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You don't need every power, but there also aren't any bad powers. I'd take everything but Unstoppable, because I hate tier 9 crashes, but it's very effective while it's up. Some people skip one or two of the passives. They aren't so strong that you must take them, but they are strong enough that you may miss them.

Edit: The devs buffed Invulnerability a while ago. Before that, the consensus seemed to be that it was the worst secondary, though not unplayably so. Just in the sense that SOME secondary needs to be at the bottom of the list. As I recall, some of the changes were ones that the forums had come to rough consensus on. The changes were small and cautious. They were also exactly what the set needed. The devs made it very competitive without changing the personality of the set or making it overpowered, except of course when dealing with its specialty, surviving large crowds of smashing/lethal enemies.

I recognize that Shield Defense isn't the most solid of secondaries while leveling on just SOs. But I just can't describe it as "painful".

My Broad Sword/Shield Defense was the most fun I've had from 1-50. Very solid. Yes, I know half of that is because of Parry. We don't have to count that experience if you think the sword primaries shouldn't count.

But I'm leveling a Fire/Shield, now 31, which should be as squishy as Shields get. I put in a Kismet unique at 12, and I put in a Steadfast Protection unique at 28, but other than that, I haven't gone to IOs. It's not bad. Actually, it's pretty good. I think I've died three or four times total. I play tank for a Blaster/Scrapper level-pacted duo, with occasional guest appearances by a friend's Offender. One small purple has me almost to the soft cap. I ground from 30 to 31 solo with half of my time spent taking on the Red Cap bosses in that one section of Croatoa that's overflowing with them. Granted, Red Caps take 25% (?) extra damage from fire, but that's me on my squishy little Shield Defense, surrounded by four even level bosses, going to town. I was burning inspirations to stay and farm the entire area in one burst of activity, mostly purples and blues. I'd burn out around the time all the bosses were dead, go kill some minions and lieutenants to replenish the inspiration supply, and head back in. I did some boss-killing there while they were purple too, just not four at once.

I feel solid, and I'm having fun. I'm not seeing this "sucks while leveling on SOs" thing except on paper. Seat of the pants, I'm not having a problem. I don't feel like I'm paying my dues to get to the IO'd out end game. I'm just having fun playing the game with a rather good character.

So from my perspective, the fragility of an SO'd Shield Defense is overstated. On the other hand, I'd also say that the end game dominance of Shield Defense is similarly overstated. It isn't like Shield Defense is the only secondary played by the min/max crowd. We play a wide variety of things, and all have their benefits.

It won't surprise me if the DDR thing is considered a bug and eventually gets changed. It also won't surprise me if it never changes. I'll continue playing both Shield Defense and other secondaries either way.

Maybe I'll warm up to it. I've only been playing since the weekend. Could be an acquired taste.

Maybe. I'm guessing I get my choice of a heal OR Fireball, but not both (well, not both plus soft cap plus 95% DDR). One choice looks to be Medicine instead of Fitness, and slotting Physical Perfection to the max along with near-perma-Hastened Conserve Power to handle sustainable endurance duties. The other choice would probably be all out assault, with both Fitness and the Fire epic. Haven't really poked much at builds. Just mulling things over in my head for now.

I have enough AV soloers, so a mostly pure offense build is intriguing. I'd like to have enough survivability to take down a pylon, but that's probably not a particularly high bar as long as I'm soft-capped. Mind you, it would also be nice to be able to solo AVs quickly instead of slowly. I suppose I could pop greens as long as I'm just having fun.

Thank you! I did that once upon a time for Targeting Drone, but that was like five years ago. I remembered only that it was possible.

Well, as long as we're posting about costumes and sound effects, here's Turiel standing in front of his "Boss Farm". This is why I'm considering the all swords route (thank you, Ninja Running):



Hmmm, looks like I should crank up the brightness on the shield one more level...

