Martial Arts Tanker! Show me the way!

[Shadowstorm06]

This set seems to do quite a bit of everything! I was digging through @Ston's melee testing and was quite pleased to see how well it perfomed. Decent damage, good AOE with Dragon's Tail, +Def to ALL with Storm kick. I like how, compared to live, how you can mix up punches and kicks now.

Are there any Tanker primaries you feel mesh well with MA? I was looking at Elec, Rad and Shield myself, but I'm open to suggestions!

Edited March 18 by Shadowstorm06

[SeraphimKensai]

@Sovera has posted a lot of information combining fiery aura and martial arts. I personally don't have experience combining the two, but recently just built a fiery aura tanker for the first time since fiery aura was buffed and it's pretty damn good. I suggest checking Sovera's Brunker post.

[Sovera]

As Seraphim said you can be very creative with slotting on pretty much all resistance sets and achieve 45% to melee/ranged/AoE if pairing with MA. Is it worth it? Well, kind of. Are you a resist set and being debuffed to heck and back because you're meant to eat all attacks, even those carrying debuffs? Are you weak to psi? Watch yourself ignoring psi if it's tagged as ranged attack. Are you being hit with -recharge or -tohit? Ignore it if it's tagged as either melee/ranged/AoE.

 

Where the defense fails is against defense debuffs since without DDR it will get whittled, but even then having a 40%/45% buffer goes a long way against that happening with as little as a small/medium luck, because even resistance based armors that are not trying to build defense fear being defense debuffed into the negatives.

 

But the whole 'reach 45% defense on top of 90% resistances' is mostly my baby and a niche thing, it's in no way the normal way people slot or build.

 

 

There is not a lot of point in pairing MA with defense sets (IMO) because defense sets reach high levels of defense thus the extra 10% is just padding. It is good if aiming for incarnate content where defense should reach 57% (or was it 59%?) but incarnate content is not particularly common, and with the constantly spamming of Destinies I never felt lacking. Take this with a grain of salt.

 

But the 10% from MA can also help ease off slotting for defense sets, or even not use Weave at all so it's still a valid pairing.

 

 

One thing to consider if soloing is that MA's AoE is weak. It animates fast, recharges fast, and the FF proc we can slot in it makes it even speedier to recharge. But it hits for low numbers. For this I found the Fire Armor/MA variant particularly good as the synergy was amazing. Dragon Tail providing with soft CC and speeding up every cooldown in the build from Build-up to heal to endurance to Burn, and Fire Armor complementing the AoE damage for MA. It's also a really early starter. You can Posi 1 with Dragon Tail and Burn. You can even suffer a very modest damage loss and trade Crippling Axe Kick for Cobra Strike to have both AoE AND the ST chain available by level 20. Honestly it's one of my best all-rounder builds to move around at all level ranges.

 

[BuiltDifferent5]

From what I hear, Rad Armor/Martial Arts is something else.

[Sovera]

Yeah, it can do about the same as above with Fire Armor while also being tankier. Firey Embrace and Burn are replaced by procced out Radiation Therapy and Ground Zero, both of which the FF procs from MA help with the recharge times and both roll offense and defense into a single click.

 

I tried this combo in the past but it was drab to level to 38 to get Ground Zero. Having it now at 26 helps a lot for leveling and pacing.

[Story Archer]

Well, you can get to the defensive soft-cap of 45% by 12th level using only SO's and a couple select IO's. That's pretty damn strong to start.

 

 

 

[Hjarki]

22 hours ago, BuiltDifferent5 said:

From what I hear, Rad Armor/Martial Arts is something else.

Rad/MA is often consider the premiere farm build because of the Dragon's Tail/Force Feedback interaction. This alone makes it some of the strongest AE in any set. But when you combine it with Ground Zero, it really shines.

 

With that in mind, actual farm builds involve a lot more procs in Dragon's Tail/Ground Zero than are manageable for a general purpose build.

[Owenknowone]

Question then.  Would Martial Arts with storm kick be the best min/max secondary or would Staff fighting be the better option?

[Sovera]

Guarded Spin gives 15% to Slash and Melee though I think (don't quote me) that's it's the only such power that stacks three times.

 

If you just want to pick a resistance armor then it can make you nearly immune to melee very early on with no investment. That's a fat amount of damage not being taken.

 

Picking a positional defense armor (Melee/Ranged/AoE) would be dubious since they already have melee toggles. You could at least ditch the one toggle that gives melee defense?

 

Picking a typed defense armor (Smash, Slash, Energy, Negative, etc) would leave you gross overcapped for Slash while still having to slot your S/L toggle to get Lethal up since the toggles are always paired (S/L, E/N, F/C, etc).

 

 

Picking Storm Kick would give you 10% to all.

 

For resistance armors it allows to exploit the IOs and incarnates and get 45% to melee/ranged/AoE.

 

For positional and typed defense armors the 10% allows to ease up on your slotting since 10% are accounted for. You can ditch Weave for example, or aim for incarnate level defenses and reach 59%.

[Owenknowone]

1 hour ago, Sovera said:

Guarded Spin gives 15% to Slash and Melee though I think (don't quote me) that's it's the only such power that stacks three times.

 

If you just want to pick a resistance armor then it can make you nearly immune to melee very early on with no investment. That's a fat amount of damage not being taken.

 

Picking a positional defense armor (Melee/Ranged/AoE) would be dubious since they already have melee toggles. You could at least ditch the one toggle that gives melee defense?

 

Picking a typed defense armor (Smash, Slash, Energy, Negative, etc) would leave you gross overcapped for Slash while still having to slot your S/L toggle to get Lethal up since the toggles are always paired (S/L, E/N, F/C, etc).

 

 

Picking Storm Kick would give you 10% to all.

 

For resistance armors it allows to exploit the IOs and incarnates and get 45% to melee/ranged/AoE.

 

For positional and typed defense armors the 10% allows to ease up on your slotting since 10% are accounted for. You can ditch Weave for example, or aim for incarnate level defenses and reach 59%.

What pairings would you recoomend?

[Sovera]

12 minutes ago, Owenknowone said:

What pairings would you recoomend?

 

MA does decent ST and mediocre AoE, Staff does mediocre ST and mediocre AoE, so, MA.

 

I've got an infamous Fire/MA called the Turtle in my signature, 45% to Melee/Ranged/AoE and 90% resists, but you can achieve the same with Rad Armor and Dark Armor just less damage.

[Force Redux]

Super Reflexes/MA... Redlynn has a guide, NoGetHitsu which breaks it down nicely  I have one and it's super fun and effective, easy to do on the cheap, and plenty of slots and power picks left over for whatever. No need for Medicine, with scaling resists and Regen your hp drop down low then just stop.

Edited March 26 by Force Redux

[Thraxen]

I’ve got a stone/ma that is super tanky. Eagle’s Claw in granite was originally the point. Still do that but the build is fairly crazy now.