Obitus

@ ricohdah: Thank you for the kind words. I was pleasantly surprised too.

@ Nihilii: Very good points about Titan Weapons. It looks like a very interesting set mechanically, and like you, I'm sure those mechanics'll be exploited to the fullest. Honestly, I'm almost glad I have no interest in the set from an aesthetic standpoint, because I have too many build ideas I wanna develop as it is!

@ No one in particular:

I was reworking my spreadsheet earlier to adapt it for Blasters, and discovered a small boo-boo in the original calcs, vis-a-vis Focus Chi and Combat Readiness. I had the activation time in the wrong place, so I was very slightly underselling the buffs' benefit. For example, in the first chain, I multiplied the total damage by (39 recharge - 1.32 cast) / 39 = 0.966 to account for the dead time every cycle. But your cycle time is the recharge added to the activation, so what I should have used is:

39 / (39 + 1.32) = 0.967

Anyway, it's a small enough difference that I'm going to leave the original numbers intact in the OP (usually no more than about 0.5 DPS, sometimes less). The corrected values follow:

Street Justice

Chain 1 changes:

156.34 DPS w/ CR @ 39 second cooldown

183.17 DPS w/ procs + RES debuffs + Combat Readiness @ 39-second cooldown
216.71 DPS w/ Tier 3 Reactive DoT.
256.97 DPS w/ +50% global damage

Chain 2 changes:

171.6 DPS w/ Combat Readiness @ 22 second cooldown

194.43 DPS w/ procs + RES + Combat Readiness @ 22 second cooldown
225.73 DPS w/ Tier 3 Reactive DoT
267.26 DPS w/ +50% global damage

Chain 3 changes:

165.85 w/ Combat Readiness @ 23.75 second cooldown

195.92 DPS w/ procs + RES + Combat Readiness @ 23.75 second cooldown
227.81 DPS w/ Tier 3 Reactive DoT
268.18 DPS w/ +50% global damage

Chain 4 changes:

156.5 DPS w/ avg benefit of Combat Readiness @ 27.5 second cooldown

188.01 DPS w/ procs + RES + Combat Readiness @ 27.5 second cooldown
219.64 w/ Tier 3 Reactive DoT
259.7 DPS w/ +50% global damage

Martial Arts

Chain 5 changes:

179.61 DPS w/ avg Build Up @ 27.7 second cooldown

195.93 w/ procs + Build Up @ 27.7 second cooldown
228.86 DPS w/ Tier 3 Reactive proc + Build Up.
267.72 DPS w/ +50% global damage

Intentionally Suboptimal

Chain 6 changes:

155.26 DPS w/ Combat Readiness @ 39 seconds

Chain 7 changes:

175.34 DPS w/ Build Up @ 27.7 seconds

I like your methodology. It's similar to mine, and having spent the last couple of days mulling over various attack chains and slotting options for Defender Sonic Blast, I find your post especially interesting.

That said, I see two potential hiccoughs in your calcs: first, you're not taking into account Arcanatime, which is a pet name for the way the server influences cast times (named after Arcanaville, who invented the method for accounting for those server ticks). Second, and this is a less solid assertion on my part, but AFAIK you're underselling Reactive's DoT a bit.

On the first point, your Sonic attack chain should go from this:

"Chain Duration = (1 + 1.67 + 1 + 2.67) = 6.34 seconds"

to this: "Chain Duration = (1.188 + 1.848 + 1.188 + 2.904) = 7.128 seconds"

I don't have time right now to go over the implications of that change, but I imagine it'll make a pretty big difference, given that the duration of your attack string affects both DPS and average -RES debuff.

On the second point, this post describes how Reactive's DoT most likely works given the available evidence at the moment. In any case, it seems pretty clear that as long as we're not discussing scenarios with multiple Reactive-proccing attackers (oodles of pets/teammates), the Reactive DoT will not reach its stacking limit of 8 -- and thus what determines Reactive's DPS in this sort of calculation is the character's attack speed. It's basically a normal proc for our purposes.

I'll come back later when I have more time.

Thanks for all the comments.

