Werner

Well, my main advice would be to take Tough and Weave. More resistance to the most common damage types is always good, and Weave is better defense than Combat Jumping, so would relieve some defensive slotting pressure, even if it would add some endurance slotting pressure.

If I ever get around to IOing my level 50 BS/SD, my current plan has me sacrificing a little bit of melee defense and then using Parry to make up for it, similar to what Shannon is suggesting.

I'd want an interrupt reduction in Aid Self, but it may not matter much on a soft-capped build. I personally hate Aid Self, so despite including it, my planned build has WAY more passive regeneration than yours, but that's probably more of a personal thing.

I'd want a Kismet unique – I target 95% to hit +4s, and you're in the 78% to 85% range. Kismet would get you to 89%+.

Soft-capped with defense debuff resistance taken care of, and you have Parry to handle pets and to hit buffs, so it looks very solid from a defensive standpoint.

I haven't checked endurance consumption, but you didn't state sustainable endurance as a goal anyway. I haven't checked if you're soft-capped at 32, but I almost never exemplar, so never even found out how the exemplaring math worked. I'm guessing you checked it?

Looks pretty good to me. But I understand the whole not being satisfied thing. I have builds that have been through a whole lot of iterations and I'm still somehow just now happy. No matter how good they look, I'm convinced that I'm missing something and that they could be a lot better.

My top end DPS comparison project (still in progress) has Dual Blades pulling off 238 DPS with Shred Monkey's chain (Blinding Feint -> Ablating Strike -> Sweeping Strike -> Ablating Strike), and 214 DPS with the much simpler Blinding Feint -> Attack Vitals chain. It's in the neighborhood of other primaries, better than some, worse than others. But yes, since you won't have the buff from Shield Defense, it probably won't compare to your DM/SD or FM/SD.

Not so sure about DPS while leveling up, other than it seemed pretty decent to me from my seat of the pants view.

I suspect that a top end Willpower build would be about as survivable on average as a top end Shield Defense build with Siphon Life or Aid Self. But Rise to the Challenge cranks up rapidly when surrounded by enemies. At the aggro cap, I would expect a top end Willpower build to be significantly MORE survivable than a top end Shield Defense build. The benefit of Shield Defense is DAMAGE in that situation, not survivability (except indirectly by killing enemies faster).

And I probably could have just said, “I agree with what MrLiberty just said”, but what would be the fun in that?

I use WeGame. It's free. Try running it while actually playing first. If that's too painful, as it is on my ancient PC, just take a demorecord and WeGame it while playing it back.

Ditto on the jet pack. I do have Laser Beam Eyes on both of my mains, but it's mostly a set mule, and I only use it infrequently. I could do without. I wouldn't give it much thought.

Hello Europe!

Hmmm, well, I play a few blasters and tankers and other ATs, but I post almost exclusively to the scrapper forum, and my expertise is only in scrappers. I've been playing since beta, but my first post was a couple years ago as the first Regen to complete the Rikti War Zone Challenge. AV soloer, number cruncher, DPS spreadsheets, survivability spreadsheet, enjoy unlimited-budget build optimization (falling a bit behind here due to a recent case of altitis), generally looking for the hardest targets to take down solo without temps or inspirations, almost exclusively solo or play with a couple friends, so have almost no task force experience and can be surprisingly newbish in larger groups.

Looks like others have you covered. Which is good. Double XP weekend, y'know.

Well, I've held onto this post all week.

I have a Regen and two Willpowers at 50. From at least my seat of the pants view, I agree that Moment of Glory adds more to Regen than Strength of Will adds to Willpower.

That said, I don't put much stock in the seat of my pants. My butt-o-meter isn't particularly accurate. So let me check some survivability numbers.

Example Katana/Regen with MoG = 2284, without = 1901
Example Katana/Willpower, 3 targets, with Strength of Will = 2218, without = 1901

Yes, those are time-averaged numbers, not just with it up and with it down. So at least in this small example, we can see that it adds a similar amount of survivability to the two sets. I'll also note that this example is slanted more towards the Regen than I would expect on average because this particular Regen is running with 155% global recharge. On the other hand, since these are Katana builds, it's slanted away from Regen because the Regen is already sitting at the melee and lethal defense cap, so Moment of Glory is doing much less than it would on some other build. And this ignores factors like how Moment of Glory adds the ability to soak an alpha strikes that would otherwise be fatal, even though it only lasts 15 seconds and therefore doesn't contribute a whole lot to time-averaged numbers.

