Your experience with ma/fire, shield, regen ,sr and electric armor.

I have been looking for a fun and good combination for ma, shield seems interesting so far been trying it out, regen seems fun because you get to click more but not sure if its worth the tradeoff compared to shield, since shield gives extra dam while regen mostly gives you health and heals.

Fire well looks flashier, but never tried it yet, seems like it would help mas aoe, but keep in mind I do not mind st sets in fact I am use to it from playing other ats.

Sr seems great in concept but it just does not look all that visually appealing, I have to admit quickness is looking very nice due to martial arts slower recharges, other then that I cannot seeing it being much fun, iffy about click and forget sets as well.

Ele armor, hmmmm seems interesting, you get clickies, secondary effects to enemies, and a recharge power, but lacks in defense and only has one heal, seems a bit squishy, I think fire might be a little better as far as surviving goes.

Anyways this is just from what I have been reading so do not take what I said here seriously, I really just want something fun, interesting, doesnt bloom to late and has a good synergy with ma thanks all.

Almost forgot to say, I do not enjoy super tight builds I prefer to have a nice variety of attacks.

Well, my Martial Arts/Fire is loads of fun, but he IS very much on the squishy side, at least compared to the kind of Scrappers I normally play. I haven't played the other combinations, but Martial Arts/Shield should be very good. That would be my recommendation unless you're after a specific feel or something.

Hmmm as long as the shield animations do not look to much like brute strength and something more agile then that should feel great with ma.

MA/SR can be very fun, but you dont have a lot of options. Except for Practiced Brawler and Elude SR is all toggles and autos, and MA is pretty much just straight Smashing damage.

My original character is a softcapped lvl 50 MA/SR and he's pretty nasty, but I definitely feel the lack of a click heal when things manage to hit me and I get down into the red. If I don't have a green inspir or a team mate with a heal I'm outta luck. If I run into a AV or EB with high smashing resists, I'm in for a hard and frustrating fight.

So, thematically, MA/SR works and can be very competitive, but now that I'm more experienced with the game I tend to opt for power set combos that give me more options. Having played one up to 50 I don't regret the experience and still take the character out for a spin now and then, but I wouldn't make a second MA/SR for a repeat experience.

I'll second MA/Shield, I've never played MA, but AAO is second to none.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Murdok Your mom's real name is Castle.

I have an MA/SD currently at 37 and he's a lot of fun to play. Damage boost from AAO is great and Shield Charge gives you more hard-hitting PBAoE capability.

I rolled up an MA/Regen last night and I also like the feel of it. When you combine inherent Fitness with Fast Healing and Quick Recovery, your character feels supercharged. Very little down time between fights, which makes the game seem more fast-paced.

Don't have any experience pairing MA with the other secondaries you mentioned, but I can recommend both Shields and Regen.

I've run a Martial Arts/Regen up into the 30's so far and he is a lot of fun. I think some of it depends on your plans for the character. Mine was built specifically to team with some friends so 90% of his time has been spent on a team with another scrapper, a tanker, a controller, a defender, and a blaster so it's a very different scene than a mostly solo character. To me /Regen is very much a 'live long enough to take them down first" powerset.

Based on that experience I can tell you Regen is awesome for a team character - on the rare times something overflows the tank I can take pretty severe damage before I even need to hit one of my heals as it grows back very quickly given any breathing room at all. I can usually take an alpha if I run into a spawn first although I will be hitting a heal shortly thereafter. On those unpleasant occasions where we run into something a little too strong for the entire team he is often the last man standing as it takes a fairly concentrated series of attacks to take him down and that won't happen until a) he is the last one up and b) I've used up all insta-heals and inspirations.

In my limited solo experience with him I know that bosses aren't the problem that big spawns or multiple spawn aggro are for him. Single big targets are fine as stuns and knockbacks can mitigate the damage enough to keep the regen ahead of the incoming damage. Running with bigger spawns can be more of a problem as the incoming damage keeps coming after the alpha as there's no one else to draw it off and he can't take them down fast enough all of the time to stop it. It's not so much a problem at even level or less but it ramps up noticeably with +1 or more level opposition. I have slotted some for defense and I have taken the fighting pool powers so he does have some resist and defense but he's nowhere near the softcap at his current level and vs. anything other than smashing & lethal it's not much.

So I would say /Regen is great for teams, probably less so for solo play. He can take significant amounts of stray or incidental damage while doing beastly single-target damage and the team healer will appreciate having one character they can safely ignore : )

As far as MA: Dragons Tail firing off right around the same time as the Electric Scrapper's Thunderstrike lands is beautiful thing, so I recommend it for tram play as well.

I have both MA/Fire and MA/Shield being leveled off and on atm.

The MA/Fire (Pre patch haven't played him since) had two annoying bugs. Burn does self damage (Doesn't on Tanks) and Eagles Claw under the effects of Fiery Embrace doesn't do the damage it should. (Much Less)


Ma/Shield is much more Sturdy, MA/Fire pumps out more damage but is very squishy. Where shield pretty much requires 1 or 2 purples to be in that "Look at all this defense) range early on, /Fire takes a bit more effort to solo the larger mobs, but does go through them faster thanks to burn (even with the self damage bug).

In the end the one will be a MA/Shield/Fire and should have a Decent mix of survivability, AoE and ST damage. The other will be a MA/Fire/Soul, between shadowmeld and 35% S/L defense 32% Melee it should be survivable and have some decent AoE, Solid ST, and survivablity.

MA/Fire: it's awesome!