Axe/rad armor slotting archetype enhancements

[RooGirl]

Which archetype enhancements should I get -- I'm mostly solo levelling so thinking Unrelenting Fury -- and in what power should I slot them?

 

Thanks, go easy on me, I'm old and playing with Merit Rewards for the first time. Not min-maxing, just having fun.

[Maelwys]

I'd shy away from the ATOs as the Brute ones really don't give you much bang for your buck.
The Set Bonuses are decent; but the Procs/Globals are rubbish and it's quite expensive to slot multiple ATOs for the set bonuses.

Instead; I'd look at a few choice regular IOs... although instead of purchasing these via Reward Merits you'll get a far better return by spending your Reward Merits on Enhancement Boosters or Convertors + then selling these on the Auction House and using the proceeds to buy whatever IOs you want.

Battle Axe is very endurance intensive; but Rad Armor can alleviate that via sticking a Theft of Essence Proc in Radiation Therapy.
The main thing that'll help your overall performance is putting a Force Feedback Procs in both Axe Cyclone (most important!) and Pendulum. If you want to push things further then offensively you can also use "chance for -resistance" procs; Fury of the Gladiator fits into Axe Cyclone and Achilles Heel fits into Chop or Beheader or even Beta Decay (which is a toggle and so will have a lower activation rate; but is an AoE so will potentially hit more targets!)... and defensively you'll benefit greatly from the Reactive Defenses and Shield Wall +Resistance globals and anything that boosts Maximum HP (Unbreakable Guard global being the big one).

Once your Resistances are sufficiently high you could then look into pushing your Defense up a bit; but another way to go that won't require as much effort/compromise is Healing Procs. You can stick these in Health (Panacea) and in Stamina and Gamma Boost (Power Transfer) as well as potentially also in Superior Conditioning and Physical Perfection from the Energy Mastery epic pool (Power Transfer) and they'll happily keep ticking away - on average each kicking in once every 20 seconds.

One of the big selling points of Rad Armor is additional AoE damage via Ground Zero (as it hits a very large number of targets and takes lots of damage procs) and Radiation Therapy (which can also be slotted up for damage procs). So eventually I'd recommend getting at least Ground Zero procced up... but for Battle Axe it'll be a lower priority than other primaries since you already have so much AoE capability.

 

[WuTang]

Man I haven't thought of this combo! This will be AOE madness! 

 

Rad armor is a great set, very easy to get resistances nice and high. Then couple that with all the KU and KD in Battle Axe and the shield from Rad talk about mitigation. Oh man, gotta have one now! But I might make it a Tank instead...

 

Everything that @Maelwyssaid is very true. Proc'd out, the AOEs in Rad are mini nukes. Axe Cyclone takes procs very well too.

 

Have fun with it. There are so many different ways to slot...

[RooGirl]

13 hours ago, Maelwys said:

Instead; I'd look at a few choice regular IOs... although instead of purchasing these via Reward Merits you'll get a far better return by spending your Reward Merits on Enhancement Boosters or Convertors + then selling these on the Auction House and using the proceeds to buy whatever IOs you want.

 

I love this detailed and extensive response. Thank you so much! 

 

11 hours ago, WuTang said:

Oh man, gotta have one now! But I might make it a Tank instead...

I almost went with tank, but I like the extra damage and the fury mechanic. (I often stealth my scrapper through missions, so it's good to have just a pure KILL ALL toon.) I cannot remember how I ended up with this combo but I am loving it to death! I've recreated my favorite scrapper (RooGirl) from Live, but my brute is higher level than her now because she's just so frigging fun.