Hejtmane

Originally Posted by DSorrow

I use Mu Bolts instead of Chain Induction because with MB I can run a gapless single target chain and get better single target DPS than with Chain Induction and a gap. I really don't want to make the already anemic ST DPS any worse. Besides, I have to take Mu Bolts anyways.

Originally Posted by LaNocheBlanca

Have not decided what to go with yet, but I am looking at:
DM/SD or EM/DA.

I know, I said no to AoE this time around, but I likes AoE. Was using my 50 Spines/Fiery last night and while he is a bit squishy and nowhere near spec'd up enough (I don't even know what I need on IOs anymore.)

If I understand /SD and /DA as they now work, would the following comments be valid to their differences:
DA: Resistance, Damage Mitigation/Control (Cloak and Oppressive), Self-Heal, PBAoE Aura
SD: Defense, Damage Enhancement, slow recharding Active AoE

I'm thinking if you can manage your END use, EM/DA is really powerful potentially as an AoE. Would it hold up against EM/SD which seems more popular ATM?

Some questions on powerset powers:

What are the core SD powers? I'm guessing:
Defelction
Battle Agility
True Grit
Active Defense
Against All Odds
Shield Charge
One with the Shield

For DM:
What is the conventional wisdom on Shadow Maul at this time? The animation is a disaster
Is Siphon Life still too little healf and too little damage for too much END/too slow RECH? Looks like with 4 Touch of Nictus and 2 Hecatomb, you can get END cost down to 8.681, RECH to 5s (!), ACC to 139%, heal to a little over 15% and Damage to 180NE. Now it still has that terrible 2s cast time, but still it seems respectable.

Ah, also, what are the IO sets du jour for DA, EM, DM and SD? Are they listed somewhere? I'll post a prospective build soon.

Again, much appreciated.

Originally Posted by Werner

I'm a little worried about Sword/Dark once we hit incarnate content. Sure, I should be able to soft cap again, get endurance sustainable again, and raise my on-paper survivability even further. But I hear rumor that there will be more to hit and more defense debuffs, which could get nasty for our approach to Sword/Dark. It might be hard to keep up. Mind you, it'll still be really, really good. It just won't be as good as I got used to before the IO nerfs, and perhaps not as good as I can do with some of my other toons. But it still remains to be seen what they do with the incarnate content, I suppose. And for that matter, what most of the incarnate slots will do. It's really hard to predict what's going to be good.

Originally Posted by LaNocheBlanca

EM is AoE? Really? Didnt know that [EDIT: Would have helped if I'd noticed that 4 of its powers are AoE :/] How does it compare to Spines? I guess with /SD it really gets a power boost that Spines has a hard time competing with now. Spines I guess would depend on DA with Death Shroud/Spine Burst/Throw Spines/Ripper/Quills. I'm guessing neither one is great for AV soloing.

I suspect that against mobs, /SD is better than /INV if you have some AoE stuff, but less useful against an AV, but isn't /Inv also weaker against a single target?

Thanks, that's great info btw. Always loved DM because it looks cool, it has neat effect stuff and best of all Neg NRG is one of the least defended against, so even at lower raw numbers, it is resisted less.

Looks like the armor cost/sec on DA has dropped considerably, only .208/s unmodified compared to .26/s for Fiery, Elec, SD, etc. I mean, yeah it needs to be spec'd hard, but it looks better than ever!

Ok, well, that's great stuff to think about. Thanks again!

La Noche Blanca

Originally Posted by LaNocheBlanca

So I am returning to CoH not having played since 6/2009 I think, I13 or so. I see a lot of changes, and a lot of bad things are gone. Also a lot of new choices. I will be keeping my Stone/Ice Tanker, but a lot of the rest I may redo.

What I would like is an opinion on the solo-viable scrapper builds. I don't want to solo everywhere or everything, but I don't want to be PUG-dependent either. I used to play Spine/Regen in I2-I4 and I could solo really well. I also could solo well with Spine/WP in I13, though not quite as well as I would like, and DB/WP was quite awesome as well with the right combos.

So what is the build du jour for the solo-oriented scrapper today?

Thank you in advance for your assistance!

La Noche Blanca

Originally Posted by Santorican

LOL that is an argument waiting to happen so let me start it. According to some its not broken on Tankers or Brutes, but if Scrappers got it, it'd be broken.

Originally Posted by Call Me Awesome

Good point, I know when I'm putting together a PuG for the STF one of the things I look for are Controllers & Defenders. However, while I may look for those I'll give a try with whatever someone wants to bring along. If we end up with 6 scrappers and a pair of 'trollers I'll run with it; we may have a rough spot or two but it should be doable as long as everyone knows what they're doing.

