Umbral

If you're referring to allowing */DA to maintain mez effects, it's probably because it doesn't create a wholesale decrease in fury generation. Ice Armor and Ice Melee slowed down the attack speed of all enemies in melee with them for a good while after the Brute left them. */DA only prevents the lowliest enemies from attacking and, even then, requires that the Brute remain next to them the entire time.

Of course, this completely ignores the fact that there are only 2 powers in */DA that provide large scale slowdown in fury generation while virtually all of Ice Armor and Ice Melee are designed to do such. If you want to turn off the power that is inhibiting your fury generation, DA can do it reasonably easily. Ice Armor and Ice Melee, on the other hand, don't really have that luxury since anything they do would decrease fury generation.

So you'll put in multiple full Obliteration sets (which are going to cost you more than 100 mill for every full set because most of the pieces go for 20+ mill each) but you won't put in a few 100 mill individual IOs?

Well, you were asking for a build critique. I critiqued your build based on the numbers the build was generating or capable of generating. SotW is, from a numerical standpoint, universally worse than GC. If you want to use SotW rather than GC, it's not going to have any effect on me.

Straight up 5 Doctored Wounds. 12% +regen isn't really going to do you much compared to 5% +rech. It's like I said, what you did to those powers wasn't really IO set slotting: it was more akin to frankenslotting.

There's more than 1 passive accolade. The fact that you only selected a single one is more what I was concerned with, especially since the +hp ones are actually going to influence set bonuses you're going to want to go after substantially more than a single 5% +end accolade (it's pretty much pointless to get +hp set bonuses on a */regen if you've already got the +hp passive accolades).

In simple terms, yes. */Regen should already have in excess of 100 hp/sec in terms of damage recovery at level 50. Adding an extra 2.6 hp/sec is going to be doing almost nothing, especially when you could be increasing your defense (and thereby multiplying the effectiveness of your existing damage recovery by decreasing the incoming damage that you're having to recover from) or recharge (and increasing your damage recovery along with damage mitigation and damage dealing capability).

You took it at level 50 with a single recharge enhancement. Sure, you took it, but you didn't really do anything with it. I will, however, admit that I didn't notice it when I was typing that response, most likely because I was looking at both yours and Claws' side-by-side: his build doesn't have it while yours has it late and underslotted.

I play to have fun as well. How we have fun playing the game, however, is most likely different. I enjoy analyzing and playing with the game systems to see what can be accomplished. I can have as much fun engaging my mind by entering into a discussion involving game mechanics or designing a new build or learning a new powerset as I can in game (and I often decide to do such whenever the social aspect in-game has died down for the night).

Just because I enjoy the game through different means doesn't mean that I don't play the game to have fun. If I didn't, I wouldn't bother playing it since I'm not getting paid to (in fact, I'm actually paying to, so there is an impetus for me to actually do what I find fun/rewarding rather than what I find to be a chore). Don't assume that just because I enjoy the game differently that I don't enjoy it as much as you do.

Yes. They are. They regularly make a mockery of some of the biggest, nastiest builds out there. The minions have attacks that debuff resistance, tohit, and defense. The lts are a lot like the minions, except that the hit harder and some of them have self heals and other debuffs. The bosses will either hit you like a truck and make you limp for the rest of your life or turn your into a mewling kitten just ready for the slaughter. The only people I know that don't have a problem with them are softcapped defense based builds, and even they have more problems than others when they end up going down much faster than they normally do.

If you're curious, check out their Paragonwiki entry. You'll get to see a basic synopsis of many of their attacks and figure out exactly why they hurt so bad.

Yes, just because you're slotting up a power with DOs doesn't mean you'll get something different from when you're using SOs.

Recon is going to be doing a lot more for you than FH will. Slotted FH grants you roughly 1.5 times the natural damage recovery you would receive normally; rather than healing from 1 to full in 240 seconds, you're healing from 1 to full in ~96 seconds. Slotted Recon provides you the same natural damage recovery you would normally have (240 seconds from 1 to full) along with the ability to fully recover your health every 60 seconds (50% of your health every ~30 seconds).

Yes. Your click powers are substantially stronger than your passive powers. FH is the second to last thing I would bother slotting on a */Regen (assuming you don't take Revive, which is pretty much pointless imo) right before Resilience (which I wouldn't even take except for an IO build). It's because of this that when you begin looking into IOing your character, most everyone will start telling you to go crazy for +rech set bonuses.

Honestly, I don't think it's going to matter much. You can play your way to 50 with mediocre slotting because the game doesn't really require all that powerful of a character to achieve that minimum level of performance. If you've got loads of Vetspecs and don't plan on ever using them, go ahead and respec or wait until you think you feel that the less effective slotting is detrimental to your performance. If all else fails, you could just respec when you hit 50 and are ready for an IO build.

