Give Scrappers a real inherent power

Are you done whining yet?

Way to prove me wrong.

You're right, I don't know you. All I have to go by are what you posted.

So let's go through this: you want 25% more endurance than anyone else, which will also affect recovery and a minor effect on endurance drains and have a fairly substantial effect on many builds' peak performance as several sets which could have endurance problems at high recharge (SR, SD) now don't have to build around that. Now given that most people are capable of managing endurance issues at level 50 in their builds - even if it means compromising on things like recharge or which Alpha they select - presumably this is because you can't (or simply refuse to) create a self-sustaining build despite Scrappers having one of the best damage-to-end ratios (by modifier alone it's the best melee damage in the game per point of endurance spent due to the dam/end/rech formula) and thus should have the least issue with endurance. If you're having endurance trouble on a Scrapper, I can't imagine how you deal with Tankers. But the other ATs apparently aren't deemed worthy in your mind, it has to be on Scrappers just because you say so. Whatever. Sure, go ahead. I don't think it's likely and I think you're asking for it on the wrong AT, but who cares, right?

You have a level 50 Ninjitsu Stalker, but insist that Scrappers should have it. So I take that to mean that you refuse to make another Ninjitsu Stalker in order to play the set on the AT it was built for, instead insisting that the status quo be changed to suit your personal desires. I haven't searched to see if you're one of the people that also want it to have extra defense debuff resistance, some resistance in the toggles, and/or a +hp power along with everything else, but those have all been brought up as "things to change" if/when it gets ported over to Scrappers. That certainly seems like posts that want to change it sound suspiciously like "I Shield Defense only with a built-in self heal" rather than "I want Ninjitsu". So those people don't really want it, they want buffs to Shield instead. If it's a powerset combination that you can't get on Stalkers that you would be able to make if it were ported over to Scrappers, then your argument about how "everybody else has everything that Scrappers can do" falls apart, and you're just saying you want a powerset you can't have because the one you got that seems to be the developer-intentioned replacement doesn't actually do the exact same things (see: Empathy vs Pain Domination).

That's not a case of "Stalkers getting all of the Scrapper toys and not wanting to share". It's a case of you not wanting to play a set enough to deal with the requirements to do so and not wanting to have to deal with pesky little concerns that other ATs have to deal with. But god forbid someone say you're whining, or highlight specific instances of it in quotes from you or anything.

Also: I don't seem to recall telling you what you should and shouldn't want. In fact, I pretty much explicitly said the opposite. I said I'm tired of hearing the same requests (for Scrapper Ninjitsu specifically) with the same lack of support behind the arguments and if it was up to me, it wouldn't happen. And I could care less about Shield either - by performance it's one of the better sets when fully kitted out but I just don't like how it actually looks so I have all of 2 Shield characters, neither of which I play much.

Since it's not up to me, you just have to make a real case to the devs. But you haven't made any case, you've just been whining.

Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle it has gone from unconscionable to downright appalling that we have no way of measuring our characters' wetness.

Originally Posted by Brillig It's hard to beat the entertainment value of Whackjob Wednesdays.

I have made my case more than once, and in personal chat.

I also have 2 SD characters, and just don't like the way it looks. I want Nin for scrapper because I have concepts I want to play that would use nin. I like the set, and the spiffy things that it does, which includes Caltrops, smoke flash, and blinding powder. I have never been a fan of SD and I may never be.

Nope, I will make another one at some point. Your reasons for not wanting scrappers to have it (tired of hearing about it) are really no better than mine for wanting it. Nin seems to be the Stalker holy grail, they don't want anyone else to have their special thing. At one point I agreed and felt each AT should retain one power set that was theirs and theirs alone. The devs do feel different though, so why not get on with it? Shoot who knows, when it gets ported to scrappers it may get a buff like EA did.

The only reason I responded to you at all is because you accused me of whining, which I found offensive, and still do.

All I am doing is trying to get something more (I don't even want a huge buff) for the AT I like the most. Much like the stalker players did for years. You want whining? Go read some of those threads.

As for my builds, plenty of them are listed on the scrapper and now stalker boards, feel free to take a look. Hey, feel free to take a look at any of my posts, where I pretty much remain respectful to others (in most cases), and stay away from personal insults. You may learn something from them, as that seems to be something you are struggling with.

