Best Melee AoE Power Set?

What is the best melee AoE power set, either hero or villain? I'd imagine Electric?

You would imagine correctly. I'd suggest rolling a stalker so you have single target damage as well.

I would guess it would be one of Spines, /Fire (tanker version, with Combustion), Claws, or SS. It depends on what you mean by "best" - the AT and complementary set make a big difference in final DPS.

Spines hands down.

Wait, wait, what makes Spines a better AoE set than electric? I mean, I can imagine it's a better all around set, but for sheer number of AoE attacks and their availability, I think Electric has it hands down.

I mean, I know there's spine burst and some range in spines, but how does that compare to Lightning rod+Thunder strike+Chain Induction? (I don't really count Clap, as it's more a utility power)

Depends I guess on what you want.

You want a guy who can just make a spawn go bye bye in like, 2 moves? Elec/Sheild... BuildUp/SC/LR... it's all dead. You'll have to deal with the next spawn without your 2 heavy hitters, or you can stager them, but basically, what you have here is the king for AoE aplha striking.

Now, if you just want, constent, 24/7, AoE madness, youd prolly roll a Spine/Dark, Fire, or now Elec. You get 2 Damage auras, spineburst, and thowspines, ready for each and every spawn.

So, it's either Spines, or Elec (IMO). Frankly, i find Spines more effective, and easier to use. The damage aura and spineburst simple to aim... you get right smack in the middle... and go nutz, and thorwspines cone is HUGE, so, again, aiming isn't hard, and the attacks recharge pretty fast. Elec, it's best aoe attack is on a long timer. JL's cone IMO is small, The chaining lighting attack is unpredictable. thrunderstike is AWSOME, no question, but all in all, i think spines is just more consistnet and more forgiving, thus, making it, genearly speaking, a better performer.

A high recharge based SS Brute. Nothing beats Rage and Fury fueled Footstomp. Add Shields for best results.

I'm going to say elec/shield/fire or ss/shield/mu. Though I'll give a mention to elec/fire/fire and ss/fire/mu as well.

Spines is really good too though, it just doesn't have anything like the "everyone dies NOW" powers like elec and/or shields offers. But if you had a way to constantly feed things into your damage aura it may well pull ahead, auras are really good.

I'm currently leveling an elec/fire/fire scrap. I think FE and blazing aura will do a decent job of replacing AAO and sheildcharge for me because I like hitting the tele-nukes from range yet AAO dictates I already have to be surrounded. FE fueled blaze mastery should be pretty nice too. The build I'm planning has FE up about 37% of the time, that should work nicely for blazing aura and fireblast/fireball.

Don't laugh but I'm also going to try leveraging rise of the pheonix. Slotted up it hits almost as hard as scrapper l-rod, which is quite a bit harder than shield charge. Basically I plan to use it in the ~10 second window that hasten is down so that I don't mess with my cycles. I don't have it yet, but I plan to make a bind that will drop all my armor toggles and just jump in and immeditately die, boom rofflecopter of the pheonix +fireball and then retoggle while I jump to the next group. We'll see...

Frosticus, I don't always agree with you but I fully believe you have sense in your head. I'm just not seeing how Elec beats out SS or Fire. Is it that LR is hotter than I thought - maybe with a really high-rech build - or am I underestimating the rest of the set? From a practical standpoint, it seems to take a lot more positioning work to get the most out of JL, CI, and TS than it does to land in the middle of the spawn and bounce on Foot Stomp or Combustion/GFS. CI in particular is tremendously fiddly due to needing to not kill the primary target and due to the random nature of the arcs.

I'd be interested to see your take on this.

If your measuring stick is "who's going to kill a lot of guys the fastest" I would love to see a melee toon who can kill a lot of guys faster than a melee character with Super Strength post Foot Stomp.

I don't see it happening. I would greatly enjoy being shown that I am in the wrong. I can bring the Super Strength guys for you to compare to

Agreed, Spines has the most AoE. 1 click PBAoE, one Toggle PBAoE, one small Cone attack and one short-ranged Cone - Spines is one of the few Scrapper sets that actually has (shortish) Ranged attacks.
Dual Blades has one PBAoE and two Cones, as does Claws.

