Naz_Nomad

[ QUOTE ]
my defender makes sure "Heal Otter" is on his.

[/ QUOTE ]

Lucky Otters! I want to play one too - is it some sort of scrapper? Are they available for CoH and CoV? Can I be an evil otter? Otter FTW!!

[ QUOTE ]
it's probably more important in the case of tanks since they will most likely be the only ones to survive if they play badly (unlike other ATs).

[/ QUOTE ]

Until you're on a team with a tank who is not only played badly but built very badly too. Then watch the debt pile on for the tank. Tanks can survive battles against mobs quite well, but tbh, my money would be on the defender and the scrapper as the suvivors of any bad team pullling excess aggro. It's a style thing, defenders stay back and pull least aggro, scrappers tend more often to have an escape route coupled with the ability to take some serious aggro. Tanks may have the best armours and the most hp, but their taking-it-all play style can lead to more death than others who fight with more thought of what could happen should things go worng.

I love being in a team with a good tank who can pull the aggro and survive it, I love being in a team with a good defender who uses their primary more than their secondary, love teams with lots of scrappers so the damage/second ticker runs in overdrive... It isn't going to be the tank who keeps the team alive by doing his job properly, it will be the team that stays alive by allowing everyone to do their job, even in teams that might appear unbalanced. TEAM is the key word, not any particular member. If people talk to each other, then the team can survive a lot of pain. How many team wipes have you seen where members are silent on the team channel and rush round trying to get missions done for xp/minute rates? Too many, and too much debt, tank or no.

[ QUOTE ]
Energy/kin would be a challenge

[/ QUOTE ]

I got these.. level 13 and flying! Energy/Kinetics FTW!!

Energy is nice single target damage, kinetic lovely single target debuffs, so far they are working perfectly for me, solo and teams.

Rain of Fire on my fire blaster is used as a defence thing rather than an attack. Scatters mobs when the melee gets too much for a blastery type, and nice for that, but be careful because every bugger and his dog will want to shoot you after they escape the shower.

[ QUOTE ]
Why not think of something original rather then plagiarise an existing ideas from the DC universe?

[/ QUOTE ]

And why not follow your favourites? How many Legolas's were there when archery came out? How many batmans are running around in one form or another? If it works, if it fits, and if it inspires you to have fun with the game, then go for it.

But useful for solo corruptors... sort of crowd control thing for me. I like it.

Yes you can. I do with my level 27 emp/energy occasionally.

Heal Aura, RA and erm... RA (Regen and recovery) all work for you. Choose a secondary well though, because you'll struggle with reduced damage.

Anyone can solo. Some just do it a lot slower than others. Empaths are ok so long as you have a decent secondary and can maintain your endurance and know when to run like hell.

Yup, but it's the same for swords, katanas, claws, and spines. The only scrapper powers that don't require "drawing" are MA and DM, and that's because they're erm.. well... erm... hitting powers. Air Superiority is also a hitting power. They match better.

[ QUOTE ]

So, hmm, have you considered moving on the US servers? On EU evenings, yeah, the EU servers have more people. But if your playing hours are all out of sync with EU, you may find a _lot_ more people on the US servers.

[/ QUOTE ]

Strange this... I did move onto the US servers about 9 months or so ago. Don't ask me why, but I didn't like it at all - the UK servers are home, always have been! Actually, my Brute is a yank character, though the scrapper main is a UK toon.

There's a strange way of playing games in the US and I couldn't settle. There's also the time thing again... 12 hours removed from the UK means if I get on in the mornings here, it's evening there. 17 hours removed from EST, and it all becomes too awkward to work out. Lunchtime here becomes early evening there, and the afternoon becomes the busiest times for the servers. My evening becomes the early hours, with the traditional server downtime (8am EST) is about 1 am here. So... my evenings are the wee small hours of the night for most US players, and the servers at that time of day are actually emptier than in the mornings on the UK servers. There is a slight lag with West Coast players who are about 21 hours behind me, so some evenings (Saturday and Sunday for me) are reasonably busy.

It wasn't that so much as the style of gaming over there. The UK servers are fast and loose, the Americans like everything to be efficient and work the numbers. I even recieved some slight hostility towards less than efficient builds or playstyle there.

Then there's the language barrier. Yes, we all speak English, but Americans speak in code. I swear it. I have had to send home-made dictionaries to Americans before now to explain some of the slang that is common in English. Try explaining to an american whats happening when you are "Taking the P*ss"... It is far beyond their comprehension.

I transferred my Co* characters back to the UK servers after a short while on the US servers. Not a nice place. Trust me, there are demons on the US servers.

[ QUOTE ]
So I would advise to have a break and come back to it later after some alting. Sometimes characters just lose their appeal.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is what I have done, but my thoughts drift back to Ennil a lot. She's not been out the box for a month or so now and I have been playing a corruptor for the last week or so and the love has all come back for the game, which lost appeal a lot when I reached 40.

