Zect

Soul drain vs spirit drain comes down to a choice between unreliable but (potentially) stronger vs reliable but weaker: They both have the same uptime ratio: 30s every 240s vs 15s every 120s (at permahasten levels both are slightly under 50% uptime). Soul drain has twice the target cap (10 vs 5) and hence, twice the potential boost; But spirit drain has the larger area (15ft vs 10ft) and targets corpses in addition to live foes You can usually saturate spirit drain without even trying, but getting a really good soul drain is a lot less of a given. Doubly so if there are fatties among the enemies with big hitboxes, looking at you toxic tarantulas. On the other hand, power boost completely blows both the T1 powers /dark has to offer out of the stratosphere. There is no comparison.

That's the neat part, reflexes don't even come into the picture. Waiting to fix shit as it happens is a recipe for stress and disaster, not to mention very unstylish. What you want to do is be aware of what's going on, anticipate what will happen next, and pre-empt (or at least be prepared) for any problems that appear. This is why I keep talking about knowledge and situational awareness. Situations usually take time to develop in an unfavorable direction before turning into catastrophes, giving you many opportunities to rectify the situation.

Compared to "normal" content, there is more emphasis on: maneuver and positioning; to only engage what is necessary (4* mobs have very high perception btw) and avoid instant death mechanics target prioritization; to kill priority targets first (such as the hydra EBs in LGTF, smelters in aeon or hostless in ITF) coordination; to work with other players, execute a plan and bring what is needed to the table. Optimized 4* builds typically have: little personal mitigation, only low hanging fruit like the uniques; usually no fighting pool. Mitigation comes from barrier destinies + shields from powersets such as cold or FF +maxHP, because this is less available from ally buffs. This helps you to avoid being 1-shot, after which it is the healer's job to heal you mostly damage optimization (procs), because this is the optimization that matters most in this threat environment. They may sacrifice slotting damage enhancement to pack more procs even if this leads to less dps on paper, because they assume a kin is there to FS them less rech than general-purpose builds, because they assume a kin is there to SB them 4* optimized builds are often not optimal in general content (where you don't know the buff composition, and there may or may not be a kin and barriers). Conversely, you can do just fine on a 4* even if you don't optimize fully for it, as long as you are geared and you do good damage. I have done many 4*s on general content builds because I can't be bothered to respec every single alt. I really need to emphasize that knowledge, situational awareness and a good attitude are more important than the build. It's less about what you have slotted in your powers and more about what is slotted in your brain.

My ideal would be for every powerset to have 5-6 core powers that provide most of the functionality, and the remaining 3-4 being situationally useful. If you make every power in a set indispensable, which is Homecoming's current stance, the game becomes more cookie-cutterlike - eg every mind troller will have the same powers as every other mind troller. This removes important elements of choice and expression from the game. P.S. I like new telekinesis and my opinion of it goes up every time I use it. It is a very precise way of moving mobs around, far more controlled than things like KB or even foldspace or wormhole.

Rationally, this would be a terrible move. At the same time, it also strikes me as an oddly compelling one. After all, the economy in this game is hilariously imbalanced (reward merit rates thoroughly borked with no attempt at balancing after multiple patches, little correlation between either difficulty or time spent and income, vast discrepencies in earning rates depending on playstyles - the dictionary definition of imbalance, etc.). What better way to fix an intractable problem than to trash everything and start over? Furthermore, it would be extremely funny to watch the hedonic treadmill in action as people start whining for "something to work towards to" in a week's time. What I'm saying is, even though it would be disastrous for the game in terms of player engagement and long-term appeal, I would still laugh if the market dies in the fires of a communist uprising (and while we're at it, hand out free exp/incarnate xp potions at START too!). Viva la revolución!

