Werner

It's funny 'cause it's true - I want the fewest attacks that I can get away with, and I'm a big fan of simple A -> B -> C -> B chains. So for Fire, I'd probably run the Incinerate -> Scorch -> Cremate -> Scorch chain. It's merely good DPS, but it only takes three attacks, and has very good EPS, which is good for making an AV soloer on the cheap.

When last I looked at it, endurance looked nearly sustainable. I asked for help on the endurance, and Umbral said that he thought it would probably be OK, and did some calculations himself to show why. I did take his advice of moving a slot from Build Up to Conserve Power. It looks like it will depend a lot on the situation. Do you need Death Shroud? Do you need Tactics? How often are you hitting Dark Regeneration? How many targets do you have for the Theft of Essence proc to reduce or eliminate the endurance cost? Are you lucky or unlucky with it and the Performance Shifter proc? There are so many variables that I think it's something I'll just need to try in a lot of situations to know for sure.

Chain is my standard DA -> GC -> GD -> GC -> DA -> GC -> SD -> GC. Also just noticed that I have no Achilles' Heel, so I'll need to downgrade my uncalculated DPS estimate to maybe 150? Still enough for AVs and pylons, but it'll be slow going. OK, I just rushed through a DPS calculation and got 148 DPS and 2.73 EPS. That's better DPS than what I used on most of the AVs with Sergei, but it's a long slog. I'm not including Death Shroud, as you'd turn that off when fighting AVs to conserve endurance.

Again, a build in search of a reason to exist. *chuckle*

With a 45.6% ranged defense and 54.7% smashing resistance, swarms of mobs can hurl boulders at him all day long.

(edit: Wait... were you just looking at the typed defenses? That would explain the boulder hurling comment. The typed defenses are incidental. The build has soft-capped positional defenses.)

Here's a copy of the spreadsheet I use for calculating survivability.

The “Wernerscore” (not a name I came up with) is in a very broad sense a measure of incoming DPS that the build can survive indefinitely, yes. So in a very broad sense, this build can (on paper) survive about 5000 DPS of incoming damage from a crowd. You'd never see it in practice, though.

Yes, my approach is about what you're guessing. Two main parts of the calculation – damage mitigation and hit point recovery. For hit point recovery, I'm looking at base regen plus healing powers. And now that you mentioned it, no, I didn't take the 5% miss on Dark Regeneration into account. I really should, particularly when talking about a single target. At 3+, it starts mattering less and less, but I might as well calculate it correctly rather than assuming it hits.

For the defense and resistance, I'm using a matrix of percentages. The typed percentages are based on a careful analysis by... (I'm so sorry I'm forgetting your name!). The positional percentages were pulled out of my ***, and I set them at 70%, 20% and 10%, and just multiply those by each of the types for the % of incoming damage from that combination. In the past, when comparing builds, I've done quite a bit of fiddling with those numbers to see how the builds behave in different circumstances. You can see some graphs on the second sheet where I was comparing some builds for my main as we shift from melee to ranged or AoE damage. I haven't gone that far for a long time, though. Lazy I guess.

Anyway, I'm not using a composite average of all of the types and positions, but rather splitting the incoming damage by those ratios, so that the one that fails first is, in a sense, the one that dominates your survivability score. But take heart, Invulnerability tankers, with only 2.04% of the damage being psionic, it won't cause you to fail particularly fast. The 29.25% lethal melee damage is likely to be a bigger factor, despite your huge defense and resistance to it.

I should probably write up a list of all the ways that this number is wrong so that I can post it every time. It assumes an infinite number of hit points, essentially, and only cares that you take a random walk rather than trending up and down. It therefore underestimates the true benefit of more hit points, and how the same mitigation level from resistance leaves you in a much more secure position than the same level of mitigation from defense. On the opposite side, it ignores the various detrimental effects that defense stops that resistance lets through. It makes no allowance for to-hit buffs or defense debuffs, which can be very important. And so on and so forth. There are definitely better ways to calculate survivability, but this is one I consider good enough for my own purposes, which is to say comparing very similar builds to each other. Should I swap some sets around to give up 2% melee defense but gain 3% smashing/lethal resistance and another 8% regeneration? That's how this started, not as some way of assigning any sort of absolute numbers to builds, or reading too much into those numbers.

Oh, and my number doubles a later-developed forum consensus on the meaning of the words “damage mitigation”. Basically, I'm assuming a baseline of enemies hitting you 100% of the time for 100% damage. Since even with 0% defense and 0% resistance, even level enemies only hit you 50% of the time, my calculations would say that all super heroes start with 50% damage mitigation. The consensus was that it was more logical to consider this 0% damage mitigation, and work up from there. But I didn't want to go through and confuse myself by cutting all my numbers in half. I just think of them as a score anyway. Just keep in mind that if 5000 means taking 5000 DPS, that DPS includes all of the attacks that would have missed even if you had no defense.

