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DM is, honestly, a pretty similar beast but it's a beast using different powers. Shadow Punch isn't really a decent money maker any more (thanks to a hard nerf to the animation times of all of the quick punches more than a year ago), but Siphon Life got a very nice buff to its damage. Smite, Siphon Life, and Midnight Grasp are going to be your go to powers and Shadow Punch is pretty much going to be relegated to a filler attack (if you even bother with it). Soul Drain got some major loving too, so you'll love that even more.|
Originally Posted by JLane
1. How is DM these days? I haven't played/read much on the set for about 2 years or so. Back then, it seemed like shadow punch and smite were very powerful, but shadow maul was quite lackluster. Has this changed at all? Also, As a WP, I don't foresee any endurance problems, so would it be safe to skip the AOE endurance drain in DM?
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Personally, I'd still take Dark Consumption no matter what my secondary was because, even though you're going to have QR, you can always not take Stamina (and thereby not bother taking Fitness). Either way, pre-heavy IO investment, I wouldn't avoid any endurance tool simply because you can always find a way to spend it.
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| Is it annoying to keep the active defense of SR or SD up? Can they be set to your "auto" power and be left alone? |
I can't help you with DM, but I'll say that Shield really is a beast. My BS/Shield is softcapped to all positions, has enough endurance recovery to fight at full speed with no pauses for over 5 minutes (while running 8 toggles no less) and is capable of soloing on +4/8 man difficulty.
Like any defense set Shield does have growing pains; until you get your defense above ~25% it'll feel like you don't have a secondary. Once you begin to approach the 45% soft cap though it turns into an unkillable monster... and the damage buff from Against All Odds really shines when you're surrounded by large numbers of enemies. Fully saturated AAO allows me to kill an entire 8 man spawn of +3 mobs with Build Up/Shield Charge/Whirling Sword. After popping that off the only survivors will be bosses and they'll be hurting.
Shield Charge recently got buffed if you can believe it, I routinely get ~750 points of damage out of it with AAO & Build Up. The trick is you jump into the group FIRST to allow AAO to boost your damage, THEN Build Up and Shield Charge. Don't use the TP portion of Shield Charge to port into the group... you'll waste the damage buff from AAO.
You'll definitely want to get as close to the 45% soft cap as possible... the difference between 40% and 45% is really noticeable when you're dealing with massive numbers of enemies... the situation where Shield excels. I had an advantage there by being Broadsword... I could count on Parry to get me to the melee cap and only had to find ~12% or so Range & AOE IO set bonuses. I'd estimate my level 50 build is roughly worth $150 million or so.
Oh, and welcome back.
COH has just been murdered by NCSoft. http://www.change.org/petitions/ncso...city-of-heroes
I can only echo what's been said above by Awesome and Umbral.
But I also returned from a 10 month absence from CoX about a month ago. In that time I was searching for a good scrapper set, and in the past I had played a LOT of DM toons, but my last 50 was actually a DB/WP.
So I decided on DM/Shield and he's doing great. I posted for advice on this forum and a few threads below I'd recommend you check out my experiences on "A discount DM/Shield build with bad numbers".
I wish I could change the title because he's become really proficient AND I did do it on a discount.
Oh yea... and welcome back! I always come back to CoX.
Nekron: Beam Rifle / Poison Corruptor and Slayer of Evil!! (Exalted)
Intergalaktic: Fire / Time Corruptor (Exalted)
Looks like your questions have been answered, so welcome back!
Thank you very much for the responses. I think I am going to give the DM/SD a try since I have never played Shield Defense.
One last follow-up question: Which of the following would you recommend taking for leveling?
1. Shadow Punch, Smite, Shadow Maul
2. Smite, Shadow Maul
3. Shadow Punch, Smite
After reading your responses, I'm leaning towards Smite and Shadow Maul until I can pick up Siphon Life.
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Shadow Punch and Smite. It shouldn't take you more than 2 hours or so to get to level 8 and pick up Siphon Life. |
Originally Posted by JLane
Thank you very much for the responses. I think I am going to give the DM/SD a try since I have never played Shield Defense.
One last follow-up question: Which of the following would you recommend taking for leveling? 1. Shadow Punch, Smite, Shadow Maul 2. Smite, Shadow Maul 3. Shadow Punch, Smite After reading your responses, I'm leaning towards Smite and Shadow Maul until I can pick up Siphon Life. |
I have a level 50 DM/SR brute, and Shadow Punch is still very much a part of his chain. Though, once you get to higher levels with a scrapper and start IOing with global recharge bonuses, you can drop Shadow Punch if you like (I would definitely wait until after picking up Midnight Grasp to drop it) It's also another single target melee attack that you can slot Mako's Bite or Touch of Death in to help get you to the softcap. I like Touch of Death in Shadow Punch, because the slightly lower enhancement values (especially on recharge) don't matter as much in it as in the harder hitting powers.
So, if you take everything you will have 4 single target melee attacks, and 4 PBAoE attacks that you can use to slot set bonuses in. You will probably not have room for all of them though. Touch of Fear and Confront are pretty much universally skipped unless it's for concept.
For help softcapping, it's still pretty much the usual suspects: Touch of Death, Mako's Bite, Scirocco's Dervish, and Obliteration. I like 6 slotting Red Fortune in defense toggles if I'm trying to hit softcap, but if you can get the ranged defense elsewhere (or aren't worried about softcapping) 4 Luck of the Gambler is a good choice too. I also like 5 Crushing Impact and a Heal IO in Siphon Life, but opinions vary on that one.
As far as Shield Defense goes, you will want everything except maybe Grant Cover and One with the Shield, which are IMO optional. It's an absolute beast, but it takes more work to softcap than SR does because it doesn't have the passives contributing 7-8% to your defense. DM/SD has been proven to have the highest damage potential of any scrapper combination on a single target, followed very closely by Fire/Shield. (If I remember Bill Z's findings correctly)
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Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately. |
Greetings, everyone!
Let me start out by saying that it has been a about 7-8 months since I have last played, and I just decided to pick up the game again as I was getting tired of the amount of raiding my guild required in WoW.
With that out of the way, I'll get right to the point of my post. I'm looking at getting into a new scrapper, and I'd like a little advice, if any are willing to offer. I'm thinking of playing a DM/WP scrapper or a DM/SD scrapper (among others, but these two are at the front).
On to the questions:
1. How is DM these days? I haven't played/read much on the set for about 2 years or so. Back then, it seemed like shadow punch and smite were very powerful, but shadow maul was quite lackluster. Has this changed at all? Also, As a WP, I don't foresee any endurance problems, so would it be safe to skip the AOE endurance drain in DM?
2. I have a 46 Claws/WP scrapper that I enjoy, but I want to start pretty fresh this time around. That being said, I am pretty comfortable with the WP powerset, so I'll focus a bit more on SD. I have read that this thing is a powerhouse, and I can definitely see how this can be the case by reading through the powers in Mid's. I've never played a hero (or villain) that uses an active type status protection. I've pretty much only made a couple scrappers, and they were either regen or WP, so I'm used to the toggles. Is it annoying to keep the active defense of SR or SD up? Can they be set to your "auto" power and be left alone?
Sorry about the long post, but I want to hit the ground running, and I remember how helpful the scrapper community as a whole was in the past, so I'm hoping the culture has remained in my absence!
Thank you for any and all replies!