In short, yes, definitely.
The latest release of Mids is counting Hidden crits in its average damage display, for some reason. So the Bane mace attacks seem to have much higher damage than they actually do, unless you mouse over them to see how that damage is broken down into its component hits. Pulverize, for example, displays 179.8 damage unslotted, but that's actually 91.2 damage plus five ticks of 5.56, for a total of 119 damage. The remaining 60.8 only happens when attacking from Hide. The same attack from a Scrapper hits for 102.6 base, before counting crit damage. So that gap is much, much smaller than it may first appear.
But then you have to account for the Scrapper getting Against All Odds (admittedly, this is kind of a wash with double Assault, in terms of your own damage), Shield Charge, Clobber, a cone on Shatter, Whirling Mace, and crits... and it's no longer even a contest. I've played both a Bane and a WM/SD scrapper, to 50 and above, and the Scrapper totally outclasses the Bane in melee ability. A Bane's stealth, team buffs, res debuffs, and pets give it some good strengths of its own, don't get me wrong, Banes are great. But as a melee combatant the Scrapper wins easily.
Fantastic.
Thank you.
BRB scrapper...
I believe WM/SD is substantially sturdier and strong than a Bane, outside of the odd hidden crit. CC is absurdly stronger on a WM/SD outside of hide. Not to mention Clobber, which is the best-est thing ever.
So after being back for two months and making this post I have mostly made a ton of lv20-35 alts and -as usual if you know me- come full circle to wanting to do a weapon/shield melee character again. I know a little more than I did when I made the other thread and I definitely want to do War Mace / Shield Defense. No doubts there.
However, my highest so far is a lv47 SoA who started out crab but slowly talked himself out of all the crab powers and into a bane build. I'm looking at mids and the damage values are HIGHER for the VEAT than for the scrapper (even taking out the Toxic DoT, which is fantastic and shouldn't be taken out) and I really don't get that. I start every fight with a big crit from hide, and then he's running double assault and adding toxic DoTs while fighting AoE resist debuffed enemies (Venom Grenade)... how is that fair? SOMETIMES my team will have those things, he will always have them.
Please tell me there's something in here I'm missing that will get me more Damage on a scrapper, because I would love to out-do my SoA but I don't want to level a pure melee to 50, call it my main, and just end up being weaker and less versatile than my SoA.
Granted, a scrapper is probably tougher than a SoA but I'm not trying to turn this into an AT vs AT thread to decide one is totally 'better' I'm looking to pull more melee damage. I don't want to roll MDPS to be tougher, or to shoot a gun, or be sneaky, or buff people... I have the SoA for when I feel like doing all the fancy stuff.
I want to make this character for that satisfying crunch and to see red bars drop fast. Melee single and PBAoE, can I do more damage than my SoA if I make a WM/SD scrapper?