Next Scrapper : StJ/SD or MA/SD?

I really can't decide. I like how the animations for StJ look, and -Res is nice of course, but the DPA on MA is just so fantastic...

If it matters, I'm planning on taking Leviathan Mastery (first four, undecided on pet) for this character.

I am using StJ/Wil on my current main and I love it. Yes ma would be better for burst damage but I don't think either one is generally better than the other overall.

I admittedly have never played a MA/ past the single digits, so I have only a theoretical understanding of what you're comparing against. I have played StJ though, and I strongly doubt you would be disappointed by its damage, so if you like the look of it and don't mind spending the points, go for it.

They are both good. It comes down to several minor factors.

~ Animations and flavor.
~ Whether you like the combo point system of StJ.
~ If you can live without the extra AoE if you choose MA.

In my experience...

MA and SJ initially look similar but MA is basically just better. One aoe versus two? That's cool, dragon's tail is better than either of SJ's aoes and the thing is that given the combo system you can't actually fire both of your aoes as often as they're up without feeling like you're missing damage. Of course, if you got over that hurdle then SJ is in fact the better set for aoe by a margin I've not bothered to calculate.

Where SJ is not better is in single target. Storm kick is pretty much as good as crushing uppercut on its face. The difference is that storm kick can be every second attack, whereas crushing uppercut is lucky to be every sixth. Some may argue that street justice is the more satisfying single target set based on the big, crunchy animations but there isn't much of a case to be made for its numerical superiority.

For me the deal breaker is how finicky SJ's combos are. Unlike staff or water blast, the finishers are not also builders. When you miss a piece of your chain you just feel bad about it and there isn't anything you can do about it due to the way SJ's attacks' recharge times stack up in an obnoxious way that I am not prepared to explain but which you could figure out if you spent a lot of time on it. Was that just one sentence? Right, well, my point is that if you miss your shin breaker, either you fire your CU for sub-par damage and end your combo, you fire your sweeping cross for radically worse damage but allow for the possibility of starting a new chain for another chance at CU, or you just keep cycling builders.

It kind of sucks, honestly. SJ is a great stalker set because they have more single target punch and give up no aoe. For scrappers? I really wanted to like this set but I cannot recommend it, all told.

I'd prefer not to dump on a set because as you say there are always ways to mitigate any deficiencies, perceived or actual. Part of my SJ enmity came from the fact that I cycled through all of 50s on Virtue for the summer event today, including my SJ scrapper and brute. Both are only slightly purpled and are suboptimal set pairings compared to my subsequent characters, ergo they do not look particularly good in comparison.

What I cannot set aside is that I just don't like how the powers mesh. Four builders and three finishers, when there is no overlap between them, adds up to wasted recharge. You cannot use all four builders unless you're rocking a SO build that doesn't believe in recharge slotting, but that isn't terribly meaningful compared to the finisher issue. The real problem is that you can only build three combo points over a period of fourish seconds and to do so you can only be using the three builders that you selected. Those other finishers may be very nice looking but only the one you actually use to complete the cycle is of any use to you. The overlap is most apparent between sweeping cross and spinning strike, spinning strike being the sensible choice the vast majority of the time. As I said, the wrench in the works is the fact that sweeping cross has to double as a single target attack and crushing uppercut is not so good that it deserves the privileged status that it has of "only great single target power in the set."

As you can see I could go on about this but eeeeeeeegh. If you like how SJ looks and don't care about such minutiae, go nuts. There's nothing actually wrong with it. As a long-time veteran of martial arts scrappers, though, I cannot help but make that comparison and martial arts happens to win.

I only take issue with 1 part of your post:

Quote:

Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle the wrench in the works is the fact that sweeping cross has to double as a single target attack and crushing uppercut is not so good that it deserves the privileged status that it has of "only great single target power in the set."

I don't like cone attacks and I don't use sweeping cross in my build, crushing uppercut is a great finisher.

Normally in a melee set I choose 5 powers, 2 minor attacks, 1 heavy hitter, a pbaoe and the buildup. With this set I had to choose 3 minor attacks in order to get the combo points up quick enough. You still have the option of starting with the minor attacks or using the buildup.
I'm not going to cry if people prefer ma though, op please let us know what you went with.

I'm going with MA. Like I said, I love the animations for StJ and the debuffs are tempting, but I know in the long run I'll prefer the sheer performance of MA. It's a fast, accurate, powerful set -- which frankly feels weird to type about what used to be the red-headed stepchild of Scrapperdom.

Every time I think of one of the many good points of StJ, I always come back to Storm Kick : DPA 124, 6 second recharge; vs Crushing Uppercut : DPA 124 (@ Combo Level 3), 25 second recharge.

I can really only see StJ being an optimal choice for FA (where the -Res is leveraged by continuous damage effects) or DA (where you can work some magnitude stacking). Now a fun choice, yeah, it definitely is. But I think I'll have a lot of fun with MA/SD too, so I have to go with the more powerful fun.

Nice combo, I have a MA/SD scrapper and she's a monster. Used to be godly in all situations but since the HamiO "fix", I tread more carefully vs some enemies. Crane Kick is still the best looking ST attack IMHO. Kick it, kick it good.

