Even though MA has fallen out of favor lately, I never had quite as much fun with any weapon style as I did when I was MAThe recent thread about the atrox fist-fighter doc got me thinking and I decided to write up a guide to it. I think this guide might be helpful to people who are unsure of what to do in light of the impending rifle nerfs, and MA is still one of our best damage dealing choices outside of PvP.
I. Introduction - or, So you Want to be a Kung Fu Fighter?
The Doctor profession, while not a primary or even secondary damage-dealer by nature, can nonetheless make good use of several combat skills for whacking on those fleshy-headed mutants.Although it's been rendered less popular than ever due to the Notum Wars, it is useful for us to remember that for generating the maximum amount of damage per second in PvM, no weapon available to a Doctor can match our fists. In fact, a good Martial Arts Doctor can outdamage not only other Doctors in PvM, but often many players of more combat-oriented professions.
In addition to being our most damaging option, it is also very low on IP useage, is friendly to our nanoskill implants, and naturally fast so that raising initiative is less important. Throw in the convenience factor (you never need a wrangle to equip your bare hands) and the fact that punching and kicking can look pretty darn cool, and the result is a combat skill that has only one drawback: Lack of utility in PvP.
II. Getting Started: Train Hard, Grasshopper!
To be a Martial Arts Doctor, make sure you aren't holding anything in your hands, walk up to something, target it, and press Q. You punch it!That is how martial arts works - it is your bare hand attack. Assuming you don't have to reclaim because you punched something that was red when I told you to just now, I will go into more details. Otherwise hurry and rez and get a warp back
Using martial arts is really the same as using any other weapon, with one exception. When you go to punch something the game will calculate your chances of hitting, based on your Attack Rating compared to the target's Defense Rating. Then it rolls to see if you hit, and if you hit, it calculates damage based on your weapon's damage stats, the target's armorclass, and your damage multiplier.
Attack Rating is a number you can view in your statistics window, and for martial arts is equal to your martial arts skill plus any AddAllOff modifiers you might have. AddAllOff is short for Add All Offense and can be found as the benefit of several buff nanos, some jobe implants, and certain items. Attack Rating is hugely important for combat because it helps to determine if you hit or miss your target and also provides a damage multiplier to your rolls when you hit something. So having a high AR is a good thing - it makes you hit both more often and harder! Your damage multiplier is equal to (1 + (AR/400)), and is applied to the results of hits after the damage dice on your weapon is rolled but before armor class is subtracted.
The one exception I mentioned earlier is... that you aren't using a weapon
The way that the game assigns you a Martial Arts Item is different from how you equip other weapons. With other weapons, you put them in your hands (often using buffs) and then that's that. Whatever QL weapon you put on is what QL you have, and even if your skill goes up or down, your weapon stays the same. The Martial Arts Item is different: the game calculates the QL of Martial Arts Item based on your Martial Arts skill. The QL of the Martial Arts Item you get is 1/2 of your Martial Arts skill, up to a maximum of QL 500.
This detail is pretty nifty because raising your Martial Arts skill not only increases your attack rating (which makes you hit more frequently and for more damage), it also provides you with a stronger pair of fists as your weapons.
III. Initiatives and Agg/Def: Strike Like Lightning, Dodge Like Wind!
In addition to raising your Martial Arts skill to get stronger fists and higher attack rating, you will also want to raise your Physical Initiative skill as time goes on. Initiative, along with the position of your Agg/Def slider in your status window, affects how frequently you will attack. Each weapon, including the Martial Arts item, has an attack time and a recharge time. The attack time represents how long it takes for the weapon to "wind up" before you swing it or shoot it, and the recharge time represents how long it takes for a weapon to "recover" after you attack.
Attack time and Recharge time are both capped at 1 second apiece, so no matter how fast your weapon is, and how high your initiatives are, you will only attack once every two seconds (1s attack, 1s recharge - also called 1/1 speed).
A major influence on your attack speed is the position of your agg/def slider. At 100% (all the way right, or fully aggressive) you will attack more quickly. 100% agg/def modifies both attack and recharge time by -0.25 seconds. At approximately 88% agg/def, you have no bonus. Lower than 88% agg/def, you begin to experience penalties - at 0% agg/def you have a +1.75/1.75 penalty to your attack and recharge times. You might be thinking, "Why should I ever go left with my agg/def slider then?" The reason for this is that the further left you are with it, the more effective your defensive skills become. So people who choose to fight offensively will attack faster but get hit more often by those who attack them, while people who fight more defensively will attack less often but also be missed more by attackers.
After your attack speed is modified by the agg/def slider, your initiative applies a modifier to it too. Initiative affects your attack speed in the following way: 300 points of weapons initiative, results in -0.5 seconds to attack time, and -1 second to recharge time. So if you have a weapon that is 1.5/2 speed, getting 300 in your initiative skill will make it 1/1 speed. Or, if you have a 1/1 weapon, and pull your agg/def slider left, having a higher initiative will keep the weapon at 1/1 and you get the bonus of better evades too.
One of the best things about Martial Arts, from the Doctor point of view, is that its speed is very fast naturally and unlike other fast weapons, its damage doesn't utterly stink.