A note about the calculations

In order to analyze Street Justice from the ground up as opposed to my usual, lazier, plug-in-the-final-numbers-from-Mids' approach, I had to make a new spreadsheet. (Available here, if anyone's curious, though unfortunately it only seems to work in OpenOffice format. Neither Excel nor Google docs likes my little dropdown menus.)

And as long as I was making a new spreadsheet, I thought I might as well go whole hog, incorporating -RES procs, over-time Build Up benefits, stuff like that. But since I'm by no means a math or a spreadsheet guru, there's a decent chance I handled some of the mechanics the wrong way. So what follows is a short rundown of my methodology. If you see a mistake, please feel free to correct me.

Rib Cracker's RES debuff: I didn't put this directly into the spreadsheet because it seemed relatively simple. I just multiply the number of Rib Crackers per attack cycle by 5 seconds (the duration, AFAIK, of the debuff), and then I divide that number by the length of the attack cycle. The result is multiplied by the 7.5% strength of the debuff. So if you have a 13 second attack cycle with two Rib Crackers in it, you'd get:

((2 Ribs * 5 seconds) / 13 seconds) * 7.5 = 5.77% over-time -RES

I'm not 100% positive that the Rib Cracker debuff double stacks, but I have no reason to believe that it wouldn't (and in fact, the very short duration tends to suggest that it does, a la Sonic Blast).

-RES Procs: These are a little more complicated. The duration of each is about 10 seconds, but they can't self-stack (Edit for clarity: Each proc doesn't stack with itself; the two -RES procs do stack with each other). So a 20% chance to fire the Achilles' Heel proc corresponds to 0.2 procs per proc check, but the faster you use the relevant attack, the more 'wasted' procs you'll have.

To deal with that problem, I borrowed Arcanaville's explanation over in a Brute thread. Basically she describes the proc's uptime as:

10 seconds / (10 + (4 * (length of proc cycle))

That number is then multiplied by the 20% strength of the debuff. So let's say you had a 4 second attack string with one proc check in it; you'd end up with:

(10 / (10 + (4 * 4))) * 20 = 7.69% over-time -RES

But in my case, I wasn't necessarily working with short attack strings. The first attack chain I discuss, for example, has a Fury of the Gladiator Proc in Sweeping Cross, which is only used once per 13.2 seconds. The FoG proc in that chain doesn't have any risk of self-stacking. So anyway, my messy way of dealing with -RES procs in my spreadsheets was to have the user enter the number of times each proc is checked per attack string, and then the sheet calculates:

0.2 * ((10 / ((IF((chain length / number of checks)>10;(chain length/ number of checks);10)) + (4 * (chain length / number of checks))

Spreadsheet pros almost certainly have a much neater approach, but this one seems to work. If the interval between proc checks is longer than 10 seconds, then the uptime is simply 10 / (5 * proc check cycle). If the interval between proc checks is shorter, then we try to weed out wasted procs by using the aforementioned 10 / (10 + (4 * cycle)) uptime calc.

Reactive Interface DoT: There's been some doubt about how the Reactive DoT works for awhile now. Near as I can tell from a combination of my own personal testing and the reports of reliable sources, the DoT is stackable up to eight times (total, from all sources including pets and other players), but there's a wrinkle: each tick of the DoT apparently has a chance to fail.

And I don't know what the chance of failure is, exactly.

What we do know is that there's a 75% chance that the DoT will be invoked to begin with. We can guesstimate reasonably that the chance of each subsequent DoT tick is also 75% (there's a decent chance it's 80%, like other fire DoTs, but I'd rather err on the side of lower).

If the stacking limit is 8, then it's virtually impossible that a single Scrapper will hit the DoT ceiling attacking on his own. So anyway, I probably handled it wrong, but I estimated the tier 3 Reactive DoT at 5 * (0.75 * 13.36) = 50.1 damage per attack.

Note that I didn't include Reactive's -RES component at all.

Estimating Combat Readiness' and Focus Chi's average benefit:

Damage buffs are pretty simple to average out over time, as long as you take that averaging with the usual grain of salt. In the case of Focus Chi (Build Up by another name), it's just a matter of estimating the power's uptime and multiplying that by the strength of the damage buff, and then accounting for the 1.32 seconds of dead space every cycle when you activate the power.

