City of Heroes:Scrapper
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Game Description
- Hit Points: Medium
- Damage: Medium
- Primary Powers: Melee
- Secondary Powers: Defense
The Scrapper is a fierce melee combatant. In hand to hand, no other hero can compare. But the Scrapper is not as resilient as the Tanker, and might find himself in a little trouble if he heedlessly wades into combat. The Scrapper's aptitude for melee is countered by a total lack of long distance attacks. Scrappers possess Critical strike capability. Their melee attacks have a chance to sometimes do double damage.
General Notes
Scrappers have the second-best damage and the second-best defenses of all the archetypes, which means they are a good choice for players who wish to solo.
Since they are the most self-sufficient of the archetypes, Scrappers can pair with any other archetype with little trouble to themselves. They pair well with Tankers and Controllers, who provide crowd control that makes their damage dealing faster, and also well with Defenders, who can provide buffs for similar effect. The archetypes that are least complementary to Scrappers are Blasters, Peacebringers and Warshades, who all start with greater damage than a Scrapper can provide, and either gather aggro faster than most Scrappers can pull it away, meaning that Scrappers cannot generally protect them when needed, but tend not to be able to do so deliberately, meaning that they generally can't protect the scrapper when needed, either.
Scrapper Powersets
Scrapper Primary Powersets
Scrapper Primary Powerset Notes
Broad Sword provides the highest up front damage per attack, at the cost of slow recharge and moderate animation times. Katana is similar, trading some damage per attack for faster attacks. Both Katana and Broadsword have a power that adds a significant amount of Melee/Lethal Defense for ten seconds with a fast activation time, and have significant damage mitigation by means of Knockdown as well.
Claws in theory provides the highest damage per second by means of very fast attacks, even though the damage per attack is low, and has one ranged attack with knockdown, however in practice, this doesn't turn out to be true as of Issue 6. Issue 7 is supposed to improve animation times to make it more viable.
Martial Arts has mostly fast attacks (with the large exception of its final power, which is very slow), similar to Katana, but smashing damage instead of lethal, no Defense bonus, and Disorient and Knockback in place of Knockdown, which works better in some situations and much worse in others.
Spines has the lowest damage output against single targets, the slowest animation times, and the least amount of damage mitigation (a slight amount of -recharge and -speed), but has the largest amount of area effect damage. Although Spines scrappers are more vulnerable than scrappers with other primaries, they do the most overall damage in large teams with sufficient Defender or Controller protection.
Dark Melee has minor ToHitDebuffs in every attack for damage mitigation (though these are small enough that they generally aren't noticeable, and slots tend not to be available to improve them until HOs become available at the very end), along with a late-blooming ranged attack, and does half smashing half negative energy damage, which means that it tends to get resisted much less than the other sets in the late game. It has the least up-front damage, however, since it is the only set that doesn't get a version of Build Up. Instead, it gets a variation that lasts longer, but requires multiple opponents in close proximity. It also gets a close-proximity endurance recovery power.
Scrapper Secondary Powersets
Scrapper Secondary Powerset Notes
Of these, Dark Armor is by far the most powerful as of Issue 6... once it has reached high levels, and is fully slotted and optimized. Until it can be brought to its peak performance, however, it requires considerably more care. It's the armor to choose if you have the patience to work it to the very end, and isn't bad along the way. Since it has little reliance on click powers, it has a strong synergy with Spines and Broadsword, where the longer activation times aren't as much of a problem, but since it requires close contact with enemies for its self-heal and auras to function, Martial Arts may cause some problems with Knockback. On the other hand, Martial Arts also stacks Disorient on top of it, making it easier to stun bosses. Dark Melee also works well, with the point-blank endurance recovery and damage/accuracy boosts working well with the same tactics needed to make the armors work well. There are no sets that function particularly poorly with Dark Armor, with the possible exception of Claws.
Regeneration used to be a very strong set, but has become less so with every passing release (in fact, there has yet to be a release where Regeneration wasn't nerfed somewhere, and this will be true even when I7 comes out). Of all the sets, it has the highest vulnerability to up-front damage, but the lowest overall downtime when not defeated, as the combination of endurance and health recovery powers mean that it can be fully refreshed in about 30 seconds of inactivity or less. Its reliance on click powers for damage mitigation means that it has the worst synergy with Spines (and to a lesser extent Broadsword, Martial Arts, and Dark Melee, all of which have frequently-used long-animation attacks in the late game), but excellent synergy with Katana.
Invulnerability used to be the strongest scrapper secondary by far, and now is potentially in last place. [Section needs work.]
Super Reflexes has always been the weakest of the scrapper secondaries, and is now tied only with Invulnerability. It has strong synergies with Broadsword, Katana, and to a lesser extent also Dark Melee, as the defense bonuses stack nicely. Since the time in between being hit is significantly longer than with any other scrapper secondary with the possible exception of late-game Dark Armor, taking the Medicine Power Pool is highly recommended with this set for the Aid Self power.
Scrapper Ancillary Power Pools
Scrapper Ancillary Power Pool Notes
All pools provide additional range damage ability, with Darkness Mastery also providing a Hold, Body Mastery providing additional endurance discounts and accuracy bonuses, and Weapon Mastery providing an immobilize. For PvE play, Darkness Mastery is generally the most effective. In PvP, the ToHitBuff and +Perception from Focused Accuracy are too valuable to pass up. [Section needs work]
