Werner

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You'll do much better with regular damage procs, or just about anything else. Maybe one of my posts on the subject is still out there. If I can find it, I'll try to link to it later.

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Right, because you're too busy playing to post. Wait, you didn't just post to say I'm plain wrong, did you? That's just weird.

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Yes. I didn't want to quit the team to make a long post proving my point, but wanted to let you know that you were wrong. What's weird about that?

Anyway, it looks like the forum monster has eaten both times I've explained the details in the past. So I'll write it all up again, and this time I'll remember to save a copy, because this keeps coming up.

Lets say you're surrounded by five even level minions and you use an PBAoE with an Achilles' Heel proc in it. With a 20% chance of firing, on average it will hit one of those minions. Achilles' Heel is basically a buff – attacks on that minion over the next ten seconds will do 20% more damage. So we can consider that additional damage to be the “damage” that the proc does. A level 50 minion has 430 hit points. Let's say that the attack with the proc did 190 hit points of damage, leaving the minion with 240 hit points. And lets say that you DO manage to kill the minion in the next ten seconds. The 240 hit points of damage required to kill the minion can be considered to be 200 base hit points of damage, plus 40 hit points of damage from the proc. So what's the MAXIMUM damage that the proc can do? It would be in an AoE that does NO damage itself, so that the minion still has all 430 hit points of damage. And then you'd need to finish off the minion in the next 10 seconds, which pretty much means finishing off the whole crowd in 10 seconds since I don't think there's a way to identify who got hit with the proc, or at least not to do it quickly. You would then attack the minion for 359 points of damage, and the proc would do the other 359 * 20% = 71 points of damage.

So the proc does 71 damage to an even level minion under nearly IDEAL circumstances – your AoE does no damage at all, and you finish off the crowd in the next 10 seconds.

What about a regular damage proc? That's a lot simpler. 20% chance of doing 71.8 damage.

So when fighting minions, even under nearly ideal circumstances, the Achilles' Heel proc basically only pulls even with a regular old damage proc.

What about lieutenants? Well, you won't be surrounded by just five lieutenants and nothing else, and good luck finishing five lieutenants off in 10 seconds except with an AoE monster, but sure, let's say that everything comes together just perfectly. A level 50 lieutenant has 805 hit points. So you're doing 671 damage, and the proc does 671 * 20% = 134 damage to finish off the lieutenant. Then yes, under these even more ideal circumstances, the Achilles' Heel proc will do somewhat more damage than a regular old damage proc. But taking into account that you won't often find yourself in this situation, that your AoE actually does damage, and that sometimes you won't finish off the guy that got hit with the proc in the next 10 seconds, I wouldn't say that it's necessarily better in practice. I'd probably still recommend a regular damage proc as being more likely to do more damage on average, and to do it sooner since it takes effect on that attack rather than on potential future attacks. But it's hard to say for sure. So let's say we take the 20% chance of 134 damage at face value. What about a purple proc? That's a 33% chance of 107.1 damage = 35.3 damage on average, compared to our 20% * 134 = 26.8 damage on average. So the purple proc is still significantly better than Achilles' Heel against lieutenants even under near ideal circumstances.

So we pretty much need to get up to boss level before the Achilles' Heel starts to more clearly beat out the alternatives. And while you might be using AoEs on a boss farm, you're not going to be finishing off that crowd of bosses in 10 seconds unless you're on a big AoE team. So I suppose I could add a qualifier of “unless you're AE boss farming on a big AoE team” to my advice to skip Achilles' Heel procs on AoEs, but that's seems unnecessary, that being such an exceptional circumstance, and presumably not representative of your normal play on the character.

So the basic use of Achilles' Heel procs is for taking down single hard targets. It's a single target because you don't usually find or take out multiple hard targets fast enough (with some exceptions on some teams). And it's a hard target like a boss or above because only those have enough hit points for the damage from the Achilles' Heel to add up.

Now, I DO see some logic in putting it in AoEs for the situation you described – attacking the boss, but using an AoE because there are other enemies around. The primary target is the boss, so it's pretty much like putting it in a single target attack at that point, which is to say that it is worthwhile. However, what percentage of time do you use your AoEs that way specifically, and what percentage of time do you use them on targets other than bosses? Generally speaking, I think AoEs are largely used as minion munchers. As such, the Achilles' Heel procs are usually going to be outclassed by other options, often significantly outclassed.

Now you can hopefully see why I didn't explain while I was playing the game earlier. This isn't something I can explain while people are selling between missions.

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OK. So Tough and Weave are usually forced in, Aid Self is usually forced in, Health and Stamina are usually forced in. A lot of things have prerequisites that aren't particularly useful. Slotting them so that they aren't "forced" doesn't make the situation better. It makes it worse.

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It makes it worse? really?

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Yes, it really makes it worse. You're forced to take Kick or Boxing to get Tough and Weave. That's bad for you, because they're inferior attacks, worse than what's in your primary. You generally want to avoid using them. To actually waste slots on them is to make a bad situation worse. Now not only do you have an inferior power, but you've also wasted five slots that you could have constructively used elsewhere rather than throwing them away.

