_Elektro_

Okay, that's what I had heard.

When I checked my poor old brute out he was stripped of I/O's and dirt poor. lol

I guess years ago I respecc'd him to steal some expensive I/O's and burn wasn't in his build.

I do remember stone melee being ridiculously heavy in end use. I love the animations, but the lack of people responding to this thread make me believe perhaps it's a bad combo?

Well that's true I suppose. But I only use Weaken on a very tough boss/AV or what not in which case it's worth using... not just for me, but the whole team.

Again, I submit it's something you learn to live with synergy wise. I simply start each battle with the poison element of the fight. When that's done, the gun comes out, and usually stays out unless something has gone very badly.....

Typically, I am not jumping back and forth between the poison stuff and Beam. It's one, then the other.

On the other hand if someone wants to be simply a 'beamer' than I think Blaster is the choice for you, because with something like energy, you have your few powers that will sprinkle in with beam, and you can pretty much just hit your aim/build up and go to town.

I moved to Exalted... started up new toons, etc.

Right now the server FEELS full of Street Justice and Time. I think I would rename Exalted: Justice Time server.

Anyway, I'm guilty of that too and I started thinking about OLD... very old toons I had laying around I thought about moving my brute from Freedom to Exalted.

Here's the thing, I haven't played him since... years ago. I got him to 50 so I could play a Crab and then quickly lost interest in the crab.

I do recall revisiting the FA/Stone melee brute only to find I was dying a ton. Now I understand a lot has changed. Burn changed... a few things may have changed.

For me I'm not concerned with being the 'best' FOTM build, but at the same time I'd like to think I'm using a powerset combo that is in the top.. percentage for effectiveness.

Does Fire Aura/Stone Melee fit that criteria? IS it a strong Brute set or gimped?

oddly enough I haven't seen any of them in recent months. I personally LOVE the feel of wielding a big **** stone hammer, and the giant foot stomp thingy.... But is it gimped?

Any advice? Any thoughts? Good or bad would be appreciated.

There is a lot of interesting data, and argument in this thread for sure.

The 'balance' point is supposed to be Scrappers do more damage. Brutes are more survivable.

BUT the overall argument is very one sided. The flow of conversation has been from the point of view of Brutes doing too much damage. Or at least questioning it.

Some are going so far as to say Brutes do too much damage. Regardless of if that's true, or not, I would suggest it's easier to make Scrappers more survivable than it is to keep Brutes on a higher damage scale.

I know this isn't something you can hammer out with math, and it's purely observation based. The truth is when I think about it there aren't a lot of times I'm thinking 'wow that brute is really out damaging my understanding of the archtype'

But quite often I'll see a scrapper than makes me feel there is little need for a tank in the group. Heck I've done it myself. I hate to admit it, but I would call foul on scrapper survivability FAR sooner than I would call foul on a brutes damage capability.

We need sharks with lasers on their heads.

I don't quite understand all the redraw negativity.

I have a beamer/Poison Corr at about 44. Yes there is redraw, but every battle starts out the same... the redraw or poison activity for me is all at the beginning.... so it doesn't seem to bother me.

I start out with perhaps a hold, envenom, then go to town with a series of Beam Rifle attacks. If things go south, then yes, I revisit the hold... perhaps the slow cone power, but who cares about redraw at that point? I mean you're typically running for your life or not in a position to attack properly anyway....

The poison hold, and envenom are fast... my big beef is with the poison late game powers. They stink really bad. Envenom assures you do similar 'blaster' type damage, the rest of poison is specific to holds/slows/boss debuffs. All are useful, but the trade off is redraw. Again a lot depends on how you play it.... I don't mind starting a battle with poison then moving on.

I'm just curious how much a difference the damage and game style change is between a Beam Rifle Corruptor and Beam Rifle Blaster.

I confess I've played a Beam Rifle/Poison corruptor up to about level 44. I'm not going to ***** about poison, because, well I've already done that, and there's a lot of negativity on it right now.

More to the point, I'm wondering if Beam Rifle is worth choosing for -any- corruptor? The reason I wonder this is because I've come to realize, as good as beam is at single target, it's a very intensive, involved set.

