Chaos_String

This is the most ... guide I've ever read. Silas obviously ... is so smart and funny, [and] I ... find his antics [amusing].

Well, firstly, when you kill as fast as spines/fire, inspirations drop very quickly, so that's helpful.

Also, Kinetic Combat set IOs cap at lvl 35, and Reactive Armor at 40, so it's quite feasible to have a substantial amount of S/L/Melee defense from IOs and pools by level 38.

ElA is pretty weak mitigation for scrappers, given the scrapper base resistances and resistance caps. It's a lot like Fire Armor in that respect, but with more passive regeneration and less active healing. And also knockback protection, as long as you don't jump around a lot.

Furthermore, you have a damage aura that gradually drains endurance from nearby foes, and Power Sink, which is a big burst end drain. By using them together, you can reduce incoming damage, potentally by a lot if you can survive long enough to use Power Sink a second time. One application won't really stop foes from attacking; it'll just slow down their use of heavy hitters. The second will basically stop all incoming damage, until the mobs wise up and run out of your Lightning Field. And they will. Overall, mitigation via sapping is a dodgy thing to rely on. It won't help you at all against alpha strikes and only somewhat against sustained "beta" damage. But after a while, anything left standing isn't going to attack you effectively at all unless it runs away and then comes back.

Like FA, ElA can be built for a good amount of S/L/Melee defense, at which point it becomes a very good set, since it already has resists, a self-heal, and the endurance attrition mitigation I just mentioned. This is how I built my Spines/ElA, and it works quite well for me. Of course, killing quickly with Spines is contributing a lot to that efficacy.

I had turned up to +0x6 by level 22, and at 50 I'm running at +2x8 against mostly everything but Nemesis. Nemesis I just avoid. As a spiney, it's hard to avoid killing the lieuts too early. My build hasn't been tested against Cimerorans, but I can already tell you it won't fare well. ElA offers zero DDR, which is a recipe for disaster for a meleer in Cimerora.

tl;dr: Overall in terms of pure survivability from the set ElA is closest to FA, and a very far cry from the strongest scrapper sets. I chose it for the cool FX, for concept, for the damage aura, and for the endurance management tools.

Choose it for those reasons and it won't disappoint. Choose it for its tank, which is relatively weak and easily broken, and it will let you down.

Actually the animation times are different also. Gambler's Cut is faster for scrappers, while basically everything else is faster for stalkers. Not sure if this would necessitate/facilitate a different attack chain, but it might.

First, let me observe that if Willpower has one weakness, it's burst damage, which is to say, a large sum of damage dealt to you on an alpha strike. By the time you begin to drop the more dangerous foes and thin out the incoming damage, it's too late; your regen gets smaller as each foe drops, and it's not enough to bring you back from the brink. Only enough to delay the inevitable, because you took too much damage in the first few seconds of battle.

Now, other sets which rely on defense can often come through these alpha stikes unscathed, and sets with self-heals can replenish their health with a "burst" heal that can offset the burst damage taken.

But Willpower is vulnerable to burst damage, and to some extent you'll have to live with that.

However, there are some things to look into which may help.

1) Strength of Will: your Tier 9 does not have a catastrophic crash like some others. Nor is it a true godmode, but if you use it in anticipation of burst damage (i.e. before you take it, not afterward), it can and usually will reduce that burst damage to the point where your regen tank will hold and not be broken during the battle. If you plan on taking this at 32, be sure to take Stamina between now and then; with both Stamina and QR, the endurance crash should not be an issue, even if it happens in the thick of battle.

2) Slot up HPT for heal (which will give you maxHP) and then for dmg resistance. Also Tough and Weave will help. Another reason to go ahead and get Stamina.

3) Defense from other sources: Willpower gives you decent exotic defenses; you can dovetail this with smashing/lethal defense from IO sets. There are a lot of such bonuses to be had; look to sets like Reactive Armor, Kinetic Combat, and Obliteration. And there are others, too--find them. If those I mentioned are too expensive for you right now, look instead at Titanium Coating, Smashing Haymaker, and Multi-Strike. Then, having added some S/L defense, boost all your typed defenses with Combat Jumping, the Steadfast Protection unique, and maybe even Maneuvers. Try to get all your typed defenses to at least 25%, preferably higher. Defense is the best way to deal with burst damage; it's damage teflon. Most of the bigrednumbers just don't happen in the first place.

4) Tactics. Burst damage is your biggest vulnerability, so try to space out the incoming damage a bit. Throw spines, then pop behind a column, stalagmite, corner, into a cubicle, or whatever. Stuff will come running at you, and then by the time they have a clear shot, they're already fueling your regen. This way, the whole group won't spike you at once.

