Claws/RAD or EA?

[Wolfboy1]

So I have played a Claws/Elec before and honestly didn't really care for it.  But I do hear that Rad and EA are really awesome on a Claws build so I guess what I am asking is: why?  What gives those two the big "This is really good" vibe to the secondaries?   (other than /Bio but I have no interest in a /bio char.)  Is it better to go for /EA's +Def with its +Res additions or go with /Rads +Res with a bunch of utility (at least from what I have seen)?  At this point I have a bit of choice paralysis so if anyone can give me the bump needed to go one or the other please do! 🙂

 

I saw someones claws/rad showcase on the forums and it was pretty impressive but couldn't find something for /EA.  

Edited June 24 by Wolfboy1

[Erratic1]

EA gets you +Recharge while in the midst of enemies. 

[Wolfboy1]

Also, I've noticed quite a few peeps skipping Eviscerate.  Is it not a good power?

[Story Archer]

On 6/24/2025 at 6:19 PM, Wolfboy1 said:

Also, I've noticed quite a few peeps skipping Eviscerate.  Is it not a good power?

 

It's a very good power, your most damaging one from a burst standpoint, with a higher than normal chance to Crit. However, it also has a longer activation time than anything else in your arsenal and roots you while it goes off, which diametrically opposes the playstyle encouraged by Claws as a whole. Claws has fast recharging, fast activating powers which can be very efficient when fully taken advantage of. I used Eviscerate for a long time and promoted it, but when I finally dropped it in favor of Shockwave, my entire approach (and my entire appreciation) of the Claws set really elevated.

 

Against large groups, a Claws character is much more effective using Follow-Up and Spin, jumping/moving back a step and using Shockwave to knock everyone down before jumping back in. Your survivability goes through the roof with this approach - just make sure you have a KB to KD IO slotted into Shockwave. Against solo foes, Shockwave and Focus usually give you enough cycling KD to keep a guy on his back for most of the fight.

 

Eviscerate can admittedly hit hard, but every time you use it to deal 500 damage when you only needed 150 damage to finish off a guy, it's a waste of time and energy. Chaining together Claws' faster, lighter attacks is usually much more efficient.

 

As far as armors go, I play mine with Bio - like you, I initially had no interest in it, but eventually I got turned around and now it's my favorite Scrapper armor. Generally speaking though, I suggest Resistance-based armors for Brutes & Tankers and Defense-based armors for Scrappers and Stalkers, so of the two you mentioned, I'd recommend going with EA. There are some nice IO slotting tricks that you can use to boost your defenses with that set even further. Ninjitsu is also a good choice because of its useful toolbox and the fact that it uses positional defense instead of typed defense.

 

Edited Thursday at 06:01 PM by Story Archer

[SomeGuy]

On 6/24/2025 at 5:19 PM, Wolfboy1 said:

Also, I've noticed quite a few peeps skipping Eviscerate.  Is it not a good power?

 

 

No, it is not a good power.

 

Does it have the most burst/frontloaded in the set? Yes. Does it have a higher then normal crit chance? Also yes. Does this make it good? No. It has a really long animation time for the DPS. So, I don't think it is. The animation looks cool, but so many attacks in Claws are fast charging that the ones you really want are more then likely going to be recharged during the animation and waiting.

Edited Thursday at 06:16 PM by SomeGuy

[Wolfboy1]

7 hours ago, Story Archer said:

 

It's a very good power, your most damaging one from a burst standpoint, with a higher than normal chance to Crit. However, it also has a longer activation time than anything else in your arsenal and roots you while it goes off, which diametrically opposes the playstyle encouraged by Claws as a whole. 

 

Really appreciate the detailed explanation.  I did eventually did go with EA (though really wish the heal was a bit sooner).  Level 12 with him now.

 

I do have to wonder why a lot of people though really like /Rad?  If defensive is better on scrappers after all.  Maybe it has more DPS later?  

[Due Regard]

The bias is due to Tanks/Brutes having larger HP pools and a 90% resist cap. On the other hand, the higher lethality of Scrappers/Stalkers benefits them with defense sets. Dead mobs don't deal DPS. (Note numbers are for illustration, only.)

e.g. 3 mob spawn dies in 12 seconds (4 sec/kill) vs 18 (6 sec/kill), each mob firing attacks every 2 seconds.

High damage takes 3, 3, 2, 2, 1, 1 for a total of 12 attacks, 1200 damage.
vs
Low damage takes 3, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2, 1, 1, 1 for a total of 18 attacks, 1800 damage.

That's 1200 on 1500 HP, 80% of HP.
That's 1800 on 2000 HP, 90% of HP

1500 HP resisting 100 damage hits to 25 = ~1.67% of total HP

1200 damage x 25% = 300 damage taken, 20% of total HP

vs.

