Sancerre

this this this. the whole point of build up+Gaussian is to assure total destruction arrest. you can play with the proc and 'maximize' how much recharge to put it the power while still achieving 90% proc rate...... but once you have enough global recharge in your build it actually doesnt do much to add a recharge IO into build-up anyways... shaves off like 2 seconds. this is especially true if you have FFeedback recharge procs in your attack string (you should if you can).

relatively speaking, scrappers benefit less from damage procs than other ATs but it is still the last remaining way to eek out more damage. if you are planning to run musculature incarnate (you should), then reaching an 'effective' enhanced damage cap is really easy (for the most part 3 enhancements with a damage component will do it). procs work best with minimal recharge in your power and maximum GLOBAL recharge (IO set bonuses, party buffs like chronoshift, self buffs like hasten). you want to try to maximize your global recharge so you can hit perma-hasten self buffed and then maxamize your enhance damage scale through IOs in the individual power first (again only takes about 3 enhancements typically). beyond that just weigh your set bonus options against more procs. there is a lot of flexibility and nuance here but most of it doesnt matter _too_ much for scrapper. it is mostly a decision on your end of if you want more defense/resistance to survive self buffed or do you want to rely on party buffs and/or inspirations more.

there is a lot of nuance in the topic and that is why the conversation spiraled. the simplest answer to your original question is that both scrapper and brute are fine, so play what you want... and if you cant decide based on all this conversation, then flip a coin and you will still have fun. you really would never notice any substantial difference until you dump influence into a fully optimized build at or near level cap... and even at that point, people will tell you about all the workarounds you can do like stuffing your mailbox full of inspirations and buying temporary buffs to make bad builds functional! **you cant ask 'which one is better' and then not expect people to talk about the META.

My point is actually that whoever is META will make the non-META AT(s) irrelevant however you balance it. The definition of META dictates this in the first place. There is never going to be a point in the game where all 4 (dont forget about stalkers) of the main melee ATs are all equally useful on every team. In order for there to be a winner, there has to be a loser. Frankly speaking, scrappers already dont really have a place in parties as it stands when blasters and corruptors exist. The META role for scrapper right now is to be the high damage tanker that survives because the game doesnt necessitate tanker-level defenses for most party content. But if you wanted my opinion on how to 'better' balance the game to ATTEMPT having all of these extremely similar melee ATs somehow having carved out useful party roles in a game where party composition barely matters in the first place: scrapper taunt auras would be 100% removed from every armor set. tankers and brutes should be the only classes with the passive taunt auras bump brute's base damage scale reduce brute's max damage buff (compensation) goal of generally improving the baseline performance without effecting their peak damage brutes would have *real* ATOs that actually do something meaningful brutes would have corruptor-level values for power pool options (slight bump for things like tough/weave, combat jumping, and leadership buffs) damage and buff procs (especially FF recharge) would see a BIG overhaul

brutes just offer an optional middle ground between scrappers and tankers. generally speaking, for teamplay brutes are not 'more useful' than having another scrapper or another tanker on the squad. brutes will do less damage than a scrapper but offer some better mobbing control with taunts and will feel more tanky with party buffs. for soloplay, brutes dont really feel any more 'tanky' than scrappers typically because armorsets run the same exact values as scrappers and it is very difficult to get above 75% resists without temporary and/or party buffs... and you just do less damage. that said, brutes are perfectly fine where they are at. if brutes did the same damage as scrappers but were more tanky, we would be having the same conversation about scrappers being pointless. if brutes were just as tanky as tankers but did more damage, we would be having the same conversation about tankers being pointless. brutes are entirely functional/playable but the 'pure' classes are just better when optimized in the current patch. funny enough, i made this same argument for sentinels in a different thread and got all kinds of unhappy responses. lets see if it happens again.........

brutes and stalkers can feel pretty fun while leveling but tankers and scrappers end up being miles better at level cap with incarnates and a solid IO'd loadout. as others have said... the critical strikes proc ATO is what makes scrapper feel so much better. it is a complete game changer. also, yes elec melee is............... underwhelming.

not the math nerd on DM particularly here, but as a baseline... smite is the best place for the crit proc to go for pure DPS. it is not necessarily the most reliable place though. midnight grasp would be the most reliable. i believe there was some oddity with the ArcanaTime of siphon life and/or midnight grasp as far as *WHEN* the crit proc happens (mid animation) such that you lose a substantial part of the buff duration. that said, the biggest problem you have right now is that you have your crit proc button slotted to hell and back full of recharge. whatever button has crit strikes in it should have ZERO recharge (aside from the crit strikes proc itself...... unfortunately coming with recharge). the goal should _not_ be to just move the crit strikes set to another button. stop being bamboozled by set bonuses. check out procs-per-minute math threads if you need a better explanation. **ArcanaTime is a real interesting thing to dive into if you wanted to read up on it but also just a whole lot of 'more-than-you-needed-to-know'.

take everything except geode. geode is fine to take but very optional. overall stone armor is very much a 'set it and forget it' armor set. you do want to upkeep earths embrace though... and you probably want that to auto-renew... recommend you macro that (unless you skip hasten for some reason). stone skin is a tougher power to slot due to being both defense and resist. the bonuses are meaningful on both defense and resist. would recommend splitting it even and not worrying _too_ much about IO set bonus there. as an interesting piece for earth's embrace. scrapper HP (alongside standard accolade bonuses) actually caps out with a SINGLE healing enhancement in earths embrace. aside from IO set bonuses... it is quite wasteful to over-invest there. earth's embrace just gives that big of a bonus. Rooted gives -substantial- regeneration, especially combined with earth's embrace massive HP cap buffer. do be sure to invest some healing IOs into rooted to enhance the regen further. not sure there is much else to talk about stone armor. it is great all around.