Because your low level fists are 1.25/1.25, you can be punching at 1/1 right at level 1, just by going to 100% agg/def. This is recommended for PvM - most everyone is always at 100% agg/def in PvM unless they can go lower without losing weapons speed. Until your martial arts skill gets over 200, you can save IP by not putting any in physical init (which martial arts uses) and just fighting at 100% agg/def. But if you are at 100% agg/def, even with a QL 500 Martial Arts Item you are very fast, and only need 150 in physical init to punch at maximum speed
This is a great IP-saver, and having a fast-attacking weapon is important for us, since healing interrupts our attacking. When you have IP for putting into inits, you can start fighting more defensively and still do the same damage, but which will help you survive being aggroed like you will be in many teams. The lightning speed of kung-fu lets us play it safe and still get our licks in between heals
IV. Brawling and Dimach: Fist of Fury, Soul of Flame
When you are unarmed there are two special attacks you can make based on your skills. These specials are Brawl and Dimach, and the work just like any weapon special does - you press the appropriate button and make an extra attack, then the appropriate skill locks for several seconds or several minutes, after which you can make the attack again. Specials of this sort always hit, regardless of your attack rating, the target's evades, etcetera.
Brawling is basically an extra punching attack. It's described as a sort of a "dirty trick," below-the-belt or sucker-punch type move (in fact the MA buff for Brawl skill is called Dirty Fighter). Brawling is an incredible special move, one of the tops in the game for PvM. It recycles very quickly, and can do impressive damage. Brawling damage is based 100% on your skill in Brawling. Higher skill means higher damage. Brawling also crits on occasion, which can really ruin some poor victim's day. I strongly recommend raising Brawling when you have leftover IP after other skills as an MA doctor, and even if it's low, use it as often as you can.
Dimach is a very hard hitting "soul energy" attack. The upshot of dimach is that, with enough skill, you can do crippling amounts of damage on a decent hit - so much so that at one point weapons-swapping PvP soldiers would dimach as part of their alpha strike. The downside of dimach is that it recycles once every 30 minutes, which makes it kind of impractical for most purposes. For Doctors, dimach is very IP costly, and combined with the recycle time I have to recommend against raising it. If you really badly want to arena duel as an MA doctor, this would probably be the only reason for us to use dimach.
V. Getting the Most From Your Kung Fu: Techniques of the Masters
Punching fast, being at low agg/def, and brawling have made you a pretty formidable opponent by now, Grasshopper. You are ready to advance to the next level of your training and learn the secret techniques of the Martial Artist: Martial Arts Special Moves.
These special moves are attacks that can only be done when you are unarmed. They take the form of items that you "use" (rightclick or use from hotbars) to execute. These items come in various QLs, and have various skill requirements. I highly recommend familiarizing yourself with these moves, using them, and updating them when you can - they will increase the amount of damage you can do over time significantly and many are effectively freebies in that their requirements are skills you would be raising already.
Attack of the Snake is a quick jab of the fist that does some extra damage. It requires only your martial arts skill, so if you are an MA doc you can use this without any extra IP investments. It's a freebie - take advantage of it! Attack of the Snake does less damage than other MA specials but it recycles very quickly. All around, this is a great choice for the IP squeezed - decent additional damage for no IP. If you are using MA at all, you want one.
Bird of Prey is a jumping kick that does more damage than Attack of the Snake and has a 30% chance of stunning the target briefly. It locks your skill for about twice as long as Attack of the Snake, but also does twice as much damage - the stun effect is where it shines. Bird of Prey does require relatively high Dimach to use however. I would recommend Bird of Prey as an attack for PvPers who are using Dimach and for whom the stun effect can be a nice boost.
Angel of Night is a special move that have an extremely high Riposte requirement. Its effect is of a minor init debuff (that does stack with our nano lines) and a melee AC debuff. It also has a really long skill locking time. I would say that Angel of Night isn't worth the IP expense of Riposte, especially because Riposte skill isn't useful in itself.
Bright, Blue, Cloudless Sky is an attack that has an extremely high Dimach requirement but can be very useful to a PvPer. It causes a worthwhile amount of damage, initdebuffs the victim in a way that stacks with our nanos, and stuns the target for approximately 5 seconds. The drawbacks are a three-minute recycle time and the very high dimach skill required.
Flower of Life is a very cool attack. Its main attraction to most people is the fact that it is a very good heal (2500 point heal for ql 200). It also debuffs the target's run speed and All Def for 10 seconds after being used. And it looks cool when you use it (like a high kicking thingy hehe). Flower of Life requires Parry skill to use, and the IP cost can get pretty heavy for the bonus. Doctors are already pretty good healers, so I'd mostly look at this as an emergency heal when debuffed or out of nano - situations you'll encouner more in PvP than PvM.
Shen is much like Dimach (and high Dimach is a requirement). It has a lot of powerful effects, including heavy damage, a DoT, a stun, and an initdebuff. But it locks your skill for a very long time, making it less then great in PvM. Much like most of the attacks using Dimach, Shen is best saved for duels.
Blessed With Thunder is unique among the special attacks useable by doctors in that it doesn't have martial arts skill among its requirements. Its requirements are Brawl and Parry. In terms of Damage Per Second, Blessed With Thunder is superior among MA attacks. When first used it does a rather hard initial strike, then has a 6-tick DoT of slightly lesser but still nice damage. The skill lock period is 40 seconds, meaning that you can use another BWT before the first finishes ticking - it stacks with itself. If you are serious about doing the most damage you can with MA, you will want to raise Parry and use a Blessed With Thunder.
Overall... my advice would be not to the specials that require Dimach or Riposte, and focus on Attack of the Snake, Flower of Life, and Blessed with Thunder. Doctors don't have enough IP to go around for most of their career, to be raising skills with as limited utility as Dimach or Riposte in return for special attack moves that aren't useful - especially not when compared to BWT - outside of duels.
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