Making a new scrapper for aoe besides ele/shield
Spines/Dark is the classic AoE scrapper. Spines/Fire is arguably better at it, with more damage in return for less survivability.
Spines/SR or Invuln would be a solid combo as well.
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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. |
Thanks. Is it possible to get soft cap if you know with dark as a secondary?
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On a scrapper I know you can't, not sure on a tank. On a scrapper I didn't go ALL out figuring a defense build but only got around 20%. Can't remember if i took weave, no maneuvers, but even then that'd get you to 30%, not 45%. This is to all 3 types though, of course you could if you were going for say, only melee, but that seems flawed in my book to not round em out.|
Originally Posted by squishor
Thanks. Is it possible to get soft cap if you know with dark as a secondary?
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Between spines/fire and spines/dark I'd much suggest the spines/fire. With tough, and energy torrent for the KD when they're already lined up for your cone anways its just as safe, and you don't need to be in direct melee for your other toggles to proc for as much daamge, and the self rez is better.
I have a spine/inv as well, its fun, a little sturdier, just no extra damage help from the secondary is all.
Plasmic's Guide to Sonic/Mental
Plasmic's Guide to Regeneration
Plasmic Fire - 50 Fire/Rad Victory Server
It depends on what you want to do exactly.
For general aoe goodness spines/dark is, by far, the best for overall survivability/damage. I don't see the point of spines/fire, there's a point where you have enough damage to quickly wipe the spawns and all you need is survivability to take on bigger spawns and/or larger. Mine is fairly old and was ok with a cheap IO build, now i brought her up to date with a solid build and, wow. Build up + throw spines + spine burst and a ripper to finish the lieutenants, i can wipe +1 x8 spawns in a matter of seconds. The damage auras are awesome, but what makes spines/dark shine is the range: the pbae and cone both have a huge range. It's all at the expense of survivability, though with very high recharge and clever kiting i find i'm as survivable as the average scrapper around while dealing crazy damage.
However, if you want to farm AE with tightly packed mobs around you, then you should consider claws/dark. Its main drawback is the very short range on the pbae but if you can hit enough ennemies with it, Spin is muuuuch better than spines burst. In AE farming back in the days when you could spawn hundreds of bosses my claws/dark was the best character i had for that. Attack chain was follow up > spin > evisecerate. With a kin you can just chain spin and eviscerate and everything dies very fast.
In general missions/tfs or older farm maps it's not as good, in the typical mob spawns a spine burst can hit everything, while spin won't. So claws/dark is only good for very tight packs of mobs where it can shine. The best was with custom mobs immune to KB to make sure you can spam Shockwave too.
I think they're overall better for farming than even elec/shield or anything else. For me the whole point of farming is to keep very high sustained aoe dps and i found shield charge on my bs/shield to be terrible for that. Sure, you can obliterate a spawn but, the damage is not high enough to be worth waiting for it to recharge.
For softcapping you can forget it unless paired with katana or BS. /dark is awesome because unlike most secondaries you get survivability from the global recharge, which is what you need for efficient farming too. Getting some defense to ~30% or so (you'll hardly get more unless you want to gimp your build) won't give you more survivability than upping your recharge. I think dark regen is up in about 8sec on my /dark scrappers, that's a full life bar + some endurance bonus every 8sec. Unless you jump in a pack of red/purple bosses, there's hardly anything that will destroy your lifebar in less than 8sec especially with the spines slow secondary effect.
And if it does, that's what Soul tranfer is for. I waste about 10sec when i die (retoggling everything) and that's it. 
I usually run with 4 columns full of big purples insps and i eat everything that appears in the first column after everything. I kill stuff so fast i barely need to heal when i'm farming, like the cimmeroran wall, i need to fire the heal maybe once every 5 or 10 packs of 10 traitors, just because i kill them before they can attack. On the BM map set to +1 x8 i need to heal every 3 or 4 packs. Best survivability is to kill stuff before it can even attack you, and if you can't, just hit a few purples then you're invincible.
Dark armor lover.
The Claws/DA Scrapper guide.