5) Inspiration use. On my WP toons, I like green and purple inspirations. I push myself suicidally and always take on way more than I should, but it's chilly cause I know how to rake the skittles. You get hurt, you go right ahead and pop a green AND A PURPLE. See? Not just a green, but a green AND A PURPLE. This works great on WP. It gives your native regen and damres a lot more leeway to keep you alive. If you don't have a purple, two oranges yield a similar effect. Burn reds to kill stuff faster. Combine blues, breakfrees, wakies and yellows to make stuff you can actually use (might wanna keep a couple yellows depending on the enemy faction). And never, ever, EVER faceplant with a full tray.

Hope those tips help.

My Katana/Willpower was by far the easiest trip to 50 I've taken in CoX.

It's just ridiculously easy mode.

I can see people skipping all kinds of highly desirable powers for one reason or another. To each his own, and all kinds of oddball build strategies have proven effective even in spite of thsemselves.

That said, the highest DPS attack chains for Martial Arts have fairly high recharge requirements, and builds featuring this kind of recharge will also get a lot more uptime from Focus Chi. Thus, the more efficient your attack chain, the bigger a DPS boost Focus Chi will add to it.

So, if you're looking at a servicible, but sub-optimal, attack chain which is fun even if it produces mediocre results, then by all means skip Focus Chi, or whatever else in the MA set you don't see yourself using.

But if you want to be a powerhouse: you will take Focus Chi as soon as you have a decent attack chain to take advantage of it; you will get it to recharge as fast as you can; and you will use it whenever it's up. You won't save it for next spawn unless firing it means wasting half or more of the buff's duration on spawn-to-spawn travel.

Take it, slot it, love it, and for goodness sake use it. It will make you strong.

(Never set it to autofire, though.)

Spines/electric's a good farmer too; it has end management tools that spines/dark lacks, and better overall damage mitigation than spines/fire. That said, it's probably a little less effective than either of those two in an overall sense--but it still tears through large spawns very quickly.

Well the 23.2% defense will cut incoming damage by nearly half, as long as there aren't any defense debuffs or tohit buffs going on. 5% recharge and 73% regeneration won't do nearly as much to contribute to survivability.

OK, here is the black-on-white costume:



And here is the white-on-black version:



Both costumes use blue/red electrical FX and a green electric body aura.

My spines/electric is mutation origin; the electric armor powers are his mutant abilities.

The spines are part of his costume, which is a genetically-engineered symbiant (like Venom). It feeds off the electrical fields of his body to produce the spines (and for its own sustenance).

I use the crystal spines, and have matched them very nicely with the costume colors. They really look like they're extruded by the costume itself, rather than protruding through the costume from underneath.

Slightly less obnoxious than the most obnoxious things is still obnoxious.

If you actually care about BM etiquette, dismiss your pets. Of course, that'd make you one of exactly four people on your server who actually care about BM etiquette.

Even as someone who has two level 50 masterminds and has played every MM set, primary and secondary, to at least 30, the first thing I thought when I saw Posi's tweet about pets zoning in i16 was, "Oh great. Now I'll never be able to click on a Shady or a Facemaker without wading through 34873974 robots jumping over themselves to bubble each other and make clankity clank noises."

That and the fact that masterminds now aggro the whole zone in a wake behind them as they travel.

I guess it's a good QoL buff for masterminds in general, but it diminishes QoL for everyone else.

Not that I really mind, but there's two sides to every coin.

On my AR/EM blaster, I can do more to help a team mow spawns using just range-boosted cones (Buckshot, Flamethrower, and Full Auto) than I could with the enemy-scattering M30 Grenade.

On my Rad/Mental I've got Psy Scream and Electron Haze, two cones for attacking at range, and also Psy Shockwave, Irradiate and Atomic Blast, three PBAoEs that are up close and dirty. Neutron Bomb with its slow animation would do little more than slow me down.

So, I skipped the targeted AoE on both blasters and can still contribute a lion's share of AoE damage. Not every targeted AoE is as effective and essential as Fire Ball.

Yeah, this has been talked about in this forum a number of times before.

It's a lot harder than the standard RWZ Challenge, for sure. My BS/SD scrapper has attempted it a few times without success. I imagine my Katana/WP scrapper will do better once I wrangle the last few purples into his build.

My DM/EA brute, on the other hand, does it reliably every time, and doesn't even come close to dying.

It's definitely a stress test that's a notch or two higher in intensity.

I run with a buddy who plays a fire/fire scrapper with just 1 -KB IO.

99% of the time, he's fine.

But when we fight Fake Nemesis, he gets ponged around. Marauder spilled him a lot, too. Against Diabolique, he was basically chain KB'ed into uselessness.

Of course, if you avoid EBs and AVs, Pylons, Nemesis, Cabal and a few others, you'll be fine.

If it were me, I'd build with three -KB IOs or take Acro, but I *hate* being knocked around.