Werner

I farm with my Fire/Shield, but only +2x8 (edit: with bosses) since I don't have a heal. That difficulty level balances the recharge of Build Up and Shield Charge with the speed at which I beat each enemy group and get to the next, so it makes for the best rhythm, even if it's not the most efficient from a drops standpoint. I assume an Electric/Shield would farm faster, and then there are Spines/Fire and Spines/Dark as well, though I wouldn't try either of those against +4x8.

At worst, 14.3%, and only if you already have 95% pre-ED enhancement in the power already. Depending on what you're enhancing, you may or may not be near that point. For musculature, you probably are. But for the others, you likely are not that high in very many or any powers, and will get much more, and often the full enhancement value.

Gambler's Cut is also a great way to get a whole lot of Achilles' Heel debuffs into your chain without burning a lot of slots. It is also in some cases a way to get a lot of purple damage procs into your chain, but not in the posted build.

It's the slower and slightly weaker cousin of Katana. HOWEVER, Broad Sword/Shield Defense is frickin' AWESOME. Best ride I've had 1-50 on any character. Parry makes it easy, Against All Odds gives you the DPS you lack, and Shield Charge gives you the AoE you lack. Sword and board is also a good match thematically if that makes any difference to you. Also, if you believe like I do that the incarnate content is going to include more enemy to-hit buffs and defense debuffs, you're in good shape to be able to handle both of them fairly well, so it may be a good choice for upcoming end game content, even if that's only a guess. Also, my opinion has always been that lethal damage is less of an issue than most people make it out to be, even if it's really obvious when fighting, say, robots.

You want this:

Divine Avalanche -> Gambler's Cut -> Golden Dragonfly -> Gambler's Cut -> Soaring Dragon -> Gambler's Cut

I just need to make sure you have the recharge... yes, just, which makes me think that Iggy tuned it for that chain.

The extra Gambler's Cut over Elegost's suggestion is both because you don't have the recharge for his chain, and also because you have an Achilles' Heel in Gambler's Cut, so you want to use it as often as possible, at least against hard targets.

The top chain is Blinding Feint -> Ablating Strike -> Sweeping Strike -> Ablating Strike. It's gapless at +314% recharge in Ablating Strike, or 4.34 seconds.

For a little more AoE at the cost of DPS, you can consider Blinding Feint -> Sweeping Strike -> Ablating Strike. It isn't gapless until +355% recharge in Blinding Feint, or 2.64 seconds. However, it at least does competitive DPS well before it becomes gapless, even if it doesn't match the top chain. But unless you have a serious desire for extra cone damage, or routinely have recharge boosts on you, I'd stick with the top chain.

Hmmm, I don't seem to have any reasonable DPS stats stored for Empower -> Sweeping Strike. But for recharge, it looks like +214% recharge in Blinding Feint (3.83 seconds) and +188% recharge in Sweeping Strike (3.83 seconds).

As for Blinding Feint -> Attack Vitals, while a good chain, it's quite a ways down from the top chain. The advantage is that it only requires +128% recharge in Blinding Feint (5.28 seconds), +109% recharge in Sweeping Strike (5.28 seconds) and +96% recharge in Vengeful Slice (4.09 seconds). And really, it's plenty of DPS for just about anything but impressing the kids with your pylon soloing times (and they won't be impressed anyway unless you're Shield Defense).

I should note that we know there are minor issues with how we calculate required recharge. We don't know exactly how to do it right, so I'd just aim for a little more recharge than indicated. It's a good idea for dealing with recharge debuffs anyway.

1) Logical

2) Yes, that's the chain. Greater Fire Sword (+237% recharge, 3.56 seconds) -> Incinerate (+137%, 4.22) -> Cremate (+84%, 4.35). Shoot for a little more recharge than that since I believe the "standard model" of required recharge is known to be a little bit wrong at this point (you might need less, but you might need more, and better safe than sorry).

