/Invulnerability

I don't see many people play invulnerability, but I have been messing with some builds and I am beginning to wonder if invulnerability is the best secondary for scrappers.

Since we can get defense bonuses from IO sets and and invulnerability has a couple of defensive powers it seems easy to build for defense.

I built a Katana / Invulnerability character with soft capped S/L and can get soft capped melee with one DA. I also have 72.9 S/L resistance.

All other position defenses are in the mid-20s with resistances in the mid-20s or higher as well.

What am I missing?

It's vanilla. Everybody likes vanilla, but nobody goes out of their way for vanilla. Almost every other set is newer and/or fancier.

Currently rolling a Staff/Inv scrapper and loving it.

Invulnerability is pretty nice, and Dark Melee/Invulnerability is amazing, at least in normal content. I haven't paid much attention to the forums recently, and don't know how it does against incarnate content. I worry about all the psionic and energy damage, for instance, when you can't really incarnate soft cap on a Scrapper. I bet it's fine, though.

Invuln is an excellent set.

I don't know about "the best secondary"; there's no useful way to rank Invuln's extreme survivability against, say, Fire's offensive benefits or Energy's endurance tools or whatever and objectively declare that one is the best. Apples to oranges and all that. But it is definitely a very good set.

One issue I've seen with incarnate content for an Invuln Tanker I duo with are all the endurance drains. I think it's only killed him once, but he has on multiple occasions announced that he can't do anything but keep them taunted because he's out of endurance.

He also has trouble with the psionic damage and the defense debuffs, but most sets will have trouble with those, I believe. I know the defense debuffs have been the biggest threat to my Katana/Dark when soloing, though Barrier has been a pretty good counter (though it's still iffy when you're suffering from 100% defense debuffs).

Werner, you might try ageless radial against high debuff mobs...it boosts your DDR and other debuff resists by 85%...

I usually have rebirth/barrier (regen or dark armor dependent) and on regen's clarion on dark toons ageless radial...adds greatly to survivability against say...iCoT...things like that

I haven't had too many issues with incarnate content as a KM/invul scrapper.

As a premium with an IO license (no level shifts), I could streetsweep 54s in DA, although I did get low on end often enough I would opt to take a break between groups every now and then.

As a VIP, being +3 mitigation is largely a non-issue. Spiritual (or Vigor) boosted Rebirth goes a long way with 2k4 HP, and building for infinite ST sustainability end issues are few and far between - I do shut off Tactics sometimes, though.

I would guess stacking a support Hybrid on that might get rid of the issue. I went damage but within my limited testing the returns seem so low (on that particular combo anyway*) I'm starting to rethink; control seems useless and defense just isn't needed.

*Edit: then again, I was relying on memory - always a bad idea, as I forgot how truly bad KM DPS is. Assault Hybrid isn't that bad!

I'm also running a Kat/Inv who happens to be my main. I find Invuln a really nice set, good Defense with decent Resistance against most stuff (amazing S/L res) to buffer you up against (un)lucky streaks. Dull Pain combined with Rebirth takes care of all the damage recovery you might need, so the only thing I sometimes find wanting more of is exotic status protection and damage.

My live build is soft capped against S/L/E/N with one enemy in melee range, has capped S/L Resistance and runs perma DP along with the GC>GD>GC>SD attack chain that is sustainable indefinitely. Melee soft cap is reachable with one application of DA, but I pretty much only use it against F/C or -Def heavy melee foes if I don't happen to have a purple at hand.

Here's the build:

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My BS/Invul Scrapper does have Cardiac because he honestly needed it to go full bore. I just snagged Melee Core Hybrid. I was a little torn, as Radial has +defense, and +defense is good (my Invul is nowhere near the iSoftCap except to Lethal) but it has no non-scaling benefits. So I tried Core. I then went into PI and pulled up an Arachnos scanner mission set to 54/x6.

I soon came across a spawn containing two Tarantula Mistresses. This would have previously been a serious problem if I did not have a fresh Rebirth or Barrier running. Instead, I deliberately avoided using Destiny and tried my luck with Hybrid Melee alone. It worked great. I actually left the two Mistriesses until late in the spawn. I can promise you it would have normally been a very bad thing to have two +3 LTs beating on my with psi attacks, let alone their -defense debuff. But the fairly high +regen and the added resists (Including Psi) really made a big difference. I was impressed.

I can't offer much about the end drain. I suffered with that in the Arachnos mission due to the high prevalence of Mu on large team settings. They never drained me fully, but my blue bar spent a lot of time hovering near the bottom. I could have used inspirations, but I didn't. IDF are a bit more brutal even than Aracnhos about end drain, having three types of critters that can hammer your recovery. Banished Pantheon can be rough, too, but I think IDF are the worst.

And depending on how often and how big an issue Psi is my /SR in particular loves her Elusive Mind accolade when she's wading in Carnies or Arachnos using Psi.

It's a nice power, but it's not really sufficient if you're going to clear a mission full of Arachnos on x6 to x8. That's just too high a likelihood of multiple Tarantulas, Night Widows and / or Fortunata Mistresses. (There are usually lots of minion-rank Fortunatas, but they aren't usually enough threat on their own unless their Psi damage is piling in with the higher-rank Psi damage dealers.) I tend to find that if I need it as an "Oh crap" power in such a map, I'm going to need it more often than it recharges, even with around 70% global Recharge plus Hasten.

My main is a Kat/Inv. Overall I am pleased with my characters performance. I think the reason that you dont see that many Invulnerability scrappers is because there are so many other secondaries to choose from. At the time that I joined this game and created my character, Scrappers only had 4 secondaries to choose from.

Unfortunately brutes are quickly becoming the "farmer" AT and not really being used as much as they should, i can honestly hand on heart and say that either a brute or scrapper version of invuln/dark melee, you cant go wrong, 2 things to remember when making this choice, scrapper version is a pretty hard hitter with all the damage at once and then some, being critical, as a brute your there for the build up of damage, which to me with certain sets dont apply to my personal taste, but if your looking for either a pvp toon or pve, invul/dark melee is a top notch contender that doesnt lack in damage or mitigation, my invuln tank however, is a different story, and i spent enough that i love this particular set to bits, it is all about defense on this, i would go for the resistance radial hybrid to fill the hole when fighting incarnate enemies with energy attacks, although i havnt slotted this yet, the tanker ATO lets me stack foot stomp 3 times and i get over 63% resistance overall, not the case with scrappers i know, but with scrappers, you get more damage and if you worried about isoftcap, go soul mastery for the def shield , only for 15 seconds , but with enough recharge, you be isoftcapped every other 15 seconds, and to survive for atleast 15 seconds till that burst, well dull pain is there to take the shots for you, as someone previously said dull pain and rebirth i believe are good for the psychic attacks to fill your hole, its a really powerful set and once i got my invuln/dark melee scrapper up he will be undoubtedly fitted to the hilt with pvp io's and pve io's simply because it performs at such a high level, and never dissapoints me, i hope this little bit of advice was helpful and whatever your choice, good luck.

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