Energy Melee - Scrappers

Yeah but iv'e seen scrappers twoshotting with MA now, and 4 shots with BS. Why not give scrapper EM? Can't be that bad.

Tankers have a melee damage mod of 0.8 and Brutes have a melee damage mod of 0.75. The 0.65 you're thinking of is the Defender ranged damage mod.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Here's the thing: The hardest two-shot a Martial Arts Scrapper can pull off is Eagle's Claw + Crane Kick. Eagle's Claw has a scale damage of 2.28 and Crane Kick has a scale damage of 1.96. That's a combo altogether of 4.24 scale damage.

The hardest two-shot an Energy Melee Scrapper would be able to pull off is Energy Transfer + Total Focus. Energy Transfer is scale damage 4.5 and Total Focus is scale damage 3.56. Together, you have 7.86.

First of all, that's more than a Stalker's Assassin's Strike. A regular Assassin's Strike is 2.5 scale damage for the attack, and another 4.5 scale damage for the Assassination critical, for a total of 7.0. Currently, the only people who can pull off an Energy Transfer + Total Focus are Brutes, Tanks and, yes, Stalkers. Brutes have a damage mod of 0.75 and Tankers have a damage mod of 0.8, so both lag behind Stalkers, who have a damage mod of 1.0. Scrappers have a damage mod of 1.125, so they would do even MORE damage with that combo. Not only that, but JUST Energy Transfer deals more damage than Eagle's Claw and Crane Kick combined, and Total Focus comes close.

I honestly don't know what Castle could do to mitigate that. Certainly I would like to see a Scrapper wielding Energy Melee just for the sheer awesomeness this would produce, but I just know we won't ever see this much concentrated awesome. Energy Melee has too much spike damage and too much reliable hard control.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

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.

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

I'm with Technobot, I honestly don't see there being such an imbalance for Scrapper EM in PvE and in PvP, the damage can be a whole different value because its effect in PvP doesn't have to be what it is in PvE. There's no reason it shouldn't be ported.

Also, yeah Sam, you pretty much extrapolated EM's set-up. On a Stalker, AS is optional. You don't need it but it's another high burst attack that requires a set-up (hide, BU and no movement). But an EM Stalker can pull off an AS without that thanks to the high burst of Total Focus and Energy Transfer plus those attacks don't exactly crit for more burst thanks to hide.

So a Scrapper would be able to pull off what a Stalker can. Why is that an issue?

Because they haven't gotten to it yet.

They will get it eventually. They will probably adjust damage values for scrappers a little, since they don't want it completely overshadowing BS and MA for ST damage.

Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately.

The thing is, that gigantic Assassin's Strike critical is sort of the flower in the crown of a Stalker. More than that, though, that much damage outgoing from an AT with as much defence as Scrappers just sounds like too much. Stalkers already skirt the line. A Scrapper with this much damage is just TOO powerful.

That's actually a problem with all Tanker sets, and why we see so few of them on Scrappers. Tanker sets are built around the expectation that you'll have a low damage mod, so they do these incredibly high levels of damage and have these big AoEs. Given to a Scrapper, these sets would not only overshadow just about all classic Scrapper sets, but actually push the AT as a whole too far up the power curve. Stone Melee, Super Strength and Energy Melee have this problem, and while Battle Axe and War Mace can be kind of said to, as well, their balance is actually lot more common to what a Scrapper typically has.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Well put, (going from memory here), But back when we used the BI index weren't the heavy hitting Tanker powers (Like KO Blow) Almost 10? While the most massive scrapper attack at the time (Head splitter) was only 6 or 7.

I couldn't have written that better myself.

/e applause

Brawl Index was a pretty bad way to measure attack strength, because Brawl itself varies between the ATs. It's a melee attack, so it keys off the AT's melee damage mod. It's also not a good scale damage, at 0.36, so comparisons to it are awkward, at best.

