Savage Melee and Street Justice

[JasperStone]

I just realized I haven't played either.

Pros and cons, if you please.

 

[Vanden]

Street Justice pros: Punches

Street Justice cons: Weak on non-Stalkers

[PoptartsNinja]

Savage Melee pros: The set is pretty great on Brutes, since it builds a stacking/spending resource that helps it attack faster. If you've got an armor set that needs all or most of its picks, Savage lets you safely skip 3 powers (Shred, Hemorrhage, Taunt) so you can pick up a few pool powers you might need. It's a very efficient (end cost) attack set so it pairs really well with armor sets that don't have any built-in endurance recovery like Super Reflexes or Invulnerability.

 

Savage Melee cons: Spending Blood Frenzy and exhausting yourself kind of sucks, so you have to either pop your spenders at 4 blood frenzy or avoid popping them at all. All of the sets AoEs are spenders, and of those I only consider Rending Flurry to be decent. Shred and Hemorrhage are kind of a waste of your time.

 

The set is still really fun on brutes because of the built-in recharge boosting from Blood Frenzy,

[Go0gleplex]

Street Justice has seemingly slow attack delivery and weaker damage comparatively to some other melee sets. Nice variety and all, but just comes off as lacking IMO. 

 

Savage Melee...attacks have a rather fast delivery and when slotted well can really rip through mobs, especially on a brute as noted. Have both a SM/Reg and SM/PsyA Brute, the latter I'm running at +1 and both tend to go full quissinart once they've gotten ramped up. I find it more fun than SJ to run. 

[Maelwys]

3 hours ago, Vanden said:

Street Justice cons: Weak on non-Stalkers

 

Same for Savage Melee TBH.

(or more accurately, it's reasonable on other ATs but very strong on Stalkers)

 

Even just swapping Blood Thirst for Build Up is a major buff since you really want to avoid the 15 second lockout on building Blood Frenzy stacks...

[Spaghetti Betty]

My main Scrapper is StJ. so I can speak on that!

 

The good news is it feels very fun to play! The delivery on every attack feels right, and the combo system is pretty straightforward and easy to pick up! Crushing Uppercut is easily one of the most satisfying things to hit in the game. You'll feel very rewarded for landing one!

 

Now onto the not so great stuff! If you're playing on anything other than a Stalker, your damage is going to feel a bit anemic without extremely heavy investment. In fact, the only other AT that feels viable damage-wise is, in fact, Scrapper! It is entirely feasible to get into a rotation of (Heavy Blow, Rib Cracker, Shin Breaker*) -> (Filler**) -> Crushing Uppercut, but it takes a LOT of recharge investment to do it. But the payoff feels good! The set is also severely lacking on the AoE front. Sweeping Cross is a garbage attack and Spinning Strike's range is doody, but it's better than nothing.

 

You're going to be pushed into pairing it with an armor set that can offer good endurance management, provides a bit of global recharge, and could possibly add to your AoE damage some. Which is why I landed on Rad Armor! I think Elec and Bio are also pretty decent pairings for it.

 

 

*- Use these three in pretty much any order, just make sure whichever one you place your Crit Strike/Hide proc is last in the sequence!

**- Any epic snipe is best, but Cross Punch also fits here!

Edited Sunday at 10:14 PM by Spaghetti Betty

[Jacke]

Part of the problems with Kinetic Melee is that it is misunderstood.

 

First the T9, Concentrated Strike has a low DPA and a long Cast time.  It's worse that Martial Arts T9 Eagles Claw and that one I skip on all ATs.

 

I do take all 3 of the other ST attack, T1, T2, and T3, as well as Cross Punch (better DPA even ST than the T9) as the PBAoE T7 is a bit slow on the recharge.

 

Power Siphon is actually better than Build Up.  Using the first 3 ST attacks, quickly pump it to 5 stacks of +Dam (I monitor it in Combat Attributes) which is greater than Build Up and lasts longer, but with the same base recharge of 90s.

 

Here's the latest build on my Kinetic Melee/Ninjitsu Scrapper.  It's a Gold-side completist, so it'll be a while until I get it to L50.

 

Scrapper KineticM-Ninjitsu.20250828.WpnM [i28p2] @Jacke - Jacke Discreet.mbd

 

 

[Uun]

I've only played the dominator version of Savage. It has 4 of the melee set attacks (Maiming Slash, Vicious Slash, Rending Flurry and Savage Leap [renamed Feral Charge]), 3 ranged attacks from Beast Mastery (Call Swarm, Call Hawk and Call Ravens [renamed Unkindness]), a wonky BU/+perception power and a self heal. Two of the ranged attacks have a mechanic that scales the damage based on the number of stacks of Blood Frenzy (without depleting them). There are only 2 powers that cause Exhaustion when used with 5 stacks (Rending Flurry and Call Hawk). 

[Frosticus]

I recommend both for Stalkers. 

Savage

Procd out savage leap is something you need to experience yourself. The whole set just pushes you to go faster and faster.

Single target is still good, but lethal damage does hit roadblocks.

 

Street

For Stalkers this set has great flow. The combo mechanic and real buildup work better for them. Lvl 3 crit on crushing uppercut never gets old. There are attacks the line up numerically (like insight strike GPB), but dont feel as crunchy. Without the-res procs EM blows past it, but the feel of the set is hard to quantify.