Building and Playing the Katana/Regen Scrapper

Amberyl's Guide to Building and Playing the Katana/Regen Scrapper

This is a level-by-level guide to building and playing a katana/regeneration scrapper. It covers several different types of builds and approaches. The goal of these builds is not to be "uber" -- but they will nonetheless allow you to solo easily, and contribute well to a team.

The build advice here is intended for Issue 4. My own experiences were effectively all I3 (I hit 16 just as I3 came out, and 50 just before I4 came out), but I've done enough testing with copies of my toon from various levels to have a decent idea of how well the build works in I4.

Why Katana/Regen?

Katana is an excellent scrapper primary for the impatient. The powers recharge quickly, animate quickly, use modest amounts of endurance, and do excellent damage. Plus, the animations have lots of style. Katana's damage per second (DPS), over time, is roughly equivalent to Broadsword's, but with katana, you'll always have a button that you can push.

Regen, while it has been nerfed over successive multiple updates of the game, remains an extremely strong scrapper secondary. It is arguably the strongest secondary for the soloist, since its defensive powers are more than adequate for solo missions, and it effectively has no downtime. This means safe, fast, fun soloing.

Unfortunately, regen does significantly less well in a team. Regen is not as much of an all-or-nothing secondary as it once was (either you were doing well and looking great, or you were dead), but incoming damage still comes in two flavors -- an incoming damage rate that is less than your HP regen per second, and an incoming damage rate that is more than your HP regen per second. The latter is highly dangerous, because having less than a full bar of health greatly increases the chances that something will one-shot you.

Nonetheless, regen is overall a very strong secondary. Its low downtime arguably makes it more attractive than Invulnerability in solo situations, and while it's not as survivable as Invulnerability overall, most would say that it is better than either Dark Armor or Super Reflexes.

Philosophies

All the builds are based on the following ideas:

- The best solo defense is a good offense.
- If it's dead, it's not hurting you.
- If it's been knocked down, it's not hurting you.

My personal build philosophy also includes:

- If it didn't notice you, it's not hurting you.
- If you dodge its attacks, it's not hurting you.

Also, I believe that powers and slots should be chosen to facilitate fast leveling at that instant in time, without sacrificing utility over the long term. If you need a significantly different build later, you can respec.

Levels 1 through 15: Surviving Pre-Integration

Regen scrappers are, initially, rather squishy. The 75% base healing rate on Fast Healing is almost purely a downtime reducer; you won't really notice the benefit during fights. Consequently, you want to end fights as quickly as possible.

You have a choice of two initial attacks: Sting of the Wasp (SotW) and Gambler's Cut (GC). Of the two, SotW is by far the stronger choice. It does decent damage and it recharges quickly; you will use it throughout your career. GC has a very fast recharge but its damage is poor; it's completely pointless to take it, because a later attack, Divine Avalanche (DA), does as much damage, recharges just about as fast, and also gives you a hefty defense buff.

At level 2, take Flashing Steel (FS), which is a wide, shallow cone attack that does somewhat less damage than SotW, and recharges at a similar rate. You will use it throughout your career. Learn, early on, how to position yourself so your enemies line up within the arc of the cone; you can easily hit three, and can sometimes hit more, at the same time.

The default slot in both SotW and FS should be accuracy; although both attacks have a +5% chance to hit, you will still want an accuracy enhancement.

You will use Brawl as a filler attack in these early levels, although you won't slot it, of course. For katana, Brawl is a stylish pummel smash; it doesn't require redrawing your weapon.

At level 3, put a damage slot in SotW and FS. Don't bother to slot Fast Healing; it's not worthwhile.

At level 4, take Reconstruction. This effectively gives you the equivalent of a free Respite inspiration every 60 seconds. It will save your bacon a lot, in the early levels, and later on, once it's slotted, it will be even more useful.

In the past, people have asserted that Reconstruction isn't very useful in the later levels. This is absolutely not true, especially given the lowered rates of regen in I4. Reconstruction is superb for recovering from alpha strikes, and from hard hits from a boss. It is also useful when your health is being whittled away because you can't out-regen the incoming damage. While you can always carry green inspirations, Reconstruction is a bigger heal; also, Reconstruction typically recharges much more often than you get more green inspiration drops. Using Reconstruction means having to carry fewer greens, and thus being able to carry more reds (faster kill rate) or purples (more overall safety). Furthermore, Reconstruction is useful even against enemies that debuff your regen rate (-regen powers) and will significantly help your survival against them. It's also a great way to recover from Moment of Glory. This makes slotting Reconstruction much more worthwhile than slotting up Fast Healing or the like, since it's useful for your entire career, not just the first few levels.

Conventional wisdom often asserts that level 4 should be used to take Quick Recovery, and that QR should be immediately slotted. However, at the early levels of this build, you simply don't need additional endurance recovery -- you have two attacks, neither of them uses much endurance, and you're not running any toggles. Your downtime is created by low health, not low endurance. Reconstruction is much more useful for this early leveling-up, and your slots are far better spent on attacks, because killing faster ultimately means less endurance use, and, importantly, less damage taken overall.

At level 5, put a damage slot into SotW and FS.

At level 6, take Hasten. Hasten is crucial to being able to spam attacks as quickly as possible, as well as boosting the recharge rate of vital powers later on. Your slots at levels 7 and 9 should go into recharge on this power, allowing it to be up fairly frequently. The less time it takes for you to do a lot of damage, the less damage you'll take from your enemies, and the less downtime you will incur. Slotting Hasten over slotting your attacks is preferable at this point because the Training enhancements aren't boosting your damage as much as faster attacking does, plus faster recharge on Reconstruction is always good.

At level 8, take Build Up, and make its default slot a recharge. Build Up has a base recharge time of 90 seconds, and lasts for about 10 seconds -- long enough for an attack chain. You'll want to use it to start fights whenever possible.

