Werner

Heh. I think you have the right attitude about further abuse, and I apologize if I was too, uh, blunt? I haven't read the other threads, but at least based on this thread, you've done nothing even CLOSE to "leave this forum" worthy. You have not been rude, haven't bad-mouthed anyone, and have backed off of statements as you've gotten more information. You've been perfectly reasonable the whole time. That's, uh... kinda rare on forums. So welcome.

Yep, AVs, fluffies, the whole thing. It's, uh... kind of hard to believe, I know. I honestly can't get my head around it. But Iggy has made a habit of doing the impossible.

Hmmm, Fire Melee/Shield Defense with maxed out DPS at maybe 300, +25% extra damage, that's 375... and maybe, just maybe, a Scrapper could solo a giant monster with no temps, no insps, on a specialized build.

Looks like Adamastor is your best bet (25% extra damage from Fire), with a Devouring Earth Thorn or Jack in Irons close behind (20% extra damage from Fire).

OK, here's a quick (editor's note: quick???) build comparison and review. For comparison with yours, Aaron, I grabbed Santorican's build, which I've never looked at before either. I just have reason to believe that it's solid, because Santorican has has a pretty good idea what he's doing.

In all fairness, his looks EXTREMELY expensive, with PvP IOs and purples. Yours isn't cheap, but it's probably an order of magnitude cheaper. That will account for much of the difference that I'm seeing.

The first thing I'm looking for is what chain you two can run. The top Dark Melee chain is this:

Midnight Grasp -> Smite -> Siphon Life -> Smite

It's the top chain for a couple of reasons. First, it's the highest DPS chain. Second, it takes very good advantage of Siphon Life to increase your survivability. Not the BEST advantage, but the best advantage for any chain with anything close to the DPS that I've looked at so far.

Santorican has the recharge to run that chain while Hasten is up, is close when it isn't, and Hasten is only down for 4 seconds or so. Your build can't run it. Looks like your best chain is this:

Midnight Grasp -> Smite -> Shadow Punch -> Siphon Life -> Smite -> Shadow Punch

That chain is actually very close on DPS, but it has two big things going against it. First, it requires an extra attack, which is likely to involve compromise elsewhere in the build. Second, it doesn't use Siphon Life nearly as often, which is going to eat into your survivability.

Siphon Life itself is a key attack, both from a damage and survivability standpoint. It's one of the few attacks where I recommend frankenslotting over set bonuses. Santorican went all the way, no set bonuses, just six hamios, with +95% accuracy, damage, healing AND endurance. Unless you also want recharge to spam Siphon Life faster than your chain allows when you're in real trouble, that's as good as it gets.

Your Siphon Life is healing less often, and for about half as much. And it's less damaging, with significantly less accuracy and endurance discount. You DO have more recharge enhancement, but can't really take advantage of it, and Santorican's global recharge more than makes up for the difference.

I'm just glancing briefly over the other attacks. In your build, they look underenhanced. In Santorican's, they look pretty decent. His DPS is likely noticeably higher. But kudos for taking Shadow Maul. I really like Shadow Maul.

How about endurance use? Your best chain uses 3.57 EPS. His takes 3.36 EPS. Not a huge difference, but I suspect noticeable in things like AV fights or pylon soloing.

Let's have a look at defense and resistance. Very similar numbers there if Santorican leaves Tough (which has no endurance reduction) off, but of course he's a little better there if he turns it on.

Regeneration is similar, with yours ahead, but I suspect that will be dwarfed by the difference in Siphon Life frequency and slotting.

Hit points are similar, with the edge going to your build again. Hit points are very very nice to have.

Defense debuff resistance? No contest. Santorican has an almost full time double-stack of Active Defense, fully-enhanced with Membranes. He's likely capped at 95% defense debuff resistance. Not a concern of his. Significant weakness in your build. No Membranes in Active Defense, low defense debuff resistance.

Endurance use? Well, this is overly simplistic, but you have 3.53 EPS recovery, - 1.07 EPS toggles, -3.57 EPS attack chain, so you're losing 1.11 EPS. That's quite a lot, at least if you're soloing AVs or fighting +4x8 and that sort of thing. Probably OK for normal play. Santorican has 4.15 EPS recovery, -0.85 EPS toggles (Tough off), -3.36 EPS attack chain, so he's losing 0.06 EPS. Oops, missed the Panacea unique. So he gains endurance with Tough off, loses it very slowly with Tough on. Oh, Conserve Power and Dark Consumption. He can run forever without blues, even when unlucky with his procs. Frankly, I bet he could trade some of that to improve the build in other areas. In any case, sustainable endurance is what you want for AV soloing, pylon soloing, +4x8, Rikti War Zone challenge, and various other scrapper challenges. Again, not so important for regular play.

Hmmm, accuracy? I normally measure it against +4s. Looks like you're OK, with Tactics and decent slotting keeping Soul Drain over 95%. Then with Soul Drain up, your other main attacks are over 95%. When Soul Drain is down, you're going to have some misses. Not sure how many +4s you were planning to fight, though. Santorican... not really any better. 95% on Soul Drain, 95% on other attacks when Soul Drain is up, not so much when it's down. His Soul Drain is closer to perma, though. Still, pretty close overall.

Shield Charge in 30 seconds on yours, 25.4 on his. Not a huge difference, but nice to have it up faster.