There isn't a tipping point wherein slotting FH and/or Health is better than slotting better powers. That's one of the interesting things about them: all of the powers that we're talking about generate a linear increase in survivability. Recon has 2 linear methods of improvement (recharge and heal enhancement both increase in a linear fashion that operates together to generate a 4 fold increase in effectiveness when both attributes are fully slotted), and FH and Health only have a single method. There isn't some magical way to completely circumvent the basic math that says that a bigger number increased by a percentage is going to somehow be smaller than a smaller number increased by a similar percentage.

The only possible reason that slotting them would be better would be if you don't want to expend animation time activating them (which shouldn't be since you're operating at low level without much recharge or many attacks to fill in your animation time) or don't want to expend endurance to activate them (which shouldn't be an issue since you've got the native end discount of Claws and QR making your blue bar happy at all times).

Not that I agree with giving */Regen to Brutes or Tankers in any sense (for the same reasons I don't think Scrappers or Stalkers should be given Stone Armor), but you're wrong here. Brutes gain fury simply by being attacked. An attack that misses you still fully contributes to your fury gain, which is why you can have fully effective defense based brutes (i.e. SR). The effects that actually hinder fury gain are -rech debuffs (because they slow down the rate in which attacks are incoming; this is the given reason why Brutes were not given Ice Armor) and mez effects (hold, stun, fear, etc. all prevent attacks from being used thereby preventing the fury from being gained; this reason is apparently ignored by the devs because */DA has fully effective mez powers which have the effect of putting a damper on incoming attacks from low ranking enemies thereby reducing fury gen).

While you're leveling, the important thing to remember is that your regen clickies love recharge. Interestingly enough, your attacks do as well. Luckily, you're Claws/Regen, so your attacks use less endurance baseline and you have QR to make things even easier.

Defense isn't going to do you much good because you don't have much to stack up with it, so there's no real point in a */Regen getting it pre-IOs. You've got Follow-Up and, even with only basic SO slotting, you're still going to be able to get 1 stack up at all times, so you don't really need to slot up acc particularly heavily in your attacks.

Here's a build I cooked up in about 2 minutes that should show you what to aim for. Ignore the levels but follow the slotting. In general, you want to slot your attacks first (not that slotting pre-SOs really accomplishes much of anything), then your Regen powers, and after that your other powers. Integration and QR should get slots asap whereas Recon, DP, and IH can probably stand to wait until your attacks are full up before they get attention.

Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.601
http://www.cohplanner.com/

Click this DataLink to open the build!

Level 50 Mutation Scrapper
Primary Power Set: Claws
Secondary Power Set: Regeneration
Power Pool: Leaping
Power Pool: Fighting
Power Pool: Speed
Power Pool: Fitness
Ancillary Pool: Body Mastery

Hero Profile:
Level 1: Swipe -- Acc(A), Dmg(3), Dmg(3), Dmg(5), RechRdx(5), RechRdx(7)
Level 1: Fast Healing -- Heal(A), Heal(50)
Level 2: Slash -- Acc(A), Dmg(7), Dmg(9), Dmg(9), RechRdx(11), RechRdx(11)
Level 4: Reconstruction -- Heal(A), Heal(13), Heal(13), RechRdx(15), RechRdx(15), RechRdx(17)
Level 6: Quick Recovery -- EndMod(A), EndMod(17), EndMod(19)
Level 8: Follow Up -- Acc(A), Dmg(19), Dmg(21), Dmg(21), RechRdx(23), RechRdx(23)
Level 10: Dull Pain -- RechRdx(A), RechRdx(25), RechRdx(25), Heal(27), Heal(27), Heal(29)
Level 12: Combat Jumping -- DefBuff(A)
Level 14: Super Jump -- Jump(A)
Level 16: Integration -- Heal(A), Heal(29), Heal(31)
Level 18: Focus -- Acc(A), Dmg(31), Dmg(31), Dmg(33), RechRdx(33), RechRdx(33)
Level 20: Spin -- Acc(A), Dmg(34), Dmg(34), Dmg(34), RechRdx(36), RechRdx(36)
Level 22: Boxing -- Acc(A)
Level 24: Tough -- ResDam(A), ResDam(36), ResDam(37)
Level 26: Eviscerate -- Acc(A), Dmg(37), Dmg(37), Dmg(39), RechRdx(39), RechRdx(39)
Level 28: Instant Healing -- RechRdx(A), RechRdx(40), RechRdx(40)
Level 30: Hasten -- RechRdx(A), RechRdx(40), RechRdx(42)
Level 32: Shockwave -- Acc(A), Dmg(42), Dmg(42), Dmg(43), RechRdx(43), RechRdx(43)
Level 35: Hurdle -- Jump(A)
Level 38: Moment of Glory -- RechRdx(A), RechRdx(45), RechRdx(45)
Level 41: Focused Accuracy -- EndRdx(A), EndRdx(45), EndRdx(46), ToHit(48), ToHit(48), ToHit(48)
Level 44: Physical Perfection -- EndMod(A), EndMod(46), EndMod(46)
Level 47: Health -- Heal(A)
Level 49: Stamina -- EndMod(A), EndMod(50), EndMod(50)
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Critical Hit

