beowulf2010

Coulda sworn that's exactly how I wrote my spreadsheet but obviously made a mistake somewhere. Thanks for the formula Broken, I'll be sure to correct whatever I did wrong in mine.

Edit: I see what I did. All my recharge numbers were based on the overall length of the entire chain, not the length of the attack chain that between firings of the powers.

I personally wouldn't worry about including them in any theoretical DPS calculations as they're not consistent enough to really care about in "normal" gameplay (ya know, where you don't even have enough time to take half an elite boss's health off before the entire spawn is dead due to Blaster/Corruptor/Dom/Controller AoE and other Scrapper/Stalker/Brute/Tanker/Arachnos boss hunters, tougher AV's being the exception) and you'll have other, more accurate, methods of calculating actual DPS available when performing "Stupid Scrapper Tricks" (tm), mainly Pylons. I'd do what you're doing now. "I've calculated my DPS to be around xxx.xx DPS without factoring in double Build Up and my Achilles' Heel procs" works well enough for me.

Edit: Oh, and to give my answer on your original question I'd say it boils down to whether you want to have slower/stronger attacks (the so called "Crunch" factor) and an "easier" source of Melee/Lethal defense with Broadsword or if you want to have faster/weaker attacks (it's not so much "Crunch" in Claws as it is a Dervish/Whirlwind/Blender) and a bit of extra mitigation with Knockdown/back.

Neither really "help" much in terms of actual survivability once you get to a near or fully IO'd build as /Regen can be insanely survivable just on it's own. My main is DM/Regen which really doesn't provide any extra mitigation other than raw damage and extra Endurance from Soul Drain and Dark Consumption and even though I play her suicidally she still just doesn't die even when I do something stupid like get Reichsman's attention for extended periods of time. Sure, it's got some -To Hit but that's really not a useful source of mitigation in my experience as the only AoE power that it's in is Shadow Maul which I don't even take and EBs and AVs pretty much just laugh off debuffs like that.

My GF's main is a Broadsword/Regen scrapper and let me tell ya, the "Crunch" factor of that set is absolutely delicious but I've always been more of a fan of the Dervish style of Claws myself.

I don't think so. My lousy math is tell me you need <Wrong>% in Midnight Grasp, <Incorrect>% in Smite and "only" <OMG was I off>% in Siphon Life. Hmmm... That seems a bit low. Maybe Claws, Werner, Arcanaville or someone else that's used to calculating recharge requirements for attack chains can come through and clean up this mess.

NP. Like I said earlier, I already went through all this with my charcter about 6 months ago. Anyway, here's her current build.

Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.92
http://www.cohplanner.com/

Click this DataLink to open the build!

Archaic Adverb: Level 50 Natural Scrapper
Primary Power Set: Dark Melee
Secondary Power Set: Regeneration
Power Pool: Speed
Power Pool: Leaping
Power Pool: Fighting
Power Pool: Leadership
Ancillary Pool: Blaze Mastery

