Werner

The buff is more important, but the heal IS still worthwhile. So don't just click Dull Pain every time it comes up. Wait until you're hurt. Then you have the buff AND you're at full hit points.

The performance difference between Broad Sword and Katana isn't something I notice seat of the pants, so to me, its mostly about how smashy I'm feeling with a particular character. Katana isn't very smashy. Sometimes I prefer smashy. When I do, the numbers don't get in my way.

Admittedly, I've only done Katana on my top end builds. In one case, it was a character older than when I started paying attention to numbers, so this was mere coincidence. In the other case, it was a deliberate choice. But I DO have two level 50 Broad Swords (and I'm not a power leveler with a huge collection - I stop and smell the roses). I like Broad Sword.

Divine Avalanche is actually the same as Parry, I think the one attack that's an exact clone other than name and animation. That's probably for the best. In any case, it means the defensive potential of both sets is basically equal.

I wouldn't be opposed to a very mild damage boost to Broad Sword to bring it to parity with Katana.

So defense IS the trick, and it's another one trick pony like Super Reflexes? A heal and regen power is nice, but I'd disagree with it being better than a HP boost when Siphon Life, Aid Self and Rebirth are available options for a most durable Scrapper. It's the resistance/hit points aspect of survivability that is generally more difficult to achieve on a Scrapper. As far as Energy Drain helping with defense debuffs, I'm sure it helps a little, but it looks like 6% defense or so at the top end if you slot it up and are surrounded? In the same situation, Invincibility is giving about a 11% defense buff over baseline in a toggle. Neither seem great, but it seems like 11% full time would be better, though Energy Drain looks like it could be stacked several times in a high recharge build?

Apologies if I'm way off base. This IS almost my first time looking at this set. Y'all can slap me around and call me a noob if it's appropriate. Some sets I know. This one I don't. And my track record at immediately comprehending the potential of "new" sets is rather dismal. (Shields? Pfffft. What a stupid set.)

Edit: Also, one reason for my curiosity is that I'm close to starting a new Scrapper or Brute. I was thinking Super Strength/Fire for the mass AoE carnage, but I'm also tempted by more "exotic" sets like Electric or Energy.

I can see that. I haven't tried to put one together, and there may be a better approach, but it seems like you could make a very solid one. Take Barrier and go whole hog on defense pools and bonuses to get to the positional soft cap (smashing/lethal would do for most purposes, but I'm trying for the MOST survivable build here, and I'm guessing that covering all positions from 0 is easier than all types from 0). Resistance should be over 50% to almost everything. Regeneration and healing wouldn't be that great on a soft cap build due to lack of recharge, so go with Dark Melee for the constant healing. But then, Siphon Life is slow there compared to most Dark Melee builds. Hit points are kinda meh. Hmmm, maybe going smashing/lethal IS better, as it allows more build flexibility, and you really need some recharge here, I think, for the powers to work properly. Eh, not sure. I can see it all maybe working, but don't have the experience to say for sure. I know someone that loves his Electric Tanker, but he loves all sorts of things for not strictly performance-related reasons.

"Soft-capping is great relative to the strength of conventional SO builds, and its night and day for squishies. But on its own its actually not all that fantastic without additional support when it comes to high performance melee. Softcapping an Invuln is fantastic. Softcapping a Willpower is amazing. Softcapping SR is kissing your sister." - Arcanaville

Yes, the soft cap makes you pretty durable. Yes, Super Reflexes is the easiest to soft cap. It can be a revelation if you haven't played a soft capped build before. But one shouldn't confuse "easiest to soft cap" with "most durable possible". The soft cap is only ONE aspect of survivability.

There are basically three pillars of extreme survivability - defense, resistance/hit points, and healing/regeneration. (Active mitigation is also important, but I'm ignoring it for simplicity.) Super Reflexes natively has only one of these pillars, though its scaling resistance can be better than most give it credit for. Dark Melee, Aid Self and/or Rebirth give it the healing/regeneration pillar. But solo, it will always come up short on the resistance/hit points pillar with its lowish resistances and lack of hit point buffs. Really, when fully kitted out, its main advantage is its 95% defense debuff resistance, but that puts it in the realm of "situationally better" not "ZOMG Super Reflexes!"

