Werner

Here's a few:

• Super Reflexes gives a high level of survivability on a budget.
• Super Reflexes gives you a recharge boost, and an expensive, high recharge Katana/Super Reflexes build would put out good DPS.
• It levels well, in the sense that Divine Avalanche helps you cap your melee and lethal defense from a low level, before your secondary fully kicks in.
• Good for hard targets - it'll solo AVs pretty well with an appropriate build.

Do you need one Divine Avalanche or two?

Two: DA>GC>GD>GC>DA>GC>SD>GC 90% recharge in Gambler's Cut
One: DA>GC>GD>GC>SD>GC 103% recharge in Golden Dragonfly, 90% in Gambler's Cut

So do you need Hasten? Not necessarily, but you probably need Hasten OR IOs. I'd probably frankenslot IOs with a focus on recharge where required, and if you're running the one Divine Avalanche chain, just settle for a very slight gap. Hasten doesn't really benefit Willpower, so I think it's worth avoiding if you can.

I settled for 45.4% myself. I fairly frequently see 43.x% during heavy debuffs, but usually not much lower than that. I don't think I've ever seen 40%. I'd AIM for 47% to 48% when making a build, but that buffer zone is easily sacrificed for other build goals, as it was in my case.

I'm a big fan of Tough and extra hit points on Super Reflexes, though. Anything that helps you survive when you get unlucky is good.

More hit points only mean more regeneration when you actually have more hit points. Your hit points are capped while Dull Pain is up (assuming you put in a little effort to grab the accolades), so all those IO hit point bonuses aren't helping at all most of the time. Also, more regeneration is the last thing Regen needs. Also, while I'm a fan of Leadership, Tough and Weave will do more for you than Maneuvers and Tactics most of the time. And you aren't getting the 2.5% defense from Tactics since you only five-slotted it. And the build up proc in Tactics is contributing about 1% to your DPS.

Regen REALLY wants Tough. It also wants more recharge. And more defense. What DID you focus on? Oh, hit points. A classic mistake.

See, you have permanent Dull Pain. Even skipping Task Force Commander, if you pick up Portal Jockey and Freedom Phalanx Reserve, your hit points are getting capped down from 2565 to 2410. For the vast majority of the game, those extra 155 hit points are doing you no good whatsoever, because they don't count.

Your primary focus should be recharge to get those click powers back up faster. Then you want to look into some ranged and AoE defense. You won't get huge numbers, but you want decent numbers, let's say something around 20-25%? You want to cut down on the rate at which those ranged attackers are chipping away at you.

For DPS, you're going to want to look into the Achilles' Heel proc. Well, for big game hunting anyway. Won't help much at all for minion munching. So it depends on what you want to do. But with no Whirling Sword and no Slice, it looks like you're trying to build a single-target monster. For that, Achilles' Heel.

Fire doesn't have any native knockback protection. Acrobatics fixes that. I think it is BETTER to fix it with IOs, but Acrobatics is an option.

While I was leveling Katana/Dark, Oppressive Gloom was better simply because I could afford the endurance. But I think Cloak of Fear is definitely the better power for that combination once you get your endurance under control. First, the enemy wander can cause problems for Divine Avalanche, as your current target wanders away from you, and you have to switch targets or chase (possibly through a crowd) to keep Divine Avalanche up. And second, Divine Avalanche gives you such great defense that eventually you'll find yourself taking more damage from Oppressive Gloom than you're preventing through the stun. At that point, run Cloak of Fear or don't run anything.

I don't know that there's a standard slotting for it. Here's mine:

Armageddon acc/rech
L53 Golgi Exposure
Theft of Essence proc
Numina's Convalescence end/rech, heal/rech, heal/end/rech

33% accuracy
84% endurance
84% heal
96% recharge
12% regeneration
1.87% hit points

However, that's a lot more healing slotted than I would recommend for general play. It's for those times when I feel like taking on an AV without minions, allowing me to leave Death Shroud running to take the AV down faster. I also have enough global accuracy and to-hit to make up for the fairly anemic accuracy in the power itself.

In case you're wondering, since you're basically new to this forum, Umbral is an expert and Regeneration is one of his specialties. Some of his advice may sound strange to you (don't worry about your regeneration or hit points, skip Fitness, etc.). And seeing your regeneration at 752% vs. his at 554% might make you think he's done something very wrong. He hasn't. He's done something very right.

If you want further clarification on WHY what he's done is the right thing to do, we can get into that. If you want to custom tailor some things to your own play style, we can get into that too. But if you just want a good mid-priced PvE build, you're set.

