Highest damage?

[Bubbles232]

I know this is over asked and it depends on so much! 

 

I'm looking at a scrapper and want a good team player but does tons of damage. 

I'm kind of interested in Savage melee, mace.

I'm open to any suggestions other than spines fire lol!

 

Any info would be awesome thanks!

[Murcielago]

AoE king is Elec/Shield

ST king is Dark/Shield situationally and FM/Shield less situationally

[Kaeladin]

Respectfully, the true "all-around damage king" at this time is Titan Weapon/Bio Armor for scrapper. IMO, I think it's more fun (and still very effective) to play the characters Murcielago recommended, but both numerically and in performance, TW is in a league of its own (especially with bio armor, arguably one of the best offensive sets for scrapper).

 

I would NOT recommend TW/Bio for a newcomer to melee, or a new player in general. It's not a leveling-friendly, and/or new player-friendly, set (especially combined). But it is undeniably powerful at high end.

[MunkiLord]

AoE king is Elec/Shield

ST king is Dark/Shield situationally and FM/Shield less situationally

 

These are all incredibly fun to play too!

[Kaeladin]

Agreed.

[marcussmythe]

For -pure- damage out, at 50, with incarnates and dream IOs, aingle target (and maybe AOE) TW/Bio.

 

But thats a long list of assumptions, and your taking a reistance hit, and the only reason it does better than /Shield is because of TW, and because TW really loves IOs.

 

For a general case scrapper with ‘thats not right’ damage combined with serious survability and fun playability from a much lower level, Id say Dark/Shield or Fire/Shield.  Shield is strongly the best scrapper secondary in the general case.

[Bubbles232]

Is FM or electric melee good for teams or soloing?

[Kaeladin]

For -pure- damage out, at 50, with incarnates and dream IOs, aingle target (and maybe AOE) TW/Bio.

 

But thats a long list of assumptions, and your taking a reistance hit, and the only reason it does better than /Shield is because of TW, and because TW really loves IOs.

 

For a general case scrapper with ‘thats not right’ damage combined with serious survability and fun playability from a much lower level, Id say Dark/Shield or Fire/Shield.  Shield is strongly the best scrapper secondary in the general case.

 

I'm a little curious why you believe shield is the strongest scrapper secondary in general; I agree it's powerful, but just wondering what your understanding of its power is (I'm assuming you're comparing it to bio in this case).

[Dan Petro]

Don't forget that having a TW/Bio/Pyre built right brings some crazy debuff potential to the team as well.

 

-20% achillies proc -20% fury of the gladiator proc -10% melt armor, -10% from evolving armor in offensive mode, -10% from rend armor. 

 

A scrapper/DPS class that is stacking -70% resistance on a hard target is a massive boon to a team.  (STJ/Bio/Pyre can hit those levels as well)

 

Shield is probably a very distant second or third place to bio (in teams) and solo it is probably third with /Fire scrappers pulling in the number two spot thanks to the interaction with Burn/Crit strikes proc. 

[Kaeladin]

Don't forget that having a TW/Bio/Pyre built right brings some crazy debuff potential to the team as well.

 

-20% achillies proc -20% fury of the gladiator proc -10% melt armor, -10% from evolving armor in offensive mode, -10% from rend armor. 

 

A scrapper/DPS class that is stacking -70% resistance on a hard target is a massive boon to a team.  (STJ/Bio/Pyre can hit those levels as well)

 

Shield is probably a very distant second or third place to bio (in teams) and solo it is probably third with /Fire scrappers pulling in the number two spot thanks to the interaction with Burn/Crit strikes proc.

 

Yuh.

[MunkiLord]

Is FM or electric melee good for teams or soloing?

 

Both. That being said, if you're wanting to solo AVs, Fire is the better choice. Electric Melee can solo AVs, but it is significantly slower than Fire. If you want to kill large masses of minions and LTs, then Electric Melee pulls ahead, though again Fire is also really good at that.

[marcussmythe]

I find it the best general case scrapper set for the below reasons:

 

1.)  A large damage buff via AAO (larger than the bonus of Gooo BIOARMOR!) without a resistance hit.  Situational (requires a crowd), but that is a common situation.

