The Stabby Frenzy: Claws/Super Reflexes Guide i11

The Stabby Frenzy: A Claws/Super Reflexes Guide, updated for i12.

Welcome. Do you like stabbing stuff? Do you like not being hit? Are you thinking of a Claws/SR? It's a fun build, not overpowered--but very rewarding. It will never be a PVP god build or a burst damage king. But, Claws/SR offers great, fast, consistent attack chains with great DPS that barely hurt your e-bar. Nice AOE options add much variety and options for facing all sorts of situations. It has a set-it-and-forget-it secondary. You're fast, you dodge, you stab, you win. And it's dead sexy the whole time.

Convinced? Welcome aboard. Just, for the love of all things holy, no more cat-women. Please.

Twitchy McStaby was my first toon from I1. I may have other loves but you always remember your first. Especially when your first stabs people in the face. It’s so endearing.

Let me start this off by saying the most important thing now: Claws/SR is one of the tightest builds in the game. Mostly because of SR. You're going to need every power from it--the most you want to pass up from it is one power. Add in a range of attractive Claws attacks you're going to want, the pool powers for traveling, and the ones to improve upon your secondary, and there's little wiggle room.

So, ready? Let's start with the…

CLAWS POWER REVIEW
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Swipe:
It's cute, but still not worth taking in my book. It's the weakest attack in the set. You're going to have an arsenal of quick-recharging single-target attacks, and you can have a workable chain without it by level 8. You can survive until then, right? If you have to take it, you're most likely going to want to respec out of it later. Remember, your build is going to be tight. A 2.3 brawl-index (0.84 DS) attack is easily skippable.

Strike:
Better than Swipe. A gut-stab animation I love, nice recharge, and the good ol' passing-the-time-while-my-other-attacks-recharge 2.7 brawl index (1.0 DS). Take it first.

Leveling slotting: 1-2 acc, 3 dmg, generally does fine without recharge or end-redx.
Late game slotting: Crushing Impact, Mako’s Bite, or Touch of Death sets.

Slash:
Better damage than Strike (3.7 brawl index/1.32 DS), good recharge, and a defense debuff? Sold. Take it. Now. What are you waiting for?

Leveling slotting: 1-2 acc, 3 dmg, recharge or end-redx to flavor.
Late game slotting: Crushing Impact, Mako’s bite, or Touch of Death sets.

Spin:
Nice point-black AOE, but damage is not ‘wow’, it’s more like ‘I am inclined to approve.’ Good if you are often wading in enemies, not so good for soloers until later in the game.

Leveling slotting: 1-2 acc, 3 dmg, recharge or end-redx to flavor.
Late game slotting mixed slotting: Cleaving Blow: acc/rech & acc/dmg, Multistrike: acc/dmg, dmg/rchg & dmg/end/rchg (78 acc, 95 dmg, 96 recharge, 21 end).

Follow Up:
Since ED hit way back when, this has become an attractive attack. You want it. The accuracy and damage buff is wonderful in the early levels, when training origins do nothing to help you. The use of it in the teens will be a bit awkward, but once you can devote four-slots-plus and SOs/IOs to it, it becomes gold. With good recharge you can stack it twice.

Leveling slotting: I like 2 acc, 1 end red, 3 recharge to double-stack it. There are many good combos, so long as you have an acc in it, anything between damage, recharge, end reduction, and to-hit buff is good. Of major popularity now is getting the Gaussian’s chance for build up in there, as it provides much better activation chances than having it in a toggle.
Late game slotting: I like membrane HO, 1 nucleolus HOs, Crushing Impact dmg/rchg and acc/dmg/end, and Mako’s acc/dmg/end/recharge. That gives 72 acc, 95 dmg, 39 end discount, 20 to-hit, and 77 recharge (I have global recharge bonuses to get it above the 95% recharge needed to double-stack it). Others like the 3 nucleolus, 2 membranes, and the Gaussian’s chance for buildup. So many good enhancements, and only a wee 6 slots… such a shame.

Confront:
If you take this, you are a fool. If you want aggro, stab someone in the face. If you want a room full of aggro, play a tank. In a pink dress. Pansy.