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Probably any Scrapper can soft cap. Shred Monkey posted a quick and dirty Fiery Melee/Electric Armor build (below) with soft-capped defenses to prove the point. Whether it's the best approach or not is a lot more debatable, but possible, yes.|
Originally Posted by Windenergy21
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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
Thanks for the replies. There are some AE's that I can just be surrounded by enemies. Definitly not bosses but a full mix. My ele/sd is soft capped in all 3, 1.7 sec off perma hasten and has enough recoverythat unless I am on a full team with no stop in some AE's I have very few problems with end(running with fire mastery). I was really just looking for a nice change of pace from him but when help people out with xp and tickets they face plant within seconds of entering. Even some lvl 50's with some IO's but I so not know there builds. Even with soft cap defense and some blows sitll get through. I guess that is the nice thing about dark though and having that heal up all the time?
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Really? You can't? | On a scrapper I know you can't |
That's odd....
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=189427
Dark Armor is the easiest resistance-based set in the game to softcap for a scrapper. Invuln is a close second. Fire and Electric are more difficult.
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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. |
Has anyone tried spines/elec and how does it do
Pinnacle
Langar Thurs-Katana/SR 50; Hejtmane-DM/DA 50
Rogue Spear-Spines/DA 50; Hypnosis-Ill/Rad 50
Sir Thomas Theroux-DM/SR 50; Melted Copper-Fire/Shield 50
Byzantine Warrior-DB/ELA 50;Blade Tempo-50 DB/EA
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Well, In General I don't consider that a "build" with softcapping. Its a toon that'll just sit there softcapped, but is by no means a "build" if you get what i'm saying.
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Originally Posted by Werner
Probably any Scrapper can soft cap. Shred Monkey posted a quick and dirty Fiery Melee/Electric Armor build (below) with soft-capped defenses to prove the point. Whether it's the best approach or not is a lot more debatable, but possible, yes.
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Plasmic's Guide to Sonic/Mental
Plasmic's Guide to Regeneration
Plasmic Fire - 50 Fire/Rad Victory Server
Quote:
Again, that is not softcapping. For one, ranged isn't fully there, on a tiny note neither is aoe. Two, that's ONLY because of parry/divine avalanche, you can't consider those when someone is mentioning a general "softcapping" unless they are explicitly asking about techniques on doing so for a BS/Katana user.
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Originally Posted by ClawsandEffect
Really? You can't?
That's odd.... http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=189427 Dark Armor is the easiest resistance-based set in the game to softcap for a scrapper. Invuln is a close second. Fire and Electric are more difficult. |
Plasmic's Guide to Sonic/Mental
Plasmic's Guide to Regeneration
Plasmic Fire - 50 Fire/Rad Victory Server
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Originally Posted by Celidya
It depends on what you want to do exactly.
For general aoe goodness spines/dark is, by far, the best for overall survivability/damage. I don't see the point of spines/fire, there's a point where you have enough damage to quickly wipe the spawns and all you need is survivability to take on bigger spawns and/or larger. Mine is fairly old and was ok with a cheap IO build, now i brought her up to date with a solid build and, wow. Build up + throw spines + spine burst and a ripper to finish the lieutenants, i can wipe +1 x8 spawns in a matter of seconds. The damage auras are awesome, but what makes spines/dark shine is the range: the pbae and cone both have a huge range. It's all at the expense of survivability, though with very high recharge and clever kiting i find i'm as survivable as the average scrapper around while dealing crazy damage. However, if you want to farm AE with tightly packed mobs around you, then you should consider claws/dark. Its main drawback is the very short range on the pbae but if you can hit enough ennemies with it, Spin is muuuuch better than spines burst. In AE farming back in the days when you could spawn hundreds of bosses my claws/dark was the best character i had for that. Attack chain was follow up > spin > evisecerate. With a kin you can just chain spin and eviscerate and everything dies very fast. In general missions/tfs or older farm maps it's not as good, in the typical mob spawns a spine burst can hit everything, while spin won't. So claws/dark is only good for very tight packs of mobs where it can shine. The best was with custom mobs immune to KB to make sure you can spam Shockwave too. I think they're overall better for farming than even elec/shield or anything else. For me the whole point of farming is to keep very high sustained aoe dps and i found shield charge on my bs/shield to be terrible for that. Sure, you can obliterate a spawn but, the damage is not high