The Alpha Slot and my DM/SD

When I began alphaing, my criteria at that time was "Out of Acc, Dmg, End and Recharge, which one of those will help this character the most right now?" It recently occured to me, while looking further down the tree for my toons, I should have started at the end state and mapped a way to get there. So I'm going about the process of a more thorough analysis of what different alphas do. I'm taking a look at my Dark Melee/Shield Defense Scrapper now.

Cardiac Core Paragon
Endurance/Range/Resists

Enhancing Endurance and Restistance sounds like a good idea.

Endurance can be a struggle for extended fights. I can go spawn-to-spawn no problem. I did try the Rikti pylon challenge, after I recently respecced this guy, but the blue bar bottomed out. This isn't a crisis to me because I don't really care to make this guy an AV soloer, or pylon soloer, or any of the extreme events.

Anyway, with that said...

With all toggles on, end drain is currently 1.01 end/sec and drop to .78 with this alpha.

Resists go up a tad, 3-ish percent across the board.

Cardiac Radial Paragon

Endurance enhancement goes down and the only thing I gain is a Fear enhancement. Yes I still have Touch of Fear (mule for Siphon Insight bonuses).

End drain is now 0.83 end/sec and of course, all attacks became slightly more costly.

Musculature Core Paragon
Oh yeah, more damage. That's Scrapperlishous.

Def debuff is irrelevant, but there is an immob to consider, Midnight Grasp goes from 17.9 to 23.8 seconds.

But what about the damage???

Smite goes from 221.9 to 251.2
Siphon Life from 291 to 348.1
Midnight Grasp from 430.8 to 509.7 (whoa nelly!)
Fire Blast from 366.8 to 416.6
Fire Ball from 343.1 to 389
Even Char is a respectable 178

Seems like I'm forgetting something. Oh yeah, Shield Charge. From 270.7 to 311.6

Musculature Radial Paragon
A bit less damage than above, with end mods. I bet the -tohit debuffs may be interesting as well. Added run speed is a bonus, nothing more.

Smite 243.4
Siphon Life 333.5
Midnight Grasp 489.2
Fire Blast 403.3
Fire Ball 376.7
Char 166.4
Shield Charge 301.9

Recovery goes from 172% (3.15 end/sec) to 180% (3.3)

The ST attacks all have a 5.625% -tohit debuff that increases to 6.75%. To the soft-capped Scrapper, this isn't quite so valuable, but hey, it's a freebie that may prove handy, at least for squishy teammates.


Nerve Core Paragon
Accuracy, Hold, Defense

Global Accuracy is 52%. Every power with a to-hit check is well in excess of 95% against +3s. Then add Soul Drain on top of that. In other words, I'm pretty well set for accuracy. So much so let's move on to the next one, to see what tertiary enhancements it offers.

Nerve Radial Paragon
Accuracy, Hold, Defense, Taunt is our bonus here.

Again, Accuracy is all set.

Hold from Char goes from 22.3 seconds to 25.9.

Taunt from AAO goes from 17 to 22.6 seconds.

On to the good stuff: what about defense?
Looks like it gets a 3% buff across the (positional) board. Melee and Range go from 45ish to 48ish. Aoe is not curently soft-capped (42.8) but is with this alpha (45.7).

That's nice but not overly invigorating.

Spiritual Core Paragon
Recharge, Stun and Healing.

Global recharge is currently 58.8%, outside of Hasten.

With this alpha, Hasten recharges in 128 seconds, very nice. Let's call it perma-ish and all subsequent numbers will include Hasten

Soul Drain went from 38.5 seconds to 34.
Shield Charge from 29 to 25.6.
Fireball from 12.5 to 10.6.
Active Defense from 76 to 65

Siphon Life went from a 253.4 heal to 291.1.

Regen goes from 217% (18.2 hp/sec) to 230% (19.6).


Spiritual Radial Paragon
This is less recharge than above, and the tertiary enhancements I can use are jump and to-hit buff.

I'm not enthused at enhancing those 2 at the expense of recharge.

Conclusion

I've already gone down the Spiritual path. Having done this analysis now, only Musculature Radial Paragon stands out as potentially a better option. However it's not so much better that I'm going to change direction. Maybe down the road, I'll earn Musculature in addition to Spiritual Core Paragon.

I submit this post to see if my reasoning is flawed and if there's some consideration I missed.

Great analysis. I'm having the same questions -- not sure what to alpha slot. Here's my current build.

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I have a DM/SR and I started out with Spiritual first, and also had Musc on the side. After 19.5, I've been comparing the two. With Spiritual Rare my Hasten is completely perma, and Siphon life heals for about 290ish. I've been more leaning towards Musc after playtesting, though. The added damage means MG one shots minions without SD. With Soul Drain on a mob, I pretty much one shot everything lower than a boss depending on the mob. Hasten only has a few seconds downtime, and I get by. I much prefer Musc, but I'm still undecided which route to go with the ultra rare. Tough to call whether I want massive damage, or a lot of damage with more -Tohit and some running speed.

The build if you care

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