Just came back and they finally did it....

Hello all. I've just recently returned to the came after a brief hiatus of a yr and some change and I'm loving all the new content. Now I've never played a scrapper past the 20's but after the new editions I figured why not. So after looking around ,hoping my search fu is still up to speed, I realized there wasn't much in depth perspective on the plays styles and progression of a Kinetic Melee primary coupled with lets say....Regen (personal favorite), Shield (liking this new comer...in theory atleast), and SR. Now my Objective is to get each one to 50 in the order as listed and as such I have already rolled a KM/RGN up to 10.8. So, my inquiry to all is multi-fold....what should I expect progressive and performance wise out of these combos, what would be some strategic choices of there power selections. Again, thanks in advance, you all will be an awesome help.

In my opinion, KM is great as a single target set. You'll want the 3 first attacks and the final one, as well as the "build up" (Power Siphon).

The PBAoE, Burst, can be decent as it has a good chance to knockdown, but that said it's not fantastic as the animation is slow and the radius low (standard I know, but 8" isn't enough to me ). As for the KB cone, well... It's a KB cone, enough said ; and the Focus clone (Focused Burst) has a slow animation, making it not worth it in the ST chain for pure damage - although the range and guaranteed (I think ?) knockdown can make it valuable for some leveling builds.

Burst will help your survivability quite a bit as it both knocks down multiple foes and also slaps a double sized damage debuff on them (compared to the other KM attacks). The animation isnt _that_ long, though you'll want to not throw it towards the end of a fight as a finisher with teams as your mates will often have wiped the bad guys out by the time your damage procs. When solo its a great finisher however. So, as everything else, situational considerations apply.

I'm still toying with Focused Burst (the ranged attack), but thus far I like it. It's a little awkward to work into an attack chain at first, but now that I'm getting used to it, it is working out for me and I'm finding uses for it. It's really great for runners and fliers...but if you have the veteran ranged attacks then not as much.

Repulsing Torrent is the only lame duck in the set in my opinion...what kind of a melee character really wants a cone knockback?

Uhm *cough* Shockwave

Put a few more levels on my KM character, got Concentrated Strike and slotted it. Wow. Very nice.

The animation is...well, lets just say I'm not 100% sure I like it.

But the damage is considerable. I often one shot even lt's with it when my damage bonus is high enough.

Good times!

Shockwave is very different from Repulsing Torrent. Shockwave is a 30' 90 degree cone, that does 67 base damage at level 50. It has a 100% change of a 1.45 knockback. So while it's knockback, it's not a lot, and it's 100% and it's a huge cone.

Repulsing Torrent is a 45% cone that does 50 base damage, and it has an 80% chance of a 6.23 knockback. So it's not going hit everyone, and those it does it, it's going to knock really far back. RT is junk IMO. Maybe amusing to knock mobs off of tall buildings, but not worth much otherwise.