New Toon: Kinetic Melee vs. Martial Arts?

[Bugaman]

So rolling a new toon and was going to go Kinetic Melee because of the almighty concept. However I am missing.... a lot. As in whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, Hit.. I tagged him once! YAY! As a DPS type, missing very much defeats the purpose. So much so that I am considering shelving the toon and rerolling Martial Arts. And before the "Slot accuracy" comments come in, He's slotted for 3 accuracy and STILL missing a lot. Is this what I should expect later on? Is MA much better to go or should I trudge on? I solo much more often than team so I want to know what I am dealing with in the future.

[Machariel]

Martial Arts has a very slight accuracy bonus on its attacks over Kinetic Melee.  (78.75 base accuracy instead of 75%).  Whatever your problem is (it's hard to tell with the very minimal amount of information provided) it will very likely not be resolved by rerolling into Martial Arts. 

 

As an aside, Kinetic Melee is much stronger on stalkers than on scrappers so if you're willing to reroll because you are unhappy with your performance you may wish to keep that in mind.

[Saikochoro]

You may be fighting enemies with to-hit debuffs. Circle of thorns is a classic example. Even with sufficient accuracy slotting getting debuffed will make you whiff a lot. Changing primaries won’t really help this. 
 

This will be fixed more with your secondary and pool powers. High defense secondaries help mitigate this problem as the attack and thus debuff won’t get through. Also will be fixed with set bonuses as many provide +Acc.  Secondaries such as bio armor provide a to-hit buff.  You could pick up tactics in the leadership pool while leveling to also help. Secondaries/pool powers that allow defense slotting will also allow you to a lot the kismet +Acc IO, which despite the name increases your to-hit chance. 
 

If you give some more information on what secondary and pool powers you are choosing we can probably help you in slotting choices. If you are just running SOs or common IOs we could probably help with power picks to help you out. Also just be wary of enemy factions that use a lot of dark attacks because they debuff your to-hit.  

[Nemu]

Performance aside, kinetic melee is more versatile because of focused burst and repulsing torrent. Martial arts is boring AF. Run Apex and fight Battle Maiden a few times and you'll wish you had some ranged attacks when she's in the blue patch.

 

With a defense secondary you can fit some pretty decent procs into Kinetic melee, and since you can 4 slot LOTG into defense powers for the ACC bonus it compliments the defense armor + proc strategy.

 

Everyone's ACC stinks at lower levels, get a kismet + to hit asap.

[Bugaman]

More info... ok

 

First I've been a very longtime player so I understand the whole base accuracy deal. I know 3% isn't much however I question swinging with an AoE and missing 5 out of 6 targets. It feels much like it misses more than it should. I can swing 4 times and hit maybe once or twice and again, it's slotted with 2-3 Acc IO.

 

Now lets look at what I am fighting... Praetorian Clockwork. Some Syndicate. While I know there are Kin in Syndicate, I don't believe debuffing Acc is in their wheelhouse. They are also even level or +1. Scrappers should be able to manage that even at level 20.

 

While I am not looking for a build, I am running Elec armor. I know everyone is thinking "Kismet +6 ACC" however I am running Scrapper IO Critical strikes and separated it into 2 sets of 3 to get +18 Accuracy. AND YET SWISH CITY.

 

Kinda frustrating. So has anyone else had this experience? Because it really doesn't feel like it's going at that 75% base accuracy. Now is it a bug? Super bad luck? Or working as intended? Not sure but it's not worth leveling to just hate the build later on. So if there is no improvement at later levels, then I'd like to know before I hit 50.

