Seroster01

Well I really don't want to start a full post right now cause I'll end up awake till 5 AM, but 2 things I wanted to throw out tonight: I asked this a bit up the thread & havent seen an answer: People have brought up examples of other clicky self-buff powers that PB does not affect, but all the ones I saw listed had a resistance effect built in to them, & per another post on this subject, that should make all of them ineligible for PB due to that by itself. Is there a list somewhere of clickies not affected by PB where we can check this out? Part B of the post is me simply bringing up that I feel my frame of reference is different from what seems to be the main topic of discussion; when boosted by PB, a Defender's Farsight gives 12% more defense. I'm not saying this amount is insignificant, but rather that at the level in which it's possible for this specific combo to exist, some or all of that 12% will be redundant in most groups, and if the character isn't in a group who the heck cares how powerful they are? With that part out of the way, the core reason I personally don't feel like this is a big deal is that I've spent a lot of time on my Thugs/Time, and from a numerical standpoint this feels like a big hullabaloo about nothing, since her total endgame build's PB+FS effect is right around 20%, Yet my Bane Spider's double maneuvers with 0 enhancements gives out 15% defense for merely being alive & within 60 ft any character, from as early as lvl 10. Can't stay awake, will check back tomorrow.

I'll say this last bit, before I go actually play the game for the rest of the evening: I personally care far less about the +Def of FS benefiting from PB than I do the +To-Hit. My MM gets far more bang out of that than the +Defense (She'd be soft-capped either way. Notice a theme?)

I'll say the same thing about this as I've said about FF: +defense isn't the most useful part of any Sentinel armor set. Once again, mez resistance is the most useful part of their kit, and even for the sets that are pure defense, their DDR is more useful than the defense itself. A frequent point of discussion on the Sentinel forums (at least last time I was browsing it a lot) was that the only real advantage to a Sent over an IOd out blaster was the mez protection. Of course that's not totally true, as the armor sets also tend to also have a mix of various heals/absorbs, self buffs, CCs, & enemy debuffs... but so do Blaster secondaries. Perhaps if Sentinel's armor sets came with higher values they'd be considered more useful, but in the current state of the class it's more about the armor's "perks" than their raw mitigation #s. Disclaimer: I'm actually rater fond of Sentinels, & one of my most-played Homecoming characters to this point is a Water/Bio sentinel. Sents are just barely on the fringe for me thinking they could use a slight buff, but not one to their defensive abilities. Anyway, I'm fine with them the way they are, so don't take this as shilling for Sentinel buffs.

I mean, FF already needs to be radically changed SOMEHOW. I said it earlier, +defense is probably the least useful support effect to bring to a team in the modern game, and that's where 90% of FF's effectiveness comes from. It's certainly not useless, but TBH I'd say the defense from FF powers is often less useful than the mez protection from Dispersion & odd secondary protections of the shields. ' If you're saying that the +defense from a single TM power completely ruins another set: A.) Then it was "ruined" a long time ago by all the other defense boosting support powers added to the game. A well-built SoA will give the whole team 20% or more +def from double Maneuvers, and Fortunatas do similar things between their weaker maneuvers & Mind Link. Does that make FF useless? What about Traps, which has a power with effects identical to Dispersion Bubble (albeit with the caveat of it being a destroyable pet). Cold has shields very similar to FF's & a PBAOE defense bonus from Arctic Fog. Those were in the game before TM & nobody was complaining about them "ruining FF". B.) FF's non-defense effects (Mez protection, Toxic Resist, and end drain resistance) are more useful in the modern game than the defensive portion of their effects, & that's the only comparable aspect of the 2 sets. C.) If you're saying that a single power power from set makes the entirety of a different set redundant, that certainly sounds like an issue with the other set & not the power. As I mentioned above, I don't think +defense is FF's main draw anymore, but that's what the whole set was built around in a time where having a bunch of defense buffs was rare to come by. The other effects that FF brings are basically all knockback/knockdown/general mob positioning tools. These days everyone and their dog can soft cap some defense with a Luck, and it's usually FROWNED UPON to do anything other than congregate mobs in a pile. (Honestly I'm not sure if mob re-positioning effects were ever very popular, but they're certainly disliked now.) It has no direct offensive boosts, and the only way I can think of that FF could directly contribute to a group's damage output would be a weird strategy in which the group had some good patch effects & could push all the mobs into a corner & light it on fire or whatever. Thus, 1 of the set's primary effects is largely redundant, and the other is typically considered a detriment, and it doesn't add anything to the team's kill speed. Meanwhile, many other sets can/will give solid amounts of +defense and EVERY other support set I can think of has some type of direct offensive bonus, whether that be -res, +damage, or +recharge. If you aren't bringing FF for the "niche" areas that it buffs, then I'm not real sure why you're bringing one. IDK what to do about FF w/ the resources available to Homecoming, but to me it absolutely needs SOMETHING done to it. D.) I think that for the most part you can throw out all of the above, because I think much more of the player base cares about creating a character that fits their theme for the character than how strong/weak it is in comparison to other characters. Those that don't probably wouldn't have picked FF to begin with, because of everything I listed in C. I feel like this has derailed the thread at this point, and to throw in a bit of the post to actually discuss the topic: Do any of the other powers in the discussion only do things that PB normally effects? Having read the thread I understand that any power that buffs a resistance definitely shouldn't function this way, so Fade should definitely get that hole patched. But Farsight is only +Defense & +To-Hit, which both seem to be in the list of things it SHOULD effect. Is there a comparable power that doesn't buff Resistance & isn't affected by PB?

