Guide to Claws DPS- To FollowUp or not to FollowUp
By
Edict,
Posted on: 2005-04-20 18:51 in Player Guides
Great post.
Ive recently started a Claws scrapper and been trying to weigh up Follow Up. My own less math focused brain had pretty much decided that it was a very near thing to Build Up, so in that way I guess it is balanced, but Build Up seems much less hassle to use.
At the moment I am planning on trying a not stacked FoU with a couple of To Hit buff Enh and replacing the Acc in my attacks with extra damage, which normally would scare the willies out of me. It will mean restricting myself to targets that I am 95% likely to hit with the Follow Up, but we will see how it goes.
Last thing, is there a worse named power in the game? It is not a Follow Up attack it is if anything an Opening Strike attack that you follow up with other attacks.
regards, Screwloose.
"I am not young enough to know everything."
How to Look Stuff Up Yourself - It's Fun and Easy
Looking for Powers Numbers try City of Data.
For Fraks sake read the Guides and FAQs
Global Chat Channels - Australia
On the name - Yeah, I agree. A name like "Primer" or "Open Up" might be more appropriate, but I think small name changes like this are low on the dev's priority list so I guess we are stuck with it. 
Things can get pretty hairy if the initial Follow Up whiffs. One way to counter this is to have a spare acc inspiration or two (easy to get) and use one if FoU misses or even before FoU if you know the enemy is tough to hit. You can also have a "backup attack" that has an accuracy or two in it that you can tread water with until FoU recharges. Focus might be a good candidate, as it can KD the foe and spare you some time, though you will feel the loss of the damage enhancement more than another attack. Slash also has a good -def component and can be used as a back up, though most people don't want to devote slots to it. Personally I have both accuracies in my attacks and follow up because I love super-high accuracy. Acc enh + FoU + Slash will let you hit +4 bosses consistently, though consistently surviving is another matter. I think I may get Focused Accuracy and combine it with Follow Up then drop the Acc's for EndRed or damage since this gives high, consistent accuracy plus good damage/end use return.
Build Up vs Follow Up: I believe that 6-slotting Build Up for recharge gives a 100% boost to damage 1/3 of the time, which is equal to perma-Follow Up in DPS. However, BU's acc component is less useful than Follow Up's because it is not constant (who wants to hit only 1/3 of the time?). On the other hand, BU has no chance to fail, allows damage to be frontloaded, and is still useful without heavy slotting while Follow Up requires damages/accs/hitbuffs to be worth it. I would say that in the early game FoU>BU because that is when you really need the accuracy boost, and later in the game BU>FoU because you can assign slots elsewhere and still get the same boost against the tough foes when you need it. FoU can be good slotted well, but unlike BU it's all-or-nothing: slot it like your other attacks or don't use it. Build Up can be useful with just one or two slots and FoU simply doesn't have that option.
Here's a good chain for Claws that uses a 6-slotted Follow-Up:
Slotting:
Follow-Up: 2 Acc, 1 AccBuf, 3 RchRed
Slash: 6 Dam
Strike: 5 Dam, 1 RchRed
Focus: 6 Dam
The chain is very simple:
Follow-Up, Focus, Strike, Slash, Strike[, repeat]
Focus is double-buffed every time after the first. Strike is double-buffed every third time it hits. Every other activation is perma-Follow-Up.
The chain takes 8.6 seconds to complete, and does an average of 49.79 Brawls, for a DPS of 5.79 B/s. It costs 43.2 endurance per rep.
There is no room for Hasten, as you are in a power animation 97% of the time already.
If you are not a Slash fan, you can alternate Spin and Eviscerate for Slash's spot instead.
Follow-Up, Focus, Strike, Spin, Strike, Follow-Up, Focus, Strike, Eviscerate, Strike[, repeat]
It would be nice if Spin could be double-buffed, but that borks the chain.
Without resorting to power pool attacks, I'm not sure you can do better than the above. Claw attacks just seem to hate each other.
