Deus_Otiosus

That's correct.

Mercy Island was created with the specific purpose of tormenting anyone dumb enough or crazy enough to want to create a villain, and hopefully deter them from that path before they get to L10.

I agree, the pose needs to be less sex-doll if she is so shocked out of her mind.





Have you two never done the LRSF?


KEEP IT TOGETHER SHALICE!!




(I don't disagree with the overall sentiment, but I think your complaints about Sis P being a panic-doll are just really late)

How about lightning? You can go with Mu and the build won't change much.

But I'm assuming the concept is more about the Dark and less about you disliking fireballs.

Claws will incur redraw, so you will probably be skipping a patron pool for more attacks.

In which case you can grab energy, which is great for Invuln.

Invuln and WP can both be built to be very hard to kill, they excel in some different situations against each other.


Tactics adds 7% to hit at base, but costs a truckload of END to run.

Invincibility adds 2% to hit per enemy within 8ft up to a maximum of 10 enemies.

So I think you can stick with Invuln with no worries, tuck a kismet in one of your DEF toggles if you want a little extra to hit.

The GSFC Chance for BU will be better in Follow Up than in tactics.


Both are good choices.

At this point you could delete the entire Brute AT as it would cease to serve any valuable function on a team.

At some point tankers need to get into their heads that the role of holding aggro is not some sacred, protected position ordained by god given to tankers.

You have every ridiculous advantage given to this AT that you could possibly get to fill this role - learn how to tank and stop nerf calling on brutes after they've already been nerfed at the same time that Tankers got two improvements.





That's easy, a lot of people are really really terrible at this game.

A top end damage dealing build can easily out aggro poorly played Tankers/Brutes with low end/mediocre builds that don't have anything that resembles an optimized attack chain or even a coherent idea of what to do in combat beyond mashing buttons.


My Fire/Rad Corr is a laugh riot in those situations.

Are you opposed to having electric/lightning powers as well as "energy" (they both do energy damage actually)?

I ask, because you could be tossing Mu Lightning bolts and Balls of Lightning out of that right hand of yours if you go Mu.

On top of that, EM really wants some extra AoE as well.

I just had to see what it might look like.

The first time you get into monster DPS mode on your future Claws/SR Brute who has a taunt aura on one of the AVs in BAF, you will suddenly have the desire to turn it off ASAP.


I'm sad every time I absolutely must turn AAO off on my DM/SD Brute.

Between his taunt aura pulses, and a top end attack chain that packs mag 4 threat into every single attack - he would spend basically every BAF perma-banned from combat for generating a level of threat that can outstrip entire leagues worth of players. (Not hyperbole, this has happened).


So now I always turn AAO off on BAF - even against the adds by the way, who have shared aggro with their AVs. If you do enough damage/threat against the adds, the AVs can and will give you warnings even though you have never attacked them at all.

Fun stuff.

Many KB powers do no, or low damage.

Those non-KB powers don't need to one shot anybody.

It only takes 1 person with Kb scatter to negatively impact the efficiency and use of AoE debuffs and damage powers of 7 other people.


How does your example answer the situation I posted earlier, where repulsion field is being used on 9CUs to scatter them uselessly?

9CUs have no melee attacks to deny, pushing them away does nothing but increase their lifespan.

I used the minimum required level of smileys in that post (1).

RoF does not deny others the use of their powers.

KB Scatter denies the maximal use of RoF, or any AoE effect/attack.


They should not stand there and admire anything. They should get their own AoEs and add to the destruction of enemies, instead of adding to our enemies lifespans.

Why control them, when they could be dead instead?

Are you sure you don't want to help our targets survive longer? Whose side are you on anyway?

KB = enemy survival boost.


But hey, the devs finally got around to allowing me to turn off those griefing tools people like to call "group fly" and "group teleport".
Now all the players who like those powers have been denied their fun.


Who knows, maybe they will one day turn off the griefing tool that is KB.

It's not even close.

Its a minor amount AVs and Pylons can shrug off.

The Cataphract offers -regen on a level better than some debuff sets.

Unfortunately thats true about the Achilles Heel proc.

However, you can slot the Fury of the Glad Proc in Shatter and you most likely want that in your ST chain.

They work well for Scrappers, who generally are not holding aggro as a Regen.

Scrappers also have no concerns about maintaining Fury.

I do agree that there are some very good mitigation sets that will give quite a lot to Regen.


I see no reason to exclude SS/WP from the mix.

It is easily one of the more popular Brute combinations and for a very good reason.

Whether or not your secondary benefits from Rech is really irrelevant if you want a solid ST DPS attack chain.


For the record, I have L50 WP, Ela and FA Brutes.

I like them all, but for different reasons.

I don't believe in the mythical team wipes being some constant issue, its just a very messy mechanic that reduces the killing speed of high end teams/Tfs/leagues (the only kind I want to play on).

The problem is the assumption that it can be used intelligently, when a lot of players are simply just bad at it.


Here are two specific circumstances I can think of recently where the KB was so detrimental as to cause a team wipe.

1) Lowbie team, Virtue server.

We are fighting Rogue Paragon Swat Teams who are loaded out the gills with the much dreaded Glue Grenades.

These enemies fight at range, and can completely deny movement ability - we had no less than 3 players, including a Brute with Handclap, with KB powers who used them indiscriminately to KB the SWAT Enemies out of our striking range, as they simply blast away at us as the melee section of the team struggled in vain to close the distance with them.

No amount of asking to hold off on KB helped.


2) 16 person BAF, no ambush team, Freedom Server.

