Werner
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Posts
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Quote:I WISH Katana worked with Shield Defense. It would be capable of some massive DPS and pretty decent AoE. Broad Sword is a little behind in both categories. Still, Broad Sword/Shield Defense WAS perhaps the most fun I've had leveling from 1-50 so far. Really good leveling combination.Originally Posted by Nemo_Utopian
just thought that i would pipe in and say that either of the swords works very well with SD.the melee defense in parry stacks nicely with the melee positional defense in shield,and can make for a very smooth leveling experience.the set also has very solid aoe -
Quote:Yep. I very occasionally wandered into PvP zones prior to all the changes. I haven't been in a PvP zone on ANY character since the changes. Wait, no, I did once on Sergei to get the nukes. Didn't see a soul, not even where they should be ambushing stupid newbs trying to get their nukes.Originally Posted by macskull
Rewards as the "carrot on the stick" for PvEers trying to get them into PvP will only work if the underlying system is at least somewhat balanced, but I13 (which was an attempt to do just that) actually ended up driving away PvPers and many PvEers won't even try PvP now that everything's so different.
So I'm not a PvPer, but I think I understand and have a lot of empathy for the PvP mindset. If they made the rules changes in an attempt to make it newbie friendly, that just pisses me off. First, it totally failed, because having a completely different set of rules for PvP is just one more barrier to entry. Second, even the goal is misguided in my opinion. PvP shouldn't be newbie friendly. You wander into a PvP zone as a newb, you should get owned, and HARD. Want to pick up your nukes? Trying to get a PvP badge without actually PvPing? Just want to play tourist? You deserve what you get if someone tears you apart. Nobody owes you anything in PvP, and least of all are you owed a supposedly newbie friendly set of rules.
Sorry, jumped on a soap box on a subject I honestly know almost nothing about. If I'm being totally retarded, sorry.
Back on topic, I highly doubt that the PvP IOs are tempting anyone into PvP that wouldn't otherwise PvP. Even when some of them go for two billion each. Your chances of landing one is very low. It's pretty much winning the lottery. I've heard of people with multiple accounts FARMING them, but I've never heard "PvP IOs? I was just WAITING for something like that! PvP, here I come!" On the other hand, I don't hang out on the PvP boards. I DOUBT that anyone is over there saying anything like that, but I could be wrong.
Even if they do temp someone into PvP, is that REALLY the kind of person you want in PvP? Someone who is only there for the rewards, and doesn't actually like the whole PvP part of it? -
Quote:Yeah, I thought about that after I wrote that. Lowbies these days. Don't know how easy they have it.Originally Posted by Fury Flechette
Rikti War Zone. You can get there right from Atlas Park, and it's accessible at level 1.
I'm going to keep making the Steel Canyon run, though.
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In the absence of an actual build or experience with the primary, let me at least give you some very general advice:
Focus on getting and slotting up your attacks before your defenses. In the early game (up to 20 or so?), the best defense is a good offense. Then it slowly transitions through the rest of the game to the best defense actually being a good defense. Well, if you slowly crank up the difficulty, anyway.
Talk to the detective in King's Row and run radio missions as soon as possible (level 5-6?). After running a few missions, you'll get a safeguard mission. Defeat the main boss in the bank on the mission, and you'll get a temporary travel power (flight, 2 hours of in-game use). Do the same thing in Steel Canyon, and you'll get another temporary travel power, this time jumping. It's faster than flight, so worth getting as well. These CAN allow you to skip a real travel power for some time if you wish, though real travel powers are faster. I typically pick up a real travel power in the 30s or so these days because the temp travel powers are good enough for me. Another option is to purchase the martial arts pack and use Ninja Running or whatever it's called. It's quite fast and has just enough of a jump to not be annoying when the map isn't flat. If you just want a real travel power as soon as possible, plan ahead, because all of the real travel powers have a prerequisite power in the power pool.
I'd pick up Stamina at 20. That has TWO prerequisite powers in the power pool, so again, plan ahead.
The teens will likely suck. They do for me on most scrappers. You're going to die a lot, and you'll be running out of endurance, and you'll be questioning what you did. Hang in there. It gets better, and then a LOT better.
Don't slot Rest, even if it is tempting for a while. Eventually, you won't even use it because you'll recover health and endurance too quickly to bother.
Don't slot Brawl. You have much better attacks. Use it as filler if you want, though, until you get some attacks from your primary.
Do slot at least one endurance reducer in each attack. They burn a LOT more endurance than your toggles do. Do slot accuracy in your attacks. Accuracy and endurance enhancement are the generally the priority before damage enhancement at low levels.
