What's The Optimal Solo Scrapper?

[biostem]

Can't go wrong with katana/ninjitsu - pretty much all your bases are covered, and you have tons of utility!

[Sunsteal]

So I have a Claws/Regen scrapper. Had a fully slotted one on live but for the life of me cannot remember how I built it. I do remember it cost over a bil... Any pointers or builds I could look at as totally stuck and no good with mids?

[Without_Pause]

Incarnates are Level 50. If those are included, then other sets will also see similar benefit if not even more so. I care about the ride to 50 as well. Plus, it takes a variable amount of time to even get Ageless to be up enough to really start to cover that hole. Again, it is far better on a Brute or Tanker. WP simply isn't on the same level as SR or Shield and more so Incarnates included. 

[Sovera]

A Fire/Fire Tanker.

[Lazarillo]

23 hours ago, Without_Pause said:

Incarnates are Level 50. If those are included, then other sets will also see similar benefit if not even more so. I care about the ride to 50 as well. Plus, it takes a variable amount of time to even get Ageless to be up enough to really start to cover that hole. Again, it is far better on a Brute or Tanker. WP simply isn't on the same level as SR or Shield and more so Incarnates included. 

I'd note that if you're steamrolling groups at x8, the ride to 50 is gonna be pretty short anyway.

And that, again, that's only part of the equation.  There are things that /SR and /Shield can do that Willpower cannot, but they do not make up, from my perspective, for what Willpower can do that they can't.

Edited December 4 by Lazarillo

[Without_Pause]

44 minutes ago, Lazarillo said:

I'd note that if you're steamrolling groups at x8, the ride to 50 is gonna be pretty short anyway.

And that, again, that's only part of the equation.  There are things that /SR and /Shield can do that Willpower cannot, but they do not make up, from my perspective, for what Willpower can do that they can't.

I don't care about teams where inferior sets can be carried. Solo. Maxed out settings. WP isn't on par. Even more so on a Scrapper. 

[aethereal]

3 hours ago, Lazarillo said:

I'd note that if you're steamrolling groups at x8, the ride to 50 is gonna be pretty short anyway.

And that, again, that's only part of the equation.  There are things that /SR and /Shield can do that Willpower cannot, but they do not make up, from my perspective, for what Willpower can do that they can't.

 

What do you feel it is that WP can do that shield and SR can't?

[Octogoat]

7 hours ago, aethereal said:

 

What do you feel it is that WP can do that shield and SR can't?

 

It dies real well to certain mobs that Sr and shield cant

[Lazarillo]

8 hours ago, aethereal said:

What do you feel it is that WP can do that shield and SR can't?

I mentioned these in a previous reply as well, but summarizing it bullet points:

 

SR:

-Lacks taunt aura, causing enemies to scatter very quickly

-No protection against Confuse without Tactics.  No protection against Terrorize, period.

 

Shield:

-Can't be paired with several sets (including, IMO, the best set)

-Locks character stance, makes you look stupid while moving (looking cool, by contrast, being objectively the most important thing in the game)

[Without_Pause]

So non-sensible and things which are factors in rare situations. I concede the Taunt aura being a bit of an issue, but a snipe can be added. I mean, how pretty does a character look while faceplanted? Shield can be paired with arguably the best set for it, Dark. 

[Erratic1]

As I recall, the final nail in the coffin for my Willpower Tanker was being hit with so much -Recharge his attacks were slated to be available the next time the world's continent's merge to form Pangaea.

 

SR has some resistance and on any defense set, the attack has to land for the nasty to occur.

[aethereal]

11 hours ago, Lazarillo said:

I mentioned these in a previous reply as well, but summarizing it bullet points:

 

SR:

-Lacks taunt aura, causing enemies to scatter very quickly

-No protection against Confuse without Tactics.  No protection against Terrorize, period.

 

Shield:

-Can't be paired with several sets (including, IMO, the best set)

-Locks character stance, makes you look stupid while moving (looking cool, by contrast, being objectively the most important thing in the game)

Sorry, I wasn't clear:  what is a thing you feel that you can't actually do in game better with WP than SR or shield?  Like, is there an enemy group that you feel better about with WP?  A TF?  An arc?  

