Sir Myshkin

30/s Up, 30/s Down, that's not terrible, and for many who've included specifically for heavy targets, that 30/s time window is significant enough that it massively swings over all time down. Typically this would only be the choice in situations where access to the proc is not possible (like Kinetic Melee). In the case of Claws, Shockwave can take the extra proc, and by incident moving the proc into Shockwave was enough that the continual consistency of the attack improved (marginally) over all times compared to relying on the proc being in WS itself. In a higher recharge situation, where Shockwave could be skipped, then Water Spout is a competent replacement to access the proc. That is my determination from testing. So, I've seen that table before, and I've seen it, and other similar ideas applied to several survival concepts for this game (in fact, I still have one of them that weights all aspect of a character and determines total survival "value"). Without really getting into the weeds of it all, that chart doesn't account for the other aspects of what sets like Bio Armor employ (Regen and Absorb). Capped resists, backed by high regen and complete hit-mitigation with Absorb mean Bio Armor can pretty consistently ignore most of what it gets hit with from S/L damage types as they'll easily be repaired in a fast hurry. If you don't have 45% on F/C/En/Neg to go along side that 45% S/L, then you've gimped the very point of what Bio Armor is designed for with its multi-layered mitigation approach. For slot reductions, after messing around with the various values, DNA Siphon, Ablative Carapace, Parasitic Aura, and Inexhaustible, those all kind of max-out at 3 useful slots, 4 for Inexhaustible since a performance shifter +end is useful in auto powers. I found by simply taking Musculature Radial (for the End Modification), I could drop each of those abilities by one slot and move those 4 new slots somewhere else in the build, essentially taking out what would've been my end modifier. To help boost end/rech enhancement in those respective powers I also used Enhancement Boosters on the IO's slotted there to bring their effective use back in-line on those two aspects. I was able to 6-slot six attacks, and 5-slot a seventh, which is about all that most would have anyway. For Resistances, its not "soft cap," there is only a Hard Cap. For Scrappers, that's 75%. For the Claws/Bio I used, with only one target in range, it actually was at 73%. If I'd had four more Rikti on me, I'd've been at 75%. The build could technically squeeze in the Shield Wall 5% +Resist, but I felt that a Perf. Shifter +End proc was worth more considering that normal gameplay would've seen cap on its own, and 73% is still really strong. And yes, that is with Offensive toggled on. If I turn Offensive off, I shoot to 80.59 (capped to 75%). I intentionally over-drafted on S/L resists so that I could have perma-Offensive, and also maintain "cap" resists. However, I will mention that this all hinged on Water Spout being in my build on how I managed some of these slots. Given that the build can't full optimize for a lack of Shockwave, leaving it in (-Res proc or not), and taking out Water Spout gives me five slots to mess with as I'd flip Leviathan for Soul and get Shadow Meld into the build for Incarnate content, and then I could dump that 5% into the build, flip a couple of .. well, basically there's a bit of domino effect that I could actually fine-tune the build a step further if I wanted to. But it sits at 32.5% S/L, 47.5% F/C, 44.5% En/Neg (Defenses), 73% S/L (Resists), 472% Regen (Only Ablative active) and 124.9% Max HP. If I max and activate DNA Siphon: 864% Regen (and that power has a 31.48/s rech). If I also then activate a max Parasitic: 1,781% (that's 124 HP/s, not as good as I can get get with a Regen character, but then Regen