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It wasn't THAT huge of a nerf, and he didn't say that he would nerf it. He just gave numbers for what he had originally intended the power to do vs. what it was actually doing, then ran off with a migraine. I'm personally expecting a nerf eventually. This will affect farming. How much remains to be seen.
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If Mids' is correct, it looks like 69.2% resistance to endurance drain at level 50, unenhanceable. It's a lot. I don't remember any endurance drain problems leveling my Katana/Dark, and that included Sappers, though perhaps I've forgotten. I agree that purple shields would be helpful if you need any extra help.
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Generalizing a bit from what BrokenPrey said, the only sense in which Dark Melee/Super Reflexes may be worse is that when I built mine (I12), I felt it was THE top performer for AV soloing. Now, due to new sets, new IOs, and a number of buffs, a lot of combinations are its equal or better in that regard. But it hasn't gone downhill in any absolute sense, and depending on when "a long time ago" was, it may have gotten significantly tougher since you last fiddled with it.
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Quote:I don't know and I don't care if a direct port of Scrapper Super Strength would be overpowered. I'll worry when they actually port it. But this particular comment really jumped out at me.Brute Fiery 172.6 3.1
Brute Energy 157.5 3.3
Scrap Energy 151 3.3
Scrap Claws 149.6 2.9
Brute Claws 149.5 2.9
Scrap Fiery 149.3 3.1
Brute Warmace 148 3.7
Brute Dark 143.7 3.1
Brute Martial Arts 143.7 3.6
Scrap Strength 142.1 2.9
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First of all, this study looks at SS ported to scrappers completely unaltered, yet it comes in TENTH for scrappers. If the this info is correct, there can be no argument that SS directly ported to scrappers is overpowered in terms of single target damage, unless you also believe the nine powerset/at combos ahead of it are also 'overpowered'.
The list you posted shows it fourth for Scrappers, not tenth. The rest are Brutes. One of the Scrapper sets beating it hasn't been ported yet, and another is Fire, which has a secondary effect of more damage, so in a sense should be the "overpowered" damage set. Only Claws actually seems interesting to me. And not to take anything away from Bill Z Bubba's analysis, but you're basically looking at a single data point, a single attack chain, a single way of slotting every power. That's only barely more informative than "I played it to 50, and I didn't feel like it did very good damage" or "Werner did a top end tank DPS comparison and Super Strength got the highest DPS of the four sets he picked to look at." None of these data points are particularly relevant in isolation. None of them say much about overall balance. Look, you might be completely correct. You were right about Katana. I was wrong. But looking at a single data point, even if it is correct and supports your argument, does NOT equal "there can be no argument". There can absolutely be argument. You may have noticed people arguing. You may have noticed valid points on both sides. Or maybe you haven't. -
Dark Comes with a self heal, which is a big help. If you go with Fire, you'll be somewhat squishier unless you splurge for the Medicine pool and Aid Self. Not squishy, mind you, just squishier, more dependent on greens. But Invunerability's hit points generally move slowly enough to give you time to react.
On the offense front, the main difference between Fire and Dark is your AoE potential. Fire has it; Dark doesn't. So I guess it depends on what you mean by "able to fight". Either will fight just fine, but Fire will tear through larger spawns faster due to better AoE. And with Invuln, you're better off in large spawns.
So I guess my recommendation would be Fire/Invuln. It's tough enough for most things, and will put out more damage. But if you really want to feel Invulnerable, go with Dark/Invuln.
As for how to build it, your first three pools are Fitness, Leaping and Fighting. From Fitness, take Hurdle, Health and Stamina. From Leaping take Combat Jumping (and Super Jump if you want a travel power). From Fighting take either prerequisite (you won't be using it) and Tough and Weave. Your fourth power pool should probably be Speed, Medicine (only on Fire) or Leadership. All have different flavors of what they do for you. Speed brings Dull Pain back faster, and helps out your offense. Medicine gives you a heal, so is pretty straightforward. Leadership gives you Maneuvers for a small defensive boost, and if you take Tactics, you can stick a Gaussian set in it (it could also go in a Build Up power). I personally went with Hasten on my Brute that I'm leveling, but I'm not convinced I made the right choice yet.
