Claws or DB?

Princess Darkstar - Proud Member of the Handprints of Union, the #1 ranked SG in Europe!
British by act of union, English by grace of God, Northern by pure good fortune!

Originally Posted by Aggelakis PrincessDarkstar: "RAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGHHHHHHHHHH SOMEONE IS *WRONG* ON THE INTERNET!"

One of the great things about CoX is how much it can vary between AT's, powersets, and even players and STILL be tons of fun!

I have a trio of Dual Blades/WP toons -- scrapper, tank, and brute. I call the scrapper my "main" and after hours (and hours and hours) of play only rarely find myself thinking about combos. My fingers just set them off automatically, generally alternating AV and Sweep, and I only find myself thinking "well, NOW what?!" if I miss on one combo, abort it, go to another combo and miss on that one as well. There's no knockback to consider unless I'm fighting something lower level than me, only a flurry of blades and no thinking to speak of besides "how do I take this giant Cuisinart from Spawn A to Spawn B the fastest?" and "hey, this spawn's done for -- now can I get all the way over to that other one and still land my Sweeping Strike in time? Ooooh -- yes!!"

After playing those toons for a year or more, and having read on these forums about just how awesome Claws is and about its big numbers and DB-like mitigation, I created a Claws/(same secondary as the others) scrapper. It is indeed an awesome powerset, and fun, and survivable and...and....

...and I apparently don't play the Claws toon nearly enough to have developed the same sort of Zen-like non-thinking that I've achieved with Dual Blades.

Efficient aiming of the cone attack with claws isn't the problem -- there's two of them in DB, after all -- but I'm still not used to Shockwave.

"GAH! It's knockBACK, not knockDOWN!" *chases after another suddenly-flying villain*

Since AF Bill is talking about taking Willpower as a secondary as well, it just seems really counter-intuitive to use Shockwave and thus knock enemies back out of Rise to the Challenge's range. "More damage! Less healing! But they'll all be standing up and not attacking for a few seconds. And I'll have to chase whatever I'm scrapperlocked onto, thus cutting into my DPS! Let's hope the Archon back there with the rocket launcher misses."

Oh well -- BOTH Claws and Dual Blades are fun, just like all the other scrapper primaries!

Edit: And if the phone hadn't rung halfway through my long post, I'd have beaten PrincessDarkstar to the point, instead of repeating it. Doh!

Here's a tip in case it hasn't already occurred to readers: Dual Blades toons should line up the combo moves in the correct order in their power tray, so pressing 1, 2, 3 activates one combo and 4, 5, 6 another. Don't be like me when I first tried it and try to memorize 4, 1, 3 type combos. :P

I actually use different trays. So tray 1 is my BF+AV combo, 1, 2, 3, 4 and tray 2 is my BF+Sweep combo, 1, 2, 3, 4 again. I hate reaching over to 6 and beyond for regular moves; I'd much rather hit the alt key.

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.

For single target you are probably right (I know the very best single target chain doesn't use a combo) but for AoE I wouldn't skip the Sweep combo, especially on a Willpower toon. Sweep basically gives a 50% damage boost on your final Typhoon's Edge, and wonderful mitigation with the KD.

Also I quite like One Thousand Cuts and would use that anyway, so you are basically trading Power Slices 1.4s amination for ~100 AoE damage with KD which is something I would happily do.

I also think a lot of the fun in the set comes from the combo's, if you aren't going to use them I would suggest rolling something that you probably would use all of (Yeah fun is subjective ).

Princess Darkstar - Proud Member of the Handprints of Union, the #1 ranked SG in Europe!
British by act of union, English by grace of God, Northern by pure good fortune!

Originally Posted by Aggelakis PrincessDarkstar: "RAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGHHHHHHHHHH SOMEONE IS *WRONG* ON THE INTERNET!"

I've been playing DB since the day Issue 11 launched; I started off setting the tray for 1, 2, 3 and 1, 2, 4 for the first two "OMG they're awful!" combos which still come in handy occasionally or when exemped. When I picked up Attack Vitals, I rearranged the tray and completely threw myself off, so I'm quite happy with using the powers in the order in which I got them. (And of course, the next tray button "lights up" to teach the new DB player the order of the attacks.) Your mileage may vary, but I don't even notice reaching for the "8" key unless I overshoot and hit the "9."

I had a great laugh when a DB/SR bragged about their being able to do more DPS by just spamming Attack Vitals over and over, while I alternated AV with Sweep. Yes, they were doing more DPS but kept faceplanting against the same mobs in the mission. "That's because I'm knocking them down three times as often so they can't attack me, and so I'm still standing at the end of the fight. Here, have another wakie."

I think that too many people worry ONLY about DPS. I care more about "Damage Per Hour." And it's really hard to do damage when you're laying facedown on the mission floor.
I'm the same way -- I'd rather use all the tools at my disposal for a toon. I mean, I COULD have made a melee-only blaster/blapper (and tried, and went back to scrappers) or a petless Dual Pistols mastermind (no, I didn't) but I find well-rounded and balanced characters more fun to play.

I'm sure there are people who only take three or four attacks on a DB scrapper, but at that point, what's the difference between that and a katana or broadsword scrapper -- besides the animations and style points? "I have one more sword than you do!"

Blinding Feint over Build Up/Focus Chi. The ability to make your damage boost permanent, and even stack it, is much better against hard targets, whereas Build Up is better for quickly dropping annoying targets like Sappers, or for massive AoEs. Also, DB does have the highest-DPS chain of any scrapper primary. Some people like that.

Any primary?

I know it was capable of a great chain with loads of recharge, and agree that if you want to build for that then yes by all means throw the combo's out (I didn't think the OP sounded like that much of a powergamer though) but I find it hard to believe it is the highest DPS?

Princess Darkstar - Proud Member of the Handprints of Union, the #1 ranked SG in Europe!
British by act of union, English by grace of God, Northern by pure good fortune!

Originally Posted by Aggelakis PrincessDarkstar: "RAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGHHHHHHHHHH SOMEONE IS *WRONG* ON THE INTERNET!"

It's not.

Fire or Dark paired with Shield Defense are the top 2 as far as I'm aware.

And Fire paired with just about anything will beat Dual Blades for DPS.

Dual Blades is up there for sure, but it's not THE best.

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.

Thirded on the "THE best" doubt. Somewhere around here -- and didn't it used to be stickied?! -- were a couple of threads ranking DPS chains. (I thought BillZBubba started it, or posted a lot in it, but can't find the darn thing now.)

I remember reading it and thinking "hey, my main is in the top third or half at least!" but I wasn't terribly surprised to NOT see it at the top of the heap.

This is old info.

Sadly, there's no new info yet.

I strongly suspect claw/fire or db/fire or even km/fire or dm/fire to readily beat the damage output of an /sd toon now.

Fiery embrace, burn, and the damage aura are just that good, IF you can survive.

It's just a matter of when people are going to be willing to talk about it.