Now, there are still situations where you might end up slotting them. I've actually used Boxing in my attack chain while leveling when I was extremely tight on power choices. It was therefore worth slotting until I could respec into a better attack chain at a higher level. And of course one of them might be necessary as a set mule. But to slot it just because you don't want to waste the power pick is to throw good money after bad.

(Edit: And I apologize for the attitude in my posts. Reading over them, I come off pretty badly. It's certainly not your fault that I've explained these things multiple times in the past. I didn't explain them to YOU, so it's all new information. You didn't deserve to get hit with a “sheesh, I've already explained this five times” sort of attitude. I was honestly trying to be helpful, both to you and to the OP, but I came off pretty smug and conceited. I'm sorry about that.)

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I'd put Achilles' Procs in each attack

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Don't put Achilles' Heels in your AoEs. They're boss killer procs, not minion munching procs.

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Anything to help take down something that the first hit doesn't (granted not often). I also like to put it in everything, because it almost guarantees the proc will effect my primary target (I will throw everything at it).

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I really need to save my explanation of this, and I don't have time right now to go through all the mathematics again because I'm busy playing. But the conclusion is that you really shouldn't put them in AoEs. You'll do much better with regular damage procs, or just about anything else. Maybe one of my posts on the subject is still out there. If I can find it, I'll try to link to it later.

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Tough is nice for some, but also forced in (You don't even slot Kick!)

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I'm not sure what you mean about “forced in”. Tough is very useful, stacking nicely on the other smashing/lethal resists. And why would you slot Kick???

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Forced in? I mean taking a power you're not ever going to use just to take the higher level one you do. I seldom do this (but that's just me). I like to have a use for every power I take.
As for Slotting Kick? Again, I like to use every power I take, and well....Slotting is great for Set bonuses

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OK. So Tough and Weave are usually forced in, Aid Self is usually forced in, Health and Stamina are usually forced in. A lot of things have prerequisites that aren't particularly useful. Slotting them so that they aren't "forced" doesn't make the situation better. It makes it worse. As far as the set bonuses, slotting a useless power for set bonuses is called a "set mule". Sometimes useful, but it's a lot better to slot a useful power instead if you can.

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83?
Mine is 99.8%. 2 generic lvl 50 End Mod + lvl 50 Performance Shifter End Mod + the Proc.

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Nope your not with 2 generic lvl 50 End Mods. Endurance Modification At lvl 50 only give +42.4%. So 2 of the would only be 84.4% and that is not counting ED which will make it 83.32% The Performance Shifter End Mod + the Proc does nothing for your End but give you a 20% chance for 10 end every 10 sec.

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And both of us are miscounting despite him now saying it twice. He has a total of 3 endmods, and both of us are only counting 2 for some reason.

Edit: Yeah, sorry you had to say this three times. I have no idea how we're all misreading it so badly.

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I do very well without the Fighting Pool.

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I do very well on my Dark Melee/Super Reflexes even when I turn all my toggles off and run invincible missions. That doesn't mean that I should recommend that people skip all toggle powers.

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/SD is very end intensive and adding Tough and Weave to the mix just begs end crash.

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That IS true. Endurance management is important, and looks like a problem to be solved in this build. Tough and Weave aren't something I'd sacrifice on that alter, though. In this case, for instance, Weave means soft cap, and dropping it means getting hit twice as often. Not a good plan.

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Health? If you have the Numina Unique, you should also have the Numina Heal too (increases Health's base regen and plus 12% more)

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Yeah, I'd do this too, and probably a third for the hit point bonus, or even six slot for ranged defense. That said, with Aid Self in the mix, regeneration isn't nearly as critical as otherwise.

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Stamina? I wouldn't slot it with the full set, too much enhacnement is lost. I slot 2 generic End Mod IO's and--from Performance Shifter--End Mod and the Proc

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Huh? It's at 97% enhancement, and yours is at 83%, and both have the proc. You might suggest that it isn't worth the extra slots, but I don't see how you can say “too much enhancement is lost” when enhancement is actually gained. And in my opinion, it IS worth the extra slots for the 3.13% AoE defense. The hit points, recovery and damage buff don't hurt either.

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You're missing some attacks there. Where's Flashing Steel and Lotus Drops?

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The OP said, “I'm trying to build him to solo AV's”. For that, AoEs are completely superfluous. Nice for general play though.

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I'd put Achilles' Procs in each attack

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Don't put Achilles' Heels in your AoEs. They're boss killer procs, not minion munching procs.

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Medicine Pool is forced into the build and unnecessary with Dull Pain already in.

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Aid Self is very useful for the stated goal of soloing AVs.

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Tough is nice for some, but also forced in (You don't even slot Kick!)

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I'm not sure what you mean about “forced in”. Tough is very useful, stacking nicely on the other smashing/lethal resists. And why would you slot Kick???

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Unstoppable is an excelent power in a jam.

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And completely useless for soloing AVs, because when it crashes, you're dead. Nice to have. Not critical given the stated purpose of the build.