Scale damage, on the other hand, is global. It's an attribute of a power BEFORE any AT attributes are taken into account, so you can compare powers independently of the ATs that use them. That's very useful for the purposes of proliferation comparisons.

For reference, Scrapper "heavy hitters" tend to be very low on the damage scale. Scrappers have:

Head Splitter at 2.6
Eviscerate at 1.99
One Thousand Cuts at 2.35 and
Midnight Grasp at 2.76 (I'm surprised at this!)
Greater Fire Sword at 2.28 (plus an 80% chance of 1.0 more, which doesn't critical)
Golden Dragonfly at 2.28
Eagle's Claw at 2.28
Ripper at 1.7 (plus 80% chance of 1.0 more, which doesn't critical)

By comparison, let's look at Brute sets, which have, identical sets notwithstanding:

Total Focus at 3.56 plus Energy Transfer at 4.5
Seismic Smash at 3.56
Knockout Blow at 3.56

That, and the Tanker weapon sets still have bigger heavy-hitters an more sustained damage, which:

Cleave at 2.76
Clobber at 2.92

Now, the thing with this comparison is, it doesn't hold true for the entirety of a Tanker's set. It only holds true for one or two powers. The rest are regular melee damage scales. This creates a particular sort of duality, where you will have one really big hitter that comprises the majority of your shock damage, and a bunch of piddly attacks you can use as filler. Energy Melee was absolutely absurd before the Barrage fix, with Energy Transfer and Total Focus doing almost twice as much damage together as the rest of the set, only being compounded by the fact that you'll use them with Build Up anyway.

Battle Axe and War Mace are the exceptions. They are sorta-clones of Broadsword, so they are built like it, practically following the same model but replacing Slice with a VERY big, very strong cone and replacing Parry with very high-damage attack. In the case of Battle Axe, it's the set's second-heaviest hitter, and in the case of War Mace after the reworks, the game's strongest single-target attack out of a weapon, Assassin's Strikes notwithstanding. That, and both sets deal slightly more damage on each attack than Broadsword does. They do come with balancing factors, though, such as Battle Axe being very slow and War Mace actually being somewhat weaker in terms of direct damage, so if we're looking at Scrapper ports, these are a good candidate. They would probably outshine Broadsword in pure damage, but Broadsword still has more speed and more utility.

It's funny to think of Broadsword as the lower-damage, faster set, really

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

It's one reason, not the only one.

You lost the arguement when you didn't account for Brute fury, which puts them at more damage than a Scrapper, not to mention they have better defense than scrappers (more hit points, and the ability to obtain higher levels of resistance).

Next, Energy Melee isn't all that. Yes, it has two heavy hitters. To bad on teams the mobs are dead before you even land the hit. That's how long those animations are. :/

That's what I'm saying. Coming from the perspective of an EM/EA stalker, it's strong but it's weak at the same time. Sure, it hits like a truck but it's SLLOOOooOOOoooooooowww.......www

It also doesn't do very good AoE dmg (in the case of stalker, it does *no* AoE dmg), and if you're not a healing/regen secondary, your strongest attack slowly kills you. And if you're not a def/res secondary, you run the risk of dying in the middle of those long attacks.

On top of *that*, those strong heavy hitters don't benefit from your inherent fully. So while ET is a 4.5 dmg scale attack, that's all it can be while the other heavy hitters scrappers have can meet or exceed that *without* killing you.

I'm not saying EM on a scrapper wouldn't be strong but I doubt it'll be any more overpowered than on a Brute. And is EM even the top set for them? I'm pretty sure it was bumped down a step with the introduction of Claws.

And it's not that hard for Brutes to rack up some fury. I suck at fury generation, but even I can maintain at least 50-60% on teams, that keep on going and don't stand around alot.

On my new Claws/EA I was maintaining a nice 80%+ ...but some of that may be claws...as my Elec/Elec and SS/SR Brutes didnt maintain that amount of fury as easily (at least for me).