[Ruby Rocket]

I have 2 kinetic melee scrappers and 1 KM Stalker.  I don't miss that often.  If you want to "fix the miss" To-Hit is going to be your answer.  Accuracy helps, but To-Hit is far more effective.  If I recall correctly, Kismet was mislabeled as +6 Acc and is actually a +6 to-hit (which is better than an unslotted tactics).  If it's still true, then it will help a lot.  The Scrapper Kinetic Melee build-up is cool, but takes a bit to get a decent to-hit bonus while you're trying to get it to stack.  Tactics WILL help with the "CHS" syndrome.  Focused Accuracy to a much lesser extent; as it's focused more on Accuracy than To-Hit.  If memory serves, it has like half the to-hit bonus of Tactics.  The main reason I'm a Dark Melee Fan, is because after you fire off soul drain on a mob "you never miss".  Heck, even an unslotted Cloak of Fear (and it has a ridiculous 50% accuracy) will hit level 54s reliably with a 7 stack of Soul Drain (like +72% to-hit).  On my Dark/Dark Scrapper, I see like 130% (or more) +to-hit when I'm on a roll.

Edited October 12, 2020 by Ruby Rocket

[Nemu]

3 hours ago, Bugaman said:

More info... ok

 

First I've been a very longtime player so I understand the whole base accuracy deal. I know 3% isn't much however I question swinging with an AoE and missing 5 out of 6 targets. It feels much like it misses more than it should. I can swing 4 times and hit maybe once or twice and again, it's slotted with 2-3 Acc IO.

 

Now lets look at what I am fighting... Praetorian Clockwork. Some Syndicate. While I know there are Kin in Syndicate, I don't believe debuffing Acc is in their wheelhouse. They are also even level or +1. Scrappers should be able to manage that even at level 20.

 

While I am not looking for a build, I am running Elec armor. I know everyone is thinking "Kismet +6 ACC" however I am running Scrapper IO Critical strikes and separated it into 2 sets of 3 to get +18 Accuracy. AND YET SWISH CITY.

 

Kinda frustrating. So has anyone else had this experience? Because it really doesn't feel like it's going at that 75% base accuracy. Now is it a bug? Super bad luck? Or working as intended? Not sure but it's not worth leveling to just hate the build later on. So if there is no improvement at later levels, then I'd like to know before I hit 50.

Anyone that has slogged through pre-SO levels experiences this. It's amplified by the fact that you don't have your end recovery nor your recharge sorted out at those levels and a miss is a huge drain on your resources and an AoE miss is a really feel bad event.

 

18% global acc+ whatever scaled down values from the scrapper ATO sets is good. That + a kismet IO is better, all that plus the amplifiers from P2W is even more better and those amplifiers are a good investment at lowbie levels because they are cheap, and they fill in a lot of holes during the leveling process.

[Hew]

So, my take on MA. At 50, and really way way way way before that, I only had 4!!! attacks from my primary. Total. I took and slotted cobra, axe, tail, and claw. That is it. I did take boxing, kick, and xpunch. Xpunch is a core piece of my attack chain. I also took zap and ball lightning, both of which are slotted with procs, ball lightning with a a/d/e.

 

My secondary is shield, because shield charge man!

 

It is pretty silly strong. Telenuke, ball lightning, tail, xpunch, pretty much everything is dead. Alternate with judgement, ball lightning, and tail or xpunch, rinse, repeat. I love it to bits and pieces.

 

Look for Sir Bruce if you want to see it in action 😄 I took assault, Musc radial paragon, assault core embodiment, and ageless core epiphany. I, uh, have no other way to really manage end costs... 😄 With ageless, ball lightning pops every 10 seconds (it does LOTS of damage), shield charge in 24,  tail in 3.5 secs, and well, xpunch is pretty much available every other attack if I want to use it. The aoe all has faster activation times than axe, claw, or strike.

 

Maybe that is an abnormal build? Dunno, but it sure as hell works!

 

[Moonlighter]

First, go to Combat Attributes and add "Last To Hit Chance" to your little tracking window.

 

Sometimes RNG is just messing with you. Like missing three big attacks in a row is a 1 in 8000 chance, consider how many attack cycles you might do in a week that is likely. So you can sanity check by keeping as eye on Last To Hit Chance to see if it is below 95%.

 

Tip: If you want to get through the early levels without going crazy, I generally buy 8 hours of all the buffs from the P2W vendor at level 1 when it only costs 1000 Inf for each hour and grab Accuracy from DFB.

 

(As an aside, I rarely play stalkers because missing opening Assassin Strikes irritates me so much and there is always a 1 in 20 chance of it happening.)