Werner

Ah, here's the thread with the budget build I was remembering:

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=249133

Edit: Scroll down to the final build with the last few tweaks by Iggy. That's my favorite of the bunch, in any case, but Ramia did a very good job putting the main thing together.

Well, the fight strategy with Katana/Dark is fairly basic. Run in with Build Up, hit Divine Avalanche and start chaining your attacks. Hit The Lotus Drops when you can, and let that and Death Shroud pick away at the cowering minions while you take out the harder targets. Be ready to hit Dark Regeneration if your hit points are tanking, but don't hit it too early. For AVs, if they aren't too dangerous, run Death Shroud and turn off Cloak of Fear once the minions go down to save endurance. Heal off of just the AV, which means just a partial heal. For more dangerous AVs, turn off Death Shroud, kill any bosses or lieutenants, and use the cowering minions to get a full heal as needed.

If you have the influence for it, I'd soft cap positional defense, use Cloak of Fear instead of Oppressive Gloom (at the soft cap, OG will probably do more damage to you than it prevents), and not use Touch of Fear. With an unlimited budget, you can do something like this:

Recharge, recharge, more recharge, and defense. Perma Dull Pain is a "must". Take Tough and Resilience, but you can't really boost resistance much outside of that (well, Shield Wall, but that's 2 billion). Defense can be substantially improved through pool powers and IOs, though, even while focusing on recharge.

If this is for PvP, I'm no PvP expert so I'll reserve judgment. But for PvE, the build is horrible.

You should start by reading up on Enhancement Diversification (ED).

http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Enhancement_Diversification

The TL;DR version is don't slot more than three of the same enhancement in a power.

And again for PvE, here's my standard "Regen on SOs" boilerplate:

“There are definitely other approaches, but here's what I'd consider a basic plan for the Regeneration secondary using SOs or common IOs:

• Fast Healing at 1, 3 heals
• Reconstruction nice and early, 3 heals, 3 recharges
• Dull Pain when or shortly after when available, as there is a lot to squeeze in at that level, 3 heals, 3 recharges
• Integration at 16, 3 heals, possibly 1 endurance reducer
• Resilience when and if you can work it in, 1 resist
• Instant Healing when or shortly after when available, 1-3 recharges, no heals unless you're swimming in slots
• Skip Revive
• Moment of Glory when or shortly after when available, 3 recharges
• Hasten when convenient, 3 recharges
• Tough when convenient, 3 resists, 1 endurance reducer
• Slot Health when convenient, 3 heals
• Quick Recovery when the default slot in Stamina isn't enough. 1 endurance modifier at first, add 1 or 2 more as necessary
• Slot Stamina only after slotting Quick Recovery. 1 endurance modifier at first, add 1 or 2 more as necessary"

If it were me, I'd also try to get some basic defense, but it will use up even more power and pool choices. Combat Jumping or Hover, but don't worry about slotting for defense. Weave with 3 defense. Maneuvers with 3 defense. The Steadfast Protection unique in Resilience or Tough. With even-level SOs, that will give you 14.3% defense to all. Not great, but not bad."

Not so sure about the whole Quick Recovery vs. Stamina thing as I haven't leveled a Regen since inherent fitness. My thinking is that you're almost certainly going to need Quick Recovery. That being the case, it's better to slot it first, as you might not need the extra slots in Stamina. Doesn't matter much for a respec build like yours, but I thought I'd mention it.

It of course gets more complicated with Hasten, Dark Consumption, Conserve Power and so on. I'd think in terms of taking the Hasten crash, then needing to make it to the next Dark Consumption or Conserve Power. On the other hand, I'd probably calculate Dark Consumption as if I only had one target, so it wouldn't fill you to full. It might be good enough to time average its contribution in that case and just try to get from one Conserve Power to the next. That's assuming Conserve Power gets you back to full, which isn't always the case either. And it might be better to assume worst case scenario on Dark Consumption timing in relationship to Conserve Power. If you have the Panacea proc, that one has its own calculation. If you want the cardiac alpha, everything gets even uglier.

I've done no calculations on Kinetic Melee, so I know nothing. But I'd have expected it to be higher in the pylon thread by now if it was going to be a Dark Melee beater. But it wouldn't surprise me if in many situations it does outperform Dark Melee.

Fitness is inherent now, so you don't need to take those powers. I'd really, really want Hasten. Electric/Shield is kind of centered around long recharge PBAoEs. You want those back faster. Shield Defense's defense debuff resistance is centered around Active Defense recharging in around 60 seconds. You want that back faster. I assume you've chosen to not splurge on Hamios, but just in case you weren't aware, slotting Membranes in Active Defense will further boost your defense debuff resistance.

Pets have 75% to hit, so the soft cap to them is 70%. There are a lot of pets in AE, such as everything for a Mastermind. If I were playing AE regularly, I'd want 70% defense. Not sure what that has to do with ambushes, unless the ambushes are routinely Masterminds.

Many comments below based on having vast sums of influence available.

First, get enough defensive set bonuses to hit 45% defense to melee, ranged and AoE. Next crank recharge as high as it will go. One reason is that your top DPS chain, Head Splitter -> Hack -> Disembowel -> Hack, only becomes gapless at +304% recharge. You're not going to get there, but it becomes the top chain before you're gapless. In other words, every bit of recharge you add will add to your DPS. Another reason for recharge is to double-stack Active Defense to get high defense debuff resistance. Another reason is so that you can use Shield Charge as often as you can, because seriously, Shield Charge. You'll also want some hit points, but you can usually pick up quite a few without a strong focus on that.

For endurance, the usual, like make sure you slot sufficient endurance reduction in attacks. That can be tough on a top end build, because you'll probably be running purple sets in Hack and Head Splitter for recharge, and endurance on those is bad. And while you only need five from those sets, you should use the sixth slot for the Achilles' Heel proc (Hack) and the Fury of the Gladiator proc (Head Splitter). So you're going to burn endurance like mad with your attack chain, unfortunately. So I think that sticks you with the Body Mastery epic and Physical Perfection to add a little (Edit: Oh, duh. Conserve power with your massive global recharge will cover the rest of your needs). Put a Performance Shifter proc in both Stamina and Physical Perfection, and at least slot Stamina decently. Make sure you grab the Miracle and Numina uniques. If possible, try to get sets with good endurance reduction in your other powers.

Mind you, this is all just educated guesswork. I haven't tried to put together a Broad Sword/Shield Defense build. But that's the basic outline of how I might approach it.

You can soft cap Super Reflexes without Weave, but it's easier with Weave, and I consider Tough a core power. If you can afford it, I think the Shield Wall +3% resistance IO is a great benefit for a single slot, particularly if you can mule it somewhere (For instance, one character has it Vengeance, which I've never used). 20% smashing/lethal resistance should be pretty straightforward with Tough and the PvP IO.

Soft cap on a resistance set is doable, but your defense debuff resistance will suffer mightily.