Powerset Comparisons - Scrapper / Brutes

[natewest1987]

Hi all. 

I am trying to work out a new character and have some questions that I'm hoping someone might be able to provide insight for.

 

I really like seeing the big numbers of the Titan Weapons set, but I absolutely hate the play style.  It feels so slow and clunky.  I've messed with Hero Designer to compare power sets and it looks like scrappers massively out damage brutes, is this typically true?  The power scale in-game didn't look that different...

 

My second question is are there any sets that come close to this amount of damage without the super slow animations and preferably with an energy component.  I've never played a melee character before, but I'm looking forward to it.

[Prototech]

click fury power, drag scale from 0 to like anything else and voila your brute now outdamages your scrapper

[Without_Pause]

Scrappers out damage brutes by default. They benefit more from +dmg. If brutes can generate enough fury and add in buffs, they can go higher, but those are specific situations.  If I want energy like damage, I would look at an Elec/shield scrapper.

[Hopeling]

I really like seeing the big numbers of the Titan Weapons set, but I absolutely hate the play style. It feels so slow and clunky.

Titan Weapons is indeed very clunky until the mid-game. Once you have a gapless attack chain to make full use of Momentum, and when Build Momentum recharges in 30 seconds instead of 90 seconds, it becomes a great deal more fluid. That wind-up attack is always slow, but the next four attacks are blazing fast.

 

If you love the set conceptually and haven't played it past the teens or mid-20s, consider sticking it out a little longer.

I've messed with Hero Designer to compare power sets and it looks like scrappers massively out damage brutes, is this typically true?  The power scale in-game didn't look that different...

Scrapper base damage is 50% higher than Brutes, and they also get crits. But Brutes have Fury, which by default is set to 0 in Mids. With three damage SOs in their attacks, Brutes break even with Scrappers on damage at around 60 fury. Overall, in actual gameplay, the two deal roughly similar damage, with a slight advantage to the Scrapper once damage buffs or ATOs come into play.

 

My second question is are there any sets that come close to this amount of damage without the super slow animations and preferably with an energy component.  I've never played a melee character before, but I'm looking forward to it.

War Mace, Super Strength, and Stone Melee are all great sets for feeling smashy, and do strong damage. If you want to deal energy damage, Rad Melee is also quite good. Electric Melee is good if you don't mind being an AoE specialist.

[Some Random User]

My second question is are there any sets that come close to this amount of damage without the super slow animations and preferably with an energy component.  I've never played a melee character before, but I'm looking forward to it.

Most players are going to try to tell you that you should just make a few toons and abandon the ones that aren't fun. I don't work that way and I don't expect you to work that way either. You should have some basic info at your fingertips before you start playing. Let's get into how to get that data.

 

The first option is to open up Pine's and look at what sort of damage is inflicted by every power of every Powerset of multiple Archetypes. That sounds pretty effort intensive. The second option is to go ask on the subforums for different Archetypes. Let's look at how that is best accomplished.

 

You're really asking more than one question here. You're asking for something with certain damage Types, which is a pretty big difference between the Powersets. That really limits the options down. Most of the Powersets have only one damage Type or one main type and a second Type that edges in here and there. That alone will trip the options to maybe one to three Powersets. You can check the old wiki for some guidance on this: https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Main_Page

Note that the Homecoming team has "proliferated" some of the Powersets that used to be unique to an Archetype, adapting them to another Archetype. For example, you can play a Tanker with Claws.

 

The other question you're asking is a very different question. Base damage values from one Powerset to another matter significantly for these Archetypes. They are different in their impact for Brutes vs. Scrappers because of the way the Fury and Critical Hit mechanics work differently. To see this all you need to do is compare a Staff Fighting/anything Scrapper's [Eye of the Storm] to the same attack on an identical Brute. The bonuses they get and how they Enhance is therefore a bit different. These differences (or how things that are the same get adjusted by the Archetypes' differences) vary wildly in how obvious they are and how they affect play. For example, if you play Broad Sword/anything and you're a Scrapper the Critical Hits are huge numbers because the base damage is very high, but as a Brute the slow animations make building up your Fury bar frustrating sometimes, so the quality of life is very different. If, like me, you prefer theorycrafting a bit before making big mechanical decisions, I can give some advice. Here's what I would do:

1. [*]Saunter over to each of the Brute subforum and the Scrapper subforum and ask each of them for their advice on sets with the types of damage you want. This is the sort of question that is easy to get responses within a few hours. For bonus points mention that you know there are Enhancements that add damage procs to your attacks and ask if anyone has experience putting those all over a build and seeing what happens. Responses should flow in, along with a few "make stuff and play around" responses. You always get a few of those.

[*]Wait for a few responses. I would come back the next day to get my answers.

[*]Now that you'll have a list of options, is post again in those threads. This time, take two Powersets they mentioned and ask how fast the animations are compared to each other. This will probably get a response in a few hours. I'd again check back the next day.

[MunkiLord]

All solid advice given here so far. If it's big numbers you're looking for, have you considered a Stalker? My first one is five bars away from 50 and it does some stupid high damage.

[Zolgar]

"Brutes out damage scrappers." "scrapper out damage brutes"

 

Both are right, and both are dead frakking wrong because they are boiling a slightly complex explanation down to a single sentence.

 

Brutes vs. Scrappers: out of the box.

If an attack deals base 75 damage for a brute, it will deal 112.5 damage for a scrapper.