So while I'd say the results are inconclusive so far, I'm still putting my money on Moment of Glory. I'd have to run more numbers, but I probably won't bother since I'll never have to choose one power over the other.

I do think Strength of Will's resistance may be being downplayed. The example build I used has about 50% smashing/lethal resistance normally, and Strength of Will bumps that to the 75% hard cap. That's cutting the most common damage types in half, while at least significantly reducing some the others.

Definitely pie. I mean, cake would be better if you really filled the inner layer with a lot of gooey goodness, and then make the cake itself all flaky and buttery, and then skipped the icing, but then it would be pie. Mmmmm, pie. Pie pie pie pie pie.

Pie!

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Werner hasn't really played his */regen in a while last I recall him saying and, even then, I think it was the general consensus that a significant portion of his capacity to survive in the situations he survived on Werner were do more significantly to Divine Avalanche than to any specific mastery of */regen, which is actually specifically mentioned that he played down by not stacking +rech to optimize the click powers.

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I do play Werner pretty rarely these days. I've mostly been leveling a whole bunch of alts. He and my skills are getting dusty, though it usually doesn't take long to get back into the swing of it. I DO have over 1500 hours played on Werner, so I do think I have Regen down pretty well, but I certainly make my share of mistakes still.

I don't think I'm a great player. I think I'm just a good player. I think I'm a better builder and number cruncher than player. The combination of the three lets me do some great things, but I'm sure that others could go farther. For instance, ValBlademaster + Umbral's build. Four AVs at once is pretty sweet, and almost certainly beyond my current capability.

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The point I was trying to make was that sometimes it's the primary that Werner capitalized less on his */regen skills and moreso on his katana/* skills on that character. It made him quite effective, and I'm not going to downplay what he's done, but it's thanks to a very powerful skill that he was able to leverage very well more than the ability to leverage the uptimes and downtimes of all of his */regen powers.

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I will note that I've also completed a RWZ challenge without touching Divine Avalanche, on the first try, and on a I12 build centered around Divine Avalanche rather than around recharge. Divine Avalanche may be a huge portion of my success, but I don't actively SUCK at playing Regen.

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Werner pretty much nailed this, and heres proof;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDeiiX_ODpE

"My attack chain is Smite -> Midnight Grasp -> Smite -> Siphon Life. The alternate chain is Smite -> Siphon Life -> Laser Beam Eyes".

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Wait, what did I nail? What did I prove?

Anyway, yeah, those are my chains. The first is the DPS chain, though my Siphon Life is slotted for healing over damage. The second is for when I'm badly hurt, since it spams Siphon Life almost as fast as it recharges.

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Well for 7min fight that would be 420 sec

If she had 28270 hit points like most AVs do

28270/420+94.24=161.5 DPS

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I guess that explains why I cant take down a pylon.

When I get the courage I will post my exact build for you guys to tear up.

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161.5 DPS should translate into a 19 minute Pylon run, plus or minus.

As another point to consider, popping a purple on a Willpower will typically add more survivability than popping a purple on a Regen since added defense is a non-linear benefit and Willpower starts out further up that curve.

I haven't played it or messed with builds for it. The combination should be fine, but I'm short on advice.

If you're going for a defensive build, I'd slot Parry with enough defense to get you to 45%+ defense when double-stacked. I'd personally shoot for at least 15% defense from the rest of the build so that I could slot Parry purely as an attack. Another good approach is a single Luck of the Gambler global recharge, since it has a small amount of defense, and builds are often short on spots to put them. Nothing wrong with procs in Parry. Just make sure you take care of your accuracy, damage, endurance and defense needs first. For a recharge build, I'd probably go with five Crushing Impacts and the Luck of the Gambler. It depends on the rest of the build, though.

Even I can't figure out what that says.

As many have said, the highest DPS attack chain is Storm Kick -> Crane Kick -> Storm Kick -> Crippling Axe Kick.

