Deacon_NA

Here's some play style - summon the prot bots only, release one of them, it will bubble you, release it. Total time, 5-10 seconds for a 4 minute buff. Whatever works for you though, as you say, playstyle, etc.

What I am saying is that Mids does not reflect the bubble the Protector Bots buff you with.

So whatever Mids says, add 7.5% due to the prot bot bubble. If you enhanced the prot bot bubble by slotting some +Def enhancements in the prot bots, then that 7.5% increases appropriately.

So in this example with positionals of 45% (or whatever it was), then actual defense is 52.5%. If you have 0% defense, the prot bot would get you to 7.5%.

I just want to mention, to anyone that is using this as a template, that the bots buff you with one shield, which isn't reflected in Mids (though I think it can be configured to do so, I don't know).

So all those Defense numbers shown in Mids are shy 7.5% (since Prot Bots didn't have their def enhanced). Personally I think a bots/trapper is well served by 1-2 Def IOs in Prot Bots and 5% def pet IO. The resistance IO is nice too. Slotting up the prot bots would give the opportunity to redirect ~10% Def bonuses to other attributes, such as recharge (primarily) and HP (secondarily).

I'd tread carefully before spending a lot of inf on further recharge on a perma-hasten build. Incremental recharge bonuses get smaller and smaller, as far as affecting recharge time.

Let's look at TT, 10 second base recharge. I'm going to assume you have 180% recharge, including Hasten. Let's further say you have no recharge slotting in the power (just to be conservative), only the 33% from the alpha slot. That would currently TT recharges in 10 * (1/(1 + 1.8 + .33)), a recharge of 3.195 seconds. Go ahead and spend a couple of billion on an Armeggedon set, we get to 10 * (1/(1 + 1.8 + .3 + .1)) = 3.096.

Even a longer recharging power, like Tar Patch, would only come up a second quicker. Probably less since I'm sure you have recharge slotted in TP.

More recharge won't be a bad thing. Personally, I'm a "value" builder and I stop chasing particular bonuses when they're satisfactory and start going after others.

I tend to go with the epic aoe over the wawg simply to gain access to further patron powers. I perhaps would take a different tactic if I went for say, GW, but for Mako, I'm not a fan of trow sharks, practically speaking.

You took the ally bubbles? Lame, just spam heals with Aid Other.

I keed, I keed.

As for power selection, it's quite similar to my Thugs/FF. I think our only difference is I took the Mace immob and you took veng. I'm definitely not suggesting you switch those, veng is plenty good and gives you an lotg mule to boot. Oh yeah, I took the cage instead of Force Bubble. Again, I have no real preference of one over the other. In other words, yours looks solid.

If I use Benumb on the Pestilence War Rider (I think he's the one with Weaken) would that lessen the effect of his -Heal, etc?

Whether we're dealing with trolling or ignorance, I neither know nor care. I thought it wiser to step away from the "debate" just as I would with a "New Earther" arguing that humans walked the Earth with dinosaurs 6000 years ago, I advise others to do the same.

Well... actually he said "as long as it's not a Stalker or Kheld" (true story) but I thought I'd leave the second part out...

I had an amusing interaction last night, the channel request was for "anything that can do a speedy LGTF". I had a scrapper on that server that I wanted a Notice for so I responded saying "so anything that can be speedy right?", to make sure a Scrapper was ok, and the response was "Well anything but a Stalker".

I just found that amusing, no other point to this post...

Fun, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.

What I find to be a) outstanding team utility and b) fun is Earth/Cold. It possesses an embarassment of riches for crowd control from both the primary and secondary. Crippling aoe debuffs (again, both from primary and secondary) and devastating single target debuffs. The cherry on top is nice team buffs as well.

People are quick to take exception whenever the term "the best" is used. Whatever. Among the characters I've played (and I've played a few), this is "the best" team support I've ever played. Can he farm +4/8? Nope. Can he solo AVs? Nope. Does he make pretty much any team better, regardless of team composition? Yep.

The end drain wasn't what killed me (though it didn't help me). It was the Poison debuffs, most especially Weaken, since DP + chewing all my greens did very very little to save my bacon.

Good ideas though, especially the bit about taunting from range to escape the pbaoe.

What about those powers you can purchase from the Vanguard vendor? Like Nectanebo's Curse Breaker, which counteracts "Curse of Wearines". I'm not sure what "Curse of Weariness" is exactly...

FA increases +Perception, to-hit, accuracy and, what I like the most, -tohit debuff resistance.

For Scrappers the -tohit resist is quite a bit lower than Tanks, (69.2 vs 86.5).

this next paragraph has bad math
[bad math]
Fighting +3s, you currently have a 86.4% chance to hit without any sort of to-hit buff/debuffs on you or def buff/debuffs on your target (using global acc of 110% and 50% via slotting for a total of 160%.) One instance of Tactics gets you to 95. FA also gets you to 95.
[/bad math]

Outside of set bonuses, heavy slotting FA doesn't gain you a lot. If its endurance cost is too prohibitive for you, 2 slots of End Reduction may suffice.

I've not taken it on a Scrapper, but I really value it on my Tank.

Death has become a pretty rare event after building up my Inv/ tank, if I may say so. Therefore, whenever I get defeated it really stands out. Two times in the last few weeks, I've gone down to the Rikti War Riders. I'm trying to figure out my counter measures besides chewing blues and greens furiously.

Def (typed) is capped, even Psi is close and I popped a purple. I should have checked my combat log but things were fast and furious. What happened was, my end bar got demolished, to about 1/4 and very quickly and steadily went down from there.

