Stupid_Fanboy

Shockwave can be very, very useful for someone using /SR. I know you might not like the knockback but it can be helpful if you use it right and the extra AoE damage you'll put out is, I feel, more than worth it.

I'd also take Focus at 18 and Health at 20, but that's me. I like getting Focus asap and feel that since it's the best attack in the set, it should be taken that way.

Also, If you want, I'd use temp powers and Safeguard rewards for travel and take Super Jump at 24 and shift Health and Stamina down a bit. SR can feel quite end hungry, even paired with Claws.

I'd also try to figure out a way to get Quickness earlier. That 20% recharge buff really makes a difference when combined with the natural 20% recharge discount of Claws.

They go very well together. All of DM's tools are excellent for a defensive set. The tohit debuffs make it easier to hit the softcap, and less expensive too. Siphon Life's heal is great for EA. The two have worked well together for me once I got EA slotted up. And before that, the tohit debuffs help level up.

now that we can edit all our posts, i'm going to add those suggestions into this list.

Patch Notes: September 18th , 2009

• Electrical Melee (all ATs) - Jacob's Ladder should look correct on male, female, and huge models now
• Obliteration will now sell for the proper amount of influence/infamy during a respec.
• Dark Armor now has a "No Fade or Pulse" theme, which will allow players customizable FX without the dark light pulses of various powers or transparency in Cloak of Darkness
• PVP - Scrapper - Super Reflexes - Practiced Brawler's protection versus debuff effects should last the full 120 second duration.
• Electric Armor - The help text for this power set no longer states that it contains any healing powers. Instead it states that it offers no defense enhancing powers.
• Darkness Mastery - Night Fall: This power should no longer state it accepts To Hit Buff enhancement sets and should correctly accept To Hit Debuff and Accuracy To Hit Debuff sets.

Patch Notes: Issue 16

• Powers Customization:Hundreds of powers have been updated to allow new color selections and customization. Players can now pick new Themes for each powerset, adjusting colors, appearance, and even animations for some sets.
• Activating Willpower/Heightened Senses while flying should no longer play the Martial Arts/Dragon's Tail animation.
• The Minimum Entry Level has been removed from many Hazard and Trial Zones in order to support upgrades to the Sidekicking System.
• The Minimum Entry Level of the Rikti War Zone has been removed in order to support upgrades to the Sidekicking System
• Brawl no longer costs Endurance when used.
• Electric Melee (All versions) - Removed erroneous reference to Fury from Chain Inductions Long Help
• Reduced Endurance cost of Origin Based powers Apprentice Charm, Taser Dart, Tranq Dart, Throwing Knives, and Mutagen from 6.5 per activation to 2.08 per activation.
• Shields/Against All Odds: Detailed Info now shows Dmg debuff numbers that are applied to foes.
• Powers with knockback and repel protection should no longer suppress knockback or repel protection when held, stunned, or slept.
• ncludes all Brute, Scrapper, Stalker, and Tanker versions of Entropy Shield, Unyielding, Active Defense, Rooted, Granite Armor, Integration, Wet Ice, and indomitable will. Acrobatics also will not suppress the knockback portion.
• To go along with our new changes to sidekicking and exemplaring, we've made some adjustments to the experience awarded from minions, lieutenants and bosses in the level 5 to 24 range. In short these enemies are on average receiving a 20% experience and influence increase. This will slightly speed up the pace at which heroes and villains advance through the 5 to 24 range.
• Powerset Proliferation: Electric Melee
• Powerset Proliferation: Electric Armor
• Electric Melee - Removed the ability to slot powers within this set with Taunt enhancements as these powers do not have a taunt component.
• Electric Melee - Chain Induction correctly jumps to additional targets when slotted with proc Ios.
• Spines - Ripper: Removed extraneous sound effect from Barb Swipe.
• Spines - Quills. The body spines will now appear when this toggle is activated. However, they will go away if the player enters and then exits spines combat mode while the toggle is on.
• Electric Armor - Lightning Field: Removed the ability to slot this power with Taunt enhancements as this power does not have a taunt component.
• Electric Armor/ Power Sink: This power should no longer accept taunt enhancements.
• Enhanced Difficulty Options: The old notoriety system has been removed and replaced with a new difficulty system of independent settings. You can now fine-tune the difficulty levels of the missions you play by telling the game exactly how you want to be treated:
• Choose to fight monsters between a -1 to +4 level difference from the player's level.
• Choose to set your personal team size (1-8).
• Choose if you want bosses to scale down to Lieutenants when soloing or not
• Choose to have AVs scale down to Ebs.
• The difficulty settings of the mission owner dictate how the mission is handled. Actual team size overrides any difficulty setting, so you will always get Arch-Villains if the team has 6 or more members. The difficulty setting is per task, so personal team member sizes do not add together.
• You can change your difficulty settings at any Hero Corp.'s Representative in Paragon City or Fateweaver in the Rogue Isles.
• New Ancillary Powers!
• Blaze Mastery (Scrapper) NEW
• Ring of Fire - Ranged, Moderate DoT(Fire), Foe Immobilize
• Char - Ranged, Minor DoT(Fire), Foe Hold
• Fire Blast - Ranged, Moderate DMG(Fire)
• Melt Armor - Ranged (Targeted AoE), Foe -Res, -DEF
• Fire Ball - Ranged (Targeted AoE), Moderate DMG(Fire/Smash)
• Body Mastery (Scrapper)
• Physical Perfection - Auto, +Regen, +Recovery (50% of the values offered by Stamina and Health)
• Darkness Mastery (Scrapper)
• Nightfall - Ranged (Cone), Moderate DMG(Negative), Foe -To Hit.
• Energy Mastery (Tanker)
• Physical Perfection - Auto, +Regen, +Recovery (50% of the values offered by Stamina and Health.

