Preferred pairing for Fire Melee, and why?

After having searched the scrapper forums, I've found a surprising dearth of FM/FA threads, but far more /SD, /Reg and /WP pairings. Though I love the thematic coherence of going FM/FA/Blaze, I'm getting the impression that it's not really a good synergy.

I'd be interested in knowing: what's your preferred secondary for Fire Melee, and your reasons. Extra points for rationales as to why /FA seems to get skipped over.

Thanks in advance!

SR, because it rocks and leaves you enough room to pick up aid self

I'd actually advice *against* pairing Fire Melee with WP

Fire/WP or Fire/INV. Great fire and forgot powers and easy to get your defense numbers up with IOs.

Overall, and if money is no object, I strongly reccommend SD. Shield. Charge. If you haven't used this power before, you need to. A pimped out fire/sd slaughters groups.

Now if you're building a toon to solo av's without insps, then I'd say go with something else that allows for a heal. SR would probably work fine and it would be much cheaper. It's tough to fit aid self into a softcapped sd, but then again, it's not impossible either (though I didn't try, so maybe it is... lol).

FA has no -KB powers in and it's just not tough enough for a scrapper. If I pick FA, I should had roll a blapper. At least a blapper would have been more tougher and do more damage. But that just me.

I'm not sure how would you make a blaster tougher than a FA scrapper unless you built for defense on it - in which case you could do the same on the FA scrapper with better results.

Fire/Super Reflexes for a cheap AV killer and decent all-around toon.

Fire/Shields for not so cheap obliteration of everything in your path.

Fire/Fire for getting lots of opportunities to use Rise of the Phoenix.

i have a top specced FM/SD an it's insane. by far the best melee damage dealer i've played for versatile game play.

DM/ solo's better but no AOE

Elec/ Farms better but no ST

Fire/ IMO is perfect.

I'd say FA, SD, or /Elec.

A Fire/Fire Scrapper is squishy, but puts forth a big amount of burst damage, and I also think it looks cool. Not the strongest, but not BAD. The holes in its mez protection are a problem.

A Fire/Shield scrapper has better sustainable DPS with Against All Odds, probably even if you take the Damage Aura in the other sets out. It also gives you a great AoE attack in Shield Charge, defense that you can softcap (along with decent resistance), and really good mez protection. If you invest money into this build, you'll have a monster. The only potential issue is that it lacks a self-heal or endurance recovery power.

A Fire/Elec Scrapper will have a damage aura, solid resistance and mez protection, a self heal/recovery click, a PBAoE endurance recovery power with a Tohit check, and an "Oh crap" button in Power Surge.

Of the three, I'd eliminate the Fire/Fire. It's too weak compared to the others, sad as it makes me to say it. The order of secondaries listed by me, in my opinion, is /shield, /Elec, and /Fire in last place.

I love fire melee, it's my favorite scrapper primary and it sounds like your set on it.

To pair up shield defense with it I'm sure would be the best option. I have a level 50 shield scrapper and shield charge is just that fun. And despite many saying its expensive to softcap, it can be done cheaply, and once you do it you'll be nigh on unstoppable.

That being said, I wouldn't be so quick to overlook willpower. My FM/WP scrapper was my fastest and easiest toon to date to get to 50. I basically leveled up (pre difficulty slider) in hazard zones jumping from one large spawn to the next solo. RttC draws them in, then fire sword circle knocks them down, then pick off those still standing with greater fire sword and your golden, wash rinse repeat. And doing all that without hardly noticing your green or blue bar move at all. And if you can get your defenses up into the 30% range and then add that to your incredible regen factor, you need only carry a couple big greens to offset any big damage bursts. And you're strong right out of the box, no waiting till the 40's to get your defenses up and shield charge fully slotted. RttC at 16, FSC at 18 and then QR at 20 and you're off to the races!

Honestly the only reason why Shield shines is because of Shield Charge. If Shield Defense didn't have Shield Charge it would be an average power set, but I'm assuming.

Whenever anyone asks what secondary to pair with my answer will be /Shields, with the caveat that if you want a cheap build then /SR. But really, taking the time to fully outfit a /Shields scrapper is worth it. All other secondaries fall behind it. It's that good.

Now, I have a kick *** Invuln, Dark Armor, and will be working on Willpower. All can reach that level of survivability with some work, or at least within the ballpark, but none compare the survivability with the best scrapper damage boost in game and a kick *** AoE attack to supplement offensive ability.