Obitus made a comparison between StJ and MA awhile back and can be found here:

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=276359

They are surprisingly close but in regards to DPS, StJ can pull ahead by a miniscule amount.

Since nobody else has hopped in yet, I'll run counter-point.

Quote:

Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle MA and SJ initially look similar but MA is basically just better. One aoe versus two? That's cool, dragon's tail is better than either of SJ's aoes and the thing is that given the combo system you can't actually fire both of your aoes as often as they're up without feeling like you're missing damage. Of course, if you got over that hurdle then SJ is in fact the better set for aoe by a margin I've not bothered to calculate.

You get bonus damage at combo levels 1 and 2 too. Not to mention that with AAO saturated, the bonus damage is icing on the cake. With sufficient purpling, I can run SS every fourth attack. The only drawback is positioning, but its not a horrific tradeoff.

Quote:

Where SJ is not better is in single target.

ricodah already linked to Obitus's number crunching, I recommend giving it a looksee.

Quote:

For me the deal breaker is how finicky SJ's combos are. Unlike staff or water blast, the finishers are not also builders. When you miss a piece of your chain you just feel bad about it and there isn't anything you can do about it due to the way SJ's attacks' recharge times stack up in an obnoxious way that I am not prepared to explain but which you could figure out if you spent a lot of time on it. Was that just one sentence? Right, well, my point is that if you miss your shin breaker, either you fire your CU for sub-par damage and end your combo, you fire your sweeping cross for radically worse damage but allow for the possibility of starting a new chain for another chance at CU, or you just keep cycling builders.

Where I differ is in my belief of how good Shin Breaker and Rib Cracker are. You get the nice -DEF and -SPD bonuses of MA and you get a built-in -RES and -DMG too. And while you can't two-shot a minion with them, they still do very noticeable damage. I've never been unhappy spamming both of those in my rotation.

Not to mention that getting combo 3 isn't that hard. At 95% to hit, its an 86% chance to hit three in a row. Give yourself five builders in between CUs, which is my high-end plan, and 999 out of 1000 CUs will be at combo 3. (I think. Its been a long while since I had to play with binomials.)

That's not even going into the happy feeling of running an ITF with a pair of kins, shoryukening Rommy, and seeing a nice big orange 1350 pop over his Nictusfied helmet. And I didn't even crit.

Quote:

Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle The real problem is that you can only build three combo points over a period of fourish seconds and to do so you can only be using the three builders that you selected.

I think the hurdle you have to get over is 'see orange circle, press orange circle'. Once she's IO'd and incarnated out, I'm looking to run SB -> RC -> HB -> SB -> RC/HB/gap? -> CU on my StJ scrap and have no regrets. All a matter of taste really. MA is steady where StJ is a less powerful steady with bursts of ZOMG. And I really like ZOMG.

Like I said I begrudge no-one's personal preferences. Still, I don't think Obitus' numbers do much to hurt my case. To get single target performance out of SJ that's competitive with MA's you need much more specific slotting, in many of those cases much more global recharge, and both of the -res procs that are available to you. The latter is problematic given that -res procs are apparently being significantly nerfed in issue 24 unless something changes during the beta. More problematic for me is how locked in those chains would make me feel. Obviously MA's chain doesn't have much in the way of variety but something about the rhythm of it is pleasing to me.

Also pleasing is how, as you point out, you typically are killing minions in two shots ceteris paribus. It's super satisfying to take a boss from half HP to dead with one critical uppercut but when you have to use it against a pre-maimed lieutenant since that's all that's left standing, well, I can only speak for myself when I say that makes me a little sad. Happy for the crunch, but sad for the overkill.

It may be worth noting that I dislike titan weapons a lot more than I dislike street justice and by any account it's stronger than SJ or MA. Having to start slow and end up fast... I'm playin' scrappers here, do I look like a brute?!

My 'natural themed' Scrapper originally started out as MA/SD. Then when StJ came along, I was swept away by the animation for Spinning Strike, so I transferred my 50 MA/SD off-server and remade her with StJ.

Since then, I recently brought the MA/SD version back, and to be honest I still feel conflicted.

The point about having those massive Crushing Uppercuts is not to be underestimated. It's very satisfying to see a 3-combo, AAO saturated Uppercut crit with a Hecatomb proc. Hell, throw in a double-strike!

So yeah, I definitely miss having that. That said, I also like MA, in part for character-theme reasons (it looks/feels more disciplined, which fits my character), and I find it easier to leverage the AoE of Dragon's Tail better than Spinning Strike and... er.. uh.. whatever the Cone attack is called. But on the OTHER hand Spinning Strike has one of the greatest animations in the game! I also prefer not having the combo system, but that would probably change if they just made those points last a couple-few seconds longer before vanishing.

It's interesting though, that of all the characters I've made and re-made, only the choice between MA/SD and StJ/SD has left me so conflicted and tormented that hardly a day goes by that I don't think about changing...AGAIN.

"There's villainy ... and then there's supervillainy. The difference is performance."
-Doc_Reverend