beowulf2010

I have to admit, I love it when I encounter a problem and find that it's already resear4ched and addressed.

Even though it doesn't really matter, mine started after creating a new SG and modifying options/color schemes as well.

That's awfully good to hear. My Ninja/Time is still a baby but she's gonna get some serious loving both tonight and this weekend. Glad to hear this combo works as well as it looks like it should.

This, in my opinion, is the single biggest reason that Rain of Fire is so much more useful than it used to be. There are so many more ways to Immobilize, Fear, Disorient and/or Slow your foes (even for a solo Blaster) now that the scatter effect of Rain of Fire isn't near as bad as it used to be and sometimes is ignorable depending on your character's build and/or killing speed.

Now, I'm not Arcanaville so I can't give you all the details and exceptions, but in general, yes. At even levels, -ToHit = +Def. Now as the enemies get to get higher and higher levels than you and the enemies shift from Minions through Bosses and into Arch-Villians, they start to resist part of the debuffs. IIRC AVs resist 85% of all debuffs meaning that -20% ToHit is now only equating to around 3% Defense.

I'm sure someone not at work will post the real numbers for ya but that's the general gist of it.

Here's some of the details: http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Purple_Patch

15, 25, hasn't mattered to me in the least. I'm not in melee with my Illusion Controller and I'm always in melee with me Ice/Time Corruptor. >Grins<

Thanks for the correction though. I meant to put a "(25?)" after the 15 in my post. Editing it to not spread false information.

Not to put words in TheOOBs mouth, but I think what they were saying was that the fact that one power is a Toggle centered on an enemy (will always be affecting the enemies, excepting runners) and the other power is a toggle centered on the player's character (In this case playing a Primary where the enemies are rarely, if ever, within the 25 meter range of the toggle) is enough of a difference to make the powers non-comparable for Illusion Controllers.

Man, I hope that the solution is that easy. I'll definitely try it when I get home. It just never occurred to me to try to re-bind the Left+Right button combination. Even if this bind isn't right, thanks for the idea.

Pine pretty much nailed it. +Defense first to boost Energy/Negative Energy and Smash/Lethal. +HP next (+Regen on a Willpower or Regeneration character is almost worthless due to how high you can push the +Regen numbers with just your normal powers). After that I generally move onto looking for ways to get some +Recharge into the build. (What can I say, I like pressing lots of buttons when I'm fighting)

The best thing I can recommend is to make sure you take some time and just play with builds in Mids to see how set bonuses interact with each other. For me, the best way to understand the whys of someone's build is to deconstruct their build power by power.

Yeah, I've noticed that but I plan on fixing that later as she's half of an experimental character pair that may or may not turn into a "real" characters later on. (Just seeing what *I* notice the difference between an AoE focused Brute and Scrapper are.) Oh yeah, I made a slight mistake. The Claws/Fire is a Brute while the Scrapper is Katana/Fire.

Correct. The "redraw" animation has been moved inside the animation time window of powers and so do not effect damage output at all. This being said, I hate it with a passion and do my best to avoid any situation where I have to redraw a weapon as even though I know it has no effect on my DPS, it still feels like I'm slowing down my attack rate.

Guess I'll have to get used to it on my Claws/Fire Scrapper whenever I get around to getting her to whatever level a Scrapper gets Burn at...

Basically as has been attempted to be pointed out in this thread, any Tanker can be made to be "tough enough" for anything currently in the game (just ask Grey Pilgrim about his Fire Tanker) but certain builds have an easier time getting there and/or have more leeway to build for other goals past survivability.

Fire has a higher damage starting point and essentially immunity to Fire damage whereas Elec has a bit less damage but a few more non-Defense or Resist related "tricks" to help improve it's survivability.

Sure, you can tank Lord Recluse with any Tanker if built right but a Shield/DM or Granite Tanker will have to "spend" less of it's slots and IO selections towards reaching this goal (if you choose this to be your goal, remember, very few people view tanking Lord Recluse as a requirement) as opposed to a Willpower or Dark Armor Tanker.

To sum up, Elektro, your Fire/Fire will be "tough enough" to do anything you want to do with it if you are willing to spend the time and influence to make him so. Don't worry about trying to figure out which Tanker is "better" between your Fire/Fire and your Elec/Elec, just take some time and find out which one you have more fun playing. And if your answer is "Both", that's just fine as well.

My thoughts exactly though I'd add Darkness Mastery as a potential option to that list as well. If we're gonna be using cones I'd rather have 2 semi-damaging ones (OK, 3 but Torrent isn't all that great) with one being an immobilize. I use Fire right now (I don't like cones on my DM and the graphics fit better than even Darkness Mastery) but will be switching to Soul Mastery for another Alpha Strike Prevention Power (ASPP) as I have a tendency to beat even the Tankers into the next group for maximum Soul Drain coverage.

Oh, have I mentioned that I tend to play a little on the suicidal side of the spectrum? >Grins<

Well, personally having either Hover or Combat Jumping for both the raw defense (2+% isn't much but for a /Regen, every bit helps) and the Luck of the Gambler +Recharge mule. My preference is Combat Jumping but you mileage may very. That's why I initially suggested to consider dropping Revive for your travel power.

In case you're interested, I took Leaping (Combat Jumping and Super Leap at level 49), Speed (Just Hasten), Fighting (Boxing, Tough and Weave) and Leadership (Maneuvers and Tactics) on my DM/Regen and will be shifting to Soul Mastery once I finally decide to move her to Redside to get it.

Right. But Hasten and Hover/Combat Jumping are too valuable in my mind to completely skip and it looks like you've already settled on all 4 Power Pools which would limit you to either Super Speed or Super Leap anyway.

