Trying to decide on a soloer, could use some scrapper advice :P
By
Aliana Blue,
Posted on: 2009-09-13 20:53 in Scrappers
hmmm...I'd say Fire,Dark, or Electrical for a primary and shield, willpower, or invuln for a secondary. Shield will be the most expensive secondary, the other pri/sec could be done really cheaply.
The more people I meet, the more I'm beginning to root for the zombies.
Dark having its own end boost and heal combined with Shields damage aura and aoe makes for a pretty potent combination. But yeah, not super cheap to soft cap defenses, then, what is?
Brutes aren't a bad choice either. I'm assuming you're interested in a hero AT choice, but if you don't care, large packed in mobs provide a brute an amazing damage boost.
As for scrappers, I have a fire/shield that can decimate large groups set for 6-8. Against All Odds + Shield Charge + Fire Sword Circle kills all minions instantly, and Lts. are badly hurt. That basically just leaves you with bosses after a few attacks and you have the defenses to stand up to them. I have no problem standing up to a pack of 7-9 level 53 bosses with a little bit of inspiration use (which drop fast anyway). I'm assuming that DM/Shield and BS/Shield can do well too.
If you're looking for a high survivability scrapper, then consider a Katana/Invulnerability. It's feasible to get a build that's soft capped (or close to it) in defense, have around 70+% resists, perma dull pain (or close to it), has excellent end recovery and fairly good damage output. That's about as tankish as a scrapper you can get.
It's going to be tough on a scrapper. That's not to say you can't do it - in a recent thread, a number of us found +4x8 to be a really fun difficulty level. But it's going to be risky, and you'll need to be able to work out and afford a top tier build.
Ideally, you'd have something that scales up in large crowds. Shield Defense scales up your offense. Willpower, Dark Armor and Invuln scale up your defense. Not sure about the primary. Dark Melee would be nice for the heal, but with mostly single target attacks and a cone, it won't plow through the crowds quickly. Fire would put out some nice damage, both single target and AoE, but you'd probably need Aid Self.
Katana/Willpower might be nice. Katana has good single target and decent AoE, and Willpower scales up nicely. Willpower is also easy on the endurance bar, which can be important for very long fights with only very short breaks.
I'm personally working on Katana/Dark Armor with the intention to run +4x8, but I'm still fiddling with the build.
It's going to be safer on a Tank. Slower to plow through the spawns, but safer. So I'd say Tank if you want to play it safe or don't have a large budget. Scrapper if you want to do it faster, are willing to take some risks, and have the influence and build to pull it off.
"That's because Werner can't do maths." - BunnyAnomaly
"Four hours in, and I was no longer making mistakes, no longer detoggling. I was a machine." - Werner
Videos of Other Stupid Scrapper Tricks
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I'm assuming you meant Kat/DA and I concur with that sentiment.|
Originally Posted by Werner
Katana/Willpower might be nice. Katana has good single target and decent AoE, and Willpower scales up nicely. Willpower is also easy on the endurance bar, which can be important for very long fights with only very short breaks.
I'm personally working on Katana/Dark Melee with the intention to run +4x8, but I'm still fiddling with the build. |
Honestly, if you have a bit of a wallet and can pick up a Theft of Essence: Chance for +End for Dark Regen and get some modest recharge and defense set bonuses, I'd really recommend Kat/DA. You might have to run at +2/x6 for a while until your defenses totally mature, but I'd say it'll be a lot of fun. My Claws/DA, without being kitted out that well, was able to slice and dice +2/x8 without too much difficulty.
Either that or go Tank and go Fire/DM, Fire/Fire, Shield/SS, Shield/DM or Shield/FM. All of those have decent survivability and good damage to go with it. With Shields, it's not too difficult to hit the soft-cap and then start working on recharge.
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Yeah, whoops. That's what I meant.
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Originally Posted by BlackBellatrix
I'm assuming you meant Kat/DA and I concur with that sentiment.