I'm not sure if this is something anyone but me enjoys, but I typically want to make costume tweaks very early in the game. The lowest level zone with an Icon is Steel Canyon, and it's on the opposite side of the zone. You have to weave your way through bad guys that can pretty much one shot you. Still, you CAN do it. They're never so close together that you can't slip through them and make it. Besides, the hospital is halfway there, and at a low level, you can't get any debt. I think of "The Steel Canyon Icon Run" as a right of passage for my new characters. I've never heard of anyone else with the same idea, though, so it's probably just me. -
Well, I didn't save any, but it's been routinely discussed, so there are bound to be some good ones in old threads. However, most of what you'll likely find are probably level 50 respec builds for specific purposes - farming, AV soloing, what have you. You probably won't find much for leveling up.
That said, there are plenty of people who probably have one or can throw one together for you quickly.
I'd recommend Fire/Shield over Electric/Shield, mainly because my impression is that it is more flexible, allowing you to better put off deciding exactly where you want to go with it, and giving you more options when you do decide. But I haven't played either, and haven't looked much at Electricity yet, so I could be off base. -
Spines, Fire and Electic are probably on top, probably Claws then Dual Blades next depending on how they're built. Katana is almost passable, and Broad Sword, Martial Arts and Dark Melee probably bring up the rear. Secondaries with a damage buff (Shield Defense) or a damage aura (Dark, Fire, Electric) are probably on top.
Some top farming builds would be Spines/Dark, Spines/Fire, Electric/Shield and Fire/Shield. Fire/Shield is also extremely good at single-target damage, and even makes a great archvillain killer (with enough influence spent). -
For a starter secondary to go with Fire Melee, I'd probably stay away from Regeneration (too clicky), Super Reflexes (too late blooming) and Dark Armor (too unusual). Wait, I just listed all my main scrappers. Hmmm. Anyway, Willpower might be a good choice - it's fire and forget easy, and once you hit 20, your endurance problems are over. Fiery Aura is of course a good match conceptually, but I'm not a fan of resistance secondaries. Same goes for Electric Armor. Shield Defense probably gives you your best top end power when IO'd to the gills, but may only be so-so while leveling. Still, it would probably be my next suggestion if you don't want to go with Willpower. Finally, Invulnerability would be a solid choice.
If you're open to other primaries, a number of us commonly suggest Katana/Willpower as the best starter scrapper. Katana gives you significant melee and lethal defense, which gives you a lot more survivability, and as mentioned earlier, Willpower is easy. Also, if you want to go nuts with it later, Katana/Willpower gives up nothing on top end power, so you won't be sitting there regretting not going with something harder to level but more rewarding for the end game.
Just to comment a little further, when I saw the thread title, my immediate thought was "All of them." All scrappers solo well. They have different strengths and weaknesses, but they all solo well. The primaries and secondaries are very well balanced, and there simply aren't any bad combinations, nor any combinations that are clearly superior (at least in PvE). You'll find a vast variety of scrappers being played, even among the min-max powergaming crowd. -
Not perma Dull Pain, but I'm showing a maximum down time of 1.5 seconds. You could call that close enough, or you could stick a recharge in it. I'm not a big pusher of perma Dull Pain, in the sense that every bit of recharge helps.
On soft-capped defense, the closer you get, the more each percentage point helps, and it starts getting ridiculous as you approach the magic 45%, but then once you pass it, you're only making minor gains. Dull Pain has a much much smoother curve as you increase the recharge to and past the permanent mark. So I recommend "as fast as practical" Dull Pain. If that's several seconds away given your budget and build goals, no problem. If it's a 20 second overlap, even better. -
Grats!
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Playing more carefully because of defense debuffs means several things in my case. First and foremost, I monitor base defense so that when it goes red, I know I'm debuffed BEFORE I get killed by it. I use Divine Avalanche double-stacked as part of my attack chain, but if debuffed, it can be worth just spamming it until the debuff is over. Or I may want to take a purple immediately. Or in some cases, I might want to run, regroup, and come back in. I may focus on the debuffers first.
On a soft-capped FM/WP, you can do all of that but spam Divine Avalanche. So yeah, you'll be fine as long as you play carefully, with perhaps the occasional cascading defense failure death against tough odds. -
Proc tick rate is 10 seconds, so it's even worse garbage.
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Aid Self isn't very useful on a Regen - you almost always have a better click available, plus you get hit a lot, so it can be easily interrupted. Weave may or may not be very useful depending on how much other defense you have in the build. Weave is probably least useful in PvP. Tough is an important power in my opinion, and I would stack it with Resilience, though likely not slot Resilience.