Thanks for jumping in here! I've read through the guide quite multiple times but I suppose my brain just assumed I'd never need to do the calculations again after I found the PPM calculation sheet "attached" to the sheet listing PPMs you linked in the guide & didn't realize this formula was at the bottom. 🤦‍♂️

Yeah I have the formula in a Google sheet, with cells for the various input #s, which the formulation cell takes & then spits out the result for the numbers I put in. I can certainly just change the recharge value till I find the cutoff, but it was much more convenient when I could put the values in & it would tell me the maximum directly. The given formula works for single target powers (since that seems to be what the sheet was originally set up for), but it isn't set up to take the base data for and/or calculate the AoE-related values (Area Factor & such).🤷‍♂️

That's useful to have, but I'd already replaced the main formula in the sheet I used. My conundrum was that the sheet I modified had a 2nd set of inputs that would output the maximum amount of recharge you could slot in a power & retain 90% chance to proc. I tried to compare that formula to the base formula to see if I could "reverse engineer" it, but I couldn't grasp how to do it in the amount of time I devoted to it. I might think harder about it once we get home & settled over the next couple days, but haven't had the time yet.

Isn't it already like that? I feel like any expectation of "difficulty" in CoH was largely destroyed with the introduction of IOs, & kept taking blows ever since. The content that's done most frequently wasn't balanced for carefully planned IO builds, and certainly wasn't designed for the addition of Incarnates & such. Any player who wants to devote the resources & brainpower can create a sizable number of characters with the ability to solo 99% of the content in the game. And besides that, why does anyone even care about nerfing defensive boosts in modern CoH?. As has been pointed out, +defense is one of the most prevalent effects from "external" sources; whether that's IOs, Incarnates, or one of the gazillion other support powers in the game that boosts defense, +def is everywhere. Hell, almost every character I team with seem to to have Maneuvers in their build somewhere. I personally don't think it compares well to Dispersion Bubble in a balancing discussion, due to that issue: even a moderate difference in the value of the Defense buff is nearly irrelevant to me compared to the mez protection from FF. That mez protection is relatively limited, all things considered, but you're likely STILL going to be at the soft cap with either set, and any amount of mez protection is rarer for classes without an armor primary/secondary. I think theres a few underperforming sets spread across all the ATs that need a buff (poor Energy Melee got gutted for everyone), but I also want to try to limit buffs for sets that don't need them or those that would affect a large amount of characters. What I CERTAINLY don't think we need to do is nerf any support sets when Homecoming has things like TW/Bio Scrappers & many other characters with both more personal survivability & FAR more damage output than any character that has access to PB+FS. Besides that, this isn't a game where OP characters have a major impact on... well, anything really. Theres not really any large scale "competitive" PVE. Nobody's racing for Wolrd First, and even if they were I don't think TM is going to be a major factor in such a race compared to Kin, Rad, Traps, etc. The ultimate effect of PB+FS is that YOUR character is really hard to kill, and it takes a decent amount of levels & enhancement slot investments to get there. Big whoop, almost every other character at level 40+ is built such that