Werner

I'm pretty certain you wouldn't want to add Dark Blast to a Katana attack chain due to the redraw, though I haven't done any number crunching to be certain. It's more of an assumption I made to the point of never even trying weapon chains with pool attacks.

Just a quick note – anything level 50 or above will drop purples, I believe. No need to hunt level 54 Rikti unless you're enjoying it.

Broad Sword/Regen and Broad Sword/Willpower have very comparable survivability. I think it's a matter of how active you want to be in your own survival. If you just want to toggle on and concentrate on killing, go with Willpower. If you like more control over your own survival, with both the highs and lows that accompany that, you might enjoy Regen more, but it can be a school of hard knocks.

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Maybe I'm expecting too much... But at what level does SR start to shine?

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I'd say by the 20s it's playable, and it starts getting good in the 30s. That's been my experience, anyway.

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Ummmm, I always thought it was a bit more common than I guess others here thought. I've solo'd plenty of AV's with my controller, obviously some are much easier than others, but then, its much easier to do it with a controller, or at least I think so. If you can do it with another AT, thats great, at least you know how to use your toon.

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I haven't played controllers, but my understanding is that you're correct. I think scrappers get a reputation for it because we're crazy enough to try against the odds and vocal about our successes, not because it's the best AT to get the job done.

I'm of the opinion that if it's worth using an attack, it's worth six slotting it.

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/Regen - A lot of self heals
/SR - Toggle up and prepared to barely get hit
/WP - This is awesome

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And excellent summary.

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Is 300% including what is in each power?

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Nope. 100% base + 206.3% global + 89.9% enhancement = 396.2% recharge in Ablating Strike, for instance.

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I generally play single-target specialists, so I believe I get XP faster on invincible. Even if I don't, it's more fun playing on invincible, at least for me. I think a lot of people play at level 4 for the XP.

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That to me is disproved by how many people tell me to raise the difficulty to 5 for the "uber xp". Course they then get mad and quit when the team's makeup can't handle +3's and +4's.

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Heh, LOL. Yet more reasons I either solo or team with friends.

I generally play single-target specialists, so I believe I get XP faster on invincible. Even if I don't, it's more fun playing on invincible, at least for me. I think a lot of people play at level 4 for the XP.

Or a handful of enemies with to hit buffs. Generally speaking, 45% to 48% is considered plenty in PvE, with occasional weaknesses.

If you run Architect Entertainment missions, a lot of enemies have to-hit buffs.

But yes, higher than even level minions get an accuracy modifier of sorts, not a to-hit modifier. They only get a to-hit modifier if they're over 5 levels higher than you.

It's hard for me to say how long it takes me to hit 50 these days because now almost all of my toons are level pacted, and generally, one player or the other is more active. I'm thinking about 150 hours. But that's solo, and not focusing particularly hard on XP.

He might have been on a shields superteam over double XP weekend. Can't get hit due to crazy levels of defense, saturated Against All Odds, tearing apart +5s, I could see it happening. I was on a dedicated team of a tanker and two fire/fire blasters that I think hit 50 in about 100 hours, and that's despite doing a whole lot of missions. Had it been double XP weekend, and had we been really concentrating on it, we might have hit 50 in three days.

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It worked out just fine for the 3 days it took to get to 50

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This statement alone is a counter-endorsement for your recommendation. It suggests that your playstyle is radically out of touch with what the vast majority of players are experiencing.

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Or it suggests that his approach is radically superior and is what allowed him to hit 50 in 3 days.

There's a bit of a point to it with Shield Defense on a big team. You'll be surrounded by a whole lot of enemies, so Against All Odds will be giving you a big damage buff, so damage slotting will be less effective in a sense. It's kind of like brutes running around a full fury. I'm sure there are some builds where dropping under the ED cap on damage in exchange for recharge slotting is worth it, and it may well be that Silverado's was one of those cases. I generally wouldn't accuse Silverado of not knowing what he's doing given all he's accomplished on so many different toons.

But I do think that in the vast majority of cases, slotting damage will be a better idea. And that's why I qualified my advice with “unless you really really know what you're doing and why you're doing it.”

I have a hover tank and hover brute right now, both low level. Both hover fast enough for it to be totally viable in combat, and one with just the default slot with a flight speed DO. I have the E key bound to swap back and forth between Hover and Fly, so I can move around the map quite fast, then go immediately back into Hover.