3) In theory once every ten seconds. So probably just once in practice. You're probably better off slotting something else. Actually, someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but it looks like you shouldn't even USE Burn in an AV fight. If Mids' average damage is right, you're looking at 59.5 DPS unslotted vs. 80.4 DPS for your WORST attack, Cremate. So great AoE, but a bad idea for fighting single targets.

4) You already answered your own question, "Im okay with using inspirations unlike most here on the scrapper forums". Without inspirations, the combination would generally get owned hard, though it could probably be tuned for a class of AVs, like maybe smashing/lethal ones. Also, Fire/Shield probably has similar damage output, and is easier to make survivable without inspirations. But WITH inspirations, Fire/Fire should be quite good. It's just a matter of finishing the AV before the inspirations run out, which I don't expect to be a problem most of the time with that much damage output.

I've not played it, so take this with a grain of salt.

It seems like the single target damage output would be quite good, and Burn is at least some AoE, but it would probably be a little squishy. Not a lot squishy (except at low levels where most Scrappers are squishy), since Dark Melee will provide a heal, but a little squishy, because that heal isn't being leveraged by any meaningful amount of defense. It'll probably be one of those "kill them before they kill me" builds, at least until there's some heavy IO investment, and even then it won't shine for survivability, merely get a lot more solid.

Hopefully someone with actual experience with the combination can give better feedback, though.

You won't be soloing Giant Monsters on a Scrapper except on some of the highest DPS builds chugging reds or using nukes. Not sure the reds are enough, actually. If that's the goal, I think you're looking at Dark Melee, Fire or Kinetic Melee with Shield Defense. I think. (Edit: Oh, wait. Envenomed Dagger. I pretty much never use temps, so I don't keep very good track of what they can do for you.)

If you're not concerned with time required, and just want a massively survivable build that can take down AVs and almost anything else, it's hard to go wrong with Dark Melee/Invuln.

My favorite is Katana/Dark, actually. You can hit 45% to all positions, have very good resistance, and have a full heal every fifteen seconds or so. But really, it's still not as solid as Dark Melee/Invuln when it comes to surviving multiple AVs. Heck, I haven't even tried multiple AVs with mine. No wait, I did once a year ago and face planted. I'm pretty sure it could do it just fine, though, just not as well as Dark Melee/Invuln.

So... Dark Melee/Shield Defense and nukes if you want to solo Giant Monsters, Dark Melee/Invulnerability if you want to solo multiple AVs at once. Those are my suggestions.

OK, now I see what you're saying about the defense bonuses and what makes one set better than another. Makes sense. I did want some melee since I was trying to get 45% with one hit of Divine Avalanche, though I ended up overshooting. And you're right that it's harder to get ranged than AoE on these builds, so it makes sense to value ranged defense highest, AoE next, and melee lowest when assigning a value to the sets for this combination.

Yeah, I don't like what Mids' is doing with the Gaussian proc, but I understand it. It's using the little selection dot to both say whether you count a proc and whether you count that power. So in Tactics, you either count both or neither. What I do is remove the proc when I'm trying to look at my accuracy, and put it back in when I'm trying to look at my defense. Annoying, but workable.

As for the Gladiator's Armor +3% defense, I'd assumed you'd left it out intentionally based on price and availability - it costs 2 billion on the market, and you have to get in line with hundreds of others willing to pay 2 billion for one. Or you can spend more than 2 billion and buy one off market. Or you can accumulate 30 (?) alignment merits, but that takes some time. But yeah, if you can get your hands on one, it's great. Not as great as the drastically cheaper Steadfast Protection unique, but great. I see you also picked up the Shield Wall +3% resistance in the new build. That one can run 2 billion as well, though you can get one for less if you're patient. If you're OK with spending that kind of influence or saving up alignment merits, that's fine. Just want to make sure you're aware of what you're getting into, assuming you were actually thinking of building this.