doesn't spot 73% S/L Resists...). Edit to add: Figured you're probably just want to see the actual build so this is what I ran on test ... | Copy & Paste this data into Mids' Hero Designer to view the build | |-------------------------------------------------------------------| |MxDz;1547;736;1472;HEX;| |78DA65945B6F125110C7CFC252A4520ADDD6DE29507BB1B4086D5FBCC5A8B5C6046| |29326BEE20A47588B4016E2E5D16FE02DF12BD44B6AEC37F0D5EB17E8556334A9D5| |AAF1196777FEA524906C7E67FF3B336766CE1C5277E7BC2B97EE9F158AEF4241AF5| |4D28B19532F97A5E94AE9392323AC9F9B9ECE7D3D9D92052963647CA712A98B73F2| |862C5664ECBC514A5F31737AD1C8A4CF99B74A66E072312F4D59ACC6F617AD0BA55| |221B6589632DB662FE78D5CBE6A1473EDF65B52EA596956F246D9BBFF5EA68FC18B| |6523135BACEA8525DA2E296F1B7A35AF17D329BD5295E6BD1E4A71921EC32DF0ABA| |9E2892A444215A30F98630FC147CC638F996BC364AED83E2E31ABD89A230E2698EA| |3438C36C9976DABCE9862BF92A1F590BBF651EFD004AC1796499636F1C4268AA58A| |77D9DBCAFC3B9CBB653DF9989A70E9B4B14DF85F8AE33AC759E064F308F9C044F31| |C3826314DCD6D1396C5FF735AEF5900E5E67FA32CC8E2C28991B949B8773533D5D5| |C736B27E8677A03A0C6DC249FC3EC538BD0DE6DBC56DAA256DD1EE103B7C9AE1D75| |B7FFE05CFD3B20EA2F927F0075075EE2BC96C167CC89E7E00B30C1F57FA6F89AA2D| |8F1B52071CC23062216A9AF617E7750FC2E8E2FBAFAF85C9CA475630EBA31073D98| |831ECC41087310C21C842D87419A0BF2ED45BF7AD1AF3EF4AB0FFD0AA24FA10EE61| |7CAB3DF9E9E9AD26FF781F2DC610628DE207A3468C7F388A01FD49865B219428F86| |DE71DF263F81EFC115EEF9D42BAE31B1CDFA1A2102DFC83A6BC35BE006B889F9FD8| |6D95C637EA5BC4790F708CE6F14E7F7CF2BC438FA3A1EE53D3B28CF28D722A261CE| |C7DA22C676CED85F3EB7E3BFC13FE01EE69AFCE3F08FA317036AFD9E5BE356AB892| |1B57E8B6B134D5FE34D4AA249996952669B946493B2A0D6FF0184622B1EBFB06EA0| |9DC96E2B7D45EECA14F7E3D781A62861EE5BCB559E899F8DF6E36CBFD7A885587B6| |DDD35ECB1D5B05E6DB883F3DD648AF572E460BDAAD11AF649ED40FF0F46EBFFA7| |-------------------------------------------------------------------| I'm going to be brutally blunt on this: I've been playing the game long enough, and been a part of Pylon Testing for so long that I already know what to expect in variance, and can most definitely come to a generalized conclusion. In this particular case I was testing multiple different aspects, all based on a baseline you already determined. Of each scenario you've posted multiple times with Bio Armor, on average they've been within a variance of 6/s from top to bottom, and all had a fairly consistent middle ground within 2-3 seconds from a median value. I haven't got the time, or honestly the patience to go out and test five variables five times--25 instances, when there aren't even that many Pylons for crying out loud, at 4:00 a piece to have all powers recharged equally each test... just, no, not happening, that's nearly an hour and a half--just to prove what one or two times is sufficient to do when I'm only altering one simple thing in a given run based on an existing baseline you created. Inconsistencies will show up on their own. If something demonstrates too radical, I'll retest to confirm by course of action, but if its within reason of what I expect to see based on past testing data, then there's no point in repeating more than twice, at best. If someone wants to go out and make the effort to reconfirm on their own, more power to them, which is exactly where this whole effort even came from. You didn't want to run the one extra test, just to see, so I went onto test and did it myself. Five of my six runs were weighing their variance against the established baseline you already posted. Since none of them were outside expectation, or wildly variant, there was no reason to keep running them, or be concerned with the expected variance. All I wanted to see was a simple, potential optimal number, and I shared those findings. We're not writing the next scientific review paper on game design, we don't need that insane a data-sample.

