I want to make a Katana melee character for the first time, have questions

I want to make a Katana/elec armor character. I'm not sure if I should go brute or scrapper though. But whichever I go with, I will likely build it similarly. I know what I want to do with electric armor, and generally I have ideas as to what IOs to go for with the armor... but I want to know how should I build for the Katana.

What attack chains are optimal for a high end build (say I have enough global recharge to cut downtime of my powers to 1/3 or 1/4 of their original recharge)?

What attacks should I skip?

If I were to farm or take on huge mobs, what is the best AoE attack chain to go with?

Should I go with Soul mastery for darkest night and gloom? Should I also take dark obliteration?

Should I slot an achille's heel proc in each power to give me the best probability of having a near perma -res debuff?

If it helps, I am considering either Cardiac Core T4, Resilient Core T4, or Agility Core T4 for my alpha (Maybe even the Musculature Radial T4 for extra damage, endurance mod, to hit debuffs, and defense debuffs... actually, I probably should be going with this).

I am definitely going with reactive interface 75% DoT / 25% -res proc. The DoT alone would give me an extra 50.1 damage per attack, which makes me think I could go with a ST attack chain of: GC --SotW -- GC -- FS for max attacks per second, giving me more DPS from my interface. Or, I could sub in DA for FS if I need the defense. Or go with an attack chain of GC--DA for max defense. Either way, it seems like I would have no need for my upper tier attack powers, with the exception of the AoEs. It seems like Soaring Dragon is a great power, but I just don't see it fitting into an attack chain. I'll calculate numbers I guess, but I was hoping some experience could lead me in the right direction.

Best DPS chain is Golden Dragonfly>Gambler's Cut>Souring Dragon>Gambler's Cut. Throw in Divine avalanche as you need it for defense, skip sting of the wasp (don't know if you'd want to skip it in the early levels though), and flashing steel if you can't fit it.

Katana is low on the damage until you get to the high end of the level range, so it's a little rough starting out. As for archtype, I can't really say, given I'm heavily biased towards Scrappers over either Brutes or Stalkers.

Most people only slot an Achilles' heel in Gambler's Cut, and use actual damage procs in their others.

Gloom, while awesome on brutes, sucks with weapon sets, because of redraw issues.

Not sure how interface damage works into all of that, but that'd be a question to ask on the Scrapper boards. There are a lot of number crunchers there.

Katana could go either way. Electric Armor is going to be better on a Brute, because damage auras play nicely with Fury and resistance based armor sets function better with the Brute's larger HP pool.

I24 Proc Chance = (Enhanced Recharge + Activation Time) * (Current PPM * 1.25) / 60*(1 + .75*(.15*Radius - 0.011*Radius*(360-Arc)/30))
Single Target Radius = 0. AoE Non-Cone Arc = 360.

The trick is that katana has short animations, meaning with large amounts of recharge, your build-up window of 10 seconds can be a large number of hard-hitting attacks. Since scrappers have a larger base and get more out of build-up, that little 10 second rampage can be a big burst of damage that the brute might have a hard time catching up to.

It's swings and roundabouts really.

Heroes, Villains ♦ Reviews ♦ Retrospect

Any DPS lost on Katana by going the BRute route (which isn't likely much) will be made up for on Lightning Field do more damage with the BRute as it's effected by Fury and not by Crits.

For Electric Armor, I'd suggest going the Brute route, as enemies will stay in the AOE, and you can reach 90% Energy Resist on the Brute, no on the Scrapper.

I find that Gauntlet is what keeps me coming back to the brute, yeah. Scrappers just can't hold aggro the way that brutes can.

Heroes, Villains ♦ Reviews ♦ Retrospect

I have heard great arguments all the way around, but I am starting to think that scrapper is the best way to go about the build. There is too much synergy with musculature to not take that alpha. Damage/EndMod/DefenseDebuff is all about a Katana/Elec Scrapper. I love the extra survivability of the brute, but I believe there is enough defense and mitigation between Divine Avalanche, Endurance Sapping, and Shadow Meld (let's face it, I'm going Soul) to manage. Plus, by having Shadow Meld, I will probably have the freedom to use Power Surge whenever it's up... just before I crash, I softcap my defense for 15 seconds and get ready to use Power Sink to regain my blue bar while I also retoggle all my armors. So there you have it, I'll probably go Scrapper. Although, brute is an extremely close second. Oh so many options... the good news is, I can't go wrong with either.

