Best solo scrapper builds?

I've just begun playing CoX again and am starting completely from scratch. It has been quite awhile since I last played and with the new power sets available for scrappers I am unsure of where to begin. I was thinking of FM as my primary but not sure on the secondary. Any input on a great starter build would be great.

Feel free to suggest other archetypes if you feel they would serve better as a first character.

For a starter secondary to go with Fire Melee, I'd probably stay away from Regeneration (too clicky), Super Reflexes (too late blooming) and Dark Armor (too unusual). Wait, I just listed all my main scrappers. Hmmm. Anyway, Willpower might be a good choice - it's fire and forget easy, and once you hit 20, your endurance problems are over. Fiery Aura is of course a good match conceptually, but I'm not a fan of resistance secondaries. Same goes for Electric Armor. Shield Defense probably gives you your best top end power when IO'd to the gills, but may only be so-so while leveling. Still, it would probably be my next suggestion if you don't want to go with Willpower. Finally, Invulnerability would be a solid choice.

If you're open to other primaries, a number of us commonly suggest Katana/Willpower as the best starter scrapper. Katana gives you significant melee and lethal defense, which gives you a lot more survivability, and as mentioned earlier, Willpower is easy. Also, if you want to go nuts with it later, Katana/Willpower gives up nothing on top end power, so you won't be sitting there regretting not going with something harder to level but more rewarding for the end game.

Just to comment a little further, when I saw the thread title, my immediate thought was "All of them." All scrappers solo well. They have different strengths and weaknesses, but they all solo well. The primaries and secondaries are very well balanced, and there simply aren't any bad combinations, nor any combinations that are clearly superior (at least in PvE). You'll find a vast variety of scrappers being played, even among the min-max powergaming crowd.

Yeah, some are better in PvP, some are better for taking on bosses, some are better for AoE. But just about any scrapper can not only solo well but by mid 20's to 30's should be able to crank up the difficulty and still solo really well.

Which builds tend to function better as far as AoE is concerned?

Spines, Fire and Electic are probably on top, probably Claws then Dual Blades next depending on how they're built. Katana is almost passable, and Broad Sword, Martial Arts and Dark Melee probably bring up the rear. Secondaries with a damage buff (Shield Defense) or a damage aura (Dark, Fire, Electric) are probably on top.

Some top farming builds would be Spines/Dark, Spines/Fire, Electric/Shield and Fire/Shield. Fire/Shield is also extremely good at single-target damage, and even makes a great archvillain killer (with enough influence spent).

I am definitely thinking of going with shield as my secondary now since it is entirely brand new to me at this point and is certainly intriguing. Do you have or know of any good electric/shield or fire/shield builds, Werner?

Well, I didn't save any, but it's been routinely discussed, so there are bound to be some good ones in old threads. However, most of what you'll likely find are probably level 50 respec builds for specific purposes - farming, AV soloing, what have you. You probably won't find much for leveling up.

That said, there are plenty of people who probably have one or can throw one together for you quickly.

I'd recommend Fire/Shield over Electric/Shield, mainly because my impression is that it is more flexible, allowing you to better put off deciding exactly where you want to go with it, and giving you more options when you do decide. But I haven't played either, and haven't looked much at Electricity yet, so I could be off base.

Okay, I will cruise through the forums a little deeper. I couldn't really find anything other than AV builds. Thanks for the help, Werner.

Hehe, Captain Crisp is no running the streets on infinity; went with fire/sd. We'll see how I do

In the absence of an actual build or experience with the primary, let me at least give you some very general advice:

Focus on getting and slotting up your attacks before your defenses. In the early game (up to 20 or so?), the best defense is a good offense. Then it slowly transitions through the rest of the game to the best defense actually being a good defense. Well, if you slowly crank up the difficulty, anyway.

Talk to the detective in King's Row and run radio missions as soon as possible (level 5-6?). After running a few missions, you'll get a safeguard mission. Defeat the main boss in the bank on the mission, and you'll get a temporary travel power (flight, 2 hours of in-game use). Do the same thing in Steel Canyon, and you'll get another temporary travel power, this time jumping. It's faster than flight, so worth getting as well. These CAN allow you to skip a real travel power for some time if you wish, though real travel powers are faster. I typically pick up a real travel power in the 30s or so these days because the temp travel powers are good enough for me. Another option is to purchase the martial arts pack and use Ninja Running or whatever it's called. It's quite fast and has just enough of a jump to not be annoying when the map isn't flat. If you just want a real travel power as soon as possible, plan ahead, because all of the real travel powers have a prerequisite power in the power pool.

I'd pick up Stamina at 20. That has TWO prerequisite powers in the power pool, so again, plan ahead.

The teens will likely suck. They do for me on most scrappers. You're going to die a lot, and you'll be running out of endurance, and you'll be questioning what you did. Hang in there. It gets better, and then a LOT better.

Don't slot Rest, even if it is tempting for a while. Eventually, you won't even use it because you'll recover health and endurance too quickly to bother.

Don't slot Brawl. You have much better attacks. Use it as filler if you want, though, until you get some attacks from your primary.

Do slot at least one endurance reducer in each attack. They burn a LOT more endurance than your toggles do. Do slot accuracy in your attacks. Accuracy and endurance enhancement are the generally the priority before damage enhancement at low levels.

I'm not sure if this is something anyone but me enjoys, but I typically want to make costume tweaks very early in the game. The lowest level zone with an Icon is Steel Canyon, and it's on the opposite side of the zone. You have to weave your way through bad guys that can pretty much one shot you. Still, you CAN do it. They're never so close together that you can't slip through them and make it. Besides, the hospital is halfway there, and at a low level, you can't get any debt. I think of "The Steel Canyon Icon Run" as a right of passage for my new characters. I've never heard of anyone else with the same idea, though, so it's probably just me.

Ahh, thanks for the pointers. If anyone has any more specific information on a leveling build for fire/shield, I would greatly appreciate it. All I could really find were end-game farming or AV builds.

I'm working on a Fire/Shield myself, currently at 37, and all of the above advice is very sound. One thing I find helps is to always have a few purple inspirations on hand, whether by purchasing them from contacts or combining other inspirations. With the defense you already have from your secondary, it only takes 1-2 small purples to cap your defense, at which point you become very very hard to kill. I'm soloing on +2/x4 without trouble, thanks to using purple inspirations when I can't just blow the group away with Shield Charge.

just thought that i would pipe in and say that either of the swords works very well with SD.the melee defense in parry stacks nicely with the melee positional defense in shield,and can make for a very smooth leveling experience.the set also has very solid aoe

as an added bonus their are lots of fun sword and shield costume combo options.

dark melee can also be a very smooth leveler with SD,though much weaker in aoe.the heal is mighty sweet,and covers for SD's only real drawback as a set.while SD helps a lot to take the edge off of DM's lack of aoe,it still feels like it lags behind other SD sets quite a bit.i would have to say that it can be one of the most survivable SD combo's of them all.