Fraktal’s Guide to Martial Arts/Super Reflex Scrappers

My main character, Fraktal, was my first (and is still my only) character to level 50. I started her on the day COH launched, and stuck with her as my primary character through all the time I played COH. Over the months (and now years), COH has changed how exactly the different powers work, but I think the basic building and playstyle tactics I have followed have been good, solid ones all along — maybe not the “flavor of the month,” maybe not the “most uber”, but solid.

When building a Martial Arts/Super Reflex character, the key thing you’ll need to remember is that you basically need every single secondary power. This is not to say that the secondary is more important than the primary, but that you need every power for it to work (whereas the primary is fine once you have five or six of the powers in your build). So keep in mind, as you create your building design for your character, that you will need to fit in all nine secondary powers — most of them pretty much as soon as they are available. You’ll want them all in there by 38, for sure — and this may cramp your style in terms of choosing pool and primary powers, depending on what else you wanted to go with.

The fact that you really need every single secondary power in Super Reflexes is offset by the fact that one of the signature powers in the set, Practiced Brawler (which you can get at a fairly low level), is hands down, bar-none, the best defense against control powers (so-called “mezzes”) in the entire game. The reason it’s so good is that, unlike most other “mez defense” powers like Regneration’s “Integration” or Invulnerability’s “Unyielding”, Practiced Brawler is a click-power, not a toggle. That means that even if something manages to overwhelm it and stun you, Practiced Brawler itself will not be turned off. This helps you recover from the stun faster, and protects you vs. additional attempts to stun/hold/immobilize you. A toggle would turn off, and stay off throughout your “mez”, meaning you have no defense at all against further attempts to apply a control power to your character. Because it’s so good, and because it’s on a long recharge time but also a long duration, most people add a couple of slots to this power and, when “Single Origin” enhancers become available, place them into it, control-click the power (which makes it auto-fire the instant it’s recharged) and keep it on permanently (so-called “Perma-PB” in COH bulletin board lingo). I highly recommend doing this with Practiced Brawler.

In terms of actual defenses, Super Reflexes provides almost exclusively (with one notable execption) defense type protection, which means “dodging the blow” and not being hit at all — and very little resistance type protection (which reduces damage after you’ve been hit). Thus, a Super Reflexes scrapper is based on avoiding damage rather than (as Invulnerability) sucking it up or (as in Regeneration) healing it. In fact there is very little resistance and zero healing in the power set — it relies very much on dodging incoming blows. This focus on a single major mode of avoiding damage — dodging out of the way — means you need as much of it as you can get… and that is why you need all the toggles, and all the passives.

As a primary, Martial Arts is a bit unusual. Most primary attack power sets have “secondary effects” to their attacks, and frequently those are similar. For example, Dark Melee has multiple attacks, all of which “debuff” (weaken) enemy accuracy. These effects stack, so if you hit someone with three Dark Melee strikes in rapid succession, you’ve applied three reductions to the enemy’s accuracy, and they all add up. Martial Arts, on the other hand, has lots of different secondary effects on its powers. It has some disorienting attacks (Cobra Strike being the main one, with minor components to Eagle’s Claw and Thunder Kick that can also disorient), but it also has a knockdown (Dragon’s Tail), a knockback (Crane Kick) and a slow (Crippling Axe Kick) effect in its attacks. The variety of secondary effects is both good and bad. It’s good because hardly any enemies are immune to all of these effects, meaning you can usually get one of them to “stick” even when the others won’t. On the other hand, it’s bad because you can’t “stack” the effects easily, so there is less synergy to the moves.

On the other hand, Martial Arts enjoys heightened accuracy (a base of 85% to-hit rather than 75%), as well as quick animations and generally fast recharge times. In COH, particularly as a scrapper, whose main role is to lay down massive amounts of melee or close-range damage, you want an “unbroken attack chain” as soon as possible. This is fairly easy with Martial Arts, as most of the powers recharge quickly, and with a single “single origin” (SO) recharge enhancer, you can get just about any 3 or 4 powers to recharge so fast that you always have one of them available. This is where the one “non-defensive” power in the Super Reflexes secondary comes in: Quickness. For this power combination (MA/SR), Quickness helps all of your already-quick-to-charge powers recharge that much faster, making your attack chain lightning fast, and making it so that you always have at least one attack power up and ready to use. As a result, you don’t need to take every single primary power in the set — a good thing, considering you won’t have as much wiggle room with the SR secondary as you would with another secondary.

In terms of actual powers, Martial Arts allows you a bit of flexibilty. Basically, every attack in the set is good. Focus Chi is very good and will increase your damage and to-hit. Warrior’s Challenge (a ranged taunt) is optional — you can take it or not, depending on your playstyle. The main thing is, you have seven attacks, but at least in the pre-40 game and perhaps for the whole 50 levels of your development, you will have neither the room (in power picks) nor the slots (in terms of adding slot sockets) to be able to take and apprpriately slot all 7 attacks. By 32, when you get the final, mega-attack power (Eagle’s Claw, which you’re going to want to take, and fully slot), you will have room for only some of your primary powers. You’re going to want Focus Chi in there, and then about 5 attacks. So the question is which attacks to use? The answer really is, it’s up to you… there are 7 to choose from, and you need to demote at least one, and probably two of them, to “some time later on, after 40th level, if at all.”

