The reason why Scout is worse than Hunter and Ranger in 1.65 and in a pure solo context isn't just because of self buffs. Even if they had self buffs, they would still do between 40 and 50% less damage than the two others (taking the pet into account for the Hunter), and the shield would still not make up for it: 5% block chance, +28.5% at RR5, +11.35% with 277 dex, +6% from MoB2, -8~9% from defense penetration gives around 42.35% block chance, of which you lose 50% against your most common enemies. From a pure mathematical perspective, it simply doesn't work. Also too much value has been given to Slam (and incidentally slow bows) from the days the class was designed, a style with no to-hit bonus (18% miss rate yay), very high endurance cost, that can be purged, and isn't even unique since everyone else except SB has more or less easy to use stuns their spec lines.
That's very true. Defense penetration trumps a lot of the theory crafting and the dummy raw dps testing that people like to do. In a solo context, the fact that Scout works the way it does (which you described) makes it universally a worse soloer than the other two.
You could hit twice as hard on one class compared to another and it still wouldn't matter if 50% of your attacks are evaded. Especially if that class you are fighting is using DW (Ranger, Assassins) and cutting your own defense layer in half in return.
However, they do exceptionally well in a stealth group setting. If archers were actually grouped in visible groups, they'd also do great there, due to having excellent bow aptitudes, excellent guarding potential and the ability to decently spec in both bows and their melee line of choice without sacrificing one of the other over much.
So imo, they're a bit closed in that group sniper role that they're quite stellar at, with the added benefit of offering party members an anytime 9s stun, a great guard, and that's where it stops for them.
They're just not a good solo class, lacking the utility of a Hunter pet to deal with Casters, the Evade/block defense 50%, pen and dmg add of a Ranger.
Also, purge is 30 minutes here, so there will still be those times when you will be able to stun, pull out the bow for 2 more arrows and win fights that way..
People often time look at DAOC classes and evaluate their merit solely based on how many favorable match-ups they have in 1 on 1, and compare the classes that do the best against everything else and end up with a completely wrong baseline. If you compare Minstrel, Bone dancer to the other 37 classes, everything suck solo.
Similarly, while it's good sometimes to sort classes by archetype and how good they compare within archetypes, if you start comparing archers, well then everybody plays Rangers because they have the best bows (tied with scout), the best buffs (dps add/baselinestr/d/q,), the best melee (due to how Def Pen works). That sort of comparison fails to acknowledge that DAOC isn't designed as a solo warrior game, and that Albion Scouts can rely on very good infiltrators, and beyond excellent minstrels to group up with and form devastating/mobile stealth groups with..
That being said, you can still rack up kills in any settings solo as a scout due to how good the sniping is, but it will require playing in a specific way, chosing targets, and environments. If that fails, you can still murder people in a stealth group