If it makes a difference for comparison's sake: | Copy & Paste this data into Mids' Hero Designer to view the build | |-------------------------------------------------------------------| |MxDz;1515;709;1418;HEX;| |78DA6594DB4E134118C767DBADD8D242B7E528A5D02294522854BD3746C4A86D42C| |478A77529D376A5D936ED6AC0C3856FA068C28DC7C41337BE836FE0F14E8D3E8080| |1AAFEBD7FDFE5093DD64F39BF9CF779C99DDDCDABCFFCDE93BC785123859D11B8DF| |C92A5575665DD93D34B46C12DE8E9A03702399F931529D3E70C535A46217FC2B2F4| |C26A746F715E16A5D990E9A56B359A9D97C58A5C930DED8C599675695AE9BD816FB| |15AADA4976A52AEF8ED6156EA35C32C05ECC982512A5B340BD9B30B94B056AD5BBA| |6554CDE8A99A5148EFA5CBCAEB866E9575339FD31B96ACAF0F50A5497A754DE0697| |A44D225444615AE2930C15427C114F3409ECC13AAB8E4252AB6AF10BD8ABD56D020| |513CE5AE6A6BA17BCC9E0DF03EB3EF018878798AE7E6781E7717C7F3F998FE4ED0C| |FECEA0603CC15CAEB81AFE79D9BEBFCCC1C780F7E601EFA087E624A8D4FAEE5DBB1| |C53D1E7C0D3E67465E30A3AFC097CC38397A39AFCB9B2264BC22044E807D64D3C9F| |14527F6E932F51A40BD816DAE63748719DB057F81BF99993F4C9D7CBBB1EFDD3161| |6B25EA41430FDA53DED7C30FC147E063E6C413F019F30AC50B733C258CFA223D4C1| |7D5DE8BDA7B9BF48865B2EE87753FACC760BD4C250CA28AC1358E1E5D678EDE006F| |32C76E81B799058A3B84AE8666B82B37651FE678AEE118EF66E208EF42B255C4B02| |A0CCA39829C2345F64B96C03273CA00AF82ABCC15CA19C729C471D3A671D3A671D3| |A671C36670236770F354AA6D9CF3AAE341D6121A18826D98398BFDF942A54FC267F| |207F731FB1DFC86537E4B372B4CFCCAF3BF7E21523881947D0245EA380D259DE24E| |C6A99A396873B6D590BAFF653723ED716B4AAB530E65CEA1641CCA518772CCA1641| |DCAA2BAFF4F108AAD7883F4A5A3B69F3E5A55FE5FDD692B2EE522FE0331DE8DE059| |C5FE576C3BBC76DB8AA26CF0D719DC6466C3045E6B2EF4B7C75BF1F678B365839AF| |E01581A020F| |-------------------------------------------------------------------| Also, for that odd time of 2:27, are you sure you didn't activate the Hybrid on accident? Because that time would've lined up more with Active Hybrid, otherwise anything roughly around 3:40 without Water Spout or a Hybrid is in line with what I had. Edit; Posted the wrong build first time.

