StJ/Dark help?

[Lhanis]

I don't generally play melee. I've been here on Homecoming for some 6 years now and can count my melee characters that have made it to cap on one hand. A big part of that, I think, is that most of the melee and armor sets I like aesthetically are ones I don't enjoy mechanically.

 

After a recent break and return to find the i28 page 2 changes though, I'm wondering if I shouldn't give it another try. I actually got rather attached to Elec armor on an E3 Sent a while back, and I've always wanted to do something with Dark Armor too... so I'm wondering how people have enjoyed the changes to them. I know resist sets aren't generally the domain of Scrapper, but it's also the only AT I've never really touched before and I feel like this is a good opportunity to fix that if I'm considering melee again.

 

Long-winded preamble aside, I'm looking for:

• Thoughts on the Dark Armor changes?
• What to expect performance wise for a resist set on Scrapper?
• Primary sets that might be fun/pair well?
• Advice for a long time player but first time building Scrapper?

 

That third point is definitely the biggest one on my mind. In a perfect world where Kinetic Melee didn't feel absolutely awful to play it'd be my first choice, but I've been down that road before. Any and all advice is welcome.

[Yomo Kimyata]

2 hours ago, Lhanis said:

A big part of that, I think, is that most of the melee and armor sets I like aesthetically are ones I don't enjoy mechanically.

 

Let me start by asking you to elaborate on this.  What are the mechanics you dislike?  Primaries are generally going to be about some ST attacks, some AoE attacks, maybe a ranged attack, and then some "other" stuff.  Secondaries tend to focus on resistance or healing or defense, and can be active (requiring button pushing) or passive.  What do you think would work for you in this context?

[Lhanis]

46 minutes ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

Let me start by asking you to elaborate on this.  What are the mechanics you dislike?

That's fair, the way I wrote it is a little vague but it's also not an easy thing to put into words. By mechanically, I mean how it feels to play/tools it has available that I would want. Not necessarily whether or not it has an in-built mechanic like Momentum or Combos.

 

Some examples:
Savage Melee. I adore this set aesthetically, but my experience with it was frustrating. Back when Tanker gauntlet first got buffed, I rolled one with Savage - the End reduction was nice, and Leap is a wonderful tool, but the constant need to play around or against the bloodlust mechanic to keep yourself from getting locked out was not particularly enjoyable.

 

Dark Melee. A generally pretty great set all around (especially on Scrapper, or so I'm told), but a lot of small issues that make it unenjoyable for me to play. Shadow Maul feels like it takes far to long, needing to proc bomb Touch of Fear to have a decent early AoE, and to be completely honost I would rather just have a normal Build Up over having to worry about saturation for Soul Drain. 

 

It's hard to give an example of an armor set here though. Mostly I'm looking at it from a tool perspective, does it have good mez prot, does it have a taunt aura (something I'm sad most Scrappers lack, but oh well), is it to clicky to maintain mid-combat, etc. It's why I clicked so well with Electric Armor initially, it just does everything I wanted it to without having to jump through hoops to get it,  while also having some neat extras in speed and +End.

 

The old iteration of Dark Armor would fall into that "dislike mechanically" catagory, which is why I'm asking about it. Hogs endurance, has to bring it's own KB prot, leans to heavily on Oppressive Gloom... all things that at least on a first glance may have changed. Cloak of Fear looks like it might be a much better pick now and potentially replace OG, Obscure Sustenance could be a huge help with endurance, now has KB prot in Cloak, etc.

Edited Friday at 08:53 PM by Lhanis

[Yomo Kimyata]

3 hours ago, Lhanis said:

Thoughts on the Dark Armor changes?

 

They buffed the living hell out of it, honestly.  Functionally Cloak of Fear becomes a real option rather than something you had to work around accuracy and endurance wise.  Little bit of help on the KB protection side, but you still need to bring some of your own.

 

3 hours ago, Lhanis said:

What to expect performance wise for a resist set on Scrapper?

 

With high knowledge builds, absolute top tier.  Dark Armor is just a little behind Rad Armor in my eyes in terms of making everything work all the time.  Sure, you'll need to build for set defense and it really helps to add some other mitigation, but OG and CoF are right there for you.  I rarely play pure defense sets since you've got all your eggs in one basket.  It's a pretty good basket, but I vastly prefer actively managing my defenses and resistance based works like a dream.

 

3 hours ago, Lhanis said:

Primary sets that might be fun/pair well?

 

Pick your poison.  It all works.  People hate on staff but it's one of my faves.

 

3 hours ago, Lhanis said:

Advice for a long time player but first time building Scrapper?

 

Focus on your survival; the damage will take care of itself.  The critical strikes ATO proc in the right spot can and will add a ton of damage.  I'd consider it in Dark Regeneration which will activate all the time!

[Lhanis]

7 minutes ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

People hate on staff but it's one of my faves.

 

I don't care if Staff's damage isn't great, Innocuous Strikes is just such a fun animation 🤣

 

9 minutes ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

The critical strikes ATO proc in the right spot can and will add a ton of damage.  I'd consider it in Dark Regeneration which will activate all the time!

