Personally, I have never been on a team with too many AoE's, weheras most of the teams I have been on have to little.
Even primarily AoE characters likes spines scrappers or fire blasters mix in their attacks with single target effects.
No, I have to say the real reason that people dont take AoE attacks is because the game is riddled with cowardness. People are terrified of aggro. Even some tanks, like the tauntless Granite tank (yes, thats level 32), who decided not to run Mud Pots most of the mission.
If everyone in the team stopped worrying about aggro and let rip with the AoE they had, teams would sweep through missions at a furious page. But people don't take AoE, they take single target powers. So the AoE'rs end up contributing more for the team and taking more debt. Bitter, Moi?
AoE rules in PvP big teams. YOu may argue about a boss. HOwever, if the minions are quickly wiped out, a lone boss is no challenge to an 8 man team.
Ive never ever been on an 8 man team when people have AoE'd the minions in seconds and then stood around for hours struggling to kill the boss. I am struggling to see how on earth that could happen, actually. Maybe with 8 Fire blasters who only used fire ball and rain of fire. But they don't. They would all use these and then Blaze / Fire bolt on the boss and everything would drop at the same time.
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Personally, I have never been on a team with too many AoE's, weheras most of the teams I have been on have to little.
Even primarily AoE characters likes spines scrappers or fire blasters mix in their attacks with single target effects.
No, I have to say the real reason that people dont take AoE attacks is because the game is riddled with cowardness. People are terrified of aggro. Even some tanks, like the tauntless Granite tank (yes, thats level 32), who decided not to run Mud Pots most of the mission.
If everyone in the team stopped worrying about aggro and let rip with the AoE they had, teams would sweep through missions at a furious page. But people don't take AoE, they take single target powers. So the AoE'rs end up contributing more for the team and taking more debt. Bitter, Moi?
AoE rules in PvP big teams. YOu may argue about a boss. HOwever, if the minions are quickly wiped out, a lone boss is no challenge to an 8 man team.
Ive never ever been on an 8 man team when people have AoE'd the minions in seconds and then stood around for hours struggling to kill the boss. I am struggling to see how on earth that could happen, actually. Maybe with 8 Fire blasters who only used fire ball and rain of fire. But they don't. They would all use these and then Blaze / Fire bolt on the boss and everything would drop at the same time.
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Hmmm.. It's a bit of a sweeping statement to say the game is riddled with 'cowardness'. You must understand that most powerset attack chains will have single target powers in them and that the majority of mixed groups wont be exclusively of an AoE nature.
Even Fire Blasters and Spines Scrappers will pop in a few single target attacks, when fighting mobs.
I suppose if you had picked an all Fire Blaster team and no one used fireball, then you might have a case 
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One toon I've played which has had very respectable AOE damage output has been my Robotic Mastermind with his Assault Bot's overlapping Burn Patches.
The reason many of my CoH toons haven't taken AOE attacks is that the damage output, recharge rate and endurance rate on those attacks sucked. Cone attacks tend to be more damaging/faster recharging and often just as effective as AOEs on scrappers. Compare Lotus Drops and Flashing Steel for example.
Between Flashing Steel, Golden Dragonfly and Energy Torrent my Kat/Regen usually manages to hit most of a herd of mobs to scrank or take an alpha strike. Pulling some of the aggro is not usually a concern for a well built tank or scrapper, heck even my squishy Human Form PB didn't mind pulling aggro occasionally.
I've been on manys-a-team where a quick Fulcrum Shift followed by a Fireball or two killed off most minions, leaving LTs and Bosses drained but not dead. One or two smacks with a Broadsword or Katana during the Fireball would have them eating dirt, and we can all move onto the next mob. In teams like that I don't even bother using my cones unless Energy Torrent's knockdown would be useful.
The other argument is that many CoH 40-50 missions that teams run have an AV in them, so a mixture of Single Target and AOE specialists is more desirable than a team of only AOE specialists.
Sorry i was including Cones in the broad definition of "AoE". And as you say, Broadsword/Katana have a few good cone / AoE attacks in.
The endurance per damage cost of cones / AoE is of course, far lower than single target attacks in big teams / big spawns.
As you say, a Fulcrum shifted fireball can wipe out some minions and a few broadslaps take out the boss. But then, something like Blaze and Firebolt could, aswell.
However you cut the mustard, AoE effects (not just attacks) are more effective in PvE big teams. The only exception is vs AV's, which is actually a fraction of your time (even on AV missions).
