Vauluur

First of all, welcome back! I hope you enjoy the new features of the game.

Now, to your questions:

1.) Parry is incredibly useful for this powerset combo, and always has been. Slotted up, you can soft cap your melee defense with 2 active Parrys IIRC. With Invention Origin set bonuses, you can bring that down to 1 Parry. You've been gone long enough that you probably aren't familiar with the soft cap concept since you left before we got access to the real numbers for in game powers. The soft cap is the point at which an enemy has only a 5% chance to hit you, which is the minimum chance allowed for in the game. For typical play, this will be about 45% defense. You want Parry, and you want to use it.

2.) Body Mastery isn't bad really. However, you are missing out if you don't allow yourself to get the Soul Mastery Patron Pool. It features a power called Shadow Meld, which is sort of like a mini version of Moment of Glory. For obvious reasons, that's a good power to have. It doesn't take long to go villain, run the arc, and then come back to hero. It also comes with a respec, so that might be handy anyway.

3.) Your pool choices are decent. You probably don't need Burn Out, and you might want to add Combat Jumping from the Leaping pool.

4.) You want Spiritual on a BS/Regen. Faster recharge and more effective heals.

As a side note, if you look back a page or two on the Scrapper category you should be able to find a thread Werner started on a Kat/Regen Scrapper. The thread is very long so you don't really need to read the whole thing. However, you should find the builds in that thread very useful.

Frustrated with not being able to get on a league for trials? Tired of failing? Search no further. Tonight, at 6:00PM Eastern Time, I will begin forming a league for a full night of Incarnate trials. My intention is to run every trial, including TPN and MoM. The order will be as follows:

Lambda
BAF
Keyes
Underground
TPN
MoM

* This order may change, or some trials may be left out, depending on the size and skill level of the league.

Because of the difficulty level of TPN, the idea behind this event is to hone the league into a well-oiled machine by the time we get around to the new trials. It will also allow for some people who only have a +1 level shift to have a chance at getting +2 or +3 before we get to the more difficult trials. Join the league for incarnate salvage, a bucket load of Empyrean merits, and good old fashioned fun

Also, I'd like to thank those of you who followed me on the failed TPN last night. I wish we could have beat it, but now I know how to get it to run more smoothly.

For the sake of answering your question, I suggest Tri-Form builds using a playstyle similar to the one in Dech's guide. Human-only becomes significantly better only in very expensive builds.

I don't have access to Mid's, but some general thoughts:

You'll want Dwarf Mire to be well slotted for double mires. If you want the more foolproof version of double mire, slot Dwarf attacks up as well so you can use Dwarf form and avoid errors that make Dwarf Mire expire too quickly to be leveraged. If you want the best way to use double mire, hit Sunless followed by Dwarf Mire and then immediately go Nova for the AoE attacks.

You'll want Nova AoEs to be slotted well. Don't bother wasting slots on the ST attacks because Human is better for ST damage anyway.

Get recharge set bonuses. Lots of them. You want Sunless Mire and Eclipse to be perma so that you have high survivability in all 3 forms and insane damage buffs all the time. That's the main goal of the playstyle after all.

I tried something like this a long time ago and ended up deleting the character because I just couldn't handle the long form shift animations. It was, however, very impressive. YMMV.

From a thought experiment point of view, recharge would be the highest priority for a Tri-Form. Then, you could aim for either +dmg or +regen. I don't think defense bonuses would help as much since you couldn't stack them with anything really. What your playstyle goal would be is something fairly similar in nature to the MFing Warshade:

1.) Buff up using Inner Light and Light Form - should be perma.
2.) Fire off Nova AoEs
3.) White Dwarf Step into spawn. Use Dwarf Flare.
4.) Drop to Human for ST clean up or Solar Flare depending on number of living foes.
5.) Repeat at next spawn.

Rather than using Stygian Circle for a heal, Peacebringers have a self-sufficient version in White Dwarf Sublimation which is significantly more powerful than Reform Essence (or whatever the Human heal is, I get it mixed up with the buffs they have).

Recharge is the first set bonus to aim for since it makes every aspect of the build better and increases both offense and survival by getting Inner Light and Light Form perma. Damage would be a good secondary bonus to aim for, since Peacebringers lack the damage-capping power of double mire. On the other hand, Regen could allow you to take advantage of higher HP from Essence Boost.

