Werner

If I were building an end-game Super Reflexes, these days I'd shoot for 60% defense or so. Mind you, there are lots of team buffs. I am at least frequently over the minimum necessary starting at 45% even. Heck, I'm frequently over 100% defense. Just not often enough that I'd want to count on it.

The counter argument, I'd think, is that for those few times you aren't massively buffed, carrying purples covers the gap. I think loading up on purples is standard practice. So there's no reason to wreck your damage output or other aspects of your build chasing an exact defense figure that, in a league, may be nearly meaningless.

Edit: Also, based on my experience so far, the two most important factors in success are teamwork and knowing what to do, particularly on the Lambda Trial. Your having 45% vs. 59% defense is pretty insignificant in comparison. Of course uber builds help, but lack of uber builds probably isn't nearly as detrimental as doing the wrong things or failing to do the right things.

Mind you, in the temp power collection phase of Lambda, the groups very frequently seem to get a bit scattered, which is very dangerous. Being able to survive solo, at least for long enough to get back to the group or vice versa, is quite useful. I suspect that will be less of a problem over time. People will probably eventually memorize a pattern, and everyone will just go the same way every time. Not sure, though. Rules like "follow your lead Tanker" sound great on paper, but when your lead Tanker takes the wrong bank of elevators and gets completely separated from the group, you kind of have to improvise. I seem to be very off topic. I'm going to shut up now.

Not so far as I know. You can convert shards to threads, but it's only the threads (and salvage) that you need.

Finally have a T3 Barrier Partial Core Invocation slotted. Haven't had a chance to try it out yet.

It's not a high DPS chain, but Katana's two Divine Avalanche chain fires 8 attacks in 10.43 seconds. How long does the debuff last? Same 10.25 seconds as Achilles' Heel? How fast are the fire ticks?

Also, I'm running Death Shroud on my Katana/Dark. That ticks every 2 seconds, and my understanding is that every tick gets a chance to proc instead of every 10 seconds. If so, and if the debuff lasts for the 10.25 seconds, I'm getting about 13 attacks in the debuff window.

Ah, there's the duration, at least quoted from Arcanaville from an old post, 10 seconds for radial. Close enough.

Let's see, how do I calculate my average debuff? Well, since I can't do maths and I'm also lazy, I'm ignoring the cap for the moment. So over simplistically, that's 13 * 25% * 2.5% = 8.125%. It's probably a little less in practice since there's a reasonable chance of the cap applying now and then. So let's say my average debuff is around 7.5%. With a maximum of 10%, I don't see any reason for me to be using the reactive core. It's not worth trading all that DoT for another 2.5% debuff.

As for how much the DoT will be stacked, I don't know how fast the ticks come, so can't really say, and the 20% chance of cancel each tick lowers the overlap further. Still, seems like there's a good chance I'll have a lot of them stacked with a 75% chance of each and a very fast rate of chances to proc. Thank you, damage aura.

Yeah, I have a tier 1 interface and haven't even unlocked the others. Only one character. But I haven't been playing much, honestly.

I don't think it's any secret how you do it fast, though. Just run the trials over and over with a good group. Bam bam bam. Being rich can speed it up even further, though it seems unnecessary, and the prices seem kind of ridiculously high.

For me, it's the Umbral Rectangle. I hadn't thought to visualize survivabilty that way, even though that's what the math is essentially doing - computing the area of a rectangle. Then Umbral said it, and I was like, "Ah, great way to describe it!" I'd also be surprised if people weren't talking about it that way before Umbral too. That's just where I heard it.

The only time I refused IOs was when I made a second SO-only build on Werner to try to take down AVs on only SOs. I never succeeded, but I tried a handful of times, and made enough progress in several cases that I'm convinced it's possible with persistence. I just didn't persist, so it never happened.

In other words, I can see doing it for a different kind of challenge play. Refusing to use inspirations or temp powers is also shooting yourself in the foot, and a lot of us do it a lot of the time. I'd definitely make my SO-only build a second build, though, just like I often DO use inspirations. But that's me.

Ah, but Ageless CORE doesn't have the debuff resistance, right? So there's no point for me, then. I'd be using Radial, which means "only" filling my blue bar every two minutes.