Dark miasma wants 3 things: 1) you want to almost double-stack your tar patch (250% to 300% rech in tar patch, which you're close to), because the -res stacks, 2) it wants tohit because unlike other debuff sets, dark has no -def (tohit also adds damage to the quick mode of your blazing bolt), and 3) it wants to not softcap because really, what's the point of softcapping when you have that much -tohit? It's wasted stats. There is a lot of debate on the exact breakpoint to shoot for though. You have 1 and 3 and the build doesn't make any unreasonable choices, so that's a promising start. Your aoe def is 5 higher than ranged def - is that a deliberate choice? Seems odd if it is. I also question whether you really need melee def: you are only in melee for a moment to use soul drain and maybe inferno. Critters will be running around slowed in the tar patch and rain of fire and not tightly grouped up around you in melee. Even if you do need melee def, 6x oblit is a stronger choice (rech, acc, proc and a more useful res) than avalanche. Winter sets have extremely specific uses outside of farming, they are rarely the best option for most build goals. You're not taking the reactive defenses and shield wall uniques. If this is the amount of SL res you are satisfied with, you can use them to produce a build that drops fighting for leadership and still has the same or better stats. Abyssal Blayze - Corruptor (Fire Blast - Dark Miasma - Soul Mastery).mbd

You don't need to softcap for any content played with a team: The game has to be balanced so that it can be played without tankers or any armored AT's, so developers are limited in how much damage mobs can do. Then this damage is split up to 8 ways even before it gets to you Then it gets nerfed by the gigantic amount of buffs, debuffs, controls etc raining from the sky, all of which are vastly more powerful than your puny IO sets. Maneuvers from a random corr is 5%, think how many slots you spend to get 5% def to all. The defense softcap (and resistance hardcap) are more relevant for soloing difficult enemy groups at high difficulties, under arbitrary constraints such as no temps no insps just to say you can do it. However, speaking as someone who actually does this, there is little practical use in it. From a pure minmaxing perspective, it's more optimal to cut defense and prioritize dps; any mitigation beyond what you need to survive is wasted stats. Most toons I see have too much def and res for the threat environment they play in. I believe that building for too much def and res carries the danger of making one stupider: it insulates the player from negative results of their choices and actions. It would be like chopping up food in the kitchen while wearing oven mitts to protect from any possibility of getting a cut: people should just grow up, git gud and learn to handle a knife properly, which is not only more efficient but safer for yourself and others in the long term. When I encounter someone deep in the Dunning-Kruger valley who thinks they are an expert despite their builds and gameplay being awful, it's often a tanker main, because even though good tanking is all about knowledge and situational awareness (knowing what to engage, where to engage and when to engage it), tankers have the greatest tendency to focus excessively and exclusively on personal mitigation. This is a non-softcap example, but it is a good illustration of how prioritizing any kind of mitigation too heavily can become a knowledge debuff. Some time ago I was giving build advice to some rad armor tanker and I recommended removing their -KB IO. They countered that KB protection is important and a tanker should not be flopping around on their backs. The problem with this is that rad armor, and most armor sets for that matter, come with built-in KB resistance (not protection as given by IO's such as botz, resistance) which reduces KB magnitude. It is nearly impossible to be knocked back at all, even if you are hit by kb of magnitude higher than you have protection against. Because they assumed they needed KB protection, they were simply never exposed to evidence that proves otherwise. --- Anyway, back to your concern, OP: the best solution is actually to minmax harder. Restrict yourself only to top-ranking, meta powerset combos and optimized builds. After a couple dozen alts, you'll be thoroughly bored and ready to try something different.

The best general purpose 2ndaries are (in no particular order) /time, /TA and /earth. The rest have their cute tricks but don't stand out from the pack like these 3. A good blaster 2ndary provides: Offensive buffs (debuffs get nerfed by purple patch, damage auras do little dps) Set mule/proc opportunities Good attacks Build up or close equivalent Time: +rech, 80% (!) slow resist, some -regen across various powers if you're into that Mules resistance sets Future pain ~97 dpa and psi damage is handy for killing unstoppable bosses. TA: +rech, +def, + acc, +per, -tohit resist, -per resist, slow resist (just lol, lmao) Mules def sets Glue arrow AKA aoe blaze. Earth +acc, +per, -tohit resist, -per resist Seismic smash The best blaster melee attack, and that's before you consider it takes hold procs.

