Give Scrappers a real inherent power

Which was done with a small change, within existing powers systems (already created for other reasons), to a single power in each powerset.
The technical nature of the change had a very limited scope, yet the result was very significant. That's practically the common-use definition of something that's called "low-hanging fruit". It's something that's easy to make happen that has a large benefit.

Contrast this with what appears to be needed for Blasters, which is being discussed in the other thread as ranging from adding new features to every attack to redesigning their secondaries to adding new alternatives to Build Up. That is not "low-hanging fruit".

Apparently, by your description here (which I do not agree with universally across powersets) the ability to split the difference and function without conditional performance (e.g.: no reliance on Fury or Assassin's Focus).

To be unique does not require that you "own" peak performance in a specific area. It requires only that you not function identically to others. It's an aside that one should also not perform in a way that's meaningfully objectively inferior to others. That's not a prerequisite of being unique, but it is important for a "healthy" AT.

This puts a lot of what has been bothering me in one place.

... And you make posts like this and I KNOW you're just arguing for the sake of arguing and bloating your post count. And also being badly misinformative. Underlined bits being the obvious sins. Some for being flatly wrong, some for being opinionated and pointless, and one or two being just hilarious.

Edit: And one being just hypocritical of your ENTIRE argument.

Not trying to argue. I promise I am past that point here. Could you take each thing you underlined and explain your position on it? For me, not for EG. Because a lot of what he has listed I have found to be the case while playing the game.

Sure, no problem.

1) This was an overhaul. The hit and run playstyle is now all but a memory.

Explanation: The Hit and Run playstyle was always optional (and inefficient). It existed only if you wanted it to. To suggest it ever truly existed is to try to strawman the Stalker AT's issues. This is something Leo_G has done, which is furthering my theory of those two having a club together.

2) I get what everyone says about them still being good. I don't quarrel with that. But when I look at the AT as a whole, I can't find any advantage they offer outside of taking Shield. That powerset leverages their higher self-damage buffing in a way that properly pulls them ahead of Brutes and Stalkers. But Shield isn't an AT.

Explanation: Badly opinionated. Their advantages? Up front, no nonsense, no remote gimmicks. Having no disadvantages at all. There is nothing WRONG with the Scrapper AT and there is nothing Blatantly Retarded about the AT. This post is also key of the hypocrisy I mentioned. Wait for it.

3) Scrapper don't offer any advantage over Stalkers or Brutes. Brutes leverage AoE better, and Stalkers leverage Single target better.

The mentioned hypocrisy. If you look up, he goes on about Shield, and states 'Shield isn't an AT.'

Brutes only leverage more AoE in two circumstances: Super Strength or Titan Weapons paired with Fiery Aura. Their AoE is inferior unless HEAVILY saturated (and the difference is minor) with any other combination. He is trying to define his argument BASED OFF POWER SETS, which he said just about Shield and Scrappers "is not an AT".

Stalker single target is generally higher in all areas, but not in ALL areas. They have inferior Primaries to Scrappers in SOME categories, but they overall DO leverage higher now. Working. As. Intended.

Stalkers having superior AoE (only in Kinetic Melee due to 100% Burst Crits) is a flat lie otherwise. Their lower modifier is too damning to abilities with out Auto Crits, and Auto Crit fireballs aren't that much leverage.

Hypocrisy and just lying.

4) Yes, you don't start as strong as Scrappers, but it takes mere seconds to get back. As for Stalkers, they're just Scrappers now, but they have all their other advantages besides.

Dumbing down the AT for your argument is ludicrous. But that's the second half of the statement alone. The first half? Mere seconds is hyperbole, and ludicrous.

I have explained.

But Scrappers just hit things. Everybody else just hits things...but they do this other stuff too. What else does a Scrapper do? In a Venn diagram, Scrapper sit within Stalkers at points and Brutes at points, but at no point are they anything unique.

That you wish to ignore that players think about how they go about hitting things differently does not change the fact that there are differences in how you play the ATs. Yes, you can just run around and just hit things on a Stalker or Brute, and it works pretty well. If you want to eke out the best they offer, you need to pay more attention to Fury for one and AF for the other. Yes, I think right now you need to pay more attention to AF than to Fury, but that does not change that the need exists. That need does not exist for Scrappers, and that indeed makes them unique.

What you're really arguing is that you're not satisfied with that particular brand of uniqueness. That's not the same thing as them not being unique.

The hit and run playstyle was announced since CoV's beta as the Stalker design. But OK, everyone has an opinion.

Talk about opinionated. You continue to relate the nonsense that having no advantage is an advantage. Then you start down the strawman hole with "blatantly retarded". Who said that? Oh, that's right...you.

Sigh... Brutes leverage AoE better because of superior ability to maintain aggro. A Regen Brute will have an easier time than a Regen Scrapper in using its AoEs because Integration taunts the NPCs, keeping them in PBAoE range.

It's not just SS or Titan paired with Fire Aura. That's your opinion.

