Crabs against single targets

Crab players I need your help. I love playing the dude in teams most of the time for his sheer AoE destructiveness, but my single target damage is not just low--it's positively painfully bad. I don't know if this is a factor of my build (I'm only 44, so no real sets yet) or if crabs are just doomed to struggle whenever they run into a boss solo or, god help them, an EB. (And doomed to look rather stupid in teams fighting an AV.)

What do you all do when faced with a tough single target to crack?

Although it's obviously not as high as e.g. a Bane, I don't have too much issue with my Crab's single target damage.

Generally I ensure the target is debuffed by Venom Grenade at all times, and otherwise use Arm Lash, Channelgun, and Slice to fill the gaps; I know some will be appalled at 2 melee attacks and no Longfang, so don't think I'm advocating melee specifically here, it's just the path I took (my Crab is called Pinchy, so he needs to be able to "pinch").

Now by itself this may or may not be a bit slow, depending on what I'm fighting, but that's where the pets come in: I have Spiderlings out perma (not too hard to accomplish) and Call Reinforcements up often enough that it's likely to be available for any hard targets (long term goal is to perma them, or close to it). When there's just the one hard target (i.e. no trash to distract them) the pets add a good amount of dps and things speed up to much more pleasing levels.

Of course it all depends on your opinion as to what constitutes "struggle" and how fast is fast enough, but once I got the pets on my build I found hard targets ceased to be an issue.

I took shatter armor on my crab, it hits like a truck and applies more debuff goodness to the target baddie. May or may not be in your planned build but it helps deal with the critters that refuse to melt before your AE blitzkrieg.

I'm not sure what your build is like but I have never had a problem facing a boss solo and have done well facing EBs. My crab is set up as basically a Blaster with a serious attitude problem.. She is also my badger so she has ever accolade with power avialable but all she has in slots are generic 50 level IOs.. not a single set bonus. of course I always have out at least ONE set of pets adding to my damage output.....

then its just Venom Grenade, Frag Grenade, Heavy Burst, Suppression, and then just keep firing until nothing is moving anymore. Channel gun is a definate friend... I have almost NO close range attacks everything is set up for range... Oh and I have my Omega Manuever recharged to be usable about every three minutes. that's always fun.. set that out and get their attention.. web grenade to hold any of the runners in place, fire off a venom grenade to increase potential hit point damage and then start into th attack chain to finish everything off. :-D

My crab picked up gloom, so does Channelgun->Longfang->Channelgun->Gloom->repeat

Not anywhere near 44, but my Guncrab build is AoE, while my pure Crab build I concentrated more on the melee attacks so I can deal single target damage. Arm Lash is definately a good portion of that.

The build will pretty much get me killed on any team, which is why I switch back to the Guncrab for that.

I like using the arm melee attacks, though. I've got big, honking sharp arms mounted on my back, if you get too close to me you should EXPECT to be chopped up into little bits. I would be kind of annoyed if I couldn't use them.

A crab spider was able to do the pylon test in a very very respectable time in the scrapper forums. Even tho it was a specialized build, apparently the pets did a large portion of his damage.

Fwiw, with a non-specialized build I had a bash at that pylon test. Without pets out it was close to a stalemate - I *might* have brought it down eventually, but the time would have probably been in the hours rather than minutes.

My first attempt using pets the health bar started moving more noticeably... for a few seconds before my pets decided to all join me in melee and got killed by the pylon's AoE.

My final attempt I went without melee attacks and sat back so the pets wouldn't get killed by collateral damage. This attempt was successful, clocking in at 8m44s - not especially impressive by that thread's standards, but not too shabby considering my build and the circumstances (only one single target ranged attack, no aim, no assaults - though some of that will change when fitness goes inherent).

So yeah, pets. Use 'em.

the pets are not too shabby....they are a big help against tough targets

i would definitly take all of them, makes your life much easier and more comfortable