 

Trouble's post about the ATO procs' placement the other day is actually what started this whole thing for me... it was interesting to see how much of an impact they have on the AT overall, and reminded me Scrapper was something I'd never really given a shot. I'll be honest though... it never even occurred to me that you could slot it in Dark Regen since it deals damage. That's a wild thought. Cheers for that!

[Yomo Kimyata]

3 hours ago, Lhanis said:

I'll be honest though... it never even occurred to me that you could slot it in Dark Regen since it deals damage. That's a wild thought. Cheers for that!

 

There are a few AoE powers in scrapper secondaries that can slot them.  The beauty of Dark Regeneration is when you are fighting three or more enemies since the proc only needs to trigger once, and it will check versus up to 10 enemies in a 20 foot radius.

[Lhanis]

So I was left to my own devices for more than 5 minutes, and the intrusive thoughts won. So now I have half a dozen half-built variants in mids that I've been putting together while I am supposed to be working try to decide which one I want to pull the trigger on and actually roll... and I'm very quickly coming to realize I really don't have a clue what I should be building for on a melee character.

 

For reference, a vast majority of my characters fall into the Defender/Controller/MM variety, where you slap in rDef sets between your procs and just keep out of reach. Something tells me Scrapper needs a bit more than that though.

 

Dark Armor is a Res set with minor defenses and some -tohit and fear. Do I want to try and chase positionals for extra padding despite the lack of DDR? Should I be trying to ResCap instead despite the scalar and max 75%? Do I actually want Tough and Weave?

 

If I do want Tough and Weave, which I assume I do even if Tough just mules sets for me, that leaves me in an awkward spot for power picks. To get everything I want into the build, I need a primary I can cut 3 powers from. That's easy for some, since I don't want Confront and you don't usually take both T1 and T2. Psi Melee drops boggle, Savage can skip Shred, etc. But I have no idea what others like Titan Wep, Katana and War Mace can live without. And after all that is considered, I look at my endurance and weep for what Dark Armor has done to me, and start asking myself if I really need Death Shroud all that badly.

 

I realize I'm mostly just shouting into the void, and that none of this is really specific enough to get any actual answers more than "it depends", but I just thought I'd share. I really did not walk into this expecting to have to relearn my mids-fu.

Edited 23 hours ago by Lhanis

[Lhanis]

So, I started messing around with things on Brainstorm and think I've got an outline for what I'm hoping to accomplish, and some actual answerable questions for the folks who know slotting better. Outline attached below.

 

Original concept was going to lean into Cloak of Darkness completely hiding your character and taking a weapon set with hover to float around as a haunted, cursed weapon. Thought it would be fun. But while testing I accidentally fell in love with Spinning Strike in StJ. Sweeping Cross being skippable also lines up with my original goal of a 6 power primary. Where I'm having trouble is figuring out how I should be slotting these powers.

 

1. Scrapper's high base damage makes me feel like I should be taking advantage of it more than cramming procs in to do the work, but StJ also looks like a set that gets a lot of use out of FF procs and I'm not sure where to draw the line.
2. With what I have, the crit-proc ATO looks like it would work best in either Rib Cracker or Shin Breaker (unless I put it in Dark Regen for giggles, but on paper that looks very expensive on End). Crit window looks about the same, but I'm unsure if it'd be better in one over the other - better chance in Shin Breaker, but SB also looks like it'll want Achilles in it where RC can't take anything interesting that'd compete for space.
3. I chose Soul for patron on account of Shadow Meld looking like a dream come true for bolstering during alpha strikes, but with StJ already being very ST focused and wanting you to stack combo I'm not sure how important I should treat Moonbeam.
4. It's hard to find advice/examples of the revamped Dark Armor, and I can't tell if Obscure Sustenance might actually be a better pick. The revamp turned it into a clicky with no target requirement and a 25% heal on top of it's already very nice +Regen/+Recovery (though Mids doesn't actually reflect this yet) as opposed to Dark Regeneration's expensive target-based heal. OS also can have a majority of it's buff made permanant quite easily, but it has very little options for slotting compared to DR.
5. Soul Transfer has the same issue as above, and it does so many things now that I'm not sure what I should be focusing on with it. If I take OS over DR, it'd make a good spot for Panacea/PM sets, but I don't know if that's worth losing other things that can go there.
6. Lastly, I'm curious if Hasten is even needed with a setup like this. With StJ getting 3 decent spots for FF procs, I'm wondering if I might be better served dropping it for another power/pool entirely.

 

The attached build was put together with non-superior sets mostly just because I wanted to see what things would look like leveling. I'm not above using purple sets (I've got more than enough inf set aside to make a fairly expensive build) but I'd like it exemplar as well as possible since I spend far more time below cap than at it. The only thing here that's really set in stone is that I very much want Fold Space which pushes me into Teleport for travel, and that I want Hover for both concept and to make Teleport more palatable.

Scrapper - StJ Dark wip.mbd

Edited 5 hours ago by Lhanis