Most damage

[hakurr]

Just verifying Energy Melee is the most single target damage dealing attack power for melee combat? And if that is the case do scrappers do the most having critical strike or do brutes do more damage with fury?

[Maelwys]

EM posseses a few very meaty attacks. But its damage output is a bit limited by animation time and nowhere to put -res procs.

If you look at Ston's Pylon times list it doesn't quite break the top 5.

 

That said, it's still pretty good damage even before you fully twink it out with IOs; and one of the set's big draws is that Energy Transfer doesn't cost any endurance.

 

In answer to your other question... Scrapper and Brute Single Target damage output is roughly similar until you include ATO enhancements. Then the Scrapper leaves the Brute in the dust. What you really need to look at is Scrappers vs Stalkers... as the latter can attain a very high Crit rate plus almost constant uptime on Build Up.

[hakurr]

Thank you for the information

[Championess]

 

14 hours ago, Maelwys said:

EM posseses a few very meaty attacks. But its damage output is a bit limited by animation time and nowhere to put -res procs.

If you look at Ston's Pylon times list it doesn't quite break the top 5.

 

That said, it's still pretty good damage even before you fully twink it out with IOs; and one of the set's big draws is that Energy Transfer doesn't cost any endurance.

 

In answer to your other question... Scrapper and Brute Single Target damage output is roughly similar until you include ATO enhancements. Then the Scrapper leaves the Brute in the dust. What you really need to look at is Scrappers vs Stalkers... as the latter can attain a very high Crit rate plus almost constant uptime on Build Up.

 

Yeah I agree with this.  If you're looking to compare best ST burst damage for EM it would be a stalker for a best comparison.  Their armor is scrapper lite but likely with maybe better more predictable crits along with having BU up more often, and access to a third extreme ST attack getting AS.  Yeah stalks get a little less aoe but there are epic aoes that you can make due with that also feed your BU recharging.

 

It is a little misleading sometimes with pylon times because like Maelwys is alluding to lots of those pylon numbers tend to depend on the various -res procs firing consistently, which EM doesnt really have ideal powers for those.  But your teammates will have those slotted, making your EM attacks much more potent than they already are.

 

Admittedly I'm a stalker homer but EM is objectively just so nasty on stalkers nowadays.

Edited January 27 by Championess

[Hjarki]

2 hours ago, Championess said:

It is a little misleading sometimes with pylon times because like Maelwys is alluding to lots of those pylon numbers tend to depend on the various -res procs firing consistently, which EM doesnt really have ideal powers for those.

It also appears he's running a sub-optimal rotation where he's only using ET once (rather than twice). I suspect he also didn't split the ATO minimize the internal recharge on Assassinate (and thus get the maximum proc rate on Hide before TF). In terms of raw non-proc/non-pet ST damage, my experience is that EM Stalkers are in a class all their own.

[Championess]

19 minutes ago, Hjarki said:

It also appears he's running a sub-optimal rotation where he's only using ET once (rather than twice). I suspect he also didn't split the ATO minimize the internal recharge on Assassinate (and thus get the maximum proc rate on Hide before TF). In terms of raw non-proc/non-pet ST damage, my experience is that EM Stalkers are in a class all their own.

 

Yeah I like to machinegun those fast ETs out whenever theres a ring on it and available.  I mean you get two pressure stacks why not use em?!

 

EM stalkers truly are yeah.  I have to remind myself not to hold my other stalker assaults to the same standard.  EM is the golden child, the rest of the assaults are the middle kid by comparison.

[aethereal]

EM is among the best ST damage sets, but not like "the uncontested first."

 

Really high-end pylon times only truly predict pylon times.  Like, if someone gets a really amazing pylon time, you know they have very good ST damage, but you don't really know if they have better ST damage than someone who gets a few seconds less.  The -res procs are the main offenders: having them go off against an even-level opponent and not be reduced by the purple patch makes them way more impactful, when essentially any other hard target that a very high-end scrapper faces will be +3.

[Stormwalker]

Having both a Claws and an EM scrapper at high-end builds, I can say that in my experience Claws (using FU -> Focus -> Slash) is slightly better at sustained DPS than EM (using ET -> TF -> ET -> BS -> EP) is.  That said, it's only slightly better, and EM has better burst damage.  On the flip side, Claws also has spectacular AoE damage output.

 

Obviously, I'm not using a snipe in either build (concept reasons), and that would alter the equation somewhat.  EM probably benefits from adding a Snipe more than Claws, since adding another attack to Claws' chain reduces your Follow-Up stacking, whereas for EM you just replace EP with the snipe straight-up and get a significant DPS boost in single-target situations.

 

In AoE situations, for Claws I go FU -> Spin -> Shockwave.  A little jousting is required to make optimum use of both AoE's since one is a PBAoE and the other is a (very large) cone.  Slotting KB -> KD in Shockwave is necessary for proper synergy.  For EM I go ET -> TF -> ET -> WH -> BS in AoE situations.  BS frequently gets skipped in this rotation due to Build Up, Hasten, or other clicks (Energize/Energy Drain/ Conserve Power/Incarnate powers). 

 

In practical experience the EM rotations frequently get modified with extra BS or EP being inserted to cherry-tap an enemy that is at too low health to be worth wasting an ET or TF on.  That's of those ways in which real gameplay differs from stuff like Pylon tests.  A quick attack that does less DPA but still defeats the enemy is better than a long wind-up that wastes most of its damage on massive overkill.  Of course, if you're going to WH again before the fight ends (and if you're not over the target cap for WH), you can just tab to a new target and let WH finish off the weakling when it comes up.

 

Similarly, in practical experience with Claws I often use modified attack chains like FU -> Focus -> Shockwave, which allows me to dribble the boss like a basketball while also KD'ing the spawn, which yields massive damage mitigation and reduces their ability to do annoying things (like summoning or debuffing or, running away).

 

Both sets are better than anything else I've tried on a Scrapper (which includes MA (x2), Katana (x2), BS (x2), DB (x3), KM, PM, StJ, DM (x2), Staff, and ElM.  I also have an Ice scrapper but she's only level 7, so it's far too soon to evaluate her performance yet), and they've well established themselves as my two favorite Scrapper primaries (DB is probably my third, but I love them all).

 

This is all anecdotal, of course, but hard testing is only so useful in this case since the available tests favor certain kinds of builds in ways that regular play may not (as the previous poster noted).

 

Regarding Secondaries, my order of strength is Shield (damage buff, plus team def buff) > Energy Aura (best overall defensive set, recharge bonus) > SR (adds recharge and stays out of your way so you can focus purely on offense) >> everything else, with the caveat that I have not played Bio (It's U-G-L-Y and it ain't got no alibi) or Rad (just can't come up with a concept for it).  My favorite is Energy Aura, followed closely by SR.

Edited Thursday at 06:28 PM by Stormwalker
knew I was forgetting one

[Without_Pause]

Things to note, EM can do a truck load of damage which means you can overkill in terms of damage. Also, Em is going to be less resisted than Claws so there will be times EM is simply outputting more damage depending on the target.