For starters, who's your friend Ben? I'd love to talk with them about my experiences as a scout and why I think it's great, and what you'd need as a baseline to excel in the midwest. Send them towards the somi discord or have them hit me up on facebook, maybe they'd feel better with scout.
For this increase in damage from behind, the rogue gives up significant defenses in the forms of armor and body, and gets upgraded versions of the per day skills a fighter has. This means they are in much greater danger if something turns around on them, unless they rely on expending per day skills.
This is a super duper NERO / Alliance 1.3 mindset. I'm working through it with another convert on it and he's struggling with the same opinion. Profs and backstabs aren't the name of the game anymore, especially at higher levels. It's about per lp skills.
The general reduction in damage, monster abilities, and means that a lot of times when someone has a back shown, it's worth dropping a lp move.
Rogues get a high level take out from behind for 2 xp every 15 xp spent, this means a pure rogue is looking at 8 or 9 at 15 level (I really achievable level given the 2.0 xp curve). Paralysis is a hard take out. It's a defense or die move against just about everything. Curse based defenses are relatively rare, which leaves baseline monsters with only a few defenses options, phase, dodge, parry, evade or mettle (Maybe weapon guard?). In Michigan these tend to land. Usually if you've caught some grunt, you've got them. With larger monster who have a few defenses, you can quickly eat up its catch alls. Letting someone land that take out if you can't bust through it's phases. Along this line you've also got a 4 assassinates at 125. Combined with an assassin's edge or you dip into fighter some. You can make these call body relatively easy. That'l kill a bunch of stuff in a single shot. Especially undead, which are relatively common in the midwest.
So you're sitting pretty at at least 12 solid per day moves. How many real chances are you getting to do back work before monsters die per day? 20? 30? 1/3 of those encounters you can shut down pretty quickly.
I don't value the other per day skills a ton but, that's a fair amount of take out, or takeout adjacent moves. You've also unlocked at least 1 opportunistic attack, so you can drop something from the front AND surprise attack, which is crazy given mods with 3 counting, or a good bindomancer who you know how to work with.
Lastly, trap globes don't get a lot of credit but they should. Shatter is one of the best effects in 2.0. It's an undead killer, it's a take out to lot of humanoid npcs. You don't need a light, you don't need read magic, it's rogue xp to start making them.
Even if the other lp skills aren't great (other folks rave about them but, I don't see the value maybe as a scout, they're a bit pricy), your toolkit of teh workhorse skills are SUPER strong.
I think you're selling the class way short if you're only looking at backstab damage.