Best MA AT

[drgantz]

I've been playing MA/EA Scrapper for a while, but wonder if a different AT might be better, since Brute and Tanker have a Def bonus on SK.

I've been thinking of remaking it into a MA/EA Brute or MA/WP Tanker.

Is MA especially good for a certain AT?

[Uun]

MA/EA scrapper should be very strong. Energy Aura can hit the defense soft caps for everything but psi and toxic and doesn't need the defense buff from Storm Kick. Brutes have an advantage with resist armors due to their higher caps but are largely the same as scrappers with defense armors. MA is primarily ST damage and a MA/WP tank is going to be lacking in AoE.

[StriderIV]

I know @Werner has done some crazy things with his Shield/MA Tanker.

[nihilii]

Highly personal, but I love the Stalker version of MA because it gets a slightly beefed up Eagle's Claw. I love EC but it's fairly useless on other ATs due to terrible DPA.

On the flipside, Stalkers get no AoE. On the *other* flipside, Dragon's Tail is kinda ass anyway.

[twozerofoxtrot]

On 3/31/2023 at 10:47 PM, drgantz said:

Is MA especially good for a certain AT?

 

Blasters and Doms.

 

But if you're thinking of rolling a WP/MA tanker, I think you'll enjoy it. 

 

Like a Toyota of Tankers. No frills, but it's going to do everything you need done and is easy to drive.

Edited April 5, 2023 by twozerofoxtrot

[Hjarki]

5 hours ago, nihilii said:

Highly personal, but I love the Stalker version of MA because it gets a slightly beefed up Eagle's Claw. I love EC but it's fairly useless on other ATs due to terrible DPA.

On the flipside, Stalkers get no AoE. On the *other* flipside, Dragon's Tail is kinda ass anyway.

Eagle's Claw has terrible dpa on a Stalker as well. Even with the ATO proc, you're still better off just running conventional attacks.

 

Due to Force Feedback, Dragon's Tail is one of the highest dps AE attacks in any of the melee sets. Losing it is a huge drawback, especially given that the set has no other multi-target attacks.

[nihilii]

5 hours ago, Hjarki said:

Eagle's Claw has terrible dpa on a Stalker as well. Even with the ATO proc, you're still better off just running conventional attacks.

 

What's a conventional attack?

[Uun]

7 hours ago, Hjarki said:

Eagle's Claw has terrible dpa on a Stalker as well. Even with the ATO proc, you're still better off just running conventional attacks.

This doesn't support your statement

 

[Hjarki]

56 minutes ago, Uun said:

This doesn't support your statement

What that chart shows is that Storm Kick, Crippling Axe and Assassin's Blow are all significantly higher dpa than Eagle's Claw. Cobra Strike and Crane Strike are both slightly better dpa. The only reason you'd ever use Eagle's Claw is off the ATO proc - and if you're looking for an infrequent attack to use when the ATO procs, you're better off with Moonbeam/Zapp.

[nihilii]

9 hours ago, Hjarki said:

What that chart shows is that Storm Kick, Crippling Axe and Assassin's Blow are all significantly higher dpa than Eagle's Claw. Cobra Strike and Crane Strike are both slightly better dpa. The only reason you'd ever use Eagle's Claw is off the ATO proc - and if you're looking for an infrequent attack to use when the ATO procs, you're better off with Moonbeam/Zapp.

Basically, you quoted my post while purposefully ignoring all relevant content, and posted a vague, partially inaccurate and unrelated answer for the purpose of being contrarian.

Let's go through it step by step:

 

"Highly personal, but I love the Stalker version of MA because it gets a slightly beefed up Eagle's Claw. I love EC but it's fairly useless on other ATs due to terrible DPA."

"Highly personal" -> this doesn't apply to everyone
"I love EC" -> I want to make EC work, what's my best path to it?
"fairly useless on other ATS due to terrible DPA" -> on a Scrapper, EC does 22% less DPA than CK or CS

 

Your reply:

"Eagle's Claw has terrible dpa on a Stalker as well." -> the DPA difference between EC and CK/CS is 0.6% on a Stalker

This is a difference that is more than 36x smaller than the Scrapper. THIRTY SIX TIMES.