That is because you are shifting goalposts (changing the base amount for each comparison). You first compared 100 to 200, in which 100% = 100 damage. Then you compared 200 to 300, where 100% = 200 damage. Then 300 to 400, where 100% = 300 damage, and so on and so forth. Since the value of 1% across your calculations increases continually, naturally you see "diminishing" returns. There can be good reasons to do this depending on the purpose of the comparison, so I'm not going to nitpick too much. But the fun thing is that this equally applies to rech, damage, healing, etc etc. As shown above, the behavior of rech and damage enhancement is exactly the same. So if you think that rech has diminishing returns, you would also need to admit that damage, healing, mez duration, and most things you can enhance etc. are also subject to diminishing returns, so it really makes zero sense to post PSA's that recharge has "diminishing returns" when damage works the exact same way. I'll concede the former if you concede the latter, deal?

If you died from full health in the final room you either missed buffs or stood in a black hole bomb. You can tell if you are standing in a bomb that is about to explode because it puts a light dot on you while you are in the area of effect - this is much more reliable than trying to eyeball the ground sfx. Dying in 4* is almost always some kind of positioning or mechanic failure (i.e. what the kids like to call a 'skill issue'). Builds help but don't make a night and day difference as long as they are generally sensible and do good damage. The effects of build optimization are dwarfed by the massive amounts of buffs you will be carpet bombed with. The best thing you can do is to record your runs using either the demorecord function or software like nvidia shadowplay and find out what killed you.

You could lose 30% rech and take hasten, which will put you at +176.25%, just a hair off permadom + permahasten. So the tradeoff is paying 2 slots and a pool choice for hasten, or paying 30% more rech. That's around 18 slots worth of set bonuses in your build. For many powers the rech needed to perma them without hasten is higher or close to that needed for permahasten itself. Eg. dull pain only needs +200% rech total to perma, so you might think that a turtle-tank could just drop hasten and perma it with set bonuses alone. But even with +100% rech from enhancements, that means you still need +100% from set bonuses. Which, if you take hasten, would put you at +170%, again just a hair off permahasten (which increases hps from more frequent castings of dull pain and helps claw back some dps). Generally this type of hasteless design is only worth it if you really want the extra pool choice freed up by not taking hasten (when I pioneered such builds fitness still cost a pool choice!), or you struggle with keeping up multiple powers on cooldown.

I've added a handy tldr. Enjoy!

It heals, and because it heals it also accepts more procs than aqua bolt does (= more damage), and on top of that it has better damage per animation time (which is the metric that matters most).

