Looks pretty solid actually.
You'll have the same problem my BS/DA has fighting more than +2 or so uplevel due to the lack of accuracy.
The first thing that jumped out at me was I would definitely try to slot Health and Physical Perfection better than they are, since any enhancement that is in the power also enhances the procs. Unfortunately I don't really see anywhere you can steal slots from without hurting something else.
I'd also swap the Multistrike Dam/End that's in Lotus Drops for a Dam/Rech to bring it back a little faster.
It's not too far off what my BS/DA looks like actually. You should be able to pull off a RWZ Challenge with no problems. The lower AoE defense might hurt you in some situations, but my build still isn't completely done, and it hasn't been an issue for me thus far (my AoE is at about 37% because I'm missing 2 BotZ -KBs)
End consumption might be an issue if you're running all your toggles simultaneously, but it shouldn't be too horrible. Conserve power ought to soften that blow a little bit though.
All in all, it looks pretty good. Kudos.
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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. |
Cool, thanks Claws. I know there are some odd choices in there (specifically the teleport pool), but I was really trying to have my concept cake and eat AVs, too.
The end use does worry me, but I think that's part of the "mini metagame" of the Dark Armor set. I'm still fairly new to that set. I can't imagine times when I'd be running ALL the toggles; right now, I tend to swap out CoF and Death Shroud, depending on what I'm fighting. I keep CoF on and focus on the ST chain until whatever hard targets there are are down, then I turn that off and bring in Death Shroud to wipe out the minions and Lts.
For AV fighting, I'm thinking that you don't need all the Resist toggles on all the time?
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Depends on the AV. If you're fighting Battle Maiden you can turn off Murky Cloud. If you're fighting Black Swan or Nosferatu you need both of them. (their Shadow Mauls are NASTY if they land) |
Originally Posted by StormDevil
For AV fighting, I'm thinking that you don't need all the Resist toggles on all the time?
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I didn't question the teleport pool at all to be honest. If you like teleport as a travel power it makes a lot of sense to take it and use it to slot BotZs. I personally wouldn't, but that's just because I despise teleport. I play almost exclusively with the keyboard, so teleport is a difficult travel power for me to use.
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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. |
Yeah, to be honest, I'm not a huge fan of TP either--it seems to require two travel pools to make it viable (Hover+TP; I don't know how folks get around with just TP), but that was a concept sacrifice. For the most part, I get around using Swift+Sprint+Ninja Run; TP is taken that late both for the BotZs and navigating land travel unfriendly places like the Shard.
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I shut down toggles to conserve endurance while fighting AVs or other hard targets. I don't usually need Tactics, though turning it off while fighting Malaise was a big oops since it's my confusion protection. I'll want either Cloak of Fear (quaking minions for Dark Regeneration fuel) or Death Shroud (picking DPS over healing/endurance), but not both. Then depending on the AV, I might turn off some of my resistance to damage types they don't use.
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Originally Posted by StormDevil
For AV fighting, I'm thinking that you don't need all the Resist toggles on all the time?
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"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
Sadly, I'm mildly annoyed as I write this post because I seem to have misplaced my BS/DA build, among others. 
You've sacrificed AoE capability in order to achieve greater defense values. Not necessarily a bad choice, but certainly not a route I would want to take.
I'm trying to reconcile what you've done with Dark Regeneration with the level of defense your working with. I've had this debate with Werner prior. Basically you're siding with "I have enough defense to not rely on Dark Regeneration as often." I've considered doing something similar as an alternate build, but I never really liked as a primary build. The big draw back being the resulting builds have zero exemplar capability.
I'm somewhat impressed with how endurance friendly this build seems, but the 4th slot in Stamina really is overkill. You'd get better returns for that slot in health or Physical Perfection, same logic as ClawsandEffect was speaking to.
This is the part where I'm being a stick in the mud 
I still think you're short changing yourself with Death Shroud's damage not being fully enhanced. This where the build kind of falls apart for me. Yes Death Shroud can be effective against single targets, but it shines against multiple targets. The ToE Proc in Dark Regeneration also works best against multiple targets. With the amount of defense your packing, CoF really contributes little against single targets.
EDIT: Sorry, I missed the fact you had maxed out your 3.13% defense bonus. I removed the last line of my post because of this.
EDIT 2: Minor suggestion. IMHO damage procs in an aura are a waste due to the 10 second rule, (unless this changed recently?). Switching that PROC in Death Shroud to the Eradication: Damage would increase your Death Shroud damage without altering any of the other stats on your build.