2000 HP resisting 100 damage hits to 10 = 0.5% of total HP
1800 damage x 10% = 180 damage taken, 9% of total HP

Now, of course, that assumes perfect accuracy. Mobs only hit 50% of the time, and we'll set to 0% resistance.
600 damage vs 900 damage, 40% vs 45%
Defense adds to that, we'll say +25%, for Mob ToHit of 25%:
300 damage (20%) vs 450 damage (22.5%)

You'll notice, regardless of the trending, it is not so much that the Defense sets are "better" on Scrappers/Stalkers, it is more that their increased damage allows them to take less damage due to defeat mitigation, and so Defense performs better. The example here has damage killing ~50% faster, and the tankier class is taking ~50% more damage as a result.

I've always been vocal about increasing the Scrapper/Stalker (Sentinel) Resist cap to 80%, which helps to show those AT's are "tougher" than the squishies (without AT mezz protection), but not tougher than EAT's (85%) or meat shields (90%). But, that's neither here nor there.

All numbers were plucked from my brain (mayhaps the one I sit on) and not rigorously sourced; they are for example only.

Addendum: So, it is also not that Resist sets are BAD on Stalkers/Scrappers, they're just worse than on Tanks/Brutes. Compared to the squishy classes, they're still perfectly viable and mitigating damage. Radiation Armor brings significant utility to both the Scrapper and the team, unlike Fiery Aura or Electric Armor, and without the perceived Endurance weakness of Dark Armor. This helps to shore up the perceived value against Defense based armors.

Edited Friday at 04:32 AM by Due Regard
Addendum to actually address the question

[Story Archer]

15 hours ago, Wolfboy1 said:

Really appreciate the detailed explanation.  I did eventually did go with EA (though really wish the heal was a bit sooner).  Level 12 with him now.

 

I do have to wonder why a lot of people though really like /Rad?  If defensive is better on scrappers after all.  Maybe it has more DPS later?  

 

Also throwing out there that Defense is generally considered better than Res because it protects you from stacking debuffs, BUT there are also a lot of stacking Defensive debuffs out there which can crash you hard (often referred to as 'cascading defensive failure'), so you need to keep DDR in mind and try to layer your defenses as much as possible with Defense, Resistance, Absorb Shields, Heals, damage debuffs, etc. That's one of the reasons why I've come to love Bio-Armor so much, those Absorb shields are golden.

 

I'm actually a huge fan of Rad Armor (my favorite Tanker and most prolific farmer is a SS/Rad). The main reasons why some people tend to love Rad so much are as follows:

• Highly resistant to Energy drain/Recovery debuffs which are a PAIN when you have to deal with them, especially solo.
• Highly resistant to Energy damage which can be a difficult thing to achieve in many other builds.
• Big absorb shield to compliment its Resistances.
• Meltdown is a great T9 power with no downside, which usually isn't the case.
• Beta Decay is a really nice power that does a lot for you that's easy to overlook.
• Ground Zero is easily proc-able into a potent fast-recharging mini-nuke, and if you're creative, you can do the same thing with Radiation Therapy as well. 

Until recently I'd say that the last reason is the biggest one by far, but with the recent patch I haven't checked to see how much those proc bombs have been affected yet, so that might have diminished its allure a little.

 

 

[Story Archer]

13 hours ago, Due Regard said:

You'll notice, regardless of the trending, it is not so much that the Defense sets are "better" on Scrappers/Stalkers, it is more that their increased damage allows them to take less damage due to defeat mitigation, and so Defense performs better. The example here has damage killing ~50% faster, and the tankier class is taking ~50% more damage as a result.

 

Just interjecting that this is one of the reasons why Bio-Armor is so popular with some, particularly on Scrappers (and Stalkers, I suppose, I don't play them) - it contributes to 'defeat mitigation' in a big way and provides some sneaky defensive benefits that can help you get past traditional caps, like the damage debuff caused by Genetic Contamination.

[venetiasilver]

6 minutes ago, Story Archer said:

 

Just interjecting that this is one of the reasons why Bio-Armor is so popular with some, particularly on Scrappers (and Stalkers, I suppose, I don't play them) - it contributes to 'defeat mitigation' in a big way and provides some sneaky defensive benefits that can help you get past traditional caps, like the damage debuff caused by Genetic Contamination.

One of the big reasons Dark Armor was a big success was it had multiple avenues of mitigation.
High Resists and Healing + CC.

[Story Archer]

On 7/11/2025 at 12:16 PM, venetiasilver said:

One of the big reasons Dark Armor was a big success was it had multiple avenues of mitigation.
High Resists and Healing + CC.

 

Very, very true. I put together a completely unkillable MA/Dark tanker that pretty much capped Defenses, Resistances, had that huge Heal up every 15 seconds or so AND could either stack fear or stun AoE.  Just insane.

 

Edited Monday at 07:42 PM by Story Archer