Help with top end Katana/Dark

I think I'm going to reroll my Katana/Dark Scrapper as a Brute. I'd really like a taunt aura, the higher hit points are great, and the higher resistance caps will let me take better advantage of Barrier. My attempt at a build is down at the bottom.

What I'm after is maximum survivability in an otherwise practical build (travel power, AoE, etc.). I would like to be able to solo incarnate content once they introduce soloable incarnate content. I'm assuming (hoping) that soloing incarnate content will be really, really dangerous. So I want to be very survivable at incarnate levels of to hit, and when the exotic damage and debuffs start flying.

I sometimes enjoy "challenge play", which is to say no temps, no insps, no click accolades, no base empowerment buffs, and so on. I also mostly solo. So no counting on inspirations or external help of any kind with this build.

No expense spared for even the smallest benefit. L53 Hamios, +5 boosters, PvP procs, purples, anything goes. I already have lots of good Hamios and IOs in storage and on my Scrapper build, which I'll likely gut for the Brute. And it looks like my veteran status and subscription give me access to plenty of "free" enhancement boosters.

Build goals:

• soft cap melee/lethal with one Divine Avalanche
• soft cap ranged and AoE with the 5% tail end of Barrier
• well over incarnate soft cap with two Divine Avalanche (my "defense debuff resistance")
• sustainable endurance with Cardiac Core Paragon
• high hit points
• high resistance
• decent recharge on Dark Regeneration
• Dark Regeneration with decent accuracy and healing for when I fight AVs with no heal fodder
• 95% to hit +3s
• 12 points knockback protection
• usable Cloak of Fear

• I was able to get slightly better results elsewhere in the build by going with this simpler chain.
• Saving a power pick let me take both Soul Transfer and Focused Accuracy, which as I said amuses me.
• For anything that can challenge this level of survivability, single-target knockup/down tends to not work (AVs) or is only mitigating a small fraction of the incoming damage (one target in a large +4 crowd).
• It uses less endurance.
• Shorter attacks build fury faster.
• Shorter attacks get more out of regular and interface procs.
• It doesn't ever toss my enemies out of range like Soaring Dragon occasionally does.
• While built purely for L50 performance and not intended to exemplar often, having a full chain by level 8 would be occasionally convenient.
• I just... kind of like the chain. I've played it before, and I like the way it flows. I'm an attack chain minimalist.

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Kinetic Combat proc in Brawl. Stupefy proc in Boxing.

Seriously, though, it might be worth considering putting a Winter's Gift IO in Fly. Then again, if something could make this build want to use Dark Regen on cooldown you might want all the speed you can get in Fly.

I do hate slows, and I'm way over the cap on Fly speed. I'm not sure it's worth giving up 1.88% AoE defense for 20% slow resistance, though. It'd be nice to find SOME way to fit it in, though.

When something makes this build need Dark Regeneration while it's recharging (and trust me, I'll find something that will), that's where Barrier comes in. Rather than having it up full time, I'll use it as a response to heavy defense debuffs or massive damage while Dark Regeneration is recharging. By the time the capped defense and resistance goes away, Dark Regeneration will be recharged, so as long as I'm quick enough on my clicking, it can take a pretty heavy wave of damage. One anyway. And heck, if the next wave looks like it's going to take me out, I might as well just go down and use Soul Transfer rather than trying to escape.

I could consider Acrobatics. I like Hover scrapping, but I like the Jumping pool too. I feel tighter on slots than power picks, and that might save two or three slots. One could go to Winter's Gift. Who knows what I could accomplish with the other(s). Easy candidates for replacement would be Build Up, Focused Accuracy or Soul Transfer.

If you're okay with exchanging Flight for Jumping then I'd...

Fly -> Super Jump (Jump, Jump, WG)
Hover -> Combat Jumping (same slotting)
Focused Accuracy -> Acrobatics (End)

From there, you could drop the Steadfast KB from OS or the Zephyrs from CJ, or maybe a Jump from SJ.

I'm not really sure I can be much help as you've worked on this build a long time and the Scrapper forums have already gone over it with a fine toothed comb.

I doubt there is much left to squeeze. I might be able to squeeze something cutting Soul Transfer or Focused Accuracy, but I'm not sure how much room there really is.


What is your current Scrapper version's ST DPS and what do you calculate will be the Brute version's DPS?

The main change from the Scrapper build is dropping Hover and picking up Hasten while using Barrier to cover the lost defense. The addition of enhancement boosters may also in some cases allow for interesting optimizations, like getting 96% recharge after ED out of just two recharge IOs in Hasten. I fiddled around with some things trying to reoptimize, but you're right that it isn't very different than my Scrapper build at this point, and yeah, I got quite a bit of help back then. I'm hoping there's more performance to be extracted, but maybe I'm being overly optimistic.

I'm definitely trying to see what I can do by using acrobatics instead of IOs for knockback protection. I need to spend more time at it. So far it looks promising, but I don't have anything I'm happy with yet. I'm pretty slow when it comes to building, I think.

