If you plan on soloing AV's (without inspirations) you might want to make room for aid self, and the fighting powers. Otherwise I think you will be fine without aid self, but do take tough/weave.
I don't know, I took both on my tanker, because I like that kind of overkill.
See how high you can get your elemental defenses with weave plus IO's, Combat Jumping, etc. The trick is that you probably want to be building for psy defense/resists with your IO's as well, making it somewhat more challenging on a scrapper. At the same time, a scrapper doesn't have to hold the entire spawn either, so maybe this is less of an issue. Anyway, if you can get most of them soft-capped or near it, weave will probably serve you fine with popping a few greens here and there to keep you afloat when your defense decides to go stupid on you.
yah, that's the problem, I understand exactly how to slot and pick powers on tankers, heck, I have done it 6 times... it's scrappers that i am wary of.
I guess... Use dual builds and go nuts?
Aid Self will increase your survivability by more than Tough/Weave, but it will reduce your offense as well due to the very long activation time. The interruption isn't an issue in my opinion, my /Elec Brute had no problems firing it off and it barely had defense at all.
If you want I could do the math and see the difference if you give me your current numbers (mid's build or just defense, resist and regen numbers).
I'd say Tough/Weave.
against Smash/lethal you should be able to get around over 30%def & 70%Res without compromising anything else on the build. (And Dull Pain is already there as a heal/HP buff).
And with some serious effort you could get over 40%def & 75%res (for smash/lethal). Which is pretty close to Granite Tank territory.
Of course, it all comes back to where the scrapper is headed, on an ITF that's awesome, a lot of AVs will be easy too.
But theres also a lot of enemies that use Energy, Psi etc, that's when Aid Self might be the better choice. (Even if it is an interuptable power that may not save you in time against those enemies anyway)
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Aid Self will increase your survivability by more than Tough/Weave, but it will reduce your offense as well due to the very long activation time. The interruption isn't an issue in my opinion, my /Elec Brute had no problems firing it off and it barely had defense at all.
If you want I could do the math and see the difference if you give me your current numbers (mid's build or just defense, resist and regen numbers).
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Hello,
I would be really interested to see that aid self will increase really more your survivabillity than though/weave (=> soft cap S/L def with 1 foe, 35%+ def to E/N for exemple)
Because Weave will bring your def where you couldn't go with aid self. And when you arn't hitted there's no need to heal yourself.
Top of that whith though you will near cap your S/L resist. (that's a good asset since you already have 50% or so basic resistance to S/L, upping you survivabilty by a great %)
The only time where it will be more usefull, will be when you get heavy def debuffed or vs psy attack (toxic too i guess).
edit : i argumented with the idea of an IO build. If you still lvling and just put some SO, i'd say definitvly : aid self.
Actually, with katana I am looking at closer to 70% lethal and soft-capped melee 
That's why i was considering forgoing weave and tough in the first place.
Would try to fit both...
Good thing about Katana is that you don't need that much recharge for a good chain, so you don't really need hasten
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Actually, with katana I am looking at closer to 70% lethal and soft-capped melee That's why i was considering forgoing weave and tough in the first place.
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the question that i would look forward is :
what will protect you more ? soft cap S/L or softcap melee + lethal ?
Hard question to answer. What i know is in high end, all big melee attack got a component of Smashing or letheal.
As for ranged attack, some got lethal component and some got smashing (energi for exemple). Pure elementhal attack are pretty rare (except in AE).
Did you ever planned a build without divine avalanche ?
It might be not worth it though.
From the point of view of someone who doesn't crunch numbers at all:
My kat/invul scrapper is 45 and I specced though/weave out completely. I felt they did not bring much to my survivability and I did fine with dull pain alone. Since I took two powers from the leadership pool, though and weave were killing my end bar far too fast considering what little good they did.
I don't use aid self either mind you so, it may depend on what you want.
Have you considered the leadership pool at all? the +to hit and +dmg it brings to the table seems considerable to me and dead mobs don't do damage...
Although I have Assault on Werner, the damage contribution for the endurance is fairly poor if I remember correctly. Still, I do love the Leadership pool, and this is coming from someone who rarely teams. For teaming scrappers? Do eeet!
On the original subject, I took both on my Invuln, so I'm no help. They're both good. I hate Aid Self, though, so if it came down to it, I'd drop that first.
"That's because Werner can't do maths." - BunnyAnomaly
"Four hours in, and I was no longer making mistakes, no longer detoggling. I was a machine." - Werner
Videos of Other Stupid Scrapper Tricks
Like Satera_Landen , I'm not a numbers' guy so take what you will from what I'm saying: if you feel you are doing okay without tough/weave and aid self, do not take them. I did not with my Katana/INV scrapper and do not suffer for it. I got almost 60% s/l res. and I can hit the soft cap for defense with IO sets in my powers I have now. It's not worth it to me wasting slots on powers I want for stuff that is cheaper for me endurance wise that are part of my powerset.
Good luck with your Katana/INV scrapper.
Clear up to make clear what I was saying.
edit : without subject now.
Thanks for starting this thread! I started a baby Kat/Invuln last week, and there some great food for thought in this thread.
For those of you playing this power combo, are you using the Tanker Invuln Guide that soft caps def/resist as a starting point?
Queen of the Amazons, WP/DB
Sound Judgement Son/Son
Cobra Lily Plant/Kin
Celestia, FF/Psy
Nefertiri, Storm/Elec
Pixie, Ill/Rad
Guardian Server
I guess the title says it all.
Based on experiences with tanker invulnerability, tough/weave were generally quite preferable over aid self due to aid self's reduced comparative effect during Dull pain's 'uptime', as well as the fact that the resistance numbers for inv on a tanker are high enough that tough and weave would come close to capping in a lot of areas.
but now my scrapper just turned 28, and I am starting to look into improving my end game performance.
These are the things I am considering:
Scrappers, of course, have much lower s/l resist and defense than tankers. also, tough/weave have lower numbers for scrappers than for tankers.
Katana has truly outstanding melee mitigation, outstanding enough that I believe in combination with invulnerability, it should make getting aid self off in the middle of a heavy fight trivial.
Aid self, in general, is much more endurance-friendly as long as it works consistently, and the application is right where you need it instead of draining you 'all the time'
The concept (whipping out a tricorder and healing yourself) as well as the team-friendliness of stimulant are not an objection (tech-based hero, power armor)
the question is, am I barking up the wrong tree? would it be worth it with the change of passives to delve heavily into the invulnerability set, heavily enough that running the fighting set might be pointless?
post-30 and post-40, is aid self going to be worth the mitigation values of these enemies, or am I going to find myself burning down my blue bar during a particularly tough fight trying fruitlessly to bypass the interruption? will my endurance 'savings' from not taking the fighting pool be blown off by the prevalence of non smashing-lethal-melee damage in the late game?