Werner

I was thinking of something more recent, but that's kind of where it all started. Some of it is surely out of date by now, but the general thrust of the pros and cons should still be accurate.

Right, which is why you shouldn't do it. But you can.

The 1.563% ranged defense, 3.125% AoE defense, 1.8% endurance and 2.25% hit points are all VERY useful. The set bonuses from Eradication are great for a Sword/Dark.

Stick with Gambler's Cut. There's nothing wrong with Sting of the Wasp in and of itself - damage per Arcanatime is similar to Gambler's Cut. However, Gambler's Cut slots perfectly into the best Katana attack chains (including the two different defensive chains you'll likely be using most with a Katana/Dark), and takes better advantage of procs due to its very fast activation. In particular, it's the ideal spot for an Achilles' Heel proc.

Edit: You might want to look at this thread for some Katana/Dark advice. There's an older thread with a lot more options being discussed, maybe from a couple months ago, but I'm too lazy to look for it. If you see Desmodos and I discussing pros and cons of soft-capping a Sword/Dark, you're probably in the right thread.

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=269547

I believe you're correct.

You do want Hack instead of Slash, assuming that's what you were saying. That's one of the things that's different between Katana and Broad Sword.

Here's mine. It's very playable. Positional and lethal soft cap with one DA, and about 75% with two, giving you some room for defense debuffs. Barrier should help as well. Similar resistance, slightly higher hit points. Better accuracy on Dark Regeneration, though still lowish. Similar but slightly-higher recharge. Better knockback protection, though still only 11 instead of 12, though with Hover it's not really a problem on the handful of occasions I've been knocked back as a result. Higher budget.

If you want good recharge, I'd drop defense down to 40%, relying on Barrier to get you to the soft cap when it's critical. Pick up Hasten and maybe a couple more recharge bonuses with the room that should create in the build. It might be a better approach in most situations. I made my build in I19 before Barrier was an option.

I think two can and should (Invulnerability, Regeneration) and two others can but shouldn't (Willpower, Shield Defense while One with the Shield is up). Did I miss some tricks?

...which then lets you mostly ignore defense debuffs.

I assume because "I monitor my regen rate on all of my melees".

Similarly, I monitor both defense and base defense on my melees. Base defense goes red under any defense debuff to give me an alert. Then it's easy to glance up and see where my defense is actually sitting and respond appropriately.

Because they play differently, and different people enjoy different things? Some people like fire and forget survivability. Some people like something with more active survivability.

What is the set supposed to be for? Passive regeneration? The Regeneration secondary hasn't been about passive regeneration in probably five years or more. I'm sorry it's misnamed, but the power set is what it is. Would you be happier if we called it "spastic clicky survivy thing" instead?

Look, I'm telling you what's possible at the top end. If people don't want to build it or play it that way, they don't have to. It's a game. Everyone should play it how it's fun for them. However, I don't see how anyone can continue to claim that Regen CAN'T hit a high level of survivability. It CAN, incarnate to hit or not. Someone may not know how, or may not have the budget, or may not have the necessary twitch reflexes, or may simply choose not to build or play that way. But that's not at all the same thing as the secondary being incapable of competitive performance and therefore needing a buff.

I'm not opposed to a buff. I'm just saying that "top end Regen survivability is teh suxxorz" or for that matter "I don't like having that many click powers" isn't likely to fly very well as an argument for one.

Edit: Here, I'll throw a bone to the buffers. I suspect that Regens DO die more frequently on incarnate trials than most other secondaries. They CAN be built so that this doesn't happen, but as I said, someone "may not know how, or may not have the budget, or may not have the necessary twitch reflexes, or may simply choose not to build or play that way". The devs, I believe, care a lot about AVERAGE performance, probably more so than peak performance. It may not matter that top end Regens are laughing at the incarnate trials if average Regens are getting slaughtered. If I was specifically looking for a buff, I'd be wanting the devs to do some data mining, with the expectation that they'll then SEE the supposed performance gap.

Arcanaville was responding to someone who talking about balancing around SOs. A point like that would likely not help the case of people wanting further Regeneration buffs. I believe that's why we're now talking about (I think) top end performance with all the bells and whistles.

Edit: Too slow. Post now irrelevant. Leaving it because I'm not a fan of deleting.

And so using Aid Self your SR is very likely at 2000+ DPS emitted, 1000+ DPS mitigated/healed. That isn't survivable in practice, but is with a perfect stream of damage and perfect timing.

Oversimplifying, my Katana/Dark regenerates and heals 155 DPS on top of soft-capped defense and 54% weighted damage resistance without Barrier.