From your secondary, I recommend taking everything except Unstoppable. Some people like Unstoppable, but I'm not a fan of crashing tier nines, and I'm already pretty unstoppable. If you go with Dark Melee, Siphon Life is your key attack since it heals you. It's probably worth frankenslotting in the mid game since it's serving double duty as a heal and an attack, and should be spammed in your attack chain.
Pick up a Steadfast Protection unique. Red side, I just put in bids for recipes as infamy came in, and ended up with two of them by the thirties (so one went to storage). Blue side I have buckets of them so it's never been an issue.
End game builds are a different story. A survivability-spec Dark/Invuln is capable of taking on multiple AVs at the same time without temporary powers or inspirations. Probably something to worry about when you get leveled up, unless you like knowing where you're going. -
If you want a very tanky build, Dark Melee/Invulnerability is a very good choice (I'm leveling one now red side). But you'd also be fine with Fire/Invuln. And you can also build Shield Defense to be very survivable, even on a budget.
Quoting myself from another thread:
Quote:On Shield Defense, I'm going to do this:
- Slot Deflection and Battle Agility with three defense SOs
- Slot Weave with three defense SOs
- Slot Combat Jumping with one defense SO
- Slot Active Defense with three recharge SOs for a nice margin of error
- Slot a Steadfast Protection unique
- Take Phalanx Fighting
- Use a single small purple inspiration at a time as required
- Never die
OK, yes, that technically isn't "just with SOs", but seriously, you can afford a Steadfast Protection. You just can. And if you're being a stickler, then fine, take Manuevers and slot it with two defense, and you'll get the same thing. I suppose you could say that using inspirations isn't "just with SOs", but I'm betting that 99%+ of the player population uses inspirations while leveling, so I'd call that a nonsense argument.
Those power choices and that slotting puts me at 32.4% defense. One small purple inspiration puts me at 44.9% defense, effectively soft-capped. I have my status protection. Oh, we're done. That's all you need to be almost unkillable in normal content. You can now focus the rest of your build on destroying your enemies, at which it will excel. Now, I DO recommend taking True Grit and at least slotting heal SOs in it. You'll want to take and slot Tough (had to take it to get to Weave anyway). But seriously, making Shield Defense unkillable is just that easy. -
You don't really need help from the Primary either. I played Dual Blades/Willpower to 50 on a Scrapper, and I think to about 30 on a Brute, both on the influence earned while leveling. "Very Squishy" is not how I'd describe it. I suspect this is a build or play style problem, not a lack of expensive set bonuses problem.
I'll agree that it's even hardier with Broad Sword or Katana, though. -
Does being the reincarnation of Bubba count? Because that would be a lot closer.
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Yeah, I'm assuming fairly extreme levels of recharge to run the very best possible chains. I certainly wouldn't be surpised if Claws is better at more down-to-earth levels. I'll open the new window... yeah, for basic slotting, Bill has Claws at the top for Scrappers.
I'm pretty sure you could do a Dual Blades/Electric Armor without Stamina. Haven't tried it, but it certainly sounds doable. -
Well... they look very similar on my rather cursory analysis, perhaps a 5% difference or less. I THINK Katana can come out ahead with the right build, but I haven't proved it, and I wouldn't bet the farm on it. In particular, I'd hate for you to start over with another build, only to find out later that I was wrong.
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Oh, VERY nice. OK. Now I feel bad about trying to point out where I thought he was coming from. Turns out he's coming a MUCH more offensive place. I agree that reporting him to the Mods is the right response. I hope you get banned, Pur3Z. You've lost all sympathy from me and I can't believe I wasted time defending you.
