Scrapper or Brute? help me decide.

[Tryna_Dugid]

Hiya!

 

I’ve got some new melee alts in the works and can’t decide on whether they’d be best realized on a scrapper or brute. the 2 power combos i’m thinking of doing:

 

savage/elec armor

fire/rad armor

 

my initial impulse is to make these toons as scrappers because of the crit bonuses. both combinations are intended to be heavily aoe focused but also able to put out some solid single target as needed. 

 

i know people generally recommend defense sets on scrappers, but does it really make that big of a difference at the end game level? if it does then the combinations seem better suited to a brute. alas, i’m not really too experienced with either AT in end game to be able to nitpick, so i’ll let ya’ll take a stab 🙂

[nihilii]

You can't go wrong with a scrapper. Thanks to their ATOs, they'll always do more damage than an equivalent brute.

Now, for the specific power combos you've picked... The damage gap may not be as big as it is in some other cases. Neither Savage (IIRC) nor Fire has strong self damage buffing, so the Brute version loses less damage than with something like, say, Dual Blades or Dark Melee.

 

Elec Armor and Rad Armor are also resistance-based, and can reach 90% resistance to S/L/E. Those are the three most common damage types, and it means being more than twice as sturdy as the equivalent scrapper (!). That's just from the resistance, then you add other boons like greater base HP.

The Brute version of Elec Armor will also have a Taunt aura (the Scrapper version doesn't).

Personally, I'd lean towards the Brute versions because I'm happy to trade 10-20% of my damage for ~3x the survivability + greater aggro control.

But it's very easy to make the case damage matters more than anything in CoH, and the scrappers, built properly, will still be able to handle anything reasonable you throw at them - as well as many unreasonable things.

There's no wrong option.

 

[Riverdusk]

Yep, anything can be made to work of course, but the resistance cap difference of 75% vs 90% makes it real hard for me to ever recommend a scrapper over a brute for the resistance based sets.  That is a huge difference (and a big part of why I think scrapper's res cap should be increased to at least 80%).  Lack of taunt aura on electric armor is also a big annoyance to me, as it means you will have to deal with runners, which is an even worse issue on sets that have a damage aura.  I'd go brute all the way.

[Frosticus]

I'd go sav/ela broot, or sav/ela stalker.  Sav is monstrous on stalkers, so if you are sacrificing the survivability bonus of the brute you may as well go all in for the vastly superior damage the stalker version offers. 

I'd skip sav/ela scrapper.

 

I'd go fire/rad brute as well. /rad should be able to cap many types of damage with meltdown on a brute. Meltdown can be up quite often. 

[Tryna_Dugid]

2 hours ago, Frosticus said:

I'd go sav/ela broot, or sav/ela stalker.  Sav is monstrous on stalkers, so if you are sacrificing the survivability bonus of the brute you may as well go all in for the vastly superior damage the stalker version offers. 

I'd skip sav/ela scrapper.

 

I'd go fire/rad brute as well. /rad should be able to cap many types of damage with meltdown on a brute. Meltdown can be up quite often. 

funny you mention the stalker, because i currently have a savage/energy armor stalker built out who is a little monster that inspired me to try out the power set on a scrapper or brute. i prefer stalkers over scrappers because the ATO’s are just absurd on stalkers. i wasn’t too impressed with scrapper crit damage on the test server. the damage is certainly nice and sustained with less set up time than stalker, but stalker feels muuuuuch quicker overall...especially if i don’t open with an assassins strike.

 

fire felt a little lackluster on the test server, thinking i’ll probably make a elec/rad brute instead and roll the savage/elec as a brute too.

 

thanks for the discussion everyone!

[Gulbasaur]

12 hours ago, Tryna_Dugid said:

funny you mention the stalker, because i currently have a savage/energy armor stalker built out who is a little monster that inspired me to try out the power set on a scrapper or brute. i prefer stalkers over scrappers because the ATO’s are just absurd on stalkers. i wasn’t too impressed with scrapper crit damage on the test server. the damage is certainly nice and sustained with less set up time than stalker, but stalker feels muuuuuch quicker overall...especially if i don’t open with an assassins strike.

Stalkers are so tough to beat with the ATOs, which create such loophole abuse that you can double-stack build up on two crits in a row about every 20 seconds or so. They're really one of the "everything else feels pale?" archetypes with ATOs equipped. 

[Call Me Awesome]

46 minutes ago, Gulbasaur said:

Stalkers are so tough to beat with the ATOs, which create such loophole abuse that you can double-stack build up on two crits in a row about every 20 seconds or so. They're really one of the "everything else feels pale?" archetypes with ATOs equipped. 

Pair that up with Elec/Shield and you have up to 4 high damage, large AOE attacks; three of which will crit.  (Lightning Rod/Shield Charge/Fire Ball/Thunder Strike). I call it a spawn killer.

[Frosticus]

52 minutes ago, Call Me Awesome said:

Pair that up with Elec/Shield and you have up to 4 high damage, large AOE attacks; three of which will crit.  (Lightning Rod/Shield Charge/Fire Ball/Thunder Strike). I call it a spawn killer.

I wouldn't call thunderstrike a large aoe, but yes the tele nukes (savage has the best one of all) mixed in with an epic aoe put stalkers on an aoe level with some of the best in the game.