Assuming a ridiculous amount of coin is DB still the way to go for DPS?
By
bAss_ackwards,
Posted on: 2010-01-09 12:23 in Scrappers
I've suspected for a while that shield charge will get the psychic shockwave treatment. While they won't reduce the damage (they just buffed it), I wouldn't be surprised at all if they reduced the area of effect (radius) and decreased the endurance cost to compensate.
Under such an "adjustment" shield charge would still be powerful but wouldn't be a power that can completely eclipse blaster tier 9s.
Also, AAO's taunt aura will probably be adjusted down...it's ridiculously strong.
For the record, some of you know I have a fully purpled/PvP IO'ed beast of a fire/shield/blaze scrapper that I love to death, but I've been bracing myself to a negative change to this set for some time.
Shields? meh....
I don't play mine much anymore... got a bit boring for me
missing in that thread is a 228 DPS build I had on my claws/SR. A DB should be able to put out the same or higher numbers.
A Katana/SR built properly should be able to put up 240+ DPS, so it'd be in the middle of all those shielders...
But then again a Katana/Shield could possible reach the 300 mark... Guess who'd be one of the first ones to roll one of those IF that were allowed to happen... 
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I'd be in favor of that kind of change to Shield Charge. Even a damage reduction would be fine with me.|
Originally Posted by Fury Flechette
I've suspected for a while that shield charge will get the psychic shockwave treatment. While they won't reduce the damage (they just buffed it), I wouldn't be surprised at all if they reduced the area of effect (radius) and decreased the endurance cost to compensate.
Under such an "adjustment" shield charge would still be powerful but wouldn't be a power that can completely eclipse blaster tier 9s. Also, AAO's taunt aura will probably be adjusted down...it's ridiculously strong. For the record, some of you know I have a fully purpled/PvP IO'ed beast of a fire/shield/blaze scrapper that I love to death, but I've been bracing myself to a negative change to this set for some time. |
As for when they finally get around to allowing two handed weapons with shields I'll be rolling a claws/shield.
Virtue: @Santorican
Dark/Shield Build Thread
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Originally Posted by Igor_The_Mad
I can damage cap my shield charge.
By myself. It's stupid amounts of damage - it oneshots +3 minions. Shield charge is so powerful that I don't really care whether I'm soloing rikti warzone missions at -1x8 or +3x8. I just herd the spawn, soul drain, and shield charge them into the ground. Lieutenants take a bit longer, and bosses might require a full attack chain to kill, but the minions evaporate - which is why I don't really care that DM has no aoe. However... I think that the defining power of /shields is not SC, but AAO. It's trivially easy to saturate it, since AAO is an enormously strong taunt power. I was doing a STF and if the stoner (who had more IO's than a... really... io'd thing...) did not taunt on cooldown I was stripping aggro off with my high DPS + taunt aura. Saturated AAO is worth slightly more than 3 small reds. Try running around on your non-shielder with 3 reds popped all the time and see how you like it, and you'll have some idea of how powerful AAO really is. I don't think the devs planned for /shield to be so dominant, but they probably should have seen it coming, seeing as the scrapper community is populated by, as one person put it, "numbersraping powergamers". Weaknesses of shield are that while it performs at a (mostly) acceptable level with SO's, it doesn't particularly shine. Shield charge has a very long (90 sec base) recharge. It can't cap its defense debuff resistance without some major shenanigans involving HO's - and this is more of a weakness than anyone cares to admit, considering how much time most people spend doing ITF's. Another off-putting characteristic is that it's confusing as heck to learn the powers. Willpower (for instance)... ok, +regen auto, +hp auto, +regen toggle/taunt aura, +recovery auto... got it, and you're off! Shields, on the other hand starts out with the normal +melee/range/aoe toggles, a +hp/resist auto, clicky mez protection (which can't be perma out of the box, ugh), then a +dmg taunt aura, and then veers off into the realm of "ahhh i don't know what any of these things do" with phalanx fighting, which most novice mids builders don't understand, grant cover, which gives you one thing and gives everyone else something ELSE, then an aoe with a long recharge, and a tier 9 that doesn't really do anything to enhance the survival of a SO'd shields toon. It's not at all like SR where you say "ok, i've reached the next /SR power, my survivability has increased!" With Shields, once you have TG, both the defense toggles, your mez click, and phalanx fighting (if you take the time to look at city of data and figure out what it does, assuming you even know what city of data IS) you've pretty much capped your secondary. Shields doesn't get better at keeping you alive past level 20 (or 22 if you want to argue that point, for SO's). It gets better at helping you KILL THINGS, but not better at making you NOT DEAD. Time for numbers! Yay! A level 50 /shield scrapper with ED capped defense toggles and true grit, and phalanx fighting has 21.6 defense to all positions, and 1605 HP, and a tier 9 which gives you some resistances (whoopee). A level 50 /SR scrapper with ED capped defense toggles and autos has a whopping 30.9 defense to all positions (plus scaling resists for low HP situations), plus