enough to be worth waiting for it to recharge. For softcapping you can forget it unless paired with katana or BS. /dark is awesome because unlike most secondaries you get survivability from the global recharge, which is what you need for efficient farming too. Getting some defense to ~30% or so (you'll hardly get more unless you want to gimp your build) won't give you more survivability than upping your recharge. I think dark regen is up in about 8sec on my /dark scrappers, that's a full life bar + some endurance bonus every 8sec. Unless you jump in a pack of red/purple bosses, there's hardly anything that will destroy your lifebar in less than 8sec especially with the spines slow secondary effect. And if it does, that's what Soul tranfer is for. I waste about 10sec when i die (retoggling everything) and that's it. I usually run with 4 columns full of big purples insps and i eat everything that appears in the first column after everything. I kill stuff so fast i barely need to heal when i'm farming, like the cimmeroran wall, i need to fire the heal maybe once every 5 or 10 packs of 10 traitors, just because i kill them before they can attack. On the BM map set to +1 x8 i need to heal every 3 or 4 packs. Best survivability is to kill stuff before it can even attack you, and if you can't, just hit a few purples then you're invincible. |
On the points mentioned about how Dark Armor is more survivable, Look at what we're talking about here. Playstyle. We're farming with the spines. With the build I was suggesting, the spines/fire gets energy torrent as part of its aoe attack chain. Enemies are knocked down when you go into melee with them and a good portion of the time, that or dead.
Then on that note, fire's heal does not need targets to heal off of, the self rez does neither. And most importantly, the scrapper doesn't need to be in constant melee to benefit most from the defensive capabilities. On top of that, fire armor, not even considering fiery embrace at all in this equation, gets consume, which puts it GOBS ahead of dark armor for farming purposes for endurance reasons. I've made good DA builds with miracles/numinas and PP and lots of end reduction, but the recharge let by the spines/fire easily puts it over DA in my opinion on a farming standpoint.
Now a well constructed spines/elec, is a different matter. It really plays almost too closely to fire armor to wink an eye at outside of how the heal works (which i still think the regen portion should last the full minute not 30 seconds but i digress) But it has close resistances, a heal/regen type power, pbaoe damage aura, and should not be having end problems.
Going for tough + high recharge build + defense build what you can would work well for spines/elec, but i'd still go for the spines/fire over it when you're basically looking at still no end problems in an IO build, a self rez which is handy to have, and extra damage tools. With high recharge on both the spines/fire and spines/elec, you don't notice lightning reflexes boost much in the finalized build.
Plasmic's Guide to Sonic/Mental
Plasmic's Guide to Regeneration
Plasmic Fire - 50 Fire/Rad Victory Server
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Look at the second build I posted in that thread. |
Originally Posted by Windenergy21
Again, that is not softcapping. For one, ranged isn't fully there, on a tiny note neither is aoe. Two, that's ONLY because of parry/divine avalanche, you can't consider those when someone is mentioning a general "softcapping" unless they are explicitly asking about techniques on doing so for a BS/Katana user.
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And remember to turn Combat Jumping on.
I know for an absolute fact that it IS softcapped, because it is on my live character.
And another thing: Since Parry is part of my attack chain, any time I am in melee to be attacked from that position, I am softcapped to it. If I am not in melee with anything in order to stack Parry, I obviously have no need to have defense to it.
Ranged is at 45.17% on live, and AoE is at 44.9%. Sure you could quibble that AoE is .1% away from being softcapped, but I have NEVER seen a situation where .1% was the difference between being hit and not being hit. I'm sure it's happened, but I've never seen it.
All you said was "On a scrapper I know you can't", referring to Dark Armor softcapping. You never said anything about conditions or primary. As far as your original statement is concerned, my build proves it wrong. You made a blanket statement and it was debunked.
You can debate semantics all day, and it won't change anything. I proved you wrong, and you changed your argument to say that because I used Parry to achieve it, it doesn't count.
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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. |
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Yes, I think I get what you're saying. But in that case, you perhaps should have said "On a Dark Armor Scrapper I wouldn't suggest it" instead of "On a scrapper I know you can't."|
Originally Posted by Windenergy21
Well, In General I don't consider that a "build" with softcapping. Its a toon that'll just sit there softcapped, but is by no means a "build" if you get what i'm saying.
