Need some help defending Scrappers to my Brute loving friend

I'm having a hard time defending Scrappers to my Brute friend and was hoping people here could help me out. I struggle because many of his arguments are pretty valid. The first thing is defense. From what I've read (and what he tells me) a Brute ends up with higher resistance than Scrappers. This makes Brutes far more durable than a Scrapper.

The next area is in damage. My friend argues that while Scrappers at early levels do out damage Brutes because of the need to rest health and stamina, at later levels when everyone has fitness and other stamina boosting powers, downtime is greatly reduced thus making fury loss more minimal. Yes Scrappers do get Crits, but they're inconsistent and unreliable, where as Fury, once it is at X% you know your damage.

So can someone help me to argue against this.

Thanks in advance.

Both good, if one has a preference, one should play that.

Brutes have about 10% more health and a higher resist cap, but their actual resistance and defense values are the same as Scrappers. They can get more out of t9 defense powers thanks to that higher cap, though.

Assuming the same powersets and the same slotting, a Brute needs ~60 fury just to break even with a Scrapper on damage, and since i18 it's challenging to get much above that, so at best a Brute will only ever have a small lead in damage. However, scrappers benefit a lot more from damage buffs like Build Up, Against All Odds, red inspirations, and team buffs, thanks to their higher base damage.

Scrapper mini-nukes (Lightning Rod and Shield Charge) do more damage than their Brute equivalents, because the pseudo-pet has a 400% damage cap and thus does not benefit fully from a brute's Fury and the Build Up that's normally used in conjunction with the power. 400% of a Brute's base damage is less than 295% (more with AAO) of a Scrapper's.

A brute needs a full Fulcrum Shift or more to one-shot a lieutenant, a Scrapper just needs Build Up and a crit from the right power. Even a chance to kill that Guardian before it can drop its Quartz is better than no chance at all.

Ultimately though the two are pretty well-matched. Brutes are a little tougher and in most circumstances do a little less damage. The main differences are in playstyle, and in which AT gets access to which sets.

Once Scrappers get access to the smashing damage tanker sets brutes enjoy (stone melee, super strength, war mace)... well, it won't be pretty. Seismic smash anyone? A thousand+ point crit against most mob types with a mag three hold?

Brutes get more mileage out of popping orange inspirations and their tier 9, it's true. That, and more defensive primaries are their advantages (only Shield Charge rivals the sheer mitigation, not just for the brute but his entire team, of Fault or Footstomp - both of which recharge a lot faster: Stacked fault crushes stacked parry.) Not damage dealing.

Now, at low levels I *think* brute damage is still ahead of scrapper damage due to fury - as a result I've always found the Race to SOs more enjoyable on a brute (hence, 10 brutes level 22+ to one scrapper).

Fulcrum Shift will swing things dramatically in the Scrapper's favor, actually. With TWO saturated Fulcrum Shifts, the Brute will almost catch up thanks to their higher damage % cap.

I was about to post what Umbral said but... Umbral just said it.

In my experience, I was a brute (actually two brutes but my stoney isnt anything like a damage dealer even with niffy IOing), I rerolled a scrapper.

On the defense side: Scrapper and Brute have the exact same scaling on powers but Brute's caps are way better. Actually the +res cap really matters here but 75% vs 90% really makes a huge dif. Tho it does only really matter if/when you play with a heavy +res secondary (FA, Elec...) or/and have a regular use of orange insp or/and have a strong +res buffer in your group (Sonic, Fire..).

On the damage side: Brutes doesnt "over damage" Scrappers (see Umbral's post) but they "Do almost as good in some situations". Brutes need fury, they need to get hit, to hit, to be kept in action (at least every 5 seconds). There will be many specific situations when front loaded scrapper damage will be far more usefull.

On the tanking side[: Thats the whole point to me. Thats why I rolled a Scrapper.
Brutes are meant to take aggro (they want it, they need it, they can handle it) where Scrapper are meant to survive mele. I play almost always with two friends, we played brute/brute/kin, my pal was the "tank" brute and I was the "damage brute". It didnt worked so well because either I get all the aggro (and die or make him useless) either I hardly go passed 50ish fury and do very bad damage compared to, lets say, a Scrapper.
With my scrapper I can deal only slightly more dps and my defense caps are lower but I since i dont rely on specific situations my overall damage is way highter, my defense allows me to survive to the couple of mobs I aggro.

I think he meant defensive, as in the defensive abilities (including resistance, among other things) of his character, not defense like.. erm... defense.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze I hate to be the bringer of bad news... but Willpower sucks!!! you're better off rolling a regen

Brutes were very slightly better than scrappers before the fury nerf, from my opinion. The nerf was just enough to blur the decision enough that I can't say for sure which I prefer, so as far as I'm concerned, I think the two at's are exactly where they should be now.

On average, scrappers will do slightly more damage overall and brutes have a slight survival edge. The only real difference between the two at's, from my vantage point, is powerset availability, because 'maintaining fury' is pretty much just 'scrapper lock' on a brute, imo.

The Chaos buddies seem to be developing a reputation of having a hard time identifying nerfs in the meaningful sense of the word. No worries Cyber.

CS,

My lowbie brutes now lose less fury while running between spawns but can't attain the levels the could before the change while in combat.

End result? Nerf. A nerf at level 1. A nerf at level 50. A nerf solo. A nerf while teamed.

I still don't disagree with the nerf, but a nerf is a nerf.

Nerf.

I wouldn't call it a nerf simply due to the etymological roots of the term "nerf" as it applies to game balance. The term refers to a reduction in effectiveness to such a point that it is largely pointless to use said mechanism/item/etc (i.e. "turning your steel sword into a nerf sword" is pretty much the way it got started being used that way). Since Fury is still a viable and useful mechanism, I would say that, rather than being nerfed, it was simply rebalanced (which is a term that isn't nearly as heavy on the negative connotations).

While you may be absolutely correct on the origin of the word, it is now commonly used to describe any decrease in effectiveness.

Therefore, nerf.