Crabby thoughts

[Snarky]

I am making my first Crab in forever.  I love that they changed animations so the soldier attacks use arms now.  
 

My Crab is fully ranged and AoE centric. Because thats what I like and it is hard to get them to do much else. 
 

I have not really built it in Mids yet.  I have poked around. This will be using 5 of the Bombardment sets.  Some may be Frankenslotted, but at least two Bombx5 so I get a +25% range on everything.

 

I will be pushing at least some global recharge goals. Not going for perma dom numbers, but the slow recharge on the Dull Pain power and Ghetto Nuke call out for a fast clock.  
 

I doubt I can get ranged defense, or even seriously up my resistance beyond the not bad but not great level Crabs seem to sit on, especially when I am prioritizing the above goals. I see shoveling out range damage maniacally to be both a job and a defense.  It is so awesome the nuke has a taunt, and i have venom grenade to blow through resists.  Now to assembly line the F-ers.  
 

Lastly, in my confused mind I would have swore Crabs had a strange half cape that came up to their backpack/mid back but I cannot find that anywhere.   Is the old vampire mixing up memories of a by gone time?

Edited March 1 by Snarky

[Burnt Umber]

So, besides Venom Grenade, Wide Area Web Grenade and Frag Grenade are great power picks, and the immobilize will certainly help keep your foes at range.  Your +25% range goal would lend itself to the cone damage powers Heavy Burst and Suppression; dipping into Leviathan also gives the Bile Spray and Arctic Breath cones, with the latter giving more -Resist on top of Venom.  Although it will perhaps compete for slots for Bombardment, the Artillery ranged AoE Damage sets will give more range to your powers and give lots of Ranged defense.

 

On that note, ranged defense is relatively easy to come by for Crabs, I think.  The Tactical Training: Defensive passive gives unenhanced 7.5% ranged (bumped up to 12.5% with enhancements).  6-slotting your native Manuevers as well as Leadership's with Red Fortune will provide some ranged defense; 6-slotting Lightning Strike in your couple of single target ranged attacks also will provide some ranged defense; and 6-slotting Blood Mandate into whatever pets you get gives a good amount of ranged and AoE defense.  Your resists are middling natively, but that can be upped a bit depending on your slotting.

 

Serum (the Dull Pain like power) can become permanent without heavy investment into recharge, and I like slotting it with Preventative Medicine.  I'd temper my expectations for Omega Maneuver (the quasi-nuke):  it does poor damage and has somewhat poor range so it may end up a dropped power, but your mileage may very.

 

Unfortunately, you are remembering the way that Banes get capes from their backpacks.  Crabs get the gnarly arms instead.

 

Additionally, you didn't mention it, but be sure to slot the SoA ATO enhancement for global toxic damage somewhere in your build.  It procs frequently enough to be really helpful.

Edited March 1 by Burnt Umber

[Neiska]

I've leveled 3 Crabbys, and found they are best built two general ways -

1. Recharge focused - this is for the crabbermind setup. Boats meduim resistances and good defense with perma-pets. Often runs both sets of team toggles. Fantastic for teams but kind of slow to solo with. The downsides is it can be fairly END intense, and the pets don't last on higher difficulties, even if you focus on making them as tough as possible.

2. Durability focused - Crabbys can actually get up to 85% resists, and its fairly easy to cap their defenses. Which means you can make a very durable hover-crabber with lots of AOE and debuffs. You don't "have" to use pets, but it helps. If you go pet-less you have more power picks and many slots to use tough. The downside for a supertough crab is it lacks single target, but often enough I was more durable than the tanker or brute on the team.

 

What I found worked best for me, was to have 1 build of each, and swap between them depending on the activity I was doing. If I was teaming, I would go crabbermind. If I was doing solo on harder difficulty, I went Tanky Crab. Other people may have other styles they like of course, but this is just what worked fantastically for me.

Edited March 2 by Neiska

[Snarky]

4 hours ago, Neiska said:

I've leveled 3 Crabbys, and found they are best built two general ways -

1. Recharge focused - this is for the crabbermind setup. Boats meduim resistances and good defense with perma-pets. Often runs both sets of team toggles. Fantastic for teams but kind of slow to solo with. The downsides is it can be fairly END intense, and the pets don't last on higher difficulties, even if you focus on making them as tough as possible.

2. Durability focused - Crabbys can actually get up to 85% resists, and its fairly easy to cap their defenses. Which means you can make a very durable hover-crabber with lots of AOE and debuffs. You don't "have" to use pets, but it helps. If you go pet-less you have more power picks and many slots to use tough. The downside for a supertough crab is it lacks single target, but often enough I was more durable than the tanker or brute on the team.

 

What I found worked best for me, was to have 1 build of each, and swap between them depending on the activity I was doing. If I was teaming, I would go crabbermind. If I was doing solo on harder difficulty, I went Tanky Crab. Other people may have other styles they like of course, but this is just what worked fantastically for me.

I mixed the two concepts.  Some recharge, some def/res/+heal/+end   

 

I find the Crab a muddied up mix or armored toon and Corruptor.  Unlike Sentinel armored/blaster.  I just built to its strengths and patched a bit and walked away thinking...meh...

 

 

Arachnos Soldier (Crab Spider Soldier - Crab Spider Training) Crab 2024 1.01.mbd

[Epoh_Imagiro]

@Neiska Would you be willing to share your tanky crab?

[Neiska]

2 hours ago, Epoh_Imagiro said:

@Neiska Would you be willing to share your tanky crab?

 

It's the "Sin's Hovercrab" in this post. - 

 

[freedan48]

This is Mids File for my Crab-Mind. Heavy Focus on Fire Power, along with keeping them pets out... if you like pets. but maybe worth a look. maybe worth some ideas. Also very Tanky.

Sakura Blackstar - Arachnos Crab Spider Soldier.mxd

Edited March 7 by freedan48
forgot to mention tankiness

[Burnt Umber]

On 3/2/2024 at 7:29 PM, Snarky said:

I mixed the two concepts.  Some recharge, some def/res/+heal/+end   

 

I find the Crab a muddied up mix or armored toon and Corruptor.  Unlike Sentinel armored/blaster.  I just built to its strengths and patched a bit and walked away thinking...meh...

 

 

Arachnos Soldier (Crab Spider Soldier - Crab Sider Training) Crab 2024 1.01.mbd 43.22 kB · 15 downloads

 

Looking at the build, it seems like you are frequently breaking your sets to frakenslot more expensive sets into the mix or over-/underslotting things with expensive uniques.  I think that might be contributing to your "muddied" feel.  Some of that might be fixed by taking more essential powers sooner, and reallocating slots from passives to you active powers.  For example, you take aim early on and 4-slot it with Gaussian's, but leave the more important TT: Maneuvers until the 40s - even though it's a core power to your defense - and underslot it.  I'm not sure I fix your problem and it certainly isn't perfect, but here's a revised version of yours:

 

 

Crab 2024 revised.mbd

[victusfate]

After some tinkering and I ended up dropping some of my pets (the tier1 -2 level ones) and slotting up heavier attacks. They just are too squishy with a long cooldown. This may be an older spec

 

I ended up skipping regular leadership for endurance reasons..

 

AA_DeathClawVictus_Crab.mxd

Edited April 21 by victusfate