GavinRuneblade

Essentially BS does more per hit, Katana has shorter activation and recharge times. But they are not in balance at any level of enhancement, not on SOs, not on IOs, not unslotted. At all points Katana does more damage in any specific amount of time. What is worse, the more damage and recharge you put into them the farther Katana pulls ahead.

Per Bill's old spreadsheets (the results are in), Broadsword is the third lowest damage of all scrapper primaries only beating Electric and Spines (barely) and behind all others. On SOs (the "take 2" version) Katana was rated at 128 damage per second, BS was 121. On IOs (the original) BS had 154, Katana 168, doubling the difference between the two sets.

Note that these are not the top damage either can do, they are just the baseline Bill was using to test the difference in single-target damage between brutes and scrappers. Still, it is solidly the case that the only reasons to take BS are for flavor, because you want to use a shield, or for PvP. In all other cases, take Katana you will be happier with the character.

Mace does smashing, axe does lethal. Lethal is more commonly resisted (not hugely so, but you definitely feel it, especially on zombies and robots) and when resisted has a higher% resistance.

Mace's cone (clobber) hits 10 targets for more damage than axe's (5 targets). Mace's stuns have a higher % to trigger than Axe's knock, in some powers 100%.

I believe the damage and endurance numbers are weighted for axe to hit slightly harder but use more endurance. I also understand that the same issue with katana vs BS impacts Axe vs Mace where the devs did not properly weights the slower attack times against the damage dealt.

Mace is flat out superior from a mechanical standpoint. You will do more damage, more reliable damage, and with more reliable mitigation using a mace.

Axes have better customization.

That said, I have an Axe and a BS character and do not have a Katana or Mace. They are fun, and they are not gimped at all. But if I had gone Katana and Mace they would be mathmatically superior. As I do not care about soloing AVs "with no temps and no inspirations" (I am fond of purples, nukes, shivans, venomed daggers, and recovery serum) there is nothing in the game that I attempt that either is incapable of achieving.

Random means without pattern. All equal = a pattern. If all were equal it wouldn't be entirely random.

I run level 40 acc/endmod/rech and endmod/rech from both Perf Shifter and err, the other decent end mod set whose name eludes me at the moment.

works pretty decent.

Azerbaijan. Or Schenectady.

Actually I've had reports from both so one might be either a clone, his praetorian double, a temporal paradox, evil twin, or a Nemesis Automaton-o-matic (tm).

As tot he topic at hand, I consider my holds, sleeps, confuses, and generally causing the enemy to die to be the primary form of defense my dominators worry about. S/L or Ranged defense as a number, is nifty, but not something I build for intentionally. Lots of otherwise good sets have some though.

The problem I see is not endurance but accuracy and damage.

In cost, the reactive armor sets will cost you about 100m each you have three, Oblit will cost you about 250m, the Perf Shifter Procs will be 30 to 80m each depending on level and how patient you are. Doctored wounds about 40m for the 5 pieces you want. I have no idea on the taunt sets but I suspect you can get all of what you have listed for under 150m. you have maybe 4 million in generic IOs if you pay full price, under 1m if you craft from memory.

Rough guess on price: 900m, but half that if you buy recipes and craft for yourself.

Thank you! Brain fried just now (for the past month and foreseeable future really).

Blasters (like dominators) have a higher multiplier for melee damage than for ranged damage.

That is because the Oni is Japanese, and as we all know the Japanese have only one word that means both Different and Wrong. The Dev's tried to get him to take the other sets but he kept misunderstanding and thinking they were giving him "wrong" sets. So he won't accept them.

But on blueside the Atlas Medallion is quite easy and +5 endurance is oh so handy. Redside that one's a pain.

The OP is taken care of, but to continue the discussion some, While not a bad combo, I would say that recommending ice to a new dom might be a bad idea. It is one of the few without a reliable alpha absorber. So not a good starting point regardless of secondary.

Thoughts?

And more importantly a level 24 dual will beat a +3 SO, and a level 20 triple will be a +3 SO.

you can sometimes get the cheap set IOs for less than common/generics, and nearly always for less than SOs.

Alternatively, you can use your second build, or respec. It is technically the act of going from 19 to 20 or any level above 20 that unlocks the epics. So you can do it with a praetorian once you are in the main zones.

Better table is the long one on the side here. That one you quoted only shows single-aspect IOs and gives people very limited information in regards to when to slot IOs as a result.

Key things to note:

triple aspect IOs better than +3 SOs starting at level 20 (slottable by a level 17 character)
dual aspect IOs better than +3 SOs starting at level 24 (slottable by a level 21 character)

Not counting Yin-Os, earliest easy access to SOs = 25 (slottable by a level 22 character)

That's for the resistance. Loyalists can throw rocks at resistance.

Actually, I think crafting is a reasonably significant destruction process. 65 slots per character, if you outfit someone in all level 50 common IOs that's 490k/IO x65 = over 30m in crafting fees. But you also add to this the 65x 90k worth of common IO recipes that don't get vendored so never BECOME inf in the first place. Possibly another 10-20m destroyed if the poor sod bought them at full price off the worktable instead of the market. Plus the 65x2x250 for common salvage that never becomes inf. Plus any of these bought on the market = 10% of the transaction destroyed. At buyitNAO prices on salvage, getting recipes off the work table, plus crafting fees a pure common IO build is looking at 50 million+ inf destroyed.

That's a pretty decent job right there.

Even a single level 50 crap set IO, is going to be 490k in crafting fees, plus 5k rare salvage plus 1k uncommon and 500 common plus 5k recipe never generated as inf, plus say 1.5 million to buy the salvage on the market = 150k destroyed via the market, plus say it sells for 4million before being slotted another 400k destroyed there = a bit over 1 million pulled out of circulation per IO. If the market is used heavily. Of that, half is the crafting fee. The lower level IOs, it is far less than half. But 50s are spendy to craft.

I dunno, but I think crafting might be a pretty reasonable weapon against inflation. Not enough clearly, but it seems to me it must be helping at a reasonable fraction of the total impact of the market itself. Maybe 20-30%.