Werner

LOL, yes. If I were doing Shield Defense, I'd be shooting for 59% melee (incarnate soft cap), 46.5% ranged and AoE (one small purple from incarnate soft cap). But Agility can get us there, and slightly past, so then I'd probably back off of powers or set bonuses very slightly in favor of other things in the build. Hard to say.

It might imply that the only situation in which we'd ever use Kick is when radically recharge debuffed, in which case a big buff to recharge might be the most useful thing to us. I never thought of it before, and I don't know if that was the intent, but suddenly it sounds like a good idea. 🙂

I'd describe the melee defense as 1.3% too little, rather than way, way too much. 🙂 Soft cap defense means your defense has lowered most enemy chance to hit you to as low as it can go. Any more defense will not change their chance to hit you. The soft cap for normal enemies is 45% defense, for incarnate enemies is 59%. Defense beyond those numbers can be situationally useful when dealing with defense debuffs, or the occasional enemies with higher to-hit like snipers, maybe other situations I'm not thinking of. Exemplared down and running +6 content? I did that once. Hard cap resistance is 90% on Brutes. No matter how much more resistance you pile on, the game won't apply any more than 90%.

In a sense, healing is fundamental. All damage mitigation can be considered merely a multiplier for your healing. If you're running Dark Armor, say, with massive recharge and Dark Regeneration for a full heal every 10 seconds, you're going to be amazing... right up until the moment you faceplant. And I say this as someone who loves Dark Armor and has pushed it hard. I did my share of Stupid Scrapper Tricks. But I wouldn't want to play a team tank like that. You gotta have defense. You gotta have resistance. I consider those more important in the real world, no matter what the numbers on paper say. But once you have them nice and solid, more healing is definitely better. I'd personally be uncomfortable playing a character without either high regeneration or a good fast heal. But you can definitely tank with sets without either if your other layers are really solid.

Thank you. I looked through that and some other posts on farming, and set up a keybind/popmenu to make and eat reds. That dropped my time to 5:30. My hit points stay just fine without greens or my heal despite not being at the fire soft cap. My endurance drains quickly, so I need to either hit Consume or a blue now and then. It'll be nice if Ageless makes that no longer a concern, but it's not really a problem.

I respec'd and got everything slotted this morning. Probably cost around 800 million? No boosters bought or used yet. T3 alpha, no other incarnate powers yet. No accolades yet. No inspiration-combining macro yet. I did about 6:30 on the +4x8 exemplared to 49 Comicon fire farm, definitely slower than the pros, but not disappointingly so. I could have ignored my health, and barely had to glance at my endurance, but I was chugging inspirations like mad, so that means little. It seemed pretty smooth in use, with the main annoyance being how much time I spent eating inspirations instead of attacking, so I need to track down the combine and eat reds thingy. Then we'll see how my health and endurance are without inspirations to help. Hopefully I can still hang in there with liberal use of Healing Flames and Consume. And if not yet, hopefully once I have my incarnate powers and accolades in place. So far so good. 👍

Well, yes, but it's hard to generate Fury when you're stealthing around like a Stalker. That said, a little stealth can help break up the alpha strike as it takes some enemies a few seconds longer to react than others, and sometimes every little bit helps.

I assume it's the same as it is for Foot Stomp and Burn. I use hover on my SS/Fire. Just always push yourself into the ground before starting to attack. I rarely have a problem, but it is a little annoying in those rare cases where I'm somehow just slightly too high. But I have wings. What can you do. 😉

I absolutely agree. Maybe the only complicated question is what counts as sacrificing too much. Me personally, I use a survivability spreadsheet that splits an arbitrary amount of incoming DPS out by position and type, calculates what percentage gets through each combination, then weights those percentages to get an overall percentage. Add up all your sources of healing and regeneration, divide by the percentage, and you have a number that in a very rough sense tells you the DPS that you can survive indefinitely. That's definitely overly simplistic. Defense also helps by preventing status effects and debuffs from landing. Resistance also helps by being less commonly debuffed (is this true? am I making this up?), and by smoothing out the loss of hit points, making it easier to respond with heals. But even setting that aside, things are still complicated in some cases. The simplest possible case might be, say, a normal enemy with a single damage type. Let's say we're currently sitting at 40% defense to that type, 80% resistance. And let's say we can take a set bonus for either 5% defense, or one for 6% resistance. defense: (50%-45%)*(100%-80%) = 1% damage gets through resistance (50%-40%)*(100%-86%) = 1.4% damage gets through Defense is better, ignoring other important factors. But what about against an incarnate enemy? defense: (64%-45%)*(100%-80%) = 3.8% damage gets through resistance: (64%-40%)*(100%-86%) = 3.36% damage gets through Resistance is better, ignoring other important factors. These are arbitrary numbers, of course, chosen to illustrate a difference. I'm not saying to always go defense against normal enemies, always go resistance against incarnate enemies. That would be silly. And things get more complicated weighing positional defense vs. typed resistance, but the spreadsheet will dutifully return numbers for each to compare. What is this "team" thing you're talking about? It sounds like it greatly improves DPS and survivability! 😉 Soaking the alpha is definitely important. But I'm used to a long hard solo slog from there against +4x8 enemies, in the old game, at least. Nothing short-lived was going to keep me vertical for long. But I'll agree that your teaming preferences are another factor. On big teams, soaking the alpha strike is probably significantly more important than being able to hang in there indefinitely. Perhaps that's also why I measure survivability in terms of what I can survive indefinitely rather than time to defeat, even though in most situations, having any sort of reasonable time to defeat is sufficient. (Edit: Mind you, this is in the context of Brute tanks, in which case the team is a given, and the rules I'm used to following change.)

