Werner

They run towards me on my Fire/Shield. On the other hand, I'm just standing there letting them whiff till I think everyone's in range. Then it's nuke and move. On my Katana/Dark on the other hand, there's a lot of chasing. Don't farm with a Katana/Dark is my advice after having done quite a bit of it.

My soft-capped Katana/Dark was endurance sustainable, and that was with Cloak of Fear instead of Oppressive Gloom. Mind you, that was before the IO nerfs, and he isn't any more. But it should be a solvable problem, particularly in I19. I wasn't sustainable leveling, but it wasn't horrible, just had to make sure everything had sufficient endurance reduction. Frankenslotting my attacks helped tremendously.

Yeah, that doesn't look bad, but is it AV good? OK, yes it is. But is it non-smashing/lethal AV good? Yeah, I didn't think... wait, what? No, seriously, if it is, it's just because you're Iggy, and everyone knows you're haxxorz.

And to me, that's the goal for a defense build while leveling. 33% is enough for most situations, and when it isn't, a single small purple is your god mode. More is nice, but is almost more "fun to have" than "gotta have" at that point.

DPS is less important for AV work than you might imagine. Mostly, it just speeds things up. Serious survivability is what you need, and I doubt that Dual Blades/Electric will deliver. A few might be possible with a very focused build. Or maybe it's easier than I think, and someone will post to say, "No problem, I solo AVs all the time on my DB/Electric".

Yeah, I noticed that, then forgot about it by the time I got around to posting. Probably fixable.

Hmmm, I don't see your name in that thread. A search doesn't show you posting in that thread. A search only shows you posting in a single Scrapper forum thread - this one. Are you saying you're the second account of Frosticus or something? You'd almost have to be, since you seem to be claiming that you're one "of the more recognized min/maxers", and it's hard to be recognized when you only have a handful of posts. So should I call you Frosticus? Frosticus, neither of those top two numbers are Scrappers, very few non-Scrappers are posting in that thread, and thus your results have no real competition. Your numbers MAY be awesome, top of the heap. But that thread gives zero evidence of that, and I don't have enough experience with other ATs to have any idea.

I don't think Arcanaville was telling you that you don't know how the game works. You may have a deep understanding and serious play skills. I believe what Arcanaville was doing was laughing at the idea that she doesn't know how the game works.

It seems you want to say that Arcanaville asked the question wrong, and should have asked for an AV soloer, or whatever. Yet it seems like a whole lot of people in the thread understood the spirit of the build challenge, and have submitted reasonable builds for consideration. I'm not saying that Arcanaville couldn't have been more clear, but perhaps the communication problem is not entirely on her side?

It also feels like your putting min/max in a smaller box than I'd put it in. You seem to be saying that a min/max toon is an optimized AoE machine designed for destroying large spawns. Then there are AV soloers. Then there's everything else. That seems a bit too restrictive to me.

I do STRONGLY support what you say about DPS being only one measure, and a typically overused measure of damage output. In regular play (whatever that is), DPS is not what matters. AoE is king, and burst is queen.

That said, I abide by my DPS chain in actual play. My recharge rates are generally carefully tailored, and I've trimmed out all other single-target attacks. If I'm attacking a group, I'll use any AoEs I have, assuming I even have AoEs, as frequently as possible. But other than that, it's the DPS chain, because to do otherwise is to simply skip attacks, wait for preferred attacks to recharge, and simply do damage more slowly. This may not be the case with most people's builds, as most people take more attacks than I do (such as Arcanaville in this example). But I'm a minimalist when it comes to attacks, so the resulting toon is "stuck" using the DPS chain only. Another thing to note is that I rarely fight whites on a mature toon. I'm often fighting as much uplevel as I can, quite often +4x8. I'm not going to burst my way through anything. The time it takes is well into the DPS realm, and I'm going to be using my DPS chain, and for quite a while.

That said, if all I'm after is kill speed, I'll drag out my Fire/Shield with massive recharge and go to town with AoEs. It's what he was designed for. But I don't consider him any more or less min/maxed than my single-target specialists, or my general-purpose-with-AoE-but-not-AoE-focused Scrapper.

If I feel like doing AoE to plow through spawns as quickly as possible, I'll dig out an AoE toon. What I WON'T do is try to optimize EVERY toon for AoE, even if AoE is king. Not every toon is suited for that role. If I feel like playing them anyway, like my DM/SR, I don't think that means I'm not min/maxing the toon. A DM/SR min/maxed for AoE in regular team play would probably be a pretty retarded build, beaten by a huge number of alternatives.

Bah, late for work.

They'll almost certainly hand out a free respec with I19. I wouldn't want to suffer with no Stamina until then.

Broad Sword/Super Reflexes. Take Parry while leveling to smooth out the ride. Drop it once all your defenses are at 45% without it. Hack is better than Slash. Take everything from your secondary but Elude, and if it's your first time with Super Reflexes, you might want to take Elude just to see if you like it. Fitness (Hurdle, Health, Stamina), Leaping (Combat Jumping), Fighting (Boxing as a wasted pick, Tough, Weave) and probably Speed (Hasten), but consider Leadership (Maneuvers, Tactics). If you buy no other IOs, pick up a Steadfast Protection unique and a Kismet unique while you level.