Put more simply, these numbers aren't particularly meaningful, so take them with a grain of salt.

It's kind of a build in search of a reason to exist. I'm sure it'll solo AVs, and I did crank up the healing enhancement in Dark Regeneration to perform well against single targets. But of course Dark Regeneration will also benefit from additional targets. And while it's probably OK, I'm not entirely convinced that endurance is completely under control to the point of AV and pylon sustainability. It does have Death Shroud and The Lotus Drops, but isn't really AoE focused. No confront or aggro aura, so not really a good off tank for a team, but it does have Leadership and should be team friendly. For reference, or if anyone wants to actually give it a shot and let me know how it works, here it is. I'm still leveling up.

Empty slot is for the PvP +3% resist. Duplicate Steadfast protection is the PvP +3% defense.

Looks like I haven't calculated DPS or the “Wernerscore” for it yet. I'm guessing moderate DPS (175?) and a very high Wernerscore (2300?), particularly when surrounded (3000?).

(edit: I underestimated the on-paper survivability. Wernerscore is 2521 against a single target, increasing to 4192 against two targets, and 4906 against 3+ targets. Those are the best numbers I can remember for any scrapper.)

(edit 2: I see that Powerforge had a DM/SR build with Aid Self that put out better numbers against a single target, 3373.)

(edit 3: Since it is a significant potential problem, I'll mention that these numbers don't take defense debuffs or to-hit buffs into account. Those will certainly limit survivability in some situations.)

Hey, now. I like tanks. I love that they want to save everyone. It's very sweet. Some of them just need to realize that even squishies can handle some aggro bleed. You don't need to drop everything to save my Blaster from that minion. It's going to be annihilated in just a second anyway. Keep things moving. And some need to realize that staying alive is an important component of holding aggro. It's shocking to me how often some tanks face plant. Dude, you're a TANK. How are you dying?

Yep. On one of my Blasters, I'd rather be teamed with someone with Maneuvers than someone with Grant Cover. I'm not standing next to you, so 3.61% is much better than 0%. Well, unless I'm on my Fire Blaster. He's crazy and stands in the middle of the melee all the time.

I've never bothered plugging it. I've never found it to be a big problem. You just need to remember that you're not invulnerable to them, and can't sleep walk through them like you do through most content. Pay attention to your health. Be ready with inspirations. But you're a Scrapper. Tear them apart.

NEVER!!!!!!*




(* maybe... but I have all these toons I should finish first...)

I'm not sure there's a main strength of Katana/Regen, but it's a good combination. When built and played correctly, it's definitely one of the big boys (e.g., Val Blademaster vs. 4 AVs). But mess up the build or the play, and you'll face plant a lot when the going gets tough.

For me, I guess the main draw is HOW it plays. I LOVE the focus it requires. I LOVE that I "never" die as a result of running out of options, but only as a result of my own mistakes. I LOVE that I can go from green to dead in three seconds. It's exciting! It's not for everyone, but it's totally great for me...

... except when I'm feeling lazy, and then I bust out my Dark Melee/Super Reflexes, which can sleep walk through almost anything. It's not that it's better. It's just easier.

Heh. I've never cared what the devs INTENDED. I just care what is POSSIBLE. And hard core AV soloing turns out to be a Shield Defense strength.

As far as Grant Cover, I don't team much, but I can tell you that the last thing I want on my Blasters is for a Shield Scrapper to be chasing me around the map trying to give me Grant Cover, or to insist that I should jump into melee range and just stand there to get the benefit. My Blaster's main defense is MOVEMENT, and I'll take that over the Grant Cover buff any day. I suspect the same is true of other squishies.

That said, I took it on my scrapper, and use it situationally. It's good for buffing the tank, for instance, since you'll both be in melee. And it's nice when facing defense debuffers.

On the original questions, the BS/SD build I have planned is a “low” DPS one focused purely on survivability, double-stacking Parry to handle pets and to-hit buffs in AE and with no attack chain options for higher DPS. He'll do between 150 and 184 DPS depending on number of targets in range of Against All Odds. I consider that good enough for AVs. Swapping Parry out for Slash is a trivial change that buys you another 6 DPS or so. Stick an Achilles' Heel in Slash for more benefit. Might crack 200 with fully saturated AAO. Not sure how much better you can do without Hasten.

I wouldn't drop the Fighting pool. Even if you can soft cap without Weave, Tough is just too nice to skip in my book. Assault isn't a particularly big DPS boost, probably less than 5%.