Werner

As I recall from playing this exact build, the endurance was just fine... for a leveling build where you have short down times running from spawn to spawn and taking blues when you need them. It's definitely not in any shape for AV soloing and the like. And please DON'T level a Claws/SR this way - it gives up way too many great attacks for way too long. You'd have more fun taking better attacks and delaying the soft cap, or spending a little more of your influence. I just wanted to make certain the build wasn't TOO painful to level and play.

Ah, but duh, you were probably talking about KATANA, since that's the main subject. Yeah, doing exactly my build but switching in Katana attacks would leave you hurting for endurance. Claws gets an endurance discount as one of its perks. Katana doesn't. For that matter, I think you'll find it hard to put together a nice Katana attack string with only three attacks like that. Yeah, ick.

The main point was just to show what I consider a basic template for soft capping, which powers to take, and basic slotting of them. Then as you add IOs, which you should do, you can take away some things, like dropping Maneuvers in favor of Hasten or Aid Self, that kind of thing.

soft-capped defense
48% average resists (weighted by frequency of damage type)
1766 hit points (would be 1833 with task force commander)
22 HP/sec regeneration
Dark Regeneration (full heal) recharges in 12.7 seconds

Nothing hits me. If it hits me, it does half damage. Passive regeneration tops me up and handles singular big hits. Dark Regeneration puts me back at full when there are multiple big hits in a row like when an AV gets lucky. Basically, you have less than 15 seconds to kill me through soft-capped defense and 50% damage resistance. That's pretty difficult to do. It even handles most minor defense debuffs without incident since my melee and lethal defense are 55%+.

So unless there are big time defense debuffs, it stomps all over my Dark Melee/Super Reflexes. Same defense, much better resists, better heal, similar hit points, similar regeneration.

Feels awful fragile against the big time defense debuffers, though.

I have two sets, so in a sense, not bad, only a few percent. But as we all know, dropping a few percent BELOW the soft cap is BAD. I'm also getting hit whenever they decide to nerf Miracle the same way they nerfed Numina. I'll need to figure something out. Figure I can trade some stuff that isn't as critical for the critical stuff. But I'm waiting until I17 actually comes out and everything's actually nerfed and Mids' is updated and so on. And I'll enjoy what I have while I have it.

Every build of mine gets a Steadfast Protection unique and a Kismet unique as soon as is practical. Sometimes those are the only IOs they get. Usually I at least frankenslot my attacks in the 30s. Occasionally (OK, once, my latest toon), I'll also use cheap set IOs while leveling.

Oh, you're not the only one. I got it totally wrong too, and argued my point against people with better foresight. It looked... OKAY to me. Nothing special. I started playing one immediately, but wasn't expecting too much. I couldn't understand why people were so excited. But I ended up having my favorite trip ever from 1-50 on my Broad Sword/Shield Defense. And on top of that, whoah boy are these things awesome when IO'd to the teeth, now aren't they? I don't have one IO'd to the teeth, but I've seen the builds. I know what they can do. Having a whole lot of fun leveling my Fire/Shield too (currently 47, I think).

I don't go SPLAT on my Dark Melee/Super Reflexes, at least the handful of times I played him on +4x8 with bosses, mostly to see if I could (he's mostly retired). I suspect that it's a combination of high hit points (for Super Reflexes), high resistance (for Super Reflexes), and constantly topping up my hit points with Siphon Life. I believe Bill Z Bubba reported no real problems against most enemy factions on his Claws/SR. I'm sure there are a lot of Super Reflexes out there without major problems on +4x8. I think the "two hits and you're dead" thing is overstated in regards to an IO'd out Super Reflexes.

Vanguard tear me apart in seconds on +4x8, of course. I'm sure some other enemy groups would be troublesome as well.

Sorry for the commercial break. Now back to your regularly scheduled program.

Guess I don't see it that way. I don't see it as any different than, say, pulling. Again, you're exploiting the AI. SMART enemies would call everyone around them, hit the alarm button to alert the rest of the complex to where your team is, ignore the Tank's taunt, and shoot the squishies from range to avoid being nuked in a group. Or at least something smarter than running over one at a time, or bunching up at a corner and dying conveniently for you.

This game doesn't have smart enemies unless you PvP. I exploit that continuously. If I want to make the game harder, I crank up the level or remove tools like inspirations. I'm not a role player. I don't even TRY to pretend that my enemies are smart, and then adjust my tactics to give them the same advantage they would have if they WERE smart. I'd feel completely stupid doing so. Accepting the AI for the stupid algorithm it is just seems like smart tactics to me. Or cheating. Or dishonorable. As Sarrate says, semantics, and it doesn't matter to me what you want to call it; it's what I'll do.