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Fury, I did find your initial reply to be reasonable based on one reasonable interpretation of the original post (which is the same as my interpretation on first reading). Some of this appears, on further review, to be just a misunderstanding since Pur3Z got the build from a friend (who got it from the forum) instead of getting it directly from the forum. He therefore wouldn't have known who the build came from and what it was capable of, no matter how well known this is on the forum, since he's not a forum regular. He didn't specifically pass it off as his own creation, just asked if it was any good. Yes, perhaps "forum convention" says that unless you say you got it from someone else, you're claiming that you made the build yourself. Pur3Z doesn't know "forum convention" since this is pretty much his first time posting. So people are kind of jumping on him for violating unwritten "rules" that he wasn't aware of. So while I understand exactly where you're coming from, and it's exactly where I'd have been coming from had I been the first responder, I can understand him getting upset now that we know more of the story.
Calling you a "Feggat", however, went over the line. And Pur3Z, even if you don't think it went over the line, I hope you can see that name calling, even if you personally feel it's a reasonable response to being "attacked", isn't a great way to win friends and influence people?
At this point, Pur3Z has been red repped into the toilet, I'm going to guess for the name calling. Hopefully that's enough to satisfy the people upset with him?
Pur3Z, you at least got your answer (the build is great), even if you didn't like HOW you got the answer. You've learned that the Scrapper forum wants you to be explicit about where you got the build you want feedback on, or we'll make some assumptions that you didn't intend, and are probably quite shocked that we made. Yes, you can easily claim that this means we have reading comprehension problems, but that's not really it. We just have some unwritten rules about what needs to be stated and what doesn't need to be stated. To pick another random unwritten rule, unless PvP is specifically stated, we're talking about PvE. So if you ask for advice on a build, you're going to get PvE advice, which can get you killed in PvP. Since you don't know all the unwritten rules and seemingly strange assumptions we may make, you're better off giving us too much information rather than too little, even if it seems to you that nobody with a basic grasp of the English language would misinterpret what you're saying (and what you're not saying). So you're hopefully now in a much better position to avoid this sort of forum brawl in the future. I hope you'll continue to post and look for advice here, even if we all got off on the wrong foot.
And why am I trying to be forum counselor? *sigh* It's like I've never seen people argue on the internets before. -
Quote:Actually, Katana's top DPS is higher than Claws, but I figured the Follow Up stacking on Lightning Field would probably make up the difference and pull it slightly ahead.Well, Claw's top DPS is better than Katana's. Add in FU double stacking for LF (which would be the same damage adding ability for both without FU)...I'd give it to Claws.
But I think you know that.
Looking more closely, using my old Super Reflexes DPS template, Katana is pumping out 242 DPS while Claws languishes at 226 DPS. However, a different chain with 225 DPS keeps Follow Up triple stacked maybe 2/3 of the time. Let's say triple-stacked full time for our first pass, so 3*37.5%*12.5 = 14 damage per tick added by Follow Up, and ticks every 2 seconds. Nope, not going to be enough to make up the difference, and that was exaggerating the buff. Plus Katana has more -resistance going on. So on closer examination, I'm going to change my mind and say that I would expect Katana/Electric to be capable of higher top end DPS. -
An easy way to add Super Jump is to drop Calling the Wolf. A single-target taunt isn't going to let you be team tank. If you want to taunt something, stab it in the face.
Looking at Streetcleaner's last build posted, also swap the Oblits in Golden Dragonfly for Armageddon (all but damage) to pick up some of the lost recharge. You're then a little over a second away from perma Hasten, but one second is bragging rights, not anything significant. If you feel you MUST have perma Hasten, take one of the slots you just saved and stick another recharge in Hasten.
