Story Archer

First off, thank you very much for the time and energy expended in this response - you've given me a lot to consider as I reorient myself on the game I knew well years ago but have a great deal to catch up on now. It really felt like to me that DM/SR would have my bases covered with a self-heal as part of my attack chain. I've started a Katana/Willpower for now while I consider DM/SR vs. DM/Ninjitsu, since the +DEF of Divine Avalanche seems to help out a lot in the early levels. I also started a Dual Blades/Regen when I first returned - it was my second toon - and while I like it, I tend to prefer to focus my attentions on the fight, my positioning, the various threats I'm dealing with, etc. - pretty much everything except which defensive clicks I need to be making, so I'm not 100% certain it's for me. It always felt like you run into a fight and then spend the first half of it trying to manage your recovery from the Alpha. I'm not 100% sure what difficulty level I'm going to be using, I figured I feel my way through and adjust it as I went - obviously I'd like to run on the hardest difficulty I reasonably can. Again, thanks for the response, I'm re-reading it now to be sure I've absorbed the advice fully.

G'day all! I recently rediscovered CoH (SO happy) and I'm trying to decide on a Scrapper for leveling. Play will primarily be solo with occasional duoing and teams only rarely. My main focus is to fully enjoy the pre-50 content. At the moment figure standard IO's only - my altitis combined with my personal aversion to power-leveling usually prevents me from being able to dive too deeply into sets - maybe a handful of uniques or procs in key spots and that's about it. My first thought is a DM/SR. I'm not so worried about the -ToHit synergy with the high defenses of SR because I'm assuming minions won't last long enough for it to matter while bosses and above aren't really affected by it enough to matter. What I like about DM is a self-heal to compliment your high defense that can legitimately be worked into your attack chain, and an almost chainable series of AoE attacks, including an area Fear and an area damage/self-buffs. Heals, Recovery and Damage buffs that all simultaneously deal damage seems like a really efficient way to play. What I like about SR is the fact that it doesn't have to worry about -DEF causing a cascading defensive failure and the little Recharge buff it gives you. Defense always seemed to be a 2-for-1 because not getting hit also offers protection vs. mez effects. The biggest downside of this set seems to be that I have to take almost every power in both sets and I start running out of IO slots fast. Is this an accurate evaluation? I've looked at Ninjitsu instead of SR, but I have zero experience with it so I'm not sure how they compare head-to-head and - embarrassing as it is to say - the names make it difficult at times to keep straight what does what when I'm planning the build. I'd be interested in seeing build suggestions (again, I'm probably only using generic IO's, but suggestions for the few 'must have's would be appreciated), in part because I'm not sure what a smooth attack chain looks like once it has incorporated the AoE/self-buff attacks and I'm having trouble figuring out what powers can/should be skipped. Would the Fighting Pool/Combat Jumping still be needed and what Ancillary Pool would compliment it best? Even as an AoE attack, is Touch of Fear worth including in the build? Would a Brute be a straight-up improvement over a Scrapper in this case? I'm not sure what the differences are beyond the effects of their inherents. My other thought was Katana / Willpower. What I like about this combination is the defensive compliment that Divine Avalanche seems to bring to all of the regen and layered defenses offered by Willpower, making leveling 10-40 a much smoother experience. I also like auto powers that give +regen and +recovery and that the sets aren't so power/slot intensive. What I don't love is that it seems like Lethal is heavily resisted and Divine Avalanche only benefits melee (the main reason this choice is currently in second place). I'm open to other suggestions for this particular playstyle but these are the two I'm looking the hardest at for the reasons stated. Not really a fire or ice guy, either. TIA for any ideas, thoughts or suggestions. I really can't tell you how happy I am to have rediscovered CoX after all this time. 🙂