Claws/SR question

So I've decided now that I've finished my WP/SS tanker do play something that can actually dish out some damage. After sitting here at my computer for atleast an hour debating with myself down to two choices, Claws/SR or Claws/WP I decided on the Super Reflexes, mostly because I have willpower already on a character, not sure if I would want to run another one with it. I hear alot about how powerful the Claws/SR combo can end up being with a ton of influence backing it but I was wondering just how well it does on just SO's while it waits for the influence to get built up for getting the IO's sorted out? Any help on this would be much appreciated.

With nothing but SR and SOs, you're looking at around 30-32% defense to melee, range and aoe. On top of that you get the passive scaling dam-res to help slow incoming damage once you start dipping into near death land.

It also means that 1 in 5 hits is landing, and that's a lot. When you start tacking on pool defense (combat jumping or hover, weave or maneuvers) things start looking up.

SR + CJ + Weave all fully slotted gets you up around 40%. Now only 1 in 10 hits are landing.

That's when fighting even level minions, of course.

Like all defense sets, it's going to suck until level 22 and SOs. That's when you'll realize that yes, you do have a secondary doing something.

It's when you hit the magic 45% defense to all positions that SR starts to really shine.

So 45% is what I would want to aim for. Cool. Would that work as a combination of say, fire def of 15% and your ranged def of 30% would that work out to a 45% or does it all need to be stacked into say all ranged and all melee defenses.

Negative. Typed defense doesn't stack with positional. As an SR scrapper, the only typed defense that will do you any good is psi since there are several psi attacks that lack a positional component. So if you had 30% ranged and 15% fire and someone lobbed a fire blast at you, you'd have 30% defense toward it as the game grabs the highest appropriate value and uses that.

So when looking at SetIO bonuses, go for the ones that give defense to melee, range, aoe first, and if you have some space left over, maybe some psi defense or damage resistance.

For me, I focused on soft cap defense first (that 45% is called the soft cap) and after that hitpoints, regen, some s/l dam-res to stack on tough and the passive scaling dam-res and the rest usually comes bundled.

Sweet deal, thanks. That had always been something I had wondered about when it came to defense in this. Definitely a good thing to know.

You are most welcome. Enjoy the blender of joy that is claws/sr.

It is really pretty cheap to get soft capped. Grab tough/weave and CJ if your a jumper. Tough helps a lot more than people give it credit for as you have to have it anyway, and having s/l attacks do less when they hit adds a lot to your survivability. Steadfast +def IO is reasonably cheap. Fortune sets for your toggle defense powers are also very cheap and add one of the def components. Definatly follow bubs advice and get softcapped first, then worry about rech/dam/whatever your focuses are.

Trust me, when you hit 45% to all, that is when you will be able to almost totally ignore your green bar for most content. Warning, after playin a /sr scrapper for a long time, it does take some gettin used to when you play another character and all of a sudden have to start worrying about dying again.

Also note the high amounts of +HP and regen. Add the near unlimited endurance, 2.16 end/sec, when combined with Claw's natural end efficient attacks and end redux slotted in them. It is just a majorly fun powerhouse that I think everyone should make :P

Did i mention how thematically well the two sets go together as well? Especially with that new martial arts pack that just came out :P I've considered dropping super jump in favor of sprint + quickness + swift + ninja run :P

I wouldn't call 2.16 near unlimited. My Regen has a net of 3.5 and still drains in long fights. And your's is down to 1.93 with sprint on. That won't take much with your fairly fast Recharges to drain you out. Tossing a mircale in health vs. that Health IO would net you more Recovery and lose you about 2 Hp/sec regen. But yea, overall its a pretty good build man.

Why does the build have to be played? I have an MA/SR. All I am saying is you wind up in the wrong position for too long you will drain based on your recharge. And my Regen can have almost 4 Net recovery and still drain after a long fight (AV, Pylon, 17 +3's etc etc). I just think the real issue here is what your idea of pretty well and near unlimited means. I have ran toons with better end use/end rec. I do not need to "downgrade" my recovery to lower numbers to tell you the obviousness of the situation, FA or not. Then again, if near unlimited is falling under the "killing a couple baddies" or "+0, +1 groups" then ok I can see your side of it. At the same time, whats the point in building a good toon if you are going to be playing mediocre content. *shrugs*

The proper amount of recovery is that which allows you to run your single target attack chain indefinitely without ever running dry.

I have that now on my main. He's the only character I have that has that. He's the only one that needs it. He's the only one that I count on for soloing AVs and pylons.

For a *normal* player, if you have enough recovery to take out a spawn of X size and recover on the way to the next, that's probably enough.

When you IO the Claws/SR right, then it's worth every moment you've spent on it.

I just thought I'd throwing something in here since my first two toons are Kat/SR and FM/WP. I don't know about the final build on either since my SR is only lvl 40 and WP is 23, but I thought I'd mention the difference in levelling the two. My SR is my first char and I found it interesting that I didn't even realize some of the perks SR was granting me with the high defense until I played my WP. Of course I was getting hit less often, but this also limited the debuffs. Probably the most notable issue is -end stuff (although -def also sucks). When my WP is fighting something like MU Strikers I have to focus on them first (even before bosses or lt) because I can take a punch to the face better than -end. Anyhow, just something I found pretty interesting.

When you already have kick and tough, going for weave isn't that much of a committment. And with /sr and sets, your rech can get really high, so you don't really need as many attacks to have a totally solid chain. Its definatly possible to softcap without it, but having it gives you more flexibility in slotting. I am tossing around the idea of trying to get that new pvp proc with the def bonus and seeing if i can get by without weave with its bonus, but don't know if I can without taking cj (my ma/sr is a flyer, first toon concept stuff) so don't know how the numbers will work out. I can see arguing against weave, but not so much if you are gonna use two powers to get tough already....

I'm just saying that weave is a good power and I fail to see how its such a bad pick that it makes you cringe to think of people taking it, especially when tough benefits /sr so much and its only one more power at that point. If you don't need it fine, I'm just saying it has a lot more benefit for flexibility in slotting, especially for claws with its high recharge so you should have room for it on a claws. I personally hate shockwave. The animation doesn't make sense for a claws toon, I despise the aoe knockback. And you definatly don't need all the claws attacks, but I guess if you like having multiple choices for ST attacks available all the time then go for it.