Nihilii

HOs can give you better stats for some specific powers ; i.e., I like to slot my Siphon Life with 3 acc/dam and 3 heal/end. Recharge isn't necessary in SL for the Smite MG Smite SL chain (the global recharge you're going to need for MG and Smite will give SL enough), which is the top DM DPS ST solo attack string.

Other than that, my guesses would be a combo of Hami raids being harder than they used to be, inflation, and people who don't want to invest in the IO system and find HOs easier to use and understand.

The big difference between these two towns and CoH servers, which is also the reason why this analogy doesn't work, is simple : critical mass.

If you don't mind not seeing buffs on you, you could eventually use /suppresscloseFXdist 255 and /suppresscloseFX 1 to turn sword attacks into odd-looking punch attacks. Saying this for FSC mostly, as it is that good.

DB relies on Blinding Feint stacking to get as much damage as possible. Scrappers get higher damage mods (and, unlike Brutes, aren't balanced around Fury) so get more out of it. By my own calculations and experience I need 90% Fury on a DB brute just to break even with a DB scrapper. For reference, the brute/scrapper balance is usually something akin to ~70% Fury to break even with scrappers. Although it's not a major concern, the animations aren't especially fast and Fury building isn't so hot, at least for me.

For these reasons, I think DB works better on scrappers ; it's not an enormous difference and you might never see it unless actively looking for it, but it's there.

so·lo
(sl)
n. pl. so·los
1. Music A composition or passage for an individual voice or instrument, with or without accompaniment.
2. A performance by a single singer or instrumentalist.
3. Games Any of various card games in which one player singly opposes others.
adj.
1. Music Composed, arranged for, or performed by a single voice or instrument.
2. Made or done by a single individual.
adv.
Unaccompanied; alone: flew solo from Anchorage to Miami.
intr.v. so·loed, so·lo·ing, so·los
1. To perform a solo.
2. To fly an airplane without a companion or an instructor, especially for the first time.

In my eyes, this is straightforward.

Using a dead body = 2 characters != solo
Using insps/temps = 1 character = solo

Elec armor was designed for brutes and it shows. It's a high resistance set, capable to hit above the 90% cap on energy res and 90% to everything with its T9. Scrappers are limited to 75% so the energy res and power surge aren't as good there. Basically, as an elec scrapper you'll take 2.5x as much damage against energy opponents (or against anything that isn't psi while in Power Surge) compared to an elec brute. This is especially important for a Fire/Elec, as your primary offers no mitigation other than "kill them ASAP".

The endurance management is awesome on brutes, and while it's still damn great on scrappers, it's not the huge advantage it is on brutes as scrappers have better epic tools than brutes for that purpose (Conserve Power, Physical Perfection). This will most likely be moot when Going Rogue is released, but for now brutes have it "better" on that one.

The damage aura combined with end drain is great on a brute, if you use Power Sink you can even sap some foes. Of course, you can do just the same on a scrapper, however lacking a taunt/gantlet effect like brutes get the elec aura tends to make wounded mobs flee for their life (on brutes, they'll stay put until they die, except for very specific mobs who always run like those mafiosi snipers in port oakes). This is, again, something especially true for Fire/Elec as the dots from FM combined with the damage aura and sapping will make mobs run even more on a scrapper.

As for Fire Melee, to be fair it's an awesome set on both ATs and the differences aren't as significant as with Elec Armor. Fire Melee brutes get Incinerate earlier and FSC later, which can be an advantage or a disadvantage based on your playstyle (personally, I really like having that full ST attack chain as soon as level 8, but more AoE oriented folks might be annoyed to have to wait an extra 8 levels for FSC). GFS does more damage (relatively, before mods are applied) on a brute than a scrapper, though. There's also dots ; Fury fully affect the damage of fire melee dots, whereas scrapper criticals don't take dots into account.

You can make a strong and fun to play Fire/Elec scrapper, but I'm absolutely sure you could just as well make a stronger Fire/Elec brute.

Re : Talk to me about Fire/Elec

Better as a brute.

No matter how many times I hear these "I can hit 38 bazillion mobs with 3 feet cones as a smooth attack chain that doesn't waste even a millisecond positioning" claims, I've never seen it ingame nor seen any video showing that. Guess I just don't play with the cool crowd !

For that matter, chaining FU -> Spin -> Evis on a standing still target already takes more than 6 seconds, and nobody's going to have perma 2x FU as, well, the way FU works is that you have to hit an enemy first (and 0s travel time doesn't exist, unless you've got a pocket tanker herding mobs to you standing still).

Everything can look great on paper when you use arbitrary values as hard numbers. Somehow, these paper builds never seem to reach the statistical comparison topics based on actual gameplay (i.e., kill inf/defeats per minute).

Which, with the recent news, is a cunning way to say it's possible but takes a lot of work. Clever.

I've had some success with a DB/ELA that had around 28ish defense to all positions, without insps. It wasn't fantastic, but still, as that alt was based around *using* insps, that it could solo some AVs at all was interesting. A claws/DA would be relatively similar ; smaller res numbers, higher def numbers, faster recharging heal, harder end management - overall I think it'd be a better toon (than DB/ELA) as claws is light on end and CP/PP can do the trick.

Focusing the build on it, you could build for S/L softcap and be fine against many AVs without insps.

If you'd had 33%+ def to every position and don't mind actually using insps, I'd vote Aid Self (one luck would be enough to softcap), but with the values you posted I'd go with softcap.

Seconding ELA, for reasons already highlighted.

Power Surge is junk on scrappers, in my opinion.

Consider :

Thanks to scrapper resistance cap, PS only brings you to 75%.
S/L res, you're already at ~60% with Charged Armor and Tough, a 15% boost can help but isn't all that much.
EN res is already capped, PS doesn't do anything for it.
Psi res isn't boosted by PS.
That leaves PS significantly boosting F/C/N/T resistances, which aren't encountered nearly as often as the above damage types.

Add to that the crash leaves you at 10% hp, 0 end and -recovery for 20s. Thanks to Power Sink you can mitigate the end crash... But if you do that, you're going to be at 10% hp for a few seconds ; and if instead you heal up right as you crash, you're not going to recover end fast. The power can be worth it villainside for a brute with the 90% resistance cap, but on a scrapper going to 75% just isn't worth the headache. Pop lucks instead of Power Surge and save yourself the trouble of having to convert these into an awaken once you crash.

Everything else is worth getting, although at high level I like going for CP/PP rather than Power Sink, to save enhancements slots and animation time.

I don't necessarily disagree with you, but I think as a tanker you have some wiggle room with that ; more often than not, in heroside PuGs, tankers control the pacing.

For tankers, getting Rage up as often as possible is the way to go even with the crashes; the damage boost provided outweight the damage loss caused by crashes.

Now, consider you never fight 100% of the time in a mission, especially on a tanker. Crash downtimes can be used to move around, gather mobs, heal up, and so on. You can also use vet attacks during the crash, and procs still work (I personally footstomp during rage crashes as the Arma proc procs often and KD is good for mitigation - not only for me but for my team).

To directly answer the question :

Pick Lingering Radiation. Congratulations, you win.