Jackson

If you insist upon farming...

Although it's not even close to the efficiency as my elec/shield, I've found my dark/shield to be a fun change of pace for farming purposes.

Assuming you are softcapped to defense, Council Empire foes are perfect to farm for */shield toons. After a ranged volley or two they pack in tightly around you. Hit your build up, SC, and take out the stragglers with your single target strikes.

Make yourself a custom farm in AE using Council Empire as your foe or run the Council Empire farm from Unai Kemen in PI.

That's a great build, Enots. It's much more survivable than my Ill/Cold.

You could put two pure recharge IOs in PA and get down to 61 seconds; you could grab a base buff for an extra 20% recharge overall (but that kind of defeats the spirit of the build challenge).

Even if you leave the build the way it is you will be a completely unstoppable killing machine. You will melt AVs/GMs from relative safety.

I've tried... perc io + tactics + heightened senses and pop a yellow and you can see a capped stalker at 10 feet. This is generally useless.

I have the accolade on two toons; although there may be a more effective strategy and guide out there, here is what worked for me:

http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Gaining_..._Crafter_Badge

I chose to focus on one enhancement type across recipe levels for the sake of simplicity (and future profit on the sale of the enhancements). I chose taunt, heal, resist, hold, end. red., recharge, acc., damage and run.

I opened the recipes in tabs in my browser (along with the guide) and placed my salvage bids to fill quickly - I wanted the salvage NAO so I could just crank out the enhancements. Back-end profits will easily compensate any excess expenditure.

It was useful to do it in Talos - I could fill up my salvage, hop to the base portal, and then craft & store in the SG base quickly and easily.

I filled up 2 enhancement bins and found it useful to have a couple extra salvage racks to help the process flow.

Even after crafting all the required enhancements you will be short of the 4th invention badge by a good number; I chose to craft level 30 and 35 damage and accuracy enhancements to fill the gap - they are VERY profitable, especially after you have the recipe memorized.

It takes a couple of hours and some attention to detail throughout but it's definitely worth the effort.

Does anyone happen to know what 80% ranged defense will DR to on a VEAT?

I would gladly invest a billion to the project on Virtue.

Regarding shadow meld in pvp... I have a hard time believing it could make any difference for my regen scrapper. Wouldn't DR make it essentially useless?

I'd love to have a mini MoG every 30 seconds but I can't see 32% defense nerfed down to 16% or so helping me at all.

Throwing sharks is cool and all but an effective shadow meld plus a long range snipe to break stand-off huddles in zone sounds attractive.

What do, pvp - throw fish or get soul?

I've also lost an expensive enhancement due to this bug. I hope the developers address the issue promptly - this is kind of a big deal.