Why no Super Strength Scrapper?

Ah. See, I wasn't aware that we're on, like Fury 2.0 or 3.0. Thanks for the heads up on that.

And in that case, let's freeze some brootz!!

Says who? Scrappers are fighters. Period.

You know, it sickens me that the same insane old arguments from six years ago keep getting rehashed. "Oh, but Brutes are this and Scrappers are that." Here's a suggestion: let ME decide what my characters are. As long as the set fits within the confines of the AT's intended approach, let me have it. I'll handle the RP side. Scrappers are defined by hitting things that move until things don't move no more, and being able to survive long enough to do it. That's all there is to them. This idea that they're "agile" fighters or "light weight" fighters or "skill" fighters or what have you is completely fictitious and nothing more than an intolerant expression of some people's conceptual vision of what an AT should represent.

ATs are not conceptual constructs. They are mechanical construct. From the beginning of the game, their only purpose has been to ensure people have enough of the right kinds of powers to be able to contribute and at the same time NOT have the kind of powers that would make them overpowered. This is literally the only reason why the game went from a "points buy" system of free power selection to AT-restricted, powerset-restricted power selection. It was intended to prevent us from gimping ourselves and prevent us from overpowering ourselves. These conceptual explanations ARE NOT part of what the AT system is intended to be.

ATs come down to a simple question: What do you want to DO? It has nothing to do with concept, it has nothing to do with story, it has nothing to do with "skill." If you want to hit things, you pick an AT that has "melee" somewhere in its powersets. If you want to hit things with a particular approach, you pick an AT that's designed to hit things in that way. If you want to shoot things, you pick an AT that shoots things and THEN worry about what else you want it to do. If I want an AT that shoots things AND hits things, I go Blaster. If I want an AT that shoots things and debuffs them, I go Corrupter.

Brutes, Scrappers and even Tankers are pure fighters. Brutes have the Fury gimmick, Tankers have a focus on survivability and Scrappers are "direct" fighters with no gimmicks to their name. Just stats. It's ludicrous to try to translate these gimmicks into what what concepts the AT "should" depict, when for every RP argument you make, I can make an RP counter-argument. That's the nature of conceptual RP.

Ideally, the game should let us pick the approach we prefer and STILL give us the visuals we like anyway. If I want to play a Scrapper because I don't want gimmicks and am as such willing to trade off some survivability for it, then why shouldn't I be able to pick Super Strength? Suppose I want to make Naruto's Sakura, who's super strong but in no way a brutish tank, and is in fact very easily hurtable. Why should I not?

It's all a matter of options and choices. An AT should be unique by how it plays, not by what powersets it has access to. If you think certain powersets are incentive to play certain ATs, you are wrong. I do not want to play Tankers, and I WILL NOT play Tankers, but if Ice Melee and Ice Armour were available for another AT, like Scrappers or Stalkers, you bet your lunch money I'd play them in a heartbeat. I played an Ice/Ice Brute in Beta, before I was asked to delete it.

Any AT should have access to any powerset it's eligible for. Players should, thereafter, be trusted to sort out their own concepts, because players are smarter than this. If any powerset is given alternate animations on proliferation should have those given as power customization, and should have them ported over to all other versions of the powerset. If I want an agile Brute or a lumbering Scrapper, then that should be my choice. AT is a meta-game concept that one player has no business "defining" for another.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Well put Sam, but this line nearly made me burst out into laughter and wake everyone up in my house.

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow City of Heroes is a game about freedom of expression and variety of experiences far more so than it is about representing any one theme, topic or genre.

Well, she was the only super-strong yet not super-tough character I could think of off-hand and I didn't want to break my thought to go google-diving I'm not familiar enough with comic books to give more examples, unfortunately, but I can name a few cartoon and video game characters who perform super strength antics, yet aren't characterised by being slow, lumbering and brutish. I'll just need some more time to put together a list

Something else I wanted to mention, however, is that with its alternate animations, Super Strength is, in fact, not a slow, lumbering brutish set, or at least doesn't look like one. Swapping the animations for Jab, Punch and Haymaker removes most of the "Hulk SMASH!" vibe from the set and replacing Foot Stomp removes the need for the character to appear heavy, which is what has kept me from using Super Strength on lighter characters in the past. Swapping Knockout Blow doesn't really change much, other than the need for the character to appear more like Popeye the Sailorman.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Why?! Because Castle hates Scrappers! That's why!

Everybody hates scrappers. Scrappers even hate other scrappers.

Dang scrappers stealing my kills.

And now I have to contend with brutes as well. *grrr*

If Rage (and the SS powerset) is overpowered on Scrappers, then it's overpowered on Brutes and Tankers and should be nerfed immediately.

A friend of my sister's friend has a cousin who was knocked up by SS....