I invite you to, and thank you for bumping the post. I will no longer respond to folks who can't argue without flaming.

No worries mate, I understand you have a good heart concerning things here, it just caught me off guard as very different from your normal posts.

Yes, you don't need to manage anything on a Scrapper, but that's because there's nothing to manage. That's like saying that a Blaster doesn't need to manage their mez protection. (That's an exaggeration for illustration, I am not saying that is an identical situation, I AM NOT SAYING THAT IS AN IDENTICAL SITUATION.)

The argument seems to be that it's OK for Scrappers to have inferior performance to Stalkers because they don't have to manage anything. Well, it's not exactly like we've been given the choice either.

If Scrappers in every combination did superior AoE damage than Stalkers, then that would be OK. But there are Stalkers combos that are superior to Scrapper combos in survivability and AoE damage and ST damage.

All Stalkers have the advantages of Hide, Assassinate, Assassin's Focus, and team scaling crits. I will acknowledge that Scrappers have higher self-damage buffing, but for most Scrappers that's limited to Build Up. The higher damage mod gets lost in the Stalker's higher crit rate and ability to create controlled crits.

No, you're arguing that the absence of uniqueness is uniqueness. I don't buy that.

But then we get back to the 'need' of Stalkers for the very large buff they got. It's assumed that because the AT wasn't popular that it needed this very large buff. I disagree. But we've been down that road before and I only bring it up again to clarify my position. Yes, I don't think Scrappers 'need' a buff. But Stalkers didn't 'need' a buff either, but the AT got a very large one.

No, it's like saying you don't have to masterfully juice your stickshift to get from 0-60 in 4 seconds because you have a high-end automatic with a large enough engine that it does it for you.

Strawman. They do not have "inferior performance" unless you focus solely on peak single-target DPS. They have superior HP, superior total damage scale on attacks that aren't AS, lower EPS for comparable DPS as a result of the higher damage scale, don't give up anything for Hide and don't give up AoEs to have AS, have higher damage self-buff scales, and have damage self-buffs besides Build Up .

What Stalker secondary except for SR is better in survivability, and what Stalker primary is better in AoE damage than its Scrapper version? We can build combos that don't compete in either direction all day long. That's a non-argument. Compare apples to apples.

Proof please.

Circular reasoning. You define Scrappers as non-unique, and argue that therefore they are not unique. I don't buy that.

Agreed. I can certainly appreciate that Scrappers are not intended to fulfill a primary tanking role, but taunts have more efficacy than that.

Nice strawman at the end for trying to give an excuse as to why you can't respond to the points, and instead continue to flail your arms and make excuses.

Edit: Also, this?

Blatantly retarded IE insanely broken IE what you WANT on Scrappers and are just skirting around the words needed to make it entirely obvious.

Kinetic/Regen/Fire

Yes, in theory the Kinetic Scrapper has another AoE. But really, I don't think you want to go there with Repulsing Torrent and its scatter.

ST - Not even close anymore with Assassin's Focus. I have to theorycraft here because I'm not willing to run one to 50 just to do a pylon run. But next time we have a beta bump I will play both. I suspect this fight is going to go on awhile.

AoE - With 50% crit rate out of hide, Burst will do significantly more damage overtime when set up with Placate or used as an opener. Same with Fireball. Furthermore, Build Up provides a large infusion of damage buffing at one time. Power Siphon may or may not be built up (no pun intended) to enough of a damage buff when using the AoE. As you know AoEs have to be leveraged in such a way to maximize their targets. Build Up gives you the damage buff all at one time and on demand.

Survivability - Stalkers have Placate which gives them another defensive click. This can give them time for Recon and other clicks to recharge. MoG gives a Stalker enough time to reenter Hide, making escapes easier. Once in Hide, the Stalker has capped (if slotted) AoE defense.

The counter is that the 134 Health difference base between the two makes Scrappers more survivable, and that's just folly IMO. It's another example of Placate being relegated to being solely a damage boost, when it is a very potent defense power.

This again goes back to the old fight. I don't accept that the Stalker's unique powers (Hide and Placate) are survivability neutral.

You define Scrappers as unique and then argue that they are unique. Let's be fair here.

I don't think you have to prove the single-target performance to me, if nothing else because of how CS interacts with Build Up.

I don't see this as proof. This is a discussion of AoE burst damage, and doesn't address the sustainability of that over time. Yes, you get this "for free" on openers. You don't get guaranteed Placate success when mid-fight against enough foes to be using AoEs on, because of someone hits you with damage you lose the hide effect. Of all the examples you could have offered, Regen is one of the ones most easily plagued by this due to its lack of in-set defense - only a fairly high-end IO Regen build is going to be able to pull this off mid combat with high regularity.

You don't have to sell me on Placate. I still love it as a mitigation power and have no plans to ditch it in a post I22 world. However, touting how a Stalker can use MoG to escape longer hardly sounds like my idea of a shining endorsement of superiority. And capped AoE defense is nice but there's a reason most general purpose builds that use positional defense prioritize AoE defense last. I'm not going to say it's useless, but it's not selling me on unambiguous superiority.

