"You are under no obligation to save me" - A scrapperlock thread

I build my scrapper's to be as survivable as possible. In most cases I don't *need* a team to stay up, but then again, I won't turn down any help I might get. It does annoy me, though, if people try to save me instead of a squishy who's about to faceplant, thinking I can't cope with the spawn alone.

On that happened way, way, way back. My team had wiped in a fight--we managed to get about three groups as adds, and there were a total of seven Longbow Wardens in the mix, along with a huge pile of minions and Nullifiers. Everybody else hospitalled.

I made an Awaken->Break Free->pile of purple inspirations->Catch a Breath->Respite stack, mashed them, hit Overload, and dove back into the pile. I survived through the Overload crash, and I was still going when the team got back several minutes later. They didn't, however, grant my request to let me finish the spawn alone.

Pif, kittens...all you're doing is adding fuel to the catgirl fire.

Now, "I" made the best set(s) ever.

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=144473

Just you wait. The devs are totally going to jump on these.

Got another one, but this time it wasn't me!

More and more lately I've been forming the ITF's instead of just finding one to join. Things tend to go quicker that way since I don't wait because "We need a tank/kin/rad/whatever obligatory AT/powerset." I find the first seven other people willing to join an ITF and roll. This is mostly because I have the debuffs necessary to take down an AV, but even those aren't necessary. Anything else is icing.

So anyway, last night I formed an ITF. Lately I've been running these in character, so once everyone is together, I start clicking my macros. There's a quick introduction, then a rundown of how things go when I'm in charge. Basically, until I see reason to do otherwise, everyone is free to proceed as they see fit. Solo, small teams, one big group, whatever; if it moves, find a way to kill it. I mention that people who feel squishy are welcome to follow me for support and cover fire, but otherwise I'm pretty much encouraging scrapperlock.

The team I found was two scrappers, two brutes, a dominator, and two corruptors. If that's not a team destined for eight directions of scrapperlock, I don't know what is. The dominator had to leave during the first mission for some reason. I don't remember what anyone's powersets were... I never saw them.

I honestly had more fun watching the map than I did playing this little run through. Eight little green arrows zipping across quickly revealing black space in all directions at once. Everyone seemed to be paying attention to everyone else, though. I would see someone redlining, and their little red arrow would soon be accompanied by several other green ones. Occasionally they made it in time.

I remember seeing one brute with a swarm of Romans on him. I passed him up and went into the room ahead. He eventually leapfrogged in front of me.

We hit the shadow cyst caves and the two scrappers went full bore in two different directions for the ends of the cave to work backwards. The rest of us went our merry way crushing seafood and Romans under our heels while dealing with frequent ambushes. Yes, there were faceplants, usually followed by "I'm ok." and a quick hospital trip.

The mission with the generals? That was a fun mission. One of the scrappers would pull a general, and as soon as we had his aggro, he ran back to get another. One of the corruptors had fun pulling the patrols into our current mob when things started to slow down. Again, faceplants happened but no one cared. We were having fun.

Imperious accidentally aggroed Romulus while half the team was still clearing nazis on the sides of the platform. We kinda sorta regrouped and started wailing on Romy. It got pretty ugly with ambushes and lots of summoned nictuses (nicti?), but we managed to bring him down all four times without losing too many people.

After that we still had traitors to kill so I let out my last macro. "We're down to cleanup. Split and sweep people!" I think I saw "Dibs on tower 1!"

I hadn't been paying attention to the time, but it didn't feel like a particularly fast run. There weren't any team wipes, but there were plenty of deaths and we hadn't been trying for speed, so I wasn't expecting much.

One hour, six minutes.

Not Really Scrapperlock but funny none the less.

A while back pre AE me and some buds where running a ITF set on Relent.....No brute, no tank.(yea it doesnt look good from here). We start expecting the worst. the first mish we roll treu like thiers no tommorow with only 1 death several teammates split we all find each other at the top with the mish complete scroll across the top. Second mish all the way to the end we have mabey 1-2 death's a completion. The End fight with Romi.... Yea the fun fight at the end. We all gather drop romi once, twice.... Now its him and his heal bot nicti grouped together. We go in for the kill only to all faceplant. So we try again and again and ... well you get the point. after 6 tries we regroup and discuss a plan..... THE PLAN. Get next to the wall and immob romi and his nicti and since we are below him next to the wall he wont be able to target us in order to attack or let his nicti heal off of us(Sounds crazy i know). IT WORKED!!!11!!. 2 hours after we started a team of 2 defenders neither of witch where Dark/ or Emp/, 4 Controllers a mix of Fire/ Ice/ and i think thier was a Mind/ all /kin, and then are 2 Doms(dont member thier powers) Finished set on relent. Was the funnest ITF i have ever run and will never run another like it EVER.