I wish other people thought this way. I don't see how people can accept them in their current form on Brutes and Tankers and not say its over powered.

Players seem to be stuck on the fact that due to Scrappers AT modifiers it would be over powered but what I don't understand is when you compare super strength to Brutes and Tankers other power sets where does it fall? I can almost assure you it will be close to or at the top performing set.

That sounds painful...

Scrappers do get 100% from Buildup and similar powers vs the 80% for Brutes and tanks IIRC, you can stack rage quite easily which means Scrappers would get 200% damage buff compared 160%, the Scrapper would also got Criticals on top of that. Considering Scrappers also start out with a higher melee damage modifier means they would be putting out stupidly high damage without much effort.

I like it. Or you could lower the buff time on rage for scrappers. Then the "oneheckuvapunch" would look more scrapperish.

//Jack

I thought the idea of proliferation was to give the ATs access to more themes of superpowers?

Changing one power isn't a deal breaker for it, otherwise Stalkers would never get any.

I was actually going to suggest this myself. If the damage/ToHit buff were scaled down to around 40% of the normal Rage buff but had new crit mechanics added to make it interesting, I'd say SS on Scrappers/Stalkers would actually be unique enough to make me perfectly happy with the proliferation. Far more pleased than with other proliferations we've gotten.

*points to Stalker scaling critical chance with teammates within range*

If a Stalker can have scaling crits depending on how many allies get within 30ft (something that constantly changes in combat), as well as a toggle that alters crit status (look at Hide. while hidden, it can change powers chance to crit to 50-100%)...really there are more examples too but I'm not allowed to talk about it...

Anyway, it's very possible. Crit chance is only hard coded into the power if the devs want them to be.

Perhaps. And it's one reason why I don't care for proliferation as much as others. I *want* changes to proliferated sets so they fit *better* for that AT. I wish they'd have done that so Dark Armor was a better fit for Stalkers (rather than a flub-fix because now they can't go back and redo it right because the cottage rule).

How I'd want Rage for Stalkers/Scrappers: +45% dmg/8% ToHit (slightly less for Stalkers), 100% crit-rate state on next ST attack upon activation, 50% for AoE (think Placate but you can't be knocked out of this by being hit) then +15% crit-rate for the rest of the duration.

Being able to control a crit for Scrapper would be a potent effect (just like how Rage is so potent for Tankers/Brutes). For Stalkers, that's two controlled crits (and I think there might be a chance to double crit if crit-rate isn't cumulative so combining placate and rage for the same attack might result in that possibility) but where it really shines is, with max teammate buff and Rage, that's like 45% crit chance all the time. Pretty potent...maybe too potent >_>

[EDIT]Oh yeah, you'd need to make the crit-rate buff non-stackable (the controlled crit at the start of Rage should be enough). If it were stackable, Scrappers could get around +45% crit-rate and stalkers a maximum +60% crit-rate...and that's with just 1 stack. It'd start getting absurd after that...

Yeeeah. Not sure why the apparent sarcasm, but whatever. Everyone has their GG moments. [winkie emote redacted]

Haymaker on scrapper base abt 114
Haymaker on brute base 68.4

Slotted for 100% damage on scrapper 228
Slotted for 100% damage on brute 136.8
Plus Fury at 66% (+132% dam) for brutes 227.1

This is where the sets should be about equal. If you run the numbers for almost any set, fully slotted and at about 66% fury the damage will be very close. Now both sets can do more damage than this. BU and crits will increase the damage for scrappers and BU and higher sustained fury will increase the damage for brutes. Overall the end result is similar damage output over time. If the brute can manage to maintain their fury bar that is.

Now here is what happens when we factor rage into the picture.

Plus Rage at 100% for scrapper 342
Plus Rage at 80% for brute 281.8
Even with fury at 85% (about the highest you can sustain over time on a brute) your damage would be about 307.8. And the scrapper would crit at times for 684. All of this without any external buffs.

Thanks to rage, this puts the average DPS much higher on a scrapper vs a brute. Consider that most other sets that the 2 ATs share have similar DPS and you can see how a direct port would really put the set over the top on scrappers.

So why is rage not OP on a brute or tank?

The set has been balanced with low damage, faster recharge attacks at the lower tiers and extra long recharge attacks at the higher end. The set was also given jab, which is only slightly better than brawl and also handclap which is slightly worse than brawl. So overall the set has been balanced against other sets for brutes and tankers based around rage.

As others have said, in order to port to scrappers the devs would either have to rework rage, rework the damage on all the attacks or both. First they are porting over the sets that are the easiest to port and once those are done, they will work on the more difficult ones. SS will end up being one of the more difficult ones.

It's just not the same without the PSSHOW, BAMF, BSOOOM sound effects.