PleaseRecycle

Unfortunately it is no longer true that damage auras proc reactive on each tick. It's been changed to be a once per ten seconds affair like ordinary procs now.

I also tend to go for the radial reactive just because it's so much more useful in multi-target situations. Yes, the -res is substantial and probably the better option on an AV where nobody else on the team (say, if the team is comprised solely of you) also has reactive. However, what would you rather be tagging almost every enemy you hit with - what amounts to a free purple proc, or -2.5% res?

I feel like we're in the twilight zone. No, the damage aura does not favor the brute, not at all! What the hell? "Give us numbers!" *numbers are given* "We choose to ignore this!"

Anyway.

Ash, who said anything about pullling, herding, or lining them up? If there are still enough enemies in the spawn you're in to justify continued presence, then you sit there and kill more of them. As soon as the spawn is sufficiently depleted to have an impact on your damage, you should be in the next spawn. The leftovers are going to follow you whether you have a taunt aura or not, or your team will kill them. Or nobody will kill them, but who cares? Know what's bad for your earnings over time? Obsessing about individual npcs.

I can virtually guarantee that if you're that mental about cleaning up 100% of every spawn, you're already playing in a suboptimal manner, taunt aura or no.

Not having mids I can't see the build but conserve power vs consume seems like an easy choice. Will you only have endurance problems vs avs? Conserve power it is. Will you possibly need endurance in other circumstances? Surely you want consume. Do you have some kind of backwards endurance problem that calls for more endurance expenditure? Assault is there for you.

Oy.

Okay so two things.

Arbegla, did you notice that in the build you posted to show me how stupid I am for just using spin, you only have spin as a dependable aoe? Great, thanks.

Colossal, we went over damage auras earlier in the thread. The results weren't exactly as dramatic as it seems like people had hoped. It in fact turns out that damage auras are identical on brute and scrapper. Soooooo. They "just do more damage on brutes because of fury." Are you kidding at this point? Is this some kind of mass-troll event? Cause really I can keep doing this but I'm starting to feel kind of bad, and not for me.

Well on the other hand Syntax, surely you can relate to wanting to have inspirations in reserve for extraordinary circumstances, not every fight. Though I will say that if the topic is soloing on 2x8, you'll clearly already be basking in the purple rain. Purple rain, purple rain. *guitar solo*

Oh me oh my, I just said I'd quit posting in this thread, but when you make it this easy...

Yes, actually, spin is the only aoe you should have to use with any regularity on a claws/elec. It is a stellar power. Shockwave is the runner up and it is best applied in situations where you're already over the target cap so it doesn't matter if you knock ten of them away. Obviously if you need breathing room with less targets it's also great. Eviscerate is a great way to demonstrate that you love cool animations and are totally relaxed about accomplishing things. Extra-claws aoes demonstrate that you are either 100% focused on farming or fail to comprehend the impact of redraw on your damage.

This may be hard to follow so I'll type it slowly. Brute spin may not be good enough all by itself. Scrapper spin is. Scrapper claws/elec does not need additional aoes to supplement spin. That's why scrapper claws/elec is better. Resume normal speed.

How indeed does one keep ten foes within range of a pbaoe without a taunt aura! A question that has tantalized man throughout the ages. Before brutes existed, it was known to be impossible to damage multiple enemies at once. Rumors persisted, however, of the legendary Spinsquatch, a creature capable of using naught but its movement skills to corral plenty of targets to feed its low recharge scrapper aoes. Some say it still exists... maybe it's right behind you!!!

Good point, AshWind, this is a silly thing to bicker over. I'd tell that one guy not to reroll his scrapper unless he wanted a taunt aura as my final comment along those lines.

I've never had problems running fire farms on my fire scrapper or energy farms on my elec scrapper, I'll also note. S/l defense takes care of any issues you'd have. For that matter I'm pretty sure my elec scrapper could run fire farms and my fire scrapper could run energy farms. All of them are great on plain old s/l farms though so why not just run those when the agricultural mood takes you?

"My math" was demonstrating that your claim of infinite brute superiority was ludicrous, Arbegla. You've corroborated my assertion, not disproven it. Speaking of the damage cap, how much additional buffing does it take the brute to get there? How much for the scrapper? Hmm...

The funny thing is, I never said scrapper spin hit harder than brute spin. I said it was better. It is. At any level of recharge, it is back in 66% of the time it takes for brute spin to get back. At the recharge cap, this makes it a full second faster still. With less recharge, the gap is even wider. Having high recharge is not "better" because it can be reduced. That's a completely outlandish argument. That is equivalent to saying that hail of bullets is better than rain of arrows because it has a 120 second recharge and ~14% higher damage.

I notice you're also being extremely charitable to the brute on the fury number. Funny, but what I've heard brute players saying in other situations is that 65-70% fury is the new norm. Or does the average sustainable fury depend on whether you're trying to crap on scrappers or claim that scrapper is op and brute need buff? Seems as though it might.

Back to you, Deus! Funny thing I just noticed while looking at city of data. Spin seems actually to get the most pronounced damage increase for brutes - other powers are anywhere from comparable, so a 13% increase, to not increased at all. All of them, on the other hand, have higher recharge, with the exception of followup. Followup, a power which actually has a reduced base damage for brutes compared to scrappers, and which also is less beneficial to them. I'm actually not convinced that the brute numbers are going to look very good at all! Course we could still work it all out if you want to?

For some reason I don't feel that compelled to produce numbers when what I'm arguing against is "damage auras are infinitely better because of fury" and "fury is a damage bonus therefore scrappers are worse." This isn't exactly rocket surgery. Scrapper spin hits 88% as hard as brute spin and recharges in 66% of the time. Oh look, I was wrong about followup. It isn't three times as effective for scrappers assuming the brute has 160% damage bonus from fury, it's at least four times as effective, as it not only operates on a much higher damage scale but it also has a higher buff value. Not only that, but any additional buffs you manage to tack on, assault for instance, will be significant for the scrapper and meaningless for the brute.