And I considered it slow with just Total Focus, before the change.

If Energy Melee came to Scrappers, I'd roll one up, for no other reason than I love the looks of the Pink Pom Poms (that people are now ruining by changing it's colors >.>).

If it wasn't for that animation aspec of EM, I'd hate the set 100% It's just not that great at all.

Full on Troller team with one lone melee. Other melee options I feel like I can still get some attacks in, and do something. With an Energy Melee toon, I'm watching the team fly past me, with me staring at attacks going through animations on dead targets. :/

And no...EM isn't top damage set DPS wise, it does still maintain top burst damage if I recall however.

Time to do that all over again.

Brutes have a melee damage mod of 0.75. Scrappers have a melee damage mod of 1.125, which is 150% the Brute damage mod (0.75*1.5 = 1.125). So let's give the Brute a theoretical 100 point attack. With the same attack, a Scrapper would do 150 points of damage. With ~100% damage enhancement (it's 98.8% or some such, but let's call it 100%), a Brute would do 200 points of damage, while a Scrapper would do 300% (150*(100% + 100%)). A Brute would, therefore, need 50 Fury (100% damage buff) JUST to break even, at 300 points of damage (100*(100% base + 100% from enhancements + 100% from Fury)). With Build Up, a Scrapper would do 450 damage (150*(100% base + 100% from enhancements + 100% from Build Up)) whereas a Brute would only do 380 (100*(100% base + 100% from enhancements + 100% from Fury + 80% from Build Up)) To break even under Build Up, a Brute would need another 35 Fury, or 70% damage buff, giving him 450 damage (100*(100% base + 100% from enhancements + 170% from Fury + 80% from Build Up)).

A Brute would, therefore, need 85 Fury JUST to break even with a Scrapper going full tilt, and at least 50 Fury to break even with them under normal conditions. And a Scrapper can DOUBLE his damage on a lucky critical, which a Brute plain and simple cannot match. A critical Total Focus or Energy Transfer can get into the thousands of hit points of damage on a Scrapper. A Brute can kinda sorta measure up if he's going full on Fury, which is both hard to achieve and hard to maintain. A Scrapper can do that and more just rolling out of bed.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

And that's the thing:

Energy Transfer does not crit. Look at the only critical hitting Energy melee set (Stalker: Energy Melee) and you'll see that Energy Transfer's crit is in the form of nullifying the self damage. It adds no damage to the attack however.

Total Focus only *partially* crits. I don't recall how much exactly but rather than 2x dmg, it's something like 1.5x dmg.

Yeah, I remember hearing about that, myself. And even so, you can pump out more damage than your Assassin's Strike OUT OF HIDE with just those two powers. I highly suspect that a Scrapper pulling off a hide-less Assassin's Strike for even more damage so very often is overpowered. Any of these heavy-hitters are just SICK for Scrappers.

Look at what the two high-damage ATs have access to. Scrapper have 2.6 - 2.7 at most, while Blasters have 2.2 on a reliable heavy-hitter and 2.7 on their snipes. About the only power which breaks those boundaries is Energy Manipulation/Total Focus, at 3.56, but even then it uses the Blaster melee damage mod, which is 1.0, less than their ranged damage at 1.125. Nukes notwithstanding, high-damage ATs just don't do that much damage.

Here's an interesting thought, though. a Brute at his damage cap, given the same old 100 point damage attack is doing 950 damage (100*(100% base + 850% cap)). A Scrapper with it is doing 900 (150*(100% base + 500% cap)). This right there shows you the power of high base damage.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

And still with criticals factored in, Brutes out DPS Scrappers...have a whole thread on it in the Scrapper forums (stickied at that).

Unless this more about PvP concerns?

Because PvE wise, solo, after SO's are brought in, some blue skittles are in place, powers are taken to keep the pace, a Brute might start slow, but they catch up quick enough in the damage department.