Slotting: Did you not just read the previous 2 lines?

Focus:
Indisputably the shining star of the claws set. 4.5 brawl index (1.6 DS), knocks down your target consistently, good range, and a base 6 second base recharge. It makes you happy. So very happy. Take it at 18 when it's available and never look back.

Leveling slotting: 1-2 acc, 3 dmg, recharge or end-redx to flavor.
Late game slotting: I like 1 nucleolus HO, Thunderstrike acc/dmg, acc/dmg/rech, dmg/end/recharge, 1 recharge IO, and Decimation: chance for buildup. I’m pounding that attack all the time and I’m pleased with how often I get a free buildup. 80 acc, 95 dmg, 83 recharge, 21 end.



Eviscerate:
You know, this one is difficult to decide on. It's good. It has a higher chance of getting a critical, and acts in a small cone, so you can hit multiple enemies with it. Best damage in the set at 4.7 BI (1.7 DS).

But… it's slow execution. In time it takes you to do the backflip and hit, you can do a Slash and a Strike for a total of 6.4 brawl index (2.3 DS) to a single target. If you get it, you only want to use it when you know it will hit multiple enemies, and in the time it takes to line up enemies for it you can continue on your stabbing frenzy. I’d say it’s the second most skippable behind swipe, especially for soloers. More valuable for big teams with big tightly packed mobs.

Leveling slotting: 1-2 acc, 3 dmg, recharge or end-redx to flavor.
Late game slotting: Cleaving Blow: acc/rech & acc/dmg, Multistrike: acc/dmg, dmg/rchg & dmg/end/rchg (78 acc, 95 dmg, 96 recharge, 21 end)


Shockwave:
A ranged cone that knocks back all the targets it hits. Damage is the same level as spin. Used well, it’s a wonderful damage mitigation tool and can get enemies lined up for more pain to come. Used poorly, you send baddies flying everywhere and if your leader is a tank or an AOE blaster, he may seriously look at the ‘kick’ button and ponder. Most people grow to like it, I know I did.

Leveling slotting: same ol’ 1-2 acc, 3 dmg, recharge or end-redx to flavor.
Late game: I’m a big fan of adding range to it over what the IO sets offer. I do 2 acc, 3 centrioles, and 1 recharge.


Single-Target vs AOEs
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Claws has some solid AOE options (well, more specifically, 'multiple-target attacks'): A good-damage melee cone, a point-blank AOE, and a ranged cone.

Claws can let you be a sustainable single-target rapid-fire killer--this is one of the greatest advantages of the set. You want the attacks to have a solid single-target chain no matter what.

Your build is bound to be tight to work in what you need in SR, so delaying some attacks could be necessary as you grow. The AOEs provide fair damage but nothing spectacular. Eviscerate does better damage, but lining up melee cones is difficult, and you can be spending that time unloading a killer single-target chain. Though claws is endurance-friendly, using AOEs when they will only hit 2 or 3 enemies can take its toll.

Anyway, you have to answer this. Will you mostly solo or duo, maybe the occasional larger team? I would favor single-target attacks until later levels. For small spawns, I've found I can kill just as fast bouncing around with my single-target attack chain.

Will you spend your career in huge teams? Huge teams equal huge spawns. Huge spawns is where your AOEs will really pay off, and give you a good reward for the extra endurance you're using to execute the AOE attacks.

Huge teams also have the advantage of damage mitigation. If you are going to play in environment where there is constantly a tank to keep the aggro, or debuffs/buffs to keep you alive, you can forego some SR powers until later and your supplement pool (fighting, medicine – discussion later).

So, if you like big spawns and lots of friends, pick and chose what you will give up to gain your multiple-enemy attacks. If you free up one power to make room for an AOE attack, I suggest spin first. It's available at level 6, and it's easy to use (no lining up for the attack). If you free up two slots, you can chose eviscerate or shockwave. By 26, you will be able to guess which one will be better for you. Are you constantly facing enough enemies where a cone will hit more than one? Eviscerate. Are you constantly jumping back to be out of melee and firing off focus from a safe distance? Shockwave pairs well and give you another valuable knockdown.