Patch Notes: July 15th , 2009

• Damage resistance bonuses granted by Invention Origin sets like Aegis or Shield Wall will no longer be modified by archetype modifiers. This means that all archetypes will get the advertised bonus on the enhancement.
• All damage proc effects in Invention Origin enhancements will now state the rate at which they will be triggered, the damage type they inflict and the measure of damage they inflict.
• Activating "Heightened Senses" with Claws out no longer plays the Slash animation.

Patch Notes: Issue 15

• Fiery Aura/Temperature Protection: Clarified that this power grants slow resistance by adding this to its short and long help.
• Sprint: The dust trail from Sprint will no longer continue to play in air if a Flight power is turned on while sprinting.
• Fixed a bug where cones could hit significantly more enemies than intended.
• Capped the base duration of all mezzes in PvP zones and Arena to 4 seconds. Strength mods can still increase the duration of the mez beyond 4 seconds.
• Stun duration for all versions of Rise of the Phoenix is now correctly set to 2 seconds in
• Weapon Mastery/Exploding Shuriken: Fixed a typo in this power's combat channel text.
• Activating Willpower / Heightened Senses while in Claws combat mode will now play the correct animation.

Patch Notes: April 20th, 2009

• Fixed bug that caused various buff powers and Invention Set bonuses to suppress after zoning.
• Multiple Builds: Fixed bug that allowed set bonuses to persist when switching between builds.

Path Notes: Issue 14

• PVP CHANGES
• Phase Changes: Any player in a phased state, including Phase Shifted or Dimension Shifted, can be attached by other phased players. Hibernate and Cage effects are still impenetrable since they do not phase the player.
• Elusivity Bonuses: The elusivity bonus on Melee Defense Armors and Personal Force Field has been reduced slightly. We are adjusting this carefully since the elusivity bonus is intended to keep Aim, Build Up, or Tohit bonuses from negating defense armors. Overall, Defense armors are performing well when compared to Resistance based Armors and the intention is to keep them a strong contender in PVP.
• Melee AT Ranged Attacks: Melee Archetypes had their ranged attacks in their primary, secondary and Ancillary Pools reduced slightly. Since Melee archetypes use ranged attacks that are set on the melee damage table, they do much more damage than they should with ranged attacks. We're reducing this slightly but overall we're comfortable with the ranged attacks being very useful.
• Taunt: Tanker, Brute and Scrapper taunt now displays a message when the taunt portion of the power misses in PVP. Stalker taunt is unchanged.
• PVP Invention Origin Enhancement recipes have a small chance to be earned in all PvP Zones and Arena matches by defeating another player. Once a PVP IO recipe has been earned, there is a 10 minute timer before the player that earned the recipe can have a chance at earning another recipe. PvP Invention Origin Enhancements have two groups of set bonuses PvE bonuses and PvP bonuses. In a PvE zone/area the player will not benefit from set bonuses marked with (PvP). While in a PvP zone or arena match the player will benefit from both PvE and PvP set bonuses. Below is a list of the new IO sets being introduced by this feature:
  Fury of the Gladiator (Melee AoE Set) (Recipe Level Range 10-50)
  Javelin's Volley (Ranged AoE Set) (Recipe Level Range 10-50)
  Gladiator's Armor (Resistance Buff Set) (Recipe Level Range 10-50)
  Gladiator's Javelin (Ranged Damage Set) (Recipe Level Range 10-50)
  Gladiator's Net (Hold Set) (Recipe Level Range 10-50)
  Gladiator's Strike (Melee Damage Set) (Recipe Level Range 10-50)
  Panacea (Healing Set) (Recipe Level Range 10-50)
  Shield Wall (Defense Set) (Recipe Level Range 10-50)
• Gladiator's Armor: +Defense and Teleport Resist now has a 20% chance to grant immunity to teleportation for 10 seconds instead of always on total immunity.
• Shield Wall: +Resistance and Teleport Resist now has a 20% chance to grant immunity to teleportation for 10 seconds instead of always on total immunity.
• Panacea: Chance for Heal/Endurance: This enhancement will function normally in PvE zones, however in PvP zones this power will grant a regeneration bonus much like Numina's Convalescence: +Regen/Recovery. This was done to prevent healing suppression from being triggered by this effect.