You always seem to be trying to get your Disintegrate groove going. Something like 'Fire' conversely, is kind of a fire and forget.

But with beam, you seem very busy, trying to get that spread going, trying to even fit a snipe in there (for 100% chance to spread). It's a busy set.

So really do you find you have the 'time' as a beamer to really use your secondary? I start every fight off with my poison tricks, then pull out the gun and start 'fighting'. Now I know I'm doing this with a 25% damage penalty in exchange for the awesomeness that is 'poison'.... but is it worth it?

Also is scourge worth it? I am finding Scourge seems best on aoe, dots. Would it be better to simply have the 25% damage rather than hoping a Disintegrate spread turns into a scourge?

I do enjoy beam rifle a lot. More than I thought I would.... but I'm starting to wonder if it's a set best made for a complimentary secondary that just gives you a few buffs, rather than a very graphic intensive, involved secondary like corruptors get. (I still can't imagine playing a Time/Beamer personally)

With Poison I'm down to two play modes: In a team with 'real' controller types, and healers, I go full damage. I use my debuff, and start shooting... so I'm not really a corruptor then am I? I'm a weak blaster.

In solo, or small, or let's say 'handicapped' teams, that's when poison, or a 'corruptor' has a lot more use. The hold, the 'weaken' the potential heal (poisons is garbage but still).....

So what are your thoughts. Does Beam actually work as a Corruptor choice? What about the two sets works/doesn't work? Is a blaster better suited for it? Is it a wash? Just curious....

Just wondering if there is an official word on this yet?

Some rumour floating around points to Trap and Venemous gas getting some treatment, but I'm hearing more about 'Titan Weapons' than I am on anything else right now.

I've kind of reluctantly shelved my Beam Rifle/Poison toon because he feels underperforming in the mid 45's..... The last few powers, if not the whole set needs some tweaking badly.

You know it's odd since I started this thread I've been watching my end use with my fire/time corr, and it's not bad at all.

He's properly slotted, and since I got conserve energy or whatever it's called, and Chrono Shift... no real issues. I think Cardiac would be somewhat of a waste for me. It's really almost never an issue unless I nuke... which is natural.

Still weighing musculature, or spiritual.

You raise a good point about the recharge.

But I worked my build out and compared the numbers with Spiritual vs. Musculature.

While the recharge benefits very slow items like Chrono, and Farsight, and I suppose Hasten..... my actual attacks fire often enough that I don't see a HUGE benefit to having (for instance) Rain of Fire up every 16.45 seconds vs every 15.50 seconds....

However the damage bonus of Musculature is constant... and every attack. Stacked with "Aim" it is.... quite notable.

I guess I'm answering my own question here. Just curious what other Fire Corruptors have done.

Just curious what you guys think.

My fire-time corr is nearing the might Incarnate stuff. I'm not sure what to do. (never had a 50 Cor before.)

On one hand I think we (as Corruptors) start in the hole compared to blasters only doing 75% of blaster damage. I can't make a LOT of that up with the Time powerset. Just in the one debuff power: Slowed Response (22.5%).

Slowed response makes me -close- to basic blaster damage for 30 second bursts. So it seemed logical to go full out Musculature Total Core Revamp.

But now I'm having second thoughts. Am I chasing the damage holy grail where perhaps I should be going after the recharge holy grail? (Spiritual).

The thinking there is to have my debuff up more often, same as my larger AOE's or whatever....

I'm just not sure. Any thoughts?

AH you guys...

You talk me into the expensive option every time.

Alright... finally get to use some enhancement de-slotters tonight.

Well I'd be lying if I said I wasn't tempted to pull my old crab out of hiding!

I haven't played him in eons... but you may have convinced me to look at your build and consider it!

Interesting topic... I've thought many times of making a Tron inspired character, but it's hard with present power picks... which is funny because it seems like there are so many choices right now.

A combo of a mid range throwing device... a ring? A boomerang? A knife? Throwing knives? Energized playing cards (whoops).