 

2.)  A powerful, built in AOE.  Additional AOE is always handy, and this either stacks towards specializing an AOE focused character, or supplanting the AOE of bad sets.

 

3.)  Positional defense, which is superior to typed defense, inasmuch as it is simpler to enhance with IOs (many IOs offer large positional bonuses and a pair of smaller typed bonuses), and lacks the glaring Psi (and Toxic) hole present in most defense sets.

 

4.)  Defense Debuff resistance, valuable on mixed-mitigation sets (rather than on pure defense sets, where it is expected), and a fair amount of it, once you start stacking active defense.

 

5.)  3 powers that while addiing value are also easily skipped... saving you 3 power choices if desired.

 

6.)  Phenomenal return on a tiny slot investment.  Before you pursue set bonuses, the set is seeing most of its performance with 9 total slots added to Deflection, Battle Agility, and True Grit - you can cut this to ~5~ added slots if you use 50+++++ IOs...  17.6% Positional Defense and the same resist to all but psi for 3 powers and 9.. or 5.. slots?  Yes, please, thank you.

 

 

 

[Kaeladin]

I find it the best general case scrapper set for the below reasons:

 

1.)  A large damage buff via AAO (larger than the bonus of Gooo BIOARMOR!) without a resistance hit.  Situational (requires a crowd), but that is a common situation.

 

2.)  A powerful, built in AOE.  Additional AOE is always handy, and this either stacks towards specializing an AOE focused character, or supplanting the AOE of bad sets.

 

3.)  Positional defense, which is superior to typed defense, inasmuch as it is simpler to enhance with IOs (many IOs offer large positional bonuses and a pair of smaller typed bonuses), and lacks the glaring Psi (and Toxic) hole present in most defense sets.

 

4.)  Defense Debuff resistance, valuable on mixed-mitigation sets (rather than on pure defense sets, where it is expected), and a fair amount of it, once you start stacking active defense.

 

5.)  3 powers that while addiing value are also easily skipped... saving you 3 power choices if desired.

 

6.)  Phenomenal return on a tiny slot investment.  Before you pursue set bonuses, the set is seeing most of its performance with 9 total slots added to Deflection, Battle Agility, and True Grit - you can cut this to ~5~ added slots if you use 50+++++ IOs...  17.6% Positional Defense and the same resist to all but psi for 3 powers and 9.. or 5.. slots?  Yes, please, thank you.

 

Fair points. I'm going to take each of these one by one to offer some thoughts, especially when comparing it to bio armor:

 

1) The damage buff of Offensive Adaptation (Bio Armor) is 31.25% on scrapper.

 

The damage buff of Against All Odds is 12.5% base, then 6.88% per enemy near you. At 3 enemies, this slightly surpasses offensive adaptation (33.1%). The max is 10 enemies, which is 81.3% damage buff. But realistically, in a decent solo build (and/or in a group), the time in which 10, or even 9/8, enemies will stay up to provide you with damage buffs, is fairly short. But yes, I agree that, on average, AAO will provide more additive damage % increase.

 

I mention this part because this additive damage increase is of greater value at lower damage values/presence of buffs, but Offensive Adaptation also brings the following additional damage-oriented components:

 

+7.5% to hit (not accuracy!)

Toxic damage procs on all attacks

A base -10 resistance to all aura (which benefits your party) AND, in offensive adaptation, this is actually increased by an additional 3.3% approx (tested on tanker; will try to confirm on scrapper variant) for a total of -13.3% resistance to all aura; this is quite substantial!

A damage aura

 

The combination of these components is very substantial, and therefore I feel reasonably confident in asserting that Bio Armor brings a much stronger offensive package than shield defense in most general play.

 

2) No arguments here; shield charge is quite nice. Note that this does mean some of the slots you're saving (from point 6) need to go into this, preferably 6 slotted, as it's a strong attack. But shield charge is great!

 

3) Agreed that positional defense is generally superior to typed defense in principle, but the point about it being "simpler to enhance with IOs" is not correct; they are at best net neutral. There are roughly an equal number of bonuses that also provide large typed bonuses (and smaller positional bonus); believe me, I've built both and a quick browse through set bonus finder will show you that both types of defenses are plentiful depending on which IOs/power sets you are using to aim for those defenses. The Toxic and Psi holes are definitely true, although to be fair most non-positional defense sets run into this issue.

