The appeal of Scrapper Primaries

So I have a level 41 MA/Regen scrapper and I freakin love her.

she can Stun, immobilize, knock up, and knock back and take on really tough mobs because she can control the crowd.

Stun someone, then knock someone away, then take out who's ever left, rinse, repeat.

So then I want to build another scrapper and..... the other primaries just don't do it for me.

They're like 1 trick ponies, extra DoT, or lower def, or -acc, etc.

So what's the appeal of non-MA? I know there is one, but I don't see it!

Help?

The appeal of one trick ponies is that there are some pretty good single tricks out there.

• Katana and Broad Sword allow you to easily soft cap your melee/lethal defense, adding huge survivability to non-defense sets.
• Dark Melee has a heal that does so much damage you'd put it in your attack chain even if it didn't heal you, which adds huge survivability to non-healing sets.
• Fiery Melee does big damage all around. Dead enemies don't fight back.
• Electrical Melee and Spines do amazing AoE damage, tearing apart crowds. In most of the game, AoE is king, no matter how much people like me like to talk about DPS. And again, dead enemies don't fight back.
• etc.

I'm with the bearded one here - control does very little for a Scrapper, who generally has access to good enough survivability besides. I tend to ignore knockdown in powers unless it shows up in upwards of five powers in the same set (like, say, Battle Axe) and actually HATE knockback since it makes things far more complicated than they need to be. Immobilization is rarely needed, especially melee-range such, for the simple fact that Confront does a far better job of stopping runners, and it does so at range.

Really, I much prefer the one-trick pony sets, since at least with them, their secondary effects matter. A 7.5% defence debuff doesn't really make a huge difference in the select few instances where it matters, but both Broadsword and Katana can stack that three times over with ease. This means that once you scratch a Rikti Drone or an Earth Thorn Caster, then his defence will suffer cascading failure and you will destroy him with ease.

Or take Fiery Melee as a good example. Fiery Melee's secondary effect is "more damage." And you know what? With the amount of raw damage, not to mention AoE damage, that this set puts out, its gimmick is "I kill things dead." After all, death is the best debuff in the game. Dead things can generally be trusted to be very harmless. In the event that they should resurrect, they can simply be rekilled for even more damage.

I have a great dislike for sets that spread their effects too thin, since melee set secondary effects are rarely very useful on their own. If you can't stack them or chain them, they're only a mild help.

Quote:

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.

I like my Martial Arts scrappers an awful lot, I have four of them at level 50, and there's a certain appeal to the flow of one movement into another -- I can almost zone out while running one of them through a very tough mission set for 8 people.

The appeal to other sets is MOAR damage and killing stuff faster. While MA has very good single-target damage, my katana and broadsword scrappers can do more in a single hit than my MA scrappers can. And when it comes to AoE, there's no comparison. Fire sword circle on a group of enemies is immensely satisfying, and Lightning Rod is just a blast. I've been reworking my electric melee/shield defense scrapper over the weekend, I ran a whole bunch of missions solo and teleporting into a mob and having them all drop dead (Lightning Rod, Shield Charge, Fireball) -- well, MA can't touch that.

I'm not anti-stun or knockback though. On an MA scrapper your enemy spends a great deal of time NOT attacking you.

Also, if you really like knockdown, getting Fireball and placing Ragnarok Chance for Knockdown in it will turn it into a nice AoE knockdown power... it's a 20% chance to knockdown (not knockback) so pretty much puts 20% of the enemies around you on their backs. ^_^ Fun proc, although I don't know if it's worth slotting if you're not using other pieces from the same set.

Looking at it from the other side of the fence, MA doesn't appeal to me because it doesn't offer much of what I look for in a good powerset: AoE damage, good DPA, game-changing debuffs (-res -ToHit -regen), self or ally buffs that synergize with secondary/APP attacks (Soul Drain, Rage), etc.

Stuns and immobilizes are nice, but these are available (and in ranged form) from the Blaze APP, which lessens the advantage of MA having them.

I'll go the other direction and say if the other primaries don't do it for you don't play them. There's now officially lots to do with a single character (there always was) so unless you're thinking of a second scrapper to avoid burning out on the one you love I'd say... kick things in the face and be merry.

While MA might be a +3 x2 Set by level 30. Other sets, like spines and Elec are a +0 x8 Set by level 32 ish. Its just up to you what is more fun. Taking on 3 red minions and a purple LT or 8 minions 3 or 4 LT's and a boss or two.

Electrical melee.

Walk into a group of mobs. Lightning Rod. Shield charge. By the time you get one of your fancy kicks off, I'll have every mob except bosses dead.

It's a thing of beauty. My elm/shield scrapper doesn't rely on fancy stuns. It doesn't rely on endurance drain.

