Werner

I don't know what it is, but I hate it. Yes, it seems like the game decides you're in "friendly territory" so it doesn't autofire, like it doesn't want to "waste" the power. Maybe you're right about targeting an NPC. It's something like that. Been around a while. Hate it. I can't imagine what exploit could be being "fixed" by this.

Yeah, that's a good one too. I recommended it to someone recently. They didn't have enough recharge to pull off the top DPS chain, but weren't satisfied with the DPS of the Incinerate -> Scorch -> Cremate -> Scorch chain. Incinerate -> Cremate -> Fire Sword was just the ticket, doing higher DPS with the same endurance efficiency (DPE). The DPS is pretty much the same as Incinerate -> Cremate -> Greater Fire Sword -> Fire Sword, which is to say not far behind the top chain, plus it saves you an attack.

We don't recommend it much for some reason. I'm thinking that most people either settle for low recharge and the EPS 3-attack chain, or the DPS 4 attack chain, or they go for maximum recharge and want to run the maximum DPS chain. Maybe we're just not seeing many people with high but not extreme recharge who want great DPS but aren't chasing maximum DPS. For them, though, Incinerate -> Cremate -> Fire Sword is probably the ideal chain.

Defense is binary - you get hit or you don't. "At... the top end, such as when fighting AVs", you still won't get hit much. But the hits that DO land will be for a whole lot of damage. Your chance of survival then depends on how many hits you can survive in a row. Let's say the AV has a 10% chance to hit. If you can survive two hits in a row, there's only a 1% chance of getting killed by each pair of hits. That might sound low, but if it takes you 100 hits worth to of time to kill the AV, your chance of survival is only 37% or so. If you can survive three hits in a row, there's only a 0.1% chance of getting killed by each triple of hits, and your chance of surviving the same fight is 90% or so. Now, I'm sure I've screwed up the math in hopefully minor ways, but that's the idea. Tough in combination with more hit points will significantly increase the chance that it'll take three hits instead of two to put you down, which will in turn greatly increase your odds of surviving a difficult fight. Something like 37% to 90% in the hypothetical example given. That's not trivial.

Now, that's specific to AV fighting, but the general idea still applies, if perhaps to a lesser extent, with more enemies doing less damage each, like when you're cranking up the difficulty level.

And while not as dramatic as with defense, resistance also gets better the more you have of it. Since a Super Reflexes has resistance that scales with how much damage they've taken, that means that Tough gets better and better the more injured you are.

As I said, "probably not very critical for normal missioning unless you like to mission on really high difficulty settings." But if you want top end survivability, you take Tough on a Super Reflexes.

Edit: Bah, my numbers were for only being able to survive one vs. two hits, not two vs. three as stated. Same idea.

This. So don't worry about endurance in Shield Charge, and don't use it for AV soloing.

Good point. Same with Eradications.

When I play with my friends, I routinely tank on my Scrappers or Brutes. I can get all the survivability and aggro control I need out of a properly-built Scrapper. I am not getting my friends killed. An actual Tank would therefore be overkill, and would simply represent a big loss of damage output.

As for how the archetype should be played, I've been playing since beta. I think I can decide for myself how to play my favorite archetype based on my own experience without being swayed by bumper sticker slogans and well-intentioned rules of thumb.

I admit I didn't know it was a proc. I thought it was a "set" bonus. However, I doubt I'll be putting it in Divine Avalanche or Parry. First, I really want the to-hit on my FIRST hit. That is often THE most critical attack of the entire fight. Second, I don't want to burn one of my attack slots. I'd rather pick up Tactics, Focused Accuracy and/or accuracy set bonuses, and use the last slot in the attack for more damage or for the 6-slot bonus.

On a perma Hasten or at least very high recharge build, that cooldown isn't all that long, and you have two nukes to swap back and forth between, and you have other AoE. I'm not big into farming, but I think that recharge would make a huge difference for Electric/Shield's farming speed.

What I was originally responding to was this:

"[Broad Sword and Katana] are around 3rd in terms of single target DPS"

SINGLE TARGET DPS.

I was responding to a comment about SINGLE TARGET DPS. Despite that being what I was responding to, I THOUGHT I was fairly clear in discussing the difference between that and burst damage and AoE damage.

I also use what what I believe to be shared terminology. On the Scrapper forum, when someone says DPS, they almost always mean single target DPS. That's just what we MEAN by DPS. We call AoE damage AoE damage. We call burst damage burst damage. We call single target DPS DPS. It saves constantly typing "single target" over and over again. And you understood what I was talking about, because you say "you actually mean SINGLE TARGET DPS." YES. That is exactly what I mean. I thought that EVERYONE was on the same page in that regard. I thought everyone understood that we were talking about single target DPS when I was responding to a comment about single target DPS with a bunch of lists comparing single target DPS (except the two comparing AoE damage).

Yes, I know single target DPS isn't the only freakin' kind of damage there is. I also talked about AoE damage. I also talked about burst damage. You may have noticed me saying that burst damage is one reason why Broad Sword is better than the DPS (SINGLE TARGET DPS) numbers would indicate.

WE'RE AGREEING. OK? Good lord. How can a whole bunch of people in complete agreement that Broad Sword is a good set be in such a vehement argument about something WE AGREE ON.

I don't have a narrow focus here. I was responding to a very specific assertion about a very specific thing. An assertion about SINGLE TARGET DPS. Which we all know isn't the only freakin' kind of damage there is.

Anyway, Y'all believe whatever you want to believe about Broad Sword. Y'all believe whatever you want to believe about what I said. Y'all can now have the last word, because I'm done.

So far as DPS goes, I think Claws/Fire would resemble Dual Blades/Electric, in that both are using a follow up power to boost a damage aura. I'd put Claws at about 10 DPS under Dual Blades at the top end, though. So off hand, let's say Claws/Fire is capable of something in the 250s with a dedicated DPS build. That's very good, and you also don't need fuel to do it the way you do with Shield Defense. But it's also not going to set any DPS records, and you're going to have a lot of trouble getting the survivability out of it if you're going for max DPS.

I haven't paid close attention to AoE, so can't comment there. Seems like it would be very good. I doubt it would be on top, but that's just a guess.

Yeah, oops. I had the Incinerate -> Cremate -> Scorch chain just beneath it in my spreadsheet, and copied down the recharge time numbers from it instead somehow.