Claws/?

I've recently fallen in love with the claws powerset. The only thing is, I'm unsure of what secondary to go with. I'd like a secondary that isn't completely passive (ala nothin' but togglin' on and away you go), and is fairly survivable with limited IO investment. Ideas?

Regeneration. Or Dark Armor. Both require thought to play, and both work well without extensive IOs. DA will need a KB protection IO somewhere, of course.

My current Scrapper project (after having rounded out the rest of my AT collection) is a Claws/SR. It's remarkably survivable (even at low levels I notice the contribution of the toggles) and has an activated mez power which might fulfill your "not toggle and walk" requirement.

My Claws/Nin is alot of fun, and the only stalker I could level up in the 40ies.

If you're used to play brutes or scrappers usually, it's a good opportunity to test this awesome secondary, only available on a stalker. It really feels stalkerish, and it complements the AT so well...

I'll agree with Regen or Dark Armor, with Regen being the more interactive of the two.

I'll also toss out Fire as an idea. Damage boost, self heal, endurance recovery tool, and Burn for survivability should make it pretty interactive. Might be fun.

I would say /Regen, /DA, or /SR.

Claws/Regen is the old fashioned Wolverine-wannabe build. You get solid recovery very early on, 2 click heal powers, and a power that rapidly increases Regen. A touch of resistance and potential for IO set boosts make this 'un a good and stable build. No complaints.

Claws/Willpower is darn near a powerhouse in terms of, uh, easy mode. It has a lot more defense and resistance than a Claws/Regen, making it less click-intensive so that one might focus on attacking. It feels like it will fair better in PVP then a Claws/Regen, but I may well be wrong.

Claws/SR is darn near invincible in PVE, but it isn't as easy a road as a Claws/WP (and might not do as well in PVP, though I'm not certain due to lac of experience in PVP with this build). Elude and Quick Recovery, combined with low endurance costs in the Claws primary, make for a fast, nimble and and dangerously strong Scrapper. The high level of lethal resistance in AVs might be the only detriment to this build.

Hope this helps.

I'd vote for /regen.

I say /regen, too

Although you mention that you don't want to just have a "Toggle and Go" powerset, there is definitely something to be said for the power of Willpower.

I currently run all secondary toggles and all leadership toggles as well as hover. I know there are probably better toggles to have up (Tough and Weave), but I am fairly new, and I really wanted to give leadership a try since it buffs the entire team. So far, I am having a blast hovering up to a group and just ripping them to shreds. One of my favorite combos is followup>other single targets until enemies get grouped>eviscerate>hover up and back a bit>Shockwave>fly back into the group to make sure Rise to the Challenge is at maximum.

This works very well as a soft form of mitigation. This strategy definitely works for regen as well, if not better. I could see shockwave being a life saver...Take a few hits, pop shockwave, knock everyone on their butts while you regen a few hundred hitpoints.

Sorry about the long post! Good luck with your scrapper!

I like my Claw/Fire, 2 Res toggles, 1 Dmg Aura and a click self heal make for a really fun fast killing ST and AoE-tastic scrapper.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Sure, the devs are supposed to listen to their customers, mister business 101 out there. And if I decide to start suggesting that the devs change the game from being about superheroes and supervillains to being about clowns that is my right as well, and technically Paragon Studios is supposed to pay attention to me. But I hope strongly that they assume a meth-head somehow managed to hack into my forum account and make paper airplanes out of my posts, because I hope they recognize stupid when they see it. I assume they will recognize futile just as accurately.

Well I can say I understand the draw of fire and forget secondaries to pair up with Claws. I will always lean towards SR for Claws until something similar to Shields or Shields itself can work with Claws. The thing you will need for fire and forget with SR is to Auto PB and stop attacking long enough for it to fire off when it recharges. SR can be a tough road early, but gearing up towards the soft cap is relatively easy.

But I can see where WP would fit better, you don't have any true synergy with Claws but also nothing major as far as disadvantages. The one thing that comes to mind is the knockback with Shockwave reducing RttC's effectiveness, but that can also be managed. Tough and Weave make WP really impressive, and you have the end to run them with QR.