It doesn't take a huge sum of influence to get the defense higher than was perhaps intended. My Fire/Shield had positional defense in the lower 40s by the time he hit 50, on a leveling build, using the influence he earned while leveling. But frankly, you can do almost as well most of the time once you hit 32.5% defense, since you can pop a small purple for any difficult fight and be soft capped. I personally think it's pretty easy to get yourself to that point, so I think that Shield Defense is easy to make very survivable, even while leveling, or at least for the "long" slog through the upper levels.

My opinion doesn't seem to be the consensus view, though. I think most people, or at least the majority, find Shield Defense to be pretty squishy while leveling. Which hints that in practice, it's playing for most people just the way the devs seem to have intended - giving up survivability for better offense.

As far as what to play, I wouldn't sweat it. The primaries and secondaries all operate in a fairly narrow band of performance. The worst Scrapper combination is still a Scrapper.

If you still want to go with Shield Defense, I'd do this for a super cheapo build with good survivability:

• Slot Deflection and Battle Agility with three defense
• Slot Weave with three defense
• Slot Combat Jumping with one defense
• Slot a Steadfast Protection unique
• Slot Phalanx Fighting with one defense
• Slot Active Defense with three recharge for a nice margin of error
• Slot True Grit with three heal
• Slot Against All Odds with one endurance reducer
• One with the Shield is optional
• Use a single small purple inspiration at a time as required

On his Katana/Willpower, Iggy destroyed a pylon while surrounded by two RWZ challenge spawns, then finished of the spawns. Best I managed on my Katana/Regen was one and a third RWZ challenge spawns no pylon, or a single RWZ challenge spawn under a pylon (but not finishing off the pylon first). My build is ancient (I12), and a more up to date build could do better, but I'm still going to give the edge to Katana/Willpower, at least for RWZ challenge variations.

Katana/Regen has done at least four hand-picked AVs at once. Not sure what the record is for Katana/Willpower.

I'll agree with Umbral that neither will make a good farmer, but Katana/Willpower should be a marginally better.

They're both really nice combinations.

Yeah, I'd like knock up instead of knock back personally, but a lot of people like the knock back, so I can't see changing that.

Some minor buffs would be nice. They need to tread carefully, though, as the primaries run in a fairly narrow performance band. I'd like to see buffs done with the same restraint they showed when buffing Invulnerability. Just enough to make it very solid, without so much as to attract complaints of it now being overpowered.

My only vague suggestion would be to make the secondary effects more useful. The chance of stuns just don't seem to cut it in practice.

I don't have experience with Shockwave, but isn't cone knockback the name of the game for Claws survivability at the extremes of performance?

As for Eviscerate, it's a good attack, even for AV soloing. Follow Up -> Eviscerate -> Focus is a very high DPS chain.

You can't really make a bad Scrapper. Both Martial Arts/Shield Defense and Katana/Electric would be good. Most Scrappers will solo better than most Tankers, but there is SOME overlap when you're talking about survivability-spec'd Scrappers and damage-spec'd Trankers. If you're soloing, go with the Scrapper. It has plenty of survivability for solo play, plus will put out more damage.

Yeah, mainly, read through that thread. But here are some basics:

• Divine Avalanche -> Gambler's Cut -> Golden Dragonfly -> Gambler's Cut -> Divine Avalanche -> Gambler's Cut -> Soaring Dragon -> Gambler's Cut
  
• Achilles' Heel in Gambler's Cut
  
• You need at least your melee defense to be soft capped, and it helps to have all positions soft capped.
  
• Get the hit point and endurance accolades.
  
• Tough and Weave. Make sure you have good resistance values.

And Chimera might still be slightly problematic, because he debuffs defense while buffing his own defense (thus making it harder to land your own Divine Avalanche). I monitor my melee defense and my base defense. When base defense goes red, I know I'm debuffed. Then I make sure I use enough Divine Avalanche to stay above 45% defense, even if that means using it out of sequence. I also have sufficient accuracy and to-hit to make sure I connect.

AVs are only easy if you do everything right - build, planning, experience, knowing what to hit and when, and so on.

There are actually more than 11 Praetorian AVs, so I didn't solo them all. None killed me, but I don't have the DPS to kill all of them either (Nightstar, Siege, Diabolique, Dominatrix). So the 11 were the 11 I have the DPS to beat, and also that appear in the main Praetorian arc. That also means I didn't fight Anti-Matter. So the ones I beat with no deaths were:

Battle Maiden
Black Swan
Bobcat
Chimera
Infernal
Malaise
Marauder
Mother Mayhem
Neuron
Shadowhunter
Tyrant

I would highly recommend Fighting (for Tough and Weave) over Stealth. I would stack Resilience with Tough. I'd put enough defense in the build that I could soft cap with two Divine Avalanche without slotting it for defense, though slotting it for defense until you get to that point is very useful.

