So... spines...

I've always been more of a claws person, but I've always been curious. What's the deal with spines? Is it just a terrible powerset? Is it on-par with claws, because they look nearly identical aside from the secondary effects?

Compared to Claws, Spines has better AoE at the cost of single-target damage. I don't personally like it, or at least didn't enjoy my Spines/Dark (abandoned at level 44), but it actually has great performance as long as you aren't trying to kill bosses.

I see, well that pretty much answers my questions on that XD

Well that's not really the end of the story, some powers are just naturally very different. Spin outperforms Spine Burst in like every way, it does more damage with a shorter animation time AND a faster recharge. Spine Burst just has a big AoE...

Claws: Spin

Damage: 98.85
Cast Time: 2.50s
DPA: 39.54
Recharge: 9.20s (look at that recharge guys, that's godlike for a PBAoE attack, makes foot stomp look like trash)
AoE: 8ft

Spines: Spine Burst

Damage: 71.08
Cast Time: 3.00s
DPA: 23.69
Recharge: 16s
AoE: 15ft (the only redeeming quality of the power)


The reason that spines deals slightly better AoE dmg than claws is the Damage Aura: quillz. Please keep in mind though that spines has in fact, the worst ST DPS of all Scrapper sets to compensate for having its own damage aura.

Barb Swipe is a waste of your time.

Lunge is your best bet, but still not "good"

Impale is so much worse than focus that it's laughable, even defensively. Focus isn't just a great attack, but a 100% Knockdown makes it great mitigation as well. This makes impale worse both offensively and defensively.

Ripper is acceptable in your ST chain, only cus you have nothing else. Still not good though.

Taking all this into account, and preaching about Claw/Fire Brutes for farming myself, I think Spines is a niche set almost not worth playing. Claws can do just about as much AoE dmg (in a smaller AoE) and still do epic single target damage, making it a superior choice in almost all situations.

I still have one spine scrap, a Spinelec... he doesn't get played much.


As a final note, the values of many of these attacks in the Dominator set "Thorny Assault" are very different, some of those Thorn Attacks have top tier DPA and are really good.

Don't be so quick on the Spine burst vs Spin. I have both a spines/dark and claws/dark and i've been hesitating a loooong time between both, and which one to make my main scrapper. Claws/Dark is awesome AoE in AE farms with 50 mobs piled around you and... that's all. In a normal +4 x8 spawn or incarnate trial spawn, the mobs are scattered over such an area that Spin will at best hit 3 or 4 of them.

On the other hand, Spine burst hits 7+ constantly when jumping right into the middle. Add to that the cone, claws one sends mob away and can be hated by the team, while spines one can be spammed easily.

So yeah, claws has better damage, but with such restrictions it's most of the time faster to clean mobs one by one than to hope to gather them into Spin tiny AoE. Radius is the main stat to look for on an AoE because Spin could be one shoting bosses for all its worth, it would still hardly hit more than 3 mobs in normal play, while i can easily wipe most of a spawn on my spines/dark during the alpha strike.

For ST dps, while still far from competitive, i found the reactive proc and the invention procs to help enough on spines to not feel such a shame when trying to finish a lonely boss. The Ripper => impale attack chain is not that bad, so even if it didn't improve at all compared to the other sets, it improved enough compared to the mob health bars to feel somewhat decent. At least enough to make me feel my spines/dark was a much better scrapper all around than my claws/dark, who couldn't AoE more than 3 or 4 mobs in most of the normal groups/tfs/trials where mobs die in 3sec flat and before moving two feet.

Built on the idea of upping it's ST DPS, Spines can get some decent (not best) ST DPS when paired with a Secondary that has a Damage Aura.

This isn't to say Spines isn't the worst at it, but with the right secondary you can take out bosses just as quick as some other sets, while mixing up the damage types a lot more.

Lethal + Toxic + Energy/Fire/or Negative

Going off memory, I believe Spines best ST DPS Impale -> Ripper -> Throw Spines -> Repeat, with IOs and both DMG auras going, that's about 180 DPS. End intensive and using a lot of AOEs sure, but that's still decent ST DPS (imo anyways)

Then you add in one of the Incarnate DMG procs.

That said, I expect to see Spines become more popular when Brutes get access to Spines for aggro aura goodness to keep the npcs huddled together and around you.

Unless you're looking for a specific function on a scrapper (like farming), it boils down to how much fun a powerset is to play. It's NOT fun to play something gimped, or painfully slow. For example, (and this is all subjective, mind you) broadsword does enormous ST damage (definately not gimped), but to me it's almost painfully slow, making it less fun for me to play than almost any other scrapper.

I do have a da/spines. Also have a da/claws. Which is more fun? They are BOTH an enormous amount of fun. I don't prefer one over the other, honestly. Nor do I notice much difference in the damage they do, either. If I were fighting Kronos, or a pylon, or something wanting the extra ST damage, I'd bring the /claws. Otherwise? Pfft. Either one and I'm a happy scrappy.

I have a spines/ inv scapper i run ambushes with and it destroys all in it path i love it got a claw/wp to 46.5 now so we will see

Spines has less damage per hit than other sets, but most attacks by it also have an 80% chance of extra toxic DOT damage and some attacks have a small slow effect. Claws Focus has a knockdown which makes it better for defense. Impale has an immobilize which is good for catching runners and seems to also ground fliers. I have a spines/fire scrappers with more AOE's than single target attacks. Not so good on bosses or AV's but nice at taking out their henchmen.