Werner

I suspect the devs didn't see it coming because almost no one saw it coming, including many of us numbercrunchers. Most of the testing was on a previous iteration of Shield Defense, which by all reports was pretty lame. They buffed it, but most people still were claiming that Shields sucked, if I recall. I believe Shred Monkey predicted that Shield Defense would be the new Super Reflexes. I believe I pretty much said hogwash - it's better than everyone thinks, but it's not THAT good. Oh look, I was totally wrong. It IS that good. I think the main thing I didn't pick up on was that you could cap defense debuff resistance. I realized that you could cap defenses, but I figured the resistance was a wash with Super Reflexes scaling resistance, so you were giving up defense debuff resistance for more damage, which seemed like a fair trade. I also didn't realize how great Shield Charge really was. People were reporting how much they loved it, but I just figured it was fun. Too long of a timer to really make a meaningful contribution. Boy did I call some things wrong on Shield Defense. *chuckle*

What's this "read" thing you're talking about? Is that some power that other archetypes have access to? What does it do? It apparently lets you attack "the story"? What's that? Some AV?

Seriously, I don't read my missions. All missions to me are "Kill everything, click the glowies." I might glance at the text briefly if for some reason that doesn't cause the "you're done" jingle to play.

EDIT: ... which makes it nearly impossible for me to play <other MMO>. You expect me to read the story for my objectives and to figure out where to go??? Good thing I have an add on with an arrow to point me in the right direction, except when it doesn't. Stupid arrow.

This almost needs to be a standard disclaimer to go with advice on the Scrapper forum. Unless you get very specific about what you want and why, we'll just steer you towards what's best when spending billions of influence on a carefully-optimized level 50 build. It's not strictly BAD advice, but it may not be RELEVANT advice for the vast majority of the player base. Unfortunately, the people more likely to need different advice than this tend to be newer to this forum and don't know they need to be very specific when asking for it. It occasionally causes confusion or ill will.

There's nothing wrong with the purely resistance sets. They'll level up just like anything else. All Scrappers are good, and damage auras are really really nice. And you can give them a whole lot of survivability when IO'd to the gills in the end game. In my experience it's not quite top tier survivability, but it should be good enough for most game content solo, and all game content on a competent team.

Clear contender, but not clear winner. The damage buff IS really nice, but for overall play instead of pylon soloing, may not be any better for damage output than a damage aura (which don't tend to get nearly the credit I think they deserve). (Warning: No mathematical rigor in the comparison of AAO to a damage aura. Usually I've done some calculations to back up what I'm saying. I totally didn't here.) Shield Charge is awesome, but is on a long timer. Survivability is merely so-so without being IO'd to the gills, at which point... it's still so-so when compared to other primaries IO'd to the gills.

I think what makes Shield Defense so popular is that it has ENOUGH survivability when IO'd to the gills, that we care a lot (perhaps too much) about theoretical top DPS, and that Shield Charge is just so durn FUN.

Perhaps we're talking about different things. I won't claim that the HYBRID sets lag behind on top end survivability. I said the opposite. What I will claim is that the PURE resistance sets, such as Fire and Electricity, lag behind on top end survivability.

Still, I WILL claim that in regards to surviving defense debuffs, autohit or not, Super Reflexes and Shield Defense are your best end game bets, NOT Invulnerability or Willpower. 95% defense debuff resistance combined with soft-capped defenses means never having a problem. I agree that to-hit buffs and pet to-hit castrate defense, but those are laughably uncommon in most of the game, AE excluded. And seriously, it's not like my Super Reflexes just randomly dies walking down the street. I agree that luck is a problem for Super Reflexes at the top end, while soloing some of the nastier AVs for instance, and that is the kind of thing we tend to talk about around here. But the way you stated it, at least to me, makes it sound like luck is a much bigger factor than it is.

Yep. You don't have to have a defense SET. But you DO need a lot of defense.

And my soft-capped Katana/Dark Armor is MORE survivable than my Dark Melee/Super Reflexes or my Katana/Regeneration in most situations. But the difference in our experiences is probably that I spent 20 times as much influence on mine as you did on yours, and was willing to sacrifice more damage to get more survivability. Defense debuffs tear me apart, though. It's a significant and annoying weakness.

If you find yourself fighting single targets than slashing at a group, then no, I don't think it's a mistake. My Katana/Dark has Sting of the Wasp and does not have Flashing Steel.

Without inspirations, probably not without spending some influence. But with inspirations, a well-designed budget build should be able to pull it off. Dark Melee/Shield Defense seems like a particularly good choice for this.

