MA: Secondary Thoughts?

I have a Ma/Reg, but to breathe some life into my returning to CoH, I am starting a new MA character.

I am trying to pick a secondary that, combined with MA meets the following criteria:

Good ST Damage (you can't be MA without accepting a role as a ST guy, so this is given)
Reasonable AoE Damage (doesn't have to be the best (its MA), but not meh-make-you-sigh-at-your-damage damage)
Pre IO Set Decked out survivability (Some soloing, self sufficient on teams)
Post IO Set Decked out def capping/etc (Would hate to actually get to that point be hard to cap)
Good attack chain flow, good scrappery feel

Pretty much anything but Reg is on the table. Looking over things, SD makes some serious sense to shore up the AoE aspects, but I also find Inv (particularly Invinc) neat, and think SR's quickness and concept feel is cool, oh and WP's fire-and-forget is differently good for quality of life...and.. and..

.. anyway, I am open to any suggestions!

Thanks for your time!

It's not going to cap your defense but the damage reduction of /Dark is quite solid and is one of the only ways to fill the psi hole. A lot of the toggles also include -tohit which effectively boosts your defense and the Oppressive Gloom stun toggle combined with Cobra Strike will let you keep entire spawns stun locked while you focus on the boss and Death Shroud eats the minions. MA itself will give you all the ST damage and attack chain you'd ever want.

I hadn't really thought about dark being a good fit, but I think it may be... what about the AoE aspect?

Will MA/DA give you any kind of decent AoE? I am looking at DT + Death Shroud? that's not alot to eek out an AoE livin'.

Don't forget about APP and PPPs. You can add fireball, and now ball lighting or the mace blast one(forget the name). My main is ma/sr and has ball lighting. I use it or DT after EC depending on how close mobs are, or which one is recharged, and it is awesome. They both rain in the crits

Haven't played MA in high enough levels really...
But any primary you could pair with Shields seems like a winner for some insane stupidity...

I have an MA/SD. She's an absolute blast to play! Having two knock-down AoEs is great.

Hi there

My MA Scrapper is MA/Elec and I wouldn't play anything else. I have resistance to recharge debuffs, slow, and endurance drains, I can sap endurance from enemies, I have a great heal with awesome secondary effects, good resists to all dmg but Toxic, and being slotted 2/3 of the way to the defense soft cap and with several of my attacks having double dmg procs in them, I do pretty damn good.

But I may be biased. /Elec is "pretty" to me, and my MA toon is kind of my alter-ego.

Wow. I came to the forums looking for an answer to this very question.

I made a MA/Fire and absolutely love it...I was kicking Snaptooth about, when it came to me that the stuns would probably mesh well with /Dark's stun aura..so what can I say...I have one of those now too.

I am not real good about pairing primary and secondaries, so I came here to see what secondaries the experts thought would complement a MA Scrap.

Shields has that yummy damage increasing aura and shield charge

Electric is my fav scrap secondary. With it, I can (1) happily live in the RWZ, (2) chase sappers, (3) beat up carnies with impunity, and (4) Steal everyone's endurance and give it to myself (Evil cackle)

Hmmm...and /elec would be a secondary that would probably do well in Praetoria which is a selling point in itself as I have so far gotten only one toon out of Praetoria, an Elec/Ice Dom.

Ok, thanks everyone

I am off to make a MA/Elec scrap. Praetorian Sister to Kickspark and Netherworld Kick. I think, if it is available, I will call her Praetorian Kick because she will be very proud to be a Praetorian..and I will not have to spend hours, and hours, thinking up a name..and it is a unisex name so if a cool guy costume becomes available (I did see that Eagle toon) I can change her sex without worrying about changing the name. Win/Win

Again thanks for this thread being here, and thanks for putting up with my brainstorming

Lisa-Off to Praetoria

I've a 50 MA/Reg, MA/WP, MA/SR, MA/DA, and I'm working on a MA/SD and MA/FA rather slowly, both in the mid-late 20s now.

Of these, the DA, FA and SD all increase your AoE abilities to different degrees. I really like my MA/DA, soft capped S/L def, and lotsa other nice stuff, great utility/control, survivability, decent damage, etc, though my motivation/reason for liking it is more concept oriented. I think the SD would take less work to make great than the FA would/will, but the FA is/can be every bit as capable (perhaps more so in some areas) while getting some more flavor and utility as well.

Shield is basically great with anything, and after playing my first toon to 50 on it, I had a lot of trouble not making more shield toons, but I'm glad I didn't, and at this point in my MA/SD and MA/FA careers, I'm much more excited over the MA/FA. Intentionally leveling those slowly though. It's painful sometimes.