Yeah, I was eyeing Void Radial, but hadn't thought anything through yet. On quick glance, it did look best from a survivability standpoint while still doing good damage. Also thematically appropriate, though the overriding theme on my Katana/Dark is "whatever works".

Noooooo!

That'll do.

The things I still don't know about this game could fill a book. One written by Arcana.

OK, being able to use it reactively makes Ageless at least a lot more competitive. For the sake of argument, let's also say that I can lean on both the endurance and recharge (Conserve Power) to replace the Cardiac Alpha (questionable, I'd need to calculate). Maybe Musculature Radial's boost to endurance recovery would be enough to make up the difference assuming there is one, giving me a little more damage. Damage seems like the last thing I'll need to buff at full I20 spec. Nerve won't be very useful since I don't have much in the way of defensive powers, just defense bonuses. So we'd be looking at probably Spiritual Core. If there's an endurance shortfall, hopefully the recharge from it and Ageless will get Conserve Power to take care of it. I get an average debuff resistance of 32, but I'd be using it reactively, so average would be lower, but actual utility would probably be higher than that indicates. Dark Regeneration would on average recharge in, I think, 10 seconds instead of 12 seconds, and at least if facing a single target (rare) would heal for more. Plus better regeneration from the Alpha. However, I lose a fair bit of resistance that I already have, and don't have a response to to-hit buffs, only to defense (and other) debuffs.

As far as Barrier not being able to pull you out of a hole, I would only ever be in that deep a hole if I wasn't paying any attention. Moment of Glory, for instance, has I think NEVER failed me if I use it correctly. Incorrectly would be hitting it way too late, or using it against psionic enemies. Ooops! Anyway, inattention in a huge mob of high level defense debuffers could still get me killed. But I think as long as I'm paying attention and Barrier was available, there would be no problem.

On the surface, Ageless sounds like just what I need. My main weakness has been defense debuffs.

But while I could always slot a different alpha for other benefits, my Cardiac Core has my endurance needs covered right now, and I like the extra damage resistance. Debuff resistance isn't useful as a response to existing debuffs, so would have to be used ahead of time, so just put on auto, essentially. So then I just hope I'm at the first part of the cycle when the trouble starts. Maybe it helps a lot, maybe a little, maybe not at all. Extra recharge on Dark Regeneration is always nice, of course.

I'm honestly thinking Barrier Core Epiphany. Don't put it on auto. Keep it in reserve. When defense debuffed (or otherwise in big trouble), hit it. Moment of Glory is the answer to everything on my Katana/Regen, so I imagine Barrier with its bigger numbers and lingering effects would serve my Katana/Dark just fine. I've also been pushing my resistance fairly hard in my build. I'll have 30 seconds of capped smashing/lethal/fire/cold/negative and psionic resistance, while Energy and Toxic will both be over 60%. Even the lingering +7.5% and +5% should noticeably reduce incoming damage.

Rebirth would be nice for the extra hit points, which is functionally similar to resistance, but I think straight resistance will be better. And while I'd be happy with some regeneration, I have plenty of healing in Dark Regeneration. I think I'd rather just take less damage.

I need to see more real numbers on this stuff, though. Like I don't know the recharge on everything, and whether your global recharge affects it. And what I'll probably do is copy over to test and try them all out once I have enough to get one of them. But there's more to it than even testing, since you can actually build around some of these things, like I built around the T4 Cardiac.

Anyway, I'm slow. I don't even have tier 1 in this stuff. Heck, I think I've only unlocked one of the slots. I should play tonight.

I agree that it would probably be best for the team for the lead Tanker or Brute to just fix situations like that. But in this specific case, the Tanker and I know each other and each other's builds. So there are many possibilities for what went through his head, like:

• "Werner's got that room covered. Let's move on."
• "Well, that's what you get for charging into a room before the Tank, dummy. FOLLOW THE TANK. Don't lead the tank, FOLLOW."
• "I bet Werner will scream like a girl if I stick him in that room all alone. Hmmm, do my Tankerly duty or... Yeah, it's worth it. All, yours, Werner!"

