Scrapper Options - Katana/Staff? EA/SR?

[Prismatic]

I'd like to play a scrapper - I've played mostly ranged characters in the past and scrapping seems fun.

 

For concept reasons I'm down to three primaries and two secondaries: Katana, Street Justice or Staff for primary, Energy Aura or Super Reflexes for secondaries. Are there any options that are much worse or better than the other options here, or any strong suggestions as to what to pick up?

[Gwyrddu]

Any of those combos will work. Katana is the an older set so outside of cool individual moves the only inherent bonus is a defense debuff and bonus to accuracy (which is important). Take street justice if you want to play around with a combo system and staff if you want some flexibility in terms of fighting modes (similar to dual pistols). Super Reflexes I believe has the best defenses in the game, but only gives some resistance when down on health. Energy Aura is more of a mix of defenses with resistances. Both give a speed boost, EA provides stealth and resistance to endurance drain, and SR gives resistance to slow.

Edited December 26, 2020 by Gwyrddu

[Erratic1]

EA and SR both provide a Recharge bonus via their skills. EA's depends on how many foes are around you up to 10 foes, SR's is flat (equivalent to EA having 4 opponents IIRC).

 

SR has scaling resistance from 60% health downward--Subtract your current percent of life from 60% and that is how much you have. So at 25% life remaining you'll have 60-25=35% resistance to incoming damage (probably not Toxic or Psi). On my SR/TW Tanker (yeah, I'm that crazy) I slotted the Reactive Defenses IO that gives 3-13% scaling resist based on your life total to boost that since every bit helps.

 

EA also offers a heal combined with 30 seconds of endurance cost reduction.

Edited December 27, 2020 by Erratic1

[Haijinx]

Ninja not fit the concept?  It has some cool stuff also esp. The scrapper one.

[Haijinx]

EA does have the advantage of a toggle status protection.  

[Saikochoro]

I personally would go EA 9 times out of 10. It’s not that SR is bad at all. It’s just that EA has so many tools available to it. It gets the + rech. Super easy to softcap defenses (except psi). With pool powers and set bonuses you can get great resist totals. SR can do all of that too, except better DDR and defense is positional. 
 

However, EA gets a good heal that also acts as a strong endurance discount that can be made perma. It also gets a recovery click that doubles as a defense boost. The endurance management and healing are the deciding factors for me. 

[Prismatic]

EA having a toggle protection is why I picked it over ninjutsu, yeah. I don't like forgetting that one.

 

Right now I'm leaning toward /EA as the secondary and either katana or staff as the primary.  I heard that staff is subpar on a scrapper - is that true or is it not enough to worry about? Also, with a def-focused secondary set, is it worth getting the def-focused attacks (Guarded Spin for staff or Divine Avalanche for katana) or is it just irrelevant? I guess for Guarded Spin you'd want it for the AoE if nothing else.

 

Edit: Specifically I heard it was much better for Stalkers, so if that's the case I might make this char Katana/EN and save Staff for one of them.

Edited December 27, 2020 by Prismatic

[Haijinx]

Yeah because the stronger attack staff animations are kind of long, replacing one of the attacks with a really fast assassin strike instead really benefits the set thus the stalker benefits.

 

The same can be said for Kinetic Melee. 

 

Both also get full build up powers in their stalker version, without losing the lil damage trick that supposedly is why the scrapper version does not.   

[Prismatic]

Thanks all for the tips! I've decided to go Katana/EA.

 

Still curious about whether Divine Avalanche, though normally very good, should be skipped on a primarily DEF set (though I'm inclined to take it anyway since It's not like I'll be capped at the level it shows up).

[Erratic1]

You may want to reconsider skipping Divine Avalanche. 

 

The thing about the Defense bonus it gives is that the bonus stacks. Each stack lasts only 10 seconds but you're using Energy Aura, which has Entropic Aura that gives you a bonus to Recharge based on the number of opponents nearby. Its not hard to get a couple of stacks up. 

 

The upper screenshot shows you will have 0% base Melee Defense. The bottom screenshot shows Melee Defense at 35.21%--5.21% from Energy Cloak and 30% from having used Divine Avalanche again within the 10 second window of the previous usage. With a base recharge of 3s before you consider any Recharge bonus from Entropic Aura, its not hard to get to Melee Defense cap with no Recharge enhancements slotted. 

 

 

Being capped on Melee Defense means you really only need to worry about AoE and Ranged. The type of attacks that come from range are quite often going to be the damage types Energy Aura works on. You will have to ask someone else the distribution of AoE attacks but I suspect that is a less rosy situation. 

Edited December 27, 2020 by Erratic1

[Prismatic]

You misread: I said I was going to take it. (I do have it now though I haven't broken level 15.) Though if it continues to be good even when my other defenses are up there, great! I certainly won't complain.

[Erratic1]

Taking it seemed up in the air but the hazards of English. 🙂

 

I think my routine is to open up with DA and then pop it again the moment it is up. Give that a shot and see if it makes fight easier.

[Bastille Boy]

I think you made a good call on EA v. SR. I have an SR scrapper I'm rerolling as a tanker. It was a fun toon and a good concept, but as a scrapper, it's too squishy. With no self-heal, low regeneration, and the scaling resists only starting to kick in at 60% HP, Super Reflexes benefits from high base HP.

[Saikochoro]

On 12/27/2020 at 4:34 AM, Prismatic said:

Thanks all for the tips! I've decided to go Katana/EA.

 

Still curious about whether Divine Avalanche, though normally very good, should be skipped on a primarily DEF set (though I'm inclined to take it anyway since It's not like I'll be capped at the level it shows up).

I would more highly value DA on a positional based defense armor (SR, shield, ninjitsu) as they will get more mileage out of it. Still unnecessary for something like SR though in my opinion. I don’t think it’s a problem taking it, but energy aura is a typed defense armor and is already easy to softcap all types except psi.  So unless you are facing a ton of melee psi damage it won’t help much.  That or a lot of toxic damage since there is no typed toxic defense. In the mass majority of cases your typed defense will kick in before your positional melee defense even matters. At that point, it is a dps loss to use it and it would have been better to use a higher dpa attack. 
 

The other place it may help is against enemies with lots of defense debuff. Energy aura does have a decent amount of DDR, but it can still get stripped with enough debuffs. The lethal defense buff would actually help more in this situation in my opinion as a lot of the attacks that strip defense are lethal.

 

In the end it’s personal preference. It’s not going to hurt you to take it, but I think it is unnecessary on energy aura due to it already having high levels of typed defense. I personally skip it on energy aura characters. Others don’t though. You can always respec if you find you aren’t really using it. 

Edited December 28, 2020 by Saikochoro

[Haijinx]

Divine Avalanche can help with Def debuffs.  

 

Also, Gets you to the incarnate softcap when you need it.

 

Still though, Energy Drain probably covers this stuff.