What happened Scrappers?

Well, there's nothing particularly good to throw myself against these days, it seems. I've been mostly duoing the Dark Astoria stuff with my Katana/Dark Scrapper and an Invuln/SS Tanker on +4x8 with both of us on out-of-date builds (Enzymes, etc.), and while we occasionally oops and die, oopsing and dying can be solved by paying closer attention and gaining more skills.

That said, I was waiting for I23, and will probably be respec'ing soon. But I still don't feel like I have anything specific to throw myself against to show how well or not well the build is working. I suppose I could crank up the Dark Astoria arcs solo, go with Scrapper challenge rules, and see how far I can go, at least once I have my Hybrid slot all figured out, but that doesn't lend itself to short little "check this out" vids. Also, I'm still missing a couple tier 4s, and duoing Dark Astoria on +4x8 is a pretty slow way to kit out a build.

I didn't go free to play. I DID take quite a few months off of the game due to being angry at the lack of solo incarnate content, and feeling like I was being completely left behind the cutting edge due to my dislike of teaming. I went and played another MMO for a while. When we finally got solo incarnate content, I came back and hit the game pretty solid again, but not the forum so much.

Just an anecdote about my dislike of teaming - when I23 came out, I rushed to convert my Threads to XP, only to discover that I couldn't. I was FUMING. Really, Devs? Your new iTrial sucks so much you need to FORCE people to play it? After I calmed down a bit, I signed up for a Magesterium farm. I had my hybrid slot in a flash, but the experience left a VERY bitter taste in my mouth. It just feels like they actively HATE soloers these days. They'd apparently much rather you be a retarded cog in a wheel running some retarded farm content than actively pushing the bounds of what a solo character can do and enjoying actual content. And good grief, it seems like I23 needed another month in the oven. That cake isn't cooked.

I also haven't paid much attention to all the new sets, and haven't run numbers for some time. So I don't have a lot to contribute to many of the threads the way I used to.

So I guess for me, it's the incarnate powers and all the new sets. Those aren't bad things, but I think I contribute most in a stable, analyzable, optimizable environment. That's kind of not what we have now. I'm playing as much as ever - I'm just not spending the time on calculating how to get another 2% performance out of my build when the next issue will give me another 20% with no thought involved (while wrecking my 2% optimization), and when my current performance is perfectly sufficient for available content.

Ah, also, I kind of don't CARE personally about other sets any more. Being mostly solo, the incarnate powers are WAY too much of an investment for me to consider starting over with another combo. And I love my Katana/Dark. So that's pretty much all I play now.

Personally I enjoy new incarnate powers being introduced. I find it fun and engaging discussing with other min/maxers how best to optimize my builds (or theirs). This applies to all ATs. The only reason I don't play scrappers as much as I used to is simply one thing: runners. So in other words, taunt aura. There are only a handful of defensive sets that this isnt an issue, and those sets are good for the most part, but man I really want a tw/fire scrap but the idea of chasing down a boss that survived out of a large group is depressing. I ca accept runners on my stalker for some strange reason (he makes AVs flee...stj/ea). Maybe because I played this game when giant rock monsters weren't afraid of robots with claws that this irritated me so much. I definitely have old 50s I abandoned due to runners.

Also anyone that knows me understands I try to min/max all my characters, regardless of the combo. My main defender for example does on average 3m pylon times without hybrid or lore pets activated. I have a plant/fire dom that has a best time of 2:14. I only consider a combo bad if it can't kill a pylon solo. Doesn't have to be quick. Actually I don't remember if that was his time...seems to low. Id have to check the pylon thread. I remember it being less than 3m for sure though.

I mostly read the Pylon thread for fun, geek interest and inspiration. I have only rarely gone out and tried to mow something down.

On the note of both inspiration and the times I have gone pylon hunting, I'm fairly pleased though to have numerous melee characters in the 200-250 DPS range despite having things like Cardiac and Spiritual rather than Musculature as their standard Alpha. But I finally picked up T4 Core Musculature on my BS/Inv, combined that with T4 Core Assault, and took him out for a spin today and, by his standards, mutilated a Pylon. I need to build him an Ageless so he can actually do that sort of thing without winding himself halfway through. Rare will probably be fine for my purposes - I usually tote Rebirth or Barrier around for scary foes.

Edit: While I prefer to solo, I clearly have no issue running lots and lots of iTrials. Some of my 50s are starting to groan under the weight of their piles of iSalvage.

I am glad Werner is back. He does in fact express the soloers position very well.

Is it still solo-ING it if you multibox the clicky parts also solo-ing the khan tf was rough on my brute. I imagine that being a good challenge for scraps. Need a looooooottt of dps.

IOs and Incarnates killed a lot of the challenge/goal-achievement.

I remember a friend of mine would PL on the Ninja map in PI on his SOd Kat/SR, set to Invincible. Then when IOs came out he soloed STF up to the last mission of a Master run. Now everyone and their aunt has defense cap, bloatrous damage, a nuke and pets.

The only things left are to solo trials...they honestly should look at how easy it is to defense cap, but I'm not sure they are ready for the pitchforks and torches that would assail Paragon Studious if the went into that particular corner of the game world.

Hopefully the Battallion don't suck and fall over like most of the other content in the game so far.

I know I have been gone a year or so played the game Rift. I renewed for 3 months but I will most likely drop back to free to play once it expires. Once that happens I can will not be allowed post.