City of Heroes Coldfront (CoH, CoV)

This guide is for DM/REGEN who want to solo invincible missions nonstop pve and throw smack down in hit and run, single target pvp. The guide will also help you to be a 'freelance' groupmate, allowing your team healers to focus on other groupmates while you tangle with the difficult targets.
I have almost 2 years of experience as dark melee/regen, currently at lvl 40 as I was waiting for Recluse's Victory to start moving on again.

Dark Melee: This set comes with its own strengths and weaknesses. First, you need to be aware that damage mitigation is negligible in this set. You put out damage, fast, furious, and downright uncanny. Second, you do most of it with your 1st and second tier powers. Dark Melee is all about sustained damage, which also brings us to its weakness: you have to go toe to toe to shine above the other sets often for more than 10 seconds. You are rooted much more than claws, becoming more of a 'hard nosed brawler' as opposed to the 'crack head grasshopper' that many scrappers become, leaping around, creating havoc. With this build you will have to get used to anticipating your greatest source of damage before you enter the fight, then relentlessly beating it into submission. Then deal with his cronies.

1. Shadow Punch. This is a 5 star power. With just about the shortest activation time in the game, it puts up a healthy brawl index power that does half smashing and half negative energy...very nice for bypassing some damage resistance. With such a fast recharge and activation, you can achieve unbelievable DPS with this. Boxing DOES NOT compare and if you swap the two you will find yourself to be far sub par in DPS compared to SP. Recommended Slotting: 2 acc, 3 dam, 1 recharge.

2. Smite. Smite is a huge damage dealer and your real powerhouse. Very short activation time, again this is half smashing and half negative energy. Used in conjunction with Shadow Punch, you can hit 3 times within 2 seconds. SP, sm, SP. This is your bread and butter combo for single target damage, and will outperform shadow maul, midnight grasp, and other attacks. 5 star power, slot it up. 2 acc, 3 dam, 1 rech.

3. Shadow Maul. Huge damage, LOOOOONG activation time. This power will keep you rooted in place and get you killed if you use it as a single target power while surrounded by baddies. If used correctly, this will take down 3 enemies at a time and boost your DPS quite a bit. Still a 5 star power, but only should be used if several enemies are in a short cone. Half negative, half smashing damage. 3 second animation...ouch. 2 acc, 3 dam, one rech.

4. Siphon Life. You are regen, so skip it. Reconstruction can use any slots you would have put here and be much more effective. It's still a fun power, and if you have spare slots it is not a bad filler. The heal is tertiary and its got nearly a 2 second activation, but as long as you don't think of this as 'bread and butter' it's personal preference. If you don't have hasten, it can be a great boon while reconstruction is down. I personally skip it until it can be proven that I need it. Slotting: 2 acc, 3 heal, 1 rech or 2 acc, 3 dam, 1 heal for DPS filler.

5. Touch of Fear. This is a first rate power. 5 stars, but not worth taking until you are further into your build, 20s or 30s. In both pvp and pve, this power shines. 2 or 3 accuracy is all you need to keep your enemies out of your hair. Run in, pop this on a sapper, and go kill everyone else. When its back up, hit them again. In the 40s you can spare slots to get its duration higher, but I have 2 accuracy and rarely miss +3s. It takes 2 hits to fear a boss, but since i run hasten, this takes almost no time. Larger tohit debuff than your other attacks, and does no damage. Slotting: 2 acc, eventually 3 fear and 1 recharge.

6. Confront. Skip it or embrace your inner noob. Attract attention with your bad assity, not a wasted power slot.

7. Dark Consumption. This power is great, but for a regen scrapper, its almost a waste. I skip it, as i take the fitness pool. This has a long recharge and needs a to-hit roll to give you back any endurance. I had it until recently, because I finally counted how often I use it...almost as often as I use MoG...almost never. If you do, you want to HEAVILY slot for recharge to get it to repop every minute. 2 acc, 3 rech, and 1 end. I give this power 4 stars if you are not a regen, 2 if you are.

8. Soul Drain. 5 stars, love it love it love it! Every enemy it hits gives you accuracy AND damage! Also throws a tohit debuff on all of them in its AoE, does damage, and is up every 90 seconds! I throw in recharge redux to keep it up every 48 seconds or so with hasten. Even when facing a single target AV or EB, pop this for the extra boost it gives you. It's like aim and buildup for a scrapper, what's not to love? Slotting: 3 recharge, 2 acc, 1 tohitbuff. Alternate slotting 2 acc, 3 dam, 1 recharge.