Hmmm, I wonder if we've actually gone too far in the endurance saving direction. Made the changes I suggest above, which leaves you with four or five free slots. Now you recover 3.74 EPS on average, and burn 0.91 EPS on toggles, 3.51 for the attack chain, 0.19 for Practiced Brawler and Hasten. So you're burning 0.87 EPS - while Conserve Power is down. It's only down for 71.5 seconds, so you only burn about 62 endurance. Conserve power burns about 10, so 72 endurance. Now your toggles burn 0.52 EPS, Hasten... well, Mids' still says 15 points of endurance, so 0.13 EPS, Practiced Brawler is 0.03 EPS. Attack chain is 1.88 EPS. So you're recovering 1.18 EPS, and you'll be recovered in about 60 seconds, leaving you 30 seconds bumping against the top.
That sounds just about right, actually. 0.4 EPS of your recovery is from procs, so you can't strictly count on it, plus my calculations weren't 100% correct. Therefore, I'd want to leave a margin of safety for when luck doesn't go your way. Plus you'll probably hit Practiced Brawler more often than once every 120 seconds, again for safety.
Oh. #*@! The Accolades were off again. I'm not recalculating, but it does mean you have a bigger margin of safety than I'd probably shoot for. You can actually stand to burn slightly more endurance.
And grab a Kismet unique. -
Heh, we see the same numbers and have opposite reactions. I don't think you're going to have big recharge bonuses out of a survivability-spec'd Katana/Electric. A half heal every, say, 45 seconds doesn't strike me as particularly good. I have a full heal every 15 seconds or so on my Katana/Dark. And while I might go minutes between heals, sometimes I hit it as fast as it comes up. So having Aid Self as your emergency back up heal might be useful, at least if you can pick it up without major sacrifice. On the other hand, if you can make room for Aid Self, you can easily make room for Hasten instead, and get Energize back faster, which might be a better overall choice. So you're probably right.
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Quote:With that in mind, you have a whole TON of options, because almost any Scrapper can be made capable of soloing AVs and pylons. Katana/Electric is a perfectly good choice. Divine Avalanche takes care of your all-important melee defense. Good power pool selection and a ton of set bonuses will at least do a good job with your ranged and AoE defense. You probably won't be soft-capped to them due to the compromises required, but you could be. I'd probably settle for less than the soft cap, maybe something in the 35% to 40% range, then focus on other things. Electric Armor combined with Tough will give you good resistances, as well as taking care of your endurance and hopefully your healing and regeneration needs. Might need Aid Self, but I'm thinking probably not. More of a want it instead of need it thing. If you do want it, you could probably get rid of the Fitness Pool and rely on your secondary and Body Mastery to handle endurance and regeneration. I haven't tried to build one myself, but that's probably where I'd start if I was building one.Thanks. put that way I think I can forgo the top time pylon soloing. I'm more interested in being able to solo AV's, and doing it with a slightly different build. And please keep in mind that this is going to be a long term project for me, I'm not going to be able to IO right away at least not the expensive ones.
So with those thoughts in mind is Kat/Ela a good idea or is there a better choice for a "different AV soloing project build"?
One completely different possibility would be Fiery Melee/Super Reflexes. For all that the forums say that it's a great AV soloer on a budget, I have the feeling that not very many people actually play them. Kind of a shame, because it's a great AV soloer on a budget. I think it depends on how much you're willing to work for the rewards. Katana/Electric should be just as good, but will require more investment in both time and influence.
Me, I'd go Katana/Electric. I'm strongly considering starting one, actually. I probably won't turn it into an AV soloer, since I've got several of those already, and two are Katana, but I think it would be a fun toon to play. -
Well, thanks, but everyone can be wrong. I've been wrong numerous times in the past. Oftentimes, I'll say something based merely on an educated guess, even a hunch. If you want numbers to back it up, it's worth asking for them. If you want clarification, it's worth asking for it. Please don't take my word as Truth with a capital-T.
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Well, all builds are compromises in some way. There's no best build for everything. What I'm saying is that if you build Katana/Electic for maximum possible DPS for pylon soloing, you might not have the survivability you need for AV soloing. And if you build it for the survivability for AV soloing, you're not going to have the highest DPS.