I actually feel the blaster-ish Tron character isn't really doable with current sets, but the martial artsy-bullet time look to the moves might be closest to martial arts? I mean imagine martial arts with a disk in your hand as a striking weapon.... that's about as close as I can get.

Too bad you can't colour the jet board black/white or black/orange....

Just following up....

You guys are right. There's little sense in IO'ing this for my tastes. Basically I am going to do a touch of frankenslotting to keep it economical but I'm now looking at reducing recharge, and keeping it a little lighter on the endurance use.

I gotta say, this is actually a really interesting thread. (Aside from the minor pee-pee contests)....

Some things really surprised me, like 'Crab'? Seriously? Never would have thought of that AT being a top damage dealer in anything but AoE's potentially? (I played one to mid 30's way back when they were the new black).

I am surprised I haven't heard more of my own favourite: Dark Melee/Shield Defense. The combination of the two is just fantastic. Shield picks up for Dark Melee's lack of AoE. I realize this is a tad off topic, but still the single target damage potential is very, very high.

This thread has given me some ideas of potential builds that I never thought of. Which is really great because after so many years, you can feel like you've tried everything. And obviously that isn't really true!

Some great ideas in here.

Well I held back on saying anything til I could see where this is going....

The only way I think this really works is if you break it down into subcategories of AT's. Unfortunately, that's really just bringing us back to where we were, by having the builds back in their respective AT categories!

It's too convoluted. It's a hectic looking page and to make these builds easily accessible, a person shouldn't have to look through a bunch of posts on the FotM to find a.... Gravity/* controller build (for example).

I think you have a decent build here, except for your end recovery vs. use.

Mine is bent over sucking air like a pig in a long fight and I have 4.07 recovery and 1.14 use.

Although YMMV, mine is only at 38 so I could be wrong, but I'm betting endurance will be a factor.

Well I've done a few respecs... and I'm running out of vetspecs so I have to stick with what I've got for a while. I am finding Poison Trap is pretty much a skippable power as well. I just realized this after seeing it usually slows me down... gets destroyed, or just has very little, to no effect during a fight.

Right now it's a 3 slot donkey for some ranged def.

So this got me thinking, maybe with beam I should have just taken a blaster, but I wanted to do this so here I am... late game thinking- poison 'must haves' are the hold, envenom, sometimes the slow (as an 'oh crap I gotta get out of here'), and the rest is really skipable. There could be an argument for weaken, but I don't know if you could justify it.

On the plus side, I originally had taken most of the poison, and end game poison powers (which I would highly recommend skipping) to test it all on a corruptor. Now that I see how much of it is bad, or just plain dysfunctional, the good news is that aside from the cruddy heal power, you really only need 2 of the other powers to make yourself a soft debuff/hold blaster. The rest of the power slots easily leave you enough room to get into the fighting pool for Tough/Weave, and perhaps combat jumping/acrobatics.

I still hate going this route but this is poison as it stands.

After hitting 40, I dropped Venemous gas. Ugh. It's an end pig that relies on you getting in trouble to have any effect. This, to me, should be a teir 1 power (skippable)

Poison Trap? This power couldn't give a level 5 Council recruit heartburn. I didn't drop it simply because I don't want to dip into a new pool. It's pretty bad though.... sometimes I think I figured out how to use it:

- Set it up, before the fight
- watch a Freakshow Smasher approach you
- hover, and the poison trap gets pounded by the Freakshow Smasher.
- Awesome.

At first I set it up with some accuracies and hold duration... no point. At best it's a slot mule. I couldn't tell the difference. I thought of slotting it to work like a ghetto Rain of Fire.... but it's unslotted right now.

Truthfully although I found Poison quite good with my Ninja MM (Yay for the heal), I am really kind of down on it.

Poison for a Cor seems to have a lot of 'almost' powers. The hold is great.. so are all holds. Weaken? Great for really long fights, but how many AV's do I face a night?

The truth is the end game poison powers are brutal and need work in a big way. They're a total let down.

The second thing aside from the horrible late game let down is the fact that you can really only use so many of these powers a fight.... I mean I've 'set up' a fight for so long, the hold is down and I haven't fired a shot yet!