See told ya no scrapperlock everyone was to busy jumping up and down at the stair walls that romi stands on in the end to even wanna bother with scrapperlock. :P

Heh, just remembered the one Citadel TF I was on. That TF... would have been really fricking boring if it weren't for the hilarious team. Blaster, Blaster, Blaster, Blaster, Blaster, Blaster, Scrapper, Heal-Empath.

About five minutes into the first mission, I figured that the Heal-Empath was getting bored of the coordinated focus-fire and strategic pulls we were doing. So, I started trying my hardest to get killed, and guess what? All five other blasters followed suit.
So for a couple hours, the team consisted of six blasters all competing to see who can get brutally murdered before the empath can heal them, with the scrapper frantically running ahead trying to hit things before they died of AoE overdose.

Gooood times.

Awesome thread with freak-ishly familiar stories.

Scrapperlock is my drug of choice...seriously, old men need to play CoX...its better then Viagra...
Picture standing on the dock in Cimerora, 7 people are on the team, 3 are farming the wall while the leader and 2 others wait beside Imperious...A lone scrapper surveys the image before him out of boredom...

3 ships sit mored, rocking and straining against the ropes which bind them. 2 of the ship's cabin doors are visible, the 3rd faces west and will inevitable slow your entrance...The lone scrapper's face tightens into a grimace...

An 8th person appears in the team window, the scrapper checks his armours. As the 8th enters Cimerora 4 people drop down next to the scrapper...

"Speed run, Sybils only." Commands the leader...
A red arrow appears on the scrappers vision as he explodes into movement...



*Shudders*
*Stands up and starts to dial the local rehabilitation clinic*
*Stops*
...
*Midnight Grasp the phone and walks away*

Member of the Stoned Templars

{|-|} Easy Kills {|-|} A&TC {|-|}

I don't have any 50s and most of the teams I'm on are just generic radio/paper teams, but I do have one story...

I was on a low level brute and got on a team to farm the bank mission in MI. One of the people on the team wanted to get the badge for breaking into the vault 10 times and everyone on the team agreed to go for it.

Well after the 6th time or so the guy says, "this is taking too long, let's just rush the vault". Now, the other 6 people on the team were either apprehensive or weren't too sure what he meant, but the next time we went in me and him just bolted straight to the end without paying any of the mobs any mind. We make it to the vault and focus fire it into oblivion. As we slowly turn around we're greeted by pretty much the entirety of the bank's security squad looking us dead in the eye, and the rest of our team is still dumbfounded back at the start.

I quickly rush forward while the other guy throws out his AoE immob. I jump right in the middle of all of them and...BOOOM...Thunderstrike. Now, I already had over 50% of my fury bar built up from the constant fire from the mobs as well as from pounding the vault into submission, and that was enough to pretty much level every minion and make a hefty dent in the LTs as well. From there we proceeded to wipe up the rest of the wave as the rest of our team finally catches up for round 2.

After the dust settled and it was all over I sent a tell to the dom that had been with me and said, "did we just duo that entire bank mission at once?" to which he replied, "yep".

We proceeded to do the exact same thing 3 more times...

So I'm absolutely surprised nobody's made mention of the Cuda Strike Force, so I'll throw my hat into the ring. A few clarifications on my end first:

1) If you're not running Relentless on a brute/team, you're doing it wrong.
2) You're not done until you're out of wakies.
3) Aggro cap on the last mission of the BSF is guaranteed.
4) If you've never fought the 5th column, I just want to explain that war wolf bosses one shot almsot everything and shotgunner bosses liquefy most people (they hit hard and aoe).
5) In the final mission of the BSF, you get ambushed by triple digit 5th Column.
6) I run a DM/Inv brute.
7) If you're not chasing your fury bar, you're doing it wrong.

So the first few missions of the BSF are generally very subpar. Smash Longbow, smash Column, smash more things. In the final mission, AVs notwithstanding, you end up having to fight Reichsman and you're supposed to have a variety of ATs to make your life easier. Specifically, stalkers can go behind forcefields to vaporize dozens of Column at once and dominators can guarantee a hold on said swarms which corruptors can immediately liquefy with their power.

Obviously, for this story we didn't have a stalker, corruptor, or anything aside from two masterminds, a dom, some SoAs, and me. We engaged Reichsman and about two seconds into the fight, the neverending swarm of Column started coming. I need to express to those that have not done this fight that there are so many mobs, the MAP becomes impassable because column simply clog up the cave entrances. However, with the SoAs and the masterminds we figure we stand a chance so we start fighting.

