What's your favorite scrapper, and why?

[Due Regard]

1 hour ago, FFTMime said:

As a brief end note, knowing what powers to focus on for early leveling may help people too. The art of leveling is something not often brushed on in advice. I wonder how often trying to dilute your slots across too many powers is common. You don't get many early. Build one or two super strong bread and butter attacks even if you respec out of them later. May help feel a lot. 

This, not enough this...

Most of the content/lore/material is sub-50. And that level 50 will play very differently at lower levels as you're climbing or going to content you've missed. I recognize people farm, and if that's fun for them to powerlevel yet another 50 that they park, then good on them.

I'm the weirdo who enjoys the journey and the change as the toon grows and gets better.

[FFTMime]

Yes, COH was uniquely built that most of the content is leveling content. That was the intent. Originally there was nothing to do at 50 at all. 

That said, my advice is already stated. Examine your attacks you get at like 10 and under and figure out what among those you will slot as much as you can early. Two strong attacks with a third as a filler to finish off hanging healthbars seems to work on most ATs and power sets. If you are an AT with no defense or support secondary, you can be more liberal, but diluting your attention is bad. Similarly, getting better attacks once you hit mid-levels is a trojan horse. You can easily turn a winning character mid-level to a bit of a drag to play by chaining like 5 things that all don't do much. You'll be happier flatlining guys with fewer punchier and quicker attacks. 

Not that you shouldn't take those attacks. Try everything. Yet keep in mind slotting them can be bad till you have slots to burn. Once you get used to things, you can eyeball when a power would mature better with slots versus probably being a waste. Uh.. for instance... a power that technically does damage but you stand around too long doing it. May want to keep slotting your lower attacks and just put recharge in them. Not all upgrades are upgrades. Some things just link poorly too no matter what damage they do. It's fine to experiment with the particulars, but your actual mission clear should be well slotted low level attacks. 

Edit: Particularly mind that, once you pass certain level thresholds, enemies get functionally more accuracy and nasty stuff. So something like a scrapper will suddenly need to slot their defenses rather than coasting. Which puts pressure all the more on slotting a few attacks early before you're forced to put some attention on defenses. 

Edited Wednesday at 04:53 PM by FFTMime

[Story Archer]

I've played about a dozen Scrappers to 50 over the years and my favorite one for most of that time was my Dual Blades/Ninjitsu. I can't say enough about that build and all the things I like about it. However, my aversion to Bio-Armor stemmed from my personal distaste for its visuals and my failure to fully appreciate how Absorb shields worked. Having discovered that there was a 'minimal FX' option for Bio Armor, I finally gave it a shot (Claws/Bio-Armor), and I have to say she's become my favorite Scrapper and one of my top two favorite builds of all time. She is just so, so very lethal. I've got her maxed out now and I just can't stop playing her, so much so that I've made her my 'new' badger just to have a reason to always have her out.

 

Her survivability is great, she's not as 'clicky' on defense as I feared (I don't care for high-maintenance defenses), but I think the thing I like most about her is her efficiency and versatility in combat. Having a fast-recharging ranged attack (with KD to boot) as part of your regular attack chain is such a big deal for melee types. My standard attack chain is incredibly tight, regardless of whether I'm fighting single targets or groups.

 

vs. hard targets: Follow Up -> Eviscerate -> Focus

vs. groups: Follow Up -> Eviscerate -> Spin

 

I open with Shockwave on my way in, maybe popping Shadow Meld if I think it's necessary and then it's just lather, rinse repeat, with Genetic Contamination cooking all the while. I had thought to include Cross Punch in my attack chain (it's an incredibly under-appreciated power imo), but there's neither any room nor any need for it. Crits just rain down. Strike and Moonbeam aren't even in my power tray, unless I'm exemping down. See build below, if anyone's curious or wants to comment.

 

[Ladyshrike] alt.mbd

 

[Mattmba]

On 3/5/2024 at 10:14 PM, Frosticus said:

Stone/nin is doing something wonderful for me.

