Besserwisser

I didn't run the numbers, but since two mobs cap the healing it didn't seem likely that it could go from 1271 to 2907. Twice the regeneration can't lead to three times the survivability. Or is the 1271 number with no mobs in range?

They're actually not that powerful for the average character, only for melee characters. They're not very perceptive. A ranged character can pick them off one by one. Even Scrappers can usually pull it off using the Origin temp power to pull with. The zombies also prefer shambling up to the enemy and puke and punch rather than projectile vomit at range and they're not very fast, causing them to seldom attack ranged characters.

I'm guessing you're not capping the Dark Regeneration heal at 100%?

An interesting number for healing sets is to see how much damage they can take between each heal without accounting for the heal. If that number is lower than the infinite DPS, that number is more interesting in my opinion. In this case it's 2142 (converted to Wernerscore).

Reslot Siphon Life so you get some heal enhancers in there, that will increase your survivability quite a bit.

Your Soul Drain currently lacks accuracy (though your global accuracy is fairly high) and is low on recharge. Gaussian's is a great set with all six slotted, but I wouldn't sacrifice any usability of Soul Drain for it.

The good active defenses of Claws suggests to me a regeneration or healing based secondary. Then again the low end costs of Claws means it's fairly safe to take a secondary lacking end recovery. Conclusion: Dark Armor.

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Eh, I've been bragging about Regen since I started posting on the forum. So far, the only changes since then have been buffs.

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You're assuming anyone ever listens to you.

My main reasons for choosing DM with SD are Dark Consumption and Siphon Life. I can't stand slowing down because of my endurance and the heal increases the survivability by a ton. Even without spending a few hundred million inf it's a great combo.

I'd like to know more about what you're looking for though. AV soloing without inspirations, soloing swarms of enemies, basic soloing, teaming, little bit of everything or something else? High damage or high defense? Good endurance management? Proactive, reactive or passive defense?

Martial Arts doesn't have as much AE damage as you may want, but willpower is great in big teams. Spines has the most AE damage, Claws, Dual Blades and Fire are also good.

With those numbers you can get 97.16% def debuff resistance, so it's even.

I would go with Energy Aura since it's the only option that has an end recovery power. I'm unsure how end intensive Elec Melee is though, so you might do fine with one of the others depending on how much you get from the end recovery in it's attacks.

The problem with Psy/MM is as has been mentioned that some mobs are heavily resistant to Psionic damage (50-60% resistance), which are a huge problem if you don't pick your fights carefully. Staying away from Banished Pantheon, Council, Arachnos and Malta prevents most of those problems.

Opening with Blazing Arrow is almost the same damage in less than half the activation time. I reiterate, snipes suck.

Healing is highly overrated by half the game and highly overrated by the other. The thing is that unless the ones taking the damage has self-heals or extreme regeneration, healing will help you more than anything. But if they do have that, healing is mostly useless and buffs would help you more than anything. There's two parts of survivability, mitigation (defense, resistance, crowd control) and recovery (healing and regeneration). The more you have of one, the better the other gets.

A team with a good willpower/fire/dark tanker and a FF will never miss a healer, I promise you that. The same cannot be said if the Tanker is SD/Ice/Invuln, who wouldn't even be helped by the FF.

Shield Defense can easily get to 90% defense debuff resistance. They get debuffed twice as much as SR, but it's still too little to be a problem in almost all scenarios.

That's true, I've only compared secondaries.

There will never be any reason to split them. There's nothing that only gives defense or resistance to one. Evenly is highly inaccurate though. The real split is:

Smashing: 27,90%
Lethal:41,78%

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Oooh! Are you the one that studied all the damage types blue side? I saw the post and intended to plug the numbers into my spreadsheet, and then promptly forgot. I suppose I could just search for the post, but if you have the numbers handy...?

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That would be me. I did it to get as good numbers for this spreadsheet as possible. It also means they're only accurate blueside, haven't gotten around to doing redside yet. It took forever. Here's my data:

S/L 69,68%
F 5,33%
C 1,90%
E 12,12%
N 4,33%
T 4,60%
P 2,04%

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Ah! Yes, I didn't notice that Earth's Embrace was a buff as well as a heal. Also, my Mids' is showing it recharging in 385 seconds, even though the base recharge is 360?

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Granite armor provides a rather hefty recharge debuff.

If you've only seen people teleport into mobs with it you've been playing with poor players. Using it while surround is much better since then you get the damage buff from AAO. You have to teleport, but you can teleport to where you're standing. It has a long recharge, 90 seconds, which is why you don't see it more than once a spawn.

Against anything using S/L damage the invuln scrapper beats SD by a ton. Against exotic damage the table turns. Invuln is tough as heck, but has weak spots. SD is fairly tough across the board.

My calculations for damage on heroside came up 2% psionic.

Anyway, I'm getting 576 on the stone brute. I think you've missed something, either Earth's Embrace or brutes higher HP. Our calculations have been fairly even so far.

But the Dark Armor build? I'm not touching that one with a ten foot pole.

If you're softcapped to all positions your S/L defense is completely irrelevant, since it will never be used. There are a few attacks that positional defense don't protect against, but they're all psionic and they're not common enough to matter.

I'm running 89% on my scrapper. Based on what Seize says Tankers get higher def resist numbers so they can hit the cap as well.

Invinvibility buffs defense, by quite a bit.

Rage can be doublestacked.

SS still has all those cool knockups and knockdowns.

Shield defense can easily get 90% debuff resistance as well.

Actually Brutes are generally more survivable due to higher hit points, higher resist caps and the same defense values. Just never seen an IO'd out brute at those levels, not because it cannot be done, but because it isn't done.

Every 12 seconds. It's a big deal, trust me. I've taken that into account and it can't take half the beating the seriously tough Scrappers can. I guess it's enough for farming though.