Doomguide2005

One of my friends when he first started created a Katana/Regen scrapper. He spent, well, several hours in Outbreak before finally giving another friend a call for help. He couldn't figure out how to get out of the tutorial and into the game proper. His scrapper was the only one among us for a long time (until Ouroborous) to have the Contaminated badge. He'd defeated god only knows how many Contaminated until he made that phone call. 😄

My first, my main of mains a Claws/SR scrapper from i3 to i23 then, story of my life, the computer died. Recreated here on HC and then the latest computer died. Is there a badge for having computer failures 🤪. Bug Hunter was one of the few she didn't have on Live...yeah computers hate me.

I think the issues arise from two major factors. First is as @oedipus_tex points out the ratio of recharge to duration of the effects. The second is what is actually debuffed --> defense and to hit both of which are relatively meh in end game. To hit debuff is desirable if you aren't softcapped and defense debuff is desirable for making it easier to hit neither of which is in short supply on endgame IO builds. These have a duration of 30 sec well short of permanent. It has some other potential effects (kd, -fly, -jump, -recharge, hold) and can take a wide variety of IO sets including more procs than you can shake a stick at. Unfortunately my understanding is it doesn't really pay to use procs in the power last I checked.

Combat Jumping + Hurdle you can now jump backwards firing and land around a corner. Great for pulling. That t1 Immobilize of blaster secondaries. Yes they still fire back but you can move and take cover and decide what to do next. Air Superiority-> very reliable knock up. Takes one target out of the picture. Recharges fast enough to keep one foe out of commission while you deal with others. My Empath would use her Cosmic Burst to get one boss stunned and use Air Sup to keep the other boss helpless while CB wore the first into defeat. That's with defender scale damage not blaster vs "Invincible" notoriety Cimeroran mobs. Use slows and patches with Afraid and Avoid mechanics. Mobs running away aren't attacking so yes you silly hero shoot them in the back while they're running away ... you're only arresting them after all. Many targeted AoEs can be used around a corner. Many of Earth controls powers work this way. Stealth. Attack first against oblivious foes. More specific ideas require knowing what sets are in use.

Traps/Fire was my choice for a hardcore SG run on Live. Solid defense pre-IO, mez protection in FFG and Fire blast for damage. Late developer but Storm/Sonic was an early AV killer pre-IOs. A ton of debuff potential combined with Storm's damage output. Storm/Dark, able to stack stuns, proc potential, to hit debuffs. AoE immobilize plus Hurricane. In general an abundance of CC options. Many strong options as noted above in the thread. And many 'weaker' choices when you add in IOs plus p2w options can be quite capable.

My goals in general are get to 47 to 48% defense all positions 95% DDR Net endurance recovery 2.5 end/sec I favor maximizing my mitigation in terms of +max health, passive regeneration over high recharge. Very few if anything can kill my Claws/SR so quickly I don't have time to adapt or adjust. She has about 900 health beyond base. @Bill Z Bubbaposted his latest scrapper version not long ago. Things an utter monster (and I would expect no less). Find it for inspiration.

Clearly it's to Nerf Regen, probably we even need to Buff the Nerf because the issue keeps coming up, over and over and over and ...

While a bit of an edge case but for /TA or Fire/ or sets with powers similar to Flash Arrow or Smoke with perception debuffs Superior Invisibility will allow the user to get close enough to Snipers to use those powers to completely blind even a Sniper (reduce their perception to zero) allowing the entire team to move by. In particular I recall a mission in Numina's where Nemesis Snipers can open up at range and an awful lot of Stealth gets 'cancelled when hit' now the team is visible to intervening Nemesis mobs and all hell can break loose.

My rusty old brain wants to say that includes recharge enhancement in the power itself. So if you have ~100% recharge enhancement in AM that means you only need an additional 152% global recharge which is not only doable but relatively easy to reach --> 70% from perma-Hasten, 37.5% from LotG and some ~50% from other set bonuses. I think technically you're not accounting for the recharge provided by AM itself but rusty brain liable to explode if I go there.

To hell with knockback, NERF REGEN!

Not really or at least not that I'm aware of. That said there are various maps and other references out there that can give you a better idea of where to roam around hitting tab. Combine that with custom binds and you'll search a smaller area much faster at least. Asking in the forums about a specific foe(s) can also help learn about spawning oddities (only at night or shared spawn sites etc.).

I agree with basically everything said by Area Man. But I will point out (emphasize) the utility of Choking Cloud very much does depend on your playstyle and willingness to get into melee distances. You can rather rapidly stack holds on bosses via VG or Fossilize then moving in and adding Choking Cloud to the mix. And for me Fallout is part of a package deal on at least one of my alt builds. The package -> Teleport Ally + Fallout (+/- Vengeance) + Mutation is a thing of beauty. But it requires allies know what's going on and cooperate (not run off to hospital, self rez, and enable teleport permission) to really come together.

It's one of the reasons many of my Defenders and Controllers aren't really all that focused on building for defense but focus on recharge. Most of the time between team buffs and inspires they're pretty well covered especially when they really need it.

