The Way of the Fist

A standard Martial Artist is the most common type of MA you will come across. He goes for skills that are easy for him to raise: Martial Arts, Brawling, Dimach, Physical Prowess Initiative, Body Development. There are other skills you will raise occasionally, like Computer Literacy which is important for using the grid and equipping high level NCU Belts. Or First Aid and Treatment which are important for healing yourself during and between fights.

Again other skills are not for direct use, but you may need them when you want to use equipment that requires those skills. However, plan those skills well, as they are the extra skills that make you run out of experience points later. So which of those additional skills are valuable? Between the following two skills you should decide: Riposte and Parry. Maxing both is simply not possible whilst you advance. Both skills are very useful, depending on what type of equipment you chose. Damage shields require Parry, while damage deflection shields require Riposte. Some of the best MA special attacks (like Blessed with Thunder) needs a high Parry, while other MA special attacks require Riposte. You have to make up your mind! I personally prefer Parry before Riposte.

An additional skill class which is very important are the nano skills. All six of them are painful to raise, but Matter Creation is the hardest. However, some nano skills are most important for the Martial Artist, so you can use buffs that will extremely improve your character. I can tell you: You will not be able to raise all six nano skills equally! Try to focus on maybe three of them, depending on what kinds of nanos you want to be able to use. Most armor class buffs and damage buffs as well as the healing nanos require Bio Metamorphosis, Matter Creation (dark blue!) and Sensory Improvement. This is the only exception where I say raising a dark blue skill is worth the while. You will also need to raise the other nano skills a little, so you can use the general skill buffs. Those skill buffs can then buff your nano skills again, which can save you some experience points as well. Also don't forget the use of implants, which I will describe later.

Other skills like Dodge, Evade, Duck, Nano Resistance and Run Speed are useful too, but they should only be raised if you have lots (and I mean lots!) of experience points left. Run Speed is useful for PvP, as Martial Artist is the class who is able to fight while running. You will have an advantage to a class which is specialized on ranged weapons, especially when they try to escape. A basic Map Navigation skill is useful for uploading the most important maps and map reader utilities. Keep that skill around 150 and it will be enough for most situations.

Fellowman practicing his kata in a backyard.

The Tank Martial Artist

Well, with the introduction of Notum Wars and towers playing an Atrox MA is more viable than ever. The problem in the past was simply that with a capped 400 Intelligence, Sense and Psychic we were about 5 - 10 points short on being able to cast FFoK and UVC (Four Fists of Kali, Universal Vulnerability Compendium), even at 200th level! Well, the main problem with this (other than having to bug MP's for Masteries to cast our best nanos - even at 200th level) was that our opifex, solitus and nano-mage brothers and sisters were casting these nanos at 150th level.

So now you know why there are very few Atrox Martial Artists.

So now that we have the bad part out of the way let's focus on the positives.

Atrox = STRONG!
Atrox = HEALTHY!
Atrox = Not so slow!
Atrox = dumb
Atrox = not very senisble
Atrox = not very psychic (?)

Martial Arts = hitting people. Ok, great! So you're punching people in the face. Well, Atrox' do this remarkbly well. I know I know, you shift click on the MA skill and it says that strength is a low requirement. Well, honestly, you don't lose damage here at all. Keep your strength maxed and implanted (I currently have bow implanted to be able to use the 181 POW bow - although I'm not sure why I did this atm...), and you're damage will (at the minimum!) be equal to if not greater than your opifex brothers and sisters.

Ok, so point one:

Implant Strength and keep it maxed!
Max Stamina (don't implant as you need those slots for Max Health nanos)!

Intelligence is important as for every 12 points of intelligence you get about 3 points in every nano skill. So I would raise this periodically as well.

In my opinion nano skills should go in order of damage for a tank and not healing.

WHAT?!

BUT IF I'M TANKING AND I CAN'T HEAL I'LL DIE!

If you're tanking and not outdamaging your team mates they will take agro and die... Keeping in mind that as a Tank MA you only have a few ways really keep and hold agro, and they don't work very well. First being the amount of damage you do and the second being the Da Taunter!!. Also another way to gain agro is to spam team heals as the team heals taunts for the total amount it heals for. The problem here is that as an atrox you don't have alot of nanos and if you attempting to get agro you won't have time to sit down and nano yourself. Besides this specialization assumes that you, the Tank MA, is NOT the primary healer anyway. You should have a doc with your team as well - MA's should NEVER be the primary healer (even the healing MA shouldn't be the primary healer in a group!)

Also keeping in mind that even if you don't implant your healing skills (which you will be doing) you're only looking at using the nanos a couple of levels longer than the other people that do anyway.

So, nanos skills in order of importance:

Psychological Modifications
Sensory Improvement
Time and Space

Ok, why these three:

Psy mod and Sense Imp are needed for MA skill buffs (Mastery and FFoK)

Psy mod, SI and TS are needed for Crit buffs (SG, LMA and UVC).

So what's next?

BM (needed for healing)
MM (needed for str buffs - important for this specialty)

As long as BM doesn't interfere with the 3 mentioned above implant it! However I would not recommend implanting MM and only raise it when you're not desperate for IP points.

and lastly:

MC (used for sucky AC booster)

I am now 170th level and still haven't raised it...

Armour for the Atrox Tank MA:

First of all any strength or stamina armour is good, however this is going to be my personal recommendation. I say strength and stamina because those are what the atrox is best suited for and it is most easily buffable (essence from enforcers and IC or enlarge from doctors).

Ok, in my experience it is best to use Graft (NOT Organic!!!) as it provides the best over all protection. To make up for the lack of cold AC you can implant it (I don't remember off hand if the slot for Cold AC is used by something else - I don't think it is though...). Another reason for Graft is because it's easily blitzable and has fairly low requirements considering the protection it gives. Graft is also upgradable to CAS later on once you acquire the necessary Notum Chips/Fragments. Enriched Notum Fragments are also smashable and creat Notum Chips which can be used. Grab you're friendly enforcer with a large hammer to smash them.

Alright, if you've got time to blitz, money to spend or time to waste then this is what I suggest.

Start doing team missions and gather all the So8 you can. Stuff is pretty nice and provides good protection. Adds to MA skill and to evades, which I'll talk about later.

For your back armour you have an early choice as well. The Blue combat suit (ugly as it is) increases your MA skill as well.

Once you get higher level you can search out the every elusive Aura Magnifier which is dropped by the Tarasque in the Camelot Dungeon.

And for the very rich there is always the Living Dragonflesh Body Armour. But don't get your hopes up as every Tom Dick and Harry wants it still. :/

So, we got the armour, got the nanos, what else?

Evades! Everyone seems to think that being a tank means taking the damage. Well, this is important, however not taking damage is important too. I have a fixer, in Grid Armor MK III and she can tank better than my twinked enforcer of similar level. Eh.

So, RAISE THOSE EVADES! Yes, duck explosions is important as well. Most weapons used by bosses attack vs. this skill. Evades, which are not just responsible for whether or not the blow misses you, are responsible for the amount of crits that are made against you. So, as you can see, evades are important on 2 different levels.

Allright folks, that's all the time I have for today. Post your questions and I'll update the guide as needed.

Hatchet
RT Alumni
Atrox MA!