beowulf2010

>Wishes he had the power< Need to run TF's more often. Though being 0 for 4 on completing the Statesman Taskforce over the past month doesn't help my motivation to do so... Stupid Brutes thinking they can single pull Mako with Hurl and stupid Tankers thinking they can single pull Ghost Widow with Taunt... o_O Damn, times like that really make my wish my main character was a Shield or Stone Tanker instead of a DM/Regen Scrapper...

Ah well, try again for a Notice of the Well this Saturday. Have all the shards I need to step up to a Rare, just need me my Notice...

Funny, my Siphon Life is 100% slotted for damage and does me just fine with just the +Heal from my Alpha slot. Anyway, I'll try to remember to post my build when I get home.

You definitely could do that in some instances. But then there's this little thing of the Devs starting to add enemies that have a higher than normal accuracy rate so depending on what you're doing, you may not be at the soft cap.

Exemplaring turns off your Alpha (and other incarnate slots I'm assuming) and Battle Maiden and some newer Devouring Earth enemies have a base 64% chance to hit you which means you now need 59% Def to soft cap against them. I don't expect there to be many enemy type additions with a higher than 50% base chance to hit as that would screw over some one trick pony Defense sets (SUper Reflexes and Shield Defense spring to mind), but I wouldn't be surprised if we see a few more over time to give people more of a reason to build for something other than just pure defense.

Looks like we complete whichever Task Force is considered the Weekly Strike Target. Hmmm... Yeah, I'm pretty giddy now myself. Can't wait to get home now and see just what the recipes for the Rare and Very Rare look like. I think I'll be skipping my normal Tuesday night TV show now.

Edit: Holy crap, 110 *PAGES* of discussion on this i19.5 announcement in a week and a half? Oh, looks like there may be another way to generate Notices of the Well when i20 goes live. Dunno.

I like 'em too Eldorado. Keeps me entertained while waiting for my tool at work to catch up to me. Wish I had access to Mids here so I could actually contribute more than just what I remember off the top of my head. Ah well. Good stuff from you, BrandX and Nihilii.

We can blame a lot of things on ED. Speaking of coffee, I needs me some more too.

No, what I meant is that by adding it to the Attack Vitals chain it reduces the amount of recharge you need in the attacks in Attack Vitals to get a seemless chain. The OP was trying to run Attack Vitals by itself which needs an insane amount of recharge. I was referring to the fact that by adding Blinding Feint to his chain of purely Attack Vitals, he'll need less recharge in those three attacks. Probably badly worded on my part. Sorry.

Though I don't have a high level DB character, I can answer this one. Blinding Feint is in there for 2 purposes. To lower the +Recharge requirements for the rest of the attacks in the Attack Vitals combo and to give a +Damage and +To Hit buff to all attacks in the combo including the damage dealt by Attack Vitals itself. Claws also has a power similar to this (Follow Up) and these powers boost the overall DPS of the attack chain by more than the lower DPS/DPA of the attack itself looses you.

As for Combat Jumping and Fly, I assume that Eldorado is making use of his City Traveler Veteran award. Those with enough account activity time (54 or 60 months I think but am probably wrong) have access to Travel powers (Super Speed, Super Leap, Teleport and Fly) at level 6 without having to take a pre-requisite like Hasten, Hover, Combat Jumping or Recall Friend.

Man, reading this thread makes me want to work on Ginsumatic (My DB Scrapper) now... >Sighs< Double XP Weekend coming up, can't play till Saturday and at least 5 chars I want to level up... Decisions, decisions...

I quite agree. Maybe at the high levels with fully IO'd soft capped builds the -Damage from KM doesn't do much but let me tell you, was a low to mid level KM/WP Scrapper (especially pre-Rise to the Challenge), the -Dam effect has done wonders to my char's survivability against the Elite Bosses I run into running the Story Arcs that I like to play. Soloing Frostfire was never that easy or painless on *ANY* of my other characters.

Yep. And if you're patient enough to do the research, you can find the currently best selling single A-Merit IO's, buy the recipe with the A Merit, craft them, sell them on the Auction House then use that money to buy the recipes of what you actually want to equip on your character.

For example, I grabbed one of the Kinetic Combat IO Recipes with an A-Merit, crafted it and sold it for 130 million. Minus AH fees and crafting costs, I had enough cash to buy 2 or 3 IO recipes that I wanted for my character. A couple Obliteration pieces and a Numina: Heal I think it was, not that the details matter.

Oh, one other thing to mention just in case you didn't know. Once every 20 hours 50 Merits and 20 million Inf can be used to "buy" an A-Merit. Very handy way to speed up your A-Merit rate.

That's definitely a fair point Werner. And now that I think on it, that's what I did on most of the i19 respecs I've actually done so far.