 

Next, we factor in +95% damage from enhancers:

Brute: 146.25

Scrapper: 219.375

 

Now, we factor for AT abilities (crit/fury):

5% of the time against minions, 10% against bosses/lts, a scrapper will deal double damage.

Brutes have a hard time maintaining an absolutely full fury bar. Since fury caps at 200%, let's assume 180%, fair?

 

Our brute, at that level of fury, will deal 281.25 damage per hit with that power.

Our scrapper, assuming it's a lt. or higher will deal approximately 240 damage on average when account for crits.

 

At this point, yes, the brute out performs the scrapper.. but this, as I said, out of the box. Just their base numbers, also here, we're in a fight, it's take the brute a few attacks to get to that 180% fury, our scrapper was full strength from the word 'go'.

 

As you start adding more damage buffs, the margin between scrapper and brute narrows, and it narrows further if we add in the scrapper ATOs which increase the chances of crits.

 

If we put them both at their damage CAP, which is +400% for scrappers, +675% for brutes:

Brute: 581.25

Scrapper: 562.5 pre crits, factor in the 10% crit chance, 618.75 average damage. The difference extends even further if we add in the scrapper ATOs.

 

What it ultimately boils down to though is this:

 

Brutes and Scrappers deal comparable amounts of damage, scrappers edge over brutes a little bit in average damage per second, but not by a large margin. Over all, scrappers tend to edge over brutes in terms of single-target DPS, brutes tend to edge over scrappers in terms of fighting a multitude of foes.

 

Scrappers are Westley, brutes are Fezzik.

[DSorrow]

Basically what Zolgar said. Also a couple of other things I consider useful to know:

• Brutes have higher base HP and max HP so +Regen or self heals will be better than on Scrappers
  
• Brutes also have higher Resistance cap so any sets that provide a lot of Resistance are better on Brutes if you have team buffs or IOs that push you to the cap
  
• Scrappers have higher base damage so any sets that provide +DMG provide more actual damage points on Scrappers (Shield, Dark Melee, Bio Armor, etc.)
  
• Scrappers also have a much easier time to reach their damage cap of 400% vs Brutes' 675%. Even with peak Fury, a Brute still needs roughly 3 SOs worth of extra damage buffs compared to a Scrapper to get to the damage cap.
  

 

For me this basically means that any resist sets that can be pushed past 75% should be played on Brutes while any sets that provide significant +DMG should be played on Scrappers. Everything else is pretty much down to preference as the difference in performance isn't all that meaningful.

[marcussmythe]

Basically what Zolgar said. Also a couple of other things I consider useful to know:

• Brutes have higher base HP and max HP so +Regen or self heals will be better than on Scrappers
  
• Brutes also have higher Resistance cap so any sets that provide a lot of Resistance are better on Brutes if you have team buffs or IOs that push you to the cap
  
• Scrappers have higher base damage so any sets that provide +DMG provide more actual damage points on Scrappers (Shield, Dark Melee, Bio Armor, etc.)
  
• Scrappers also have a much easier time to reach their damage cap of 400% vs Brutes' 675%. Even with peak Fury, a Brute still needs roughly 3 SOs worth of extra damage buffs compared to a Scrapper to get to the damage cap.
  

 

For me this basically means that any resist sets that can be pushed past 75% should be played on Brutes while any sets that provide significant +DMG should be played on Scrappers. Everything else is pretty much down to preference as the difference in performance isn't all that meaningful.

 

So what do I use Bioarmor on?  :)

[Gobbledygook]

Basically what Zolgar said. Also a couple of other things I consider useful to know:

• Brutes have higher base HP and max HP so +Regen or self heals will be better than on Scrappers
  
• Brutes also have higher Resistance cap so any sets that provide a lot of Resistance are better on Brutes if you have team buffs or IOs that push you to the cap
  
• Scrappers have higher base damage so any sets that provide +DMG provide more actual damage points on Scrappers (Shield, Dark Melee, Bio Armor, etc.)
  
• Scrappers also have a much easier time to reach their damage cap of 400% vs Brutes' 675%. Even with peak Fury, a Brute still needs roughly 3 SOs worth of extra damage buffs compared to a Scrapper to get to the damage cap.
  

 

For me this basically means that any resist sets that can be pushed past 75% should be played on Brutes while any sets that provide significant +DMG should be played on Scrappers. Everything else is pretty much down to preference as the difference in performance isn't all that meaningful.

 

So what do I use Bioarmor on?  :)

The toilet

[Zolgar]

 

So what do I use Bioarmor on?  :)

 

Literally anything because Bio is OP.

 

I've run it on scrappers and brutes both, and it's just monstrous, I've also see it quite effective on stalkers and sentinels. The only thing I don't think I really see with bio a lot is tanks, and... that's more because you don't see a lot of tanks around. (Bio is also a ted aggressive of a set for most tank builds, honestly)

[marcussmythe]

 

So what do I use Bioarmor on?  :)

 

Literally anything because Bio is OP.

 

I've run it on scrappers and brutes both, and it's just monstrous, I've also see it quite effective on stalkers and sentinels. The only thing I don't think I really see with bio a lot is tanks, and... that's more because you don't see a lot of tanks around. (Bio is also a ted aggressive of a set for most tank builds, honestly)

 

Thus the smiley in my post, as Bioarmor offers both a rather extreme +DAM bonus, and the ability to reach 90% Smash/Lethal on a Brute with pool powers and IOs.