To estimate FC/CR uptime for my chains, I've just taken the amount of recharge required to run the chain and applied that to the 90-second base cooldown on Focus Chi and Combat Readiness. So if your attack chain requires +131% recharge in Crushing Uppercut, I estimate Combat Readiness at 90 / (1 + 1.31) = 39 seconds of recharge, or 10 / 39 = 25.6% uptime.

That uptime corresponds to a 0.256 * 0.625 = 16% average buff to base damage, but you're also losing about 3% of your total damage output to the cast time for Combat Readiness (1.32 / 39 seconds = 0.0338, or 3.38%).

I ignore Combat Readiness' combo-point bonus in the single-target DPS section because a long-term measurement of single-target DPS tends to minimize that aspect of the power. Sure, if you manage to time your CR so that it compensates for one of your builders' missing before a big Crushing Uppercut, then that's helpful -- but by the same token, if you delay your use of CR to account for builders missing, then you also diminish the over-time benefit of CR's damage buff.

There are, in fact, so many complications that go along with the 5% minimum miss chance for Street Justice that I feel miss chance isn't worth incorporating at all. Suffice to say that whatever slight penalty my estimates assign to Combat Readiness is probably offset by the slight advantage my no-miss estimates give to Street Justice as a whole set.

All of that said, there are aspects of the mechanics here that I may not fully understand or cannot reasonably quantify. Some things are fudged a little on purpose, either for convenience or because I just wasn't sure: for example, I don't know at what precise moment the damage buff for Build Up goes into effect. Is it at the instant the animation for the power stops playing, or at some point during the animation? Likewise, does the 5 second duration of Rib Cracker start when the character is finished, or when knee actually meets groin?

TL;DR: The numbers presented in this thread aren't meant to be taken as exact predictors of in-game performance. They are meant to be accurate enough to serve as a basis for comparison, given a uniform and plausible set of assumptions. If you feel like I've made an error, I'm happy to hear about it, and I'm also happy to hear about anecdotal experiences with each power set.

For some time now, I've wanted to reroll my first Scrapper, an MA/Regen that was intended to be sort of a lower tech Batman-esque concept. Batman obviously doesn't regenerate but when I came to CoH in 2004 I was convinced from my experience in other games that mana regen -- our endurance recovery -- was too good to pass up. So the concept changed to a regenerating ex-soldier with a contempt for firearms.

This post is already going to be a monster, so I'll spare you the details of each powerset's history. Suffice to say that, even with all of the many buffs MA has received over the years, I've felt it's a bit on a weak side -- and present-day Regen, for all of its strengths, just doesn't appeal to me. I've spent most of the last several years in CoH letting that build, and the original concept for it, collect dust. But when Energy Aura was revamped and Street Justice announced, I figured it was as good a time as any to revisit my old original Scrapper concept. Street Justice, I thought, would finally give me the mix of punches and kicks I'd been waiting for, and EA would give me concept-appropriate Stealth without a movement penalty.

35 levels later, and my powergamer sense started tingling. Street Justice felt a little weaker than I expected, and wasn't necessarily the aesthetic fit I'd imagined either. Maybe I'd been giving MA too little credit, after all.

Long story short(er): It was time to compare the sets as best as I could, subjectively and objectively. The following are my numerical comparisons, prettied up as best as I could manage. Figured I might as well share, in case anyone's interested:

The Powers (Before Crits/combo bonuses are averaged in, and with Arcanatime)

Street Justice:

• Initial Strike - 52.55 damage, 1.056s cast, 3s recharge, 4.37 End
• Heavy Blow - 72.57 damage, 1.32s cast, 5s recharge, 6.03 End
• Sweeping Cross (finisher, cone) - 93.84 damage*, 1.848s cast, 8s recharge, 8.53 End
• Combat Readiness - +20%/+62.5% ToHit/damage for 10 seconds, 1.32s cast, 90s recharge, 5.2 End (also sets combo level to three)
• Rib Cracker - 82.58 damage, 1.584s cast, 6s recharge, 6.86 End (carries a -7.5% RES debuff for 5 seconds)
• Spinning Strike (finisher, TAoE) - 96.34 damage*, 1.98s cast, 16s recharge, 15.18 End
• Shin Breaker - 102.6 damage, 1.584s cast, 8s recharge, 11.86 End
• Crushing Uppercut (finisher) - 198.9 damage*, 2.376s cast, 25s recharge, 14.35 End