elude which will, you know, cap your defenses. THIS is why shields is so amazing at a high level of IO investment - because you have to overcome 9 percent melee, ranged, and AOE deficit in comparison to super reflexes. I wanted an AV/Pylon soloer and looked at shields when it came out and said "man that thing has 22 positional defense, there's no way I can soft cap that" because I don't care about shiny toys like shield charge and AAO if the secondary can't, you know, keep me alive. So I rolled a DM/SR and purpled it out to 191 +recharge and had a lot of fun with it. I kept hearing about how powerful X/Shields was, so one day I sat down for, oh, about TEN HOURS with mid's and figured out how to soft cap one. I made a dm/shields scrapper, leveled it to 50, and it's the most overpowered thing since, oh, I don't know, /invul tanks in issue 3? However, for those of us who spend their free time on the scrapper forums figuring out how to make their characters do things that the devs never intended (Iggy, I'm looking at you), we know that /shields is balanced by the fact that it sacrifices 9 percent positional defense to achieve higher damage output, much like fiery aura. For our scrapper bretheren (and sisteren) (hah, I just made up a new word) who prefer sticking with SO's - shields is still a good set, which is as it should be. It's the fiery aura to invulnerability of defense sets. Well, that's probably enough rambling. I'm going to go solo a pylon or something. See ya out there! |
Whenever I hear cries of 'overpowered' regarding scrappers - what about the AT's that are soloing Lusca... lol. It aint' scrappers pulling that stuff off, and the scrapper AT is SUPPOSED to be the dominant solo at. Then people will come back with 'well that's just top end stuff with crazy io investment'. Well yeah, same thing with the 'overpowered' argument regarding scrappers.
SD is a great top end set, the best imo, but it's no picnic leveling up, and that should be considered when discussing it's top end power. And it definitely does not shine without IO's, and lot of them (especially the expensive ones).
Some defensive sets have fallen behind a bit with the rise of defense and IO's. Rather than messing with sets that people enjoy and angering the dwindling customer base, the devs should rework some of the lesser sets to make them more appealing and competitive, and give their players freshened up sets to play with and enjoy. Top end, IO'd to the gills scrappers soloing a pylon in under five minutes is no more gamebreaking than an ill/rad soloing lusca. An sd obliterating a mob with SC and fireball is no more gamebreaking that a fire/kin farmer.
Devs and players, I say to thee, put down your nerf bats. DM used to be an underused set, but rather than nerf popular sets that were outperforming it, the devs buffed DM and gave players a virtually new set to play with and enjoy. So rather than crippling SD like they did with EM, tweak some of the underperforming sets to make them more competitive, or introduce new IO's that benefit those sets the way def bonus IO's benefit defensive sets.
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Originally Posted by Chaos_String
BillZ's thread showed Broadsword ranking among the worst primaries for high-end DPS; yet my BS/SD build outperformed every single non-shield build on record in pylon time.
The point remains: choice of secondary (Shield vs. not-Shield) has more to do with high-end DPS than choice of primary. |
I'd love to see your BS build that puts out that kind of dps.
And while you're right to point out that SD will put most if not all primaries above any non SD paired primary, all things being equal (ie. when measuring primary vs primary, they either both have sd or neither does), the chart does give a good idea of which sets are best in regards to single target dmg over an extended period, and BS seems to finish in the lower half in most of the discussions we've had (which is why I'd love to see your build, I'm curious to see your slotting and attack chain).
Obviously with DB, SD is not an option, but if I recall correctly, shredmonkey's db was doing well over 200 dps without sd.
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Those ATs that are soloing GMs (Controllers and Defenders heroside, with the occasional Blaster that got incredibly lucky) are doing so exclusively because of the absurd utility of -regen. The fact that they're doing so has almost nothing to do with the overpowered nature of any single powerset (though the Lusca soloers are all Ill/* last I checked and could do so exclusively because of the unkillable tankiness of Phantom Army) and more with the fact that AVs and GMs regenerate so much that -regen equates to hundreds of DPS against them.|
Originally Posted by Cyber_naut
Whenever I hear cries of 'overpowered' regarding scrappers - what about the AT's that are soloing Lusca... lol. It aint' scrappers pulling that stuff off, and the scrapper AT is SUPPOSED to be the dominant solo at. Then people will come back with 'well that's just top end stuff with crazy io investment'. Well yeah, same thing with the 'overpowered' argument regarding scrappers.
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Think of it like this: ask a DM/SD Scrapper to solo an AV without AAO and an Ill/Rad to solo an AV without Lingering Radiation. The DM/SD is going to be able to take out the AV, but it will take longer. The Ill/Rad is never going to make even the slightest dint in the AV's regeneration. Personally, I think that was a major design problem in the game. When fighting the big bads, -regen is more powerful than any other effect anyone can bring to bare.