Not saying anyone else has to. If drawing a line for what parts of the AI you'll exploit makes for better immersion, or improves role play, or just makes the game more challenging in a fun way (e.g., RWZ challenge rules), have at it. I'm just not drawing that line personally. It doesn't generally improve my game play experience. I guess for me, allowing the stupid AI to outsmart me would make me feel even more stupid than, say, turning off all my toggles and running missions that way. Your mileage may differ.

OK, yes, I do I feel a little bad when I lure Tyrant into the lava. Poor little guy. But I still sleep at night.

We're sure. Fast Healing is better than Health. And my version of Mids' agrees. 40% regeneration from Health, 75% regeneration from Fast Healing.

Right, it won't be a worry. You're not a Regen Scrapper, so getting locked in a long animation is exceedingly unlikely to kill you, particularly with high defenses. Oh, sure, it might happen some day if you play enough. Maybe. Still worth it for a good AoE with a low endurance cost.

The soft cap doesn't really have anything to do with the classes. It isn't part of your character's build, or any actual limitation on your character's build. It arises naturally out of how the game calculates the chance to hit. Vastly oversimplifying, "all" enemies have a 50% chance to hit. From that you subtract your defense. The minimum chance to hit is 5%. So any defense over 45% is wasted.

In practice, it isn't always wasted, because there are defense debuffs, and because some enemies have over a 50% chance to hit (+6 and above, pets, AVs with some form of build up, some custom enemies in Architect Entertainment, etc.).

And the actual formula for calculating the chance to hit is more complicated than what I've presented. But the part that matters insofar as defense goes is pretty much what I described.

For all the gory details:

http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Attack_Mechanics

And even better:

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=121258

As for the answer to #2, it really depends. If you have good defense debuff resistance (possible with Shields) and don't play Architect Entertainment, I'd probably target a flat 45%, or at most an extra couple percentage points.

Tactics.

I wouldn't play it, no.

But as a hypothetical, it's pretty much impossible in today's game. To not be ABLE to soft cap it would require it to start with negative defense, since Shred Monkey has demonstrated soft-capping pure resistance sets. So yeah, of course I wouldn't play it.

But you could ask something like, "Would you play it if the total defense offered by the set were 10% lower?" And no, I wouldn't. Probably not even with it 5% lower, though maybe. Not sure what my cut off is, but it couldn't lose much before I'd give up on the set. All of the sets are in a pretty narrow band, and small changes can make big relative performance differences.

Well, "sucks" might be an overstatement, but I guess I don't know, because my Fire/Shield is the only character I've leveled where I've moved out of SOs and into mostly set IOs while still leveling. I did level up a Broad Sword/Shield Defense on mostly SOs, but Parry probably makes any survivability observations almost irrelevant.

But I also don't have the impression that Shields with just SOs is TOO strong. Strong enough to be worth playing, perhaps, but not particularly strong. I'd probably choose something else if it weren't for the end-game IO'd out possibilities.

It's my Katana/Dark that's getting nailed by the IO nerfs. I was apparently taking advantage of quite a few IOs that the devs have decided were overpowered or simply broken. And yeah, my Katana/Dark IS seriously overpowered, at least until I run into big defense debuffs. I wouldn't have done the IO nerfs if I'd been in charge, but I guess I can see where the devs might be coming from.

I'm going to guess that it works out like this:

Smite -> Shadow maul -> Smite -> Shadow Punch -> Siphon Life

It's a nice easy chain. Only requires +90% recharge in Smite, so you can keep running it while Hasten is down.

At +185% recharge in Smite (runnable while Hasten is up), the next chain will yield a TINY improvement in DPS, but the main benefit is saving yourself an attack and all the slotting.

Smite -> Shadow Maul -> Smite -> Siphon Life

At about +240% recharge in Smite, this chain takes over:

Smite -> Siphon Life -> Smite -> Shadow Punch -> Pause

But that's just theoretical if the build isn't packing the recharge for it, and the one you posted isn't. Besides, might as well include the AoE since it's incredibly endurance-efficient and you get to hit multiple targets sometimes.

Unfortunately, the first and second chain are over 20% worse than the top chain And the third chain, even at a nearly-unattainable +300% recharge, is still 17% worse than the top chain.

In other words, dropping Midnight Grasp really hurts your DPS. The first chain is good enough for most purposes, and even without Soul Drain, could probably solo Pylons and AVs with Against All Odds helping out. But it's not really using the right tools for the job.

I don't guarantee I got the best chains, but the situation doesn't look very good regardless. I also didn't account for the slotting in any specific build.