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Thanks for the input Des, I was hoping you'd chime in. A couple of explanations/parries:
With CoF, strategy-wise, my thinking with this was that I could use it to keep Minions off me completely, while I chewed up a single hard target, like an AV. That way, if that single hard target gets a good one or two in, I can use the fodder around me for Dark Regen, which would somewhat make up for DR's fairly low accuracy. Sure, that means the Minions would get to fire off an attack due to DR's damage component, but they'd have a hell of a hard time hitting me.
AoE defense-wise, I actually wouldn't be able to use the Eradication bonus with the build as is, since I'm capped on 3.13 bonuses (Siphon Insight's is 3.75), but that wouldn't be an issue if I pulled a BotZ piece from one of the travel powers. I might have to look into that. I'd be "sacrificing" .62 AoE defense, but I think I could live with that.
I feel like I've got enough AoE capability, but the hardest part of the build for me, from a power choice standpoint, was between Flashing Steel and Lotus Drops. Obviously LD is the superior "all these guys have to get hit now" choice, but the quicker recharge on FS makes it an attractive choice. Having both by dropping CoF would be sweet, but I really wanted either CoF or OG in the build. Plus, CoF looks cool.
Good suggestion on the Stam slotting; I'll have to play with the numbers to see what kind of returns I can get from alternate slotting.
Werner, this is more your area, but isn't his recharge kind of low for AV fighting?
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Any time |
Originally Posted by StormDevil
Thanks for the input Des, I was hoping you'd chime in.
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| AoE defense-wise, I actually wouldn't be able to use the Eradication bonus with the build as is, since I'm capped on 3.13 bonuses (Siphon Insight's is 3.75), but that wouldn't be an issue if I pulled a BotZ piece from one of the travel powers. I might have to look into that. I'd be "sacrificing" .62 AoE defense, but I think I could live with that. |
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Mind you, in my build at least, I ended up with +96% recharge enhancement in Dark Regeneration, plus 40% global recharge. It recharges in 12.7 seconds. Sometimes I wish it was faster, but it's been good enough.|
Originally Posted by Desmodos
Sadly, I'm mildly annoyed as I write this post because I seem to have misplaced my BS/DA build, among others.
... I'm trying to reconcile what you've done with Dark Regeneration with the level of defense your working with. I've had this debate with Werner prior. Basically you're siding with "I have enough defense to not rely on Dark Regeneration as often."... |
The 19.7 seconds in StormDevil's build is pushing it, but I suppose that's one of the compromises being made.
And Des, I have a "Desnocta" build from you, dated 5/2/2008. Probably a bit older than what you're looking for, though. I probably also have one or more builds in my inbox. Hmmm, when I filter on you, nothing shows up. I swear I didn't delete them! Ah, looks like it's forgotten who a lot of my mail in from. Strange. OK, there, there's a bunch of stuff on Broad Sword/Dark Armor, looks like from you, starting 1/31/2009. Sound right? There's a build from you of which you say "Definitely not happy with it yet". And then another five hours later, "Interesting to see how much our choices differ, lol".
Anyway, based on the messages themselves, you were only a few hours into the builds at that point. I can send them to you, but I bet they're way out of date unless you simply abandoned the concept after that.
"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
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I assure you, that works VERY well on AVs. In the movie I just posted of the 11 Praetorian AVs (see sig), you'll see me using that strategy on most of them. It also helps with endurance use, because of the Theft of Essence in Dark Regeneration. The more minions, the more likely you are to recover endurance rather than burn it. You burn endurance faster when it's just you and the AV, plus you need to enhance the healing more than otherwise. Though I enhanced my healing anyway because I like options.
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Originally Posted by StormDevil
With CoF, strategy-wise, my thinking with this was that I could use it to keep Minions off me completely, while I chewed up a single hard target, like an AV. That way, if that single hard target gets a good one or two in, I can use the fodder around me for Dark Regen, which would somewhat make up for DR's fairly low accuracy. Sure, that means the Minions would get to fire off an attack due to DR's damage component, but they'd have a hell of a hard time hitting me.
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"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
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Honestly, I haven't looked at the build yet. We went back and forth on a few questions on build strategy, but not the build itself. I need to take a look. But a defensive Katana chain doesn't require much recharge... uh... looks like Gambler's Cut recharges JUST fast enough, and that's the tough one. Oh, wait, no Golden Dragonfly. Well, in that case, I'm not sure what the chain is, and I'd have to fiddle. I'd recommend replacing Sting of the Wasp with Golden Dragonfly, though. That'll mess with set bonuses, so there will be cascading effects, but that's what I'd do. Well, technically I dropped both Golden Dragonfly and Soaring Dragon, but that's just crazy talk.|
Originally Posted by Desmodos
Werner, this is more your area, but isn't his recharge kind of low for AV fighting?
