Spines advice

[TheMoncrief]

I've been leveling a Spines/Bio Brute, and I'm wondering if I've made a horrible mistake. The AoE is OK, well mostly the double damage auras, but the single target seems particularly bad. Maybe I'm just spoiled having come recently from leveling a Claws/EA Scrapper, what with Claws being surprisingly strong, much faster animating, and having roughly similar AoE layout other than the lack of a damage aura.

 

It's not unplayably bad by any stretch, just very underwhelming. Any advice on how to leverage Spines advantages to make a decent character? 

[Maelwys]

8 minutes ago, TheMoncrief said:

Any advice on how to leverage Spines advantages to make a decent character? 

Short Answer: AoE things. ALL the things.

My first foray into Spines was a Spines/DA Scrapper Issue 7 or so.
Leaping from spawn to spawn with double Damage Auras and Spine Burst after setting them up with Throw Spines + Energy Torrent was hilarious.
Endurance Management was a challenge until IOs and Alpha Slots; but ST damage was and still is pretty rubbish - because that's not what Spines is about.

That said... IIRC the best DPA attack in the entire powerset is the T1 (Barb Swipe) which procs really badly. However Ripper and Lunge aren't quite utterly horrendous and thanks to the redraw not causing any delays nowadays you can always pick up more attacks from pool powers (like Arcane Bolt or Cross Punch) or your Epic Pool (Gloom is great; and opens the way to Dark Obliteration. Spirit Shark is the other obvious standout, or possibly a procced-out Char)?

[Grimm2]

Yeah, Scrapper Claws compares so favorably to Anything Spines. That being said, I like Spines' look, and I've had tons of fun with it despite it not being a top performer with Brute, Tank, and Stalker (144 vet levels on Spine/Stone Brute, and I have a Bio/Spine Tank). With Bio, you probably have the best case setup for Spines (I think Stone Armor is a close second). I'm not a build savant and I copy a lot of builds, but here's my 2 inf.

 

- Spines needs Throw Spines to come together. It's always amazing to me how shit the set feels before Throw Spines is slotted, and how it makes sense after. 

 

-Barb Swipe is superior to Impale (except on Stalker). I agree with Maelwys. Stalkers appreciate the bigger predictable crit, but weaving in a Swipe feels better to me otherwise. Even in a team Swipe-Lunge-Swipe gets you in on that boss-mashing action. Throw Spines has a comparable DPA to Impale, as well. 

 

-Work on a hard target, letting Throw Spines and Ripper hit everything else. Spine Burst will slow you down. As you've seen, hard targets are the sticking point for clearing a spawn. I only use Spine Burst when I'm lazy about pressing buttons or I'm exemplared. 

 

Spines has some nifty slotting options worth mentioning. 

-Ripper will take a FF+rech, always good for Bio.

-Most attacks do minor -Spd, but Throw Spines does a hefty 40%. This works well with 2 Winter IOs + 4 Ice Mistral's, getting you 25% slow resist, HP, some acc, and 50% slow. Slow res is excellent for Bio, and the slow messes with enemy AI.

-In your case, you have 2 dmg auras, excellent places for the Brute ATO sets.