ClawsandEffect

Yes.

It is intentional. Devices plays like no other blaster secondary. It is a strategic set, and can achieve greater solo survivability than just about anything else.

That is a good thing. The last thing I want is for all blasters to play identically with different animations for their powers.

And yes, I have a /Devices. Sonic/Devices to be precise, and I've had it since early 2006. That solo survivability I mentioned? I've gone entire missions without even being targeted by anything, let alone defeated. And it didn't go all that slowly either.

Okay, you're going to want more than just S/L defense and resistance. Energy defense in particular is VERY important to Willpower.

I'll explain why: You have very little Energy resistance, so any Energy attacks that hit you are going to hurt. A lot. Also, Willpower, as far as I'm aware, doesn't get any end drain resistance, which means any Electric attacks are going to drain your end bar dry in short order.

To that end, I would do a couple things with your build.

1) Split the Brute ATO between 2 different powers and use Catalysts on all of them for a whopping 10% S/L defense bonus between the two sets.

2) If the powers you put the ATOs in are Foot Stomp and Hurl (which I recommend), you can fill out the other 3 slots in each power with Eradication and Thunderstrike respectively for some more E/N defense.

3) Replace the full set of Gaussian's you have in Rage with 2 Rectified Reticle and 1 or 2 generic Recharge IOs. It will get you slightly more S/L defense and it will be recharging faster than with the full set of Gaussian's in there (Gaussian's seems designed more for toggle powers, due to it's low recharge enhancement and relatively high end reduction enhancement)

4) Swap the slotting of Health and Fast Healing. Fast Healing gives you more regen than Health does, so you're going to want it enhanced. The 3 uniques you have in there currently don't actually do anything to enhance the power itself. 2 generic Heal IOs that have been boosted 5 times should get you right to the ED cap on healing enhancement.

5) Take the slots you pulled out of Rage and put them in Mind Over Body. Then put 4 Reactive Armor in there and the Steadfast Res/Def. You don't need the KB protection or the set bonuses from all 3 Steadfast Protections, and your resistance will be much much higher with the Reactive Armor.

6) If you followed my advice in point 1, Put another 4 Kinetic Combats in KO Blow, and round out the power with 2 Basilisk's Gaze (use the ones that boost accuracy). That will give you a little more E/N defense.

Hope that helps a little bit. The rest of your build looks pretty solid to me.

Sounds like the possibility of Scourge AND Fury. Which is pretty sick.

Not exactly.

Defensive Sweep adds Melee/Smashing defense.

That leaves you with no defense to Ranged/Lethal attacks. Machine guns are ranged/lethal. And they debuff defense. Regen has 0% defense debuff resistance

So, since you aren't avoiding those machine gun attacks, your defense is going to get debuffed in a hurry, including that melee defense.

And there are a LOT of machine guns in the game, particularly among the Council and 5th Column. They tend to stand back and shoot you quite a bit before closing to melee range.

Defensive Sweep isn't as useful to Regen as you think.

So, 2 characters that are at different points in their career cannot have the same event happen?

He explained it pretty well actually.

The first guy had been a hero for years when Galaxy was destroyed. He may have even been called in to help with the crisis because he is an experienced hero. (My main was in a different part of the zone helping out, since he isn't needed where BaBs and Sister P are)

The second guy was just starting his career when Galaxy City was destroyed.

If his characters meet later on it simply means they have something in common, since they were both at the Galaxy City disaster. The only difference being, one was an experienced hero coordinating with the signature NPCs, and the other was a fresh-faced rookie who just signed up.

The event happened concurrently for both of them, but one was level 50 and the other level 1. I see no handwaving in this instance.

I thought things happened chronologically as you leveled. Meaning that you could still create Praetorians because at level 1 those events haven't occurred yet for your character.

Or have they done away with that now? Because if they have, it seems incredibly stupid and wasteful to create 3 entirely new graphically intensive zones and several novels worth of backstory only to render it moot a year and a half later.

No, that wouldn't make people ragequit when they stumbled in there by accident and a bunch of jacktards won't let them leave. Most PvPers I have ever encountered would NOT respect a "Hey, I didn't mean to come in here, can you please stop attacking me so I can leave the zone?" New players in particular would fall victim to this quite a bit, and they won't have IOs or expertly constructed builds. So if they were on a server like Freedom where people still PvP regularly, they might end up with a character that is doomed to spend the rest of its existence as a punching bag for people who refuse to allow them to leave, while being almost completely unable to defend themselves.

That is almost as bad of an idea as open world PvP that people have no choice but to participate in.

My magic sword wielding character disagrees.

So does my character that is a vehicle for an ancient Japanese warrior's soul.

Both magic origin as defined by the game. Magic is not just wizards casting spells any more than natural is strictly normal humans.

In a rare defense of another player, he did NOT say "There are not many Energy Melee characters in the game". That would require empirical evidence to prove.

What he DID say was "In my experience, not many" in regards to the number of EM characters in game. That is simply a recounting of personal experience and doesn't really require proof to be a valid statement. There was more to it than that, but the only thing he actually stated was that he personally does not see many Energy Melee characters in game.

I team more with my blasters than I do with any other AT. They are off the wall awesome when all I have to worry about is pumping out as much damage as possible.

My Sonic/Devices solos very well, but I doubt I'll be taking down any GMs with him.

And I would really like to see video of that Fire/Fire/Fire blaster taking down a GM. As far as I was always aware they just don't have the tools to pull it off, and I'd love to be proven wrong on that. (because I have one myself, and I may be shortchanging him if it is indeed possible)

I would increase Stalker resistance cap to 80% as well. In the theory that all melee-centric ATs should be able to get more resistance than a Defender or Controller.

On a WP scrapper the melee defense is irrelevant.

I concur with replacing the Touch of Death set. I would also replace the Obliterations with 4x boosted Eradication and a couple Scirocco's. That's because with your pathetic Energy/Negative resistance, you're going to want more defense to it.

Splitting it is a good plan as well.

I have a Claws/Regen build I'm working on that's pretty sick.

Highlights:

Perma-Dull Pain.
700%+ passive regen.
Softcapped to S/L.
And it has enough recharge to run Follow Up>Slash>Focus>Slash>Repeat as its attack chain, which, while it isn't quite the best chain you can run, is pretty good.

It involves the scrapper ATO set, and lots of boosted enhancements. Oh, and tier 4 Spiritual, which I'm only one very rare component away from.

If I think about it when I get home I'll share the build. It should translate pretty well on the Regen side of things at least.

Edit: Also, Welcome Back Werner!

Well, there's your problem.

If you still don't like it at level 35, maybe you're on to something.

No, nothing broken at all about being able to level as a Regeneration Scrapper or Brute until you get to 50 (because Regen is still among the fastest sets to level), and then switching to Electric/Shield (If Scrapper) or SS/Fire (If Brute).

The sets that get good at high levels suck at low levels for a reason.

A set like Regeneration peaks at about level 30 and doesn't really get much better than that, while other sets don't start getting really good until level 30.

If they implemented this, you would never see a Regen above level 30, and you'd never see a Shield or Fire below level 30, pretty much ever again.

Part of the balance of those sets is that the better they are at end game levels, the worse they are going to be at low levels, and vice versa. There would be a TON of balancing issues that would need to be addressed in order to prevent people from abusing this idea exactly as I outlined above.

I cannot argue with the logic of that statement.

The only problem is....bricks are not always red. Though they ARE always bad for your teeth, either via impact or attempted chewing.

He's working on Neverwinter.

He told me personally when I found him on Facebook.