(updated October 7th, 2009)

This thread is not for balance issues against other archetypes. It is for balance within the Scrapper power sets. It is for reporting bugs that affect Scrappers.

Please note: this is not a substitute for /bugging it. I am not a developer. Always /bug a problem you've noticed as well as reporting it in this thread or on the scrapper forum!

For the love of Positron, please do not quote this entire post to reply.

Please feel free to submit PvP issues and opinions.

Updates are written in lightgreen.

Notes for Balance Issues

• Attacks are balanced, DPS-wise, on recharge time, not activation time, and whether they're AOE effects or single-target. Secondary effects aren't consistent in how they affect this - Stupid_Fanboy, 2006-02-15
• The following equations are the ones used to create costs for attack powers in PVE (powers whose primary function is damage)
  AREAMOD = (1+(0.75*(RADIUS/5))-(((0.011*(RADIUS/6))*(360-ARC))/5)
  DMG = (0.2*((RECH*0.8)+1.8)) / AREAMOD
  END = 5.2 * DMG
  - have fun with these guys -SF
• All characters, regardless of archetypes, should be able to solo a mission on 'heroic' - generally, spawns of three even-level minions, or a lieutenant and a minion - clarified by Arcanaville, 2006-03-08
• Defensive sets are balanced against the base to-hit chance of minions, which is much lower than the base to-hit chance for characters - in PvP, all players were granted a +25% bonus to base Defense - clarified by Arcanaville, 2006-03-08

************************************************** **********

General Issues affecting Scrappers - unresolved

• Bug: IO procs that affect regeneration and endurance recovery are affected by the regen and recovery enhancements in the same power.[/i] (need clarification if this is a bug) - several
• Bug: Scrapper inherent description is incorrect - should read, 'Scrappers have a chance to critical hit a target for double damage. Most scrapper attacks have a small chance to critical hit minions, pets, and other players, and a higher chance to critical hit more powerful foes.' (plus more detail if desired) - Arcanaville, 2006-09-01
• Bug: Enemies being feared seem to attack if you attack anyone, not just the feared enemy - Silver_Snake, 2005-10-24 - partially fixed, for Touch of Fear but maybe not Cloak of Fear? - Stupid_Fanboy, 2005-11-29 - while ToF'd, will run away and buff - Stupid_Fanboy, 2006-06-06
• Balance: There appears to be a large discrepancy between the levels of resistance and defense achievable with IO bonuses. Perhaps resistance bonuses should be paired up like defense bonuses were – Daolong, 2009-02-10
• Wishlist: Would be nice if power icons had some kind of indicator when your target is out of range for that power - Shadow_Stone, 2005-12-13
• Wishlist: It would be nice if eventually, all weapons could be used with Shield Defense – combined from several hundred people
• Wishlist: Complete elimination of redraw from all primaries, secondaries and pool powers would be nice – combined from several hundred people