Back to the original post, mathematically /Regen is great solo poor in teams, /SR and /Invun somewhere in the middle, and /Dark is great for teams. I can categorically say a tank would far rather have a /Dark next to him, damaging everything around him, debuffing their accuracy and disorientating him, than a /Regen whose powers effectively do diddly squat for the tank.
the 'boss killer' approach to scrapping has its place but if a scrapper just boss locks then i dont think they are doing what i'd consider a good scrapper job.
imo scrappers are there to quickly cut down the total damage inc rather than take one mob out the fight, its normally total damage that will overwhelm a team rather than one mob that does the damage.
my standard routine is let the tanks taunt target the bosses and then thin everything else out unless the tanks having trouble in which case support them.
In the time it takes to kill 1 boss you could have killed 4-5 minions and as minions are good enough to kill squishies thats a lot of risk you've just removed for the squishies over 1 boss mob.
exceptions are there of course, this is just a general goal of mine.
I do think that scrapper secondaries are secondary to scrapper play style rather than any effects they ooze, the DA scrapper could be off by himself doing his scrappers are god thing. A good team based scraper player will shine regardless of their powers because of their baddy picking and support.
@ExtraGonk
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Back to the original post, mathematically /Regen is great solo poor in teams, /SR and /Invun somewhere in the middle, and /Dark is great for teams. I can categorically say a tank would far rather have a /Dark next to him, damaging everything around him, debuffing their accuracy and disorientating him, than a /Regen whose powers effectively do diddly squat for the tank.
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How is Regen mathmatically weaker than SR in teams? I can understand Invun being useful if you need a minitank (it has a secondary taunt) and Dark having its debuffs. You miss one important aspect of Regen, its ability to be independent of support (the reason it's so popular for soloists), with the self heals and fast recovery rate it drains less attention from the other members of the team allowing them to concentrate more on the enemy. Also a Regen has no downtime and copes well in prolonged fights where I have seen other scrappers struggling with End issues.
Regen benefits a team not in what it contributes (like Dark) but in the fact that it provides, for want of a better term, a "fire and forget" damage dealer.
All scrapper sets have their assets, however the players behind them often dont.
All my scrappers can boss lock and fight minions at the sametime. If i let the tank herd, i have more chance of this.
Sometimes there is a foe in a mob that can really show up a tanks weaknesses and not mine so i might pull that one away using single target taunt during or just before the herding process. On a mob where its hard to pick the undesireable one out you could use macros like /targetname sapper, or /targetname dark ring mistress in the case of having an invuln tank that doesnt deal with them well. I got to rush off i'll come back to this later.
Once you know what
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Reason for /Regen being mathematically weaker than /SR is long but here goes...
Firstly, if we take the position that the tank in a team, then damage mitigation / heals are irrelevant. In this case, /SR has a very marginal advantage over /Regen because of quickness power - it will boost the dps of the scrapper slightly, making it more effective for the team.
Now, if we are looking at damage "Migtigation". /Regen has a "Flat" rate.. i.e. damage mitigation is static and independent of incoming attacks, because it is based on healing HP. /SR, however, will mitigate an amount of damage dependent on incoming attacks...
E.g. Lets say Scrapper R, a /regen, heals 100 HP/second as his "damage mitigation". Scrapper S, a /SR has 50% damage mitigation.
[NB these are not truly reflective, just illustrate my point].
In a small team, and a small spawn, lets say the scrapper takes 100 HP/Second average damage. In this case, Scrapper R has, on average, total damage mitigation, whilst Scrapper S will take, on average, 50 HP damage / second.
In a big team, with a big spawn, lets say the scrapper is receiving a shed load more damage (and he should be, if there is no tank on the team and he is doing his job). Suddently, on, average, the scrapper is taking 300 HP/second damage. (Hopefully, of course, with the defenders and controllers he is protecting from this damage, in turn helping him). In such a case, Scrapper R will effetively take 200 HP/second damage, whilst Scrapper S will take 150 HP/second damage.
These are only ball park figures, but it demonstates the fact that /regen has a basically "Flat" damage mitigation, whilst /SR (and all other secondaries in fact) have a basically "Proportional" damage mitigation. Hence, my argument that /Regen is better solo and worse in teams.