Much more solid than Yoshi's at the very least. You took Gambler's Cut rather than Sting of the Wasp (GC has better DPA, cycle time, and a faster animation), got a good deal more defense and recovery, and didn't have nearly as much of what I would consider wasted slotting (i.e. what Yoshi did to DP and Recon, which is pretty much just frankenslotting). Of course, you may want to look at how you slotted Integration in comparison to Fast Healing (Integration only has 68.9% +heal whereas FH has 96.7%), not to mention my preference for loading the heal set uniques into PP rather than spreading them out to get as much +recov out of them as possible (not to mention how I'd move a couple slots out of Integration and give Int some more +heal as well as the Regen Tissue unique in order to maximize +regen with those slots).

My biggest question for the OP is why didn't you bother with the passive accolades? I can understand avoiding the "basic" expensive IOs the LotG +rech and Perf Shifter procs, but the passive accolades are incredibly easy to get (the hardest maybe being TFC because you have to actually team to get it) so there's no real reason not to get them. If you do, you'll have a much easier time with endurance, not to mention capped HP as long as DP is on (which should be ~75% of the time).

As to general goals, I really would suggest against slotting up +regen or +hp heavily on a */regen and grabbing Hasten as well. I noticed that both of you avoided taking it, and I don't recall reading anything stating that it was "illegal". Hasten adds so much to a Kat/Regen that it doesn't really make much sense to me to go without it: your click powers will be up more often, and you'll have access to better attack chains as well (more GD is always a good thing).

Either way, I don't really think I could comment much more on Yoshi's build because it seems like his "budget" (whether in effort or influence) is too restrictive for me to really have fun with it. If a few LotG +rech IOs are too expensive (I see 3 spots that they could be fit into), anything I come up with will either not satisfy what I deem to be minimum requirements to make IOing a character worthwhile or too costly for the OP to consider putting into play.

The main reason is because (1) they're incredibly useful (functionally 30-37.5% +rech) and (2) because they're not that expensive or hard to obtain. Just run a few TFs or story arcs to get either random rare recipe rolls or outright buy them with merits. Assuming that you have to buy them with inf is simply asking to have the price of your build skyrocket (not to mention that 100 mill isn't really all that much for a single IO anymore when you consider that most top tier builds are extending into the several billions).

I might be extremely lucky, but I can tell you outright that I'm not an AE farm fan whatsoever. I've gotten every single unique (and other rare IO) that I have equipped via either drops or random rolls. I don't do "normal" farms, much less AE farms, so the assumption that you have to farm to get any of these is a simple fallacy.

You're not getting the BotZ for the +KB prot. You really don't have to care about that whatsoever. You may want to actually look at the set bonuses for BotZ, however. When you're a Kat/* or BS/* and softcapping melee is a given, the ability to easily snag and extra 3.13% +def(ranged, AoE) with only a couple slots additional investment is incredible.

Many of us (like me) already do. Some don't. Don't feel bad. I knew exactly what was going on when I read what was going on, but didn't feel like clarifying it at the time. I have to wonder what everyone thought that little bar and the commensurate number at the bottom of powers like Phalanx Fighting (for number of allies nearby), Soul Drain (for number of enemies hit), and Follow Up/DA (for number of stacks up at any individual time) were for/

Defense Debuff Resistance.

Q: Why did the Scrapper cross the road?
A: Because someone said that you weren't intended to do it alone.

All of these involving Scrappers have been wrong.

The correct answer is 21: 1 to screw in the light bulb solo, 12 to say how much better they could have done it, 6 to say how the original scrapper was using the entirely wrong powersets, and 2 more to crunch numbers to determine the optimal way to screw the light bulb in.

I thoroughly enjoy using my (fully slotted 3 dam/3 rech) nuke on my Dark/Ice. A lot of Dark/*'s usefulness is accomplished via click powers rather than through toggles, so it's not like I'm hurting myself or my team by doing so. I just pull a group with Darkest Night (you mean you're not used to being a puller/tank on your defender?) and then let loose with Fearsome Stare>Tar Patch>Ice Storm>Blizzard.


