KillerShrike

Axe blooms late, but finishes up decently powerful, and the reliable knockdown is good mitigation. It does lose out to War Mace however.

Yeah, the dev's really got it right on this one.

I wish I could buy a token in the store to rebuild at least one of my scrappers as a stalker instead...I would do that in a second. ST oriented scrappers feel a bit anemic to me now compared to a stalker equivalent.

Yeah, any /WP Scrapper is hard to beat in terms of easy of play and learn-ability.

No, never, not once. I have taken Provoke on a scrapper w/ a damage aura before...worked out ok.

Alpha yes, obviously.

The rest...mostly subjective, and based on how much you value your time and how high your tolerance of repetition is.

I've got too many 50's and too little time to t4 them all. I hit them up as I can and go a more opportunistic route. But, basically, I consider t3 on non-Alpha slots to be good enough. Everything else is gravy.

My buddy has focused on a few of his 50's and has them all t4'd out. He feels that it was basically worth the time. Personally, I would get bored playing the same 3 characters thru the same trials over and over and over again.

T3 gives the best return on investment, but T4 grants an edge. It's up to you ultimately.

The numbers say its within normal performance ranges.

The RESPONSIVENESS is more of the issue, IMO, and it's mostly the loooooooooong wind up of the t9 coupled with a kind of droopy dog low register sound effect that contributes to this widely held impression.

I just avoid using the t9 on large teams / leagues except vs tough opponents with a fair amount of hitpoints remaining, as otherwise its is simply too common to start the long animation only to have some shooty type gip my target, and I'm still rooted in the animation for another second or two finally smacking open space and then running on to catch up with the rest of the team. It sucks, as the t9 is big damage, but its just too long of an animation on a fast paced team to use on anything less than a boss or elite boss.

The other attacks animate almost too quickly...I sometimes manage to throw an extra attack in on a foe that has already been defeated by my previous attack.


To add insult to injury, the t9 animation is just kind of goofy looking IMO. I wouldn't mind the downsides as much if the animation looked bada$$. Maybe one day we'll get an alternate animation, but I'm not holding my breath.

I went w/ Spiritual on my /EA brute for a high recharge build, but Agility wasn't out yet when I went down that route.

If I ever cycle back around to the character I might build out Agility and switch over.

Yeah, I'm on the west coast also, work, have a family, and so forth. It can be hard to get some trial action going in the evening after wifey is in bed due to low population on the server around that time.

I have my son every other week and he plays, but his bed time is 830ish; after dinner, homework, and bath time we usually squeeze in 45 to an hour of play and sometimes we can get on a trial in that window, but often we can't.

The weeks I don't have him, I usually work on other projects or play a lowbie alt to de-stress before bed.

Thus, I tend to get in some iTrial action on the weekends. However, I did mostly solo thru the DA arc with one of my newish 50's, Big Blue Basher a couple of weeks ago. I unlocked Reactive and Judgement doing it (he was already alpha slotted) and managed to get t2's in both, but I just haven't gotten the drops or threads to go any further on non-trial content as of yet.

I'm glad there is some solo-able i-content now, but I do wish they would put in a 4-8 man iTrial so that we could get something going when the server head count is low.

Had fun w/ you on Diabolique and BAF, nether.

My son got his 3rd 50 yesterday...Hyperbow (Archery/Trick Arrow Corrupter). Already got a couple of iTrials and a Tin Mage under his belt.

I tried Agility on my MA/SR scrapper and it just wasn't workable, so I re-slotted Cardiac. I had respeced into the end curve allowed by Cardiac, and Agility just wasn't cutting it with Stamina and Physical Perfection to work with.

On the other hand, my WM/Shield Brute uses Agility, and with Stamina, Physical Perfection, and Superior Conditioning, plus different set bonuses slanted more towards END he's perfectly fine.

All my Dark Armor characters run Cardiac. My Energy Aura and several WP's run Spiritual. One BS/WP runs Musculature.

My original character, from release, is an MA/SR scrapper; lvl 50+3, pimped out and yadda yadda yadda. Basically...I've put a lot of hours behind the wheel piloting MA/SR over the years.

Both MA and SR have gone thru various nerfs and buffs over the years. It's been very solid for a good while now. MA is good. SR is good. MA + SR is good + good.

MA has some competitive advantages over some other melee sets. Namely, it has a tool boxy collection of attacks that allow a good variety of IO set slotting and can combo in different ways with other abilities; it has a diverse set of power animations allowing some variety (I like the punching animations, personally); Focus Chis is a workhorse build up effect, no gimmicks or weirdness; Eagles Claw has some custom logic granting a small window of crit bonus to your next attack if you queue it right away while EC is winding down; Crippling Axe Kick (in its current version) is practically as good as a t9 attack, making FC+EC+CAK a vicious combo.

MA has some downsides as well. The buffet line secondary effect options lack focus. It is all smashing damage, all the time. It has weak AoE...you get Dragon's Tail (though coming off Stalkers you likely wont notice). EC is sweet and both of it's animations (punching and kicking) look great, but has a long animation that hurts its overall DPS (I still love it and use it though).

SR has some advantages...the main one is DDR. You will be effectively immune to defense debuffing, assuming you take all 3 toggles and all 3 def autos (and you would be foolish not to). If you are cheap or on a budget, you can softcap SR easier than anything. If you take all 3 auto def powers you gain a scaling resistance buff as you drop below...60% health or so...1% RES per % below the threshold; it's harder to reason about than straight up RES, but it does help your survivability. If you take Quickness you get a nice global recharge buff, movement buff, and debuff resistance for both...it's very nice. SR has a nice "Minimal FX" animation set which is convenient for thematic / conceptual reasons on some toons.

