1seanv

I love my Em/Inv scrapper as well. He's neck and neck with my Kat/SR for fun.. For durability I have to give the nod to my Kat/SR scrapper. The most versatile and tough character I've made, if solely because he barely ever gets debuffed. My /Inv is super tough, but group -def debuffs, end drains, and psionics make him work - whereas my /SR ignores thar. I'm not sure I've ever been 2 shot on my /SR unless it was off in the distant past and I wasn't paying attention. I don't even worry when I see orange cuz he just gets tougher.

I remember liking my SS/Elec brute. SS puts out solid single target damage once you're double stacking rage and slamming ko blows left and right.

How to fix Regen: 1. Instant Healing is a toggle. 2. -regen resist at 90% spread across a couple powers. 3. Moment of Glory activation time cut in half. That's it.

For primary I would take Energy Melee or Super Strength. I've read alot of posts on best primaries, and best dps, but in my actual play, EM and SS have always provided me with the best experience. I've had both on max io'd toons and the thing with them is they need HIGH recharge to really shine. EM needs it for it's 1-2 TF+ET combo with frequent build ups. I now prefer EM on scrapper for higher burst damage. SS really shines with high global recharge and FF procs. Once recharge is high enough you can almost chain Knockout Blow, Footstomp, and haymaker. It has very good mitigation thanks to footstomps knockdown, and you can get it even higher if you took the kb proc for hand clap, but I wouldn't take hand clap just for that. Plenty of sets have higher dps, higher burst, but as an all around set, SS with high recharge is really good. For secondaries, the best I have used are Invulnerability, Super Reflexes, and Energy Aura. Through my testing , maxed out /SR will probably outperform the other 2 in 95% of the content because of its high defense and DDR. When built right all you need is a tray of greens and rarely will you run out of greens. /INV maxed out is amazing. You don't need the T9 with IO's, and the overall mitigation of defense, resistance, +HP/big heal is very strong. Way stronger than it some times seems to be given credit for. Paired with the +regen incarnate and all the small heal io's - absolute beast to anything except some psionics. /EA on a brute is crazy good. Medium DDR, but you can double Overload for 6 minutes of 3200hp, stupid high defenses, and recovery. Only real weakness imo is psionics which is why I choose /SR over /EA despite /EA's killer T9. So if I had to pick a best brute, imo, it would probably be: SS/SR SS/INV SS/EA SS/SR built with max hp and resists in mind would probably be the strongest overall, having the least weaknesses of the three.

In RWZ - the level 54 scrapper challenge, I spent a couple of hours running both a maxed /Inv and /WP brute. There is a moderate amount of psionic damage incoming, and the /Inv brute still outperformed the /WP. It is really splitting hairs though because /WP is a fantastic armor and for pretty much most things - un-killable when maxed out. We share similar opinions about SR. My maxed Kat/SR scrapper has handled everything I've thrown at it - without issue. The set overperforms 95% of the time, and only rarely underperforms when a couple of hits within a short window come through. People tend to seriously underestimate just how awesome SR is when fully io'd and incarnated. I like /Elec, and had a decently io'd SS/Elec on live, but I didn't have the greatest build for him. I would guess that /Elec on a tanker would be awesome because the resists are so high you can just focus mostly on defense/hp. That said, imo, the two toughest armor sets overall are /Inv and /SR. I would throw /Dark in for second place.

I have a force feedback and -res proc in grave knights, theft of essence in twilight grasp, and that's it. Once I hit 50 and run more challenging content I'll see about reducing the -tohit and adding other stuff in like you have.