If you can stand being a floating dustball of doom, I'd go that route. If not, and you can afford the pools, no reason not to have both Combat Jumping and Hover. Combat Jumping is almost free for the endurance. I'd probably stick with the default slot in both, or maybe one extra in Hover for both flight speed and endurance, at least until the late game when slots become plentiful.

That said, I three-slotted my hover tank for flight speed immediately. I'm going for fun rather than numerically optimal on him.

Repeating what's been said for emphasis.

No, not a good idea. Now with set IOs, you can ED cap your damage and get a lot of recharge, so that can be worth it. But don't do it with regular enhancements unless you really really know what you're doing and why you're doing it.

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You could probably get to around 200% global recharge bonus but not without making some huge sacrifices to your build.

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Actually, we're poking around at 200%+ global recharge Dual Blades/Super Reflexes builds over here. There are some compromises that make it probably not worth it, but the latest iterations have the majors – soft cap and Aid Self.

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306.3 With Aid Self and softcapped. Empty spot in tough is for PvP uinque and PvP proc for Sweeping Strike. Best I could do.

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While it's fun trying to eliminate the gap, again, I'm not sure I'd bother getting closer and closer in practice. You knocked an extra 0.02 seconds off the gap by slotting five Kismets in Lucky, for instance. Looking at the build more holistically, I really think there would be better things to do with those slots.

Still, you HAVE indeed eliminated the gap if we include the base empowerment buff. That IS pretty awesome. Nice job.

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How do such amazing single-target damage dealing builds fare in team play?

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Although AoE probably rules the day on teams, I believe Shred Monkey reported great success while teaming. I imagine that he got good at positioning for Sweeping Strike.

Another possibility for a more team-oriented DPS build would involve swapping some slotting around and chaining Blinding Feint -> Sweeping Strike -> Ablating Strike. Put the Gladiator proc in Sweeping Strike. I'm showing that at about 5% lower DPS at the levels of recharge we're talking about, BUT you do Sweeping Strike more often, and it has a triple stack of Blinding Feint on it. Also, it tops out at 355% recharge, which is to say that when speed boosted, it'll do better DPS than the other chain on top of the better AoE.

Well, I'm a big fan of Katana/Regen, but Katana/Super Reflexes has a lot going for it. In the early portions of the game, before Super Reflexes has had a chance to bloom, Divine Avalanche will smooth out all the rough spots. And in the late game, you can drop it in favor of hitting the very high DPS that Katana is capable of.

Frankly, the biggest difference might be how the sets FEEL. Katana/Regen is a very active set with a lot of micromanagement, at least when the going gets tough. Katana/Super Reflexes would be a lot more toggle up and go.

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See, For me, what makes AV soloing worth bragging about is the fact you've achieved enough Damage output, enough Survivability AND enough End Recovery.

Miss any one of those three and it's not possible. (without insps at least)

So coming full circle, I just don't think an SO build could pull off all three, but it could come close, very close.

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I believe DM/Regen could do it. I might try to make an all-SO build in build slot 2 just to try it. I know way back in the day my DM/Regen soloed Maestro as an AV, although it took forever, and that was back in 2006 long before inventions (but also before AVs were made more resistant to tohit debuffs I believe). Not the toughest AV in the world, but I think the most important point is that over a very long fight I managed to not run out of endurance, which is one of the sticking points for scrappers with enough damage in theory.

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Hear that, Umbral? Now you GOTTA solo an AV using only SOs!

Any scrapper can solo AVs if you build for it and throw enough money at it.

As far as specific recommendations, what Broken Prey said.

That hasn't been my experience. Invincible (without AVs) is WAY easier than AVs in my experience.

Getting rid of the gap just isn't that critical to your DPS, and you can get a lot more out of the build if you make a few compromises. But yeah, I DO kinda like the look of Laevateinn's build. Might be a nice base to play with.

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An idiot thread by an idiot OP who is incapable of realizing the effect of debuff resists.

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Agreed. I spend most of my time playing redside, but I know if theres ever a need to discuss numbers, you come to the scrapper board. Werner in particular added something nice to the discussion.

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I'm not sure if walking in, unzipping and waving my ePeen around counts as "adding something nice". *chuckle* More like wallowing in the mud.

I think the other point in my post is valid, though. If the OP really does suspect a bug, it's easy enough to document it using the real numbers or Herostats, and send it to the devs.