45% defense, even without DDR, is lovely and should never be underestimated - if you're fighting non-incarnate enemies that don't spam defense debuffs. If that describes how you play, take the 45% and call it good, because what DSorrow and I are talking about doesn't apply. But if you're out there doing incarnate content without big buffs and/or fighting crowds of defense debuffers without DDR, the luster of that shiny 45% defense fades quickly. Yes, of course 45% is still better than 35%, and if you can get it with little compromise, definitely go for it, but the difference is no longer a stark black or white, alive or dead. Things get more nuanced. Side note that I'm sure everyone knows but is probably worth repeating - even without DDR, defense protects against defense debuffs since the debuff has to hit you. Unfortunately, once they pry that lid open, and they will if you're pushing the envelope, things can go south fast.

#4 looks to be going for "reasonable" recharge, 25 / (1.584 + 1.32 + 1.584 + 1.584 + 1.584 + 1.848) = 263% #5 needs 25 / (6.072+1.32) = 298% recharge in Crushing Uppercut. That's still doable. #6 is asking Crushing Uppercut to recharge in 1.584 + 1.32 + 1.584 + 1.584 = 6.072 seconds, taking 25 / 6.072 = 412% recharge. Technically possible, but probably not in a sustained fashion. But a massive recharge chain that should be doable in real world builds is this one at 327% in Crushing Uppercut: SB>RC>HB>SB>RB>CU I suspect that's the best DPS you're going to get on a practical Street Justice Brute. (Edit: Eh, maybe Initial Strike instead of Heavy Blow would be better DPS at slightly higher recharge, not sure. But I prefer the knockdown of Heavy Blow.) Or if you're an attack chain minimalist like I am, you could even consider giving up your biggest DPS attack and doing this at a nice, casual 8 / (1.584 + 1.32) = 276% recharge: SB>RC>HB So simple, and the additional stacking of -resist at least helps lessen the sting of losing Crushing Uppercut. I doubt I'll tempt anyone into it, though. Still, if someone is running the chain I first suggested, they have the recharge and attacks to run this one too, and compare DPS on a Pylon, say. I'd be curious about the results.

I have been coming around to this way of thinking. I had a Katana/Dark Scrapper in the old game with I think 75% melee/lethal defense, ranged and AoE around 35%. Solid resists, but not as good as you can get now. Defense debuffs were about all that could kill him, but it felt like a lot of groups in the end game had them, so he was squishier in play than on paper. Even so, he could usually survive pretty heavy defense debuffs by leaning on his resistance and his healing. That's even more practical in the current game. These days I'm paying more attention to having all the layers in place, even if no single layer is great. Particularly in a world where the new soft cap is 59%, that's usually just not practical on a non-defense character. What is practical these days is intentionally adding a lot more resistance, even at the cost of some defense. Ageless can offer some defense debuff resistance. Not great, at least at the tail end, but it's something. Barrier is another way of handling defense debuffs, but it spikes then crashes too quickly, I've found. If I was sitting with 70% defense debuffs on me, say, fighting a group of +4x8, there was some chance that Barrier was just delaying the inevitable for a short while. I don't have any Ageless experience to compare, but I'm hopeful that it will work a little better. And switching from a Dark Armor toon to a Fiery Aura toon, I'm also missing the fear protection. I don't think fear has straight out killed me yet, but I'm also not pushing the envelope yet. So these days, I want to have it all - good defense, good resists, good debuff resistance, more status protection and resistance, and solid heals/regen. I now feel like it all matters. No more hitting 45% and calling it done, if that was ever a thing. I never called it done, but I'm definitely paying more attention to everything else these days.

Gah! Sorry, yes, I got confused which forum I was on. I'm definitely more likely to take Assault on a Scrapper than on a Brute. Not mandatory, but definitely to be considered.