I'm guessing I was hit with Envenom and Weaken. Most certainly Weaken since Dull Pain took my HP from about 1/8 to 1/4. Those are just ranged attacks it appears, with no damage type, right?

So I need to chew enough purples to hit range soft-cap, is that the answer? What to do when I'm hit with it? Pray teammates wipe them out fast?

Personally speaking, I found my spines/regen scrapper the most frustrating character I had leveling up, especially among the "good soloer" classes. It's been a long time since playing him, I just remember hitting Spine Burst, taking a damage spike and just waiting, waiting, waiting to see if I happened to survive long enough to execute a heal. I never did IO him out, of course that would help.

2 points

1) Be very clear on what speed your team is using. It makes for a less pleasant experience when not everyone is on the same page. Have the "I want shards" vs "I want speed" debate before the leader clicks "agree to form a task force".

2) A dom/troller isn't required for Hami. I've seen team recruiting get stalled looking for this when the tools to stack mag 10 holds were already on the team. Many blast sets have a hold as well as epics.

Unyielding provides all of your mez protection in Invulnerability. There is nothing else in game to cover that gap, except for minor hold protection in Acrobatics which will, ironically, keep you from getting kbd. Unyielding is also a significant source of your Resists.

If you skip Unyielding, getting kbd will be the least of your issues. You will get mezzed, that will suppress your other toggles, you will then die, it's that simple.

I second the idea above, to go with Fire or Dark if you want to get kbd.

When I began alphaing, my criteria at that time was "Out of Acc, Dmg, End and Recharge, which one of those will help this character the most right now?" It recently occured to me, while looking further down the tree for my toons, I should have started at the end state and mapped a way to get there. So I'm going about the process of a more thorough analysis of what different alphas do. I'm taking a look at my Dark Melee/Shield Defense Scrapper now.

Cardiac Core Paragon
Endurance/Range/Resists

Enhancing Endurance and Restistance sounds like a good idea.

Endurance can be a struggle for extended fights. I can go spawn-to-spawn no problem. I did try the Rikti pylon challenge, after I recently respecced this guy, but the blue bar bottomed out. This isn't a crisis to me because I don't really care to make this guy an AV soloer, or pylon soloer, or any of the extreme events.

Anyway, with that said...

With all toggles on, end drain is currently 1.01 end/sec and drop to .78 with this alpha.

Resists go up a tad, 3-ish percent across the board.

Cardiac Radial Paragon

Endurance enhancement goes down and the only thing I gain is a Fear enhancement. Yes I still have Touch of Fear (mule for Siphon Insight bonuses).

End drain is now 0.83 end/sec and of course, all attacks became slightly more costly.

Musculature Core Paragon
Oh yeah, more damage. That's Scrapperlishous.

Def debuff is irrelevant, but there is an immob to consider, Midnight Grasp goes from 17.9 to 23.8 seconds.

But what about the damage???

Smite goes from 221.9 to 251.2
Siphon Life from 291 to 348.1
Midnight Grasp from 430.8 to 509.7 (whoa nelly!)
Fire Blast from 366.8 to 416.6
Fire Ball from 343.1 to 389
Even Char is a respectable 178

Seems like I'm forgetting something. Oh yeah, Shield Charge. From 270.7 to 311.6

Musculature Radial Paragon
A bit less damage than above, with end mods. I bet the -tohit debuffs may be interesting as well. Added run speed is a bonus, nothing more.

Smite 243.4
Siphon Life 333.5
Midnight Grasp 489.2
Fire Blast 403.3
Fire Ball 376.7
Char 166.4
Shield Charge 301.9

Recovery goes from 172% (3.15 end/sec) to 180% (3.3)

The ST attacks all have a 5.625% -tohit debuff that increases to 6.75%. To the soft-capped Scrapper, this isn't quite so valuable, but hey, it's a freebie that may prove handy, at least for squishy teammates.


Nerve Core Paragon
Accuracy, Hold, Defense

Global Accuracy is 52%. Every power with a to-hit check is well in excess of 95% against +3s. Then add Soul Drain on top of that. In other words, I'm pretty well set for accuracy. So much so let's move on to the next one, to see what tertiary enhancements it offers.

Nerve Radial Paragon
Accuracy, Hold, Defense, Taunt is our bonus here.

Again, Accuracy is all set.

Hold from Char goes from 22.3 seconds to 25.9.

Taunt from AAO goes from 17 to 22.6 seconds.

On to the good stuff: what about defense?
Looks like it gets a 3% buff across the (positional) board. Melee and Range go from 45ish to 48ish. Aoe is not curently soft-capped (42.8) but is with this alpha (45.7).

That's nice but not overly invigorating.

Spiritual Core Paragon
Recharge, Stun and Healing.

Global recharge is currently 58.8%, outside of Hasten.

With this alpha, Hasten recharges in 128 seconds, very nice. Let's call it perma-ish and all subsequent numbers will include Hasten

Soul Drain went from 38.5 seconds to 34.
Shield Charge from 29 to 25.6.
Fireball from 12.5 to 10.6.
Active Defense from 76 to 65

Siphon Life went from a 253.4 heal to 291.1.

Regen goes from 217% (18.2 hp/sec) to 230% (19.6).


Spiritual Radial Paragon
This is less recharge than above, and the tertiary enhancements I can use are jump and to-hit buff.

I'm not enthused at enhancing those 2 at the expense of recharge.

Conclusion

I've already gone down the Spiritual path. Having done this analysis now, only Musculature Radial Paragon stands out as potentially a better option. However it's not so much better that I'm going to change direction. Maybe down the road, I'll earn Musculature in addition to Spiritual Core Paragon.

I submit this post to see if my reasoning is flawed and if there's some consideration I missed.