they're exceptionally difficult to kill, and unlike a lot of those characters a Time Manipulation character won't have any real mez resistance unless they have access to Incarnates & they eat the opportunity costs involved in taking Clarion instead of a different destiny. I suppose if this argument is about it being too effective in PVP, that's something I wouldn't have an informed opinion on... but I don't think PVP has been mentioned in the thread to this point, and just like every other time PVP-related balance issues come up in MMOs, I'm of the opinion PVE shouldn't be changed for PVP reasons (especially in CoH/Homecoming, where PVP is on the fringe in terms of engagement, in a game likely qualifies as fringe by itself). I suppose I'll frame my ultimate disagreement with this: what positive effect would this have on the game as a whole? How would it increase anyone's enjoyment of the game? Is there an overwhelming volume of TM characters kicking about that I haven't seen? Cause honestly I don't see many TM characters in groups (other than my own MM...). If we're going to start nerfing things I'd say the first thing to start with is TW's astoundingly OP damage output (in both AoE & ST situations) , & after that we can get to other sets & powers that "need" it. But I don't even want that done, because one or 2 outlying sets/powers don't affect my enjoyment of the game in any way. 🤷‍♂️

Thanks for the feedback here. Staff is a set I've always been slightly interested in but never interested enough to get a lot of levels on one. I made a staff/bio Scrapper & didn't really feel it. I did like the Halbred skin, mostly because I made a costume that I rather liked; female character with a Valkyrie/Barbarian theme & full-body chainmail underneath. Perhaps I should've made that one a Stalker...

I've yet to play Claws Scrapper, but /Bio seems to be getting a worse wrap than I think it deserves. If nothing else, it certainly seems to have the largest increase in damage potential for a Scrapper secondary (/shield is probably close overall & better with a lot of enemies nearby, but it won't be as consistent since /Bios bonuses are always at full effect so long as your toggles are on). If your run Offensive Adaptation you'll end up with self buffs to the effect of ~30% damage bonus, +7.5% To-hit, & a bonus hit of Toxic damage on with every attack that's equal to around 25% of the power's base damage. Enemies in range of your auras will end up with -10%-ish damage debuff & -10%-ish resistance. I certainly won't claim it's the tankiest armor set out there, but with an appropriate build it's possibe to have soft capped S/L defense, solid defenses to the normal elements, & 50% or more S/L resistance. None of that is particularly amazing, but having layered defenses is always nice & /Bio also has good health recovery bonuses. Ablative Carapace is the largest one, giving a solid absorb shield & a solid regen bonus for 30s with 90s base recharge. With end-game building, the recharge can get under the duration. Throw on the damage debuffing + the overall increase in damage from the set & most of the time a /Bio character can kill a spawn faster than the enemy can eat through their HP with all the overlapping mitigation involved. /Bios biggest issue is that it has exactly 0% DDR in the set & doesn't usually end up with much of an "over-the-cap cushion" (if you can manage to get any at all). End result is that the set is extremely prone to ye old Cascading Defense Failure. You can get the destiny that has debuff resistance, but then you'll miss out on the destiny with the defense bonus, which can be a key piece of reaching the soft cap. Claws/Bio is a character I've got moderate interest, in but it's behind a few others in my queue at the moment. Some day! (I hope...)

