Werner

What what what? I can make all my missions as hard as I can stand? WOOT! Thank you devs! <Other MMO> can kiss it! Woo hoo!

Please please please let this affect Task Forces. Stupid Castle and his trying to keep newbies from totally killing themselves. *pout*

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It also looks like the devs called us out.

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Yeah. Go devs!

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Just need to repsec and relearn the game it seems. And afford all these new enchancements you just rattled off

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Right. If it's Umbral, it's top of the line and very well thought out. The trouble is, if it's been five years since you've played, you're not going to be able to afford it. Plus, you might want to know WHY its a good build.

Now, we could try to explain what you want and why you want it. But my suggestion would actually be to start with a cheap but well-designed SO build. The point is to get your feet wet again and get a feel for Dark Melee/Regen's strengths and weaknesses, so that you'll have a much better understanding of why we're building a particular way as the price starts increasing.

On the other hand, you may have 50 million lying around from last time, and you can do much better by spending some of it. So if you want, we can jump right to your first step up from SOs, perhaps a 20 million influence build with IOs, frankenslotting and non-level 50 cheap sets.

Mind you, I probably shouldn't say "we", because it probably won't be me helping you for the most part - I don't have a Dark Melee/Regen, and my expertise is kind of divided between the really cheap and the really expensive, because I level up really cheap, and then sometimes spec into something really expensive. So the in-between stuff is probably best left to others.

The Crow, the scene above the bar with the band playing below. “You're all going to die.” (4:10 if you want to skip right to the violence)

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Well... I had this crazy idea

Since all us Scrappers love carnage and pure scrapperlock, how about we do an All Scrapper Rikti Raid?

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Absolutely. We talked about it earlier in the year, but the character copy tool was pretty much down for the count at that point, so it never happened.

My thought was that we should all solo pylons instead of ganging up on them. Not even close to optimal, but it kind of flips the bird at the Rikti. Others preferred a more sensible approach of at least splitting up in pairs.

As with other things large team related, I've never done a Rikti raid. Well, not since it was in beta, when I was on a failed one.

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Mission 2 is the most straightforward - kill 4 AVs. Shall we fight the few spawns between the AVs? O-portal out, except one person.

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Are they vertical? Because I find that really offensive.

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Umbral: Give it to Werner to play with.

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I would never do so. The fact that it's horrible to deal with makes it all the more intriguing!

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That and I've never played with defiance calculations, and don't even have a corrupter. Almost all of my number crunching is specific to scrappers. I have other toons, some of them at 50, but they never interested me enough to pull out a calculator.

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An ITF with all scrappers could be rather interesting.. especially if they're high-end scrappers... you can essentually split up and chase mission objectives solo (or duo-ing).

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Given I have multiple scrappers that can essentially solo the ITF up to the AV's at the end of missions 3 & 4, I figure it would just be all around good times, not some sort of mind bending challenge

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Yeah, it wasn't any sort of mind bending challenge. Nothing until the final mission Romulus seemed particularly difficult, and even that we started by just charging and seeing how it went (answer: not so well). We didn't even pause for buffs (a lot of us had Mystic Fortune). But it was fun to be on a pure scrapper lock team for over an hour straight.

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An ITF with all scrappers could be rather interesting.. especially if they're high-end scrappers... you can essentually split up and chase mission objectives solo (or duo-ing).

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It was fun. Non-stop kill fest. We didn't really split up much, but we weren't waiting around for others either, just go go go. It was the most go go go team I've ever been on.

(Edit: I think it was all top tier scrapper builds. I was probably one of the squishier toons since I brought my Katana/Regen for the challenge. I can no longer say that I've never been killed by Cimerorans. More information on our experience in some recent thread here.)

Bah, good points all around, and all of which completely slipped my mind.

Your suggestions look good to me. I'm thinking Katana/Super Reflexes at this point. I don't think Broad Sword would pump out as much DPS, even with Shield Defense. Fire/Shield might be good, but I still haven't taken a close look at maximum Fire DPS.

