7 Years of Scrappers

I've technically got three level 50 Scrappers. (and two Brutes, three Tankers and a Stalker)

In reality I've got one and a couple of part timers.

My original toon, my hero main and the toon with the most paytime on it is my Katana/Regen scrapper. He was created the day before the EU game officially went live, as the servers were available early for those too impatient to wait.

I took him, partly solo, but mostly in the company of a group of friends from 1 to 50 over a period of about 3 months, 474 hours of playtime, to be exact.

I remember when you go to become a god of the battlefield with /regen, able to stand on the frontlines alongside any tanker.

Hell, I *was* a tanker. A very specialised one at any rate, on an old fashioned Hami-Raid. I was the Hami-Tank on Union's first successful Hami Raid, backed up by two Empaths, with perma-Hasten, Dull Pain and toggle Integration/Instant Healing. Oh, and Calling the Wolf slotted for range, recharge and taunt, IIRC.

The best thing about shelving a character for months at a time, especially a scrapper, is that you come back to it, and assuming your memories of how the play the character still work, you think 'Good god, how much damage can I dish out on this guy?!?'

So now I'm 75 months into the game, yet I still play my Katana/Regen scrapper. And I'm STILL using my Issue 5 build that I respecced into after the successful Hami Raid. I've changed the enhancement in the slots around, but the allocation of the slots is still as it was before ED was known.

If you value seeing well constructed, focused Scrapper builds, then for the love of god, don't view this build. What IO's are there are purely an afterthought. I dropped shiny things into slots I already had as something to do with the inf, and to get a vague idea of the invention system.

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hah...I can't believe it, I forgot my Katana/FA scrapper...Razorblade Lipstick...oh how I loved that concept Haven't played her since the changes to Fire Armor, I have no doubt she'd be more awesome now!

This is my first day in CoH -- 1 week after launch. I waited for the game to come out before buying it. I don't remember the name of this character, I deleted her within a couple of days. I believe she was a scrapper. But this was just me playing around with the costume creator and then checking the game out.



This is my first picture of Organica. The original Organica was a katana/dark armor scrapper, back when the only katana was the monstrous legacy katana and you swung it like a broadsword. I played this version of Organica for about a week or two, but at level 17 I was very discouraged at the high endurance cost of dark armor, and I didn't really believe that stamina would solve all of my problems so I deleted her and remade her as a katana/regen. I never looked back after that. ^_^



This is the regen version of Organica, doing what she did best. At the time regen was godlike, instant healing was a get out of damage free card, provided you didn't sustain really massive spike damage. This is a later picture because it's an alternative costume. When the game first came out you could only do one costume and never change it. I remember that the original Organica had a string bikini instead of a regular bikini, so there was a gap that you could sometimes see beneath the belt where the bottom of the costume didn't connect to the top. This bugged me a lot and caused a lot of anxiety, it was one other reason I decided remake her at 17.

I played Organica to about 37. That involved several levels of solo streetsweeping in the back of Brickstown, man many hours to gain one level, and I got very very sick of it and gave up on the character. I had another character by then that I liked better, my fire/axe tank Jalia, who herded and burned down massive groups of enemies and made it all the way to level 50. I did the old-style hami raid twice with Jalia.

I left the game after about a year and a half, with the intention of never coming back. More than a year later a friend talked me into coming back (she played with me once, then quit ). When I came back I started up on Virtue with Mouse Police, who was an alternate version of the Mouse Police I had on Pinnacle (who was level 27 at the time), but really was essentially an Organica clone since she was katana/regen. I played her all the way to 50. She became my second level 50 and my first level 50 scrapper.

Just this last year I managed to get Organica to 50 finally too. ^_^


Don't forget that in the bad old days, one of the things that was a big problem for a scrapper was how the game handled moving targets. If you were chasing an enemy and you were right on top of them, you were not actually in melee range according to the game. You had to be 5-7 yards ahead of them in order to attack them. This was quite frustrating for any melee character.