And that brings us to:

The Great Single Target Attack Chain
---------------------------------

My i7 guide had the best single target attack chain ever conceived by mortals. It was followup, focus, slash, air superiority, repeat. Basically it was perma-knockdown of anything you were fighting with a nice sustained DPS. Not too long after however, perma-knockdown was nerfed to where you can’t re-knockdown most enemies in the getting back up animation. But, in substituting strike for air superiority, you still get the high DPS and I highly recommend this as a single-target staple while leveling:

Slash: 1-2 acc, 3 damage, 1 end redx.
Strike: 1-2 acc, 3 damage
Follow Up: 2 acc, 3 recharge, 1 end redx
Focus: 1-2 acc, 3 damage, 1 end redx.

This is the chain:

Follow Up -> Focus -> Slash -> Strike. Repeat. 1 2 3 4, 1 2 3 4.

What happens with this? You build momentum. In this chain of sweet fast-activating attacks, Follow Up lasts for the next 6 attacks. Follow Up buffs your first chain with essentially the equivalent of another damage SO, and a good to-hit buff. On the second run, and all subsequent cycles, Focus and Slash, two attacks with very respectable brawl indexes, have two stacked follow-ups buffing them. You've added the equivalent of two damage SOs to these two attacks. Take that, enhancement diversification! The to-hit buff also moves from 'good' to 'healthy'.

At the same time, Slash is a defense debuff. As the chain unfolds, you are buffing your accuracy and debuffing the enemies' defense. Your chain is made for hitting consistently, to the point where misses become surprising when they happen.

The endurance of this chain when you have an endurance reducer in each attack and Stamina is cheap. Seriously cheap. No kidding, with 2-3 toggles up, I can do it 10 times nonstop. Endurance will never be a reason to take a break, so you can keep the xp rolling in nonstop.


SR POWER REVIEW
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This is more condensed than Claws, grouping like powers. And you're going to want all of them, so no need to debate the relative merits of individual powers. I'll discuss the one you're not going to take later.

Focused Fighting, Focused Senses, Evasion (the toggles):
Your basic defense. Early on, the endurance cost of two will hurt. Melee hits damage more, so keep fighting on and turn off senses when you don't need it. You want to make sure the first two are well-slotted by the time you hit SOs. The toggles provide 19.5% defense with 3 SOs each. You're taking a minion down to 30% to hit you, and bosses down to 45%. Thanks to the global defense (more accurately, enemy to-hit) changes with I7, these percentages will stay pretty consistent up to +5 enemies.

Agile, Dodge, Lucky (the passives):
Your supplemental defense. Since these don't offer as much base defense as the toggles, take them later, and slot them later. At 7.8% extra defense 3 SO'ed, combined with the toggles, you are taking minions down to a 22% chance of hitting, bosses to 38%. Very nice, and very noticeable.

Then, there is the matter of the damage resistance. Each passive gives you scaling damage resistance--a little when you hit yellow, and more when you hit red. My old builds, I went light on the passives, thinking them not valuable enough. I was so. very. wrong. When you have all three and you are in the red, what would have been a kill shot hits you for half the damage or less, and you live to stab more things in the face. And the difference between two and three passives is VERY noticeable. You need them all.

Practiced Brawler:
Best scrapper status protection. 2 recharge SOs + Quickness and it's perma. It can't be detoggled, and it doesn't cost endurance past firing it.

Quickness:
Some say it's skippable, but not from my angle. It helps your recharge everywhere, and the slow protection it provides is extremely valuable. When the Earth Thorn Caster drops quicksand and you run straight through it and stab him in the face, you'll thank me. The run speed buff is also great.

Elude:
Your god-mode. Though your defense is good on paper, in actual play you're going to get in a situation where the enemies have to-hit buffs, defense debuffs, or superior numbers. The extra defense Elude gives then will make the difference between victory and a faceplant. And don't forget the endurance buff, should you get sapped. Slot 3 recharge first, you don’t have to add defense for PVE (you’ll be at the defense soft-cap if you keep toggles up) but one or 2 can’t hurt if you have extra slots.