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Hack > Headsplitter > Hack > Disembowel > (0.5sec)|
Originally Posted by Cyber_naut
I'd love to see your BS build that puts out that kind of dps.
And while you're right to point out that SD will put most if not all primaries above any non SD paired primary, all things being equal (ie. when measuring primary vs primary, they either both have sd or neither does), the chart does give a good idea of which sets are best in regards to single target dmg over an extended period, and BS seems to finish in the lower half in most of the discussions we've had (which is why I'd love to see your build, I'm curious to see your slotting and attack chain). |
BTW, I was the one who gave BillZ this attack chain and convinced him that it was better than the one he was going to use.
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And made me do a complete redesign on the algorithm I'm working on to generate optimum attack strings with basic attack information input. Stupid demonstration of situations in which pauses are better for your DPS than actually attacking. >.<
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Originally Posted by Chaos_String
BTW, I was the one who gave BillZ this attack chain and convinced him that it was better than the one he was going to use.
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Originally Posted by Umbral
though the Lusca soloers are all Ill/* last I checked
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Rad/Sonic and Fire/Rad also works. I would try it on my traps sonic if i didt get bored with gm´s after tearing my hair out due to the bs with acid mortar. I bet lusca would find a way to run from it.
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I agree with the gist of your post but want to point out that the rad could probably still solo the AV, because EM Pulse has -1000% regen in it and on a permahastened build you can get it to about 17% uptime. I don't think even most rads know that EMP is half the reason Rad outputs more -Regen than the other debuff sets. |
Originally Posted by Umbral
Think of it like this: ask a DM/SD Scrapper to solo an AV without AAO and an Ill/Rad to solo an AV without Lingering Radiation. The DM/SD is going to be able to take out the AV, but it will take longer.
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The fact that EMP shuts down your endurance recovery for the same amount of time that it debuffs enemy regeneration makes it impractical for soloing AVs and GMs.|
Originally Posted by Laevateinn
I agree with the gist of your post but want to point out that the rad could probably still solo the AV, because EM Pulse has -1000% regen in it and on a permahastened build you can get it to about 17% uptime. I don't think even most rads know that EMP is half the reason Rad outputs more -Regen than the other debuff sets.
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Although my ill/rad has soloed everything up to and including Lusca, I didn't use EMP for that purpose, except in a few cases where I missed with LR and wanted to let my pets continue to make headway against the AV/GM while I basically did nothing for 15sec.
Now I'm going to have to break out my ill/rad and see if I can take down some AVs without LR.
EDIT: just soloed Chimera without LR. So yeah, it's sub-optimal but definitely doable. In fact I'm pretty sure I could have taken him down without any -regen at all, though it would have taken longer without EMP. An ill/rad can put more raw DPS on target than most people realize, I guess.
Looking back on things, this shouldn't have surprised me in the least. I took down Nightstar and Siege even though they both have 80% psi resistance, and the bulk of my damage output is psi.
Now I feel this thread has been thorougly derailed.
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I've just rolled up a claws/sr scrapper to dump all my purples and pvp IO's into if shields does get hit hard by the bat.|
Originally Posted by Fury Flechette
I've suspected for a while that shield charge will get the psychic shockwave treatment. While they won't reduce the damage (they just buffed it), I wouldn't be surprised at all if they reduced the area of effect (radius) and decreased the endurance cost to compensate.
Under such an "adjustment" shield charge would still be powerful but wouldn't be a power that can completely eclipse blaster tier 9s. Also, AAO's taunt aura will probably be adjusted down...it's ridiculously strong. For the record, some of you know I have a fully purpled/PvP IO'ed beast of a fire/shield/blaze scrapper that I love to death, but I've been bracing myself to a negative change to this set for some time. |
I wouldn't mind a smaller radius on shield charge as much them taking my ability to cap DDR with Hami-Os. If they take that away my SS/shield and fire/shield/blaze will probably get the good old delete button.
Active 50's
Darklocked (dm/sd Brute)
Wardman (Fire/sd Scrapper)
Congealer (ice/cold Corruptor)
Peroxisome (mind/psi Dominator)
Evil Thing (Fire/Kin Corruptor)
Proud Member of Repeat-Offenders
Why not just modify your play style to adapt for the decrease in DDR? Seems a bit silly to delete a 50.