As nice as helping out the entire team is with Leadership, I'm gonna have to agree with Claws on this one. With as "easy" as it is to get LotG +Recharge now, it's nice having up to 3 more places to put 'em without even having to think about slotting of powers.

Of course, I always found a way to fit Leadership in on most of my builds before i19 so...

I'm at work so no build from me either, sorry. To expand a bit on some of the things Werner pointed out...

Smite, Siphon Life and Midnight Grasp are your three main attacks. Sure, you can slot them as other things, but they are your bread and butter attacks. Don't even think about slotting them for anything but Accuracy, Damage or Recharge until you've got at least 1 SO worth of ACC, 2 SOs or so worth of Recharge (Mainly in Siphon Life and Midnight Grasp) and are at or near the ED cap for Damage. *THEN* you can start thinking about tossing in procs or +Heal and the like.

Now, don't be afraid to take and use other attacks especially in the lower to mid levels as it's hard (not impossible, just hard and probably not worth the other sacrifices) to get enough +Recharge to make the 3 attack chain seamless until you're 50 and have slotted yourself with the Spiritual line of Alpha Boosts.

As +Recharge is the primary goal for any /Regen character, make sure you take Hasten (Recharge!) and Combat Jumping (Place for Luck of the Gambler +Recharge *AND* +Defense). Also strongly consider taking 2 of the following three power pools as your other two Power Pool choices: Fighting (Tough and Weave), Leadership (Maneuvers and Tactics) or Concealment (3 more places to put Luck of the Gambler +Recharge)

Also make sure to grab the Steadfast Protection +3% Defense IO and put that in Resilience. Sure, you can put it in Tough, but Tough has better baseline +Resistance numbers to enhance.

Werner's suggestion of Doctored Wounds in things like Dull Pain and Reconstruction is a great idea and works quite well.

One other thing to mention just in case is the Rule of 5 when talking about IO bonuses. You do not receive any IO bonuses past the first 5 in any build. For example, Doctored Wounds (Heal set), Obliteration (PBAoE Damage set) and Crushing Impact all grant a 5% bonus to recharge speed. If you have 2 full sets of each of these three IO groups on a character, only 5 of the 6 +5% Recharge bonuses will work.

Now, there is one exception to this. The +7.5% Recharge bonus from the Luck of the Gambler +Recharge IO is not the same as the 7.5% Recharge bonus from IO sets like Basilisk's Gaze. So you can have 5 Luck of the Gambler +Recharge in your DM/Regen Scrapper build for +37.5% Recharge *AND* still get another 7.5% recharge from putting 4 pieces of Basilisk's Gaze into a APP Hold like Char from Blaze mastery.

Lastly, if you have Going Rogue, make sure you do your Tip Missions. That is how you get Hero and Villain Merits (assuming you're full Hero or Villain and not a Vigilante/Rogue, they're also known as Alignment Merits) and Alignment Merits make getting the more expensive IOs (Kinetic Combat, Luck of the Gambler +Recharge, Numina/Miracle/Regenerative Tissue uniques) a lot easier and quicker. I'd much rather take 4 days to run 22 missions to get 2 Hero Merits to "buy" a Luck of the Gambler +Recharge to use than to buy it using my Inf. Of course, you could also use the Alignment Merits to "buy" other IOs that sell really well, craft them and sell them then use your newly earned Inf to buy what you want. Both methods work.

Anyway, time to work. There's plenty of other DM and /Regen experts that will weigh in as well so I'm sure there's more great advice coming.

Yeah, I've noticed that myself and considered it but unfortunately for me those few Scrappers I have that are going to take the time to go Villain are gonna go with Ghost Widow's pool for Shadow Meld. >Sighs< Ah well. Then again, you do need to *USE* both powers to get that damage and considering how rarely I actually remember to use Fireball...

Heh. Usually in the late 30's or 40's I have a power choice where there just isn't anything else to take so that's when I usually grab SJ. Ninja+Sprint+Swift+Hurdle+Raptor Pack = All I need to get around. I don't even bother with SS on anyone but my cone using characters like my Plant Controller/Dom or my Fire/Psy Blaster.

You cannot take any of the Patron Power Pools unless you have completed the Patron Power Pool Unlock Arc given by Ghost Widow, Black Scorpion, Mako or Scirocco as a Villain. Which means you'll at a minimum run a story arc or at worse convert your Hero over to a Villain to run the Arc. As a side note, Fireball does more damage than Ball Lightning so if you have an extra power slot to "waste", I'd take Fireball over Ball Lightning for all actual combat reasons. (Concept and looks are certainly good reasons to take Ball Lightning, but from a gameplay perspective, Fireball's enough of an improvement over Ball Lightning to me to make it worth the extra power required as a pre-req)

Oh, as for 4 slotting Hasten, as already pointed out by Pine, don't do it. Hell, the 3rd slot (assuming level 50 Recharge IOs) in Hasten rarely takes off more than about 5 seconds of recharge itself. I find 2 Recharge IOs to be plenty for all of my characters. Hell, if I had an extra slot I might think about putting it in Hasten, but never a 4th.