Martial Arts:

• Thunder Kick - 52.55 damage, 1.056s cast, 3s recharge, 4.37 End
• Storm Kick (higher innate crit chance) - 82.58 damage, 1.056s cast, 6s recharge, 7 End
• Cobra Strike - 122.6 damage, 1.848s cast, 10s recharge, 10.19 End
• Crane Kick - 122.6 damage, 1.848s cast, 10s recharge, 10.19 End
• Focus Chi - +20/+100% ToHit/Damage for 10s, 1.32s cast, 90s recharge, 5.2 End
• Crippling Axe Kick - 132.6 damage, 1.848s cast, 11s recharge, 11.02 End
• Dragon's Tail (PBAoE) - 73.82 damage, 1.716s cast, 14s recharge, 13.52
• Eagle's Claw (higher innate crit chance) - 142.6 damage, 2.772s cast, 12s recharge, 11.86 End (also increases crit chance on subsequent attack)

I. Single-Target DPS

A. Street Justice

1. Typical Street Justice attack chain (requires +131% recharge enhancement in Crushing Uppercut):

Heavy-Rib-Shin-Crushing-Heavy-Rib-Shin-Sweeping

66.77 base DPS
5.48 base Endurance per Second
72.9 DPS w/ 10% avg crit rate
77.04 DPS w/ Rib Cracker's RES (5.68%)
142.15 w/ 95% damage enhancement
150.22 enh DPS w/ RES
156.16 DPS w/ over-time benefit of Combat Readiness @ 39-second cooldown

Tricked out w/ purple damage procs in Heavy, Sweeping, and Crushing Uppercut (35.3 avg damage each), a regular damage proc in Rib Cracker (14.35 avg damage) and -RES procs in Sweeping Cross and Shin Breaker:

155.02 DPS before -RES
177.04 w/ expected RES (14.2%)
182.96 DPS w/ Combat Readiness @ 39-second cooldown
216.46 DPS w/ Tier 3 Reactive DoT.
256.68 DPS w/ +50% global damage

2. Combat's best chain from his ATs&Powers forum post (requires +311.7% recharge in Crushing Uppercut):

Shin-Heavy-Rib-Shin-Crushing

72.09 base DPS
6.03 base EPS
78.71 DPS w/ 10% avg crit rate
82.2 w/ Rib Cracker's RES (4.44%)
153.47 DPS w/ 95% damage enhancement
160.29 enh DPS w/ RES
170.98 DPS w/ Combat Readiness @ 22 second cooldown

Tricked out w/ purple damage procs in Heavy and Crushing, a regular damage proc in Rib Cracker, and a -RES proc in Shin Breaker:

163.53 DPS before -RES
182.95 DPS w/ expected RES (11.88%)
193.73 DPS w/ avg Combat Readiness @ 22 second cooldown
224.91 DPS w/ Tier 3 Reactive DoT
266.3 DPS w/ +50% global damage

And now a couple of loony attack chains I was considering:

3. Rib-Shin-Rib-Crushing-Rib-Sweeping (requires +206% recharge in Crushing Uppercut, but more importantly it requires +279% recharge in Rib Cracker)

66.01 base DPS
5.24 base EPS
72.1 DPS w/ 10% avg crit rate
79.77 DPS w/ Rib Cracker's avg RES (10.65%)

140.59 DPS w/ 95% damage enhancement
155.56 enhanced DPS w/ -RES
165.34 w/ Combat Readiness @ 23.75 second cooldown

Tricked out w/ purple damage procs in Rib Cracker, Crushing Uppercut and Sweeping Cross, and -RES procs in Shin Breaker and Sweeping Cross:

157.3 DPS before -RES
185.97 DPS w/ -RES (18.23%)
195.32 DPS w/ Combat Readiness @ 23.75 second cooldown
227.1 DPS w/ Tier 3 Reactive DoT
267.35 DPS w/ +50% global damage