It absolutely is not. Let's say you have a power that does 100 damage, and has a base recharge time of 1 minute. Using the formula in the link you yourself quote: We can construct this table for our hypothetical power: +Recharge% BaseDamage EnhancedDamage RechargeTime Power uses / minute Damage done in 1 minute +0% (base) 100 100 1.000 min 1 100 +100% 100 100 0.500 min 2 200 +200% 100 100 0.333 min 3 300 +300% 100 100 0.250 min 4 400 We can clearly see that the effect of adding recharge is linear. The first +100% and the last +100% both have the same effect, each granting 1 more use of the power per minute and hence, +100 damage in that time. In general, adding +x% recharge grants an additional +x% uses/min of the power compared to the base (unenhanced) rate, all the way up to the recharge cap. Hence, recharge is subject to linear returns. The key insight is that it is not the time left until the power is recharged that matters, but rather the number of power uses per unit time (i.e. the rate) that is the correct way to compare the effects of +recharge. The example used is damage, but this applies equally if the power does heals, mezzes, etc. This is applicable to your gang war example, too. We can model each posse as dealing a certain amount of damage over its lifespan, and gangwar therefore is a power that does x damage per use, upon which the above analysis applies. For the exceptionally thick-skulled, I invite you to answer this question: is damage subject to diminishing returns? (You might want to write down your answer on a piece of paper, so that I can force you to eat it after I prove my point.) Let's see what the effect is when we slot +damage enhancements in our hypothetical power: +Damage% BaseDamage EnhancedDamage RechargeTime Power uses / minute Damage done in 1 minute +0% (base) 100 100 1.000 min 1 100 +100% 100 200 1.000 min 1 200 +200% 100 300 1.000 min 1 300 +300% 100 400 1.000 min 1 400 We can clearly see that adding +damage is exactly identical to the effect of adding +recharge, with each +100% damage exactly matching the effects of +100% recharge. So why single out recharge for having "diminishing returns"? Under such an interpretation, damage, healing, buffs, debuffs and most quantities you can enhance are also subject to "diminishing returns". There are a few exceptions to the above (does not apply if you are at the recharge cap, etc). The biggest one is that it does not apply when the animation time of powers is not negligible compared to its recharge time, since recharge has no effect on animation time and powers only start recharging after they finish animating; hence in such situations the benefit of recharge is less than calculated (but this is still not diminishing returns, since it depends only on the animation times and not how much rech you already have slotted). In general this only matters for ST rotations (attack chains in oldschool parlance), since ST attacks all have short base recharge times of 25s or less. However, certain clicks are notably affected - an example is Aid Self, with a base recharge of 20s and an animation time of 4.488s (!), nearly a quarter of the base recharge time. Also, for buffs which do not stack with themselves, the benefit is always capped when the power becomes perma. The real reason you should think carefully before going for perma gangwar is that, when you already have a lot of recharge, it gets really tough to get even more recharge. Getting +40% global rech from set bonuses is free. 5 lotgs and some set you were going to slot anyway. The next +40% is easy. A couple of purple sets and ATIOs, done. The next +40% suddenly gets difficult. Halfway through, you run out of purple and ATIOs and lotgs. All the easy options for rech are gone and you've spent over 1/3 of assignable slots. Anything beyond that is really fucking hard. At this point you are at +190% with hasten and unless you have help from things like your powersets or incarnates or external buffs, you're reduced to doing desperate shit like blowing slots on 5x and 6x set bonuses for measly amounts of 5% to 7.5%. Most sets, taking hasten, naturally reach about +130% to +160% global rech before the difficulty of getting further rech suddenly shoots up a cliff as you run out of slot-efficient options. This is the real diminishing returns and it applies to any build goal, including def, res, and whatever you care to build for, and this is why 80% of two things is usually stronger than 100% of one and 0% of the other in coh.

Inv is hard to get wrong in the sense that even badly built invulns are still pretty tough in the easy content frequented by most players. A set with 90% SL res out of the gate and good defense is going to do well when most of what you fight are council, cims and farms. But inv is also hard to get right, in the sense of constructing a well-rounded build that leverages all of inv's strengths and patches up its weaknesses. Making an inv with permanently softcapped defenses, hardcapped resistances, perma-dull pain, high debuff resists, and strong rech and dps to make up for its lack of dps is a very technical endeavor. Most builds are only able to achieve a handful, or even as little as one, of these build goals. Soul is a really good epic (good damtype, good proc opportunities and good debuffs) but DN is not good vs AV's despite fender numbers because of the way -dmg works. Most AV's have strong resistance to their own damtype which means they get debuffed less by -dmg. DN is good for the -tohit against exotic critters and especially ones that debuff you, like vanguard. In the case of LR, and I assume the MLTF version, foe debuffs are weak against him because the orange tower phases him and the red tower gives him 100% SLE resist. So DN does nothing to him during the period when he actually has a chance of tickling you. The most critical tool for tanking this LR is ageless radial to ensure you don't get drained and detoggled by his channelgun which he can use from range. If you're really unlucky he will decide to zap you with it when you are not in melee with anything and have no def from invincibility. Your build spends nearly all build capacity on def and res. And while it does this quite efficiently, there are other things to defend against when turtling up. For example, Debuffs - usually debuffs are what kills tanks, not raw damage. You're already softcapped with 1 in range without barrier, so you can take ageless radial instead of piling on more def that changes very little. Instead of spending slots and a destiny on more def, you can get -def resist to help keep the def you've already got. Spending just 1 slot in SL for a +5 boosted healing common increases its lifesteal by a little over 100. At your present levels of rech, this is a pretty significant +20 hps. More dps would paradoxically increase survivability by killing off troublesome foes your mitigation doesn't protect against. You get the point. Basically, once you are within reach of the caps, you can gain a lot by looking beyond def and res to diversify defenses.