However, there is an argument that if a team could very carefully modulate the amount of aggro a tank / scrapper gets it would be possible to make the /Regen superior. Impossible to do in practice
Regens get a considerable endurance boost in QR. This will often offset Quickness. At higher level's it's usually a toon's endurance that is the limiting factor, not his recharge rate (assuming that as a scrapper you are doing your job and attacking flat-out). With a few AM's or Speed Boosts, it's irrelevant since you'll have more than enough endurance and your recharge will be through the roof regardless of whather you are SR or Regen.
The other thing is that there are very few +regen buffs in game, whereas there are a LOT of +defense buffs and several +res buffs. The SR would already be fairly close to the +45% defense ceiling, any higher would overshoot it and be wasted. By that logic a regen is likely to gain more from buffs than a SR on larger teams.
Agree, my main point, however is that /regen is a Flat damage mitigator whilst /SR is a proportional damage mitigator.
/Invun is proportional and has an additional scaling protector in Invincibility.
/Dark has proportional damage mitigation and a shed load of AoE's that benefit the entire team.
Personally, and this is a gripe, I get a bit tired of people saying they are very valuable to teams AND great solo. Its just not possible. You cannot be great at everything in this game. I play a MA/Regen and a play a Spines/Dark scrapper. I fully accept my /Regen is not so good in teams (but can blitz through solo missions), and my Spines/Dark is absolutely marvellous in teams, but is much slower solo.
Most toons are of course somewhere in the middle. But Imi afraid cold hard maths pretty much dictates that AoE win in PvE big teams. And /Regen is, mathematically, very strong solo or in very small teams (and visa versa, relatively weak in big teams).
Mastermind Merc/Dark or Bot/Dark are very easy to solo and great in teams. Various forms of Rad trollers and Defenders are also. Ditto for Fire/Kin Trollers, Spines/Regen scrappers... there are some combinations that are simply better than others in the majority of both team and solo situations. That's why you see so many toons being declared as "Flavour of the Month".
I don't like it, but it's a fact of the game.
The Maths viewpoint also only stands up so far... if the variables (teammate buffs, mob resistances, number of bosses per mob, difficulty setting, is there an AV, is one teammate an aggro-pulling squishy, etc) don't change from team to team and mission to mission.
I agree with you that the inclusion of AOE buffs and attacks is very important on larger teams, but I disagree with the sweeping statement that "AOEs are _always_ better than Single Target buffs/attacks" on larger teams. In my view there is a "sweet spot" in large teams, beyond which more AOEs are unneccessary and more single target attacks are desirable.
I also agree that the BEST soloist will not be the BEST team-orientated toon, but IMO there are some builds out there that are very, very close to the top of both spectrums.
Having said all that, I can see that this is something you've thought a good deal about and I don't expect to change your mind about it. Differences in opinions and playstyles help keep this game interesting! 
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Agree, my main point, however is that /regen is a Flat damage mitigator whilst /SR is a proportional damage mitigator.
[/ QUOTE ]Regen, however, can utilize the most +res and +def buffs, since those values have a cap, which the other secondaries reach easier, while there is no cap AFAIK (and considerably less buffs as well) for regeneration.
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Agree, my main point, however is that /regen is a Flat damage mitigator whilst /SR is a proportional damage mitigator.
[/ QUOTE ]Regen, however, can utilize the most +res and +def buffs, since those values have a cap, which the other secondaries reach easier, while there is no cap AFAIK (and considerably less buffs as well) for regeneration.
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Quite true. No build is, of course, the best in all situations.
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I also agree that the BEST soloist will not be the BEST team-orientated toon, but IMO there are some builds out there that are very, very close to the top of both spectrums.
Having said all that, I can see that this is something you've thought a good deal about and I don't expect to change your mind about it. Differences in opinions and playstyles help keep this game interesting!
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Player skill, and indeed "Build" skill are, to my mind, the most important variable. But we are all, to some extent, slaves to maths.
A team with ONLY AoE attacks would be pretty difficult. However, even the most AoE characters likes Spines/Dark scrappers of Fire/Fire blasters still will have a fair number of single target attacks.
Personally, I have never ever been in a team with too many AoE attacks. Has anyone else?
I totally agree with the 'Boss Killer' approach. In the higher (40-50) levels, bosses can do a fair amount of damage before AoE's can take then down - particularly when on invincible.
My primary role, on my Kat/Reg, was to make straight for the boss - or other hazard like a sapper - and take it out fast.
Your less resilliant team mates will really appreciate it and it adds to the fun as well.
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