At level 10, take Divine Avalanche. This is a quick-recharging attack that does modest damage, but its real value is that it gives you a 20% melee defense buff. With Hasten, you can use Divine Avalanche in between each attack, if you want; this will allow you to stack two DAs, making the defense buff 40%. Don't think of DA as an attack. Think of it as a click defense power that happens to do a little bit of damage. It's incredibly useful against bosses, and, indeed, in any situation where you really want more defense. Its default slot should be accuracy.

At level 11, put two heal slots into Reconstruction. Slotted with one recharge and two heals, when you get SOs, you'll have about a 40% heal, every 30 seconds. This is the time to give it some heal slots because the frequency with which you team, and the nastiness of what you encounter when you team, tends to go up at this point in time. You won't be able to count on low-level defenders and controllers for good-sized heals in a timely manner, so you ought to prepare to take care of yourself now.

At level 12, take Quick Recovery. This is in preparation for the toggles you'll pick up in the next several levels, and the fact that, now that you can have Dual Origin enhancements, you can have Hasten up for a good bit of the time, which will allow you to whittle through your endurance bar somewhat more quickly, especially if you're spamming DA between regular attacks.

At level 13, put damage slots into SotW and FS. You now have a very respectable damage output -- you won't need to slot these attacks again until convenient, much later in your bulid.

At level 14, you get your travel power -- SuperSpeed. (For a discussion of builds that utilize different travel powers, see a later section of this guide.) If you plan to use SuperSpeed in combat, you may want to consider making the default slot an endurance reduction instead of a run speed increase.

At level 15, put two slots into Quick Recovery.

Your build now looks like this:

01 : Fast Healing hel(01)
01 : Sting of the Wasp acc(01) dam(3) dam(5) dam(13)
02 : Flashing Steel acc(02) dam(3) dam(5) dam(13)
04 : Reconstruction recred(04) hel(11) hel(11)
06 : Hasten recred(06) recred(7) recred(7) recred(9) recred(9)
08 : Build Up recred(08)
10 : Divine Avalanche acc(10)
12 : Quick Recovery endrec(12) endrec(15) endrec(15)
14 : Super Speed runspd(14)

Levels 16 through 27: Getting to Instant Healing

At level 16, you pick up Integration, and life is suddenly good. You're getting a base healing rate of 200%, and while you're not uber, you should be able to survive soloing quite nicely, and be on par with other scrappers for team survival. Integration is also fantastic status protection -- it will prevent you from being knocked back, and has a very high-magnitude protection from mez effects (multiple high-magnitude effects have to be stacked on you before they'll go through Integration). Turn it on when you log on, and never turn it off.

Your initial slot in Integration can be an endurance reduction or a heal. The toggle cost is relatively inexpensive (it's cheaper than SuperSpeed), but it never hurts to conserve endurance.

Your slots at 17, 19, and 21 should be devoted to 6-slotting Hasten (one more slot needed), 6-slotting Quick Recovery (two more slots needed), and putting two more heal slots in Integration. The order is up to you. This means that when you hit 22 and can buy SOs, you will have perma-Hasten; the slots in QR are required to support your constant high attack rate, as well as your toggle costs. Two more heal slots should go into Integration at 23.

At this point, you have several possible paths to choose from:

The first is the Stealth build: Stealth at 18, Dull Pain at 20, Hurdle at 22, Health at 24, Stamina at 30, your choice of power at 35.

The second is the early Stamina build: Dull Pain at 18, Hurdle at 20, Health at 22, Stamina at 24, Stealth at 30, your choice of power at 35.

The third is a Fighting pool build: Dull Pain at 18, Hurdle at 20, Health at 22, Stamina at 24, Kick/Boxing at 30, Tough at 35, Weave at 38 or 41.

You will not really feel the need for Stamina until you get your two big attacks and you are running Instant Healing full time, which is not likely to happen until your 30s, although you will almost certainly want to have the power at level 35 or earlier. Consequently, you may find that taking Stealth earlier helps you more than taking Stamina earlier.

Stealth is a great power. It provides a base 7.5% defense buff, and in combination with SuperSpeed, you are essentially invisible. This allows you to scout missions, click glowies with a low probability of being noticed, and avoid drawing a villain's attention when it's choosing which team member to attack. While its defense buff is slightly lower than Weave's, it also doesn't require two other powers as a prerequisite, which is a definite plus. Also, even if you ultimately want a Fighting pool build, you may want to strongly consider building for Stealth first -- and then doing a respec at 35 or later in order to get the Fighting pool. That will allow you to enjoy the advantages of Stealth for at least twelve levels.

The Fighting pool requires you to take one totally useless power (Kick or Boxing, neither of which you will ever use, since they require a weapon redraw and do piddly damage), in order to get Tough for resistance, and Weave for defense. While this is the standard "cookie cutter" way to build a regen scrapper, and arguably the most "uber" way to do so, it is certainly not the only viable approach. If you decide to do this approach, I highly recommend using a respec later on, rather than sacrificing having a useful power earlier in your build.

Regardless of which of these paths you choose, you will want to take Dull Pain. It boosts your hit points by 40%, which has the side effect of boosting the number of HP you regen each second, too. Slot it with one recharge for now. You are not counting on it for healing; it's there to reduce the likelihood that you'll get one-shot. (By the way, while it might look like your hit points drop momentarily and then are healed when you activate Dull Pain, this isn't actually the case. What happens is that the game first increases your max HP, which makes the percentage of your HP bar that is full look lower. Then, it boosts your HP, which fills the bar back up. Thus, you see a "bounce" effect on your HP bar, but your HP is only going up, never down.)

At level 25, put two recharges into Build Up. This will give you 10 seconds of Build Up being up, and 25 seconds of it being down. Unless there's a particular tactical reason not to, you should simply hit Build Up every time it recharges, maximizing your damage output.

At level 26, take Soaring Dragon (SD). It is a high-damage, single-target attack that has a very high likelihood of doing knock-up. A target that is flat on its back is not hitting you, so once you get SD, it becomes much easier to fight bosses. Make the default slot an endurance reduction. Why endurance reduction? Because SD is an expensive attack that you will use very frequently in your attack chain. When you are low on endurance because something's drained you, you don't want to be denied the ability to use this power because you don't have enough endurance; one endurance reduction makes it only marginally more expensive than SotW or FS.