9. Midnight Grasp. 5 stars again, and finally you have a good attack chain with MG, sp, smite, sp, (filler), MG. With hasten up you can skip the filler. Huge damage, immobilize, tohit debuff, DoT, and not a bad recharge. I slot it with 2 acc, 3 dam, 1 recharge. Bread and butter...

When you use MG, shadow punch, smite, shadow punch on single targets, even +3 lts are dead. The tohit debuff stacks, so against an AV you are just giving defense to regen, providing a nice synergy to resilience (resistance) and your mitigation through superior healing. Fan-freakin' tastic! On to regen!

1. Fast Healing. Slot it 3 times for healing and forget it. This improves your base healing rate and affects all of your other healing powers.

2. Reconstruction. Think of this as 'shrugging off the hit'. When wolverine gets torn in half by the hulk, he hits reconstruction and moves on. It is a must have and bread and butter for regen. Fast activation means you'll be back in action swinging with minimal interruption. Starting out, 2 slot for recharge and 1 slot for heal, then one more rech and 2 heals to finish it off. With that slotting you will have a 40% heal every 28 seconds. DAMN.

3. Quick Recovery. Even better than stamina, 3 slot it in your teens for End Recovery. If you could have more than 5 stars on my scale, this would have 6. It is what keeps you attacking, shortening the fights and therefore mitigating damage to you. Endurance is power in CoH/CoV.

4. Dull Pain. The numbers have been run so many times on this I won't bother repeating them. At lvl 40 this gives me 1000 extra hit points. It's only off for 10 or 12 seconds with hasten and 3 recharge. Base healing takes a huge jump and you can absorb alpha strikes. 3slots for recharge and 3 for healing, in that order. One of the best regen powers as it mitigates the number one killer of regen scrappers: Alpha strikes. It buys you the time to hit reconstruct or any other power you need. 5 stars.

5. Integration. I don't need to reinforce the idea that this is another 5 star must have power. at lvl 16, if you take anything else, the developers may just hunt you down where you live and kill you, because this is nearly the best power in the game. It's got a sickening Mag 12 or 16 resist to EVERYTHING status. KB? Disorient? You name it, they hate you now. Go kill that dominator, he is your [censored]. 3 slot for heals, and never look back. This should ALWAYS be up. It also improves your healing rate by 190%. On top of fast healing. Are you seeing the trend? Regen builds on itself, so taking advantage of all of the powers becomes a multiplicative experience.

6. Resilience. This is the only 'must have' power that I will only give 3 stars...and only because its one you don't need to slot heavily. It gives you about 6 or 7% smashing/lethal resist with its native slot, which adds up over the levels. It also gives you a good mag 2 or 3 resist to disorient, which stacked with Integration is godly. When energy melee starts trying to drop toggles, you are going to be a tough nut to crack. If they do, you can just run away and retoggle, because you won't be disoriented, and if you are, it will be for one or two seconds at the most. Even using an Awaken, you will pop right back up with 1 second or 2 of disorient, until you have 2 slots, in which you won't experience any. 1 slot to start, eventually 3 slot for resistance, probably after lvl 40.

7. Instant Healing. Hm. I deem this a must have, but truthfully, even in invincible solo missions I never use this unless fighting 2 bosses at the same time. However, if there is any power that can be your "oh SH**" button, this is it. It will foil enemies over and over that think they will bury you. Pop it and watch jaws drop. 3 slotted with heals, this will give you about 1000% faster healing. (remember when i told you about FH and Integration? If you would normally heal for 100 per tick with those two powers (just putting in perspective with easy numbers) you would get 1000 per tick now. If you fully slotted those powers for healing....let's just say you don't need math where you're going. They call you AV slayer at that point. The only thing that could kill you is multiple alpha strikes from AVs or groups of +4 bosses, or many stalkers. (i've survived a triple strike of stalkers before...I think 4 would kill you no matter what. I was dulling my pain at the time, very glad i have hasten). 3 recharge if you are a nervous person. 3 heal if you like overkill. Even without slots, this is godly. I 6 slot it for "just in case".

8. Revive. If you take this, it is advisable to wait until post 40. You just don't need it. The one or two times you wish you had it don't make it necessary. I will be taking it at 44 or 47.