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The first is your opinion on how people should build for maximum effectiveness. That's cool. I probably wouldn't soft cap a Fiery Melee/Electric Armor or a Spines/Dark Armor either. But to say that you can't is incorrect, which is why we gave you counterexamples. You don't have to LIKE the builds for them to be counterexamples.
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Originally Posted by Windenergy21
Again, that is not softcapping. For one, ranged isn't fully there, on a tiny note neither is aoe. Two, that's ONLY because of parry/divine avalanche, you can't consider those when someone is mentioning a general "softcapping" unless they are explicitly asking about techniques on doing so for a BS/Katana user.
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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
Here's a couple more for you
Fire/Regen
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K this one is not really all softcap but is rather nice...| Copy & Paste this data into Mids' Hero Designer to view the build | |-------------------------------------------------------------------| |MxDz;1427;698;1396;HEX;| |78DAA5934B4F535110C7CFA5B794D25B4AAD6DA150DE505EADE0C6D7C244A182810| |40159288F5CCBB13469DAE6B60AEC4C8C263E566E5CB9F3F9118CDF44FD263EEACC| |FC4F9B1897DEC0FCCE99F39FFF99DEC95D3F5972947A7455593DD7CB6EBD7EB055F| |0DC5A4D7BFE75B7582A24F2254F673D5DD4956CC1AD650FF57D5DA9EB80522AD552| |1EACEBB2D6B97C497BA758A7DB474BD0E736D9417B6EA354AD44572B47DAD39546A| |EB5086F54AB6532281E354A95A223BB35EDD66813C25199CF22AD8343EDD58F4AB5| |E872AD54C85DAB1ED2B56EBD41D7F7515F33F4FF981B94A7E95707848CEAD807F60| |4F62E7057D07947B0C45596542975D3E2D49380C9909105A34E1875C1A80B46DD30| |EA86519EAA7C30B27CAF3B945A5433AF044FE9C46FFCFC1F24E5BC07DE097ADE021| |F05BD9F04CB54855FD4B4032BD258EF0DC1445E30B50CAC0A6E903668E441C8A720| |CF409E813C03B945F290E929D4A0545A65EB8273C7C009F050B0F840E0A3AAB0795| |9E1A4A456281541CA1FD9B1B8F3D94DC1FC16B02DC8DE066E099E5155D45C1F6DCA| |EF3DA37C821FB23BFB13F82548FC16AC5255CC5C1F3B2F729B5271F3D6E31708B64| |F255AA4B324CEECA4C9F57D15A7BE6F82D477CCC91C3EA7827ED3553F069FC2E007| |31F8410C7E08831FC2E093543580AA8E01D80FC17E04F64112A44D1F690846FE128| |C9AFB670D4354306C1C8751308A825114BC20C19869740C8D8EA3D171343A8E4627| |D0E8041A5DA3AA4954A9C9B8CCC1A1D4B4B9691A37CDE0A659DC1425C19C79BF73A| |6BD79C32D9A40CEF8E5E614CBE3245F307E0B27E410538BC7C0A960D06E7FA4F447| |8F5AFB27B361B7BF3F654966D86E7FA4FFF57C765A3EC1CD6E8ADB1C3628583BBCD| |AE5B0C7DB7D5EB9BCBAC7A1C0DBE617A7D569E422377489C3650E5738BC6451803F| |AA1007874398430F8708875E0E310E090E290E6F3834FF00FB5F046A| |-------------------------------------------------------------------|
DB/DA
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I see the point and i often considered Energy torrent too, i even tested it a long time ago, however i don't think it does the job well enough. First, the cone is pretty narrow compared to throw spines, so it most likely won't hit all the mobs in a spawn. Hell, i can't even hit all of them with a spines burst because i often jump into spawns with twice more mobs than the target cap allows to hit. On top of that it forces a redraw, some don't bother, i do and i hate that with spines because it breaks the flow of the attacks i think |
Originally Posted by Windenergy21
On the points mentioned about how Dark Armor is more survivable, Look at what we're talking about here. Playstyle. We're farming with the spines. With the build I was suggesting, the spines/fire gets energy torrent as part of its aoe attack chain. Enemies are knocked down when you go into melee with them and a good portion of the time, that or dead.