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"That's because Werner can't do maths." - BunnyAnomaly
"Four hours in, and I was no longer making mistakes, no longer detoggling. I was a machine." - Werner
Videos of Other Stupid Scrapper Tricks
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Yup, this is what my scrapper is. Very easy to solo, but as someone else here mentioned, not much really in the way of AOE. Attacks are set up with a soul drain for the enemy debuff and self-buff, followed either by the Shadow Maul cone attack and/or the Shield Charge to send them flying to be picked off as they rush back at you. Adding flight and air superiority adds to the attack chain with the knockdown putting the target out of action for a round, as well. The Dark Consumption is also an area attack that provides endurance recovery along with a Siphon Life single-target attack to regenerate hit point damage, both of which do a fair amount of damage. The dark melee set also provides an inherent enemy to-hit debuff, so defense is most important early in the attack, less so after they've taken some hits. But it's not a fast 1-2-shot mob-finished build. It may take as many as a dozen shots before the whole mob is put out of action and the time it takes will depend partly on your mobility (superspeed & jumping). It's also a build where recharge rate is as important as the defense cap in order to minimize the recharge time on the Soul Drain and multiple-target attacks, so plan on acquiring some LotG's to tack on to the many defense sets. So far, my dark melee / shield defense scrapper has been my favorite character to solo (and team on the offense side of things).
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Originally Posted by Negescape
Dark having its own end boost and heal combined with Shields damage aura and aoe makes for a pretty potent combination. But yeah, not super cheap to soft cap defenses, then, what is?
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I'm also going to have to agree with Katana/Dark.|
Originally Posted by Werner
I'm personally working on Katana/Dark Armor with the intention to run +4x8, but I'm still fiddling with the build.
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Katana offers good dps in single target as well as good AoE damage. It also is relatively easier on endurance then other primaries. It also provides a great melee defense buff.
Dark offers resistance and the ability to gain defense from Katana which works well with each other. It has the best heal in the game, Dark Regeneration, which for your purposes will work great being that when surrounded by a group will fill your health bar completely. It also offers great mitigation tools in Oppressive Gloom and Cloak of Fear, and offers a nice damage aura. I slotted Absolute Amazement: Chance for To-hit debuff in OP and I find that it helps out.
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Dark/Shield Build Thread
I'm gonna have to put in my vote on a well built scrapper here. Not that a tank can't do it, but it would just take a bit longer than a scrapper could.
FM/SD/Fire would be my go to on this...
Claws/SR with Spin and Shockwave (+4 get KD) is just gonna be tons of fun... ohhhh just can't wait
Claws-Fire/Inv would be my second option
I wouldn't go with anything Dark... just cause I dislike them... ;-)
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The issue with deciding between Tankers and Scrappers when dealing with massive, hyperpowered mobs is whether you actually need the additional survivability or if that additional survivability is actually going to make up for the lower kill speed (re: more damage means that there is less time spent in combat).|
Originally Posted by Phoebe_Ponderas
Now generally I would hold that idea to be true, BUT, with i16 coming out I have to ask this: If I wanted to solo 8-man spawns set to max difficulty, would I want to do that on a tank or a scrapper? The loss in ~1000+ hp seems rather nasty, despite being able to soft-cap defenses on either a scrapper or tank (admittedly I tend to only soft-cap melee defense since trying to soft-cap all three costs an absolute fortune and most of my time is spent in melee).
So my question is, if I want to go swimming into massive swarms of purple mobs, do I want to mess around on a scrapper or stick with a tank? |
Now, assuming all other things are equal, we can attempt to operate exclusively off of the AT modifiers.
At a baseline, Tankers have 40% more hit points and 33% more mitigation (from the same set), so they've got 186% of the survivability of a Scrapper. Of course, thanks to their lower damage modifier and lack of Critical capability, they're also going to be dealing nearly a third less damage (66.45% of a Scrapper to be precise). So, at a baseline, the Tanker is going to have roughly 123% of the survivability of a Scrapper when you factor in kill time (assuming you can leverage the enemy groups to actually require those high levels of survivability).
Now, if you start talking IOs, it gets a bit more difficult. At their caps, a Tanker is going to have 333% (3212.7/2409.5*(1-.75)/(1-.9)) the survivability of a Scrapper but only 50% ((.8*3)/(1.125*1.07*4)) of the damage. The Tanker is still going to be able to take more damage, but the Scrapper is going to be doing the fights twice as fast. This is also where you get to the point wherein the AoE caps and the aggro cap start inhibiting the Tanker's ability to perform because the Tanker can only get so many enemies and, as has been shown by so very many AE farms, 16 enemies isn't really enough to threaten a Tanker, especially one that is heavily focused upon survivability. Once you achieve a certain level of survivability (it depends entirely upon the situation generally), additional survivability is largely irrelevant. Capped Tankers have gone so far beyond this that it generally doesn't make sense.