I'd never thought about it before, but the PPM sheet I was using (found through a series of links from the PPM guide) was apparently only set up for ST attacks. I knew there were additional parts for the calculation of AOE PPM, but I'd never thought about them being missing from the sheet. I changed things up on the sheet to calculate AOEs properly, though I don't have the math chops to alter the formula to show the max amount of +rech to keep it at 90% chance, so I'll just give that a shrug for now... Anyway, having done all of that I see that you're right about starting at 89% chance. The rest of your post has answers for basically everything I wanted to know, so TY for that. And yeah I was starting to think I'd ditch Rend after I got Flurry, but havent put it into practice cause he's lvl 15-ish at this point due to the fact that I've still had very little time to play (and won't till at least Saturday 😭). A question I did have after reading your response: I guess you're saying you don't slot any accuracy at all into Savage Leap? And that doesn't cause issues with misses? And one I just thought of, do you use Leap vs single targets, AVs & such? Thanks for being so helpful! A question for the crowd: how do y'all like Elec for Stalker? I know it was mentioned early, but doesn't seem to have spawned much further discussion. It's the 2nd most interesting primary for me, and I'm mostly curious about it due to fearing SM being pure Lethal damage will make it worse in practice than on paper. Love to hear some discussion on SM vs. Elec if folks have experience with both.

Tried to make a post 2x now & my phone freaked out & I lost it. This time I typed it in my note app, so hopefully this won't happen again... I made a SM/Bio Stalker who's up to 13 or so now, & when I got in to build planning I realized I had quite a few questions for those more experienced with SM, both build related & how it plays in actual combat. My biggest question, though probably not the most important, is on slotting Savage Leap. I saw someone say they put all the available damage procs + the PVP -res IO. From what I could see in mids, this would take 5 slots of procs & leave 1 slot free for whatever. Is this the suggested route? If so, what's the ideal option for that slot? According to the PPM worksheet its functionally impossible to slot enough recharge in Leap to drop a 3.5 PPM below a 90% chance to proc (it would take 180% slotted recharge, which AFAIK is impossible due to ED effects). As for what to put in that single slot, my first thought was that a +5 Armageddon D/R/A would be the most bang I could get out of that single slot, but then it would be impossible to get the 5 pc in another power for that sweet +10% global Rech. Another option I'd thought to consider but hadn't played with before I left home was cutting out 2 of the procs & instead sticking a 3p of Stalker's Guile in there + the 3 procs that looked most favorable. I felt like this might be a good option since I'm already trying to divide it in 2 in order to get double 3-slot bonuses for 10% total S/L defense & some of the other PBAOE & ST sets have pretty attractive 5/6 piece bonuses. I'd assume that sticking those 3 in Leap probably isn't the ideal setup for Leap itself, but it might open up some options elsewhere that could help the build. On the subject of Stalker's guile, where do folks normally put the Chance for Hide? I suppose this is somewhat of a general Stalker question, though I think it might be a tad more complex in SMs case. From what I've gathered in this discussion it sounds like Hide crit is best spent on Hemorrhage & thus the hide proc probably shouldn't go INTO Hemorrhage. It seems like Assassin's Flurry might be the best place for it, as it has by far the longest base cooldown of the remaining ST powers & thus probably poised to have the best returns from the PPM mechanics. I've also thought Savage Leap might be a good option for it if I go with the aforementioned 3p Guile in it, for the same reasons its good for all of the other procs. But then I wasn't sure what would happen to the hidden effect if I hit something with Leap. All of this reminds me that I really wish the ATO w/ a 3p S/L bonus was the one with a passive global effect rather than a normal PPM, but it's not. So I'll just sulk.😢 My main gameplay focused question is basically just "how does Blood Frenzy work out in real usage?". I know that 2 powers consume it, & the PbAOE at least seems to have a significant increase in function if used at 5 stacks. The interwebs (archived City of Data & Paragon Wiki) says Shred is another consumer, but I don't remember it saying that in-game & I haven't noticed it functioning as listed in gameplay (web states it has a 20% chance per stack to reset instantly, which I can't recall happening, but I may have simply missed it occurring). How does the build & spend cycle typically play out in normal combat scenarios? Should I try to not consume Frenzy while at 5 stacks in order to avoid Exhaustion? How impactful is Exhaustion in general? How long does it last? One of the consumers is Hemorrhage, but I'm pretty sure the in-game power details are either blank or everything just says "Special", and I can't find any numbers on the net or in Mids that give me a clear picture on how Hemo scales with Frenzy stacks, or why it benefits so much from Hide. Do I only use it with full stacks? Press it whenever I end up hidden? Rending Flurry sounds like it gets a big boost in range at least from consuming a 5 stack, so that seems like it may be a good option to take Exhaustion for. Are there any other bits I need to know while planning this build? That's all I can think of at the moment. Took me a day & a half to get this all down because we're travelling & I've had to do a lot of baby wrangling + a fair amount of packing. Hopefully some of these questions get answered.