Any discussion involving Jack is obviously going to be very polarized, because of the strong negative feelings some people have against him. However, without ED there would be no IO system. And for all its flaws, the IO system is one of the more unique things that modern Coh has to offer players. Sure, there's a meta, but MMO's where you have this degree of freedom over character design are very rare (I'd say only DDO and maybe EVE come close - lmk if you know of more). I credit the IO system for being responsible for the immensely fun game we all enjoy today. FFXIV and WoW (and especially the former) have made entire endgames out of this kind of challenge, and both are far more successful, critically and commercially, than Coh ever was. This kind of content is still challenging because even after the solution is known, being able to execute it is not always easy for the average player, since MMO's usually demand elements of situational awareness, some twitch skills, managing the mental stack, or coordination and teamwork, unlike purely intellectual/logical puzzles. (Furthermore, even after discovering one viable solution you can go further and optimize for better ones, which is its own challenge.) You can enjoy playing music, even if you don't have the skills to compose. For players who truly want the challenge of solving the puzzle, nothing stops them from avoiding spoilers. I had a blast solving all the investigation missions in TSW myself and I never allowed the notion that the answer is a google search away to get in the way of fun.

The reason is you can't use footstomp when flying (technically you can, but you have to be basically glued to the ground to do so, which most players can't be bothered to do). Therefore, taking fly on inv/ss effectively means -1 defense powers (no hover). For the case of inv/ss specifically, if you are trying to balance mitigation (and I include debuff res in here) and dps to any degree, it's very hard to beat agility + ageless. (Also, Malewys builds are usually very sensible, but I react strongly to the idea of 5x Underwhelming Farce in boxing.)

Rad/SS

Let's take a look at my original assertion: Inflation is the broad and sustained rise in prices over time. The HC market does not generally have inflation, as I observed. However, that does not change the fact that flipping causes prices to increase, for - and this is the key part - at least some market participants some of the time. Items have two prices, a lowest sell price (ask) and highest buy price (bid). Let's say an item has an ask of 5000 and a buy of 3000. A marketeer who knows the bid and ask accurately can put in a bid for 3100, and when it fills, list it at 4900, for a profit of 1800 inf sans fees. A buyer previously need bid at least 3000 to have their order filled. Now it is 3100. They pay a higher cost. A seller previous need ask for at most 5000 to sell their item. Now it is 4900. They too pay a higher cost because they earn less from the same sale. (Notice that the simultaneity of the buy and sell transactions is irrelevant: they could be 10 years apart, and it wouldn't matter. Any market participant who interacts with the flipper's bid and ask pays the price.) This is where people start getting confused, because some might say, "I don't have to adjust my bid/ask to match the flipper; I can just wait them out." (This is your simultaneity argument.) However, the fact that it is possible for some players to take advantage of price volatility to avoid paying the costs listed above does not change the fact someone else may pay them. If, for example, I pass a law that says seatbelts are no longer mandatory in cars, some people will choose to install and wear seatbelts nonetheless, and be unaffected by this law. However, it would still be correct to say that my law will increase accident fatality rates, because it is the driving population as a whole we look at. "If the bid has gone up but the ask has fallen by the same amount, does it make sense to say that prices have increased". Ans: yes as a whole. We see that the buyer and seller in my example above are both paying a price. A different buyer who is willing to pay the ask (the buy-it-nao price in oldschool marketeer terminology) pays a lower ask. However, everyone else is paying more. If a minority pays less but most people pay more, it would still be correct to say that prices in general have increased. Let's say you aren't convinced by any of this. The clearest indication that flipping causes prices to be higher than they are otherwise (for at least some participants some of the time; I hate sounding like a broken record but this is necessary to avoid being nitpicked to death) is to look at the flipper's account, which consistently gets money without producing goods. The market does not create inf, the HC economy pays no interest, and there is no inflation, so where does that inf come from? It is paid by buyers and sellers in the market. Ergo, the market as a whole (but not necessarily any one player individually) is paying more than it otherwise would have to. Arguing otherwise violates every rule of accounting. Marketeers, since the era of live, have been very hesitant to acknowledge the fact that flipping takes money from the market without producing goods. The reason is probably that people, and this frequently includes marketeers themselves, conflate any mention of "higher price" with "inflation"; and the word "inflation" has a severely negative perception among non-economists, so marketeers have been keen to avoid it. Getting $ out of the market without producing goods also strikes some players as parasitic. However, as I previously noted, flipping is not necessarily a bad thing. Flippers likely do help the market function more efficiently by constantly keeping bids and asks listed. In other words, they provide liquidity, and are being compensated for that value they bring (even if it doesn't create goods). -- A trillionaire marketeer