At level 27, add the sixth slot to Integration. (The difference in heal rate is small enough that slotting Build Up was a priority over doing this, in order to get a faster kill rate and immediately being able to make frequent use of Build Up in conjunction with SD.) Spend the other slot on putting an accuracy into Soaring Dragon.

Yes, I advocate 6-slotting Integration, despite the huge nerf to the effectiveness of heal enhancements in the power. The reason for this is simple: Integration is something you will always run, because it is cheap and you cannot afford to not have status protection. Instant Healing is not something you will always need to run. Many situations are survivable with Integration alone. Consequently, if it's survivable with Integration alone, there's no need to waste endurance running IH.

Levels 28 through 40: The Days of Glory

At level 28, you pick up Instant Healing. The world is now your oyster. Even though the endurance drain will be too high to run it constantly when you first get it, you can turn it on for fights as need be, and pop the occasional blue inspiration if you're having endurance issues.

Instant Healing will eventually be 6-slotted with endurance reductions and heals. 3 endurance reductions will allow you to basically ignore the drain. 2 will be noticeable but is usually not problematic. If you only use 1, you will need to watch your endurance usage.

For reference, here are some common toggle combinations that a 6-slotted Quick Recovery will just about exactly cover the cost of:

- Integration with no endurance reductions and IH with just one endurance reduction.

- Integration with 1 endurance reduction, Instant Healing with 2 endurance reductions, Tough, and Weave.

- Integration with 1 endurance reduction, Instant Healing with 3 endurance reductions, Focused Accuracy with 4 endurance reductions, and Combat Jumping.

At level 29, add two slots to Dull Pain. This is in anticipation of your 30s, where the villains get somewhat tougher, and you'll want the protection against the occasional massive incoming damage. Three slots will be near-perma, with your perma-Hasten. (Alternatively, you can devote one of these slots to IH to get the endurance cost down to bearable, delaying that slot in Dull Pain until 31.)

Your power choice at level 30 will depend on which path you chose at level 18 (see previous section).

At level 31, you will want two slots of damage in Soaring Dragon, and an endurance reduction in Instant Healing. At this point, the drain from Instant Healing will still be noticeable, but it's manageable. Integration alone will still get you through virtually all of a solo mission, though you should run IH for boss fights. You may need IH when you team up, but often you will get the benefit of a defender or controller's endurance recovery buffs in those situations. (Because of this, slotting damage into your attacks has been given priority over slots in IH, in this build.)

At level 32, get Golden Dragonfly (GD). This attack does terrific damage right from the start, and although its recharge time is the longest of your attacks, it will still be a regular part of your attack chain. It is essentially a straight-line, very narrow cone attack, that will hit one target and has the possibility of hitting any targets that are directly behind it. It has a higher critical hit chance than the other attacks, and it sometimes does knockdown. It eats a significant amount of endurance -- basically double that of your basic attacks. The first slot in it should be endurance reduction.

At level 33, finish 6-slotting SD by putting two more damage slots in it, and add an accuracy reduction slot to GD. (The rationale for this is that, after I analyzed HeroStats data from many play sessions, SD's slightly lower recharge time makes it used sufficiently more often that it should receive slotting priority despite GD's higher base damage.)

At level 34, put at least two slots of damage into GD. At this point, I recommend putting a third endurance reduction into IH. Instead of doing so, you can make that slot a heal, or you can add another slot of damage to GD.

Your gameplay is essentially set from this point forward. Your tactics are mostly comprised of where to stand and what to hit (situational awareness is important, by the way, since you want to keep track of who's in trouble and go to assist if necessary). While some people favor setting up a smooth attack chain that maximizes DPS, I believe that you will find that it is actually much safer to decide what attack to use based on the situation at the moment. For instance, there are foes that you will want to keep knocked down as much as possible, and have a Divine Avalanche defense buff in effect when they're about to hit you. Enjoy the straightforward gameplay, because this is about as relaxed as the game gets.

If you took the Fighting pool, you'll be getting Tough at level 35. Otherwise, it's really up to you. You could take Resilience, for a little smash/lethal resistance (to be really useful, this will eventually need slots). You could take Teleport Foe, which is sometimes useful for administering a beatdown when there are simply too many things in a room to deal with (you'll find this more useful in your 40s). You could pick up Calling the Wolf, which is a single-target auto-hit taunt, which is sometimes useful for pulling aggro off squishy teammates despite its fairly limited range. There are plenty of other possibilities as well.

One possibility that deserves its own discussion is taking The Lotus Drops (LD). This is a PBAoE attack that does solid damage, although its recharge is slow and its endurance cost is high -- indeed, it's identical to Whirling Sword in the Broadsword set. If you plan to herd things, this is a good attack to have. However, LD is most efficient when you are surrounded by mobs. Under normal circumstances, whether solo or teamed, you are unlikely to be surrounded unless you've deliberately been doing at least a little bit of herding. This power needs slots to be worthwhile, though.

At level 36, put two slots of damage into GD (or if you didn't slot IH at level 34, put one slot of damage into GD, and one slot into IH). Also, you can now finally spare a slot for Stamina. At this point, if you haven't done so already, you should definitely turn your mission difficulty up to Unyielding or Invincible.

Eight of the slots you get at 37, 39, and 40 should be divided between Stamina (three slots more), and Dull Pain (one more slot of recharge), and Instant Healing (two more slots, both heals), and damage in your attacks (one slot each in SotW and FS, or if you look LD, two in LD). The ninth slot should go to either Stamina or IH (one of them will be 5-slotted instead of 6-slotted, for now). The order is up to you. The total of four slots of recharge in Dull Pain will make it perma, which you'll want for your 40s.

At level 38, you can pick up Moment of Glory (MoG). While not strictly speaking necessary, MoG is a great panic button, and it is the primary defense you have against the Malta sappers you will encounter in your 40s; sappers are capable of easily draining your entire endurance bar in the time it takes you to kill them. It is also hugely useful in situations where there is so much incoming damage that your regen rate isn't helping you at all; MoG will often give you the chance to survive those situations. The default in it should be defense.

