Hopeling

Scrappers have higher base damage than stalkers, not lower. Stalkers also generally give up an AoE attack for AS, so depending on the primary they are somewhere between a little worse and a LOT worse at general group clearing than the corresponding scrapper set. In addition to the ATO thing, a scrapper's higher base damage means then benefit substantially more from damage buffs than a Brute does; for example, an Elec/Shield scrapper's telenukes will be noticeably superior to a brute's since you use those attacks during Build Up. Brutes do have a higher damage cap, but even at their respective caps the brute still doesn't hit as hard once you count crits, and the brute cap is harder to reach than the scrapper cap is. This is perhaps the reason Super Strength has been unavailable to scrappers for so long; as powerful as Rage is on a tanker or brute, it would be even more busted on a scrapper because of how much we benefit from damage buffs.

Focused Accuracy is a very expensive toggle, and its bonus is relatively small. Since you can usually get plenty of accuracy from set bonuses, it's not great just for that unless your build has a ton of extra endurance. It does give very high resistance against tohit debuffs, which is sometimes useful, both on certain AVs and elsewhere.

AoE is definitely the set's weakness. At least Tremor is decent now that its animation was sped up; it used to be kind of sad. Shield Charge or a damage aura definitely helps, as does Fireball, but at best it still blooms a little late. I have always thought Stone/ would pair very well with /Fire. They almost perfectly cover each other's weaknesses: Stone gives massive control (hard and soft, AoE and ST) to cover /Fire's relative squishiness, while /Fire gives endurance and extra AoE damage to fuel Stone/'s fast attacks and help it get through crowds. But I can't stand Burn without a taunt component, so this combo might be better on a brute. I actually did make a Stone/Fire brute recently, and he's just as excellent as I had hoped.

The original devs already did that. Most attack powers follow the design formulas, and by those formulas Fire really does get more damage than most sets, since its DoT damage is "free" on top of what the formula would give. The problem is, ignoring activation time is objectively the wrong way to design powers, since in practice animation time is extremely important, and even the original devs eventually recognized that ignoring it was a mistake. Plus, FM isn't the only set around that gets to "cheat" on the design formulas, and there are also structural issues with it like the fact that it has only one decent (not even great, just decent) AoE attack in a game where almost all fights are multi-target, and that DoT damage is worse than the same amount of instant damage. So even if we're not worried about DPA and what high-end attack chains look like, it's still 'only' upper-middle of the pack for actually killing things, and has no debuffs or control to back that up. Relatedly, I like /FM better on tankers than FM/ on scrappers, precisely because it gets a second AoE attack in Combustion. I wouldn't say FM/ is anywhere near a bad set; it's not even the worst Scrapper primary. It's just kind of vanilla, clearing spawns at average-ish speed without any particular strengths or exciting things to call its own.

Mainly inspirations. On /WP or /Fire I try to keep a few purples around for rough moments; on /SD or /Inv I keep a few greens. I'm also not above using /ah to load up between missions; I often zone in with a tray that looks exactly like my avatar. Passive regen is also more important than you might think; 300%ish from set bonuses and uniques means you can take about twice as much sustained damage as you could with just unslotted Health. Every 100% regen amounts to a free Respite every 60s, more if you have +HP from powers or accolades. War Mace specifically is also very good at juggling enemies. Picking out either the hard-hitting boss or the annoying-debuff minion/LT and keeping them on their back until they die really reduces the danger.

I'd slot more endredux in your attacks. Two blues and two reds is probably better than one blue and three reds at this point; you can always carry red inspirations to make up for the difference. Frankenslotting would also work. With a typed defense set, I'd consider dropping Defensive Sweep at this point, and getting a sixth slot in some of your other attacks. Unless you're going to use the Numina/Miracle uniques, 3 slots in Stamina and 1 in Health will almost certainly serve you better than 2+2. I would definitely turn off Tough and possibly Weave until you can get them slotted more, maybe toggling them on situationally in hard fights. They're expensive toggles, and Tough doesn't do much by itself without slotting. Also, don't be afraid to abuse temporary powers. A recovery buff from your SG base and a stack of Recovery Serums can handle a lot of problems.

It works exactly like endredux slotting, and stacks additively with slotting. But since it isn't actually slotting, it isn't subject to ED limits. This is just like how damage buffs stack with damage slotting.

How much more consistency? Can you, say, run HeroStats for a session and check the results?

In short, no, there's no good way to never get cascaded. You just have to deal with it. If you don't have DDR, then you're playing something other than /SR, so you have tools in your secondary besides defense, and you combat it with those. You can also use purple inspirations as ablative armor against debuffs, and if things get out of hand, moving out of range for a few seconds until debuffs fall off isn't a terrible idea. If it's only certain enemies that debuff you (like the Banished Pantheon guys with radiation powers), you disable and kill them first.

If it's hitting at the same time as a teammate KD power, they can conceivably stack to make KB. A few enemies (mostly Clockwork) are also vulnerable to knocks, so even low-mag stuff will knock them back.

Negative; it has knockdown. Like all KD effects, it will turn into KB against sufficiently low-level enemies, but that's only rarely a problem.

Uh, are we talking about the same set? SS only has knockback on two powers, namely the two that people rarely take or use anyway. Claws and Kinetic Melee already have more knockback problems than SS does, since it's unavoidably attached to their AoE attacks instead of on a separate power.

The Rage crash is costing you 25 endurance every 1-2 minutes. In the meantime, you're recovering probably in the neighborhood of 2-400 endurance. If your blue bar isn't moving up, it means you're spending all of that on toggles and attacks. So Rage may be the last straw that actually drains you, but most of the issue is your other powers. What you can do is slot your attacks and toggles with more cost reduction, maybe run fewer toggles, and avoid using expensive powers when they're not necessary (like Foot Stomping a single enemy).

That's actually a really neat idea. Lightning attacks already have the endurance-refund thing; just crank that up and maybe add the recharge bit. Lightning blasters in comics tend to be speedsters or power sources, so it's thematic. And it gives the set something cool of its own instead of a "boring" effect like straight extra damage.

Yeah, that's going to be pretty squishy even with softcapped defense to one type.