Looking for Spines / Electric Armor advice
By
Chaos_String,
Posted on: 2010-05-09 08:14 in Scrappers
Quote:
1) My Spines/Elec (37 now) has no problem running both damage auras with Energize/Power Sink/Stamina [no +end/+recov IOs], though he doesn't have Hasten. Power Sink is a right powerful recovery tool with even 2-3 slots, especially considering as a Spines/Elec you'll be aiming to fight lots of enemies simultaneously. (I haven't gotten Tough/Weave yet.)|
Originally Posted by D-Void
1) I am looking to go with both damage auras, Hasten and possibly the Fighting toggles (on top of the secondary's toggles). In doing so, am I shoehorning myself into Body Mastery -> Physical Perfection, or would Energize / Power Sink / Stamina (and the occasional Power Surge) suffice?
2) Would you advise skipping Power Surge, and why (or why not)? 3) What would be your survivability strategy: raw damage output, resistance alone, or resistance with as much defense as could be scrounged in what's looking like a tight build? 4) Is it fun to play from 1-50? When does it mature? Are there any outstanding problems (like scatter) in your opinion? |
2) I would skip it, but don't find the collapsing tier 9s have a positive effect on survivability, though I haven't tried this one, and the EMP-ish pulse sounds interesting. It doesn't add that much resistance (except to toxic and neg damage), since it will likely cap you from 42% res (or even less for S/L with Tough).
3) Survive by defense. (I'm testing out the Melee/Ranged route on this one as I have an Elec/Dark piling up S/L at the moment, and I've recently done a couple of S/L brutes. Getting a couple of the Kinetic Combat recipes has been tedious/expensive lately.) Damage output the second, since it means more inspiration drops soloing.
4) I think it gets really fun at 32 with Throw Spines, and the fun gets carefree at 35 with Power Sink, though I've just recently crossed that mark. The slow in Throw Spines (+ the others stacked) is very helpful about preventing scatter. The most irritating thing is the long activation times (Impale, Ripper, Spine Burst), but the cloud of orange numbers around you assuages that somewhat.
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I rolled a spines/elec soon after electric armor became available to scrappers and played it to 50 fairly quickly. When server transfers were free, I transfered it to Infinity with a number of semi-retired lvl 50s and used it to establish a SG base there by running missions on +2x8 until I had enough prestige to build a base with teleporters to everywhere, storage for everything, vault, empowerment and aspect of the crystal. This took less than a week (although I was converting influence into prestige as well).|
Originally Posted by D-Void
Good day,
I'm hoping to get some thoughts from the scrapper community regarding a spines / electric armor scrapper. It's premature to talk about actual builds - I've seen a few tucked away in threads - but I have a few questions I'd love answered by those in the know: 1) I am looking to go with both damage auras, Hasten and possibly the Fighting toggles (on top of the secondary's toggles). In doing so, am I shoehorning myself into Body Mastery -> Physical Perfection, or would Energize / Power Sink / Stamina (and the occasional Power Surge) suffice? 2) Would you advise skipping Power Surge, and why (or why not)? 3) What would be your survivability strategy: raw damage output, resistance alone, or resistance with as much defense as could be scrounged in what's looking like a tight build? 4) Is it fun to play from 1-50? When does it mature? Are there any outstanding problems (like scatter) in your opinion? Thanks, all! |
It's a strong AoE damage powerhouse with good survivability. Its only drawback is its lack of a taunt aura, so, like spines/fire, it has to kill mobs quickly or they will scatter, which can be frustrating for some players. I found it perfectly acceptible though; and to echo what was said above, it felt fully mature by the early to mid 30s, although I was able to crank up spawn sizes to x6 much earlier (mid 20s).
To answer your points individually:
1) No, you're not shoehorning yourself into Body Mastery. I took all the powers you mentioned, as well as Body Mastery, and therefore I don't need to use Power Sink very often, so in my build, Power Sink has just a base slot with an End/Rech IO. But if you want to forego Body Mastery for something else, you certainly could--just upslot Power Sink and you should be fine.
