ClawsandEffect

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?

@oldskool Could never get into DP on a Sentinel, but my DP/Martial blaster is one of my favorite characters to play. I intentionally built him with no set attack chain in mind so I could just hit whatever power happens to be recharged and in range. He's a teleporter, so that includes the melee attacks. He looks like an over the top action movie when I play him. My favorite Sentinel is my Dark/SR. I managed to solo a MoITF run with her before Sentinels were buffed. She's insanely good now.

For someone new to both the game and tanking in general, I'm going to second the Willpower suggestion. It's a purely autopower and toggle based set, so you don't have to worry about remembering to click a power to keep yourself alive. That frees you up to focus on learning how to position yourself and work on aggro management to help keep your teammates alive. As far as your offensive set goes, pretty much anything will work pretty well with Willpower. I have a Willpower/Dark Melee tank that just doesn't die. Ever. The insanely high regeneration in a mob paired with a self heal that you don't have to think about using because it's also one of your better attacks is just gold.

SD/StJ is a pretty great combo for tanks in general.

I've really been enjoying my Fire/Nature Corruptor. It's great for players like me who hate clicking on teammates names.

I'll throw out an out of the box suggestion: Sonic Corruptor. -res combined with Scourge could be tasty. If you're shooting for something like a Pylon test or an AV fight where you have a large pool of HP to whittle down, a Sonic Blast Corruptor would exponentially increase its DPS as the health bar of what you're beating on goes down. -res on every attack combined with a chance to crit that increases the lower the health of the target should lead to some pretty crazy DPS numbers. It will start slower than other things, but toward the end of the fight it would ramp up pretty fast.

My BS/DA scrapper from live disputes your not optimal assertion. He was stupid good.