54/x8-Knives of Veng-DA

That would be awesome Wyldhunt. Would love to hear how your fire/kin (controller/corruptor?) does at 54x8 with no insp, and no I don't have all of my level shifts.

Alright - just ran the "Ritual Knives" mission from Ephram Sha at 54x8 with bosses in DA. No real issues at all. I have a Fire/Kin Corr with most Incarnates at T3, softcap Def S/L/E/Rg. I use Clarion Partial Core Invocation on autofire for continuous mez protection.

The mission is fairly lightweight (there is one small ambush at the end). I did use inspirations - sorry, I don't refuse all caffeine in real-life either (yeah, smart-alek comment, but I couldn't resist ). However, I only used "the last spot" inspiration, which is my normal habit.

Since this toon has +3 level shift, the enemies only conned yellow through red. In this mission, there were no spawns on top of others. I played like normal, plowing into melee and firing my stuff. That playstyle did cause one death - I used "Return to Battle" and finished off that spawn - no hospital needed. Never did I suffer mez nor cascading def failure.

If I had taken a little longer and been a more careful, I could have gone through the mission with no deaths and using no inspirations, I'm sure. I'm not the most tactical/strategic player - many on Guardian can confirm that. Even so, I feel I could run all the KoV missions on 54x8 with care, using inspirations when warranted, and have minimal deaths.

My suggestions for you, some of which will possibly be stating the obvious:
1. Get all your level shifts - back down on mission difficulties until that's done.
2. Get softcap def.
3. Get continuous mez protection.

I'm not sure I'd consider a Katana/Dark Scrapper the ideal for something like this since it has absolutely no defense debuff resistance. It's just my favorite character, so I try to make do. Yes, with a good build it's extremely solid outside of that limitation, but that limitation is a doozy. With Banished Pantheon, I'm often fighting with a 100% defense debuff and trying to stay alive on resistance and healing while every attack lands, and it's really hard. I can usually make it, but not enough I think to be able to solo all of arc 6 no temps no insps no deaths, which is what I'm after.

No problem with Knives, though, perhaps because most of their defense-debuffing attacks are melee/lethal, and I'm around 75% defense to melee/lethal, making it difficult for them to start debuffing me, and giving me some wiggle room for the debuffs that do land.

I do have tier 4s and tier 3s and all the level shifts, which really makes it +1x8 in a sense.

People in the linked thread of mine have made some good suggestions (Ageless instead of Barrier, Water Spout, etc.) that probably would let me complete the arc, even if it still wouldn't be easy. But I was annoyed enough at my problems that I've already rerolled as a Brute and have been leveling that up instead of fiddling with the Scrapper.