Werner

I haven't run any numbers, but I'm willing to believe that no Scrapper has the raw DPS to take down Diabolique. I could be wrong.

I believe Shred Monkey has. I believe it involved vast quantities of large reds and a lot of luck, but I could be misremembering.

There's a whole lot of room for improvement here.

I'm going to start pretty basic based on the number of posts. If I'm going too basic, I apologize. If you need even more background, let me know.

Let's talk about attacks first. If you're interested in AV soloing, you want to be able to do good damage per second, because AVs regenerate quickly. And to do good damage per second, you want to run a good attack chain, over and over. There are a couple of very high DPS chains that Dual Blades can run, but they're at extreme rates of recharge, and you won't get any other use out of that recharge, so you shouldn't be running those chains. I just mention that they exist for completeness. The best general-purpose attack chain at a much more moderate level of recharge is Blinding Feint -> Attack Vitals Combo. So that's what I'd be shooting for. Here's the full chain with the recharge speeds you need to achieve in each attack:

Blinding Feint (5.28 seconds) -> Ablating Strike (5.54 seconds) -> Vengeful Slice (4.09 seconds) -> Sweeping Strike (5.28 seconds)

To get there, you're going to need more recharge, so you'll be wanting some recharge bonuses, and some good recharge in those attacks, other than Ablating Strike which needs almost none.

If you're going for a PURE AV soloer, you'd stop with only those four attacks. You might stop there anyway, but you could pick up more AoE if you want, particularly if you like teaming. But the more attacks you take, the more likely it'll have a negative impact on survivability, so there are trade offs.

As far as slotting, I mentioned recharge already. Blinding Feint needs special mention - slot it like an attack. It needs to hit to give you the buff, and you want it fully slotted for damage because you'll be using it frequently. And generally speaking, any attack worth having is worth putting six slots in. Not necessarily all from one set, but six slots.

Now let's talk about survivability. This is where most of the build effort should go in my opinion. And the name of the game here is defense. Specifically, typed defense - smashing/lethal, energy/negative and fire/cold. You WANT to get those six types up to 45% defense. Don't bother going higher, but don't settle for lower unless you simply can't figure out how to pull it off (in which case the forum can try to help, because I suspect it will be very very difficult).

The reason you want 45% defense is that almost all enemies have a base 50% to-hit, and defense is subtracted from to-hit, and there's a minimum of 5% chance to hit. So when you're at 45% defense, you've made the enemy chance to hit as low as it can go. More defense won't make it any lower, so isn't protecting you. More DOES help if the enemy has a higher than usual chance to hit, but this is very rare outside of Architect Entertainment. It also helps if you're being defense debuffed, but it's going to be so hard to get to 45% that planning for extra for the occasional defense debuff just isn't going to be worth it, even if it's possible.

You also want defense more than resistance, hit points, or regeneration. Defense, at least 45% defense, simply provides better survivability than your other options. Now of course you don't want to gimp your resistance, hit points or regeneration, but they are not the focus of the build. Just take what you can get.

You'll also need recharge in order to handle that attack chain. Probably not a lot of global recharge, but some, probably at least 40%, which is going to take some build effort as well.

As far as power picks go, I've already mentioned removing the majority of your attacks. I'd also remove Resurgence. You can already tank most things by your own admission, and we're going to send that through the roof. You shouldn't be dying, and if you occasionally do, use a rez or the hospital. You can also CONSIDER skipping Strength of Will. It's nice to have, but it's ONLY a nice to have, not much more impressive than having a few orange inspirations. Only drop it if you need the power pick for something more important, of course.

Add the Fighting pool. Tough stacks nicely with your resistance, and Weave is going to be very important in our quest for defense.

I'd add Leadership as well. Take Maneuvers. I'm a fan of Tactics as well, but it's more optional. Since you have Focused Accuracy, though, I'm going to guess you want to be able to hit. In that case, take Tactics instead of Focused Accuracy, I'd say.

Grab a Steadfast Protection unique and a Kismet unique.

Well, that seems like enough for a first go.

Very tight builds on very rich characters might go for two L53 Enzymes, assuming that the debuffs all still function as buffs in a buffing power.

Super Reflexes is an excellent secondary. It has been somewhat eclipsed by Shield Defense, but it can hit the soft cap more easily, so it's still a good choice, particularly on a budget. It's also a self-sufficient secondary, at least as long as you're willing to use inspirations. Some secondaries I'd be afraid to touch without a primary that brought a lot of damage mitigation to the table (Fire Armor, for instance). Super Reflexes doesn't need help from the primary. It IS a bit of a late bloomer, where having a low amount of defense, as you will for a while, is almost as bad as having no defense. I think it becomes reasonably-solid in the mid to late 20s, but it may be until the mid 30s before you start feeling like it's doing its job. It's all gravy from there, though, assuming you keep focusing on powers that add defense.

