Werner

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Hack simply has substantially better DPA than anything else in the Broadsword set.

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Umm... what? I agree that Hack is a great attack, and when slotted in a build with some procs, it MIGHT have better DPA than other attacks. I agree that there are advantages to doubling up an attack, such as getting extra mileage out of a good proc, like a purple or Achilles' Heel. But just raw DPA? Head Splitter beats it, and Soaring Dragon isn't far behind.

Mids' average damage, Arcanatime:

74.60 DPA Head Splitter (187.1 damage in 2.508 seconds)
71.28 DPA Hack (112.9 damage in 1.584 seconds)
68.13 DPA Disembowel (134.9 damage in 1.980 seconds)
43.43 DPA Slash (68.8 damage in 1.584 seconds)
36.49 DPA Parry (57.8 damage in 1.584 seconds)

Head Splitter -> Hack -> Disembowel = 71.62 DPS at +293% recharge
Head Splitter -> Hack -> Disembowel -> Hack = 71.55 DPS at +305% recharge
Head Splitter -> Hack -> Disembowel -> Slash = 65.79 DPS at +172% recharge
Head Splitter -> Hack -> Disembowel -> Parry = 64.35 DPS at +172% recharge
Head Splitter -> Parry -> Hack -> Disembowel -> Parry = 59.58 DPS at +108% recharge

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You can manage to red zone both healing and damage with frankenslotting, but more people nowadays are more interested in the extra 3.75% defense from the 6 piece damage set bonuses than they are from eking an extra 21 hp/sec from Siphon Life.

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They are? Seems to me that there aren't many situations where an extra 3.75% defense to one position is going to do more for you than healing an extra 21 hit points per second.

Anyway, there's a good thread on frankenslotting Siphon Life here.

It's worth it. The defense numbers for Fire, Cold, Energy and Negative are pretty substantial. I also like to have at least some +perception in a build.

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The redraw is still baked into the powers, so using outside powers shouldn't effect its dps at all.

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It is? Just Spines, right? These days, my habit is to always have my "weapon" out before engaging in combat. Guess I'll still do that to stay in practice, but it's nice to know that it doesn't matter with Spines.

Looks like 785 if I did it "right".

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Also, is that slotting of Boxing very common? I never really thought of it as a serious part of any attack chain, and the stun never seems to on any mobs you really need it for.

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That slotting of Boxing is probably not uncommon in a billion influence DM/Regen build. What would be uncommon is actually USING Boxing in such a build. It's almost certainly just a set mule in this case.

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It's actually Damage Per Activation time. It's the damage dealt divided by the number of seconds the animation is (usually modified for Arcanatime). The dimension is damage/second.

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Yeah, the DPA reported by the game is per activation time. I use DPA to mean damage per Arcanatime.

See also Starsman's DPS charts.

Yeah, if we're doing two, I'd say Spines/Dark farming for a Fire/Super Reflexes. Spines/Dark is one of the best farmers. Spines/Fire is probably better, but more difficult. Fire/Super Reflexes is no temps no insps AV soloing on a budget, so you won't need to farm like a madman forever. And when you're all done, you'll have an AoE specialist that can tear it up on a team, and a single-target specialist that can destroy almost any hard target. Not a bad thing.

Not sure about which one scrapper would do both well, as they're kind of opposite ends of the spectrum. Something like Fire/Shield might be a good compromise?

For survivability? Hit points and regen. Endurance and recovery don't help you to survive, at least not directly, or not often. Running away to get your endurance back sucks, though. Generally speaking, the most effective way to tackle endurance problems cheaply is to get a lot of endurance reduction in your attacks.

I have billions. I dump at 1 influence because my time is more valuable than sorting through my garbage for pennies. If someone else wants to pull out the cans and recycle them, that's fine by me, but I'm not taking the time myself.

I also bid for stacks at well over the normal market rate. I'm not going bid creep to save a couple hundred influence when I'm trying to craft and sell a multi-million influence enhancement.

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If you have the chance...

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

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

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Assuming the +3% defense IO in the empty slot, from 1271 to 2907 depending on the number of targets in range of Dark Regeneration. I did get Hasten plugged in correctly this time, so that's not assuming perma Hasten either.