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| Then on that note, fire's heal does not need targets to heal off of, the self rez does neither. And most importantly, the scrapper doesn't need to be in constant melee to benefit most from the defensive capabilities. On top of that, fire armor, not even considering fiery embrace at all in this equation, gets consume, which puts it GOBS ahead of dark armor for farming purposes for endurance reasons. I've made good DA builds with miracles/numinas and PP and lots of end reduction, but the recharge let by the spines/fire easily puts it over DA in my opinion on a farming standpoint. |
I have stamina 4 slotted, conserve power, ToE proc in Dark regen and i run almost all toggles (with CoF instead of OG), sprint and superspeed half the time. Unless going against endurance drainers or mobs happily spamming tohit debuffs (like a bunch of CoT death mages) i never pay attention to my blue bar. Consume ? With conserve power + dark regen and the proc i can heal half or even all my blue bar... every 8sec and 4 times my health bar in the process, too. I don't think i've ever been waiting for the blue bar for anything but some CoT missions or carnies, and i tend to keep superspeed all the time just because i want to be fighting 95% of the time and not spend time running between mobs.
Based on Mid's data compared to in game data, and taking OG, i would even make a staminaless spines/dark using only PP. It would work well enough, but it would be impossible to mentor and do the lower level stuff so, i leave that out of the way. I think PP + stamina is overkill, i prefer to take something more useful instead. /dark endurance issues disappeared with IOs, and while this set is hell without them, with a good build i think it needs less endurance help than some other sets out there as long as you adapt your playstyle to it (toggle management), at least for farming and normal missions. Not talking about AVs or RWZ challenge or stuff like that of course, i would die very fast
The self rez is arguably better for fire, i think it depends on the situation. For soloing it's a lot better, however for teaming the massive ae stun + regen to full life/stamina of the dark rez is more useful i think as it gives some breathing room for the whole team and can stun anything short of AVs.
Anyway /dark doesn't need at all to stay in melee all the time. I spend most of my time jumping for cones and to forces mobs to switch to ranged/melee so i can delay their attacks and keep up with the heal. It takes a bit more practice and sometimes can be annoying but, 99% of the time it's not an issue at all, just a specific playstyle that won't suit anyone, that's a sure thing. In fact i don't run CoF for defense at all, it's slotted to get a cheap 6,25% recharge and for the damage proc on it, as i like the damage auras and every little bit helps (+ it looks cooler than OG). I couldn't care less for the fear/accuracy debuff that is worthless anyway, and OG was annoying more than anything else, i want mobs around me, not wandering.
But not much point arguing about it really, i think both are good, while being much lower survivability than the soft capped shields or SR of course. So in the end the whole point is to farm stuff we're comfortable with, and when i do that i don't even need to heal, so fire or dark is in the same boat. I think the whole point of /fire or /dark is not to survive and tank stuff like soft capped secondaries but just to kill stuff until you die, self rez, then proceed to kill the stuff you didn't kill before then keep on killing more stuff. And both are very effective for that with their tools for health and endurance.
Dark armor lover.
The Claws/DA Scrapper guide.
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Well not quite. My bad for not explaining that he woudln't have to be LOCKED into a very specific build to do it, When we didn't get a distinction of what primary. That's just like saying you cant get 700% regeneration on a SR, then adding later that "oh, did i mention I'm dark melee with slotted siphon life"|
Originally Posted by ClawsandEffect
Look at the second build I posted in that thread.
And remember to turn Combat Jumping on. I know for an absolute fact that it IS softcapped, because it is on my live character. And another thing: Since Parry is part of my attack chain, any time I am in melee to be attacked from that position, I am softcapped to it. If I am not in melee with anything in order to stack Parry, I obviously have no need to have defense to it. Ranged is at 45.17% on live, and AoE is at 44.9%. Sure you could quibble that AoE is .1% away from being softcapped, but I have NEVER seen a situation where .1% was the difference between being hit and not being hit. I'm sure it's happened, but I've never seen it. All you said was "On a scrapper I know you can't", referring to Dark Armor softcapping. You never said anything about conditions or primary. As far as your original statement is concerned, my build proves it wrong. You made a blanket statement and it was debunked. You can debate semantics all day, and it won't change anything. I proved you wrong, and you changed your argument to say that because I used Parry to achieve it, it doesn't count. |
It doesn't work like that. When someone is asking something general, you can't pick a very specific situation and go with that as the norm.