Hero Profile:
Level 1: Smite -- T'Death-Acc/Dmg(A), T'Death-Dmg/EndRdx(9), T'Death-Dmg/Rchg(9), T'Death-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(11), T'Death-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(11), T'Death-Dam%(13)
Level 1: Fast Healing -- Numna-Regen/Rcvry+(A), Numna-Heal(3), Empty(3), Heal-I(5)
Level 2: Reconstruction -- Dct'dW-Heal/EndRdx(A), Dct'dW-Heal/Rchg(13), Dct'dW-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(15), Dct'dW-Heal(15), Dct'dW-Rchg(17)
Level 4: Quick Recovery -- P'Shift-End%(A)
Level 6: Hasten -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(7)
Level 8: Siphon Life -- T'Death-Acc/Dmg(A), T'Death-Dmg/EndRdx(17), T'Death-Dmg/Rchg(19), T'Death-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(19), T'Death-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(21), T'Death-Dam%(21)
Level 10: Dull Pain -- Dct'dW-EndRdx/Rchg(A), Dct'dW-Heal/Rchg(23), Dct'dW-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(23), Dct'dW-Heal(25), Dct'dW-Rchg(25)
Level 12: Combat Jumping -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A)
Level 14: Boxing -- T'Death-Acc/Dmg(A), T'Death-Dmg/EndRdx(27), T'Death-Dmg/Rchg(27), T'Death-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(29), T'Death-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(29), T'Death-Dam%(31)
Level 16: Integration -- Dct'dW-Heal/EndRdx(A), Dct'dW-EndRdx/Rchg(31), Dct'dW-Heal/Rchg(31), Dct'dW-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(33), Dct'dW-Heal(33)
Level 18: Tough -- Empty(A)
Level 20: Weave -- Empty(A), Empty(33), Empty(34)
Level 22: Resilience -- S'fstPrt-ResDam/Def+(A)
Level 24: Maneuvers -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A)
Level 26: Soul Drain -- Oblit-Dmg(A), Oblit-Acc/Rchg(34), Oblit-Dmg/Rchg(34), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(36), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(36), Oblit-%Dam(36)
Level 28: Instant Healing -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(37)
Level 30: Tactics -- GSFC-ToHit(A), GSFC-ToHit/Rchg(37), GSFC-ToHit/Rchg/EndRdx(37), GSFC-Rchg/EndRdx(39), GSFC-ToHit/EndRdx(39), GSFC-Build%(39)
Level 32: Midnight Grasp -- Hectmb-Dmg/Rchg(A), Empty(40), T'Death-Dmg/Rchg(40), Empty(40), Empty(42)
Level 35: Dark Consumption -- Oblit-Dmg(A), Oblit-Acc/Rchg(42), Oblit-Dmg/Rchg(42), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(43), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(43), Oblit-%Dam(43)
Level 38: Moment of Glory -- Empty(A), LkGmblr-Def/Rchg(45), RechRdx-I(45), RechRdx-I(45)
Level 41: Char -- BasGaze-Acc/Hold(A), BasGaze-Acc/Rchg(46), BasGaze-Rchg/Hold(46), BasGaze-EndRdx/Rchg/Hold(46)
Level 44: Fire Blast -- Empty(A), Empty(50), Empty(50)
Level 47: Fire Ball -- Empty(A), Empty(48), Empty(48), Empty(48), Empty(50)
Level 49: Super Jump -- Jump-I(A)
Level 0: Freedom Phalanx Reserve
Level 0: Portal Jockey
Level 0: The Atlas Medallion
Level 50: Spiritual Radial Paragon
Level 0: Task Force Commander
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Critical Hit
Level 4: Ninja Run
Level 2: Swift -- Run-I(A)
Level 2: Hurdle -- Jump-I(A)
Level 2: Health -- Empty(A), Mrcl-Heal(5), Heal-I(7)
Level 2: Stamina -- P'Shift-End%(A)



The blank spots are to be filled with IO's I have yet to get off my lazy *** and actually obtain namely the Miracle and Regerative Tissue Uniques for Health and Fast Healing respectively. Tough is going to have a Ribozome Hami-O if I ever can justify the cost or get in a group that can actually finish the Statesman Task force and I get lucky on the roll. Weave will be getting 3 pieces of Luck of the Gambler. Midnight Grasp will have 5 pieces of Hecatomb. Moment of Glory's empty slot will be a fourth Luck of the Gambler +Recharge. Fireball will turn into Dark Blast and get slotted with 5 pieces of Decimation, Fire Blast will turn into 3 slotted Shadow Meld (2 Luck of the Gambler and 1 generic Recharge) and Char will be straight up replaced with Soul Storm, keeping the 4 pieces of Basilisk's Gaze.