You didn't list how many Recharge SOs you put in Follow Up to make it perma, but I wonder if it might be an advantage to decrease its recharge SOMEWHAT, but not enough to stack it. The overall boost will be less, but you will be using Follow Up less as well, thus it will reduce the DPS by less. There may be a "break even" point where the DPS is higher than all Damage, but neither all damage nor all recharge.
Well, with Perma-hasten in the mix (for example for a Claws/SR scrapper going for Perma-Elude) or Quickness, the recharge reductions are NOT necessary.
I'd be curious to see what the calculations are for Follow-Up when slotted with 2 Acc, 2 To-Hit-Buff, and 2 Damage.
I bet it would come out quite well. 
Happy gaming!
-SunderX
Sset - 50 DM/Regen Scrapper - 8 years of out-tanking any tank but Granite, with 5x the DPS.
**Making Altaholism a socially acceptable disorder**
"Scrappers are just like chainsaws. Somewhat hard to handle, EXTREMELY dangerous, and by far the most fun when wielded by the slightly insane." -Alissara
Here's a modified chain adding perma-hasten, and retaining a 6-slotted Follow-Up.
This turns out to be better, but it obviously requires those six slots of Hasten to work well.
Slots:
perma-Hasten: 5 to 6 slots.
Follow-Up: 2 Acc, 1 AccBuf, 3 Dam
Focus: 6 Dam
Eviscerate: 6 Dam
Strike: 6 Dam
The sequence is not as short and sweet:
Follow-Up, Strike, Eviscerate, Focus, Strike,
Follow-Up, Focus, Eviscerate, Strike, Focus
Every third Focus is double buffed, and every third Strike is double-buffed.
Total damage is 42.93 Brawls in 17.4 seconds, for a DPS of 6.853. The endurance cost is a hefty 102.7. I hope you have Stamina. 
The base recharge on Follow Up is 12 seconds. With Hasten active it drops to about 7 seconds. I haven't heard estimates on the duration of the bonus but Hasten seems to make FoU perma with a bit of leeway before hitting the next FoU, so I would guess it's an 8 second duration. Two recharge SO's are about equivalent to Hasten and whites will bring the recharge to 7.2, so either way will work.
Another effect of adding more Follow Ups in a chain is a general reduction in DPE- not surprising considering that its 11 endurance cost gives it half the damage per endurance of other attacks. In fact I've used an endred in Follow Up for quite a while and it seems to have a noticeable effect in end use.
Compared to FA, Follow Up chains tend to have better DPE ratings. In the chains I based my model on using Follow Up with 2 Dmg and 4 Acc/ToHit mix gave a DPE of 1.15 while the equivalent FA chain (assuming 3 EndRed in FA) gave 1.09 DPE. Dropping 1 of those damages for an EndRed in FoU gave 1.20 DPE. The DPS of the two chains I used is nearly identical with or without the extra damage in FoU.
I believe the buff lasts 10 seconds. That jives with the scenario you posted, once activation time is considered.
Follow-Up has a 1.6 second activation, so a 10 second buff, with perma-Hasten, buys you just over one second of overlapping "double-buff".
+ -> Buff Effect
X -> Activation
| -> Recharge
Each row is one second.
X
X
|+
|+
|+
|+
|+
|+
|+
X+
X+
|++ (overlap)
|+
|+
|+
|+
|+
|+
+
+
+
[ QUOTE ]
FoU-->F-->S-->Ev-->F-->S: 7.16 DPS
This setup is somewhat easier to slot for damage in FoU as well because 3 AccBuff SOs and 3 Accs arent a requirement. One damage in FoU gives 7.25 DPS and two gives 7.34 DPS. Thus using ToHit Buffs in Follow Up and dropping Accuracies in other attacks gives a good boost. In this way it is very similar to Focused Accuracy but without the painful endurance cost (using Follow Up can actually lower DPE slightly, but not nearly on the scale of FA).
[/ QUOTE ]
You're shorting Follow up here. You're comparing a follow up with 3 tohit buffs to attacks with just one SO - but a follow up with that many to hits is going to be putting out an accuracy boost in excess of 2 SO's.