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Anyway, as is, I'm betting it's mostly enough, with a small fraction of a second gap where Sting of the Wasp is, since Gambler's Cut isn't going to recharge quite fast enough to bookend Sting of the Wasp. Don't know what the best chain is, though, for that specific set of powers, since it's, uh, kinda weird.
"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
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Nope I absolutely love my BS/DA. I'd really appreciate if you forward those PMs back to me. Beats the heck out of starting from scratch. I think the builds are on a damaged drive I have. If they're there, I can retrieve them...just have to re-install the damned thing.
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Originally Posted by Werner
And Des, I have a "Desnocta" build from you, dated 5/2/2008. Probably a bit older than what you're looking for, though. I probably also have one or more builds in my inbox. Hmmm, when I filter on you, nothing shows up. I swear I didn't delete them! Ah, looks like it's forgotten who a lot of my mail in from. Strange. OK, there, there's a bunch of stuff on Broad Sword/Dark Armor, looks like from you, starting 1/31/2009. Sound right? There's a build from you of which you say "Definitely not happy with it yet". And then another five hours later, "Interesting to see how much our choices differ, lol". Anyway, based on the messages themselves, you were only a few hours into the builds at that point. I can send them to you, but I bet they're way out of date unless you simply abandoned the concept after that. |
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I've never been too concerned about recharge on my BS/DA. I can solo an AV or two, just takes me a little longer is all.
I'm at about the limit of my endurance without shutting toggles off as it is, if my recharge were any faster I'd start burning end too fast.
That's the same thing I mentioned as being a concern about the OP's build.
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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. |
Hm, I thought I was pretty set in the End department, if I managed my toggles correctly. I'll have to look into that a little further.
And yeah, the attack chain is probably pretty...weird. I was hoping to avoid Purple sets entirely, but if I absolutely had to, I could pull some Inf together to slot Hecatomb in GC. Or, alternatively, I could just frankenslot it better. As Werner said, dropping SotW for GC, while being a vast improvement in DPS, would cripple that build's Ranged defense. It's still very much a work in progress.
EDIT: Oh, another factor in my CoF choice; given DA's complete lack of DDR, I was thinking that the 7.5 -toHit from it would mitigate that shortcoming. I might be entirely off base in that regard, though.
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Well, it's next to useless against AVs, who resist it like 95% or 97% or something crazy. I could look it up, but I'm lazy, and the actual number doesn't matter so much as simply "it's really really high". Higher level enemies will also resist it some. I tend to not count debuffs when I'm looking at my own builds, since when I really need them, that's when they're going to let me down the most.|
Originally Posted by StormDevil
Oh, another factor in my CoF choice; given DA's complete lack of DDR, I was thinking that the 7.5 -toHit from it would mitigate that shortcoming. I might be entirely off base in that regard, though.
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Still, yes, it gives you a little breathing room.
"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
Ah, well; "looks awesome and gets me to 40% AoE Defense" will have to do. Plus there's a proc in there that pumps out a ridiculous 20% toHit (yeah, it's only going to fire off once every 100 seconds, on average, for 10 seconds, but still)
EDIT: regarding the attack chain, it's looking like DA->GC->SotW->DA->GC->SD. I have no idea how to calculate the DPS of a chain, though, short of beating up a pylon.
OK, my best guess for the chain you'd want is my normal suggestion for a double stack, but with Sting of the Wasp replacing Gambler's Cut. In other words:
Divine Avalanche -> Gambler's Cut -> Soaring Dragon -> Gambler's Cut -> Divine Avalanche -> Gambler's Cut -> Sting of the Wasp -> Gambler's CutThat takes 9.77 seconds to complete if tight. But you'll have a 0.21-second gap between Sting of the Wasp and Gambler's cut. No biggie. So you end up just under ten seconds. I think that's fine, and there's not any big need to add recharge for your attack chain.
Your attack chain uses 2.71 EPS, which is decent enough. The toggles you have clicked on only use 0.94 EPS for a total burn of 3.65 EPS. And you recover 3.54 EPS, plus another 0.40 EPS from your procs on average, so 3.94 EPS recovery. In other words, with the toggles you have off, you will tend to recover endurance even while fighting flat out. For normal play, you'll probably want to run Death Shroud and Cloak of Fear, so you'll be running at a loss, but that's what blues are for. If you're AV soloing without inspirations, you'll want either Death Shroud or Cloak of Fear up. Both are about 0.38 EPS. So... 2.71 + 0.94 + 0.38 = 4.03 EPS burned. You recover ALMOST that much on average, plus you have Conserve Power. You'll be fine. The biggest variable is Dark Regeneration. It sucks down a LOT of endurance, but if you take the feared minion approach, that gives you a much higher chance for Theft of Essence to fire to drastically reduce the cost, or if lucky, recover some endurance. So... probably OK. It reminds me of how I tuned my own build. All I could say before I started using it was that it was probably OK. And it's normally OK, but occasionally, I need to slow down attacking in AV fights. Usually not for long before a proc fires or Conserve Power recharges or whatever. Just enough to annoy me. Anyway, I'd say that your endurance situation might be fine, and if it isn't, probably isn't worth much additional effort and compromise to improve.