Electric has one small Cone and one real AoE, plus the targeted pseudo-AoE in Thunder Strike. The other AoE is a Stun.

Secondaries are a separate matter.

Be Well!
Fireheart

I'm going to be a bit different and claim War Mace.

I have an uninterrupted attack chain of Crowd Control, Shatter, and Whirling Mace for when there are 16 opponents clumped in front of me. That brute lays waste to huge swaths of opponents.

Depends what you mean by best. But as others in the thread have pointed out;

Best AoE Alpha: ElM/SD Scrapper
Lightning rod and shield charge make for one mean everyone dies now toon.

Best Lazy Guy AoE: Spines/FA Scrapper
Toggle auras on, use Fiery embrace, use burn.

Most efficient AoE Steamroller: SS/Fire Brute
Rage, embrace, Elec-Fences, Footstomp, Burn with fury inside™

Sword/Shield scrapper can kick out some impressive AoE damage, Charge, Whirling sword and then the cone. All boosted by the +dam aura (god I fail at names today)

Fire/Fire is also a destructive piece of kit, I have to say. At range or melee.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

I have played almost every melee set there is and here are my picks. I won’t be including epic/patron because it will be the same blue side fire and red side Mu.
For damage over time my spines/fire was the best but it did not have the big AOE hitters as other sets.

For highest damage AOE that would be a brute SS/Shield. Once fully slotted and with fury or Fulcrum shift the damage is crazy good. The downside is you have to wait till late game to even get an AOE and have it slotted up.

The next best thing and it’s the best blue side is Elec/Shield. Yes you won’t get Lightning rod and shield charge late game as well, but the set has more AOE’s in it then most sets. Thuderstrike is great, and Chain induction jumps much better now, just make sure you use it early on a boss so he won’t die and it will jump. Jacobs’s ladder gets a bad reputation but it works great at early levels, you just need to line up and use its cone. I like to get some minions between a boss or LT target the Boss and fire off JL if the cone is right I can zap a few then follow up with Sands of Mu to get more in your cone.

Pro's to elec on stalkers vs Brutes.

1. Higher base damage on the AT. This means no waiting around for rage buildup or always having to have a /kin follow you around to maximize your value to a group. You just are awesome. This also means that damage buffs from BU and your enhancements go further. You will be doing more damage per attack over time than your brute friends.

2. Controllable criticals on higher base damage attacks

3. Critical chance scales with the size of your party and goes nuts when you run with a dominator or two. Critical damage does not count toward the damage cap so in very rare occaisions (2 domi, 5 MM teams) you'll have a higher damage potential than any other form of electric melee.

4. It's diffucult to test, but from my observations over a pretty decent amount of time, it also seems that psuedopet powers count as party members for the purpose of determining critical chance. More benefit to solo stalkers than teamed, but still significant for teamed stalkers.

5. First two attacks proc sleep which allows for assured critical hit on the next attack. This mostly affects solo players though as teamed you will most likely fail to line up the BU+thunderstrike before the sleep is broken.

Cons

1. Lower damage cap.
2. lower general survivability.
3. Psuedopets do not inheret critical capability (LR and Chain Induction proc.)

Biased conclusion: Elec is better for stalkers than for brutes.

I couldn't say what is best though. That's such a subjective term. Do you want the most damage over a full mission? Just right now? For 5 packs or 15 packs? Do you want to be able to survive alpha's or just follow someone else in? Is this maximum AOE for farming or missions? If farming, then Farming what?

"Best damage" doesn't really exist in an absolute sense. There are just a ton of factors that make one combo better than another.

If I were asked to just toss out a combo I'd suggest a Spines/Elec Scrapper for blueside or an Elec/Nin Stalker for redside. Spines/FA may have more theoretical damage, but Elec Armor have much better protection in the form of higher resists and better mez protection. Elec armor also have a better End recovery power and an overall more useful heal button. Elec's t9 is also better to cover "oops" moments than FA's.