DM/SD or FM/SD for AV soloing goodness?

I have narrowed it down to these two.. And I've hit a dead end. I really know nothing about FM or SD, I do have a DM/DA scrapper though, so I'm familiar with dark. My question is, which primary has highest dps that doesn't cost a pixel arm and leg? Not saying I want a cheapo solution, just nothing too high (over 1.5). Also, any advice or even a sample build would be great to start me off (sample, nothing too serious ). Thanks in advance!

Read some of the previous threads.

Much easier than me exsplaing too ya mate.

For just AV soloing, I'd go DM/SD. Similar DPS, plus you have a self-heal as part of your chain and an endurance recovery tool. Win. But FM/SD can do the DPS without risking killing the Against All Odds fodder, plus it has tremendous AoE potential. Add Aid Self, and you're good to go on AVs and pretty much everything else in the game.

As far as cost, recharge is where the influence goes (unless you splurge on PvPs). Fire Melee has an excellent chain at +145% recharge (Inc>Scorch>Crem>Scorch) that I would happily settle for on an AV soloing build. Dark Melee also has an excellent chain at only +128% recharge (Smite>SP>MG>Smite>SP>SL), but I really wouldn't want to settle for that on an AV soloing build, because I want to be spamming Siphon Life. I'd want to go for Smite>MG>Smite>SL, which takes +235% recharge, which is going to cost you wheelbarrows full of influence. So... maybe Fire Melee is cheaper in practice, though only because you're making do with Aid Self, and settling for it recharging less fast than it could.

As for builds, I don't have an example, but there are plenty of them floating around.

If you are looking for DPS chains and how to get them, check out either of the "The results are in..." threads started by BillZ up at the top of the forum. For actual build suggestions, I would just search the forum, there are plenty already posted. I do have a FM/SD scrapper and could post the build I am working towards but it's not an AV killer build - its just a general purpose softcapped build (cheaply softcapped for that matter) that can handle most situations.

However, if you are looking for a toon to be primarily for AV soloing I suspect that DM/SD is your best bet - both DM and FM should be able to produce enough DPS to take out an AV but DM gives you a heal in siphon life that will probably make a huge difference - even softcapped an AV is going to hit 5% of the time and when they do it is probably going to hurt, a FM scrapper is going to have to take aid self or carry greens to recover from that where a DM scrapper can rely on siphon life.

I'm glad I looked before I posted, as I was about to ask a similar question. Hope you don't mind OP.

The question is, for me anyway, does DM produce enough damage without soul drain being fully saturated. I'm stuck between dm/sr, fm/sr, dm/sd, or fm/sd. I know that each primary set is strong enough to take out AV's, hell, I have a dm/wp brute that dropped his first AV at 26 or 28. Just, kinda stuck.

Sounds like you've answered your own question. Yes, each primary set is strong enough to take out AVs. No, you don't need Soul Drain to be fully-saturated.

You may WANT a lot of DPS, though. First, trading punches for 20 minutes can get boring. Second, time exposed to danger. The higher your damage output, the less time you'll spend trading punches, the less chance the AV has of getting a lucky string of hits that takes you out.

When they revamped Dark Melee, Soul Drain got a big change. I don't know the exact numbers, but City of Data should be able to fill in the details.

Soul Drain now gives two buffs. The first gives a large bonus, about half of Build Up, that is flagged to not stack. The second gives a smaller bonus that does stack, and can hit up to 10 targets.

Even hitting only one target gives a noticeable boost, and it lasts 30 seconds. My just barely perma-hasten Dark/SR scrapper has about 5 seconds of downtime on Soul Drain, when he's just trying to keep it up, rather than firing it when saturated. If you have recharge in the realm of what Werner mentioned, you should easily be able to close that gap, maybe even squeeze in one attack at double-stacked SD.

If I remember what the number crunchers said when the revamp happened, Soul Drain is now twice as strong as the old version off one target, the same bonus at 8, and slightly weaker (but barely noticably) than the old version at 10 targets.