Follow Up - Claws Question

Hi there.

After riding the squishy levels of my Claws/Regen, I'm thoroughly enjoying playing him but I need a little advice on the Follow Up power. I understand that a successful attack gives you a brief boost to Accuracy and Damage however I've read two separate guides which seem to conflict on what it affects.

One says that it boosts accuracy and damage as a whole, therefore using something like Focus or Evicerate afterwards would give me a massive damage output. However, the other guide states that it affects only base damage meaning that the bonus is almost worthless.

I know the damage it deals on its own is not huge, it's the bonus that I'm curious about. Can anyone enlighten me on whether this is actually worth taking? Thanks.

Info on Follow-Up from nofuture.org here

It's a boost to base damage and tohit.

I think the idea is to tweak it so that this boost is stacked constantly though... it's less of a damage boost than Build up but can do more +attack/+tohit over time and it can be double-stacked for a short period.

Basically it's low damage, so if you spam it it will eat into your dps... But at the same time it's giving you a boost to your other attacks so using Follow-up in between each of your big hitters can be worthwhile.

There's a "ultimate follow-up attack chain of doom" thread somewhere on the US boards that involves using Quickness and spamming follow-up for maximum dps.

Basically, juggle about with it and see what suits your playstyle!

[edit] added US boards thread linky [/edit]

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One says that it boosts accuracy and damage as a whole, therefore using something like Focus or Evicerate afterwards would give me a massive damage output. However, the other guide states that it affects only base damage meaning that the bonus is almost worthless.

[/ QUOTE ]It's a damage buff, just like all other +dmg powers in the game.

Yes, but it affects tohit as well.

All normal damage buffs only work by increasing base damage. They don't take into account other buffs or damage enhancements. Therefore assuming you've 3-slotted a power with Attack SOs, +20% damage from follow up would effectively raise your total damage output for that power by about 10%.

Mob resistance debuffs work differently as *all* damage is effectively increased, but as my sonic defender has discoved the % of extra damage from -res drops as mob level scales up...

Mael, probably because the higher level critters tend to have some sort of resistance themselves, which resists resistance debuffs. Low level bad guys hardly have any resistances of any worth.

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Mob resistance debuffs work differently as *all* damage is effectively increased, but as my sonic defender has discoved the % of extra damage from -res drops as mob level scales up...

[/ QUOTE ]All power effectiviness is decreased if foe is higher level than you, ever since the purple patch.

-Resistance doesn't work quite like that... it's effectively a total damage multiplier, so the mob's actual resistance levels for various damage types don't matter to it.

Say Mob A has 50% resistance and Mob B has 0 resistance:

You hit for 100, so that's 50 on mob A and 100 on mob B. Now apply a -res debuff of 20%: you now hit mob A for 60 damage and mob B for 120. It's effectively adding 20% to your total damage output.

And I'm aware that most offensive powers scale down as mob level scales up MaX, but that didn't make it any less annoying when I tested it a few days back and found a 30% -res debuff on +4s boosted a 63 dmg attack to only 67 dmg... I'm too used to Build Up's flat +damage rate!

I'm pretty sure that secondary knockdown/knockup effects don't care what level a mob is providing the tohit check succeeds. And -tohit debuffs certainly seem to scale a lot better than -res does...

...Ack, now I'm griping!

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I'm pretty sure that secondary knockdown/knockup effects don't care what level a mob is providing the tohit check succeeds.

[/ QUOTE ]They do, the higher the target, the shorter distance it will be knocked back. ALL power effectiviness on hostiles scales with level.

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I'm pretty sure that secondary knockdown/knockup effects don't care what level a mob is providing the tohit check succeeds.

[/ QUOTE ]They do, the higher the target, the shorter distance it will be knocked back. ALL power effectiviness on hostiles scales with level.

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Yes, Which wouldn't affect Knockup/Knockdown attacks since they already have a "Knockback" distance of zero on even level targets.

The actual bouncing occurs at the same success rate regardless of whether the mob you're trying to bounce is even level or +5, as long as you can physically make the attack connect.

