City of Heroes Bandwagon. Welcome one and all!

[AndyBloodredMage]

At first I was gonna play blaster, then I heard that a LOT of people will be playing them, so I wanna play a scrapper. Any tips other than the ones by xeno?

[Nazragul]

How to play scrapper? Do lots of damage! If there is a tank in your group, let them keep aggro, if there is a controller, understand how the 4 kinds of mez work (hold, sleep, disorient, immobilize) and how to make them work best in your favor. Scrappers are fairly tough, but do not hold up well against higher level bosses without support...so you either need to group or really do damage quickly, so the baddies die before you do. Scrappers do the most damage over time of any archetype at high levels (though the recent blaster bump closed the gap quite a bit). All primary sets do good damage...best are considered to be Martial Arts (lots of stun/disorient effects that keep baddies from attacking you) and Dark Melee (shadow maul has to be the best melee attack in the game...don't believe me, wait till you fight bad guys that have it...Bone daddies, Jawbreaker boss). Katana and Broadsword do good basic damage, Claws are very fast, and Spines have a little range, they poison, and some other strange effects. The biggest key to how to play a scrapper depends on your secondary power set.

Dark armor: Know what kinds of damage your enemy is doing so you know what shield to have up. This set has some healing, defense, and resistance powers...making it the balanced set...but it covers your character in a wierd darkness cloud. If you want to be able to see your character clearly at all times, don't take this set.

Regeneration: Learn to time your heals and how to strategically retreat to heal up during a fight...regen scrappers are great but their actual DEFENSE is terrible. Greatest thing about regen is they never get tired (end regen) so regen scrappers actually do the most damage of anyone in the game (IMO). Integration also gives great defense vs mez, which is what kills you 90% of the time at higher levels

Invulnerability: Opposite of Regen, they have some defense and great resist (but not as good as tank)...problem with this set for scrappers is in order to make it really effective you need to put a LOT of enhancements into it...biggest advantage is most powers require no endurance.

Super Reflexes: This set is the art of not getting hit. If you DO get hit, you get creamed, so this is a strange set. Sometimes, you can fight and fight and fight brutal enemies and take no damage...sometimes a weak minion just lays into you. This set relies on 'dice rolls' more than any non-controllers, but with lots and lots of defense enhancements this secondary is extremely powerful vs. even or slightly stronger enemies...so much so that a lot of people called for this set to be pickable by tanks. These scrappers really need to avoid aggro when fighting purple con bosses and the like, however, as all their bonuses get negated by the level difference.

Summary:
Reflexes: Dont get hit, take lotsa damage
Invuln: Get hit, take less damage
Regen: Get hit, take lotsa damage, heal it back up, tireless
Dark Armor: Kinda annoying switching toggles, but fairly balanced

Hope this helped a bit.

[AndyBloodredMage]

Do you have any info on the enhancements? (And yes, this helped QUITE a bit, thank you)
Also, do the starter things matter? (technological, mutation, natural, etc.)

[Nazragul]

As far as Origin, the only thing that it affects is what story arcs you start with. As far as I know the villians you fight at beginning are:

Natural: 5th Column (easy)
Tech: Clockwork (resist physical damage and drain end)
Mutation: Hellions or Skulls I think...
Magic: Hellions (occasional tough bosses) then Circle of Thorns (easy imo, some people hate em)
Science: Vahzilok (tough)

