What are currently the best scrapper secondaries?

What are the best secondary powersets for scrappers? And why? Thank you for your time!

If you want to list which ones to avoid, that also works.

What mauk2 said. The devs have had many, many years to balance the secondaries. They've done a good job with the Scrapper secondaries. Primaries too. Different sets are better at different things, but there are no best and worst sets without knowing build goals, play style, and so on.

Edit: Heh, and you clarified while I was posting. Unfortunately, I'm no Street Justice expert.

Shield

/thread

Again... doesn't really matter. StJ doesn't really have meshing power. It's pretty good with any set. I would say if you want some extra damage, go SD (Not sure how the animations are changed with SD). Easy and cheap to soft-cap? SR. Tough in just about every content? Invuln or WP.

OK, here are some guesses with Street Justice. I assume it's a smashy smashy set like Martial Arts or Super Strength with a mishmash of secondary effects that provide a lot less mitigation than you might hope. I'm going to assume it's a low-mitigation primary. I also assume it has no heal?

While leveling at least, some secondaries are happier with some mitigation or a heal from your primary. You're not really getting that, so for leveling purposes, you may want to limit yourself to secondaries that provide a more complete package.

In that regard, I think Willpower or maybe Energy Aura would be best, at least for survivability. Then there are a bunch of secondaries that would like a heal, but greens are usually sufficient, and you can always pick up aid self. I'd put Super Reflexes, Shield Defense and Invulnerability in that boat, and would probably pick Shield Defense to boost your damage, and because Shield Charge is also smashy, so is consistent in that way. Then there are secondaries that I think do best with decent mitigation from your primary, which is something you don't (?) have a lot of, so these are the ones I'd be more cautious about choosing - Dark Armor, Electric Armor, Fiery Aura and Regeneration.

As I said, I don't have any experience with Street Justice, and I also haven't studied Energy Aura, so take my recommendations (particularly for the Street Justice/Energy Aura combo) with a grain of salt. A really big grain of salt. Maybe a salt lick. Maybe a "why am I even posting" sized salt lick.

Shield.



GOD DEVS WHY CAN'T I PLAY SHIELD WITHOUT HAVING TO LIVE WITH SHIELD GFX AND ALTERNATE ANIMATIONS grumble grumble I'll go sulk in that corner, and reroll
another SR and whine about having lower res and HP and no fear protection
another inv and whine about having lower DDR and defense and no fear protection
another WP and whine about having lower DDR and defense

I'd suggest energy aura.

WHAT!???

Actually, it makes sense. New and improved energy aura does several things that are good for all scrappers, and especially Street Justice.

Street Justice really benefits from a lot of recharge. It is all about getting as many crushing uppercuts as possible really, because CU has about double the DPA of the other attacks. Energy aura allows you to maximize recharge, leading to more CU.

It also eliminates the need for endurance. Between energize and energy drain you really don't need to worry. This allows you to use either musculature or spiritual to increase damage instead of Cardiac.

Energy aura also gives the potential for some seriously good defense stats. On my planned build I have 65% to smashing/lethal/energy, 54% to fire/cold and 51% to negative with maxed energy drain. That is enough to leave you softcapped to all but psychic and incarnate soft-capped to the majority of damage. With energize, you can get some fairly good +regen numbers on top of that defense. I'm looking at 560% with physical perfection, and with t4 rebirth I'm looking at roughly 90ish hps (40ish without).

DPS wise my calculations show a theoretical DPS for the build above at around 306, counting the -res in the set. While CR is active that jumps to a spike of 370ish. For those interested, I usually get about 90% of the theoretical max, so I'm looking at 270ish to 340ish DPS on a character that is at the incarnate soft-cap to the most common damage types and doesn't require 10 targets for the damage (I have a DM/SD, I know what needing targets is like).

I also ran the numbers for tankers, to see what the additional -res could do. My best numbers were 220ish for a Willpower/Stj. I think that a SD might push 300. A Willpower tanker that can hit over 200 DPS is insane! I mean, we are talking about a character that takes in over 100 HPS before rebirth, can be softcapped, and can resist cap to smashing/lethal, and that character can now deal more damage than most scrappers could just a few issues ago.

I'll run my numbers for a Stj/SD scrapper and tank to see what they are like. I'm not planning on switching, but it should be interesting. I already have a great level 50 shielder and don't need another, and I am weary of going without a heal in either powerset. More damage, sure, more DDR, sure, but less capable at the incarnate level and much squishier do to the relative lack of healing.