This advice will assume a very high or unlimited budget.

Go with Storm Kick -> Crane Kick -> Storm Kick -> Crippling Axe Kick for the highest DPS. You'll need +225% recharge in Storm Kick, which is why it's going to be expensive – purple sets and Luck of the Gambler globals.

Take everything from your secondary but Elude and slot them up.

Hit the soft cap (45%+ defense) to all positions, ideally something in the 46% to 48% range.

I recommend Tough and Weave. You want resistance to avoid being two-shot, and then Weave is a great way to get closer to the soft cap.

Hasten for the recharge.

Stamina to power everything.

Aid Self to keep you alive.

Uniques: Steadfast Protection, Numina, Miracle, Regenerative Tissue, Kismet, and possibly the PvP +defense and +resist IOs.

Get the hit point and endurance accolades.

Pick up as many hit point bonuses as you can (after getting 45% defense and the required level of recharge).

Possibly a Gaussian set, but I don't think I've left you any good place to put it. You could put it in Focus Chi, but I'd hate to lose the recharge. You could grab Focused Accuracy and stick it there, but I suspect it would mostly be a set mule, and losing six slots on a mule doesn't sound appealing. Well, there are certainly other ways to hit the soft cap, so I guess don't sweat the Gaussian set.

Red Fortune sets are nice. 5% recharge at 5, 2.5% ranged defense at 6.

Blessing of the Zephyr perhaps.

I like two to four Luck of the Gamblers for set bonuses since you'll be sprinkling them all over for recharge anyway.

Consider five Apocalypse in Laser Beam Eyes. It's a mule, and thus “wasteful”, but the set bonuses are excellent.

Five Armageddons in Dragon's Tail.

Performance Shifter proc and possibly set in Stamina.

You picked up quite a bit of recharge, that's good.

Generally speaking, don't six slot purple sets, Crushing Impact or Doctored Wounds. Use five of them, and then plug in something else for the sixth slot.

Parry should be slotted as an attack or mostly as an attack. Pick up defense bonuses and power pool defenses to get you back to the soft cap (45% defense). I recommend the Fighting Pool. To power them, add Performance Shifter procs to Quick Recovery and Stamina.

You should grab Quick Recovery before Stamina. It's the better power.

Probably not worth so many slots in Combat Jumping.

Grab a Kismet unique.

Conserve Power should be slotted for recharge, not endurance reduction.

Pick up the endurance and hit point accolades.

Dark Melee/Shield Defense is, I believe, your current single target DPS leader if you spend enough influence on it. It's a very good AV killing option, kind of the flavor of the month AV killer. There are certainly other options, but if I were starting a new scrapper from scratch with the specific goal of soloing AVs as FAST as possible, I'd go Dark Melee/Shield Defense.

As far as GMs go, they regenerate the equivalent of 360 DPS. Dark Melee/Shield Defense can approach and has in one documented case just exceeded 300 DPS. So if you're going to use temps and inspirations, again, that's probably your best combination for the job.

I don't have a build on me, but I'm sure there are some floating around.

Well, I have too many unfinished projects of my own, including some builds for myself, so I don't really want to take on a project like that.

I can give you some basic ideas on how to modify my build, though. Recharge is one of the most expensive things. So I'd go for Smite -> Shadow Punch -> Midnight Grasp -> Smite -> Shadow Punch -> Siphon Life, which approaches the DPS of the top chain, but requires much less recharge (+128% in Midnight Grasp). That should eliminate the need for the purples and some of the Luck of the Gambler globals. You can look for cheaper but still good Siphon Life options in the thread I linked to. For a general purpose build, I'd look for one that maxes out damage rather than healing. And if you don't need to solo AVs without inspirations, endurance won't be as big a factor, so you could probably drop the Miracle unique and possibly the Numina unique. Drop Laser Beam Eyes (it's mostly a set mule) and pick up Shadow Maul. If you're good with Shadow Maul, your performance in most situations should then be higher than mine and at a hugely reduced cost.

