Broadsword -Parry and IO sets

Has anyone found an IO set that fits Parry? I've played with a couple but am starting to wonder if a couple Accuracy and a couple of Def might not be best way to go.

Parry should generally be slotted as an attack. Its base damage is low, but if you're using it frequently for the defense buff, you'd be giving up a lot of damage by not slotting for it. Meanwhile, its defense buff is huge and usually doesn't need much enhancement (when you really need extra defense, it's easy to stack the Parry buff anyway). As such, any melee damage set is appropriate. If you want to enhance the defense buff, use a set that gives good bonuses with 4-5 pieces, and put a LotG or a generic defense IO or something in the last slot.

Since it's cheap and recharges quickly, you could also frankenslot it for acc/dam/def if you prefer.

That's the weird thing about this power. It will take a Def, Def DeBuff or Melle IO Set. I was leaning toward Analyze Weakness as it has Acc buff, but keep coming back to the "frankenslot" approach.

Parry doesn't take def debuff sets, because it doesn't debuff def (unlike other Broadsword attacks).

Depending on your secondary powerset and how much defense you have in the rest of your build, slotting Parry for defense ranges from "wildly unnecessary" to "still less important than slotting it for damage". It should be slotted as a proper attack, period. If you have any room left and want to slot it for defense too, you can do that as well.

I personally slot the hell out of Parry's (well, Divine Avalanche's) defense (Edit: on my Katana/Dark). That's helpful for solo incarnate content with their 59% to hit and all the defense debuffs.

My current build, from before the Enzyme nerf, has this:

2 L53 Nucleolus
L53 Enzyme
Mako's Bite acc/dam/end/rech
Luck of the Gambler +7.5% recharge

L53 Nucleolus
+5 Hecatomb damage
+5 Luck of the Gambler +7.5% recharge
+5 Luck of the Gambler defense
+5 Luck of the Gambler defense/endurance

D'oh don't know why I thought it took a Def Debuff set. So basically it draws down to Def or Melee set, although from what I'm hearing a combination of both works best. So in answer to my original question, there doesn't appear to be an IO set that fits this power...

Sorry for the off topic, but...

Quote:

Originally Posted by ClawsandEffect With my particular build it's all irrelevant anyway, because I need the full set of Mako's in it to keep my soft-cap.

I think I'm going to back away from the soft cap on my Katana/Dark on my next respec (well, I'm there already after the Enzyme fix). In incarnate content, the old soft cap isn't, and the new soft cap doesn't seem a practical goal. It seems worth giving up about 5% defense to pick up a lot more recharge (Hasten+) and a few other goodies. Some earlier calculations I did bore this out, and also came with the more surprising revelation that it was also better against normal 50% to hit, I suppose because so much damage is melee or lethal, which is still soft capped. Something to consider.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ClawsandEffect Oh, did you know you can slot the Scrapper ATO Crit chance increase in Soul Transfer? It's nice if you want just that piece but don't have room in your build anywhere else.

I hadn't thought about it, and I need to take a closer look. I suspect I'll want the full set in my Katana/Dark, though. It gives good bonuses for what I want more of: recharge, hit points and resistance.

If anything, I just put a single LotG (The global recharge one) and then Frankenslot the crap out of it. Usually four slots is enough.

My el-cheapo frankenslotted BS/WP scrap has 2 ACC IOs, LotG def/+rech, LotG def/end/rech, Red Fortune def/rech and Red Fortune def/end/rech.

It's every other attack.

Caveat: I hit fifty on this toon 3 and a half years ago. I don't play him much anymore; His alpha slot is unlocked is all, I think.

Your modern mileage may vary.

My build will be remaining unchanged for the time being. I'm focused on other characters, namely my DA/Staff tank at the moment.

I haven't thought much about what would be best for incarnate content. I'd been thinking Super Reflexes or Shield Defense, but it seems like one of the devs' counters for rampant defense on teams is to have more auto-hit powers. So we may be back to layering as many mitigation strategies as possible, even if no particular one is stellar. So maybe Katana/Dark would be a good approach in that sense (defense, resistance, fear, fear protection, healing, Barrier as reactive "defense debuff resistance", stealth, etc. - Jack of all trades). In any case, my Katana/Dark is my favorite character right now, so he's getting all the incarnate love. With my current build (I19, +3, lots of now-useless Enzymes), incarnate at +4x5 duo'd with a decent Tanker is proving to be about the right level of challenge, with quite a bit of hitting red and maybe a death or two per night from "oops", all preventable if I could get back some Regeneration secondary levels of anticipation and reaction time. He's definitely not "a character that never dies" at this point, though. I need to solo more at high difficulty to see what kills me so that I can figure out better what to build for. (Edit: So far no trouble soloing a handful of incarnate missions on +4x4 with my obsolete build, but I somehow haven't hit Banished Pantheon or Talons of Vengeance.) As for my initial thoughts on how to approach it, look for my in-progress builds in a Katana/DA thread by DragonEdge_NA a few down from here. Probably better to chat there than here.

Back on topic: I'd want a single Parry get me to 45%+, with a double stack hitting 59%+ for incarnate content. That will tend to take some defense enhancement, though not necessarily ED-capping it. I WANT a single Parry to get me to 59%+, but that's pretty difficult on non-defense Secondaries.

The build I'm fiddling with is at 52.5% with one Divine Avalanche, which we could call 57.5% with T4 Barrier. So in a sense, I'm 1.5% from my goal. I don't feel like I've sacrificed much yet. Regen would be harder, of course, plus I'm assuming unlimited budget and +5s and so on.

I haven't touched my spreadsheets for months at this point, and when I do get back to them, probably I'll want to plug in some of my own builds first (recently fiddling with SS/Invuln Tanker and Katana/Dark Scrapper). If you don't want to wait for me to get back into the swing of things, you could track down the calculator John Printemps put together. It creates official Werner-licensed Wernerscores.

Frankenslotting Parry sounds like one of the best ideas to me. 4 or 6 slotting would go nice, I guess.
For four slot you could do two LotG, two Mako's bite.

A neat trick would be six slotting with a kinetic combat set and a LotG: Defense. I'm not much of an expert on this sort of thing. I could sound like a complete fool right now.

Then again, putting that many slots into Parry could be me overthinking. It depends if you want to throw in Manuevers/Tough/Weave (and maybe combat jumping) into that character as well.