Note: Now that I can play stalkers blue side, I am sure I will have more of them. The only problem I have ever had with the AT was red side. I dislike the content and the environment there. At this point the AT plays just like a scrapper except with better Crits, and less AOE in some sets, which means that it is more fun. Which I also said all through this thread.

Lol this is exactly what I point out every time to New Dawn but never get a response. None of her hypotheticals ever amount to anything but rescuing n00bs. I can rescue n00bs on my Blaster.

In fact, yesterday we had 2 Tankers, 1 PB, 1 Scrapper, an Emp and 2 blaster (one of those was me). I don't remember the setting of the mission, but practically everything was purple longbow (I'm thinking it was a tip mission, save Polar Shift, cave map with Longbow + CoT). Anyway, we come up to a spawn with 2 Warden Emps and they roadblocked us, killing us quite a few times with their forted up spawn.

So I pulled some breakfrees from my e-mail, asked everyone to pass me reds, asked for Fortitute, sucked down the inspirations and just nuked the *******. "Moving on..." is what I said while the others were like "Well that worked..." and were more surprised I 'solo'ed it.

What does that prove? That probably half of them were newbs if they had inspirations left to use, and I went and saved them. Doesn't prove anything beyond that. You can save n00bs with practically any power if you know what you're doing. Confront/taunt isn't some special 'save teh n00B' button and frankly, the whole 'scrappers are selfish and only want the spotlight' attitude isn't any better than the 'taunt stopped the orphanage from imploding, rescued the cat from the tree and baked us cookies simultaneously!' mentality.

I haven't seen any case other than "Scrappers don't have any unique powersets because of proliferation, so let's take one away from someone else". Note that I disagreed with taking away unique powersets in the first place, not just from Stalkers but on principle, and you'll see why this argument doesn't hold any weight to me.


I'll freely admit that at this point much of the reason for my not wanting Ninjitsu ported to Scrappers is spiteful; it's also not directed strictly at players who want it alone: the devs have tried to pigeonhole Stalkers for years based on what's "thematic" and not - it's why they said they couldn't have Shield or Titan Weapons despite it coming after they said that they'd give any new powersets to each AT it was reasonable for. So if Stalkers have to put up with being limited by theme, then so should the other ATs have to put up with Stalkers having a thematic set that only fits them.

Is it petty? Sure! But it's equally petty for people to claim to "need" it for another AT when they're given more sets without having to beg and plead for dev consideration simply because they don't want to have to go with the AT it already exists on.



Take a day, relax, and look at the parts I highlighted from your quote in my post before this one. What would you say to someone posting that if it wasn't your words?

And I never said anything about you specifically whining until then - I said that the arguments for Scrappers "needing" Ninjitsu amounted to a lot of whining from people who want the set without having to put up with the tradeoffs of being a Stalker.

I have. I've also called people out for whining in them. I've even stated in a few places that I knew I was whining, but most of those that I can recall were about powerset issues rather than AT issues. I actually "whined" more about Corruptors than Stalkers, because you could actually make a good case for Stalkers being inferior when compared to Brutes and Scrappers at the time; with Corruptors it's a little harder to get people to agree that some changes could be justified (I still say their mez modifiers in general, and in particular their ranged and melee stun modifiers are way too low).

But I don't take offense when I'm called out on whining when I'm whining. That's not a personal attack on me, it's a statement of fact and sometimes one that I might overlook. But an argument of "something needs to change not because there's a performance problem but just because I don't feel special anymore" is really close to - if not over the line of - whining. There are other ATs more in need of help than Scrappers. Push for all the buffs you want, but don't get upset when people tell you that you have nothing to complain about - you really don't.

Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle it has gone from unconscionable to downright appalling that we have no way of measuring our characters' wetness.

Originally Posted by Brillig It's hard to beat the entertainment value of Whackjob Wednesdays.

Confront can prevent a team wipe, save someone who is at a distance and pretty much help make everything doable no matter what the team make up.

Um a scrapper doesnt need confront to do any of the above. Worst case scenerio witha competent scrapper like say my forum handle's namesake a BS/Regen is I have 7 friends kissing dirt, cheering me on with a texted rendition of various "QUEEN" highlander soundtrack selections, then i use res other to get them back on thier feat and thank them for all the vengeance buffing they helped me with.