155 / ((50%-45%)*(100%-54%)) = 6739 DPS emitted, or 3370 DPS damage mitigated/healed

Here are the full calculations for that and for my final proposed build from the top end Katana/Regen build thread. The builds are in the spreadsheet. You can plug in the enemy to hit at the top so that you can check incarnate trial survivability as well. Explanation for the spreadsheet is in the thread, 5-19-2011 7:01 PM and 5-20-2011 8:29 PM. And as I say there, "I know it's not user friendly. It grew over time. It was never something I sat down and designed for use, and now I'm so used to it that I have no motivation to make it easier. I swear that at work, my code is tight and elegant, my GUI is clean and beautiful, and the users have all the information they need at their fingertips, understood at a glance. I swear that my professional output looks nothing like this. "

And already discussed, these calculations significantly overstate what is achievable in the game at these levels of damage output. Massive damage doesn't come in a stream designed to exactly match my mitigation, and I don't manage to hit Dark Regeneration at 1 hit point time after time after time. But at heart they're your good old "immortality line" () calculations, making them the kind of calculations I think most people mean when they discuss what are essentially survivability numbers like 1000 DPS incoming damage.

Not enough parenthesis! My Fire/Shield concept build can only handle about 600 DPS, more when One with the Shield is up. It's enough for a RWZ challenge. Oh, wait... you said "if you can't" not "if you don't". Carry on!

Before MoG drops? No. Not the ones that challenge a high end build. Probably some minions, though. As you say, I can at least reduce the damage. Except for AVs and the like.

Again, before MoG drops? There's a big difference between "I can't kill the spawn in 15 seconds" and "I don't have the means to kill the spawn".

Incorrect. 1000 DPS, whether that's critter outgoing or player incoming, is easily survived on a high end build.

The things that dish out megadamage are AVs, crowds of uplevel bosses, giant monsters, gathering phase spawns when you end up solo, various other things. A RWZ challenge probably starts around 1000 DPS. Some of those you can at least reduce the damage below 1000 DPS quickly. Others you can't. A double RWZ challenge will be more than that, and six bosses are likely to last more than 10 seconds. Herding giant monsters will be more than that. Multiple AVs will be more than that. Possibly single monsters or AVs. So the things in the game that dish out megadamage are the very things that you can't put down in ten seconds.

We seriously MUST be defining 1000 DPS builds significantly differently. On paper (though certainly not in practice), my Katana/Dark will be an 8400 DPS build once I get my tier 4s. Against the incarnate soft cap, he's still 6600 DPS. Even with what I think your definition of DPS is, that's still a 3300 DPS Scrapper. How about Regeneration? The highest score from the recent high end Katana/Regen thread was about a 5500 DPS scrapper against the incarnate soft cap, or 2750 or so your way. Now, it doesn't work that way in practice. At those levels of incoming damage, discrete effects are probably MUCH more significant than these sorts of average survivability calculations. So the true survivability will be lower. But 1/2 that? 1/3 that?

In the evidence column, how much DPS do the monster island monsters do? On an earlier iteration of my build with what I calculate as around 6000 DPS survivability, I rounded up 4 and survived for about 10 minutes, then grabbed another two and survived another three or five minutes or something before they finally put me down. I didn't record it. I was just curious. It was my one and only go at it.

Now, my build is pretty extreme. But if I'm even a 3000 DPS Scrapper, 1000 DPS is easy if you know what you're doing.

Edit: Ah, here we go. Actual testing, and this is using the "would have hit you at 0% defense 0% resistance" definition of DPS, so double it for what I'm normally saying (enemy damage output). This is my Dark Melee/Super Reflexes, I think with an I12 build, maybe I13. The incoming damage was negative, which I have less resistance to, so it probably approaches being a 1000 DPS build when weighted by damage type. It would probably be easy to get quite a bit more than this these days, perhaps double or better. I wasn't trying to prove anything about how tough this Scrapper was, just that theory matches observation pretty well for the standard model of mitigation, at least at these damage levels. Oh, and the reason that observation was below theory at 45% defense is that I was unable to round up a big enough spawn to do that much damage. These were fairly low damage mobs, though, so it's easy enough to run into more damage than that in the game as a whole.

Edit 2: WAIT, this test was done WITHOUT USING SIPHON LIFE. I just stood there and took it. My survivability is MUCH higher than these numbers indicate. On the other hand, now that I'm thinking about it, I think I used damage output numbers instead of 0% defense 0% resistance numbers. Eh, whatever. It's still a 1000 DPS build however you define it, and it's easy to be much better than this these days.



Thank you. I'd assumed that was possible, but hadn't done it myself.