Minmax Melee Archetype Comparison & Tier List

[ZemX]

1 hour ago, Bellicose said:

Now a couple of things I'm unsure of: Are these attacks even worth taking and slotting (ex. does Touch of Fear's 52.79 base damage even warrant a spot in a reasonable build). Also, do ALL Stalker AoEs crit from HIde? Even more of weird outlier question would be does the Dual Blades combo crit from hide (ex. Build Up -> Assassin's Blades (procing the Chance to Hide) -> Ablating Strike (triggering the Sweep Combo)?

 

Generally all Stalker AoEs, including ones from pool powers, have a 50% chance to crit from Hide.  There are a few exceptions like Lightning Rod and Shield Charge which, because of how they are implemented, don't crit at all... but also don't break Hide.

 

Dual Blade combo finishers do not crit.  Neither do other sets that feature combo builder/finisher type bonus damage.  Each attack in the combo can crit in or out of Hide based on the Stalker AT's normal mechanics, but the finisher itself is not a separate attack.  It's just a bonus power effect that does some stuff, like damage or other effects.

 

If you're unsure and want to find out for yourself, City of Data is the best resource.  For example, look up Stakler->Dual Blades->Ablating Strike.  You can see in the effects list where it checks if you have the right combo level and then executes the sweep bonus if you do.  That sweep bonus does damage but does not do additional damage if the Stalker is Hidden.  Ablating Strike itself can stealth crit though, as can any of the other powers in the combo chain leading up to it.

[Sanguinesun]

Ston, you've put in a lot of effort with your testing and I think everyone recognizes that.  Such efforts are appreciated.

 

That said, thoughts below are just for thinking about for testing considerations and hopefully wont be taken as discouragement towards your efforts thus far. 

 

All sets tested were perhaps skewed with the use of powers not from those damage sets (gloom being a prime example).   Given seemingly that the premise of the testing is to primarily classify damage sets by tiers of power effectivity, this means actual raw data specific and only to those sets is actually not being tested.   It would seem then that its not an accurate standardization and may play into confirmation biases otherwise? As I'll say below, it's almost impossible to have accurate testing of course but parsing more may be something of merit.

 

Most testing looks to have been primarily focused on single target effectivity.  Given that content experienced by players is not always specific to that and that sets aoe powers, some of which can do possibly more burst or sustained damage in a rotation, from those sets was not part of the testing either.   This would also seem to skew the classifying.   

 

In relation to the point just above, some sets as well are more single target or more aoe focused as well.  No distinctions were made in testing for them.

 

Burst in a rotation vs sustained rotation and in context to how such plays out in content with teams or solo may not have been distinguished either.

 

Power choices also in the rotations listed may not have been ideal/optimal either for some of the target testing done even if consideration was for single target comparisons.

 

Basically, my thoughts are that testing the variables for sets becomes hard to discern effectively.  The game, especially with homecoming's proliferations, makes it challenging(if not actually impossible at this stage) to have good testing parameters and values.  Secondaries, inherents, incarnates, teams(and their buffs etc), all skew the data making it become even harder(again potentially impossible) to say a set is XYZ tier.   Whether anything I've thus said helps to improve the tests conducted or not, I don't know but I felt it was at the very least worth mentioning.

 

 

Again, thanks for your efforts thus far.

[ScarySai]

On 5/21/2023 at 1:35 PM, BuiltDifferent5 said:

And it STILL seems to perform well on a Scrapper.

If it could leverage the ato properly, it'd mostly likely be competing with axe for top marks.

[Kinvesu]

This is great, but I just wished we had this without the patron/ancillary powers. I am no rper by any means(I can't stand it personally), but I can't use gloom(or zapp) on a ice melee or katana or anything not dark or martial arts or savage or heck even energy melee, I could make that work. It just doesn't make sense and is so out of place on like war mace or stone melee or titan weapons. I like to stick to theme if I can and if not, it has to make somewhat sense.

 

Not to mention, not every build can fit those attacks in and deck them out without gutting other things. I like looking at these to see what power I want as a solo tanker, but I don't know if ice melee is better because I would never use gloom or cross punch cause to me it doesn't make sense. I know this is to see how well they do in these tests with max dps, but I bet 98% of the players don't want to mix these sets like this and still want to know what the best st/aoe dps is for each set.

 

I hope someone comes along and does one of these tests, but with the archetypes inherent powers from the primary/secondary and you can just add the ancillary/patron powers as a bonus.