Levels 41 through 50: A World of Options and Pain

The 40+ game is dramatically different from the 30-39 game. There are a number of new and nasty villain groups, and there are a lot of archvillains (AVs). Increasingly, you will find yourself teaming up to take on AV missions. You'll be fighting things that take forever to kill and can dish out incredible amounts of damage. You will find that you end up dying far more often than you ever did in the earlier levels of the game.

However, a lot of missions are still pretty straightforward for you, when you're solo. You will find that Integration alone will carry you through many solo missions, and even missions with small teams -- you'll need to use IH only occasionally, or not at all.

Your choice of epic power pool is up to you, but I highly recommend Body Mastery. Pick up Focused Accuracy at level 41, and make its default slot endurance reduction, because it drinks almost as much endurance as IH. You won't be able to run FA full-time, but you can turn it on for a few seconds to whack a couple of annoying Rikti drones, and such.

At 42, you'll spend a slot on 6-slotting either IH or Stamina (whichever you didn't 6-slot earlier), and then you'll want two more endurance reduction slots in FA. The endurance drain's still noticeable, but at least it's bearable at that point. You probably won't want to run it full-time, nonetheless.

At 43, you can drop one more slot of endurance reduction into FA, which will finally allow you to run it all the time without the drain being painful, although in a long fight you'll definitely notice the difference. (Indeed, if you're solo, you may want to forego running IH unless necessary, in favor of running FA instead.) I recommend that you put the other two slots into Build Up; with the five recharges it will have, it will be up for 10 seconds and down around 15, which means you'll basically get double damage output, half of the time.

Your build at 43 will look something like this:

01 : Fast Healing hel(01)
01 : Sting of the Wasp acc(01) dam(3) dam(5) dam(13) dam(37)
02 : Flashing Steel acc(02) dam(3) dam(5) dam(13) dam(37)
04 : Reconstruction recred(04) hel(11) hel(11)
06 : Hasten recred(06) recred(7) recred(7) recred(9) recred(9) recred(17)
08 : Build Up recred(08) recred(25) recred(25) recred(43) recred(43)
10 : Divine Avalanche acc(10)
12 : Quick Recovery endrec(12) endrec(15) endrec(15) endrec(17) endrec(19) endrec(21)
14 : Super Speed runspd(14)
16 : Integration endred(16) hel(19) hel(21) hel(23) hel(23) hel(27)
18 : Stealth defbuf(18)
20 : Dull Pain recred(20) recred(29) recred(29) recred(39)
22 : Hurdle jmp(22)
24 : Health hel(24)
26 : Soaring Dragon endred(26) acc(27) dam(31) dam(31) dam(33) dam(33)
28 : Instant Healing endred(28) endred(31) endred(34) hel(40) hel(40) hel(42)
30 : Stamina endrec(30) endrec(36) endrec(37) endrec(39) endrec(39) endrec(40)
32 : Golden Dragonfly endred(32) acc(33) dam(34) dam(34) dam(36) dam(36)
35 : Resilience damres(35)
38 : Moment of Glory defbuf(38)
41 : Focused Accuracy endred(41) endred(42) endred(42) endred(43)

Beyond this point, your powers and slot choices are really rather open. I recommend taking Conserve Power at 44, because it's invaluable in really long fights where nobody on the team can buff endurance recovery -- very lengthy AV fights, for instance.

This is the point where you need to figure out how you're going to survive all the archvillain battles that will be the staple of life from 45 to 50. If you have the Fighting pool, slots in Tough will help reduce the likelihood that you get one-shotted, and slots in Weave will help increase your survivability overall. If you have Stealth, more defense slots will similarly increase your survivability (its defense buff is only slightly lower than Weave's). If you have Resilience, it really needs slots to give you measurable protection, but it's often not going to save your bacon because its significant resistance is just against smashing and lethal damage (but Tough has the same issue, it's just that Tough takes fewer slots to get a modest amount of protection).

You could also consider slotting some defense buffs into Divine Avalanche. This will solidly protect you from melee attacks, especially when stacked, but it is useless against ranged and AoE attacks. That means that the boss probably won't hit you, but the miscellaneous minion and LT AoEs being flung at the tank, whom you're likely next to, are likely to still hurt. Ditto the alpha strikes from Nemesis soldiers in formation, and the like. DA is the most economical way to get defense in terms of slots, at the cost of limiting what situations it's useful in. It will be more effective solo than teamed, in most instances, due to the percentage of melee-vs-other damage.

If you use Moment of Glory, I would recommend putting another two slots of defense into it. MoG's base defense is already high, but not enough to floor villain accuracy in the situations where it really matters (if you're using it as a panic button because regen isn't cutting it, chances are that you're really in trouble and will want all the defense you can get). It doesn't hurt to slot some recharges, either, although this is really a question of, "Just how many groups with sappers do I need to worry about?"

The interesting alternative possibility to defense and resistance is putting some more slots into Reconstruction. In general, you never want to be below 50% health. If you've been whittled down that far, and your incoming damage isn't getting eliminated, you want to hit Reconstruction. Perma-Hasten and just one recharge in Reconstruction gives you the chance to do this every 30 seconds. Three recharges and three heals will allow you to heal yourself for about 50% of your HP, every 20 seconds or so. (Since you already have three slots in it, this requires only adding three slots.) It won't save you from the one-shot, but it will save you from the health bar that is steadily going down.

If you're not terribly worried about your team survivability, you can cheerfully devote slots to your offense. Two more slots in Focused Accuracy, both of ToHit Buff, mean that you'll rarely miss, and can cheerfully hit +5s and +6s. If you took LD, you may want to 6-slot that. Otherwise, if you have the slots to spare, it's nice to 6-slot SotW and FS (or LD if you took that), and you'll get a smidgen faster recharge with a sixth slot in Build Up.