The dominator dies immediately as aggro cap bleeds over and makes her paste on the wall. The Shotgun troopers proceed to evaporate the two masterminds, despite aggro cap (from what I've seen, there are tons of bosses and, being relentless, all purple). As one of the masterminds was dark, the other SoA dies immediately. It then comes down to me left and the widow, so we figure we want to give Reichsman a chance and reset him while fighting the literal army of 5th Column. Down at the entrance to the room, the epic battle wages on as both of us are at aggro cap, defense cap, and both possessing a self heal (Aid Self for her, Siphon Life + DP for me). Eventually, she gets unlucky and manages to get Warwolfed with a stray shotgun blast aimed at me.

Now, defense cap notwithstanding, purple bosses have a substantially higher to hit chance all around. At one point in the fight, I'm forced to pop Unstoppable and I'm -still- taking damage while at resist AND defense cap with two heals. So I'm doing this dance around the lower half of the room, moving near the corpses of all my dead allies (any attempt to stealth is met with clogged tunnels) who I swear were just watching it for the spectacle. During the fight, they feed me with insps to sustain me, greens, blues, oranges, purples, everything. Unstoppable crashes, I smash demonic, glob up purples, and greens to just remain vertical (with a Dark Consumption + DP thrown in). I dip to near blinking red twice, but with my teammates' support I remain standing.

Half an hour later, everything is dead. I'm a purple richer and on one of the biggest adrenaline rushes I've ever had. At some point during the fight (presumably when the tons of Column had been slaughtered), one of the masterminds was able to wakie and slowly teleport everyone in. It was some of the most fun I've ever had, and some of the comments people made while watching me systematically dismantle an army of Column were hilarious (and sadly, I fail at memory right now). I can only imagine what Reichs was thinking when he saw one brute just obliterate his entire "Might of the Column" nonsense.

Of course, on the flip side I've been on the receiving end of the RNG screwing me for that fight >.> I swear, RNGs make or break epic scrapperlock stories.

I'm bringing my old thread back up with a new scrapperlock story, or rather a few.

This time, however, I was blueside. *gasp* With a warshade. *double gasp*

First story: I created Defying the Curse, a warshade, and ran a few missions until I hit level six and picked up nova. I proceeded to join a sewer team, exemplaring to level 2, but thanks to the new exemplar rules, I retained nova. We had decided to go the whole way to KR, and a few minutes in, someone said:

"Hey Curse, can you slow down? The mobs between us and you are respawning before we catch up."

Story Two: Getting dwarf, I kind of felt invincible. I was tanking for a synapse team because of said invincibility complex. Not only was I tanking, I was scrapperlock running ahead and bashing robots. RAH RAH RAH! STOMP! SMASH! I forgot for a moment that when I drop to human for sunless mire, I retain the bullet stopping power of a blueberry pie.

"Anybody got a wakie?"

That's all I have for scrapperlock right now. Somebody else has to have a new story too!

So my tale of Scrapperlock from the other side.

I really need to put the thread title on a sticky on my monitor. It's taken a while, but eventually I learned to not go harrying off ofter the soloist who then gets in over their head.

But every so often I will forget, just like last night during a Sewer Trial. We were on the catwalks, working our way down to the Hydra head. One of the scrappers, had gone off on the other side into a mob of Rikti which wasn't an issue, but the Kraken standing not far off was.

Me, forgetting my creed "Support the team, not the loner." Flew off to pop at least a heal and a FS, proceeded to get taken down multiple mezz's and kraken technicolour yawns. I at least made it back over a catwalk before I went down rather than dropping down to the Hydra.

Being face-planted, it was easy enough to bang my head at that point.

Team: "I should know better than that by now."

My #1 Scrapperlocking character is my Widow. I just can't bear standing still when I know I could be laying down the hurt. The boost in run speed only contributes to this predilection for carnage. It doesn't matter what we're doing, I'm going from mob to mob to mob as fast as I can. I haven't been kicked from a team yet for doing it because... it works.

My Energy/Energy blaster has her moments. The most memorable was a Positron TF with a tank and 2 scrappers who were too afraid to go first. Energy Torrent ftw! If the mob is on its back it can't shoot back. It was a TF marathon so I continued tanking on through Synapse until we picked up a tank with cajones for Psyche and the rest.

When I'm just hanging out with friends, chatting while playing I don't mind a bit of standing around. The company is part of the fun.

On a TF or PUG it drives me nuts. We're there to play, not socialize, and certainly not to dither or cower in fear. Kill something already! Or I will, it doesn't matter what AT I'm playing.