Seismic has 91% chance to crit from shinobi hide. That ups it to mag 6 hold and it has a high chance of triggering crit strikes.

 

Tons of aoe control and ffb procs galore. Aoe damage is a tad low, but at least tremor is 15ft and all the ffb spam brings procd fireball around quickly. 

 

Stone burns crazy end , nin fills it up. 

Nin has (very) low ddr, Stone has oodles of control. 

 

Eventually it will be a t9 build, but it is playing very well even in its "immature" state.

Thanks for teaching me something new. I’ve had several builds with super reflexes with both a 50 tanker and 50 scrapper but I never even looked and Nin. It has a heal and end+ while having great defenses against all. Stone seems like a strong choice to go with it but what about ice, energy, electric or street justice or even spines? 

[aethereal]

19 hours ago, Mattmba said:

Thanks for teaching me something new. I’ve had several builds with super reflexes with both a 50 tanker and 50 scrapper but I never even looked and Nin. It has a heal and end+ while having great defenses against all. Stone seems like a strong choice to go with it but what about ice, energy, electric or street justice or even spines? 

 

Ninjutsu is an overall strong armor that will go well with lots of things.  Its two big problems are:

 

1.  It's a very defense-based armor set with low DDR

2.  Its offense boost is on the weak side, just an increased chance to crit once per combat.

 

Ice is this very feast or famine set: it has one of the strongest ST attacks in the game (Frozen Touch), it has good-to-great AoE in Frost and Frozen Aura, and it has good additional mitigation in Ice Patch, but Frozen Fists is dire, Ice Sword is weak, and Greater Ice Sword is mediocre, so you don't have much single target beyond just Frozen Touch.

 

Energy is one of the stronger ST sets in the game, but has weak AoE.

 

Electric is not a great set.  Lightning Rod is good and fun, but other than that it has extremely mediocre ST and its AoE is like....  fine but not great.

 

Street Justice has strong ST, mediocre AoE, and is overall a pretty good set.

 

I don't think any of them have incredible synergy with Ninjutsu, but again Ninjutsu is a solid armor set that goes well with most stuff.

[Frozen Burn]

I'm surprised I haven't commented on this thread yet.  lol  

 

Despite the suckiness of Kin Melee... I do enjoy playing my KM/SR Scrapper (more so solo).  I also enjoy her MA/SR sister and the classic Claws/Regen.  

 

But my absolute favs so far are Katana/Dark and War Mace/Invuln.  Both are beasts and survive practically anything.  SO much fun play.

[Mattmba]

On 4/19/2025 at 10:24 AM, Frozen Burn said:

I'm surprised I haven't commented on this thread yet.  lol  

 

Despite the suckiness of Kin Melee... I do enjoy playing my KM/SR Scrapper (more so solo).  I also enjoy her MA/SR sister and the classic Claws/Regen.  

 

But my absolute favs so far are Katana/Dark and War Mace/Invuln.  Both are beasts and survive practically anything.  SO much fun play.

Thanks for the feedback on the ninjitsu defensive power set. I don't think I will make an immediate alt that has it but it looks like it would be fun to try. I liked my SR defense tanker that I got to 50 and found SR to be a nice armor set for a tank. I just got bored with it and the lower damage and no heal. I would just watch my health wittle down with no heal and no real damage mitigation beyond hoping the 5% minimum chances to hit didn’t hit me too many times in a row. 
 

My very first character on live was a MA/SR scrapper back when endurance recovery was way worse than it is today.  Had to rest for up to a minute after every battle. It makes me think that MA/ninjutsi might be a fun combination. 
 

I’m leveling up an Ice Melee/ Fire Aura scrapper that has been pretty good. Got a little boring around level 38 but as I get some IOs into the build to boost defense I am finding it fun to plan again. 
 

 

Edited Sunday at 10:14 PM by Mattmba