It looks like you are suggesting Storm Kick -> Crane Kick -> Crippling Axe Kick. That does less DPS for more EPS and higher required recharge. Storm Kick is your heavy hitter, and has the best DPE in the set as well, so you want it twice instead of once.

I did take the increased critical chance on Eagle's Claw into account in my spreadsheet. You might still prefer Eagle's Claw for the stun, or because you don't like the Crippling Axe Kick animation. But you want Crippling Axe Kick if your only criteria is DPS.

The defensive chain to double-stack Parry is Head Splitter -> Parry -> Disembowel -> Hack -> Parry. The recharge requirement is MUCH lower (108% on Head Splitter). So is the DPS, at about 17% lower. It's actually likely worse than that in practice, as it's more difficult to take advantage of Achilles' Heel in that chain. It's still the chain I'd run, but it's definitely not the “maximum carnage” chain.

Head Splitter -> Hack -> Disembowel -> Hack. It'll beat the chain you mentioned at +211% recharge, and become gapless at +305% recharge, at which point it'll be 9% better DPS.

Also, Hack then makes a good spot for the Achilles' Heel, which will boost it up quite a bit against hard targets. Ditto a purple set if you can afford it (skip the damage enhancement).

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The "borrowing ahead" argument posed to me by Arcanaville as the fundamental balance factor that normalized this lack of variable assessment never quite sat well with me.

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Then you're probably the sort of player that doesn't sit around for several minutes waiting for everything to recharge so that you can achieve another burst of peak performance. Like almost every scrapper in existence, I'd say.

Yes, we can achieve higher peak performance by clicking on Dull Pain, Instant Healing and Moment of Glory at the same time. But anything in the game that needs that sort of peak performance is still going to be around 15 seconds later, and we're going to be sad little Regenners that we didn't pace ourselves better.

I'll agree with Arcanaville that we can save up survivability rather than being constantly at our average. But I'd say that doesn't matter much in practice, because the only enemies tough enough fight with that strategy are going to live long enough for that strategy to backfire.

As far as damage output goes, you'll probably get much more from an investment in recharge than an investment in damage bonuses. I mostly treat damage bonuses as a tie breaker when looking at sets that offer other bonuses I like.

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I wander away for a couple days, and Ultimus himself shows up for the first time in forever on the scrapper boards to beat a dead horse. I AM amused.

Numerically, top tier Katana/Regeneration and Katana/Willpower builds get similar survivability scores in my spreadsheet when soloing a one or a few enemies without temps or inspirations. Willpower pulls ahead when surrounded by enemies to fuel Rise to the Challenge.


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Katana/Regen blurs things a bit though as it has a tool for boosting melee defense considerably which in turn artificially inflates /Regen's survivability.

WP has a much easier time reaching the Defensive softcap without Divine Avalanche.

A better comparison of Regeneration and WP for overall survivability would be with a primary which doesn't offer such a defensive option.

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Agreed. Which is one reason for the next sentence, which was "Private spreadsheet results for a specific primary in edge case situations is never going to settle the debate, of course." But as I also just said, I don't have comparative results for, say, Martial Arts. It wouldn't surprise me if Willpower is ahead there, but that's mere guessing on my part, which also isn't going to settle any debate.

And perhaps conceding the point even further, or perhaps explaining why Katana makes for an appropriate comparison, I can't conceive of playing non-defensive secondary (Regen, Fire, Dark) without a sword primary. I insist on defense. I'm not going to build a scrapper with no defensive leg to stand on, and I'm not going to wait until 50 and IOing out to get that defensive leg.

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But if you want to use Greater Fire Sword, don't want Fire Sword, and want only medium recharge requirements, that's probably the chain for you.

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Which one exactly?

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Ah, yes, that was a bit confusing. I meant the one you proposed: Incinerate -> Greater Fire Sword -> Cremate -> Scorch. That should do the trick for meeting your requirements.

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Numerically, top tier Katana/Regeneration and Katana/Willpower builds get similar survivability scores in my spreadsheet when soloing a one or a few enemies without temps or inspirations. Willpower pulls ahead when surrounded by enemies to fuel Rise to the Challenge.

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How about top-tier MA/Ragen verus top-tier MA/WP?

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Don't know. I don't have such builds on hand to reference, nor do I have the experience to recognize a top tier build in that case.