Werner

1) My notes say "I think the blinding feint buff takes effect sooner [than the end of the animation], like at half a second? It then wouldn't last as long and would lower the DPS." So I guess I don't know the answer.

2) I believe it was Arcanaville that said that no, we don't need to round up the gaps.

3) If you have an attack chain of, say, 8 seconds with 3 chances to proc, then use 3*10/8 = 3.75 in the calculation. Don't round up or down. Any individual attack will only have an integer number, but when calculating the chain as a whole, use an average like this.

I've heard good things about Water Spout, but never used it.

Edit: So...

DPS*(1+(1-.81^(AchillesChancesInChain*10/ChainDuration))*.2)*(1+(1-.81^(FuryChancesInChain*10/ChainDuration))*.2)

One issue I've seen with incarnate content for an Invuln Tanker I duo with are all the endurance drains. I think it's only killed him once, but he has on multiple occasions announced that he can't do anything but keep them taunted because he's out of endurance.

He also has trouble with the psionic damage and the defense debuffs, but most sets will have trouble with those, I believe. I know the defense debuffs have been the biggest threat to my Katana/Dark when soloing, though Barrier has been a pretty good counter (though it's still iffy when you're suffering from 100% defense debuffs).

Invulnerability is pretty nice, and Dark Melee/Invulnerability is amazing, at least in normal content. I haven't paid much attention to the forums recently, and don't know how it does against incarnate content. I worry about all the psionic and energy damage, for instance, when you can't really incarnate soft cap on a Scrapper. I bet it's fine, though.

Well, there's nothing particularly good to throw myself against these days, it seems. I've been mostly duoing the Dark Astoria stuff with my Katana/Dark Scrapper and an Invuln/SS Tanker on +4x8 with both of us on out-of-date builds (Enzymes, etc.), and while we occasionally oops and die, oopsing and dying can be solved by paying closer attention and gaining more skills.

That said, I was waiting for I23, and will probably be respec'ing soon. But I still don't feel like I have anything specific to throw myself against to show how well or not well the build is working. I suppose I could crank up the Dark Astoria arcs solo, go with Scrapper challenge rules, and see how far I can go, at least once I have my Hybrid slot all figured out, but that doesn't lend itself to short little "check this out" vids. Also, I'm still missing a couple tier 4s, and duoing Dark Astoria on +4x8 is a pretty slow way to kit out a build.

I didn't go free to play. I DID take quite a few months off of the game due to being angry at the lack of solo incarnate content, and feeling like I was being completely left behind the cutting edge due to my dislike of teaming. I went and played another MMO for a while. When we finally got solo incarnate content, I came back and hit the game pretty solid again, but not the forum so much.

Just an anecdote about my dislike of teaming - when I23 came out, I rushed to convert my Threads to XP, only to discover that I couldn't. I was FUMING. Really, Devs? Your new iTrial sucks so much you need to FORCE people to play it? After I calmed down a bit, I signed up for a Magesterium farm. I had my hybrid slot in a flash, but the experience left a VERY bitter taste in my mouth. It just feels like they actively HATE soloers these days. They'd apparently much rather you be a retarded cog in a wheel running some retarded farm content than actively pushing the bounds of what a solo character can do and enjoying actual content. And good grief, it seems like I23 needed another month in the oven. That cake isn't cooked.

I also haven't paid much attention to all the new sets, and haven't run numbers for some time. So I don't have a lot to contribute to many of the threads the way I used to.

So I guess for me, it's the incarnate powers and all the new sets. Those aren't bad things, but I think I contribute most in a stable, analyzable, optimizable environment. That's kind of not what we have now. I'm playing as much as ever - I'm just not spending the time on calculating how to get another 2% performance out of my build when the next issue will give me another 20% with no thought involved (while wrecking my 2% optimization), and when my current performance is perfectly sufficient for available content.

Ah, also, I kind of don't CARE personally about other sets any more. Being mostly solo, the incarnate powers are WAY too much of an investment for me to consider starting over with another combo. And I love my Katana/Dark. So that's pretty much all I play now.

It turns out that I agree with you on your points. Hitting the 59% soft cap now has similar value to hitting the 45% soft cap before, but the trade offs can be MUCH more significant when it's even possible. At some point in many builds, even with each point more valuable than the last, no matter how good that extra defense might be, it becomes less good than what you're giving up to get it. And that's where I think I've found myself.

I think all the debuffs and autohit flying around emphasize the layering approach as well. Any of my layers may simply vanish, but it would be rare for them to ALL vanish. The more I can survive with one or two layers missing, the better. It's making me think of things like slotting my Cloak of Fear better, grabbing Assault for placate resistance (not that I've seen placates, but I'm sure they'll be out there), that sort of thing.

Hmmm, one objective is "to kill every... Arch Villain". If this is to be under Scrapper challenge rules, Dark Melee/Super Reflexes is going to get wasted by Malaise, for instance, and other options may have similar kryptonite. Of course it may not be under Scrapper challenge rules, and we were also told "within reason", so that may be fine.

Also, isn't this easier with a Controller or other heavy-debuffing archetype? If there's no specific desire to hit them in the face repeatedly until they go down, I suspect that debuffs would make it easier to collect the whole set.

I shoot for overkill on survivability, then go looking for a challenge.