Trying to be concise on points without going to far down the rabbit hole: Spiritual Core is the best choice for Bio Armor in maximizing recharge potential between it and the attack set paired with it. The Heal enhancement benefits a third of the abilities in the set, plus Health, and help reduce necessary slots. Spiritual Core with Ageless actually gave me enough reduction to make Follow Up gap-less for 30/s, .1/s for the next 30, and then .2 for the remaining minute. Given that there's nothing really in Bio Armor that truly benefits from that level of recharge however, I stayed with Musculature for the across-the-board improvement in damage. I didn't know what kind of recharge you'd tried packing into your builds, so that's why I asked if it was possible for you to achieve that attack chain. And the second -Res Proc isn't really a big deal to have Shockwave for, because Water Spout can provide that option, plus I personally would rather stick the KB to KD proc in Shockwave over a -Res for overall gameplay. While what you're doing with these test-generated builds is interesting from a statistical stand point, most people that come in to this thread aren't chasing purpose-built AV (Pylon) killing builds, but seeing how well their general PvE build holds up, its sustainability, and whether it can take down an AV on its own. Of which, it was already determined back on Live so many years ago that anything less than a Boss generally dies too fast for any of the Interfaces to matter, so it's really everything above that which has to be considered, and Degenerative is just hands-down the best choice. Of course we can't all run into an Incarnate Trial with Degenerative, we'll hit the effect cap on the ability and kind of waste the effort. When I asked about trying to run Claws with Degenerative, it was purely a curiosity of what would be the best ST it could manage; I wasn't trying to get you to min/max your build. When you talk about Neutering your build though, that raises questions for me on what you believed you had to sacrifice to make a "general" build versus why that particular build couldn't actually unify more damage potential to increase overall effectiveness. I am also curious as to why you went through so much focus on getting S/L Defense Soft Cap when Bio Res caps to S/L. When I did the Pylon test I activated Ablative before hand (as I have it capable of being Perma), and didn't touch anything else after that. In all the test runs I did (which'll be below), I only activated any of my click abilities when the Drop Ship came by and nailed me for ~1,500 damage. I wanted to also be assured that I wasn't sure experiencing an isolated scenario with the Pylon and my build (since I don't have an actual 50 with Bio Armor yet), I went out and started hunting level 54 Rikti around the mothership en masse. Turns out I just had a really solid build and didn't really care about what kind of mob I jumped into, the passive effects took care of anything that managed to hit me. As an ultimate back-up I put Hibernate in as an emergency ability just as I put Shadow Meld on my Regens and Dark Armors. Anyway, at this point its gotten kinda late and I burned my night and hoping on Test to verify this myself. Kinda bummer it takes so long to put together a build, but I really did want to know where Claws would sit optimized with Bio Armor's Offensive Adaptation. So now I head to bed super late after posting this: Running: T4 Musculature Radial, T4 Hybrid Assault Core, T4 Degenerative, and T4 Ageless Core (Purely for the Recharge, don't need the recovery, and I definitely wouldn't use Ageless outside of this specific test if it were an active build, Rebirth +HP is a far better tool for Bio Armor). As the standard, no insp, no temps, (and no pets of any kind). 3:33 (307) - Baseline (no activation of Hybrid) of FU > Focus > Slash with its widening gap. Rech on FU was 3.63/s, I wanted to see how impactful the gap would be. 2:40 (367) - Inclusion of Shockwave to fill the gap after the first 20/s. I had my global recharge up, once it dropped below 156% I had to cycle in Shockwave. Of note, this is without the -Res proc in Shockwave. 2:20 (401) - Ran FU > Focus > Slash > SW with Water Spout (-20% Proc), and activated Hybrid 2:10 (422) - Moved the -20% Proc over to Shockwave and didn't use Water Spout any longer, activated Hybrid 2:50 (353) - Swapped to Musculature Core and T4 Reactive to test comparatively. No active Hybrid 2:17 (407) - Musculature Core, Reactive, and Activated Hybrid So Degenerative Core and Musculature Radial: 422, Reactive Radial and Musculature Core: 407 Musc Core on attack values is about 6-8 points difference (more) per attack, would average around a +/- 7 DPS difference, so the flip/flop on those would be like 429/400

Since you've put the characters together, if they're still there, would you be willing to go back and try something different for Claws? Follow Up > Focus > Slash, if you have the recharge for it (with Ageless I'd imagine you should at the front end for sure). If you can get (or have already) gotten Follow Up to 3.10/s or less in recharge, then this chain would end up with a triple-stacked Follow Up on Focus once the chain is rolling. Of course I'm assuming you did put the -Res in Slash. And if you could swap Reactive for Degenerative -MaxHP 75% (should be a faster time, marginally, but it should). I ran Claws/Regen back on Live and that was before the advent of the bonus critical procs for the new Scrapper ATO, or Bio Armor's massive scale of damage boosting, or any of the PPM changes to procs in general. It tapped out at 240 DPS back then. These changes should be a higher DPS, just curious what you would get if you ran it.