2) I skipped Power Surge because I felt that the crash wouldn't work with my playstyle. By the time I was high enough in level to take Power Surge, I had some S/L defense, and I didn't feel I needed the peak survivability Power Surge would provide at the cost of downtime associated with the crash. I didn't want to deal with the downtime so I skipped it. It's viable to take it, but inspiration use can accomplish much of what Power Surge can, and without the drawback of crashing.
3) My survivability strategy was a mixture of the things you've mentioned. First, I incorporated plenty of recharge so I could spam AoE attacks and have Energize as close to permanent as possible (in the end it had a few seconds downtime). The self-heal backed by +regeneration and strong resistances woudln't have been enough for my playstyle though, so I also built for S/L and melee defense. Every set that affords S/L defense also has a melee defense element, and vice versa, so I used a lot of Kinetic Combat, Obliteration, Reactive Armor, and a couple pairs of Rectified Reticles, and wound up with roughly 40% S/L defense and 35% melee defense. This gave me all the survivability I needed to solo large spawn sizes against all the major villain groups, although those with a lot of non-S/L attacks required me to use inspirations fairly liberally.
I slotted sets for S/L bonuses as soon as it was optimal to do so (a couple Rectified Reticle in Build Up at 17, a bunch of Kinetic Combat and Reactive Armor at 32, and so on). This helped the build to mature earlier, and therefore speeded my progress through the levels. In so doing, I made it a lot of fun to play from 1-50, although I've heard reports from others that the mob scatter caused by twin DoT auras without a taunt element frustrated them enough that they abandoned their toon. So I guess it's up to the individual player how fun it really is, but I certainly enjoyed the character a lot. GL with yours.
Great replies, and thanks to both of you! Gives me percolation material. Speaking of which...
... are the problems with scatter that you've encountered sufficient to try and squeeze in the Presence pool AoE taunt, or even slot for slow movement?
Thanks again!
Quote:
No. Slot for fast killing.
|
Originally Posted by D-Void
Great replies, and thanks to both of you! Gives me percolation material. Speaking of which...
... are the problems with scatter that you've encountered sufficient to try and squeeze in the Presence pool AoE taunt, or even slot for slow movement? Thanks again! |
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Hee, hee. Dollars to donuts this explains why I have not experienced the problem with scatter I keep hearing about with my Spines/Elec.|
Originally Posted by Chaos_String
No. Slot for fast killing.
|
I did indeed slot one or two low/medium damage powers for slow..not sure which as the game is down and I don't remember which.
The varmits do scatter, but they scatter soooo slow it is piece of cake to catch and destroy them.
Mind you, my build is just for fun..no serious 4/8 farming..but she is a monster just the same. Riktis and Carnies and Sappers run the other way when the see her coming
Sorry I brought up an old post. I am using the downtime doing some research on what IOs people use in "Proper" builds, and when I saw this, I just had to respond.
Lisa.
So don't wait for heroes, do it yourself
You've got the power
winners are losers
who got up and gave it just one more try
***Dennis DeYoung
Cardiac is an attractive option for ElA if you wanted to skimp a little bit on end redux slotting but still avoid putting power sink on auto. Going body mastery probably enables you to slot musculature or spiritual instead, so it comes down to how you want to balance your power selection versus your alpha. You could even contemplate ageless, but rebirth would be awfully tempting if you can get your endurance elsewhere!
1) If you mostly plan to do level 50 content, Incarnate slots are able to help you manage your endurance. Cardiac was mentioned, but I think the Destiny is a better choice for endurance management. If you choose Cardiac, you give up the option to pick Musculature for damage bonus or Spiritual for recharge and healing bonus. If you choose Ageless Destiny to deal with endurance, you lose other defensive buffs that you can live without, or just don't need. I don't like the fading nature of Destiny buffs and I think Ageless' endurance is the only buff that provides something substantial and useful for the entire duration of the buff for Scrappers.
2) Power Surge may be your only mitigation against toxic damage if you go for typed defenses. If you skip it, don't worry about it because toxic damage is rare.
