What are the current thoughts on Dark Melee/Super Reflexes?

[SomeGuy]

7 minutes ago, SemanticAntics said:

What primary/secondary would you recommend for that?

 

 

Primaries?

 

Dual Blades

Katana

Fiery Melee

Stone Melee

Titan Weapons

Martial Arts

Energy Melee

Claws

Battle Axe

War Mace

 

All those primaries will drop hard targets consistently. Energy Melee having the weakest AOE out of them all.

 

Secondaries?

 

Energy Aura

Radiation Armor

Bio Armor

Shield Defense

Invincibility

 

I personally am a big fan of secondaries with a taunt aura, and yes I know I left Willpower out of this...its a solid set just really boring to me. Each their own...

 

The first three secondaries I listed are my personal three favorites. EA being number 1 for me. It gives the least amount of offensive help compared to Rad/Bio but it's super easy to build for and has really really good survivability. All those primaries will definitely take down hard targets. You can not go wrong playing any of those. Fun matters. 

 

[SemanticAntics]

7 minutes ago, arcane said:

People are pretty down on Dark Melee here, and I get it’s not S Tier offense, but… when I have procs maxed out on Smite/Siphon/Grasp I feel just fine with it. The experience is nowhere near as bad as, say, the experience of trying to do damage with Staff Fighting or Kinetic Melee.

Oh, yeah. That's what originally attracted me to the set back on live. The old "buzzsaw" build. High recharge, quick attacks, lots of procs. Of course, proc calculations have changed quite a bit since then, but it's still decent. I'm more of a Tanker player at heart, though. Generally, I'd rather be the last one standing at the end of a protracted battle than the glass cannon that either ends fights decisively or is running back from the hospital to try again. As you might guess, I could never get the hang of Blasters.

[SomeGuy]

18 minutes ago, arcane said:

People are pretty down on Dark Melee here, and I get it’s not S Tier offense, but… when I have procs maxed out on Smite/Siphon/Grasp I feel just fine with it. The experience is nowhere near as bad as, say, the experience of trying to do damage with Staff Fighting or Kinetic Melee.

 

 

Not exactly a high bar to clear.

 

But you do bring up good points. DM is a fun set. I know I was able to solo every TF/SF in the game (except for the villain reichsman one) with a DM/BIO a few years back. 

[arcane]

35 minutes ago, SomeGuy said:

 

 

Not exactly a high bar to clear.

 

But you do bring up good points. DM is a fun set. I know I was able to solo every TF/SF in the game (except for the villain reichsman one) with a DM/BIO a few years back. 

Right - it’s a low bar. I’m just saying there are characters out there where it’s legit tedious to kill an EB or something, and DM ain’t there for me.

[SomeGuy]

2 hours ago, arcane said:

Right - it’s a low bar. I’m just saying there are characters out there where it’s legit tedious to kill an EB or something, and DM ain’t there for me.

 

 

Out of the scrapper primaries, I can legit say DM was never tedious to kill anything with. I do know it wasn't as fast as other stuff. Tedious though? Nah. Not at all. I have almost gotten there with KM a few times, but I worked a LOT to get as much as I could out of the set. Staff? Oh god. It's just noticeably bad when by myself. I wish it performed as well as it looks, cause to me, it's legit one of the best looking melee sets.

[aethereal]

2 minutes ago, SomeGuy said:

 

 

Out of the scrapper primaries, I can legit say DM was never tedious to kill anything with. I do know it wasn't as fast as other stuff. Tedious though? Nah. Not at all. I have almost gotten there with KM a few times, but I worked a LOT to get as much as I could out of the set. Staff? Oh god. It's just noticeably bad when by myself. I wish it performed as well as it looks, cause to me, it's legit one of the best looking melee sets.

 

I played a Staff stalker to 50 and it was, y'know, fine there.  Assassin's Strike + getting build up + getting Form of the Body "for free" take it from "really bad" to "fine."

 

Doesn't take it to great, mind you.

[SomeGuy]

29 minutes ago, aethereal said:

 

I played a Staff stalker to 50 and it was, y'know, fine there.  Assassin's Strike + getting build up + getting Form of the Body "for free" take it from "really bad" to "fine."

 

Doesn't take it to great, mind you.

 

 

Yeah, the stalker verion of Staff was my introduction to playing the set. I had a really fun ride to 50 with it, but I do know the group of people I played with did the lion's share of DPS work on the way. I played the set by myself at 50 and when I had it fully kitted out and...wow. Kept the costume. Gutted the set.

Edited Tuesday at 06:31 PM by SomeGuy

[bAss_ackwards]

I'm a big fan of Dark Melee and the utility it brings to the table. The single target chain of Smite > Siphon Life > Midnight Grasp is pretty solid. You can alternate between that and Smite > Epic Snipe > Midnight Grasp as well.

 

My AoE chain is as simple as a repeat of Smite > Touch of Fear (or Siphon Life > Touch of Fear for health). Touch of Fear spam is nice for the soft crowd control, but mainly the fairly large out of the box unenhanced -11.25% ToHit that it causes, and having Smite trigger the +50% Critical Strikes proc between Touch of Fear is nice. Bit of a buzz saw AoE.

 

Finally, there's the theme and visuals. This is largely ignored by gameplay/numbers folks, but for me it has been great for my main character which uses blood magic as part of her powers. The Noir alternative VFX set looks incredible in blood red!