Now consider a Dark Melee/Invuln fully IO'd out. You're sitting at 45% defense to all but psionic facing one enemy, 56% when surrounded, which gives you a buffer for debuffs, or gets you close to the incarnate soft cap. Your smashing/lethal resistance is over 70%, and you have non-trivial resistance to other types except psionic. Your hit points are capped. You're spamming a small heal, have an infrequent but large heal, plus have massive regeneration from Rebirth scaled to your capped hit points. There are also some more subtle points here, like how Siphon Life and Rebirth are keeping your hit points topped up all the time, giving you huge protection against spike damage, and spikes of damage are what tend to kill extreme durability Scrappers. This spike protection is one of the major things that allows DM/Invulns to solo multiple AVs at once.

Yeah, they have their kryptonite - psionic damage. But some of that psionic damage is non-positional. I bet my Dark Melee/Super Reflexes gets torn apart by Malaise faster than a Dark Melee/Invuln despite psionic not being my kryptonite.

My Katana/Dark mostly laughs at psionic damage, but with comparatively low potection from spike damage, he'll crumple faster than a Dark Melee/Invuln in more common situations.

I need to look into Energy Aura. I haven't studied what it's capable of. Edit: OK, on brief glance, it's just a positional defense set with low resistance and no hit point boost? Am I seeing that right? If so, it'll have the same issues as Super Reflexes - good on a budget, but not as good as something like a maxed-out Invuln in most situations. What tricks am I missing, or is "defense" the trick?

OK, I'm not sure how far I have to back up, so I'll back up quite a bit.

We have the invention system, which lets you build IOs, "Invention Origin" enhancements, from a recipe and some ingredients. You need an invention table or whatever they call it, available in schools and in most bases. When you combine IOs from the same set in a single power, you get small bonuses to various things. So normally, what you do with the invention system is exactly that - use only IOs from the same set within a single power.

Frankenslotting is an alternative, and typically a much cheaper alternative to getting the good set bonuses. With frankenslotting, you focus more on the enhancement values than the set bonuses. I typically frankenslot my attacks some time in the mid 30s. IOs often enhance two or more aspects of a power (such as enhancing accuracy, damage AND endurance reduction). The total bonus from these is higher than you get from SOs or from IOs that only enhance one aspect. And since you don't care about set bonuses here, many of these enhancements can come from cheap "junk" sets. I can generally frankenslot a character with the influence they've earned and with no reliance on any transfer of wealth from richer characters.

In your case, you'd be trying to do this with IOs that enhance endurance reduction AND one to three other things. Obviously make sure you get enough damage and accuracy in the attacks, and recharge is always nice. But frankenslotting lets you get higher values for everything than you normally would when slotting with SOs.

As far as where to buy them, go to Wentworths, the auction house. Recipes and salvage will drop in game, but typically not so much that you can frankenslot your character in any reasonable time frame using only what drops. So if you want to enhance Hack, say, bring up melee sets, pick a level range you're willing to settle for (I'd say anything 30-43 would be fine), and select only what's available now so that you don't have to wait. Start tossing out lowball bids on whatever's available that suits your needs. I mostly buy recipes, but sometimes the crafted IOs can go for cheap as well. Be aware of salvage costs. Sometimes the salvage may be significantly more expensive than the recipe itself. And crafting costs influence as well.

Probably some of what I suggested will be out of your reach financially if you consider yourself a noob. I haven't checked recently, but I think the Numina and Miracle uniques were going for around 100 million each last I looked, which can be more than you earn your whole trip from 1-50. They're helpful, but you can probably make do by picking up Conserve Power and Physical Perfection.

