Masterless Scout is at least A+.
Intuition 1 start then Int2, then Finesse + Juggler, or Hellrunner 1+2.
Finesse+ Whizzkid after. Or "choose your own adventure" on the Hellrunner side.
It doesn't look like it adds DPS, but it does. A lot. Weapon switches or Movement do tonnes of damage.
Masterless Scout is incredibly strong.
None of the Scout masteries block any of those traits in 0.9.9.8, so that's not a real advantage for masterless Scout. Instant weapon switching also isn't doing much for DPS except for the early game where you use the Juggler with several Shotguns trick to emulate a bootleg Tactical Shotgun until you get the real deal, and I find Intuition to be a bit overrated (especially after Intuition 2's nerf in 0.9.9.8); detecting enemies outside of vision just doesn't really do all that much to help you survive if you spawn in a bad hot start or there are too many enemies around for you to avoid them anyway (i.e the scenarios most likely to kill or cripple you), and it especially tends to be unhelpful in most special levels where enemy locations are more static (most of the time when I pick it up, it's just to speed the game up after I'm already in a good place power-wise, and I'll almost never get it early on N! outside of specific challenges where it's more valuable like Angel Of Darkness). Masterless Scout's one true advantage over any Scout mastery (if you're not doing a quick stair dive) is that it retains access to Tough as Nails (and Badass by extension), since every Scout mastery blocks it, but those traits are pretty lousy anyway in 0.9.9.8 (in 0.10 where TaN got a serious and perhaps OP buff, it would merit more serious consideration, but this tier list is for specifically 0.9.9.8 and so that doesn't matter here). For a build to be A+, it has to seriously trivialize most of the game and require relatively little loot luck to do so (as Ammochain does with its complete disregard for ammo economy, being able to spam 40+ consecutive Plasma Rifle/Hyperblaster bursts without needing to reload, and not even having a harder early game thanks to buffed Reloader and the Marine's overly strong inherent resistances in 0.9.9.8), and S tier would require outright breaking the game with mundane equipment even on N! (which Vampyre does by being nigh-IDDQD with nothing more than a Nanofiber Red or even without and having a track record of players, that had difficulty with HMP previously, suddenly beating N! with it), while masterless Scout lacks the oomph to do such things; you're not going to see players punching above their skill level by just not getting a mastery with Scout.