 

As for SR, unfortunately can't speak to that. Never been a fan of it but DM/SR is one of the classics since the early days. Topping up your health at 262HP every 3 seconds is pretty good for those hits that do go through.

[venetiasilver]

52 minutes ago, bAss_ackwards said:

I'm a big fan of Dark Melee and the utility it brings to the table. The single target chain of Smite > Siphon Life > Midnight Grasp is pretty solid. You can alternate between that and Smite > Epic Snipe > Midnight Grasp as well.

 

My AoE chain is as simple as a repeat of Smite > Touch of Fear (or Siphon Life > Touch of Fear for health). Touch of Fear spam is nice for the soft crowd control, but mainly the fairly large out of the box unenhanced -11.25% ToHit that it causes, and having Smite trigger the +50% Critical Strikes proc between Touch of Fear is nice. Bit of a buzz saw AoE.

 

Finally, there's the theme and visuals. This is largely ignored by gameplay/numbers folks, but for me it has been great for my main character which uses blood magic as part of her powers. The Noir alternative VFX set looks incredible in blood red!

 

As for SR, unfortunately can't speak to that. Never been a fan of it but DM/SR is one of the classics since the early days. Topping up your health at 262HP every 3 seconds is pretty good for those hits that do go through.

I read through the I7 Arcanaville Scrapper Secondary analysis and SR did come last in his estimations.

[bAss_ackwards]

18 minutes ago, venetiasilver said:

I read through the I7 Arcanaville Scrapper Secondary analysis and SR did come last in his estimations.

There's only so much you can do for a set that mainly relies on one form of survivability. It does have that scaling resist based on missing HP, but I am unfamiliar with how well that gives your character time to recover from actually getting hit. One of the reasons I prefer Inv is because it has many layers of mitigation - capped HP, Defense, Resist. Add in DM and you've got a constant heal, soft CC, and plenty of -ToHit. I like taking Shadow Meld and Moonbeam with my DM/Inv. The quicksnipe does good damage, and Shadow Meld adds a large amount of Defense on a quick recharge to help reset the -Defense that does go through. Mine is currently 15s duration with ~30s recharge, so it can be used quite often as a form of protection from -Defense.

[SemanticAntics]

29 minutes ago, bAss_ackwards said:

There's only so much you can do for a set that mainly relies on one form of survivability. It does have that scaling resist based on missing HP, but I am unfamiliar with how well that gives your character time to recover from actually getting hit. One of the reasons I prefer Inv is because it has many layers of mitigation - capped HP, Defense, Resist. Add in DM and you've got a constant heal, soft CC, and plenty of -ToHit. I like taking Shadow Meld and Moonbeam with my DM/Inv. The quicksnipe does good damage, and Shadow Meld adds a large amount of Defense on a quick recharge to help reset the -Defense that does go through. Mine is currently 15s duration with ~30s recharge, so it can be used quite often as a form of protection from -Defense.

I played a SR/Rad Tanker to 50 a while back and found it to be quite solid. IIRC, it had 95% DDR, so precious little made more than a momentary dent in my defenses, and the scaling resists make so much more impact with the deeper HP pool Tankers have. It seemed like such a clever pairing with /Rad (giving it the damage aura and heal SR lacks), but I found the damage to be...slow. Enough to get through just about everything solo, though, so I didn't mind it. But I couldn't finish the LRSF. That last fight was a stalemate for me. If Scrapper /SR is comparable, I'm expecting great things. Even if it falls short, it'll still be very good.

[Erratic1]

2 hours ago, bAss_ackwards said:

There's only so much you can do for a set that mainly relies on one form of survivability. It does have that scaling resist based on missing HP, but I am unfamiliar with how well that gives your character time to recover from actually getting hit.

 

Really comes down to how big a chunk of health you are losing at one time. The smaller the chunks, the more it does for you. Of course you should also grab the Scaling Resist from Reactive Defenses too. Someone at one point tossed out a line about how horrible it would be to be an SR Tanker, so I made one, and to double down on being a "weak Tanker" I went Titan Weapon. Worked decently enough.

[Uncle Shags]

18 hours ago, venetiasilver said:

I read through the I7 Arcanaville Scrapper Secondary analysis and SR did come last in his estimations.

 

I built a DM/SR on test and took it for a spin. It could take 2 groups at once of CoT, Council, Arachnos, and Carnies at 54x8. It wasn't super fast, but the survivability was there.  It wasn't as tough as my SR/DM tank which can solo all 54x8 radios and up to 801.5 with endless waves of multiple groups forever, but I think 2 groups at once for a scrapper is pretty dang good.

 

I think trading survivability for damage is a delicate balance on every AT, but because of the raw damage potential of scrappers it can be a very big deal.  I compared my TW/Bio, for instance, and vs some of the 54x8 radio scene it performed noticeably better by relying on kills as mitigation.  But for other stuff (Arachnos) it melted while the DM/SR wasn't ever at risk.

[SemanticAntics]

1 hour ago, Uncle Shags said:

my SR/DM tank which can solo all 54x8 radios and up to 801.5 with endless waves of multiple groups forever

Forgive my ignorance, but what is 801.5?

[JediDave]

6 minutes ago, SemanticAntics said:

Forgive my ignorance, but what is 801.5?

Challenge missions in AE designed to be difficult

[Uncle Shags]

53 minutes ago, SemanticAntics said:

Forgive my ignorance, but what is 801.5?

 

They're player designed missions that are harder than normal content.  They get harder the higher the decimal. It's useful for testing survival.