Spinning Strike half crit?

Spinning Strike is a finisher, and does more damage based on the combo level. The extra damage from the combo is not doubled, only the damage it would do at combo level 0. This may be what they are seeing.

I PM Synapse about this issue when I tested SJ. He is worried that a full critical from a combo 3 is going to do too much damage (especially at early levels), which I kinda agree.

I also agree that Brute gets more benefit from SJ due to Fury increasing combo damage.

I guess the more logical way is to not allow Fury increase every damage! It's ridiculous that they allow Fury to increase Burn damage too. If they get rid of that, then everything else seems to be more balanced. :P


I think most people are happy with current SJ damage output so adding more critical damage seems to be too much. A full critical combo 3 Uppercut does more than a critical Assassin Strike.

The only problem I have with Stalker SJ is the loss of Rib Cracker. That attack just looks cool and the debuffs are useful. I really hope Synapse can increase Shin Breaker's damage a bit more to make up for the loss of resistance debuff. He said he may look into Shin Breaker later. I left this game right when VIP freedom came out and I haven't really followed up on new stuff.

When Shield Defense and Kinetic Melee were released, there was much discussion on the brute forums about their superiority on Scrappers over Brutes.

Percentage-based damage buffs don't shine on Brutes because the AT has mediocre melee damage scaling (75% vs. 112.5% for a Scrapper, 80% for a Tanker, or 100% for a Stalker) balanced by the damage boost from Fury. This means that for Brutes, %dmg buffs are 33.3% less effective than they are for scrappers (this is before accounting for crits!). This inferior scaling makes abilities like Power Siphon (KM) and Against All Odds (SD) greatly favor Scrappers.

These same percentage-based damage buffs are further enhanced for Scrappers because they multiply the damage of crits (not unlike how Fury multiplies the damage of SJ's combo bonuses).

Brutes' benefiting from Fury's effect on combo bonus damage in Street Justice is just the flipside of this scaling disparity. Where Brutes get shafted by sets with %dmg buffs because their base damage scaling is cripple to balance Fury, Scrappers (and Stalkers) get "cheated" on sets with raw bonus damage effects (i.e. Street Justice combo damage, Fiery Embrace in /FA, etc.).

Scaling disparity is a two-way street.

Stalker gets screwed even more by not having 1. Shield and 2. Fiery Aura.

I can sort of see the argument between Scrapper VS Brute but Stalker's inferior "raw" damage is balanced by having more Critical chance with more teammates so attacks that cannot score critical are imbalanced for Stalker (hint hint!!! 3 out of 4 Epic sets cannot critical).

I am not too sure if the argument that Brute should benefit from Fury buff even from secondary attacks (that cannot critical for Scrapper/Stalker) is valid enough because Brute should never out-damage Scrapper and Stalker to begin with. Brute has more HP Cap and Resistance Cap than those two. And Fury buffs Brute's damage way more efficient than the typical Build Up buff. Brute can increase Fury ratio on his own, while a soloing Stalker can never increase team-critical buff.

With SJ, Brute's fury buffs combo finisher base damage and then gets amplified again with 3 combo points.

So Brute fans asking to deal same damage as Scrapper (or Stalker) is just not going to work. And they shouldn't be surprised that Kinetic Melee works better on Scrapper because Scrapper should deal more damage than Brute, period. I never understand why Brute players think they "should" out-damage Scrapper and Stalker. They want higher survival, higher damage and better aggro management. The damage scaling disparity shouldn't be a two-way street. It should ONLY be one-way street that favors Stalker/Scrapper.

Sadly, Kinetic Melee is really the ONLY melee set that the dev paid more attention to the Stalker needs. They added build up refresh.

Like stalkers are too good now? I still don't understand why only 1 tick of the spinning strike crits.

Funny isn't it? I can go read about Brutes and Scrappers soloing Task Forces, AVs, Pylons, and whatever.... but we gotta make sure STALKERS aren't too powerful?

Successful so far!