that had a decent melee cone in it for some added AOE.

 

 

[Heraclea]

Fortunately, Energy Melee was never ported to Scrappers (AFAIK, not that I'd check) so just by making a scrapper you've avoided the only really bad melee set. 

 

The real question is what works best with your defense secondary?  Generally attack sets with +def (Broadsword, Katana) or -tohit (Dark Melee) are natural fits for defense oriented sets like Reflexes or Shield.  While -dam attacks like Kinetics are natural pairs with resistance sets like Invuln, Bio, or Fire.  Other sets bring different things to the table like crowd control or different debuffs, while some like Fire are pure damage. 

[marcussmythe]

Fortunately, Energy Melee was never ported to Scrappers (AFAIK, not that I'd check) so just by making a scrapper you've avoided the only really bad melee set. 

 

The real question is what works best with your defense secondary?  Generally attack sets with +def (Broadsword, Katana) or -tohit (Dark Melee) are natural fits for defense oriented sets like Reflexes or Shield.  While -dam attacks like Kinetics are natural pairs with resistance sets like Invuln, Bio, or Fire.  Other sets bring different things to the table like crowd control or different debuffs, while some like Fire are pure damage.

 

It was not.  Developers chose not to port it to Scrappers, and removed or derated the crit functionality when they ported it to Stalkers, because they feared it would be too good in the hands of those ATs.

 

Then Developers gave us Stalker ATOs(?), Bioarmor (??!!) and Titan Weapons (!!!!!).

 

As Barbie once said, “Math is Hard, lets go shopping!”

[Keilis]

I think the only one which has a clear shtick that doesn't do it particularly well is Dual Blades.  BF->AV is great, but the other combos generally get ignored outside of leveling.  Even then, the two best attack chains eschew combos entirely.  Also, the fact that they're more like sequences rather than combos doesn't feel great - Empower and Weaken start the same, but aside from that, there's no decision-making once you start combos, and if something misses (and there's always that chance), you generally have to wait for recharges to start again.

 

I *love* the set and it does very well, but the combo system paid a price for being the first such system.

[greenstalker]

Fortunately, Energy Melee was never ported to Scrappers (AFAIK, not that I'd check) so just by making a scrapper you've avoided the only really bad melee set. 

 

The real question is what works best with your defense secondary?  Generally attack sets with +def (Broadsword, Katana) or -tohit (Dark Melee) are natural fits for defense oriented sets like Reflexes or Shield.  While -dam attacks like Kinetics are natural pairs with resistance sets like Invuln, Bio, or Fire.  Other sets bring different things to the table like crowd control or different debuffs, while some like Fire are pure damage.

 

Ummm not sure about broadsword shield combi but as someone plays katana SR you never use divine avalanche /which is only power in whole set that gives +def) with SR you can already soft cap melee defense easily with just SO's the selling point of a katana SR combi is not katana's defense section but the ability to make true attack chain of katana without relying to divine avalanche for defense (which is GD-GC-SD-GC)