_Deth_

yeah, i realized that after the fact.


*shrug* Didn't say it was bad, just said it looked unfinished. As a base for a total build, it is great. The fact that without changing the slotting you can really flush it out is even better.

Like I said, the second build I posted was one I had saved that I put together for my gf.

That is the difference between SO and IO slotting. How it is "supposed" to look changes, dramatically. That is probably the biggest hurdle when it comes to creating good builds with Mid's. You have to look at the total values. Yeah, I took slots out of stamina and put em in brawl. If you are going to slot with IOs, sometimes things like that will reap much higher benefits than "traditional" slotting.

I didn't crank up defense at the cost of End. I cranked up defense, and regen, and damage and tohit, and end efficiency. If you compare the two, my build is more efficient than the one you posted. It has higher end recovery, and lower end use.

I didn't say I had trouble with darknest night, I said I don't like it as much. Plus, overall, you will get more out of the immobilize slotted as I had it than out of darkest night. Especially considering it isn't costing you any end.

For someone that has never put together an IO build, I can see the one I posted as being intimidating, I had to change my mindset on slotting when I first started building them as well.

Don't remember exactly, but it couldn't have been too much, I get queasy when I spend more than 20mil.

Now this sounds like fun!

"Wildly exaggerating"? Honestly, that is essentially what it would come down to, with the exception of mission mob size, which scales with the size of the group, anyone doing outdoor content would encounter exactly the scenario of 1 or 2 mobs at a time. How often do you actually come across groups with more than 5-7 mobs, unless of course you are in a full group in a mission.

Wow, this is just petty. Yes I disagree, but that is not what I based my point on. I based it on the fact that currently, most groups only have anywhere 3-7 mobs, with the exception of missions where the number scales to the size of your team and the mission difficulty.

Getting mad because I am just pointing out where it would leave things the way it was stated is childish.

Sorciere and Starsman stated what they thought was fun, what Kruunch, me and others have stated is, removing the aggro cap will not change how people that don't mind the aggro cap play the game. They can keep doing what they are doing. Those of us that dislike the aggro cap would be able to do what we find fun as well. Currently, I run most solo content on Invincible with my tanks, short of AVs, not because I can't live through it, but because I lack the damage output to kill them. I still like to grab as many mobs as I can to make the content challenging.

I would rather put the slots in other places, but yeah, personal preference.


Don't really see why they wouldn't be enhanceable, the recharge at least anyway. The way I see it, it isn't a tier 9, and to be honest, is most valuable in that it gives the set a heal. I think the regen/recovery is a throw in to allow for non stam builds to still be viable with the set. Not taking stam was, again from my pov, the only conceivable reason for taking CP. With stam, it was pointless to take it.

Well, as someone who has played MMs since CoV Beta, I have to agree with you. MM's are definitely more than capable of playing the tanking role, especially after they introduced bodyguard. The aggro mechanic for MMs is really just misunderstood by most. After CoV release, when teamed, I would swarm the minions and Lt's while the rest of the team took out the boss, or, the exact opposite, with the rest of the group handling all the extras while I nuked the boss. /poison was just nuts back in the day, but shines more on single targets than on groups.

To be honest, I would put brutes squarely between Scrappers and tanks, comparing to both ATs equally. In the SO game, I agree, they definitely do resemble scrappers more, unless you gimp them on damage. But when you break into IO territory, they become monsters that are more than capable of tanking even the heaviest content, while putting out excellent sustained damage. It is my opinion, in overall potency and utility, they eclipse both classes. Being able to softcap defense, access to taunt for aggro control, and having hp levels that compare to tanks, and only slightly lower resistance levels, they can tank anything in the game. Sure tanks are still tougher, but until they up the difficulty in content, that toughness goes unused. Scrappers will definitely put out larger damage numbers, having that burst DPS from criticals that a brute just can't match, but a brutes constant DPS(with fury built up) will be on par if not better than a scrappers. BillZbubba has a thread that has shown DPS wise exactly how brutes and scrappers stack up, so go read that before arguing this point. But I can't really think of any content in the game where burst vs. constant dps is even really considered a necessary strategy.

Yep

See above.

As for porting /regen to brutes, I think WP is as close as brutes are going to get. For the SO game, yeah, it would probably be balanced pretty well, when you take into account IOs, that goes out the window. Regen scales with total hp, and having tank levels of hp available, well, without serious tweaking, I can see it getting out of hand. Alpha's may be a bit rough, but I don't see them being a big obstacle, especially if people build for perma dull pain.

PM me your build, I have one set up for my SM/WP brute with it softcapped for S/L. No PvP IO in the build either. Am going to see if I can't put one together for positional that doesn't gimp the crap out of me.

NVM, couldn't even come close on positional.

Softcapped (well almost softcapped, will get that last 3 percent with my last Kinetic Combat) def to S/L has done amazingly well on my DA/DM tank. That said, the damage seems to be varied up a bit more redside, so I am not sure how well it will do.

there is an article in the player guides on why softcapping def is, as far as survivability goes, the best thing you can possibly do for mitigation. The basic gist is, 40-45% mitigates as much damage as the first 40%.