Given ED-capped D/A/E and no 6th slot bonus (btw I extremely love it when people are so specific about the optimization parameters), buff procs. These at least take advantage of the aura's ability to roll against multiple foes at once to cheat the PPM formula. Offensive procs have shit procrate so do not confer significant benefit. That said, you will occasionally see things like glad fury and achilles' in damage procs if they cannot be fit anywhere else, because -res is damage with more steps, and damage is king in the modern coh meta.

These days it sees most of its use in hami raids. Everywhere else, the critters don't do enough damage or stay alive long enough for it to be worth anything.

This build is pretty good. This is literally the first time I have seen an invuln tanker advice thread not plagued by terribly slot-inefficient builds with very questionable design choices, or worse, builds with invulnerability toggled to 10 and ageless plus an FF proc in kick toggled on. The main thing this build lacks is perma-dull pain, and I also prefer better hasten uptime, but that's me. I have only 1 suggestion. Invuln has a lot of def, so you can build around having 2 stacks of ATIO1 +res proc, which you will consistently have after the first few seconds of combat when the proc is slotted in your filler attack (it's a 6ppm proc, the rates are very high even in a power that's shit for procs otherwise). There is no need to cap with 1 stack of +res proc considering you have 2 mit layers backed up by capped maxhp. So my suggestion is to trim back to 74-76% EN res, and then you can invest more in other areas.

The Camel build is definitely the best one of the ones posted. Beats the JJDraken one in maxhp and def, moderately behind in res, while featuring almost twice the rech and superior buff, debuff, supportive and damage output. It runs gloom moonbeam lifedrain, allowing it to increase dps and self-heal while cutting 1 attack power (and save a lot of slots in the process). There are optimizations to be made, like going 6x cloud senses in fluffy instead of 4x basilisks + 4x eradications. The best part of fluffy is the -tohit aura, as any master illusionist worth her salt will tell you in-between making PI radio teams cry; but overall it is very competently made. Note that it is an endgame (incarnate) build because it will not function without ageless core, but it should not be too hard to adapt it for leveling, before respecing into the final build at 50. You can drop fighting and pick up dark blast, for example (dropping leadership is not recommended because leveling teams always struggle to hit). The reason why JJDraken is not a fan of your build is because conventional wisdom on d3 is not to over-invest in defense. After all, you already debuff enemies tohit, so a heavy investment in defense is overkill. The approach of building res and maybe maxhp instead has merit, but maybe do so in a more slot-efficient way (3x freebird, just lmao). Dark vs soul mastery Dark: Opp gloom (stacks with other stuns you may take) Soul transfer (useful in 4*) Soul: Power boost Do not underestimate power boost. It boosts all your tohit debuffs, including the ones in your dark blasts. It boosts your heals considerably; a powerboosted twilight grasp can easily turn around a bad situation. It even boosts def from toggles, though only when the power boost effect is active. The version in soul also has extremely high uptime, potentially almost 50% on a permahasten+ build. Soul drain gives more potential damage buff than spirit drain (Same bonus per target, but 10 targets vs 5. They have the same uptime ratio). However from my experience it is much, much easier to saturate spirit drain than soul drain and spirit drain works even on corpses. How many melee powers do you have? You can improve your movement and positioning so that when you go into range to use your powers, only a few critters are in range to hit you. Remember that TT immobilizes, so critters cannot crowd around you. By the time you move in, they are all glued to the floor and debuffed into the 9th circle of hell, which will help you avoid getting grouped up on. So melee def is pointless. (In general well-played ranged toons do not need melee def. This is why you will see even kins that only have ranged def.) Rech/slows in tar patch are cute but remember that tar patch does movement slow not recharge reduction (which is never enhanceable, even if it was present) and TT immobilizes. So there is little point in the slow because TT will stop critters from moving and you can just go with commons (boost to +5). Yes, putting ATIO2 +end proc in an aoe will proc it like mad. Buff procs are mad overpowered in aoes. It's why toe +end in rad therapy, or FF + rech in foot stop, are so imbalanced. Exploit ruthlessly. Note that dark consumption is extremely weak. It has 3x the base rech, 360s, than the version in DM. Grass grows faster than this thing recharges. Even blaster nukes only have 145s base rech. Dark consumption will not significantly impact your endurance situation however you slot it so you should avoid heavily investing in it.

