There is no orange weapon for Akaavi because there is no "Aim" Hilt (only Str or Will) and sadly tech staff and blade are defined as melee weapons so that they use Hilts not barrels. It is definitely BW's fault, they could just make Str is the main stat of Akaavi, but they chose the hard way by making it Aim instead...and players are the victims of that stupid decision.

Not the best class, but the best tree of Scoundrel. Cunning/Power and Crit. Alacrity is also good at least for PvP, you will be pretty much invincible with 1.7 s cast Underworld med.

It is because of the shotgun animation of scoundrel. BW tries to make it look cool, it is actually pretty cool. However, the animation is like slow motions in combat, especially when comparing to knife stab and swing animations of Operative. Other reasons why less and less people plays Smug are constantly nerfs thx to PvP but no compensate for PvE; annoying cover mechanic (Good god, finally BW allows smug to use cover while being rooted in 1.2); horrible looking outfits; and SW fans most likely prefer to play force classes over guns classes. Why are there more troopers than smug? For those reasons above. Slinger is way smoother than Scoundrel since they have only 1 animation that is raising the guns up and firing.

Head shot has 30m range and does weapon dmg (white). Cheap shot has 4m range and does kinetic dmg (yellow). Thus, it hits harder than headshot (as a trade-off for being in melee range). Both of them are unusable on elite/champion/boss mobs and also players in pvp. You can use a combo of grenade, then head shot on a standard mob from 30m away. You can use a combo of Shoot First with K.O, then cheap shot on standard and strong mobs in melee range. This combo pretty instantly kill a normal mob or at least takes away half of hp of a Strong mob. Since they cost no energy, they are sort of free finishers, to compensate for lacking of sustain dps of Scoundrels. Bad thing about them is they have long cd and useless in instances.

Wrong sir. At 800 resolve, Force choke will fullfill the last 200 (like in 2 sec), but the problem is it does stick with the full duration (extra 4 sec stun on the target) regardless the full resolve bar. That is why people keep crying about the resolve system does not work.

Agree! Though, you might doubt the class again, when you are 50.

Hmm, scoundrels are pretty rare nowadays. Hardly find 1 in WZ...a band of them? Are you trying to tell a fairy tail or what? Are you sure that was not a band of Shadow/Sin? Because scoundrel is just a myth. WZ should be called Fitness Zone because most of guys there are "peaceful sages" doing rock-weight lifting for more muscles and sprinting around for more endurance. They are sexy and they know it.

Force Choke can be fully channeled (6 sec) on a nearly full-resolve bar target. Opening with a 2 sec stun by leap, a 4 sec stun by any other guy next, then 6 sec Force Choke, and gg. That is how a typical cc-chain works in PvP.

People usually maintain a ratio of 1:2 of Crit and Surge (idealy about 33 crit chance and 76% Crit dmg boost) then the rest is power. IMO, in 1.2, BM sets give pretty good balance of crit/surge/power and they are cheap too. Thus, you better wait till then.

Backblast, Viral, Blastwhip, Pugnacity, Flurry, Cover, Sabotage charge, Blastwhip, Suckerpunch, Back blast...again. But yeah, until you get Shoot First+Flechette, Scrapper is pretty suck.

Lol, let i remind you most of boss fights start right after cut scene, so you do not have stealth to cc them. Well, you can waste your DA for it, but it is a real disadvantage for Scrapper. Shadow might have the same problem, but they have way better tools to over come the problem. Secondly, unless your tank companion have superior gears than you, he would have trouble to hold agro of the boss from you. There are times that even Surrender wont help you out of boss' agro. Work around way is you will have to spam basic attack here and there, root the boss, run away to buy your tank some time to get the agro. And so the boss fights of course are usually pretty long, unless you do the kamikaze style, and hope the boss will go down before you do. For someone who has Scrapper as his/her main character, he/she just gets used to the disadvantages of the class, so for him/her, it is just a norm. For other people, who have scrapper as an alt, they will see big different between how to lvl the class from their main. For example, OP has Sage as his main, and it is really easy to lvl a sage. Put the AoE on pack of mobs, the quake thing, bam bam bam, normal mobs would die before they are even to react or even if they can land some attack on the sage, the bubble absorbs pretty much all of those dmg. So i have the empathy to OP. To OP, if you find some boss fights are too tough, do normal quests 1st. They will surely help you out-lvl the content pretty quick. Come back after 2-3 lvl with better gears. It will help.