Nothing wrong with Regeneration either. It's easy mode for just normal play at normal difficulty settings, but it can be tricky to play at the edge of the envelope. And even once you've mastered it, I'd say you'll only have equivalent survivability to other sets. You don't really get rewarded with better survivability. The reward, if you consider it one, is in mastering it, in surviving against the odds when you've managed to do everything right, and how good that can feel. Would you prefer to cruise down the interstate in the back seat of a limo? Or do you want to be on a motorcycle, blasting through traffic at twice the speed limit, flirting with disaster with every move you make? Regeneration is that wild motorcycle ride. And Regeneration will never let you down. The vast majority of your deaths won't be because you ran out of click powers. They'll be because you clicked the wrong one for the situation, or weren't fast enough, or anticipated the incoming damage incorrectly, or you used one that you didn't need so didn't have it when you really needed it. There's almost always something you could have done to have survived, if only you were smarter, better, faster. And I like a set that encourages me to be smarter, better and faster.

Now, Regeneration IS a set where I'd want good mitigation from my primary, like Katana or Broad Sword. But plenty of people play it successfully with less-mitigating primaries. My hat's off to them, because that skeers me.

I think the way you deal with the binay nature of Super Reflexes is to pick up Tough and a lot of hit points. A heal helps, of course, but unless you're doing no-inspiration stuff, I'd think that greens would cover it most of the time. I do think Dark Melee is perfect with Super Reflexes due to the self heal in the attack chain, but lots of things work well with Super Reflexes. Still, no matter how much you buff it, your hit points can still move rapidly when you do get hit. You need to be more on your toes than you do with some secondaries.

As for mobs chopping away at your defense, a well-built Super Reflexes should have 95% defense debuff resistance, so that's just never been a serious issue for me. But yeah, mobs with to-hit can be nasty. Fortunately, outside of Architect Entertainment, there are VERY few of those. Stay away from Overseers. But that pretty much goes for everyone.

As for the original question, I wouldn't slot an attack for sleep, and you can get hit point and recharge bonuses in better ways.

Katana isn't Broad Sword, and the powers, even though similar and in the same order, are not the same powers. Take Hack. Hack has a DPA of 71 vs. only 43 from Slash. It's very much the better power.

DM/SR should be OK, though I don't think it's particularly good, as on just SOs you're probably not going to soft cap it. That's where Katana/SR beats it because of Divine Avalanche. Still, even 32.5% is pretty good since a single purple puts you at the soft cap, so you can have a tray full of god mode. And you have Siphon Life for the heal. It won't suck.

I haven't done the math, but I'd probably do Dark Melee/Super Reflexes on a Scrapper. Soul Drain can be a big buff that's up a lot of the time, and Scrappers get more out of damage buffs than Brutes. But I just like scrappers, so maybe I'm the wrong person to ask.

Normally, I'd recommend Katana/Willpower, but you already have Katana and you already have Willpower, and you might not want to repeat. But you said you rolled them recently, so maybe that isn't a factor. And to reduce the overlap, maybe Broad Sword/Willpower, which will play pretty much the same.

I really enjoyed leveling my Broad Sword/Shield Defense. It was probably my favorite combination to level, and I only use a handful of IOs while leveling. Shield Defense has a reputation for being squishy on just SOs, but I personally think the reputation is largely undeserved, plus Broad Sword will let you cap your melee defense easily, and your lethal defense as well with a bit more of a stretch. Shield Defense then buffs your damage and gives you a big AoE, so you'll power through content pretty well.

I'm kind of afraid to offer any advice. You say you don't want a cookie cutter build, and in a way that makes me worry that if we give you any good advice, you'll go off about how that isn't what you want, and how you clearly stated in your post that it wasn't what you want. But at the same time, you want to be able to amaze teams. Well, you're not going to amaze any teams. You have the survivability of a blaster with the damage output of a tanker. I don't THINK that was your intent, even if you want a concept build. So, I'm going to go ahead and risk it.

• If you do nothing else, at least get some accuracy and damage into your attacks.
• Hack is one of your best attacks, or would be if it had any slotting.
• Please slot Moment of Glory for recharge instead of endurance recovery.
• Why even take Slash? As slotted, you'll never use it, or shouldn't.
• As already said, Parry needs accuracy to get any benefit out of the defense. It also needs damage to keep from lowering your horrible damage output even further. Your lack of defense in the build as a whole may mean you need to slot SOME defense it it, but don't go overboard.
• Is the Stealth pool for concept? Or do you figure you'll be phase shifting a lot to try to stay alive?
• Resilience really doesn't need to be slotted up. If you care about resistance, pick up Tough.
• Please don't waste a Panacea proc on this build.
• The consensus is that melt armor is totally not worth it. If you want to do more damage, slot some damage in your attacks. If you want to hit better, slot some accuracy in your attacks.
• If you have the accolades, most of your hit point bonuses are useless when Dull Pain is up because of the hit point cap, and I suspect you'll be making frequent use of Dull Pain. It's not permanent, so the hit points will help when it's down, but that's likely only a small portion of the time. I know it's what cookie cutter Regens do, but consider chasing recharge or defense instead of hit points.

The revised build is a little better, I suppose. At least Head Splitter and Whirling Sword have some accuracy now. They still don't do any damage, though.

I wouldn't do it. One or the other will do a good job of locking down minions. Not perfect, but good. And yes, admittedly, both together will do an even better job than either separately. But if you started with Oppressive Gloom, then it's probably not going to be worth the endurance to also pick up Cloak of Fear. If you started with Cloak of Fear, it's probably not going to be worth the self-damage to pick up Oppressive Gloom. I've not tried it, though.