************************************************** **********

General Scrapper Primaries - unresolved

• Bug: Powers with Knock effects can ragdoll the target through or into objects on the map, making them difficult or impossible to target afterwards. Targets will also sometime be immune to knock effects if they are at a certain part of their recovery animation when hit. They will stand up and fire attacks as though the effect never hit them. combined from several other notes – SF
• Bug: Target Reticles for Single Target and Cones need to be positioned better on NPCs as you can find yourself unable to hit with both Cones and ST attacks depending on your relative position to the target. This is particularly noticeable with very large targets, like the Jade Spider – Nihili & Desmodos, 2009-02-17
• Wishlist: Female Scrappers with Weapon Sets shouldn't run and jump like males when the sword is drawn - huge models suddenly acquire perfect posture as well - combined from several other patch notes.- SF
• Wishlist: Removing redraw from Scrapper Ancillary pools would be nice and allow all primaries equally to use every pool – combined from several hundred people

General Scrapper Primaries - IN PROGRESS

• Wishlist: It would be nice to be able to hit very large enemies, i.e. giant monsters, up in the faces rather than always having to go to the hitbox located around the feet. (suggested by Houma, 2005-03-09 - NotABunny notes that there is a narrow layer above footstomp AoE where a flying/hovering scrapper can still punch/kick the giant monster, 2005-06-01

Broadsword - unresolved

• (home of future balance issues)

Claws - unresolved

• (home of future balance issues)

Dark Melee - unresolved

• Wishlist: Shadow Punch's animation time was changed from .57s to .83s. Backalley Brawler cited animation concerns but there are other powers that still allowed to animate faster.
• Wishlist: Would be nice if Shadow Maul could interrupt Embalmed Vahzilok's detonations, it doesn't because it's a DoT - Desmodos, 2007-05-22

Dual Blades - unresolved

• Bug: The Empower combo does not work well with high level of +Recharge bonuses. If the combo is initiated less than 6 seconds after the previous one, it will not work – Nihili, 2009-02-10
• Wishlist: Would be nice if each power's description explained what combos it was a part of and in what order. Combos are a vital part of DB attacking and should be explained in game – CrazyCorsaire, 2009-02-17

Electric Melee - unresolved

• (home of future balance issues)

Fire Melee - unresolved

• Bug: Greater Fire Swords costs 0.83 more endurance than it should. - SF
• Bug: Fire Sword Circle costs 0.666 more endurance than it should and it recharges 0.8s too slowly. - SF

Martial Arts - unresolved

• Balance: Lacks AoE attacks but doesn't have more single-target damage compared to other sets - SpiderTeo_OC, 2007-09-07
• Balance: Lack of AoE attacks limits the kinds of IO sets that can be slotted. Status Effect sets are little consolation as enhancing for their effects at the cost of Damage, Accuracy, End Cost and Recharge hurts the Scrapper's build - SpiderTeo_OC, 2009-02-10
• Balance: Storm Kick seems to cost too much end (7.0044, should be 6.864) for its damage - Arcanaville, 2006-07-24
• Balance: Martial Arts lacks a general secondary effect (Katana and Broadsword have -Def, Dark Melee has -Acc, Spines has Slow, Claws is faster and less END-costly) - SpiderTeo_OC, 2006-07-03
• Balance: Martial Arts status effects are not nearly as consistent in application as other sets - SamChoice, 2005-10-31, clarified by Arcanaville
• Balance: Cobra Strike does too little damage for its recharge time, compared to utility powers in other sets like Divine Avalanche, Follow Up, and Impale. Mag 3 stun is useful but lacks a consistent stun power that can be paired for bosses - Arcanaville, 2006-03-10
• Wishlist: Crippling Axe Kick has a chance to immobilize, but no visual indicator - Impact_Hazard, 2006-07-26
• Wishlist: Crippling Axe Kick's impact sound is wimpy - TheArtifex, 2006-02-13
• Wishlist: Thunder Kick's disorient was more useful as a 100% chance of a mag 1 disorient which could then be stacked with Eagle Claw's disorient or Cobra Strike's disorient, than a 10% chance of a mag 2 disorient. - reported by Heroic, corrected by Arcanaville, 2006-12-08

Martial Arts - IN PROGRESS

• Bug: Combat chat for Crippling Axe Kick says it slows attack rate, which the power doesn't do - Arcanaville, 2007-04-05 - Castle aware and fixing

Katana - unresolved

• Wishlist: Right fist is closed instead of opened when jumping (blade held in left hand) - Neutrino_Siphon, 2007-08-15
• Wishlist: Female katana (and broadsword) scrappers shouldn't run and jump like males when the sword is drawn - huge models suddenly acquire perfect posture as well - EvaDestruction, 2006-01-27 - GreyDog, 2006-07-14