[Nemu]

Willpower can sustain whirlwind a smidge better than SR or Shield, and we ALL know spinning is winning.

[Without_Pause]

The only mob type I can really see being easier for a WP to take on would be ones with high +ToHit buffs. At least WP has Regen to fall back on. 

[Lazarillo]

13 hours ago, aethereal said:

Sorry, I wasn't clear:  what is a thing you feel that you can't actually do in game better with WP than SR or shield?  Like, is there an enemy group that you feel better about with WP?  A TF?  An arc?  

Now I'm a little more confused, I think just 'cause of the wording, of what content you think WP does better than those other examples, or what you think they do better at.  So I'll answer both ways, hope it's clear enough.

 

Basically, WP is gonna be more fun to play against any enemy group/content that uses those things I named as comparative shortcomings.  For /SR, it's enemies like Longbow, Circle of Thorns, Crey, IDF, or KoV that use a lot of Confuse or Terrorize effects, particularly.  Or fights against large numbers where enemies scatter after the alpha strike. For /Shield, again, it's less a matter of what it can't fight, and more that since it can't be paired with Claws, it lacks access to that set's as-close-to-it-as-you're-gonna-get ability to both tear through groups and to stunlock bosses and keep them (and similar enemies) from popping untouchable/godmode powers that drag things on excessively.  But even without that, it's still less appealing because of the animation/appearance jank.

 

On the flipside?  Well, it's Christmastime.  /SR's gonna do a hell of a lot better at rescuing Baby New Year with all the Quicksands and ice melee slows being tossed around, just off the top of my head (on my 50s, again, Ageless makes up a lot for that, but it still hurts WP quite a bit).  /Shield, meanwhile, can pair up with Energy or Ice (or Stone on a Brute/Tank) and catch up to and even surpass Claws on the stunlocking front, but those don't tend to steamroll whole groups quite as well in my experience.

[Without_Pause]

As someone who has a SR Scrapper going through DA arcs at +4x8, see KoV, I can officially say those issues are minor at best. I even farmed Heather's arc with taking on the final mob with bosses with no real issue. I've done missions which officially made me stick a fork into WP as a set. 

[aethereal]

So, like:

 

Super Reflexes has Confused protection.  Slightly weirdly, it's in the first toggle, Focused Fighting, not where we generally think of SR's status protection being, the click Practiced Brawler.

 

The result is that say the Succubus Come Hither confused that I assume is what @Lazarillo is suggesting makes Circle of Thorns an unattractive enemy group for SR does nothing to a SR character.

 

I have to ask here, @Lazarillo, are these ideas you have based on play experience?  I don't have a ton of SR play experience, but it's generally a highly performing set, and, I mean, it's true that every set has its weaknesses, but when you put a big laundry list of enemies and suggest that SR is bad against all of them, I just question that holistically.

[Doomguide2005]

     Speaking as a long-time player of SR, specifically paired with Claws but many other secondaries, oops primaries, as well I can safely say Confuse is much less an issue than Fear effects.  But, in many instances, it's just a matter for ANY armor (or player) to be aware of your weaknesses and, like I would do to Succubi, target them first.  In my case not so much as they represent a threat to me but to the team if someone else gets confused.  Dead threat is no threat ... usually.  Much the same reason I often take on things like Sappers first.

 

EDIT: And yes, I'm tearing thru Rescue the Ugly One mission solo at +4/x8 (plus level shift).  The QS does drop my defense from 47.67 to 46% for my lowest positional.  Basically, ineffective against me.

EDIT 2: For me these days much more than the defense is the DDR (always has been really) followed by the scaling resists the most defining things about SR

Edited December 8 by Doomguide2005
spelling, punctuation

[Lazarillo]

7 hours ago, aethereal said:

I have to ask here, @Lazarillo, are these ideas you have based on play experience?  I don't have a ton of SR play experience, but it's generally a highly performing set, and, I mean, it's true that every set has its weaknesses, but when you put a big laundry list of enemies and suggest that SR is bad against all of them, I just question that holistically.