I think right now as it stands to get the most from poison, you need about 3 powers. That's it. and aside from the heal they're all very early. I hardly use Toxic Breath anymore... it just takes too long. I've cast it with npc's several yards away from me... some times I don't know who is 'slowed' until I get a hammer in the face.... it's a long animation.

I'm sticking it out. The powers that are usable are great....I've been pretty positive with it thus far, but the end game stuff is a real bummer. It's one thing to fight redraw, slow animation, splash effects, but the last two powers being so 'meh' really would make this power set skippable for a lot of people.

Just hit 38 with my Beam-Poison.

I actually like it. I still think poison works great with Beam... poison DOES need some help. I won't say it's getting hate in this thread, but I know darn well what the debuffs do. I've tested it over and over.

Also, in a very good team, I can drop the debuffs for all but the biggest nasties and go nuts on Beam.

Scourge Beam is a great time. I kept poison trap for now just because it's easy. For right now i have it slotted 2 x acc, and 2 x hold duration. NOt sure what to do with it.

I'm going to skip the final power but it would seem stacking neuro breath and Trap does something? IDK. Trap is a bit of an aggro machine, but it's easy to lay and escape with...

Thanks BrandX... for validating my purchase!

The feel of the set is why I like it. I'm just happy it isn't... crappy. I know it sounds weird, but when I find I typically LOVE a set, it sucks. lol

Seriously, I loved dual pistols, heard nothing but complaints, and went to incarnate with it.

Loved Gravity Controller... ok, nuff said.

Love this.

I'm not sure what to think at this point...

Street Justice seems like the cool big brother to Martial Arts feel of yesteryear. This doesn't seem fair, but I understand the underlying drive to sell something new, rather than bring something old up to date.

Street Justice makes me think Martial Arts could be REALLY cool if they added Dual Pistol style animations to it, and some other minor tweaks.

I feel a bit ripped off by the new set because I am a VIP player so.... I kept asking myself, why am I paying for this? I felt a little taken advantage of by paying my monthly fee, twice this month already just to enjoy content I apparently subscribe to.

I blame myself though. I got caught up in what I call 'Sewer Justice' and had to have one. The problem is when you've played nearly everything that interests you in this game, and have explored most of the content, it's easy to get sucked in.

That being said, I actually really enjoy the set. The sounds, and moves are what make it though. There very well may be MUCH more.... potent melee sets out there, but this is a very bone crushing, visceral, and violent looking set (no pom poms here, k, thnx)

As I hit a meager level 19, I'd have to say this set won't last longest with the min max types. It will last with concept players, and people who love the feel of a very batman-esque, bone-snapping, power set.

I think I figured out why my Beam/Poison corruptor is taking such a back seat to my fire-time guy....

Time is incredible. But you can't put time, IMHO, with a very busy set... Fire is so easy to pair up with it, because of so many dots. The Dots work in the background while you're doing your other stuff.

Time does debuff (not as early as poison) but has a great hold (so does poison) a host of slows that again IMHO way better than poison.... And not to mention the second power in Time is this amazing heal that you can fire off BEFORE a battle, and let it trickle heal you as the fight begins.

Towards the end of the power list, Time gives you this great buff for def... it just keeps getting better.

I'm looking at the end of Poison and I don't even remember if these poison powers are any good.... (I had a Ninja/Poison MM up to the 40's that I deleted but I can't remember using the end game poison powers).

So enough is enough... I like the beam rifle, and I want to make it a little funner.... Even after hours and hours of play, I'm not convinced Poison is the best choice, but most of the animations are quick, and it falls in the category of debuff/soft control which helps.

Time, unfortunately, debuffs/buffs (yourself)/Heals!(yourself)/Regen/Rchg... wow. Time is stellar.

So I spoiled myself with time. Time is the crack of corruptor powers. I'm convinced of it.

I intend on posting my Beam Rifle/Poison build shortly. It's hardly 'optimized' but fun is key.... The only thing I'm uncertain of is the final Corruptor version of Poison powers.

Can anyone tell me how Poison Trap and Venemous Gas perform with Beam Rifle. Also what do you recommend for slotting those two (if any?).