OK, if it won't be any worse than a RWZ challenge, then I'll probably go ahead and bring Werner (Katana/Regen). Seems like it would be more fun than sleepwalking through on Sergei (Dark Melee/Super Reflexes). I'll probably make the choice on the day of, since who knows what sort of mood I'll be in that day.

So yeah, I'm in.

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I'd be shooting to soft cap typed defenses. It wouldn't surprise me if I had to back off a little from that, but I'd certainly be trying. The difficulty of the defensive challenge is part of why I'd be settling for the easier attack chain.

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Hmmm... not sure this is exactly right - Werner, remember that WP is debuffing the ToHit of everything in melee range with RttC, plus DM is of course debuffing the ToHit of everything (i.e. the AV) that you're attacking. 45% defense is almost certainly overkill, and getting to that, in particular on S/L, is a good way to bork the rest of your build since it's so hard.

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Ah, you're right. I tend to ignore and then forget debuffs since AVs resist them so heavily. But yeah, 45% isn't particularly necessary here. It's a nice buffer, but is mostly overkill, even for AVs (since with so MANY debuffs hitting them, it adds up). Shooting for 35% to 40% is probably a better idea.

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What it seems like, in short, you are getting at is, less can be more and every IO set in the game isn't necessarily the right answer if your power choices are sound?

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Well, less can be more because you can't have everything, so we're always talking about trade offs, and almost everything has some form of diminishing returns. So while you might want to have another 10% accuracy in a power “just in case”, if that just in case only occurs rarely, and meant that you had to sacrifice 50% endurance reduction, you've probably made a bad choice.

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With that in mind, should I SO slot everything to see where I have holes and IO set from there, to fill in holes.

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That's not a bad idea at all. I don't normally recommend it, but I personally level up on SOs to probably the mid 30s. Then I frankenslot my attacks to address my weaknesses, which is usually just too quick of an endurance burn as I've been piling on the toggles.

So similarly, you might want to play with just SOs for a while to get a feel for how you perform, and what your strengths and weaknesses are. On the other hand, you can also just ask the forums. If you find it hard to survive, you might not have the recent experience to know exactly what the problem is. Do you need to put out more damage? Debuff the enemy more? Add more defense? More resistance? More hit points? More regeneration? These might be hard questions for you to answer.

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Also, I am trying to find the difference between smashing/lethal (as an example) defense vs. resistance. Which one do i need to hit 45% with, and please don't say both, lol.

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I'm being called on to game tonight, so I can't get into great detail on defense vs. resistance. The basic idea is that defense keeps them from hitting you, and resistance reduces the damage you take. Most enemies have a 50% to-hit. That's not the same as saying that have a 50% chance to hit you; it's just one of their base stats. An even level minion would have a 50% chance to hit you (if you have no defense), but it goes up from there as the levels climb or for lieutenants, bosses and the like (due to accuracy modifiers, not additional to-hit, which remains at 50% all the way up through +5s. +6s and above start gettting to-hit modifiers, but you probably won't be hunting those). Defense is subtracted from to-hit, and there is a 5% to-hit floor in the calculations, which is why we call 45% defense the soft cap. It's soft because you can have more than 45% defense, and doing so is situationally useful (enemy to-hit buffs, or defense debuffs on you). But it's called a cap because more defense than that IS only situationally useful, as opposed to almost always useful. So as an example, if you have 20% defense, an even level minion will hit you 50% - 20% = 30% of the time. Resistance takes effect after they've already rolled to hit you. It's quite a bit simpler a mechanic, simply reducing the damage taken by a percentage. So if you have 20% resistance, and are hit with an attack for 100 points of damage, you'll actually take 80 points of damage.

Yes, Broad Sword/Shield Defense can be an AV killer. It's very solid. I'm running on an SOs and frankenslotting build at 49 right now, and I haven't picked up Aid Self yet (planned when I IO him out), and I have no survivability issues with +2 bosses, so let's take a look.

Mmmm... I'm not seeing any obvious problems. Basically soft capped, good resists. Regen is pretty low, but you have Aid Self and the defense to use it reliably. Plenty of attacks. Endurance looks like a problem, but should be fine for anything but no-inspiration challenges. I'd be uncomfortable with only 10 seconds of overlap on Active Defense, but it should rarely if ever be a problem. On paper at least, it looks like you should be doing quite well. So... dono?

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Regarding ED, why would the game designers build IO sets that exceeded (thus wasted) stats like;
"Damage 101.86% (Pre-ED: 145.75%)"
that message is quoted from Mids when I 6 sloted Ragnorak (i dream big) into throw spines.
I have searched Paragon Wiki for ED and I know what it means, but in relation to this 6 slot IO set it seems to defeat the purpose of 6 slotting the full (and as i imagine, prohibitively expensive) IO set.

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Honestly, I don't know why they do that. It IS mostly wasted. So in practice, I think most people five slot the purple sets (skipping usually the damage/recharge), then use the extra slot for something more useful.