My personal opinion is that (in addition to one of Thunder or Storm Kick, which the game will require of you), you’re going to absolutely want Crane Kick, as soon as available, along with Focus Chi. My preference was to take all four of those. Alternatively, you could go with Cobra Strike (which does no appreciable damage and should not be slotted for damage, but rather for disorient duration, endurance reduction or recharge rate reduction) in place of either Thunder or Storm Kick. If you go with Cobra I’d recommend going with Thunder rather than Storm kick, since Thunder Kick has a (weak) disorienting capability that can stack with Cobra Strike (and, later, with Eagle’s Claw). It doesn’t do much good, since it’s so weak, in the disorient department, but it’s better than the zero disorient chance of Storm Kick, and if you are going for a “disorienting” build, these should synergize fairly well.

In the early levels, then, your first four primary choices should come as early as you can get them, and should be Crane Kick, Focus Chi, and two of the other available attacks. You won’t get any more attack choices until 18, when Crippling Axe kick becomes available. It’s also possible to skip one attack, holding off until 18… Choosing, for example, Storm and Crane Kicks, and then using just them until 18th level. This is a long time to wait for your 3rd attack. However, if you are going to put Crippling Axe Kick into your build, then you will need to only take two attacks before 18th level. With MA/SR, what you really can’t do, is take all of the early attacks and CAK… because you need all your secondaries and you will get too far behind on your power picks. You also won’t have nearly enough slots available to slot up all those attacks anyway… and they recycle fast enough that having four total attacks is completely ridiculous at this level. Finally, I can’t see anything other than Storm or Thunder kick to replace with CAK… certainly not Dragon’s Tail or Eagle’s Claw, which in my opinion are must-haves, along with Crane Kick and Focus Chi.

To sum up, in terms of the primary, in my judgement the following rules apply:

• Crane Kick, Focus Chi, Dragon’s Tail, and Eagle’s Claw are must haves and should be taken basically the first level available.
• At least one of Thunder Kick and Storm Kick must be taken because of how level 1 powers work.
• Only one (and no more) of Cobra Strike, Crippling Axe Kick, and whichever of TK/SK you did not choose at level 1, should be taken before level 40. It’s your choice which of these to take, but do not take more than one with an SR secondary.

Also at low level, you’re going to want to start working on your movement powers, and of course your defenses. Another problem with Super Reflexes is that it’s “toggle heavy.” You will need to run at least three toggles (Focused Fighting, Focused Senses, and Evasion) after level 35, and there are two to run long before that. With such a “toggle heavy” character, I strongly recommend getting the Fitness Pool, particularly Stamina. Without it, you will need to slot your powers (both attack and defense) massively for endurance reduction… which in my opinion is a waste of slots. On the other hand, Stamina requires three full power picks, and it’s really this, along with the nine secondaries, that makes it so hard to fit all your primary attack powers in.

For the secondaries, the basic rule I followed was, “Take them pretty much as they become available.” It’s hard to do this with Focused Senses (which becomes available very early) simply because taking it adds another toggle, and at low level, your character will be gasping for air a lot (without Stamina). You might want to wait, therefore, until after Stamina is in your build (which you should try to get by level 22 if you can) before taking Focused Senses. The other option is to to take it, but leave it off unless you are facing some serious ranged attack power. Go after any ranged attackers first, while it’s on, and once they’re down, turn it off and go with just Focused Fighting (the melee defense). Ultimately though, as an SR scrapper, life is so much easier if you can just turn on and leave on your toggles and not worry about them (“set it and forget it” as I like to call those powers), but you will have a really hard time doing this without Stamina.

The first “level break point” one gets in COH is level 14, where you finally get your movement power. Which movement power you take is up to you, and entirely a matter of taste. In terms of practical considerations, Combat Jump synergizes nicely (it adds a tiny bit of defense to help your defenses out some) so adding that (followed by Super Jump) is quite nice. the other movement powers are not really helpful nor do they hurt you much, though in my opinion Martial Arts has such high recharge rates, combined with Quickness, that it makes Hasten rather un-necessary. However if you like SuperSpeed as your movement power there’s no reason not to take Hasten. One thing I would NOT do is take any of the “attack” entry powers for movement (Air Superiority, Flurry, etc). Those are decidedly inferior to most Martial Arts moves, and you will find with the three early attacks (Thunder or Storm + one other + Crane) that your attack chain is already pretty decent (unlike many other sorts of builds where the extra pool attack can be a godsend until 18th level).

Taking all this into account, my recommendation on what sorts of power choices to make up to level 14 are as follows:

Primaries – Thunder Kick, Storm Kick (or Cobra Strike), Crane Kick, Focus Chi (4 powers)
Secondaries – Focused Fighting, Agile, Practiced Brawler (3 powers)
Pools – Combat Jumping, Super Jump (or any 2 movement ones)

If you choose to go with CAK as a main attack rather than, say, Thunder Kick, then you’ll want to substitute one of your early choices of attack, by taking Focused Senses early instead.

