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I don't much remember the early levels on my Katana/Dark. That probably means they didn't stand out as particularly good OR bad. I think it came into its own in the mid 30s or so, and was very solid from there on out. That was probably with the Kismet unique, Steadfast Protection unique, frankenslotting of attacks, and SOs everywhere else. I don't really remember, but that was my general approach to leveling at the time. I believe I was mostly fighting +2 with bosses, and that I fiddled with the number of enemies a lot, but I think I averaged something in the x4 to x6 range. I can't remember for sure.

I'm a little worried about Sword/Dark once we hit incarnate content. Sure, I should be able to soft cap again, get endurance sustainable again, and raise my on-paper survivability even further. But I hear rumor that there will be more to hit and more defense debuffs, which could get nasty for our approach to Sword/Dark. It might be hard to keep up. Mind you, it'll still be really, really good. It just won't be as good as I got used to before the IO nerfs, and perhaps not as good as I can do with some of my other toons. But it still remains to be seen what they do with the incarnate content, I suppose. And for that matter, what most of the incarnate slots will do. It's really hard to predict what's going to be good.

Oh, the damage thing very much changes. At a low level, I frankly slot no damage enhancement in my powers on either a Scrapper or a Brute. Just accuracy and endurance. Scrapper damage scale is 1.125. Brute damage scale is 0.75. Brutes only need a 50% damage buff (I believe 25% Fury?) to equal a Scrapper at that point, and they're going to have a lot more than that. So Brutes have it all over Scrappers on both survivability and damage output at a low level.

At the other end of the spectrum, let's talk about a Dark Melee/Shield defense with near perma Soul Drain surrounded by enemies, entirely in its end game element. Let's say +110% damage enhancement in the powers and from set bonuses, +68.75% from Against All Odds, another +70% from Soul Drain, and that 1.125 becomes 3.923, while the Brute's 0.75 becomes 2.615. Now Fury only enhances the BASE damage, so the Brute would need an extra 174% damage from Fury to keep up. I believe that takes 87% Fury, which you might occasionally see, but probably not sustain for long.

I really thought the difference was even more stark, though, so chances are I'm getting the Fury mechanic wrong, or made some other error, since I don't study Brutes.

Or maybe it's right. Until recently, it was commonly argued (though certainly not universally agreed on) that Brutes equaled Scrappers on damage. Then they changed Fury generation, I believe to make it easier to get and keep moderate levels of it, but harder to get and keep high levels of it.

So each contributes less than the last, but there's no hard and fast place where you say "OK, that's enough".

And I say "% Buff" because that's the % buff to your DPS as a result of the debuff. To me, calling it a DPS buff is more meaningful even if it's less accurate. Same thing either way, though.

Plus you may want to build around a specific alpha boost, targeting a specific recharge level with the spiritual alpha boost included, for instance, and maybe short changing some of your slotting since you'd be affected by ED at a lower level of enhancement in the powers themselves.

What!? No no no, the cure for what ails you is MOAR DAMAGE! Because when they die, they drop skittles.

(OK, I suspect this is less helpful on a team. Stupid team takin' all my skittles. )

Not hugely. As a rough estimate, I'd say +10% if that's what you use it for. But it depends a lot on your current build. And hey, +10% certainly doesn't suck.

Didn't know they were hinting at that, though it doesn't surprise me either. I'm not sure that active defense will be my response, though, but rather just trying to keep up in the passive defense arms race.

Maybe I should dust off my Broad Sword/Shield Defense. I originally planned it to handle AE missions, and specifically pet to-hit and all the custom enemies using Build Up. Just pulling up one of builds I was fiddling with, he's at 81.5% melee, 58.4% lethal, 48.8% ranged and 46% AoE. DDR looks like it's probably capped a lot of the time, though the Active Defense double stack is down for longer than I'd be comfortable with in a high defense debuff environment. The alpha slot and some additional build fiddling might help there.

Or depending on how much ToHit there is, maybe Super Reflexes will be simple enough to keep ahead of the curve. My Dark Melee/Super Reflexes looks to be benefiting hugely from at least the alpha slot. And yeah, Touch of Fear certainly could be a viable option then.

What do you mean, the change in the recharge time itself?

Recharge Time = Base Recharge Time / (100% + Total Recharge Enhancement and Bonuses)

So let's say you have Hasten and +85% recharge from set bonuses:

Recharge Time = 15 seconds / (100% + 126.2% + 70% + 85%) = 3.935 seconds

Or, if you want to be really unkillable (at the cost of DPS), you could use the extra recharge for a Siphon Life spamming chain. It's not going to work with Shield Defense without an insane build, but as an example I'm strongly considering Smite -> Boxing -> Siphon Life on my Super Reflexes. It takes +299% recharge in Siphon Life, so you're spamming it that fast. Plus Siphon Life's heal will be significantly boosted by the alpha slot. Too bad about my DPS.