All in all, your 40s, while significantly harder than the 30s and definitely no cakewalk, are still going to go by pretty smoothly. Leveling speed in the 40s is considerably slower than at any other point in the game, and many people resort to bridging for power-levelers during the mid-40s. However, with this build, you won't have any trouble breezing through just about all of your own missions; most of the game's best storylines arguably come at this point.

What if I Want to Use a non-SuperSpeed Travel Power?

If you want your initial travel power to be something other than SuperSpeed, you're going to end up sacrificing some things in your build, pushing certain powers out until later.

The basic build gives you:

- Divine Avalanche at 10
- SuperSpeed at 14
- Stealth at 18
- Hurdle at 22
- Health at 24
- Stamina at 30
- Your choice of power at 35

A non-SuperSpeed build results in this:

- Prerequisite power at 10 (Combat Jumping, Hover, TP Foe / Recall Friend)
- Travel power at 14 (SuperJump, Fly, Teleport)
- Divine Avalanche at 18
- Swift at 22
- Health at 24
- Stamina at 30
- Stealth at 35

(You could also take Stealth at 30 and Stamina at 35; it's quite doable, although you will need to watch your endurance in teams where you've got to run IH all the time and nobody has Recovery Aura, Accelerate Metabolism, Transference, etc.)

Personally, I chose SuperJump (I like vertical movement), taking Stealth at 30, Stamina at 35, and picking up SuperSpeed at 47 for quicker movement around missions and practical invisibility; the slight defense boost from Combat Jumping is also helpful, especially given the basically negligible cost of the toggle. Indeed, I chose to respec in order to make taking an SJ-based workable -- I took the Lotus Drops earlier rather than Health, and did a respec at 35 in order to drop it for Health and then pick up Stamina (on the philosophy of "why take a largely useless power when you can have a more useful one for quite a lot of levels?").

General Combat Tips

Katana does lethal damage, and a significant number of things, notably robots, are resistant to lethal damage. Armored villains, such as Crey tanks and Rikti Chiefs of various sorts, also have some resistance to lethal damage. However, for the most part, villain resistance to lethal merely means that it takes you longer to kill something. If you want to eliminate sources of incoming damage as quickly as possible, though, it may be worthwhile to go after the non-resistant foes in front of you first.

You will do the most damage if you move around slightly during combat, positioning yourself so that Flashing Steel catches multiple villains in its arc, and, if possible, that Golden Dragonfly has at least two targets in its line-up. Since the game auto-corrects your position when you attack, though, you may find that what you thought was a perfect set-up turns out not to be so, especially if you're experiencing any lag.

If you don't have SuperSpeed (SS), Sprint plus Swift will get you around a fight with sufficient rapidity. If you do have SS, it's not necessary to keep it running during combat (and the toggle is not that cheap, about as much as Tough and Weave combined). Indeed, you will find that you can make small position changes more accurately without it. Furthermore, even if you have it on, your run speed is suppressed for a few seconds after you attack. You're usually better off turning it off when you get up to the villain and launch an attack, and then turning it back on when you've dispatched that foe and need to move to more foes that are further away. Note, however, that if you are running SS + Stealth for invisbility, and you turn SS off, villains are more likely to aggro to you.

Indeed, if you are duoing with a squishy, you will deliberately want to turn off your SS when you enter combat. This is because whatever you are personally damaging will attack you -- but everything else will aggro to the squishy, because he's the only one that they can see. Chances are, you can take that extra damage, and they can't, so be polite and be visible.

It is, as a scrapper, easy to go into the suicidal killing frenzy of "scrapperlock", where you are focused only on the target in front of you, unaware of your own health and endurance and unaware of what's going on around you. If you team, you need to pay attention to the rest of your teammates. You'll especially want to watch the team's defenders and controllers. Support ATs whose health is rapidly dropping have probably attracted melee attention from something, and you will definitely get plenty of gratitude if you zip back to them and kill or at least draw the attention of whatever's beating on them. (Just don't train a pile of aggro back to them when you run back. Calling the Wolf would, in theory, be handy for these situations -- but the taunt range is unfortunately unimpressive, though two slots of range at least gets it to the point where you usually don't have to go terribly far to get into range for it.)

Consideration for your teammates means that, even if you're at full health and endurance, you shouldn't go charging ahead of the team while everyone else recovers. First off, it is likely to mean that you draw more aggro than you can handle. Second, most teams will see you getting into trouble and dive ahead after you. If you insist on running ahead, and get into trouble, have the courtesy to not drag a pile of villains with you when you run away; make a valiant stand or die trying. Scout if you're invisible and so impatient that you can't stand still for a few moments, but don't start fights without the rest of your team. The only exception might be very small teams, where even separated you are completely dominating your foes. In this case, you should announce and get agreement that you are going to continue onwards without your compatriots.

As an I4 regen scrapper, you can no longer afford to not watch your health. You will find that there's less all-or-nothing -- you will see your health drop bit by bit, as your regen rate fails to quite keep up with the death by a thousand cuts, and you need to know when to back up and give yourself a few seconds to gain back a bit of health, or hit Reconstruction. If you are at half health, Reconstruction is more efficient. Keep at least one inspiration slot free, as well -- just suck whatever drops when it drops, or swap it with another inspiration and suck that one. Being constantly inspired, whether or not you need it, gives you a slight edge in kill rate over the longer term. (If your tray is full of useless junk, give it away to whoever on your team can probably use it.)

How to Level Up

As a scrapper, you will experience the joy of being able to immediately solo your own missions, although this is not without its dangers, and you should still be careful what villain groups you take at low levels -- a bunch of Clockwork can really wreck your day, for instance.

However, prior to Integration, you are extremely squishy. If you team up, you may be better off in smaller teams rather than larger ones. In the early levels, a controller probably makes the best duo partner, and there are usually far more of them looking for teams than there are teams to accomodate them, so make a new buddy. Their holds will reduce incoming damage sufficiently for you to deal with it, given your fast kill speed.

The time between getting Integration and Instant Healing can be spent either solo or on teams. Small teams will probably get you the best XP with the least risk of death. Soloing is very viable. If you're going to avoid any villains, avoid the Vahzilok (their damage output is still excessive compared to your regen rate).