So even though she's not slotted in a few of her powers, she's crazy fun to play and crazy survivable too. Took a wrong turn and solo'd a group of 52 Rikti in a Lady Gray I ran last week and had most of the group dead before I realized that the party went the other way. And right now I'm trying to finish off the 10million damage taken badge so I'm avoiding using Dull Pain right now.

Basically the way effect IOs work like this one is they last for 2 minutes after the power they're in gets activated. Obviously an attack gets activated every time you use it. Always on powers like Health and toggles like Combat Jumping and Tactics "acctivate" every 10 seconds which serves to renew the 2 minute duration every 10 seconds.

Granted, you're attacking a lot so it's not too much of a problem but common theory is to not "waste" a slot in an attack and instead put things like Karma: -KB and Kismet: +ToHit in things like Combat Jumping where there's really not much to enhance in the first place.

The next step down I assume would be to add an APP Blast (Fire Blast prefered) into the chain after one or both Smites. If you didn't take an APP Blast, I *THINK* Shadow Punch is next on the DPA list but I'm not positive about that. I did all the math a few nights ago but don't have access to the numbers as I'm at work right now.

Edit: Oh yeah, I'll look at what I have for recharge in my powers as I'm pretty much at the seemless version of this attack chain. I know I have the Rare Spiritual Alpha and Touch of Death 6 slotted in all 3 attacks with 3 LotG +Recharge so far. Don't remember many of the rest of my +Recharge bonuses other than knowing I have all 5 instances of the +5% and only 1 +7.5% other than the LotG.

I cannot emphasize this change enough. Siphon Life went from decent Heal with crap damage to great damage (3rd best DPA in the set behind Midnight Grasp and Smite) and good heal. My Siphon Life is slotted purely for damage so the only +Heal on it is from my Alpha slot and it still heals 194 damage while dealing 250+ per hit depending on how many enemies I hit with Soul Drain.

As has been said earlier, the "goal" attack chain you're gonna want to move towards once you decide to start investing in IO Sets is Midnight Grasp=>Smite=>Siphon Life=>Smite though that takes a serious investment to get there.

Make sure to take Weave (Slot this one) and Combat Jumping (or Hover, your choice) as you will want to start building some Defense up.

When you do decide to start moving into IOs you'll be looking primarily for Recharge bonuses with Defense as a secondary concern. I'll post both my DM/Regen (Also recently unretired after 3-4 years sitting on the shelf, she still had Hasten 6 slotted with Recharge when I loaded in just before Issue 19) current build and an SO only one I've been messing around with as an experiment for exemplaring. It'll at least give you another couple things to think about.

Edit: Oh yeah, when you do start looking into IO Sets, don't even look at +HP and +Regeneration bonuses. If you shoot for high recharge like you want to with /Regen, you'll be able to perma-cap your HP with pretty much just Dull Pain and any +Regeneration bonuses you get will likely be completely unnoticeable. With nothing else active, Integration, Health and Fast Healing are giving me as bit more than 46HP/sec regeneration and that's quite low compared to what you can get to when you have Dull Pain and/or Instant Healing running.

While I understand and agree with your point, I'm not so sure I'd use the word challenging for /Regen. /Regen is a much more active set that a player actually gets to play almost as much as a Primary as opposed to /WP which is in the "toggle and forget" camp.

Correct. Here's the actual numbers ignoring criticals,

Midnight Grasp: 172.66dmg for 76.94DPA
Smite: 82.58dmg for 69.51DPA
Fire Ball (All Ticks of DoT): 75.08dmg for 63.20DPA
Fire Blast (All Ticks of DoT): 87.6dmg for 60.33DPA
Siphon Life: 122.62dmg for 58.06DPA
Shadow Punch: 52.55dmg for 49.76DPA
Fire Ball (No DoT): 56.3dmg for 47.39 DPA
Fire Blast (No DoT): 62.56dmg for 43.09DPA

As you can see, Midnight Grasp and Smite are your two best DPA powers while Fire Ball and Fire Blast are somewhere between worst and 3rd depending on how many ticks of damage you get. Hell, you'd be better off firing off a Shadow Punch instead of a 0 tick Fire Blast.

