The scrapper, especially the regen (imho) is the king of solo missions and who can tank if he's up against foes with no big hitters (the DE spring to mind). On a solo mission the spawns will be 3 mob strong and even when 3 lvls higher than you present no real threat.
This is at the higher lvls obviously.
You say you haven't played beyond lvl 10-12 which means you've made it about 5% of the way into a toon's total potential. Obviously he's still fairly fragile. He's running on TO enhancements with powers that aren't even close to being properly slotted.
As for the run the remaining distance for a melee attack to hit comment I think this highlights your problem; you haven't even learned to properly control your toon yet.
A scrapper isn't a tank, he doesn't stand in the middle of a spawn spamming his attacks. A good scrapper is almost constantly in motion, positioning himself to minimise the number of mobs who can hit him with a melee attack at any one time.
That's my take on a scrapper anyway.
(\_/)
(O.O) Bunny: Our time is coming
(> <)
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..melee? I confess I haven't quite understood the concept of meleeing in CoH. It seems based on 'if you have a healer you survive, if you don't you are going to die'.
[/ QUOTE ]First, let's get rid of the term healer, it really has no place in CoH, as unlike other MMO's, debuffs, buffs, and controls work very well here, many times negating the need of a 'healer'.
Soloing is very much possible, as you only get 2-3 minions per group soloing if you're on the easiest difficulty setting (which you should be until your 30's or so with your first character).
In teams you survive if you concentrate on one target at a time, not drawing aggro from everything to yourself.
The 'F' key is bound to follow target by default, cant remember the correct variables for making macros for it atm though.
also, if you tell us your sets (primary and secondary), we could tell what powers should be taken ASAP, and which ones to avoid.
This bind saves a lot of fuss for me personally. Not quite what you're looking but I'll get to that.
/bind q "target_enemy_near$$follow"
Whack that and you'll find the nearest foe and automatically move to within melee range of him. On the way, cue what move you want and when you get there, it'll fire off.
As for auto-follow when a power is used, hmmm:
/macro Name "powexec_name Power Name$$follow"
or
/bind Key "powexec_name Power Name$$follow"
Thats as close as you're gonna get AFIAK, but should work ok. But not a concept I'll be using any time soon. 
Now, the other stuff.
Groups of 6-8 mobs when solo'ing should only be found outside of missions, i.e. street hunting etc., and even then, much more likely in the hazards zones such as Perez, which are by design much more dangerous than the relative safety of the non-hazard zones.
If you're finding actual missions too tough, maybe you've made the same mistake I did with the difficulty levels, as you mentioned. Your reputation reflects enemy number and level within door mission. Heroic is the easiest, Invincible the hardest. Don't go above Heroic until your late 20's or early 30's. The more powers, slots and SO's you get in your build, the better you cope, and these things only happen 20+.
Edit: an additional note about the difficulty levels.
Levels 1, 3 and 5 (Heroic, Rugged and Invincible) result simply in putting the enemies within the mission up one level for Rugged, up two for Invincible.
Levels 2 and 4 (something and Unyielding) put more mobs in the mission of the level of the difficulty one down from that one.
That's my general experience anyway.
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Edit: an additional note about the difficulty levels.
Levels 1, 3 and 5 (Heroic, Rugged and Invincible) result simply in putting the enemies within the mission up one level for Rugged, up two for Invincible.
Levels 2 and 4 (something and Unyielding) put more mobs in the mission of the level of the difficulty one down from that one.
That's my general experience anyway.
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That's pretty much how it works, I think.
Heroic: Standard difficulty*.
Tenacious: Increased numbers (typically one extra Minion per group when solo), standard Level.
Rugged: Standard numbers, +1 Level.
Unyielding: Increased numbers (typically one extra Minion per group when solo), +1 Level.
Invincible: Standard numbers, +2 Levels.
When soloing on Heroic, you shouldn't encounter Bosses (they'll be downgraded to Lts).
When soloing on any higher difficulty, Bosses appear as specified by the mission.
* That means mobs of the level at which you were assigned the mission or +1 Level, and groups of (typically) three Minions or a Minion and a Lt.
Thanks for the replies 
Yes, I do understand a low level character doesn't mean a thing as its true capacities. Who didn't play a wizard in any fantasy RPG and got handed in the beggining just to start tossing fireballs and chain lightnings later on..
That said yes, I'm a newbie The positioning I'm aware of, having played said wizards, choosing the right place for a firebal, or a cone of cold, this is ok for my blaster.
But a blaster kites, runs ab it, hits a bolt or two, runs a bit more.
A scraper who has to be in melee, with mobs who follow, I don't quite see how positioning works for them. I do the whole thing of forcing them to run around corners to meet me, so my attacks have time to recharge without me sitting still while they hit me, but..
Ok, anyway, it's true, I'm low level and so I don't know how it works, I was just expecting things to be a bit more.. I dunno.. How I was used to I guess
I find scrapping to be incredibly easy. I do my little build up chain, move on, and jump around switching from mob to mob when I get to disorient one, but I'm early days too.
