ClawsandEffect

You should really have at least your Alpha slot to tier 3 before you start the Dark Astoria arcs. It gives you a level shift and makes you effectively level 51. That part of the game is meant to be more difficult in order to give Incarnate characters something more challenging to do.

If I'm chasing typed defense I like to split the Scrappers Strike set 3 and 3 between 2 different powers. You can get the other bonuses elsewhere, but when it's Superior getting a 10% S/L defense boost for the cost of 3 slots in 2 powers is pretty hard to pass up. Not as useful if you're running a positional set though.

The only set I will never play on a stalker is Claws. Losing both Spin and Follow Up is brutal.

My proposal isn't just for resistance though. It's for all survivability aspects. Resistance, defense, and mez protection. Maybe regeneration too. I don't think one aspect of that overlapping with a somewhat similar mechanic that exists within a single powerset is a good enough reason to discard the idea entirely. If overlap is to be completely avoided then the original developers already failed on that when: -Scrappers and Stalkers were both given the ability to crit as an inherent -Tankers and Brutes were both given the ability to taunt enemies they hit. -Blaster damage goes up as they attack, very similarly to how Brutes work. There's plenty of overlap already existing in the game. This would be a unique mechanic for an entire AT, rather than one minor aspect of a single powerset that most players don't even notice happening, and that was not part of the original design of said powerset. The resistance buff as health decreases was a QoL change that came along later. What I had in mind conceptually is essentially the old adage "The best defense is a good offense". Basically the enemy is so overwhelmed by the ferocity of your assault that their ability to fight back is reduced. Represented in game by the effectiveness of your defensive powers increasing as the bar for the inherent increases. Sample powerset, based on Martial Assault Dominator secondary: 1- Shuriken Throw 2- Ninja Reflexes (both Ninjitsu defense toggles rolled into one power) 3- Trick Shot 4- Mez Protection + Regen toggle power, possibly Recovery as well* 5- Blinding Powder or a similar soft control power (maybe a version of Smoke Flash that stuns instead?) 6- Stealth power. Jury is out on whether this should give increased damage while stealthed. 7- Self heal or Absorb click power. 8- Masterful Throw 9- Exploding Shuriken, but make it a targeted AoE. Because it's silly that an exploding object doesn't damage anything around it. Making it work like Thunder Strike in that the primary target takes more damage than nearby enemies would be fine. In this case, if the defense toggle started at roughly Weave levels and increased to Scrapper base level as the bar increases towards full, that would probably be about ideal. Same for resistance powers. What I don't know, however, is how enhancing those powers would affect this mechanic. *I know Ninjitsu has click mez protection, but I can't for the life of me think of how you could make a click power increase in effectiveness based on where a bar is at. Heal and absorb click powers is easier. They would grant more heal/absorb the fuller the bar is when you use them.

Here's an idea for an inherent. Inverse Fury bar. Call it Grit or something like that. Only increases when you attack, not when you are attacked. Instead of increasing damage it increases the effectiveness of your armor and survivability powers. Example: Mez protection. The base mez protection power in the secondary has a low value, maybe Mag 1. The more you attack and build up the bar the more the mez protection builds up until you hit Mag 10 or whatever Scrapper mez protection maxes out at. Same works for resistance and defense. Lower values to start, but as your Grit bar fills up you end up somewhere around where a Sentinel is on survivability. The best part is the code for this already exists in the game in the form of several IOs. Specifically I'm thinking of the Reactive Defenses Scaling Damage Resist IO. It goes from 3% to 10% depending on where your health bar is at. I see no reason why something similar couldn't be done by tying a value to an increasing bar instead. The overall idea here is that this AT needs to keep going to keep itself safe. If it is caught flat-footed it is in trouble, but as long as it can keep attacking it is relatively safe. It also gives a reason for the ranged powers to exist. If you can attack at range too, you can build up your Grit bar a little bit before you dive into melee range instead of having to jump in and pray you can get enough attacks off to survive the alpha strike. I'll put some more thought into it and maybe we can work out something feasible. I did get a couple minor suggestions through on the live forums (me and a few other people are the reason Resilience in Regen works on all damage types and I basically named the Annihilation set) so I think I can work out something that is balanced enough to present to the devs. I like the idea in general, let me work on it and I'll revisit this thread with what I come up with.

Scrapper Primary/Dominator Secondary. Swap out the melee attacks in the Dominator Secondary for armor/survivability powers that match the theme of the set. Done. Example of a secondary: The Martial Assault Secondary is already really cool with a bunch of shuriken throwing attacks. Since shuriken are the theme for the ranged attacks, take a few defensive powers from Ninjitsu (there's a little bit of overlap there already). Do the same with the other Assault sets and Robert is your mothers brother. No idea what a good name or inherent for it would be.

What I'm getting out of that table has nothing to do with Water Jet. Shout needs some love. There is no reason a power that takes that long to cast should have such poor damage. The only balancing factor I can think of that could explain it is the presence of -res all over the set Shout is in. But I still think a power that slow should hit like a truck.

BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!!!

That's good to know. I'll be stretching my build wizardry muscles soon.

RWZ Challenge is pretty much obsolete now, because it's hard to find anything that CAN'T do it. It was more a thing back when purples were insanely expensive, and PVP IOs, Winters, and ATOs didn't even exist yet. But back when it was still relevant, someone doing it on a Regen only using their tier 1 attack was pretty damn impressive.

