Besserwisser

With some quick changes I got 240 DPS and 3.20 EPS

Be warned that there's a ton of mobs that has 40-60% resistance to Psionic so not having any other damage types can get annoying. This includes all robots and zombies (except Clockwork).

243 DPS with 3.673 EPS. Net loss 0.76 EPS, drained in 144 seconds. In order to be sustainable you have to slow down to the point where you do 196 DPS. Powerforge wins.

Powerforge, your chain gets 218 DPS and 2.935 EPS, Werners gets 200 DPS and 2.766 EPS.

While all fire attacks are reasonably fast, none of them is lightning fast either. The average attack speed is fairly even with most sets and they have limited options for alternating attack chains (one for building fury and one once it's built up). It's definetly good at building fury (my only level 50 villain is Fiery/WP).

Endurance shouldn't be that much of a problem if you slot for it, FM has really good DPE. Running away from an AV to recover isn't something I'd advise for a Brute, while it would work well for a Scrapper the Fury loss would really hurt the Brute.

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It just seems I am missing something huge. Like I forgot to do...<insert thing to do here>... Know what I mean?

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Slot your attacks for endurance reduction? Get Dark Consumption and slot it for recharge?

It should be noted that Energy Melees low endurance costs are paid in blood.

I have 30 active characters and have deleted about twice that in total. I dare you to stick to just one.

I'm not sure what you like in the game. I always create a solo character that I have just to experience all the content in the game. Missions feels a lot more meaningful in this game than in other MMOs. If story is not your thing, then I suggest teaming as much as possible. You gain XP much faster that way so you'll reach PvP levels faster and it's in my opinion a lot more fun. Pick a highly populated server (Freedom or Virtue) to make it easy to find teams (there may be a PvP focused server too, not sure about that).

Most damage sets gets an added effect. Battle Axe gets knockback, Energy Melee gets stun, Fiery Melee gets more damage. The only thing you'll ever get from Fiery Melee is damage and lots of it. So while it's not necessarily better overall, it's certainly better for damage. It's also got decent AE damage.

Stone Melee has some really high damage attacks, most notably Seismic Smash which is probably the best attack in the game. Not only does it do tons of damage, but it can also hold bosses.

Now I didn't notice you were talking about PvP. The mechanics are completely different between PvP and PvE. If you want to be good at PvP I recommend the PvP forums, very few who frequent the AT forums knows much about it, me included. I do know that nothing beats Super Strength for PvP though. I think the devs forgot to balance for damage buffs, the fools. I also know that Willpower is bad for PvP.

Willpower is very good with EM in PvE. For PvP I think /Fire would be the best choice. You get Healing Flames to get your health back up (awesome, awesome self heal). Heck, /Fire's a good choice for PvE as well. But again, for better PvP advice turn to those forums.

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Situations where my damage is capped on my scrapper are few and far between. If I had to pull a random number out of my [censored], I'd say it's far less than 1% of the time I spend teaming.

I've never seen the damage cap on my brutes, except when I was popping a bunch of reds ; and I've got a SS brute, which can doublestack Rage for +160% damage.

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For me it's about 80%. When you've got on average +300% damage from your own buffs it doesn't take that much from teammates to cap it and kinetics aren't exactly rare. The downside I'm seeing for making a DM/SD team scrapper.

The thing is that Boxing can do all that while dealing more damage and opening up the Fighting pool though.

A lot of Dark Armors survivability lies on Oppressive Glom and Cloak of Fear. Both of those severely cuts down your fury building, making it a rather poor choice for Brutes. It can still do ok, but I think most prefer making them Scrappers, Tanks or Stalkers.

Well, Energy is still one of the best for single target damage. Fire and Stone are better, but EM has better mitigation than Fire and you don't want Stone. I'm not a fan of SR combined with it though, EM really needs a heal or regeneration to make up for the loss of health from Energy Transfer. Aid Self can do it, but the animation time of that would really reduce your damage output.

You should be able to find a stealth IO for a few million if you shop smart. Now this sounds like a lot to someone who has been away for awhile, but know that it's much, much, much easier to earn influence nowadays. Just learn how IOs work and how Wentworths work.

The build looks much better. Now we're talking damage! I still don't like Blazing Bolt because the damage of snipes suck, but they're nice set mules now and I can't think of anything better to use there.

Imagine how much my Fire/Fire/Fire Blaster loves RotP.

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hrmm...After reading a bit about /Ea, that doesnt sound too bad. Pretty solid in def and res, plus a +regen and +recovery clicky...I AM SO CONFUSED!!!!

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You don't need regen and recovery in your secondary, you have it in your primary. That's why you combine DM with a secondary that lacks them. /SR, /SD and /Inv.

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Ok, So......Which is the most solid and non squishy, cheapest to soft cap and most destructive (Not to myself mind you hehe) out of all the Brute Secondaries?

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I'd say /SR fits those criterias best when combined with DM.

Well, it was not the first character I made, but one of the first. Maybe a month into the game. I got my first 50 about a month after Kheldians were implemented ("ooh, more alts!"). Guess when my first villain hit 50.

Out of those two I'd definetly go for Shield Defense. Siphon Life provides the heal and Dark Consumption supplies the end recovery SD so desperately needs.

Note that this is one combo where a Scrapper actually outdamage a full Fury Brute.

Super Strength attacks has rather low base damage so AAO won't make much of a difference. Then again, neither will Fiery Embrace. Rage makes a huge difference for Blazing Aura, Burn and Shield Charge though.

How could I forget the suck that is Barb Swipe. Jab actually has one more thing that's better than Boxing, it's Stun Duration is 7.152s compared to Boxings 4.768s. Considering the chance to stun is a mere 10% it doesn't make much difference, but we have to be fair.

It's got the same animation as Boxing, same chance to stun and deals less damage. The DPA of that attack is one of the worst, if not the worst in the game. It's utterly and thoroughly crap.

MKnight: Archery and Assault Rifle are excused because of redraw. And yeah, I also have an Archery/Energy that's ranged only, but the rest have melee attacks.

ML: I'd probably skip Stealth and get a stealth IO in Sprint instead and skip Fire Blast (rather poor attack). Instead pick up Energy Punch and Bone Smasher. Slots can be taken from Combat Jumping (it gives about 1% faster jump, enhancing that is completely irrelevant. Put a defense enhancement in the default slot.), Super Jump (at higher levels one enhancement + Hurdle caps the speed) and Power Thrust (not as useful when you have melee attacks).

My DM/SD Scrapper is running Maneuvers, Tactics and Vengeance. I would run Assault instead of Tactics, but I needed a place a full Gaussian set for when I do my stupid solo stuff. Those two and Grant Cover makes me rather nice to have around. I'm not sure Willpower can survive tanking without Tough though.

I always preferred sneaking up behind them and knock them out with a good one-two punch (Energy Punch + Bone Smasher). Or just jump up to one during a fight and SMACKDOWN! They won't have time to hit back, trust me. People with Hover can't pull this off, but CJ and Hurdle gives you great combat mobility.

If you want high single target damage you need to use your secondary. The post wasn't really directed at you though, I just never see any brave (hitting people from behind, but up close kind of brave) blasters anymore. I'm also convinced that CJ gives you better survivability than Hover. If you Hover the mobs know they can't get to you and just shoot at you. If you CJ the fools think they can reach you and spend more time running than shooting. This could be all in my mind though, they might just chase me while their ranged attacks are recharging. It's not like I have time to analyze the situation.

What do you know, there is another attack that beats the Axe equivalent. 1' extra radius and 5 higher target cap. How horribly unfair.