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A question I also have is if someone knows of a macro or a bind that makes our character run to a mob when a skill is used.
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One bind I've always found incredibly useful is:
/bind q target_enemy_near
This allows you to very quickly move from enemy to enemy as a scrapper, targetting the nearest enemy near (with q), hitting the appropriate attack (which I normally keep in the low number slots) and hitting follow (F by default, although mines been moved) which moves you directly into melee range and keeps you there unless you hit a movement key.
With blasters I often use
/bind e target_enemy_far
which can be very useful for targetting cone attacks. (target the far mob and then position yourself to place your end of the cone).
However, I suspect you are taking on more than you can safely handle. Generally at at low level I try to take on groups of 3 or less blue or greens when street sweeping. You can handle these rapidly and effectively. Larger or harder groups can be handled, but the effort just isn't worth the effort..you'll improve mu2ch more quickly with the easier mobs.
As you level up you need to work out what you can handle and increase your gameplay to match. My level 44 scrapper happily takes on large groups of reds or small groups of purples. My level 31 corruptor still worries about groups of three whites whilst soloing (mainly because most of his abilities involve buffing or healing others, or single target debuffs). Interestingly enough the Corruptor is very good at handling one high level mob, and very poor at groups (so he could take on a Purple by debuffing it until its little threat, but a big group of greens is scary).
Things which suggest time to move up a gear include, getting a complete attack sequence with no gaps, becoming energy efficient (getting Stamina), anything which increases your speed (hasten, siphon speed etc.), more powerful attacks, moving from Training enhancements to Dual Origin enchanceents etc.
The optimum group to take on by the way isn't neccessarily the biggest group or toughest group you can handle. There is a fine balance between risk, speed and experience which means its often better to take on less rewarding mobs that you can take out faster (assuming levelling is your objective).
Finally I should add that at 10 you are at one of the "hard" spots in the game - the bit where Kings Row feels too easy, yet steel canyon and skyway city are just that bit too tough. I normally get through this bit by teaming with people in the Hollows, or by doing lots of missions..either works but the later is best if you want to solo.
Finally, be glad its challenging. If it wasn't it would be boring
Good tip there But your first bind is not needed as the game itself has, in the options, a keybind to choose the nearest enemy. This is very useful I find, ever since playing Guild Wars, I was happy to have found it and keep it mapped.
This prevents a need to do bind work. I am not sure if the options include one for the farthest away, but it's possible.
Still, a good tip
Thanks for the advice on all the line. I also reckon it's mostly my fault as I am not used to inspirations, I might not even remember I have them. On other thing is that health inspirations are quite cheap at 50 coins each. Rather easy to buy a trayful and at the right moment they save a life.
I'll go re-roll my ma/regen scrapper with a description and a better uniform, I like him ^^
P.S. Yup, the game itself has the option to target the clost and farthest enemy. *Very* useful
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But a blaster kites, runs ab it, hits a bolt or two, runs a bit more.
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Not a /nrg blaster. He kills them all with his melee attacks before they have tie to react.
Personally I found the best way I learned how to play a scrapper was watching others, or at the very least playing regularly with other scrappers. That way the mistakes you learn by are not always your own.
The other thing I personally found as long aas you treat the game as an experience of itself and don't try and power through the levels you will learn how to play. My first scrapper was well and truly gimped, DM/DA with no fitness, I took powers that were worthless (In I3) over and above the powers that would have made my life easier, much to my regret I deleted her sometime ago.
On positioning again speaking from the Dark Melee perspective, I find that I want to have the majority of enemies in view, this is good as shadow maul is a cone attack thus hopefully hitting more than one target. But it also means that in a team I can see what allies are doing, letting me respond to attacks on the squishies before they happen.
Targeting, as a rule of thumb I target three ways, first I have 'Q' (or for me W) bound to nearest enemy, Tab (for me Q) bound to next enemy. Lastly in big spawns or before attacking I use the mouse to pick out bosses or AVs. I have follow bound to the middle mouse button, with the further use of CTRL+Middle button bound to face target, making quick turns useful.
Above and beyond anything else enjoy yourself so that in a years time you can come here and advise the newest crop of scrappers on how to make the best of their builds.
..melee? I confess I haven't quite understood the concept of meleeing in CoH. It seems based on 'if you have a healer you survive, if you don't you are going to die'.
Granted I haven't played past level 10 - 12, but so far what I've seen is tankers, scrappers, defenders, anyone who approaches a regular group of 6 - 7 mobs and get creamed as they turn and all wail on the offender.
Makes me ponder how soloing is even possible.
Now, if only there was a way to have 2 - 3 strong mobs instead of 6-8 middle ones I could work my head around it.
This can be achieved via the difficulty settings though, right?
A question I also have is if someone knows of a macro or a bind that makes our character run to a mob when a skill is used.
Frankly I tire of hitting a skill and seeing a 'out of range' instead of the dumb guy taking two steps and hit.
Any way around making that work?
My thanks