Scrappers Solo?

Are scrappers any good at playing solo? I tend to play alone a lot, and the Rad/Rad corruptor I have has a tendency to faceplant as soon as he fails to hold something (which is rather difficult for a corruptor).

Any/any.

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It's just a matter of preference in terms of AoE, ST, etc...

Pick any combination for a Scrapper. You won't be disappointed.

If you've got anything you'd like out of your characters, go ahead and post away! Single Target DPS, indestructible, leveling build, whatever you want I'm sure a few people can find a few good matches for your Primary/Secondary choices.

Yeah, I'm looking at the options, and there are a lot of them. Single target DPS is probably what I'd like to focus on, perhaps with some sort of healing. I could be interested in AoE, too, though, I can never make up my mind. Maybe a brief overview of different sets' highlights would be useful?

Dark Melee/Shield Defense combines excellent single-target DPS with Siphon Life as your self-heal (and part of your DPS chain). It's not great for AoE, but if you decide in the end game that you want some, combining high recharge with Fire Ball and Shield Charge probably wouldn't be THAT bad.

BS or katana may work well if you are mostly undecided to get AoE or single DPS. Both set are focus on single DPS but have good AoE options. If i remember correctly BS (never played BS i just know its powers are similiar to katana) has more burst damage while katana has faster attacks. Oh and both sets have -def in most of their attacks so once you started to hit you will keep hitting.

Or maybe DB though its a set that early play, middle play and late play are totally differentand probably require respecing at each 15 or so level but since you will beplaying first time and need to see different powers in the set anyway I don't think this is a handicap.

Personally I can't stand to solo scrappers. Past level 22 it becomes a snorefest very quickly for me. The only exception I've found has been Regen, with it's reactive nature keeping me on my toes.
All the other sets with good defenses end up leaving me bored.
Half way through a mission and I'm just click click click, next. Click click click, next as I'm in no danger of dying I have no need to pay attention.

Ultimate boredom.

I hate soloing scrappers. I really love playing scrappers on teams though as the added company and increased spawns makes it interesting.

But yeah, roll any scrapper and get some SO's. You won't be faceplanting that often past that.
(provided your a decent player)

If you're not increasing the spawn sizes with the difficulty setting, a Rad/Rad shouldn't be defeated TOO often once you've got SOs for the toggle debuffs. Accelerate Metabolism provides some small amount of help by shortening mezz, and the self heal should let you get away with carrying more breakfrees than I usually do on my characters, since you won't need as many greens.

That said...the following is opinion, leavened by some experience playing and reading:

Dual Blades, Martial Arts, and Katana are the prettiest primaries, in roughly that order.

Spines, Claws, Electric, and high-level Dual Blades are the best AoE, followed not far behind by both sword sets...and with a special mention of Fire, which has only one AoE but it's the hardest-hitting, and half the damage is a good damage type to boot.

Dark Melee, the sword sets, and Martial Arts give the most mitigation (so far -- the eventual introduction of War Mace and Battle Axe will give Scrappers new mitigation-heavy primaries).

Dark Melee, Martial Arts, and Fire are the main sets people think of as single-target. All three are hard-hitting. The sword sets also do well here -- each ends with two essentially single-target heavy hitters, and Broadsword has a third very hard-hitting ST attack in Hack, which is matched by Katana's substantially smaller but blazingly fast Gambler's Cut. Spines and Electric Melee are actually not especially good at single-target, probably as a concession for being so good at AoE.

I'll let someone else tackle the secondaries.

Sure, a scrapper CAN solo... but if you do play solo, who will be there to witness your awsomeness? ...if a tree falls in the woods....

Scrappers are awesome if you want to solo, although I don't have any high level Brutes (I hate the Villain and Praetoria zones) judging from the comments they are a blast to solo also.

I'm not sure what your play style is but I'll use myself as an example. I have a problem paying attention to things so when I play a scrapper I need a "set it and forget it" type of build so I go defense in SR. Some players like Shield better but I could never come up with a good concept to roll one, plus I like Quickness in SR.

The damage resistance sets and regen require too much hands on for my tastes.