Generally speaking, for pools I recommend Fitness, Fighting, Leaping and Speed for a Regen. -
Sold! And sorry if I came across as harsh. It WAS all just a misunderstanding as best I could tell.
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Dark Melee/Shield Defense with fully-saturated Soul Drain running Smite -> Midnight Grasp -> Smite -> Siphon Life. On the right build, it'll put out over 300 DPS.
But that doesn't really apply to PvP. For that matter, neither does DPS unless you're fight-clubbing. If you want speedy kills, you want burst damage, not DPS. Still, Fire should be fine. Use Build Up, and then probably hit them with Greater Fire Sword, Incinerate and Cremate. For that matter, that's your top DPS chain, but it'll take +237% recharge in Greater Fire Sword to cycle back to it immediately.
Disclaimer: I don't PvP. Anything I say is second hand information.
(Edit: Just remembered that all the damage is different in PvP than PvE. So honestly, I have no idea what attacks to use.) -
I don't have ClawsandEffect's build, but I have something similar in a soft-capped Katana/Dark. I'm going to need to play with Nemesis again. I got killed against (I think) +2x8 with bosses. But the stacked vengeance death reminded me, "Oh, yeah, Vengeance". That and I'm pretty sure I'd somehow gotten a double or multiple spawn, as I believe I counted eight lieutenants standing over my corpse, and that was after I'd killed a few. After that, I just took out the bosses first, and by then the minions were generally dead, leaving a handful of lieutenants. Then it was just a matter of killing them all at the same time, and theoretically running if that didn't work, except that it worked pretty consistently. +4x8 might be a different story, though.
On the other hand, I'm remembering Carnies being horrible when cranked up due to the defense debuffs. Not a big deal if I see it and immediately and pop a purple or two, or just run and try again, but I remember it being painful. Same thing or even worse with the defense debuffs on Arachnos.
Anyway, I've mostly been farming to try to finish my build. Now that it's getting close, I should probably hit some of the more difficult groups again and see how it's working.
I can tell you that it WASN'T working against Vanguard. Ouch! -
Why oh why am I stepping into this...
OK, I hate to be the one to break it to you DimMak, and you're probably not reading this anyway, but your communication skills seem to be lacking, and you don't seem to be aware of it. Let me break down the back and forth:
Quote:OK, Fire/Regen is good at PvP. Good to know, though only peripherally related to the PvE game.Originally Posted by DimMak
Go to any PVP zone on freedumb and watch a cat called Zippo- (fire/regen) destroy everything.
And Santorican points this out.Quote:Originally Posted by Santorican
PvP and PvE are two different games. You don't slot for defense in PvP like you would in PvE being one good example
And here's where the trouble starts. What are you disagreeing with? My assumption was the first part second sentence. If you disagreed with that, it meant you agreed with the opposite, so you agreed with "You DO slot for defense in PvP." So it appeared to me that you were saying that you should slot for defense in PvP, and given the context, that you should perhaps dedicate just as much effort to it as you would in PvE.Quote:Originally Posted by DimMak
Disagree
Santorican interprets your one word comment the same as I did. He replies that very few people slot for positional defense in PvP, and instead go for high recharge builds.Quote:Originally Posted by Santorican
Go look at the PvP section and see how many builds slot for positional defense. You'll find very very few who do, and the majority of people will make high recharge high regeneration builds and rely on MoG and Phase shift rather then passive defense.
With this message, it appears that what you meant by your one word "disagree" response was that you shouldn't slot for positional defense in EITHER PvP or PvE. But in that case, for at least PvP, you are AGREEING with what Santorican said. So then your edit makes only half sense - you want to team with him in PvP so that you can change his thoughts on it? But he agrees with you! As for PvE, you're going to show him that a billion influence Regen build dedicated to massive recharge and resistance does fine? Heck, I'd agree with that too. I'd say adding 25% defense so that you get hit half as often might be even better, given that you can do that AND have a massive recharge build with decent resistance. But I won't argue that massive recharge on its own isn't enough to do great in PvE. And as best I can tell, Santorican wasn't arguing with that either.Quote:Originally Posted by DimMak
I disagree about slotting defense for pve. I don't and I have no issues unless I get complacent. I could see it being somewhat useful, but I have one of those uber regens that cost billions and is easy mode everywhere. Recharge and resistance is better anyday
Edit:
We could sit here and debate about it or we could team in both PVE and PVP and i could change your thoughts on it.