9. Moment of Glory. Much-maligned power, but I do have it and it is 4 slotted. (3 resist, 1 defense). If instant healing can't save you, this might. That is the only reason I have it...the backup power of a backup power. I have only used it when soloing an AV and dull pained up. With one defense the AV was whiffing me and when he did hit the damage was reduced by 62%, 70 with my resilience. If nothing else it lets you escape what otherwise would have killed you. Highly situational, but my reasoning for taking this is to be 'the unkillable scrapper'. For that 1% of situations that incredible healing rates can't save you, this will. And by lvl 38, you are already complete if you follow my build, so this is truly a gravy power. 3 stars...but still a must have for the sake of pvp solo. Slotting is highly debateable, and since the power is so infrequently used, hard to say. I will say that 3 slotted for defense and resist, you would have +126% defense and +62% resist. If you have combat jumping, stealth, etc, those do stack. That pretty much floors anyone's accuracy to the 5% minimum.

The Build!

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Exported from Ver: 1.7.6.0 of the CoH_CoV Character Builder
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Name:
Level: 50
Archetype: Scrapper
Primary: Dark Melee
Secondary: Regeneration
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01) --> Shadow Punch==> Acc(1) Acc(3) Dmg(7) Dmg(11) Dmg(21) Rechg(40)
01) --> Fast Healing==> Heal(1) Heal(5) Heal(13)
02) --> Smite==> Acc(2) Acc(3) Dmg(9) Dmg(11) Dmg(23) Rechg(40)
04) --> Reconstruction==> Rechg(4) Rechg(5) Rechg(15) Heal(25) Heal(36) Heal(37)
06) --> Shadow Maul==> Acc(6) Acc(7) Dmg(13) Dmg(15) Dmg(23) Rechg(40)
08) --> Quick Recovery==> EndMod(8) EndMod(9) EndMod(17)
10) --> Dull Pain==> Rechg(10) Rechg(19) Rechg(21) Heal(25) Heal(36) Heal(37)
12) --> Combat Jumping==> DefBuf(12)
14) --> Super Jump==> Jump(14) Jump(48)
16) --> Integration==> Heal(16) Heal(17) Heal(19)
18) --> Swift==> Run(18) Run(48)
20) --> Resilience==> DmgRes(20) DmgRes(42) DmgRes(46)
22) --> Health==> Heal(22) Heal(27) Heal(27)
24) --> Stamina==> EndMod(24) EndMod(29) EndMod(29)
26) --> Soul Drain==> Acc(26) Acc(31) Rechg(33) Rechg(36) Rechg(43) TH_Buf(46)
28) --> Instant Healing==> Rechg(28) Rechg(34) Rechg(37) Heal(43) Heal(43) Heal(45)
30) --> Hasten==> Rechg(30) Rechg(31) Rechg(31)
32) --> Midnight Grasp==> Acc(32) Acc(33) Dmg(33) Dmg(34) Dmg(34) Rechg(42)
35) --> Touch of Fear==> Acc(35) Acc(42) Fear(46) Fear(48) Fear(50)
38) --> Moment Of Glory==> DmgRes(38) DmgRes(39) DmgRes(39) DefBuf(39) Rechg(50)
41) --> Boxing==> Acc(41)
44) --> Tough==> DmgRes(44) DmgRes(45) EndRdx(45) DmgRes(50)
47) --> Revive==> Heal(47)
49) --> Hurdle==> Empty(49)
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01) --> Sprint==> Empty(1)
01) --> Brawl==> Empty(1)
01) --> Critical Hit==> Empty(1)
02) --> Rest==> Empty(2)
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I hate the scrapper ancillary powers, especially for regen, but options are to take torrent just for knockback, in which case you will never really need instant healing anymore LOL. I opted for boxing/tough, just so I could be even tougher in a knock down, drag out brawl where I don't have to run around like a little girl and can just absorb whatever the enemy tosses me in pvp. Power pools: Jumping is the best for utility and speed. combat jumping gives you a tiny bit of defense as well as unsupressed movement capability, which is very handy. Hasten is a must, and fitness just makes what you do even better, regenerate health and stamina. Health affects your base healing rate, which again, catapults your other healing abilities. I hope you enjoy, as I absolutely love Dark Mike and have fun in whatever I do with him. There are no 'wasted' slots, which is how i finally settled on this. Every single power (until the post 40 "whatever you want" phase) is making me even better and more capable (and fun) at my playstyle. Feel free to comment, and enjoy your dm/regen!