Now, I will point out that every little bit of damage enhancement still helps, but the more you get beyond a certain point, the less it helps. ED (enhancement diversification) is like a diminishing returns sort of mechanic. That all makes sense to me, but having a set go so far beyond where it gets nailed by ED, that I don't get.

But I figure I don't have to get it. It is what it is, so I shrug my shoulders and five slot purple sets instead of six slotting them.

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Secondly, I am a big fan of not just equipping an item (or enhancement in this case) without knowing why I am doing it.

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Fair enough. The reason you may not get much explanation is that the WHY is usually MUCH more difficult to explain than the WHAT. So getting the why explained may come down to you needing to ask a bunch of specific questions.

So lets look at Quills as a specific question, and see if I can answer both the what and the why.

First, let's just cover why Pacing of the Turtle doesn't buy you much. You may be looking at the 95% slow enhancement, and thinking that's great. But the slow enhancement doesn't affect their attack speed, only their movement speed. And usually, enemies will just be standing there pounding on you, so the movement speed debuff won't even matter. Even when it does matter, like an enemy trying to run away from you, that 95% slow enhancement actually only makes the difference between a 16% movement speed debuff and a 31.6% movement speed debuff. The enhancement is to the debuff percentage, not a direct debuff of their speed. So fully slotted with pacing of the turtle, about all you're doing is slowing down the occasional runner by 15%. They're easy to catch or nail with Impale either way, so it's really largely a non-issue.

In other words, it's just not worth enhancing the slow portion of Quills. You CAN'T enhance the valuable recharge debuff portion of the power. So therefore, just treat it as an attack.

And definitely think of your PBAoE toggles as attacks, not as toggles. Just that mindset change will have you ahead of most players. They're just ultra-convenient attacks that don't require any activation time. They're also uber-cheap attacks, in that their endurance cost is half that of other AoEs.

Mind you, now we need to talk about what you should enhance on attacks and why. Hopefully damage is obvious. More damage is better. Accuracy would be similarly obvious, except that more accuracy is NOT always better. The mechanics of to-hit, accuracy and defense are a very big subject, but the basic idea is that your ability to hit the enemy hits a cap, and won't go any higher. How quickly you hit that cap tends to depend on how difficult the enemy is. So, for example, one SO worth of accuracy (33%) is enough for basic missioning on Heroic. I'd recommend that people put in two SOs worth of accuracy when they crank up their difficulty level to cope with the higher-level enemies being harder to hit. So the recommended amount of accuracy can vary depending on the difficulty of what you like to fight. I personally shoot for a 95%+ chance of hitting +4s on my end game builds (the highest you'll fight on a level 50), but will certainly settle for less while leveling up.

The amount of recharge you'd want on your attacks is an interesting subject, but not relevant here, since as a toggle, the power is “always” on. Recharge enhancement will only affect how fast you can bring it up after being detoggled, which will happen so rarely in PvE as to be completely ignorable. Don't intentionally slot your toggles for recharge, as it's wasted.

And then we're up to endurance reduction. More is usually better until you get to the point where you can fight forever without losing endurance. Most people never reach that point, though Willpower is capable of doing so depending on the build. But generally speaking, you don't need maxed-out endurance reduction in every attack and every toggle. Generally speaking, you can do with a moderate amount of endurance reduction in the attacks (50% ish?) and about one SO worth in the toggles (30% ish?). The reason you put more endurance reduction in the attacks is they use a lot more endurance overall than your toggles while fighting, so enhancement there will give you more bang for the slotting buck than in your toggles.

So before I even look at sets, let's say we're looking for something like 60% accuracy, 95% damage and 50% endurance reduction. The thing is, sets are MUCH more complicated than just their enhancement value, because of the set bonuses they give. They are small individually, but they can really add up in a top tier build. So the set you should choose depends a lot on what you're trying to do with the build overall. For Willpower, my suggestion is that you spend most of your effort trying to get defense. There is a non-linear relationship between defense and survivability, such that the closer you get to 45% defense, the more each additional point of defense helps you survive. Experience with a lot of builds tells us that Willpower can get there, but that it takes a lot of work, so it will pretty much dominate the build. Also, because of the way defense works, you want to focus on either positional defense (melee, ranged, AoE), or typed defense (smashing/lethal, fire/cold, energy/negative, toxic, psionic), but not both. Willpower starts with a nice base of typed defenses, so it is best to enhance those, again due to the non-linear relationship between defense and survivability.