A low-compromise AV and pylon soloer is Dark Melee/Shield Defense. Also worth considering is Fire/Shield, which has a little compromise on the survivability front (it "must" pick up Aid Self) but gets better AoE for general game play. But both are very popular builds, at least on the forums, so don't fall into the category of "a little different." But I think ONE of the following three items will likely need to go:
- a little different
- great for AV soloing
- top times for pylon soloing
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Thanks, Umbral. I wanted to answer this, and I was trying to calculate Fire Blast correctly, and I THOUGHT that's how it was calculated, but then the numbers I had on my Tanker spreadsheet didn't match that OR Mids'. No idea what I did wrong on that spreadsheet. I need to fix it to avoid confusing myself in the future.
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Difficult due to the difficulty of getting good ranged and AoE defense with a secondary that provides none of either. But should be doable with the right build. I've NOT actually tried to put together a build like this, though, so this is just general rather than specific experience talking. If it were me, I'd assemble a good build first before committing. Well, no, actually I'd probably just play it 1-50 first since it sounds like loads of fun for leveling, THEN figure out if it was worth going further with it.
Edit: Won't top the pylon charts, but with the right build, won't be too far off the pace either.
Edit 2: The build to place on the pylon charts might look significantly different than the build to solo AVs. Doing both at once would probably be compromised at both. Not that compromises are bad. A compromise might make for a better all-purpose build. -
I just hope that Super Strength gets ported soon, in whatever form they port it, so that this monthly argument can at least be about something real.
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I think you'll be hard-pressed to get a survivability boost equivalent to 3% resistance to ALL damage types out of one slot in any other way, at least if you already have a solid build that isn't completely neglecting key slotting of key powers. But yes, that's a whole lot to pay for a fairly small overall improvement.
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Quote:You're right. I wasn't reviewing the build as a whole, just answering the question about required recharge. Looks like 2.91 EPS recovery with the proc added in, less 1.15 EPS for toggles, less 0.13 EPS for Hasten, less 0.06 EPS for Practiced Brawler, so only 1.57 EPS before looking at the attack chain. The chain with its current slotting burns 4.09 EPS, so we're netting a loss of about 2.52 EPS. Ah, I should add in the accolades. Didn't realize they were missing. That adds another 0.27 EPS recovery, so our net loss is 2.25 EPS. It'll burn through 110 points of endurance in about 49 seconds.Werner, that build has some impressive recharge in it... But I question what kind of sustained capability the build has for fights. With (only) 162% recovery and no tools like Conserve Power, etc. in the build, I am not sure how long you could keep that going against an AV or Pylon before running out of endurance.
Thoughts? My "end game" builds are typically built around soloing and/or are not dependent on assumed outside buffs. Figured I'd raise the question before the OP plonked down the influence only to be potentially dissappointed in his, erm, "stamina".
Yeah, I wouldn't go near that build.
For AVs and pylons, I'd shoot for endurance sustainability. For general play, I've found a loss of something in the 0.5 to 0.75 EPS to be acceptable with the pauses between targets and groups and the use of blue inspirations. I wouldn't touch a 2.25-EPS-burning build.
For some quick improvements to EPS, drop the damage from Golden Dragonfly and replace with an endurance IO. Put the Hecatomb set in Gambler's Cut, skipping the damage/recharge to make room for the Achilles' Heel. Drop Sting of the Wasp Completely. Put the Mako's Bite set in Soaring Dragon instead. Pick up Conserve Power. I don't think that'll be enough, but it'll be significantly better, plus it should improve DPS a little. It also frees up some slots that you may be able to put to good use.
For a slightly more painful improvement to EPS, I'd also drop Super Jump, swap Swift for Hurdle, Ninja Run (jump, actually) everywhere, and pick up Physical Perfection. That might be enough combined with the other changes to get you into a reasonable burn rate, plus it will improve your survivability. -
No, they've never been available on Scrappers. Yes, they will probably be available at some point in the future. Powerset proliferation is one of the goals of the devs. Many sets have been ported so far. Many more to come.