Bill Z Bubba

I decided to go claws/ea. I'll be able to focus more on damage thanks to EA's energy drain and I'll have claws' great mitigation to help EA.

Plus the concept I have going kicks ***.

Another reason rep is funny:

Getting 4 positive rep hits for a post that is now shown as N/A.

As much as I love gloom on my dm/wp brute, I think it would drive me insane going back to a claws build that has more redraw than practiced brawler causes on my scrapper.

Redrawing before every single followup? I'd snap.

I've been playing since Sep of 04.

I currently have 3 level 50s, about to have 4.

I've deleted 2 level 50s. One of those was rebuilt and is the aforementioned "about to have 4."

There have been several times that I wanted to have the experience that so many of you speak about here. The wide view that is provided by having your level of experience with all of the different ATs.

But I can't do it. I've built multiple combos from every AT but most of them just don't click with me enough to stick with. I can only assume that my predominantly solo playstyle is to blame.

Of the 50s mentioned:
Hero Main 50: Claws/SR Scrapper
Villain Main: Lvl 46 DM/WP Brute
2nd Hero 50: Warshade
2nd Villain 50: SM/WP Brute

Deleted 50s: Peacebringer (twice deleted) and EM/FA Brute

I like...

Enough damage to kill enemies fast enough that I don't get bored.

Enough mitigation that I don't have to make trips to the hospital unless I'm taking down an AV/Hero.

Enough endurance to never need to hit rest.

Enough tohit/accuracy to only miss 5% of the time.

Enough speed to get from A to B without feeling like I'm wasting time.

Brutes, scrappers, corruptors, a warshade, blasters and maybe dominators.

Deth... you might want to rethink spin. I would MUCH rather lose SW or Evis (in my case evis) than spin. A lot of times my attack chain is nothing but FU, Slash, Focus, Spin, repeat. Spawns melt and no reposition for cones needed.

Here's my take on claws/sr on a brute:

Because of the way claws works (end/recharge discount as the secondary effect,) you won't need to rest much from level 1 to level 18.

You're a blender. Get into melee quick, chew 'em up.

Since you'll be in melee, work on your melee defense. People say TOs are worthless. That's not really true. 3 TOs in Focused Fighting will add about 4% more melee defense. It's better than not slotting it at all. So get 4 slots in FF early since you'll need 4 in there anyway. 1end-red/3def.

Same goes for FS. Agile is the start point for your passive scaling dam-res. You NEED all three passives. Worry about slotting them later. Take them for the dam-res which will get more use on a brute due to higher base HP.

It will be a rough road with SR until SOs. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. However, you'll be killing so quickly that it won't hurt too much.

Consider CombatJumping early. It's a nice little bump of defense for very little defense and the extra mobility is nice as well.

Ya know.. since they are putting the Masters of ITF (I think) in with i-16... I think I will try that. Lowest diff, of course, but it sounds cool.

Ahhh, but that's the beauty of it. At the very beginning I noted that we had just done it with 6.

1 invul could hold the healer fluffy and another the spawner fluffy leaving 6 to gang rush Rom while taking turns dealing with the autohit. Even as an SR, I can hold aggro on the autohit as long as I stay the heck out of dodge when it fires off.

What I described above is the "easiest" way for a team of scrappers to handle the situation. But we all know that 8 scrappers can do anything... cept that no death masters business.

Having just run one, and as per my last one, had an absolutely blast, I figured I'd write up a quick how to for others that want to run it. We only had 6 on this run so we took longer, but meh, we made it!

Missions 1, 2 and 3:

Kill everything a lot.

Mission 4:

Kill everything some more.

Ok, once you're at Romulus, you're going to need to turn off scrapperlock and use your brain. But not too much.

There are four entinties to deal with: Romulus, The Autohit Fluffy, The Healer and the Spawner.

We'll save Rom for last.

The Healer:
The Healer needs to hit in order to heal. Guess who's job it should be to get the healer out of Line Of Site. (LoS) Aye, your SR scrappers. Two of them can solo this creature. They should pull the Healer right around the corner of the stairs so that it has no LoS on the rest of your teammates. Its heals will miss the SRs and they can tear it up.

The Autohit:
Guess what this thing does to SR scrappers. Yup, that's right, it kills them dead and does so quickly. Have two regeners on this punk. Just far enough back up the stairs so that it can't hurt the rest of your team.

The Spawner:
This is the one that spews out a bunch of weak but annoying fluffies. All of their blasts have slows which can be hell on many scrappers. However, two willpower users can sit in that mess and regen themselves happy. If you can, try to keep all of the mini-fluff blasts firing away from the rest of your team.

That leaves Romulus and two more scrappers. If Rom gets too far from any of his fluffies, they will float to him regardless of the level of aggro they have on them. This means that your last two scrappers need to hold him on the steps and be strong enough to handle his big hits.

As long as he stays put, and as long as the healing fluffy stays out of LoS, and as long as the autohit fluffy is kept away from any defense based scrappers, you should have no problem dealing with the final event of the ITF.

Once the SRs have killed the healer, they can join the two holding Romulus. 4 scrappers will make short work of him and he'll take out either the spawner or the autohit. Be sure to get out of LoS of Romulus' body when he falls so that his self-res doesn't disorient you. Once the two have control of whatever fluffy is left, the other 6 rip up Rom again. One last repeat with all 8 on Rom and you're done.

Hope this helps!