4. Heavy-Shin-Heavy-Crushing-Shin-Sweeping (requires +227% recharge in Crushing Uppercut, and +220% in Heavy Blow)

69.48 base DPS
5.85 base EPS
75.89 w/ 10% avg crit rate
(no innate -RES, because no Rib Cracker)
147.99 DPS w/ 95% damage enhancement
156.14 DPS w/ avg benefit of Combat Readiness @ 27.5 second cooldown

Tricked out w/ purple damage procs in Heavy Blow, Sweeping Cross and Crushing Uppercut and -RES procs in Shin Breaker and Sweeping Cross:

162.06 enhanced DPS
179.3 enh DPS w/ -RES (10.64%)
187.58 DPS w/ Combat Readiness @ 27.5 second cooldown
219.14 w/ Tier 3 Reactive DoT
259.11 DPS w/ +50% global damage

B. Martial Arts:

5. Martial Arts is much easier. Your basic optimized attack chain is Storm-Cobra-Storm-Crippling for 72.38 base DPS. That requires +225% recharge in Storm Kick, and +178% recharge in Crippling Axe.

Storm-Cobra-Storm-Crippling

6.06 base EPS
141.13 DPS W/ standard damage enhancement
158.77 DPS w/ a 12.5% average crit rate
179.2 DPS w/ avg Build Up @ 27.7 second cooldown

Tricked out w/ one damage proc in each attack, including a purple in Storm Kick:

175.87 DPS w/o Build Up
195.48 w/ Build Up @ 27.7 second cooldown
228.34 DPS w/ Tier 3 Reactive proc + Build Up.
267.12 DPS w/ +50% global damage

C. Now a couple of intentionally sub-optimal attack chains purely for selfish/concept reasons:

6. A standard Street Justice attack chain replacing Sweeping Cross with Spinning Strike. I'm interested in that substitution for a couple of reasons: First, I just like the way Spinning Strike looks, and second, I'm toying with the idea of skipping Sweeping Cross altogether -- not because I dislike the power, but because six attacks from a Primary set feels like a lot.

Heavy-Rib-Shin-Crushing-Heavy-Rib-Shin-Spinning Strike

5.93 base EPS
141.24 DPS ED enhanced w/ crits
149.18 DPS ED enhanced w/ Rib Cracker debuff (5.63%)
155.08 DPS w/ Combat Readiness @ 39 seconds

7. A standard Martial Arts attack chain replacing Crippling Axe Kick with Crane Kick. The reasoning here is mostly aesthetic, but also a tiny bit practical: I like to make my builds as exemplar-friendly as possible, and so it would be an advantage if all the parts of my ST attack chain came by level 8.

Storm-Cobra-Storm-Crane

5.92 base EPS
155 DPS ED enhanced w/ 12.5% avg crit rate
174.94 DPS w/ Build Up @ 27.7 seconds

D. DPS Conclusions:

Just from a casual glance at the attack stats, MA should theoretically win before -RES debuffs and StJ should theoretically pull away after you add enough +damage buffs and procs. Both of those at-a-glance conclusions are true in principle, but what's surprising is just how much extra damage it takes before Street Justice starts to pull away.

The numbers suggest that, short of high-end builds using Shield Defense and/or Fiery Aura, MA will remain at worst tied with Street Justice even using its best-case -RES attack chain. In fact, even my best StJ attack chain at the extreme high end (lots of procs, +50% global damage, Reactive DoT) only edges an analogous MA build by 0.23 DPS. Obviously Street Justice will provide more benefit to a team in a hard-target situation, but even that's a tad misleading because the two -RES procs don't self-stack; if your teammates use them there's a decent chance yours will be wasted, or at least diminished.

The numbers also reinforce what many of us already suspected: Street Justice's single-target DPS is largely unaffected by recharge buffs. Chasing a faster cycle time on Crushing Uppercut may be worthwhile from a general-purpose, qualitative standpoint, but in an over-time context the extra damage from faster CU tends to be offset by the extra damage from more -RES debuffage.

Finally, we see that Street Justice is no more endurance intensive than MA against a single target.

II. Burst Damage

This is just kind of a random exercise for me to (try to) gauge which set is better over the short term. I make no guarantees that the tactics I propose are the best for burst damage; I'm just trying to estimate how much damage each set will do over the duration of its self-damage buff.