 

4) DDR is nice; there aren't many sets (and I don't think any resist set actually) that carry it. Certainly handy and a welcome feature of shield.

 

5) This is...I'll come back to this one.

 

6) Shield Defense definitely has some nice "initial return" for investment, no question. But note that I say "initial" return, because this is one of the core differences between bio armor and shield defense; bio armor has erratic initial return, but VERY strong late investment.

 

Now to build on a few of my earlier remarks and some of the other things you mentioned:

 

- You mentioned the "resistance hit" from offensive adaptation; it reduces resistance to all by -7.5%. Definitely notable. However, have you ever noticed the difference (particularly in smash/lethal values) between what the two sets can normally achieve assuming similar builds? Well-built bio armor can push over 70% s/l before the penalty, and this does not even fully include evolving armor giving you stacking damage resistance per enemy around you (similar to what AAO does, except for resistance). It's pretty substantial at that; I am reasonably confident that, even with the offensive -res penalty, bio armor WITH the penalty has comparable resistance to shield defense (and honestly, probably more when factoring evolving armor). If you have a shield defense build in mind that might counterpoint this, I'm absolutely open to seeing it.

 

- The skippable powers component; the reason why bio armor is such a power-slot hungry set is because virtually ALL of its powers are very, very useful and strong. It brings one of the strongest regen packages outside of sets that specialize in it (e.g. regen, well-built willpower) and strong self-healing. It has good endurance management in the form of DNA siphon and inexhaustible (not to mention efficient adaptation if even needed). Parasitic aura is an incredibly strong T9 "crashless" power that provides insane endurance and regen, and could potentially be slotted for reasonable uptime. These self-healing and endurance management tools are ones that shield defense notoriously lacks.

 

- To add to this piece, skippable powers are great but it's the question of "what" you'd pick with them. Most attack sets usually pick up 4-6 attacks (at very most) and build-up; most powers beyond that are usually used for extremely situational moments (e.g. parry/divine avalanche) and/or as slot mules. Boxing/tough/weave, combat jumping, and hasten are usually auto-includes for most melee builds. That already locks you into 3 pools; leadership pool is a typical 4th. Epic power pools are nice, but normally used either to provide a high DPA alternative attack (e.g. gloom for brute, water spout) or, again, as slot mules. Travel power is nice of course, but it's luxury. Once you softcap your defenses (whether as shield defense or bio), and have your attacks slotted up, your options become a bit more limited besides chasing flavor powers and/or slot bonuses.

 

In conclusion, I bring these points up because I absolutely love both sets (I was a huge shield defense guy myself before I met bio armor), but I do believe the assertion that it is "the best general secondary set for scrapper" is a bit too strong of a conclusion IMO; I could easily argue that, while possessing a higher entry curve and requiring more investment, bio armor provides much more late-game potential due to the nature of the bonuses/strengths it brings while giving you a strong level of consistent, and VERY powerful, offensive presence without the need to add an additional attack.

 

Just some food for thought; it's totally fine if it's your preference and you love the "type" of playstyle and building that shield defense offers. But I don't necessarily consider it to be the ultimate secondary set.

[marcussmythe]

-nods- Valid points, and an excellent defense of Bioarmor as the ‘best of the bunch’ set.

 

Id guess our differences  go to ‘early vs late bloomer’, ‘set and forget vs decision making’, and ability to handle defense cascade collapse (though shield will require an incarnate to get -really- tough against this - which does raise the attention requirement).  This is likely a product of playstyle and main levels played at - you may finish and IO characters more often than I.

 

An aside, have you tested the additional toxic damage component of offensive stance?  It seems to be ~22% of base (ignore brawl, something is strange with brawl and that toxic component), with that ~22% entirely separare from and in addition to the 30% raw damage bonus from Offensive Adaptation.

 

RE:  Parasitic Aura - Ive noticed that you tend to slot it more lightly than I do.  I tend to run a 4 or 6 slot PA, heavy on heal (regen) and recharge.  My recollection is around 50% uptime, with +Regen numbers that seemed to challenge WP (though again, only while up).  Holes in this uptime get plastered over with careful timing of the other two clickies, or incarnates.  My main Bioarmor is a Brute - so perhaps Im more incentivized to chase the regen.