[Ston]

6 hours ago, Kinvesu said:

This is great, but I just wished we had this without the patron/ancillary powers. I am no rper by any means(I can't stand it personally), but I can't use gloom(or zapp) on a ice melee or katana or anything not dark or martial arts or savage or heck even energy melee, I could make that work. It just doesn't make sense and is so out of place on like war mace or stone melee or titan weapons. I like to stick to theme if I can and if not, it has to make somewhat sense.

 

Not to mention, not every build can fit those attacks in and deck them out without gutting other things. I like looking at these to see what power I want as a solo tanker, but I don't know if ice melee is better because I would never use gloom or cross punch cause to me it doesn't make sense. I know this is to see how well they do in these tests with max dps, but I bet 98% of the players don't want to mix these sets like this and still want to know what the best st/aoe dps is for each set.

 

I hope someone comes along and does one of these tests, but with the archetypes inherent powers from the primary/secondary and you can just add the ancillary/patron powers as a bonus.

 

The results will be mostly the same. The best sets will still be at the top and the struggling sets will still be at the bottom.

 

The thing that’s really separating these sets is DPA. A set like Spines has terrible DPA compared to Battle Axe. The margin will only get wider if you only use the inherent powers.

[Kinvesu]

27 minutes ago, Ston said:

 

The results will be mostly the same. The best sets will still be at the top and the struggling sets will still be at the bottom.

 

The thing that’s really separating these sets is DPA. A set like Spines has terrible DPA compared to Battle Axe. The margin will only get wider if you only use the inherent powers.

Thank you so much sir. I was just about to edit my post cause I was thinking about it and was so worried I sounded like a freaking jerk haha. Thank you for the information. That helps a lot for me. I appreciate it!

[Unclemarty]

This is great data Ston, thanks for taking the time to do some testing!

 

Do you have any files for the builds that were tested? I'm quite surprised that all attacks had a 95% chance to hit, even when slotting no accuracy enhancements.... Even with tactics I always thought that some accuracy would be needed.

 

Also, would these builds completely fall apart without Ageless? I've been experimenting with proc builds too and it always seems like endurance management is an issue. Without ageless or chewing blue inspirations constantly I'm not sure how some primaries would stay fighting with 0 end reduction.

[DarknessEternal]

Why Cross Punch in so many of these?  Most of these attack chains can be executed just subtracting it.

[Without_Pause]

On 8/11/2023 at 4:15 PM, DarknessEternal said:

Why Cross Punch in so many of these?  Most of these attack chains can be executed just subtracting it.

My guess is the +Recharge it offers aids the other attacks to where it increases DPS enough to warrant being added in. I also know Gloom helps Claws for DPS, but I can do a attack chain without it, so I never grab it. As the OPs states, these are builds done with a specific goal in mind. These are by no means builds you are going to see doing everyday content. 

 

My biggest take aways are just how poorly Kinetic and Psionic perform and just how good Battle Axe is.  This confirms my initial plays of the Kinetic and Psionic. Kin is just simply too slow for the damage it produces. Let it be a slower but harder hitting Claws as there is virtually a 1:1 correlation for powers between the two sets.  Psionic has an issue with Insight. More so since Boggle helps trigger it but it is poorly implemented. Almost no one wants to take Boggle when other sets get actual attacks which are used in attack chains. Rename Boggle to Insight so that's where it gets generated and make it a toggle. Two easy fixes for sets in desperate need of balancing. 

[ZemX]

1 hour ago, Without_Pause said:

My biggest take aways are just how poorly Kinetic and Psionic perform and just how good Battle Axe is. 

 

It's the same old problem with animation times.  Pool powers were never supposed to be better than primary/secondary powers and that's true... if you ignore animation times just like the Live devs did.   I'm still kind of amazed, even after their own players proved the mistake to them, that they never made a pass at boosting slow animating powers to bring them in line with fast ones.

 

It's kind of embarrassing to realize that some of the performance differences seen in these data tables today was decided by the Live team's art department.  

[BrandX]

@Ston

 

Was using Barb Swipe vs Lunge purely on the animation time?  Looking at MIDS (and it can be wrong of course) once procs are involved, it looks like Lunge pulls ahead in terms of DPS.

 

Barb Swipe with 5 Procs and +3 ACC/DAM edges out 6 Procs just a bit in MIDs.

 

Also, Throw Spines with 6 Procs looks like less damage than Lunge with the same animation time.  So would you still use TS for Single Target?

Edited August 22, 2023 by BrandX

[Kaika]

While the amount of data you have gathered here is stagger I'm not entirely sure about all the rotations listed here.

