Cyber_naut

You shouldn't use bills top end single target chart to determine if the set is ok or not, imo.

Try playing it from 1-50 and I think you'll come back here with the same opinion as the OP.

Sure, tricked out and maxed out with IO's, its on par with a few other sets for best single target damage. That's wonderful, but at the same time, it's dead last in aoe ability, both in damage and mitigation. So sure, it's great at single target damage, but the same sets that are on par with it there, blow it away in aoe ability.

Then there are the intangibles. The best two attacks are ridiculously slow. The set really should be renamed tar melee. On teams is where you'll really feel the pain of tar melee (but you can color it now...). Fire off one of your 2 top attacks and watch the wonderful animations as your teamates kill your target and you attack air! So fun! As a bonus, if you're using ET, you damage yourself! Bonus fun! So while your teamates are wiping out enemies with their superior aoe capabilities (and everyone will have superior aoe capabilities, lol), you kill air and hurt yourself.

The set was passable when EM was the unquestioned best single target dmg set, and was balanced by the fact it was the unquestioned worst aoe set. Even then it was underpowered because aoe is more valuable than single target in most situations, especially on teams, and since this is an mmo, well, you get the idea. And sure it had only one great attack, and it didn't come till very late, but the attack was AWESOME. Now the attack is a joke, and as a result, so is the set. Is it unplayable? Of course not. But its a cellar dwellar and needs help, but I guess the devs are just too proud to admit they made a mistake and over-nerfed it. The oddest part is they pretty much admitted they did it based on posts of people laughing at those who didn't take EM, somehow missing the fact the posts in question were dealing with pvp issues, where EM did in fact dominate. The oddity is multiplied by the fact they changed pvp to negate the advantages EM did have at about the same time.

Oh well, luckily there are other sets. I certainly hope the devs don't look for the next popular one, and deball that one too. Wouldn't it be nice if they instead focused on the under-performers and buffed them, giving players new sets to play with? They did that with dark melee and look how well that turned out. Does anyone play ice melee, lol?

bastards.

Yeah, I enjoyed the wonders of stacked vengeance last nite... lol.

Makes me wonder though, if the devs think zephyr is overpowered, how is stacking vengeance not overpowered?

The devs have stated kinetic isn't ranged either, most of the attacks are melee. Scrappers are melee specialists, and since dp is all ranged, scrappers shouldn't get the set, imo.

Having said that, that doesn't mean scrappers can't have any ranged attacks at all. Like you mentioned, some base sets even have ranged attacks in them, like claws and spines. The devs could satisfy a lot of their customers if they created a ranged attack pool powerset scrappers could dip into. The squishy/ranged at's get a lot of nice melee attack choices in their pool sets, so I see no reason why scrappers couldn't get some more options for ranged attacks. And the devs have already kind of headed in that direction with the fire epic pool recently. For a couple of pistol attacks, I'd just add them to the devices pool.

This. Not to say DM/DA is bad, just more complexity to it (though that's not to say you need a doctorate to use it...).

Work divine avalanche into your attack chain and you'll be really study while having good single target and aoe abilities.

DB can reach some of the higher single target dps's with lots of recharge.

DM is one of the better single target DPS sets, and therefore one of the better sets to use to beat down AV's and Heroes. You need to use IO sets to max out dmg/end/rech, get as much set rech as possible and put together the best attack chain you can. My dm's use the chain of smite/siphon life/smite/midnite grasp, repeat, but that takes a lot of recharge.

SM is great single target dmg too, but it's end hungry from what I understand. SS is decent for single target, but you'd be better off with DM still.

As far as surviving, trust me, it's all about DEFENSE. Can you survive in some cases without defense? Sure, but you'll survive in far more situations with it.

They're both top notch, but if you're concerned about hard targets like bosses, then fire is definitely better. And while elec has an extra nuke, fire has FSC which is up way more often. Take fireball with either for added aoe goodness.

Ew, how much are those pvp uniques going for now? I snagged the only one I've ever gotten back when they were a measly 500 mil lol.

Its true that in most cases, brutes have both a damage and survivability edge on scrappers, but there is no glaring gap that you're really going to notice. There is a playstyle difference in that you don't need the fast pacing on a scrapper that most like to use with a brute.

This. I've played every scrapper primary to 50, and every secondary (except for invuln and elec, which I've played on brutes), and my FM/SD is my favorite thanks to it's versatility. Great survivability, great single target damage and great aoe dmg. But like fury states, it's an expensive build (if you really want it to shine) and other combos can beat it in certain categories and situations.

Yeah, graphics are great, but you seem to imply CO's graphics are great. I'm gonna go ahead and disagree there, lol. When I ran up to the first contact, the mayor, and thought I was looking at a cgi muppet, I knew that game was in trouble. But you're right, gameplay is even more important, and coh owns lots of other games on this point as well.

And since a good portion of its survivability is given via defense, it benefits greatly from def bonuses from IO's.

I'd agree with your argument if there was a wide performance gap at any level overall, but there isn't.

I think werner nailed it with his post, the over and under performance claims are mostly overstated. We've seen all the top end stuff being done on the other primaries too, and in many situations, you are better off with another secondary. I think most of the secondaries are pretty competitive with eachother. When I play, I don't see 99% of the scrappers running around with a shield, I see a pretty even mix of secondaries. The reason you see so many people drooling over shields here is because we're the min/max crowd looking for any slight advantage, and clearly shields has advantages in terms of end game and with massive IO investment.

So again, there is absolutely no need for nerfs. I would agree that a couple of sets could use some buffs to get them into the performance range of the majority of secondaries, but that is another argument. And as I've said, I'd love to a few buffs to IO's that benefit resists or heals (or just new io's), because it's far easier to buff defense than it is resists late game, which is unfair to sets that rely primarily on resists and heals. But overall, there is no huge performance gap, imo.

I find you...

GUILTY!

(not sure of what yet, I'll let ya know)