And you're trying to create a false equivalence, using the exact same word to qualify both relationships.

Maddening. Simply maddening.

"Even with the ATO proc, you're still better off just running conventional attacks."

Seasoned troll that you are, you made this vague to keep the opportunity to run away if called out. Sure enough, your next post is now arguing the once-every-10s ATO is "infrequent", CS/CK are "slightly better" (+0.6% base DPA...), and people should just use epic snipes.

 

Once again for emphasis. Your answer to a post saying "I love EC and this is how I make it work" is "UGH dude just use those other attacks that do the same base damage".

Literally nobody is arguing picking EC is optimal. You're strawmanning harder than the strawmannest strawman here.

 

Whole point is in relative terms. Picking EC is an enormous performance hit on other ATs. While on Stalkers, it's palatable. Between:

- damage procs (= better effect on EC than on same DPA powers with faster recharge/animation)

- ATO proc (better effect on a higher base damage power like EC)

- adding AF stack (snipes don't)

Hjarki, Hjarki, Hjarki. Will you ever beat your pathological desire to say "no" when somebody else says "yes"?

It seeps through everything in your posting. Forcing you to argue 8ft radius Dragon's Tail is one of the best AOEs around.

 

Primary school math, aka "area of a circle", is a recurring struggle for our proeminent theorycrafters who don't actually play the game. But in all fairness, in the mind of a theorycrafter who doesn't play the game there is always the target cap of enemies in melee range every single time they activate their Force Feedback'ed 8ft PBAoE.

 

OK, I'll grant my own subjectiveness here. I know there's players who make Dragon's Tail work and work well. I even enjoy it occasionally (without fantasy theorycraft FF procs where getting DT to recharge in 4s rather than 5s would matter any...).

Yet once again the point is relative. I would not trade high damage 10ft Atom Smasher for an epic TAoE. I will happily trade medium damage 8ft Dragon's Tail for an epic TAoE and their 15ft range. It's not about making optimal choices, it's about judging whether the constraints tied to my preferences are workable or gamebreaking.

Anyway. Hjarki, babe. We've done this song and dance for a while. It's somewhat fun to correct your inaccuracies, to point out your lack of actual playing the game (which you never ever dare to deny or address, I get a kick out of that conspicuous silence every time...), even to concede the rare valid points or have to readjust my thinking.

But to be honest, it's also equally irksome to deal with your bad faith arguments. The bullshit asymmetry principle applies: you quickly throw out falsehoods, it takes me much longer to refute them.

Consider this our breakup letter. You can keep milking that bullshit asymmetry principle, but I won't be here to see it. 😪

[Hjarki]

2 hours ago, nihilii said:

This is a difference that is more than 36x smaller than the Scrapper. THIRTY SIX TIMES.

 

The Scrapper version of Eagle's Claw may have lower intrinsic dpa, but the additional critical actually makes it higher effective dpa than Cobra Strike. So the Stalker actually has a nerfed version of Eagle's Claw compared to the Scrapper.

 

2 hours ago, nihilii said:

Once again for emphasis. Your answer to a post saying "I love EC and this is how I make it work" is "UGH dude just use those other attacks that do the same base damage".

 

Nothing in your post indicated you were aware that EC was a mechanically weak choice. Everything in your post indicated you were under the false impression that it was unusually strong on Stalkers when, in reality, it's even weaker on Stalkers than other AT.

 

2 hours ago, nihilii said:

Whole point is in relative terms. Picking EC is an enormous performance hit on other ATs. While on Stalkers, it's palatable. Between:

- damage procs (= better effect on EC than on same DPA powers with faster recharge/animation)

- ATO proc (better effect on a higher base damage power like EC)

- adding AF stack (snipes don't)

 

On Cobra Strike, a standard damage proc will occur 68.075% of the time. On Eagle's Claw, it will occur 84.758% of the time. If we were just firing this single attack, this would translate into +21.939 dpa for Eagle's Claw and +26.431 dpa for Cobra Strike because of the shorter activation time on CS. Put within the context of an entire rotation, Cobra Strike will still normally come out ahead because you're getting almost the same raw damage increase in 60% of the activation time.