So, in short, the question you want to ask yourself is not whether Tankers or Scrappers are better; the question you want to ask yourself is do you plan on doing all of this crazy stuff on an optimized/high budget IO toon or a low budget/leveling build? If you plan on doing it low budget/leveling, Tanker all the way. If you plan on the optimized/high budget IO, Scrapper all the way. You just can't leverage the survivability of a Tanker past a certain point and that point is easily achieve on a Scrapper.
Hmm...I wonder how hard it would be to soft-cap a Willpower without giving to much up in the process? Considering soft-capping makes you (generally) get hit pretty rarely the massive regen would more than likely refill your hp bar between the hits you do take. On the other hand Willpower doesn't do nearly as much good as, say, Shield Defense when you haven't actually taken damage.
Shields would give me a better overall kill speed and is VERY easy to softcap (on a tanker you don't even need the +3% IO's, may or may not need them for a scrapper) but if I get hit I'm going to need to get healing on my own. On the other hand, Willpower will give me the endurance I need to sustain the long fights with an army of grapes as well as recover me when I do get hit, but it's a lot harder to softcap and won't give me any damage benefit at all.
Also, when trying to soft-cap, if your going tank/scrapper is Melee the best one to shoot for since thats where you are? On a Shield it doesn't matter, you can soft-cap all positional defenses very easily. But on a Willpower I'm not so sure you can soft-cap all three.
I suppose the fact that I can't decide what to play means the company is doing a good job. If there was only one choice to make it wouldn't be very much fun now would it?
As far as funding goes, I have about 100m spread between all my toons. I do plan on IOing the heck out of one eventually, assuming I get it high enough level to make it worth it, it's just a matter of what can get me through the massive spawns the best. I'm generally a fan of better survivability over damage but the cap in this game sorta puts a damper on that one.
Im going to vote scrapper FM/SD/F
WAYYY to much AoE (if there is such a thing) and since you will be burning through the mob's I would think the inf will be earned much faster.
Do you vets think a normal farm scrapper (Spines/Fire or Spines/Dark or Fire/Fire) would be able to handle those types of spawns?
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I think based on what you have, I'd recommend going tanker. Trying to optimize a shield scrapper (soft capped defenses, good dps, good innate regen) will burn through 100M very quickly. You might spend all that in getting just 1 set. |
Originally Posted by Phoebe_Ponderas
As far as funding goes, I have about 100m spread between all my toons. I do plan on IOing the heck out of one eventually, assuming I get it high enough level to make it worth it, it's just a matter of what can get me through the massive spawns the best. I'm generally a fan of better survivability over damage but the cap in this game sorta puts a damper on that one.
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This is not me trying to put you down. However, generating vast amounts of influence requires either a lot of time or some market savvy. I have 1 billion saved up to upgrade my current fire/shield into the sets I want (she's currently soft capped and has a Miracle proc, 4 LoTG Recharges, 2 full sets of Obliterations, 2 full sets of BoTZ) and I may have barely enough to cover what I'm trying to buy.
If you're going Tanker (re: cheap), I'd say go */WP. The higher base HP of a Tanker make */WP a survivability powerhouse that is actually reasonably easy to take to the point of laughably high survivability. A lot of the +dam on an */SD Tanker is pointless because Tankers have lower base damage as well as a lower damage cap. It's actually really easy to hit 300% +dam on a Shield character, especially when you're talking about perma-saturated AAO.
If you're going Scrapper (re: expensive), I'd say go */SD (unless you want to go with a primary that can't be paired with */SD, at which point I'd say */WP). If you spend the money, you'll have impressive survivability (re: enough for +4/x8) coupled with the ability to dish out more damage than you can shake a stick at (because we all know how little damage War Mace does, right? bu-dum-tsh!). Of course, you'll most likely end up selling a kidney and half of your liver to afford it, but, with the money you'll be generating, you can buy new ones!