Any form of taunt aggro mechanic is archaic and out of place in the modern COX, tank and spank play style belongs in the dull over develped sword and sorcery MMO scene. Here there should never be such a thing as a squishy on your team, if someone is still playing a glass cannon blaster they soon will shatter and be reforged into glasssteel. Or transparent aluminum. Im easy either way on magic or tech bringing us a better tommorrow.

This is where you failed, on the first attempt. Coming up with the Nuke arrangement on attempt whatever didn't save the team at all. You all sucked, got indebt and that was that.

That worse case scenario is a fail you do know that? Do you not see the order in which the team mates fell? Sometimes its a case of one of the team mates being a Keystone in the team support being dropped after which the rest may follow. If you bought some time for that keystone the rest may of been alright.

I'm sure it's possible it can. That's a completely separate question from how often it does. Perhaps you frequently team with folks where a Scrapper with Confront does something useful enough for a team to justify having it in a build. I do not, and I am not referring to how often I solo. It's a power that I would rarely every have a use for, which means I can usually find powers that I would get more frequent use from to put in that power pick. Any power that does something provides some utility. The question one asks when picking powers is what is most useful, and how often is it useful? When I look at the utility of various powers I can fit in a build, it's not that Confront is gone from the list, it's that it doesn't make the cut. There are too many things I find more useful more of the time. I believe, based on common player perception of the power, that this is a common experience.

I will, therefore, continue to skip Confront in my builds. As a result, I'm sure that once in a blue moon when Mercury is in trine to Mars, when Confront and Confront alone might have saved some calamity from befalling a team, I won't have it. I'll chalk it up on the same mental scoreboard where I note when Dark Miasma/Black Hole or Whirlwind might have been useful and we'll all get back to playing.

No, where the first failing was with the team leader overestimating his team and setting the mission difficulty higher and higher after every mission. But it's great you *think* you know a lot when you actually haven't a clue.

I'm all for tough unwinnable odds in games, just makes one a better player as they experience more of the game. Having the team wipe isn't 'failed', it's only when the team is demoralized enough to quit have you failed. Despite the rough mission with lots more debt, we finished then lowered the mission difficulty for the next one.

That is success if I ever seen it. The mission was accomplished, the leader learned what not to set missions to for the team and everyone was richer (I hope) from the experience.

If taunt from the tankers couldn't save that team, your measly confront wouldn't either. And I'm certain, had I been on a team with you, I'd most likely be saving your rump too if not actually pulling your Scrapper's weight in kill speed because you're wasting the majority of your time 'Confronting' mobs instead of hitting them.

I suppose you'll make yourself seem like a good team player but you won't be as good a damage dealer as any of my Stalkers, Blasters, Dominators or Scrappers.

The fact that you seem to think confront is a power that must be used as often as an attack might explain why you are unable to effectively use it.

UberGuy, I would argue that it isn't about "saving the team," since as you yourself point out such a hyperbolic framing makes it difficult to see scenarios where it's useful. Apply that same standard to any power and witness the same result. The power that easily reverses team wipes in the general case is a power that is massively unbalanced. I know you're not the one who introduced that notion.

Even if confront were good for nothing more than hovertanking it would be valuable to someone who ran a lot of STFs. As it happens that isn't at all the only thing it's good for. Regardless, I have a hard time imagining a build where every single slot is so perfectly placed that taking confront would be inconceivable. If you have room for vengeance, you have room for confront. If you have room for resuscitate, you have room for confront. More controversially, I would say that if you have room for a travel power you have room for confront. I don't know about you but I frequently have enough leeway to grab such powers. Perhaps I'm a poor build designer.

Alot of damage in teams can be excess anyway. You don't apply the exact amount of damage to the amount of hitpoints left and between team mates sharing targets that gets a bit more so.

I am actually trying to be the real enemy in this thread.

One thing some of us Brits like to do is play the bad guy. I do so love playing Star Wars The Old Republic where most the baddies have strong British accents. You said I was the real enemy. I just playing up to it now XD.

I'll admit you are playing with fire here not thinking that a player with confront can dish out as good dps as you on any of your Scrappers or Stalkers. It's almost worthy of betting accounts on it. Confront doesnt have to get used in a DPS face off. My nephew farms with a Brute, with taunt and still lands stupidly godlike times. I could create anything I want in a single afternoon. Then take a couple of hours to Incarnate the snot out of it maybe still, in that, single afternoon.