I'd love to claim credit for the Divine Avalanche slotting, but I can't. I got the idea from Moonlighter, who actually suggested four slotting it. I just hadn't considered shorting the power on slots, particularly when I'm trying to get so much out of a single power. Yet the benefits seemed to outweigh the drawbacks, even if I settled on five slots instead of four.

I'm happy to see the new build hitting 47% melee and lethal with one hit of Divine Avalanche. Needing two isn't bad, but only needing one is much better, both for surviving the alpha strike and allowing for misses. And when your survivability isn't being pressured, that can let you switch to a higher DPS chain, Divine Avalanche -> Gambler's Cut -> Golden Dragonfly -> Gambler's Cut -> Soaring Dragon -> Gambler's Cut. You appear to have the recharge for it. I'll also mention that the Achilles' Heel makes a big difference in DPS on hard targets like EBs, AVs and pylons. If that matters to you, you might want to look for ways to fit it in and get the ranged defense back from somewhere else. If you mostly do normal missions, you won't really notice its absence, and are probably better off with the Mako's set like you have.

The main issue for me would be the accuracy, which is well below 95% against +4s (Golden Dragonfly and The Lotus Drops are down at 67%). And in a sense, what's the point of the HUGE survivability you get out of a build like this if you're not hunting uplevel? Well, AVs, sure. But if it's for AVs, then I'd want the Achilles' Heel. On the other hand, you might be where I was when I first started this project so long ago - to me, it was a build in search of a reason to exist. That seems kind of where you're at - it's an awesome build in many ways, but what do you DO with it? It's not really set up for DPS, so while you could solo AVs, it would go slowly. It's not really set up for accuracy, so while you could fight uplevel, you'd have some issues with hitting them, so it would go slowly. It'll cream regular content without even challenging your survivability, so then why have that much survivability.

My answer pretty much came to "I don't care. I love it, so I'm building it." The previous iteration of my build probably had DPS lower than what yours would pull off, which was honestly just fine. It had more accuracy, but I didn't actually fight a lot of +4s, even though I could. I did solo some AVs, and it was easy, but I didn't really get into it the way I had with some other characters of mine. Really, I just use him for a bit of everything. And as a general purpose bit of everything character, I'm having a blast with him. It's not for everyone (see higher in the thread for someone that was very disappointed with this general approach), but if you do decide to build it, hopefully you'll enjoy yours just as much as I have.

There's a vast difference in price points, so this isn't exactly a fair comparison. But here's the build I'm currently playing.

I haven't tried one, haven't studied Kinetic Melee closely, and haven't made any builds. But it should be just fine. Invulnerability is a very solid secondary that doesn't need much from the primary, and the big hit points and resistance really takes the sting out of AV attacks, giving you time to react. Kinetic Melee can do good DPS. Inherent fitness makes Aid Self and the resistance passives more practical. It should be good.

For me, Dark Armor has moved in and out of awesome since we figured out what to do with IOs. I figured out an almost-practical soft-capped Katana/Dark back when the Gaussian unique wasn't, but never got around to building it before they fixed that bug. Finally put one together a year ago after new IOs made it practical again, then IO nerfs broke it again (if you consider 42% ranged/AoE and not quite endurance sustainable "broken"). Now I'm better than ever in I19 and loving it. We'll see if they break it again, but at this point, I'm guessing they won't.

Dark Armor is probably tied with Regen for my most loved secondary. Not my most USED, mind you, as both have very distinct personalities, and require active involvement, and often I just want to sit down, turn off my brain, and play (e.g., Willpower). But I just love them when I DO feel up to it. Dark Armor is less involved than Regen, of course (a couple clicks and some toggle management for mine), which makes it a nice compromise between active and passive.

Well, my Martial Arts/Fire is loads of fun, but he IS very much on the squishy side, at least compared to the kind of Scrappers I normally play. I haven't played the other combinations, but Martial Arts/Shield should be very good. That would be my recommendation unless you're after a specific feel or something.