Best Boss Killer?

Hey I'm a long time player, although I just returned to the game. I always wanted to play a scrapper, but I wasn't sure what I wanted. But now I sort of do, and I thought I would enlist the help of the scrapper pros.

Basically I want a boss killer. My vision of this guy is to join 8 man teams (for the purposes of this a generic team will do just fine) and only focus on the bosses until I kill them all. I don't want to argue whether this is effective, I just want to try this for myself.

I am pretty much set on regen, although if any of you have strong urges elsewhere, go ahead. So my problem is the primary. Right now I'm looking at BS and MA, although I am a scrapper noob.

Anyway, any advice would be fantastic thanks!

My vote goes to DM/Shield.

Broad Sword or Katana. I recommend Katana for the slightly better damage output unless you have a preference for Broad Sword. Both are largely single target. Both add a lot of melee and lethal defense, which is something that Regeneration strongly benefits from.

(Edit: But if you're more flexible with regards to secondary, Psiphon is right on the money. Dark Melee/Shield Defense can do way more single target damage, and should be at least as survivable.)

I am found of fire with GFS and the other fire attacks yum

If you're planning on teaming a lot you might want to think about DM. You'll be able to saturate Soul Drain on a team, then go to town on the bosses.

On the other hand, if you're doing a lot of PuGs with a regen, yeah, what Werner said. I'd go with Katana too, because I find Broadsword painfully slow.

I think you really only need sustained dps to fight monsters and AVs...and maybe EBs if you're solo or duoed. Everything else can be defeated by burst damage, and Broadsword has very good burst damage. I've found it to be good mitigation just from killing off things, let alone the knockdown, knockup, and parry powers.

Broad Sword does have very good burst damage. But unless by "burst damage" we mean "damage done by the single biggest attack", then Katana tends to do better burst damage. Put overly simply, as long as the mechanisms are the same (both use Build Up), then burst = DPS. It's when the mechanisms are different, such as Build Up vs. Blinding Feint, that we see a big difference between a burst damage comparison and a DPS comparison.

Seems like there was a thread not too long ago that actually had numbers from one of the number crunchers. I seem to recall that Fire Melee won out.... or was that a brute?

My search foo is weak. I am sure the answer you seek is out there for a master in this art to locate.

Unless you have a lot of foes clumped together and very high recharge (to maximise Dark Melee's "Soul Drain" buff effectiveness and minimise its downtime) Fire Melee tends to win out in Single Target DPS.

There are exceptions due to specialised builds, but generally speaking unless you're prepared to spend a LOT of influence on a character that's already level 50, Fire Melee will be the most damaging for Single-Target one-on-one boss killing. This is due to the fairly unresisted damage type (fire) and the Damage Over Time effects on the attacks. Katana is a slightly slower, but far safer alternative option due to Divine Avalanche's Defence buff and the Knockdown/Knockup effects from its two heavy attacks. Certainly if you're looking to level up a new toon those primaries would likely be the best two options for you.

If you're talking about optimised endgame level-50 "money is no object" builds, Katana can push about 175-185 DPS (plus buildup, plus a large amount of uptime on the Achille's Heel -20% resist Proc) whereas Fire Melee can push about 10 DPS higher (although without the proc) and DM about 10 DPS lower. That's with enhancements slotted damage but without external buffs. Once you factor in the disparities between Build Up and Soul Drain, Dark Melee pulls ahead. By comparison, you only need over 94.24 DPS (after resistances) to solo an Archvillain.

I'll throw in my opinion on the matter as well since everyone else is having fun on this.

I will agree with everyone else how some sets can have higher damage than others. I favor Martial Arts, just because I am bias for the set myself. Still, when comparing certain builds, and more "elite" IO'ed builds with high recharge and defense bonuses, then MA does fall behind a bit compared to some of the FoTM combo sets like DM/Shields or Fire/Shields.

Now, if you are going to be hitting PuGs and generally "average" working teammates, then there are other things to consider rather than just more damage output (On a side note, when teaming with a very efficient team with various buffs/debuffs and controls, then yeah, damage is really the only thing you need to worry about bringing to the team).

At the lower to mid- levels, damage is really all you need to take out bosses, with a few excepts like some CoT. As you get to higher levels, then some of the Bosses start to actually get challenging for "standard" build and even pimped out builds. Sometimes, more damage is just not enough because Bosses got enough HP to avoid getting taken down with a one- or two- shot hit (barring no Kins are on the team or something similar). Then having something else besides more damage would actually be helpful in survivability, particularly if you are dead set on /Regen as your secondary.

Having /Regen means no native defenses so you will more than likely get hit with whatever is being thrown at you, compared to other sets like Willpower or Shields. Having a primary to help compensate for that lack of defenses will be very noticeable.

The sword sets (BS, Kat) do have a lethal/melee defense buff, which will work with some enemies, but not all of the dangerous Bosses. It also has some KU/KD to keep mobs off their toes. These sets also have -def debuffs in some of their attacks, which will make some targets even easier to hit if you need it.

Fiery Melee's tactic is to just hope that the Boss dies before you do (even when debuffed).

Dark Melee does have some nice utilitarian powers to keep you standing and attacking as well as having good single target damage (though I don't know what kind of recharge you need for that).