So if we pop Combat Readiness followed by a chain of Crushing-Heavy-Shin-Heavy-Rib-Shin-Crushing and we have standard 95% damage slotting and a 10% crit rate:

Total time elapsed is 1.32 (Combat Readiness) + 12.144 seconds (attacks) = 13.46 seconds. Total damage dealt is 2609.1, unless we consider the -RES debuff in Rib Cracker, which should affect at least the next two attacks (Shin Breaker and Crushing Uppercut) -- in which case our total damage jumps to 2682.75.

StJ's "Burst" DPS for lack of a better term is therefore 2682.75 / 13.46 = 199.25. (If you're wondering why the attack chain is allowed to be >10 seconds long, it's because you still get the benefit of your damage buff as long as you start the attack before the end of the buff's duration. In our case, we're starting the last Crushing Uppercut with ~0.23 seconds to spare, which may be too slender a margin to prove feasible in practice, but meh.)

Our bursty tactic for MA could go in two different directions. Personally, both for aesthetics and for extra mitigation, I favor using Eagle's Claw, which is a clunker for DPS but adds a significant amount of extra damage for burst/AoE purposes because it boosts the crit rate of the subsequent attack by 33% (AFAIK that's additive, so if your next attack usually has a 10% crit rate, Eagle's Claw gives it a 43% crit rate).

Anyway, if we pop Focus Chi and then hit Eagle-Crippling-Storm-Cobra-Storm-Eagle we end up with a total (non-crit) damage of 2081.4 over 1.32 + 11.352 = 12.672 seconds.

With crits, we get:

Eagle (15% crit) = 483.77 damage
Crippling (43% crit) = 559.37 damage
Storm (15% crit) = 280.15 damage
Cobra Strike (10% crit) = 397.84 damage
Storm (repeated) = 280.15 damage
Eagle (repeated) = 483.77 daage

2485.05 damage, or 196.1 "burst" DPS. And at the end of the Focus Chi buff, we're primed for another Eagle-enhanced crit attack.

For curiosity's sake, let's try a simpler MA burst tactic, just chaining our single-target attacks as normal after a Focus Chi buff:

Focus Chi -> Storm-Cobra-Storm-CaK-Storm-Cobra-Storm-CaK for 2790.14 damage over 1.32 + 11.616 = 12.936 seconds, or a "burst" DPS of 215.7.

Burst conclusions: I honesty thought MA would win more convincingly here, but Street Justice makes a proud showing. Admittedly, the inclusion of the damage buff's cast time dilutes the differences between the various chains, but I don't know that it's fair not to include the buff's cast time, given that the entire exercise is predicated on our getting every last moment's worth of +damage.

III. AoE Damage

On paper, Street Justice crushes MA's AoE damage capability. After all, Street Justice has a cone and a TAoE, whereas MA only has a PBAoE. MA's PBAoE has a larger area than Spinning Strike, which is an advantage, but it's an advantage that's very hard to quantify.

Leaving that question of area aside, I thought it'd be interesting to just weigh the AoE damage output of each set, even though I know the results will be skewed in Street Justice's favor.

Our assumptions: The MA build needs a minimum of +225% recharge in Storm Kick to run its optimal attack chain, and Street Justice doesn't seem to have an overwhelming preference one way or the other, so we'll say for the sake of argument that both characters have +225% recharge in their AoE attacks too. Damage enhancement will be at the customary +95%, and we'll start with no procs of any kind. So:

Sweeping Cross (50-degree cone, 5 targets max) - 182.99 damage*, 1.848s cast, 2.46s recharge
Spinning Strike (6-ft-radius TAoE, 10 targets max) - 187.86 damage*, 1.98s cast, 4.92s recharge

versus

Dragon's Tail (8-ft-radius PBAoE, 10 targets max) - 143.95 damage, 1.716s cast, 4.3s recharge

If we assume that you're just standing in place spamming AoEs (and nothing else) as soon as they recharge, then Sweeping Cross at combo level 0 is worth 182.99 / (1.848 + 2.46) = 42.5 per-target AoE DPS, or when fully saturated, 42.5 * 5 = 212.5 AoE DPS. By the same standard, Spinning Strike at level 0 is worth 187.86 / (1.98 + 4.92) = 27.2 per-target AoE DPS, or when fully saturated, 27.2 * 10 = 272 AoE DPS.