Enhancements are items you slot into your powers. Every time you level up, on even levels you get a power (until 30, then you get at 32, 35, 38) and on odd levels you get 2 enhancement slots (3 after level 30). An enhancement slot lets you increase one of the power's 'stats'. Some examples: range, damage, defense, resistance, attack rate, endurance cost, hold/sleep/imm/disorient duration, slow, healing, area of effect, and so on...there are like 30 different kinds, and powers usually have 2-5 different stats you can increase. This allows customization of powers. Putting more slots into a power makes it more powerful. What makes CoH different from any other game is that the power you get at level 1 is equal in power to what you get at 38. Sure the one at 38 will be more visually impressive and do a lot more things, it usually takes a lot out of you...whereas your level 1 power is usually very fast. What you put in your enhancement slots determines your strategy as a player. You can put all damage into a power, and while it is slow, costly, and inaccurate, when it hits it will be brutal. You can make your attacks quick...cheap in endurance cost...extremely accurate...or you could pump up the secondary effects (your punch may not be very damaging, fast, or accurate...but when it hits your enemy might stumble around disoriented for 15 seconds!). What makes this really neat is you will play with a character that has the same power as you, but theirs behaves in a completely different way.

An example: My controller and the other controller I played a lot with each have Domination, a power that does moderate damage and holds the target. The other player had 1 accuracy, 1 hold duration, 2 endurance reduce and 2 damage enhancements. I had 4 accuracy and 2 hold duration enhancements. His Domination cost less endurance and did decent damage, but rarely hit high level bosses. Mine did negligible damage, but never missed minions and had a decent hit rate against bosses, even ones a few levels higher than me. My power also held a little longer than his. Whose is better? Depends on the situation. His was definately better against even level minions, which is what you fight 90% of the time. He did more damage and did so at a lower endurance cost. My power, however, could stop a boss in it's tracks...and powerful bosses are the things which are most likely to kill you in the game. In a tight situation, you would be better off with my set-up.

Also, there are 4 kinds of enhancements.
Training: anyone can use, standard
Dual Origin (start:Lv15): Twice as effective, expensive
Single Origin (start:Lv25): 4x as effective, incredibly expensive
Special: These are brutal, get these for completing trials in end game, I have no idea how they work ^^

Also as a side note...here is info on the 4 kinds of mez:

Sleep: standard EQ mez...they do nothing, hit em and they wake up
Immobilize: EQ root, they can't move, but can take other actions
Disorient: Can move slowly, can not attack, does not break when hit, usually very short duration (2-7 seconds)
Hold: Uber mez, can not move, can take no action, does not break when hit...often has long duration (10-40 seconds). This power is what makes controllers controllers

[AndyBloodredMage]

How high is the Scrapper abilitiy to get resist mez under the regernation sub thingie? I don't like the idea of the enemy holding me right before I kick him to next tuesday.

[Nazragul]

Very good...chance depends on relative levels of you and enemy. It's a good power. Invuln has one too, unyielding stance, but you can't move when it's active. You have seen integration in action if you have ever fought members of the troll gang and seen em yell and bang on their chest king-kong style.

[AndyBloodredMage]

If you're talking to me, realize that I've never played the game.
You said earlier that your origin determins whom you fight first. After that can you fight the other 4 people?

[MP37a]

I have a question. What are the chances of making a so called "gimp" character. lol You all talk about taking down reds and purples where I can seem to create that yellows are difficult. I seem to have a problem with getting stuck with those in RPGs and it's annoying as hell with the amount of time I put in them. Are there any classes that aren't very good or is it all about choosing the wrong skills? Also the whole group thing. What would a typical party consist of? Is it like any other MMORPG in which you'll need certain characters to work off their strengths and weaknesses? You'll need ppl with certain powers to advance maybe? Such as the basic party of a tank, a healer, ranger, caster or whatever you'd like.

[AndyBloodredMage]

As far as Ive heard from the forums on the site, there's no way to make a bad character. Each has their own strenghts and weakness, and you should worry about "wasting" your enhancements early on for every power is equal in power, except for maybe aesthetic value. But again, this is only from what i've heard, ask the resident beta tester.l

[Ertyuio]

Dont forget about the power pool that you get at 6, 15, ?, ? i forget the last two levels and im not sure bout the first two but you can pick some extra powers as well.
check this site out if you have more questions that arnt fully answered or understandable here.
www.cohportal.com