Solo +4/x8 on my main..can it be done?

Minor thread necro. Suppose you were building a BS/Invuln of your own. No limit to prices, no requirements on power selection. The focus was on making it as effective as possible, a near-master of two trades: tanking for a team, and DPS. Broadsword obviously can't do that second one as well as some other sets, but it can perform well. What would that build look like, and is there a specific reason you would make some of the choices different from those I made?

@Rorn ---- Blue Baron ---- Guardian

This would be the start of my wish list:

• Soft cap SLFCEN with one target
• Parry takes lethal/melee to incarnate soft cap, double or triple stack for debuffs
• Perma Hasten
• Head Splitter -> Hack -> Disembowel -> Hack with only a small gap
• Rebirth for healing, can skip Aid Self
• Good resistance
• Good raw regeneration
• Blaze Mastery
• Sustainable Endurance

Just to pick a single nit, Werner, I don't know why you'd be concerned with softcapping FC. Nothing does pure cold damage aside from the winter horde and ice mistral and those are both easy in the first place. The main thing that comes to mind for pure fire damage is demons and again, not one of the toughest villain groups in the game. Really I guess this is more a beef I have with high end builders in general than with you so maybe I shouldn't have brought it up, but here we are.

I just noticed that one reason to go for the full softcap on SLFCEN is that you're putting the SLFCEN into self-centered. In an abstract manner.

I can't look at your build right now, so for the time being I'll just answer generically. Along the theme of the replies given...

• Shoot for the S/L softcap. I actually am not desperately worried about hitting this with one target, but I want to be within a few percent of it. If I explicitly set out to solo or even just tank AVs, I might try harder to cap it. The reasons I might be willing to skimp on it are that while S/L defense does end up fending off lots of damage of other types, an awful lot of what is delivered is S/L, and Invul can hit the Scrapper resist cap for S/L damage. Also, Parry can cover the Lethal defense part, leaving only a Smashing defense "hole".
• As close to the E/N softcap as I can get, possibly trading that last few percent on S/L to do it. (I don't know that this specific tradeoff is actually possible in general, but I would at least look at doing it if I could.) An awful lot of ranged attacks have these damage types and nothing else.
• At least 35% F/C defense with one foe around. There's not a ton of fire damage in the end game so far, but I don't want to be the one guy who can't solo lots of Circle of Thorns.
• Enough recharge to perma Dull Pain, even though I don't keep it on auto or anything.
• To get the defense numbers above, I would be willing sacrifice the levels of recharge I have on things like Regen and FA characters, because while a good BS attack chain still wants high recharge, its long animations mean I can get close to an optimal attack chain with a lot less total +rech. This is guidance on my build, not a hard constraint.
• My philosophy has been to suck up the Psi mitigation hole. When it's bad, it's very bad. (I soloed a Safeguard mish with my BS/Inv yesterday on +4/x8 and all the Arachnos bank robbers were Tarantual Queens and Fortunata Mistresses. I lived, but it sucked.) Despite that, I'm not satisfied with the compromises I would have to make to get what I consider even moderate total mitigation to Psi. On the upside, high E/N defense gets you moderate ranged defense, which helps with Psi damage derived from Psychic Blast powers (as opposed to Mind Control or Illusion Control), so that's helps some.

On TANKER Invuln, I'm pretty sure I'd be shooting for some decent Psionic defense, but then, on a Tanker, it's much easier to soft cap and more. I've been fiddling with Invuln/SS and Invuln/Dark builds for solo incarnate content, though I'm not happy with anything yet. Let's see... Invuln/Dark with one target in range, 59% SL, 53% FCEN, 32% meee, 29% ranged and AoE, 26% psionic. Eh, 11% psionic from sets. I guess that's all I figured I could get while working on other goals. But now that we're talking about it, why'd I crank fire and cold up so high? Maybe I can trade some of that for better psionic.

