So What's the Best Hand to Hand Powerset?

Now I mean straight up no supernatural powers, just hands/feet/elbows/knees.

We got-

Martial Arts
Street Justice
Super Strength

It seems to me Street Justice is the best because of the combos, but I normally play an Energy/Energy Blaster as my main toon and decided to make a SJ/EA Scrapper and am not as experienced with Melee toons.

Any opinions???

There are alot of variables here.

Super Strength has the potential to be the absolute most damaging in both ST and AoE if you pair it with Fiery Aura and Soul Mastery, but I have a feeling you don't want that. Even without /FA Super Strength pulls ahead in aoe damage thanks to the radius on Footstomp and Rage. Without Burn and Gloom though it won't be winning ST dmg.

Def see what your saying, but what about SJ paired with FA, would that be better than SS/FA???

So, by no supernatural powers you mean, not energy melee? No Kinetic melee? No supernatural strength that can foot stomp making a localized earthquake?
No weapons either?

So, just down to MA and SJ? I'd go with MA, since I like it's customizable animations better than the fixed ones for SJ, and combos make me nervous ever since Dual Blades, but I'll admit I haven't tried SJ, and doubt I will in the near future.

From what I've seen, tho, SJ looks fairly effective.

I'm not familiar with these 'point based' combos of which you speak, but I assume you mean they *aren't* a giant pain in the butt, with a vastly, painfully, multiplicatively higher chance of failure for each step beyond the first? If so, I'm glad to hear that. Now maybe they might redo DB to have it, too.. That'd be nice..

My "go to" set for four years has been Super Strength. YMMV. It's that good.

My vote for StJ. Im levelling a StJ/WP and im loving it. The animations, the sounds, and the omgwtfcrushinguppertcutcritted

I am leveling a StJ/EA Scraper and loving it so far. StJ is so brutal!!!!

Id go Street Justice.

I have a SJ/EA scrapper at 50. Lots of fun.

Street justice is the "coolest" of the three. I don't know about quality, though. Super strength and it are very close.

As far as raw numbers are concerned without accounting for your secondary set, MA has the best single target damage, and SS has the best aoe damage. StJ is slightly under MA in single target and slightly better than MA in aoe.

It really depends on your concept what you might want to go for though. StJ is sort of Batman-style brawling, great for a vigilante themed character - it also looks awesome and flows well with the combos. Martial Arts is probably the best animated launch set, and it's more of a precise style, and a lot more kicks (you can use power customization to change some of them to punches, though). Super Strength is really Hulk-ish, fits the Brute archetype perfectly. You use Rage as a long lasting Build Up, but it has a lengthy crash where you can't do any damage for a little bit.

I have to say that Street Justice has been probably the most fun set I've leveled so far... my StJ/Inv scrapper hit 49 last night and there's just something that makes you grin about kicking the bad guy in the junk or hitting him with Smashing Uppercut and launching him straight into the air. Of course my scrapper is 4' tall so 3 guesses where the aforementioned uppercut hits the target?

There's a reason I named him "Balzy"

I recently got a SJ/EA Scrapper to 50 and it's great fun!

My advice is to stick it out a bit. EA takes a while to get into its own. Once it does though, look out! SJ, however, is fun from the beginning.

EA's energy drain is a really important source of defence. My fifty can softcap defence with all SOs by using Energy Drain carefully. Six slot that thing with recharge and defence, and you'll be pretty hard to hit.

I've found that it's tough enough to tank for a team quite successfully and even solo full 8 man spawns without too much trouble, even +2 spawns. And this is with SOs and no Incarnate powers.

Never mind what this used to say lol

^^You do realize you just quoted and replied to yourself...right?

Ever since running the upper-end TFs and the iTrials, I have been a bit leery of SR. There's just too much out there that seems to be able to gob smack you with stacked -DEF debuffs. I've sort of become a fan of the "little bit of everything" type defense sets like Willpower. My SJ/WP Brute isn't hitting any softcaps on anything, but nevertheless has a nice combination of DEF and Resistance (including psionic) and +Regen, and even if one of those is debuffed to nothing, I've got the other two working for me. And for real emergencies, I have the Eye of the Magus and Core Barrier Epiphany to turn to (had the Wedding Band too, but have since used that puppy up).