So, 60% accuracy, 95% damage, 50% endurance reduction, some sort of typed defense, and preferably some other bonuses that would be useful. That's what we're looking for. At the high end, you have Armageddon, which would probably cost you a billion influence for the set. The reason it costs so much is that it has the best recharge bonus available, and recharge is CRITICAL to making some builds super powerful. But not yours, so we move on. Although Obliteration offers some positional defense (1.88% smashing/lethal), it isn't very high, and the endurance enhancement is below what we'd like (19%). It might not be a critical weakness, but there may also be a better choice. Scirocco's Dervish offers 1.56% fire/cold defense and 3.13% psionic defense, which is decent. It also has 10% regeneration, 3.13% negative resistance, and 9% global accuracy (affects ALL powers, not just Quills). Those are all pretty good bonuses that you can use. As far as enhancement values, it's at 74% accuracy, 95% damage and 48% endurance reduction, which is right on target. Looks like a very good candidate. Multi-strike gives you 0.94% defense to fire/cold and smashing/lethal, which is a pretty low bonus but possibly useful. Still, its no Scirroco's Dervish, so let's set it aside. Eradication? 3.13% energy/negative defense, 1.56% fire/cold defense. Awesome! The other bonuses are 1.8% max endurance (useful for sustained fights), 2.25% hit points (more hit points are always good, and are highly recommended on regeneration-based characters because they also buff regeneration), and 2% debt protection (completely useless). Still, great bonuses overall. The enhancement values are 54% accuracy, 87% damage and 15% endurance, though, which isn't very good. Might be worth considering if endurance doesn't turn out to be a problem overall, though.

So my advice would probably be a set of Scirocco's or a set of Eradication, depending on how the rest of the build played out.

There are other options beyond that, though. Sometimes you can do better by slotting some from two different sets. That isn't typically the case when you're after defense, which is usually a bonus from the sixth slot, but it can sometimes be the case. Or you may get better results by combining part of a set with Hamios (Hamidon enhancements), a common IO, or a proc. I think your best option in this case is probably six slotting a set, but it's hard to say conclusively.

Anyway, there's an explanation for Quills, and at the same time, and explanation of why you probably won't get a lot of WHY advice unless you specifically ask for it. It's a lot to explain!

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How does regen drop faster then I can toggle up?

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It's one of our super powers!

When Regen drops, it's often very fast. The line between perfect and dead is sometimes a fraction of a second of reaction time. Don't be surprised if I just suddenly faceplant out of nowhere if I'm on the ITF next weekend. Now, SO FAR, the Cimerorans haven't killed my main. But I've also never run an ITF, so it could easily get ugly.

Or if we run on test, I can bring Dark Melee/Super Reflexes instead, which sounds like it would be cruise control except for the autohit Nictus.

Still a 7 foot 90 degree cone. Just confirmed in game by going into the character creation system and showing the details for the power.

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Midnight Grasp probably gets the Hecatomb. Yeah, it would do more damage in Smite or Shadow Punch, but Midnight Grasp will probably need the recharge since you don't have Hasten.

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You really think the damage output will be sufficient without Soul Drain up most of the time?
I've been messing around in Mids making a build without Hasten, and I can get Soul Drain down to a 44s recharge. That means it will be down for 14 secs.

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Yeah, I think damage output will be sufficient. AVs regenerate, what was it, 94 hit points per second? You shouldn't have a problem beating that by enough to make decent progress.

If you don't like going slowly, you could focus more on offense (recharge) than defense. I think your percentage of successes would go down, but so would the time required for each attempt, and it might be more satisfying.

Quick reply to multiple posts to save time.

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I am an avid regeneration scrapper player and was thinking about a small buff to regeneration in the form of recharge debuff resistance and regeneration debuff resistance.

[/ QUOTE ]People that solo AVs need buffs.

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And yet, I've seen builds for /regen AV soloers.

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Scrapper AV soloing is completely irrelevant to intra-archetype balance concerns.

AV soling is just a line, survivability level X. It turns out that ALL the secondaries can achieve survivability level X.

If you know that 10 people all doing the same job at the same company all make more than $50,000 per year, does that tell you that their salaries are the same?

Nope. It tells you nothing about their comparative salaries.

That */Regen can solo some AVs tells you absolutely nothing about intra-archetype balance.

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So what you're saying is, nerf everyone until regen is good, then nerf regen?
I think any archetype that has a forum presence of AV soloists, TF soloists, and pylon soloists should stop trying to get dev attention.

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Ah, so since some forum scrappers can solo AVs, scrappers are ALL too powerful and therefore shouldn't worry at all about INTRA-archetype balance? Look, if scrappers can overperform compared to other archetypes, then yeah, nerf scrappers or buff other archetypes. I haven't seen that to be the case, though. I looked into making an AV soloing blaster at one point, then realized that it would be TOO EASY, so didn't bother. Controllers solo giant monsters, which are still well out of reach of scrappers. A large forum presence of min-maxers in one particular class doesn't mean that's the most powerful class. It might also just be the most challenging.

I just happen to like scrappers. I like beating things up face to face. I did that in another MMORPG where the scrappers were by far the weakest archetype. I do it here where they seem to be in pretty good balance. Hell, I do it in first person shooters, such as using a cheat code in No One Lives Forever 2 so that I could do most of the game using the scimitar instead of machine guns. It's just so much more visceral carving people up. Guts guts guts! Mwahahahahaha! Why are you looking at me like that?

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But my DB/Willpower... simply blows him out of the water and requires next to no thought process on my part beyond lining up combos. No remembering parry. No clicking reconstruction. No gauging if I need to MoG for this encounter. Nothing. No thought, what so ever, and he's still better at everything.