Bio Armor is full of powers I wouldn't want to give up, but if I was tight on power picks, I'd consider giving up Parasitic Aura, because I like powers that are always on more than situational buffs. But there are lots of options. If you're not locked into Stealth and Invisibility (I assume they're just LotG mules), I'd give both of those up. I'd have to do more calculations than I want to to see, but it's possible that your endurance would be just fine without Conserve Power and Physical perfection. Add a Panacea +regen/recovery to Health to help out. Assault means less on a Brute than on many archetypes since you should be running with a high bonus to damage full time. So swapping that for Maneuvers is something I'd likely do. Vengeance can be a LotG mule if you need one. Well, if you take Tactics. I take Tactics. You don't have any confuse and fear protection, but at least Tactics would give you some resistance. And make it easier to hit some things. And it'll take two Rectified Reticle for +1.88% smashing/lethal defense, and so help with the defense goals for one power pick and one slot.

My advice is to not take that advice. 😉 You might not want Maneuvers. It was just an example of a way to improve defense. It's pricey on the endurance, and for a small benefit, though it's nice that it buffs the team, even if that's not a Scrapper's job. I usually include it, but not without considering what else I might do with the power picks, slots, and endurance. Tough and Weave I put in every build without even thinking.

I know this isn't the intent, but the build looks almost deliberately constructed to avoid defense. Look at the sixth slot bonus on your powers that only have five of a set - they're almost all defense. There's no Weave, no Maneuvers. Even the missing defense bonuses from the sixth slot are the wrong sort for Bio - positional rather than typed. Adding Tough would cap your smashing/lethal resistance, and gets you into Weave. You'll actually be well over the smashing/lethal resistance cap with Tough, making it easier to swap out sets that are giving you smashing/lethal resistance in favor of sets that help your defense or other numbers.

2% def + 20% = 2.4%, not 2.2%. But it's also a 2.28% defense base, and you might go with a level 50 IO at +25.5% = 2.86%, so 0.58% defense from the IO rather than the 0.2% you thought. However, that's not how you would actually slot Maneuvers in most end game builds. Usually you need all the Luck of the Gambler defense/+7.5% global recharge IOs as you can get, so that's your first slot. It costs a lot of endurance, so you probably want the LotG defense/endurance in the next slot. Those two slots only bring it up to 3% defense. And if you're a big spender, use enhancement boosters to take them to +5, and to 3.18% defense. Or if you have no endurance trouble, you could go with a straight LotG defense in that second slot, for 3.21% even level, or 3.42% at +5. You could even use a third slot, but you're starting to run into diminishing returns. These are all small numbers, but a good build is an accumulation of a lot of small numbers into much bigger numbers. Still, your initial conclusion of Maneuvers being a waste of slots is probably mostly true. I'd two slot it in most builds, maybe three, but that would probably be the extent of it. Slots are precious.

If you don't have Mids' Reborn, I suggest downloading it. I don't have this version yet so can't personally vouch for it, but I assume it works like previous versions. https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/7645-mids-reborn-hero-designer/ When it's booted up, Window -> Set Bonus Finder. Scroll down the list on the left to find all the different Def and Defense bonuses. Start clicking on those, and you'll see the different sets that offer that kind of defense. You can see the percentage in a different scroll. I typically check each from high to low to see what might be practical. You can also look at other people's posted builds to see the approaches they've taken to improve their defense. In addition to Weave and Combat Jumping (or Hover), I usually take Maneuvers. It's not a big bump, and it costs a fair bit of endurance, but I think it's still worth it, and it gets me into Tactics, and it's team-friendly.

LOL, yeah. But Scrappers aren't needed either. I doubt any archetype is needed. Put together a random team and have some fun. 🙂

I play with a friend who often tosses enemies out of my Burn patch. Do I like it? No. Does it ruin my fun? No. We're both having fun. And there's no reason why my fun (fire! fire! fire!) should be more important than his fun (whee! look at 'em fly!). But we aren't on PUGs. On a PUG, it's harder to know what people like or not. Maybe most of them hate knockback. If so, even if you think their hatred is irrational, avoid doing knockback. That's just courtesy. But maybe most of them don't mind. If so, even if you hate knockback, keep it to yourself and let others have their fun. That's just courtesy. If as a result of respecting their fun you're not having fun, find another group. No reason for anyone to have a miserable time playing a game.

Thank you for checking and testing how it worked. I have a bid in on a Performance Shifter now. Already have the Panacea.

