Super Reflexes (Scrapper)

Is Super Reflexes bugged or is it just plain useless now?

Reason I ask is I've had a Katana/SR level 50 since around i7 or i8, I've never really cared for the set that much but stuck with it & got it to 50. Now I find that playing the toon in either PvE & PvP just isn't fun anymore when I compare it to the other scrapper sets. Feels like the squishiest of all the Scrapper sets in both PvP & PvE.

PvP mainly because everyones accuracy is so dam high nowadays with the set bonuses etc & the defense/HP given just isn't enough to take an attacking players wave of strong attacks after build up.

PvE it seems like when you are hit once mid mob, you are dead. 1 hit lowers your defense, another hits lowers it again etc etc

I'm tempted to delete it, it would be the first time I've ever deleted a 50 & I'm just really wanting to make sure its not gonna be getting a buff in the next issue nor is it just me who seems to have this problem.

Well, I haven't been on my Super Reflexes for a month or so, but I doubt it's bugged. Super Reflexes is a great secondary for PvE, but you have to have a basic understanding of the combat mechanics and how to achieve what you need. More specifically, have you heard about the defensive soft cap (45% defense)?

PvP is a different story. Not my area of expertise.

SR is a real specialist one trick pony set.
If you take and slot all three toggles and all three passives, you'll have an unequalled 95% Defence Debuff Resistance so that you dont get any noticeable defence cascade failure like you were describing, where the first hit lowers your defence.

To Hit buffs like Devouring earth emanators are still a major pain, but they're pretty rare.

My SR scrapper never got to the softcap, but I found having 40% defence against ranged and melee let in little enough damage that my natural rate of regeneration and the rate at which green pills dropped took care of everything, both on teams and solo. (And this was before we could combine enhancements)

These days its a bit overshadowed by Shield Defence, which offers enough Defence to get by and a bunch of offensive boost and tricks, but it still provides two distinct advantages over Shields - much easier to softcap and the massive Defence Debuff Resistance.

I found my MA/SR scrapper more survivable than my BS/SD scrapper.

I'd suggest doing a quick respec and taking and slotting all passives (if you havent done so already) before you delete.

Stories with SR:

RWZ Challenge: Level 54 spawn, 3 bosses + associated LTs and Minions, no insps: Done
Rikti Pylon soloed without insps: Done
Solo +4/x8 with bosses scanner missions: Often done
Last two times I was called into an Arena 1X1 match: 5-4, 5-2: Done
Last FFA: I had 8 kills versus the next two highest with 4 kills each out of 6 or 7 players in the match: Done
And I'm a carebear.

Can I do all that with SOs? Hell no. SR squishy? Also hell no.

I think SR is the worst secondary scrapper set in PvP so I wouldn't try that.

As others have indicated, do what you can to hit the magic 45% defense for PvE. I'll post a build template that does it with a single IO. Not saying to do it that way, but it's one way. Using IO sets and dropping Maneuvers is a better way.

I also think it's important to slot and use Tough, and to pick up as many hit points as you can, such as getting the accolades. To the extent possible, you want to turn your one-trick pony into something that can survive the hits. Aid Self may also be useful in that regard, but isn't strictly necessary - BillZ doesn't use it, and he's posted what he can do with his.

(Edit: Oh, and here is a link to attack mechanics. But the very simple version is that almost all PvE enemies you regularly face will have a 50% chance to hit. You subtract your defense from that, and the minimum chance to hit is 5%. Therefore, the maximum USEFUL defense most of the time in PvE is 45%. There ARE a fair number of defense debuffs, but a well-slotted SR all but ignores those. And there are occasional enemies with higher to-hit, but they seem very rare outside of Architect Entertainment.)

(Edit: Also note that there's almost no such thing as close enough to 45%. What about 40%? You're getting hit twice as often. 44%? Getting hit 20% more often. On a super Reflexes in PvE, it's almost "soft cap or go home", at least when you crank up the end game difficulty.)

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Oh, and note, like it's been mentioned before, /SR is terrible in PvP. I just wouldn't recommend that toon for PvPing.

I'll also chime in on the PvP thing being meh with SR. Billz is some kind of mutant freak, or might be hacking a gibson or two, I'm not sure which.