I like Martial Arts, particularly since the new I18 changes, because I can still put out damage but also have a bit more soft control and a -def debuff as well. At low to mid-recharge levels, Martial Arts does give out very respectable damage, even over some of the other sets (I think this was shown in one of old lists comparing DPS among the primaries a while back). I don't know if you are planning more of a "standard" SO build or going for the totally pimped out IO'ed builds common on these boards, but MA does seem to lag behind some of the other sets as +recharge gets higher in a build.

But the reason I like MA is because it can now even perma-stun Bosses, and maybe even EBs, with just a little more than your basic slotting. This might not make much of a difference for most well-played teams, but solo and on "weaker" teams, it really helps to keep those pesky Bosses under controlled. Here are some examples that I thought of.

Carnival Shadow's Ring Mistresses-
If you are going /Regen, expect to get hit with their special "Mask" debuff, which will suck your down your regen and recovery, which can %$#@! up any toon that gets hit with it. If you have stacked Quick Recovery and Stamina, you could survive one hit from these debuffs, though the Ring Mistresses tend to stack them on top of each other if you are not careful. BS's parry or Kat's Divine Avalanche won't work against this attack, though DM might have a few tools to compensate for getting hit. MA's tactic is to perma- stun the Ring Mistress before you get perma-debuffs by them. I used to do that before I18, but now it's easier to do as well as keeping the damage on.

Crey Paragon Protectors
If you don't kill these guys fast or hold them down, then they will hit their Tier 9 power and then make you wait for what seems like an eternity to let it wear off. If you can perma-stun them at the right time, you can kill them off the bat rather than let them run around with their hacked MoG.

Nemesis' Fake Nemesis
This also goes with the PPs. After a time they will use their Personal Force Field and make them impossible to hit. If you can perma-stun them, then they won't have a chance to throw up their shields.

Of course, on a decent team, you wouldn't always have to worry about stunning and containing Bosses, since your teammates should be taking care o that while you bring the pain to your enemies.

The top DPS chain for Dark Melee takes pretty beefy recharge at +235% in Midnight Grasp. However, there's a very good chain down at +128% if you just add a couple Shadow Punches to the top chain: Smite -> Shadow Punch -> Midnight Grasp -> Smite -> Shadow Punch -> Siphon Life. On the forums, we tend to chase the top chains, but they're often only marginally better in most situations. I do think one of Dark Melee's main tools, Siphon Life, is of less benefit to Regeneration than it is to most sets, since Regeneration is already swimming in damage recovery abilities.

And you're making me want to play my Martial Arts/Fire again. He's languishing while I fiddle with other alts.

Out of those two...I'd go MA!

You said you wanted boss killer, and a MA will have more DPS to unleash on a Boss, than a BS user will.

BS user is likely to be safer though (due to Parry).

Well, I have taken BS to 50 twice, once as a BS/Regen and once as a BS/Shield. For the record the BS/Regen is very good in the low levels and drops off to adequate in the upper levels; it does have issues with spike damage. With any /Regen in the upper levels you really have two states, full health or dead, with little in between. Get good at timing on Recon, Dull Pain and IH and you're going to do ok, miss your timing and you're going to faceplant. It's very active and will bite you hard if you screw up.

The BS/Shield on the other hand starts off fairly weak just like all defense sets do but it matures considerably tougher than /Regen. As an example I've used that BS/Shield to main tank the ITF unassisted; that's how tough it can get in a mature, soft capped build. The BS/Shield will do a LOT more damage than the BS/Regen as well; with saturated AAO (fairly easy to get in a group) you'll have an 80% damage buff; add in Build Up and you have ~+180% damage; that pushes Shield Charge up to roughly ~550 damage to a large AOE... Whirling Sword will add another ~300 damage to a smaller AOE. Headsplitter/Disembowel/Hack/Slice/Parry will tend to take out the remnants quickly.

Of those two scrappers the BS/Shield is definitely superior in the late game in both durability and damage output. It does take some investment in IO sets to achieve that level of performance but I haven't come up with a build for the BS/Regen that can equal it.

<edit>
I don't want anyone thinking Regen's bad by any means... I've played it to 50 twice, once BS/Regen and once Spine/Regen. It just isn't going to have the durability or damage output of a MATURE shield build.

My first character at the start of CoH was a BS/Regen, now at 50. The attacks are a little slower compared to then and he still hits hard. I still find regen effective, even if your health does go up and down quite a bit. If you want to be the first person into a group using recon and DP can take quite a bit of time, so it's better to use IH or MoG. If that is the type of scrapper you want to build a defense based scrapper might be better. Follow the tank in and regen works fine most of the time and you have to tools to survive if it gets tough.

Since regen has so many clicks you can just go for +recharge which works well with broadsword to bring your big hitters back more quickly. I tend to find that easier then +def builds where a few percent at the top end can make quite a difference and it's a little easier on the influence.

I think the crux of the OP's inquiry is this:

If a broadsword toon and a Katana toon, both IO'd to the gills, go into 2 different +3 battle maiden spawns and kill the bosses as fast as possible, who wins? (Katana, btw)

The top scrapper at that challenge is probably a DM/Shield. If you take away the minions and LTs for their damage boosting properties, it's probably claws/fire or DB/fire.