We are fighting the two AVs, and dealing with the Ambush teams as they arrive.

An MM has turned repulsion field on, and left it on...


The 9CUs are scattered indiscriminately around the field, its impossible to bring AoEs to bear on them. They continue to fire on us, as being pushed out of melee is irrelevant to them.

They gain their increasing +damage and +to hit bonuses, and completely wipe half the league.



Smart players would not have used their KB powers that way.

Smart players are rare.

I'm not sure if ST attacks actually have faster recharge or not. I haven't compared them.

But WM is definitely more AoE focused.

Whirling Mace
8 ft PBAoE
10 Targets Max
14s rech base
Mag 2 stun

Shatter
8ft range, 45 degree cone
5 Targets Max
12s rech base
Mag 0.67 KB
*You want this in your ST chain if you have the rech for it

Crowd Control
8ft range, 180 degree arc
10 Targets Max
12s rech base
Mag 0.67 KB


With a decent amount of recharge (40-60% global + hasten) you can repeatedly cycle these three.


If you have never played this set before, you WILL LOVE Crowd Control.

My Corrs who come equipped with AoEs hate KB as well.

KB is ego tripping.

KB is people having "fun" where they get to feel powerful blasting stuff across the room whether it makes sense to or not.

Blasting stuff across the room whether it makes sense to or not is the height of failure to consider your team.


KB is protection for enemies from concentrated AoE destruction.


Everything will be KBd before you finish typing that.


If my PBAoE or TAoE or LocTAoE or any number of other powers are up every 5-15s, and I need to tell you every time that I'm about to use it to keep you from making a gigantic, inefficient, ridiculous mess of it all - that has indeed ruined my powers for me.

Aside from WP not caring about Recharge, but also having more places to slot LoTGs - WP has QR and FS helps with mitigation that WP loves.


I see nothing major in your statement that Regen will provide that WP does not already give.


Its been mentioned a few times that regen is not the set for fighting large groups.

Brutes are an AT, that I feel, do best fighting large groups.

I'm willing to see how regen performs for Brutes but I don't think it will be some amazing set for holding aggro (with the taunt aura that it will most likely have) for teams.

Please post it when you do, I'm interested in those results.


I have a cranked to the gills DM/SD/Soul brute and I made a cranked to the gills FM/SD/Soul Brute on test (the original got stripped since it had no reason to exist).

The conclusion is that the Brute, once SD+AAO is brought into the combination has absolutely no chance of keeping up with the Scrapper.

This is on seamless, top end attack chains using Gloom.


Gloom is amazing, but it simply can not touch what AAO does for the Scrapper.

Its actually something I consider to be heavily unbalanced in favor of the Scrapper.

Scrappers should be doing more damage, and Brutes should be more survivable - but there needs to be a balance point of "how much more damage" vs. "how much more survivable".

The Brute ends up with the normal extra 12% HP or so (guesstimating) but the Scrapper ends up with something like a 20% to 25% DPS advantage. (My Pylon results were in the 240 range for both builds, and most similar Scraps end up in the 285-300 range).

On top of that, Scrapper SC is also wildly stronger than the brute version and I think hits for like 400-450 (need confirmation here) vs. the Brutes cap of around 280-300. if it is 450, that's 50% more damage per usage.




So FM is in the exact same boat as DM for Brutes.

If you add SD into the mix, the crits vs. fury + DoTs becomes irrelevant due to how much better AAO is on the Scrapper as it provides both a higher Damage bonus as well as simply giving the Scrapper more benefit due to their higher melee scalar.

I don't think Brutes should get the Tanker numbers for AAO when they get the Scrapper numbers for DEF & RES, but they do.

I also think the Brute version of SC got nerfed too much when it was the Scrapper version that was breaking 700-800 damage per use.

They both needed a nerf, but I don't think the pseudopet issues and how they interact with fury were taken into account and instead a low scalar was simply slapped onto the Brute version and the devs called it a day.


As for Brute FM/non-SD vs. Scrap FM/non-SD, I'm not sure where the two stand against each other.

The same goes for Brute DM vs. Scrap DM - all of the top times, IIRC, for Scrap DM are DM/SD which will always favor the Scrapper.

Does that factor in redraw?

While I think the new fury mechanics are an overall improvement for the majority of players and are also more team/trial friendly - I was one of the players that could maintain a fairly solid 90% Fury, and I did this on teams.

So to me, it was effectively a nerf.


I have mixed feelings about it still.

I think the Fury degradation is much better now, and I think about how trials are played and how old Fury might have been a huge disadvantage.


On the other hand, I still feel like I should be able to access the last 20-25% of my Fury bar if I play hard enough/fast enough/good enough and not only when Frenzy is recharged.

That last chunk of Fury is about consistent Damage, and Frenzy is less about giving you a "Burst" of extra damage (which doesn't happen due to how Brutes and damage bonuses work) as is more of a Fury recovery or instant-fury power in situations when you need it.

The problem is it takes 3s to cast, and I don't usually need more than a handful of seconds to generate fury by diving into enemies anyway. So




Back on topic.

I'm kind of Surprised at Claws still being better DPS on the Brute side, but I'm very willing to take Bill Z's opinion on it as it concerns his main character.


Bill, have you copied your main to test and rebuilt a Brute version over there using all the stripped out IOs to test the ST DPS? I'd love to see a side by side of the two vs. each other if you have any details.

And KD, lots and lots of KD with Crowd Control.

Play something else in the meantime, wait and see if you like BS better than BA.

wai.