Malta Sapper Secondary Mitigation

I'm trying to evaluate secondary powersets according to their ability to mitigate the effects of Malta Sappers, and I need some insight from all of you. I'm aware that you can use your primaries to stun/kill the Sapper before he has a chance to try to sap you, but I'm more interested in how the secondaries react once a Sapper actually gets through.

Offhand, I'd say that if you have to go against a Sapper, you'd probably want either /Electric, because of its resistance to endurance drain, or /SR, because the Sapper can't drain you if he can't hit you.

I would tend to avoid powersets like /Willpower and /Regen, because they provide recovery increase powers, which you come to depend on. When you have massive recovery and an endurance intensive build, you find yourself in serious trouble when your recovery drops to zero.

What do you guys think?

Look into Invuln and Dark Armor as well, both of those have Endurance Recovery Resistance. Shields is almost as good as SR for dodging the attacks as well, plus it has the same Click power for mezz protection, so even if you do get hit and detoggled, you can't get stunned/held/immob'd/KB'd by other mobs.

Regen and Willpower suffer the worst by far, followed by Invuln. Dark Armor, which was on the first toon i got to 50, has moderate protection, enough that sappers need multiple hits to fully drain you. If you want full mitigation, however, electric is the only way to go. Even if they manage to bring you down, you have an autohit endurance recovery power to bring you back. Fiery Aura has an endurance recovery power, but the long recharge is unfavorable.

So, from most powerful to least

electric armor - massive -end resist and endurance drain power and energize (-50% endurance costs)
dark armor - moderate
super reflexes - stable mezz protection/defense
shields - see above
invuln - minor -end resist
fire - endurance drain power
regen - nothing
willpower - nothing

I'd put SR one notch higher. Sappers can't drain what they can't hit, so it will take them more shots (on average) to drain a /SR than a /Dark. /Elec is definitely number one though since it pretty much doesn't matter how much they hit you (which is good since you'll have pretty much zero defense).

It's worth pointing out that an Invulnerability Scrapper with highly-saturated Invincibility (or better yet, at the soft cap) is both hard to hit AND has some resistance when hit, and thus would be better than a plain SR against Sappers.

I know this is not a secondary, but My Dark/Regen and Fire/Fire use Petrifying Gaze from the Dark Mastery to put a muzzle on Sappers. It holds the sapper, and thus allows them to be defeated in perfect safety.

My Dark/SR on the other hand looks for Malta missions in the AE. She laughs at them.

My Spines/Elec is too young yet to meet up with Sappers, but I can't wait

I maltaed all over the place yesterday, purple minion style. Invincibility from Inv secondary. Three defbuf, 2 endred. Never turn it off.

If you get killed or your end bottoms, the first toggle to hit is that. I bang on it as I stagger backward, away from the chaos, waiting to get control back.

INV FTW

Edited to add: Holy crap, just looked it up. I dont' think I have any end protection. I'm insane.

My only gripe with Invincibility and the DA auras is that they are melee range only. If you aggro the Sapper from range he'll be able to get a shot off before you can get in melee range of him, plus in a standard solo spawn Invincibility isn't adding a lot of defense. Of course in a standard solo spawn who cares if the Sapper hits you? Everything's going to die before your bar can fully drop. But in large crowds I'd rather have a softcapped /SR than have to stop and plan my exact approach to get the sapper(s) in my auras before they can fire (that "tactics" nonsense is for Blasters, Scrappers should not have to stop and think before jumping into a pile of bad guys! ). A softcapped /Inv would be just fine too, but /Inv is a lot harder to softcap so I put it lower down on the list.

I have a Macro when doing Malta and it's

Macro T, "$$targetname Sapper"

That way I can pick them out instantly before one shotting them.

Ela

I put Dark Armor ahead of Super Reflexes becuase Dark armor, as others have stated, have more than just enurance drain resistance built into their shields. They have cloak of darkness, which even without super speed will give you enough time to get right beside the booger and take him down in 1 - 2 shots. You also have those mez auras, you don't need both, just one, and those can help subdue him so he doesnt get a chance to fire off. I have played Dark Armor for over 4 years, I know all it's secrets. I chose oppressive gloom to save on endurance, and despite the health drain, it's very manageable becuase Dark Regen makes you nigh indestructible in a mob. Stack that set with tough and pick up physical perfection in your epics and you are solid gold. I have played electric armor to fifty and I am currently playing another one to 50 since I deleted my old one (lack of healing at the time). They are so immune to endurance drain that it is pathetic, and with powers like Energize and Power Sink, you never run out, even if you run tough, three shields and the damage aura. I have played super reflexes to 50, and yes they can avoid sapper attacks, but when they hit they hurt, and they have no other tools in their secondary to help deal with that kind of attack. I rated it higher than invuln becuase aside from resist elements, Invuln has no other tool to help it out aside from defense, which for a scrapper needs a little help from set bonuses to be worth anything, even with a saturated invincibility. Everything else is kind of lackluster against endurance drain, the sets just don't have anything to offer, aside from fiery aura, which only has a long recharge endurance recovery power that requires mobs to be in range before you can use it, and it has an accuracy check to boot.

I have played Invuln, fiery Aura, Dark armor, electric armor, super reflexes and shields to 50, playing against all manner of villainy. I know which mobs my toons blow through, and i know which ones they suffer against. The only jack of all trades I have that can do everything medium well is my Dark armor scrapper. He has a solid quick recharging heal (mine is down to 17 seconds and heals for over 50% with one mob in range), four resistance shields with resistance to everything, including psi, Fear protection, stealth, a mez aura and endurance resistance. Throw in one or two KB resistance IO's and grab physical perfection for some extra recovery and let him/her roll.

To the above poster.

Out of all my scrappers, of which multiples are 50's of all types. Dark armor is the /sec that I really dont care what type of mob I fight as well. About the only thing I dont think /dark can do better than other /sec's is fight AV/GM's.

Up until a couple weeks ago Id never manage to buy/purchase any of the healing uniques.
On a different thread people were talkin about rolling for them in the 24-29 bronze ticket roll range.

I collected approx 8k tickets from a couple toons and rolled all on lvl 24-29 bronze rewards

I managed to get 2 steadfast uniques and 2 miracles

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shadow Ravenwolf My favorite combo is Faceplant/DebtCap with the TeamWipe Ancillary

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dispari Yeah, I like Blasters too.

I've played many soft-capped toons... sappers have never been an issue on any of those toons. I'd say ranged-defense plus using "/targetcustomnext enemy alive sapper" as a bind or macro as the ultimate stopper to sappers.

sidenote: I like using a macro for my targeting instead of a bind so I can edit it quickly for different situations.

Personally I will agree with just targetting the sapper and chewing it up before it gets a shot off. On most scrappers, just build-up and one/two shot it.

On say Dual Blades and Claws, who have their "build-up" ish power as an attack, run in, use a quick single target knockdown power, following up with another strong single target attack to finish it off.