My Kat/Regen scrapper can attest to this as he was quite happily permabouncing level 50 Death Mages in PI from 45 onwards...

Knockup attacks have a distance

Yes, of zero

(unless you're talking about the height at which mobs are actually bounced into the air... which I've never seen change on my Soaring Dragon *ever*...)

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Yes, of zero

(unless you're talking about the height at which mobs are actually bounced into the air... which I've never seen change on my Soaring Dragon *ever*...)

[/ QUOTE ]It's not always zero, there are powers that only KU very short distance (like AS), and those that do so for longer distance (such as psi tornado, or the old whirlwind).

Of course, the addition of ragdoll might be screwing up KU, and the distance changes won't be as apparent as they used to.

Hmm. I always assumed Knock UP was the component that literally bounced a mob upwards, and that Tornado/Psi Tornado/Whirlwind/etc. only caused mobs to be flung backwards because the entity causing the knockup was itself moving forwards and adding "momentum" to the bounce.

A quick glance on Nofuture shows:

Effect 6.231 Knockup to Target for 0.3 seconds if (target = critter)
Effect 12.463 Knockback to Target for 0.3 seconds if (target = critter)
Effect 12.463 Knockback to Target if (target = player)
Suppressed when Knocked, for 10 seconds (WhenInactive)

Tornado contains BOTH a knockup and a knockback component.

1.4 Knockup to Target (50% chance)

And Psi Tornado Contains just the Knockup component. That'd suggest to me that mobs would actually be forceably flung away from Tornado, but that mobs would only be thrown backwards from Psi Tornado at roughly the same speed that the Psi Tornado itself was travelling forwards.

Wierd... If it doesn't actually act this way, I suppose it's just the ragdoll system in action!

I suppose a toon could knock something back further if it had a knockup/knockdown attack slotted for knockback... but does anyone actually DO that?

[Edit: I never got the chance to test out the old version of whirlwind, but from what I gather it was knockup without much knockback... there's tales on the US boards of scrappers using it to keep mobs out of action but still within melee range (5 feet) ....? Apologies to the OP for the OT discussion btw!! ]

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[Edit: I never got the chance to test out the old version of whirlwind, but from what I gather it was knockup without much knockback... there's tales on the US boards of scrappers using it to keep mobs out of action but still within melee range (5 feet) ....? Apologies to the OP for the OT discussion btw!! ]

[/ QUOTE ]You could go next to some low level foes, activate whirlwind, and see them fly about 20 metres up to the air, only to land to the exact same spot. Of course, after ragdoll that no longer worked, and then whirlwind was nerfed to do knockback.

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Apologies to the OP for the OT discussion btw!! ]

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No problem. I just shudder at what I have unleashed onto the boards...

As it is, I will probably pick up Kick next anyway just so I can get to Tough. I was just curious to know whether the damage buff on Follow Up made it worth getting.

Max is correct, I can confirm becase I recently went out to destroy a supertroll mob with my level 50 controller and they DEFINATELY were flying higher into the air, somewhere around the height of the top of the nearby warehouse...

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I was just curious to know whether the damage buff on Follow Up made it worth getting.

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In my opinion ( and i know a couple of claws players that would agree) Follow Up is definitly worth getting. I didnt get it that early but specced it in at the late 20s and it made a definite difference to my dmg output. I'm still using it in the 40s slotted with recharge and tohit buffs so that it stacks a little bit and means i rarely miss Unfortunatly i never found it fun to number crunch so cant give you stats but from my playing experience i think its good thing to have in your powertray. Just my two pence

Just thinking about the slotting, now my Claws/DA is at lvl 17. I assume to-hit is worth it, and some recharge. What about 1 acc, 2 to-hit and 3 recharge?

I'd slot Damage instead of ToHit, the bonus isn't really worth enhancing but slotting damage instead helps to limit the drop in damage you'll get when using this instead of a standard attack.

So 3 recharge, 2 damage and 1 accuracy?

My claws scrapper slots 2 of each.

Yeah, either that or 2xAcc, 2xDam and 2xRecharge - depends on what level foes you usually face.