Elec Melee or Savage Melee /SD? A few questions and build request

[Warlawk]

So I tinkered with a EM/SD Stalker and it just wasn't tickling my pickle. The whole stealth and managing stacks mini game isn't terrible but not what I want out of my core game play so I'm going to be rolling up a scrapper for similar play.

 

I haven't gotten around to playing savage melee yet and figured this might be a good time to try it out, I know EM single target damage is a bit lackluster outside of stalkers so that would be a gain in switching the combo to SM. Pines and the character creation screen both don't seem to list the damage for savage leap so I can't compare directly to Lightning Rod. I assume with the much lower cooldown the damage will be lower but I tend to prefer attacks I can use more often anyways. With rending flurry I imagine the AOE will be fairly comparable to EM for clearing packs while having better single target damage than EM would.

 

I continually hear that Hemorrhage is terrible on scrappers but no information as to why. Is it just a matter of heavy dot damage not critting and competing for your frenzy stacks?

 

If anyone has a defense capped build they wouldn't mind sharing I would appreciate it. I plan to pull the IOs from my stalker and transfer them. I imagine the IO build will be quite similar but seeing the build itself would be great. I'm just not rich enough yet to have two very expensive builds, lol.

 

Thanks in advance!

[Rumors]

I can't comment much on SD.  Or EM.  Played them, but never got them very high way back on live.  Although Lightning Rod + Shield Charge is supposed to be really fun and looks stupidly strong.

 

According to Kael's spreadsheet, Savage has very high single target damage potential under ideal conditions.  Although in practice it'll be a little bit lower due to Lethal resistance everywhere and its weirdness with crits.  It's not a particularly bursty set though, since Blood Thirst has much lower damage values than normal Build Up, although it does last long and also combats Exhausted.  But the damage is very steady overall.

 

Not 100% sure how AoE compares to EM, I assume EM will be stronger if just because Lightning Rod and since Savage Leap only does max damage at max range.  However, the AoE is still pretty good since Leap and empowered Rending Flurry are very big AoEs and it pairs well with an APP AoE attack to quickly clear the chaff from a spawn.  You can make a good ST/AoE hybrid toon out of Savage.

 

One difference I am aware of though is Lightning Rod apparently you can pinpoint the spot you want to go to.  Savage Leap targets a mob.  Therefore, LR is probably better in situations where mobs are spread out a bit but still all in range even if they do identical damage.  LR also looks way cooler.

 

 

Hemmorage is bad because of the combination of losing your Blood Frenzy stacks (which each give about 4% recharge/endurance discount, up to ~20% max) and going into Exhausted when empowered, which keeps you from rebuilding new stacks until it wears off.  You can get around this by only using empowered Hemmorage when you have Blood Thirst (about to come) up, but Hemmorage straight-up still does not do enough damage and either still lags a little behind a basic ST chain or breaks even in terms of DPS.  So, unless you like the power and/or want it for concept, you're better using the power pick and slots elsewhere.  Hemmorage also has the issue where most targets weaker than an Elite Boss, and sometimes even them, go down too quickly for Hemmorage to finish ticking in a team setting.  If the move hit harder, or had some utility, then it'd be an entirely different story.

 

Stalker Hemmorage is much better, as I've heard it crits harder from stealth than Assassin's Strike and is more usable in general.  But, I don't have any sort of Stalker and haven't played one since Live so... I'll let someone more experienced comment/explain there.

[Warlawk]

Thank you, I appreciate the insight here.

 

Doesn't seem to be a combination that gets much attention, can't seem to find anyone that's got a build for it and I go crosseyed digging through pines for too long, lol.

[drdeath50]

I have a 45 scrapper SM/SD. Not sure why but I can't stop trying to ( Fix ) it. I want to love SM and I do love SM...Just not sure how to make it work. I feel SM needs decent IO's maybe even ATO's?

      I am not sure as I am still coming back to the game and to be honest I was not great at it in the first place. Just followed builds, I rerolled SM/Bio to maybe see how it works.

 

The only thing I can say about SM/SD is, in my head I wanted to savage leap and then do shield charge and follow up rending fury. SL seems to miss randomly or not do dmg at all. Which I have never encountered with LR. LR+SC will be a better combo but something about bleeds just makes me feel like it...should...be...good? or fun? idk. Dmg feels ok for what it is never really had a problem at all until I tried to do a couple AE's and my low SD came into play and I died.

 

Hemo I feel like is a great attack though. when it crits it does a lot of damage the DoT seems nice but it does feel like getting exhausted makes the set feel clunky and you are not rewarded for doing what you do best...dmg..this may not have helped at all just my 2 cents. Im gonna try SM/Bio maybe the dmg aura will help some...we will see! Guess I could roll stalker and just hemo crit everything lol.