Well, I've made a few /Bio characters across several ATs, so I'll weigh in on that set. StJ is a set I'm interested in but haven't played, so can't usefully contribute there. My personal experience for /Bio on Scrappers is that pumping S/L defense via sets is the easiest way to get your survivability. This is mostly because theres a 5% S/L bonus at the 3-piece bonus for 1 of the Scrapper ATOs. End result is that you can get 10% S/L defense from slotting 3 pieces in 2 different powers. Throw in a 5-slot set for the melee damage Winter IO & you've gained 15% S/L defense for a total of 11 slots. It's very possible there's ways to get similar numbers for positional defense & I just don't know about them, but I couldn't find anything close to the slotting efficiency of this 15%, & without any positional bonuses to start with I have a hard time imagining you could soft cap more than 1 position. Since /Bio already has solid-ish defenses to the E/N/F/C types, capping S/L defense will give you solid-but-not-exceptional coverage for most mob groups. I'd love to hear if anyone else has tips on pumping positional defenses for sets without any to start with. I had more to add but I've got some stuff to do, I'll come back to this later.

I think he's talking about Rending Flurry as the "quick one", though it does appear Leap has a 15yd radius as well...

I've got a Water/bio at 50, and he was one of my favorite characters thus far on Homecoming. I'll throw his build on at the end; I put it together several months ago, but I feel like since then I've gained a better grasp of how Homecoming-era characters should be built. As such I've fiddled with it a bit today (& will probably fiddle with it some more), but it should show most of what I'm trying to get across. Also, be aware that I plan my builds with essentially no maximum budgets, as I've got some market tricks that allow me to make "large" (it's in quotes because it's more about IO prices being held abnormally low due to the server-specific market/crafting shenanigans) amounts of money when I want to put the effort in. Anyone could do similar things if they wanted to, and TBH there's many ways to make "large" amounts of money on HC servers if folks put some effort in. Aaaaanyway, the biggest trick for having a good time with Water/Bio is to get Tidal Forces (Water's Aim-equivalent) basically ASAP. For best results, stick a Gaussian's BU in there, and then use it when you need a burst. OFC Aim powers are usually good for this, but the powers in WB that benefit from Tidal Power benefit quite a bit from it, so having 3 stacks on demand is very useful. TF will give the normal Aim effects, & a Gaussian's BU will have 90% chance to proc so long as there's less than 69% recharge reduction slotted. Combine the 2 & on most activations you'll end up with 3 TP stacks, +90% To-hit, +105% damage, and +33% range for the next 5 seconds (then Gaussian's will fall off & it'll drop down to normal Aim levels). On the subject of recharge reduction: Given how impactful TF is for Water, you may need to slot it w/ more +rech in the lower levels than would keep it at a 90% chance to proc, but after you get your build fleshed out & get more global +rech I would move down to a single 50+5 Recharge IO, or whatever you need to stick in it to keep it within a few seconds of Geyser's recharge time. On the topic of Geyser, Water/Bio gets a very substantial increase in power when they have access to it (Water T9 nuke). If you've got enough +rech, you can start every fight with Aim>Geyser>Steam Spray. This combo will typically CC most of the group immediately, & then the DoTs from those abilities will kill just about anything that isn't a boss before they can recover from Geyser's Knockup and/or disorient. OFC the target cap (in-game Geyser's listed cap is 10 & I think Spray's the same) means you won't normally kill everything in an 8-man spawn with this, but you'll wipe out most of them. When you combine the power of this opening volley with the alpha-soaking abilities of Ablative Carapace, Water/Bio becomes a very good combat initiator. At lower levels you can do the neutered version of this by going TF>Water Burst>[whatever]. That'll do decent damage & all the mobs hit will be knocked down (in a peculiar turn of events, Burst at least claims it hits 16 targets in the in-game UI, which is nifty if true but I've never directly tested it). Water's ST damage is a bit mediocre, but one thing that will help significantly is to put multiple damage procs in Water Jet. On paper it's not a great proc mule, as it's got a relatively short base recharge & a low-ish activation time. What makes it useful from a proc mule perspective is that when you cast it with a 3 stack of TP it refreshes itself instantly. End result is that if you play your TP stacks right you'll end up having about 2x as many chances for those to proc as they would in an identical power without the reset effect. One of the areas I'm quibbling on with the build I'm sharing is whether losing out on 10% global recharge is worth adding an additional proc to Water Jet. I'll have to play around with it later & see how it feels. Now that I've said all that I'll just link the build. I thought I had more things to talk about, but of course I can't recall what they were now. Sentinel - Water Blast - Bio Armor.mxd