Once you get Instant Healing, large teams are much more survivable, although teams in the 30s like to do missions on Unyielding and Invincible, which means that there's a higher probability that whatever you face can exceed your heal rate. However, if there's ever a time that you'll feel godlike, this is it. If you're going to avoid any villain group, though, avoid the Circle of Thorns at this level -- this is the time of the Earth mages, whose movement-slowing powers are incredibly annoying and potentially deadly if you are being hit by a storm of ranged attacks without being able to get into melee range. Similarly, the Devouring Earth are a real pain for everyone -- despite your status protection, they have effects that slow down recharge times and the like, and quite a few of them have resistance to lethal damage.

The 40s, as mentioned earlier, are much harder. You'll still be able to solo without an issue, but the villains become much more of a problem. The build offered here is not designed to solo AVs, so you will need to team for those (and you'll need to be careful not to fill all of your mission slots with AV missions). There wlil be AVs that do enough damage to one-shot you, and other situations where your regen rate can easily not be equal to the situation (a takedown of Infernal's altar can be problematic, for instance).

This is also one of the few times in the game where you'll run into things that can overcome Integration. Most notable are the Carnival of Shadows' Master Illusionists whose effect magnitude can overcome Integration, if there are two of them attacking you.

Bosses in the 40s can be quite nasty as well -- there are some that can two-shot you, so stay alert. And minions are sometimes nothing to laugh at -- the Knives of Artemis, for instance, can really be quite annoying, as they'll stack caltrops around you, making it very difficult to move. (SuperSpeed helps, but not enough.)

There are nowhere near enough solo missions in the 45-50 tier to get you through those levels if you do not team up (and indeed, not enough to sustain you even if you do team a substantial amount of the time), unless you plan to cycle Shadow Shard missions (and have a travel power that makes it non-painful to travel there). Thus, you may want to be careful about the missions you take at 40-44. As long as you start arcs from that contact tier by 45, you will be able to receive missions in that arc, and given that the arcs are usually a dozen missions or more, that'll keep you occupied for a while. 40-44 has more solo content, relative to the length of time it takes to level up, than 45-50 does, so take advantage of that by doing non-arcs for as long as possible in the earlier levels. (Once a contact has offered you the first mission in an arc, the arc slot is taken, and you will be able to get it from them even if you've outleveled the contact.)

During your 40s, consider making a lower-level defender's day by duoing with them. You can generally safely pick a defender 5 to 9 levels below you, as long as their powers don't draw aggro. If they're not around your level, you can offer them the choice of just buffing you and leeching, or getting sidekicked and contributing -- they'll vary in which they prefer. Either way, a decent defender can boost your kill rate and level of safety significantly, sufficient that you can get a hefty XP per minute boost duoing rather than soloing. An extra person only slightly boosts the spawns you'll see, so you do not really need them to contribute damage. Indeed, you can probably handle missions spawned for three just fine, especially if what your teammates are contributing are healing and buffs. An empath can turn you and an offensively-oriented kinetics into absolute killing machines.

Good Luck

I think a katana/regen scrapper is one of the most entertaining ways that one can play the game solo, while still being able to team when desired (or, in the late game, necessary). Because you can go through missions quickly, you will be able to see a great number of the game's storylines. Because missions, especially at the higher difficulty levels, are a pretty efficient way of leveling, you will be able to see content without sacrificing too much leveling speed -- this is a "go enjoy the missions" build, not a "grind in hazard zones" build. Good teams will still return much higher rates of XP than you can achieve solo, so if you like to team, you should probably team, but it's not a necessity unless you're fighting an archvlilain.

This is, obviously, only one possible way to build a katana/regen, but I think it's a solid build despite not being a cookie-cutter regen build. I hope you enjoy leveling up with it; constructive feedback and debate is of course appreciated.

Powers Compendium

According to Verxion's CoH Planner, you get a base endurance recovery of 1.67 endurance per second. A 6-slotted Quick Recovery is worth the same amount. A 6-slotted Stamina is worth an additional 1.25 endurance per second.

See the section above for the common toggle combinations that a 6-slotted Quick Recovery will just about exactly cover the cost of. Everything else that you want to do thus has to be covered by your inherent recovery, and Stamina. Because attacks drain endurance in significant chunks, you cannot attack forever. Between fights, however, you get a little bit of time to recover, so in order to get zero downtime, you don't have to finish fights full -- just sufficiently full that you will have recovered to full by the time you find the next group to take on.

Regen rates are discussed in Immortal-Nite's I4 Regen Rates Guide. The builds present here are not designed to give you the maximum possible regen rate, because pure regen is not the most survivable thing you can do. A combination of regen, defense, resistance, and healing will enable you to survive a broader variety of situations -- and the quicker you kill, the faster you reduce incoming damage, and the faster you gain XP and contribute to a team. You don't need to be unkillable -- you merely need to be able to survive under the circumstances you will typically encounter. If you build so you never die, you will save yourself debt, but in the end, you may not level up as quickly, because what you're saving in debt isn't making up for what you're losing in XP-per-minute offensive capability.

CoH Planner-derived statistics for key powers, both base and what they ended up slotted as recommended in this build (assuming SOs, and, in the parenthetical recharge numbers, perma-Hasten):

Sting of the Wasp - BI 3.2222, end 8.5, rech 8 (4.7), 1 acc/5 dmg BI 8.5871
Flashing Steel - BI 2.7778, end 8.5, rech 6 (3.52), 1 acc/5 dmg BI 7.4028
Divine Avalanche - BI 2.3333, end 6, rech 4 (2.35), +20% defense (melee only)
Soaring Dragon - BI 5.0000, end 13.5 (10.12), rech 9 (5.29), 1 acc/1 endrdx/4 dmg BI 11.66
Golden Dragonfly - BI 6.3333, end 17 (12.75), rech 12 (7.05), 1 acc/1 endrdx/4 dmg BI 14.7692