I had great hopes for the 40's after the grind that is the late 30's, especially after running out of contacts at 38 and relying on the PvP zones for missions when teams weren't easily found. Two full levels in the PvP zones brought the fun back just a little, but it was a grind for those two levels with the missions being very repetitive in all zones.

I made a corruptor to have a play on CoV, which I haven't been enamoured with, and with a slightly strange energy/kinetics build, I have started to actually enjoy CoV, and the unusual blaster/defender style of play for corruptors. It's just a shame that the early levels of CoV are so dire with the whole mercy and Port Oakes thing going off. No real diversification until Cap O'Diable IMHO.

Maybe Ennil will come back and make her slow way through the 40's again some time soon, but for the time being, scrapping and CoH seem to have teken a back seat for me. I will see how Corrupting and kinetics goes for me.

Thanks for the advice everyone.

Up for discussion today is my loss of the love of scrapping.

Level 41, Dark/Inv, and I have just lost my love of the character. 18 months into the game, and I still love to play Co* but for some reason not the scrapper. (Or the brute for that matter, who plays exactly like a scrapper.)

I looked forward to reaching 40 so much, it was a massive buzz to get there with my first character. Then I started on the missions and everything paled. Scrapping at level 40 has ceased to be fun, and I am hoping that some serious scrappers out there can advise on finding the fun again. On a side note, I solo this character a lot - I am in New Zealand and there are times when I play and there are about 10 people on the entire server, so I won't be taking too much by the way of find-a-good-team advice. I have some good friends around the game, but am not in a SG and due to time differences, I rarely see anyone all that regularly.

I have just read this thread for the first time. It had me in stitches and is so so true!

Level 27 empath, been there, had these conversations.... *sigh*

Tried again this morning - works fine now.

[ QUOTE ]
Group Name
The European Villainous Immorality League (EVIL)

[/ QUOTE ]

The url for your web page doesn't work. Either that or my browser is buggy as hell.

[ QUOTE ]
DA is a tricky set to get used to, I'll admit.

[/ QUOTE ]

And the only one I have never mastered in all my time scrapping. Try as I might, I can't get the right balance in endurance as it seems to me there are too many endurance heavy toggles for a DA scrapper. Everything else I seem to manage ok, but never DA.

But....

I could have understood hover and tp, I can understand SS and fly, but can't get fly and tp round my thinking. There are arguements, like your own, for two travel powers, but in this build, it doesn't sit right for me.

Just my two-cents worth, but...

Wouldn't caltrops fit in there somewhere? Certainly the most annoying power known to players everywhere who have met and loved Knives of Artemis. Stops jumps, and jumping in and away is a popular PvP tactic these days.

Why bother with provoke/taunt powers? Call me thick, but aren't you going to be using your snipe to pull, and is there any need at all for a blaster to grab even more aggro?

Likewise, shouldn't Smoke Grenade be in there for the steath and the bad guy's accuracy debuffs?

Similarly, the few times I have teamed with /devices blasters, their trip mines and time bombs worked very well and yet you have omitted these too.

I can't understand why you have chosen two travel powers?

Wouldn't health and stamina be better taken earlier in the build?

Other than that... Seems OK.

Hope I wasn't too critical

[ QUOTE ]
Siphon Life is not good enough, as Cynic says, its slow end heavy and poor damage. The heal that it gives you will not stop them killing you in the alpha and will only really save you if all other clickies have been used in AV/GM fights.

[/ QUOTE ]

I still use Siphon Life at 41 on an invulnerable scrapper and find the heal useful at times when Dull Pain is recharging in hard fights. It will save you after the alpha strikes, as Dull Pain and Reconstruction are recharging and all you have left are the regenrations, a third heal is nice to have for emergencies, and slotted with 2 SO heals at level 41 it heals me for 200hp or so IIRC, not to be sniffed at. Damage is comparable to shadow punch and Air Superiority. I admit it is end heavy and has a slower recharge but on a */regen with stamina, then endurance shouldn't be a problem, even with Dark Melee which is quite an endurance eater at times.

In the build above (from LostNinja), reconstruction will be needed before level 20, so would be fine as a respec build but wouldn't work from level 1 too well. Regen scrappers are very tough, but need their heals in there early. Before SO's are slotted you actually get more healing from reconstruction than from Dull Pain, and Dull Pain should be taken way way before level 22! Isn't it available from 8 or 10 or there abouts? Don't forget that there are no defences or resistances in regeneration apart from secondary resistances from such as toxic damage, so no self-heals before 20 is a short-cut to debt, and lots of it.

Remove Shadow Punch and Soul Drain, leave them til a tad later in your earlier build. Take swift earlier, then use the spare slots for health and stamina. Keep Siphon Life.
Regens can still use the extra heal, to use after the alpha strikes if nothing else. It causes damage, use it, enjoy the extra hp. Slot it Acc/EndRed/Heal/Heal/Dam/Dam.