I modified your build: https://www.midsreborn.com/builds/download.php?uc=1433&c=710&a=1420&f=HEX&dc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our build is probably better overall because you are slightly over soft cap for most of the damage types, whereas mine is significantly lower on S/L/E/N. In real world terms your build will take less hits on average, but mine will regen more hp, has almost 23% more psionic resist, and has a true get out of jail card with hibernate every 80 seconds. I don't like Shadow Meld because to me it's a power you use pre-combat vs mid with its 3 second cast time. Anything with a 3 second cast time is liable to get you killed when surrounded by enemies. I realize that with your defense that generally wouldn't be an issue, but I prefer powers that cast almost instantaneously and can completely turn your character around. I think your build with its higher defense would outperform mine on average by a decent margin, but mine would be better dealing with cascading defense failure and the occasional massive damage spike. I remember testing my two brutes in RWZ against the classic scrapper challenge spawns and my /INV brute always outsurvived my /WP brute - ALWAYS. Both were IO'd to the max. The only thing I could think of for this was because the /INV could handle the occasional bout of chunky damage getting through better with Dull Pain's huge heal and hp capping, and because with /INV having better resists in general. This is kinda what led me to hibernate - the ability to deal with those times when /WP's layered mitigation gets overwhelmed. I think your build is great. I wouldn't have thought to slot it like you did to get all those types of defense over the soft cap. Also, I definitely do not claim to make great builds, but thought I'd offer an alternative and the reasons for it.

Powerleveled my Necro/Dark to level 40. Stopped at 33, io'd him, put the 4 pet uniques in soul extraction, ran a few missions - and immediately noticed how awesome Dark Servant aka Fluffy is. Missed his presence. The DS REALLY ties the set together. PL'd him to 40 and then put 4 Dark Watchers into DS. Immediately noticed a significant power increase. I only have the game on +1/3, but pulling multiple spawns at once is np. Occasionally one of the lil zombies will die, which just gives me another pet with Soul Extraction. I'll be bumping to +2/2 and will most likely max out on something like +4/4-6. I feel like Necro/Dark does best with small numbers of difficult targets rather than large spawns. I pretty much play him how I did on live - fearsome stare the spawn, lay down tar patch, goto my pets to the most annoying mob and single target one mob after another while popping the heal everytime it's up and stepping out abit here and there to toss another fear out. I will put Darkest Night on a particularly annoying mob and ignore them until last, but only for certain spawns. Bosses get it applied at the start after the fear. Feels very powerful at 40. I would argue the most powerful/safest of my half dozen pl'd toons including my kat/sr and em/inv scrappers, fire/em blaster, and ss/regen brute. Granted they all feel powerful, but the Necro/Dark is casually walking through groups of mobs with nary a scratch - even groups that would make my monsterous em/inv scrapper work for it. My memories served me correctly. Necro/Dark is a very powerful combination and fun to play. Also, the heal is like asmr inducing sort of.

I always take placate, both for control and critical hit on demand. With a Gaussians proc in build up and hide proc in as, you can bu+AS 1 mob, reside proc, crit total focus another mob, placate crit bonesmasher the 3rd, and then crit AS the 4th. Potentially 4 dead mobs in 4 hits.

I just built a fire/em blaster. He's sitting at 30% ranged defense and 22% melee. Currently having no issues running +2/2 at level 35. Fully io'd he'll have soft cap s/l/e, 160% recharge. At that rate everything will die before they do much more than scratch him.

I don't know that offhand, but with hasten, couple lotg, and a couple purp sets - that'd probably do it. I'd mostly use it when dropping your rain and blizzard powers.

I'd probably go with ice/em or ice/rad. /em because power boost will make your slows brutal with ice, and rad because if the recharge and other good stuff I'm forgetting atm.

Blappers aren't about being aoe. They are about hitting really hard. My post was mainly talking about pvp blapping, but having a /MA blapper, I'd still choose em for the boost range and power boost. With ss and boost range you can melee snipe with ease, land a serious stun, and fire your attacks from alot farther away. Not to mention powerboost will boost your heals, regen, defense etc.

THE go-to blappers on live and for pvp were fire/em and ice/em. A typical encounter with a fire/em blapper in pvp went like this. Blapper hits powerboost, boost range, aim+buildup, then super speeds up to you with blaze, fireball, hits you with energy punch or bonesmasher, and then finishes with total focus. If you aren't dead yet, hits you with another blaze. STUPID burst damage in about 4-5 seconds total. Nothing could touch the burst damage of this. A stalker could, but that required a successful AS which was difficult with good players because they were setup to see you once you got within melee range of them. I'm sure there are many combos that can blap effectively in pve - several of which would be safer and better all around than fire/em or ice/em, but for sheer hard hitting power, you cannot beat these two.