Gambler's Cut - BI 2.3333, end 6.5, rech 3 (1.76)
The Lotus Drops - BI 2.7778 + 0.2778*3, end 19, rech 14 (8.23)

Build Up - end 6, rech 90 (24.33 with 6 rech)
Reconstruction - end 15, rech 60 (29.51 with 1 rech)
Dull Pain - end 15, rech 360 (118.7 with 4 rech)

Integration - 0.4 end/sec base cost (0.3 with 1 endrdx)
Instant Healing - 1.54 end/sec base cost (0.77 with 3 endrdx)

Resilience - 5.6% base resist to smash/lethal/toxic
Tough - 0.22 end/sec base cost, 15% base resist to smash/lethal

Stealth - 0.38 end/sec base cost, 7.5% base defense (melee, ranged, AoE)
Weave - 0.2 end/sec base cost, 10.0% base defense (melee and ranged only)

SuperSpeed - 0.54 end/sec base cost (0.4 with 1 endrdx)
Combat Jumping - 0.08 end/sec, 5.0% base defense (melee, ranged, AoE)

(An additional note here, because I can't edit previous posts: Another argument in favor of taking Stealth over the Fighting pool is the fact that Stealth grants defense against AoE attacks, while Weave does not. The greater applicability serves to balance the lower defense bonus somewhat. Moreover, the difference between 6-slotted Stealth and 6-slotted Weave is only 5%, a difference which can more than be made up for by taking Combat Jumping.)

Awsome guide! i am actually almost copying the build you provided exactly, but i was wondering something. Why no lotus drops? that is the only strong and true complete AoE in katana. If i were to put it in where would you put it, and where and when would you slot it?

Thanks

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Why no lotus drops? that is the only strong and true complete AoE in katana. If i were to put it in where would you put it, and where and when would you slot it?

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I mention it in the 28-40 section. I think it's a great power if you plan to herd, and will therefore end up surrounded by foes that make it advantageous to have a PBAoE to dispatch. If you don't plan to herd, Flashing Steel will dish out decent damage, especially with Build Up, to quite a few foes -- it just requires more careful positioning.

For a while, in my build, I had both powers, and I discovered that in general, there were only a small number of situations where Lotus Drops got significantly more foes than Flashing Steel did -- pretty much never solo, and only rarely when teamed, especially if you position yourself so that Flashing Steel and Golden Dragonfly hit as many things as possible. This is particularly true if you solo on Invincible, which will get you higher-level but smaller spawns than soloing on Unyielding. It's not nearly as efficient to take out three villains via Lotus Drops as it is to do so with Flashing Steel.

If I had it in this build, I would pick it up at 35, and would slot it 1 acc, 1 endrdx, 4 dmg. Sting of the Wasp and Flashing Steel could be left at 4 slots each until the mid to late 40s. Build Up could also be left at just 3 or 4 slots, and you could consider slotting up Focused Accuracy later on.

Thanks for the compliment.

Would you say that having 6 slotted SotW and Flashing, is better than 6 slotted flashing and lotus? I can slot two fo my early attacks, and i cant deside which two to get.

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Would you say that having 6 slotted SotW and Flashing, is better than 6 slotted flashing and lotus? I can slot two fo my early attacks, and i cant deside which two to get.

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You have to take two attacks initially, drawn from Gambler's Cut, Sting of the Wasp, and Flashing Steel. SotW and FS are the clear best choices out of those three options. They need slots early on, or you simply don't kill fast enough given your weak defenses. This means that you will end up with at least 3 slots in each, and I'd strongly recommend 4 slots in each.

You can't pick up Lotus Drops until level 18. The problem with slotting it up at that point is that there's no good place to sacrifice the slots from -- you need to get Hasten 6-slotted, you need Quick Recovery 6-slotted, and I'd strongly recommend getting Integration 6-slotted. The attack is mostly a waste unless it has slots, so it makes sense to pick it up later in a build when you have some slots to spare.

Don't get caught up in the idea that you need to 6-slot attacks early on. It's important to 6-slot Soaring Dragon and Golden Dragonfly as early as possible, but that's because they're the two most damaging attacks. Everything else is filler and group damage.

A 6-slotted (1 acc, 5 dmg) Flashing Steel has a BI of 7.4028 for 8.5 end, and perma-Hasten recharge of 3.52 seconds.
A 6-slotted (1 acc, 1 endrdx, 4 dmg) Lotus Drops has a BI of 8.4213 for 14.25 end, and perma-Hasten recharge of 8.23 seconds.

LD thus does 0.59 BI per point of endurance. FS does 0.87 BI per point of endurance. If you hit 3 enemies with Flashing Steel, you need to hit 4.5 enemies with Lotus Drops to do the same overall damage for the endurance. If you solo on Invincible, you'll typically only get 3 enemies per spawn. You need to do something around 30 points of BI to take down an orange minion.

Whirling Sword, Broadsword's LD equivalent, is much more worthwhile in terms of endurance in comparison to Slice, the Flashing Steel equivalent, only does 0.73 BI per point of endurance. And the endurance costs are much more similar -- Slice costs 12.5, while Whirling Sword with 1 endrdx costs 14.25. This makes Whirling Sword very attractive for Broadsword scrappers, and since Parry isn't nearly as good for them as Divine Avalanche is for Katana scrappers, it's easy to juggle a build to get it in (though slots as always for a regen are at a premium nonetheless).

Are you sure getting Moment of Glory is really a good choice? Everytime the subject about MoH comes up, I only hear negative things about it and saying it is trash and aint worth it.

MoG is still useful in three situations: When you're out of endurance (sappers, panic button), when your regen is turned off (anything with enough -regen), and when regen just isn't cutting it, which is a bar that has been lowered significantly in I4.

Its value as a panic button really hasn't been lowered at all. I think three minutes is less useful than two minutes for all but the longest of AV fights, and the long recharge makes it less likely it'll be up when you need it if you have to use it multiple times in a mission, but I think it's still worth taking. The 15-second no-regen period after it drops isn't that big a deal, especially with the build suggested here, because you can just hit Reconstruction to heal up a good chunk of the way. (The best way to end MoG, though, is outside of a fight, just like Unstoppable.)