My experience with my Katana/Dark is long periods of cruise control followed by huge waves of damage. During cruise control, I rarely need Dark Regeneration, and if I do use it, once is plenty. During the waves of damage, my hit points are dropping like a stone, I hit Dark Regeneration, and my hit points continue dropping like a stone, often faster than Dark Regeneration recharges. There are other tools available, of course, like Barrier, Void, or inspirations. But I'm using Void offensively, and I treat Barrier and inspirations like "if all else fails" tools (which sometimes has me dying with Barrier available and a full tray of inspirations - "I can do this!" *splat*).

My Katana/Dark was vastly better at AV soloing than my Dark Melee/Super Reflexes, though those are on unlimited budget builds. Fire/Super Reflexes was considered the budget AV soloer for a long time. And Dark Melee/Shield Defense was the higher-end AV soloer of choice for a long time because it packed enough survivability with huge DPS.

This was all pre-incarnate. The deck may be stacked differently these days. I'm not so much in the loop with all these new-fangled power sets the kids are using.

Mitigation works as you describe. Survivability doesn't. For the sake of anyone that has no idea what we're talking about...

For enemies with 50% to hit, 45% defense provides 90% mitigation, 40% defense provides 80% mitigation and 35% defense provides 70% mitigation. It's a nice, linear relationship.

However, discrete effects ignored, someone with 90% mitigation can survive twice as much incoming damage as someone with 80% mitigation, who can survive 1.5 times as much incoming damage a someone with 70% mitigation. Survivability is a measure of how much incoming damage you can survive. Each increment of mitigation improves survivabilty more than the last. It's not a linear relationship.

So other things being equal, if I can survive 10 bosses at 45% defense, I can only survive 5 bosses at 40% defense. This can and has been demonstrated in game. Other things, of course, are not typically equal, but making up that defecit takes quite a lot. It CAN work out that way, though. For instance, it might be worth dropping to 40% defense to pick up Aid Self.

And vastly oversimplified, that's what I'm considering doing. I'm dropping to 40% defense (non-lethal ranged and AoE, while Barrier is down) to improve the cycle time on Dark Regeneration from about 15 seconds to about 10 seconds.

The build I'm fiddling with is at 52.5% with one Divine Avalanche, which we could call 57.5% with T4 Barrier. So in a sense, I'm 1.5% from my goal. I don't feel like I've sacrificed much yet. Regen would be harder, of course, plus I'm assuming unlimited budget and +5s and so on.

I haven't touched my spreadsheets for months at this point, and when I do get back to them, probably I'll want to plug in some of my own builds first (recently fiddling with SS/Invuln Tanker and Katana/Dark Scrapper). If you don't want to wait for me to get back into the swing of things, you could track down the calculator John Printemps put together. It creates official Werner-licensed Wernerscores.

I haven't thought much about what would be best for incarnate content. I'd been thinking Super Reflexes or Shield Defense, but it seems like one of the devs' counters for rampant defense on teams is to have more auto-hit powers. So we may be back to layering as many mitigation strategies as possible, even if no particular one is stellar. So maybe Katana/Dark would be a good approach in that sense (defense, resistance, fear, fear protection, healing, Barrier as reactive "defense debuff resistance", stealth, etc. - Jack of all trades). In any case, my Katana/Dark is my favorite character right now, so he's getting all the incarnate love. With my current build (I19, +3, lots of now-useless Enzymes), incarnate at +4x5 duo'd with a decent Tanker is proving to be about the right level of challenge, with quite a bit of hitting red and maybe a death or two per night from "oops", all preventable if I could get back some Regeneration secondary levels of anticipation and reaction time. He's definitely not "a character that never dies" at this point, though. I need to solo more at high difficulty to see what kills me so that I can figure out better what to build for. (Edit: So far no trouble soloing a handful of incarnate missions on +4x4 with my obsolete build, but I somehow haven't hit Banished Pantheon or Talons of Vengeance.) As for my initial thoughts on how to approach it, look for my in-progress builds in a Katana/DA thread by DragonEdge_NA a few down from here. Probably better to chat there than here.

Back on topic: I'd want a single Parry get me to 45%+, with a double stack hitting 59%+ for incarnate content. That will tend to take some defense enhancement, though not necessarily ED-capping it. I WANT a single Parry to get me to 59%+, but that's pretty difficult on non-defense Secondaries.

Sorry for the off topic, but...

Here's basically the same build with the same stats, but with the normal attack chain instead of the no knockup/down chain. It's hard for me to ignore the benefits of knockup/down and higher DPS. Again, it's trivial to trade flight for leaping if desired.

I personally slot the hell out of Parry's (well, Divine Avalanche's) defense (Edit: on my Katana/Dark). That's helpful for solo incarnate content with their 59% to hit and all the defense debuffs.

My current build, from before the Enzyme nerf, has this:

2 L53 Nucleolus
L53 Enzyme
Mako's Bite acc/dam/end/rech
Luck of the Gambler +7.5% recharge

My current thinking for a respec:

L53 Nucleolus
+5 Hecatomb damage
+5 Luck of the Gambler +7.5% recharge
+5 Luck of the Gambler defense
+5 Luck of the Gambler defense/endurance

It's lower than I'd prefer in accuracy, which makes me very iffy about it, but it's otherwise OK. Well, endurance is poor, but I run Cardiac Core so my slotting intentionally burns endurance in favor of other things. The attack is fully enhanced for damage so it's still a functional attack.

I've seen people slot a full set of Mako's Bite for the ranged defense when trying to pull off a soft cap build, but with the incarnate content, I'm personally moving a bit away from the soft cap since it doesn't really mean much.

Don't slot it for defense debuff. Set bonuses are not worth destroying its utility as an attack or defense. (Edit: Oh, that's right, it doesn't take those anyway.)