There are ATs other than scrapper? I missed those some how. It is been a great 7 years, here and there I have attempted to play other ATs, but I always find my way back to scrappers.

"Accept certain inalienable truths, damage mitigation won't rise, the devs won't balance the secondaries, you too will get old, and when you do you'll fantasize that when you were young damage mitigation was higher, the devs used to listen, and newbs weren't noobs. You'd probably be right on the damage mitigation part: everyone else has been so far."

I'm glad I am not the only one eating such tasty crow.
Scrappers have been so much fun over the years I just rolled three more for giggles.

My first Scrapper was a claws/sr, going by the same name as my handle here around issue 2.

Since then I've lingered around these forms, mostly a lurker at first, I like to think I know how to build a character and how to use them... but I've never really pushed myself to optimize my build totally. I've never had an attack chain, I've never held perma hasten down, or picked up heal self to fill my need for that (because like BillZ once said (and I'm paraphrasing) "Screw the tricorder") and instead snagged some regen and dealt with the weakness that caused.

And while that playstyle was fun, I always did feel a bit like a poser or a hypocrite when I'd attempt to give advice to those that were soloing AV's (because I hadn't done it on my scrapper), I'd never taken down a pylon (I didn't have the survivability, and the dps was always right below the threshold). If went against the RWZ challenge set up a few lucky swords would end me almost inevitably.

But, even though it might seem a bit cheap now, thanks to I20 my namesake character finally makes me feel like my scrappers got value.

I've picked up -t3 reactive, t4 rebirth regen, t4 warworks, and t4 ion

Thanks primarily to reactive and rebirth I've finally

-Soloed mariahs whole arc of AV's minus siege w/o warworks (stupid self heal)
-Soloed a pylon without lore (slowly) and with lore (ridiculously quickly)
-Taken a Monster of monster island down by myself (I never thought I'd be able to pull that off on my scrapper)
-Taken the RWZ Challenge on and won
- Routinely taken all the turrets in the lambda down, alone, before the rest of the league finishes the spawns.

I don't care that I had to use incarnate powers to do that, or that those achievements might be reachable by so many more now.

I feel fast and agile, I feel powerful. I live where others die and can complete the objective with no one else to assist. No other character I've ever had can say that, not with in the new content at least.

It's invigorating.

For the first time in 7 years I think I truly know what it feels like to be a scrapper. Not a farmer. No, I can take any AT and make a successful farmer, but they require too many restrictions to be effective.

Not my scrapper.

I Kill. I survive. I'm totally free.



Long live the scrapper.

Been playing since Issue 3 with all the up and downs of everything. My main has been Fallenz, my Katana/INV/Body scrapper. Ughh I dealt with ED and GDN hoping they would undo it or fix it. And boy they fixed it: IOs. My scrapper begin to sing again. Then Castle finally buff /INV a bit and I got tougher. With some help from you guys and some coalition mates, I finally got him where he was when I first got him started. Now with Itrials, I'm kicking butt and taking names. Here to seven more years of showing the world of CoH/V why we are the crazy bunch of players/AT in game.

Gunther, my Broad Sword/Invuln Scrapper, was my first character once we were out of beta. Well, technically I think it was Klaus, a Martial Arts/Super Reflexes, but I rerolled him as an Assault Rifle/Devices Blaster after a few days of annoyance, and found out that was a whole lot of fun. So I was playing a Blaster through city of Blasters, and put in huge hours on him, finally taking him on endless Hamidon raids and kitting him out completely. That's when my attention turned to Scrappers, and I started Werner, my namesake Katana/Regen. By then I'd missed out on some of the best that Regeneration had to offer, but it was still quite strong when I started playing it. I've pretty much been a Scrapaholic every since.