Plasmic's Guide to Sonic/Mental
Plasmic's Guide to Regeneration
Plasmic Fire - 50 Fire/Rad Victory Server
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Well according to the devs, redraw doesn't affect animation time at all. Now me, I "feel" it though, so i try to avoid it yes. But in an aoe chain, not so much a single target chain its much less noticeable. It basically is the difference between an attack going off at the beginning of an animation versus the end of an animation is what it changes. I'll usually press lunge to redraw the spines as i'm going in for spine burst to elimate that feeling of redraw because you're redrawing as your jumping into the mob.| I see the point and i often considered Energy torrent too, i even tested it a long time ago, however i don't think it does the job well enough. First, the cone is pretty narrow compared to throw spines, so it most likely won't hit all the mobs in a spawn. Hell, i can't even hit all of them with a spines burst because i often jump into spawns with twice more mobs than the target cap allows to hit. On top of that it forces a redraw, some don't bother, i do and i hate that with spines because it breaks the flow of the attacks i think |
As to the rest of the rebuttle, they ARE close builds, a lot of it comes to semantics and preference. I was giving points. Not saying you can't build a /dark to be decent on end, but without question the /fire armor does it with much less worry.
RotP versus Soul Transfer, again, on teams its preference. If you've got a controller with -kb aoe immoblize, RotP is decent damage when all 3 tics get hit on the enemies. Different strokes for different folks on that one.
Plasmic's Guide to Sonic/Mental
Plasmic's Guide to Regeneration
Plasmic Fire - 50 Fire/Rad Victory Server
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Semantics aside, I think its more reasonable I was obviously assuming that we are all intelligent here and should have been thinking logically.|
Originally Posted by Werner
Yes, I think I get what you're saying. But in that case, you perhaps should have said "On a Dark Armor Scrapper I wouldn't suggest it" instead of "On a scrapper I know you can't."
The first is your opinion on how people should build for maximum effectiveness. That's cool. I probably wouldn't soft cap a Fiery Melee/Electric Armor or a Spines/Dark Armor either. But to say that you can't is incorrect, which is why we gave you counterexamples. You don't have to LIKE the builds for them to be counterexamples. I half agree with you here. The conversation was more about Spines/Dark, or at least about doing some serious AoE damage, which isn't one of Broad Sword or Katana's strengths. So yeah, we're probably not talking about Broad Sword or Katana. But again, the stated question was simply if it was possible to get to the soft cap with Dark Armor as a secondary. And your answer was that it was not possible. Except that it IS possible. When no primary is stated, Katana and Broad Sword are possible primaries, and thus seem relevant to the question. We can of course debate whether it's advisable or not. I'd say yes it's advisable with Katana or Broad Sword - my soft-capped Katana/Dark is my toughest Scrapper. I'm not sure about other primaries. I'm going to guess that it probably isn't advisable, particularly if, like the OP, you're looking for a hard core AoE scrapper. But there's really no debate on whether or not it's possible. It's possible. |
I agree, my fault for saying 'can't' without the ASSUMED pretext of "advisable"
I never say anything I would not "advise", or is out of the context of the thread.
Plasmic's Guide to Sonic/Mental
Plasmic's Guide to Regeneration
Plasmic Fire - 50 Fire/Rad Victory Server
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Well, the way you said it originally, it sounded like you were saying that NO Dark Armor scrapper could softcap, which isn't true. Had you said "On a spines scrapper I know you can't", I would have agreed, as I have never seen a build that does it. All you said was "a scrapper" which implies that no scrapper can do it. My build is not the norm, and I never said that it was. It is a Dark Armor scrapper that is softcapped, which your original statement says couldn't be done. |
Originally Posted by Windenergy21
Well not quite. My bad for not explaining that he woudln't have to be LOCKED into a very specific build to do it, When we didn't get a distinction of what primary. That's just like saying you cant get 700% regeneration on a SR, then adding later that "oh, did i mention I'm dark melee with slotted siphon life"
It doesn't work like that. When someone is asking something general, you can't pick a very specific situation and go with that as the norm. |
Softcap is defined as having 45% or higher defense. How you got there is irrelevant. If you pop a bunch of purples, you are softcapped for the duration of the inspirations. So, the fact that I use Parry to softcap melee defense has no bearing on whether or not I am softcapped. Saying that sotcapping with Parry doesn't count is like saying that perma Hasten isn't perma because you have to click the power again.