What about Savage Melee? Anyone got experience with that one? There was a thread on the Scrapper forums that the Stalker version of SM was a significantly better than the Scrapper version, but I know nothing about SM on any class so IDK what to expect there.

Threads of this type are probably overdone, but I feel the need to create it because I've played a number of different flavors of every melee-focused AT except Stalkers. Given that I've played so many other melle ATs & that I know Stalker sets are usually more different from the others than the others are from each other, I feel like my perception of the available Stalker sets probably doesn't match their actual abilities. So I figured I'd make a thread on the subject & add that the ultimate deciding factor for me is probably which sets have good AoE, & at what level their AoE fleshes out. From what I understand of Stalkers all of the primaries will have good--to-great ST DPS just due to Stalker mechanics combined with their ATOs. Thus, which sets have good AOE &bat what levels they have it will probably be the main deciding factor. Thanks for any responses!

So I got to thinking more about /Nin, specifically Blinding Powder; does hitting groups with Confuse effects still functionally cause lessened XP/inf gain? I have a vague memory that at some point in CoHs lifetime Confusion effectively lessened rewards because they were lessened based on the damage from non-pet NPCs based on the % of HP they did or some such. IE if a your group did damage equal to 25% of an enemies & a confused mob did the other 75%, you'd only get 50% of the normal XP/Inf for that mob. IDK if this still exists, if I've conflated this from one of the gazillion other MMOs I've played, or whatever... but it's always left me reluctant to use sets with prominent Confusion effects.

Well from what I can see in the Enemy Scanner, it seems like I have enough debuff to bottom out an AV's regen. That would eliminate the regeneration from being an issue, so I guess it'd come down to whether 14% less HP (or -4000 HP on AVs & such) w/ Toxic damage is worth more than -10% resistance +Fire damage. I'd imagine the HP debuff is more valuable vs the AV+ group & the -res is more useful for Bosses & under, but neither of the options are likely to have a large impact on normal mobs simply because Bosses & under die quick enough to for either to really affect it. I suppose either one you pick is going to run into the same general issue of losing usefulness when other party members have the same ability.

You seem like you're joking, but I'm not actually sure. As to /Nin Scrapper, think I remember giving a cursory glance at /Nin for Scrappers, but can't remember it well. I remember being pretty impressed with the Sentinel version & as such I can't seperate which AT has what powers in my head. I don't think it had very much DDR did it? And would it be able to deal with the end issues from TW? I'm a sucker for powers that boost hover speed, and I believe Nin replaces Stalker's hide with one. Also pretty sure every version of Nin has that Heal+End clicky. But that's all I can remember.