At OP current lvl - lvl 31, cover would bring up his defense by alot to survive the hardship of lacking of both defense and offense until he gets Shoot First and Flechette. Of course, i do not say that he should be in cover all of the time, but use it wisely on hard fights, such as elites, extra mobs coming would bring up the survivability. Dart from stealth is good for most of the time, except that mobs in Illum/Instances tend to break stealth and agro from 50+ m away.

Like i said, Scrapper is a late bloomer, your dps suck until you get Shoot First, and Flechette. Therefore, until then, you will have to rely on cover pretty much on hard fights. 1. That is what people who are still playing scoundrel (not sawbones) in general keep asking for. Better defensive skills. Def screen is suck bad compared to Bubble of Sorc/Sage and only usable on yourself. Dodge is just too short and not reliable. 2. You will find DA is a great tool to become the sole survivor in boss fights in 50s. For examle, after boss down, but there are still adds and your teammates are going down, pop DA, adds disappear and you can happily rez others and get loots. 4. Dart without stealth, we think it would begreat but BW does not think so. 5. You will get a healer companion (Guss) around 40s. IMO, at that lvl, I do not find him any useful except when I try to do Heroic without a real healer. Weird curve, I guess BW think Scoundrel can heal so... 6. Our tanks are suck without top notch gears. I personally use dps companion like Akaavi or Risha (they can do some real dps even with so-so gears) to sweep mobs fast rather than rely on Corso/Bowdaar. 7. More UH? Again, BW does not think so. Oh wait, BW is going to give Sawbones 1 more UH in 1.2 (3 in total and better way to proc UH). Hints is people pls reskill to Sawbones to be viable. 9. Cheap/Head Shot only works on standard and strong mobs. 10. Welcome to the world of second grade citizens. Just because Scrapper annoyed Sorc/Sage population due to buff stacks and high rating surge (which are both BW's faults), Scrapper got nerfed again, again and further in 1.2. P.S: things will get better in 50s with Shoot First (1 hit mob), Flechette(big DoT), and Flyby(clear a pack of mobs in 3 sec). However, a pack of standard mobs might still able to drag you down to hell if you are careless.

Camping at healing node in Huttball, see a guy with 1/3 hp approaches the node, KO him, eat the node then finish it him off, then pop an Underworld medicine for a maniac laugh. It makes my day regardless win/lose the game.

I assume by brawler you mean scrapper tree. Unlike other classes, Scoundrel is extremely squishy with the worst defensive skill sets among 4 classes. Moreover, it is a late bloomer, you only become a true sco when you get Shoot First at lvl 36, and Flechette around 40s. The tip is you always need to set your mind that you and your companion could be defeated against any pack of mobs, which means you have to choose your fights more carefully(right timing or just skip the fight) and be prepared. Again, you play like a sneaky ninja not a berserking Rambo. You dont want to against 2+ strong mobs at the same time. So you have to wait for those patroling strong mobs leave or cc them before you start the fight. Cover (the real one not just crouch down) is your friend against strong/elite mobs. Use cheap/head shot as much as possible, Dirty kick/knock down a mob with Thermal grenade then use those right away to drop it fast. Use your interupt wisely, especially on those elites/champ/strong mobs. Lastly, always upgrade your companion's gear, and take care of their hp bar (best is dont let it drop below 40%). Remember you have Underworld medicine, dont be shy to use it.

This still better than AION where you run through an instance (Fire Temple in AION's 1st 4 months) hundred times for several months and nothing drops for you. And nothing means NO LOOT at all.

Scrapper is a late bloomer. You onlyl become a true scrapper only after getting shoot first around lvl 36 then flechette at 40s. Generally, Scrapper is not bad, but you will find alot of frustrating movements in both PvE and PvP. For example, in PvE, you will find that you cannot backblast mobs if your tank cannnot hold agro, and mobs are auto-facing you (impossible to strafe to their back) and so your effectiveness is reduced by alot. You will also find yourself running like a turtle to each mob to kill them since Scoundrel does not have any gap closer, and elites/bosses tend to bust and agro you from 50+m when you are in stealth. In PvP, you will find yourself spend like 60% of time down to the Pit in Huttball.