In the later teens, you’ll want to start working on Fitness (probably), taking Swift, Health, and Stamina as three of your next six choices. Add in Focused Fighting and Dodge for your defense, and by level 26 you should have the following setup:

Primaries – Thunder Kick, Storm Kick (or Cobra Strike or Crippling Axe Kick), Crane Kick, Focus Chi
Secondaries – Focused Fighting, Agile, Practiced Brawler, Dodge, Focused Senses
Pools – Combat Jumping, Super Jump, Swift, Health, Stamina

At level 26 you can get your one and only Area of Effect (AOE) attack, Dragon’s Tail, which also does a Knockdown. In the late 20s and 30s you can then add in the rest of your defenses, and the final attack power, Eagle’s Claw.

You may notice I have not talked much about slotting. I will say a bit here about that. You want your attacks six-slotted. This will make them very effective. It also is why you don’t want too many attacks — I’d rather have 5 attacks 6-slotted than 7 attacks 4-slotted. But that is really a matter of taste (though for practical considerations having all seven MA attacks would be hard to do without, for instance, totally foregoing the fitness pool — which most people wouldn’t be comfortable doing). For your attacks, you’ll want something like this for slotting: ACC-DAM-DAM-DAM-END-RECH. Personally, I find quickness and the speed of martial arts to be such that I do not need recharges in several attacks (Crane doesn’t have it, nor does Storm, in my final build). You can be flexible therefore. For example, most of Fraktal’s attacks are actually ACC-ACC-DAM-DAM-DAM-END, or ACC-ACC-DAM-DAM-DAM-RECH. I like to hit, and hate to miss, so I often put dual accuracy enhancers in my attacks (on the logic that hitting once with a power that has no endurance reduction, uses less enduraince than missing once and hitting once with an endurance reducer on the power). This is really a “season to taste” sort of thing and you will want to play around with it to suit your fancy.

On the defensive powers, any more than 3 enhancers for defense modification are useless, so you want 3 slots in the passives, and probably four slots in the toggles (one for endurance reduction, 3 for defense boost). Practiced Brawler I recommend 4-slotting. I give this power 2 recharge enhancers and two endurance enhancers. It uses a lot of endurance and you don’t want it sucking you dry at the wrong time, especially if you have it set (via control-click) to auto-fire. Quickness needs no slots and can be left “bare” — all you can boost is run speed with that power. And finally, Elude, the “panic power”, which massively increases your defense for 3 minutes, followed by an endurance crash, I recommend 6-slotting: 3x recharge, 3x defense.

Focus Chi is a great boost to your attack strength and to-hit, and I would four-slot this (2 recharge, 2 to-hit) or more (3 recharge, 3 to hit is great, if you have the slots to spare). Stamina and Health I would triple-slot, and Swift can be left bare unless you want to run really fast.

In reality, by the late 40s with a build like this, you will have far more slots than you know what to do with. So by the 50th level, Fraktal had 5-slotted all of her toggles (the extra one was a second endurance reducer), and 3-slotted crazy things like Swift and Super Jump.

In terms of when to put slots into your power, I have always believed, and always will believe, in “even slotting.” That is, pre-30, you get 2 slots every other level… I normally put one into an attack power and one into a defense power. When choosing which attack or defense power to slot, I add them evenly… one in Thunder Kick, then the next one goes into Storm, then Crane, then back to Thunder, etc…. and I do the same with defenses. You certainly don’t have to do this — I know people who just 6-slot their first attack, then 4-slot their first defense, then 6-slot their second attack, and so on. I become impatient with this sort of thing, as it leaves many powers “bare” for too long to suit my taste. This is of course a matter of personal taste.

As to the numbers, people often ask what the SR defenses are. The base defense of the toggles is 12.5%, ehanceable (with 3 SOs) to about 20%, and the base deffense of the passives is 5% (enhanceable with 3 SOs to about 8%). Your final defense is thus about 28% with everything but Elude engaged (30% or so if you have Combat Jumping). Elude gives you about +45% to that, and can be ehanced to be even better. Your full defenses with full enhancements (but not Elude) can thus take a white con minion from having a 1 in 2 chance of hitting you to about 1 in 5.

Finally, a comment about the passives. These are not as optional as they once were. The passives now have some “emergency resistance” built in. As your hit points drop, your passives provide more and more “resistance” to hits that do get through (it’s kind of like “rolling with the punch” as you get more and more hurt). It’s never huge (I think the maximum is something like 20% resistance), but it’s strong enough that it can keep you from being killed. This resistance cannot be enhanced, but it’s just “there” when you take the power. Thus, even if you don’t want to spend slots on the passives, they’re worth at least having.

I would like to close by reminding people that these build guidelines represent my advice, and should not be taken to be intended as “gospel” in any way. You can certainly build characters in lots of different ways. You can forego the passives in SR and replace them with Tough and Weave, for instance, and that might give you a viable build — but I can only speak to what I have tried, and what I know works, and that is what I have included in the guide.