We're evil and used to each other, so I didn't even think to get upset.

Yeah, sorry. I got it, and I'll get to it. What time I've had recently has gone to I20 and commenting on the I20 stuff.

Yeah, believe me, I wasn't soloing on purpose. Didn't mean to make it sound like I'm all "Look at me, I'm soloing Lambda! Woooo!" *chuckle* I prefer a Tanker take the aggro so I can focus on damage and preserve my inspirations for later. It was a small team each time, there were communication failures, deaths, and in one of the two cases, a huge mass of enemies in a doorway that I somehow got through and then everyone else decided not to bother I guess. There were two containers in the room, so I chugged some inspirations and set to work. It worked out, but I recognize it's far from the ideal strategy.

I just checked in game and I'm still 95% DDR. No incarnate sources of DDR, just some overslotting like you guessed.

You mean the one Umbral created and Val Blademaster played? No idea about the thread, but I have several versions of it saved. I'm just not sure which is which. But I THINK this is the original, the one Val actually played when he soloed four AVs at once back in I think I15, no temps no insps.

These days, it simply doesn't look all that impressive as a build, but it was great for its time.

It wouldn't surprise me if the extra slot was for the Gladiator's Armor. Was that available in I15? Perhaps Mids' hadn't been updated at the time if so. Otherwise, I'm not sure what it is.

Eh, you have reason to vent. I was just totally an *** to someone refuting a point he didn't even make, and while I think that sort of insulting tone is rare on these boards, I'm sure it happens a lot more than we'd like to think.

"Sacrifice anything and everything to hit the soft cap," is often bad advice. It's often GOOD advice too, but certainly not always, and particularly on a low budget with a secondary that doesn't have much defense to start with. If you don't know what you're doing, you'll probably create a horrible mess following this standard advice. Even if you do know what you're doing, you're going to be making some big compromises. Some of us understand and accept those compromises. But it doesn't mean were strictly right in any sense, even if our builds might be more survivable as a result of those compromises. Our builds will have other problems, problems that many other people might consider unacceptable. Desmodos, for instance, a huge expert in Dark Armor, would probably HATE my Katana/Dark Armor's build.

Our mathematical models that say "defense is king" also tend to ignore some very important factors, such as your ability to drain all the endurance of what you're fighting, and thus drastically reduce the rate of incoming damage. I know I don't account for that in my own survivability models. That's just something I'd keep in mind when interpreting the resulting numbers, "Well, sure, it SAYS the survivability is only 1/2 this alternative, but I also know that after a brief period, I'm not going to be getting hit much because they'll have no endurance." This very prominently shows up as an issue with my handling of hit points, which the model values ONLY for their contribution to regeneration, even though they have much more value than that in terms of surviving the kind of spike damage that occurs when facing the kinds of tough enemies that I'm calculating survivability for.

Player skill I think definitely plays a factor. I'll guess that ArcticFahx is a better player than I am. I don't think I could have done an ITF only dying a few times with his build, even after I got back into the practice of Regen (I'm very out of practice).

I agree that we're taking a plow horse and turning it into a race horse. It's just my opinion that converted plow horses can make the best race horses. *chuckle*

But this I think deserves a more specific answer:

Quoting myself from another thread:

Now, yes, overly simplistic analogy is overly simplistic. But I think there's MUCH more than merely a kernel of truth in this case. I really do think this is a pretty accurate way of describing the basics of survivability and why we do what we do with Regens (primary focus on recharge, secondary focus on defense). Also, I'd always recommend Tough and Resilience on a Regen. You don't have to slot Resilience, but I'd slot and use Tough. On most Regen builds I'd say that's more important than Weave.

LOL! Yeah, I suppose so. Killing enemies is often the best defense.

Hmmm, I'm really not familiar with the various defenders. Well, Liquefy looks like a big -ToHit, but it's on a big recharge, so certainly wasn't permanent. You get a bunch of resistance, but I wouldn't think it would make enough difference. I'm sure the heals added up, but in my mind wouldn't make up for being at 10% defense if you really weren't getting fortitude buffs. I guess I'm pretty impressed.