Moral of the Story: Ancilary Power Pool attacks are exactly that, ancilary. You're better off sticking to your normal attacks than trying to use APP attacks in a DPS chain. (Excluding Gloom of course)

This has been my experience as well. Just like Brute Fury, I have found that you only need to be targeted by an attack to get your Defensive minions to trigger, not actually get hit by it. That being said, there is most definitely a delay between when the incoming attack is resolved and when your minions react.

Yep. I more meant that Smite didn't perform as well as it should have. Good thing I haven't messed with my 3rd Build yet so I can go into things with nothing slotted.

Aren't Rikti resistant to Negative Energy and/or Smashing damage? If so, that's why Smite wasn't performing very well. Gonna be playing my DM Char tonight so I'll test this a bit myself.

(Edit: Oh, I forgot that I'm not factoring in Fire Blast's DoT. That narrows it a bit but Smite should still outperform Fire Blast against unresisting foes)

I have to admit that I'm not a big fan of Musculature as a whole. On average it gives you about the same bonus as 3 mobs in your Against All Odd range *OR* 2 enemies worth of Soul Drain. A drop in the bucket for the most part.

Honestly, I have trouble getting past the Musculature = a bit more than a Medium Red, Nerve = a bit more than a Medium Yellow and Cardiac = keybind to combine non-Blue Inspirations into Blues to eat or a well timed Dark Consumption. Recharge is the only thing you can't replace with Inspiration use.

That being said, there's only 2 powers in your secondary that would benefit from recharge and it's not *THAT* hard to get enough recharge in a build to get Midnight Grasp=>Smite=>Siphon Life=>Smite to a near gapless chain. I'm almost leaning towards Cardiac being 1a and Spiritual being 1b for ya.

Though it should be said that not only do I not have a /Shield Defense character at 50 but that I'm spoiled with /Regen and /WP characters having literally *TONS* of spare Endurance so I may be underestimating End usage of DM/Shield.

I agree. I have 50's of both /WP and /Regen, though they are Dark Melee and I love both sets. /Regen is a ton better than a lot of people would have you think and is a very active playstyle while /WP is way more passive allowing you to focus just on arresting the bad guys. Both provide insane levels of Regeneration and both become super powerful after you build for a decent amount of defense.

Basically, who do you want to blame when you take a dirt nap. Yourself (Not using Reconstruction, Dull Pain, Moment of Glory or Instant Healing at the right times) or defense/regeneration/endurance sapping enemies (Cimerorans, machine guns, Longbow Nullifiers, Malta Sappers, etc).

They shouldn't. I assume you're using Mid's numbers for Ring of Fire and Fire Blast damage? IIRC, they're double what they should actually be for Scrappers.

The best DM attack chain should be Midnight Grasp=>Smite=>Siphon Life=>Smite.

I'll double check on my DM/Regen nothing but I seem to remember Fire Blast doing in the mid 60's unslotted and Ring of Fire only a tiny bit more (65ish sounds about right). Smite should be around 82 damage base unslotted.

Edit: Forgot to mention that Smite animates in under a second and Fire Blast and Ring of Fire are both a bit over a Second so Smite's DPA should be a good 40-50% higher than Fire Blast/Ring of Fire.

If they did that I'd never play anything but Dark Melee...

>Laughs< Never said I wouldn't share Spiritual with non-/Regen characters, especially your beloved DM/Invuln bass. Someday I'll have enough time to actually get to playing a DM/Invuln. Sounds like a ton of fun and I know I already love DM.

That damage isn't multiplied. It's added.