So yes. You want all of the SR powers. But in reality, you may have to forego one. So which one?

First choice: the AOE protection. You're not getting it until late anyway, and, with a few notable exceptions, AOEs hurt less than ranged and melee. With your SR supplement pool, you will have ways of recovering or lessening the AOE damage. Plus, a mere 3 levels from Evasion, you get Elude. If you find yourself in AOE hell that's too much to survive, you have a button out. IO slotting (see later) can also provide good AOE defense.

You can strategize to minimize AOE damage as well. Charge into melee, and Nemesis will try to stab you with their guns rather than fire their AOEs. If there's only one AOE'er, he dies first.

So drop Lucky or Evasion? Evasion. Why? Even though it provides more AOE defense, you're better without it. First, it's a toggle, and it costs endurance. Second, the 3-passive scaling damage resistance is worlds better than the 2-passive. You may be hit by more AOEs, but they'll do less damage by the time you are in the yellow. And that's when it matters most. I tried life without both, and keeping Lucky is what I settled on.

Second choice: Elude. Late game, you can use IOs to get your defense to 45% all around, making elude a bit redundant in most PVE situations.


TRAVEL POWERS
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Honestly, what you want. The prereqs can add “character” to your tight build. If you would like to play around with more knockdown options, air superiority leads to fly. Hasten is always welcome in any build for me, and leads to superspeed. Combat jumping gives a lil’ bit extra defense, which adds up, and leaves to superjump. And teleporting is… ummm… teleport.

Also, there is one other option: no travel power. Swift + Quickness + Sprint will get you to somewhere between the speed of base fly and 1-slotted fly. I've tried it, and it's workable. I just don't have the patience. But, if you really, really, want to squeeze in more AOEs or other pools, this can be a way to free up a power. Plus, it's a great way to accent a natural origin character.

SR SUPPLIMENT POOL
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OK. So SR is good defense. The problem with defense is it's a dice-roll each time. You'll have battles where you emerge unscathed, and others where it seems everyone and their grandma gets free hits on you. Since running away and/or screaming 'heal plz' is very unbecoming of a scrapper, you could use a plan B. Two pools work great for this: medicine (aid self) and fighting (tough).

Aid Self will save your behind. When your defenses fail, the only thing that will keep you fighting is an HP boost. Slotted 3 heal, 2 interrupt, 1 recharge, with Quickness, you will have 40% of your hp returned every 13 seconds. This is teh ubarz. The biggest thing people normally have against medicine is the use of the tricorder. Your mutant werewolf isn't exactly going to be carrying this in his hip hair.

Tough 3-SOed will give you another 18% S/L resist, which will not keep you in the green much, but will keep you in the yellow longer and in the red a long, long time before you die, by stacking with your passive's scaling damage resistance. Enemies are going to have a hard time finishing you off, and if you have health 3-slotted and/or other IO regeneration bonuses, you will be extremely survivable at low levels of health. The tradeoff is it's another toggle, so you'll need more endurance management, but all-in-all, still a nice supplement. It can also hold one of the greatest IOs in the game: the Steadfast Protection resist/+3% global defense bonus.

FITNESS
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You need it. Not only for Stamina letting you fight forever, but for the Swift + Quickness stack. This is unsuppressed movement, which lets you continue your stabbing frenzy uninterrupted as you bounce from one enemy to the next. As soon as one dies, I hit tab and F, and my next victim is immediately in front of my sharp stabby implements.

So that leaves Hurdle or Health. Health is better. 3-slotted for heals will help any build, and especially the ones with Tough. It also takes nice (expensive) IOs which improve your regeneration and recovery.
However, if movement ability is a concern, hurdle can make CJ/SJ faster and give you a lil’ bit of vertical help if you decided to go with just superspeed.

EPIC POOLS
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Body Mastery – Nice choices in here and generally the first choice of your scrappy brethren across the city. Best for those committing to conserve power and elude to power the end-hungry focused accuracy. You can leisurely kill at distance by adding laser beam eyes to focus and shockwave. Nice stuff.