Spines - unresolved

• Bug: Spines does not speed up attacks to compensate for having to redraw spines - reported by Thornkiller after testing attack chains with minimum/maximum spines redraw
• Balance: Spines/Ripper is claimed to be a 'wide' cone but is about 90 degrees, far less than Slice's 120 degrees.
• Balance: Attacks with notably long cast times compared to damage/effects: Spines/barb swipe
• Wishlist: Would be nice if Spines/Quills noise faded away like other togglable AOE powers (Death Shroud) do - Hellblaze, 2006-01-21

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General Scrapper Secondaries - unresolved

• Wishlist: Regeneration/Integration and Fighting/tough and other defenses should not emit /tarzan animation, this is a character role-play issue. This is okay for trolls but not for many superheroes - can work around by moving while toggling these powers - VoodooCompany, 2007-03-27
• Wishlist: Click powers in secondaries, like Reconstruction, Dull Pain, Practiced Brawler, etc.. , all cause weapon redraw which is really annoying in combat - combined from several other notes - SF
• Wishlist: Click buffs can sometimes be triggered during death, never giving their potentially lifesaving buff to the player but still entering a potentially long cooldown. It would be nice if the buff was applied when the cooldown was triggered - combined from several other notes - SF
• Kludge: Self-heals with slottable toxic resistance, such as Reconstruction, are unable to benefit from Enhanced Heal Invention set bonuses due to current game mechanical limitations - Arcanaville, 2007-04-26

Dark Armor - unresolved

• Balance: Scrapper Cloak of Fear was diminished in magnitude to only affect minions instead of lieutenants; given low accuracy, high endurance cost, might be nice if it were rebalanced in some fashion - Wyvern, 2006-08-18
• Wishlist: Most other dark attacks in the game has -tohit as a secondary effect - why not Death Shroud, Dark Consumption, and Dark Regen? - hudsonsmith, 2006-01-07 - Desmodos added other dark attacks that lack -acc for players, 2006-11-01 - Desmodos removed Soul Drain from list because powers cannot have both +hit buff and debuff, 2007-03-23
• Wishlist: Mag 4 knockback protection in an auto power would be nice – Hejtmane, 2009-02-12

Electric Armor - unresolved

• Balance: Electric Armor concern : with a resistance cap of 75%, the set is much weaker against energy damage than the brute version, which was the original design. Power Surge is also a much weaker power, suffering a very heavy crash for the relatively few resistances it offers. While Invul and Fire suffer from the same issue, Elec pays the price twice as it is affected in both its normal resistances and its tier9 power. - Nihili, 2009-09-22

Invulnerability - unresolved

• Bug: Unstoppable's +Recovery is flagged as unenhancable even though the power accepts end mods - Sarrate, 2007-08-15
• Balance: Would be nice if Temporary Invulnerability were swapped with Resist Physical Damage. It's a small amount of resistance, and TI would give Invuln scrappers a good defense power out of the gate - Defense_Options, 2006-06-08 - Liquid points out two other scrapper sets get more effective powers out of the gate, moved to balance issue 2007-08-17
• Wishlist: Would be nice to have teleport foe resistance, i.e. on Unyielding - Sky_Hawke, 2007-04-12

Fiery Aura - unresolved

• Wishlist: Mag 4 knockback protection in an auto power would be nice – Hejtmane, 2009-02-12

Regeneration - unresolved

• Bug: Some mob powers that now do -regen need to have that in their debuff descriptions - for instance, EM Pulse, Twilight Grasp, Howling Twilight, Transfusion, Lingering Radiation - Stupid_Fanboy, 2005-06-14
• Balance: Post-Enhancement Diversity and the addition of Willpower, is it still necessary that Regen's powers have both enhanceable and unenhanceable healing? - combined from several notes
• Balance: Resilience seems useless as a power with the very small, limited resistance and status resist provided - VoodooCompany, 2005-07-18 - Castle commented none of the passives in protection sets seem popular - 2006-07-16
• Wishlist: would be nice if debuffs on the scrapper were reduced in length due to enhanced metabolism