Let's see, Siphon is a 10% or 133.9 heal, enhancement for the very rare is 95+(.15*(112.5+33/3-100))+33*2/3 = 120.525, so 133.9 * 2.20525 = 295.3, every 4.62 seconds, so 64 HP/S healing. I'm at least picking up Physical Perfection with at least one slot, which gives me 26 HP/S of passive regeneration. That puts me at 90 HP/S of healing on my Super Reflexes. Not bad.

Scrappers often run ahead of the tanks, yes. We're also well known for face planting while doing so. Face planting in this way isn't a sign of a bad Scrapper, though. Only running back to the group with all your aggro hoping that they'll save you is. Scrappers should die with dignity.

I never played EverQuest, but I understand that you had to do things in a VERY specific way to survive, even more so than WoW. City of Heroes is much more forgiving, more flexible, and as probably most would agree, much easier. It's kind of like MMO-light.

Oh, certainly. But InUse's builds were all Shield Defense or Invulnerability. I wasn't clear that that's what I was specifically commenting on, though. Willpower's a little tougher to pull off with its weaker aggro aura, but obviously doable.

I spent ten billion on mine, and I don't even have a heal. He does great damage, and his survivability is OK, but not +4x8 or AV soloing or tanking for a full team OK.

Nothing wrong with other MMOs. But this is very much a different game, and the differences could indeed be part of the confusion. There's no holy trinity of DPS, tank, and heals. Most characters can solo. Some are better at it than others, of course, but soloing is viable. Most teams will function well. Some combinations will function better than others, but most combinations will function well. The roles aren't so distinct, and to the extent they are, different archetypes are capable of taking on different roles depending on how they're built and played. And defenders can get pretty offended by "need a healorz", since heals are only ONE of the many useful things a defender can do for a team.

I'm not sure I really even understand the questions. Perhaps, as I gather, because you're new to the game?

There are things in the game that a Scrapper can't tank and a Tank can, and many Scrappers don't have aggro control anyway, and inferior aggro control where they have it. The high end survivability Scrappers that the forum often discusses tend to be very expensive, and require a very strong understanding of builds (or a build from someone with such an understanding). Tankers are much easier to make survivable. Not sure what that has to do with the 400 cap anyway.

Questions about what you give up to get 45% defense feel relatively meaningless, since 45% defense is not the end all to be all of survivability. Anyone who thinks that MERELY having 45% defense puts them in the big leagues is strongly mistaken, and Tankers are better at all the OTHER things that matter. Also, how easy it is to get to 45% defense, and what you give up to get there, differs strongly by secondary. Doesn't mean that the defensive secondaries are better than the others.

But I can try to give some examples. My survivability Scrappers average about 175 DPS, and have either no or very little AoE capability. Damage Scrappers are approaching 300 DPS under ideal circumstances, and AoE Scrappers farm MUCH faster than any of my survivability Scrappers. I gave up a LOT of damage, and none of my survivability Scrappers can tank, because they don't have any aggro control. Moving to a damage Tanker would, I suspect, be a pretty smooth transition, as a top end damage tanker can put out at least 160 DPS (and probably more), not much below where I am, and probably have similar survivability to my Scrappers. Then you just keep trading damage and survivability until you're deep into the survivability Tanker realm, and not doing much damage at all.

Your Shield Defense/Super Strength should be the best Tank, by far if built for it. Your Kin/SD will have the best damage, by far if built for it.

Why would you play a Tanker? Solo, you wouldn't. You play a tanker because it's a far better Tanker. You can sort of kind of tank with Shield Defense or Invulnerability Scrappers. I've done it, but only for a small team. I wouldn't try it on a big team. So if you like Tanking for a big team, play a Tanker. If you don't, and if you don't simply have a great fondness for Tankers (I know people who do), then play a Brute or a Scrapper.

Yes, there's no point in having double the hit points if you're not facing enemies that can kill a similar Scrapper. Obviously you'd then want more damage.

Sounds to me like you don't want to Tank, at least not in the sense of playing meatshield for a large team, and only using your attacks as yet another way to hold aggro. Sounds like you just want very good survivability combined with very good damage output. Sounds to me like you should be playing Brutes and Scrappers.

Yup.

Wait, you meant UberGuy?

Huh.

*reviews thread*

Huh.

I wasn't THAT close, but that change really upset me. The awesome thing about zookeeper was just how ridiculous it was. You looked at people with that badge with this strange mixture of admiration and pity.