[Kaeladin]

An aside, have you tested the additional toxic damage component of offensive stance?  It seems to be ~22% of base (ignore brawl, something is strange with brawl and that toxic component), with that ~22% entirely separare from and in addition to the 30% raw damage bonus from Offensive Adaptation.

 

RE:  Parasitic Aura - Ive noticed that you tend to slot it more lightly than I do.  I tend to run a 4 or 6 slot PA, heavy on heal (regen) and recharge.  My recollection is around 50% uptime, with +Regen numbers that seemed to challenge WP (though again, only while up).  Holes in this uptime get plastered over with careful timing of the other two clickies, or incarnates.  My main Bioarmor is a Brute - so perhaps Im more incentivized to chase the regen.

 

I think your number on the toxic proc damage seems right, but I'll try to verify when I have a chance (doing a lot of other testing for my scrapper DPS spreadsheet! So many numbers!).

 

As for Parasitic Aura, I actually thought about this after you mentioned it and made a swap in my build; I dropped a purp set (was in Soul Storm) and switched to 5 piece Panacea in Parasitic Aura. I lost 2.5% recharge (Panacea provides 7.5%) and 15% global accuracy (not a big deal on the latter; I already run both Offensive Adaptation + Kismet) and gained a hilariously powerful Parasitic Aura in return; good trade!

 

That's two changes I've made to my base build this week; pretty happy about that.

[marcussmythe]

Let me know how it works for you.  My perception on mine (again - Brute version) is that the character is nigh unkillable while a fully saturated PA is up, due to the combination of resist, defense, and regen - barring a full scale cascade collapse.

[Sirion]

What bonus resist per target are you seeing from Evolving Armor? And is the base added resist value correct in pines?

 

I ask because I'm seeing a much smaller damage resist debuff than you are reporting, so I'm curious if any of the other numbers are off for that power.

[Kaeladin]

Pine's is off on some of its numbers (particularly with the newer sets, including bio armor).

 

The tooltip info for evolving armor's -res debuff indicates approx. 10% value. Offensive Adaptation also increases this value; the way it was tested was to utilize a standard condition where you find an enemy with virtually 0 resistance to a damage type of your choice (e.g. A level 50 scrapper with no damage buffs, with unslotted attacks preferably on low cooldown, smacking a level 50 council soldier). First establish that the damage value of that move is the damage value you are inflicting on the enemy. Repeat until satisfied. Then, test it with evolving armor and notice the difference in damage dealt. Then, once you have confirmed (repeated) results, repeat with offensive adaptation active (while calculating the damage bonus from it into the base value of the move, then seeing how much more damage you are inflicting as a % compared to what the damage buffed value should be without the -res component).

 

It's possible I could have been off, so I welcome verification.

 

Basically, test it out!

[marcussmythe]

As for Parasitic Aura, I actually thought about this after you mentioned it and made a swap in my build; I dropped a purp set (was in Soul Storm) and switched to 5 piece Panacea in Parasitic Aura. I lost 2.5% recharge (Panacea provides 7.5%) and 15% global accuracy (not a big deal on the latter; I already run both Offensive Adaptation + Kismet) and gained a hilariously powerful Parasitic Aura in return; good trade!

 

That's two changes I've made to my base build this week; pretty happy about that.

 

Id love to see what your build stabilizes at - My TW/Bio is stalled in the early 40s in favor of an aggressively bad-but-fun stalker Im toodling around on - and I think you build a bit better than I do.

[TungstenShark]

Id love to see what your build stabilizes at - My TW/Bio is stalled in the early 40s in favor of an aggressively bad-but-fun stalker Im toodling around on - and I think you build a bit better than I do.

I would be interested as well! Neither TW or Bio existed back when I stopped playing on live and seems like a good chance to give them both a go!

[Bloodofcaine]

Respectfully, the true "all-around damage king" at this time is Titan Weapon/Bio Armor for scrapper. IMO, I think it's more fun (and still very effective) to play the characters Murcielago recommended, but both numerically and in performance, TW is in a league of its own (especially with bio armor, arguably one of the best offensive sets for scrapper).

