Supermax

I guess I'll chime in on this.

I agree with the OP, AoE has always seemed a lot more epic for me than ST. Sure, both are useful, but other than for pure concept, it's pretty safe to admit that AoE is a lot more useful overall.

Take two people, one pure AoE and one pure ST. Not only does the AoE person contribute much more overall damage in a team setting, don't forget that he also does damage to the hard targets too. It may not be that much, but it's noticeable, and it adds up. Meanwhile, the ST damage person is doing ZERO damage to everything other than the one target he's attacking.

In my personal experience, I've always felt that I added A LOT more to a team if I was playing something with a lot of AoE damage. Honestly I don't know how anybody could even argue with that. If I could choose a guy that would either 1.) kill the entire spawn minus the boss, while doing some damage to the boss as well, or 2.) kill just the one boss, while doing NOTHING to the rest of the spawn, I would go with #1 in like 99% of cases. It's just more useful.

A team with no serious ST damage can still easily clean up the 1 or 2 bosses left over after their AoE carnage. But a team with no AoE damage will be severely handicapped, because they'll have to kill everything one by one, increasing the time it takes to do the mission by several times.

Going back to my personal experience, I have one of the top ST performers in the game in a DM/SR scrapper. I hated leveling him up. I felt so useless on teams when I'd go in there and take out a couple Lt's or one boss....while someone else on the team killed the ENTIRE rest of the spawn in the same amount of time. I definitely did not feel like a super hero.

Oh ok. I guess that's why everybody and their dog made one recently.

The attacks are pretty useless in my experience. The damage is too low to even bother with. But caltrops is pretty decent. It causes the mobs to scatter, and while they're running to try to get off of them, they're shooting you a lot less than usual. So it does help with survivability. But it does cause scatter, which can be annoying, especially on teams.

Ok thx all, sounds like they're similar enough to be equally awesome

I asked this in another thread, but it was at the end of the thread, so I guess nobody saw it. So reposting as a new topic.

How does shield charge compare to lightning rod, let's say if both are used by scrappers? Are they basically the same exact power? Or is one better than the other in some way? From a technical perspective, they do appear to be identical, so I'm mainly wondering about the damage of each. I just got LR on my new scrapper, so I want to know how SC compares.

Aight thanks!

Ok let me put it this way...if you HAD to delete one of those toons and keep the other, which one would you keep (Fire/Shield scrapper or Shield/Fire tanker)? Basically, which do you consider the most overall good toon? I understand this may differ person to person, but I'm just wondering.

Oh ok. My mids only shows the 50% unenhanceable part, and has zero mention of the enhanceable one.

Actually, I decided that I do have another question.

This may be not the best place to ask, but hopefully people can reply without bias. Should I even be making a tank in the first place? Between a SD/fire tank and a fire/SD scrapper, which one will be more powerful and useful overall? If the scrapper is unequivocally considered better, perhaps I will just....scrap the idea of the tank. Lol, get it? Scrap?

In my experience, parry is your only chance as a BS/regen. The regen just isn't enough these days, so you have to rely heavily on the defense against anything tough. MoG greatly helps with taking alphas too, and gives you time to stack a couple parry's.

Excellent, thanks!

Thanks for all the replies guys. Based on the feedback, I decided that perhaps I'm being too demanding in my criteria. If SS and fire are really that much better than the rest, it's probably best not to purposely gimp myself. So if I do make a tank, I'm leaning towards shield/fire.

Btw, how does shield charge compare to lightning rod, let's say if both are used by tanks? Are they basically the same exact power? Or is one better than the other in some way? I just got LR on my new scrapper last night, so I'm wondering how SC compares.

And last question: Is tanker taunt autohit in PvE or not?

I just recently came back to the game, and based on feedback from the scrapper forums, I made an elec/elec scrapper, which I'm loving. But I'm thinking of making another toon, and a tank is at the top of the list. The problem is that I don't want to play any set I've played before, which roughly halves the possible secondaries.

But an even bigger issue is that I simply don't see any set other than SS (and maybe fire) effective. For example, my /EM tank is an absolute JOKE compared to my /SS. The ST damage is similar, but the AoE is literally non-existent vs. godlike.

If I do make a tank, it will be shield. I'm set on that. But I just don't know what to do about the secondary. I don't want to play SS or fire again, but the other sets seem just laughable compared to them. I definitely don't want to kill entire spawns one NPC at a time, like I have to with /EM.

Am I missing something? Is some set other than SS or fire really good in reality, even though it looks far inferior on paper?

(KM is not an option, since I don't have GR)

Only 3 levels to go until I get it

I just made an elec/elec scrapper a few days ago, and I'm loving it so far. Level 29 right now.

It's definitely no tank, but it isn't any worse than any other scrapper I've played. It's definitely more fun to play than a defense set, imo. You actually have to do stuff to survive rather than just sit there and rely completely on a random number generator.

As far as elec not having anything special about it like other sets do, like someone mentioned earlier.....keep in mind that not everybody spends billions on their build to get high recovery rates. So to some people, completely unlimited endurance is a pretty big deal on a scrapper. That's one of the main reasons I made this guy, rather than anything else.

I am honestly surprised as to how fun it's been. Please tell me lightning rod is also knockdown like TS, not knockback.

Well I made an elec/elec. Level 22 already, and I love it. Very fun. Thanks again

Thanks for the detailed response mauk. One question: is thunderstrike really knockdown, or knockback?

I am really leaning towards elec/elec now. SD sounds like it relies mostly on defense, and since I already have an SR scrapper, it would be too similar. Meanwhile elec is resist/heal based, which is different from both SR and regen, and most similar to my fire/SS tank, which I consider my strongest melee toon.

So elec's AoE damage is good, right? Would it be safe to say it's #2 behind fire for scrappers? And where would you rate the ST damage of it?

Thanks for the replies so far. So is elec armor really bad or something? Everybody seems to love shield, but either nobody knows about elec, or it just sucks?