Minor correction to an otherwise great post. You will never actually lose a freespec. You just will never get another one on any character that has one until you use it. This will not prevent other characters that do not have one from gaining another one.

Yep. And if a power can take both it'll boost both so powers like Dull Pain, Instant Healing, Dark Regeneration, Siphon Life, and Healing Flames get a massive boost from the Rech/Heal Spiritual boosts. (As I know very well from my DM/Regen Scrapper) Imagine when we start ignoring 5/6's of ED with the Very Rare versions. >Grins<

I haven't even run the Incarnate arc yet on my SS/WP Brute (Work + 3 hours travel time a day minimum really eats into my playing time) so I'm not sure yet which boost I'll want to use with her but the Rech/Heal is tempting on her. (Footstomp even more often? Yes please!) Thinking the Defense boosting one might be nice too but I'll have to play with the numbers before I make that decision.

This sounds accurate from my limited knowledge of the base mechanics of the game. And also matches my experience with similar powers.

Moral of the Story: Put the Force Feedback Proc in a power that directly targets the enemy like Fire Sword Circle or Footstomp not in a power that generates a Pseudo-Pet like Shield Charge or Lightning Rod. (At least I think Lightning Rod is a Pseudo-Pet power, sorry if I'm wrong on this one.)

I'm at work so I can only comment about generalities instead of specifics but...

Build Up will help a bit, but only when it's running. Unless you're totally dead set on having 2 travel powers, I'd drop one (Super Speed for me), turn that into Tactics, move all 6 pieces of Gaussian's into Tactics and leave Build Up with a single Recharge IO. (I know, I know, you probably need both for PvP) Now you have a good bit more +To Hit with Tactics and the Gaussian's: Chance for Build Up now can fire at any time, not just when Build Up is recharged and good to go. This is how my DM/Regen is set up (Course, I don't have Build Up but I can't think of a single character of mine with more than 1 slot in Build Up outside of maybe a Blaster or two).

Oh, and the Spiritual tree of Alphas are absolutely amazing on /Regen. My DM/Regen won't be using anything else. The +Recharge is quite noticeable even with only 1/3 of the boost ignoring ED and the +Heal is just icing on the cake, again, even with only 1/3 of the boost ignoring ED. I can't wait to see what effect the Rare and Very Rare version of the Spiritual Alpha will bring to my /Regen.

OK. Knew about and discovered the the manually typing in the level for the IO thingie myself, but I sure didn't know about this... Awesome! Thanks for mentioning this Streetcleaner and Swift Frost!!!!

On my DM/Regen character (recently unretired after 4 years on the shelf) I decided to use the Spiritual line purely for the Recharge. Upon upgrading to the Uncommon that gave me some healing too, I've seen a minor upgrade in my /Regen's healing performance (too much of that 33% boost is still getting negated by ED even with the Uncommon's 33% ED bypass) but the +Heal in Siphon Life has been quite a nice improvement.

I imagine that as we move into the Rare and Very Rare levels of the Alpha Slot we're gonna start seeing some truly ridiculous Regeneration Numbers. Of course, I'm more interested in getting my attack chain, IH, Shadow Meld and MoG to recharge faster (and maybe save some slots!) but I sure won't say no to the increase in raw healing either.

I just can't see any good reasons for any /Regen character to use anything but the Spiritual line of Alphas. I'm sure there are reasons, but I don't see any that aren't completely outweighed by the sheer amount of benefits /Regen gets from both +Recharge and +Heal.

In short, yes, the +Heal in Spiritual is more than worthwhile on /Regen and will only get better as we get into the Rare and Very Rare versions.

Change an entire collection of powers just so you don't have to put an End Redux SO/IO/HO in the pet? I don't see that happening. As much as I'd like to see that as my Sally is quite thirsty as well...

I would argue that this is what makes it such a good soloer. You can start cranking up the number of enemies you fight as soon as you start getting a good number of slots into Roots, Fire Breath and Seeds of Confusion.

In fact, outside of a couple indoor mission maps that split spawns into sub-groups, Seeds makes it far more efficient to fight at at least x3 than at the default x1. And since most enemies like to run into melee range of each other if you wait a couple seconds after Seedsing the enemies (ya know, to use Embrace of Fire maybe?) before you Roots/Fire Breath, you'll catch the majority of the mob in your Fire Breath leaving you with plenty of confuse time to either wait for Fire Breath and Roots to recharge or just single target the rest to death.

Just need to be careful with groups that can resist confuse like Nemesis, the LT level of RIP (The Rippers), and the aura that most Longbow Wardens emanate. Of course, that's where Vines/Spore Burst or leading with Creepers/Fly Trap comes into play.