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Right. I think that's the issue. I don't think it's a big issue, in that some people LIKE an interactive secondary, so at best, I'd consider it only a minor drawback from a balance perspective. But it's still a minor drawback because interactivity gives a wider spread of performance, and therefore, given that peak performance is at best average, average performance is lower.

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In regards to builds using SOs, which this game is balanced around, Regeneration ranks as one of the top if not the top performing secondary for scrappers.

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In solo situations, this might be true. It's a great solo secondary even with just SOs. But I've had great success with the other secondaries as well. And Regen isn't so great on teams, I hear, since its mitigation doesn't scale up at all to match the threat.

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In short, unless your going for the insane stuff that was never intended, you do NOT need more then SO's and what /regen already has.

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Agreed, but completely irrelevant to intra-archetype balance concerns. Again, as with “can solo AVs”, you seem to just be defining a line of performance, and stating that Regen is over that line. Your line is more like “can handle non-insane content with SOs”. All scrappers are over that line, so this point is completely irrelevant to a discussion of intra-archetype balance.

And as buffs go, -regen resistance and -recharge resistance are VERY low on the totem pole. I suspect I'll barely notice the difference. So if Regen scrappers lag behind, they'll probably still lag behind. If they're currently average, they'll probably still be average. This is a tiny buff, more of a quality of life issue than anything.

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Would also love -KB in DA and FA.

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(I agree also^^)

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I think this is in a similar boat, yes. I see this as just a quality of life issue, and not much of an overall power level issue. There are so many was to plug this hole that this really won't make any difference in the overall power level of Dark Armor and Fire Armor characters. Since there are so many ways to plug it, I've never jumped on the bandwagon demanding it. But I sure won't complain if we get it. I mean, why not? What possible difference will it make other than making people happy?

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While this would be nice, at least the DA and FA -KB hole can be easily plugged with IOs. Regen has no such ability to cover the -regen and -recharge debuffs hole with IOs...

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Well, yes and no. You can add a whole lot of recharge or regeneration with IOs. You could easily call that plugging the hole. You could call Hasten plugging the recharge debuff hole. There are certainly options for dealing with it, and we all deal with it. So I'd say they're different sorts of issues, but not vastly different ones.

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With strictly SOs, Regen wipes the floor with most of its sibling armor sets.

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It does??? It's been a long time since I've leveled a Regen, but this strikes me as unlikely. It's a good armor set solo leveling with SOs. It might be the best, though I'm guessing the nod might go to Willpower, and it wouldn't surprise me if others were better as well. But even if it is the best, “wipes the floor”? I'd be shocked if it outperformed all the other scrappers I've leveled up by that kind of level. Maybe I need to level another one up, though, just to see. Like I said, it's been a while.

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softcapping SR with SOs seems to be unrealistic

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Agreed. I'm trying to figure out a no temps no inspirations SO only AV soloing build for Dark Melee/Super Reflexes. I'm not quite softcapped (44.1% melee, 43.1% ranged and AoE). I'm hoping it will be good enough, because yes, softcapping with SOs appears to involve too many other sacrifices to be viable.

I haven't planned one out, so you'll probably get a better answer from someone else, but I'll sketch out how I'd approach it.

I'd probably use Smite -> Shadow Punch -> Midnight Grap -> Smite -> Shadow Punch -> Siphon Life. Why not the top chain of Smite -> Midnight Grasp -> Smite -> Siphon Life? Well, the DPS difference isn't all that large, Willpower doesn't benefit from the recharge required for the better chain, and the heal from Siphon Life isn't as critical on a Willpower so it's OK for it to come less often. It'll cost an extra power choice and five slots, but I think that will still be less impact that trying to get all the recharge for the better chain.

I'd be shooting to soft cap typed defenses. It wouldn't surprise me if I had to back off a little from that, but I'd certainly be trying. The difficulty of the defensive challenge is part of why I'd be settling for the easier attack chain.

Hit points and regeneration are good. Grab what you can, but defense is still the priority.

Given the endurance recovery that's available from Willpower and Dark Melee, I'd probably use toggles to do a lot of the heavy lifting. Tough, Weave and Maneuvers for survivability. Tactics with a Gaussian set for some more defense. Maybe Assault if I could fit it in both power and endurance wise. Hurdle + Combat Jumping for my combat move. Health and Stamina. Skip Super Jump if necessary, but with Blessing of the Zephyr, you'll probably be better off with it.

Midnight Grasp probably gets the Hecatomb. Yeah, it would do more damage in Smite or Shadow Punch, but Midnight Grasp will probably need the recharge since you don't have Hasten.

[ QUOTE ]
Which is going to lead me to mentioning Werner's build misses both Slice and Whirling Sword, which are going to be a must if you head into AE for big boss mishes.

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Depends on what you mean by a must. Mine will do the job, just more slowly (i.e., bad for boss farming). But yeah, the builds I play tend to be focused at taking down single extremely hard targets without temps or inspirations and without much regard for the time it takes. They're not generalist builds, DPS builds or AoE builds. I agree that most people should at least squeeze in Whirling Sword, and quite possibly Slice.