that is the strange part about ice armor _in comparison_ to other 'better' armor sets. you can find ways to 'fix' ice armor and it is certainly 'playable' but you could also just pick an armor set that works out of the box and doesnt need to be 'fixed'... or just enjoy the theme and supplement your weaknesses through party buffs. claws and katana are great powersets fundamentally but are driven down by lethal damage type. so... great when the critters are not specifically overly resisting lethal damage. im not personally a fan of claw's follow-up in place of build up though. fiery melee is extremely strong.

nin is not uniquely the only armor set with a t9 that can do this but it does uniquely have the endurance clicky. t9 has a 3 minute duration. The goal is to get the t9 to a 4 minute cooldown with a TON of recharge. what you are covering from there is a 1 minute gap... which is the exact duration of Unleash Potential. Final step -- you just also need Unleash Potential to have a 4 minute cooldown... which is a lot easier. having the endurance clicky power baked into the kit allows you to 'bypass' the crash if you time it right... alongside ageless radial (which you will want for debuff resistance and recharge anyways). the neat thing about the combination is that the t9 and Unleash Potential both give a ridiculous amount of endurance recovery so the blue bar (outside of the crash every 4 minutes) is essentially infinite. practically speaking though, it is overkill for party content where you get tons of group buffs anyways and can be annoying to play around.

it is being talked about a lot... ninjutsu is great to an extent but it is basically jack of all trades master of none. it has fatal flaws nested everywhere even if it looks great surface level. also no taunt aura. main thing i wanted to highlight though is the shinobi-ri crit opener. you have to literally wait to be stealthed to get that crit -- it will never happen mid fight and you typically need to physically stop what you would otherwise be doing for a few seconds between packs of enemies... if you like RPing here, all well and good... but even for casual play... probably something you will quickly ignore. will give a shoutout to building around nin's t9, alongside Unleash Potential. that combination is extremely powerful but requires very deliberate power cycling that is probably more effort than most people are willing to deal with.

if you care about tier lists on scrapper then the only armor set to care about is called bio armor... incidentally missing from your list there......... away from bio armor, and of the 3 you have listed there, shield = stone >> ice. i would personally give the edge to shield because missing taunt aura really blows and mud pots slow doesnt cut it. if you team mostly though, not much to worry about there. the biggest reason for scrapper taunt is so that critters stand and fight (not run away). should also note that shield charge on scrapper is really not that great and honestly skippable (it is quite good on tanker). thematically, i feel like doing 'earthbender' without stone melee just feels off. the shield concept is cool but maybe generic. the subzero adjacent concept sounds fun (would probably want to run ice epic pool with it to sling ice bolts).

MA is very versatile. good options for focus feedback recharge. smashing damage type is solid. option for achilles heel proc on axe kick. generally speaking, not heavy on endurance. MA does not really -demand- any fixing from a secondary armor set like some other primaries might. if MA has any 'weakness' -- it is a little bit lacking on aoe damage but if you are picking up ball lightning or fireball from patron, that doesnt matter too much. so overall, MA will work with whatever you want. not much not need to worry about synergy problems. are you looking for theme affirmation or tier list kinda stuff?

forgot to touch on the damage portion. the crit strikes proc is a BIG BIG portion of scrapper. i would say, alongside stalker, the class proc really warps how strong the class feels with and without it. Very counter to tanker or brute where you just kinda set them in a power and let them work passively. scrapper and stalker really need to lean into their procs to feel strong. Getting the level 50 version with increased proc rate is massive (double chance)... as well as picking the 'correct power' and limiting recharge reduction slotting in that power as much as possible -- so that it procs as consistently as possible. scrapper is very much about playing the lotto with the crit strikes proc. beyond the crit strikes proc, franken-slotting towards damage procs is otherwise the big way to push the damage even higher... usually at the cost of defense along the way. aside from that zapp and ball lightning are often hallmarks for scrapper, especially combo-ing the crit strikes proc with ball lightning. i know you are a big fan of focused accuracy but it really is a lot to give up on scrapper to not have ball lightning (or fireball if you opt for blaze instead). a crit ball lightning ends up a feeling a lot like a corruptor t9 nuke (not quite blaster level). ground zero was a big letdown on scrapper when i tried it out because it cannot crit... and takes so damn long to cast on top of it. that said -- i think it is 'fine' if you leverage ground zero as proc bomb towards utility instead because they are mostly guaranteed to proc on everything. both achilles heel and fury of the gladiator -res procs. also a good spot for avalanche knockdown proc to have the CC utility.

if you can squeeze out more defense at no or little cost to your overall build, it is worth it -- especially melee defense. incarnate story arcs have a higher hit rate for example where 59% is the cap instead. i will note that building for 59% away from team buffs is unreasonable but 45% is not the end of the line. also helps against defense reduction... even with 70%+ resistance, it still happens and it hedges against cascading failure. aside from that... the 'optimal' place to do crit strikes proc is on smite for pure dps or midnights grasp for consistency... siphon life is probably a fine middle ground but wherever you put crit strikes proc you should definitely NOT be slotting up recharge in the same power. your s/l resist cap is fake because you have one wit the shield active. consider slotting true grit differently (4 unbreakable 2 prev medicine, to get a nice big chunk of E/N/F/C/T resists. shadow maul is an odd button... in theory it is solid if you are hitting 2+ targets but................ 7 foot melee cones just suck. i would recommend fury of gladiator -res proc in soul drain for a couple reasons -- the proc rate is virtually guaranteed on every critter every time... also it becomes the button that buffs and debuffs in one go for you...