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Looks like I was in PvP mode, and didn't realize it since I don't know enough about brutes. So it actually goes from 863 to 1973 depending on the number of targets in range. Sorry about that.

Katana goes well with any secondary.

Katana/Willpower is commonly recommended for new players. Willpower is an easy to play and forgiving secondary that starts strong and stays strong through the whole game. Katana adds some heavy melee defense on top of that (Divine Avalanche), making a very strong combination. Here's a good guide if that sounds good to you. It says it's a Broad Sword/Willpower guide, but Katana and Broad Sword are close enough that you can substitute powers one for one and be in good shape. The differences are subtle enough to not matter at this point, and we can help you out further when they start mattering.

Fiery Aura is one of the weaker secondaries from a survivability standpoint, though with enough effort it can be made good. The main advantage in my mind is Fiery Embrace, which is a big damage boost. I don't think I'd make that my first scrapper, though.

Katana/Regen is a very good combination, but as it approaches the limit, Regeneration is a very active secondary that takes some quick decisions and precise timing to keep you alive. Not generally recommended as a first scrapper, but if you have basic MMO experience, and are willing to go to the school of hard knocks, it's a great combination.

Katana/Dark Armor is... well, it's complicated. Dark Armor is a great secondary, particularly on teams. And Katana gives it the serious defense boost it needs to really shine. So what's the problem? Well, some of the choices are counter intuitive (to save endurance, run your highest-endurance toggle!), a lot of the mitigation is unusual (stunned or cowering minions), one of the defensive powers hides you completely so you'll never see your costume again, it has a reputation for eating endurance, and so on. So good combination, but not one I'd recommend to a first timer.

Katana/Invulnerability is VERY good in its element (fighting dozens of smashing/lethal enemies in melee range), merely decent outside of its element, and has a serious Achilles' heel to psionic damage. It's fairly straightforward, though, so it's a pretty good scrapper to cut your teeth on.

Katana/Super Reflexes would probably be a very good starter set. Super Reflexes is fire and forget simple, like Willpower. It just goes about things differently, by keeping you from being hit. Normally, the weakness of Super Reflexes is that it takes a long time to layer all your defenses up to the point where you're in good shape. The great thing about Katana is that its defense stacks on top of Super Reflexes, so it fills in the defensive hole while you're leveling. Very good top end power as well, and relative cheap to turn into a hard core no temps, no inspirations archvillain soloer in the end game if that's an interest for you. (Mind you, the others can do that as well, but usually at greater expense.)

And you can't use a shield with Katana, so I guess that's it!

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I didn't run the numbers, but since two mobs cap the healing it didn't seem likely that it could go from 1271 to 2907. Twice the regeneration can't lead to three times the survivability. Or is the 1271 number with no mobs in range?

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I didn't bother with no mobs in range. I figured you'd always be attacking at least one of the targets that's attacking you.
One mob heals 723.4 hit points, two mobs heal 1446.8 hit points, three mobs heal 1979 hit points. You're basically getting one heal for each mob, not a percentage boost from each mob. So in a sense, it doesn't cap at 100% heal. It caps at healing all of your hit points.

Now I could be wrong, but it definitely appears on screen as one green number for each mob, and I'm pretty sure I've gone from almost dead to fully-healed. It's part of what makes it one of the best heals in the game.

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I'm guessing you're not capping the Dark Regeneration heal at 100%?

An interesting number for healing sets is to see how much damage they can take between each heal without accounting for the heal. If that number is lower than the infinite DPS, that number is more interesting in my opinion. In this case it's 2142 (converted to Wernerscore).

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I'm capping Dark Regeneration at healing your own hit points. You obviously can't heal more than that. So the assumption is that you lose all your hit points while it recharges, then right when it hits 0, you heal them all again, somehow miraculously avoiding death. If that's the same cap that you're using, then I can check my numbers again.

Dark Melee is a very good soloing primary. It specializes in single target damage, survivability and has a lot of useful tools.

It's also one of those primaries that goes well with just about everything. While you can certainly do it, I'm not sure that Regen or Dark Armor are ideal first secondaries. Regen's survival depends a lot on proper timing and use of its click powers, which can take some experience, though the only way to get that experience is to play it. I just worry that the learning curve might turn you off. Dark Armor also plays a little strangely, has some counterintuitive aspects, and has a reputation for being endurance hungry. It's all manageable if you know what you're doing, but it might be a bit much for your first scrapper. Also, Dark Armor really shines on teams, so may be a bit of a waste solo.