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I'm no newb kid, just new to the game.

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I don't know who your calling kid, but Newb, Noob being new to the game is a Newb, no one called you a Noob. Why you put that I have do Ideal.

[/ QUOTE ]
First, I read it as “newb kid”, not “newb, kid”. The lack of a comma seems to mean that newb was an adjective here, not a noun. My guess, anyway.

And I could see writing that. I just started playing (insert other MMORPG name here) at gunpoint. I'm a total newb to that game, but I think there's a big distinction between being a newb to a specific game and a newb to the MMORPG genre, and that distinction could easily influence the type of answers you're asking for.

Also, I wasn't aware of the distinction between newb and noob. Guess I'm a MMORPG-speak newb.

Bah. I should have showed up, then. I kind of tuned out since there were so many people interested. I suppose it's been a while since I've farmed the wall in Cimerora, so I should reconfirm that I don't have issues with my Katana/Regen before volunteering. My Dark Melee/Super Reflexes would probably be a better choice for the ITF, but he's on Victory, not Virtue.

[ QUOTE ]
I've noticed that the typical Scrapper is an extremist, at least on the forums. I seem to notice a lot of min/max'ers on this board.

[/ QUOTE ]
Yeah, I think the min-maxers are VASTLY overrepresented on this forum. No idea how that came to pass, but it might explain why certain kinds of answers are usually easy to get here. Someone, and probably multiple someones, will have already spent days testing or buried in a spreadsheet working out the answer to your question. Also, there doesn't seem to be much guarding of any of that knowledge. It's like we're playing a game of king of the hill with the rules modified to see how many people we can fit at the top. I love this place.

[ QUOTE ]
And I'll let Werner extol the virtues of Katana.

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Eh, it's OK.

I see two main strengths of Katana. First, there's Divine Avalanche, and soft-capping your melee and lethal defense is a great thing to add to a lot of secondaries. Second, if you can soft cap without Divine Avalanche, you can put out some very impressive DPS.

Katana/Invuln would be somewhere in between, kind of giving you your choice of benefits. If your build isn't soft capped against only one enemy, or if your defense has been debuffed, the extra melee and lethal defense from Divine Avalanche would do you some good. Then when you're either safe or surrounded, you can switch over to pure DPS. You'll probably be looking for a high recharge build, since it's nice to have perma Dull Pain, and the DPS chain will need a lot of recharge.

[ QUOTE ]
Thanks. I suffer really bad forum search fu.

[/ QUOTE ]
I have it bookmarked, myself. Lots of good options in that thread.

Yes, that's the best DPS attack chain. Achilles' Heel doesn't stack with itself, so I'd just put the one in Gambler's Cut. However, the PvP resist proc does stack with Achilles' Heel, so go ahead and put it in Golden Dragonfly. I don't think there are any differences between the two, but I'm not online to check. You can easily look them up in the Auction House.

[ QUOTE ]
But see that is the thing they haven't encourage PvPing at all with the new enhancements, all they have done is encourage arena farming. That's it.

[/ QUOTE ]
As should have been obvious ahead of time. It's almost like they're admitting that PvP sucks so bad that they have to bribe people into playing against their will. But even that didn't work, because the devs have never heard of the concept of “perverse incentives”.

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[ QUOTE ]
Incinerate -> Greater Fire Sword -> Cremate

+237% recharge in Greater Fire Sword

[/ QUOTE ]

Jeeze what kind of recharge bonus do you need to get 237% in Greater Fire Sword?

[/ QUOTE ]
Figure 89% from Hecatomb, 70% from Hasten, so 78% from global bonuses. Five Luck of the Gamblers, five 5% bonuses and Hecatomb puts you at 72.5%. I'd probably grab another purple set for the other 5.5%, but there are certainly other options, some of which may be better. It's going to be pricey.

If only the attack chain is benefiting from that much recharge, I'd probably use Incinerate -> Scorch -> Cremate -> Scorch instead, but that's definitely a step down in DPS, so not really an answer to the question.

[/ QUOTE ]

I currently use Incinerate -> GFS -> Cremate -> FS and someone calculated that to be around 185 dps but I'd really like to find another chain that gives me more.

[/ QUOTE ]
Well, you're using the second-highest DPS chain of the ones I've looked at, so I think your only step up is to the big daddy. It also isn't much of a step up. To me, the main advantage isn't the DPS gain, but rather being able to drop an attack and recover some slots. The main disadvantage is that you'll use all those slots trying to get enough recharge to run it, so I'd probably only take that step if your build otherwise benefits from additional recharge.

Generally speaking, Spines isn't a boss soloer. It can do it, but just about anything else can do the job better. If you're planning on doing some crazy amounts of AoE, though, Spines is definitely your primary. I'd probably suggest Spines/Dark as being more survivable than Spines/Fire, with the edge going to Spines/Fire on damage output.