Ah, and two other things I'd do related to the invention system, even though they have little to do with endurance - pick up a Steadfast Protection unique and a Kismet unique. Again, I haven't checked prices recently. Pulling numbers out of the air, let's say about 10 million each. They're worth it, but I'd frankenslot first. If you run out of money and can't get those uniques, don't sweat it.

I guess you also won't be building anything like what I posted for a while. I think it cost me about 12 billion. It probably runs over 20 billion at today's prices. Fortunately, you can have a very solid character without spending that sort of influence, but I'm not really an expert at budget builds.

At 40, I'd want my attacks to be frankenslotted with a focus on endurance reduction. I'd want the Miracle and Numina uniques, and a Performance Shifter proc in Stamina along with three blues. I'd want the Atlas Medallion, and I'd be looking forward to picking up Portal Jockey. And you must must must have the Theft of Essence +endurance proc in Dark Regeneration. Then consider picking up Conserve Power and Physical Perfection. I'd probably be using Oppressive Gloom instead of Cloak of Fear at 40. I think I switched over to Cloak of Fear sometime in the 40s, probably once I had Conserve Power.

With an end game build, you can pick up the Cardiac Core Alpha, which can make a big difference. I'd had sustainable endurance without it on an earlier iteration of my build, but Cardiac allowed me to burn endurance in my powers like there was no tomorrow and still be sustainable (with proper toggle management, anyway). Cardiac can also make a non-negligible difference in your resistance, which is nice.

In my opinion, very little of top end Scrapper survival comes from kill speed.

Barring Invuln kryptonite, anything a top end AoE kill speed Scrapper with no heal can kill before getting killed is something that a top end DM/Invuln can park themselves in the middle of indefinitely. And then they can go and pull an AV or maybe five AVs to add to the mix.

I'm not poo-pooing AoE. AoE is great. Dark Melee isn't a great primary for kill speed, and kill speed is what most of the game is about. But AoE has very little bearing on a survivability discussion compared to, say, a heal.

Right, the buff provides more mitigation and healing over time than the heal itself. I thought you were saying that people had proved that for maximum survivability you should click it as soon as it recharged, which would have been wrong. It sounds like I just misunderstood what you were saying, though. I think we're on the same page.

Consider two Regen Scrappers entering a fight. The first uses Dull Pain proactively for the buff. The second waits. After both Scrappers take a bunch of damage, the second Scrapper clicks Dull Pain and heals to full. Both Scrappers are now buffed, but the second Scrapper has full health, and the buff will last a few seconds longer.

This isn't a choice between buffing OR healing, it's a choice between buffing or buffing AND healing.

Don't waste the heal.

Dark Melee/Super Reflexes is an excellent Scrapper, but not the most durable in most situations. Most durable on a very low budget, perhaps, though I haven't really thought that one through.

Oh, I love my Katana/Dark. Built right, it can be very survivable, and it's even fine for things like AVs because you leave a few minions alive and feared as healing fodder (at least when you need that). On paper, it's awesome. But so much of that on-paper survivability is tied up in your mega heal that you can't actually achieve it. Burst damage after you've used your heal can take you out (well, for no inspiration challenge play, anyway). I'd say it has excellent durability, but isn't the MOST durable in most situations.

The 60% is without Barrier, so 65%+ with, but yeah, the Shield Wall is in that.

But yeah, like you said, your advice was specific to KM/DA, and I'd probably go Scrapper for a KM/DA. I could get enough survivability out of it to satisfy me, and at that point, I think I'd rather have the damage than the taunt aura and other Brute goodies. I think the DPS would be a lot closer on Katana, particularly on a low-recharge Katana like mine where you aren't getting all that much out of Build Up. Seems like that would swing it over to Brute, at least for me. I'd have to fiddle with it and see, though.

And yes, I agree this is a good example of how "better" isn't particularly clear cut. A change of primary here, or some IOs and incarnate powers there, and the picture changes significantly.

That's hard to argue with, at least for overall damage output. Many Scrappers (and Brutes) cream it for survivability, but built right, SS/Fire has ENOUGH survivability for most practical purposes, making the point largely moot.