And actually, you can't get 700% regen on an SR. Siphon Life is simply a self heal, it does nothing to increase regeneration. If you said "I can heal such and such amount of HP per second" because of Siphon Life, it would be true, since you can average it out to come up with a number. But.....that doesn't qualify as regeneration as the term is commonly used.
I apologize if my previous post was heavy on the snark. I was a little annoyed by being told that a build I spent a lot of time and influence on doesn't count as softcapped because I use Parry to get there.
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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. |
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On a Spines Scrapper, that's true. And we're talking about Spines here, so it's still true. But I don't want someone to read this and think that's a general rule. Spines is the ONLY Scrapper set that still has the old-style animations with redraw factored in. Any other set that forces redraw, like a weapon set, currently will pay a time penalty for drawing the weapon again.
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Originally Posted by Windenergy21
Well according to the devs, redraw doesn't affect animation time at all.
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If we are to die, let us die like men. -- Patrick Cleburne
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The rule is that they must be loved. --Jayne Fynes-Clinton, Death of an Abandoned Dog
Wow, lots of stuff here. I would guess my only other question would be, is there another secondary that has a ease of getting base soft cap defenses(without the use of purples or the primary set) without totally gimping a build w/ recharge etc? I know I would be giving up SC. But something like SR maybe? Thanks again.
Just to jump in about softcapping, pretty much all my resist-based toons (Dark, Fire, Elec; tankers & scrappers) softcap S/L def w/o making too many sacrifices (mostly some recharge) and it improves their survivability a ton. My Spines/Dark and Fire/Fire (look, no Parry!) are both AoE beasts and can run X8 (+N according to your preferences) missions for much fun & profit. I often don't even touch my heals on those guys unless I'm facing serious def debuffs or purely non S/L damage, which is fairly uncommon, and for those mobs, you have your resists (and heals) to fall back on.
Layered mitigation is by far and away the way to go, and you really don't have to give up much of anything to get some common defenses to the 30's where you'll start seeing some big differences. Hell, just get your defenses to a point where chewing a small purp caps them and constantly, then just combine everything to purples and you can go throughout life mostly softcapped (your high kill rate will ensure a steady supply of insps).
An Offensive Guide to Ice Melee
Really only Super Reflexes and Shield Defense make the soft cap fairly easy, and it's easiest on Super Reflexes. But compared to Shield Defense, you're giving up a lot, particularly for an AoE scrapper.
Also keep in mind that while we seem to spend a lot of time taking about soft-capped defenses on the forum, you can have a perfectly-viable scrapper without them. Secondaries that make soft-capping difficult make up for it in other ways - damage, heals, resistance, etc. There is very little you'll see in the game where the rule would be "go soft cap or go home".
Besides, purples are plentiful. Want to be at the soft cap for a particularly nasty fight? Take purples as required.
"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
Thanks for the replies. The reason I am aiming for soft cap is because of my past experiences running with it on my Ele/SD/fire scrapper. I really enjoy it but was trying to find something a little different. I would figure with a ton of guys around me for 10 minutes anything but soft cap and I will be face planting.
There are some AE missions that I love running that you can herd a ton of mobs all around you and then go to town. I currently have an IO'd Ele/SD scrapper that is a blast but I wanted to try out something new. I have my current scrapper soft capped in positionals and I would like to have the same, or possibly s/l instead. I was trying to stay out of shield as a secondary if possible but would still go that route if need be. I liked the idea of a spines/fire but I have no way of having decent def it seems on one of those. Would a spins/??? be any good for this type? I am definitly looking to IO out the build with a medium price range of 1-2 bill or so.