It might be my favorite click in the set now. Alpha strike? MoG! Defense debuffs? MoG! Running out of endurance? MoG! Feeling a little less awesome than you should? MoG!

Yeah, the crazy IO builds floating around are absolutely not required for normal PvE content, or even abnormal PvE content. They're mostly only necessary for the most extreme PvE content with your hands tied behind your back (no temps, no inspirations). For regular old leveling up, I DO use a few IOs, but pretty much only what I have lying around or can pick up cheap on the market. Typical is to slot a Steadfast Protection and Kismet when I have room, frankenslot my attacks in the mid 30s, and then I'm good to go to 50. Nothing that I can't afford on what I earn during the journey. I also almost never plan out my leveling builds. I just pick what sounds good at the time, though admittedly I have a lot of experience in knowing what will work out well for me.

There's no best secondary for Dual Blades. It goes well with pretty much anything. Dual Blades/Willpower is a classic, though probably mostly because both sets came out at the same time. Dual Blades/Super Reflexes is very good. Both are fairly straightforward, in the mostly toggle up and go sort of sense. Willpower is probably the simpler of the two since it has toggle mez protection, and it'll also bloom earlier, and is more forgiving of build and play mistakes, I'd say. So I'd recommend that.

Let's see, basic information. I wouldn't worry about the low level combos. Just pick attacks that look good to you. I'd judge attacks primarily by DPA, which should be one of the numbers that you can view if you view details about the attack before you pick it. Instead of Stamina at 20, you're going to take Quick Recovery at 20 - it's more powerful and has no prerequisites. For power pools, I'd personally go with Leaping (primarily or even exclusively for Combat Jumping), Fitness (I'd pick up Hurdle and maybe Health early, but only pick up Stamina much later in the game, like maybe in the 30s), Fighting (Boxing just because you need some prerequisite, then Tough and Weave) and... well, it's kind of open. Hasten might be good for your damage output, but doesn't really help your survivability much. I'd probably take Leadership, picking up Maneuvers, and maybe Tactics towards the end game. I WOULD use IOs while leveling, but only a couple. I'd buy a Steadfast Protection unique and a Kismet unique as soon as I could afford them (I'd leave open lowball bids, adding new ones every time I got more influence). They're not particularly cheap, but if you think of them as your only big ticket items 1-50, they're easily afforded.

For early slotting (before level 22), I tend to slot ONLY accuracy and endurance reduction in my attacks, pretty much evenly. For toggles, my first slot is usually endurance reduction. Combat Jumping is an exception since it's so cheap. When you get to level 22 and swap to SOs, that's when I'd slot attacks with some damage. I'd probably go one or two accuracy, one endurance, zero or one recharge, and three damage. If you don't have six slots yet, I'd put the accuracy in first, then the endurance, then the damage, then the recharge.

Also for early slotting, focus primarily on your attacks. Even if you focused on your secondary, you'd still be squishy. So just focus on killing the enemy as fast as possible. Your secondary comes later, like in the 20s I'd say. I mean, go ahead and pick up critical powers (such as your status protection, Indomitable Will, and Rise to the Challenge, pretty much the core power of the set), but don't devote a lot of slots until you have your attacks under control, and feel happy with your damage output.

If you make build mistakes, they're ultimately fixable. You might have veteran respecs. If not, there are sets of missions you can run to get the ability to respecify your character. Unless it's seriously unplayable, I'd just keep moving forward until at least some time in the 20s, when you're slotted with SOs and have a better idea what you want to do.

Dark Armor? It's got a great self heal.

Yeah, on brief glance, it didn't look like that gap would hurt you beyond the obvious minor effect. There are some chains on some builds where even a tiny gap will mess up how various powers and procs stack, pretty much destroying the chain. This doesn't appear to be one of those cases.

Yeah, the 200ish DPS for your build was with the Fury of the Gladiator included.

Regen THRIVES on recharge, all that it can get. But if I can't talk you into Hasten or out of Regen, then I recommend going with Katana or Broad Sword as your primary, and amassing a collection of defensive powers and bonuses (Divine Avalanche or Parry, Combat Jumping, Tough, Weave, Maneuvers, Tactics with a Gaussian set, Steadfast Protection unique). It should work out fine.