As another point, perhaps its just me, but "come meet me and I'll show you" comments have always rubbed me the wrong way. If it's PvP, what are you going to show me? I don't PvP. It doesn't matter if I have a superior build; I'm going down because player skill and experience is such a big factor. The same is still true to a lesser extent in PvE, and is quite true of Regen in particular. Much of your survivability at the top end is skill-based. If you're highly-skilled, you're going to do better with your no-defense build than someone else with the exact same build, but with an additional 25% defense. That doesn't mean that an additional 25% defense is bad for you. In this case, it would mean that your skill was making up for a build deficit. It would be tough to come up with PvE situations to prove otherwise. So "I'll show you" hasn't really ever made sense to me.
As best I can tell, at this point Santorican is confused by what you're saying. He appears to think you think we should slot for defense in PvE, and is trying to agree with you. Since you said you didn't slot for defense in PvE, it looks like this is simply confusion. Not surprising given your short and seemingly-inconsistent answers, even if we can work out your meaning with hindsight and effort.Quote:Originally Posted by Santorican
I never said you don't slot for defense in PvE? I said you don't slot for defense in PvP...
Another confusing post. I THINK what you were trying to do is reiterate that you don't need defense in PvE. You don't even seem to realize that Santorican is not and has not been understanding what you're saying. And finally, you bail on the thread in apparent disgust and disbelief at the forum scrappers being so stupid as to think that defense is useful in PvE?Quote:Originally Posted by DimMak
OMG! Dude again I disagree that you need defense in PVE being one good example...
*Unsubscribed*
Seriously, what the hell just happened? That was weird. -
All of the fire sword attacks are quite good. It's just that so are all the other attacks, and you can't have everything. Well, you could, but it wouldn't leave much for the rest of your build.
If you want all the fire swords, you won't be gimping yourself. Heck, if you want to go nuts, you could use ONLY the fire swords. But running a gapless chain (Fire Sword -> Greater Fire Sword -> Fire Sword -> Fire Sword Circle) would would take a ton of recharge (+253% in FSC) and wouldn't really compete with more optimized builds. Might make for a fun concept build, though. -
Perhaps the main benefit would be something to point at when the casual gamers complain about being taken advantage of. "Look, there's a graph of the price over the past twelve months. You can clearly see that it is often available for a million, averages five million, and yet you bid fifteen million so that you could get one RIGHT NAO. You can't blame US for that."
Probably won't stop them from blaming us, though. *chuckle* -
Quote:That's me. For me it's largely mental, and not a supply or impatience issue. 50s are the best, so that's what I slot. It doesn't matter that they're the best by only the slimmest of margins, and that the cost for that tiny improvement is huge. Now, I'll certainly recommend that people without my mental defects buy something a little lower level, but I won't follow my own advice.Originally Posted by Adeon Hawkwood
That is probably part of it. But at the same time I don't think it's the only reason. A lot of people (myself included) will slot level 50s simply because they are the "best" irregardless of the added cost or the fact that it means a lack of set bonuses when exemping down.
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I've certainly been expecting a drop. And while I AM surprised if it was this sudden and sharp, it probably shouldn't have been surprising. While it's been a while since the double XP weekend, I figured the glut of 50s from that would support the old price points for a while, or at least have the prices dropping slowly. Perhaps everyone's IO'd their new 50s now, and between that and much bigger supply, it's time for the crash. I expected a much more gradual decrease, and for it to start earlier, but sharp and sudden is probably reasonable as well.
Or it could be a temporary glitch. I wouldn't panic and pull myself. I'd wait and see. -
Yeah, I'm just spouting rules of thumb and perhaps making them out to be more universal than they are. When you know what you're doing, rules of thumb can and should be violated based on the specifics of the situation.
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So for AV soloing, RWZ challenge etc., you need aid self or you need to be Bill Z Bubba.
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Focus Chi with two Membranes for burst damage and taking down high defense targets. Aegis resist/end/rech in Tough for better smashing/lethal/fire/cold resistance and endurance usage. Performance shifter endmod/something in Physical Perfection for the hit points and better endurance recovery.
(Edit: Oooh, I forgot the default slot. Hmmm, Luck of the Gambler defense/end in Weave for hit points, extra defense, and lower endurance usage.) -
First, yes, you're just level 22. It will get better. However, single-target wise, it probably won't get all that much better. Yes, you pretty much have the curse of being a minion melter. You probably COULD build for single target, but that would be a SERIOUS waste of Spines/Fire's talents.
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I think it's nice to have extra survivability when you want it. However, it's not so great as to be unskippable. There may be better powers to take.