I know I said I wasn't going to run another test, but the whole Assassin's Focus/Quick Strike thing was really bugging the hell out of me, so I revisited things with more extensive tests. Quick Strike's Focus trigger is...basically non-existent. I ran nine more tests, and it was pretty consistently not-present. The only time I'd really see it was when I popped BU in the midst of the chain. Something about the extra 1.32/s delay helped I guess, not sure. I checked this after having respec'd Body Blow into the build (swapped out intended build's Focus attack, for testing). Quick Strike has ... without really counting the numbers, what appears to be something like a 10% chance of creating Assassin's Focus, where SB and BB were consistent (~75%-80% chance), and AS continuously ate those stacks. I recorded things for prosperity this round: T4 Musculature, T4 Degenerative (-MaxHP 75%) consistent throughout all these tests. T4 Hybrid (2x) was toggled on for specific runs to get a metric difference. In all cases Build Up was used immediately in order to take advantage of the fast repeating attacks and the 5% proc chance (ontop of having a pretty solid recharge). 3:42 - Stand Alone chain, SB>BB>QS>AS 2:23 - T4 Hybrid 3:13 - Attempted to use Pet...it died, lulz 3:07 - Sloppy attempt w/ Water Spout (fudged attack chain trying to find timing, wasted about 5 seconds of screw up clicks) 3:50 - Tried T4 Hybrid with Pet, pet lasted about 10/s this time. Died about a 60/s in, decided to use Return to Battle out of spite. 2:36 - T4 Hybrid, Water Spout **Read second edit 2:44 - T4 Hybrid, Water Spout, testing to see if time was accurate 3:23 - Retesting the inclusion of Body Blow into the attack chain over a dual QS, in combination with Concentrated Strike while using Spout and T4 Hybrid. Basically confirmed the CS sucks in the Stalker attack chain. 2:30 - Final test to affirm main attack chain, while using T4 Hybrid. Got hit once good, used Rebirth to insure I stayed alive. So Average DPS: 389, I feel much better about this time. GO Kinetic Melee! Edited to add in: I find it odd that some sets have better success with Water Spout. It actually ended up being detrimental to KM casting it on the Pylon. Even my best time with it (2:36) was still slower than my worst time with the standard chain not using it (2:30). Edit on my edit: I forgot to add in the -Res proc to Water Spout. HA, I was scratching my head like "what the heck did I forgot?!" I remembered! So... have a dramatically different time for Water Spout now: 1:57 - 455 DPS SB>BB>QS>AS with Water Spout (And standard T4 Musc, Hyb Double, Degen MaxHP). In regards to Concentrated Strike, unfortunately I wasn't surprised by this flaw because KM suffers the same issue on Scrappers. The power hits like a truck, and has a neat mechanic with its ability to refresh the BU effect, but just like on Scrappers, it takes too long to animate and hurts the set empirically. On paper it always looked great, but in practice--especially with Procs and the like--it really hurts the set, especially when it misses. I'd rather miss one 100pt attack for 1/s, than a 300pt attack for 3/s. KM is very fluid in its ability to recover, and do a lot of damage in its first three attacks. Kind of follows a different philosophy that the upper tier attacks are burst-one-shot "fancy" abilities, but just as is true in martial arts, it's the smaller, fast, continuous hits that wear your opponent down. So... it makes sense that CS kinda sucks for DPS.