3) I would aim for 20% or 32.5% S/L and E/N, or melee/ranged/AoE defenses. That should let you fit some decent recharge bonus in the build while being in range of using inspirations to hit the soft-cap.
I would suggest Spines/Fire or SS/Fire instead. Burn is just that amazing and Brute taunting keeps them from running out of it. Electric Armor's advantage of Fiery Aura is only some resistance and endurance reduction. That may not be worth giving up the offensive potential Burn and Fiery Embrace add.
Rebirth in particular would be pretty cool on elec as it would be a second, more powerful version of energize on a similar timer, sans the endurance discount. It also goes quite well with elec's high resistances and a bit of defense. Ageless, on the other hand, would be quite nice if you went radial as that would let you kill defense debuff cascades on a set otherwise vulnerable to them.
As the happy proprietor of a fire scrapper and an elec scrapper in heavily ioed form, I'd say a case can be made for each, especially with a great aoe primary like spines. It's basically what it says on the tin - elec is sturdier, has excellent psi protection and is immune to end drains (which is all incredibly relevant in high level content going forward, from what we've seen so far), while fire is "sturdy enough" and is the most offensive thing out there since Dick Cheney left office. D-Void definitely would not feel sluggish and weak on a spines/elec, let's put it that way.
I'm running a 50 Spines/Elec and having a ton of fun with her. She has 32.5% melee/20% ranged defenses, perma-hasten, and puts out some brutal damage. I went with Soul Mastery, because this lets me pop Shadow Weave to take alphas for groups very easily in case there isn't an external source of +defense (and the snipe is a good IO mule).
I went with Spiritual because it helps reach perma-hasten a lot easier, the +healing on Energize is amazing, and I can manage my endurance just fine without any incarnate abilities (running all of the ElA toggles plus tough/weave). At perma-hasten levels of recharge, Energize comes up fast enough for healing and endurance reduction issues, and Power Sink fills up the blue if I'm ever lazy and don't keep Energize up.
Provoke is worthless on this character. It has a 5-person target cap, and why spend time provoking what could already be dead with another attack?
I'm...iffy on the T9. It was useful getting up to where I am now, but right now I feel like it just doesn't add enough survivability to be worth the crash. On the other hand, I used my slots elsewhere, so I don't think there's anything really worth taking that only needs one slot, so I'm keeping it in my build for now.
I can run a +4/x8 ambush farm with her, but I mostly do +3/x8 farms because they require a lot less attention (and I usually only farm when I'm looking for something mindless to do). You won't be as effective as a brute for farming because of the scatter (even crunched up to +400% damage you're still going to see scatter in farms), but you're pretty close. I was having a blast taking alphas and brutalizing Rikti with her on a +4 LGTF the other day.
The set performs pretty good, but it really starts to shine once you hit 33/34 and get Throw Spines slotted. The first time I saw it crit brought a childish grin to my face.
I have a lvl 50 Spines/Electric with 35% S/L defense and decent recharge that is tons of fun to play. My advice is to embrace the strengths of electric armor. Between Power Surge and Energize you will be able to handle as many end draining toggles and attacks as you want. My scrapper runs 12 toggles with no problems and has barely any endurance reduction slotted into his attacks. As long as you can find a mob and have 13 end, you'll be able to return to full every 30 seconds or so.
Good day,
I'm hoping to get some thoughts from the scrapper community regarding a spines / electric armor scrapper.
It's premature to talk about actual builds - I've seen a few tucked away in threads - but I have a few questions I'd love answered by those in the know:
1) I am looking to go with both damage auras, Hasten and possibly the Fighting toggles (on top of the secondary's toggles). In doing so, am I shoehorning myself into Body Mastery -> Physical Perfection, or would Energize / Power Sink / Stamina (and the occasional Power Surge) suffice?
2) Would you advise skipping Power Surge, and why (or why not)?
3) What would be your survivability strategy: raw damage output, resistance alone, or resistance with as much defense as could be scrounged in what's looking like a tight build?
4) Is it fun to play from 1-50? When does it mature? Are there any outstanding problems (like scatter) in your opinion?
Thanks, all!