Ice Storm and Blizzard are both blaster level, so the damage is huge, Fearsome Stare and Blizzard provide roughly 50% -tohit to the entire mob, and the combination of all 4 keep the targets either feared or running at minimum movement speed for the entire duration. Of course, this is completely ignoring Fluffy, who is going to be debuffing, healing, holding, and immobilizing the entire time I'm taking an endurance break.

I use my nuke almost every time I can on that toon, though I'll admit that I never use it on my other 2 defenders (FF/Son and Rad/Psi) because a majority of their own personal survivability, not to mention that which they provide to the group, is toggle dependent.

It's nice to see that Werner and I seem to share some kind of psychic link.

I love MoG and Instant Healing!

I want some decent male long hair! I'm constantly irked by the fact that it's impossible to get a male character with an appropriately long coif (similar to my own), not to mention that male long and female long are comically different (male long is only roughly equal to female medium, if even that).

Or just make you pay for it with 500k inf every time you want to use it. Of course, this references the "inf sink" thread way down the line, but it was considered to be one of the more popular potential additions.

Recon is immune to debuffs just as much as it is immune to buffs (thanks to the "This power's effects are not affected by buffs" tag it has), which could be the explanation. I could have sworn that the Mending Mitochondria operated by granting you +res(healing) however, and that Recon was actually affected by it (because you're resisting your own heal).

Comically enough, "He Who Should Go Off And Die In A Fire" isn't actually the lead dev for CO. He's the head of Cryptic Studios, not the lead designer for CO (who is actually Randy Mosiondz, from what I learned from less than 5 minutes of research), though, the taint of his presence still casts a pall over the game.

Hibernate is actually used because it's a huge regen buff (1000% +regen), not because it's a phase. Hami and the Mitos are actually fully capable of dealing damage to phased targets, something that was added whenever the new raid was created, so the phasing does nothing.

Well, depending on whether you're going to be giving IH any slots in the first place (most people will spare it 2 more slots if only to give it 3 rech), that's entirely debatable. I'd see a 9% increase in my total regen while IH is active (and 5% +rech at all times) as being worth 2 extra slots, though, your build is obviously slotted much more heavily for +regen () than I tend to build for so the comparative advantages are substantially smaller.

I realize that you would need to fire it at all times in order to achieve the average. That's kind of the point. That's generally how we define the contributions of power like Recon and MoG as well. It's not generally how they're used (though, if you're really pushing the envelope on the survivability of a */Regen, you're generally doing that anyway because IH gives you a great period in which you can allow all of your other powers to recharge while still being almost perfectly safe), but it does provide a meaningful method of comparison to passive and toggle powers.

I'd say you probably want at least 20-25% +def and 50-60% +rech (not including Hasten) to make */Regen "shine". In a perfect world, you'd be getting as much of both as humanly possible (~35% +def(melee) and ~150% +rech with Hasten are pretty good goals).

It's going to take until about level 35 for SR to be "solid" because, before that point, you don't have any AoE defense. SR is late blooming because all of your powers are specialists (you have 2 powers that only add to melee defense, 2 that only add to ranged defense, and 2 that only add to AoE defense) and need friends to be fully effective (the passives all have scaling resistance but you won't notice it unless you have all 3). Ideally, you're going to have every power from SR, Weave, and Combat Jumping/Hover all contributing to your defense by your mid-30s, which is when the ride starts getting substantially easier for SR.

Because of how defense works, both of them contribute a huge amount to */SR. Tough increases your survivability by increasing the number of lucky hits that need to penetrate your defense in any period of time before you fall over (not to mention being the only spot that you can slot the Steadfast Protection 3% +def IO). Weave gives you more defense which is incredibly powerful for */SR (thanks to how defense operates, each additional point of defense you get until you achieve he softcap adds more survivability than the last; 45% +def is actually twice as survivable as 40% +def). Aid Self is wonderful because you can avoid interruption most of the time and you can prevent deaths by attrition by simply healing away the few lucky hits that get in.

They're already pretty friggin' powerful now. It would also make radius a much more important value because it would actually mean that you could catch targets as they start to spread (or have already spread out somewhat).

Combined with runners bringing friends and healing/support aggro, that's probably the only "intelligence" thing that I really think needs to be added. Enemies already have a reasonably good ability to select appropriate powers to use and there is already an ambush mechanic, so there's no real need to attempt to have them create artificial ambushes that are painfully easy to see (you mean you wouldn't recognize some random additional crates?). It would make it a substantially more tactically interesting game without simply making it a numbers game, which is a win in my book.

Yes. Pretty much all of Presence is worthless, as far as I'm concerned. The Fears are mediocre and have bad recharge times and high end costs. The Taunts are largely redundant thanks to native powers doing a substantially better job. I really do think that Rumpuscat would be more effectively done as a Claws/DA, especially if you imagine Death Shroud to be the random whirling of his claws rather than nether energies.