Great writeup.
As a lvl 35 Kat/Da, I have a slightly different build than is presented here...one that works well for me and my play style.
After DA stacked and after the free respec, I went with all the DA armors and stacked them with slots somewhat heavily. The only change from my un-respected (pun intended) toon at this point was that I added Murky Cloud/removed Flashing Steel, and shifted my slotting from heavy attack to moderately heavy defense.
Dark Embrace is at 5 slots, OS/MC are at 4, CoF at 2, CoD and OG at 1. Each has one end redux, the rest are enhancements appropriate to the defense.
Note: As I level I plan to increase CoF, CoD, and OG's slots...just can't spare them now.
I have five primary attacks: Golden, Soaring, Divine, Lotus, and Sting. Golden and Soaring are 3 slotted dmg, the others are one slotted with end redux. I have one secondary attack, death shroud, 6-slotted with 1 endredux, 1 acc, and 4 dmg. I also have Build Up, 4-slotted with attack rate increase SOs.
I have only two power pools...fitness (hurdle, health, and stam). Health and Stam are 6-slotted appropriately. Hurdle has one jump SO. Leaping I took combat jumping and super jump, each with one jump SO. This gives me a fast 220 yards per jump.
When heading into battle I run the following toggles:
DS, OS, MC, DE, CoF, CoD, CJ.
I also have Hurdle, Health, and Stamina as auto's.
I use OG when necessary. Often I'll just turn it on for a few seconds until most of the mob is disoriented, then will turn it back off. The -HP isn't that bad with 6-slotted Health. Coupled with CoF its a great crowd pleaser...er...mob controller.
I do not have Hasten...I have never really seen a need for it, as I've got 5 primary attacks and 1 secondary attack (DS). Sometimes I need to wait a few seconds for an attack to be ready, but with DS ticking away at the entire mob I'm still productive...if DS is doing 25 hp / tick, and there are 5 bad guys around you, you have the potential to do 125 HP / tick total. Thats not bad DoT when you can use other attack at the same time (and DS continues to deal dmg even when you are knocked back/ held/ frozen...not really a problem for a DA now that armor stacks, but FYI).
So I haven't found not taking Hasten to be a problem in the least...I tried a few builds on Test with Hasten and didn't find it useful enough to keep as I always had to lose either an attack or an armor...and the three "best" attacks are required for a katana. Plus that littlel END drop at the completion of the hasten cycle caught me with my shorts down once when I had very little END left...it caused 6 out of 8 toggles to drop in front of a few con red Crey protectors =)
Often if I'm burning up END due to a slew of missed hits with my big attacks, I may pause for some time and let the mob swing at me. With all the resitence to dmg + Health I'm not finding it difficult to stand there and take the hits. I also generally keep my inspiration bar with 3 respites, and the rest breaths. Two of those blue pills after each battle keeps me from having any downtime. I also negotiate with teamates to trade what I have for their breaths as they get them...so a blaster may want rage or accuracy, and not need the breaths so much.
Again...great writeup, just wanted to write about some tactics and a setup that is working well for my playstyle.