Ice armor would be doable, look at DA, with the fears and the disorient aura. Building Fury wouldn't be bad at all. Would love a revised version of Ice Melee as well. Chances are, they pulled Ice more because of Ice melee than armor. Ice Melee, at the time anyway, would have been terrible for brutes as the damage was garbage, and it just built on the mitigation of Ice Armor. Ice melee is much better now, and they could redo some of the powers, or borrow from other sets, like adding ISC from Ice assault, a power that I think just looks sexy as hell.

Um, not really sure what you mean by this, as your offensive options go up a lot when you don't have to worry about end. I have pretty much lost interest in my SS/SD because it burns end so fast, and slows me down a ton. It makes my DA tank(pre IOs) look end efficient by comparison. Granted, no pretty shield charge or AAO stacked with rage, but overall survivability is much higher with the right build in WP. Admittedly, ss/sd hits hard as hell when I do have end.

If it does work out that way, that is just awesome. And definitely makes SR, in my eyes, a much more solid set than SD,

Both sets have a lot to offer, but yeah, like Kep said, SD is new, and whats more, people figured out how to turn it into a real beast.

The additional damage from AAO also makes it more desirable to a lot of people. I think you will see it kinda kick down some soon tho. With the changes coming to Ela, I see a new FoTM coming.

Believe it or not, I got my Cytos pretty cheap recently. A hell of a lot cheaper than I thought they would be. And I am impatient, so I bid til I got the things.

Man, that would actually suck, hard. The most annoying thing about WoW was having to kill things one or two at a time. Here we are, supposedly these heroes of legend, and a spider is about to whoop our *****, yeah, that's heroic. When they changed prot warriors in 3.0, it was fun to actually feel like a tank, and be able to herd up 10 mobs or so at a time. It took a lot of the tedium out of the grind.

Someone, I forgot who, mentioned Reichsman. Reichsman isn't hard, Reichsman is TEDIOUS, almost painfully so. I didn't feel heroic in that fight, I felt nerve damage setting into my hand wrist and shoulder. With only a kin on the team for heals, not once was I in any real danger of dieing, and holding the aggro between him and the other AVs was stupidly simple.

As for army sized crowds not fitting the genre, that is such crap. Go read some old Hulk comics when he was fighting, I dunno, the ARMY!?!?!? there are plenty of other examples of comic heroes mowing through tons of minions to get to the Boss.

Yeah, I think that is a fairer number than 17. I still would prefer no aggro cap at all, but I can live with it being at least a bit bigger.

Yep

Personally, in the day to day, grinding levels or farming to increase my buying power, I do like to have a challenge, and pulling a huge volume of mobs allows for that. Pulling 100 minions/lts is fun in that I CAN ACTUALLY DIE IF I STOP PAYING ATTENTION. Pulling 3-7 AVs is actually not as big of a challenge as you make it out to be, especially if you are IO'd pretty well. There is a vid out there of a WP tank holding 10. I can hold 8 on my DA, which isn't quite to the def cap, will try 10 again when I get there. Can't kill em, but I can tank em all day. Back in the day before the aggro cap, I would intentionally see just how much I could get away with, and I died a lot.

And saying they killed herding simply due to server stress is crap. If they had done it for that reason, they would have put the population cap on the hive sooner. They added the aggro cap at the same time they added the AoE cap. They were constantly screwing with every mechanic they could trying to fight farming. First the adjustment to the wolves, then putting a timer on the mish, then the timer on Dreck, then taking xp off of summoned mobs.

well, with the uniques, level is irrelevant, as they work the same at all levels. I was lucky, got mine early.

well, with the IO build I came up with for my Elec/ElA brute, the only difference IO'd out between it and my IO'd DA/DM tank is a few hp and @10% resistance. And my DA tank will put out a ton less damage.

Well, from what I understand, and I could be a bit off on the subject, they had kind of planned on that, but never really followed through with it. I think part of it was them watching to see how people played em, but hell, I am just guessing here.

I remember those dark days, before bodyguard mode. My first toon in villains was my Necro/Poison MM, who I started during the headstart they gave to those who preordered. Before bodyguard, especially in pvp, you could kind of tank with a MM, but if the aggro went from your pets, to you directly it got ugly really fast. In PvP it was just silly. People figured out really fast how to get ya. Then they introduced bg mode, and well.....

To be honest, there is no good reason why WP shouldn't be able to handle an alpha. From what I can tell, people dont really run perma Dull Pain anymore, so the HP pool of the WP tank will be a lot higher. Between the hp pool and moderate resists of the WP and the high resists of the Inv, the difference in the percentage of hp lost from the alpha should be relatively close. I can't back this up with numbers, just extrapolating based on what I know of both builds when IO'd numberswise. This is assuming both have tough and weave, and are softcapped.

With a good IO build, the WP should be able to handle the LRSF no problem, handling the job the stoner did in the run you mentioned without a hitch. Hell, if he's really good he might even be able to handle all the rest at once.

ummm, that is insane. Not saying it's bad, but serious overkill. And just absurdly expensive for the sake of it. would be nice to have more bonus damage too.