As an overall powerhouse, Claws/Super Reflexes is very popular, and capable of some very crazy things. Claws also gives you a nice mix of single target and melee damage. Great primary, but then, they're all great.

I don't have any good Spines or Claws builds on me, but we do play with a whole lot of over the top price no object builds around these parts, so I'm sure someone will have you covered.

A current favorite for no temps no inspirations AV soloing is Dark Melee/Shield Defense. It does some freakishly high single target DPS, and Soul Drain + Shield Charge is some pretty crazy AoE, even if it's a once every other group sort of thing. Also very survivable.

For AE bosses specifically, I might recommend Broad Sword/Shield Defense instead. Parry on top of Shield Defense will give you the extremely high melee defense that even souped up AE bosses would have a hard time punching through. Shield Defense also helps boost the comparatively low damage output of Broad Sword to a pretty reasonable range.

Edit: Still a work in progress, but I'll throw up the most recent iteration of my plan for my Broad Sword/Shield Defense. The empty slots and duplicate Steadfast Protection are for some PvP uniques. It focuses more on survival than doing damage, so it's probably not exactly the balance you're looking for. A better balance for your interests might be John Printemps' price no object BS/SD build in his guide.

Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.401
http://www.cohplanner.com/

[u]Click this DataLink to open the build![u]

Level 50 Magic Scrapper
Primary Power Set: Broad Sword
Secondary Power Set: Shield Defense
Power Pool: Fitness
Power Pool: Leadership
Power Pool: Fighting
Power Pool: Medicine

Hero Profile:
Level 1: Hack -- Mako-Acc/Dmg(A), Mako-Dmg/EndRdx(3), Mako-Dmg/Rchg(3), Mako-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(5), Mako-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(5), Mako-Dam%(7)
Level 1: Deflection -- HO:Enzym(A), HO:Enzym(17), LkGmblr-Rchg+(37), Ksmt-ToHit+(39), S'fstPrt-ResDam/Def+(40), HO:Ribo(50)
Level 2: Battle Agility -- HO:Enzym(A), HO:Enzym(13), Empty(48)
Level 4: True Grit -- Numna-Heal(A), Numna-Heal/EndRdx(7), Numna-Heal/Rchg(9), Mrcl-Heal(9), Mrcl-Rcvry+(19), RgnTis-Regen+(43)
Level 6: Swift -- Run-I(A)
Level 8: Parry -- Hectmb-Dmg(A), Hectmb-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(21), Hectmb-Acc/Rchg(21), Hectmb-Dmg/EndRdx(23), Hectmb-Dam%(23), HO:Enzym(25)
Level 10: Active Defense -- HO:Membr(A), HO:Membr(11), HO:Membr(11)
Level 12: Maneuvers -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A), LkGmblr-Def(13), LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(19), LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(46), HO:Enzym(50)
Level 14: Tactics -- GSFC-ToHit(A), GSFC-ToHit/Rchg(15), GSFC-ToHit/Rchg/EndRdx(15), GSFC-Rchg/EndRdx(17), GSFC-ToHit/EndRdx(37), GSFC-Build%(37)
Level 16: Against All Odds -- EndRdx-I(A)
Level 18: Health -- Numna-Heal(A), Numna-Heal/Rchg(39), Numna-Regen/Rcvry+(40), Numna-Heal/EndRdx(48), Empty(50)
Level 20: Stamina -- P'Shift-EndMod(A), P'Shift-EndMod/Rchg(25), P'Shift-EndMod/Acc/Rchg(31), P'Shift-Acc/Rchg(31), P'Shift-EndMod/Acc(34), P'Shift-End%(36)
Level 22: Phalanx Fighting -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A)
Level 24: Build Up -- HO:Membr(A), HO:Membr(36)
Level 26: Disembowel -- Mako-Acc/Dmg(A), Mako-Dmg/EndRdx(27), Mako-Dmg/Rchg(27), Mako-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(29), Mako-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(29), Mako-Dam%(31)
Level 28: Boxing -- Acc-I(A)
Level 30: Tough -- HO:Ribo(A), HO:Ribo(36)
Level 32: Head Splitter -- Armgdn-Dmg(A), Armgdn-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(33), Armgdn-Acc/Rchg(33), Armgdn-Dmg/EndRdx(33), Armgdn-Dam%(34), EndRdx-I(34)
Level 35: Shield Charge -- Erad-Acc/Rchg(A), Erad-Dmg(42), Erad-Dmg/Rchg(42), Erad-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(42), Erad-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(43), Erad-%Dam(43)
Level 38: Weave -- LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(A), LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(39), LkGmblr-Def(40), LkGmblr-Rchg+(48)
Level 41: Aid Other -- HO:Golgi(A)
Level 44: Aid Self -- Numna-Heal/EndRdx(A), Numna-Heal/Rchg(45), Numna-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(45), Mrcl-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(45), Mrcl-Heal/Rchg(46), IntRdx-I(46)
Level 47: One with the Shield -- S'fstPrt-ResDam/Def+(A)
Level 49: Grant Cover -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A)
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- Acc-I(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- HO:Micro(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Critical Hit



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