Edited for EG fixing of post: Placate is not neutral, but it is not, itself, an unconditional mitigation benefit that can swing the tide in a Stalker's favor. For example, it is of very limited use in the middle of a pile of foes unless you have a very high defense build, in which case you may not need it as mitigation. The exception is when you can use it to disable singularly inconvenient foes out of the pile, which is a conditional benefit. This has to be weighed against the way a Stalker often loses an AoE attack to have AS, which makes most Stalker sets less efficient at clearing those same large spawns of enemies as a Scrapper. So a Scrapper is often better at taking down the spawn as a whole while a Stalker is often better at disabling one enemy out of that spawn, and, with I22's changes, would not be better at defeating one foe at a time than a Scrapper that omitted the same AoE from their build. I do not see unambiguous superiority there.

Hide is not neutral either, but I see it only as its unsuppressed 2.5% base defense value the vast majority of the time. It comes at a cost of a lost power in the secondary powerset, of which I think there are good examples of this being a steep price to pay. (All loss of Quick Recovery comes to mind, especially given the EPS burn now associated with frequent unhidden use of AS.)

Except I'm using the dictionary definition of "unique", and you aren't. "Solitary in type or characteristics". Scrappers possess a unique set of defining attributes and features which are not shared in that specific combination by any other CoH AT. You are the one claiming that's not the case. I think then that you're beholden to provide a definition that defends your position other than to repeatedly declare it to be truth.

• Self-Damage buffing mod: Shared with Blasters
• Self-To-hit buffs: Shared with Stalkers, Tankers, Defenders, Brutes and SoA
• Self-Defensive buffing mod: Shared with Brutes, Stalkers, Controllers, Corruptors & Kheldians
• Base damage modifier: Technically unique in the sense that it's the only melee one, but Blasters get the same in their primary
• Health modifier: Unique in the sense that they are the only one with that modifier, but there are two ATs (including another primary damage AT) that's higher.
• Crits: lol
• Unique powersets: lol (not that I'm complaining about that, I like proliferation)
• Confront: I guess this is unique, but like with Health and crits its unique in that another AT has a superior version of it.

What am I missing? (That's a real question by the way, I think I am missing something)

I think when discussing Regen, Placate becomes much more potent. As you know, Regen players cannot without significant outside boosts (IOs, Parry, etc.) survive long in a dogpile of NPCs. The burst damage overwhelms their clicks and regen very quickly. But a Regen is excellent against Single Targets, even ones with high burst abilities. In such a fight, the Stalker has another click to drop, when things are going south and the NPC is getting a little too lucky with their hits.

I don't disagree with this. But in the world of inherent Stamina, QR isn't the boon it once was.

Viewed as a whole AT, uniqueness does not require that one possess attributes that no one else exhibits anywhere. It requires only that you combine those attributes in a way that no one else does. Your list attempts to show [edit: non-]uniqueness by illustrating that Scrappers share some individual attributes with other ATs. That does not make them non-unique.

You mention other ATs having higher numeric values for some attributes, but other AT having higher numerical values for any given attribute doesn't make Scrappers non-unique. If those ATs have the highest values of some of those scales, or of some compound metric derived from those scales, that might make them unique. And in this regard, Scrappers do have specific uniqueness: having the highest base damage scale and unconditional crits makes them unique, because it gives them the highest average DPA and EPA for any given power damage scale of all the ATs.

But single-target performance is only one aspect of the game, and it's an aspect that Stalkers are expressly supposed to be very good at, at least by Synapse's declaration. By extension, based on your assertions about Regen, a /Regen Stalker should be the one eking out better performance.

It would be a mistake to infer that "less important" always implies "not significant". All my considerable experience with Regen disagrees that QR it is not an extremely desirable boon even though we have Fitness. My Regen Scrappers have QR and Fitness. My level 50 Stalker had Fitness before it was inherent, and I assure you I still desperately miss QR as much if not more than I have ever missed Placate when playing my DM/Regen Scrapper. Do you know how I fuel my MA/Regen's AS chain? Incarnate Ageless Destiny. Do you know what my Regen Scrappers use instead? Barrier or Rebirth. AS's new utility has a very real cost.

Its unclear based on your appraisal above how Controllers are unique. The only thing really unique to Controllers based on the above appears to be they uniquely have access to the Illusion Control set, and that's problematic for two reasons, one is that all non-Illusion controllers don't get that benefit, and two you're in favor of proliferating it anyway. That would leave it without a unique aspect as you appear to be defining uniqueness above (the other unique element is containment, which is a form of crit).

Critical controls.

And I'm not sure that Controllers are unique. The 'critical' mechanic is, as you say, present in other ATs. But really, considering that I spend the majority of my MMO time in another galaxy these days, I can only take on the fight of buffing one AT.

I think Blasters need a buff more than anything, but they have you and others to fight for it. Likewise, I haven't really given Controllers that much thought. Perhaps if someone suggested that they needed something, I might not disagree.