The first does 65.54 DPS (Mids' average unslotted, Arcanatime). The difficult attack is Hack, which needs +219% recharge so that it can recharge in the 2.508 seconds of Head Splitter. It's a 9.24 second chain, so great for a single Parry.

On Regen, though, I'd be doing two parries. So the second chain does 61.21 DPS. The only vaguely difficult attack there is again Hack, which now needs +125% recharge to recharge in the 3.564 seconds of Disembowel and Hack. However, it's a 10.82 second chain, so you take your chances when it drops.

I'd personally just use Parry -> Head Splitter -> Parry -> Disembowel -> Hack. It still does 59.58 DPS. Recharge requirements drop to +108% in Head Splitter, requiring it to recharge in 6.732 seconds. That's another 9.24 second chain, so you've got a tiny bit of overlap to help smooth out transitioning between enemies.

Now if you're dropping a lot of influence, chances are that in the first two chains, Hack is going to have a purple set with proc, and perhaps the Achilles' Heel. So they'll both do comparatively better DPS in a final build than the chain I'm suggesting. I'd still play it cautious.

If you DO drop a lot of influence, so you have recharge to burn, then go ahead and set up Hack to be able to do the first chain. When you're just killing things, use the first chain for the extra DPS. When things get ugly, just transition over to the third chain to soft cap your defense. Or you could consider actually slotting Parry for defense (*shudder*) if doing so will let you soft cap with the first chain. Then you're set up pretty well to handle some defense debuffs by still transitioning to the third chain. Lots of options.

OK, looks like when Hasten is up, you can run Head Splitter -> Hack -> Disembowel -> Parry -> Hack with a very small gap. While it's down, probably replace the second Hack with a Slice. If you want to do better DPS, I'd find a slot from somewhere to stick an Achilles' Heel in Hack. Also, replace the Hecatomb damage with the Hecatomb proc - you'll do more damage on average.

Skipping Death Shroud is a bad idea if you're trying to improve your damage output. It's your best AoE attack. Seriously. It's an AoE attack for single-target endurance. What's not to like, other than the difficulty of fitting in? I haven't run the numbers, but I'm guessing that you'd be better off just swapping out Slice in favor of Death Shroud, and using Whirling Sword or Parry as your filler attack when Hasten is down.

The global recharge does help you spam Whirling Sword, and I suppose the Eradication set bonuses combined with a fairly-good +76% recharge enhancement make it the best choice IF you're willing to suck down the blues.

And I think that's a big drawback, at least for me. You're going to be sucking down a lot of blues. That's fine if you're ready for it. Might just be a play style difference.

The other big drawback of the build for me is that it drops below the soft cap in ranged and AoE defense. You'll be taking 2.5x more damage from ranged and AoE than a soft-capped build. But it sounds like you're intentionally making that trade for better damage output. That's fine. I just want to make sure you're going in with eyes wide open.

The other main thing that global recharge helps with is Dark Regeneration. However, you only have it slotted for +48% recharge. Seems like a waste. I'll also give the same comment I gave before to ClawsandEffect - you don't really need to enhance Dark Regeneration for Heal in normal play. He did it, and I did it, and if you like to be able to handle single, difficult targets, maybe you should too. But in general, not recommended.

It does look like you took care of any accuracy problems, with all attacks at least 108% against +4s, giving you some wiggle room for defense or to-hit debuffs.

The Parry slotting looks particularly strange to me. The only big, important set bonus you're getting is melee defense, but you're already over the soft cap with one hit of Parry, so it's doing very little for you. And if you do want more melee defense out of the power than the soft cap, actually enhancing the defense in the power will do more for you than trying to pick up a small set bonus. How about five Crushing Impacts (all but damage/recharge) and the Luck of the Gambler global? Still soft-capped, 5% more global recharge, 7% more global accuracy, better damage enhancement, better accuracy enhancement. You lose 5 hit points, but I think it's totally worth it.

Probably just a mistake, but swap out the Aegis res/end/rech for res/end. You probably don't need recharge in a toggle.

(Edit: Further concerns just from reviewing what you didn't like about the original.

• While you have the accuracy to fight above +2, I doubt that your survivability has improved, and if it has (through better recharge of Dark Regeneration), not to the point of doing +4x8 easily.
• You might be able to handle some AVs, but I suspect you'll still be chugging the blues to do it.
• If you add Death Shroud, I think your AoE will be pretty decent, but you still won't be taking out large spawns at a good rate. Perhaps about as fast as you realistically can, though. I just wouldn't get your hopes up TOO high.

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