Martial Arts Concept

Okay, I have a concept that requires the dusty ol' Martial Arts set. The concept also limits my secondaries, well, halves them. In no particular order Willpower, Regeneration, Invulnerability, and Super Reflexes would fit the concept well.

Can any of you break down the pitfalls and pluses of any of these pairings? Thanks.

I have a MA/regen scrapper. He is good fun. No redraw, quick recovery makes it so you can pretty much ignore the endo bar and do whatever you want. Makes slotting pretty easy too. Gives a really really diverse offering as far as what works for IO bonus, rech helps with IH and dull pain, +HP is always good with regen, +regen is actually somewhat useful to stack on the set, res and def are both good, really the only thing you dont get as much use of is +recovery.

Basically you can build the character numerous ways, with no real downsides. MA itself lends to that, sure there are a few powers people say are must haves, but IMO you can pretty much pick for style on MA and you wont totally gimp yourself. The powerset combo really is a pretty relaxed build. Just turn on integration, and go kick stuff in the face.

The only conflict (not a big one tho) is Crane Kick KB'ing mobs out of your aura in WP and Invul (or shields which I find a great pairing for MA), but since Cobra Strike now is basically identical to CK minus the KB (plus a Stun) it's no biggie.

For endgame build I took Crane Kick over Cobra Strike. Initially it was because I wanted my toon to just do kicks only (and burn stuff, since he's ma/fire). But after making the move I realized that crane kick is really better mitigation then cobra strike in most situations where it mattered to me. Minions and Lts die so fast, I really don't much care about mitigating their damage. And Cobra Strike doesn't stun a boss by itself. Crane Kick, however does knock down a boss and remove it from melee for a brief period of time. While that's not a complete lockdown type of mitigation... knockdown is still more mitigation then NOT stunning something.

Synergywise... nothing stands out during the level up period, in my mind... But I personally find MA to be one of, if not THE most powerful incarnate primary. It has very quick animating powers so you get more applications of your reactive proc then many alternativies. Also, unlike DB and Claws (which also have fast animating powers) it doesn't rely on a self buff to output high DPS chains. Where this helps, is that if you go with musculature alpha, you get a higher % boost to your overall DPS. This means, with MA, the more +dam you add your build, the more you'll catch up to, and surpass the top DPS chains of other sets.

Because of this, of the options you listed... I recommend /SR. My reasoning being this. You can easily boost recharge with quickness and set bonuses. You can easily soft cap defenses for survivability... thus leaving lots of room to use incarnate powers to focus on damage output, instead of trying to fill in other holes, which you might have in other sets. However, this is a very end-game look. If your focusing on leveling up, and won't play much after 50, then I don't see anything particularly strong, or weak in those 4 options.

I'm running a MA/WP right now and it's working pretty good. My advice is to softcap S/L first and foremost and raise E/N to 32.5% at least. If you can get E/N to softcap as well, power to you.

Kinetic Combat can now be slotted with Enhancement Boosters. At +5 they are comparable to a level 50 IO giving you both the set bonuses (+3.75& S/L Def) and better increases to your power. This is, of course, assuming you can get/afford them.

I would also recommend Cobra Strike over Crane Kick. Sure, CK may offer better mitigation, but I HATE chasing down enemies. And I STILL remember teaming in a TF with an MA with Crane Kick who kept knocking away everything I was targeting. So if you team a lot I highly, highly recommend dropping Crane Kick.

Unless the Devs turn CK from knockBACK to knockDOWN, then get back on board.

If you're going the leaping pool you can also get Spring Attack for extra AoE. SA is, more or less, a watered down version of Shield Charge. Less damage and more recharge time, but still does decent damage. At least it can be used to mule a set.

Well, as long as I'm posting builds:

This is what I've tinkered up for the ma/sr, assuming I ever get over the inherent crunchiness of sr. I need to update my mids: This has spiritual, but would work much better with agility. I'm a bit torn between barrier and rebirth, too. It has some problems, but I'll toss it up for folks to chew on.

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