Werner

The difference between 45% and 43% is taking 1.4 times as much damage, comparable to losing almost 30% resistance.

If you CAN'T tell the difference, then you aren't playing at the edge of the envelope, and you need to crank things up a notch.

Rundown of Willpower vs. Regen from my point of view from a recent private message:

"Willpower vs. Regen is... mostly about flavor. While both have very high regeneration rates, that's pretty much where the similarity ends. Willpower is a VERY passive secondary. Toggle on and go. You pretty much almost never notice it. Your green bar moves slowly. You never die, at least never by accident. On the down side, boring. No personality.

Regeneration, while possessing similar levels of power, is completely the opposite in terms of play. It is a VERY active secondary with tons of personality. You are constantly hitting click powers. You have to pay very careful attention to your health. Your green bar flies wildly all over the place. You have to develop a nearly psychic sense for what damage will be coming your way in the next few seconds. If you like to push the envelope, you're going to die. Over and over. It is a school of hard knocks. But once you master it, oh boy, can it reward. Do everything right, and you're invincible. It makes you want to throw your fists into the air and cheer. Make a split second error, and you're dead. But Regeneration didn't let you down. Look at those clicks in your tray, unused, ready and waiting. Regeneration was faithful. It was there for you. You let yourself down. It was your fault you died, and with experience, you'll know just what you did wrong, what you can do better the next time. You can always play better than you do play, and Regeneration is always there, teasing you with just how awesome you know it could be, if only you were a little better, a little smarter, a little faster. I love it, but Regeneration certainly isn't for everyone. And frankly, I also like to relax sometimes, maybe even most of the time. And for top end play, Regeneration requires hard core focus. So while I find Willpower boring and without personality, and my heart belongs to Regen, I also have a lot more levels of Willpower under my belt than Regeneration. You can only stare into the sun for so long."

For primary, I think the best to combine with either is Katana. But then, I'm a big Katana fan.

Let's see, granted, my survivability spreadsheet isn't proof, but let's see what it has to say on the subject. Plugging into some version of the Umbral-created ValBlademaster-played build, and assuming no other defense except the absolute minimum of 30% melee/lethal from Divine Avalanche and the defense we're trading off:

45% melee + 30% lethal = 1379 survivability
30% melee + 45% smashing/lethal = 1528 survivability

I'll admit that I'm surprised. I expected a bigger difference, and for it to be in the other direction.

Guess I have to go with smashing/lethal then, assuming there are no other trade offs. I'm betting there are a LOT of other trade offs, though, since 45% melee is easy, and 45% smashing is at best extremely difficult.

Good job getting to the defense soft cap, which is huge. Unfortunately, Blessing of the Zephyr is getting nerfed, so you won't be soft-capped for long. At least you'll still be melee soft capped with a double hit of Divine Avalanche, but you may still want a few more points of defense from elsewhere.

I prefer Cloak of Fear on a high defense Dark Armor. The basic idea is that your high defense will have you taking so little damage from minions that Oppressive Gloom will cause more damage than it prevents. Irrelevant for AV soloing, but as is, it seems like a waste of a power pick to me. I'd either drop it (if your main focus is AVs) or pick up and slot Cloak of Fear (if you want a general-purpose toon that can also solo AVs).

I don't think your endurance is there yet. You're averaging 3.72 EPS recovery, and 1.74 EPS for toggles (assuming we remove Oppressive Gloom or leave it off). That's not bad, but I don't think it's no inspiration AV soloing good with the chain you'll be running, even with Conserve Power available.

Normally, I'd recommend Gambler's Cut over Sting of the Wasp. But this time, I'll recommend you stay with Sting of the Wasp. Gambler's Cut is good for two main things - fitting into attack chains, and spamming the Achilles' Heel proc. But you kind of can't afford to use Achilles' Heel because you need all the defense you can get. And as far as attack chains go, the timing of Divine Avalanche -> Golden Dragonfly -> Sting of the Wasp -> Divine Avalanche -> Soaring Dragon -> Sting of the Wasp is just perfect for your build and your double-stacking needs with almost the same DPS as Gambler's Cut chains (sans Achilles' Heel). I'd go with that.

Eh, let me get a little more specific on endurance. That chain burns 3.04 EPS. So your net burn is 3.04 + 1.74 - 3.72 = 1.06 EPS. That's just not going to cut it, even with Conserve Power. That also suggests to me that you may want to focus primarily on AV soloing, drop Oppressive Gloom, and not pick up Cloak of Fear (too much endurance). If you drop Oppressive Gloom, you can pick up Physical Perfection. With a Performance Shifter proc in it, your average endurance recovery climbs to 4.16, so 3.04+1.74-4.16=0.62 EPS. Still probably not enough, even with Conserve Power, but it's a lot closer. Let's see, if you can find two slots and put in a Performance Shifter endmod and a straight endmod, average recovery climbs to 4.36, so net drain goes to 0.42 EPS. That lasts about 276 seconds. Conserve Power lasts for 90, and recharges in 387, so you need to last 297 or so, assuming a Conserve Power will get you back to full, which I haven't verified. You can add recharge to Conserve Power to shorten that time, but then we need even more slots.

So I think your two main challenges are picking up more endurance recovery, and getting around the Blessing of the Zephyr nerf.

Pure resist sets without defense added to them will not hold up as well as pure defense sets without resistance added to them. A pure defense Scrapper at the soft cap has 90% damage mitigation. A pure resistance Scrapper at the resistance cap has 75% damage mitigation. The pure resistance Scrapper takes 2.5 times as much damage. Also, while it's easy for some Scrappers to hit the defensive soft cap, it's impossible to hit the resistance soft cap (solo) to more than a couple of types, depending on your secondary.