Smite without any slots is 100% damage. (82ish)
Enhance it up with +95% = 195%. (160ish or +78)
Soul Drain and Against All Odds add another 200% = 395%. (324ish or +164)
Musculature boosts damage by +30% over damage cap = 425%. (349ish or +25)

Musculature adds around 30-45 percent damage depending on the power's base slotting and that's it. Smite does around 82 damage unslotted. Very Rare Musculature will add 37 damage to an unslotted power whether or not Soul Drain and AAO are giving you 0% damage bonus or 200% damage bonus.

(This why I'm not too fond of Musculature as an Alpha Boost. An extra 37 damage from Musculature is only a bit better than eating a Medium Red Skittle and overshadowed by a Large Red.)

(Oh, sorry if I'm misremembering the base damage for Smite, I'm at work and have little time or access to look up current power damage numbers. My example still stands as all the math scales with whatever the current base damage is)

Maybe not a generic /Invlun Scrapper, but bass is refering to their DM/Invuln. Ya know, the Primary that gives you a 250+ point heal every 4th attack. Siphon Life goes a long way to making *ANY* set more survivable that it normally would be. If bass was talking about a Katana/Invuln, I might scratch my head like you did but DM/Invuln? I can see it.

>Shrugs< No clue as to the PVP aspect but as far as I'm concerned, Spiritual was tailor made for any and all /Regen characters. +Recharge and +Heal over and above the ED cap on Reconstruction, Dull Pain, Hasten, Instant Healing, Health, all your Primaries attacks and buff powers, Moment of Glory, Integration, Instant Healing and Shadow Meld? Yes please!

Dark works quite well with /Regen as well for the same reason it helps out /Invlun and that reason is Siphon Life. What an amazingly useful power. Haven't played an Invuln to 50 yet but I do have both a DM/Regen and a DM/WP (granted, she's a Brute not a Scrapper) at 50. The main difference between these two sets as far as I'm concerned is with /Regen you have to pay attention to your health bar a bit more to time Dull Pain (Unless it's perma'd and on Auto-Fire, in which case you need to watch Hasten instead), Reconstruction, Moment of of Glory and Instant Healing. (Shadow Meld too if you go with Soul Mastery) With /WP you just have to make sure you have enough enemies around you to saturate Rise to the Challenge and keep them alive (Not near the problem with Dark Melee as it is with other more AoE oriented powersets) and clustered around you. In other words, they both take a bit of work but the "work" involved in /Regen is a lot easier to fall out of practice with so I'm gonna agree with dave_p. Between /Regen and /WP go with /Regen if you're gonna play it a ton and go /WP if it's gonna be more of a once or twice a month character.

Wish I had a bit more insight on how /Invuln stacks up, planning on starting up a DM/Invuln Scrapper when I get a couple other characters leveled up to where I want them to be.

3 level 40+ Willpower Scrapper, 2 level 50 Willpower Brutes, 1 30+ Invuln Scrapper, and 1 20 or so Shield Scrapper (No SOs yet, not even to 25% defense yet). I've never felt that the Taunt aspect of Rise to the Challenge, Invincibility or Against all Odds was a detriment to my survivability. >Shrugs< 7 characters, 0 thoughts that the Taunt aura was a bad thing.

Edit: Oh yeah, hate to break it to ya, but if your experience was typical, then *SOMEONE* would have agreed with you by now...

>Laughs< Really? Sure, it's definitely not a Secondary that I'd recommend to someone trying out the AT but sucks? Gonna have to strongly disagree with you on that one. Sure, it's not the "best" secondary choice but it does *not* suck.

I hear ya. Outside of Saturdays I don't have more than 90 minutes or so in a row to play unless I stay up when I should be heading to bed.

On my DM/Regen, Spiritual all the way. +Recharge and +Heal? Yes please! Haven't gotten back to playing any of my other 50's so I'm not sure which way I'd go with them though I have a sneaking suspicion that I'll be going Spiritual on my DM/Willpower and SS/Willpower Brutes as well. >Shrugs<