Interesting. Definitely some food for thought. The more I think about it, I realize that the more clicks I use from my secondary the more redraw time I'm using, which is a slight annoyance. Maybe having a fire/forget secondary like /WP or /SR is the way to go. Does shockwave really upset RoTC? and just HOW easy is it to softcap a /SR? My funds will be limited to under 100 mil, most likely.

If you use shockwave while in melee range, you will knock everyone you hit with it well out of rttc range. Even if you don't slot for kb.

I agree about the secondaries being too passive, I wish there were more that allowed player skill to come into play to make them stronger or better.

I have to agree with most of the posts so far, fire armor, dark armor or regen are the most active secondaries. Unfortunately with fire and dark it is toggle management for endurance issues and praying your heal comes back faster because your resist based secondary is getting hit alot and hard. They are fun and the low endurance cost of claws makes the endurance management easier. If you are new or this is your first melee toon in game I think claws/fire might be a safe and fun ride up.

All that said claws/regen would be a hoot to play, regen is just non stop gogogo. With multiple heals and a god mode you can have by level 28, and then the sweetness of MOG it is an action packed thrill ride. The only problem is how do you IO it? The set just begs for maximum recharge (and recharge bonusese are generally expensive), but once you achieve permanent dull pain where do you go?

Your ceiling for this toon at level 50 is probably the lowest of all the secondaries on the pve side of the game. Simply because in pve defense is king, and you just can't mount an appreciable amount of defense. I am afraid with the new pvp changes to damage based off of animations basically destroys claws effectiveness in pvp as well too. I have a claws/nin stalker (this was a fun toon as well) but the new pvp basically ruined this toon and with it any interest I had in pvp.

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Your ceiling for [Claws/Regen] at level 50 is probably the lowest of all the secondaries on the pve side of the game. Simply because in pve defense is king, and you just can't mount an appreciable amount of defense.

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Counterpoint: Iggy Kamakaze did a Rikti War Zone challenge using only Swipe on his Claws/Regen.

While I'm not sure Claws/Regen has the lowest high end survivability of all Claws combos, and regardless of my usual rants about the RWZ challenge as a metric - ah, who I am kidding. I'll rant anyway.

With the Mentalists/Mesmerists, it's one of the few situations where positional defense is less valuable than usual. There's also no defense debuffs and lots of psi damage ; defense debuffs are usually harsher on regen than some other secondaries, and regen doesn't care about psi damage (except for mental blast slowing down their rech, but that's one power).

I'd also argue just because people haven't done swipe challenges on other secondaries doesn't mean it can't be done ; although, honestly, I doubt we'll ever see this from a Claws/Inv or Claws/Fire. Between scrapper ceilings being so high and game situations being so different (the RWZ challenge being, in my opinion, more forgiving for regen users than some other game situations) it doesn't seem far fetched to me to believe that the weakest combo in survivability could still do a Swipe challenge, if played by a great player with a great build. Bringing me to my next point : Iggy is Iggy, using him to discuss a build power level is basically cheating.

Granted, this rant could be summed up with "while I feel you are most likely correct, one anecdotal evidence doesn't seem like a good enough basis for a counterpoint in this discussion". I guess I'm enjoying this too much.

No, I agree, we could easily see this from other secondaries, and some could probably pull it off more easily. But I found the idea of “you can't mount an appreciable amount of defense” to be a bit off. And what was being discussed was the “ceiling”, which to me includes being played by a good player. That also makes it a case where mere anecdote might be seen as evidence, since there are probably so few people playing at the ceiling for any given secondary.

Lest it be implied, I don't think that Claws/Regen is at the top end of top end performance. But the statement I was responding to seemed to imply that it wasn't very good, which I think is demonstrably false. See also Catwhoorg (hopefully I'm remembering his primary/secondary correctly and am not being an idiot here).

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I found the idea of “you can't mount an appreciable amount of defense” to be a bit off.

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Agreed.

I focused on the ceiling part and didn't pay enough attention to that part. Considering the whole thing, you are indeed right.