Remember that the first 24 levels are all about having a scrapper that can survive and arrest bad guys, not about having an uber masher. Respecs can be earned from 24 onwards and can be used to tweak your build with the next few powers becoming available in mind. You know how fast you level and if you can be effective with a chain of Smite - Shadow Maul - Air Superiority

Personally, my Dark Melee scrapper doesn't have Touch of Fear, the Taunt or Midnight Grasp but has all the other powers in the set. I believe she is quite effective, she is able to solo very well and works well in a team. It's all down to play style and your own preferences. What works for one person may not work for another.

Thanks for that Max, I haven't paid too much attention to how I7 will affect toons not yet rolled

[ QUOTE ]
What's wrong with the animations? (Apart for barb swipe, but nobody in their right mind would take that anyways).

[/ QUOTE ]

Oh, and I took Barb Swipe.... bugger!

Perhaps it's just me... I can't like the spines themselves and don't like the little popping thing when they appear, same with the constipation-spineburst animation. If it don't make the game fun for you, then don't do it I say. So spines/regen goes, and in comes either claws or MA or katana, though the katana animations are slightly annoying too, but not deletion style annoying. Regen or SR are my choices for secondaries, and I'll probably stick with regen as my first ever scrapper was regen, so I'll stick to historical/traditional, and anyway, regen rocks ever so slightly more then invulnerability I think, having struggled with inv at times on the trek to level 41. It's the primary powerset I want to get right, and much as I like the powers of spines with its AoE's etc, I can't reconcile the animations. Claws is second best for AoE's possibly (though while at work I don't have the powerset descriptions at hand), so I might give that a try as a change from Dark Melee.

Sorry Max, but the animations just bug me. For some they are nice, but then if we all liked the same thing it would be a boring world.

So... Claws/Regen... off to view the guides!

[ QUOTE ]
If you want a scrapper that's both very visible and awesome, go with spines/regen Spines is the primary with most AoE's (Area of effect attacks), and regen has great survivability. At high levels, a spines/regen can "arrest" whole spawns fairly quickly.

[/ QUOTE ]


I struggle slightly with spines for some reason, never been able to watch the horrible animations for too long either. I find Dark a much more user friendly set to play. My latest scrapper incarnation is spines/regen, and though only level 8 is queuing for deletion to be replaced with claws/regen, or perhaps MA/regen, or perhaps claws/SR, or Katana/something. I have a level 41 dark/inv on defiant and want something different on union....

Oh bugger, someone else decide. Just rid me of them damnable spines animations!! Lovely powers, horrible horrible horrible animation. Horribile. Awful. Horrible.

Do I get a prize for most gratuitous use of the word horrible? They are horrible though.

My advice on ~Fire/Ice....

Go for Ice/Fire.

Ice - better control and single target damage with slows, with ice storm to equate to your favoured fire storm
.
/Fire - generally more useful secondary than /ice apart from ice patch

Yup, you're right, there aren't many ways to play a scrapper without pressing your buttons. You run in, you start hitting stuff in a variety of fun and exciting ways. Scrapper powers are virtually all quick fast attacks that need repeating to drop the bad guys. Then move on to the next baddie and so on and so forth. Lots of button pressing.

Blasters are similar. Lots of attacks, lots of button pressing. Particularly in smaller teams, in larger teams with lots of people doing damage, tanks holding aggro, scrappers dishing damage, defenders healing, controllers holding etc, possibly less buttons to press for a blaster.

A Tank can get away with even less button pressing depending on the team and the tactics and his or her build. Some tanks are designed to run in, activate an aura and taunt and thats about it. Solo or in a smaller team, a tank has to dish more damage, hence more button pressing.

In fact, to activate powers you press a button. Regardless of archetype. Force field defenders can fire and forget every few minutes if they don't use their secondaries. It is possible to have a power on auto-fire, as my brute does with barrage, to lessen the button pressing. However, just switching targets is a button to press.

Controller's holds don't last forever, so more button pressing there too. Especially as their secondaries are buffs and/or heals, which they will need to support a team.

All archetypes have to press buttons, scrappers possibly more than some, but this is just a property of the way the game is designed. Some MMO's make use of macro's and there are utilities to use when repetitive skills are required, hence cutting out button pressing.

Personally, I say stick to scrapping. It's fun. You do lots of damage and have a laugh when the tank runs away before you do. You do shed loads of damage as a reward for button pressing, more than some blaster sets. You'll be feared in PvP and will generally be far more versatile in teams, large and small, and solo play than any other AT IMHO.

For sheer fun and versatility, scrappers are far and away the best AT's to play in CoH, though of course, others may argue differently. (They will be wrong of course, this is the scrappers forum after all!)