Shield Defense – IN PROGRESS

• Bug: Phalanx Fighting doesn't show buff numbers when hovering over the icon – Kractis_Sky, 2009-02-10
• Wishlist: One With the Shield: It has no heal to go along with the +HP of the power. A small enhanceable heal would be nice in this power – Rhysem, 2009-02-10
• Wishlist: One With the Shield should have defense debuff resistance. That's one of the situations where Shield Defense can be hurt badly and having protection from that in OwtS would help greatly – Rhysem & Daolong, 2009-02-17
• Wishlist: We can appreciate having a powerset that helps out teammates more than the other secondaries, but encouraging us to take the “team” powers by putting effects in them that are necessary for the solo Scrapper is bad design. We should want to take the power because it is good for teaming and interesting when solo, not because something vital like resistance against defense debuffs and -recharge – many people

Super Reflexes - unresolved

• Balance: Mind Control's Dominate and Illusion's Blind seem to have extremely high accuracy or are autohit - noted by Patient_V, 2006-03-10 - Sockem notes per Arcanaville/Castle PMs, these powers are not categorized as Melee/Ranged/AoE - 2006-06-06 - moved to balance issue per Arcanaville, 2007-05-22
• Balance: SR has mainly defense slots, reducing options for other forms of mitigation and IOs compared to other sets - Arcanaville, 2007-04-05
• Balance: Super Reflexes toggles take too long to activate, compared to other sets' defensive toggles, especially Evasion - Arcanaville, 2007-01-13
• Balance: PvP: SR is very vulnerable to enemies with accuracy buffs, i.e. Aim, Build-Up, Focused Accuracy, Super Strength/Rage[/b], accuracy inspirations - Colette, 2005-10-06 - Arc_Salvo, 2006-02-22
• Balance: SR is a power set where you must take almost every power to succeed, made more true by the fact elude can no longer be made permanent. Every other defensive power set gives you some choices. Even as small a change as adding 5% defense to all in Practiced Brawler would allow SR scrappers some choice about which powers to take and slot heavily - Arcanaville, 2005-07-22
• Balance: Devouring Earth Quartz emanators give what appears to be a 100% to-hit buff increase to nearby enemies, which devastates any defense-based scrapper - updated by Arcanaville, 2006-07-01
• Balance: Super reflexes AOE defense is gotten fairly late in the game - with increased damage from boss AOE attacks in the 30s, now more important to get AOE defense earlier - noted by PicassoCat
• Wishlist: Would be nice if SR could apply highest type of defense (melee, ranged, AOE) against attacks that combine several types (enemy melee cone attacks) similiar to stacked force fields of different types using highest defense - Arcanaville, daolong, 2005-08-02
• Wishlist: Since it is easy to get defense from other sources such as force fields and inspirations, it would be nice if defense specialists like Super Reflexes scrappers and Ice tankers got a higher cap for defenses, i.e. a lower to-hit floor, than other archetypes. (Arcanaville 2005-05-04)
• Wishlist: Super reflexes/quickness should give 33% recharge reduction. Because SR must run three toggles, but does not receive an innate endurance recovery power like regen, giving recharge reduction is its way of substituting for having to put an end recovery SO into powers to achieve the same effect. However, a 20% recharge reduction is barely more than a DO.
• Wishlist: Allowing Damage Resist IOs to be slotted into the Passives, even if they do not affect the scaling resists, would help SR slot different IO sets – many people

Willpower - unresolved

• (home of future balance issues)

************************************************** **********

General Issues affecting Scrapper Ancillary Pools - unresolved

• (home of future balance issues)

Body Mastery - unresolved

• (home of future balance issues)

Blaze Mastery - unresolved

• (home of future balance issues)

Darkness Mastery - unresolved

• (home of future balance issues)

Weapon Mastery - unresolved

• (home of future balance issues)

************************************************** **********

For Discussion

• Balance: I can't think of anything right now. Suggestions? Maybe some discussion on the sets that have the largest lists? Or maybe all the new powers in the 2 powersets and the other ancillary powers? – SF

************************************************** **********

Note: Internal balance issues are not things like how melee damage is 3x to 5x that of ranged damage (still true? so far as I know, they are heavy-hitting but slower, so actual melee DPS may be only 1.7 times per Fulmens' comment 2005-05-24) or how blasters can do more damage despite putatively equal damage/attack because they can start attacking at a great distance. Internal balance issues are not about how we balance against other archetypes. This also includes comparing Scrapper versions of a powerset to the versions used by other ATs. Those are issues for discussion outside the scope of this thread.