Dark Mastery – The favored choice for AOE kings and those who love them. Tentacles hold and damage and keep them lined up for AOEs. A hold and a blast round your options out nicely, and dark accuracy debuffs make your defense even better.

Weapons Mastery – lols. Focus keeps things in place better than web grenade. Tentacles keep enemies in place better for AOEs than caltrops. Shruikens only tickle and shockwave is worlds better than the exploding shruiken party trick.

Or… none. You can go back and add on any skipped SR and claws attacks that you want to play with.

SAMPLE BUILD
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01 - Strike
01 - Focused Fighting
02 - Slash
04 - Focused Senses
06 - Travel prereq or spin
08 - Follow Up
10 - Spin, travel prereq (if you didn’t get it at 6). If you are skipping/putting off spin, move swift to here and get dodge at 16 instead of later.
12 - Practiced Brawler
14 - Travel power
16 - Swift
18 - Focus
20 - Health (or Hurdle)
22 - Stamina
24 - Quickness
26 - Dodge
28 - Agile
30 - Stimulant (or box/kick, or eviscerate)
32 - Aid Self (or tough, or shockwave)
35 - Lucky
38 - Elude

Slotting:

You have 20 slots to add by the time you reach 22 and SOs. You can afford to 4-slot all your attacks, 3-slot your defense toggles, and 2-slot practiced brawler. Build your attacks up sooner, as more TO and DO aims will help you more early on than the sad amount of defense TOs and DOs give. But make sure your defenses have good slots by the time you hit 22.

In your 20s to mid 30s, finish 4-slotting your toggles (3 defense, 1 end reducer) and get your claw attacks to 5-slotted (1 aim, 3 damage, 1 end reducer/recharge). Get Stamina 3-slotted. And slot up your SR supplement pool.

Late 30s, 6-slot your big attacks with another aim, and finish 3-slotting your passives.

When you don't know what to do with your slots anymore, Quickness and Swift will happily take more run speeds for even more combat maneuverability.

PVP
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Lol.

Don’t change your build to try to be more PVP effective.

That said, you can have some fun and be viable at PVP, but you will have a hard time getting the kill with the high percentage of runners who won't stay around for your 1 2 3 4 attack chain for long. Lots of players will have powers to get around your defense, so just take it in good humor, and maybe you can have some interesting duels.

IO OPTIONS
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What’s to say really? The options are open wide for whatever you’d like to do. Good amounts of regen? More HP and recovery? Global recharge? Maxing out defense? Making your powers do more with the same amount or less slots? There’s no way I can cover it all.

What I can say is this: the best way to get good bonuses is stack a lot of the same thing. What do you have a lot of? Defense set slottable powers. Here’s what you get if you 6-slot these sets into 5 of your defense powers:

Serendipity: 20% regen, +3.75% hp, +15% acc, +5% AOE defense, +5% tox resist. This is a nice all around set, some regen helps in non aid-self builds, accuracy is always welcome, and an AOE defense supplement helps if you skipped lucky or evasion.

Gift of the Ancients: +10% recovery, 12.5% fire resist, +8% max endurance increase, +12% Psi resistance, and +37.5% run speed. This is good for providing more endurance (if you are the kind who burns through it too quickly), some nice exotic resists, and make you even faster (like adding another unslotted swift/quickness).

Red Fortune: immob resist (meh), 6.25% fire/cold resist, 10% damage buff, 25% global recharge, and 12.5% ranged defense. The latter 3 are the winners, a good damage buff, great global recharge to help bring your good stuff back even quicker, and max out your ranged defense. A relatively cheap set, too. My fav.

Luck of the Gambler: 50% regen, 5.6% max HP, 45% accuracy, hold resistance (meh), 15.6% psi resist, and 32.5% global recharge. All in all, very “wow” but VERY expensive.