SR has some disadvantages...such as no click heal or END management or Taunt aura. You need to take 7 of the 9 powers and should also take Quickness, and prior to softcapping you'll want Elude too. I slot the 3 toggles w/ 4 total slots (LotG x4), the Autos with 2 slots (IO DEF x2), Practiced Brawler w/ 2 (IO RECH, IO END), and Quickness w/ 1 (RUN)...so it will put pressure on your build no matter what you pair it with. All you've got is DEF, so auto-hit powers and cheaters like the Rularuu or Devouring Earth Quartz pet will mess you up real fast. Elude, if you need it, has a hard END crash. Other sets can get as much DEF, plus other stuff...they just have to work harder for it and get by with half as much DDR (or less). Your mez protection is a click; back in the day when toggle mez protection could get de-toggled click mez was actually a pretty good deal...but now its just annoying IMO...your attack chain will get interrupted for a stupid freaky-styley pose animation over and over again...and if you get defeated and rez back up...oops no mez prot until Practiced Brawler recharges.


Finally, while both MA and SR are good and they don't work against each other, neither do they provide any particular synergy to each other. There's no compelling mechanical reason to put them together...or not to put them together. They are basically orthogonal to each other.



So, personally though I still enjoy my MA/SR, the next time I feel like making a Martial Arts character I'll make a Street Justice character instead. And the next time I want to make a DEF based character, I'll make an Invulnerability character and softcap with I/O's and Invinvibility.

YMMV. Good luck!

Shield is basically better on a Scrapper. But...its still pretty sweet on a Brute.

It's the difference between insanely awesome vs merely awesome. Either will be fun.

I have a level 50 KM/EA Brute that I started when Praetoria was released; Kid Hype on Champion.

He was fun and awesome before the EA buff when EA was sub par, and now he's even more fun and awesome now that EA is sup par.

I built him for durability and recharge, and he tanks better than most tanks while dishing decent damage. My only disappointment with the character is that he can't quite do the Rikti Pylon test. I seem to have a hard time keeping Fury high enough solo vs the pylon. I haven't played the character in a while, but I've been thinking about kitting him out w/ the new ATO enhancements to see if that helps his Fury enough to get the job done.

The set combination also looks pretty cool and thematic together, especially with the "Atomic" Aura costume piece added in.

I've really enjoyed the character; its one of my favorites.

It can be frustrating at times due to various deficiencies that have been detailed elsewhere, but it is a fun casual set, with lots of whacky abilities.

I'm a Green Arrow / Hawkeye fan, so I get a lot of enjoyment from the archery combo when it works.

I find it most fun on teams where the utility / tool-box of options keeps things lively, but find it tiresome to solo as its very clicky clicky clicky...lots of smallish attacks. Oil slick is very nice, of course, but aside from melting every 2nd or 3rd mob in flaming oil it can be a bit of a scramble.

...So its survivable because you can run away around a corner, and heal back up quickly?

Well...ok then; personally if I have a melee character that has to run away from melee in order to survive in all but the most extreme scenarios, I consider that to be a problem.

Obviously, tolerances for that sort of thing differ; mine is low.

I want my melee types to be able to get stuck in and stay there. And even though I team a lot, I expect my toons to be able to solo effectively and not have to rely on teammates for buffs or support. The ability of good melee toons to be completely self sufficient and survivable is what attracts me to them.

Do I have terminal Scrapperlock? Maybe. But I embrace my smash-faceness tendencies and I don't consider "run away! run away!" to be a good "tactic"; at least not for me. I like sets that can take a beating. Brute Regen is better at it than Scrapper, but other Brute sets are, IME, better.

Maybe Regen is fine and it's all just me. Maybe I'm just making different value judgements regarding what is acceptable levels of performance to suit me. Maybe Regen really is a little sub-par and could use a few small tweaks to re-tune it and keep it competitive and relevant. Maybe none of it really matters and there's no point commenting on it. Who is to say, really? {shrug}

The counter argument is that _any_ melee armor set can be made awesome with the right IO's and Regen is no exception to this. Also, Dark Melee offers a lot of mitigation between to-hit debuffs and a healing attack. Many other attack sets offer less mitigation than DM.

So, I agree with you that a tricked out incarnate Regen is amazing, because all tricked out incarnate melee characters are some degree of awesome.

It's the non-tricked out leveling Regen characters who tend to not compare well to other sets, particularly in the critical "am I going to get frustrated, delete this toon, and remake it with a different secondary" earlier stage of the game.

Personally, I won't play regen on a scrapper anymore. I will consider playing it on a brute, though thus far out of 5 attempts I deleted 3 of them, and 1 was on beta and got level bumped past the painful levels so doesn't really count.

From direct experience I think Regen works well w/ StJ on a Brute, but so does WP. Both are playable for me...but I leveled the Stj/WP to 50 while the Regen mirror was left behind...so...take that for what little its worth.

Come on now, regen isn't _that_ bad. WP and inherent fitness definitely overlap Regen, but it just needs some love to make it more competitive.

It actually works ok on Brutes currently; just moving some numbers around a little and / or adding some auto debuff resistance would probably be enough to address the issues.


Anyway, the current studio has been pretty good about periodically reassessing sets that are sub-par and making intelligent realignments. It may not happen in a time frame that we like, but it does happen, and I'm confident that eventually Regen will get a pick me up.