 

I would NOT recommend TW/Bio for a newcomer to melee, or a new player in general. It's not a leveling-friendly, and/or new player-friendly, set (especially combined). But it is undeniably powerful at high end.

 

That sounds about right, heck, I played coh back when it first came out and even I just floundered trying to play titan weapons. It's so damn slowwwww, and you really feel that as you're leveling up, especially if you miss. As for bio armor, it must be one of those sets that shines only at end game, I tried various archtypes with the set and couldnt stand them, only managing to get them into their upper 20s.

[Murcielago]

Respectfully, the true "all-around damage king" at this time is Titan Weapon/Bio Armor for scrapper. IMO, I think it's more fun (and still very effective) to play the characters Murcielago recommended, but both numerically and in performance, TW is in a league of its own (especially with bio armor, arguably one of the best offensive sets for scrapper).

 

I would NOT recommend TW/Bio for a newcomer to melee, or a new player in general. It's not a leveling-friendly, and/or new player-friendly, set (especially combined). But it is undeniably powerful at high end.

 

That sounds about right, heck, I played coh back when it first came out and even I just floundered trying to play titan weapons. It's so damn slowwwww, and you really feel that as you're leveling up, especially if you miss. As for bio armor, it must be one of those sets that shines only at end game, I tried various archetypes with the set and couldn't stand them, only managing to get them into their upper 20s.

TW only shines with set IOs, event at 50 TW sucks without significant end recovery.

[iBones]

Respectfully, the true "all-around damage king" at this time is Titan Weapon/Bio Armor for scrapper. IMO, I think it's more fun (and still very effective) to play the characters Murcielago recommended, but both numerically and in performance, TW is in a league of its own (especially with bio armor, arguably one of the best offensive sets for scrapper).

 

I would NOT recommend TW/Bio for a newcomer to melee, or a new player in general. It's not a leveling-friendly, and/or new player-friendly, set (especially combined). But it is undeniably powerful at high end.

 

That sounds about right, heck, I played coh back when it first came out and even I just floundered trying to play titan weapons. It's so damn slowwwww, and you really feel that as you're leveling up, especially if you miss. As for bio armor, it must be one of those sets that shines only at end game, I tried various archetypes with the set and couldn't stand them, only managing to get them into their upper 20s.

TW only shines with set IOs, event at 50 TW sucks without significant end recovery.

 

TW is solid in specific scenarios and with Bio. In practice it's clunky, awkward and generally annoying. I'm not convinced that it's "in a league of it's own". With some personal testing - I came to the conclusion that it was high(er) in damage than most, but not far and away the best. I'll take slightly less damage for sets that don't feel like im actually not super at all, and can't swing the weapon I have chosen as my way to be super.

[Kaeladin]

TW is solid in specific scenarios and with Bio. In practice it's clunky, awkward and generally annoying. I'm not convinced that it's "in a league of it's own". With some personal testing - I came to the conclusion that it was high(er) in damage than most, but not far and away the best. I'll take slightly less damage for sets that don't feel like im actually not super at all, and can't swing the weapon I have chosen as my way to be super.

 

It's totally understandable if the aesthetic or "feel" of the set isn't your preference. However, its actual numerical performance is a different story; Titan Weapon is VERY much above and beyond all sets in both ST, and arguably AOE (whirling smash primarily being the culprit, with arc of destruction being a secondary factor). As I've been developing my own iteration of Kezeal's DPS spreadsheet (soon to be disseminated), it has become evident that it does far more ST damage than its closest competitors (Katana with 2 -resistance procs, War Mace with 1 -resistance proc, Fiery Melee, Dual Blades with 2 -resistance procs); it annihilates bosses and crowds alike in general PvE play in general PvE play while also producing mind-boggling times on things such as the pylon challenge. The descriptor of "slightly less/more damage" is not accurate in this case. It is a lot more damage.

 

Again, aesthetic and feel are fine and valid ways to compare sets. But numerically, Titan Weapon (especially in conjunction with bio) is in a league of its own.

[jack_nomind]

I've seen Kaeladin's tests and agree with his methods and conclusions.  TW's drawbacks are its enormous endurance costs and higher-than-usual immobility during its attack chain.  With a full blue bar and against targets who don't leave melee, which are both very engineerable situations, it really is highest damage by a comfortable margin.