So pick one of the above, and then find other sets for your attacks and pools to get even more of what you like. But just remember, you can’t get the same bonus more than 5 times… so if you have 5 3% accuracy bonuses, if you get another 3% damage bonus from another set, you still won’t get past the 15% bonus. But if you get 5 3% bonuses and a 9% bonuses, you will have the 24% global accuracy.

I will mention 2 specific-ish endgame IO builds, as they are worth mentioning:

1) The ZOMG Defense Build

I can’t take credit for this one but it’s floating around on the boards with better information than I’m providing. It’s not horribly expensive compared to some endgame IO builds, but cost me in the neighborhood of 30-40mil.

This build gets you to or close to the 45% “soft cap” of defense. Downsides is it pretty much picks your power pools for you (fitness, leaping, fighting) and you’re more likely to have to slot for endurance management as you will be running 6 toggles. On the plus side, you could remove elude from your build and don’t have to retoggle after the crash.

You need the following slotted out fully for defense (3 SOs/IOs or set equivalents to get you 95%+ bonus):

All toggles (21.7% defense)
All passives (8.8% defense)
Combat jumping (2.95% defense)
Tough with the Steadfast protection global defense IO (3% defense)
Weave (5.9% defense)
For a total of 39.6% melee/ranged/AOE defense, leaving 5.4% needing to be covered in IOs.

Melee defense: 6-slotting Touch of Death in Strike and Slash each with give you another 6% melee defense, reaching the cap.

Ranged defense: 6-slotting Red Fortune in Focused Fighting, Focused Senses, and Evasion will get you 7.5% ranged defense, reaching the cap.

AOE Defense: Don’t sweat it if you don’t reach the soft cap on this one. 6-slotting detonation in Shockwave and Multi Strike in Spin or Eviscerate will net you another 3.8% AOE defense, getting you to 43.4%, close enough for superhero work.


2) The ZOMG Recharge Build

This is mine. I don’t care that claws is fast recharging to start, I want everything up again in the shortest time possible. This build can give permahasten, elude up 270s / down 90s, focus recharging in just over 2 seconds, spin in 4 seconds and stuff like slash back up in the time it takes to blink. Downside is you’re going to spend your grandmother’s inheritance to get it (200 mil-ish for the Gamblers alone, another 50mil or so to complete). Bet you wish you got on more Katie farms before that was fixed … sucker.

The idea is to get five 5% recharge bonuses, five luck of the gambler +7.5% global recharge speeds slotted, and hasten well-slotted for recharge. Any 10% recharge bonuses from purple sets would be gravy.

5% bonuses can be had relatively cheaply and easily with the following:

5-slotting Crushing Impact in Slash or Strike
6-slotting Efficacy Adapter in Stamina
5 slotting Adjusted Targeting in Focused Accuracy
5-slotting Red Fortune in any of your 3 toggles, 3 passives, or combat jumping.

My personal preference was Crushing Impact in Slash & Strike, Red Fortune in FF, FS, and Adjusted Targeting in Focused Accuracy.

I love it. I run around in a blind stabbing frenzy in Elude, and when it crashes I pop a blue and conserve power, spend about 90 seconds in a slightly reserved stabbing frenzy, then pop elude and repeat. With Elude and Conserve Power available overlapping each other, I don’t have to waste any slots on endurance reduction and stick with the holy trinity of aim, damage, and recharge. Amen.


PROCS FOR FUN AND PROFIT
-------------------------------------

Lastly, procs. You have lots of options with Claws/SR, and it’s not only for endgame builds--these can help you level. Here’s a list of procs you can add in and the respective advantages. You probably can’t fit and/or afford them all, so you’ll have to make some decisions as to what suits you best.

Gaussian’s Chance for Buildup: as mentioned earlier, this can be slotted into Follow Up or Focused Accuracy/Tactics. It gives a 5% chance of buildup, which is fairly often when you consider how often you use this attack. Much better in an Follow Up than in Focused Accuracy/Tactics, where it would go off randomly--on average once every 3 minutes--and possibly not even during a fighting moment.

Decimation Chance for Buildup: Same as above, but slotted into Focus (or an epic blast if you are inclined).

Steadfast Protection +3% global defense: Goes in Tough if you take it. Works even if Tough isn’t on, in case you need to save endurance through one less active toggle.

