Claws: Swipe or Strike?

Which is the superior choice? Or is it just a matter of personal taste?

Looking at the numbers it seems Swipe is better DPS although both recharge so quickly that either can be used as a filler...

We once believed it was strike. I know that was true back when swipe was the kittycat on crack against curtains animation.

After figuring in arcanatime, swipe wins with a DPA of 1.003788 unmodified versus Strike's unmodified .818182 and costs 1.248 less end.

Edit: That's if swipes actual damage is still base 1.06. City of Data shows the following:

• 0.76 Lethal damage PvE only

• 0.3 Lethal damage (after 0.5 second delay) (0% chance) PvE only

Swipe was originally a multi-hit attack. Probably something like:

.35 lethal damage

.35 lethal damage after .5 sec delay (100% chance)


and they just changed it to:

.76 lethal damage

.03 lethal damage after .5 sec delay (0% chance)

Doing it that way means they can change the animation and make it work without having to completely recode how the power works. That would effectively change it from 2 small hits to one larger one, and they didn't have to mess with the coding.

I'm not sure if my guess is accurate, but it makes sense.

I prefer Swipe myself nowadays. The DPS IS slightly lower than Strike still, but Swipe fits in my attack chain a lot better.

Side note, that DPA I listed above doesn't mean damage per activation, it stands for damage per arcanatime.

I'm sitting here confusing myself again.

Strike does more damage. But it has less damage per second. In an attack chain, you want the higher DPS attacks so that you dish out the most damage in the least amount of time.

Take my FU, Slash, Focus, Swipe chain. Using nothing but the base values, it does:

.8+1.32+1.39+1.06 for a total of 4.57 damage and takes (after adjusting for arcanatime) 5.016 seconds.

If I replace swipe with strike, the chain does 4.77 damage but takes 5.28 seconds.

My DPS for that chain with swipe is .911
But with strike it works out to .903

Swipe is actually the better choice in all areas.

That may not seem like a big difference, but let's expand it a bit.

Make it 10 chains in a row.
9.11 and 9.03
Add 95% damage enhancement
17.765 and 17.609
Now throw in the scrapper multiplier of 62.562
1111.414 and 1101.654

But now we have to adjust for time.

Swipe chain did 1111.414 damage in 50.16 seconds.
The strike chain did 1101.654 in 52.8 seconds.

The DPS of the swipe chain is 22.157. In 52.8 seconds, that chain does 1169.89 damage.

The actual difference in damage output over the same period of time comes out 68.236 in favor of swipe. Against hard targets like AVs and Pylons, that becomes a damn good chunk of damage.

But above all, swipe is sexier.

I knew there was another reason I went with Swipe and not just for its animation...

Thanks a lot for the numbers, Billz! I'll respec into Swipe since my build requires one anyway (want Spin at 6 for exemplaring!)

Won't it really suck if one of us hops in game and determines that the 0% chance of .3 damage portion of the attack doesn't actually exist because of the 0% part of the code?

Yup. That sure would suck. And it does, too.

Level 2 Claws Scrapper against Level 2 Hellion Minion
Swipe: 8.36
Strike: 11.89

Scrapper Damage Modifier at Level 2 as per CoD: 11.016
8.36/11.016 = .759 CoD Value: .76
11.89/11.016 = 1.079 CoD Value: 1.08

Sorry, people. I farked up. This is why you have to check your data. 0% means 0%.

DPArc of swipe with the corrected damage is .72
DPArc of strike is .818

I'm a saaaad devil.

Gorram it. Now I have to go back and look at my chains again.

I PMed Castle and begged him to remove it so that I wouldn't keep farking up my chain charts.

I also asked him to just up swipe's damage to 1.06 but I doubt he'd do that without readjusting the end/recharge of it as well, and I don't see that happening.

Again, sorry for misleading everyone.

That's a pity, Strike is so damn ugly :/

Here's something interesting. I just figured out to to push my DPS over the 200 mark with claws on a scrapper. To do so, I need to drop hasten and replace it with assault.

So... Strike is better as we originally thought?


Strike isn't that ugly. Just Boxing with claws, yo.

Screw DPS, I'm not putting an attack in my chain that annoys me every time I see it.

My Claws/Regen is built on a very fine line, Swipe is necessary for my chain to even work. I don't have Hasten, and I have just enough recharge to run Follow Up, Slash, Swipe, Focus, Swipe with no breaks. I tried it with Strike and it screwed the whole thing up. Actually it works out to where I can run my chain of Slash, Swipe, Focus, Swipe twice before Follow Up is back up, but I kinda like it like that. My DPS could be loads better, but I'm not a min/maxer so I don't really care that much.

C&E, I worked out a nasty little attack chain of nothing but FU, Swipe, Focus, Swipe, repeat.

DPS isn't great, but DAMN is it a hoot to watch. Too bad there aren't more melee damage procs. With the chain on paper, swipe had the Hecatomb and ToD procs.


But here's the kicker for those that really hate strike:

The chain I'm looking at right now on my spreadsheet is FU, Slash, Focus, Strike doing 216.104DPS. If I do nothing but replace Strike with Swipe, it only loses 3DPS.

That's it. 3.

Hmmmmm, I didn't look at that yesterday. I can't rationalize putting the ugly, clumsy, nasty strike back in my build for 3 DPS!

WOOT!


EDIT: Crap. Now I see why I didn't have it on the chart. For FU/Sl/Fo/Sw I need 203 total recharge in FU. Using strike instead I only need 184 recharge in FU. The current build gives FU 189.

The trade off you have to go through to get what you want. Strike is just soooo disgustingly ugly. That frickin pause just drove me insane. My current build runs at 195 dps chaining fu->slash->focus->swipe, and my planned out respec prior to i16 going live would go around 205 using the same chain, but in doing so would bring down my regen By 30% and hp by 60. Which im ok with cause im pulling out a purple set to be moved over to my fire/shielder which im grooming to be just a ridiculous specimen come i16... ;-)
Which brings me to that PvP IO... you guys need to stop buying that thing for such a high price... I cant afford it!!! ;-)

If I could figure out how to be softcapped, have 115% global recharge without hasten, 30% global damage buff AND get rid of tough/weave while keeping at least 85% damage enhancements in each of the 4 attacks all while staying above 1800 HP... I'd be a happy camper.

no tough?
so how much regen are we talking here... ;-)

I'm looking at a build that's just 3% short of recharge but meets all other requirments. Gonna see if I could pull it off and post the build later on as I have no way of posting or openning up a build on my phone.



Edit:
However; if you are only concern of running fu->slash->focus->swipe... then i think I nailed that build... ;-)

I would love to be able to lose weave.