For Shadow Meld you don't need any +Def enhancements in it so if your going to put more Luck of the Gamblers into it than just the LotG +Recharge, I'd focus on the pieces that provide more recharge for Shadow Meld. IIRC, I was able to spare 2 extra slots for Shadow Meld in my DM/Regen's build so I slotted the LotG +Recharge and 2 generic level 50 Recharge IOs. I went this way because I didn't consider the set bonuses for 2 or 3 slotting Luck of the Gambler to be all that useful in my build. 10% more Regen isn't even noticable to a /Regen with Dull Pain running and Dull Pain along with the +HP accolades is pretty much already capping a Scrapper's HP rendering the 3 slot set bonus negligible at best and worthless most of the time.

One other thing to consider in a /Regen's quest for ever more +Recharge in a build, if you can find the power selection and slots for it, take Soul Storm and put 4 pieces of Basilisk's Gaze into it for a nice easy 7.5% Recharge bonus. If nothing else, this might allow you to drop a +5% Recharge set and slot that power with a set improving something else like Defense.

Just a couple thoughts I have. Wish I was home in front of Mids so I could play with your build a bit.

Well, outside of buying a pack to get one or the other, you best option would probably be to drop Revive and take with Super Speed or Super Leap/Fly depending on whether you take Combat Jumping or Hover as a defense bonus power as most /Regen players are already locked into the 4 power pools they're drawing from.

@ Infini: Just looking at the build itself as I'm at work and can't access Mids, are you sure you need Physical Perfection in addition to Stamina and Quick Recovery? Granted, I have Dark Consumption but having just Stamina and Quick Recovery single slotted with the Performance Shifter Procs works well enough on my DM/Regen with only the occasional need for a Blue or Dark Consumption. You would be able to shift over to Soul Mastery APP for Shadow Meld if you are willing to get rid of the Body Mastery pool. Also, at the very least consider moving the 2 extra slots in Focused Accuracy to Tactics and find another slot to toss into Tactics and 6 slot Gaussian's Fire Control in that. Outside of that the /Regen side of your build looks pretty good. I personally have that Doctored Wounds set in Integration instead of Instant Healing and IH has just 2 Numina and 2 Recharge IOs but you're version is good too.

OK. But again, you don't need to actually HIT or be HIT, just the action of Attacking or being Attacked is enough.

This may have already been addresses and I'm still reading through the thread but this really stood out to me...

Brutes rely only on *ATTACKING* and/or being *ATTACKED* to generate Fury, not hitting and/or being hit. As long as an enemy targets you with an attack, you get credit for Fury whether or not it actually hits you.

And as Dark Healer him (her?)-self mentioned that they want build "with the hope of making him capable of as many "stupid scrapper tricks" as possible" accuracy versus +4's is a very valid measuring stick.

Perfect. Thanks Werner. Luckily I was using Aracanatime so my "only" mistake was including the power itself in the time it needed to recharge during. I'll edit my wrong numbers out of the previous message.

Not at home so I really can't comment on the build itself but I wouldn't worry about Fear resistance at all. My DM/Regen has been Feared maybe 5 times for a whole 30 seconds or so since I un-retired her about a month before Issue 19.

No worries Golden. I know I come across badly in text a lot of the times too so I never take anything I read personal unless it's extremely obvious that someone is being a complete jack-wad. Which you definitely were not being so I honestly didn't think much of it.

Still not fond of Shadow Maul as it's got a fairly low DPA and what, a 4 target maximum? Blech. Fireball (And Ball Lightning though I much prefer Firaball's animation) gets a huge double thumbs up from me and I tend to fire it off any time I can as long as I have over half Endurance and there's 3 or more targets in range. Too bad I'm gonna switch over to Soul Mastery at some point and loose it when I take Shadow Meld.

Yep. They do in fact stack nicely. The only problem a Tanker may have with double stacking Rage and running Against All Odds is running up against the damage cap. And as far as I'm concerned anytime you're running into the damage cap due to power buffs like Rage, Against All Odds, Soul Drain, etc, that's a good problem to have.

Also keep in mind that while the Rage crash kills your damage and hurts your Defense (if it's not stacked), it doesn't effect the Knockdown in Footstomp so fire off that Footstomp and knock 'em all down during the 10 second -Def if you don't have the recharge to get Rage stacked.

And how sweet those crits are when fully Soul Drained.

Yeah, no fued that I knew of, all I was trying to point out is that you're better off sticking with your Primary's attacks than by adding single target APP powers to an attack chain.

A couple things I could have said differently reading back on it now was to place a, "if you even took and slotted it" to the Shadow Punch versus Fire Blast comment, to mention that I was only really talking about the single target powers the single target APP, and that using an APP to fill a gap is a good thing but building a chain with an APP is (again, outside of Gloom) not as good as keeping with your Primary powers.

As for keeping Shadow Punch in your chain to save Siphon Life for when you need it, I personally wouldn't bother. In fact I don't even have Shadow Punch in my DM/Regen's build at all. In a gapless chain of Midnight Grasp=>Smite=>Siphon Life=>Smite you get Siphon Life firing off for a 194HP heal (I have not slotted Siphon Life for any Heal other than what my Alpha gives it) every 7.2 seconds. That's almost 27HP per second on top of your normal regeneration rate (if you have the Rare Alpha or put a single level 50 Heal IO in it), your softcapped defenses and whatever resistances you've picked up.

Yeah. Ever since Ninja Run came out, I haven't taken a travel power on any character (Outside of being forced to with Kheldians) unless I completely ran out of useful unslotted powers to take which has been level 49 on about 1/3 of my characters and that's it. I don't even miss them and still manage to beat around half my travel power taking teammates to mission doors.