General teaming though I really don't much care, just bring whatever you like to play; odds are good that there will be enough good players to carry any dead weight. And if not then at worst you get a story to tell your friends. Most of us don't sweat the occasional team wipe.

Originally Posted by Werner

Scrappers often run ahead of the tanks, yes. We're also well known for face planting while doing so. Face planting in this way isn't a sign of a bad Scrapper, though. Only running back to the group with all your aggro hoping that they'll save you is. Scrappers should die with dignity.


I never played EverQuest, but I understand that you had to do things in a VERY specific way to survive, even more so than WoW. City of Heroes is much more forgiving, more flexible, and as probably most would agree, much easier. It's kind of like MMO-light.

Originally Posted by Werner

Yes, I remember, and it would be interesting, but unless you used your second build for the purpose, you wouldn't be seeing glory days capabilities. And now you have two completely different sets of rules to learn and keep track of (three if you PvP). And how far back to you roll? City of Blasters? City of Burn Tanks? Since balance was much worse at the time, they were only the glory days for a fairly small group of players. For many people, any such rollback would be a return to the sucky days before their sets got fixed.

Me, I'd be happy to try it out. But I don't think it would be widely appreciated. The game is better now in my opinion, even if I don't get to watch my health bar fill like I've shoved a fire hose in it.

Originally Posted by Werner

I believe it's this:

Incinerate (3.30, +204%) -> Cremate (3.43, +134%) -> Fire Sword (3.56, +69%)
Incinerate (4.22, +137%) -> Cremate (4.35, +84%) -> Greater Fire Sword (3.56, +237%)

Though I haven't poked my head into the recharge thread recently where Arcanaville was reviewing recharge requirements, and seeing something a little different than our standard calculations. I'd shoot for better than the above to be safe.

You can do slightly more DPS with Greater Fire Sword -> Incinerate -> Fire Sword, but that's a silly chain since it takes MORE recharge than the top chain to do less damage. I also have Incinerate -> Cremate -> Fire Sword -> Greater Fire Sword doing about the same DPS at much lower recharge (+134% in GFS), but that takes four attacks, so is inefficient in a different sense.

I'm not convinced I have the right damage info for Fire. Some things aren't quite making sense to me. I need to review it, but I'm not feeling up for it tonight.

Originally Posted by Silverado

It's the second best possible DPS chain with Fire Melee, only marginally below the top chain, with significantly lower recharge requirements. I'm not sure on the specifics, but I can run it seamlessly with 89% recharge slotted on Incinerate (and every other attack for that matter), 62.5% global recharge and Hasten up.

Originally Posted by Silverado

Better management of interruptions such as BU, Hasten, Conserve Power, click mez protection, etc.

When you use these powers that interrupt your DPS, you want to replace them for the lowest DPA attack (FS), and you also want to keep your highest DPA attack (Inc) in a permanent state of recharge, not wasting a fraction of a second of its recharge time.

Originally Posted by UberGuy

The fact that it relies on hits landing doesn't mean that it misses more often than other stuff. It means that it's potentially impacted more by missing, which is different.

Of course I tend not to use my combos much, generally only using Vitals Strike when I can hit a lot of foes with it, so that doesn't actually affect my DB/Regen much.

Originally Posted by Dz131

like the damage is INSANE I take back all the bad things I said about scrappers. I'm smacking mobs like no tommorow with this combo !!!!!
So long Brutes, Tanks, Trolls, corrs, stalks, defs, scraps,blasts,doms and other weak ATs because FM/Shield scrap is the true master race.


ok I still like MMs, but srsly. My FM/Shield made my wildest dreams come true

anyway what I want to ask is does slotting Phalanx Fighting do anything? I slotted it up with +def and I don't think it does anyhting, is that a bug?

Originally Posted by Gilia

Okay round 2. I've edited this post a lot because I made a mistake the first time.

Is there supposed to be another attack or two in here, or is this just where you're at at the moment? You're missing 2 of the 3 attacks for Sweep Combo (10k cuts and Typhoon).

With just those 4 attacks, the best I think you're going to do is this:
BF>SS>AB>PS>AB>BF>SS>AB>PS>AB>Repeat
AB is awesome in this setup because it's got very high DPA for it's low recharge.

I put that at 164 DPS. It may go a wee bit higher on the second "Repeat" because of a little bit of BF overlap. It's not much higher though. That is without criticals. With them, you're talking 172 DPS vs minions, and 180 DPS vs Lts+.

Btw, I assumed 95% from damage enhancements.

I can send you the spreadsheet I used, but I'm not super duper at this. Someone who's great at attack chains and comes along might be able to show you a more concise chart.