There may be some scrapper fans here that will think I'm dissing the set but I'm really not when I say this:

For soloing, there is no simpler blue-side AT to play than a Scrapper. Tankers are also very easy to play if you are soloing, they just can take more abuse and take longer to kill things than do scrappers.

I'd say the same thing about Scrappers cousins red-side, the Stalker, but the mechanics of hide/out-of-hide make it slightly more complex in terms of strategy.

You only have to understand two basic concepts for playing a scrapper: Damage and Damage mitigation. For almost all the other AT's, you need to consider things like pulling, range, debuffing and debuffing target acquisition priorities, soft vs. hard controls, mezzers, etc.

With a scrapper, you just point at your target and start clicking attacks. Sure, later levels may require some of the same strategies other AT's had to deal with back in the early days, but they've mostly matured beyond those. A scrapper doesn't worry about target acquisition until they meet Sappers from Malta and the like. Tsoo sorcs and BP Shaman's may have annoyed you in the past, but you could pretty much ignore them until you got around to killing them. Most other AT's can't do that at such a low level as a Scrapper.

This is, by the way, why scrappers don't always get the love when teamed. Most other AT players have either played a scrapper themselves or are accustomed to solo scrappers so they just use them as "team padding" most of time.

YMMV of course...just stating a personal opinion.

I have a related question ...sorta.

I play solo nearly 100% of the time. I've spent a year or more away from melee, focusing on my masterminds, controllers and blasters.

Now I'm looking at a few melee characters I'd like to complete and like, woah. The prices on these sets are incredible. They're also not readily available.

A personal side note - I have a hang up about gaining 2% defense and spending millions of influence and hours of my life to do so. I'll just use a small purple inspiration. I also usually wait until 35 to IO and even later to start using sets. I don't know if this is standard practice but it makes sense to me.

The problem is - when it comes to melee sets there's no comparison in my eyes - you need Obliteration, Touch of Death, Crushing Impact etc... The other sets don't have the bonuses to warrant using them over standard IO's.

Long term character goals for the win?

I'm not sure what you're asking. I typically add Steadfast Protection and Kismet uniques as soon as I have a good place to slot them. I use SOs until the mid 30s. Then I frankenslot cheapo pieces for the enhancement values along with spec'ing into my final attack chain. I continue using a mix of SOs and cheap IOs on the way to 50. At 50, I decide if I like the character enough to IO out for real. If so, price is not a concern. I like playing the character, so continuing to play to earn the IOs doesn't seem like a chore to me. If it became a chore, I'd stop.

Yeah, definitely don't slot sets for the secondary effects (well, never say never, but you'd need a really good reason). Slot damage sets, or in rare cases, frankenslot. How to build Scrappers depends on the Scrapper, but you're all but guaranteed to be looking for huge defense bonuses, huge recharge bonuses, or both. And that isn't going to come cheap. These days, I'd think even a basic build would run you a few billion. On the other hand, I may be using a strange definition of "basic build". And certainly, some combinations are cheaper than others to do "right".

So Dark Melee/Shield sounds pretty awesome, I think that's what I'll go with. One last question, though. Scrappers are pretty similar to a Tanker, just with different numbers. Any thoughts on which of those I should choose? I like the idea of being more defensive and being able to tank for those rare occasions I'm not solo, but I don't know how large the damage gap is or whether it would be worth it.

First pick Dark mellee, second pick shield defense, third cut a hole in the box....wait, that's something different.

Very cool, thanks, I'll go with the Scrapper. This was a rather informative thread.

I keenly feel the lack of AoE on Dark Melee Scrappers and in the case of /Shield, Shield Charge only partly offsets it.

Everything else about the set is gangbusters, though -- if it had better AoE it would be grossly overpowered. It may feel a bit laborious leveling up, since you'll often be punching things one at a time...but when you get your first Soul Drain off in a crowd, paired with Against All Odds, you'll see what the fuss is about.

Don't neglect to slot Siphon Life like an attack -- acc, damage and recharge. It's an okay self-heal but a fantastic, hard-hitting attack.