Yep, your math looks right. I'd personally go with Fiery Melee of the three options, as I don't like the idea of burning half of my regeneration recovering from punching myself in the face with Energy Transfer. It might work out fine, but it just seems like too much of a survivability handicap to try to recover from.

Shield Defense/Super Strength would be capable of pretty decent DPS.

I don't have Shadow Maul, so it may change my perspective a bit. If I'm solo “farming” on my DM/SR, I farm ghosts. They take 25% (?) more damage from dark energy than normal mobs, and while they don't gather at all, they're usually clustered enough to get a decent Soul Drain. I also have laser beam eyes to finish off runners, and ghosts like to run. Normally I'm killing them too fast for them to run, though.

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Im not real familiar with the term "Squishy"

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When you hit a bug, it goes squish.
When you hit a blaster, it goes squish.
When you hit a tanker, your hand goes squish.

No scrapper is squishy, but Fiery Aura has some drawbacks.

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So we might perhaps define squishy as “easily killed”. “Fragile” would probably be more descriptive, but just isn't the word we use for some reason. Also, we often use squishy as a noun, which refers to someone of the more easily killed archetypes, like blasters, defenders and controllers.

So I might say, for instance, “Protect the squishies!” meaning perhaps “Get that boss off of the defender!” At least I might if I ever teamed or ever talked when on a team.

Or I might say, for instance, “Most scrappers are just another squishy until the mid levels”. By that, I mean that at low levels, they can die almost as easily as characters that are more commonly expected to be easily killed.

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Thanks Werner! Sounds like a plan to me. What would you recommend to start with for these? I really wanna start getting into the sets but I've just had a hard time figuring out where to start!

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Are you asking how to get started on frankenslotting? Well, let's just take Blinding Feint as an example. It needs +86% recharge, plus you'll want it “fully” enhanced for damage, plus some accuracy, plus some endurance. Let's say I'm at level 35 and ready to spec into that attack chain. I'll go shopping for recipes and IOs in the, say, 32 to 38 range. I'm looking for two things – cheap, and multi-aspect. So your top choice are set IOs that enhance three (occasionally four) things. And in this case, probably almost every one of them should have recharge or damage in them, since you need a ton of each. I get into “buy it now” mode when doing this, and still find it very cheap. I bid creep up on things, and stop if it gets more than I think it's worth. Double check your bid so that you don't make expensive mistakes like adding an extra 0. Generally, I'll also end up with some IOs that only enhance a couple things. I just start popping them into my build without doing much math ahead of time. Once I have three or four, though, I start paying closer attention to my targets and what it's going to take to get there. I'm going to guess that it typically runs me one to several million per attack, though I could be wrong. In any case, I always have enough influence from simply leveling up to be able to afford it. And once done, no more replacing SOs every five levels, at least in those powers.

I wouldn't be too worried about the offense. Smite -> Shadow Punch -> Midnight Grasp -> Smite -> Shadow Punch -> Siphon life isn't THAT far behind the top chain, and gets by with only +128% recharge. The problem is survivability. I suspect that you'll lose more survivability giving up recharge than you'll gain picking up defense, but it's hard to know without trying it out and running the numbers.

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All good answers. So, what about my math, is it correct? Is there no way to Solo Dominatrix as a tank? Is there no way to Solo, almost that whole list when you use SS?

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It's very difficult to solo Dominatrix even on a scrapper, though it depends on the build. My two mains both do about 175 DPS, so I can't take her down. On a tanker? I don't see it happening. But most AVs aren't going to have those kinds of resistances, so you'd still be able to take out a whole lot of them.

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Out of curiosity why wouldn't you use Shield Charge against an AV? Wouldn't it only serve to up a Tanker's DPS?

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Actually, after I wrote that and headed off to work, I realized that I don't have any data to back that up. Scrappers and tanks aren't the same thing at all, and Shield Charge doesn't get nailed with the AT modifier, which should make it a MUCH better attack for tanks than for scrappers (compared to other available attacks on each). So let me check the numbers...