Because the only control I need is DEATH.

One of the big appeals of the Broadsword set is:
SHUNK
CRUNCH
SKLUTCH
...and other satisfying sounds.

Oh, and I guess the well-rounded set of attacks and the defense from Parry are worth something too.

What about a good secondary?

/shield seems to get a lot of attention. But having a damaging aura has been mentioned a few times, so /fire, /elec, and /dark right?

What are the best compliments to claws, swords, and spines for soloing +0 x8?

My first scrapper that I leveled to 50 was a Katana/SR. While it was a solid combo I found that I didn't ever really look forward to playing the character, it just didn't fit my playstyle too well.

Years later (literally, like 5 years later) I started giving scrappers another go. Dark/Fire? It was fun, but there were other characters I enjoyed more...Sablesear was remade into a brute and I still have her though I think I moved her from Freedom to Virtue to Pinnacle just because I rarely ever played the character and I had those free character transfers back when they were giving them. Kin/Elec? It was an interesting combo and I enjoyed it but lost interest in the mid-30s. Elec/Fire? It's 50 but I didn't like the character enough to blow a billion inf on a build so it's just sitting there. It would be great if I did set it out, I just moved on to my latest scrapper project which just hit 50 yesterday... DM/Shield. Holy macaroni.... this one is F-U-N. When I hit 47 I started emailing myself my IOs, got most of what I needed, then when I hit 50 yesterday (soloed from 48-50 doing radios in PI) I finished most of the rest aside from about 3 IOs. I then unlocked the Alpha slot, then ran 5 or 6 BAF trials to get my Judgement & Lore unlocked, got the second tier in both, then did a couple Lambdas. Interface is unlocked, but unslotted (6 threads away).

To give an example of what it was capable of, the team I was on decided to only go for the acids in the third phase. I volunteered to take on the munitions depot solo, maybe take out a crate or two. I loaded up on purples and popped one or two when I got to each crate. I soloed 4 crates by the time the team finished getting the acids, then we had enough time to finish getting the grenades. It's highly survivable and deals some serious pain.

Practical upshot ... only MA is a pony with really really LOUSY tricks that are of surprisingly little interest to Scrappers. And MA pays through the nose for those really lousy tricks ... unlike many of the other Scrapper Primaries.

It's the end. But the moment has been prepared for ...

Sometimes subtle differences make a big deal to a Scrapper primary. Broadsword's Slice power is a short cone, but it has good damage for a Scrapper area attack, and recharges in 8 seconds, letting you cycle it pretty fast. Its Katana equivalent, Flashing Steel, does less damage per use but recharges in a blazing 6 seconds. Compare to other cones having 10-12 second recharges or PBAoEs having 12-20 second recharges.

Similarly, Spin in Claws is the second-most-damaging non-nuke PBAoE melee characters can use, after Fire Sword Circle, but you can get two of them off and start a third one before FSC recharges. People don't always recognize how awesome that is.

MA is what my first 50 is, and I recently dusted her off just to respec her into the new age of inherent stamina, and SHE ROCKS. I unlocked her alpha and she soloed Trapdoor and the final mish. Unfortunately, I was in the pattern of "completing" the second, I really wish I hadn't as I'd like to see how well she does. With all the stun, etc, that's all good and fine, but with /inv she only needs three people in front of her to be capped on...S/L and something else. And she's got a horrible econo build. Haymakers, etc.

For secondaries, I like /wp and /inv, though they are the toggle heavy ones. Get rezzed and need 15 seconds to toggle up = teh lame.

I've started BS/SR and she stalled at 20. Claw/Elec, which I deleted after a thread where everyone bashed it, and it confirmed how I felt about her, she didn't measure up [others my differ.]

My most recent attempt at a scrapper was my wanting ice armor. OH, I want ice armor. So I rolled a tank. He's a big ol slab of frozen meat compared to a scrapper, but ice armor rocks so much. Oh, he's ice/dark.

My opinion on dark is that it's kinda like SS with all the punches. Punches are boring, but dark is a toolbox. And, I know it's a tank, but look at ice/dark over there. No one plays it because it's a weird "theme" but holy cow, it's a god.

Oh, but roll every single combo and get them to 20, if you don't like them at all, delete. If you are a little bored, just park them. Only certain toons have had the ability to get taken from 1 to 50 as I focus on them exclusively. Kat/WP, MA/Inv, and a Fire/Ice*/Fire blaster.

[*only the build-up and shiver]

MA has a history of being low DPS and Single Target controls didn't really make up for it. It was given a buff a year ago (or was that 2 years ago). That made it pretty well balanced in my opinion.

With incarnates abilities thrown in MA really does well for DPS... but then everyone does good DPS with incarnate abilites so again.. it's not a real stand out set.