I'm going to need to track down your Invuln tanker build, Obitus. I'm curious to have a look. I was pretty much starting from scratch since I've never made top end Tankers and don't frequent the Tanker forums. I'm sure I have some room for improvement. I was going for perma Hasten, though (I'm a couple seconds off), for the additional damage output (Foot Stomping and Fire Balling like mad, double stacking Rage, that sort of thing) or survivability (Siphon Life). However, surely I'd be going for Rebirth now that that's an option, so spamming Siphon Life is less critical. I still would love damage, though, since I play my Tankers as Scrappers. Eh, anyway, I should have a look.

What are some thoughts you all have of taking Leviathan Mastery for this Scrapper? My concern with it is it lacks an AoE attack, but Water Spout seems good and the pet is IMO the most useful available to Scrappers. It also has Hibernate. That could come in handy.

@Rorn ---- Blue Baron ---- Guardian

A couple more BS/INV builds, per request -- sparing no expense and changing up the power selection a little. Keep in mind, as always, that I have no personal experience with BS; I'm sure that someone like Werner could improve on what I'm doing here, but FWIW I'm pretty happy with these builds.

First, a build that tries to split the baby -- good offense coupled with as much Psi DEF as I could reasonably cram in:

• 45+% S/L/E/N DEF
• 30.7% F/C DEF
• 30.6% Psionic DEF
• Capped S/L RES
• Capped HP (perma Dull Pain)
• ToHit-capped against +3 opponents
• +80% global recharge (not including Hasten)
• +14.5% global damage (w/ Assault)

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Hasten isn't perma, but it's reasonably close (should be a 10-15 second lapse). In any case, when Hasten's up, the attack chain is Headsplitter-Hack-Disembowel-pause 0.373s-Hack.

Without accounting for misses, that's 150.36 DPS with our slotting, 164.04 DPS w/ Build Up @ 33.8s. With T3 Reactive Interface, it's 175.32 DPS, 188 w/ Build Up.

Max End is 115.4. Recovery is 3.71 EPS, plus 0.23 from the Performance Shifter proc on average. Toggle cost (w/ Assault) is 1.21 EPS, plus ~0.11 for Hasten over time. That gives us a burn time of about 740 seconds running our single-target attack chain.

(It's also worth noting that if Valuur still wanted Tactics for the confuse protection, he could easily swap out Assault.)

The second build has the same basic structure, but instead of going for Psi DEF it goes for more single-target DPS:

• 45.3% S/L/N/E DEF
• 30.3% F/C DEF
• 17.7% Psi DEF
• 74.9% S/L RES
• Capped HP
• ToHit-capped against +3 opponents
• +90% global recharge (not including Hasten)
• 14.5% global damage (w/ Assault)

(Cardiac Alpha still assumed. You may have to toggle on Incarnate/Accolade powers in Mids' to see final numbers)

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Hasten still isn't quite perma, but it's closer. In any case, when Hasten's up, the attack chain is Headsplitter-Hack-Disembowel-pause 0.306s-Hack.

With our averaged crit rate (11.25%) and the two purple damage procs (and again, w/o accounting for misses), that's 154.49 DPS, 168.68 w/ Build Up @ 32.6s. Reactive Interface raises those numbers to 179.6 and 192.8 DPS, respectively.

But we also have -RES procs. With three chances to fire Achilles' Heel, and one chance to fire Fury of the Gladiator per attack cycle, our average -RES against a high-HP target is 14.48%. So our Reactive Interface DPS rises to 205.6, or 220.8 w/ avg Build Up contribution.

Endurance is a little dicier. Max End falls to 113.6, and recovery down to an average of 3.747 EPS (including PS proc). The attack chain costs 2.84 EPS, and avg toggle cost remains at 1.32 EPS. So our burn time is 272 seconds, or about four and a half minutes. That shouldn't be unworkable, mind you; chances are you're not going to face opponents that last longer than that very often, but it's worth noting that you have a lot less head room to account for spam-AoE situations.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze Nice build

I always thought people who liked Water Spout on meleers as an extra source of ST DPS during AV fights (especially as you can also pick a regular pet in the same epic). Thought about it myself for that purpose, but ultimately never bothered to try it - can't live without CP!