Dusted this off and took out a few HO's since there are better options now for those slotting choices. I don't plan on recreating my DM/SD, so someone might as well get some mileage out of what I'd done with his build: | Copy & Paste this data into Mids' Hero Designer to view the build | |-------------------------------------------------------------------| |MxDz;1589;750;1500;HEX;| |78DA6594496FD35010C79F638790B4599C744B17B2949234C16E527A613FB414A5B| |4A810E0868ADB3C1AAB561AD949698F7C050EF00558CA850BDF82F5C2D20B026E80| |C472000971099337D32452AC44BFF1FFCDCC9B99677B697BAEF7C9F9DB67991498B| |50CC75929AED946B5CA6DCF45A356B70D8BC1152ED60C3B3E6BD74D87DB712D5E98| |9EF1801CDDF75D59E216E7FA9C616FA0196BADCCF19BBCE270BD5836B955DABF550| |B9532B779A5A6EF1BFEE5CD4D4B9F37D7CB35B3B2EE1377C52AE7A5A03017B951E2| |B65336ABAAB82F54B64CC75C352DB3B6133D5735D77428D1DA800D8B9B756B65C97| |06ADCDE19822235F8DBCD6AC5D570B3AC8BB1BCC25C19620AA9A48993C8036959D0| |E787308962FB255C0B210FF611078163E0FB9B62FE207B2056C258599A47ADB740B| |C800C2CD03DF8CAB48F7C0DF306AE224397889791992252BB8294A03F37F6C7DCC3| |4C6875D03CD4B3A7A4082D7C83B886ECE3C4AF58C3C017A41F6AF1622DCC9BC07C4| |948D6839AAB27DBD4BC6C80384994C1C74FFDFA3358DB904ED490A929EA0DF6088A| |E1345890F650205EC57845A5590FD3AC8723C83CCD3C1F4606214F846A8D508C0A7| |9FAA9D67ED246451E2F1B8D206F81CFA038D8863CF81AFBD69E119F23F377F159D8| |06DFA89866C31DBD8FDAA107C487C447C8F82EF1313204F58D507D23D4E716A41AA| |3F31AB3D16F07B4189D57EC15EE1F7F814CBC24AE637C6203394ECF68F3D892149B| |CC63BEF11C51431ED68953C437984385FA26305699388D6B474E118F134F2053279| |17F7B194B638C94A6F94EAA38D76F504B16D7E4EC6797782F8E7E247E227E40361F| |3B9D7CF53DD4A6DE11DF13DF22C350678E66969BC6BE4795D67B0D3FB8584C69BDA| |D8D4CD76AAE4BC97729C7BA94992E65B14B5956685B5024A17843F03EA3D2F8EE6B| |7D0798A4E1DC7FFA3ABE0D0B60A460860564E60C7E4F3209ECF347677C1AE37FB53| |549BA47E773C725CE60D9272A137BAF76D8D73BEC7F03E04A93DA8BB4EDA74D9B7C| |A27D6D7D37D9B6FF03B81DFE5F| |-------------------------------------------------------------------|

Massively disappointed by this, because the "on paper" DPS should be dramatically higher, but: KM/SR Stalker, 317 DPS (3:22) Had a horrible time with stacking Assassin's Focus. I feel like Quick Strike might be recharging so quickly that the game is getting confused as I can consistently get stacks from Smashing Blow, but QS fails to snag it nearly ever, and I even ran into one instance of AS getting its orange ring, and then keeping it for an immediate second strike (effect triggering twice in a row). Tried several runs with QS>SB>QS>AS>CS hitting BU before AS if it was up, but that chain actually came back worse than not using CS (which kind of leaned towards my experience on live with KM/SR Scrappers). Final chain I ran was QS>SB>QS>AS with popping BU every single time it came up, and it netted me the fastest time. Ran with T4 Musculature, T4 Hybrid (Double Strike), T4 Degenerative (-MaxHP 75%). Without Incarnates the build was getting around 240-245 DPS, which is terrible considering on a Scrapper I was hitting that same range. If this were actually my character, I'd probably fiddle around with the build more, but since I only did the testing for someone else, it is what it is. The proc works on all attacks, I can confirm this in testing from above that I've had the proc fire off a fresh Build Up on pretty much every attack in my chain at some point. Edited to specify this: I had the Build Up proc in Concentrated Strike, and my final run I didn't use the ability at all and relied purely on natural BU recharge and proc refreshes. I had plenty of moments in there with double stacks BU effects.

I remember there being an option for duplicating a selected object as well, and I can't seem to find a key that still allows this function anymore.