I keep on getting scrapperlock on my plant/rad troller, I was on a hess the other day and I was just charging off ahead, as usual, and thinking the team was following me so I used seed of confusion on a spawn, looked for unconfused bosses (normaly doesn't happen between the contagious confusion proc and the chance of overpower, but I do have to let off some controls at them when it does to stop me faceplanting), flung out creepers over them, tabbed to select a boss and let off roots on him and whoops, that boss was in another spawn, quickly throw down spirit tree and let off a heal, seeds still has some downtime so I'm thinking fast about how to handle it when one of the scrappers leaps into the second spawn and lets off an AoE to distract a good portion of the agro, so I move up and support him leaving the creepers, pet and the rest of the team to deal with the first spawn, as the second spawn starts falling seeds is back up so I move on to confuse a third, let of roots and more creepers pop up in them to deal some damage, that scrappers keeping pace and is done with the second spawn, the rest of the team must still be on that first spawn (slow pokes...) so we take down the third just in time for seeds to pop again so I let it off on the final spawn in the room and see the named boss we're looking for in there so I let off a targetting bind so everyone knows this is the spawn we want and pile in with scrapper in tow

This is when the tank goes "where are you guys?", I pop open the map to find me and the scrapper are alone, the tank had taken the rest of the team off a different way, I didn't get a chance to reply before the mission was complete

I've decided I love plant control by the way, but heres a warning: if you try it you may never want to play another control set and brings with it feelings of godlike ability and may cause you to look down on non plant controllers/dominators. You'll also annoy the hell out of everybody when that little cave room your fighting in is suddenly filled with 100s of creepers, each of which has the same agro cap as the tank, who may get jealous (and annoyed because he can't get into melee)

I play a lot of melee ATs and frequently allow myself to slip into Scrapperlock. But the most definitive experience I've had with it came not from getting locked myself, but rather from watching it happen to somebody else.

It was a year or two ago by now, around the time of the Winter Event. I was playing my 50 Fire/Thermal Corruptor, teamed up with a friend's mid-30s Spines/Regen Scrapper. We decide to rescue Baby New Year for some temps and badges. (We're sitting next to each other on laptops in real life.) With resistance shields, heals, and forge, he's ripping his way through enemies with no problems at all, and I'm throwing fireballs and the like behind him, trying to get at least a few kills as he has himself a grand old time.

Then, through a bad stroke of luck, I die when we get to the cave with all the redcaps. I watch him continue to rip things apart, and since he can't give me an awaken, I'm stuck making the awkward choice of either a) waiting for one to drop or b) asking him to stop killing things while I come back from the hospital. Since I've totally been there before (Got a scrapper and two brutes myself), I decide to let him keep marauding, at least until the buffs wear off.

Then he finds Snaptooth, and 'I'm too far away for my mentor to help me!' appears over his head at the same time. Looking at him, I realize that he does not notice the big, red message that has appeared on the screen. He has smelled the blood in the water, and he's sighted his prey. In other words, he's entered Scrapperlock, and the target of his fury is a purple elite boss with 15 levels on him.

I look over at him, and I see his intentions. I could easily point out the folly of what he's about to do. But, in the spirit of true friendship, I decide to let him kill himself.

He pops IH+DP, charges in, and dies in two shots. Not fussed by this, he hits revive, clicks MoG, lasts a little longer, but dies soon enough anyway.

I look at him again, smiling and trying not to laugh. He turns to me and says "This is BS! That shouldn't happen. I'm Regen!" There is a bewildered look on his face.

That's when I truly understood the power of Scrapperlock for the first time.

Was doing an AE farm along with 2 lvl 50 crabs and some random others as my AR\Trap corr back when he was 41. We had just started a slammer farm up, and 3 went afk practically in sync. I had just come from the black market and crafting for the last 3 hours and my trigger finger couldn't take anymore after 3 min.. I popped 3 purples, hasten, and demonic aura, ran up to the first horde and wasted half of them with full auto and flamethrower. Threw an Ignite and caltrops on the rest of them and wound up taking down the first group myself for the first time. The crabs stuck near me for the extra def, not doing anything else because they wanted to just watch I think, and I managed to take down the next group and half of the one after that before everyone else came back and the farming resumed. I was yelling "RAWR IMMA TANKRUPTOR!" =P

Lately, I've been playing a Traps/Archery Defender (level 38 and climbing) who just loves to be the first one into a spawn.

This occasionally leads to some interesting situations, such as the other day when, during a mission against +4 Freakshow, I raced off in one direction while the other 7 members of the team went elsewhere (I thought they were right behind me - really).

After a few minutes, a full tray of inspirations, some tricky LoS / AI manipulation, and too many close calls to count, I had basically managed to solo the entire room. By the time the rest of the team caught up, the only things left standing were three half-dead, severely debuffed Freak Tanks.

-DR

Sometimes we all have our reason for Scrapperlock.

1.A Mob everyone missed that you found
2.A Stalker who has to do the bank mish for the entire team b/c everyone like usual underestimates Longbow
3.Saving a downed team member when no one else has the jeuvos to do it ect.

But please PLEASE don't scrapperlock just b/c you think you're a big ol' can of awesome. Contribute to the team help out everyone so we all don't have to lug over the otherside of the map and try to give you a wakie while not getting owned by a pissed off mob. If the leader or some team members are playing like arsehats then get off the team or voice your opinion.