Yeah IDK, my WM/Bio's main defensive issue is that he seems to get easily face melted via CDF just about any time he ran up against -def enemies, and he devoted A LOT of his build resources towards having to get 45% S/L def with nothing to start with. EnA, after enhancing, starts with 20% S/L defense from kinetic shield, & another 5% or so from the Energy Cloak. That's A LOT fewer set bonuses needed to reach 45%, & it's enough of a difference that the 59% cap for Incarnate stuff is probably within reach if that's a goal. On top of that, EnA has 51% defense debuff resistance at base, compared to /Bio's 0 DDR. I'm not sure if that's enhanceable like the DDR in /SR is, but even if it isn't, that's a pretty big deal in a lot of content. I can certainly see Ablative Carapace being a big difference maker in survivability, but when you need 25% less S/L to get to whatever cap youre chasing it seems like there's a lot of other bonus types you could push instead. I'm also curious how different /Bios SL resistance is after factoring in Offensive Adaptation... I really wish I was in front of my PC to play around with these builds, but ofc I'll be in another state for the next few days. 😢

I'm curious why you think EnA is squishier than /Bio. I suppose it's the regen/absorbs & such? Cause on paper it seems like EnA would have higher defenses, be much easier to soft cap (allowing one to put those build resources elsewhere) has significantly higher resistance to defense debuffs, & the damage resists would be less individually powerful but hit more types. Anyway, my questions were more about how TW/EnA would compare to (something else)/Bio. Would Energize & Energy Drain be impactful enough to make end usage for TW a non-factor after I reach those levels? Or would picking some other set that isn't so Endurance intensive & pair it with Bio be a better option for my next Scrapper project?

I'll throw another powerset in the pot of "things that might go with /Bio": Claws. Seems like Claws has a pretty good reputation around these parts, & I've never had a Claws Scrapper that I can recall. Had a Widow that I ended up feeling pretty meh about. Not sure how different it would be, but seems like it could be an interesting option.

Thanks for responding! The MM that prompted all of this is /Time, which certainly has some -regen, but I don't think it's on the magnitude of those others. Or at least the individual powers aren't that strong. Theres 2 of them & they last long enough that if I spam them on a beefy target they'd end up with multiple stacks of each... but IDK how stacking rules work for stuff like that. Do you think it's worth keeping Degenerative on a Thugs/Time character?

So I've been wanting to make a Scrapper again after shelving my WM/Bio for a while, but I can't really think of a build I want to put together. There's 2 scrapper sets that I'm interested in, TW & Bio. I know together theyre considered one of the strongest combos in the game, but TBH I don't really want to play them together. /Bio, on paper at least, is a set I really like... but I like the the Sentinel version of /Bio so much more than the Scrapper version that it makes me lose motivation on that front. If I do make one, my first thought is to make it with Katana primary, though I'm open to suggestions on this topic. Other options I've considered: Street Justice, though I'm not sure how strong it is. Psi Melee seems like a fun set after you get the lvl 32 power, but I hear a fair amount of dislike for Psi damage sets because it seems to be have an issue of enemies that are resistant to it are VERY resistant to it & I guess at high levels it's more common to run into such mobs. Also a bit interested in Rad Melee, but I've played that one a bit in the lower levels & the animations seem really slow. As far as TW goes, I've had a hard time picking what secondary I want to go with it. I know Bio's the most popular pairing for TW but I've already capped out a WM/Bio & didn't really like the end consumption on it. Given that I hear TW end consumption is worse, I'm not real enthused in doing that one (plus the combo just doesn't interest me for whatever reason). My original thought for a TW pairing was /WP, being entirely passive & having a strong passive buff to end recovery. I also have some memory of it being one of the less end-intensive sets, but I'm not sure of that's right or not. Lately however, I keep hearing very positive things about Energy Aura & when thinking about what to pair with it I thought TW may be a good idea there. I know it's one of the better sets for Endurance management (eventually at least?). That being said; I've never really looked at EnA, so I'm curious what y'alls opinion on how well it would work paired with TW. I know it's a typed defense set, and a cursory glance at the power list leads me to believe it has little-to-no Psi mitigation. Obviously capping S/L defense is the top priority for typed sets, but should I push to the Incarnate cap? I think Defensive Sweep doesn't get used in most TW builds, but would it be worth taking it in a EnA build as a CDF buffer? Is it worth the build resources that it would require to soft cap any/all of the other types? I was just thinking that I can't recall any Psy defense set bonuses, to the extent that I'm not sure if there are any at all? Maybe a unique I guess? Anyway, there's my standard wall-o-text for feedback on these questions. Looking forward to hearing some responses!