Virtue: @Santorican
Dark/Shield Build Thread
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Not at all, just proving the point that scrappers are not at all overpowered when at's that are supposed to be weak solo are doing things solo that the supposedly strongest solo at simply cannot do. And the defense of 'well, it's only one power' just got shot down by your post as well. Then on top of that, the same at's are more valued on teams, to the point they are 'must haves' for task forces while scrappers sometimes have to hope for a mercy spot. So if nerf bats start swinging, scrappers should be the last at hit by them (but as I've said over and over again - I'm opposed to nerfs because I think it's fine for top end builds to be able to do extreme stuff, so don't misinterpret what I'm saying as a call to nerf anything).|
Originally Posted by Chaos_String
The fact that EMP shuts down your endurance recovery for the same amount of time that it debuffs enemy regeneration makes it impractical for soloing AVs and GMs.
Although my ill/rad has soloed everything up to and including Lusca, I didn't use EMP for that purpose, except in a few cases where I missed with LR and wanted to let my pets continue to make headway against the AV/GM while I basically did nothing for 15sec. Now I'm going to have to break out my ill/rad and see if I can take down some AVs without LR. EDIT: just soloed Chimera without LR. So yeah, it's sub-optimal but definitely doable. In fact I'm pretty sure I could have taken him down without any -regen at all, though it would have taken longer without EMP. An ill/rad can put more raw DPS on target than most people realize, I guess. Looking back on things, this shouldn't have surprised me in the least. I took down Nightstar and Siege even though they both have 80% psi resistance, and the bulk of my damage output is psi. Now I feel this thread has been thorougly derailed. |
Thanks for the BS build btw, I'll check it out when I get a chance - always interested in looking at top builds. I like how you pointed out to the other poster that sometimes its better to have a pause in an attack chain than to jam a weaker attack in for optimal dps. I've always been cautious when looking at stats thrown up in here because there are so many variables and missing any of them could lead to horribly wrong conclusions, like when people cried overpowered when they took the animation delays out of katana.
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Something of an aside, but I personally know the player of a Rad/Psi that did it. He used a bunch of inspirations, certainly, but I can forgive that for someone soloing what amounts to nine GMs at once.|
Originally Posted by Umbral
the Lusca soloers are all Ill/* last I checked and could do so exclusively because of the unkillable tankiness of Phantom Army
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It also took a really long time.
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
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I retired my DM/shield out of boredom as well. I've actually never used the buffed shield charge. It just felt wrong to me.|
Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze
Shields? meh....
I don't play mine much anymore... got a bit boring for me missing in that thread is a 228 DPS build I had on my claws/SR. A DB should be able to put out the same or higher numbers. A Katana/SR built properly should be able to put up 240+ DPS, so it'd be in the middle of all those shielders... But then again a Katana/Shield could possible reach the 300 mark... Guess who'd be one of the first ones to roll one of those IF that were allowed to happen... |
I'd often looked at making a katana toon for pure damage (sacrificing defense if needed and just rely on teams for that sort of thing). But then it occured to me that if I'm going to do that, I could just make a blaster.
Back to the original thread topic. I concur with Iggy that a fully slotted DB/SR should be right about the same as Claws/SR maxed out. And Katana should be slightly above those.
I don't know if it's by design, or chance that the top 3 primaries for ST damage are ones you can't combine with /Shields. They made the adjustments to those primaries that gave them those slots before /shields existed, but perhaps the dev's new shields was coming with a +dam buff and adjusted claws and katana accordingly (DB was always where it is.. claws and katana got a buff about 6 months before shields came).
I gotta make pain. I gotta make things right. I gotta stop what's comin'. 'Least I gotta try.
I ran a pylon just now. There were a few little glitches along the way so I think I could shave a bit off the time.. but this run was 6:42 (on a DB/SR). That's 223 DPS if my math is correct.
I gotta make pain. I gotta make things right. I gotta stop what's comin'. 'Least I gotta try.
The fact that Shield Charge does more damage than Burn over a larger area and without scattering enemies or dealing the damage over an extended period of time should tell you something (not to mention that Shield Charge is actually better than Lightning Rod because its damage is applied over the entire area rather than applied in diminishing amounts the further the target is from the target point). The fact that AAO provides more +dam over time with a single target (19.38% +dam) than FE does (10.8% +dam), using only a single slot rather than the 3 that would be needed for FE should tell you even more.
When all we had was FA, the assumption was that you gave up a decent bit of survivability and got a bit less back in offense (which is even less than it used to be because all of the damage tools that FA has have been nerfed or ignored to such a point that they're largely useless or mediocre) and it made sense because a defense set should be worse at dealing damage than an offensive set. With SD, you're giving up a marginal amount of survivability and getting enormous returns in the form of damage. That should just scream wrong to any balance minded individuals.
The difference in survivability between 22 positional and 31 position is pretty big.
Also when they allowed the scrapper AT modifier to effect shield charge, it went from "woo shield charge" to "holy crap, I have inferno on a 27 second timer" - I think shield charge does too much damage - my purpled fire blaster can't compete with shield charge because I have to hit aim, then buildup, then fbreath + fball to do what a shielder can do in a single button press.