Is Kat/SR too much Def?

[drgantz]

Since Kat has DA, is it overkill to use SR?  Is a difference secondary better?  I assume that I should avoid taking Weave from the Fighting Pool.

 

This toon will be a Natural Scrapper, so I want a secondary that will appear to come from training.  It will be PVE only, and will mostly group, with some soloing.

[Oysterhead]

You certainly won't need the defense from DA once fully built up with SR, but it'll help on the journey to that point. SR is more than capable of hitting the softcap on its own, and yes without weave as well (with tanker values its possible to hit incarnate softcaps with SR without weave!) The only things Weave and/or DA would do is potentially let you ignore set bonuses that grant defense and focus on other things. The SR powers alone with basic slotting you end up at roughly 30% defense to the three positions, a bit higher depending how close into ED you go on each power. Add in Hover/CJ and you're at 31-32%, so you need to pick up 12-14% to each to be softcapped. Weave will give you 5.5% of that and change, but its easy to hit those numbers without it as there are some nice easy set bonuses that grant large amounts to positional defense. So it entirely depends on your budget.

 

Willpower would benefit greatly from DA and fits natural characters. Willpowers defense ends up lowest to Smash/Lethal, so the 15% lethal from DA is a big boost. However, by default it doesn't have anything to melee, so you end up with a Smashing hole, where a positional set like Ninjitsu and SR get full benefit. Ninjitsu can make sense for natural, depending if you like the ninja theme and if you consider the heal/end clicks to be magical or not, and its base defense values are lower than SR, Weave and DA will certainly be of use there.

[Gwyrddu]

I don't think you can really have too much defense, that's why they are soft caps and not hard caps. A better question is do you want the recharge reduction from SR or the stealth and healing/endurance clickies from ninjutsu ? My inclination would be to go with the latter, but not because of SR being overkill. For example DM/SR is a great pairing that doesn't need ninjutsu's benefits quite a much because it has a built-in heal.

Edited July 2, 2021 by Gwyrddu

[Bill Z Bubba]

Being able to skip DA completely and focus on a much higher damage chain seems to me a boon rather than a problem.

[Haijinx]

Remember that scrapper SR has a big AOE def hole due to crappy power progression.

 

You have to wait till 35 to get your main AOE def power.  

 

So DA will help a lot with that.  

 

Then when not exemping/ or fighting incarnates / etc.  You can ignore it at high level for better damage optionsm

[Sancerre]

something overlooked with 'soft capping' is the availability of to-hit buffs on critters.  the most obvious example is nemesis faction with vengeance, but they are _NOT_ the only faction.  doesnt matter if you have 45% defense and 100% DDR.  if the critters have massive to-hit, you are going to get railed hard.

 

like others have mentioned though... having powers that are skippable allows you to pick up other powers.  katana is a solid set that doesnt particularly crutch itself on divine avalanche.  you do not 'need' to use it.  it is there if you want it.

Edited July 2, 2021 by Sancerre

[Yomo Kimyata]

Play whatever sets you want!  Depending on what type of opponents you are fighting, you probably won't need the defense from Divine Avalanche, and you can focus on attack chains that give you better net damage.

 

[SwitchFade]

With SR, skip DA.

 

Your dpa, attack chain and happyjoyjoy will thank you.

[1seanv23]

I have a kat/sr scrapper and he's one of my all time favorite characters.

 

With this combo you can focus on maximizing recharge for a very high damage single target attack chain.

 

SR is set and forget which with kat I like. I've played /EA as well, and I like that set A LOT, but for sheer defense, and the defense debuff resistance of sr - I favor SR more, especially on scrappers/stalkers.

 

A bonus is that katana is probably the most audibly satisfying and crunchy melee set - which one wouldn't initially expect. Runner up would be energy melee which is also sounds great and performs even better.

[Doomguide2005]

All the above is absolutely true.

But keep in mind a few things. 

• DA is defense only to melee and lethal.
• Exemplar
• It takes defense IOs.  That does not mean not to slot for damage but, options are good.
• Incarnate cap to melee/lethal is one DA away from the soft cap.
• A few non-incarnate foes have enough to hit buffs to make things messy.  Vanguard Sorcerer's I'm looking at you.  

It is optional.  So ultimately it comes down to what works for you.  

 

[Elia87]

What is anothrr top secondary power set for katana?

[Oysterhead]

6 hours ago, Elia87 said:

What is anothrr top secondary power set for katana?

Katana is going to work very well with any secondary set.

 

If you're specifically looking for a synergy around Divine Avalanche, I'd say the sweet spot for that is a set that has some defense to lethal/melee, but struggles to hit soft cap, which Bio and Willpower and to an extent Dark Armor offer. Invulnerability as well. (All of those can hit the softcap with heavy IO investment, but DA would give options specifically for lethal/melee). But then the argument can be easily made that layering on a bit of defense to any of the pure resists sets works well too. And then, as discussed in this thread extensively, pairing it with a defense set like SR, EA, Ninjitsu, Ice, will let you drop DA eventually in favor of a higher damage attack chain.

[Elia87]

Yea I wanted to make mainly an high dps toon, katana seems interesting.

[1seanv23]

Katana has dps. Once your recharge is really high, t4 musculature, and ATO's - the single target dps is very strong and crunchy!

 

My current kat/sr is closing in on 40 (previously had a 50 fully pimped out) and I have a force feedback proc in both his big hitters. Already I can cycle through 4 attacks easily with little downtime - without Hasten yet. I do have 5 LotG though.

 

I can't remember, but I think you can get it to the point where you just run Golden Dragonfly, Soaring Dragon, and The Lotus Drops. Place a +50 crit proc in Soaring Dragon, lot's of hard hitting Golden's. Place Guassian's Build up proc in Build up and you're hitting REALLY hard.

 

The only thing I have that wrecks harder for single target is my em/inv scrapper.

Edited July 5, 2021 by 1seanv23

[drgantz]

Thank you everyone for your replies.  You  have shown me that SR is a good secondary for  Katana.