I DO like seeing leadership in a build, so kudos on that. It seems team-friendly, where Fighting just isn't, other than to the extent that it keeps you alive to keep helping your team. Man, Santorican, why do you hate your team so much?

I prefer your Combat Jumping + Hurdle to his, uh, lack of ability to get around. But hey, Ninja Running helps a whole lot, so maybe it's fine.

Both of you skipped One with the Shield? Eh, OK. It would certainly be on my "maybe if I can afford it" list instead of my "gotta have it" list.

You have Touch of Fear, but when do you find it useful as opposed to simply attacking? Is anything so dangerous to you that you're better of fearing them instead of doing damage? About the only thing I'd want to fear is an AV, and it's not very effective against AVs. Seems like a waste to me, but maybe it's more of a playstyle preference.

Is your build gimped? Hell no. You'll own most content. Is it as good as it could be? Nope. It lags significantly behind what is possible in a build, though I'll again point out that some of that lag is due to budget. How much? Hard to say, but I'm confident that it could be significantly improved.

And some of the improvements may not make any difference to you. Do you fight a lot of defense debuffers? If yes, that's a huge difference. If not, it's no big deal. Do you want to do scrapper challenges? If yes, you'd benefit significantly from better endurance managaement. If no, and you're happy to pop blues, and don't fight AVs much, it may not make any difference at all. And so on.

Oh, Santorican's build, so you don't have to search for it:

I can't remember who, but yeah, at least one other scrapper has done a giant monster with temps and inspirations, probably more than one. Nuke them from orbit.

And yeah, my Kronos was a monster, not a giant monster. Just a glorified AV. I haven't taken down any giant monsters. My main characters put out an average of maybe 175 DPS. I doubt even nuking them from orbit would be enough. I'd probably need a lot of other temp powers too. Surviving isn't a problem, but putting out damage sure is.

I like full control. If I want to spam something, I'll spam it. If I want to move, I want to move NOW, not when the computer decides I should. I will very occasionally put an attack on auto. For instance, I might put Divine Avalanche on auto if I'm in the middle of a big spawn and suddenly need to go AFK.

I did put Hasten on Auto on Sergei, who is about 2 seconds off of perma hasten. That may be my only auto on any character. There's probably something else somewhere, but I'm not remembering it.

I'm going to pretty much echo ClawsandEffect and others.

1) Softcapped Katana/Dark Armor. Works great against most things. Dies fast against crowds of uplevel defense debuffers. Still, I verified that +4x8 Arachnos and even Cimerorans are technically possible, just FRICKIN' HARD, and will involve multiple trips to the hospital. +4x8 Vanguard erase me. There's no way.

2) I'd probably go smashing/lethal. A lot of FCEN attacks, as I understand it, have a smashing/lethal component, allowing that defense to still work. But if it were me, I'd do a comparison of both approaches with completed builds, not just guess that one was better than the other. With Katana or Broad Sword, go with positional defense. Hit the melee soft cap, then work on ranged and AoE.

You CAN make Cloak of Fear work with only a couple slots, but it's tough. Mine has a Level 53 Endoplasm (+38.3% accuracy/fear) and a Nightmare (+26.5% accuracy/endurance). Combined with my global to hit (+17%) and accuracy (+24%), it's enough to give me 70% uptime against +4s. I figure that's as good as Oppressive Gloom if they wander out of it 30% of the time. The endurance usage is pretty harsh, but I mostly have it covered. It was a tough trick to pull off, but I figured it was Cloak of Fear or nothing, as Oppressive Gloom would probably typically cause me more damage than it prevents. And as we all agree, Cloak of Fear looks cool, so there's that.

But yeah, pretty much if you can't pack the sucker with accuracy, fear, and endurance reduction, or make up for it elsewhere in the build, don't bother.

Broad Sword is very SMASH. It should do the trick for you. You might also consider going with Shield Defense instead of Super Reflexes - it'll boost your Broad Sword damage, plus Shield Charge will send your enemies flying. The combination is the most fun I've had from 1-50, and seems fairly well-suited to your concept.

Your gut is right. Both will work, but I recommend Willpower. With Super Reflexes, having Divine Avalanche would be nice while leveling, but for end game AV killing, isn't providing any benefit. And if it isn't providing any benefit at that point, you'd have been better off with something like Dark Melee, for Siphon Life and Dark Consumption. Willpower, on the other hand, goes great with Katana. Iggy Kamakaze solo'd the ITF with his, no temps, no inspirations, no deaths, no joke.

It's not exactly an ideal combination for the job, but with enough effort and expense and skill, yes.

Spines? I don't even have Spines in my spreadsheet. I have one stalled out in the 40s. I suppose I SHOULD figure out what single target chain I should be using, but I never have.

Katana for some serious defense to pair with your serious resistance and serious self heal.

Any of the others if you just wanna have fun, and aren't worried about just how far up you can crank the difficulty level. I do like the epic stun idea.

Not a huge reason that Golden Dragonfly comes first. I generally worry about DPS over burst, and that comes across in my lazy attitude towards which attack I put first in my attack chain posting. Still, you often want Golden Dragonfly first so that you can fit two in a Build Up, assuming your chain is less than ten seconds. If I'm remembering correctly, the attack must only START in the Build Up, not FINISH. If so, then closing out your ten seconds with your long activation big hitter is a good plan for getting the most out of Build Up.