To get a comparable accuracy boost to an SO, you would need no to-hit buffs in follow up and could leave follow up just at 2 ACC/ 4 DMG (you could go 1/5 I guess but if you're relying on FU for acc you're goint to REALLY want it to hit on the first go round). With that slotting follow up should be pretty handily above the focused accuracy mark.
Thanks for pointing this out. I guess saying "3 accs and 3 tohits" was too rigid and I should have simply said "no damages". My point was that even without damage SO's in Follow Up you can get a good DPS, but adding them to FoU will increase DPS further. Just for reference, a F-S-Ev-F-S chain with 2 Acc / 4 Dmg does 5.79 DPS by my calculations. So if you want to achieve that level of accuracy you can either use one accuracy in attacks and put damage in FoU (or refrain from 6-slotting it, a possibility I haven't covered ) , or slot FoU with ToHits and go full damage slotting in attacks. Both ways will give you a sizeable damage increase.
has anyone looked at the chains since ED???
sorta. animation changes coupled with the loss of 6slotting for damage and hasten has resulted in new, and important, additions to the attack chains of Claws Scrappers everywhere.
Slash now has the second best single target DPS in the set, right between Focus and Strike. It's a vital part of a Claws Scrapper's arsenal after its animation was lowered.
Follow Up's damage buff is now more significant, even at higher levels due to the inability to add more damage slots. Adding 37.5% damage when you already have 266% damage isn't that big a deal. Today, it's a much bigger deal. l
Level 50 is a journey, not a destination.
▲Scrapper Issues List - Going Rogue Edition▲
Hi everyone. New poster here, but as I have read the forums extensively and have been playing for quite a while I consider myself a veteran player. If you dont like long math discussions, just skip to the summation at the bottom.
This guide is a write up of some numerical calculations I did to find how Follow Up affected DPS with different slotting options. None of the numbers come from real tests: the values for damage come from Ian of Moores Incomplete Brawl Index (special thanks to you) and the values for activation times come from coh.warcry.com and are as follows:
Name-------------BI Listing--Activation Time---DPS-----DPE
Strike (S)----------2.7778---------1.3---------2.14----0.43
Follow Up (FoU)----2.2222---------1.6---------1.30----0.20
Focus (F)----------4.5556---------1.5---------3.04----0.44
Eviscerate (Ev)-----4.7222---------2.2---------2.15----0.32
These calculations are for single-target Damage per Activation Time so the main AOEs (Spin, Shockwave) arent listed, as well as the inferior DPS attacks Swipe and Slash. Not to say Swipe and Slash are useless, but Follow Up, the smallest DPS listed, beats out Swipe for DPS and comes close to Slash. Follow Up does have worse DPE than both of those however.
The chains I used are F-->S-->Ev-->F-->S for the non-Follow Up version and FoU-->F-->S-->Ev-->F-->S for the Follow Up version. Note that even with perma-Hasten you will have a .5 second delay between Eviscerate and the second Focus; this wasnt calculated into the DPS for the chain but it doesnt really matter for these calculations because the chains are nearly identical and I just wanted to see the effect of Follow Up. Unenhanced and assuming Follow Up doesnt last long enough to boost itself, the results are:
F-->S-->Ev-->F-->S: 2.48 DPS
FoU-->F-->S-->Ev-->F-->S: 3.06 DPS
So introducing Follow Up raised the DPS by over 1/5. However, this isnt a very representative model as no one with access to those attacks would have them unslotted. However, this is relevant to the early levels when a Claws Scrapper doesnt have enough attacks for a complete chain: Follow Up fills a gap like an any attack, plus the benefit of ~37% more damage and ~33-37% more accuracy (I think this is what I read as the bonus ). Therefore Follow Up is very effective early on.
Now consider the SO slotted model. I assumed 5 Damage SOs and 1 Accuracy SO in each attack:
F-->S-->Ev-->F-->S: 6.61 DPS
FoU-->F-->S-->Ev-->F-->S: 6.49 DPS
What?? How did the Follow Up chain fall behind the regular? Well, the truth is this calculation assumes Follow Up is not slotted for damage. When 5 Damage SOs are added to Follow Up the DPS becomes:
FoU-->F-->S-->Ev-->F-->S: 6.80 DPS
So Follow Up is still an advantage, but the difference is much less noticeable than the previous calculation. Not to mention that it requires one more six-slotted attack than the regular chain.