My first Scrapper was Kat/Regen named American Lotus and she wound up being my third level 50. She wasn't spectacular, but she got the job done, and every now and then she'd do something impressive, such as surviving team wipes or taking on a half-dozen +4 Freak bosses at once (in the mid-30s I might add). After that I played a few Brutes, got two of 'em to 50 and deleted one of 'em, but then I started hearing about how awesome DM/SD was. I dusted off the part of my brain labeled 'SCRAPPERLOCK', created Umbral Vanguard and experienced the joy of Shield Defense. Soloing my first AV was a revelatory experience, as prior to that I had assumed the best application of math was infuriating English majors. My next Scrapper project was Elec/SD, Demobot Mark III (Mark II is a Claws/WP which has sat at 38 for over a year and probably won't hit 50) which proved to be just as enjoyable as the DM/SD. Having two enormously damaging AoEs was addictive; yeah, I wouldn't be doing much AV soloing, but given the body counts I was racking up I didn't care. My next Scrapper project will probably be Fire/SD to round out the Holy Trinity of Shield Defense. I enjoy Scrappers 'cause sometimes it's nice to just kill things without all the fuss. Mano a mano, plain and simple.

Scrappers. I came to this AT with my BS/Regen who is to this day still my most played and richest character. She's my heart, although /regen no longer is. My new love is also a Scrapper of course, a Fire/Shield.

I could certainly remember the bad old days, but I prefer to look forward. But let me leave you with perhaps the Regen Scrapper's call to action:

"Concern = Small Tweak, Don't worry Regen Scrappers!" - Statesman 2004.

My first character was a Kat/regen scrapper, born 2 weeks after launch. Back then, City Of Blasters was the rage and scrappers were 'teh gimp' but I never felt that way. Don't get me wrong, a pre-L28 regen scrapper was squishy at best with FH and Reconstruction/Dull pain as your armor. On top of that, my first attempt at playing the game was with a video card that wasn't up to snuff and my first costume choice color combo was, er, unfortunate at best.

When I hit L28 and attained god status, I can't say I have had more fun in the game. Soloing Adamastor was my high point. I quickly rolled a claws/sr scrapper because this combo was 'teh gimp' of the scrapper set ... and it was but with some tweaks along the issues improving the combo's performance and some tweaks removing the /regen performance, I can say that my claws/sr is one of my favorite scrappers. I have scrapper 50's using most of the armor sets (/electric is the last one needed) and they are all different but just as fun.

Scrappers are the AT I spend 95% of my time in game on. In game, nothing is more restful than attaining scrapperlock and mowing through a map then the next.

All /regen scrappers, pour a bit of your drink on the ground in honor of our long lost homey, toggle IH.

Also, Scrapper forum is the best forum of all, no ifs, ands or buts.

Have Fun.

ps I feel remiss not giving a shout out to my l50 WP/DB tank, the closest thing to a scrapper that isn't a scrapper

My first character on the live servers was actually Sub Zero. Hey, I like Mortal Kombat!



Anyways, the character was an Ice/Ice Blaster. I played the character for about 30ish levels and was getting kind of bored of the game. Previous to that, I never really had any altitis. I would always play one character for a very long time before making alts. I thought that before quitting the game, I'd try out some of the other ATs.

Well, that's when I made my Katana/Regen character. I remember one day when I saw someone use Integration. It was some rhino-girl character, I think. Looked perfectly in-character with that person. Yelling and thumping her chest. My Katana/Regen wasn't like that, so I asked to myself "Why do I need that power? I'll just skip it - I don't like that animation!" Hoo boy, thinking back on that is embarrassing.

The first character I made in Issue 1 was a Dark/Dark Scrapper named Mormegil, a mutant who had learned to control his powers through arcane techniques. I ran through the whole game with him all the way through into Hammi's, despite everyone telling me how awful and weak he was.

And good lord was he weak!

I still remember killing an Eidolon, seeing that its rank was "Boss", and thinking that I'd destroyed a rare, dangerous enemy. >.>

Still, you all should see what that toon can do now. Softcapped, with huge damage numbers and near-perma Soul Drain, Mormegil never STOPS! Things have changed, and Mormegil moved to Virtue server, changing his name as he went, but he's still my first scrapper, and he's become one of the most versatile and powerful characters I've ever made.

Big change from "lol Dark/Dark".