My main is Claws/WP. He's stupidly durable with 90% S/L resists. Just for fun I parked him in the middle of a giant mob of Romans in a solo ITF while I made dinner. I came back a half hour later and he was still standing there, even though his defense was debuffed into the dirt and everything was hitting him. He just didn't care. My main farmer is Claws/Fire. I wanted something a little different from the usual agriculture go-tos. He's fun, and with Permahasten his Spin recharges in like 3 seconds, so his AoE output is pretty bonkers. I have a Katana/Rad that is also pretty insane. I don't think he's actually died in months now.

I'm currently leveling a Water/Kin and it's loads of fun. I very rarely pick a powerset before a name. I usually think of a name I think is cool and then figure out what powersets fit it. In this case the name was Tiderush.

I'll get around to making a Regen as crazy as possible at some point. Got a long list of characters to work on before that though. Fortunately, I already have a Claws/Regen scrapper sitting at 44. Very curious about 1 thing that I haven't seen addressed. Does the slow resistance from Winter sets apply to -recharge too?

ToF is nice. My tank has it.

I'd have to agree that DM/SD is probably one of the most well rounded combos you can have. Especially if (not sure here) the -to hit in DM is actually debuffs their To Hit and not their Accuracy. If it debuffs To Hit, then the enemies that have a naturally higher base To Hit can be brought down to a 5% chance to hit you if you're softcapped (and why wouldn't you be with Shield?). Pair that with the fact that the second strongest ST attack in DM is also a self heal and you've got a pretty solid toon that shouldn't run across many things that it can't at least hold its own with.

I had the same problem with my Sonic/Devices blaster. Put the Gaussians BU proc in Targeting Drone, and noticed that it frequently fired when I got no benefit from it. I eventually moved it to Amplify and it worked much better.

It's really fun. In the Before Times my build softapped ranged and AoE defense just standing there and softcapped melee with one hit from Parry. And I did it using mostly sets like Makos Bite, Scirocco's Dervish, Aegis, etc. Resistances were decent. S/L/N/P were all at least 60%. I rebuilt the same combo as a tank. Those same 4 resistances will be hardcapped at 90 and F/C will be around 75-80%. Even Energy, which is DA's hole, will be around 60%. It's fun on any AT.

RWZ Challenge: Take on a group of level 54 Rikti that includes a minimum of 3 bosses. You are not allowed to use temp powers OR inspirations. Only the powers included in your build. It used to be a really good benchmark for how good your character was. The advent of all the additional survival powers and Incarnate abilities kinda trivialized it. Iggy Kamikaze pulled it off on a Claws/Regen scrapper using only Swipe. No other powers.

DP/Martial is loads of fun. I built mine with the concept that his only actual superpower is teleportation (think Nightcrawler). I use the pool that gives you Jaunt (name escapes me at the moment) with a couple macros to get me into and out of melee in a hurry. TP to target and another one that shoots me 50 feet straight backward. It's one of the only characters I never bothered to work out a specific attack chain for and it's amazingly fun. He's Ike playing a John Woo action movie. I also took Mace Mastery for Scorpion Shield so he's softcapped to S/L/E defense and T4 Clarion for mez protection. At level 50 he is the most survivable blaster I've ever built by a wide margin, and spends at least 70% of his time in melee.

Thanks for the input, guys. I think I'm going to go with my instinct and put it in Lunge at first and see how I like it there. My thought process is as follows: If it is in Lunge, when it activates I have 3 choices of what I activate next depending on what I'm fighting. If I'm knee deep in a big spawn I can fire Spine Burst and stand a decent chance of critting on a good chunk of them. Several targets, Ripper. Single hard target, Impale. I don't always like a set attack chain I never deviate from. On some builds I like options so I can adjust my play for the situation.

To be fair, the addition of the Theft of Essence Chance for End proc was probably the single biggest immediate game changer that happened to any set. Dark Regeneration had a base end cost of a full third of your end bar, which is brutal on a set that is already an endurance hog. The ToE proc on average would proc on 2 enemies if you were in a full mob, which lowered it's end cost to around what Reconstruction or Healing Flames was at. I struggled with my build before that IO existed. It wasn't until afterward that I was able to make it awesome. And I have to give credit where it's due. I wasn't some uber-build genius when I started out. @Bill Z Bubba and @Werner , among others, taught me a LOT.

Challenge accepted, guys. If Iggy could pull off a RWZ challenge using nothing but Swipe on his Claws/Regen, then I'm pretty sure I can come up with something that works. IMO what would help Regen the most right now is a renewing absorb shield like the Sentinel version got.

In fact, I was one of the pioneers of Sword/Dark scrapper builds. If you browse the archived original forums you'll find a number of threads in which @Werner and myself discussed them at length. My build was only a little bit worse than his crazy Katana/Dark, but was orders of magnitude cheaper. I built him in response to someone telling me Dark Armor was the worst set in the game. I proved them wrong 🙂

Oh no, I'm fine on the overall build. I have an /Ice brute already and my wife has a Spines that works pretty well, so I'm picking her brain on that half a little. I don't really need help in that regard. I'm literally just not sure where the best place for the Critical Strikes proc would be for Spines.

Decided to roll up a Spines/Ice scrapper as a general all arounder to have fun with. Not super pressed about pulling off crazy stuff with him, since my powerset choice was based mostly on getting the name Chilling Scene and the fact that I can't recall ever having seen a Spines/Ice (the fact I don't see a thread talking about it in the first 10 pages supports that). Gotta admit though, I don't know Spines very well. It's the only classic scrapper primary I never played to a high level. Therefore, I'm a little stumped on where to put the 50% crit chance proc. My instinct is to put it in Lunge so I have the option of using the crit proc on either Ripper or Spine Burst when it fires. What say thee, oh Scrapper forum hivemind?