I don't remember an immortality thread, and you weren't talking to me, and this surely isn't what you're referring to, but I do remember one of my survivability spreadsheets getting reworked by someone, I no longer remember who, and posted online somewhere, I no longer remember where. But the basic idea is relatively straightforward. Assign percentages to all of combinations of damage types and vectors. Calculate the % of each combination that gets through your resistance and defenses. Weight those percentages for a weighted average. Add up all your means of recovering hit points and convert to an average hit points per second. Divide by the % of damage that gets through. You now have a survivability number that roughly reflects the DPS that you can survive indefinitely. And it's easy to plug in a 50% or 64% base chance to hit to see regular vs. incarnate performance. It doesn't take a number of important factors into account (status protection, for example), and it's difficult to avoid apples to oranges comparisons. But I do use it for fine tuning a build once I think I have a fairly good foundation. I don't follow it blindly, though, even when exploring small changes. But I find it more useful than having nothing but an intuition about how changes will affect my survivability. I never tried to score defensive sets in a vacuum, though, only specific builds. I wouldn't think the numbers for a defensive set would have much meaning on their own. I'm going to be adding pool powers, incarnate powers, and a ton of set bonuses to that base. The final result won't much resemble where we started, even if that starting foundation determines which direction and how far I can go. But I guess I'm straying off topic now.

As I recall, and I could recall incorrectly, in olden days a Performance Shifter proc averaged more endurance recovery than a blue in Stamina. These days I'd have to check the PPM rules, and I really should, since I'm assembling my build as we speak. OK, looks like the PPM should do just what it says in this case. Spreadsheet says 1.5 PPM, and 10 endurance when it procs. So 15 endurance per minute, or 0.25 EPS. What about a +5 standard IO in stamina? Empty build with Stamina on is 2.08 EPS, with the IO is 2.3 EPS, so the IO is contributing 0.22 EPS. So yes, it looks like the Performance Shifter proc is still better on average than slotting even a +5 blue. I'd love to hear someone confirm that, though. Edit: Well... is the proc 10 endurance, or 10% of your max endurance if higher? Because I'm pretty sure Stamina is of max, so if Performance Shifter is 10% of base, then that would draw average performance pretty even.

For DPS, your goal is probably 279% recharge in Crushing Uppercut so that it recharges in 8.976 seconds in order to run: Shin Breaker -> Rib Cracker -> Heavy Blow -> Shin Breaker -> Rib Cracker -> Heavy Blow -> Crushing Uppercut There's a higher DPS chain (remove the second Heavy Blow), but it takes 327% recharge, which is pretty extreme, though doable, particularly with Incarnate powers added in. But either way, you're going to want Hasten. Stick an Achilles' Heel proc in Shin Breaker. Possibly a Force Feedback proc in Heavy Blow and/or Crushing Uppercut. At that point, Initial Strike is doing nothing for you and can probably be dropped. For survivability, melee defense is great, but since Willpower is only giving you typed defenses, you'll probably get more mileage out of working on your typed defenses. Smashing/lethal damage is the most common, so smashing/lethal defense is generally considered the most important. My first goal would be getting that to 45% (soft cap) or preferably 46.5% (small purple from incarnate soft cap). After that, good energy/negative, and to a lesser extent fire/cold. This takes accepting that you'll be weak against toxic and psionic. Most builds are, so at least you're in good company when you faceplant. You can grab some toxic and psionic resistance, at least, if you can find the slots. Willpower is a hybrid set with defense and resistance, so you do want decent resistances as well. But resistance over 90% is wasted in most situations, so most of the work you put into improving your smashing/lethal resistance with set bonuses is wasted. Work on the other types instead. (Edit: Oops, didn't see that Strength of Will was toggled on. You're just under 90%. You're fine.) There are many specific IOs that I try to fit into most builds where practical. Some you have. Some you don't. In particular, when chasing defense, the Steadfast Protection and Gladiator's Armor are critical. And for resist, Shield Wall and Reactive Defenses are critical. Luck of the Gambler 7.5% recharges in every defense power Kismet +6% to-hit Shield Wall +5% resist / teleportation resist Reactive Defenses scaling +0%-10% (?) resist Miracle +15% recovery Numina +20% regen / +10% recovery Panacea +4.31% hit points, +7.5% endurance Preventive Medicine chance for +absorb Unbreakable Guard +7.5% hit points Steadfast Protection +3% defense Gladiator's Armor +3% defense / teleportation protection Aegis +5% psionic resist / +20% mez resist Impervium +6% psionic resist (not unique!) Rectified Rectical +perception Performance Shifter +10% endurance 25% chance Celerity +stealth in Sprint Anyway, some things to think about.

That's the same approach I'm taking on my Super Strength / Fire Brute - soft cap melee, 40% smashing/lethal. I didn't start with that goal, but I ended up there. It works well on paper. We'll see how it goes in game once I've finished buying everything and respec. Oh, and finish up all my incarnate stuff. It'll suck until then since it's built around the availability of the incarnate powers.