Willpower is a commonly-recommended first secondary. It blooms early and doesn't take a lot of effort. You just toggle on and go, and it sits there quietly in the background keeping you alive. And while it's probably serious overkill, between Dark Consumption, Quick Recovery and Stamina, you would probably never have endurance trouble, which tends to be a problem for people new to the game who haven't worked out how to deal with endurance.

Dark Melee/Shield Defense is the current flavor of the month for powergamers, but it does take substantial investment to get to those crazy good levels. I'm sure it plays just fine without all the investment, though, so it's a possibility.

Really, anything would work though. One of the good things about scrappers is that there really aren't any bad combinations.

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Not to derail things, but in looking over numbers I'm coming to the conclusion that Tactics is actually a better choice than Focused Accuracy since FA got the nerfbat. Am I all wet there?

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My vote goes to Tactics for two main reasons - it buffs the whole team, and it's cheaper on endurance. But Focused Accuracy still has a couple major advantages - it won't burn a power pool, and it has that nifty debuff resistance.

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It might be the worst scrapper secondary.

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MA is a Primary Powerset, not a secondary

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Doh!

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If you have the chance...

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

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

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Assuming the +3% defense IO in the empty slot, from 1271 to 2907 depending on the number of targets in range of Dark Regeneration. I did get Hasten plugged in correctly this time, so that's not assuming perma Hasten either.

It might be the worst scrapper secondary. But unless we're grading on a curve, that probably means a B+ instead of an A, because all scrapper primaries are good. Martial Arts is fine, and at least on the forum, it seems like a lot of people play them.

I don't have one myself, but I can give the pros and cons a shot. For pro, it has style. Who wouldn't want to kick bad guys in the face? And it can do decent single target damage. For cons, the secondary effects don't really work well together, and AoE damage is a bit lacking. If neither the pros nor cons sounded very significant, that's because I don't think they are. It's just a basic scrapper primary.

Depends on what you're looking for. Here's my leveling build to now (currently 36). I'm not sure if the slot levels are correct, but the power choices and number of slots are.

I don't recommend using it directly, but rather just farming it for information. This was more of a proof of concept. I wanted to show that not only could you hit the soft cap to all positions by level 36 using only a single IO, but that it would also be playable.

And it was playable. Pretty strong, actually, at least once I got past the terrible teens. Minor but not serious endurance trouble. But it was more like playing a tank due to the low damage output of only having the three early attacks.

Outside of showing what's possible, you'll very likely be better off and have more fun taking some of the stronger attacks and fitting in a travel power, and just delaying the soft cap into the 40s some time. It would also be a good idea to frankenslot your attacks when endurance starts to be a problem.

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Eh, I've been bragging about Regen since I started posting on the forum. So far, the only changes since then have been buffs.

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You're assuming anyone ever listens to you.

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It's probably the opposite. Nobody does, so there hasn't been an issue.

Besides, Regen is hardly king of the hill or flavor of the month. It's a great secondary, but so are... well... all the other secondaries.

For leveling purposes, I'm guessing that hitting the melee soft cap early and easily is more valuable than the heal from Siphon Life. I can't argue with Dark Consumption, but I will say that I just haven't had serious endurance issues on mine. It was just a matter of taking Stamina and frankenslotting my attacks, nothing expensive.

I can only imagine the awesomeness of Against All Odds + Soul Drain + Shield Charge, though.

I'd guess Spines/Dark for the highest contribution to a large team. Big AoE, stunned or feared minions, everything else slowed.

I almost never play on large teams, though, so I could be off base.

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Actually, Claws/regen does really well against Vahz...

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OK, the First Rule of Regen is you do not brag about Regen.

I still remember the old days when Regen got nerfed five issues in a row.

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Eh, I've been bragging about Regen since I started posting on the forum. So far, the only changes since then have been buffs.

More bragging! Buff Regen!

(But yeah. I stopped playing for six months after dealing with nerfs every issue. I just couldn't take it any more.)