 

For example a optimal Dual blades stalker shouldn't have vengeful Slice in their build as the DPA is atrocious, the Rotation in general goes

 

BU(when up)>AB>AS>SS>AS

 

This not only skips any powers with poor DPA but also lets you utilize the sweeping strikes combo, and make sure you have good uptime on achilies heel. You could probably place Zapp right before AS as it does not break the combo but I never felt the need for it myself as it delays AS, which has a extremely high DPA even without criting. With how you are doing thing here you might not be able to meet this requirement for this rotation as you aren't slotting the powers for any recharge. I suppose this may have been done in the sake of keeping everything somewhat standard but in this case it's likely hampering the performance of the set.

 

Sorry I'm aware you mentioned you aren't a expert on all the rotations and I don't wanna be hard on you for that but I felt it needed to be said as people are already linking and quoting this

Edited August 22, 2023 by Riot Siren

[bustacap]

I'm surprised Ice melee not S tier on stalkers as it gets a real pbaoe, and assassin's blade replaces its worst STDPA attack. On hide from AB you should crit FT.  FA is a foot stomp clone, and chains BU really well in a group setting.  I have personally triple stacked it before pretty easy especially considering it has a frost in the ST and AOE chain. 

[Without_Pause]

On 8/24/2023 at 6:54 PM, bustacap said:

I'm surprised Ice melee not S tier on stalkers as it gets a real pbaoe, and assassin's blade replaces its worst STDPA attack. On hide from AB you should crit FT.  FA is a foot stomp clone, and chains BU really well in a group setting.  I have personally triple stacked it before pretty easy especially considering it has a frost in the ST and AOE chain. 

This is simply about DPS. For a Stalker, that is only done on a ST level. This doesn't factor in things like utility. Ice Patch is pretty much cheat code. FA sleeps mobs which means a Stalker can go and pick through a mob at their own pace. Ice as an overall set is absolutely S tier on a Stalker.

[MoonSheep]

amazing to see martial arts quite high up on the scale, may have to recreate one for the first time since live

[DarknessEternal]

I guess the next step should be figuring out which secondary is the most damaging (of the ones that provide any damage).

 

Probably Bio, but it's a very click heavy set, and clicking on defensives means not clicking on attacks.

Edited September 5, 2023 by DarknessEternal

[Without_Pause]

3 hours ago, DarknessEternal said:

I guess the next step should be figuring out which secondary is the most damaging (of the ones that provide any damage).

 

Probably Bio, but it's a very click heavy set, and clicking on defensives means not clicking on attacks.

Bio in offensive mode wins out for offense at least in terms of Pylon times. You just need to make the penalty of using it not bad enough so you can pull it off for general play. This is why it works better in sturdier builds. Rad and Fire are options once you consider AoE. Anything else is basically a damage aura or +recharge. Shield gives a dmg boost as well. Shield Charge is just there for the occasional AoE though. I might be wrong, but I still think the trend is Bio > Rad > others.

 

EDIT: Again, we are talking pure DPS Pylon/Trapdoor times. Resist builds tend to be on the more offensive side. Def based ones will trend to being sturdier so for a genuine min/max build for general content, people prefer Def based armors. 

Edited September 5, 2023 by Without_Pause

[DarknessEternal]

Well I can't even achieve these times with Bio, so I really have no reliable testing mechanism.

[Saiyajinzoningen]

wow. 

I wish there was a wow reaction

but for now take this upvote!

[BrandX]

On 5/20/2023 at 5:34 PM, Ston said:

My Discord: @Ston#0707

 

This will be a WIP as long as I'm playing this game, but I've finally wrapped up some initial results for all the primary powersets of melee archetypes. My goal is to get a baseline of how sets compare with each other before any new changes come out (particularly changes to archetypes and procs). All of this testing was done with what has worked best for me. I don't claim to be an expert on each AT & powerset, but I did do several rounds for each and used what got the best results.

 

Hope this can give some of you guys some useful information when it comes to melee ATs! 😄

 

As I update results, I'll change the screenshots on this post and make a changelog at the bottom.

 

Tests Performed

• Pylon ST DPS Test
  • A lot of players are familiar with Pylon tests at this point. Basically, a Rikti Pylon offers a stationary target with standard resist/hp that you use to test your ST DPS.
  • *** I do not claim that every attack chain used in these tests are the best possible for each powerset. I tested several for each and used what was getting me the best results. Would be happy to test better chains if suggested. ***
• Trapdoor AoE/ST Clear Speed Test (Stalkers omitted)
  • A repeatable mission meant to be run solo on +4/x8 notoriety to measure how fast you clean clear large groups of enemies that include bosses and an Elite Boss at the end. Enemy groups are Council and Arachnos with a wide variety of debuffs and resistances you have to deal with.
  • Stalkers were omitted from this test since they don't have a taunt aura to manage aggro and would have too much variance. Just know they would be the slowest by far.