Force Feedback - Chance for recharge: Goes in Focus or Shockwave. I understand that it’s a guaranteed +100% recharge for 5 seconds when the knockdown/back attack hits, and that it keeps going if you land it again before the 5 seconds is up (continuing at 100%, not ever more). If you miss the 5-second time to refresh it, you are locked out of refreshing it for another 5 seconds and then the timer starts again. Source: link

Achilles Heel - Chance for Resistance Debuff: Goes in Slash, which you should be spamming fairly often. Has a chance to apply a -20% resistance debuff to your target, which is currently still broken and never expires once it lands on an enemy. Level with it now before they fix it!

Numina’s Convalescence +Regen/Recovery and Miracle +Recovery: will cost you a pretty penny, but when slotted in Health, boost your endurance recovery a significant degree, which is very helpful if you have a toggle-intensive build.

Performance Shifter: Chance for +End: The poor man’s recovery boost, slotted in Stamina, give a 20% chance to return 10 endurance. This chance is checked for every 10 seconds, so on average you should get a bonus 10 endurance once every 50 seconds. Not entirely reliable but a nice help when it goes off.

Extra damage procs: Various. In general, each category of attack (melee, PBAOE, targeted AOE) has one or more procs that give a 10-20% chance of doing minor to moderate extra damage. Purple sets for PBAOE, melee, and also ranged give a 33% chance of extra moderate damage (exotic too--fire or neg energy, very nice). These purples add considerable damage to any build, and even the non-purple damage procs still benefit claws as it has lots of quick activating, fast recharging attacks… meaning the inclusion of extra damage procs will up your long-term DPS.


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So, that’s the guide. Hope it’s enlightening, and hope to see more lil’ Twitchys out there stabbing away in the future. Cheers!

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Nice upgrade, I based my claws/sr scrapper on your old guide, she's only level 30sh because I've been playing villains too much. Also provides an easy way to achieve 'perma Elude'.

Not to nitpick on it but if I didn't have access to Mid's hero designer I'd like to see the Damage index for Follow Up and Spin, as well as the buffs Follow Up gives you.

I know you didn't mention procs (maybe because there are so many you could fit) but Focus and Shockwave both take the lovely Force Feedback: chance for +rech IO so you can have a ZOMG defense build with very nice recharge

And your avatar is full of win

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I used Apocolypse in Focus, I figured the constant recharge from that would benefit more. That and adding 112 Neg Ener. Damage to focus at 50 was too hard to pass up. Though in Shockwave I did use Force Feedback.

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Good idea. Guide updated to include "Procs for Fun and Profit" at the very end, any more procs I may have left off, let me know.

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Just a question about the BIs for claws attacks you listed, where did you get the data? In looking at Mids Hero Designer, the BIs listed there are somewhat different to that which you listed. Below is the table i compiled from Mids, would be useful to know if these numbers are inaccurate, as i use Mids to view the BI on various attacks when working on builds.

Claws -- Cast -- Rch -- BI -- DPS (BI) = BI / cast + rech

Swipe / 1.5 / 1.7 / 2.19 / 0.68
Strike / 1.17 / 3.2 / 3.12 / 0.72
Slash / 1.33 / 4.8 / 4.12 / 0.67
Spin / 2.07 / 12.1 / 3.12 / 0.22
Follow Up / 1.63 / 12 / 2.5 / 0.18
Focus / 1.53 / 6.4 / 5.12 / 0.65
Eviscerate / 2.17 / 8.38 / 6.11 / 0.58
Shockwave / 1.53 / 12.1 / 3.12 / 0.23

Those numbers don't factor in any sort of recharge enhancement, however just looking at the numbers, it would seem that Eviscerate is actually a pretty damn good attack provided it strikes more than one enemy, giving it a BI DPS of 1.16 for quite a reasonable endurance cost and recharge time. Having said that, Strike is according to those numbers the best single DPS attack, of course that assumes you were simply spamming that single attack over and over, so i guess the numbers are somewhat misleading.