Awwww Apparition beat me to it. Typed too dang much PS: It was a Brute showing up at a Hami Raid before side switching was possible

I was thinking the same thing ... Then I SAW IT ... I think 🤪. I can tell it's been awhile since I was ingame. Hint: last I heard of something like it it involved a Hami raid. Sheesh wonders if I'm totally wrong.

Purple Patch Look up the Purple Patch in the HCwiki for why those hypothetical settings are more about tedious than anything really resembling greater difficulty especially for an endgame team.

Good we agree. That wasn't the choice I was advocating for either. I was advocating for informed choice not a specific choice. Builds are full of choices. Nor is it a matter of all attuned or not, all set bonuses or not if/when you exemplar. You could conceivably attune enough of a set to get the set bonus you need (say accuracy) then boost an additional slot like the above LotG to end up with both your goals met. Purple and PvP IOs are already inherently attuned and can still be boosted. Maybe boosting accuracy and damage will be more valuable than the +x recovery bonus at 2 slots because the rest of the slots are damage procs and the build will be running Ageless or in a dedicated duo with a partner who will supply those end needs etc., etc.. The OP didn't specify.

I get what you're saying but those things are subjective to the individual and their build. And why would it make anything never able to exemplar? 3% could make a significant difference in an otherwise tight build. That's potentially a difference between softcap or not, perma Hasten or not, freeing up a slot or not in a specific build. And you're correct a great deal of the time that's not really make or break deal for a build. The game isn't that hard. But if you're looking to create your own vision of bleeding edge capable knowing the 'complexity' of your choices is going to be important and therefore, for me anyway, important to include in the answer as to "why" and "how" that decision is reached.

The above is exactly why I started my first post with something along the lines of 'the actual answer is far more complex ... ' and then changed it to the text above (and why @Hedgefund I suspect just uses attuned and calls it a day.) And that's with just single aspect IOs, etc., etc..

Empowerment buff station tier 2 or 3 --> recovery serum should mostly end any endurance woes since you're allowing sg buff stations. The the issue is getting the salvage to drop instead of endmod recipes or IOs.

I believe Solvera is both correct and wrong. You can boost it and it will exemp like normal. The exemplar effect is based on the natural level of the IO. Procs and global's aren't effected by boosts. So if you boost a lvl 50 def/increased global rech the def portion will scale like normal (BUT, and this is where the above answer is essentially correct) the global rech portion will stop functioning below level 47 as that's when set bonuses would shut off. Keeping it attuned means the global recharge will function down to lvl 22. The question then is would boosting a lvl 25 LotG to +5 yield better defense value while retaining the global recharge than a lvl 50 def/increased global rech that's attuned. I think the attuned is barely larger but I'm not sure to be honest and can't look at Mids or in game to tell.

I think it might be more specifically at -3 and less, maybe (just thinking): White con (even level) +0 Blue con at -1 Green con at -2 and those are minions. At -2 an underling will con gray ... maybe

Hah! I'll see your Speed Boost and raise you a Regeneration Aura. And these last few silly posts shows the more serious differences between the sets. Empathy is primarily about mitigation and recovery (of both health and endurance). The defensive side of the equation with a bit of offensive buffs to damage and recharge added in. Kinetics is more about the offensive side of the battle boosting damage and recharge with a side of damage and regeneration debuffs. And this plays into the current meta of MOAR damage as us Incarnates have a really good handle, typically, on much of what Empathy provides. Meanwhile Kins are essentially playing right into the whole MOAR damage meta of the endgame. What I find ironic is Kins provide pretty much none of what makes so many other defender sets desired in endgame. No resistance debuffs and minimal (comparatively) regeneration debuff, yet still very desired because, you know, MOAR damage 😁.

A last thought Rad Blast is great as a "proc monster" type build and doubly so on a Kin. Procs bypass the damage cap. Kins should spend a lot of time at the cap without necessarily needing to slot for damage in the power itself as those damage enhancements count towards the cap (of 400%).

One of the big issues a sapper build faces is the size of the foes endurance pools. That's why it so often seems why the baddies get to attack with basically no end cost. Everyone, players and mobs alike, gain a percentage of the end back with each tic of recovery. Player has 100 end. Bosses iirc get 200 end and a late game AV has 800. Powers themselves pretty much have the same end cost. Your Smite and Nosferatu's Smite both cost the same in endurance. But if as a player you gain 5 end the AV gets 40. Then answer how many of your powers can you use with 5 end? And how many can Nosferatu use with 40 end. And that's why it seems AVs can attack with pretty much anything even after fully drained. They get one tic of recovery and have enough end for pretty much everything. That's why it's so important to also hit them with lots of -recovery and not just -endurance. Recovery determines how often those tics occur. So first you need to remove all their endurance then second shut off their recovery. And ideally you need to do both very rapidly to make it worthwhile as a form of mitigation. Otherwise the Fire/Fire blaster mitigates them by turning them into ash faster than you drain them. And Electric/Cold sounds potent in terms of sapping to mitigate and solo big stuff. Has the sapping side covered than adds lots of -recharge/slows with Cold along with all of Cold's potent debuffs like Benumb