Medicine generally, because it has higher availability. Unleash is too slow (when you need HP you tend to need it now) and has too much downtime: it is still only available once every 2 mins at +400% rech. Aid self is actually more hps than healing flames if you spam it (17.0% heal every 24.5s, vs 21.7% heal every 40.9s - unenhanced numbers). But the catch is it's interruptible, so it's harder to kite while healing like melee toons do when forced onto the defensive and you have to beware of dots; and it's a very long animation, so using it will tank your dps. All good shield builds are softcapped without shadowmeld anyway, so you are unlikely to be interrupted. Shadowmeld mainly has value as an additional buffer against high tohit enemies or heavy incoming -def debuff. The reality is more nuanced. A power transfer proc is about +3.35 hps (doesn't scale with maxhp). Panacea on scrappers is slightly weaker at +3.29 hps (ditto). Every 100% of regeneration is about +9.17 hps.* Aid self slotted for heal at 95% ED without field medic is about +21.0 hps. It takes a significant investment to match or beat aid self, especially considering panaceas and numinas are default on most builds. My shield scraps that don't build for passive hps still get 20 hps. The real advantages of the hps procs and regen over aid self are that they do not cost animation time (= no dps loss), are passive (= less human error) and do not cost power slots (= more investment in epics, +def all powers). Even when you do match/beat aid self in terms of hps, this is a pure mathematical analysis that only works out if incoming damage is consistent and even. In real combat conditions against challenging foes (the situation where heals actually matter), incoming damage is spiky and unpredictable. If you are soloing a +3 AV and it lands 2 big hits in short succession that chop off 70% of the green bar, you do not necessarily have the leeway to hang out and wait for procs or regen to kick in. That might mean risking a death resulting in encounter reset. Analysis of risk must consider not only the likelihood of adverse events, but also when those adverse events are likely to happen**. Taking aid self means paying extra for the insurance that you will have hps when you need it most and when its value is highest. * this does scale with maxhp. I have assumed 2200hp, which is at the high end of what accoladed shield scraps will achieve without owts or other buffs active. The AT cap is 2409. ** this is the reason why junk bonds are almost never worth it in your portfolio despite the higher yield, because they tend to be correlated with stocks and crash at the same time stocks do. Why buy bonds that don't do the job bonds are supposed to do, which is reduce volatility and diversify risk? Just buy stocks if you want yield and don't mislead yourself about the amount of risk you're taking. Scrapper shield only has ~70% DDR with 2x AD, so many shield builds are pigeonholed into ageless radial (the other bonuses are generally a good deal for them too). You can keep a rebirth around for when you're not fighting -def critters though. Generally agreed, but who knows? Some people still put stock in being able to do things no insps no temps style, even though I gave it up as suboptimal long ago.

Which is to slot your shield wall +5 res unique. I want to talk about 2 things now that OP changed their epic. Firstly, shadow meld has a very long animation lock at 3.168s. You can move (i.e. you are not rooted) while using it, but attacks will only queue and not execute until it is done animating. Using it in the middle of combat is a dps loss. You usually want to pop it when you are moving in-between spawns, but hold off on refreshing it in-combat unless necessary. This adds a fun element of active play to your more passive 2ndary. Secondly, epic snipes are good but endurance-costly. Moonbeam for example has a base cost of almost 18 end. Your build will not be eps stable with only net +2 eps (since you are a leadership build) and no panacea proc. That's okay however because moonbeam only becomes available at endgame and you will have access to incarnate end management tools. It just means you're more pushed towards taking musc radial (instead of core) for alpha and maybe ageless radial instead of barrier for destiny. Experiment and adjust as necessary based on the severity of end issues you experience.