Werner

To see accuracy against +4 mobs, options -> configuration -> exemping & base values -> base tohit = 39. Make sure that if you put the Gaussian set in Tactics, you remove the proc when checking the accuracy, or it will count both Tactics and the proc.

As long as you're willing to take greens, those 4 seconds probably won't be a big deal. But playing no inspirations, I can't tell you how many times I've been badly injured and hoping for Dark Regeneration to recharge before I die. On the other hand, that's generally while doing really ridiculous things, like herding up giant monsters just to see what will happen. In "regular" play, such as boss farming the Storm Palace, I almost never touch Dark Regeneration. AV soloing falls somewhere in between - a little extra recharge would occasionally be useful.

I do about 185 DPS on mine, but I have purples. Maybe 175 on yours? Something like that? Just a rough guess, not a calculation.

Yep. I know it's obvious and not clever, but Shield Defense, just like you said. It'll do just what you want.

Well, the Regens seem to love it. I haven't heard about much use with other secondaries, and I haven't used it myself, but it seems like it would be good as long as you have your endurance under control and don't need Conserve Power and Physical Perfection. Seems like it would be nice to just absorb the alpha strike instead of take it and then heal from it. On the other hand, unless you have massive recharge, you won't be able to do that on every spawn. Probably still good for "oops, I combined two spawns".

That's been my understanding, that the definition has always been debated, though I wasn't on the forum for the first few years. To me, PvP is just another situation where burst takes on a more specific meaning. I'm also not sure how burst damage has meant big orange numbers since day 1, and that a primary reason for this is PvP, since that wasn't in the game on day 1, but that's probably just me concatenating two sentences in my mind in a way that wasn't intended. But PvP has always been a small portion of the player base, and probably an even smaller portion of the Scrapper player base due to LOLmelee. When Scrappers ask about burst, they're rarely asking about PvP.

In the PvE game, huge orange numbers are mostly for impressing yourself and other people. They're not particularly useful. Generally speaking, I'd rather have more attacks doing less damage so that I waste less damage on blow through.

I don't consider a single run through an attack chain to be DPS. To me, DPS is SUSTAINED single target damage. Five to ten seconds isn't sustained. And chances are excellent that the first run through your chain is NOT going to be very close to your sustained single target damage. Many combos have a build up power, so they'll be doing a lot more damage on the first run through. Many have a follow up power, so they'll be doing a lot less damage on the first run through. Certainly Brutes, with Fury, have to build up to their DPS.

In the end, it's just semantics, as long as people are clear about what they mean. Unfortunately, most people aren't very clear about what they mean, and so these debates continue.

Fortunately for us, Gimix clarified. HUGE orange numbers. Numbers that make people sit up and take notice. That's not Katana.

I'd say Fire/Fire might be just what the doctor ordered, at least if you can survive it. Just think of it as a high hit point Blapper with mez protection, and you should be fine.

I'll guess about 1% better survivability on average. Let's have a look. I'm just going to plug it into my Fire/Shield because I'm too lazy to find and type in your numbers. Initial survivability = 517.23. Survivability with the extra 3% to those types and no other compromises = 524.00. Improvement = 1.3%.

While I agree, Katana depends how you define burst damage. Broad Sword can put up a bigger orange number from a single attack, and that, to many people, apparently defines "burst". But to me, burst is more like how much DPS you can do in the first five or ten seconds of the fight or so. I believe Katana is ahead in that regard.

In a practical sense, the duration of burst that matters to you may also differ by build. On a Regen, for instance, I might burst damage in terms of how much you can kill before Moment of Glory drops. That's your initial burst, and you want to do a lot of damage during it, because you want a lot dead before that sucker drops.

On paper, the lack of recharge in Dark Regeneration is a horrible mistake - once you have sufficient defense and resistance, they become a gigantic multiplier for the healing you do have. At that point, every little bit of recharge you can get on your heal makes a huge difference in your survivability. However, the on paper calculations are overly simplistic, and I suspect are leading us a bit astray here. They assume the damage is constant, as might be roughly achieved by surrounding yourself with the aggro cap of minions of whatever level necessary to challenge your survivability. They knock you down, you heal back up, repeat every time it recharges like clockwork. Outside of test cases, though, the type of enemies that can challenge a build like this don't behave like that. We're talking about AVs, large crowds of uplevel enemies with bosses, that sort of thing. Damage is a lot more spikey, and the challenge to your survivability seems at least as much about surviving the spikes as about dealing with any sort of average damage output. So then we're talking about things like hit points and resistance instead of healing and regeneration.

Still, better recharge (and accuracy) on Dark Regeneration is probably the EASIEST thing you can do to significantly improve your survivability. This doesn't help much, but I might give up the endurance set bonus and go Theft of Essence proc and acc/end/heal, Scirocco's Dervish acc/rech and Doctored Wounds heal/end/rech. +22% accuracy, +17% endurance, -5% heal, +4% recharge. There are probably some other useful combinations. I'd really want another slot though. Then you could do some serious frankenslotting like Theft of Essence proc and acc/end/rech, Scirocco's Dervish acc/rech, Doctored Wounds heal/end/rech and Harmonized Healing heal/end/rech. +22% acc, +36% endurance, -3% heal, +39% recharge. Again, there might be a better combination. But the idea is that Dark Regeneration is SUCH a critical power that any set bonuses are purely secondary. What is critical is enhancing it properly.

Getting a slot is easier said than done, of course. If you can accept a two Divine Avalanche chain, you could drop the defense from it. You still have 42% defense on the first hit, though your alpha survival will still be significantly reduced. But if you can weather that storm, you might be in better shape for the rest of the fight. I'm not sure I could bring myself to do that, though. You could pull out the acc/dam, but then you drop to 76% accuracy against +4s, which I don't consider good enough. So many full sets. Hmmm, perhaps the least critical are the Crushing Impacts in Gambler's Cut. Yeah, 5% recharge is nice, but 39% recharge in a critical power may be better. So maybe I'd be thinking in terms of frankenslotting Gambler's Cut and stealing a slot? Not sure, and since you're using Gambler's Cut every other attack, decent slotting there is pretty important. Ugh.

I'm running a soft-capped Katana/Dark. Yes, I use it instead of Oppressive Gloom. It's most useful when I'm AV soloing, as it keeps my Dark Regen fuel very passive. I like how it looks, and it's fun having your enemies cowering in place. It's also easier to keep Divine Avalanche up when minions aren't wandering all over. And I'm sure it reduces incoming damage some, even if not by a large amount. So I guess my overall experience with it is quite positive, but that positive experience is entirely from the fear portion (and from concept and graphics). Since I'm soft-capped, the to hit debuff portion is normally worthless to me. I'm sure it helps some occasionally, like when defense debuffed, but not enough that I consider it any more than a negligible benefit in my specific build.

I consider my Cloak of Fear effective with two slots - L53 Endoplasm and L50 Nightmare acc/end. It could certainly be better, but I didn't feel that making it better was worth the additional slots. Yes, I'm running the cardiac boost.

I think you got it, except that Broad Sword is a poor man's Katana.

There are a lot of good Fire chains, and that's one of them. Assuming you have the budget for a high recharge high DDR build, though, you might want to aim for the top DPS chain of Incinerate -> Greater Fire Sword -> Cremate at +237% recharge and 3.56 seconds in Greater Fire Sword. Also very good is Incinerate -> Cremate -> Fire Sword at +204% and 3.3 seconds in Incinerate.