PvE Specific: Power DPS Hammer Scrapper - just how "bad" is this?

[Kichwas.7152]

Looking over various build sites I don't see hammer scrapper other than once:

https://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Scrapper_-_Barrier_Bruiser

- which is intended as a solo open world PvE build.

 

A month back I tried out a scrapper build with my engineer because... well, I find Holosmith uninteresting to play. In fractals from T1-T2 and I seemed to be doing OK. Not great but not bad - but also no expert in Engineer:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PegAIRlRwgYNMNWKO0L/teA-zRIYhSFHM6ZQ4SwRShKVg0B-e

- that's mostly exotic gear because this is just me trying to come up with a reason to use an alt more, and that's stuff I could toss together from random dungeon tokens then test out for a bit.

 

Am I missing something. Given that I've not played engineer much over the years, I seemed to be doing a lot better on this than I expected. In that exotic gear, coming in about middle of the pack in the average fractal or dungeon I went into, when I expected to be consistently dead last given how the build just never shows up as recommended.

 

And my build is... not well thought out either... It's just "hey, some random traits, and toss in all the scrapper utilities that do damage just because... and oh, this rune is cheap."

 

Why is hammer scrapper "bad"? Or is it not bad, it's just not liked?

 

Is there a DPS build here I should/could pursue into ascended gear and higher fractals, or was I getting mid-range results because my random facerolls on the keyboard were just that 1 in a million chance of hitting the right combo amid a pack of people that by random chance repeatedly didn't know what they were doing yet by random chance we still somehow cleared content? :)

 

Like... what am I missing?

 

[Endaris.1452]

Use modified ammunition in firearms, incendiary ammo does nothing for you if you don't run condition damage.

Replace the Accuracy sigils with something more useful. Your modifiers in firearms + fury put you on 105% critrate which is wasted. There's a ton of really cheap budget power+precision food like griffon egg omelets you can use to get your crit rate to 100%.

If you're alone running Short Fuse is ok but if you're in a group with a firebrand or something you should take Glass Cannon because you'll get some extra fury from your group.

What makes scrapper powerful is that the barrier allows it to very easily maintain damage buffs that depend on your health like Glass Cannon or a Scholar Rune bonus.

Aside from that you should really invest in an ascended hammer because for weapons the difference between exotic and ascended is quite noticeable as you not only gain more stats but also higher weapon strength.

So far for optimizing damage.

 

Hammer scrapper is not bad by any means. Hammer is in fact an absolutely amazing weapon that makes me wish we had it on core. What Scrapper mostly suffers from is that it has nothing really great in its trait line in terms of damage that can compare to other elite specs and the utilities are also rather meh with Shredder Gyro being the only strong damage option. It also doesn't have any reasonably good elite skill for boss fights. As a result the numbers you can achieve on paper are ~20% lower than meta classes. However unlike other classes it is more realistic for scrapper to reach its numbers even in real fights with real opponents thanks to the barrier protecting modifiers like Glass Cannon and Scholar rune. This still assumes that you play well though.

 

If you go on and try to optimise your damage output, scrapper can be played pretty much everywhere but people *will* give you weird looks in more difficult content and may kick you more quickly if you don't show them that you can perform.

[Kichwas.7152]

So my suspicion is more or less right?

 

Scrapper is just fine, it's just not popular and doesn't look as good 'on paper'.

 

I am slowly working my way through all 12 characters... and Engineer was a deep alt for me. But she happened to be one of the only ones that had not even started Path of Fire and... I just recently realized that you want to pick all three choices for the council at the very start of Path of Fire and then run the entire thing with each choice to be able to unlock 4 ascended back items (the 4ths for having gotten the first 3)... so... dusting off the Engineer and one other alt. And as noted above I did recently use the engineer in some lower fractals for a bit and noticed better than expected results.

 

So... if Hammer Scrapper is just fine, then I think I will put that Ascended hammer on the to-do list. Hammers / Maces / Clubs are my favorite weapon choices in fantasy games. Swords just make me feel like you're going after someone with a TV Informercial knife... and the sound effects for swords in a lot of games make them feel even weaker. In Guild Wars the sound and animation for hammers and maces make them feel about 20x more potent than they actually are... so I'm always searching for a play option where the weapon is actually good.

[Endaris.1452]

It really depends on what you are playing and who you are playing with.

For low level fractals, story content etc. Scrapper is really nice - until you fail to hit things to generate barrier.

If you play in a rather high-end performance environment where people play meta builds and play them well, you will see the difference in numbers between these meta classes and scrapper very clearly, it's not just on paper if you have some skill and practice on the meta classes. I am usually playing Holosmith when it comes to DPS in organised gameplay but I was recently trying to play DPS Scrapper in raids for a bit as personal preparation for the Random Comp Raiding League challenge where I filled the scrapper slot for my squad and it was not great but definitely good enough on some encounters (like Keep Construct or Samarog) but greatly lost out on other encounters to the point of really feeling like a burden (for example on Xera). I would also imagine that Scrapper has a rather extreme deficit when looking at competent meta groups doing fractal CMs.

Comparing to what good players can dish out on meta classes, Scrapper simply looks bad.

 

From how it sounds, this is not the content you will be playing with your Scrapper though and if you ignore that content then you can indeed call your suspicion correct. Scrapper is quite good in open world and casual content, better than many classes thanks to its constant barrier generation and versatile hammer weapon skills.