I'm just having an unlucky day today, I took my dog to the vets, he's still there, gave blood and in driving home completely unaware of my speed probably got a speeding ticket. Dog at vets (concern) + giving blood not a good concoction.

Edited: Classic mistake of confusing Star Trek with Star Wars.

I don't care who takes it and who doesn't take it. It's actually in my own personal favour if I only see 1 in 8 Scrappers with it. 7 of them are only going to be pants with it anyway. It's just the same with Taunt on tankers, just because you have it doesn't mean a thing.

But what I do care about is having something taken from me.

Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle it has gone from unconscionable to downright appalling that we have no way of measuring our characters' wetness.

Originally Posted by Brillig It's hard to beat the entertainment value of Whackjob Wednesdays.

The actual reason for this tangent is that the notion that scrappers need any improvement whatsoever was planted by Zyphoid, EG and others. From such auspicious premises as this we've arrived at the suggestion to alter, perhaps radically, a power that some of us use and enjoy in its current form. How does any unnecessary change have a negative impact?

Like so: The only way a change to confront would be acceptable to me would be for it to preserve the taunt magnitude, duration, autohit status, and -range. If you want to add anything else it would have to be on top of all that. Good luck finding a buff marginal enough to be added to all that without causing any balance problems, and if you manage to do that you then need to justify why such a pointless buff would be a good use of development time to begin with. Let's say, however, that the devs agreed that confront were bad, which they don't: now you're talking about a material buff to all scrapper primaries. Since nobody has asserted that scrappers are underperforming in any way, this would presumably cause them to overperform. What else will get nerfed a year or two down the road to make up for that? Does anyone in this thread care? Doesn't seem like it!

Oh, and since we're on the subject, I'll remind the reader that EG has specifically said that he does not care about game balance and agrees that buffs are not needed, even as he argues vociferously for them. Don't take the bait, y'all.

Oh?

Hmmm.

I don't disagree. I probably seem to have been implicitly supporting change to Confront by arguing about Confront with those arguing against changing it. (That made my brain hurt to write.) But I'm not joining up with those asking for Confront to change, particularly. I'm mostly arguing against New Dawn's extreme stance on how useful it is, and on how a Scrapper lacking it is somehow clearly deficient. On that, I call baloney.

Now, I don't think many Scrapper players take Confront on their Scrappers. I've seen Scrappers with it, but very, very few. If, and this is a big if, the devs were looking for a power to radically change for every Scrapper, a power that every Scrapper has access to but not that many actually take would be an obvious place to look. Now, I don't think the devs would make a change like that without a really good reason, because it breaks the "cottage rule" across a whole AT. And I think that Scrappers do not need a buff, which therefore means I do not think they would do this, because they don't have a good reason to.

Done. I've tried to create a few Scrappers recently, but found myself rerolling them. Any of the newer sets where the AoE is retained is usually better on a Stalker IMO because you get better ST and decent AoE. And if I want an AoE death machine, Brutes are better because of the better aggro control.

Shield is the sole remaining set that unequivocally favors Scrappers and I already have one of those.

But then, I think the popularity of an AT is irrelevant. Blasters are very popular, but by any account they need a buff substantially more than Stalkers ever have.

My builds rarely have room for any of the above. Scrapper, Brute, and Stalker builds tend to be really tight, tanks may be too but I don't play those. Shoot, I have come to love IO enhancers because it lets me pull a 3rd slot from hasten. Every time I take Boxing to get to tough and weave it makes me grind my teeth.

Again, Blasters are NOT "very popular." They may be rolled more than some other ATs, but their actual in-game presence drops off significantly past a certain point. I would say that to be popular, people need to be playing them across a wide variety of levels, not just the early levels.

This is anecdotal evidence at best, but I have seen less and less scrappers since i22. I am in a bit of the same boat. Every time I have gone to make a new character since i22, it has been a brute or stalker.

Stalkers with the right build play no different than scrappers with the same sets, and in some cases better. I hate MA on scrappers, but love it on stalkers. I find Ninja Blade just as boring as Katana however, same with claws. I have a Claws/WP Stalker on Tri that I am considering moving to Virtue to level up.

Not to mention the Brute and Stalker ATIO procs seem to have a far better function.

I am waiting to see how it goes when Staff Melee is released. Is it just that stalkers got buffed and are the new shinny, or are they really performing that much better now?