Claws/SR or Claws/EA for AV/TF Soloing?

Claws/EA is Cheaper for sure for the enhancements I already have.

Claws/SR is nice, but expensive as hell due to all the LOTG sets.

We all know what /SR can do. I can get about 50/48/42 with the build I have in mids in terms of positional defenses.

On the Electric Armor build, I have the Energize heal at a 30 second recharge, and my resistances look like this:

S/l = 58
Fire/Cold = 46
Energy = 75 capped
Neg = 33
Psi = 26


I guess my main question is, can they accomplish the same thing in TF's, VS AV's, etc.? Or does the Elec Scrap, being resistance based, get wailed on by Lord Recluse and other Av's pretty badly?

My guess is get wailed on pretty badly, but I haven't actually poked at Electric Armor to be able to say that confidently.

In my experience, Defense based sets have a much better time taking on AVs. My vote goes to SR.

The main difference with being Elec and SR is the percentage they can cut the incoming damage to.

Let's take a hypothetical situation where we have two scrapper sets, the other being fully IO'd to cap all Resistances and the other IO'd to soft cap Defense. The Resistance scrapper is looking at incoming damage that is 0.5 {ToHit} * 0.25 {DMG} * Acc_Mod = 0.125 * Acc_Mod while the soft capped Def scrapper is looking at (0.5-0.45) {ToHit} * 1 {DMG} * Acc_Mod = 0.05 * Acc_Mod incoming damage. The difference is that the Res capped scrapper is taking 2.5 times as much damage as the Def capped scrapper.

(0.5 - D) * 0.25 * Acc_Mod = 0.05 * Acc_Mod
                (0.5 - D) * 0.25 = 0.05
                            0.5 - D = 0.05/0.25
                            0.5 - D = 0.2
                                    D = 0.5 - 0.2
                                    D = 0.3

I can't see Claws/ELA doing well without any defense unless you've got a good team to back you up, but I don't really agree with the analysis above by DSorrow either. It's true on paper, but ingame it doesn't seem to work so linearly in my experience.

Against AVs, most SR scrappers deaths that I've seen are big hits in succession - burst damage ; resistance gives you more wiggle room to react. I'd say the softcap is actually overkill against many AVs, but when it's all you've got you're very vulnerable to bad luck streaks.

I've had reasonable success against AVs on a DB/ELA with 27% defense and elec resistances (not capped except for energy). Seeing as it'd take a bunch of hits to take me down, I could almost always anticipate and hop away while the heal is recharging. Doing so takes away from DPS, but then again having infinite endurance and a damage aura (not mentioning LR as SR has basically the same power) does wonders for your DPS. Death against an AV simply shouldn't happen on an ELA with some defense unless you choose for it to happen.

That's all assuming you've got a profound hatred of inspirations, anyway. With insps, DB/ELA can take down most even level AVs in less than two minutes and some under one minute, so I have no doubt Claws/ELA can do the same. If your goal is to take on the STF Lord Recluse, you're going to need external buffs or inspirations on any scrapper, anyway, and getting defense with purples is a lot easier than getting resistance with oranges (then again, the point could be made that a SR with Elude might need less insps, but do many people actually keep the power just for LR ?).

Didnt Bill Z solo all of the Freedom Phalanx TF´s a couple of moths ago?

Softcapping defense for a Claws/SR after grabbing weave isn't terribly hard, is it? I also don't know how many LoTGs you plan on putting in, but it seems like you wouldn't need that many with Quickness and Hasten.

Electric Armor gives some extra damage and Lightning Reflexes, as well as a heal, but its resistance based protection still means that you're guaranteed to be taking damage. I'd go with SR.

hehehehe