Honestly, I don't know my Scrapper's current DPS, and haven't calculated the Brute's. I had some error calculating the Scrapper's DPS that I never figured out, and the last time I did a pylon run was when Reactive was broken (?). I need to calculate the Brute's DPS before I commit to anything, but I'm assuming that with reactive, my DPS will be "sufficient", where sufficient is enough to take down a pylon, even if it takes a while. Maybe a goal of 160+ DPS? Pretty low, but if I want to do damage, I can pull out my Fire/Shield Scrapper, or maybe finish leveling and IO out the Super Strength/Fire that I recently started. Here I'm looking for something about halfway between a Tanker and a Scrapper.

I don't know why I don't just calculate the DPS, though. Should be easy enough, even if I may have the same error as before. What's a realistic figure for the fury damage bonus these days? 70%? I'll set it up as a plug in.

I'm showing close to 130 DPS before adding in the Reactive proc. I'm guessing that'll bump me up to about where I want to be? I'd need to look up how it actually works, how many stacks, and so on. Let's see, it looks like Reactive Radial is still the way to go for pure damage, and I believe that the ticks from Death Shroud count? How many times does the debuff stack? 4 times, right? -10% resistance total? I assume someone's calculated the damage from the DoT, and again, how often does it stack? 8 times? I get a little over 8 attacks in 10 seconds, plus 5 from Death Shroud, so I have 13 chances for those to activate? If so, it would be a bit of an overestimate to say they stack to the max, but it should be close enough for a first pass until I figure out the actual probability. First I'd need to know how the DoT works, though. I don't see any details in game or on City of Data. Arcanaville posted something back on 10/6/11 saying it's 6.695 DPS per. So if it's 4 and 8, back of the envelope says around 200 DPS? I can't imagine that Reactive is adding that much, but I've never checked. Probably I have the number of stacks wrong?

Hey, do I even want Build Up on this thing? I'm used to Scrappers where it makes a difference, though not a huge one. On the Brute version, it looks like virtually identical DPS either way. It's nice to have a brief extra 24% to hit on demand, but I'm not sure that's worth it on its own what with the whole Kismet + Tactics + Focused Accuracy thing going on. I could trade it for Acrobatics, as mentioned earlier, or even for Vengeance for a home for the Shield Wall +3%, giving me an extra slot.

Yeah, I don't see the slightly lower defense as a major loss. Barrier gets me above soft cap on demand, and perma if desired, while either way I don't hit the incarnate soft cap. I'll get hit a little more often in incarnate content, but not by a huge margin, and by less of a margin than the hastened healing can deal with. It's a significant net win, at least on paper, though I think my current paper calculations understate the ranged energy and psionic damage in current incarnate content.

I could consider Dragon's Roar to encourage enemies into melee, though it seems that often the result is that they just keep shooting from about ten feet away, and using terrain is necessary regardless.

Let's say 95% solo, 3% duo, 1% trio, 1% larger team.

Blessing of the Zephyr is a universal travel set, so it'll go in Combat Jump and Super Jump just fine. It's not as useful in them, as I don't need the boost with them, but that's not exactly important. I do think I have a slight preference for Hover scrapping at this point, but it's no big deal either way.

If Tankers had Katana, I doubt it would help defensively all that much, since more than half of the ranged and AoE defense is coming from set bonuses rather than powers. I'd be tempted to go pure tanker and just get closer to the incarnate soft cap rather than shift focus to DPS. If I tried to turn the Tanker into an offensive powerhouse, though, maybe it would be possible to approach these offensive numbers at significantly higher hit points and resistance. It's an interesting thought.

I suspect I can get more DPS out of Reactive than most people with Achilles' Heel and 8.5 attacks in 10 seconds plus 5 ticks of Death Shroud. It depends on how much it can stack, though. If it's at the lower end of that 20-30 DPS, then I want to boost my damage output some. I guess this is the big question I need to find a definitive answer to before I go much further, as it seems my DPS is right on the edge of being too little for me.

I don't really need Focused Accuracy, but some of my deaths happen when fighting significantly uplevel and when they start using defense buffs or to hit debuffs. Divine Avalanche starts missing, defense drops, and I'm eating dirt. It doesn't happen often, but enough that I think it would help. Also, I just hate missing. Werner's build used to have both, and I really liked it, though that was back when Focused Accuracy had a lot more to hit.

I plugged my BS/DA build into Mids' as a brute, exactly as it is in-game, and discovered that anything you do with your scrapper build will translate perfectly to a brute.

The only difference I noted was the higher HP. It was more like 2,200 instead of the 1,900 my scrapper is rocking.

I have yet to level him as a brute, he's sitting on Exalted waiting for me to have enough time to focus on a character for a while.

What do you think of maybe replacing CoF with DN?
Though endurance might be of a bigger issue without body.

Hmmm. Mmmmmmaybe. That's more than a little tweak due to endurance, but it's worth considering.