... and it looks like I was totally wrong, at least on paper. Shield Charge on a tank does an extremely high base 78 DPS and has better DPE than most single-target tanker attacks. So it looks like you should use Shield Charge against an AV as often as it comes up.

However, in practice, you have to get that target on the ground before it activates. That adds a little time. I wonder where the break even point is with other attacks. Looks like maybe around half a second. If you can click, target and click in half a second, it will add DPS.

But then we need to get into how best to do single target damage with the Shield primary, and I think you'll get a lot better mileage out of surrounding yourself with minions to crank up your Against All Odds. You don't want to kill them, so you want to avoid all AoE damage if you can. And that's one problem with Dark Melee, in that it also relies on Soul Drain for its high DPS, which would probably kill minions before you can finish off the AV. That's just a guess, though.

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I have a question kinda related to the topic at hand: Wouldn't the -def from Rage crashes be problematic for a Shield/SS Tank?

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Yeah, Rage crash sucks (though much less than it used to). Not sure why it would be particularly problematic for a Shield tank. It sucks just fine on my Invunlerability/Super Strength, but I suppose I do have more resistance to back up my defense.

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Note: The def debuff on Rage is set to not self stack, so if you activate Rage before or during the crash, the debuff will be eliminated. (The damage and endurance crashes are not prevented in this fashion.)

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Looks like I need more recharge, then. I JUST picked up Rage on my Invuln/SS.

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But then Shield Defense should get you that DPS right back. I think it's a good AV soloing candidate with the right build.

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Shield Defense would present more Endurance woes no? (thinking avid use of Shield Charge with the same end useage as Inv just from the toggles / Active Defense combo).

I would also think survivability would be an issue with SD unless something like Aid Self or Dark Melee is used, as the AV will hit you even with overcapped Defense.

This is where primary and secondary synergy really come into play in my mind (is also why I really like SD/DM).

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Well, you wouldn't be Shield Charging an AV, but yeah, it looks like Shield Defense is slightly more endurance hungry than Invulnerability. I agree that you'd probably want Aid Self, but soft capped defense, high hit points, good resists and maybe 40 HP/sec of regen would be plenty for some AVs. Scrappers have done it with less, though we normally include a heal if AV soloing is going to be our focus. To me, the ideal secondary for Shield Defense for AV soloing is Dark Melee as you say, so that's what I'm playing.

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I have a question kinda related to the topic at hand: Wouldn't the -def from Rage crashes be problematic for a Shield/SS Tank?

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Yeah, Rage crash sucks (though much less than it used to). Not sure why it would be particularly problematic for a Shield tank. It sucks just fine on my Invunlerability/Super Strength, but I suppose I do have more resistance to back up my defense.

Fire Armor is generally considered one of the squishier secondaries, which is I guess how it pays for its big damage buff. Willpower is very solid. Willpower isn't strictly better than Regen, but it's a lot EASIER than Regen without giving up any top end power. It will probably also work better in a team situation, as Rise to the Challenge helps your damage mitigation scale up on teams. So I'd suggest Willpower unless you like to take a very active role in your own survival. I'd further suggest Katana/Willpower. Katana gives you a big defensive buff in Divine Avalanche, is capable of higher DPS, and I think has better AoE output than Martial Arts.

On Willpower, take at least the first seven powers. Resurgence and Strength of Will are optional, though I wouldn't skip Strength of Will either. For Katana, your must haves are Gambler's Cut, Build Up, Divine Avalanche, Soaring Dragon and Golden Dragonfly. Sting of the Wasp will probably be helpful while leveling up. Flashing Steel and The Lotus Drops will give you the AoE damage you'll want in a team situation. So pretty much take everything but Calling the Wolf. I'd definitely also grab the Fitness and Fighting pools.

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So about Hro'. He was one of the easier AVs for me, what do yall think of trying him and Nemesis at the same time?

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Worth a shot. I pulled it off with Werner. Sergei wasn't able to do it, though.