This sort of a build is theoretically not as effective as a human only at the highest price range. However, at low-mid price ranges it will be more effective because of the ability to leverage Dwarf Form before Light Form becomes perma and the ability to use White Dwarf Sublimation. It also allows you to use Nova Form to offset any down time you have in Inner Light. I don't actually have a Mid's build made up for this, but it should be relatively easy to make.

Redraw is overrated IMO. It really shouldn't matter much with most secondaries, assuming you remember it's going to happen and plan accordingly. Personally, I'll probably try /Regen mostly to emphasize the point.

For the OP, you could go with anything.

/SR would be easy to softcap and allow you to skip Defensive Sweep and Weave which will be in the build for most players. This leaves room for other tools to be put in. RP reason would be simple enough. Your deity either grants you foresight or protects you from harm. Plenty of myths and legends include characters who cannot be hit. Projectiles mysteriously fall to the ground or take strange paths. Swords become heavy and cause your foe to swing too low, etc.

/EA is easy to softcap as well, and also comes with a +Recharge buff that applies -Recharge to everything in melee range, a self heal that also buffs regen and lowers end cost, a stealth power that does not suppress in combat, and a PBAoE end drain that buffs your defense even further. It's light-based GFX work well for a holy warrior as well.

/ElA is similar to /EA except instead of defense it buffs resistance. It also doesn't debuff enemy recharge but has a damage aura instead. It would certainly benefit more from Defensive Sweep than the other two.

Invuln and WP are good as well, but you seem to be aware of their benefits already.

A really, really long time ago (like the first character I ever made...pre I1 IIRC) I had an Energy/Devices Blaster. I ended up remaking him as an Energy/Energy Blaster back then because I wanted some melee attacks. I've been playing around with some ideas for a Blaster for awhile now. I'm usually a melee player (since approx. I6) so I'm looking for something a little different. I remember Blasters being a lot of fun, and I like Energy Blast. I was thinking of trying an Energy/Devices again since it would be out of melee pretty much all the time and just about as different from being a Scrapper as it can get. Before anyone tells me to be an Energy/Traps Corruptor - that's not what I'm asking for. I'm asking for thoughts on an Energy/Devices Blaster. I don't like redside, and I don't like redside ATs being played on blueside. I don't think of my hero as a Corruptor. I think of him as a Blaster. Now that I've established that, I have a few concerns with the combo:

How will Caltrops and Knockback play together? I know a lot of people like Caltrops for the mitigation it provides, with most enemies focusing on trying to get out of them instead of attacking the Blaster. If enemies are knocked off the Caltrops, will that greatly impact their utility? Or will enemies being kept at range provide sufficient mitigation anyway, with Caltrops just giving more time to knock everything back?

Explosive Blast seems to be a nightmare for teams. Will avoiding that power and relying on Energy Torrent for AoE be a major problem?

The general consenus for Time Bomb seems to be that it sucks. However, if I were to stealth ahead on a mission and plant one I could see alternating Time Bomb, Nova, and Judgement to pretty much nuke my way through stuff. Would this be effective?

I've heard Gun Drone can be made to Recharge fast enough to have 2-3 up at a time. Would you suggest aiming for that?

Devices doesn't have Build Up. Will this be an enormous problem, or can I at least partially negate it using +Damage set bonuses and Assault?

Anything else you can think of that I might want to know.

Edit: Also, what APP would you suggest? I would prefer to avoid getting a Patron Pool. I was leaning towards Force Mastery for Repulsion Bomb (the Blaster version does knockdown now too right?) which according to Mids deals comparable damage to Explosive Blast without knocking the whole spawn back. However, Munitions Mastery is attractive for another mini-nuke and I'm sure there are other good choices.

I'm actually going Regen as well I think, and it would fit your concept since you could use the +melee from Titan Weapons to stack with set bonuses and give you the agility feel. It would lack any mechanical representation for time manipulation though.

EA would fit best probably, with +Recharge for the time manipulation concept and defense for agility (Who says those glowing pulses around you have to deflect things? Maybe that's your time manipulation allowing you to dodge and creating a glowing pulse as a side effect.) and the self heal could be a Reconstruction-style regeneration ability.

I would, I've had a number of concepts that those powersets would fit perfectly. Energy Melee colored green just doesn't cut it. I'd expect radiation melee to be more gaseous/bubbly than shiny, to go along with the other radiation sets which are mostly gas that happens to be shiny.

Good point. Sometimes I do dumb things.

@ dumb things