With a 5% crit rate (AoEs typically go against minions), Street Justice's idealized AoE DPS at combo level 0 is (212.5 + 272) * 1.05 = 508.7 AoE DPS. I was originally planning to modify those numbers @ combo level 3 but since we're spamming the AoEs as fast as they recharge that would be stretching reality a little too much even for me. Instead, if we assume that just Spinning Strike always manages to get to combo level 3, our Street Justice modified AoE DPS becomes 508.7 + (272 * 0.25) = 576.7.

By itself, and before crits, Dragon's Tail is worth 143.95 / (1.716 + 4.3) = 23.9 per-target AoE DPS, or 23.9 * 10 = 239 AoE DPS when fully saturated. But there's a wrinkle: if we hit Eagle's Claw before we hit Dragon's Tail, then the minion crit rate on Dragon's Tail shoots up to 38%. Happily, Eagle's Claw recharges faster than Dragon's Tail, so that should be possible to do.

Eagle-enhanced Dragon's Tail gives us 239 * 1.38 = 329.8 AoE DPS against ten targets. For those keeping score, that's very nearly as high as Spinning Strike at combo level 3 (353.6 AoE DPS against ten targets).

AoE Conclusion: The bottom line is that Street Justice is going to win, and win handily, any on-paper comparison of AoE damage with MA. That is, unless we somehow attempted to modify the damage figures by area of effect -- and I did consider trying that, but I frankly don't have the energy. It would be a pointless exercise anyway, probably even more misleading than simply ignoring area altogether.

What I will say is that in my subjective experience, Street Justice's AoE damage output feels (perversely) almost hampered by the combo system. Sweeping Cross is not, as melee cones go, a bad power. Its coverage is, IIRC, the same as Shadow Maul's. But where I easily get at least two and usually three targets with Shadow Maul on my DM characters, I rarely get even two on Sweeping Cross. Why?

Because Shadow Maul only encourages me to do one thing before I attack -- get into a good position. Sweeping Cross encourages me to do two things -- get into a good position and have that infernal combo-level orange circle lit. And even if the orange circle is lit, that arguably means that I should wait to use a different attack (Spinning Strike, Crushing Uppercut) first, so as to make the best use of the combo points.

All of that may just be inexperience talking, but that's how I've felt up to this point. As noted earlier, I've given serious thought to skipping Sweeping Cross to give myself an extra power pick to play with. That ain't because it's a bad power, but it also ain't because I've been overwhelmed by the power's AoE potential. Sweeping Cross is actually a decent single-target attack in its own right, but if we're looking at it as a single-target attack, then Rib Cracker and Shin Breaker are both more important (and Heavy Cross cannot be skipped if we've already skipped Initial Strike).

IV. "Regular" content

Ok, this is just a pet peeve of mine: namely, that I like, at worst, to be capable of two-shotting white minions. In my view, there's no point in playing a Scrapper if I can't do that consistently, and by consistently, I mean without considering crits or procs. So I want to see what it takes for each set to reach the two-shot standard.

A level 50 minion has 430.8 hitpoints.

With 95% damage enhancement, Street Justice can therefore one-shot a white minion with Crushing Uppercut @ combo level 2 or higher, or two-shot a white minion with Crushing Uppercut @ zero combo points and another attack of your choice.

Leaving Crushing Uppercut aside, we're left with three contenders -- Shin Breaker, Rib Cracker, and Sweeping Cross, with the caveat that Sweeping Cross will clear our combo points.

Rib + Shin deals (82.58 * (1+enhancement)) + ((102.6 * (1+enhancement)) * 1.075). At base, that works out to 192.875 damage. So we need an average damage enhancement in each power of:

192.875 * (1+x) = 430.8

x = 123.4%, or 28.4% over and above the customary ED-compliant 95%.

That's at least an achievable number, even before Musculature -- lower than I expected.

Martial Arts needs to two-shot minions with Storm + Cobra (or Crane Kick, which is functionally identical to Cobra Strike for our purposes). Those two powers deal 82.58 and 122.6 base damage, respectively (and before crits). So we need an average damage enhancement in each power of:

(82.58 + 122.6) * (1 + x) = 430.8

x = 110%, or 15% over and above the customary ED-compliant 95%.