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Not a vet, but if you ask me with the build sacrifices required to make one of these three combos workable against +4/x8 without insps, you'd probably be able to make a fire/shield/fire with better damage and possibly still better mitigation.| Do you vets think a normal farm scrapper (Spines/Fire or Spines/Dark or Fire/Fire) would be able to handle those types of spawns? |
Now, if you don't mind using insps, all these combos should be pretty fine seeing how fast you're going to kill mobs and get insp drops.
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Wait...did you just say Claws/Fire is a good choice for a scrap? I made one because I wanted another /fire toon and I had never tried Claws....but have not seen or read about that that pairing before. Did I read this right, and you did say Claws/Fire can go the distance??????|
Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze
Claws-Fire/Inv would be my second option I wouldn't go with anything Dark... just cause I dislike them... ;-) |
If so, I am not going to delete her....she has Bat Wings, a Pumpkin head from the Zombie Invasion,and she has spunk and attitude...and is sitting at level 15.
Sooo....is Claws/Fire a go from a solo standpoint?
Lisa.
So don't wait for heroes, do it yourself
You've got the power
winners are losers
who got up and gave it just one more try
***Dennis DeYoung
DM/Inv worked well for me on test:
http://www.walkiry.com/CoH/Issue%2016/
^_^
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Grin. Just don't take your Fire/Fire onto the Banished Pantheon Map at 4/8 |
Originally Posted by Nihilii
Not a vet, but if you ask me with the build sacrifices required to make one of these three combos workable against +4/x8 without insps, you'd probably be able to make a fire/shield/fire with better damage and possibly still better mitigation.
Now, if you don't mind using insps, all these combos should be pretty fine seeing how fast you're going to kill mobs and get insp drops. |
On test, It was a glorious sight, all those yummy masks floating about, but think about the reality of it....
Consider that all these plus four mobs on a map set for eight will attack you at once...and you will get debuffed to the 9th degree, and, and, and you have to try it, at least once
Of course, if you have a billion dollar build, those critters you will come across will probably just feel like a kitten is nibbling your fingers...mine is an average Jane build, so I died.
I Rose With The Phoenix and died again.
I died gloriously, but I died.
I did this several times before I lowered the difficulty, and felt awful that I was the only scrapper who could not do the 4/8 thing.
However, on an average Jane build, Valkii, my Dark/SR did a 4/8 in a Council Radio mission and loved every bit of it.
You might want to consider a Dark/SR. You will probably declare a Jihad on her while you level her, but the first time you get two sappers sapping you at the same time, and your blue bar does not go down..you will smile and it will all be worth it.
Lisa
So don't wait for heroes, do it yourself
You've got the power
winners are losers
who got up and gave it just one more try
***Dennis DeYoung
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yeahhh..with 100 mill I'd say tanker. My scrapper will be doing these +8 farms, but he's probally worth around 5 billion inf.
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Originally Posted by Fury Flechette
I think based on what you have, I'd recommend going tanker. Trying to optimize a shield scrapper (soft capped defenses, good dps, good innate regen) will burn through 100M very quickly. You might spend all that in getting just 1 set.
This is not me trying to put you down. However, generating vast amounts of influence requires either a lot of time or some market savvy. I have 1 billion saved up to upgrade my current fire/shield into the sets I want (she's currently soft capped and has a Miracle proc, 4 LoTG Recharges, 2 full sets of Obliterations, 2 full sets of BoTZ) and I may have barely enough to cover what I'm trying to buy. |
The more people I meet, the more I'm beginning to root for the zombies.
After posting on the main Archtype forums and having a small debate on the whole tanker vs scrapper for soloing, I figured I would ask a question in here since the general idea seems to be that scrappers solo better than tanks.
Now generally I would hold that idea to be true, BUT, with i16 coming out I have to ask this: If I wanted to solo 8-man spawns set to max difficulty, would I want to do that on a tank or a scrapper? The loss in ~1000+ hp seems rather nasty, despite being able to soft-cap defenses on either a scrapper or tank (admittedly I tend to only soft-cap melee defense since trying to soft-cap all three costs an absolute fortune and most of my time is spent in melee).
So my question is, if I want to go swimming into massive swarms of purple mobs, do I want to mess around on a scrapper or stick with a tank?