Let's look at damage auras, shall we? A scrapper with 95% enhancement and double stacked followup should see 34 damage per tick on lightning field. A brute with 95% enhancement and double stacked followup and 160% bonus damage from fury will be doing... dun dun dun, 34 damage per tick. Wow, that's infinitely better! Tell me more, Arbegla!

I'm not impressed.

Unfortunately nobody seems capable of explaining why!

I assume you meant 2.66 seconds for spin then, still not sure how adjusting for arcanatime could take focus from 1.17 to 1.46 though! Anyway, that's irrelevant. My point is that claws/elec in and of itself happens to be an excellent farming combination for scrappers. I think it's fairly clear that a brute built the same way will be severely lacking either in aoe or in defense. You can make up for this with a pure farming build, but as Hai points out, you already have a SS/FA as your exclusive farmer, so why would you do that?

I'm not interested in making a pure farmer, I'm interested in characters that are highly capable across a range of content. From that perspective, claws/elec is clearly superior in scrapper form. You have excellent damage easily available without committing to an epic pool that's far less appealing when not farming, you've got more than enough survivability to tank whatever AV you'd care to, you can farm well if you feel like it, basically the only thing you don't get is the taunt aura which isn't a particularly big deal if you have any experience rounding up groups without it. To call it some kind of coup to get more out of power surge is like saying that awakens are better for brutes because they leave you with more HP. Who cares?

Beastman brought up ambush farming.

Arbegla, not sure where you got those cast times but they're interesting to say the least. As for the recharge required, actually you need about 70% global recharge and spiritual core. Now that's easy to do.

Maybe a brute ambush farmer would be wrong to use followup, Deus, but a scrapper wouldn't. If you're breaking up your chain with constant redraw, which you would be doing between ball lightning and fences, you're doing less DPS. By the way, I must have missed the aoe chain you said you'd use?

You're right, Hai, claws/fa probably would be better for farming, burn is certainly able to hold its own against redraw, but that isn't actually the only thing I use my claws/elec for.

Tell me what your aoe chain would be on an ambush farming claws/elec brute. I can tell you what it won't be: followup -> spin -> focus. You could swap out focus for eviscerate or you could intermittently insert dark oblit and whatever else is recharged when that isn't. Both of those options are inferior to the easily attainable scrapper chain, if you consider that the scrapper can just as easily insert fireball instead of focus half the time. I find that fireball is unnecessary - spin, followup and lightning field really need no assistance in ticket capping rapidly. Survivability is a non issue, as is build cost. So yes, you could spend more to do nearly as well with a claws/elec brute and also be slightly better at AV soloing maybe? Who really cares about that anymore?

Focus has radically better DPA than dark blast in the first place so I'm not sure how you're coming up with this dilemma in the first place. Focus is 79 and dark blast is 55.

Lightning field is also buffed by follow up. Spin recharge is indeed slightly better for scrappers, if 66% is slight. Power surge? Heh. As ever with brutes vs scrappers, it's mitigation vs damage. Scrapper claws/elec does better damage. Magical thinking has little impact on the truth of this.

Sure, as long as you aren't too worried about your aoe.

In fairness, shockwave is the highest DPA cone in the game and also one of the strongest control powers scrappers get access to. Nothing compares well with shockwave. I happen to agree that repulsing torrent is no more worth taking than scrapper fire breath, but even charitably judging it on its own merits can lead you to that conclusion, no need to bring shockwave into this.

How exactly do you think s/l enemies are going to kill a scrapper who is chugging ambush farm inspirations while level shifted to 51?

No, it isn't worth rerolling. I have a claws/elec scrapper who can pretty much do anything you'd hope such a character could do. The fact that spin's recharge is so much better for scrappers made it a breeze to achieve around 38% s/l defense as well as the follow up -> spin -> focus attack chain without any purples or other great expense. That simply isn't going to happen on a claws/elec brute.

Okay, so from Moonlighter's 81 dps arcanatime figure, doubling that for enhancement, figure in procs, carry the five, average out reactive core vs radial into a delicious numeric bisque, and voila. I have calculated that MA definitely does between 160 and 500 DPS. Probably.

I don't see why people act like MA is a single target only set. Dragon's tail is easily one of the best scrapper aoes by more than one measure. I'd take it over anything but spin.

I don't know how it all shakes out in the final DPS but I think one of the unseen advantages of the sk -> cs -> sk -> cak chain is that you're throwing down more attacks over the same period of time. The most obvious boon is the increased mileage you get from procs, but it also makes your chain more granular and results in less medium-long animations spent overkilling things just to finish them off.

What's controversial about what Auroxis just said? Did Werner ever present the pylon times as anything other than the measure of how high your DPS is against pylons? It's a method for the evaluation of a specific character in a specific circumstance. The point of this thread had been the DPS of MA chains in general, regardless of secondary and regardless of target.

There are two problems with using pylon times for this. They have human error baked in both in the build and in the fight, and not all combinations are represented. How does MA/SD look, for instance? That would be a slightly more fair comparison to DM/SD and FM/SD than MA/SR is.

Well, and another problem is that crazy pylon soloers are going to be using saturated AAO and soul drain unenhanced for damage to absolutely maximize their times. Those are very specific conditions for DPS evaluation.

I don't get how you get 81 DPS for the chain. Is using arcanatime instead of the listed animation time that big of a difference? Hrm, given how short storm kick's animation is, I guess it isn't that hard to believe.