So for me, no, a Resistance set won't perform well enough without using inventions to push up its defenses. Not even close. But "perform well enough" is subjective. You'd still have way more survivability than most Blasters. Leveling shouldn't be a problem. You shouldn't have a problem on teams. You could handle most things solo if you don't crank up the difficulty level very far. If that's performing well enough, then it will perform well enough.

I think the key to having fun with it would be your mind set and tactics. Think of and play something like a Fire/Fire Scrapper more as a really-tough, low damage Blapper with mez protection. Thought of that way, it would probably be pretty satisfying. I sure miss mez protection when I play my Blasters. Poof! Problem solved! Just don't think of it as a pseudo-Tank. You're not a Tank. Don't try to play like one.

Totally guessing, but maybe Dark/Fire or Dark/Electric would be good for you. Either way, you have two heals and two endurance recovery powers. So perhaps as solid as you can be with pure resistance, and hopefully no endurance trouble.

My general target for net recovery (recovery - toggles) is between 2.5 and 3 EPS. Once I'm in that range, I start doing more detailed calculations to see where I really stand.

Out of curiosity, where DOES my Katana/Dark stand in that regard? Looks like 1.91 net EPS - well below target. However, I do have Conserve Power and I'll typically detoggle one or more powers in long fights - Death Shroud if I want to keep minions for Dark Regeneration, Tactics if I'm hitting OK, Cloak of Fear if I'm fighting an AV without minions, Tough if I'm not fighting a smashing/lethal AV, and so on. It usually works. It doesn't always work. In long fights, I occasionally end up standing around spamming nothing but Divine Avalanche for a while.

Without Conserve Power or Dark Consumption to fall back on, I agree with Desmodos, it doesn't look sustainable, at least on the surface.

Right, no redraw with Willpower. Well, Strength of Will probably, but not a big deal. Some people don't even take that power. Boxing does cause redraw, but you won't be using it. It's just there to get to Tough and Weave.

The combo system on Dual Blades is optional, and the low level combos aren't necessarily worth taking. By the time you get to the combos that are worth taking, you're more experienced with the set. It's pretty easy, at least for anyone that uses attack chains. You just set up an attack chain that includes the combo. Dual Blades/Willpower won't, in my opinion, be as simple or powerful as Katana/Willpower. But it's a lot of fun, and a reasonable option.

Robots, Clockwork I think, anyone that looks like they're wearing body armor. It's an annoyance when it happens, and those may be the times that stick out in your mind, but it's mostly a non-issue.

1) Katana/Willpower
2) Katana/Willpower
3) Katana/Willpower
4) Katana/Willpower
5) Katana/Willpower

I hate to make it sound that simple, as I'm a big fan of both Dark Melee and Dark Armor (though I've never played them together). But honestly, I think it's that simple. Just my opinion, of course.

I don't do many comparisons of archetypes, so I may be missing something, but it looks to me that Leo G is right, and a Brute will do "a bit more damage" than the equivalent Scrapper if both are at the damage cap. So perhaps Silverado was disagreeing with the "much more damage" comment. It's not much more. It's just a little bit more. For 350% more of a damage buff.

Scrapper damage at cap = 1.125 damage scale * (100% + ~10% chance of critical) * 500% damage cap = 6.19
Brute damage at cap = 0.75 damage scale * 850% damage cap = 6.38

And I don't think this proves anything about which AT benefits more from buffs.

I'm late to the party, but I've always liked the 5 Crushing Impacts, 1 Luck of the Gambler global approach. I just haven't used it.

Both my Katana scrappers have a full Mako's Bite set in Divine Avalanche. It's just what made sense for those specific builds.

In any case, it's not an attack that I'd be likely to frankenslot. You probably don't need recharge. You may not need defense. So you mostly just want good damage and decent accuracy and endurance reduction. You can get that from sets.


So far as I know:

Best DPS double Divine Avalanche chain: DA>GC>GD>GC>DA>GC>SD>GC
Best DPS single Divine Avalanche chain: DA>GC>SD>GC>GD>GC>SD>GC
Best DPS no Divine Avalanche chain: GD>GC>SD>GC

Be sure to put an Achilles' Heel in Gambler's Cut. More information on required recharge and comparative DPS in this thread.

Heh. I don't think Super Reflexes needs a buff. It's still a VERY good set, particularly at lower influence levels since it is so easy to soft cap. Buff it, and you probably have to buff everything BUT Shield Defense to keep them from getting left behind.

I think I can throw both of us a bone, though. It really won't surprise me if you're right, and the Shields DDR exploit (if it's considered one) eventually goes away, though I'm not holding my breath. If it does, that MIGHT be enough. Shields might still be a better choice for the majority of situations when IO'd out, but Super Reflexes would have a very solid niche fighting defense debuffing foes, of which there are many, which has never been quite so clear as it is on my soft-capped Dark Armor with 0% DDR. Ow!

Resistance could affect the answer, since if you highly resist the damage coming through, it matters less that it comes through. Based on the assumption that we're talking about Dark Armor, I plugged your numbers on top of Alexei's resistance, with the exception that I raised his psionic resistance to 60%, because I believe you like to slot for that more than I do. Also using Alexei's regeneration and healing, but that makes no comparative difference.

Option 1 then gives you a survivability score of 1323.

Option 2 then gives you a survivability score of 1784.

So option 2 wins by a landslide.

That said, we don't have the complete picture. You have SOME positional defenses in option 1. I bet you have SOME psionic defense in both. I bet you have SOME AoE defense in option 2.

My bet's still on option 2, though.