Nihilii

I have it, and I like it. It's not necessary (then again, is anything ?), but it certainly helps.

Softcapped defenses or not, a few hits will get through every once in a while, and forts haven't too much HP ; using Aid Self often lowers the probability a bad luck streak will kill me.

Much appreciated. I'm cool with people telling what they think of me, good or bad, but if anyone feels I'm doing it wrong and they're doing it right, it'd make more sense for them to share their builds for everyone to see and take ideas from.

If the issue here is my use of the word "sacrifice" is deemed too strong even if I am specifically talking about my own build, I'm not sure we need pages of semantic arguments over that. I'm completely willling to agree what is a sacrifice to me could be a non-factor for others.

Granted, by now I'm polluting this thread more than anyone else with my rants, so let's stop there. Leaving comments in leetspeak is just asking to be mocked, though.

I'm tired to state over and over what my opinion really is, so let's state it one last time again with as much details as possible.

I (me, myself, the user going by the forum handle Nihilii in the city of heroes message boards) would personally not build a Dual Blades/Willpower scrapper without Conserve Power, as I feel for one power pick and one additional slot the power offers so much endurance management flexibility, doing without would involve sacrifices I (me, myself, the player behind the forum handle Nihilii) am not willing to make.

Here's what I consider sacrifices, compared to my build :
- losing 0.1% of defense to anything or above
- losing 0.1% of resistance to anything or above
- losing 0.1% of regeneration or above
- losing 0.1% of damage per second or above
- losing 0.1% of tohit buff or above
- losing 0.1% of jumpspeed or above

Increasing certain aspects (i.e., S/L defense) at the expense of others doesn't make the sacrifices dissapear. It's a tradeoff, with pros that might outweigh the cons, but there's still sacrifices.

I am NOT saying the build I used is the most efficient build. I am NOT saying it is impossible to build a DB/WP with an AV sustainable attack chain without CP. I am NOT saying it is impossible to build a DB/WP with the same or more DPS, defenses, resistances and regen than my build without CP, and I encourage anybody that can do that to post a build, this might give the OP ideas.

Throwing random numbers or assertions out of a vacuum don't mean much. I could claim I have a DB/WP build lying on my HDD that does 240 DPS thanks to CP but that I don't want to share (this is a hypothetical claim, and it's sad I have to mention that). What does that accomplish ? You, as in a general "anyone who feels CP is a waste for a DB/WP AV soloer" you, want to prove your point, it's simple : POST. A. BUILD.

That goes for you too, mister anonymous "plz l2math" red reputation. Plz l2read, plz l2manup.

I couldn't care less about a build. It's the OP that could use one.

Besides, getting lower defense to E/N/F/C and lower regen would fall into my exact definition of what a sacrifice is, yes. Whether it's meaningful or not is for each person to decide, again I never said my way was the only way to build.

This is amazing. Umbral is the one who flipped out because I dared to express a different opinion than his own, and reading some replies you'd think *I* am the one who insists other people should build my way, when all I said is that *I* would build that way.

Re : "It's silly to complain about a 5 years old arc."

Writing, or even game design standards haven't suddenly improved from 2004 to 2009. The story itself is bad, horribly bad even for a video game ; the missions are repetitive - you can't say it was because of a lack of tools either, "defeat boss and his guards" rather than "defeat all" is an option since launch.

You can say the devs themselves improved (or some new devs were added to the team, most likely), and that's certainly true, but that doesn't make the original work any less crappy.

I like the arc because I enjoy mindlessly beating up AVs, but objectively as a story arc it's terrible.

Out of the three, I'd get rid of FA. 8% tohit (fully slotted) isn't so hot on a DB as you're going to run with 1 BF on at all times and 2 for a few of your attacks, plus eventually a kismet.

CP is so nice for AV soloing I can't imagine living without. The sacrifices needed to make a chain sustainable without it are just too much, lacking any mitigation in the primary you can't really afford to waste many slots for endurance management in my opinion (after the usuals like miracle, numina, perf shifter procs).

SoW is also big, it was the difference between either "not able to solo an AV at all" and "possible in a few tries" or "possible in a few attempts" and "win on the first try" on my own DB/WP. It's the only active mitigation WP gets, and when things start going south (and they will if you don't run a softcapped build) you really want the added resistance to take the edge off you.

Problem with that is lots of forum builds that claim to be ~50m run actually in the 300-400m range (if not more !) ingame. It seems to me people use the absolute lowest value they can get from a recipe, by lowballing and waiting for weeks. That doesn't make much sense to me, if we're going by a certain price standard then it should go by the market standards too - that is, average price, not lowest price - unless specifically specified.

Then there's quite often builds in which the salvage cost alone is over 50m, yet that's completely ignored. Salvage has an actual value, just like IOs - in fact, it sometimes makes recipes that might seem cheap at first end up a bad investment (i.e., I know there's a cleaving blow that sells for 11k but requires a 2M piece of salvage).

Now on the other hand, it is very unlikely that anyone would get only 50m inf from 1 to 50, unless that player chose to sell everything at NPC vendors. A much more realistic result would be in the 300-400m ballpark, which conveniently makes the "50m" forum builds that actually cost 300-400m affordable.

So maybe in the end this is not a problem. Except you've got to know 50m really means 300m in CoH lingo.

I don't really know PvP but from what I hear everything but spines/regen sucks there.

I've played a DB/ELA to 50 and as DB and Claws are very similar in PvE I can tell it'd be great, save for one difference : Shockwave's KB can work against Lightning Field / Power Sink (then again, it might be possible to use the KB in a way that makes it work, and going against +4s I think Shockwave's KB becomes KD).

As for AV soloing, it's absolutely fantastic if you're willing to use insps, and still good without.

It'll only affect you.

I used BF -> AV.

I actually used these chains for a few days about six or nine months ago and that's from where I thought BF -> SS -> AS was as good (and from there I assumed BF -> AS -> SS -> AS would be better) as I got roughly the same times on pylon and AV soloing ; it's entirely possible I just got lucky with one chain and unlucky with the other.

Anyway, your numbers show when both chains are at their best, BF -> AS -> SS -> AS is superior against one target, so it seems to be a clear winner against AVs.

I stand corrected then, although I didn't remember the BF -> SS -> AS being that bad compared to the other one (and it was before the glad proc was introduced). Good example of why perceptions are bad and math is good.

I think BF->SS->AS is a bit more, since the Fury of Gladiator proc. I can't remember (and don't feel like checking) what number of recharge either of these chains require, though.

To keep the game interesting, I tend to take two or three weeks breaks. I sub month per month and immediately cancel, this way each month I have to gauge my interest to see if I renew my sub or not.

As for IOs, if you feel your character is subpar without them, I'd say you can at least try to frankenslot cheap sets. Going from level 1 to 50 without taking shortcuts should net you a good 100 million influence at least, without playing the market, which is quite enough to get started.

If the US government was running this game, I wouldn't be allowed to post here.

The different procs stack.

You can do that, it'll work (no time limit). Especially great while teaming.