 

The ATO proc is indeed better on a higher damage power. However, the ATO proc only occurs once every 10 secs (normally once every two cycles of your damage) so if you're going to make this argument you really need to break down what rotation you're talking about. Simply saying "higher damage better!" isn't useful.

 

In terms of the AF stack, remember that you're capped at 3 stacks. If you're trying to work in the ATO proc sequence then you're almost certainly using an attack sequence where you have three other MA attacks thrown in the same cycle.

 

2 hours ago, nihilii said:

Forcing you to argue 8ft radius Dragon's Tail is one of the best AOEs around.

 

Primary school math, aka "area of a circle", is a recurring struggle for our proeminent theorycrafters who don't actually play the game. But in all fairness, in the mind of a theorycrafter who doesn't play the game there is always the target cap of enemies in melee range every single time they activate their Force Feedback'ed 8ft PBAoE.

 

The target cap of Dragon's Tail is 10 enemies on a non-Tanker. 10 enemies can easily fit within a 8 yard radius. Indeed, I find this complaint particularly bizarre given that 8 yards is the norm for PBAoE - if your argument had any weight, we'd be mocking all those fools who think */Fiery Aura Brutes are useful for farming because there's no way they can ever hit enough targets with their AE.

[Uun]

13 hours ago, Hjarki said:

Cobra Strike and Crane Strike are both slightly better dpa. The only reason you'd ever use Eagle's Claw is off the ATO proc - and if you're looking for an infrequent attack to use when the ATO procs, you're better off with Moonbeam/Zapp.

I'm throwing up the numbers to show just how slight "slightly better" is. Ignored in your assessment is that Eagles Claw has a 15% chance to crit out of hide vs. 7% for everything else except Storm Kick. When you add the weighted crit damage, DPA for Eagles Claw improves considerably and is actually superior to the powers you reference.

 

	Cast	Damage	DPA	Crit	Dmg+Crit	DPA
Assassin's Blow	1.19	153.48	129.20	0%	153.48	129.20
Storm Kick	1.06	73.41	69.51	12%	82.21	77.85
Crippling Axe Kick	1.85	117.89	63.80	7%	126.15	68.26
Eagles Claw	2.77	162.38	58.58	15%	186.74	67.37
Zapp	1.58	97.32	61.44	7%	104.13	65.74
Moonbeam	1.58	97.32	61.44	7%	104.13	65.74
Crane Kick	1.85	109.00	58.98	7%	116.63	63.11
Cobra Strike	1.85	109.00	58.98	7%	116.63	63.11
Thunder Kick	1.06	46.71	44.24	7%	49.98	47.33

[Hjarki]

Just now, Uun said:

I'm throwing up the numbers to show just how slight "slightly better" is. 

 

Some notes:

• Moonbeam/Zapp do 30% more damage in most any reasonable build than you're indicating - even before you account for the additional purple damage proc.
• You only get that 15% critical chance when you're not exploiting the ATO proc.

You can also look at it in terms of rotation. A rotation of Cobra, Storm(x2), Crippling, Assassin yields about 80 dps with no slotting. A rotation of Eagle, Storm(x2), Crippling, Assassin yields a bit less (79 dps) with no slotting. The reason this occurs is that the second rotation takes a lot more time to accomplish and thus minimizes the impact of the high dpa parts of the rotation. It's similar to the issue that arises with procs: you're not accounting for the hugely punitive impact of that long activation time.

 

Martial Arts is not a good fit for Stalker. You lose both of the key features of the set (the exceptional Dragon's Tail and the +defense on Storm Kick) and end up with mediocre ST damage coupled with non-existent AE damage. Even if you're deciding to take Martial Arts on a Stalker for thematic reasons, your build shouldn't be including Eagle's Claw.

 

[drgantz]

Thank  you everyone for your comments.  They were all very helpful.  In a different post, someone said that Brutes are better because of the +Def on Storm Kick.  I'm glad to see that Scrappers are awesome as well.

[Shred Monkey]

+1 to the Shield/MA Tank comments.  Mine is easily among my strongest solo toons.

 

It's also a really good toon for leveling up.  I've made an MA/Shield brute toon level locked at 25 for playing on low level groups and TFs as well. 

Edited April 11, 2023 by Shred Monkey