Anyway, as noted, SR is completely brutal in PvE. My SR chars are Brutes, mind, but with Defense sets it's essentially the same thing: Get yourself to 45% Defense to Melee and Ranged, and as close as possible for AoE.

Go into the game and hit the powers tab on your bottom right tray, then hit the Combat Attributes button there. It'll bring up a screen to show us what you're actually playing with. Make sure all your defensive toggles are running. Mine, for instance, is all 3 SR toggles plus Combat Jumping and the Combat Attributes section on Defense tells me:

Ranged Defense: 49.8
Melee Defense: 46.15
AoE Defense: 46.88

The Debuff Resistance tab tells me:

Defense Resistance: 95%

This means that, generally speaking, most enemies only have a 5% chance to hit me. So most of the time, enemies will only hit me 1 time for every 20 times they attack. It's random, so it could be 5 in a row, but in practice that almost never happens.

You keep talking about cascading defense failure (enemies hit you, your defense lowers, they hit you more) but that should be virtually impossible, or at least unnoticeable. Assume an enemy has an attack which lowers your defense by, say, 7.5% (both the -def powers in claws, for instance).

Normally, if you have a 45% defense that would reduce you by 3.375, down to 41.625% Defense. As noted before, that would mean you're getting hit almost twice as often as previously (almost 10% of the time instead of 5% of the time). Assuming you got hit 3 times, it'd go:

45% to 41.6%
41.6% to 38.5%
38.5% to 35.6%

That'd be pretty bad, except you're Super Reflexes, so you should (with even basic SO slotting) be at 95% Defense Debuff Resistance, which means that a 7.5% defense debuff is reduced by 95%, and only imposes a .375% defense debuff.

45% Defense hit by a .375% defense debuff is ... 44.8%.

Even a hefty debuff like from Radiation Infection, at its highest value (a Defender with it 3 slotted for -Defense) is a 51.9% Defense Debuff... HUGE. Except to a SR, it's really only a 2.5% debuff, because we resist 95% of it.

So no, you should not be having any notable cascading defense failures on a Super Reflexes character. Your problem is, as has been noted, that you probably aren't sitting at the 45% defense cap, and it makes all the difference in the world.

For my build, I've chosen to invest heavily in IOs and skip Tough/Weave, to leave open slots for Aid Other (not that I use it) and Aid Self. I find that having a heal for just shy of 600hp every 10 seconds is plenty to keep me alive against virtually anything in PvE. Between a single Interrupt Reduction and the 5% chance to hit me, it's almost never interrupted.

I routinely tank the ITF on my Claws/SR brute, up to and including going toe to toe with all 3 AVs. The only one that gives me any trouble is Nictus Romulus's auto-hit pbaoe fluffy, but auto-hits are a pain in the *** for any Defense set.

Thanks to everyone who took the time to reply, I'm pretty confident that no matter what way I slot the toon it will be poor verging on average in PvP.

However in PvE I get the impression it is great (or at least better than I've experienced thus far), If its half as good as my Invunerable tank is in PvE, I'd be very happy. I'll take a stab at throwing a build together to try & touch the 45% soft cap, I'll toss it up here for critique when I'm done

For those on the bad in PvP side, have yall dove in recently? I remember SR also being painfully useless in PvP, and I expected it to be even worse now with PvP diminishing returns, but it seems that the new anti-accuracy/elusivity business is having some positive effect.

Course... it could also be blind luck with opponents not leveraging against SR. There was one /rad that spanked me rather quickly last week.

Well, it won't have the survivability of an Invulnerable tank in most situations, but in most situations you won't need as much survivability as a tank. What it should have is a nice balance of survivability and damage output.

You can easily drop the thrid slot in PB and the three autos. Then, use those free slots to 5 slot red fortune in weave, evasion, elude and focused senses, while keeping the specials. That nets you +15% global recharge while allowing you to swap the crushing impact in soaring dragon to a full set of Mako's. Personally I think you're losing a lot of AOE damage by not taking lotus and flashing steel. I've posted my Kat/SR buld below for a comparison. I don't have the miracle or numina's yet, but the build runs fine without them.

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