I agree that Death Shroud is underslotted. It's kind of your best attack. But you don't exactly have slots just sitting around wasting space. Perhaps the one in Stamina? Nah, too much of a difference when you're probably already on the edge. Mind you, swap out the common IO for the endmod/recharge. Yes, it's less endmod than the common IO, but it also gives you a recovery set bonus, and the total ends up higher. (EDIT: Oh, duh, do what others said earlier. Move it to Physical Perfection. Even better.)
I'd probably short change The Lotus Drops before short changing Death Shroud, but it makes me sad that both are short changed.
And Dark Regeneration is underslotted too. Hmmm. Well, if you accept ALWAYS using minions when fighting AVs, you could try to trade out some healing for more recharge and endurance reduction, maybe. Not seeing a way to on first glance, though.
Yeah, the problem is that you need just a few more slots for a few powers, and I just don't know from where to get slots without making very large scale changes.
I'm not sure what they're going for these days, but you could use a Ribosome instead of Aegis res/end in Obsidian Shield. Slightly better in all ways.
I guess that's all I have for the moment.
Oh, I just saw your post about your intended attack chain. Without going to the trouble of doing a full DPS calcluation for your exact slotting, I'm going to make an educated guess that DA->GC->SotW->DA->GC->SD will do lower DPS than what I mentioned above. My chain above is your chain with two more Gambler's Cuts thrown in. Gambler's Cut, since is has the Achilles' Heel proc, is a key attack that you want to spend a lot of time using. And Divine Avalanche is something you really don't want to use much more than twice every ten seconds, because it doesn't do a lot of damage for the time it takes. Yeah, you spend 0.2 seconds doing nothing, but I'm still fairly confident you'll be better off DPS-wise with the one I mentioned. That said, don't be at all afraid to drop one or two Gambler's Cuts (and turn it into the chain you mentioned) when switching targets, or if you miss with Divine Avalanche. You want to make sure that Divine Avalanche stays double stacked. That tends to take priority over DPS.
"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
Great feedback, thanks Werner. Really, thanks to everyone else who chimed in; I'll keep tinkering with it and try to incorporate your suggestions.
Well you guys suck!!!!!
---goes off and makes yet another Katana---
On second thought, think just gonna try out the worst scrapper combo... DM/DA
... activates Ninja Run and flips out of this thread
...glomps Iggy while running Cloak of Fear and starts spamming Touch of Fear noogies...
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one of these days I really got get one of those to 50
Got a DM/Inv Brute at 31 and my claws/da in the mid 20's. Both of which haven't been touched in years
OK, so I went back in and tweaked some things, mostly to try an incorporate the suggestions regarding Death Shroud and Dark Regeneration. I think the trade-offs work out, but there is one thing giving me pause.
With the build below, I get the following increases
Regen: an extra 20% (13hp/s vs. 14.6hp/s)
Death Shroud: jumps from 54% Acc, 54% Dam, and 36% End reduction to 92% Acc, 92% Dam, and 42% End reduction...just huge, huge increases there
Dark Regeneration: jumps from 48% Acc and 42% Recharge to 89% Acc and 65% Recharge (recharges in 17.1 seconds vs. 19.7 seconds). It does lose some of the heal (508 hp w/one mob hit vs. 593), but the quicker recharge combined with the much higher accuracy seems like a net benefit.
I swapped Sting of the Wasp for Flashing Steel, and this is where my hesitation comes in. First, to keep Ranged Defense at the cap, I'd have to slot Gambler's with 6 Mako's, and slot the Achilles proc in Flashing...not thrilled about that. I'm having a hard time working out a chain, but I should be able to get a handle on it.
Anyway, here it is:
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Please tell me you don't actually use CP that way
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Originally Posted by StormDevil
But, if I hit CP at the beginning of a fight, I should be okay End wise.
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Long time reader, occasional poster, first-time build poster. I've been having an ongoing back and forth with Werner about my Kat/DA build, and I think I've finally gotten it to a place with which I'm happy. I was hoping Claws, Des, Bobitron, Umbral, etc. (just naming some names; anyone can feel free to hop in) could offer up their two cents.