Also, I am starting to see the benefits of GD -- GC -- SD -- GC attack chain. It's capable of (up to) 3 purple procs, 4 achilles procs, and Fury of the Gladiator proc. That's a lot of proc damage and -resistance. I'm going to work on that attack chain now and come up with some post incarnate DPS values.

Thanks all for so many responses to this question. I have a real good feeling about this set (might even like it more than TW when that comes out... I think there's a lot to be set about faster animation times).

Edit:
I have ran the numbers using arcana time and math that made sense to me. I designed a scrapper build that is recharge intensive enough that allowed for perma-hasten. This allowed me to do a gapless attack chain of GD--GC--SD--GC. I used musculature radial T4 alpha. I used reactive radial T4 interface (which gives me on average 50.1 damage per attack). I did not have assault, but my set IO bonuses did provide me with 7.5% global damage boost. I slotted GC with hecatomb (including the damage proc) and the achilles proc. I slotted SD with the achilles proc and with crushing impact (no damage procs). I slotted GD with Armageddon (with damage proc) and the achilles proc.

The damage from my powers w/ crits% factored in (before procs | after procs) were:
GC -- 130.1 | 215.5
SD -- 283.2 | 333.3
GD -- 369.2 | 454.6
Lightning field (damage over 10s) -- 140.5 || 190.6

The chain duration is 5.448 seconds

This equates to 242.79 DPS before resistance debuffs are factored in.

To calculate the resistance debuffs average % by performing the following steps (I assume the duration of each proc is 10 seconds, which is why I use the number in my calculations):

Attacks per 10 Seconds: 4/(5.448s) * 10 seconds = 7.342.
So during the span of 10 seconds, 7.342 attacks will occur, each with a chance to proc. There is a 20% chance to proc, but because only 1 proc can be active at a time, I look at the 80% chance to fail. The odds of every attack failing to proc over a 10 second span is (.8)^7.342 = 19.43%

So the odds of the resistance debuff proc succeeding during this 10 second span would be 80.57%.
The average debuff would then be 20%*(0.8057) = 16.11%

This is the resistance debuff average I use for achilles... If I wanted to pay out the bunghole for the Fury of the Gladiator proc and used it instead of the Achilles proc in GD, the resistance debuff average would be higher because there is an opportunity to have both procs being applied at the same time. I won't be doing that, so I am not including it in the calculations.

For the reactive interface proc, I again assume each proc lasts for 10 seconds, but can stack up to 4 times. To save myself the time and effort of explaining it, let's just say it's safe to assume the the average -res debuff will be about 4%.

So the combined average resistance debuff would be 20.11%

The final DPS would then equal (1.2011)*(242.79) = 291.62 DPS.

That seems pretty good to me. Granted, I did not factor in misses, build up, and other miscellaneous clicks (i.e. energize every ~30 seconds, hasten every ~120 seconds)

Feel free to correct me where ever I went wrong. Tomorrow I'll probably take a look at the brute's numbers and see how it compares. I may also tweak my build to make it more survivable, but this build was pretty high end and functional.

Just wanted to comment on the scrapper vs brute thing....

Golden dragonfly gets extra % chance to crit. I have a kat/sr character I softcapped 2/3 positions and gave permahasten without purples etc. The high end performance attack chain allows you use GD a lot. Criticals fly everywhere, and they are huge. Build up comes up twice a fight solo. Learn to line up GD to hit two foes. Lotus drops is a great attack if you have a half dozen foes around, less then that and you are better off lining up GD on two guys.

Someday i will purple my scrapper etc and his build will change. Right now I use body mastery to help with endo use. Amusing diversion: Laser Beam eyes recharges fast. Originally before I realized just how much endo it takes to fuel this monster I was planning on shurikan and exploding shurikan. Shurikan recharges faster then its animation time with a permashasten build. the idea of a shurikan/SR scrapper amused me. Decimation chance for build up would be amusing when you can throw 10 shurikan in as many seconds.

Anyway, IMO if you are going mega recharge, make a scrapper. All else aside, critical GD is enough reason to do so.