Under the ideal conditions, such as targets always show their back to Scrapper and Scrapper always instantly gets behind the target (aka the training dummy), I think Scrapper's DPS is not bad. However, the common problem is the ideal conditions do not always happen. In solo PvE, you will find yourself run like an idiot to mobs from 20m aways, and spam your basic attack/grenade to those, and finally when you reach them, finish each of them in 2-3 shots, they were able to drop at least half of your HP bar. Of course, you can use Fly by to clear them, but it has 1 min cd so...too bad. Another problem in solo PvE is auto-facing mobs, which means Scrapper dps drops alot due to not able to use back blast+Flechette combo at all after the initial opener from stealth. The example for this is Dark council fight in EV. Moreover, you can find yourself have to face mobs alot due to your tank companions (Bowdaar/Corso) cannot hold the argo well. In PvP, Huttball is painful for any scrapper/concealment, they are just the least useful class (no sprint, no pull, suck defense to carry the ball) in the game and everyone agrees with this. - Some argues that Scrapper/Concealment's job is control the center, but for a good team, they dont really need that. With all pull, push, sprint, leap tools of other classes, they can score in less than 30 seconds (20 seconds is the fastest score i have ever seen). - Some says that Scrapper/Concealment's job is defend the catwalk, it is even worse, with a good positioning KB, other guys can kick your butt down to the pit or pull you to the fire, (get in cover might prevent that, but a slinger/Sniper would do that way better than a Scrapper/Concealment) and after that everyone knows the result...

Their stabbing animations are just plainly faster than our shotgun's. They just swing their knife left and right, while sco has to pull out the gun from the back, shot, then put it back. In theory, skills of both will deal dmg as soon as you press the buttons regardless the animation. In fact, due to the latency, Ops stabbing always seems to deal dmg way faster than Sco. Of course, there is an exception that some hacks the game client and make their toon extremly fast moving speed, skills, etc.

Dev said it is exactly 8 sec if your target and the one targeting you is not dead; and no one keeps hitting you with anything except DoT.

So they are trying to tweak Sco/Op so that people wont think it get abandoned by dev. They do not hate the class, yes, why do they need to hate it anway? However, the problem is the way they appoarch it is pissing off everyone playing the class. It gives the feeling that they do not even understand what the class needs. First, most of dps sco/op wants a gap closer, for being more useful in Huttball than just camping baseline or wandering around center, and of course for all general combat purpuses. Getting in cover is every stituational way to be a real gap closer, there is not always avaliable cover on the field to get in, and you cannot control the direction of where you want to get in cover (you might go left, right, or just plainly stay at one spot). Stealth is a gap closer? For pre-combat, Yes. In combat, it is just a big NO. Did BW address this problem? Yes-No-Maybe? Care to explain? Absolutely nothing from them. Secondly, Dirty fighting (mid range dps tree) with mostly 10m skills and it is still stuck with Blastwhip a 4m skill to generate Upperhand in 1.2. Again, a big disappointment. Thirdly, mobs auto-facing. While all other DPS classes do not have any problem with positional requirement to do full dps, Scrapper/Concealment have to suffer this disadvantage in PvE. At least, they should give players some clues, what they want to achieve for the class with the change and some plans for the future(if the change does not meet the goal). They failed to do that and that makes people piss off.

Can you mind share you gears, and what specific mods you are using on them? Your stat is my dream.

"Stealth is the gap closer, my friend!" or "If you cannot reach your target with your stealth, you are doing it wrong, L2P!" or "Gap closer? What are you doing with your stealth?" or "You can shot from range, idiots!" Until these people, including some sco/op playing sawbones/medicine and clueless about dps tree, stops saying those nonsense, I guess BW wont fix the class' utility anytime soon.

Or let Backblast hits 10-15% less dmg while not behind the target. Positional requirement puts scrapper in disadvantage for many situations in PvE. Or just make the NPCs not auto-face you. Why BW makes them auto-face is beyond me.

Disappear Act+Flee the Scence is only used as a sort of mobility in PvP (but its a very last resort only when you desperatly want to finish off your target). In PvE, whenever you use Disappear Act, it will reset the fight right away. So it cannot be used as a mobility skill in PvE, except in raid/instance big fights (of course, your mates must still fight against mobs when you use Disappear Act). But it has 2m cd, and the most effective defense a Scrapper has. In short, it is too important to waste just to reach some mobs in a PvE fight. Dirty Escape can be used as a mobility but it is not that useful, since if you kill the mob, you cannot use Dirty Kick. And if you dirty kick it, you will have to go back and kill it later. 30 sec cd is also pretty long.