Scrapper Issues List - Welcome to Issue 18!

Late (return) to the party, but I've been working on my shieldie again. I think this is wishlist, but mostly observation: something needs to be done about phalanx fighting. The mechanics don't match up with how class rules are built. Scrappers with SD, as boss killers, aren't going to always be up next to the tank, so they don't get a benefit themselves. Ditto the opposite if the tank has SD. I guess brutes might benefit since they aren't specifically boss killers nor specifically tanks, but my gut feel is that broken-by-design in 2 of 3 ATs needs some further thought.

The bonus in phalanx fighting is relatively small, and with a freed power pool due to inherit fitness, its hard to justify picking PF over Maneuvers. While Maneuvers has a lower default bonus, it is enhanceable and benefits the whole team and functions over a large enough range that the team actually benefits even if you're chasing down a ranged boss who's poking at the tank or a squishy. Double-plus-good for Maneuvers that it also stacks with Grant Cover.

I don't have a specific suggestion for improvement of PF at this time, only the observation that it needs work. Slotting some sort of status-resist in it might fit the theme and make it a worthwhile power pick -- I'm thinking specifically something like end drain resist, or maybe even a -to-hit resist? (assuming that exists -- you're less likely to miss if you have a shield-buddy also poking at a dude)

Oh -- one other. Patron/Epics observation: Shadow Meld in the Soul pool (+20% def! Enhanceable!) -- which can be the bomb diggity for res or regen based sets... and is pretty much useless to a def-based scrapper(/stalker). You can try to use it to fix a cascading defense failure due to defense debuffs, though that's unlikely to hit a def-based set that hard as both shield and super reflexes have good DDR in them.

Having a resistance, regen, or self-or-aoe-team heal version for the def-based sets would be really nice. I realize there are "balance issues" with that especially when considering primaries like Dark Melee with a self-heal in them but, um, aren't there also balance issues giving res/regen based sets a bunch of the good stuff from def-based set? Obviously those can be delt with, so...

Another self-reply, but the idea came from another thread: What about adding an anti-streakbreaker buff to phalanx fighting? It doesn't need to be as aggressive as the streakbreaker itself, but it would be *really nice* when you're sitting at the def softcap to remove the 1/400 chance of death-with-no-reaction when fighting two big-bads who could flatten you in only two attacks.

They tried this, sort of, with SR and the scaling resistance at low HP, but I don't hear that having a good reputation for solving the problem.

Basically, it'd just ensure that if you're at a certain defined threshhold of defense that you don't get tagged with 2 back-to-back attacks and squished without much of a chance to respond.

It'd be a nice perk to actually have better defense than every tom dick and harry out there with set IOs taking them to 45% smashing/lethal.

Regeneration/Integration and Fighting/tough and other defenses should not emit /tarzan animation, this is a character role-play issue. This is okay for trolls but not for many superheroes - can work around by moving while toggling these powers - VoodooCompany, 2007-03-27

With the new animation from the recent round of customization, this is likely resolved.

Is the following still messed up?
Combat chat for Crippling Axe Kick says it slows attack rate, which the power doesn't do

So I'm not sure if there is an actual bug here, but I've been noticing an issue with Spines Lunge attack, depending on where I am in relation to the mob (for instance it seems to come up most if I'm inside them) the attack animation doesn't seem to be going off, I don't hear the attack sound, and near as I can tell no damage numbers or anything pop up, the power does cycle however. I also noticed a similar issue with the magic cell door in the Circle of Thorns instance for the rescue Percy quest for the Midnighters story, although in that case the animation was happening, but no attack sound.

ETA: Maybe not. Maybe it's just the lack of an attack sound for me. Meh. Having died yet again on the Percy mission, I got to spend more time whacking the damn door, and it appears to do damage after all.

You can probably remove the problem with Cobra Strike doing too little damage under the Martial Arts section.

Screw it I am remakin my fave tank ad a scapper. Wm/shield.how is shield qt incarn content

Yay! They fixed the damage scale of Repulsing Torrent. So much good.

Concentrates hard on Blaze Mastery: Melt Armor.

Kinetic Melee

Bug: Quick Strike has a 25% chance of doing 0.70 magnitude knockback, which ends up being knockback (rather than knockdown) against levels -1. That means an alpha levelshifted character will knockback level 50 foes routinely.

This is inconsistent with the description of the power itself, which states "a quick attack that sometimes knock foes down." as well as "33% KD" in the title info, and with similar single target attacks from other powersets, which have 0.67 magnitude knockback and won't knockback -1 foes.

Increase the amount of Regeneration Buff that can be enhanced in Integration.

Slightly increase the non-enhanceable health regeneration buff of Regeneration/Integration.

Integration has 2 portions of regeneration, an enhancable, and an unenhancable portion.
Let's get rid of the unenhancable part.

Maybe this would allow it to actually live up to it's name without being OP.

Sweet! Revive and Resurgence have been fixed.

Concentrates harder on Blaze Mastery: Melt Armor.

Well, I...

I guess I won't have to update this after all.

Bug: Burn ticks twice everytime it ticks, for a total of 26 ticks instead of the advertised 13 (resulting in double DoT damage).

Shhh! Don't get them to fix that. ;*p

Of course. We have mez protection.

So it was a text error rather than a performance one?! Even the patch notes were misleading about this, naming a tick frequency reduction of 4x but nothing else. Truth be told, I assumed the mistake was in the description because Burn is so broken assuming its current power was a conscious design choice seemed like an outlandish notion.

Seriously. Three fourths of KO blow's damage. Hitting 5 targets. For 5 endurance. In an armor powerset. How could this not raise any red flag is hard to understand; and then stacking the FE changes on top of that!

This isn't really a complaint. FA needed a boost at the time. More like surprise, given the often stated goal of striving for balance. Personally, I don't mind the idea of overbuffing things one after another to keep a game fresh, but I may or may not have been brainwashed by Games Workshop in a previous life.

It's probably easier to rationalize looking at the scrapper version exclusively, which is something devs have seemed to do many times*. The DoT being fixed, Burn does proportionally lower damage on a scrapper, and lacking aggro capabilities things wouldn't stay in the Burn patch full time.

*hopefully *this* assumption is true, otherwise... How the heck did Kinetic Melee happen?

I don't think it was just a text error.

Look at

http://tomax.cohtitan.com/data/power....Light_Opening

This power was doing 3 ticks or damage instead of 2 (At least in a PvP zone, though it shouldn't matter).

When I started DPS calculations for scrappers and brutes for PvP, I couldn't figure out why my good friend's DB brute was doing as much as my SS brute, despite my DPS being much higher. Turns out that the 3 ticks of damage instead of 2 was throwing off everything.

Which reminds me, DPS spreadsheets factoring DR and 4 different levels of resistance the enemy can have is a lot more work then it should be.

Anyway, as you can see: 2 * 35 Lethal damage every 0.3s over 0.5s (after 0.13 second delay)

That's 1 tick every 0.3 seconds for 0.5 seconds. 1 tick hits at 0.13 seconds (The delay), and another at 0.43 seconds. Since it ends at 0.5 seconds, it shouldn't ever have a 3rd tick. It did, somehow, and I'm still not sure.

That may be the same problem with Burn. I never tested this in a PvE zone or with scrappers, it was only with nimble slash on brutes.

Any explanation?