(You wouldn't know it, but I'm actually a costume *****. I spend way too much time in Icon, and my non-demon characters have and use all five costume slots, and I want more.)

I seem to tune out most of the game noises pretty well. The two that are just nails on chalkboard for me are the "still recharging" noise and the shriek of the fire swords. I'm currently dealing with BOTH of those on my Fire/Shield. Good thing I love the character otherwise.

Oh, and the Targeting Drone drove me completely insane on my AR/Dev Blaster back when the noise was constant. That was so bad that I played without sound until I figured out how to turn it off.

I'll be happy to report back, but I'm not sure how applicable any comparison I make will be. My other three purpled-out Scrappers are all built for survivability over damage output. My Fire/Shield will likely either be an all swords AoE concept build, or it's going to be a pure damage DPS/AoE hybrid, with survivability taking a back seat (though it won't be a squishy). So I can pretty much predict what any comparison will look like, and I don't even have a build worked out yet. Heck, I can't even guarantee I'll even IO it out, though that's currently the plan.

It doesn't fail. For DPS, it's right behind the top chain, GFS>Incinerate>Cremate. Takes slightly more recharge, is slightly more endurance efficient. It's an excellent chain if you prefer Fire Sword to Cremate.

lol!

I'm showing it at just over 3/4 as much DPS as the top fire chain. That's pretty bad. On the other hand, 3/4 * 280 = 210 DPS, which would still be my top DPSing scrapper by a significant margin. How's THAT for sad? *chuckle*

But yeah, it's hard to settle for 210 DPS when you could be doing 280 DPS with no other compromise but concept. Mind you, I probably wouldn't use the top chain, and I'd probably be more in the 250-260 DPS range. But it's also tempting to go pure damage for once in my life, and it sounds like I could avoid the shriek in the top chain by going with the small sword in GFS.

I'd support that. Some elemental blade options for Broad Sword, Katana and Dual Blades.

Yeah, you can change sword sizes at the tailor. I'm planning on all larges if that'll only make noise on redraw. I should try all smalls too. But the idea is to give myself one consistent fire sword that stays out for the entire battle.

OK, if the bug IS that the +regen and +recovery are enhanceable (which I've always considered a feature instead of a bug), then that IS a problem, and we DO have reason to be afraid, and either Umbral's understanding is wrong, or my understanding of Umbral's understanding is wrong.

Maybe I just should just copy over to the test server to respec and move some things around and have a look. I feel like I'm getting conflicting expert testimony, but unlike in a trial, I'm allowed to go and gather evidence myself.

Edit: And... that's exactly when they decided to shut the test server down for two hours for some upgrade.

Thank you! OK, so now we know it can be done. Looks like you're running Incinerate -> Scorch -> Cremate -> Scorch? It's not the top DPS chain, but it's a very good DPS chain, and the chain I would likely run in a general-purpose build. And while I haven't checked in detail, endurance usage looks MORE than sustainable, even though you skipped Stamina. Nice! That's just the kind of monster I was thinking of when I saw the original post.

Katana/Regeneration has great peak performance, but is VERY sensitive to mistakes when you're playing near the limit. One mistake and you're dead in seconds. That's fine if you're willing to, say, try ten times to beat Infernal before you finally succeed. That's TERRIBLE if you're trying to do "Master Of" runs.

OK, drifting off topic, but I'd really like this clarified, and I'm too lazy to search for other discussions of it. Did I give a correct description of the bug? I only have one character with Physical Perfection, and I have NO health enhancement slotted in it, and only have the Miracle proc in it, so I can't verify without going to a lot of trouble.

To be more clear on my understanding of the bug, let's say we have 50% heal enhancement, 50% endurance enhancement, and the Miracle, Numina and Regenerative tissue procs in Physical Perfection. Prior to the bug fix to Numina, we would have this:

In live today, only the Numina has been fixed, so we would see this:

And it is not unreasonable to assume that they'll eventually fix the other two, which would give us this:

Is that correct?