Building a Savage Melee/Shield Scrapper.. best place for the ATO's?

[Heatstroke]

I dont play scrappers very much, but trying something different. Which powers would be best to put the scrapper ATO's on in a Savagle build? I believe Ive seen that some powers wont crit because of the way they work, and again i dont have much experience with scrappers.. 

 

Thanks in Advance

Edited Wednesday at 05:33 PM by Heatstroke
spelling errors corrected

[aethereal]

All Savage powers crit.  Shield Charge doesn't crit.

 

The ATO1 can be anywhere; it's a global effect.  For max dps, you'd probably mule it in an unused power since it doesn't contribute damage or other desired attributes to the power it's slotted in.

 

The ATO2 is probably best in either vicious slash or maiming slash if you want to use it for sustained DPS.

[Uun]

The Critical Strikes proc doesn't apply to the power it's slotted in, it increases your critical hit chance by 50% for 3.25s following execution of the attack (after a 0.5s animation). To make best use of that window, you want to slot the proc in a power with a short animation time after effect so that you can squeeze 2 attacks into the 3.25s. For Savage Melee that's going to be Maiming Slash or Savage Strike.

[aethereal]

3 hours ago, Uun said:

The Critical Strikes proc doesn't apply to the power it's slotted in, it increases your critical hit chance by 50% for 3.25s following execution of the attack (after a 0.5s animation). To make best use of that window, you want to slot the proc in a power with a short animation time after effect so that you can squeeze 2 attacks into the 3.25s. For Savage Melee that's going to be Maiming Slash or Savage Strike.

 

Savage Strike is a pretty low-DPA filler attack, and its 2.5 second base recharge time means that it probably won't be able to be used on cooldown.  I think this more-than-counteracts its 0.4 second advantage in animation-time-after-effect.  Honestly, the 5 second base recharge time of Maiming Slash is also pretty easy to exceed (especially on a set that gets a large native global recharge bonus), and it might be a good idea to go to Vicious Slash instead.

[Uun]

30 minutes ago, aethereal said:

Savage Strike is a pretty low-DPA filler attack, and its 2.5 second base recharge time means that it probably won't be able to be used on cooldown.  I think this more-than-counteracts its 0.4 second advantage in animation-time-after-effect.  Honestly, the 5 second base recharge time of Maiming Slash is also pretty easy to exceed (especially on a set that gets a large native global recharge bonus), and it might be a good idea to go to Vicious Slash instead.

Your call. Be aware that you would be cutting the proc window to 2.6s and likely would be unable to buff more than one attack.

 

Another option you might want to experiment with is slotting it in Savage Leap. I'm not sure if the proc fires when you take off or when you land. Could be interesting if it buffed the AoE attack at landing. Has anyone tried this?

[aethereal]

8 minutes ago, Uun said:

Your call. Be aware that you would be cutting the proc window to 2.6s and likely would be unable to buff more than one attack.

 

Vicious Slash has a cast arcanatime of 1.848 seconds, there's no reason to imagine that following a successful proc of Critical Strikes in Maiming Slash, you couldn't Vicious Slash then do whatever other attack you're running (Hemorrhage if you run it, or like an epic snipe or whatever) within the window.  It shouldn't even be hard.

 

In contrast, if you put it in Savage Strike and then activate two attacks afterward, you're probably cutting your effective proc rate by 50% (in addition to lowering your overall DPS by very heavily using a low-DPA attack).

Edited Thursday at 09:01 PM by aethereal

[Uun]

I was suggesting not to put the proc in Vicious Slash. Putting the proc in Maiming Slash and following it with Vicious Slash (and another attack) is fine.

[aethereal]

2 hours ago, Uun said:

I was suggesting not to put the proc in Vicious Slash. Putting the proc in Maiming Slash and following it with Vicious Slash (and another attack) is fine.

Well, specifically you were suggesting that Savage Strike might be a better place than either Maiming Slash or Vicious Slash.  But Savage Strike is almost certainly inferior to Maiming Slash.

 

You're only looking at half of the story.  Yes, getting enough window to launch two attacks is important, but so is maximizing the number of procs -- like, trivially, if you have half as many times that the window activates, then even if you're getting two attacks compared to one, you don't come out ahead.

 

Maximizing the number of procs means using the attack on cooldown.  If it's sitting fully recharged, you're wasting proc opportunities.  In an environment in which you'll probably have north of 200% recharge, that means that Savage Strike recharges in 0.83 seconds and Maiming Slash recharges in 1.67 seconds.  That means that in general you'll have a lot of time sitting around with those powers off recharge.

 

Does that fully compensate for the reduced window that you'd get from putting the proc in Vicious Strike, and the fact that a your harder-hitting attack would definitionally not be in the proc window?  Well...  I don't know.  It depends on what else is in your attack chain, and exactly how much recharge you have, etc.  There's no one generic answer.

 

I think that Maiming Slash is plausibly the best place for the ATO2 in many Savage builds.  I think Vicious Slash might be a good place in others, especially if you're using Hemorrhage and en epic snipe, so Vicious Slash is only your third heaviest hitter.

 

I think that a downside of Savage is that it doesn't have a super great place for the ATO2 where you're just like, "Oh yeah that's obviously the right spot for it" (largely because Hemorrhage is underwhelming).

Edited yesterday at 02:46 AM by aethereal

[Uun]

12 hours ago, aethereal said:

Well, specifically you were suggesting that Savage Strike might be a better place than either Maiming Slash or Vicious Slash. 

Please re-read my first post at the top of the thread in which I recommend but the proc in Maiming Slash or Savage Strike. While Maiming Slash is certainly superior, not having information on the OP's build, I assumed they didn't take both T1 powers and only one of the two would be available.