And just for kicks, how much damage enhancement would it take for Eagle's Claw to consistently one-shot a minion, a la Crushing Uppercut?

142.6 * (1 + x) = 430.8

x = 202.2%, or 107.2% over and above the customary ED-compliant 95%.

All of that said, MA is easier to get to the point where you're two-shotting minions consistently, but to be fair, a Street Justice character who one-shots a minion with CU and then three shots a second minion with builders has used the same number of attacks as the MA Scrapper who uses two attacks on each. This category is a very very slight edge to MA.

V. TL;DR Conclusion:

Some of my original reservations about both sets were unfounded. I didn't expect MA to be as competitive as it is both in long-term DPS and AoE damage. And though I knew StJ had its strengths, I honestly didn't expect the burst and two-shot comparisons to be as close as they are.

After having played my StJ/EA Scrapper up to level 35, I still have a couple of aesthetic/qualitative hangups about the set. For example, I'm not fond of Shin Breaker's animation (and definitely not fond of losing it if I exemp below level 26), but I almost feel like I have to take it. The number of attacks StJ encourages you to take is also a bit of a sticking point, as is the combo system: I can't help feeling like the combo system sometimes encourages sub-optimal behavior, but maybe that's just my own inexperience with the set talking.

Street Justice is extremely well designed, though. With the possible exception of Initial Strike, every power in the set is attractive in its own way, but not so attractive that it outshines the others. The combo system provides nice perks and an extra wrinkle to keep the player's attention. From the developers' point of view, my own misgivings are almost an endorsement. Lacking a clearly superior option isn't a bad thing unless you're a compulsive power gamer.

And I'm so compulsive that I'm tempted to go in the opposite direction, to treat the lack of a superior option as a strength in itself: if Street Justice derives no significant advantage from stacking +recharge bonuses to tighten its attack chain, then I figure you might as well roll a lowish +recharge build, in which case the best Secondary choices are Willpower, Shield or possibly even Super Reflexes.

As for MA, it remains one of the prettier power sets in the entire game, and though I still feel MA has a bit of a mechanical identity crisis (what it does well, it doesn't do well enough to justify its lack of utility elsewhere), I've been pleasantly surprised by some of the numbers I found here. On the whole, I'd say Street Justice is better designed, but that's an almost entirely abstract judgment, based on how I believe I'd feel if I were a game designer. As a player, I'm not seeing a huge numerical disparity one way or the other between these two thematic cousins.

Knock back is underrated among the player base. Knock back is overrated by the developers, at least historically.

Truthfully, you need to evaluate KB on a power-by-power, situation-by-situation basis to appreciate how good or how bad it can be, but leaving that aside, from a personal, selfish standpoint, I think there are few mechanics in this or any other game that scream super-hero-y to me as much as knockback, the farther the better.

For a long time, I've hoped that we could get some sort of extra-KB-only-on-the-kill-shot option to satisfy that aesthetic preference, but alas it's likely not to be. I'm not even sure it's possible to implement.

I have an INV/SS Tanker on which I've tried pretty much every IO loadout conceivable. For awhile, I had soft-capped Psi DEF along with soft-capped S/L/E/N. That build was basically indestructible*, even before Rebirth.

More recently I adjusted that build for less Psi DEF (~32%, one luck from the soft cap), so that I could take a supplemental AoE attack. After the compromise, I'm still basically indestructible*, even before Rebirth, and I kill large groups significantly faster.

I put an asterix after "indestructible" because, in my experience, there's a point after which you're effectively unkillable in any content that plays by the rules, but there's almost nothing you can do, build-wise, to give yourself a fighting chance against the various rule-breaking gimmicks that proliferate in the end game. Reichsman's stun, for instance, will kill you unless you have teammates keeping you upright, whether you've spent 0 influence or 10 billion on your survivability.

And we all know about the gimmicks in the iTrials.

All of that (mildly self-indulgent) rambling out of the way, the most survivable combo is probably an IOed INV/DM. I think that combo will reach the practical peak faster than most others.