/SR, admittedly, I haven't on Homecoming.  So I admit I missed that.  That said, I'm not trying to say /SR is "bad", just that what it offers is not so much better that it's worth trading for the status protection.  Frankly, I can say from any set that doesn't have protections that not having them means getting impeded in un-fun ways.  From my "laundry list", bearing in mind that Confuse protection actually is in /SR would generally mean you could knock out Crey and high-level CoT (some of the lower level ice demons have Terrify but they actually get leveled out), but Longbow are still a pretty major factor as you're probably going to get Illusionist or Mind Control Wardens every bunch or three, and IDF are gonna be an issue as well if you're unlucky enough to see high-ranked Seers, just as examples.

 

Meanwhile, the Defense Debuffs that people seem to think is so game breaking, in my experience, really doesn't become a big problem most of the time when playing a set that has high resistances and regeneration (or, at least, again, certainly not a problem more often than an annoying status could).

 

EDIT: I think, upon further reflection, that a lot of it comes down to what one's looking for: 90% performance against 99% of content, or 99% performance against 90% of content?  The former is definitely more valuable to me, but one's own mileage may vary.

Edited December 6 by Lazarillo

[aethereal]

Well, perhaps I can offer some relevant experience, because, while I haven't played a ton of either SR or Willpower, I did play, back-to-back mostly-solo-to-50-and-beyond, seeking out some challenging content, the following characters:

 

A spines/bio brute

An ice/bio stalker

A bio/claws tanker

An energy/bio scrapper

 

And Bio, as it happens, shares both the Willpower weakness to DDR and lacks protection to exotic mez types such as, yes, Confuse and Terrorize.

 

I did get Terrorized and Confused on occasion.  But I got defense debuffed a lot more (because defense debuffs are a feature of a huge number of mobs), and while being Terrorized and Confused was kind of annoying, getting defense debuffed was a lot more likely to actually faceplant me.

 

I particularly found Praetorian Clockworks a big pain in the butt, because not only would they debuff my defense, they'd also floor my regeneration, so I'd just faceplant to them with every spawn unless I was very on top of my game -- and because I liked the Praetorian Invasion storyline and wanted to play it and solo the Praetorian AVs, I played against Praetorian Clocks a lot.  In contrast, when I did that storyline with a /Ninjutsu scrapper a little later, Praetorian Clocks were no big deal.

 

But beyond Praetorian Clocks, I also found that, for example, Battle Maiden was very tough for me to deal with as a /Bio character, because, yes, her defense debuffs.  I had to eat a lot of purples to keep my defense high.  When I was fighting Scirocco, I was unable to defeat him because his summoned whirlwind debuffed me until I realized it was ground only and fought him in the air.  Same problem with Positron, and in general with Radiation Blast enemies.

 

Don't get me wrong.  Having no DDR was not, for a Bio character, a crippling weakness.  I roflstomped the vast majority of content.  But if someone had come down from heaven and said, "You can either have a bunch of DDR or Confuse and Terrorize protection," I definitely would've chosen DDR.

Edited December 7 by aethereal

[Without_Pause]

In short, Confuse and Terrorize are annoying. +ToHit Buffs are detrimental. Confuse and Terrify likely are coming via Psy or Ranged attacks. That's rather tolerable for a Shield or SR character as their positions will be soft capped at minimum. To my knowledge, WP doesn't offer resists to -Regen. See Praetorian Clockworks above.

[Erratic1]

8 minutes ago, Without_Pause said:

To my knowledge, WP doesn't offer resists to -Regen.

 

Fast Healing gives 25.95% resistance to -Regen.

[ScarySai]

Armor with a taunt aura is mandatory, followed by pairing it with one of the good melee sets, like claws, axe, energy, db ect.

[Without_Pause]

On 12/7/2024 at 12:20 AM, Erratic1 said:

 

Fast Healing gives 25.95% resistance to -Regen.

Someday I'll learn to not look at the wiki and just check CoD. That's still not a lot of resistance in a game which offers -500% Regen.

[Without_Pause]

I think my answer for optimal solo Scrapper is Dark/shield. Note, I'm not saying it is the most fun, but just the most optimal. In terms of SR's lack of taunt aura, that's what ranged attacks and mezzes are for. Mobs don't run away if the are KDed or disoriented.