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I actually managed to achieve the soft cap without using *ultra*expensive IOs. Only uses Steadfast Protection: Resistance/Defense +3% in Tough.

Only gripe is the lack of Quickness, although you could replace CP with Quickness and just carry blues.



Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.4006
http://www.cohplanner.com/

Level 50 Magic Scrapper
Primary Power Set: Claws
Secondary Power Set: Super Reflexes
Power Pool: Leaping
Power Pool: Fitness
Power Pool: Fighting
Power Pool: Concealment
Ancillary Pool: Body Mastery

Hero Profile:
Level 1: Strike -- Acc-I(A), Acc-I(3), Dmg-I(5), Dmg-I(9), Dmg-I(39), EndRdx-I(39)
Level 1: Focused Fighting -- EndRdx-I(A), DefBuff-I(5), DefBuff-I(11), DefBuff-I(21)
Level 2: Slash -- Acc-I(A), Acc-I(3), Dmg-I(7), Dmg-I(15), Dmg-I(29), Achilles-ResDeb%(50)
Level 4: Agile -- DefBuff-I(A), DefBuff-I(7), DefBuff-I(17)
Level 6: Spin -- Acc-I(A), Acc-I(9), Dmg-I(11), Dmg-I(34), Dmg-I(37), EndRdx-I(40)
Level 8: Combat Jumping -- DefBuff-I(A), DefBuff-I(45), DefBuff-I(46)
Level 10: Practiced Brawler -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(15)
Level 12: Follow Up -- Acc-I(A), Acc-I(13), RechRdx-I(13), RechRdx-I(45)
Level 14: Super Jump -- Jump-I(A), Jump-I(17), Jump-I(37)
Level 16: Dodge -- DefBuff-I(A), DefBuff-I(19), DefBuff-I(23)
Level 18: Focus -- Acc-I(A), Acc-I(19), Dmg-I(21), Dmg-I(25), Dmg-I(31), EndRdx-I(40)
Level 20: Swift -- Run-I(A), Run-I(43), Run-I(46)
Level 22: Health -- Heal-I(A), Heal-I(23), Heal-I(34)
Level 24: Stamina -- EndMod-I(A), EndMod-I(25), EndMod-I(27)
Level 26: Focused Senses -- EndRdx-I(A), DefBuff-I(27), DefBuff-I(31), DefBuff-I(31)
Level 28: Lucky -- DefBuff-I(A), DefBuff-I(29), DefBuff-I(33)
Level 30: Boxing -- Empty(A)
Level 32: Shockwave -- Acc-I(A), Acc-I(33), Dmg-I(33), Dmg-I(34), Dmg-I(37), EndRdx-I(40)
Level 35: Evasion -- EndRdx-I(A), DefBuff-I(36), DefBuff-I(36), DefBuff-I(36)
Level 38: Tough -- EndRdx-I(A), ResDam-I(39), S'fstPrt-ResDam/Def+(43)
Level 41: Eviscerate -- Acc-I(A), Acc-I(42), Dmg-I(42), Dmg-I(42), Dmg-I(43), EndRdx-I(45)
Level 44: Conserve Power -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(46)
Level 47: Weave -- EndRdx-I(A), EndRdx-I(48), DefBuff-I(48), DefBuff-I(48)
Level 49: Stealth -- EndRdx-I(A), EndRdx-I(50), DefBuff-I(50)
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Critical Hit



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On the build in Mids, it shows 47.2%, but actual is 46.025% because Stealth suppresses by half.

Math: 2.35/2 = 1.175 and 47.2 - 2.35 + 1.175 (or 47.2 -1.175) = [u]46.025% to all[u]

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Seven years of heroism. Seven years of friendships. Seven years of saving the world. Seven years of virtuous selflessness.

You will return, for you are the mighty City of Paragon, the City of Heroes.

Gotta thank you guys, alot. I have used the information in here to put together a build for my ss/sr brute, and so far he is a blast to play, and he is only 27 so far.

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Willpower has more passive regen than Regen does. Who thought that was a good idea?

Can we get a fix for Energy Melee instead of more new sets?