Werner

Hmmm. I have Leadership on my Katana/Regen. Heck, I have Leadership on all three of my purpled-out Scrappers. So I'm not saying to skip it. But I would personally draw a big distinction between "lead his group into the fray" and "must take Leadership pool". Leading the team into battle is an action you take, for which you may want tank-like survivability, or at least tank-like burst survivability, which is fortunately something Regen can handle. The pool is just a set of low magnitude team buffs that just happens to be named "Leadership". If they'd named it "The Team Buffs Pool" or "Group Hug!" would that change anything for you? So I guess my advice there is to worry about what powers DO, not what they're named.

Still, I think we can stick with those requirements OK. For leveling, I'd probably suggest Speed (Hasten) and Fitness (Swift, Health, Stamina) for your other two pools. In the end game, you might respec from Fitness to Fighting (Tough), using Physical Perfection and some attack frankenslotting to take care of the loss of Stamina's endurance recovery. While the game is simple enough that no power pool is truly essential, I consider a proper selection of a lot of pool powers to at least be a very, very good idea.

Your absolutely-must-take Broad Sword power is Parry. It's not a great attack, but it keeps you alive. From a numbers standpoint, that's pretty much the only reason to select Broad Sword over other secondaries. I would also definitely include Hack, Disembowel and Head Splitter. I'd take Build Up. Unless you're making a single-target specialist (not recommended for general play), I'd take at least one of Slice and Whirling Sword, maybe both. Personally, I'd probably go Slice at a low level, then respec into Whirling Sword in the mid to late game (I usually respec once while leveling, usually in the mid to late 30s). Slash is skippable. Confront should be skipped unless you're doing something very specific with it, such as PvP, in which case you'd probably want an alternate PvP build anyway.

It's plenty to take down AVs. Don't know about Gloom.

On Broad Sword, which is I assume what we're talking about, it is probably worth putting in more than one attack if you're specifically going for single-target DPS for AVs, pylons, uplevel bosses, and that sort of thing. Only put it in attacks in your single-target chain, not in your big AoEs.

On Katana, I just put one in Gambler's Cut, and then use a chain that spams Gambler's Cut every other attack.

Reiterating what has already been said for emphasis, the game applies the higher of your positional defense (melee, ranged, AoE) or your typed defense (smashing, lethal, etc.). So in almost all cases, you only need to soft cap positional OR typed defense, not both. Super Reflexes is all about positional defense. Don't worry at all about typed defense.

Resistance is better than defense in some situations. As you've experienced, defense allows for spikes of damage that can kill you, even if the average damage is fairly low. Resistance protects you better from those sorts of spikes. Defense, on the other hand, also protects you from debuffs, since most of them need to hit you to take effect. So one or the other is better in different situations. The reason why defense is king on scrappers isn't that, but rather that it is easier to get high levels of defense, and that is is possible to get a much higher level of average damage mitigation (90%) from defense than resistance (75%).

For maximum survivability, though, you want both. You want to have soft-capped defense, but you also want to pick up all the resistance you can. On Super Reflexes, that means taking all of your passives, as they provide a scaling damage resistance that increases as you get injured. I also highly recommend Tough, both for the resistance and for the Steadfast Protection 3% defense IO.

And survivability doesn't end there, of course. You also want higher maximum hit points, which are fairly equivalent to having more resistance, as they protect you against those same damage spikes. And then you want regeneration and healing, which Dark Melee provides for you in Siphon Life.

If you go hard core on all of those fronts, you'll probably be more survivable than you'll need for 99% of the game. But you CAN do it if you want to dip into that last 1%.

And for reference, here is hitting the soft cap by 36 with a single IO. I leveled using this template, and it's perfectly playable, though probably not nearly as much fun as taking some decent attacks and a travel power.

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

Click this DataLink to open the build!

Level 36 Magic Scrapper
Primary Power Set: Claws
Secondary Power Set: Super Reflexes
Power Pool: Fitness
Power Pool: Leaping
Power Pool: Fighting
Power Pool: Leadership

Hero Profile:
Level 1: Swipe -- Acc(A), Acc(3), EndRdx(3), Dmg(5), Dmg(5), Dmg(7)
Level 1: Focused Fighting -- DefBuff(A), DefBuff(7), DefBuff(9), EndRdx(9)
Level 2: Strike -- Acc(A), Acc(11), EndRdx(11), EndRdx(13), Dmg(13), Dmg(15)
Level 4: Focused Senses -- DefBuff(A), DefBuff(15), DefBuff(17), EndRdx(17)
Level 6: Slash -- Acc(A), Acc(19), EndRdx(19), RechRdx(21), Dmg(21), Dmg(23)
Level 8: Hurdle -- Jump(A)
Level 10: Practiced Brawler -- RechRdx(A), RechRdx(23)
Level 12: Combat Jumping -- DefBuff(A)
Level 14: Health -- Heal(A)
Level 16: Dodge -- DefBuff(A), DefBuff(25), DefBuff(25)
Level 18: Boxing -- Empty(A)
Level 20: Stamina -- EndMod(A), EndMod(27), EndMod(27)
Level 22: Tough -- S'fstPrt-ResDam/Def+(A), EndRdx(29)
Level 24: Weave -- DefBuff(A), DefBuff(31), DefBuff(31), EndRdx(31)
Level 26: Agile -- DefBuff(A), DefBuff(29), DefBuff(33)
Level 28: Maneuvers -- DefBuff(A), DefBuff(33), DefBuff(34), EndRdx(34)
Level 30: Lucky -- DefBuff(A), DefBuff(33), DefBuff(34)
Level 32: Quickness -- Run(A)
Level 35: Evasion -- DefBuff(A), DefBuff(36), DefBuff(36), EndRdx(36)

I think Tyrant is a fairly average to kind of easy AV. He could use a buff. Grats, though! If you can beat him, you can probably beat a lot of them.

The WMD challenge - Gaussian's arc on +1x2 bosses no AVs. No temps, no insps, no deaths.

Nice job! If it's possible without Parry or Divine Avalanche on an Electric Armor, then it's probably possible on any combination. Advisable is a different question, but possible, definitely. And it looks like you left a lot of room for tuning in the build. Might even be enough room left to make it practical.

Consider Dark Melee/Invulnerability. That combination holds the Scrapper record for most dev AVs solo'd at the same time no temps no inspirations. I can't remember the actual number, but something like 8 or 9. The idea is that you combine soft-capped defense with a rapid-fire self-heal that's in your attack chain with some hard core (for a Scrapper) smashing/lethal resistance. As long as your enemies are smashing/lethal, you can't die. Psionic is your weak spot, but you still have soft-capped defense and major healing.

Woohoo! And yeah, there's a big difference between the soft cap and being several percentage points away.