However, people have pointed out that with enough recharge SOs and maybe perma-hasten you can have Follow Up running at x2 effect at all times for an advantage of about 2 equivalent Damage and Acc SOs in each attack. OK, lets do the calculation:
FoU-->F-->S-->FoU-->Ev-->S: 6.43 DPS
Edict! You made a mistake! DPS went down! Sorry, folks, but this is correct, even assuming that it is mid-chain (the dual FoU effect is there from the start, something I didnt do on any other calculations). The reason is that in order to use Follow Up so quickly, Damage SOs must be dropped for Recharges. Considering that you are now using a lower DPS attack more often the ~75% boost doesnt make up for it. Although you could probably fit one or two Damages into Follow Up to raise this a bit, the fact is that doubling up on Follow Up is not feasible.
Ah, but youre forgetting one thing old chap. Follow Up has accuracy boost as well. Thats right, these chains are assuming 100% hit chance with average Acc slotting so the Acc boost isnt calculated in. The best way to factor this effect in is to calculate assuming the boost is all the acc you need, in other words, drop the Acc in the attacks for Damage. In the double FoU this makes it:
FoU-->F-->S-->FoU-->Ev-->S: 6.95 DPS
So the x2 model finally pays off, but not by a whole lot. Not to mention that you cannot squeeze any Damages into FoU because it needs both recharges AND accuracies: whiffing on the first FoU can result in a painful series of misses until the chain effect can get going.
In comparison, using the one FoU chain slotted with toHit buffs and damages in the others gives:
FoU-->F-->S-->Ev-->F-->S: 7.16 DPS
This setup is somewhat easier to slot for damage in FoU as well because 3 AccBuff SOs and 3 Accs arent a requirement. One damage in FoU gives 7.25 DPS and two gives 7.34 DPS. Thus using ToHit Buffs in Follow Up and dropping Accuracies in other attacks gives a good boost. In this way it is very similar to Focused Accuracy but without the painful endurance cost (using Follow Up can actually lower DPE slightly, but not nearly on the scale of FA).
Speaking of Focused Accuracy, how does that compare? 6-slotting it with endurance reduction and accuracy boosts lets you drop the Accs in attacks just the same. The result for a 6 damage regular chain is:
F-->S-->Ev-->F-->S: 7.43 DPS
So FA beats out Follow Up for DPS, but it is counterbalanced by an equivalent drop in DPE. Those of you who want extra damage and can handle the endurance burden of FA might want to use FoU until level 44+ then respect into FA, or you can continue using Follow Up and perhaps pick a different Ancillary: the slotting in other attacks will the same.
What a marathon post, phew! But we have one more scenario to consider: Follow Up plus Focused Accuracy. With FA you can completely slot Follow Up for damage as well as your attacks yielding:
FoU-->F-->S-->Ev-->F-->S: 7.71 DPS
This is the very highest DPS I could come up with. In addition, the accuracy of this chain can be ridiculously high depending on how you slot FA: with a 3 EndRed / 3 ToHitBuff you can get nearly 100% accuracy boost when FoU is active. However, this is exceedingly expensive in terms of slotting and power picks: it requires five six-slotted powers, excluding hasten (and probably stamina too, if youre running FA).
If youre used to DPS calculations from other posts these values may seem high, but recall that this is a Damage Enhanced chain in terms of Unenhanced brawl.
SYNOPSIS
1. Follow Up is good early on, with a boost of over 20% to DPS.
2. Later it is less useful unless slotted for ToHitBuff, in which case it is nearly as effective as Focused Accuracy.
3. Slotting Follow Up for stacked effect does not give a real bonus.
4. Using Follow Up six-slotted for damage in conjunction with Focused Accuracy gives the maximum DPS but requires many enhancement slots.
Peace, Out