Internal balance issues are things like Super Reflexes having no maximum hit point increase to protect against one shots despite other power sets all having some form of damage mitigation. They're errors, discrepancies, bugs in the Scrapper archetype. Also note that many balance issues are a matter of opinion. Some weaknesses may well be by design. However, it would be nice to know which weaknesses are by design and which are unintentional and needed to be called to the attention of developers.

Developers: we would much welcome responses to these issues, even if only to say 'Will look into it' or 'Working as designed'.

since this thread is already here, I'll post the explanation.

Claws is governed by 2 extra formulas that no other sets in the entire game are.

1. After calculating the initial damage of each power, it gets a 20% discount to its end costs and recharge times. It has been given these, in name, since Launch of CoH.

2. Around Issue... 12? i think? don't remember, it was given much faster Animations and at the time, Castle said that to prevent it from being too much better than the other sets, another formula was applied to normalize the DPS of each attack to roughly 1.0 DPS. This brought down 1 power and raised the others.


So, why all the adjustments on test now after launch and after a Closed Beta where someone should have caught all this? coughwasn'tinvitedcough

The devs did, or intended to do one thing to Brute Claws: raise the recharge. Since damage and endurance are calculated from Recharge, the damage and end costs of all powers would have increased by a bit, subject to the 2 Claws formulas.

Well, two mistakes were made.

1. when calculating the new damages, the calculations were entered into the spreadsheets incorrectly. (Swipe would be 0.84, not 0.83, etc)

2. The 2nd Claws formula was forgotten. The devs simply forgot to apply the formula to normalize the DPS of each power close to 1.0.


The result of Mistake #2 is that since the Recharges, and thusly the Damages, of all powers were raised, the base DPS went up on every power. By not applying the 2nd formula, the DPS of these powers were way higher than they should have been. For example, Focus was sitting at 1.42 and is now 1.29.

So the current damages on live simply shouldn't have been. Unfortunately, it wasn't caught until Open Beta and couldn't be patched any sooner than this.

(this doesn't even address what is now the issue of whether or not Claws should even have the DPS formula applied. just explaining what the hell is going on)

Seems silly to update the issues list without taking into account Issue 16 feedback. Here's what's new to comment on if you think there's a problem for Scrappers.

• Electric Melee and Electric Armor
• Enhanced Difficulty Options
• Blaze Mastery
• Body Mastery
• Darkness Mastery
• XP Curve Adjustment

If you have anything to comment on with these new additions to the game that affect us, or any I've missed, post them here for discussion.

When I first registered for the boards, I kept changing my name. Eventually, in the midst of reading an early flame war, I decided that having an insult as my name would mean that there wouldn't be much worse that someone could say to me. Perhaps it would mean that they might even address the content of my post.

So I decided on Stupid Fanboy, which still provides occasional fun when people say "thanks, Stupid!"

I want to say none of the above but if I had to choose, I'd say Evis. Focus and Slash are your best single target DPS in claws.

i'm having a tough time deciding too. I can't pick between Elec or Willpower. I don't have a willpower villain, or high level Willpower character at all but I also don't have any /Elec characters either.

I'm leaning towards willpower for game reasons but I can't think of a good name for him. On the other hand, I've got a great name for the Claws/Elec, Ampslash.

You should check out the thread on the beta board. Brute Claws definitely ain't Scrapper Claws or Stalker Clawls. No wonder you like it.

Numbers thread comparing Brute and Scrapper Claws


I can't post at work tomorrow so I wanna see some good discussion in there after work!

Damage wasn't reduced. Take into account the fact that Scrappers are 1.125 melee damage modifier and Brutes are 0.7 and damage went up, alot. And then on top of that, Castle increased it again to make the DPS go up further too. I'll post all this in the Test Server thread

check the feedback forum in a little bit.

I will. I'll post a link here to the thread I make on the beta forum.

Infernal.

But this was waaaay back in the day when the altar would spawn unlimited demons and Regen still had toggle IH which allowed me to sit there with Weave(base 10% def), cj(base 5%), and tough(base15%) and tank about 4 dozen demons and Infernal while killing the altar. After killing all the demons, it was only a matter of not running out of End. It took about 30 or 40 minutes too with original Claws.

This is still the first and last place I check when I come to the boards. None of the other boards are like this one.

Um, yeah, so the formatting really got fu... messed up with the forum switch. I'm still messing with the list to redo all that formatting. It's a lot of work and I'm lazy and busy with life so it's gonna take me some time to get it in there.

Weird, I was about to apologize for that too.