 

Test Parameters

• All tests use a standard Willpower build that is identical for everything except for primary powerset slotting. This includes all pool powers (Speed, Leaping, Fighting, Leadership) and epic powers. I do believe that pool/epic powers should be included for these tests as they use archetype damage modifiers.
  • Scrappers/Stalkers use Mu Mastery for Zapp & Ball Lightning
  • Tankers/Brutes use Soul Mastery for Gloom & Dark Obliteration
• All builds use the same incarnate powers.
  • T4 Musculature Radial
  • T4 Degenerative Core (For Pylon tests) & T4 Reactive Core (For Trapdoor tests)
  • T4 Ageless Core
  • T4 Assault Core (Active for Pylon tests, Passive for Trapdoor tests)
• All attacks had a 95% chance to hit
• Attacks use the same slotting approaches for Brutes/Tankers and Scrappers/Stalkers. The goal is to maximize the average damage output for each attack.
  • Scrappers/Stalkers use 2 acc/dam HOs + 4 procs. This puts them at the Enhancement Diversification damage cap to get the most out of crit damage and then as much proc damage/utility on top of that with the remaining slots
  • Brutes/Tankers use as many procs as possible. For most builds, this was 6 damage/utility procs per attack. This is the best way to get the most damage out of these ATs since they can't get as much average base damage as Scrapper/Stalkers.
    • Any powers that could not take 6 procs would have a lvl 53 acc/dam HO put in the remaining slot(s). This only applied to a small number of powers.
    • I ran tests where I slotted attacks with acc/dam HOs and they were consistently slower on average than using as many procs as possible.

 

Pylon Test Results

 

 

 

 

 

Pylon/Tradoor Averages

 

 

 

 

Tier List

 

 

Commentary on tier list (more emphasis on ST DPS when considering Stalker rankings):

S-Tiers: Exceptional AoE and ST DPS. Fast animations. Good proc opportunities.
A-Tiers: Very good AoE and ST DPS. Fast animations. Good proc opportunities.

B-Tiers: Either very good AoE or ST DPS. Decent animations. Good proc opportunities.

C-Tiers: Okay AoE or ST DPS. Slower animations. Decent proc opportunities.

D-Tiers: Poor AoE or ST DPS. Slower animations. Lacking proc opportunities.

 

Okay, looking at the Street Justice portion of this, I have to ask...wouldn't Sweeping Cross be the better choice over Cross Punch?  Same animation, same slotting.

 

Yes, Cross Punch can add in a 6th Proc, but Sweeping Cross with an ACC/DMG HO, or even just a DMG/END IO, will put it above Cross Punch in damage.  So why is Cross Punch being used over Sweeping Cross?

[Without_Pause]

51 minutes ago, BrandX said:

 

Okay, looking at the Street Justice portion of this, I have to ask...wouldn't Sweeping Cross be the better choice over Cross Punch?  Same animation, same slotting.

 

Yes, Cross Punch can add in a 6th Proc, but Sweeping Cross with an ACC/DMG HO, or even just a DMG/END IO, will put it above Cross Punch in damage.  So why is Cross Punch being used over Sweeping Cross?

As previously mentioned, Cross Punch adds +Recharge.

[BrandX]

6 hours ago, Without_Pause said:

As previously mentioned, Cross Punch adds +Recharge.

 

Does that mean the attacks wouldn't recharge fast enough without the +RCH proc?  If they can recharge fast enough without the +RCH Proc, why the need for the attack with it, over the higher DPS?

[Spaghetti Betty]

18 hours ago, BrandX said:

 

Okay, looking at the Street Justice portion of this, I have to ask...wouldn't Sweeping Cross be the better choice over Cross Punch?  Same animation, same slotting.

 

Yes, Cross Punch can add in a 6th Proc, but Sweeping Cross with an ACC/DMG HO, or even just a DMG/END IO, will put it above Cross Punch in damage.  So why is Cross Punch being used over Sweeping Cross?

Cross Punch also comes with the added benefit of not consuming your Combo. On top of the amazing benefits you get from proc-bombed Cross Punch, it fits neatly after StJ's usual filler chain of Heavy Blow/Rib Cracker/Shin Breaker to lead into a Crushing Uppercut. Doing this will allow you to have very high FF proc uptime, 2 -Res procs, and near guaranteeing you have another Uppercut ready to go after building your combo. Sweeping Cross just can't compare to that in terms of synergy due to it being a resource consumer.

Edited October 14, 2023 by Spaghetti Betty