MoG is certainly a matter of taste, but I think it's a useful, "Well, I'm about to die anyway" power.

Would you say your guide (which is excellent) would also work for Broadsword/Regen? I understand Broadsword is slower, but don't the powers all more or less do the same thing?

I'm very interested to read your input on this, thanks :P

No, for a number of reasons. Endurance management for a BS scrapper is different, and the slower, weightier attacks make a significant difference in the most efficient attack chains and powers, and also in how defensive powers need to be taken and slotted. For instance, Whirling Sword is a much better deal for a BS than The Lotus Drops is for Katana, despite being the exact same power. Similarly, because Parry is much less efficient of a defense than Divine Avalanche is, the BS scrapper needs something to make up the difference.

What about respec'ing into a different travel-power build?

Would this only hurt you if you intended to do a lot of exemplaring? Besides going to 14 (around that level) for task forces and such, where else would a respec into something other than Super Speed hurt you, besides maybe losing one power pool to hasten? I'm not going to question if hasten is necessary. I believe it to be true and others are welcome to their own opinion.

For instance, in my own case, I'm not one to six slot hover, and with the recent changes to Fly, AS is a viable option - does it make you put away your sword to use it? I suppose that doesn't really matter because you'd be using it primarily as a knockdown/-fly, and not in a primary attack chain... but still..

With a regen scrapper, couldn't it be easier to hit the fly speed cap with our ability to regenerate endurance making us able to slot just for fly speed?

I've picked up stealth recently, and stealthing through mishes absolutely rocks... I guess between the wasted power pool pick and not being able to stealth through caves, that'd probably be the biggest hit... I have alts that have fly that I absolutely love playing, so I'd have to say that it's my favorite travel power, and I feel that I use ss out of necessity for Spartus...

But I'm left wondering if there's anything I'm not seeing other than these questions, if I respec into flight... any suggestions/comments on this argument I've got going in my head?

By the way, thank you!!! This is a great guide, and damn near all of it is what I would put into a katana/regen guide if I was going to write one myself.

You can certainly respec into a different travel power. Honestly, even starting out with a different travel power isn't that big a deal; it simply means pushing off something so you can take the prerequisite power.

Air Superiority does indeed make you put away your sword. It's useful only for the -fly, really, since Soaring Dragon does knock-up and Golden Dragonfly does knockdown.

Fly caps out with 4 flight speed SOs. There's no need to slot it for endurance reduction (you can sometimes get a bit low if you cross multiple zones and you don't have Stamina, but with Stamina, flying is rarely an endurance issue). The problem is that fly at its speed cap still feels fairly slow.

Slots are at something of a premium in a regen build, so I think I'd find it hard to justify going with flight for anything other than fun, concept reasons. It's useful for getting around in the Shadow Shard, admittedly.

I plan on taking combat jumping at 10th (I think), but I don't know if I plan on getting any other travel power. My plan was to make a anime style character and while they run fast and jump high, they don't do it as a super would. Is it possible to fit slots into CJ and hurdle (3 total each) and still be somewhat viable for getting around?

I would love to be able to have 3 slots each in sprint and swift if it could be shoehorned in there.

You will really, really regret not taking a travel power. You may routinely need to cross four or five zones to get to missions once you hit level 30, and even in your 20s you will routinely be crossing three or four zones. You will frustrate the heck out of your teammates, who will be stuck waiting for you. It may very well get you kicked off teams or denied invites.

I copied my level 29 illusion/kenetics controller over to test to see what it would be like. With 3 slots in CB and Hurdle I could jump 58 yards a jump. 3 slots in swift and sprint is very fast but I didn't get to see how fast. I know that with 1 slotted sprint and swift I could boost myself up to faster than superspeed, so I imagine that 3 slotted would dust SS.

I will probably go with super jump anyway with my scrapper.

Thank you for this guide. I am following this guide and at 17 am still enjoying this build.

I level slow and I mostly solo. It is heartening to find that I can do this effectively.

On my next char, I am sure that I will be better prepared to make intelligent choices as to slotting.

May Peace go with you, and with yours.

Myst

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I know that with 1 slotted sprint and swift I could boost myself up to faster than superspeed, so I imagine that 3 slotted would dust SS.

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1 slotted sprint and swift is much, much slower than unslotted Super Speed. The only travel power that is faster than Super Speed in the game is Teleport, and it requires a lot of work to do so. Swift+Sprint will never be faster than Super Speed. They also don't give the stealth bonus that SS does, which can make getting in an alpha srtike mush easier.

I think the Kenetics controller was thinking he had speed boost on. Than again with speed boost normal walking is almost as fast as SS.

I have been using this build and like it. I was using the Uber build did like have a ton of toggle or the end drain that came with them. I have not notice a loss in survivability. This build can keep going for long stretchs.

Under your justificatoin for stealth you mention you can take Combat Jumping. There is nothing to get rid of to put combat jumping into the build. CJ+Hurdle does give some vertical ability. Running around with SS+Hurdle is a pain.

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I know that with 1 slotted sprint and swift I could boost myself up to faster than superspeed, so I imagine that 3 slotted would dust SS.

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1 slotted sprint and swift is much, much slower than unslotted Super Speed. The only travel power that is faster than Super Speed in the game is Teleport, and it requires a lot of work to do so. Swift+Sprint will never be faster than Super Speed. They also don't give the stealth bonus that SS does, which can make getting in an alpha srtike mush easier.

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Superspeed base speed is 275% of normal run speed.

Swift adds +20% to base run speed. 6-slotted that's +60%.

Sprint adds some amount to base run speed, but the rumors are that it varies with level. Let's say it's +50% at level 50. 6-slotted that would be +150%.

So with both Sprint and Swift 6-slotted, you'd be at +210% of normal run speed. That's inferior to unslotted Superspeed. However, it might be fast enough for travel. It'll be faster than unslotted Flight.

I think you'll regret not taking a movement power, but if you don't mind being slower than other heroes it might work for you.