Syntax42

Try slotting 2 end reductions in your attacks, and 1-2 in each toggle.

You don't need a farming toon. You can farm alignment merits with any character capable of stealthing to the ends of missions. I have done it on my Defenders.

I saw those two sentences that said what you are doing now, but your build suggested you wanted to play outside of AE.

If you are only farming in AE, you only need fire defense and recharge bonus. Search for "fire farm" in AE to find the maps that will be best for you.

Super Reflexes is the poor man's defense set. Shield Defense is more expensive to soft-cap, but Against All Odds makes it worth using if you can afford the builds.

For a primary set, I prefer sets with damage buff powers that can be made almost permanent. The 10-second build-up powers are just too short. Dark Melee and Kinetic Melee are more of my flavor for Scrapper primaries, but Claws and Dual Blades can be fun too.

The OP may have been spoiled by Super Strength's Rage buff. The to-hit bonus from Rage makes all other sets feel like they miss too much. In my experience, all sets without permanent to-hit bonuses will feel like they miss too much until you get accuracy set bonuses from slotting for recharge bonus. This usually doesn't happen until 47-50.

You still haven't said what your intended use for the character is. Your endurance use is still too high and will likely make this character less than enjoyable. I have posted a 32.5% S/L and E/N, as well as a 32.5% melee/ranged/aoe build in the past. If you are just trying to do general content, look for one of those. If you are trying to farm, fire defense and recharge are the only set bonuses you need.

I have noticed an unusual amount of critters seeing through stealth too. I use Super Speed and a proc in Sprint. Combat Jumping is better slotted with a LOTG. The Stealth Power isn't needed if you have Super Speed and Hasten, unless you use Stealth for the defense bonus.

It is difficult to determine what you are trying to do with the character. You mentioned farming, but you don't have good fire defense. Your S/L and Melee defenses are high, but not at one of the "sweet spots". Without knowing what you are trying to achieve, it is hard to give more than generic advice.


Your toggles are slotted poorly, which has led to your endurance use being almost the same as your recovery. I usually put at least 3 slots in my togges. If I'm going for a 3-slot bonus, I use the x/End, x/End/Rech, and x enhancements from a set. The x is the type of power: defense or resistance. Also, you are over the fire resistance cap for Scrappers. You don't need Temperature Protection, but it does make a decent mule power for a 3% defense IO.

You mixed a lot of melee defense with S/L defense sets. That is not very efficient. First, the game only looks at your highest applicable defense category to determine the hit chance on any given attack. If an attack has melee, smashing, and fire damage, only your melee defense will be looked at in your current build. Most melee attacks have a S/L component to them. A vast number of ranged attacks also have S/L in them. If you only have room in your build for one type of defense, getting just S/L defense will protect you in the most content. If you have room for two types, get S/L and E/N. If you have room for three types of defenses, go for all three positionals.

The "sweet spots" for defense I mentioned above are 45%, 32.5%, and 20%. Non-incarnate content critters have a base to-hit of 50% and the minimum hit chance before accuracy modifiers is 5%. This means any defense beyond 45% does nothing in most of the game's content. One small inspiration gives 12.5% and they can be bought many vendors. Using a small inspiration while you are at 32.5% will bring you up to 45%. Using two small inspirations (or one medium) while you are at 20% will bring you up to 45%. Obtaining 40% defense then using an inspiration means all the sets you used to go from 32.5% to 40% are effectively wasted in most of the game's content.

If your character is only going to be used for AE farming, you only need fire defense. Find a good fire farm map and leverage your fire resistance for maximum survivability.

You have a lot of set bonuses that are not adding anything significant to your character. Damage, recovery, regeneration, and healing bonuses are not worth chasing on this character. That means, don't end a set on one of those bonuses. Go for defense or recharge bonuses and if you happen to get one of those on the way, then good for you. One example set is Impervium Armor. It adds .042 end/s recovery. Your Fire Shield power consumes .209 end/s. That means it takes five of those bonuses just to offset one toggle and you're running so many toggles that you barely have 1 end/s net recovery (with Focused Accuracy off) to use on attack powers.

The Ragnarok proc is useless in Energy Torrent. A KB magnitude of .67 means it is a knockdown. The chance for knockdown in Energy Torrent is 100%

Definitely make it your lowest slotting priority. Slots are precious and leaving any other power underslotted would be worse than leaving SoW underslotted. It is a great power to use as a mule for a 3% defense IO, as ultrawatt mentioned.

It would seem that your shortcut link is invalid on your desktop.

Open up the launcher, right click on City of Heroes, and select add desktop shortcut. After that, you can close the launcher. Right-click on the CoH icon and select properties. Add /LaunchGame=CohBeta to the target field inside of the quotes and put a space before it.

I could be wrong about those instructions and cause you to lose your live build of CoH. I have never played on the test server or beta server. Use those instructions at your own risk.

This would be better to ask in the technical issues forum.

The best guess I can give is it may be packet loss, or issues with a node between you and CoH servers. Your ping looks slightly high for playing in the U.S. Knowing where you are located may help determine if your ping is a symptom of the issue or normal for where you live.

The best you can do on your end is make sure nobody else is using your internet connection. If it is wireless, secure it. If you have family on the network, turn their computers off while you troubleshoot. Also, make sure you don't have any torrent programs running. Make sure your computer is virus-free.

Desired set bonuses would depend on the rest of the build. Maybe you are over the defense soft-cap and don't need a certain type of defense. Maybe you passed the rule of 5's on 5% recharge, making it tough to justify an Obliteration set. It would be hard to give truly good advice without seeing an entire build. All we can do is tell you what sets are good in general, but they may not be the best for you.

I use two attack chains. One is for AoE and the other for single targets. The single-target chain is the same as you just mentioned except I use Gloom in place of Mu Lightning. For AoE damage, I use Foot Stomp, Burn, and Dark Obliteration, then KO Blow a boss. The AoE attacks recharge while KO Blow is animating, so sometimes I just pause instead of using KO blow if there are no boss targets.

My build was designed around my play style. I had tons of INF sitting around and I am fairly experienced at the game. I can see how it can feel too squishy for some people. It was designed to maximize DPS while relying on teammates and inspirations to survive. The next patch should make it much easier to get defense buffs from teammates because bubble buffs (Force Field, Cold Domination, Sonic, etc.) will be AoE instead of single-target. If you are still set on more defense, I will offer my advice.

Reaching 45% defense means you give up a lot of potential recharge bonuses. By doing so, you limit your DPS and will likely have to run a poor attack chain. I would suggest aiming for 32.5% instead so you can soft-cap with one small inspiration and still have a decent amount of recharge bonus. A tray full of inspirations will last you a LONG time, especially if you combine 3 when your tray fills up.

Your builds did a good job of squeezing in the recharge while reaching 45% S/L defense. The only thing I don't like about them is the lack of E/N defense. A lot of attacks at 50 are pure energy damage, especially in Incarnate content. I don't like feeling invincible against some things, then extremely squishy against others. I suppose that is a playstyle choice you would have to make.

One With the Shield makes an excellent mule power for holding a 3% defense IO or LOTG. Maybe you can fit both in your build. Could you post your build?

Try looking at other DM/SD builds. Someone posted one a couple weeks ago that was pretty amazing without using expensive IOs. I posted in that thread, so that will help you narrow your forum search.

With 4 targets hit, Energy Drain can fill up his endurance. An endmod wouldn't help there, except when there are fewer targets to hit.

If you had to conserve some slots, you could skimp on the Fire/Cold defense. It isn't really needed at 50. More slots in Stamina would be nice, but they still wouldn't fix endurance issues against single targets.